[00:00:00] Jay: Hi everyone, welcome to First Customer. My name is Jay Aigner. Today I am lucky enough to be joined by Brian Pickell. He is the CEO and co founder of KP Interface. Brian, how are you, buddy?
Brian: Doing great, Jay. Doing great. How are you?
Jay: I'm great. It's beautiful. Like we were just talking about a little bit, get a little bit more out of spring before summer companies start beating us over the head. So I'm excited. So, tell me, man, where did you grow up and, did that have any impact on you being an entrepreneur?
Brian: I grew up here just outside of Valley Forge Park on the, the West Norton Narstown side of the world. [00:01:00] And also, after going to school, mostly in the Narstown area, ended up going to high school in the mainline area down in Radnor and Archbishop Carroll High School. Did that have an impact to where I'm at now?
Absolutely. it didn't have an impact necessarily on me starting this business, but, my family certainly did and I think, some of my colleagues in high school certainly did as well.
Jay: What do you think, what do you think rubbed off with what helped you kind of become an entrepreneur later in life?
Brian: Well, I think one thing that probably helped, I have an older brother. I have two older brothers. one is seven years older. His name's Walt. he's a very ambitious guy, always was from the time he was young, but especially through high school and college and beyond. And I think I always looked up to him in terms of his work ethic and taking chances and that was a big part of it.
The other part of for me personally was my faith. I had spent five years after high school in the seminary to become a catholic priest and The way I kind of look at the world is that at the [00:02:00] end of the day, my belief in God is that he has me, he's looking out for me. So if I take a chance like I did to, get in this field, number one, and then secondly, to start my own business, I figured, well, at the end of the day, I'll be all right, you know, one way or the other.
So, there's chances you take, there's risks you make, but it all worked out so far.
Jay: Taking chances. one of the bigger things I think entrepreneurs, you know, have to be willing to do. So I love that. tell me a little bit about your first business. Was KP your first business or was there something before that?
Brian: Now this is my first business. I've worked for other smaller firms, firms that were startup though in nature. So I was used to that kind of environment where you had to figure things out on your own. You had to wear a lot of hats. You had to work sometimes long hours. you were responsible for everything from sales to delivery and everything in between.
So I helped a couple other businesses grow. so I had that experience at least, but I wasn't a founder of the other businesses.[00:03:00]
Jay: And I,
know you have a co founder actually don't know much about them. So I'm curious, how did the company get started? You know, how was the co founder relationship? You know, it's a different one than just a single team, solo founder. It's a different
Brian: absolutely. I'd love to tell you that story. So first of all, our name of the business is KP Interface and, the interface has to do with us wanting to interface business and technology together. Okay? Second thing was to interface us and our clients. So we wanted to make sure that partnership and that complementarity existed between all those different facets.
KP comes from our last names, the initials, and our last names, my last name be in Piel. So I'm the p my co-founder's name was Matt Kirby and he's decay. So, we had known each other a different company before. Matt, really, his background in Forte was in sales, and my forte was in operations and delivery and client services.
So we decided, look, we pair well. We both have [00:04:00] the ambition to do it and willingness to do it, the work ethic to do it. Let's give it a shot. So, we quit our jobs and got together and leapt off the cliff, so to speak. but we did it together, which was helpful because, you know, we had each other's back.
and, you know. We got, you know, started with a couple of small, you know clients and And then we just kept growing it from there each year just growing the story with matt in particular though has unfortunately a tragic ending. And in the fact that after our third year or so He came down with leukemia, came down with a form of leukemia called acute myeloid, leukemia that, that ended up taking his life about after about a sickness for about 18 months.
So he fought a heroic battle, but ended up losing that battle, unfortunately, but his legacy lives on at KPI, will not change that name. he is decay and will remain there. We have a whole room dedicated to him, called the Kirby room here at KPI with his. Picture and an attribute to him out front and then a lot of his other [00:05:00] Memorabilia inside that room here at kpi.
So we often refer to that room, you know daily weekly talking about matt but also I still recall some of matt's famous sayings and Use that energy that he had that ambition he had to drive the company even till today
Jay: beautiful. I mean, You want, you know, you want to have a legacy and you want to have an impact and it's cool that this was big enough that you guys still kind of represent that on a day to day basis. I love that. and what, so I mean, it's an interesting kind of position for you to be in at the time.
