Video: 3rdmill CEO On Her Unexpected Journey To Becoming An MSP

hey Channel insiders welcome back to channel Insider partner POV your source for untapped opportunities and unfiltered opinions in the it Channel all to help you make Better Business decisions I'm your host Katie boso my guest today is Natalia Shyer CEO of Australia based MSP third Mill if you're new to running a managed service business and honestly even if you're not Prepare To Be Inspired Natalia took over third Mill 10 years ago in the wake of losing a family member but she quickly found her passion and changed the course of her professional life Welcome Natalia thanks Katie it's great to be here it's so great to have you I I'm sure that my audience recognizes you from a past video that we did at Pax stap Beyond that's where we met and I said I absolutely have to get this woman on the show she is such a force so thank you so much for being a part of Channel Insider partner POV no thank you and it was great to meet you in Denver it was a good time A lot has happened since then in the world of technology and the IT Channel we were talking a little bit about it before coming into the show and before we talk about third mail before we talk about all the great stuff that you're doing for your customers we have to talk a little bit about the latest gossip on the street here uh not gossip but news in the time that we're recording this you're the first Microsoft partner that I'm speaking to um since the crowd strike driven outage luckily your customers were not impacted you yourself were not impacted but you got ahead of it because your customers were saying should we be waiting for the door to slam shut should we be waiting for something to happen and for the blue screen of death to sort of pop up all of a sudden how did you get ahead of it with your customers just letting them know that there's nothing to worry about and that they're in the clear and why was that so important for you to do instead of just saying hey they could write it out they'll see that nothing happens yeah it was what an afternoon so obviously we were based in Australia so it all sort of started to come to our head quite late in the afternoon on a Friday and I was fortunate that through the MSP WhatsApp channels I'm part of that we picked up quite early on that the underlying cause was crowd strike and therefore we knew that while the news outlets were still reporting a Microsoft outage it was a crowd strike thing under the hood and therefore it wasn't going to flow through to our customers so I got the early inside scoop from the the P networks pass that through to my team but we were seeing customers worried and that was the moment where I realized we we got to be proactive about this we can't just kind of sit back and take out the popcorn and watch the W bur so I got some coms out as quickly as I could to customers outlining this is what we know it's a crowd strike thing we don't use crowd strike your corporate devices are not going to be affected if you are concerned reach out and if anyone you know is affected or if some of your personal devices are affected let us know and we got a lot of positive feedback from customers off that messaging because we kind of got ahead of it and and we knew they needed to hear something from us to have that comfort that their PCS weren't going to be affected so it was quite the afternoon but we were very lucky to not be impacted I'm really thrilled to hear that that you didn't have to deal with that but I think it just goes to show you that the customer is not often a tech focused individual or group of individuals and even when nothing's going wrong in their Department you need to let them know and it's not going to go wrong everything is okay so I think that level of trust really goes beyond just reaching out when something goes wrong absolutely and I could completely see it from their perspective because the news was still reporting it as a Microsoft outage and in their minds they used Microsoft so they they couldn't understand the technical connection behind the why and and it's actually this third party product that was doing it so and sometimes you have to put yourself in the customer shoes and go well actually their concerns are valid and it's very rare that you overc communicate I've never met an MSP that overc communicates with their customer so it was important that we got that message out and I'm glad we did so why don't we go ahead and dive into the real reason why we're here and it's really to get to know you and get to know third Mill talk to me a little bit about third Mill you're an MSP you've been running the business for 10 years yourself and tell me just how would you describe third mail because truly it is your baby at this point so when you go and talk to people about it how do you tell them what third Mill is yeah it's such a great question and you're right so 10 years on the business is is mine I I sort of in ited it maybe we'll talk about that later but while it is mine I feel like that same Spirit of what it was founded on continues to to to hold true and we talk about it on our website the name third Mill comes from third millennium so it was started by my father in 1997 at the turn of the century the Millennium I guess and the idea was that we were always going to be bringing our customers to kind of the Leading Edge of Technology like the next generation of technology and so it's been a challenge for us to continue to push our customers to what coming and and