StartGrowManage – The Merlin Principle & Prosperity Plan
Joe’s core frameworks to help MSPs move from technician to CEO.
https://startgrowmanage.com

Strategic Business Review (SBR) Framework
Part of the StartGrowManage methodology. Learn how to run reviews that surface actionable business outcomes.
https://startgrowmanage.com

Product Matrix Tool (via Salesbuildr)
Salesbuildr’s built-in profit matrix to visualise client service coverage and identify gaps.
https://salesbuildr.com

Datto: Global State of the MSP Report
Industry benchmark for pricing and service data.
https://www.datto.com/resources/state-of-the-msp-report

Upcoming Workshop – Deliver AI Solutions MSP Clients Actually Need
Live and virtual training hosted by Joe Rojas and Microsoft.
https://startgrowmanage.com/events

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James Steel (00:00)
Joe, it's fantastic to have you here on the show finally. So we first met at ChannelCon while I walking around the booths. There's you standing out on your StartGrowManage booth, loads of energy. And from that chat onwards, I've just thought, I have to get this guy on the show. So I'm really happy to have you here. You talk all about taking people away from that horrible grind into giving them a life that might end up on a beach, I think is the strap line. And ⁓ I'm really good to talk to you specifically.

Joe Rojas (00:24)
Yeah.

James Steel (00:29)
today about the existing customer side of things. But before we do that, I'm going to dive straight into a question for you, Joe Rojas. And that is a misconception about you that people have when they first meet you.

Joe Rojas (00:41)
I'm crazy.

James Steel (00:44)
That's not a misconception, another one.

Joe Rojas (00:50)
Well, you know, ⁓ I am super loud and energetic and I think that ⁓ a misconception that people have about me is that I'm superficial because I'm loud and energetic. And then as you get to know me, you really start to understand that, you know, I get down into the nuts and bolts of things, into the nitty gritty of things. But I think a misconception that a lot of people have of who I am because I'm so

bubbly sometimes, and I hate to use that word to describe myself, but I is that I might be superficial. So, yeah.

James Steel (01:29)
Good, yeah.

I know having followed your content since meeting you on the stand and seeing all the work that you're doing, I know that you've got an enormous amount of experience and credentials to back it all up. yeah, it's good to have you here. Listen, when we're talking about what we're to have a chat about here on the show, you mentioned that actually there's a great kind of case study of a particular customer that you've been working with. Of course, we're interested in how MSPs can do more with their existing customers. And you've got one that added quite a nice chunk of MRR.

Joe Rojas (01:50)
Yeah.

James Steel (01:58)
in a relatively short space of time. So should we have a chat about that? How did you sort of talk to me about who they are and what the first kind of steps were that you took?

Joe Rojas (02:07)
So if you go on our website, you'll probably see the testimonial from George Blaine from BizTech Pro. And they started with us in December of 23. And in the first four months, I think we added $30,000 in monthly recurring revenue.

the first thing you have to do is you have to look at your business as a business. I help you think about how do you go from technician to CEO? And the problem is that mostly people who run MSPs like me, I was a tech when I started and I behaved like a tech and I treated my business

like a job. And so when you treat your business as a business, you look at things differently.

You operate differently. I've had clients add as much as 60,000 monthly recurring revenue in a year without adding clients. Because the first strategy we do when you come work with us is really look at what's already there. What do you have in your existing clients? Are you running good strategic business reviews or are you running TBRs and QBRs that get you nothing?

James Steel (03:18)
So is it a mindset thing to start with? And so you mentioned about, you know, it's going from the sort of the tech to the CEO is the first step. if I join your program and I want to talk to you, is the first thing you do sort of start talking through the sort of like the life goals and the end game, or is it just straight into like what?

Joe Rojas (03:31)
Yeah, so yeah, well,

we do start with that. We actually start with your, what are your wealth, freedom and impact goals?

and we call that your prosperity plan. then based on your prosperity plan,

we call it the Merlin principle. We start in the future and work our way back to tomorrow morning.

