Fast Break: IT Solutions for Small Business Success

Matt Cranney

Welcome to the FastBreak. Today, I have the pleasure of hosting Patrick Hanifin, sales manager at Elevity, a managed IT services firm based in Madison, Wisconsin, who is going to help us dive into the crucial topic of how small businesses can leverage technology for growth, security, and efficiency.

Recent studies have shown that 52% of small businesses outsource at least some of their IT needs based on a recent survey by CompTIA, highlighting the increased importance of finding the right IT partner. Patrick joined the Elevity team in 2020, bringing his 14 years of sales experience across various industries.

Today, Patrick is the sales manager for Elevity, and he’s actively involved in prospect related activities and helps guide his team to drive new business. Outside of work, you can find him enjoying time with his family and playing golf.

A little bit more about Elevity is that they specialize in helping small businesses navigate the complex world of technology, ensuring their client systems are secure, efficient, and optimized for growth. Elevity is one of the largest and most capable technology management providers in the Midwest. Their team of technology experts can help you reach a truly elevated level of IT security, strategy, solutions, and support. Patrick, welcome to the FastBreak.

Patrick Hanifin (01:20)

Thanks, Matt. Glad to be here.

Matt Cranney (01:30)

Patrick, I’m hoping that you can tell us a little bit more about the work that you do at Elevate and what sets you apart in the managed IT services space.

Patrick Hanifin (01:40)

You know, as you mentioned at the beginning, I am part of, or I’m the sales manager at Elevity. I’m also part of the leadership team here at Elevity. You know, we’re a smaller organization, 60 to 70 people. We’re part of the Gordon Flesh organization, which is a 68-year-old print provider, technology office provider. But at Elevity, I guide and lead the sales organization, helping to innovate new strategies for going to market, as well as driving our net new business.

But what really differentiates us is part of what you talked about at the beginning, that strategy, security, solutions, and support. We lead with strategy. It is a differentiator for us. We’ve made large investments in a role we call VCIOs, virtual chief information officers, that can help small to medium-sized businesses develop budgets, lifecycle management, technology road mapping, doing things that larger organizations enterprise organizations have done for years, right?

Having a chief information officer that’s guiding, that’s aligning technology with the business. Small and medium-sized businesses don’t have the need or the budget for that type of role. So, where we step in is, is guiding those organizations from a strategic perspective to not only give them enterprise tools available to them, but also the strategic guidance that they would not normally have in the size organization that they are.

Matt Cranney (03:00)

Yeah. No, I love that, Patrick. And we talk a lot at Elevate around, you know, one of the things that we always need to be mindful of with our clients is that, you know, our CEOs are chief everything officers, not chief executive officers. They are that, but also so much more. And so, I think you’re, you know, sort of outsourced ability to be that high level executive tech leaders is so needed in the space because a lot of our small business leaders, you know, they don’t have that technical capability always in tech is such a space that, that requires it, right.

Patrick Hanifin (03:30)

Yeah, not only do they not have it, but they don’t want to have it, right? They want to be lean. They want to outsource certain things that they’re not an expert on, right? So it’s a natural fit.

Matt Cranney (03:38)

Patrick, you mentioned a little bit of this in your introduction about your connection to the Gordon Flesch organization. And there are definitely some parallels to how M3 Elevate and Elevity sort of got their start. So I’m hoping you can share a little bit more about Elevity’s start. And was there a specific need or challenge that inspired the creation of the company?

Patrick Hanifin (04:00)

Gordon Flesch, Office Technology Provider, focused on copier print side, managed print. Over the years, we started receiving questions or requests from clients, hey, as copiers got online and became networked, that we were already working on their network, is this something that you could potentially do for us? And it is somewhat of a natural evolution of a traditional office technology provider like Gordon Flesh to kind of move into the managed services space. Not that print is dying by any means, but print is changing, right?

And so that was something that Jeff Dotzler, the President of Elevity, saw pretty early on, you know, 15 years ago that this was a space that we wanted to be in. And we have 15,000 customers that could be potential IT customers, right? So why not?

The Elevity story is a little different. So, Gordon Flesh Managed IT started 12 years ago under that name. We did a lot of great things, but we needed more technical help. We needed leadership within that technical space, engineering really. So, we made an acquisition two weeks before the world shut down in 2020. And that was a time to rebrand.