take them down the path of the latest technology and I think we do do that and that's certainly been my journey I know we pushed cloud and we are very much Cloud first in our thinking and we we jumped on that much earlier than perhaps a lot ofps did in the industry because I didn't come with any preconceived notions about ompr versus Cloud so I always sort of say that's the spirit that drives third Mill is we're really trying to kind of go to that next Cutting Edge and we love to play with new tech and it means my engineers get to play with new tech which helps with recruitment and with retention but also my customers get to know that they're in good hands and that we're going to be innovating with them I had never considered that before when it comes to retention about you want your engineers to constantly feel like they're being challenged and that they're thinking about the technology that's new and coming in and they get a new thing to play with literally so that's funny just to think about that when you bring that up it comes up almost every interview that we do and I think because our branding is so Cloud focused as well and we we do attract a lot of Talent of people who are really wanting to double down in their Cloud skills and they're coming from either business's internal it where they're not getting exposure to some of those new technologies and they want to get their hands on those toys and it's what keeps them the happiest is knowing that they can play and experiment and we give them that space to to work on the new on the new tech it's something I learned I didn't know that when I first started but over the years I've seen how important it is lessen an employee retention everybody give them new things to play with when they say I want to play with the coolest new thing let them do it really good advice right off the bat there let's talk about your customers you specialize in the financial sector uh specifically but talk to me about who are your customers what do they typically do and how big are they Financial Services more broadly um very very step Nation insurance and insurance brokerages across Australia but now expanding out into funds and super funds and and a lot of other kind of financial services and um sort of style businesses because under the they they all work quite quite similarly where they have a lot of customer data and there's a big lens of security and there's also a strong regulatory environment wrapped around it and so we've been able to not only understand the applications that they use and how they work but also like what the sort of the security environment around them needs to be and and the guidelines and regulations that you know the Apper and and their financial services licenses require of them so that's what's kind of helped us to push us to make sure our cyber security posture meets those regulations but also just this deep understanding of their business outside of the kind of the vertical space the only other criteria I really have with customers is Microsoft so that's our deep deep expertise and we don't play outside of that and size-wise you know five seats through to sort of 200 seats we can and work and service and service well really where we get the most success is when customers recognize the value of the partnership with the MSP and we are the phone call and we are the advisor and we are the CTO the CIO to the business in some instances there is someone in that seat on the other side but they still work very much in partnership with us so we love the customers where that partnership is strong because we can do so much more for them it's interesting to me because when you talk about those customers inside of financial services I think people that are more afraid of taking on that new technology taking on cloud taking on that Tech that we're all so excited about where we go what's the next Trend that we can Implement is that a difficult conversation for you to have with them and how do you work through that with those particular clients when you're explaining to them this is safe or we will make sure that you are safe in adopting this new technology and it's only going to make you better that's very interesting actually I think a lot of the clients that that we work with and have brought on were born in the cloud cuz they're not they're businesses that aren't very old and so a lot of them didn't have service they sort of you know Roose because Financial Services business do grow quite quickly as well and so a lot of them have only been around in the market for a couple of years and I had one customer tell me this we were born in the cloud and that's when I realized that that's why I think there is a lot of synergy between us and and the industry because they understand the cloud and and the benefit behind it the finance and the mass behind it makes sense right the fixed cost recurring Revenue know upgrades Opex versus capex conversation about how it looks in the cloud versus not and then so that they kind of intuitively understand that and also like Financial Services Workers they're busy Professional Services Workers and they need things to just work and have a quick feedback loop on their it and so Cloud just works because it's all sort of per user pull down what the apps you need and that's this kind of multi-app environment these Financial Services customers they have lots of applications that they use it's it's there's a lot of them and they want to be able to pick and choose those so it's it's up to us to