James Steel (03:48)
Okay, yeah,

nice.

Joe Rojas (03:50)
Right.

So it's about King Arthur, right? and he's about to knock on a door and a door pops open and there's an old man standing there and says, young Arthur, I've been expecting you. And it's Merlin and Merlin says, look, I was born in the future. live my life backward. So we use that Merlin principle.

James Steel (03:50)
one.

Joe Rojas (04:05)
where we go out in the future and we work our way back, And then based on that, we can build a strategic view of what your business is gonna be and start getting you into that CEO mindset and out of that ⁓ technician mindset.

James Steel (04:21)
Okay, so then they're starting to think more like that. They have a clearer definition of what it is they want at the end of it. Now they need to start actioning it. Where do they look? Where do they turn?

Joe Rojas (04:31)
everybody wants to go out and get new clients first. Wrong places start. First, you go harvest what you've already grown. You've already planted all these seeds that are sitting in your garden and you know, and the stuff is gonna go bad on the vine.

James Steel (04:46)
where are the seeds where the where are the sort of half sprouted seeds?

Joe Rojas (04:49)
Well,

the first thing is really, you right-sized? Are you charging the right amount of money to your existing clients? We had a client come in a long time ago, I said to him, okay, we have to do 100 % price increase. He said, I'm gonna lose all of my clients. And I said, no, you're not. You're gonna lose some clients.

but not all of your clients. He was like underpriced.

So we put a strategy together. It took us six months of messaging to the clients that the price increase was gonna happen.

So what you do is you set up strategic business reviews. The first thing you do is the first two months, you improve service tremendously. Before you go do the first strategic business review, you start looking at all the things you weren't looking at, you go do service improvement, you do all that stuff. Then you start messaging them for the strategic business reviews.

James Steel (05:26)
Okay.

Joe Rojas (05:44)
after you message them for the strategic business reviews, you show up, you tell them all the things that were not happening, you tell them all the things that are going to happen, and you let them know that on X date, there's gonna be a price increase, and the price increase is gonna be 150 % or 200 % or whatever it's gonna be,

They're gonna have a better break than people that are coming in new. And make sure that you mean that. You don't have to trick them.

James Steel (06:11)
Mm-hmm.

really understand and keeping your sort of finger on the pulse of the market and what other people are charging ⁓ What's best way to find out about that sounds quite tricky thing with I suppose, you know We for somebody in a peer group or something along those lines quite straightforward

Joe Rojas (06:25)
All you have to do

is go to any of the popular websites that we all know that put out the ⁓ State of the MSP report and all the average prices are in the State of the MSP report and any one of us can get a hold of those.

James Steel (06:38)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Rojas (06:39)
So that's where you could go look for that and say, okay, well on average this is where I should be, I'm not even close to that, right? So you can get them. So then we went and did that, and then we did the messaging, and then we pulled the trigger, did 100 % price increase. He had 88 clients at the time, whopping four of them left, and he doubled.

his revenue in one day.

James Steel (07:08)
Wow, incredible. Yeah, just through approaching it in the right way. Because if you didn't handle that correctly, you could well lose a lot of customers. But if you've got a good approach to it like that, I can see how that would work.

Joe Rojas (07:10)
Right? And so.

And it's really having a framework and we have a whole course on this, on what the framework is and how do you communicate effectively and how do you do it over time so that when you pull that trigger, you don't lose the clients because that's the first step. The second step is really doing the strategic business reviews to understand what the customer's business problems are,

And the reason why we are adamant that you have to do strategic business reviews using our framework.

James Steel (07:51)
Well yeah, okay, tell me about yours then, because we've had various people talking about this idea and I'm curious to know what makes a killer.

Joe Rojas (07:53)
All right.

