Brendan Gibson, the founder of answers IT, based in Brisbane, Australia, shares three suggestions he'd apply if he were launching an MSP today:

1. Say "no" a lot more – We have recently celebrated our ten-year anniversary at answers IT, which has been a good time to reflect.  

In the early days, I would try to please everybody and the result would be me saying yes to everything.  

This meant we weren’t focused as an organization, and it would distract us from achieving our strategic goals.  

Now, I would tell my younger self not to be so caught up in what other people think.

Be confident and say no when you need to.

2. Make systemization and standardization a top priority both internally and externally – In terms of systemization, make sure that you've got processes and procedures for people to follow and check, so that they are not just winging it.

We want to scale our business and we have large and ambitious targets to reach.

We want to support a large number of users and you can't do that without systems and processes that facilitate growth. 

Standardization is about having products and services that are consistent across clients.  

You don't want to have a big mash-up of all different types of solutions for your clients, especially as you grow.

We want to standardize as best as we can.

That allows us to provide better service and allows our technical team to confidently support our clients.

We have found that our clients want to have clear documentation about their environment, and standardization helps us achieve this.

It's only in the last few years that we've have focused on standardization and innovation, and we are always refining our standardization framework to improve customer experience.

3. Hire the right staff from the start – Don't be the smartest person in the room.

Don't act like you know everything.

Listen to your team and delegate accountability.

Let go of stuff and don't try to do it all.

Spend the time on getting the right people that align with your core values.

We developed our current core values just over a year ago when we began our new growth strategy.

We defined our core values collectively and that is what we live, hire and fire by.

If you hire someone with the wrong attitude – it can be toxic to the whole environment.

We've adopted a recruitment strategy based on the Top Grading method.

It's quite a detailed process designed to hire the right staff, the first time, and we certainly do that here.

That's been pivotal in getting the right people.

Editor’s note: Comments are edited to improve readability.

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