Video: How To Extend Your MSP Team In One Week With Hirexe

hey Channel insiders I'm your host Katie boso and welcome to this episode of partner POV brought to you by higher X if your business hasn't felt the strain of the it skills Gap just wait IDC predicts that by 2026 90% of businesses worldwide will struggle with this issue for the managed service providers of the it Channel who already have to navigate shifting budgets and client demand highx wants to make Staffing it Talent one less Challenge and joining me now is Chris Keith founder and CEO of highx Welcome Chris Katie it's so good to see you thanks so much for having me and I feel like I'm in great hands with such a professional on the other side so just keep me on the rails here okay oh my goodness the check is in the mail my friend thank you so much for your time today I appreciate it Chris this is such an exciting project I've known you for quite a few years now and I know you to be somebody who put your mind to something and you go after it and this is no different at highx so why don't we begin with you just giving us kind of the rundown of what highx is and who your customers are certainly um well again thanks so much for having me and and for the kind words too so what highx is high level we are a technology enabled South African BPO so I feel that we have the best quality resources in the world for the price point that's available over in South Africa we work specifically with the the Channel with msps but really any business that's just looking to grow and expand and I can get into all those specifics here with you shortly yeah absolutely let's continue on that conversation then so Chris you've spent time in the it distribution channel so specifically speaking about msps where did you see the need for the services that highx now provides so I joke around Katie I've been building overseas team since before it was cool back in 2020 right uh I've been doing this for about 15 years and when I was at zorus uh which was a cyber security company we focused primarily uh with with companies in the channel we scaled quickly so when I came on board there was about four of us we scaled up to almost 40 people in a two-year time frame I was responsible for the majority of those hires and what I realized is hiring becomes a full-time job hiring for the channel specifically there's a lot of nuance there's specific industry knowledge that you need you need to know the channel there's there's like that it factor and I say it in in Jess it's not just knowing it but also having those intangible qualities that everyone's looking for so I found or what I realized is man if there was someone that could help me get to final round candidates faster or we always joke around get to know a lot faster so that we're just stuck with those final round candidates that's something that would be hugely hugely valuable so that was really the Genesis of all this and all good businesses start as scratching your own itch or solving your own problem right so that's that's what I set out to do so let's continue on from there what challenges will your services and ultimately your people solve for msps what I'm really asking is what roles can they ideally fill because as you said yourself there's a lot of nuances in this space so it's funny it starts off the most obvious one and where we've had a ton of success is just at the help desk now what's nice is that ranges from you know L1 text up to up to L3 so if you need people with a little bit more experience we have all that one of the aspect specs that we always look for and right now we have a database built up of of a couple hundred people that are ready to go there's really really strong it Talent over in South Africa many of them in fact most of the candidates that we have in this database live and active right now have prior MSP experience so what does that mean you don't have the cold start problem you're not bringing someone from zero to one they understand the ticket velocity because you and I both know Katie in the channel like tickets happen fast like the rate of speed is is quick they also know the technology so whether it's connectwise PSA or dat rmm or backup anything like that the more specific that our partners are with us on the front end the more specific the resources we can give them that check all the boxes that they need that just allows them to to scale up relatively quickly very well put and very straightforward a database of over a hundred people right now you say yeah without a doubt so as I mentioned we're we're leveraging technology on the back end to to speed this up but one of the things that's become that's just increasingly important and we understand is the velocity in which we can make these connections and I think one of the aspects that that people don't quite realize when they go down this route is truly the win-win scenario that we're able to put together both with us companies themselves as well as the talent that's based over in South Africa so unemployment in South Africa is over 32% and there's a lot of people that have decent jobs but maybe they have to commute it's not uncommon for South AFC to have an hourlong commute so when we're able to give them a a fully remote position that frees up time to spend with family uh and at a really steady job at a company that's been around a lot of our partners have been in business for 25 plus years not only do we put uh the candidates in a great financial position we put them in like a position of of really really nice flexibility but then of course we're helping the our our partners over here in the US find really really high quality resources at a at a cost that makes sense too so it's it ends up being that true win-win thank you so much for the ra details on that and you know I'm thinking to our prior conversations talking about the struggles that kind of bore highx to to come into being so I want to know for our audience from your opinion are the msps in the US who leverage highx struggling with the inability to find and retain Talent or are they struggling to afford it State side because the people who are listening may be asking are these outsourced employees from highx knowledgeable enough to extend internal MSP teams you did touch on that but how do you respond to those who might still be on the fence so Katie let me take you back to uh gez it was probably fall of of 2024 when I was really going to Market with with highx and and and the the solution that I was building and the long-term solution is I