Right, so everybody

goes in and they're talking about speeds and feeds and wires and pliers and all the different technical things that need to happen. We try not to talk about any of that. We spend about four or five minutes talking about the tech stuff. And then,

The first question is, what's the strategic ⁓ outcomes that the business is committed to in the next two years?

And the second question is, what are you proud of that happened in the last six months?

because the outlook for the next two years is that they want to grow and they need to do these things and this is everything that needs to happen.

If you ask the right questions, the questions themselves will drive the right person because the person that's hearing the question will go, I can't answer that question. That's a question for my boss. So everybody's got, you gotta get the right person in the room.

James Steel (08:32)
Definitely.

Yeah, and you're in the right place. So tell me that second part of that question.

Joe Rojas (08:48)
And that's why you get delegated down to this like, don't need to know this stuff. Why does the CEO need to know what the speeds and feeds are? Why? They don't care.

James Steel (08:57)
That's so important,

isn't it? So that second part when you said sort of the, what are you most proud of that's happened in the last six months? Is that just another, is that to kind of get to the right person or is it what's the thinking behind that as sort of the psychology behind that?

Joe Rojas (09:10)
Well,

that's part of our framework of questions. We call it the game plan, right? And so they tell you the whole thing, ⁓ well, we did this, we got this many clients, we did all this stuff. And then you ask the second question to that question, which is, what is it that you lack? And in that question, in the second question, you start to discover all the issues.

Like I wish we could integrate this with that. I wish we could have this information over here. I wish we could, and those I wish we coulds all become projects. And then we have a whole other series of questions that follow those first two questions that help you get to what are the key results and outcomes that they wanna produce over the next 12 to 18 months.

James Steel (09:58)
This is brilliant. So we've got the initial making sure you've right-sized your pricing, we've done the mindset pricing. Now you've got the speaking to the right person and you've got the structure of those questions. So where do we go from there then? So we've probably fairly well set up. Is there any other additional advice around what we can do for our existing customers?

Joe Rojas (10:18)
One of the things that you could do is you could set up a list of who your existing customers are and set up a list of all your products across the top and see who's got what, And if all the boxes aren't checked, why not? And are the boxes appropriate for these clients? Because not every product is appropriate for every client, right?

James Steel (10:38)
you see this quite a lot within MSPs? I've heard, we're familiar with this idea of the profit matrix, we have something built into our product, we always like talking about it. Is it useful?

Joe Rojas (10:46)
Well, look, ⁓ every client that I had,

every client that I had when I was an MSP for all three MSPs, they all bought their internet from me, 100%. I would never have a client that would not buy their internet from me. Like, I don't understand that. I don't understand why MSPs are not selling internet to their clients. I don't understand it. Whenever I meet an MSP and I'm like, well, why aren't they buying the internet from you?

It's money that you get paid that you do absolutely nothing for.

James Steel (11:07)
Yeah.

You know, the white space side of things. How do you build that into a process? Because I've had conversations with MSPs that have sort of been quite surprised. They've been sort of sat on something like that. And they're just like, well, yeah, we haven't really, we should use that. We should be doing that. Where does that fit in? Who should be doing it? And how can you get better use out of that? Because it kind of feels like it needs to be part of your daily life almost to keep me referencing that.

Joe Rojas (11:33)
Yeah,

interestingly enough, you know where you could ask that question and move that client into that space? At the strategic business review.

James Steel (11:41)
Nice.

Yes, so always take that to the review with you.

Joe Rojas (11:47)
You come to

the Strategic Business Review and you say, hey, I noticed that your internet is not with us. And when your internet is with us, we can provide better service because we get higher level of access to support. can XYZ. We can maybe give you better pricing than the pricing you have now. Or we can give you faster speeds that are not accessible to you right now in the commercial space.

James Steel (11:52)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Joe Rojas (12:11)
There's a lot of stuff that's available to you as an MSP that may not be available to them directly when they're buying and they don't have to deal with it. They're still going to call you when it goes down, so you should be getting paid for it.

