When everything is moving towards automation and AI in tech, is the human connection even considered?
Grant Eckstrom, Managing Partner at Succurri Managed IT and Cybersecurity Services, has built a business around that exact question. An engineer by DNA and instinct, Grant co-founded Succurri with his brother, born from a conversation over a couple bottles of wine in Hawaii, and has since navigated the very real tensions of scaling a service business without losing the human core that makes it work. From referrals drying up post-COVID to learning a costly lesson about marketing the hard way, Grant gets refreshingly honest about where they've stumbled, what they've figured out, and why he still believes that face-to-face conversations over a drink will always outperform a Zoom call when it comes to building real trust.
0:00 — Introduction
2:21 — Meet Grant Eckstrom
3:28 — Growing Up Engineer
4:32 — RadioShack Tinkering Days
6:23 — Succurri Origin Story
8:43 — Why MSPs Join Forces
10:26 — Family Partnership and Delegation
11:28 — Defining Service and Honesty
13:17 — Scaling Through Impact Zones
18:09 — Finding CEO Community Support
20:32 — Brand Story and Marketing Shift
24:54 — Niche Versus Broad
27:40 — Sell Outcomes Not Tech
28:35 — Human Trust Building
30:03 — Referrals Dried Up
33:05 — Finding Marketing Voice
34:58 — StoryBrand Perspective
38:00 — White Glove Service
40:09 — Hard Truth Conversations
43:03 — Behind The Brand
43:35 — Rapid Fire Answers
48:22 — Wrap Up & Links
There's a tension every leader of a B2B service has to navigate: How do you scale without compromising the quality of your services - or the values that drive them? The CEO's Heart for Service is where accomplished B2B leaders share hard-won insights on walking that tightrope.
The CEO’s Heart for Service is a production of Brand3. If you’re a B2B service provider who delivers exceptional service but struggles to get your marketing to connect with the right people, find us at brand3.net. And sign up for our Brand3 Newsletter that only sends marketing insights worthy of your inbox - genuinely helpful stuff for the road ahead.
The CEO’s Heart for Service is also supported by Forge Podcast Company, a turnkey production solution for using podcasts to reach a wider audience, win new clients, and grow. Find them at forgepodcast.co
Matt Wolfe: Hi, everybody. We're back with The CEO's Heart for Service. I'm Matt Wolfe. This is Tav Laskauskas. Hi, Tav.
Tav Laskauskas: Hi, Matt
Matt Wolfe: We are talking today to one of our favorite kinds of clients, the uh, managing partner of an MSP, a managed services provider for tech doing managed services and cybersecurity. Everything we do is B2B service providers, but we, we really do love this particular niche, this particular industry, because there is always a lot to mine and pull out for their brand and marketing messaging.
Tav, what did you walk away with today?
Tav Laskauskas: I really loved the appreciation that Grant has for humans and human connection, and how even though he comes from an engineering mind and is in technology, that he's not solely focused on data, that he actually is still passionate about people. And I think that that is reflected in his work not only for his clients, but also as a leader in his company.
Matt Wolfe: I, I think that's what excites us about working with these companies. There is something deeply human about how they work and how much they care about their clients in this space. There's always something unique about what they bring to the table, and those things tend to be undervalued andunder-celebratedd in their marketing.
So yeah, you're gonna see that in spades with Grant. The other thing that I took away today was the reminder that it's okay to not worry about being liked by your clients and how much that can get in the way of serving them well, right? Because what they really need from us as faithful and true guides in these kinds of service-based spaces is to tell them the truth about what's needed, whether they're ready to hear it or not.
I'm gonna hold onto that for a while. Um, There's much more in this conversation, so we'll just hop over there.
Matt Wolfe: I can't wait for y'all to meet Grant Eckstrom of Succurri Managed IT and Cybersecurity Services. Grant, welcome. So good to have you here.
Grant Eckstrom: Yeah. Thank you, Matt
Matt Wolfe: Yeah. And I'm here with my buddy Tav Laskauskas, our co-host today, our director of marketing services and strategic genius at Brand3.
Hi, Tav
Tav Laskauskas: Hi Matt, thanks for the great introduction there. I should just take you everywhere with me.
Matt Wolfe: I could have said more nice things, but, you know, we only have so much time. So, so we're, we're gonna jump in here. So Grant, we'll get to the business stuff in a second, but, so Brand3, I mentioned the other day when we spoke, we are focused on B2B service providers B2B services, mostly things that are really high stakes, high ticket things that are just, these businesses are built on the back of relationship and trust.
And so we like to just, w- well, in our own strategies, we're trying to figure out how to make marketing more human, how to create f- and forge connections between humans, 'cause that's really what gives people the trust to move forward.
Matt Wolfe: So to that end, we like to ask just a simple human question at the beginning of our podcast, and it's just this: what did you wanna be when you were growing up?
Because there's a good chance maybe you didn't dream of being the managing partner at an IT and cybersecurity firm.
Grant Eckstrom: Yeah. So I'm, I'm not too far off from where
Matt Wolfe: Okay.
Grant Eckstrom: hoping to be.
Matt Wolfe: Wow
Grant Eckstrom: I always wanted to bean electrical engineer, right? I was that kid that was building remote control cars, you know, playing on computers. Ironically enough, I didn't touch a PC until I was 18 years old. I grew up in Everett.
Everett ran on all Macs, right? So it was kind of a little bit of a learning curve. Yeah, so but yeah, electrical engineer, it was ki- kind of always my mindset. I lived a couple different lives before I got back into IT, you know, and that's a completely different podcast. Yeah, then, yeah, then got back into school, went, did all my education, all my certifications, ended up in the Microsoft world. And unfortunately, I've signed myself up for continuing education for the rest of my life. So yeah, here I am
Matt Wolfe: Here's a question. When we had RadioShack, were you a RadioShack kid? Did you go and, like, get those kits?