I mean, he's the sales guy, which is typically the, you know, the outgoing and business development, that sort of thing. How did you. Kind of wrangle with the fact that now you have to do this kind of is, you know, on your own, so to speak, with the stuff that you learned from him over the years, how did you make that transition to kind of the total, you know, CEO, it's
Brian: Yeah, that was that was a challenging transition Not only was I dealing with the fact that you know, matt was matt when matt was sick. My goal was to every day You Send him a [00:06:00] note, an email, a message of something we had accomplished positive that they could have been landing a new client could have been finishing a project could have making somebody happy.
It could have been, you know, kudos to one of the employees. And that was my way of trying to keep him in touch with what was going on, but also give him some positive feedback. know, reaffirming and en he would work from his ho be, hey, I'm gonna be sen emails today and I'll be with all these emails and he could.
That's just the Are, that's the way they all are very hard workers. but anyway, making that transition then when Matt, you know, did get worse or did some come to the disease, it really put me in the chair of not just being a head of operations and finance at the time, but also being in charge of sales and client acquisition, which I had very limited experience.
But I had some sales training and I had the ambition to go out and work with people. And, that's what I did. So first thing I did actually is I [00:07:00] acquired another company, another small managed services provider, brought that person on as my chief operations officer. And so he kind of took that load off of me.
I brought in some other people to help me on the accounting side. Okay. And then I focused more on sales. So that's what we did at that point in time. and just kept growing it from there
Jay: such an interesting approach to take,how did you know what to do? How did you, how, first of all, how did you kind of come up with the idea of acquiring somebody to, you know, obviously maybe bringing some of their book of business, but also get their expertise in a field that you're also a part of. How did you get the idea? How did you execute on that? That's like a pretty, you know, it's an involved process. I would assume I've never had to do it myself, but from what I hear, you know, it's not like just write a check to somebody and they work for you now. it's a
bit more, how did you get into that?
Brian: It was it was a little atypical than a typical way you would go through an acquisition So yes, you're right typically with acquisition. There's a ton [00:08:00] of due diligence and going back and forth on numbers and asking questions and You know kind of dating the other firm a little bit before you actually make that transition This was somebody though.
I we had already known. this is somebody who'd worked with us had a slightly smaller SP than we had. And he would help us out in certain situations. We had projects where we, he need, we needed his expertise. he was very strong technically. So this person's name was Mark. mark and I knew each other, and he knew Matt was sick.
And, I had talked to him about it a little bit, like saying, Hey Mark, if I need help, I'm in a situation where I might need some help. You're telling me that you know, you're in trouble growing and you'd like to share the responsibility with somebody else. So after matt had passed away probably maybe a year after that mark and I got together and talked about it and then we kind of worked out a plan where he would kind of be absorbed in the kpi And that's kind of the way it happened.
So it really wasn't. As involved and as it often is [00:09:00] somebody already knew already trusted we came One thing that's really important is sharing the same values business wise and personally and that was mark and I we were very much Aligned in that respect So, and then he complimented again all of our skills.
He had better technical skills than I had and even some of my people had, but he also knew business already. So he knew how to manage business, how to do invoicing, etc. So he was a good complement to what we already had.
Jay: So let's rewind a little bit. who was your first customer at KP and how did you guys get them? Well,
Brian: You know, our first customer was a company called, Princeton University Federal Credit Union, now known as Princeton Federal Credit Union. And there is still a customer of ours today. I'm proud to admit, we got them through a referral through a partner that we knew. and, you know, we had the meeting, we presented ourselves, I guess, well enough that they wanted to try doing business with us.
[00:10:00] And we did and I serviced that account myself to start with I mean I was out there doing work Uploading updating servers and computers and networking issues, etc and as we grew began introducing other engineers into that account and But now we have a whole management team that manages that account I just mentioned that we need to go back out there and kind of do a celebration of these past 18 years so every Sometimes every five or 10 years with certain clients, we try to do something like that where we're showing our appreciation for them.
And then we also have typically have an appreciation night of all of our clients once a year. So we do that as well. But yeah, we're proud to, we're proud to have them as a,
Jay: you gotta be, you gotta be doing something right. If you're keeping people around, that long, I mean, that's a long time, for them and you,to still be in business and still be into working together. so how is, how, you know,your. Early on, you're kind of scrappy. You're figuring it out.
You're doing the work yourself. You're doing all these different things. how has the client that you were going after [00:11:00] then changed to what it is today? Have you refined it a lot? Have you kind of know exactly who you're going after? Was it kind of wild west back then where you're just kind of trying to get, you know, business on the books? How has that evolved over time to where you guys are today?