And Elevity, we like to make up words sometimes at Elevity. And Elevity is the first word we made up. And really what it means is elevate ITY, right? Elevate your security, elevate your productivity, elevate your efficiency. That’s not an IT word. You can leave that in here. But that’s the behind the word, Elevity is we’re trying to elevate your organization. We’re trying to align your technology with your business goals and give you technology with a purpose.

Matt Cranney (5:37)

When you think about our small business audience and you think about, you know, every dollar matters, right? I mean, we would say regardless of size, every dollar should matter, but that is especially poignant. It’s especially close to the vast for our small business owners. And I think having a strategic partners that understand that and get that I think is huge.

Patrick, you know, one of the things that M3 Elevate, you know, we believe like you, technology can be a powerful tool for growth as we talk about in our language being advisor led, but tech supported. I’m hoping that you can maybe share a story how you’ve seen the tech, how you’ve seen technology help small businesses not just survive but thrive in today’s competitive landscape and really be able to maximize their spend, as we just discussed.

Patrick Hanifin (06:27)

Yeah. So, you know, post there, there’s a hundred stories that I could tell you about how we helped organizations deal with COVID. That was a mad scramble of, oh my gosh, how am I going to send all these people home and be able to access that server and to be remote? A lot of MSPs can tell that story though. Every managed service provider in that space needed to be nimble and flexible and strategic, but some of it was, it was so reactive though, right? It wasn’t, we didn’t plan for it. And some organizations did, they took our advice and went into Office 365 and made other investments before that, that helped that transition, the impact of that be less than other organizations that unfortunately needed to react as quickly as can and were going to Best Buy and buying laptops and just breaking every rule you possibly could from a security perspective, just to make sure people could remain somewhat productive. Right?

But we had an organization a few years ago, they’re a family owned 50, 60-person law firm, multiple locations out of Milwaukee that had had a previous relationship with a managed service provider that was out of California. And they were essentially working out of their private cloud. So, all their data was being stored on premise or in the cloud in California. And they worked in somewhat of a virtual environment, but they were logging into that MSP every day and working through their virtual environment. Well, the relationship needed to come to an end for whatever reason. That’s not the important part here. But they came to us as a Gordon Flesch customer and said, hey, I know you do this. We need your help. We feel like we’re in kind of a tough spot here. We’re handcuffed. All of our data are 60 years of being a law firm is in their hands and we, if something happens, we have no access to it, right?

So, we went through a pretty lengthy assessment process, and we were able to recommend Azure Virtual Desktop. I’m not going to get in the weeds of a technical, but essentially, we shifted all of their data from a private data center cloud into Microsoft’s, meaning that now you’re protected in the security ecosystem that is Microsoft, we’re able to help manage you as your managed service provider. But what it allowed them to do is it gave their ownership the peace of mind that A, they were secure, their data is in a place where they can sleep at night. There was an efficiency to that as well. Productivity is something that we talk a lot about. And so, we were helped, you know, they’ve grown since then, they’ve been able to hire people outside of their normal territories because now they have a newer way to work.

We were able to lower some of their operating costs from a device perspective. They didn’t need to buy these big beefy laptops. They could buy thin clients, which are essentially like Chromebooks in a way. So, we were able to save them money, make them more productive, but ultimately make them more secure. And it’s a really great story that we tell. We have a case study on that project because it was a really big project that made a lot of people very concerned, but it has a great outcome and we’re very proud of that customer. They’re very proud to be a part of a Evelity’s organization, but we solved a problem for them.

Matt Cranney (9:48)

Starting with strategy, right? And not necessarily sort of bringing the solution until you understand the strategy and in terms of what, you know, that client was looking to do and what their why was on that project. And so that’s a terrifically powerful story. And I know as people are listening today, you know, they can be thinking about their own situations.

And, you know, as we continue to dive into our conversation, I think, you know, for listeners today to be thinking about how are you set up? What is your strategy as it relates to data security, IT management, device, all the things that you referenced through there. And maybe you feel really, really great about that. And maybe there are opportunities to at least have a conversation with a managed service provider like Elevity or somebody else if they have a connection to somebody else.