Grant Eckstrom: Yeah. Yeah. No, it was, you know, build your own speaker stereo kind of thing. Every cable that I could ever think of, soldering guns. Oh, yeah, it was, there were so many burn marks in my desk that my, my parents were just like, you know, "Just, we gotta throw that thing out. It's gotta go."
Matt Wolfe: Yeah, I loved that stuff too. No, I didn't follow through with it as you did, but I remember those sets. It was fascinating to see all those things come together, right? To see how, how it connects, how it works.
Grant Eckstrom: My, my favorite one was the remote control car though, right? Building it from scratch, you know, the whole engineering piece of it, getting it to work, creating, being able to control it and, and then break it, repair it. That was a better part of my, my, my pre-teen days.
Matt Wolfe: That's really cool to know. Honestly, we don't meet a lot of people who landed where they wanted to go, so it's cool to meet someone who had that passion and saw- do you remember, like, what sparked it? Was there a movie or something that you saw someone tinkering with electronics and you were like, "Oh, that's cool"?
Grant Eckstrom: Yeah, I think I was more genetically dispositioned for it. My, my grandfather was a, a structural engineer and ended up teaching at UCLA for business. G- completely different, but my, my other side of the family, you know, were all, you know, engineering type. So I think I just kinda had i,- as a, a brain type analytical mind. Now keep in mind, I, I strayed pretty far from the engineering side of things and came back to it, so maybe it was that, that rebound piece that, that ended me up where, where I am. But m- mind-wise, it, it just, the, the engineering piece makes sense. And so got into it f- as a systems engineer, networking engineer, architecture from, from a systems perspective, security perspective, and so it's just the way that my mind works.
Matt Wolfe: Yeah. Runs in the family.
Grant Eckstrom: Yeah
Matt Wolfe: That's cool.
Matt Wolfe: Well, let's talk about Succurri for a minute. Tav, I'll let you dig in here.
Tav Laskauskas: Yeah. So tell us a little bit more about Succurri, how you got started, what you do now, and who you serve?
Grant Eckstrom: So how it got started was actually a couple bottles of wine in Hawaii on a family vacation. Um, both my brother and I were, were doing-- We had our own managed services companies, and my dad was like, "Why are you guys doing this separately?" We kinda looked at each other like, "Yeah, we're, we're both dealing with the same struggles, the same problems."
And so through that, we developed Succurri as more... It was more of a technology development company, and we were, we were using it as to be able to build the same technologies and processes that we both needed, and maybe even bring in some managed services companies that needed help that were, you know, smaller and, and needed to get to that next level. And through that, we figured out that if we didn't have total buy-off from other managed services companies, it was a lot of time and effort put down, you know, just kinda down the drain.
So it became more of a mergers and acquisitions company. And 'cause we had all the technology, we-- actually, most of the employees at that point were Succurri employees. And we had the other managed services companies as kind of a test case for it. And so one of the first companies we bought was Emerald City Solutions, which we operated in the Seattle market for many years. And then we got to a spot where we started expanding, and it made sense that, well, ultimately, w- as we moved to Arizona, nobody cares in Arizona about Emerald City Solutions, right?
It's clearly a Seattle company. And Extrem Consulting is, you know, it, it doesn't have the ring that Succurri had. So we made the decision, we're like, "Everything is going to be Succurri on the front and on the back." And so we made that change. It's kind of all blending now, but it's been, it's been about three years now since we went through and rebranded everything. As I said, it all started from a simple conversation about how we probably can do this better. Probably, you know, why are we, why are we wasting time trying to do the same things separately? And so we ended up bringing all the companies together, and here we are today.
Matt Wolfe: I wanna dig in on that, the, the whatever happened around the two bottles of wine and the better piece, you
Grant Eckstrom: Sure. '
Matt Wolfe: Cause
Grant Eckstrom: We'll call it two bottles of wine. Yeah.
Matt Wolfe: Yeah.
Matt Wolfe: You know, so what was the better... Every business we find has a why that got it started, you know? There's a, there's a why that launched you into existence, something that you probably did wanna improve in the market.
What, what was yours? What was that thing you thought you could do better?
Grant Eckstrom: Well, the issue is that small MSPs, when they start, like you, you start as a systems engineer, like you're an IT, you know, professional, and you're like, "Oh, I can do this," right? And, and so you get in, and you create your own business, then all of a sudden you realize running a business is about running a business and not anything that you had to do about getting into the business.
Matt Wolfe: Yeah
Grant Eckstrom: You know, I, I'm, trained as a, network engineer, systems engineer, s- cybersecurity, and I do very little of that today, right?
Matt Wolfe: Mm-hmm.
Grant Eckstrom: I'm running a business. And so those were some of the struggles that we started finding as we got into it. And the further we got down the path, the more roadblocks it created. So the idea behind Sacuri was is like, okay, if...And, and keep in mind, my brother is going down the same path, just, you know, kind of on a parallel path as myself, and running into the same issues. And so, you know, some of it is financial, some of it is process, some of it is, you know, just not being able to scale.
And so that's where we were like, if we join together, we can kind of tag team some of these things and, and be able to, to scale a lot faster and be able to solve a lot of these problems. Luckily, my brother and I are complete opposites, like yin and yang to the utmost extreme. So where I excel in certain things, he does, you know, okay.
And where he excels, I do okay. So we're able to separate those different tactics and requirements of the business ownership to get a better result.
