Video: Twenty Years Of Nerds That Care With James Rocker

I wanted a do com it was like we needed that do we're mad at you broadcom we're mad at you VMware you should not have done this luck is an acronym for me it's laboring under correct knowledge hey Channel insiders I'm your host Katie boso and welcome to channel Insider partner POV my guest today is James rocker CEO of Long Island New york-based managed service provider nurd that care in 2025 James and his MSP will celebrate 20 years in business he explains how the company got its name with a very deliberate approach to branding and marketing we also dig into the sudden rise of deep seek Ai and James shares his thoughts on some of the changes that distribution giant Ingram Micro is implementing in 2025 James welcome it's great to see you thank you Katie great seeing you as well thanks for having me on today I really appreciate it thank you so much for being here and before I go any further I need to congratulate you because 2025 is your 20th anniversary of nerds that care being in business so congratulations how's that feel it's like a dream it's it's so surreal uh thank you for mentioning that uh you obviously did your research here and uh I can't believe it 20 years is uh a Monumental accomplishment for for us uh and everyone that's been on this journey since the beginning so yeah we're very excited about uh this wonderful year that we're about to have that's so cool does it feel like 20 years for you or does it feel like five minutes it's funny right I was thinking about that the other day and uh it's a good mix of of feelings and emotions right and uh one breath of me feels like I've been doing it forever um but 20 years doesn't really feel like uh like the reality so it does feel like we've only been doing this for a few years um you know and we'll get we'll get into some of that right the trajectory of the company and kind of you know that timeline and where everything started to where we are today so it's a very exciting year for us here at herds that care so a little bit of background about you speaking of doing my research uh you're a managed service provider based in Long Island New York and you've been in business as I said for 20 years so a ton of experience right there but let's talk about your customers first of all and really get to know nerds that care so you serve small to mediumsized businesses typically so talk to me about the vertical that your customers typically touch and is there anything you typically specialize in as far as vertical and customer goes yeah great question um you know when we first started out it was uh really all about who needed our help and where we felt people were and companies were lacking with the Technology support that they deserved um right and it's a little bit of where the name comes in of course just this caring aspect of of who we are and what we deliver to all our clients um we really play really nice in the Automotive space in the legal and financial spaces so a lot of clients that require compliance style Services right which then you can understand um that world a little bit touches on a lot of cyber security a lot of regulations so we really look for clients that number one have uh really a desire to have technology help their business move forward you know we're we're not some of these nerds that are just sitting behind a c all day waiting for you to call us to fix your problems we're here to support your business and and your goals right and on what you want to achieve uh for your company and I think that's what resonates when we tell our story with the clients that we do have you know they hear that and they say okay this is the team and the partnership that we want to have that's going to help move our business forward so so yeah we we we love a a couple other verticals like some nonprofits um as well as specialized Serv based businesses but you know we we have that sweet spot and we really perform and uh you know have a really high standard of Excellence for for who we're serving and all of our Solutions and and and Services I love to hear that and you mentioned compliance which is to me a a big topic that I'm often talking about in front of and behind the scenes a lot these days and you also talked about your customers being involved in businesses like legal Automotive obviously businesses that have a form of compliance they have to adhere to but have you had trouble getting people to understand that compliance and cyber security have to go hand inand what does that evolving conversation look like for you yeah it's uh you know it's a mixed bag right so you have some clients that are Highly Educated uh sort of knowing what they need to do to accomplish Right Said goals to meet certain requirements but yeah it's a challenge you know people are having a hard time just understanding Tech in general right and now you have all these new things like cloud and cyber security and of course now with the boom of AI right artificial intelligence you're seeing just people more and more confused so you know to answer your question it's a bit of a mixed bag but um but you know they're starting to get it and we're we really put it in a place where um it's easy to understand right and we really simplify it for the client to make sure that they understand what they're getting I've seen a lot of clients uh or Prospect right that become clients that maybe have been taken advantage of because they have to abide by certain compliances right and then they get oversold they're oversold Solutions some might say well the protection is there for a reason um I always kind of say like if a hospital right if a if a Health Care Organization has all these things they need to uh adhere to and those are standards to keep your business safe why is everybody not participating in those Solutions right that you're kind of you have the framework so why is the rest of the world not adopting that framework is something that we really try to allow clients to understand even when they don't have compliance to say to worry about from a regulation standpoint but when you boil it down all of those methodologies all of those Solutions all of those tactics and configurations and all those smart nerds that you need to set all that stuff up right why would you not just be doing that for whatever your business is today anyway right so you know it's a difficult conversation and we're we feel like that we're navigating it very well for our clients and helping them understand this you know giant uh you