James Steel (12:27)
So that's an important area, having the right services in your portfolio, isn't it? So I'm reluctant to go down the AI route, because it talks about so much at the moment. But do you have any views then? Because I can't help but feel like every portfolio should include AI consultancy services of some kind, and automation really.

Joe Rojas (12:30)
Yeah!

Well, there's

two ⁓ things in AI that you need to include. The first, you know that we are big proponents of you have to niche. You have to niche, niche, niche, niche, niche. And when I say niche, people think, ⁓ attorneys. And I'm like, no, no, like trust in estate attorneys.

James Steel (13:08)
is niche for the people listening from the UK. like, what's this guy all about? Yeah.

Joe Rojas (13:09)
Yeah, niche. Yeah, niche.

Right? So niche or niche, it depends. I go both ways. people say doctors and I go, no, no, no, gastroenterologists, you know, like that niche.

if you don't know their EHR, you're just a janitor. You're just an IT janitor. You're just doing 365 and cybersecurity,

James Steel (13:31)
Do you your customers, the companies that you work with, do you normally always lead them down this idea and try and help them identify? it's, from the MSPs I've talked to, can be quite difficult. Two things. One, I don't have one. I don't have a standout sector. And then two, I don't want to rely on one sector because look at what happened in COVID for the people looking after hospitality businesses and that kind of stuff.

Joe Rojas (13:52)
Listen, I had

a client during COVID that had dentists, right? And what happened to dentists during COVID? Not a lot, they shut down. So we work with our client to really understand what they could do for dentists. So the first thing that they did is they helped organize a bunch of workshops on how to get PPP and

James Steel (14:01)
Not a lot, I imagine, with

Joe Rojas (14:19)
and the other, there were two loans. So how to get the grant and how to get the loan. So they organized that for all of their clients. So all of their clients came to their sessions on how to get money. And then they said, hey, you know how your practice is?

We can never do updates or change your stuff because you're always working seven days a week and it's always open. We have this time now where we can send our technicians there and there's nobody there and we can rip your whole thing apart and gut it and put in new wifi and do new stuff. And for the next year, all he did was updates to his existing clients.

They got all the nice, fancy new stuff. They had the money to do it because my customer helped them get the money. So why wouldn't they spend the money with that vendor that helped them

James Steel (15:14)
And you could never do that with a general base of customers because you would just never be able to react fast enough. But with that specialist knowledge or the fact that you can go out and research for this one niche, then yeah, you're in a great position. Turning lemons into lemonade, that's really smart. And what about identifying these? How do you identify these traits with within?

Joe Rojas (15:15)
So.

Yeah.

But that's...

So

we have this very scientific ⁓ complex method, right? everybody has to pay close attention, right? Because what you do is you draw a grid on a piece of paper, right? If you're rural, it's a little bit harder, but if you're in any major metropolitan area, you draw a grid on a piece of paper and you put,

James Steel (15:40)
I

Joe Rojas (15:56)
⁓ the type of clients that you have across that grid, right? Whatever industries that they're in. And then you get a penny and you hold it over the piece of paper and you turn your head this way and you let the penny go and wherever it falls, that's the one, right? Because at the end, very scientific, it uses gravity and it uses, you know, this triangulation, the whole thing. And here's the deal.

James Steel (16:13)
Wonderful very scientific. Yeah

Yeah.

Joe Rojas (16:25)
To get to a million dollars in new revenue, you need 20 clients, basically. It's about 4K per month per client. You need about 20 clients, maybe 22, but that gets you to a million dollars in revenue for the year. If you decide you hate it after the 22 clients, you can A, sell it, B, continue to maintain those clients and switch to a different vertical.

C, you can find ⁓ another MSP that's focused on that and just sell the clients and keep the MSP. You can do whatever you want with it, but the thing that you need to learn how to do is how to do the process.