Matt Wolfe: That's amazing.
Matt Wolfe: I'm always amazed when families can work together in any capacity like this and partner together
Grant Eckstrom: Yeah. So I, I come from many generations of families working together. In fact, my wife works with us as well, and people are like, "How do you do that?" I'm like, I don't know any different." So, it, it just works. And, and
Matt Wolfe: Yeah
Grant Eckstrom: You know, my best friend and nobody else I'd rather spend time with, so
Matt Wolfe: Oh, that's amazing. Well, and to, but to come into it clear-eyed with where your gifts are and how they're unique, and to see that as an advantage for your clients, that's, that's a level of commun- I mean, it just tells me there's a level of communication there that it just works somehow, you know? So that's
Grant Eckstrom: You know, I think a little bit of self-understanding, right? And I, I would say that that wasn't always the case. You know, in my younger years I was good at everything, and you can't tell me any different. The older I get you know, I wouldn't say that I'm getting wiser necessarily, but you start figuring out that there are certain things that you excel at, and there's other things that other people can do better, right?
And the more you delegate, the better off it is for a business.
Matt Wolfe: Yeah.
Matt Wolfe: Well, okay, so we call this podcast The CEO's Heart for Service. A good baseline for that conversation is just, you know, trying to get a grip on what does service mean to you? What does it mean for your team to deliver exceptional service to your clients, and how do you know, how do you know when you've done that?
Grant Eckstrom: That's, that's a good one. Being able to actually define that clearly. I have to say that it's probably something around the lines of, like, understanding what's really at stake for a client. And it's not just fixing, like, the surface-level issues. It's about going in deeper into symptoms of, of how, you know, there are systemic problems, and having some really, really honest conversations, right? I think exceptional service isn't about them really liking you. It's about building that relationship of, of that honesty of like, "Hey, I'm gonna give it to you straight regardless if you like it or not, based on this is what's best for you."
It's almost like parenting to that extent. Like, my kid doesn't always like me, but hopefully at some point he'll go, "Yeah, you were right." I think that's, you know, from, from my perspective, that's that exceptional service, right? Just getting into some spots that might not be comfortable, but ultimately have the best result.
Matt Wolfe: That's great. That's a great metaphor for great, great service, and I don't think I've heard anyone say it quite that way before. That's liberating to hear you don't have to worry about being liked, you know? 'Cause that does get in the way of serving people well
Grant Eckstrom: It, it works out because I don't have much of a filter, so, you know
Matt Wolfe: Yeah. I have to work harder. I was a performer for, you know, for 25 years in theater, and so my whole job was to make people like me, kind of. So that's amazing. Well, I think that's a great baseline.
Matt Wolfe: So let's... So the big theme we like to explore here, of course, is when you have someone like you and your brother who truly care about your clients, and you do have this heart for service, as you grow, and you guys were set to grow from the jump, I mean, as you built the company.
As you grow, it's gonna get harder and harder to maintain the quality of service, to hold onto the core values that make you unique and powerful in your industry. And we wanna just explore what your journey has been like with all of that. Tav, I'll let you hop in there.e
Tav Laskauskas: So as Matt was saying, with that scale challenge that so many businesses face, there's often tension that arises with that idea of maintaining the service level and the values that you started with and became known for and got into a position where you actually could grow. Can you think of any moments in the growth of your business where you've really looked at where those challenges in maintaining that level of service and that commitment to your clients have been tested, and how you managed to grow with challenges instead of despite them?
Grant Eckstrom: Yeah. So we, we call them impact zones. And so an impact zone sometimes is a resource-related zone where you kind of hit that wall, and you bounce off it a couple times, and you keep on trying to do the same thing, and ultimately you're, you're not changing the results. Sometimes it's financial. But those impact zones are really where we kind of, we- you have to retool and rethink what you're doing.
That's when people are used to doing something a very specific way, and you start changing that, and we, we call it i- in our organization moving people's cheese, right? Like, people don't like things moved around on them. A- and so that can be, that can be challenging, right? And where we've been successful is having a really good process and documentation, and setting expectations around, "Hey, if you follow these guidelines, it will take you to the promised land," right? Where it gets tough is where you start having resource constraints, things get really busy, people start freaking out, and they revert to their old ways. And that's where you start seeing that, that friction that happens. I mean, honestly, that's something that we still struggle with, right?
As we, we continue to, to hit those impact zones and scale up for whatever reason, we still see that happen, right? But the good thing is that we're able to see it faster now than we were in our, our previously in our careers. And so we're like, "Okay, this is what's happening. Okay, we got to realign, get the resources back in place, and get the staff to, you know, let's find our, our emotional sweet spot right now and bring it down a level.
Everything's gonna be okay. You know, let's talk you off the ledge." And then we start moving forward again, and then everybody's back on track, right? So the answer is I don't, you know, how do you work through that? I think it's more about identifying it quickly and being able to make some, some quick adjustments because like ultimately the, you know, quality's not, quality doesn't automatically scale, right? With good intentions. You have to continue with that process and, and watch it. And the, the further I get out of the day-to-day and the further that my brother gets out of the day-to-day, it becomes really important that we have our leaders, our, our, our managers that, are set with the same mindsets that we have of like being able to see that happening and, and having the the desire to make sure that the outcome is as good as it's always been.
Matt Wolfe: So because you had those really clear guidelines, that's why you're able to sort of measure what's happening and identify it sooner. Is that sort of the idea?
Grant Eckstrom: It, it is, but also you can kind of just see it happen, right? Like all of a sudden a buzz of chaos of, of like, of, of panic that, you know, in the, you can hear in the voices. You can, you can see like, you know, how interaction's happening among staff, and you're like, "Oh yeah, I, I've seen this before.