I want to build like a a large Talent Marketplace that that does Smart matching so we we'll continue to take the rote aspect out of like a lot of the recruiting role and I was explaining this solution to a lot of business owners that I had in my network a lot of Channel partners that I had met over the past few years and I'm explaining hey we're going to bring all these users on we're going to be smart in the back end and make these automatic connections we're going to do all this stuff and everyone kind of looked at me and they smiled and they said you know Chris if you can solve the you know putting great people in touch with us immediately that's a great problem to solve and you're going to do really well and help a lot of people but here's what we need right now we need these three things we need qualified people so people that know the channel know the space I don't have to train them how to everything because that's really time intensive for my team and that's expensive right the time value of money I don't want to have to train them um so that's number one number two they need that it it Factor uh and that it is both like they they have that the IT background but then there's also something to their personality that's that's that sets them apart and then number three I need them to be reasonably priced um for whatever reason it's tough for me to find people in the US that are capable like that check those first two boxes right and if they do check those first two boxes oftentimes they know it and they they're really really expensive it's not someone that I can afford so that made me fall back on you know if I had the conversation once I had it 250 times this was a huge need for the market and just me like having worked with all these teams in all these different countries I knew how quality of the South African Talent was specifically because they're native English speaker so it's interesting I started to make these connections or say hey tell me exactly what you're looking for right now let me see if I can put you in touch with someone that might check that box and the moments that you saw when people would talk with these folks hear what they had to say saw their resume looked at their background and then heard them present and and got over the phone or over the video with them that wow moment was pretty special that we put together and and we've been scaling since so you've given me a ton of information that really expresses the positives of HX and I think it's it's worth kind of going into that one more time so I'm going to ask the most direct question that I possibly have in this entire interview which is sourcing Talent as we know from overseas is not new and of course yours is not the first company to connect businesses to Skilled workers abroad what makes highx stand out from the competition in this space if you can give me those differentiators that really make you stand out I'd love to hear them I think by far and away it's just it's the the quality of the product right so it's it's funny but my background is is sales right so Revenue related um and one of the aspects that we joke about I I brought it up briefly the in the prior question but it's getting to that wow moment right so that wow moment looks like a a couple different things but generally in a perfect world you're on a demo with a customer and often times if you're selling software or you're bringing something to Market you know people don't quite understand or you're giving them the demo and then something will happen and it's like it's almost that 5-second moment like if you're telling a story that 5c moment where people realize like oh this is the ending like this is this is this is exciting that wow moment with sales is when something clicks and it's often times not something that is said or articulated but you can see it you can feel it like someone's like like they light up and they're just like the energy is now there they're engaged all that sort of thing what I realized is I have that wow moment the first time that each and every one of my MSP or Channel Partners talks to someone from South Africa or frankly even watches like a a loom video because we have everyone go through video interviews for us when I send them that over they look at the resume the questions that I always get asked whether I'm on the phone or in in a video interview just like this is where are they located what's the times difference do they speak English natively and then it's and this is the price point this is this is a a full-time employee price point um so I think what's really exciting about that is um when you have a product that you know like people jerk around about product-led growth right when you have something that you don't have to sell but that the product truly elicits that wow moment on its own that's what's really special and that's exactly you know fortunately the position that I'm in or frankly my my partners in South Africa put me in just with the with their overall quality now my next question I can't help but think about AI versus traditional human employee that argument that we've often been hearing going on in the background of many Industries right now we are in the age of AI I talk about it every single day so when you hear the arguments to use AI over people how do you respond to that well my response is uh and I was actually talking with someone about about this the other day so back in the I think it was the 1950s when the first computer came out there was four major areas of emphasis across the board like with folks in the United States or worldwide and it was it was these four number one what exactly does this technology mean it's just like like what exactly is this going to do number two it feels like this is probably going to make things a little bit more efficient but number three what's going to happen to jobs right and then number four was okay when we when we put all that together what does the future look like like what what what are we going to do and it's interesting you know that was gez 70 years ago or so and what we've seen is those folks that have been able to leverage the technology and in conjunction you know use the technology to the best of its abilities with using the the people aspect simultaneously those are the folks that are really able to capitalize and then increase productivity know and it's funny because even AI itself it's starting going down this this this rout instead of a per seat pricing like what we have for SAS at the moment all the big model