You just need 20 clients. And they're not difficult to get once you're The more you niche, the easier it is to go find the clients.

James Steel (17:13)
Mmm, mmm.

Yes, yes. Now it makes sense. so much that comes from it. And I think there's just a hesitation to do it and have that reliance on, but yeah, I can understand why it's the right way to go. And as you say, it's a process, isn't it? Cause you can apply that to the next one. It's just about getting that real depth of knowledge in that sector that means that you can support them in a way that your competitors just couldn't essentially. you're sort of safeguarding your position as well, aren't you? We started talking about the...

Joe Rojas (17:34)
So.

So back

to your AI question, right? Yeah, so back to your AI question.

James Steel (17:50)
That's what I was going to say, the AI stuff. So yeah, you got me.

Joe Rojas (17:54)
So now you have one office manager in the dermatology

practice. She's got three people standing in front of her and she's trying to run a 10-minute conversation on the phone to figure something out. Guess what can do that without her picking up the phone?

James Steel (18:09)
Yeah,

very well placed. Yep.

Joe Rojas (18:10)
An AI agent can

pick up the phone, can ask all the questions, can book the appointment, can send the person a text message, can send them an email, can do all these cool things that help that office manager become a more powerful person and be more present with the clients that are sitting in front of her.

Just that one service.

James Steel (18:32)
And you're really helping. mean, that will have come out in your review with them. And that's given you a really good position, hasn't it, to go in there and make a difference to what is a real pain point for them. how do, in your experience so far with MSPs and how they're able to sort of take on these AI services, are they using partners, do you think? Or is it a case of they're to upskill fast to understand these technologies so that they can spot the opportunities?

Joe Rojas (18:58)
My recommendation is

always use partners. You should never become an expert at upscale and that's going to slow you down. The great thing about being a niche is that when you're a niche, you can quickly find the vendors that are servicing that space well and the ones that are not.

James Steel (19:18)
Yes, it helps so many areas, doesn't it? I see why that's one of your top recommendations.

Joe Rojas (19:21)
Right?

Let me look at their reviews. Let me go talk to some of their clients, because they'll be listed right there on the website.

You can become a partner. You can join their partner program. You can join their referral program. You can make monthly recurring revenue from it. There are so many different opportunities.

James Steel (19:41)
So the next part is pass the pitchfork. Now this is a question from our previous guest, Graham Stead of Growth Habits. So he's a ⁓ sales leader who works with MSPs to also grow their businesses. And he was interested to know, said, how does Joe overcome the barriers that he'll come across when trying to actually encourage MSPs to invest for the long-term in their sales and marketing operation and not just want that kind of instant payback?

So how do you approach that with your clients is what we're talking about here.

Joe Rojas (20:08)
Yeah, good.

that's a really great question. And we don't start with sales and marketing ever. Right? So what we always start with is, what do you have right now? It's like, we go and monetize the clients that they have right now. we help them narrow down to where they're going to niche to.

Nobody wants to be niche. Everybody wants to be agnostic. But buyers only buy niche. So they think when they buy from you that you can fix all of their problems and that you are gonna know all of their systems and that you're gonna understand everything about them.

James Steel (20:48)
Yeah,

that's a great point. ⁓

Joe Rojas (20:49)
So

regardless of whether you're selling niche or not, they are buying niche. They're always 100 % buying niche. So you might as well do it.

James Steel (20:56)
faster than expectation.

Ha

Joe Rojas (21:08)
And then

when you do it, what happens is all these opportunities open up and you start to learn what they are and you start to see where there's more growth and there's more opportunities to solve different problems, help them make more money. And at the same time, when you go spend money.

you see a faster ROI only because you're spending it exactly on the people that can and will buy from you because you have a solution for an actual real world business problem that they have, not cybersecurity.

James Steel (21:39)
Yeah, love that, love that. I think you've answered it beautifully there. And it's the, again, it's the power of niche niche. It's really working. Have you got a question for our next guest? It's gonna be a sales leader What would you like? Any questions? What are you struggling with Joe? Have you got any questions that you need help with?