know Tech mess that we have going on out there you know that's being sold to everybody that's such a great point because when you think about the it environment of each of your individual clients I'm sure they look at it and they kind of think about it as like the closet everything about the it is behind that door and we just trust that it's being taken care of and if you open it it feels like a wave of so many different Technologies and words and worries that you have to think about so it's great to know that you're moving with that educational piece and letting them know here's how we're going to help you understand and feel supported getting through that mess you've mentioned the word nerds a couple time which I I love the name nerds that care I've been such a fan of it for a long time I love the logo behind you it all sticks out in my mind so well so from a marketing standpoint Bravo because obviously you knew what you were doing can you talk to me about the inspiration for the name because I know you also come from a technical background yourself this has been your passion since you were in college talk to me about the evolution of nerds that care and where the name came from yeah so you know early on in my career uh before I started the business I had many jobs of uh basically being an engineer so I'm an engineer by trade cyber security kind of homegrown and taught I had a couple security positions early on which was kind of unheard of so when I tell people my story I kind of learned a little bit backwards I was uh I learned cyber security and and hacking and [clears throat] um social engineering and and those kinds of things that you that you hear under the cyber security umbrella before I even knew how to put a computer together um and usually it's the opposite right so um early on on these jobs that I had and and early on in my career realized that the people that I was working with um and the companies that I was working for they really only had a mission and it was really about themselves and that bothered me I was I was all about the clients that we worked with I was all about making their environments better uh I wasn't I wasn't a salesperson I was just an engineer trying to just make environments and businesses better um and I realized that it wasn't the goal of many that I worked for and I met and that really it bothered me um it made it gave me the drive to uh go out on my own and say to myself like many small business uh entrepreneurs say to themselves is there's a better way and I can do it a better way that was the jump that I took to quitting my job and starting the company but kind of fast forward to what your question is is how did we come up with this name and the company wasn't always nerds that care uh we had a different name early on in our career um and I think I tell the story when Geek Squad uh at Best Buy was starting to become a really popular company and they they started taking over at least our area all of a sudden you saw all the Geek Squad trucks driving around you saw the Vans and I said man like it's a okay name like I like the name but hey the world liked it because hey all this money went into that company and um frankly they probably weren't the best at the solutions and services that they were providing but here's America and the world buying from them and uh so I kind of started with the word geek and I started playing around with some names what our problem was early on was we owned a we did not own the dotom of what our company name was and everybody clients included prospects trying to find us they would end up at the wrong site it was an IT company in Chicago uh and it drove me crazy that I did did not have the you know the.com at the time you know so to put it in perspective this was probably around 2013 2014 time frame um so searching for docs ultimately because I that was really my goal is I I wanted a do com it was like we needed that do I started just playing around with Nerds the name nerd and I just started to think about why are we in business right um what's our passion what are we here to do well we're here to drive techn Technology Solutions that help businesses move their business forward but we have to do it in a caring way and I remember uh a client at the time wow you're so patient you took the time to spend the time with us to listen and provided a great solution and then even after you provided a great solution you made sure that it was working well and and up to the standards that we went in there to to provide for them they said wow you really care and something resonated with me on that and I went back home and I started my do coming searching again and and I couldn't believe it you know nerds that care was available and I'm not an English or a grammar expert or major so I said is that even like proper grammar right is that like proper English here nerds that care should it be nerds who care and I bought both so thank God they were both available fast forward to the sales table years and years after and still to this day we do hear from marketing experts from people that maybe study psychology and some other things that are they're above my pay grade Katie right that's not the world that I'm in but right we're on to something we have something here we have a wonderful brand the name resonates with people when we walk into the sales when we walk into that sales table that the psychological work is sort of done for us they know who we are we're nerds and they're hopeful that we care right so it's all in the name and and you know a smart marketing person once told me no one really knows how good your product is right they only know how good your marketing is until they actually buy your product right or use your solution so marketing and branding is is everything I think for any business out there um and I think if you don't if you feel that you don't have a strong brand this is the time to do it this is the time to reinvent yourself this is the time to um build your version of your passion and whatever it is that that you're in business to do nerds that care here we are we're here to help we're here to care about your technology and we have really amazing people here that drive this entire business to where we want to go truly such a like chef's kiss master class in marketing a brand there from the beginning after 20 years as an MSP and you build up that brand you come up with that catchy name you're somebody who's passionate about what you do how do you stand out as an MSP in this crowded space and is