Tech and Tequila Podcast 0:00 Hola Hola. 0:00 I'm Bien Venidoz Familia. 0:02 Welcome back to Tech and Tequila, the podcast where tech meets communidad con corazon. 0:08 I'm your host Kat Lopez Shelby, founder of Shelby Technology Solutions Co, creator of Hashtag Your Digital Bliss, and of course, your favorite tech chica. 0:17 And for those who may not know me that well, I'm also a local Voyager who just loves tech. 0:23 On this show, we break down what actually matters for small businesses, cybersecurity, AI, automation and connectivity, cloud software, and how to build a tech stack that supports your life and your clients instead of making you feel like you need a drink at the end of your day of work because it's been stressing you out. 0:43 And today we're talking about clarity. 0:46 Because the biggest pain that I see isn't that businesses don't have tools, it's that they don't have the visibility into what they have and into their clients the way they want. 0:58 And today I'm very blessed because going to be joined by Rosie from Forge OS and we're going to be getting into how advisors and of course their clients can finally see the full picture across their telecom and tech stack. 1:12 But you know how we do it. 1:14 So before we get into that Familia today we have a 2 parter and which feels very in with what we're going to talk about today as well as since this is the very last episode that we are going to record before the end of 2025. 1:31 We are going to go what I like to call an OBG, an oldie but goodie, but that's Pantalones tequila. 1:37 And we are going to dive into the way, let's just say when things are simple, we're going to go with like super simple. 1:45 So I have Pantalones tequila, which is the Blanca here and if you don't know about Bantalones tequila, this was of course Co founded by Matthew and Camilla McConaughey alongside with Andrew. 1:59 And I am sure I am going to butcher this poor person's name, but it's Chris Somalis and it was launched in October 2023. 2:08 And their whole vibe is literally about bringing the fun back. 2:11 And that's really what we strive for here. 2:14 We strive to make your work fun so that you're enjoying it and that you're having, you know, a good time. 2:21 You're not like grabbing a drink because you're stressed out. 2:23 And the second thing is, of course, for anyone who knows, Blanco is made with 100% organic blue Weber agave. 2:34 And of course it, this particular one is cooked with honey and citrus. 2:41 So that's going to get kind of the note you get. 2:43 But if you're in the know, for those who know, you know, Blanco is the least aged tequila. 2:50 This is the one that's really meant to be sipped. 2:52 You don't need to necessarily mix it with anything. 2:54 It's very crystal clear, you know, it's perfect. 2:58 So we're going to take a quick sip before we get into it. 3:00 Let me maybe my husband already had to fix one of these and glue it back on for me because I accidentally like yanked it out and I didn't get the whole thing, but I got it. 3:11 So we're going to take a quick sip for of this. 3:14 Then we'll be ready to talk about a great, I was going to say a great subject, but a way to simplify your tech stack, a way to simplify how you interact with your customers and something that will be very worthwhile to start the year off perfect. 3:31 Just a good sip right there. 3:33 So all right, so that is going to be my toes for clarity, clean data and of course, many, many less surprises. 3:46 So let's shift gears. 3:47 I know that we talked about it in the intro. 3:49 We kind of gave a little teaser during our tequila segment. 3:52 But one of the biggest challenges that I see as a trusted tech advisor, like I said, it's not a lack of tools, it's a lack of clarity. 4:01 There's too many flat platforms, there's too much data and not enough visibility. 4:07 And that is why I'm super excited to bring Miss Rosie from Forge OS into the conversation today. 4:14 But before we dive into to this combo, Miss Rosie, for anyone who may not know you let yet for anyone who is not in the technology advisors group already, you know, take a minute, introduce yourself to us to the listeners. 4:32 I say yes to the listeners and, you know, just give a quick background. 4:36 Sure, Kat, first of all, thank you so much for allowing us to be a guest on your show. 4:41 I really do enjoy the added bonus of having that little shot of tequila before we get started. 4:48 So thank you. 4:49 So my name is Rosie Potterbaum. 4:51 I'm vice president of business development for Forge OS Forge is a business analytics platform for technology advisors and their customers. 5:02 And one of the reasons why I was with technology advisors, I have been in with ILAC C Lex. 5:12 I was I left Windstream before coming to Forge almost two years ago. 5:17 And one of the reasons why I came was I've always been in sales operations or, or I would say the working with partners, understanding their business. 5:28 And one of the things that I was always, you know, from a sales perspective is how can I add value to my partners and their business? 5:36 You know, if I sold for a company and I didn't have those products or services, I've always introduced my partners to those vendors that could help them. 5:45 About 3 years ago, I went into a partner's office and I was going to do a QBR and he showed me the platform and what I saw just excited me because partners are incredible at selling and maintaining relationships and delivering technology. 6:06 But there's so many different platforms and most technology advisors have multiple TST relationships and multiple carrier relationships. 6:15 And the issue was, is that they had all these, these great customers, but the data, the data was siloed from 1, you know, TSD to 1 Carrier. 6:27 And although they all did great jobs of providing the data, there was not that single source of truth. 6:34 That's why I got so excited when I saw the Forge platform and I thought this is something that I really want to introduce to my partners. 6:43 Prior to coming to Forge, I introduced about 10 partners before I even came. 6:49 That's how excited I was. 6:50 And it was those partners that were at the beginning stages, the infancy of their agency, all the way to those partners that were looking for maybe an exit strategy or those partners that were just looking for what we would call gaps and trends in their business. 7:07 So how did they outrun attrition? 7:09 How did they outrun rate compression? 7:12 You could always recruit more customers or you add more products or services to the customers that you've had. 7:19 So that's why, you know, joining Forge was so exciting because I can bring another tool to my partners who I've been in the industry for 25 years. 7:28 So most of my partners are my friends. 7:31 You know, I've been very, very fortunate to be able to watch their business grow and flourish. 7:36 And to a lot of my partners, they have sold their businesses. 7:39 So my role has always been, how do I bring value to our partner community? 7:45 Well, it's like you read my mind because my follow up question was going to be, what problem were you most excited about solving when you came to Forge? 