But I think the first step is thinking through that, how does it fit within your strategy? So, so I really love that. Let’s Patrick, I want to come back to something that we touched on earlier, which is, you know, every dollar matters. And, and I wonder if, you know, some people listening today and maybe small business owners in general, maybe they could see their IT as an expense, not an investment. So I’m hoping you can kind of even further explain for our audience why having a trusted partner like Elevity is crucial and maybe hit on some of the things that you’re doing to allow your clients to sleep better at night.

Patrick Hanifin (11:00)

Yeah, you know, as far as the questions are concerned, I mean, full disclosure, you send questions, obviously, I don’t think that’s a secret here. This was the one that I spent the most time kind of thinking about how to answer. And the reason being is because we see so many different types of business owners in the SMB, right?

I think that a business owner needs to make a decision for themselves and for their business on how you want to treat IT. Do you want to be reactive, or do you want to be proactive? There has been this evolution of IT in the managed services space that started long before I got into IT where it was kind of like a plumber, right? Something’s broken. Now I call someone to fix it. Well, we’ve moved away from that truly reactive more into a little bit more proactive. So, we’re buying block contracts and we’re investing the small amount of money, but we’re not fully managing anything, right? There’s a meter running still. That’s still somewhat reactive.

And the evolution where we sit at Elevity is more of the, okay, you’re all in, right? You’re fully delegating your IT strategy, security, solutions, and support to us. We’re bringing the tool set. We fully support you. No matter if you call us a thousand times a month or one time, you’re paying a fixed cost, right? Cause that is super important to small business owners as well, is a fixed cost budget, right? Surprises don’t go very well in the SMB. That’s a problem. But as far as making a decision on whether or not it’s a, if it’s reactive versus proactive can help you determine whether or not you do treat it as a expense or as an investment, right? We talk a lot about productivity.

I think when you talk to a business owner, those words make sense. How much time is your staff spending on, fixing their own problems, trying to be self-supportive or working with a partner that can help handle that, right? I just had a conversation with one of my reps this morning. He had a great prospecting call with an AV company and the business owner was saying, you know, we haven’t really invested in IT too much lately or in the past because I employ some really smart people that can fix their own things. I get that. But why do you want them doing that? You’re paying them to scope large cabling projects and to be engineers and to drive revenue and manage projects, let us do some of the mundane tasks. Like we can be your expert, but we can also be the garbage man and the person who cleans the toilets, right? Some tasks in IT are very mundane. Let us do those as well.

So, you know, investing in security, I think is pretty important. Everybody is a target, unfortunately, and not making an investment in security is something that you’re probably going to have to pay for one way or the other. You either pay for it on the front end, make the investments or you pay for it on the back end because you have some problems.

Matt Cranney (13:50)

Patrick, that’s an incredible answer. And I think it sort of calls our audience to think about what is the highest and best use of time? Right? You know, in a very cheesy statement, you know, it’s the one thing that we can’t have more of, right? And you can’t make more of that in your business.

And so, you know, when you think about, you know, whatever your business is, do you want to be in the business of that or in the business of fixing a computer or building a cybersecurity network or, and what is the highest and best use. And I love your sort of call to action on that and call to thought, which is great.

But I want to build on something you just touched on there at the end of your response. And I don’t know if we can go much further in our conversation today, Patrick, without talking into a topic that I think is on every business owner’s mind, not just small business owners, right. And that’s cybersecurity.

You can’t go, it feels like a week right now, a day right now without seeing news stories about ransomware attacks or bad actors or those things. And obviously from an M3 Elevate perspective, we are involved in that arena from a cyber liability perspective. You all are involved in that industry as well. So, can you talk about how, maybe in a deeper fashion, how Elevity helps small businesses protect themselves from that ever-evolving sort of threat landscape?

Patrick Hanifin (15:07)

Yeah, you know, much like insurance, we do talk about, you know, there’s, there’s never going to be zero hurricanes. There’s never going to be zero car accidents. There’s never going to be zero breaches. Right?