it possibly something that you can do today do you think if you did the same thing today and started from zero today that you would be able to get to the point where you are now I I know that's kind of a bulky question but break that down for me it's an awesome question uh I've never really thought about that how you how you asked it um but I'll say this I think the answer is yes have you ever heard like if you divide the wealth amongst the world it'll take X amount of years to just go back to what it is today right um that's kind of what I believe about people in general including myself so of course I would be where I am right it's Destiny it's meant to be it's you know I believe a lot of that maybe it's a little bit of luck right but I don't really believe in luck luck is an acronym for me it's laboring under correct knowledge so if you have the knowledge if you have the drive if you have the passion for what you want to do everything else should fall into place right so you can't be disingenuine about what you're doing it can't it can't feel made up what sets us apart I think it's a bit of who we are it's a bit of our personalities um yes it's a lot of brain power but when you boil down an MSP versus another MSP they're a lot in the same so we are trying to still capture what our uniques are you know what makes us unique what's that differentiator you know some people might say it's our brand and the events that we do and the engagement that we create none of those things are have anything to do with technology right so we kind of we look at these other businesses out there businesses like Ingram Micro right you know that we participate in a lot of these events what an amazing partnership we have with them by the way but we kind of Follow the Leader a little bit what are they doing what did they do that so successful early on in my career I learned about the McDonald's story right and the conversation goes like this how can you build a million dooll business where you have 18 19 20 year olds running the business right if you walk into a McDonald's maybe now it's all robots and kiosks but okay here we are right but it's it's young kids it's young kids running in a very successful business why because there's a system in place there's a whole educational arm there's a whole system that goes with it right and and that's a bit of what we're doing here so if we systematize everything that we're doing now we have Automation and all these exciting things to make us more efficient so you know maybe we'd be be a little further along you know because of some of those clients that by the way if you're watching this we have amazing loyal clients that have been with us since the day I started and I'm so thankful for them because without them early on in our journey you know we wouldn't be where we are today but some of those technologies that were deploying today to larger style businesses let's say they're not taking advantage of that yet for whatever reason right they may have like a slower growth rate maybe they're just a smaller company that is is happy where they are but I'll tell you the larger customers that we have 50 100 employees higher than that they really want to utilize technology to move their business forward and if you can't find the right partner to do that with you then you'll probably be left behind your competitors very very quickly especially as we move into this new era that I believe that we are entering right now with AI and all these different things that you hear going on in the economy and the marketplace you talk about AI so at the time that we're recording this the the Deep seek sort of explosion happened earlier this week and there's there's still a lot that we don't know and just to give everybody a summary deep seek is a Chinese AI startup who released a report recently and saying that its AI models are just as good or potentially even better than some of the closed source and open source models that have come out of the us back to the interview but with that said could you talk to me just a little bit about this sort of rise the the absolute meteoric rise that we're seeing in the use of AI for assistance for just general being able to to search better uh to bring it into our systems with Microsoft co-pilot it kind of just is so baked into what we have now what are your thoughts on it and what is your guidance for people who are kind of going well I'm just an average person and what do I need to do to protect myself it's such an amazing question I I pose a question back to the world right how long does it take for somebody to become an expert in something I don't know the answer to that is it a year is it 10,000 hours is it you know three months because this is all new stuff I don't know anybody out there that's can can legitimately say that they're an expert in in what's going on except for maybe the people on the back end that are programming uh what we have going on so I think it's a super exciting time I think some of it might you know could be just exciting marketing you know call it what you will um but hey this is a this is a real thing that we're that we're entering right and it's there's going to be a major competitive space it's easy again it's the marketing thing right it's my product is better than yours just believe what I'm saying right that's that's sort of what they're saying now we got to use it and now I know some people using it and they're saying no it's actually incredible it's pretty great um right so how is it going to compete with these things you know uh co-pilot chat GPT and so so forth the one leg up I'll say and I think Microsoft was very smart in what they did by buying a portion or a share of uh open AI is the fact that you know um it's hooked into everything that you're using to today right so the Microsoft co-pilot Suite of applications that exist but it's hooked into everything we're doing right so I don't know how these other tools if Microsoft's going to say Hey you could just use this other AI tool to help read your emails and process chats and right everything that we're using co-pilot for today um so I think Microsoft still wins in this in this aspect because of they hold predominantly the market share of these applications that we're using every single day in all the businesses that are out there so I think it's too early to kind of predict some of that um but I'll tell you this right uh Tesla with the robots um you've seen the robot videos of Optimus and and how it's learning after making one or two