7:54 And you did such an amazing job answering that. 7:57 Because that's, I, I think there's like a clear line between being a technology advisor and, you know, having to, I want to say, go through multiple platforms, having to look for multiple things to be like, OK, and where is this at? 8:13 And what's going on and why is this missing? 8:15 And that can take up a big chunk of time. 8:19 So for the first half of today's podcast, we're really going to dive into how Forge helps from a partner perspective or from a trusted tech advisor's. 8:31 And you know, I know that collecting data from your clients is so important, right? 8:37 And from a tech advisor point of view, we're offering juggling like data from the carriers, the cloud providers, you know, mobility billing and all these different places. 8:52 So how does Forge help advisors consolidate the all that technology kind of in one spot so you can see clear insights and make stronger, you know, more strategic recommendations for your clients? 9:06 I think, Kat, the biggest challenge that we have in our industry is there's no standardization or normalization of what something is called 1 TSD can call a product one thing and another TSD or carrier can call it completely different. 9:24 And for those of us who haven't grown up in the channel or in this industry, it's very, very confusing. 9:30 What we've done is we've standardized the language within the, in the OS so that partners can see this is the customers that I have on cloud, this is what's on security. 9:41 This is what's on, you know, I'll say data or, you know, Internet. 9:46 I think that was probably, you know, even today when we work with our, our partners, they'll call it something different. 9:54 When you look at the the Commission reports for another carrier, it's the same thing but a different name. 10:00 So what we've tried to do is bring all of this data in and to centralized this data into a single platform. 10:07 So they're eliminating the swivel chair from I'll go into this TSD platform, I'll do this, I'll do that. 10:16 For a lot of our partners, this they might have Zoho, HubSpot, Salesforce, it's giving them the ability to not only have all that data in one single place, but being able to go on the reveal dashboard and be able to see what where that data is coming from, what products they've sold, what suppliers they're using, where is the bulk of their revenue. 10:40 Is it with carrier wonders? 10:43 It would carrier too. 10:45 And I think that's also the other key element of this. 10:48 It's not only knowing what your customers have, but also understanding if I'm putting a lot of revenue on carrier acts, how do I go back to that carrier and saying, hey, like 90% of my revenue was on here. 11:02 I think I should have a tighter relationship. 11:04 I think that we should should be going back to that Channel manager and saying, hey, I really want to work with you because I have a large chunk of my revenue and you want to develop those relationships. 11:14 And that's really what we try to do is giving the insights that would be impossible to gain from logging into multiple portals and platforms. 11:25 Yeah, I was thinking to myself, you know, that really leads into when you go to a provider and you say, hey, we've done this, this and this. 11:33 You know, why don't we partner on an event or why don't we work together on something to bring in additional, either additional revenue or open up obviously additional points of revenue that you can have. 11:44 I love when you talk about that because data really tells a story, you know, and it's not reports just for the sake of reports, you know, Can you explain how you know, y'all software automates the analytics and the dashboard to help advisors uncover what I was just talking about like new revenue opportunities or you know, maybe some cost saving insights for their customers that they may have missed. 12:12 Sure. 12:13 I think for most partners they don't have what we would say a customer facing platform. 12:18 So what the platform does is it gives that partner an enterprise look and feel because it puts their logo on the platform. 12:26 So if you have a customer, you know, I would love to say we're all good salespeople, but I know when I was selling, I sometimes left revenue on the table because they were in a contract with someone else that I wouldn't break that contract. 12:40 I waited until it came out until they came off of that agreement or the customer was acquired 12 times over. 12:48 And they've added seventeen other locations that in our busy lives, we kept going and we kept selling. 12:54 And you know, what happened was is, you know, you build a bond with these customers and you are their trusted advisor and they come back to you, but sometimes they forget to tell you they acquired to other companies or, you know, hey, I think I needed redundancy. 13:10 So what it does do for customers, it gives them the ability, for partners, it gives them the ability to put their customers in the platform and to see services that they might not be aware of. 13:22 We, you know, you were working with the CIO, that CIO left and started, went somewhere else. 13:28 So you might not be aware that there's a new decision maker in there and they might have acquired multiple locations. 13:34 So now you can see things that you might otherwise not have access to the platform. 13:41 When we talk about the analytics, what we do is we for every partner, we start off by building a foundation of all of your accounts. 13:49 But as you continue to sell, you continue to send us those orders. 13:53 So we continue to put those orders into the platform. 13:56 So not only do you have visibility to what you've sold, but also what's new. 14:01 And for a partner who's constantly selling and constantly working with customers, taking a breather, looking at the state and saying, hey, I noticed that I have no security in my in My Portfolio. 14:16 I have not looked at any wireless mobility. 14:20 I have not looked at cloud or data center. 14:24 Those things become very important when we have a couple minutes of downtime of saying, how do I get, there's only two new two ways that I know of to get more revenue. 14:34 It's getting new customers, acquiring new customers, which isn't always so easy. 14:39 And then the other way is to continue to add revenue to those existing customers. 14:44 And not only do you increase the stickiness or the retention of that customer, but you continue to add value year after year. 14:51 And I think that's probably the biggest component that most partners come to US. 14:57 90% of our partners come to us for commissioning, auditing, remediation. 15:04 And what happens is they realize that they see other components of it that they didn't realize. 15:10 So our goal is, you know, let's get you in, let's show you the platform for a partner who has a platform already. 15:17 Our goal is to supplement what they have. 15:19 We're not a TSD. 15:21 We're not looking to dislodge any of your direct relationships with your carriers, your TSD. 15:27 In fact, we worked hand in hand with most channel managers and most TSDS and most carriers. 15:33 Our goal is to give you that those business analytics that it's impossible to get from multiple sources. 15:41 No. 15:41 And I love that because really when you think about it, you know, once you have a developed relationship with a client, it's so much easier to have those discussions. 