Brian: Yeah, it certainly has evolved. it certainly was what we call the shotgun approach. Back then it was the Wild West. we would consider any and every client that, or prospect we came across. I used to have something I called my personal red flag, which was my little instinct to know if I was sitting and talking with somebody and I didn't get a good vibe from them, that I would say to, you know, Matt at the time, Matt, I know you want this business, but you know, they might not be a great partner to us because really in our relationship as.
service provider, especially a consultative partnership that we have, you got to see the person across the table as a partner in this because it does take their willingness, their involvement, their participation in moving the ball forward when it comes to technology and aligning it to their business.
So [00:12:00] Most times it was fine, but there were some times it was more challenging but about six seven years ago I got involved in a marketing sales and marketing consortium just for our industry just for the msp industry and This consortium this firm that kind of leads it They would give us a lot of help in terms of marketing and a lot of that had to do with Defining your target market And really going a little bit deeper instead of going so wide So we began doing that and now we focus our efforts our marketing efforts really in three main industries that be in manufacturing non profit financial services Those are our three main target markets Now if we get referred or trip across or get approached by somebody not in that market We can still service them not that we can't but and we will and we'll do a great job But at the same time we're not really out there hunting for them You Every day because you just can't [00:13:00] you can't do a great job of being too broad at least not I don't think in terms of what we do
Jay: Yeah. And I don't think anybody, I think it's still, you know, Not only is your client pool slimming down as you focus, but also like everything you offer slims down as you focus and you get better and you improve, you just kind of become like really good at a couple of things and that's what you get known for. And that's why people come back to you. So, I find that super interesting. A question that I,I kind of don't want to ask, but I'm going to ask it anyway. MSPs being more of a traditional, you know, it's been around for a long time. There's a lot of, you know, very procedural stuff that happens. Has artificial intelligence made it into your world yet?
Are you using it for anything specific or are you just kind of business as usual? And, you know, it's off to the side and maybe use it for chat, GPT and some other stuff, or is it somehow integrated into your world?
Brian: Well, it's an ongoing process and I would say it's developing to get more and more integrated [00:14:00] with Intentional strategic approach to it beginning. We're kind of at that point now where it's like, okay We've been using it here and there and now it's okay How are we actually going to build a strategy around implementing ai into what we do?
AI has been in there even behind the scenes in terms of some of the products that we use, especially on the cyber security front. So our cyber security partners have been using AI for a long time to uncover vulnerabilities, and to fix vulnerabilities, et cetera, on behalf of our clients. That's one way it has been used in the past.
Secondly, you know, we've been using it intentionally for things like chat GPT, right? Developing processes and procedures, job descriptions, marketing efforts, etc. So we used it for that purpose. It's probably for the better half of the last year or more. Beyond that, we, we actually invested in an AI program for our particular industry and for the services that we offer.
So kind of on our help desk now. We have [00:15:00] AI integration That works with our ticketing system to understand what's being asked and then go find a solution automatically for us it's it's something again. You have to feed AI you have to teach it. You have to tell it what's going on What's right?
What's wrong? so that's kind of still in process of getting better and better, but we dad we did implement thatand then more recently, we're just taking advantage of some things that are, you know, built into everyday stuff, things like, you know, recording transcription, summarization of meetings, the idea now that I typically don't take many notes in a meeting anymore.
because I don't need to. The transcription does it for you, and again, not just transcribes it, but organizes it, sets action items up, et cetera, for booking meetings. I'm no longer going back and forth with people. Hey, when do you want to book a meeting? I'm not only do I have my calendar, but I use a booking link, which is offered right through Microsoft bookings and, people can choose anytime they want.
It's available to them. It's available to me. They can just choose it on [00:16:00] their own and set up the meeting and I'm available in those time slots. So it saves so much time for me and my staff to use some of those technologies. that we weren't using a year ago or two years ago.
Jay: yeah,
Brian: yeah, there's definitely a higher productivity for each member and more efficiency and time savings as well.
But now the thing is, okay, we've been using some of these tools. That's great. Now, how are we intentionally going to be using AI in the future? To really drive certain areas of the business to more efficiency and more produce. that's really gonna be the next step.
Jay: Yeah, I think that's honestly even the more exciting applications of AI is in kind of spaces that you don't think of it like an MSP, like the procurement, all the, just the, you know, all the crazy stuff that you guys do to
help an IT department run, those will be the ones that get like behind the scenes kind of revolutionary changes from the productivity, you know, in AI, which is pretty cool.