mistakes of something I watched the robot walk down a hill and it tripped and stumbled the first time and by the third time it walked down the hill it was fully trained to walk just like you and I so like the progression of what AI is doing in general around all things is like hypers speed right so you're going to have these issues again where technology now is superseding what people and how people can C keep up with it right um and this is why they're saying if you're not using it today you you are already behind so I think there's a cool stat about 87 Microsoft put this out 87% of businesses that are not using AI this was a last year stat so like last October September October you will be left behind in 2025 so encouraging everybody here watching today reach out to your it provider get get some help using AI understand what some of those data strategies are and how you can really protect the information that you've been building in your business for heck US 20 years so right so it's it's it's that for kind of all companies is my recommendation is is get a handle on your data strategy and how AI is going to you know continue to move your business forward it definitely feels like one of those things where I know it can be intimidating but you're almost as a business owner in the world forced to figure out how it can be useful in your business because like you said if you don't you will be left behind so this is really encouraging people like of course continue to ask questions and to learn from people who know more about it than you do and to be safe and air on the side of caution but you got to figure it out somehow you or you have to make an argument for why it doesn't work in your business because I either way if you don't you will be left behind yeah well said figure it out you know there are people out there like us there are many companies out there there is wonderful companies out there that want to help you continue to move your AI strategy forward and it's maybe not as expensive as you might think to get some help here in this category you mentioned Ingram Micro in December of 2024 Ingram Micro announced that in January 2025 they won't be doing business any longer with broadcom um they'll be doing very limited business when it comes to licensing and product providing with VMware and as we all know uh the broadcom acquisition acquisition of VMware sort of is the is the story that just keeps developing as we go along some good things some bad things uh depending on who you are and who you're talking to what do you think about that because Ingram Micro the second largest IT distributor in the world right so what implications do you think that's going to lead to and and do you think that that's going to be a you know a a good thing or or who might be impacted by that just substitute us with any MSP any VAR out there um right which is a lot of companies a lot of people broadcom and VMware man they ruined our lives for months um and we figured it out it's all good we're resilient we found other ways but you know we have a lot of VMware customers thankfully like there wasn't as lot a lot of problems from a support point of view but as a as a provider of supporting services for our clients that have VMware in their environment it was completely nerve-wracking to know that we did not have the support that we were not able to make phone calls that we could not get license renewals I'd like to speak for every IT professional that exists in this world we're mad at you broadcom we're mad at you VMware you should not have done this this is crazy that this is how the transition and the the merger the acquisition whatever that is like it was not a good transition um so I don't blame ingr micro for for pulling out of of that partner ship I think a lot of it providers now have pulled out from that partnership it becomes a place that becomes a a non- trustworthy place for me to do business in now you know I'll comment on the Ingram side now I think Ingram is making a huge push for Microsoft and of course Amazon Amazon is what we heard uh all Q4 AWS AWS AWS um so I believe that their eggs are in that basket now but the big announcement I think last year uh towards the end of you know uh last year in Q4 was hey we're going to be investing in in Amazon and if you think Amazon can work for your MSP mssp VAR whatever you label yourself let's go ahead and build a really tight partnership there with Ingram and those and those experts on that side so there's a lot of opportuni so um while we're not a crazy Amazon shop we are more we we we sell more of Microsoft servic um however we do have some some Amazon clients um but the partnership is I I think Ingram has supported all its Partners in everything that they've done um it's one of the main it's one of the main foundations of our business on why we choose them um they've never let us down and with that said just kind of going on the same vein of talking about uh distributors or or vendors that are really supporting you are there any others including Ingram Micro that you would speak to as far as who's really supporting you this year and just being an awesome partner yeah so we have uh I would say our tightest Partnerships are with companies like Dell uh foret uh Trend Micro continues to shine for us in everything that we do um we put on some really amazing events last year and when I say amazing events our clients our prospects our vendor Partners people from Dell people from Ingram uh and other said companies that I'm mentioning they came to these events they supported us at these events marketing dollars right um You you can you could imagine the amount of sponsorship support that we've had from the biggest clients or the biggest uh excuse me vendors that we're doing business with um so just to kind of highlight a few there um they are really very supportive of everything that we're doing ad Lumen is another one that I want to mention they're one of our top cyber security Partners where um where we're basically out sourcing or co-managing uh our security operations center with them 247365 you know all eyes on glass you know you want a partner like that that can support those style of efforts so lots of good Partnerships to go around but I have found navigating them through the relationships that Ingram Micro have been so much more valuable for us than going direct or trying to navigate those Waters by yourself think about that too I I I we talking about these these big companies ingr micro recently went public and I know uh there is