So we’re not here to guarantee that you can’t have a breach. What we’re here to do is to put the right tools, processes, and resources in place to mitigate or lessen the impact that you will have to your business by having a levity cybersecurity plan, right? That’s what we’re trying to do is just to lessen the impact, to make sure that you remain operational.

That if something does happen, because 91% of breaches start with an email. So, there’s a human component to that that we can’t prevent. We can drive awareness and give you education. But at the end of the day, if you have a office full of clickers, there’s not a tool out there that’s going to prevent you from having a potential event or breach. Right?

One of the main things we talk about is that we do for our clients is there’s not one thing that we can go out and buy for you that’s going to protect you in all different types. Right?

 We, you know, Matt, we remember back in the day, you know, when computers kind of became online and e-commerce and, you know, if you were like me, our parent, my parents never want to put a credit card information into it. Like, who knows what’s going to happen. Right?

Well, we could go out to Best Buy or Circuit City and buy Norton antivirus. It would be a CD-ROM that would run for what seemed like a month. And then you’re good. We’re protected against antivirus, right? Well, the landscape has changed, right?

We’re not as worried about protecting the endpoint as much anymore as we’re worried about protecting the data and the identity. So, there does need to be a, what we call layered approach. So, we have tools and processes that help drive awareness. So that education piece to make sure that your staff understands the threat landscape and can be that first line of defense. Then we need to have the proper tools in place that can detect if there is a problem, right?

You know, I liken this to like a home robbery, right? So if somebody breaks into your house, what do they do? They run upstairs, they find their jewelry box, they find the safe, they get in and get out as fast as they can because they do not want to be detected.

It’s not how hackers work. Hackers lay dormant. They watch to see who pays the bills when the, when wire transfers are happening. The average dwell time for a hacker is like over 200 days. They just, they’re very patient. So, if you don’t have the proper tools in place to detect when someone’s there, you don’t know they’re there until they take that big action.

And then the next, you know, the next layer there is having proper response tools. To be able to isolate that, to be able to quarantine it to a device or to a server, so it doesn’t become a wide stead problem and then the end of that would be recovery. So, if all those other things fail and we do have an event, how do we recover? How do we become operational again? And that’s a strategic conversation in itself, because it’s not a cookie cutter approach.

For someone’s threshold for downtime in manufacturing is a lot different than someone’s threshold for downtime in marketing or a communications company or even a law firm. But we’re so reliant on the internet and technology today that we do need to have some type of a plan in place. If your MSP or your IT director or your IT manager is saying, hey, we bought an antivirus a couple of years ago, we have a subscription -based model, it’s a set in, forget it. That’s something that I would take caution with, right? It is, unfortunately, it’s a continuous investment because the landscape is continuously changing. For a time period post-COVID, it kind of felt like the hackers had a little bit of a leg up. I think we’ve caught up at this point, but they continuously are innovating, right?

One thing I think is important for your audience to acknowledge is we have this picture of what a hacker is. It’s the ponytail kid in the basement drinking Mountain Dew. That’s not what they are. They’re organizations like ours that have HR departments and finance and a help desk and they write scripts and this whole thing runs and it’s a real business and the reason why we’re seeing an uptick in it is because it works and they’re making money, right? So, protecting our clients is a cornerstone of what we do, but it does start with that layered approach, the driving awareness, having the right detection tools, having response tools, and then ultimately being able to recover.

Matt Cranney (19:35)

Patrick, thank you. I love that. And so your call to, proactivity versus reactivity, in, in not seeing sort of the, a cyber liability event or a ransomware, is something to, you know, sort of, Hey, I’ll be concerned about that when that happens. An ounce of, prevention, you know, is worth a hundred pounds of cure, right?

And, again is something that, through your strategic based approach, that obviously a levity is working with your clients, to really sort of engage on and, build that plan in readiness because so much of it today, I love you said a callback to how things have evolved in terms of, you know, install the antivirus CD-ROM move on with your life. it’s sort of a concurrent theme through our conversation that all of it is not there anymore. It’s a different day, whether it’s device management, whether it’s network security, you know, all of those things. It’s because our world is so much more connected today than it ever has been before. And that pace is not slowing down. Right. And it is only going to increase.