Okay, let's, where's this coming from? You know, are we, are we hitting the impact zone? You know, where's the stress coming from?" So we're just able to see that a lot faster now
Tav Laskauskas: Are other members of your team able to identify those moments as well, or is it still primarily you and your brother? You talked about, you know, making sure that the leaders within the organization are really fitting in. Do they sometimes come to you and say, I'm observing this. Are we headed in this direction"?
Grant Eckstrom: Yeah, it, it's, don't know if they're necessarily like, you know, the light bulb clicks on like it does for, for both Andrew and I at least yet, just 'cause we've seen it a few times. When you start... But they're definitely coming to us and saying, "Hey, these things are happening." You're like, "Oh, here's why."
And they're like, "Oh." So they're, they're getting the experience where, you know, it's not too far along the lines where they're like, "We don't, don't even worry about it, guys, we got this covered," kind of stuff. W- we've done this drill before
Matt Wolfe: Are there specific moments that you remember as you've grown where you just realized, "Okay, scaling this thing, growing this thing is gonna be a lot harder than we thought"?
Grant Eckstrom: E- every day? I mean, you know, the reality is like, you know, every day is a, is a different obstacle, right? And y- you, you set up, and you make a trajectory of, you know, where you're gonna go, and sometimes y- you fail miserably. What I like to call those, those are data-rich experiments because you figure out what not to do. But uh, at the same time, like, like there's a lot of things that you need help with as, as a, a business owner, especially when you start hitting that, know, that, that 5 million, 10 million mark.
And depending on, you know, depending on how, like how much staff you have in there, you start looking for external help. We started getting involved in some professional groups, which was very, very helpful, right? We, we haven't done EOS yet, but we've, we've taken a lot of methodologies from that. We've, we've done some very specific managed service provider groups. I've started getting into Vistage to talk with other CEOs. It's still based around- it's like a community, right? It takes a community to, to the, to grow the children. Same with the companies, right? And looking at how other people have done it.
Not every single way is correct. Not every way is incorrect, right? But getting some outside knowledge base from other people that have gone down the same path as you has been extremely helpful, and things that we need to make changes to, to get to that next level.
So understanding that you can't, you can't do it all on your own.
Matt Wolfe: I think we found that too. My, my business partner, Orshe, was ahead of me on that. She's been in some of those groups and, um, EO, some things like that. And yeah, the community is essential because I, I... One of the... That's really part of why we created this podcast too, was to have these conversations, this community amongst leaders in this format.
And a lot of what we're finding is that the things that help people scale, the things that help them suc- grow successfully are very human. They're just, they're not necessarily business strategies or things that live on a spreadsheet. They're moments where the best of our human instincts take over and get us over the next hump.
That's a lot of what we're encountering. But that's, it's hard to learn those things from each other without that kind of community that you're talking about, those places for people to gather and compare notes.
Matt Wolfe: Well, let's look at this from a different lens. So at Brand3, what we run into a lot wisB2B service providers who have often just kind of given up on marketing. They're living off of referrals and word of mouth because marketing never quite worked for them. And what we find is there are two things going on there.
People who worked with them might not have acknowledged that they are a highly relational business, and that marketing for relationship and trust is not business as usual. The other thing that we find is that no one told them to figure out their brand strategy first, which is just a fancy way of saying no one helped them figure out how to tell the right story to the right people.
So, you know, to figure out who this business is now after five, 10, 15 years of growth, and who the actual ideal client for this business is in this moment, the specific kind of people who they need to speak to, and what is the story that bridges those two things and tells the story of that relationship.
That's where you really have power and traction in your marketing and your ability to create trust and nurture a relationship. And once you have that story, it's gonna fix marketing, but it also addresses sales and client experience, the entire client journey, because it's all about relationship.
So we like to look at this, at how businesses have grown through that lens. So the first thing I would ask you is: how has that core thing that I just mentioned, the brand story of who you are, how has that changed over time? How has that evolved as your understanding of who you are and who you serve has changed?
Grant Eckstrom: Frankly, we sucked at it. Um, you know, keep in mind, like we started the business as w- we're engineers, right? And that's, that's what we know, that's how we speak. And, kind of to your point where you have, you know, website after marketing collateral and nothing really ever grabs traction.
And you're like, "Why? I'm, I'm speaking about all the things that, that people need to know about." Yeah, that's fine, but I'm not speaking to the people that need to know about it, right? And I think there's a distinct difference because the people that need to know do not care about IT in any shape or form. In fact, the moment we start talking about IT, their eyes roll in the back of their head, and they stop listening. That's not my problem. You wanna talk to so and so." I'm like, "No, no, no. This is an ownership problem." They're like, "Yeah, no, no, no." And, and so that was something that it took us a long time to get to.
Honestly, I wish we could've shortcutted it, but it, you know, we had to obviously experience that deep pain for ourselves to... I mean, you.
Matt Wolfe: Yeah.
Grant Eckstrom: ...don't have to, right? There's definitely people you can talk to. So we went through that process and, and, and it actually started in our sales process versus the marketing, right?
And I think you, you could've worked in marketing and moved to sales. Um, we started going down the sales side of it, and we're like, "Okay, who are we really speaking to?" Right? "Who is our ideal client?" Really understanding the conversations that we're supposed to be having. And it wasn't that we were far off, was just that we were missing the mark on how we were s- telling that story. So as that started to transition, we were sort of like, "Oh, well, our sales process really should start matching our, our marketing process." And, and honestly, we're still in that, right? We're still dealing with making that better today. Now that we've started ch- understanding, like actually speaking to the ownership of what are the outcomes, right?