something that you're you're wanting to be held accountable on as you told me I know that you want to IPO uh by 2030 uh with Nerds that care James can you talk to me about the journey to get there and why is that something that's so important to you yeah it's an awesome question it's it's been my dream since I started the company um it's not something that you uh you want to start sharing with your first employee and and as you start to grow that is our goal uh we we look to be a public company uh by the year 2030 um and we've got we've got some work to do as you know that's only five short years away but the preparation has started now um and there's a big reason for it money comes and goes right you can make a dollar you could lose a dollar you could make a dollar again there's something that you can never get back and that's time so what I teach my people here is the most valuable thing that we have as people on this planet maybe some other planets in the future I won't go there right is time is time you can't get time back once time is gone that's it so what's the finish line look like for people that work a job right so we say here this isn't a job this is a career this is a journey this is a bigger picture Journey goal that we are on together because I firmly believe that everybody that works here at this current moment will will gain shares of our company and those shares I hope that this helps my people our people here reach some of their goals and their dreams a little bit faster faster than they would be able to do if they were working for somebody else and listen we're going to make some mistakes we're going to need a really strong team we're already starting to put together that team because guess who's never taken a company public before and I'm okay to admit it right here so if you've never done something before well what makes you think that you can do it by yourself you can't right so it's all about the team we put together it's all about giving back it's all about you know the greater good of our company because it's not just about me as we kind of start to wrap up here and look towards the end of this interview i w i one of my favorite things to do is ask about success stories with clients because we often in this space in my opinion forget that at the end of the day the customer is the one that's benefiting the most from the outcomes that manag service providers and everybody in the channel provides so I'd love to hear a story that you love to hang your hat on when it comes to saying here's the success that we provide to our customers and like you said I know some of them have been around since day one for you what story really resonates with me um there's a law firm uh that's been our customer for quite some time um I think when they first started out as a client of ours there were about seven people fast forward uh a few years and they came to me and they said hey I know you have a bit of a cyber security background and we want to try to position our firm to do work with with banks and we're looking to be the number one title closer for real estate transactions in the New York City and Long Island area in order for us to do this though we have to kind of get we have to get these things done it goes back to our compliance conversation a little while ago but this came early on in our career here like 2010 2011 um and I had the skill sets to write what we call um information security plans information security policies they have a few names now people refer to them as wisps so I've been writing wisps since 2008 2009 let's say um so what we had to do is we positioned this firm uh with all of the cyber security controls all of the compliance controls that they needed to put in place and then they were audited by ernston Young and price Waterhouse um mainly from let's say JP Morgan Chase hopefully I could throw some of these names around and they passed with flying colors and I remember it was like an a weekly it was a week a a week long audit where I had to sit at this you know conference room table that felt like it was a mile long and I'm sitting with at this table with all these amazing smart you know analysts compliance officers you name it and we went through the we went through the process and I think there was like only a couple things that we had to like adjust but at the end of the day I remember they said to us we've never seen a small business so put together so tight have the security posture that we're seeing now and I remember the partners say you know calling me later on you know whatever it was a month later we did it we're on the list we're on the chase list we're going to be the main you know closers for Chase amongst and then it that of course uh ballooned out into Bank of America and TD and City and right and everybody else they are you know 80 employees now they are a thriving Law Firm they they are just a wonderful client and I've made friends there and it's really great so I've developed relationships there with people now that I trust with my personal stuff with personal conversations with business conversations just all because you do the right thing and and you care about what their goals are but thank you is good I'm sure we invoiced him for something but we love we'd love the thank yous if anybody else out there wants to benefit similar to that law firm and get in touch with Nerds that care where can they go to learn more about you well of course they can go to our.com nerds thatc care.com um but yeah just you can go on our website there's a lot of contact information there give us a call shoot us an email check out our website we're here to help you and uh even questions so you're unsure about something unsure if we could be a good fit unsure about what you have going on now we're here to just talk so we don't charge you for a phone call reach out to a nerd today right so just go to nerds thatare and check us out nerds are standing by waiting for you to answer all your questions exactly right oh my gosh thanks so much to James for joining me today and thank you as always for watching or listening you can check out every episode of Channel Insider partner POV on channel insider.com you can also listen to us as a podcast wherever you get your podcast from don't forget to like subscribe and follow wherever possible so you never miss an episode you can find us on LinkedIn or X Channel Insider or me at Katie boso once again I'm your host Katie boso and I'll see you next time

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