Patrick Hanifin (20:30)

There’s a lot of, and the last thing I meant to mention there is, please buy cyber insurance. Like that is so, so, so important not to plug anybody here, but that is critical. We really don’t want to do business with any organization that does not believe in having cyber insurance. We’ll gladly have a conversation with you why it is so critical.

There’s some really good statistics that Microsoft has produced about how collaboration has been incredibly elevated since COVID, more messages, more emails. And you read that initially and you’re like, that’s great. Well, what it’s also does, it’s created a lot of noise and traffic for that 91% of breaches start with an email, right? So, it’s just the percentages have just increased in that way. So, you know, some bad comes with some good. That’s just unfortunately the world we live in.

Matt Cranney (21:10)

One of the things that M3 elevate that we talk about is, you know, having your insurance program help you play offense and defense. And obviously, you know, that helps you power sort of, you know, growth, but also stay protected at the same time. And we’ve, we’ve talked today a lot about defense, you know, in IT and, but looking ahead, as you think about your clients and your business, what are some of the most exciting trends and developments in IT that you think will impact small businesses in the years to come and really help them continue to play even more often so they can continue to grow their business?

Patrick Hanifin (21:46)

Sometimes the best offense is a good defense, right? President of my organization is an Iowa football fan and that’s not a dig at them, but I think that’s something that they would pride themselves on, right? Is that they’ve quality defense. But there is some very exciting things that are being introduced through AI and through Co-Pilot that small to medium sized businesses should take advantage of.

As simply as you know, looking to an organization, it could be Elevity, it could be a training organization that can really help you adopt and optimize some of the tools that you already pay for through Microsoft Office 365. Like learning some of the new tricks and making sure that your staff is fully aware of, are they using Outlook properly? Are they using their calendar properly? There’s always something that comes out new with Microsoft.

I saw it today where, I had to search for a time slot for like six different people, some of them at Elevity, some at Gordon Flesch to join a meeting together. And, you know, I combined all the calendars to find the time open slot and I went to go set the meeting and there’s a new prompt that says, include all these people in your invite. Yeah. I didn’t have to put them all in and maybe that’s existed for a while, but I just, for some reason I didn’t see it until today.

So Co-Pilot, there’s two different versions of Co-Pilot. There’s a So that’s Microsoft’s version of AI here. There’s a public version, a free version of Co-Pilot that is using the web’s data and algorithms to feed you information. And then there’s a paid version of Co-Pilot. And that is only your data.

And organizations that are serious about taking advantage, and it’s private, taking advantage of AI, first and foremost, I think should have an AI policy. And we can help advise or even write what it is. I don’t think that the answer is just ban it altogether. You do need to, I think, put some parameters around it and make sure people understand the information, what types of information they should be putting into AI in order to help them be more efficient or more productive.

But I think it’s a big miss for SMB to not at least explore and be open minded to what AI can help them be more efficient doing. From an MSP perspective, there’s AI in everything that’s coming. Integrations, automation, bots for this, bots for that. That’s going to help us be more efficient and be more affordable for organizations that want to partner with an organization like Elevity.

But there are law firms, there are CPA firms, insurance companies that could clearly benefit from having AI work for them in a way. And it’s not like a headcount reduction. It’s to have people focused on more revenue-driving activities rather than some of those mundane tasks. Or it’s just kind of the old work smarter, not harder as well.

I think it starts with AI and it kind of ends with AI in order to play offense in an SMB from a security perspective but also from a productivity perspective is a really good tool. And your MSP should be, if you have an MSP partnership or if you’re looking for a new one or if you have an internal IT department, they should be there to help guide you and army with the information that you need to make the best decision for your organization as it relates to Co-Pilot, training in Office 365, or other some of the tools that you have. So training, adoption, optimization, kind of the three of becoming an expert in a program that you use, in our opinion.

Matt Cranney (25:25)

The world is only getting even more connected and AI is continuing to push us in that direction. So even more of a need for help, guidance, wisdom in the IT space.

I really love your call to sort of optimization versus always thinking new. I think sometimes as a small business owner or business owner of any size. There can be an inherent excitement and about sort of new shiny things. And that can be good. And as we talked about with, you know, whether it’s AI tools and we should keep our radar on antenna up to those things. But are we maximizing our current spend today? And are our people as efficient and as effective as we would want them to be?