15:51 And it's twofold, you know, just kind of what you were talking about sometimes. 15:55 And I know I'm not the only tech advisor that's ever heard this. 15:58 It's like, Oh my gosh, I didn't know that you did that or, you know, our contract was up and they just kept calling us over and over and over again. 16:08 And so we just went ahead and said, hey, you know, go for it. 16:13 But it, it had me thinking as you were talking with like a real life experience that I've had recently with a customer. 16:20 And it's crazy because I have a really, really large client that has added all these new locations. 16:30 And that's one of the things they're having issues with is figuring out who the internet's through, who this is through and all of that. 16:38 And having that in one spot would be absolutely amazing because we'd be able to pull them in. 16:43 Correct. 16:44 That's exactly Kat. 16:46 I'll give you a real life story. 16:48 One of our partners came to us. 16:49 He had a healthcare client that has 600 locations. 16:53 The client had gone through multiple acquisitions and what happened was there was a change of leadership. 17:01 So there was no historical data, There were no contracts. 17:05 Some of them were so tenured, the circuits and you know that no one even knew where they were. 17:13 So what we did is we partnered with 10410 Four is one of our exclusive suppliers and we were able to pull not only all of their bills, but we were able to say, what contracts do you have? 17:26 And then on their behalf, we went back to the carrier and said, hey, we're working on behalf of XYZ, you know, can you give us the original contract? 17:35 So not only were we managing the contracts, we were managing what they were supposed to be paying, you know, and then when that contract was up, so that if you went into the OS, you can see what contracts are coming off of term, you know, our goal, we provide that information six months in advance because we all know that a lot of times, you know, we don't always have the first option to reach out to that customer. 18:00 And, you know, but by working him and him with our carriers and saying, hey, we know these circuits are all coming up, we're then able to dispute charges. 18:09 We're able to give them a clearer picture. 18:12 And on this customer, he had multiple divisions. 18:15 So we broke those those divisions up. 18:17 So cat, if you were in in the division in Atlanta and I was up in Texas, I was only able to see what was in my area. 18:26 So there was a hierarchy that's built within the platform. 18:30 It's a permission based platform. 18:32 So for a lot of customers, they like the ability that I'm only managing this part and you're managing this part. 18:39 So I think giving them greater visibility to not only what they don't know what they're paying when those contracts come up, but more importantly upsell opportunities for that technology advisor to possibly consult on an upgrade in a Technology Strategy. 18:58 And I think that's what happens almost all the time, Cat having all that data in that single place. 19:05 And then what happens, a partner can then do a QBR, impersonate the customer and be able to say, hey, cat, let's go in. 19:14 Let's look at these 600 locations. 19:17 Let's look where the bulk of your spend is. 19:20 I noticed that we have a lot of revenue coming from these top three providers. 19:24 But what we don't have is we don't have cloud today or we don't have this. 19:29 And I think that is the key element. 19:32 Where I worked in my past, if I wanted to do a QBR, it would take me months to get all the data. 19:39 The ability to be able to go in and impersonate a customer or give your customer access. 19:45 And that is something you make the determination. 19:49 Our customers are technology advisors. 19:52 A customer cannot come to us directly. 19:55 They have to be attached to a technology advisor. 19:58 So we work handing him with our technology advisors. 20:01 Do you want the customer to have access? 20:03 Do you want the customer to have this data or would you like to present that data to them? 20:08 No, I love it. 20:09 I mean, I think being able to see is huge and you touched on it a little while ago, but I would really remiss if we did not bring this back to focus because anyone, any advisor, MSP, any, but let's just say in general anybody. 20:24 If if you are struggling to figure out how something's going to get paid or was it paid or what's missing, like, you know, through, you know, whichever TST, whatever contracts you have, that can be very stressful, right? 20:42 And something that a lot of people, you know, let's say they get into business and they're like, well, I'm good at this, but this is really not my like cup of tea, right? 20:52 So how does Forge OS support advisors in verifying, tracking and optimizing like their Commission payouts that they get from, you know, either multiple carriers, different TSDS and suppliers? 21:05 It's a great question, Kate, Kat. 21:08 So what we do is we meet the partner where they are today. 21:13 Some partners are using systems, other partners are, hey, I sold 10,000 this month and my Commission should go up by 15%. 21:21 So the first thing we do is we work with our partners. 21:26 We pull all that data into, we start pulling your reports monthly so that we're the one analyzing them and we analyze them month over month. 21:36 I had said earlier than if today you sold 10 accounts in December, you send those accounts to us. 21:42 So that we're looking for pending commissions. 21:46 We're looking if that TSD or if that carrier has set up, I'll say a commissioning account number if it's an existing account. 21:53 And this was a true story, real life experience with one of my partners. 21:59 She had a huge write off on a credit. 22:02 There was an outage that a carrier taken a credit, an outage credit and taken it off. 22:08 Her Commission took us a while, we disputed it and the partner was reimbursed for that credit because it was not in the Slas of that of the agreement. 22:20 So what we do is twofold. 22:22 We look at existing, we look at new, we look at variances. 22:26 We not only look at variances, we look over month, over month. 22:30 I would love to say to you it's 100% automated. 22:32 It's impossible. 22:34 We I would say 70% is automated, 30% is manual. 22:39 We submit tickets with the TSDS and carriers every two weeks and every two weeks we then resubmit it again. 22:47 It's not that the TSDS or the carriers or are horrible, it's just they're processing tons of data. 22:55 They're, you know, there's credits issued, there's all kind of things going on in the back end and accidents happen. 23:02 So our goal is to work with our TSDS and the carriers to make sure that, hey, we've identified this, let's work together to resolve it. 23:11 Not only does it cause goodwill between the TSD and the carrier and that technology advisor, not only does the TSD get reimbursed for maybe commissions they didn't earn because it was an error, but I think the other part of it, it impacts the technology advisor. 23:28 That could be the difference between going on the elite trip at the end of the year. 23:33 It could mean the difference between MDM funds, you know, because you've at this level. 23:38 It really could for a partner. 