Joe Rojas (21:44)
Yeah.

Thanks

So.

How do you actually generate leads and sales engagement if you stay agnostic?

James Steel (22:09)
So it's talking about how do you attract net new, how do you attract the new customers?

Joe Rojas (22:10)
Yeah. How

do you attract net new customers and service them over time if you stay agnostic? And a follow-up question is how do you get yourself as a salesperson out of the sales process?

Because what happens when you sell Netmew clients and you're agnostic is that the customer keeps calling the salesperson and going, hey, this didn't happen the way you said it would. Hey, this didn't happen the way you said it would. Hey. So how do you get out of that?

James Steel (22:39)
Yeah, because that could quite easily detract from your ultimate goal, couldn't it? For sure. Now we've got a fun section. Joe, I know you're to have some stuff about this. So this is our section called industry manure. And this is all about advice that you hear in the industry, in our little echo chamber world that perhaps doesn't sit right with you, that you think is actually bad advice people shouldn't listen to.

Joe Rojas (22:43)
All day long.

You need to know how to do all the compliance frameworks. You need to know how to do CMC and SOC 2 and this one and that one and the other one and this one and that one and that one and that one and that one and it. No. That's just how to spend more money on more tools.

You need to narrow down, this is why you niche, and then whatever your customer needs, you need to learn that. And you need to know it better than anybody. I have a customer that gets $1,500 a seat because he knows FINRA compliance better than anybody on planet Earth.

James Steel (23:44)
So it's not that you don't need to know compliance, but it's that you need to just make sure you're doing it specifically to what relevant to your customers.

Joe Rojas (23:49)
And you're doing it

so well that nobody else could do what you do.

I actually prefer that you not go learn that stuff, that you partner with somebody, because it's, if you're growing a business, right, you wanna be able to move quickly.

And the more stuff you have to stop and learn, you just have to find good partners. you have to move slow in the beginning and fast at the end. Slow to onboard a vendor and fast to fire a vendor.

James Steel (24:26)
great advice. Joe, it's been an absolute pleasure chatting to you and I knew you'd give me loads of tactical stuff. I knew you'd be tactical. We've got plenty of notes for the listeners to be taking and implementing in their businesses. You're doing so much that I think I would struggle to promote you. So tell me, what is it you would like? Where can people find you? And what is it you would like to tell the listeners about in terms of what you're up to at the moment and where they can work with you?

Joe Rojas (24:27)
Yeah.

So.

Cool, so places to find me is stargroundmanage.com or linkedinjoe.com. You go to linkedinjoe.com, it takes you right to my profile. And ⁓ we have upcoming how to deliver AI solutions that your clients actually need, which is a workshop, which is gonna be $97.

and you can do it in person or virtually. And so I'll give you the link for that so that you can put it somewhere. That's a really great way to ⁓ come into our ecosystem and see what our education looks like. Microsoft is actually leading a how to do ⁓ Copilot using Copilot Studio, how to do agents and stuff like that. So it's gonna be a really cool ⁓ workshop.

James Steel (25:35)
Fantastic. And so we'll definitely put links to, course, StartGrowManage in the show notes and to the events. I'll link to your, presumably you have like an events page, do you, so you can have a look at all the upcoming stuff. Right, great. Okay, so we'll put that in the show notes. yeah, that sounds like a brilliant session that people need to be attending. Joe, thank you so much. I hope this is the first of many sessions we get to do together. I'm so glad we finally managed to do it, but I appreciate your time. I know you're a very busy man, so thank you for sharing.

Joe Rojas (25:55)
I'm out.

Thank

you. I love hanging out with you. I've been looking forward to this all year.

James Steel (26:03)
Good man, alright. You take care, look after yourself. Cheers.

Joe Rojas (26:06)
You too.

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