And I think that’s a terrific question for our audience to sort of just take away and think about because I’m sure there are areas in all of our businesses, ours included, probably Elevity too, where we could stand to be more effective with what we are already paying for to our conversation prior about how do we maximize our dollars and our investment in tech and see it as that versus an expense. So, thank you so much for your really thoughtful response there.

Patrick, that’s all the questions I have for you on that side of things. So as always, our last set of questions is our fastest break set and we’ll do this rapid fire. I’ll ask you each question and we’re just looking for sort of a quick off the top response to each one and then we’ll move on to the next one. Does that sound okay? All right. Okay. Favorite book that you’ve read in the last 12 months?

Patrick Hanifin (27:00)

Arthur goes to camp. I’m kind of kidding. I have two very young kids. I read a lot of books and Mike, my son is really obsessed with Arthur right now. And Arthur goes to campus his favorite book, but best book I’ve read in the last 12 months, sales management simplified by Mike Weinberg.

Matt Cranney

I love it. Complete the sentence for you. Leadership is.

Patrick Hanifin

Innovation.

Matt Cranney

Patrick, the most impactful coaching advice that you’ve ever received.

Patrick Hanifin

It’s not what you promote, it’s what you permit.

Matt Cranney

Love that. Your favorite podcast that you would recommend to our audience.

Patrick Hanifin

I’m kind of a golf junkie. So, no laying up podcast is my favorite. They have two knowing up and then trap draw. But if you’re looking for one that’s more business focused, Mike Weinberg, who I mentioned that wrote the book, is a sales innovator leader and he has a fantastic podcast. all things sale, but it is really business focused. If you’re not a sales individual.

Matt Cranney

Awesome. You can’t live without it app on your phone.

Patrick Hanifin

I can’t say Twitter, so I’ll say Spotify. I’ll say Spotify.

Matt Cranney

You know, it’s funny. Yeah. As we go through this, Patrick, we’re always sort of expecting people have got these sort of exotic crazy ones and it’s always like maps, email, you know, in, in, on Spotify and others. So that’s great. Sure.

Patrick Hanifin

Teams as well. I mean, I’m on the road. Teams is a pretty big one. Our ability to work anywhere with the proper Microsoft tools is pretty incredible these days.

Matt Cranney

Yeah, I love it. Last thing you did that truly scared you.

Patrick Hanifin

There’s a water slide that one of my nephews convinced me to go on with him one of the like toilet bowl ones I I’m not a I’m not a thrill seeker kind of a guy I like my feet on the ground and I don’t like heights and I was I was actually scared of that one I’m really hoping my four-year-old son is not a thrill seeker because we’re gonna have a tough relationship

Matt Cranney

I love it. I love it. If you had last question, if you had to give a Ted talk, what would be its title?

Patrick Hanifin

I’ll still go golfing here. Why you shouldn’t own a lob wedge.

Matt Cranney

Mmm. I love that. really niche, but I love it. So, and I actually, I think I would, I would watch it. So, cause I think I have one. Okay. before, we wrap today, Patrick, I’m hoping that you can share, with our audience, you know, where people can find you find out more about Elevity, and maybe what’s the best way to connect moving forward. If our conversation today has sparked something or they have some, interest in having a conversation with, you and Elevity.

Patrick Hanifin (29:24)

Yeah, ElevityIT.com is where you’ll find all the information on Elevity. There is a lot of rich information and resources that’s self-serving as far as our blogs, our articles that we’ve written on our 4S’s, strategy, security, solutions to support. There’s also a free consultation where we can jump on a phone call and talk through some of your struggles or challenges or the goals that you have for your organization. And then lastly, we have security assessments. If this is something that you want to have a closer look and look at the vulnerabilities that your organization might have, you can do that all through ElevityIT.com. We’re on Twitter, we’re on LinkedIn, we’re on all the different socials, but that’s where we like to drive people because that’s where all the great information lives.

Matt Cranney (30:07)

Okay, Patrick, thank you so much for being willing to join me today and for sharing your insights and wisdom with our audience on this episode of the FastBreak. We really appreciate it.

Patrick Hanifin

Thank you, Matt. This has been a lot of fun. I really appreciate it too.