23:40 It's those other perks they get for hitting thresholds and milestones. 23:44 And that's why it's so important. 23:47 I, I don't, I will tell you there is not one carrier TSD that deliberately underpays the technology advisors. 23:54 You know, they want to always do the right thing for the the technology because they know that it's a very small community and, you know, technology advisors really do have a network like anything else, which which is really cool. 24:10 Yeah, No, I, I couldn't agree more. 24:12 I love when you were talking about, you know, nobody wants to try to chase commissions every month. 24:18 And, you know, we've all gone through, we're due to like a system upgrade or something, something has been messed up. 24:28 And I could see where the fact that you guys are submitting those tickets, like let's say proactively every two weeks, that keeps it on the radar. 24:35 Because, you know, I like to say very honestly, that's one of the things that I provide for my clients is that if they have an issue, I tell them, hey, you know, always make me aware of it because that's what I'm here for. 24:50 And then I will send like a weekly e-mail like, hey, this hasn't been fixed, what's going on? 24:54 Hey, this hasn't been fixed and then escalate when necessary. 24:57 So I love that. 24:58 That's great. 25:00 You've touched on quite a few things, but what I really wanted to zoom in on a little bit is how in your experience, has Forge OS been able to help advisors grow and expand their service offerings of obviously while still being able to maintain visibility into what their business into their clients and of course, you know, data integrity and all while of course, keeping the client relationships well intact and a priority. 25:36 Yeah, it's a great question, Kat. 25:38 I, I think for most technology advisors, if they have ACRM, it's something that the best intentions are, I'm going to, I'm going to do this every day and I'm going to put in all my data. 25:52 But what happens, a customer may have an outage or you've been called out to propose for another great opportunity and best efforts are laid where it doesn't always get in there. 26:05 The key component for us is that we're ingesting all of your data. 26:10 So today if you sign an order, you're going to send it to sales orders at Forge. 26:14 We're going to create that order in the OS for three reasons. 26:19 A, so that we know a Commission, you're going to be paid on a Commission, whether it's 6090 or 120 days. 26:25 We're keeping your, and I'll say your customer data updated. 26:31 If you've sold deals in the past, I would love to tell you that we're at 100% of taking all of the old data that you have and, and miraculously making it 100% accurate. 26:45 What we do is we work with the TSDS, we work with the providers, we work with the technology advisors. 26:52 We give every partner what we call a shared drive. 26:55 All of the data you have, whether it's a Google workbook, whether it's an Excel spreadsheet, I've had Word documents we have you put in there. 27:03 And then you're assigned what we call an order coordinator and a data migration specialist. 27:08 And their goal is to say, OK, cat, you had 300 accounts. 27:14 Of these 300 accounts, we're missing 20 of these. 27:17 Do you have the old PDFs? 27:20 Give us the PDFs. 27:21 Let us take that data and let us update it. 27:24 This is a collaboration. 27:27 I say this all the time. 27:28 We are a SAS company, but our goal is to meet you where you are and our goal is to work to onboard you. 27:37 We're not selling you license. 27:39 We're going to onboard you. 27:40 We're going to onboard your data. 27:42 We're then from that data going to say to you, hey, cat, here's what we're missing. 27:46 The cat on the revealed dashboard. 27:49 Let's look at where your customers are today. 27:52 Where is your revenue? 27:54 Where is that? 27:55 Are you single threaded on most of your customers? 27:58 You have 300 customers, but you only have data. 28:01 Have you ever thought about this, this and this? 28:04 You know, so our goal is, you know, I say it's the reveal, but the truth is it's revealing opportunities where maybe there are gaps that you missed or trends that you just don't see when you're going into multiple platforms. 28:19 And I think that is really the key. 28:22 When you sit back with partners and you say, you know, look, it's great that we're finding, you know, enough commissions to hopefully monetizing the platform. 28:31 But our goal is even greater than that. 28:35 We're in an aging community. 28:37 And I'm part of that aging community. 28:39 So a lot of our partners are really in in, should I sell my business? 28:45 You know, my children never want to go into this industry. 28:48 You know, do I partner with someone else who has different skill sets? 28:54 We know that if a partner has all of their data organized and complete when they go to sell their book, they could make anywhere from 4 to 6 times more than if they had multiple sources. 29:09 The other part of it is it's to have this business intelligent allows you to operate differently because you that time up to go back and look at those customers or maybe you are single threaded and maybe you need to offer other products or services. 29:29 No, I love that because I everything I kept thinking when you were talking is that you're really helping them figure out their KPIs like key performance indicators and look for things that can help. 29:39 Like, OK, so let's say you've got this client's connectivity on lockdown, but when you look into it, you know, you're they don't have hosted phones, they've got mobility, they've got other things that, you know, they may be willing to let you look at and talk to them about. 29:56 Which I think in the long run for a lot of business owners that can help them develop, you know, a campaign, like an e-mail campaign to send out and say, here's all the clients that don't have these services. 30:08 And that's a huge benefit. 30:10 100% yes. 30:14 Well, before we switch gears and we talk a little bit more about the client section of Forge OS versus what the trusted tech really gets out of it, which I feel like we've really covered very, very well. 30:30 We're going to take a quick mid episode check in. 30:34 So we've learned a lot, we've heard a lot, we see the points, but we are going to actually switch from the Blanco tequila to the tequila pantalonos, which is a good way to switch it. 30:46 And you can't see it, it blurs it out. 30:48 But this one right here is so Inejo. 30:50 It's got a like really pretty amber right here. 30:54 And this one's great. 30:56 Obviously, I think you can sip any tequila by itself, but you can also use an anejo or reposado to mix in with something. 31:03 And fun fact, if you didn't know this, the Pantalones Anejo is aged for 15 months in American oak whiskey barrels. 31:14 The other thing is, is that Pantalones in general, of course, is USDA certified organic tequila because who doesn't love a good and nae ho? 31:27 So we want to kind of switch our thought process right now from, you know, Forge OS being this great thing for advisors, which it is. 31:38 We're not going to say that it's not, but we also want to start thinking a little more about kind of like long term strategy, like for our clients, like what are they paying for? 31:51 What's duplicate, what's expiring? 