What are, what's really the, the impacts? What are the things that move the needle for a business, and how does IT impact that? When you start looking at IT, IT is in every aspect of business, right? Whether people wanna look at it or not. I'm like, if you're, all your, your, your transactions are happening through an accounting system, all your, your communications are happening through phones and through emails and, and instant messaging and, you know, whatever else.
And so you start thinking about that, and when friction happens in any of those environments, you start losing profitability and time and margin, and it's not something that shows up on a report, right? And so we're like, "Okay, well, how do we tell that to somebody so that they can understand that that makes sense to them?"
They're like, "How do, how do we, we bring that to the, the C level or the ownership suite, and be able to show that?" And so that's where things started changing for us. It's like, oh, okay. We're good at what we do; now we're just telling them better how we do it, right? And how we solve those problems.
Grant Eckstrom: That was the game changer for us, but we still have a long way to go
Matt Wolfe: Yeah. But you have, to your credit, you've solved or you've become aware at least of three of the biggest problems I think we see plaguing MSPs and IT consultants. And one of them is, one of them is the, the drive they feel to talk to everybody at once, right? We are all, we can be all things to all people, and so then they're not speaking to anyone specifically.
A great example of that is there was a healthcare-focused IT company that we worked with for many years. They just had a very successful exit, and it was all because they were so niched down to the specific community. And instead of talking about downtime and uptime and service and security and all these things, they were having a conversation about delivering better healthcare and being a partner in that.
And so, you know, that was ... And, and, and an MSP doesn't have to go all in on one niche, but the opportunity to communicate in those specific lanes to specific people is really powerful.
Grant Eckstrom: Well, that's great. You know, but I'm gonna challenge you slightly, Matt. W- we're like, w- where the, the niche is, is great, right? However, the problems that we're talking about every single business, right? And, and I have a lot of conversations where somebody's like, I'm, I'm very, very unique." And I'm like, "Yeah, your processes are what make you unique, but the problems that we're talking about here are for every single company that exists," right?
Like, these technology platforms aren't unique to your business. They're used in every business, right? And so when you start having that friction happen there, that impacts everyone. So not to say that we, we don't, we don't talk to everyone, right? Like, that's not the, the goal. We do have, we, we talk to specific types of clients that are looking for specific types of results.
But the reality is that, like,e the, the fr- if you go down to the niche side of it too far, I think sometimes you lose h- what's happening in, in the, the whole technical world, right? Like, there's a lot of technologies that sometimes get missed if you're only focusing in one market, where we're able to look at it from a little bit more holistic approach of like, "Oh, hey, these are tools that worked over here really well.
Is there a use case for over here as well?" So I, we, we try to keep a little bit of a broader perspective. You know, I think we're, we're primarily focused on like nine industries, but we have clients that, that span much further than that and, and we try to take advantage of that piece of saying, "Okay, hey, how can, lessons learned in this industry impact other industries as well?"
And we, we do it quite often.
Matt Wolfe: Yeah, I hear that. That's one of my favorite things about what we get to do, is we get to compare notes between all these different industries that we work in. Take, exactly, take what's learned in one place, take it to the, the other, and it's a perspective they can't possibly have within their own, their own bubble.
Matt Wolfe: But the, the other thing I think is really cool that you've accomplished is talking about outcomes, right? Instead of how things get done. Talk to me about the outcomes. That's a thing that comes up a lot for MSPs. And also, this, there's this eternal struggle I've noticed in MSPs that you've sort of hinted at as we've talked you have so much more value to a business than they realize, right?
It's, you are not a cost center, you are not just an expense item, you are a strategic asset to a business in so many ways. But it is hard to articulate that. What are some ways you've
Grant Eckstrom: Yeah.
Matt Wolfe: found to overcome that?
Grant Eckstrom: Well, y- you know, th- there's a lot of apples and oranges comparisons too, or, or apples to apples like, like, "Oh, you know, all MSPs are the same," right? And, and that's the case. And so we, we fight that battle of, you know, what's dif- what makes you guys different than everybody else out there, right?
A- and so that's conversations that we have to have every single day.
Grant Eckstrom: You know, how do we, how do we overcome that educational side of it? Honestly, staying deeply human, I think, of having those conversations, maintaining those relationships with the ownership. Honestly, you know, going out for drinks, right? Y- you know, I, I ... A lot of things get accomplished pretty quickly when you start having some of these conversations, and they just all of a sudden they start sticking,g or they're like, the guard is down, right? And it's not a question of authority of the topic anymore. It's just two people having a conversation, and they're like, "Hey," you know, it's the, the fireside chats.
It's the, you know, the ... All of a sudden start to deeply set in, in, in that, that conversation that you can't really, you know, it, get it to adhere over email or, you know, even a, you know, a Zoom call. So I, I'm a big fan of, of face-to-face in person still, even though most of the technologies we, we use and, and work with are, are specifically, you know, less human, especially with like AI coming into play.
And so how do you, how do you incorporate that and, and stay you know, human?
Matt Wolfe: I think what we're seeing is overall it's creating a greater hunger for those kind of moments. You just made me wonder if we should change the call to action on a lot of our businesses' sites from schedule a call to let's have a beer. That might be, that might be a better call to action. You certainly get a lot more done.
Grant Eckstrom: Yeah, you, you might get a lot more clicks, right?