companies they all pay by usage so if you use the company quite a quite a bit then you pay more if you use less then you pay less that makes sense for the workforce or just for for businesses at large right if I'm a business and I'm using your service a lot like I'll probably pay a lot for it if I'm not I don't want to I think the same thing is happening with the workforce it's we're going to transition less into where you're geographically located if you're working necessarily 40 hours a week and and where you're working those 40 hours instead it's going to turn into what is the output that you're able to generate and I think the companies that position themselves to have really highly qualified motivated people that enable them give them the best tools and put them and give and educate them give them the knowledge that it takes to to use those tools productively we're going to see people do 120 hours worth of work and what used to take 20 or 30 or 40 and that I think is is really really exciting can you give me an example of a success story in which an MSP customer of yours benefited from higher X's Services yes so this one actually checks a bunch of boxes so so thank you so this is just a couple a couple weeks ago we had someone submit a request just via the website on a Sunday um so this this is over the weekend mind you first thing Monday morning uh my my some the team in South Africa is is a few hours ahead of me so they always you know I always wake up first thing in the morning with with a bunch of information we had three Perfect Fit candidates for the request that came in on Sunday afternoon I shared that with the MSP partner on Monday he responded right away and said this is incredible thank you so much we set up the interviews for first thing on Tuesday and he extended a job offer on Wednesday morning and 72 hours we got this you know we got this person like a great resource they actually would have been able to to start on Thursday the only thing that held us Katie was was the hardware it we didn't have uh the hardware sitting on the shelf my MSP partner actually had to order it so they started that that following Monday so in Le in 72 hours job offer in in about a week's time we had someone start now the next part of what's really neat about that too is they started off with just a help desk technician now they have two help desk technicians and we just hired we just helped them hire a service coordinator so there's a bunch of different uh you know types of roles that they're looking that that they have hired uh and now we're actively helping him uh fill a chief of staff role as well to help just with overall coordination so that's just neat shows like the time the velocity at which we can we can make these things happen him making that higher and going the chief of staff route is just going to allow him to work on his business not in his business quite a bit so enabling that sort of a transition or helping there too is is something that that's really exciting so tell me what does this process of getting started with highx look like can you walk me through from that first point of contact to the day the employee gets started pending the supply chain that they're getting the the equipment that you talk about and how long does that typically take yeah so the the time frame is generally as as short as quickly like we said it could be that the hours or days um to to a couple weeks um we totally go off what what the partner specifics or what they're looking for I've started a couple companies and have worked in the channel for a long time and I'm building this business for frankly like how I would see it being valuable if I was scaling building a company so there's a few things that we do uh that I think are really nice and valuable for our partners number one is everything is month-to month right so you're not locked into any sort of a long-term agreement uh we just ask that you give us a 30 days heads up if you're going to be canceling a resource that's totally totally fine so that month-to month I think is massive the other aspect is just you know the more granular or specific that you can get with us on what you're looking for the more granular and specific we can get with you on on getting you those resources when you're interested uh we set up interviews for you they're you know 15 to 20 minutes in that first interview it's also wild Katie again what's important is getting the right people with the right companies at the right time the majority of our folks that hire it only takes it takes like 1.3 interviews is is is the is the most often so so people make decisions relatively quickly and and then we bring them on board after that happens um you I take care of everything I'm the employer of record over there there's some tricky things about South Africa uh that you you want to be aware from an employment standpoint uh luckily I have labor lawyer lawyers on staff and we handle all those specifics for you so you just give me that that onetime cost on a monthly basis we do everything that we can to to handhold or onboard that person as quickly as possible too so as far as the tech stack and everything like that we get the hardware you install your entire technology stack all the software on that and then it's essentially an internal internal employee employee for our our partners so you get them on board on exactly what your you know internal processes look like best practices that that specific technology stack but then we help to actively manage that employee with you so if there are certain aspects um you know best practices um P like just managing personalities doing weekly monthly quarterly check-ins Etc uh that's something that that we all do in conjunction with you you your leadership team Etc as well so Chris after hearing all of this if we have interested msps watching and listening today how can they get started started with HX we actually make it as easy as possible just go to MSP Chanel jobs.com that will give you a quick overview of all the services easily reach me there's a number that's associated there too uh someone or even myself will get back to you very very quickly and we'll go from there Chris thank you so much for your time today it's been a pleasure getting to catch up with you and get to know higher X and thanks to you at home for watching or listening you can check out all episodes of partner POV on Channel insider.com once again I'm Katie boso and I'll see you next time

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