31:54 What are some of these possible hidden costs? 31:57 Right now I am going to take my Inejo and because I live in Texas and it went from being just in case you didn't know, it was 82° yesterday and now it's like 40. 32:07 So we, we like to have that U-turn going on here and I'm going to put this in here and mix it for this part of the conversation. 32:14 Have a little bit of a, a hot coffee Toddy in the afternoon. 32:19 But you know, So what we want to cover right now is less chaos, more control, and of course, a tech stack that feels super smooth. 32:31 You know when we talk about visibility for clients, like for your customers from an end user perspective, what changes when all their telecom and technology is inventory and centralized in y'all's platform? 32:47 Like how does that impact visibility for them as well? 32:52 Kat, I think probably the biggest difference for a customer is having the technology advisor being able to look at all of that data and going back to that customer to say, I noticed that again, I noticed that you're still an old technology. 33:14 I noticed that, you know, you've had and I'll just use an old MPLS, you know, have you ever thought about SD Wan or going back and really saying, you know, the data circuits that you have 20 years ago, you have not repriced them. 33:31 We all know that if a customer is not proactive, no different than us with our own, you know, if you're not proactive and looking at these things, they'll continue to bill you the same rate that you had 20 years ago when the truth is that rates have come down so significantly. 33:48 So not only is it a cost saving measure, measure for you to do that with your customers, but being able to show them in a platform where you can give them access from our, and I'll say our billing solution side, you can, we can dispute the bills, we can pay the invoices. 34:09 Do you know how many customers pay late fees? 34:11 Because it goes to Cat and it was really supposed to go to Rosie because Cat's supposed to approve it. 34:19 And then there's late fees on late fees. 34:22 It is surprising the amount of late fees the customers continue to to spend when the truth is if they had everything centralized where if Cat could go in there and say, OK, Rosie, it's approved. 34:36 It's the efficiency of it, the operational, the the business efficiency. 34:41 It just becomes a whole nother ball range. 34:45 I think the other part of it is again goes back to as a technology advisor, you know exactly what that customer has. 34:54 You know that that customer is looking to do an acquisition in six year, in six months. 34:58 You understand that they've done acquisitions that maybe you weren't part of. 35:03 It also keeps you abreast of maybe new decision makers. 35:07 You know what has changed since the last time you're you've been in that client? 35:11 I think for technology advisors, you're incredible salespeople, incredible. 35:16 You develop relationships that a client doesn't leave you for years. 35:21 But sometimes we get so caught up in supporting the business, managing the customers that we forget the wealth of our business. 35:29 Often time is our existing customer base and it gives our technology advisors not only insight maybe what they don't know, but also hey, you're paying $800 on this 10 Meg circuit. 35:43 Why don't we upgrade that to you know 100 megs and we'll pay $400.00. 35:48 That's the kind of, you know results that we see from our technology advisors, from our customers. 35:56 The customers want to have that visibility. 35:59 If cat is busy tonight at 8:00 and my and your customer wants to look at their invoicing, they want to look at the products they the the services they have, they can go online and look without ever reaching out to you. 36:13 Not that you don't want to have that relationship with your client, but giving them what most customers today and most of us are so used to is we do we're self-service. 36:25 We don't want to wait on a phone. 36:27 We want to go into our mobile app and we want to just hurry up and do it. 36:31 The value that you give your customer is not only giving them that data, but you're providing that data with their logo on it. 36:38 So it's making it very customized and your logo on the top, which gives you that enterprise look and feel. 36:47 I would say historically for my 25 years in the industry that most partners businesses are less than 10 people. 36:56 Would you say that's a true statement, Kat? 37:00 I would say for the most part, to be very honest with you, unless you have, of course, you have like the larger partners that use Bpos and stuff like that. 37:08 But for the most part, you're looking at somebody who really falls squarely in the small the SMB space when it comes to employee numbers. 37:15 So what the OS gives that customer is not only the look and feel of an enterprise, but also makes you look larger with that client. 37:24 And even if that client knows there's only 5 of you, the fact that that data is getting in there, the fact that you sold him a dynamic circuit and it's being installed and that data is in there, it's pretty impressive. 37:37 So you know, you're delivering efficiency not only to your own organization, but you're delivering it to your customers. 37:43 And I think the QBR is having the ability to impersonate that data for you to go in and say, OK, Cat, let's do a QBR today. 37:53 Let's go through cat. 37:55 I noticed that you're using, you know, our billing solution. 37:59 Why don't we look at that? 38:00 Let's see. 38:01 You know, I noticed that we put in 10 disputes on billing disputes. 38:05 I noticed that you were promised a credit. 38:08 The credit never appeared. 38:10 Let me get on top of that. 38:12 I noticed that we just ordered 10 circuits for you at this location. 38:16 Let's work with the order coordinator to see where they are. 38:19 Data is powerful, you know, we know in our own life how important that is and to provide that customer, it just tethers that customer to you, the technology advisor in a different way than a partner that doesn't have a customer facing platform. 38:37 Exactly. 38:38 And I think you really touched on one of the things that I think is huge is empowering the customer, having them have the capability of looking at things. 38:46 And I know, you know, we've talked about it a couple times just during this episode, but a lot of clients are like, well, if it's not broken, we're not going to touch it, We're not going to mess with it. 38:57 We're not going to do anything, You know, not realizing that, OK, they have this item that they want to, you know, check, they want to move forward. 39:06 But it's finding like, let's say, let's it's finding the budget for it. 39:10 When you look and you're like, well, you have this, you know, data data circuit you've had for 10 years and the pricing hasn't changed. 39:17 And we could actually upgrade this, save you some money and that'll allot them that budget. 39:22 So it helps them to find, you know, I don't want to say creative ways, but find ways to make a huge difference. 