And, you know, you see all the [00:17:00] sales, Products and the marketing products that you just kind of get overwhelmed with all of it But I think the real value will come with companies like you guys Live in the trenches, find some way to, you know, level up your game by using it. And, I think that's where it comes in really useful. so switching gears for one second. what do you think about personal brain? You know, I mean, you're the face of this company. you know, you've got to be out there to some degree, kind of shaking hands and kissing babies and all that sort of stuff. Like, do you think about it separately than the business?
Do you try to do LinkedIn stuff? Do you try to promote yourself or is it all just KPI all day, every day?
Brian: it's a little bit of both. I've become a little bit more aware, self-aware. If you'll, the problem for me, Jay has always been, I'm not a great at self. I don't think I'm great at self-promotion. you know, not. I'm fine being out in front of people. I like mixing it up with people. I would consider myself an extrovert.
But I'm also not and not to send everybody in social media is a narcissist, but I'm not, and I don't feel the need. [00:18:00] to push myself out there, right? It more comes from the business need of, hey, this could be good for business if you're out there and people know you. Or you can look at it as, hey, is there something I can offer somebody else that might be helpful?
Which is a lot of what business social media has become today, and it should be. So what I've benefited from in the past year is some new marketing people on my team that are frankly, they just have to be younger They're more in tune with social media and actually in how to use social media to promote the business So it's been a combination of me doing some Working with them to do something like right now.
We're filming video short videos that are going to be again educational in nature Youand then also sometimes I have my marketing people I give them access to my linkedin if they want to post something or comment on something they can they know At this point what to do and what I prefer them not to do but sometimes it's that so it's a little [00:19:00] bit of mix of kpi But also it is definitely me still staying involved With those social channels to be out there personally and a lot of it's done by me and someone's sometimes done by somebody else but You it's a bit of a little bit of a mix
Jay: Yes, that's I think it kind of has to be that way. If you're an actual busy CEO, sometimes you see so much posting, you wonder how they have time to actually do the thing that they're saying they're doing, but, having a healthy mix of, you know, team doing it with you and you're doing it yourself. I love that.
two more things. if you had to, give some advice to an entrepreneur who wanted to start a business or just started a business today, what's that advice? What's your top piece?
Brian: the top advice I would give an entrepreneur would be to I think they've got to be two things they've got to be Focused on from my standpoint. Everything we do is about customer service. So you got to be focused on the client you've got to be willing to do what's right even when [00:20:00] it's not fun or easy that's just me because I think that virtue drives through everything else and that builds your reputation at the end The other thing though is to be as business astute in what you're doing In other words don't take the focus on the things you need to be doing right stay profitable You know use advisors when you can people that have been through it before that's probably one of the biggest things right now I'm doing that right now I just engage a couple of advisors who are 10 years older than me And they are guiding me in new ways that i've never thought of before so I would say have your mentors as well It's really important
Jay: I love that advice. And some of the best advice I think I ever got, similar vein is basically to build your own board. Build a network of trusted advisors and trusted people you can bring stuff to. I have standing meetings with probably five or six of kind of my favorite successful agency owners every month.
And we just get on and [00:21:00] talk about what's working, what's not. They listen, I listen, and we kind of go back and forth. It's been 30 minutes to an hour, probably the most. You know, helpful and insightful calls that I have. So I totally agree with the, get somebody and people help, you know, that's, I think once you hit a certain point, you're kind of happy to look back and help people who were where you were before. so even though it may be intimidating or daunting to go find somebody, just asked, you know, and you could, you'd be surprised how many people would be willing to help, but at least give you some advice and point you in the right direction. Last question, non business related. If you could do anything on earth and you knew you couldn't fail, what would it be?
Brian: if I could do anything on earth and I knew I wouldn't fail. What would it be?if I could do anything on earth and not fail, I would probably I don't know probably fly an airplane.
Jay: There you go.
All right. Well, I'm getting my pilot's license so you can, you know, if I can do it, I know you can do it. So, you know, I think we, we can make that happen.
if you want to [00:22:00] learn more about you, Brian, or get in touch with anything they heard today, how do they do that? And also how do they reach KPI?
Brian: Yeah, sure. So if you want to reach out to me, you can certainly find me on linkedin i'm available out there Brian Pickell under KP Interface. You're going to find me out there Also through a website kpinterface. com you're going to find you know ways to access us and access me there as well So i'm happy to help out in any way I can Somebody has a question after something else I can give advice to other entrepreneurs whatever I've 20 years.
I'd be happy to help because other people help me
Jay: All right, Brian, you're fantastic, man. I really enjoy it. And, thank you for your time and let's catch up again soon. All right.
Brian: I'm here, Jay. You got it. But thank you.
Have a good one.
Jay: got it, brother. See you. You, too.