kind of create that environment where they can have that flexibility and that freedom but with the security around it so the reality is actually you'd be surprised but many Financial Services customers in the S&B space I suspect probably as you go to midmarket and Enterprise some of those hesitations around Cloud may come up but in the SNB space they're Innovative they're agile and Cloud just makes sense to them I have noticed other Industries other Professional Services Industries legal is one where there is that hesitation around cloud and often comes from their experience with cloud data and the legal implications of it and the fear around that and therefore sometimes they can be harder to bring across the line but Financial Services particularly in that S&B space they're surprisingly Innovative in in on this front they get at the heart Tech um and they're quite reasonably techsavvy relative to on Industries that's an interesting takeaway and you're right when I think of legal I was kind of looping that into the same thought and assumption with financial services so it's an interesting take to hear you say that that they're I love the term born in the cloud so when a customer uses that to their it leader I'm immediately like okay they know what's going on they know what they're talking about what's going on yeah and it's a Hightech literacy in in as a result of that as well right oh very good point you teased to this a little bit earlier I'd love to talk about how you came to be CEO of third Mill it's an incredible story and I I just love to step back and have you tell our audience with what you're comfortable with telling them how you came to be third Mill started in 1997 by my father he was an immigrant from Brazil sort of done with the corporate world started up uh third male as a onean band at the time and slowly grew the business over the years he was a born entrepreneur just a mind that just saw 10 years ahead of everybody else and grew a name in the industry for being that kind of mover and Shaker he grew up to about sort of you know 10 10 to 15 staff but then in 2014 he he passed away really suddenly and I was off doing corporate strategy at deoe and mom called me up she was in the business running accounts for him and she said I think need some help and so I stepped into the business and I did not know anything about technology I couldn't have known the difference between a router and a firewall if you had labeled them and I was obviously a baby I was very young I was going back 10 years and I had to sort of quite literally step into my father's shoes I sat at his desk that first day and I think I just remembered that sense and that weight of what do I do now and and working out what the days needed to look like so that was how I took on the business 10 years ago in 2014 I stepped in together with Mom we've sort of we bu like bumbled our way through the early years without a doubt were some of the hardest ones of my life they talk about kind of the the brain fog that comes with grief and I think that that's what was happening for those first couple of years let alone the fact that obviously the business you know Financial it was hard at the time because we were still sort of trying to deal with the aftermath of everything and I think I had no intentions of staying it was one of those things where I was going to come in sort of fix it up and then sell it and go back to corporate life but I think the entrepreneur bug Bit Me Slowly slow poisoned me is probably better a better description because it was Insidious right and and the years went by and suddenly we started to grow and things got better and the team grew we got new people in and suddenly I found myself myself kind of addicted to the PACE and the change and the challenge and so yeah 10 years on we're much bigger over double in size now and um still growing and I I think I am proof the entrepreneurs are made and not born right like I wasn't set out for this life but I certainly am am here now first of all thank you so much for sharing that with me and with our audience I just think it's such an incredible story and I I absolutely know how proud your father would be of you seeing that you've stepped into this role and just become the entrepreneur that he was and just absolutely crushing it over there so congratulations just on all of your success for that so this is 10 years for you now and and you mentioned in the beginning that you said I didn't know the difference between a router and a firewall and I didn't know anything about tech and now to hear where you are at this point kind of walk me through that of where you felt that you started to really get the bug as you said to really it bit you and you wanted to learn more what was that Journey like for you of where you said I think that I'm getting it and I think this is the direction I need to take the business in because this is what technology is all about and what it needs from me h k I think I'll take up the rest of the time answering that question because it was so it there's so much to it right and and I I sort of unpack it in three different ways because I think about this a lot I think there was the the the the angle of the technology pace and upskilling myself in the tech and knowing how much I needed to know in order to to make the decisions I had to make and so that that was sort of one learning path and then the kind of second learning path was the leadership management one where I was I had never LED people or teams and learning