Matt Wolfe: That's right, that's right. Right, free beer, I'm in
Grant Eckstrom: Yep. Yep
Tav Laskauskas: So with the way that your story's changed and evolved you've mentioned that you've seen that it's, it's gotten more successful for you. Can you talk a little bit more about the impact that it's, that it's had? You, you talked some about it started in sales, and then it kind of had a little bit of a trickle-down effect into marketing.
So can you expand on that a little more?
Grant Eckstrom: Yeah. So, you know, figuring out what our voice was what was, was a journey, right? Of like, who we are? Why are we here? What are our core values? And we approached it from the sales side of it because we started, we were like, "Okay, we need to have..." You know, kind of going back to your, your point of like we were 100% referrals part of that was based on relationships. And so when, when things kind of shifted after COVID and people weren't going out and doing all the... You know, I, I was out all the time, going out to dinner, talking with people, meeting people, clients at their offices, and then that kind of diminished, right?
And so with that, we started seeing the referrals dry up as well. And it wasn't like we had a... We actually, our service had gotten better, so why were we seeing that? And ultimately it was that, that loss of human interaction had stopped. And, and so we, we looked at it like, okay, well, one, we need to, to work on that, right?
That's something we need to get back to. But also, what is something that we need to have in place to make sure that there's, there's always that source of revenue that's coming through and, and ultimately having multiple channels of it. So we started focusing on the sales side. And so starting... And, and I'm, we're on like version five, right?
So we've, we've crashed and burned a couple times in the, in the process of that, like, oh, it's just sales. You just call people, and they just pick up and they, they wanna work with you, and that's not the case at all, right? In fact, they won't even pick up. And, and so being able to have that conversation when somebody picked up, what is that conversation like?
And, and what is the value that you're bringing for them to even be willing to talk to you in the first place? And so that, that took a lot of process and a lot of outside help, right? Of like, what does this look like? And, and so that was kind of where we started. And, and when we started getting better at that, and I think we still have a long way to improve, it was very, made it very painfully evident that our marketing was nowhere close to the conversations that we were having after all this time that we'd spent on figuring out who we were and who we wanted to talk to. It, it was a natural progression to force that down and, and get that squared away. And so it, as I said, this is something that we're still working on today.
Tav Laskauskas: As you've gone through that evolution, and you, you mentioned, like, you've had instances of it not working out as well as planned. You already started to kind of evolve some of the marketing at that point, but, or was it really after that point of, "Hey, we got a good thing going with sales now," that you started adapting?
Grant Eckstrom: Yeah, so marketing has a, it's an interesting question, right? So I started getting into the business because I was good at technology. I was not good at sales, I was not good at marketing. It, I was probably better at sales than I was at marketing 'cause I've always had to, you know, I was always the one that was having the, the final conversations. And so started getting into marketing, and we're like, "Oh, this should work," right? And it doesn't, right? You make changes after, you know, I don't know, three or four months of like, okay, then y- you try the next tactic and that doesn't work either. And then you just start banging your head against the wall of, like, this should work. This makes sense to me, right? And, and so that was, that was a struggle, right? To, to get through that.
We, we started getting better at marketing when, when we hit the voice, when we started understanding who we were, who we were wanting to talk to, and then marketing started shifting and, basically, really started to stick, and we started actually seeing some, some traction to that because we started changing. W- we started talking honestly. I think you know, that was, I think that was the key, right? It was no longer a technical conversation. It was us talking about results that we're providing,g the goals that we are achieving, right? And, and it was... And actually even more of, like, speaking to somebody's story, right?
Like, I- is the... are we talking to you? Am I resonating with the things that I'm saying? Is this you? Are you in the right spot? That's where things started to stick because n- nobody cares about me talking about myself, right? People wanna hear about the things that I'm talking about resonating with them?
I mean, like, I think that, that was where we started hitting the mark was when we s- and actually I, I, I attended one of Matt's uh, events a long time ago. Well, it wasn't that long ago. and he started talking about some of that stuff, and I'm like, "Thank God I'm on the right track," So now we're starting to see some of the fruits of that labor.
Like I said, we have a long ways to go but, you know, we're, we're definitely making some traction now.
Matt Wolfe: Yeah, you're doing some great things.
Matt Wolfe: And I, you know, you, you just dropped a phrase while you were telling that story of that I think gets to the heart of why a lot of people struggle and bang their heads against the wall in terms of marketing, and it's that thing that you said, "It made sense to me."
Right? So we try and write things in a way that makes sense to us, but the- there's- we're just all too close to our own story. We're just too close to our own stuff, too inside our own bubble and our own viewpoint to really communicate effectively. So, you know,there ares two things that can help with that. One is we just all need an outside person to come and give us perspective when we're trying to tell our story through marketing.
That's just like if the law of physics is what goes up must come down, that's become the law of marketing to me. We're too, too close to our own stuff. But the second thing is the s- what we use is the StoryBrand Framework, which makes sure that instead of telling your story and making yourself the protagonist of the narrative, you're making that potential client the hero of their own story.
You're talking about what they want, what they're facing, and what, what is in the way for them, and that makes all the difference in the world is, is the simple act of inviting someone into their own story instead of telling yours first makes all the difference in your marketing. It's really powerful and simple.
Grant Eckstrom: Well, and, and to your point, you can bring in a third party, or you can kind of make some small adjustments. I'll tell you, like I said, we've made a lot of mistakes in the tune of, I'm gonna, I'm not gonna say a lot of money. Bring in a third party, right? If, if you were, if you were an IT person, marketing is not your strong suit. I figured that out at the, at an extreme cost. So bringing in a third party i- is, is a very quick shortcut. Unless you're in the Seattle market, well then I don't want you to play at all, so, um.