39:28 And for a lot of clients, it gives them the visibility into a number one, what they have when their contracts are actually up and what they're really paying for. 39:37 Because I'm going to for anyone who's listening to the podcast form, it's not like a broken record when I say this, but the number of times that we go in and we'll do a tech tech review for somebody and they'll be like, oh, well, that was supposed to be just a trial or we were only supposed to have that for so long. 39:56 And lo and behold, now they've paid for it for 6-8. 39:59 You know, sometimes I've seen it as long as like the entirety of their. 40:03 Contract they've paid for something that you know I mean I hate to say but I had a customer that they had added on one of their software platforms something that equated to about an extra $120.00 a month over an 8 month period. 40:21 So that's a huge, you know, savings that they would have had. 40:25 So and you know, and this is every little bit counts. 40:29 And Kat, I think you just brought up a great point. 40:32 You know, by, by finding those lost dollars, you can reallocate them maybe for new strategies, you know, new technologies that, you know, we all know that the, the, the cost of most things in our industry continues to, you know, be reduced. 40:49 And, you know, by finding those lost dollars and reallocating, maybe bring it in a different strategy for them. 40:55 Again, reinforcing your value as that technology advisor, you know, as opposed to if they, they didn't have that information, they brought someone in, someone's going to come in and say, hey, I can save you 32%. 41:08 The first question you'll get is that technology advisor is why didn't you, you know, advise me of these savings? 41:16 Why haven't we had this review? 41:18 The other cool thing that we offer our customers and again, this is only if a partner permits partners. 41:25 We have a lot of partners that have what we would call franchisees, so they allow their customers to quote with us directly. 41:34 And then what we do is we give a quote with the partners logo on there and says here's the ten options for cable or whatever you know the the customer is looking for. 41:44 We have partners that will say absolutely allow my customer to do it or we have partners that say that's why I want to be involved in all those decisions. 41:54 So being a permission based platform, partners have the ability to turn that on and off per customer. 42:01 So if you have 300 customers, you can give them different access based on what your relationship is with that client. 42:09 Well, and kind of the secondary thing I would think to that is what type of client it is, because you're going to have a client that has a whole tech team versus a client that would be like I, you know, don't even really want to get into it. 42:23 But you know, kind of to further go down that cost control, you know, which Forge OS tools like billing insights, you know, wireless optimization, usage analytics tend to deliver the biggest impact for these clients when it comes to cost control and operational efficiency. 42:45 You know, Kat, we do. 42:47 There's three different components in the platform. 42:49 The first one is Forge OS, which is our platform and that's the ability to take all of your data, put it in single source of truth. 42:55 Then we have op decision, which is our wireless mobility. 43:00 And the really cool thing about our wireless mobility practice is that we do a free audit before so that if we can't say that customer, your customer at least 10% will say, cat, you're doing a great job, you really got this customer on some really great aggressive programs. 43:17 Most people don't realize that wireless rates can change daily. 43:23 So what we do is we basically manipulate the plan so that, you know, we guarantee you a cost savings of $5000 a year. 43:33 We're going to make sure we hit that cost savings, but from a wireless, there are tools in there that can you can do your wireless spend so that if there's 300 people in that company, it would list every person. 43:47 It would you could do cost accounting codes. 43:50 You could literally notice that the security guy is using a lot of Netflix or you know, using a lot of you know, he he's not using for the most effective use of you know, as the company would want. 44:04 It gives you insights into what is being used. 44:07 Also, a lot of times a, an employee will leave and they forget to shut off the phone or they'll give the phone to someone else, but never tell anyone. 44:18 The really cool thing about this is that we also, you have an account manager on our wireless optimization side that works directly with you and your customer. 44:27 So that not only are you getting the full display of all of the usage, getting cost accounting codes from an HR perspective, it goes very, very deep. 44:36 And I know that you're having Casey on hopefully the podcast at some point, Casey can go into much more detail. 44:44 But from the wireless optimization, most partners today are not doing wireless optimization with their customers. 44:52 And if you're like me, I think for me it was just because I didn't know enough about wireless. 44:58 I've been in the technology, you know, the traditional wireless was always that thing I never wanted to touch, you know, I didn't know enough about it. 45:06 The really cool thing we always tell our partners is you don't need to understand wireless. 45:12 What we do is we work directly with you. 45:14 We work with the clients, and then you're given an account manager and they educate the client, they do the demos. 45:21 So what makes it much easier for that client? 45:24 And not only are you picking up that additional revenue from that client, which means you're picking up additional residual, but you're tethering. 45:32 I say this all the time. 45:34 People buy from people they like. 45:36 You can't believe how many times we'll talk to a partner and I'll say, Oh no, you know, he doesn't. 45:42 He knows I don't do that. 45:43 I'm like, just have the conversation and then we have the conversation and they buy because they have that relationship with that person that they trust. 45:52 And again, it's another tool, it's another product that increases your retention with that customer on, on the billing side. 46:01 That is completely that is that is literally taking in all your invoices, you know, looking at the contracts, what you were contracted to pay, what you're paying, how many billionaires there were putting in those, you know, disputes, getting those disputes, taking all these invoices. 46:19 We literally pay all those invoices on behalf of the customers, thus eliminating a lot of late fees, a lot of things you don't even realize, but also not only taking those fees away and bringing it that budget back in, but also giving you the technology advisor information to data you probably didn't know. 46:41 And that is what is the customer paying? 46:44 How long are they on terms and what is the next step on that technology? 46:49 Do we keep it or you know, do we start the conversation now to change them and make the make it more productive for the customer, move them to a different technology, which again showed exactly. 47:02 And I think the big thing you talked on, you spoke about or or touched on just was going over wireless. 47:09 A lot of people, I mean, I come from the side of the house. 