and understanding and growing in that space and what my managerial style and leadership style was like and that's an ongoing Journey that I think I've only really just come into my own and that was just kind of this whole thing and then I think the final piece that is harder to talk about but but I'm now realizing was so much a part of it was being a woman I I think I was afraid and risk averse and in my shell and afraid to talk about the challenges and afraid to reach out for help and so many things in that that in an industry that was you know just like all men all the time that I think it took me a while to really kind of find my feet in that as well and to learn to take risks and and fight some of those natural tendencies that I had and and I think that was it in and of itself its whole journey and so the three of those things had to kind of grow almost at the same rate in order for me to out to become successful at what I do and I'm still so so so not not not far enough down the journey as much as I should be but I recognize now that I was battling on the three fronts I liked the tech I liked the SK the skill set I liked the kind of entrepreneurial Cowboy you know mentality so on the tech front the the main thing for me was to make it clear that I was the dumbest person in the room and so I would ask ask questions of my Engineers all the time I don't understand that what does that mean what does that mean not try and out talk them outsmart them and be frank sometimes with customers to say look this is where my tech skill Taps out like I'm going to go back to the team and that helped because there was this kind of inuent humil humility in me from the beginning and I mentioned before that Journey around cloud and so I think sometimes my approach to technology is quite first principles because I don't have any of that Legacy switches wires cables servers in a command line view of the world I sort of see technology as this kind of first principles right tell me tell me what you've tried what you haven't tried have you thought about this have you thought about this and I just think about it in a very different way so today I still rely very heavily on my team I've never been able to jump on a server console and troubleshoot but I am technical enough to be dangerous and it's enough it's enough to be able to have the conversations I need to have with the customers to understand strategically how technology can help them and they know when to tap out to my team so that's kind of that Tech piece the leadership management piece was was one of the toughest ones and the reality was for a really long time I didn't actually um call myself an entrepreneur I think I had this view that I'd stepped into the family business and was running like the local cafe down the road and and like there was nothing glamorous about it and I'll never forget when I got on a phone call with someone it was a vendor or something and they said oh so you you you run you're you're running business I was like yeah yeah and they said oh well there's this this organization an entrepreneurs organization um and you you should join up and I said entrepreneur what that's not that's not who I am and that was in a whole journey of itself like meeting other business owners and realizing oh right I'm one of these people and through that building out my management leadership style through learning what other business owners were like and the fees that they had and understanding that their problems were the same as my problems and that I wasn't bad at what I was doing it was just this is why running a business is hard right and then the final piece around the the risk aversion and being able to take risks and deal with the stresses of of of it all I think um that was just a Time piece and a mentorship piece I think I needed cheerleaders and network in Industry support to get me out of my shell a little bit in that sense and that one was a whole other Journey as well that took me too long so yeah I don't know if that answers the question but that's how I've sort of seen the journey an incredibly graceful answer to a chunk question that I gave you so thank you so much don't don't ask me anymore those simple ones from now on I play yes there no questions only from now on I promise I really have to just kind of double click on what you said about the risk aversion as a woman in Tech it's so so common from so many women that I speak to and you know I had somebody reach out to me recently and said how did you be impostor syndrome and I said what beat it you never do you find a way around it it's a hill that you just have to f figure out how to climb over and I love what you said about finding your support system and your cheerleaders because those are the people who are going to be able to get you through uh and get you over that hill so cheers to that my conversation with Natalia is not over come back Tuesday to learn how she encourages new MSP leaders to ignite their own Journeys thanks so much to Natalia for joining me and thank you for watching or listening check out all episodes of Channel Insider partner POV on our website Channel insider.com or go watch on our YouTube page at Channel Insider newws and Trends you can also listen to this episode and all episodes as a podcast on your favorite listening platform don't forget to like subscribe and follow wherever possible so you never miss an episode once again I'm Katie boso and I'll see you next time oh

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