Matt Wolfe: Perfect. So like we said, you've got a great brand story, which is about that relationship between the business and its ideal client, and you can take that and apply that to marketing and sales. And by the way, you were doing another great thing that you were... We're big silo smashers. We try to smash the silos between all the departments that we usually think are supposed to inde- operate independently, and you've already done that, right?
By having sales and marketing talk to each other. So many businesses miss out on the fact that, like, marketing's over here trying to do research about who we're supposed to be talking to, and they forget that the sales guys are talking to those people and getting the best intel and the best information.
So you're way ahead of the game there. And they're able to tell the same story, to your point. That's, there's, that is huge, and you brought that up earlier, and I don't want us to miss that because that telling of the same narrative isn't just about effectiveness of the sales process; it's about trust and whether or not that's gonna be maintained.
When people have that great sales experience around the beer, and then they go to the website, and they're like, "I don't see any of that anywhere." "What is... I'm completely confused. Well, maybe this isn't what I thought." You know? Then all of that great human work that was just done, it goes out the window.
Matt Wolfe: So you've gotta apply it to marketing and sales and client experience, and that's the last piece I wanna dig in with you here is I'm curious how your client experience has evolved over the years too as you've been scaling and how your understanding of who you are has changed that over time.
Grant Eckstrom: You know, we're still deeply rooted as a service company, right? In, in fact we've always considered ourselves the, the, the white glove to a fault. Or we like to say that we'll, you know, we'll solve problems to a fault, and typically it's at our own expense. But that also, that builds that trust, right?
That's that extra piece of, of actually producing results. And it's the cliché, but like putting your money where your mouth is, right? Like, we're going to step up, we're gonna get it done. And that's why we, we have a very low churn of clients, right? They're like, they know that we've got them covered, and when we don't have them covered, we have to have that truth over comfort conversation, right?
Of like, "Here's the deal, like security's changed, right? The service has changed. We need to have these conversations and you thought we had you covered on isn't the same anymore," right? Like compliance, insurance, things like that get into play now. And the risk has changed- the risk models have changed dramatically over the last couple of years.
And, and like, hey, you can't continue to do the same thing that you were doing 10 years ago and think it's okay, right? Like all the technology's changed, like AI is, is changing the boundaries of, of all the things that we're doing. And, and so having to have those, like s- you, you know, those uncomfortable conversations of like, "I get that you're really happy and content where you're at today, but strategically you have to make some changes ahead of your competitors or, or even potentially stay in business," right? And I think that that's going back to that: if we've got you, we've got you. But if you're not listening to me, that's a problem, right? We have to make sure that we're all staying on, on the, on the same track. We're on the, the same, same length of understanding of what's happening with your business.
And sometimes, you know, it, it doesn't pan out, right? Some people don't wanna hear some of those uncomfortable truths.
Matt Wolfe: Yeah, that brings me back to the thing you said earlier about not, not being afraid to not be liked, you know, in favor of the truth. Did you always have that or is that something that's gotten, that's sort of grown, that capacity to do that over time?
Grant Eckstrom: It's definitely over time, right? In my, my younger careers, like, you know, you- everybody's gotta like you. You can't lose a client ever. Oh my
God, and then you realize that if, if you're losing a client because somebody's going against some of your, your, your core principles and values, y- you gotta...
It's not a good client, right? And, and I love all our clients, but not everybody wants to do, you know, the things that I recommend, and obviously the, there's... And it's not my highway or my way or the highway, right? It's not that way at all. But there are certain things like, "Hey, you know, you're, you're taking too much of a risk," right?
The- there's, you don't have anything to, to, to back up your risk or, A- and that's, tho- those are the tough ones, right? Or, you know, if you're not being y- you're, you're not doing ingenuitive things to, to, to bring yourself or your company to the next level, that's your choice, right? That's something that I, hey, I can point you in the right direction, but it's not a showstopper. And then, you know, it comes down to, then there's also, you know, the financial questions of like, "Hey, you're not making investments back into your company." And ultimately, i- in, in the IT space, there's a life cycle, and you have to, to, to renew equipment, you have to renew software, you can't just buy something and, "Oh yeah, well, I bought that 10 years ago, and it should just continue to work for the next 20 years."
I'm like, "It's, it just doesn't work that way." I, I don't, I didn't design it. I didn't wr- write the rule book, right?
Matt Wolfe: Yeah
Grant Eckstrom: And so having those conversations and, and, and getting people to understand like, "Hey, these are the things that you have to do make it so you are not having catastrophic events in your business." And people are willing to listen. Actually, most people are, are willing to listen, and some are like, "Yeah, I'm gonna take the risk." And I'm like, "Okay, but that, I mean, that's a significant risk to take upon your business and, and ultimately you're risking, you know, your employees' livelihoods," uh, you know, a lot of other things too.
And so those are the, those are the tough conversations to have. And, and at that point you have to realize that, okay, this is not a client that I wanna have anyways. But, but in, in times past, I, I would unwillingly take on risk that, that I probably should have never had.
Matt Wolfe: Yeah, that makes sense. Well, this has been really helpful. I'm so glad you hopped on to talk to us. We've got one more thing to do here, but I just wanna say first, I really ... In, in all of our conversations, I've really admired your drive to just continually iterate and learn, and you, you've accomplished some great things, you and your brother together with this company already, and learned some powerful lessons.
But not everyone has the humility and the wisdom to say, "Well, there's still more to learn." So I ... A- and even from that, I'm, I'm taking that, just that reminder away today, just that very sort of basic human and helpful thing. So, I'm so glad that you were able to tell your story.
Matt Wolfe: Now, what we have next, we call it the Behind the Brand questionnaire, because as we've been talking about the whole time, right, B2B marketing needs to be deeply human.