47:13 I mean, anybody can look at my LinkedIn, You know, I used to work at AT&T and I came where from where we did wireless. 47:19 We did wired, we did the whole caboodle. 47:22 And as you'll, you know, learn for anyone who works with any tech advisors or any MSP's, like everybody has something that they're very comfortable with that is their niche. 47:32 That is like, I know this and for a lot of people, it's not wireless. 47:39 And when you think about, you know, we'll, we'll put AI to the side for a second. 47:44 But when you think about the number of IoT devices that a lot of these companies have, because, you know, their employees have tablets, they've got cell phones, they've got some type of, you know, whether it's a portable Starlink that they use in their trucks. 47:59 You know, I come from West TX. 48:00 So we got a lot of like, let's say less than stellar spots. 48:04 All of those devices need to be looked at. 48:07 They need to be tracked and paid attention to. 48:10 And I think, you know, that's huge. 48:12 You know, it's especially from the customer standpoint because I cannot tell you the number of times where I've gone in because we do kidding for several of our trucking companies. 48:24 And I'll be like, OK, we're out of, you know, the software link. 48:31 You're out of users. 48:33 And they're like, well, we can't be out of users because we only have 68 trucks. 48:36 And we'll start going through and reading them off. 48:38 And they've got, you know, 345 people that have never been pulled out of the system. 48:45 And maybe their devices haven't been pulled out that aren't with the company anymore. 48:50 You know, and a lot of these devices have been given to other people but never been updated in the back end. 48:56 And so, yeah, that's absolutely huge. 48:59 You see that a lot. 49:01 I know that we really touched on this, but I, I really want to kind of nail it. 49:05 I say hit the nail on the head and that is contract and renewal visibility because I cannot tell you the number of clients that I know that IE don't know when their contracts are up, have no clue how long they've had it. 49:19 And, and, and I always say in defense, like I work with some companies that have like 5 or 6 other companies underneath them. 49:25 So it's a lot to keep up with. 49:27 But with you guys, how does Forge OS really help to plan like for those renewals? 49:35 Is this something that, you know, I mean, what do you guys do just to make sure that you capture savings before, you know, any type of deadline sneaks up and then they're out? 49:46 Yeah. 49:46 And part of the report, the Wired reports, it gives, all of the contracts it gives, you could pull it daily, you can pull it weekly, you can pull it monthly. 49:56 You know, the, the challenge that we've had in our industry is there's been so many acquisitions, so many TSDS have acquired other T, other smaller mini masters and a lot of that data wasn't really captured. 50:10 And it is a challenge we face as well. 50:12 It's not only the technology advisors. 50:15 What we try to do is first of all normalizing the data. 50:19 What does that mean? 50:21 So if a company acquired another mini master, a lot of times on the Commission report will default to a the TSD's main headquarters. 50:31 So what we do is we leverage AI to update that data to put the customers real physical location. 50:38 And then what we try to do is work with the TSD to say what data do you, this is the data that we're missing. 50:45 We found as much as we could. 50:47 Here's the gaps that we say a lot of times partners thank for the love of God, thank God they keep everything, whether it's on paper, whether it's in the filing cabinet, whether So what we do is we take all their spreadsheets, we take their files, we take the contracts, we take, we call the contracts the birth certificate. 51:08 The challenge is, is most partners business is a 36 month agreement and most of them have had clients for five, 610 years and going back and and asking them when was the last time you had any kind of upgrade with this with this customer? 51:25 Was it through this carrier, was it with a new carrier? 51:29 It's a collaboration cat. 51:31 I would love to say to you that it miraculously we pull it out of those these platforms. 51:36 We don't, we work hand in hand with our partners through getting their data, uploading the data, uploading the the PDF, the original contract and working and saying going back to the TSD, you know, I was a channel manager for a while, I sold. 51:53 I know what it's like to support a partner and getting that data. 51:58 And also, if you have a lot of revenue with a preferred vendor, you have more clout having them go back to the in US, working with that Channel manager and saying, hey, Tina, I'm hoping you can help us. 52:13 Can you pull these reports? 52:14 And that's really how we do it. 52:16 But that is the wired reports. 52:18 It lists all the when the reports are coming off, when the reports are, you know, when the contract is expired. 52:25 It always helps when we get that original, I'll say PDF or the original agreement. 52:31 But keep in mind, because you signed it January 1st, it may take 90 days to get installed. 52:39 So what we're doing, we have two platform, two different programs on the second platform, we're literally tracking when they install it because that really is when that contract expires. 52:50 And then again, making sure that you're talking to your channel manager at those companies too, especially the larger accounts, because we all know everyone wants to upgrade the larger accounts well before they come off contracts. 53:02 So it's giving you visibility into those agreements and working in collaboration with you. 53:09 I love it. 53:10 I mean, you really, really spoken about how it's a collaborative effort right between like Forge OS between your trusted tech advisor and obviously working with the client. 53:22 But one of the things that I know you mentioned a little bit, but I kind of want to discuss a little bit more, especially from the the customer perspective is, you know, really is the day-to-day operations matter. 53:35 And when it comes to managing per SE trouble ticket service request, what improvements do you see that, you know, clients see when utilizing the centralized ticketing and monitoring compared to kind of the more traditional approach what they, you know, usually see, you know, Cat, we do offer through 10 four. 53:57 We do offer the billing solutions and the trouble tickets. 54:00 I would say for a lot of clients that you know they don't have a lot of services, not complex services. 54:07 The TSDS and the carriers do a really great job. 54:11 You know, I think for those more complex, the multi location customers, those customers that, you know, expect the level of concierge type service, you know it, it definitely does make a difference because you can also then look at it and saying, Hey, you've had seven trouble tickets in two months. 54:32 Maybe there's an issue with that. 54:34 The service, you know, you have that data, how many I, I worked at a, you know, a carrier and we had all that historical data. 54:44 I think that is probably the biggest difference. 54:47 You know, not only on the commissions will you have all the trouble tickets and all the tickets that when we put in or when you've quoted a customer, I've sold. 54:57 So I know that I would quote for a customer and we all have those customers that will say quote this out for me. 55:05 And I would love the ability in my past to be able to say, well, I quoted for this in June, July, August and September. 55:11 What's changed in January that's going to make us really go for this And it, you know, again, managing your time, having those tools to say, why don't you walk me back, you know, why are we looking at this again? 55:27 Are you doing an acquisition? 55:29 I'd love to do this, but you know, I also want to understand, is this because you're looking for cost savings? 55:36 Is this because there's a real need? 55:39 And I think by having all of the historical data in the platform, whether it's commissions, whether it's wireless, whether it's billing, whether it's trouble ticket, you start to look at your customers differently. 55:52 We all have those. 55:52 We all love our customers. 55:54 We've all been very blessed to make a very, very nice living off of those customers. 55:59 But often times what makes us really good at what we do is having that conversation with the customer to say, look, I really would love, I would love to sell you 25 more circuits. 56:10 That's what we quoted out in the last six months for you. 56:13 We haven't closed any. 56:14 Tell me, what's our next step? 56:17 You know, what were you thinking? 56:19 So let's work at this together. 56:21 And I think the transparency of that from a partner, you have those relationships and being able to pull that by going into a platform, it's a game changer. 56:35 No, I, I agree. 56:37 I mean, I think that every single tech advisor MSP person in sales anywhere has that one customer that you quoted something for multiple times and having the capability to really kind of deep dive and I'll use from my own personal, the experience I've had a customer and it just tends to be they'll be like, OK, I want this quote and it never fails. 57:00 It's they have an outage, they want to quote to upgrade it. 57:04 And here recently, we had that same discussion because like I said, I know them, I've worked with them for a long time. 57:12 And I said, OK, but what's different? 57:14 And lo and behold, they've gone in and decided to completely rewire their entire like network infrastructure. 57:21 And so now you have that driving force that really helps you understand, OK, well, we quoted this before, but it sounds like what we really need is this. 57:30 And I think some of what you're talking about leads into something that I think is truly important when you're on the trusted technology advisor side. 57:39 It's not just about the upgrade, it's about understanding, you know, why are they looking for this? 57:45 Because you know, the number of clients I get that are called constantly and consistently by a particular provider saying, hey, you know, you could upgrade your Internet today for blah, blah, blah, or it's about the same or whatever. 57:58 But never have that in depth discussion about what are you really doing in your business? 58:03 How can we, you know, it's so important and I think it helps to strengthen that relationship. 58:08 You know, I, I know we've covered a lot in today's episode that gives people lots of things to digest. 58:15 But I always ask this one question of everybody that comes on. 58:18 And that would be if forge were a tequila, which one would it be? 58:24 Would it be a Blanco at a pasado or an anejo? 58:28 And why? 58:30 I think we would be an extra anejo with a modern twist. 58:36 We're smooth and refined, like an aged tequila that's been patiently crafted. 58:43 Forage feels mature and polished and we're built on a solid foundation. 58:48 And I think you know our goal. 58:51 And I, I say this all the time, I'm not looking to sell licenses. 58:55 We want to invest in your business. 58:57 We want to really meet you where you are today and being in the channel for over 25 years. 59:03 I love what I do. 59:05 I met with partners that have had so many amazing systems in place that you know, there's a piece that we make might be able to compliment. 59:15 But I think for me, it is all about how do I have a partner on their next journey and what value can we bring to them. 59:25 And it's, I wish I would have gone into software about 3 years ago. 59:29 I wish I would have drank a lot more tequila a lot year a lot earlier. 59:34 But, you know, I think for us, it's just, again, we're built too impressed and that's why I believe that we would be an extra anejo. 59:44 Did I? 59:44 Am I saying that right, Cat? 59:46 You have you are you are an extra Anejo. 59:48 Yeah. 59:48 I love it. 59:49 I I love that answer. 59:51 I think it perfectly sums everything up. 59:53 Obviously, you know, I know Rosie, that you can be found on LinkedIn and of course, you know, Forge OS through, you know, either Google or from their website. 1:00 :04And of course, if you're a member of the Technology Advisor alliance, you guys have, you know, you're one of the perks. 1:00 :11So first and foremost, I want to thank you so much for joining myself today. 1:00 :17I definitely look forward to working with you guys in the future. 1:00 :20We are at the tail end of kind of. 1:00 :22Getting that partnership complete right now. 1:00 :25And I, you know, I, I would say like, you know, maybe in like a year we'll get back on here and we'll have like a full out discussion about what it looks like to be on the other side of it. 1:00 :35And obviously for your sister company having that discussion as well, really to do a little more in depth. 1:00 :42But thank you so much for joining. 1:00 :44Is there anywhere else, Rosie, that you would recommend somebody look, IE either into Forge or into yourself? 1:00 :52Yeah, I would say go to our Forge website. 1:00 :55We do do free demos. 1:00 :57We do a complimentary Commission, look back for our partners, and again, find me on LinkedIn. 1:01 :03I'm a stalker, so don't take it personally. 1:01 :06I'm just very passionate and committed with our partner community. 1:01 :10And Kat, thank you so much for this opportunity and happy New Year to everyone. 1:01 :17Thank you. 1:01 :17Happy New Year. 1:01 :18Thank you very much. 1:01 :19Of course, if you love today's episode, make sure that you share it with a friend. 1:01 :23If you are a trusted tech advisor and you have not heard of Forge, OSI highly recommend getting a hold of Rosie, giving them a call and trying out that demo as well as if you know somebody and you're listening and you're like, Oh my gosh, this is the answer to what they need. 1:01 :37Please share today's episode. 1:01 :39Thank you very much. 1:01 :41Thank you, Kat. 1:01 :42Bye. 1:01 :43Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode of Tech and Tequila. 1:01 :47I hope you enjoyed our conversation today. 1:01 :50To stay updated about all things tech and more, don't forget to visit us at our website, shelbyts.com. 1:01 :56If you loved what you heard, remember to show your support by liking, sharing and subscribing to our podcast. 1:02 :02Your five star ratings and reviews mean the world to us and help us to reach more listeners just like you. 1:02 :09So muchos gracias again for joining us with Tech and Tequila. 1:02 :12Thank you so much, you learned a lot about tech then maybe you had a nice drink of tiki left.