It's all about relationships, and since most of the people who might hear this have not had a chance to have a beer with you yet, we're gonna give them a chance to. Yet. We're gonna give them a chance to get to know you a little bit and just unveil the human behind the brand before they reach out to you.
Okay, you up for it?
Grant Eckstrom: Yep, let's do it
Matt Wolfe: All right, great. Tav, you have the first question.
Tav Laskauskas: What is your go-to karaoke song? Or if you don't do karaoke, what is a song that you wish you could sing?
Grant Eckstrom: Yeah, that, that's a good one. No, I don't do karaoke. I did earlier in my years, and I was told I should not. So, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm good at attending. But yeah, I'm just a background singer. Y- you know, I would... Honestly, I'm, I... Foolin' Rain, Led Zeppelin, that is a, a great song. And I think that, that, you know, from a karaoke perspective, that would be my one, if I could actually do it.
But yeah, can't do it.
Matt Wolfe: That's an awesome pick. We've definitely not heard that one yet. All right, what's the last thing that made you laugh out loud?
Grant Eckstrom: You know, sometimes it, it, actually the last time w- was this morning. Some of my son's responses. I can't think of it off the top of my head, but he was making me laugh this morning. Just, like, he, he's 12 years old. He knows everything, and it was more of a, a laughing of I remember that as a child myself of like, you know, he's trying to pull, you know, the wool over my wife's eyes.
And I, I, couldn't stop from just hysterically laughing. I'm like, "Y- y- bro, you gotta work on your, your, your moves. You, you're not there yet." Yeah.
be- being a father, it can be challenging but you know, every once in a while you find that, that little, that little funny of like, yeah, you're, you're gonna get it, but y- your lie is not good yet,
Matt Wolfe: Yep. If we only knew how much our parents actually knew about what we were trying to do.
Tav Laskauskas: For sure. What is your favorite way to get away from it all?
Grant Eckstrom: So getting away from it all in the short term, I love cooking, and that is an easy way for me to get in the mindset where the only thing that counts is, you know, what I'm working on in the kitchen and the re- the result of the product that I'm putting out. So, that's kind of my, my, my day-to-day relaxation.
Otherwise, I like to travel a lot, right? And get out and experience new things, spend, and spend time with the family. But, uh, my neighbor hates me because she's always taking my trash out for me 'cause we're always gone. I would say that that's, that's how we get away from it all.
Matt Wolfe: What is one day in your life that you would like to relive?
Grant Eckstrom: All right, so this isn't necessarily the day, but it, it is a day that I won't be able to relive for, for a long time, if ever. so I went skydiving, when I was younger. Actually, my wife went with me as well. We were down in Mexico, and there was an American team down there, and they're like, "Hey, you guys wanna go skydiving?"
And so I was, I dunno, 22, 23. One of the most amazing experiences I've ever had, right? And, and to this day, like, I, I kind of tease my wife. I'm like, "I'd love to do that again." She's like, "Not a chance in hell." You know, life insurance doesn't cover people that jump out of planes. But so, but I, I'd love to be able to do it again, but I understand with my responsibilities that that's just not what I should be doing at this point in my life.
But, uh, a- an amazing experience that I'd love to be able to do again, just probably won't
Matt Wolfe: Yeah, that makes sense
Tav Laskauskas: What smell reminds you of a specific place or time?
Grant Eckstrom: Well, I, I live in Seattle, so there's lots of smells here. Honestly, you know, I think I, I love the, the smell of, of the sea. Like the, not, like the funky, like low tide smell necessarily, but like just the, the salt water. I, I spent a lot of time in the Northwest, growing up around water and, and, you know, crabbing and, and fishing and things like that.
And so you get that smell of, of the seawater, and it kind of just brings me back to some of those moments.
Matt Wolfe: What three words would your loved ones use to describe you?
Grant Eckstrom: Difficult, opinionated, and, uh, honest
Tav Laskauskas: What would it mean to have truly succeeded in your work? Not necessarily on the company level, but for you personally
Grant Eckstrom: So, I, I'm one of those people that I don't know if I'll ever be able to retire. There isn't an endpoint for me, so I don't have a true mark of, of what success looks like. For me, I think success is continuing to build on what I already have, and I don't necessarily know if there's a stopping point for that.
I'd be that, that person that would freak out if I had too much time on my hands. Um, you know, obviously working less in the business would be nice, but I, I will always have something, whether it's this business or something else, that I will be involved in. You know, s- success is, some people look at it as financial.
That's not necessarily how I look at it. I, I think it's more about continuing to build on, on what you've, you have and, and ultimately being able to help other people with that, know, those lessons that you've learned over time, through that process as well.
Matt Wolfe: Yeah. Wow.
Matt Wolfe: Hey, thanks for diving into that questionnaire with us, Grant. That was really fun. It's been a joy to get to know you better today and to hear more about your heart for service. And, uh, if people wanna contact you, they can go to succurri.com, but I wanna specify it's two Cs and two Rs. S-U-C-C-U-R-R-I.com. Uh, succurri.com, they'll find you there. Grant Eckstrom with us today. On our side of things, if you're a B2B service provider and you are tired of surviving on referrals and word of mouth, our Scale Beyond Referrals program is built just for you. We'd be happy to tell you about that at brand3.net. And this is Matt Wolfe, and this was Tav Laskauskas for The CEO's Heart for Service, and we'll see you next time.
MAILING
201 Market Street S
Suite 201
Havre de Grace, MD 21078
OFFICE LOCATIONS
Havre de Grace, MD
Lake Stevens, WA
