Innovation, Resilience, and Leadership: Carl Mazzanti's Journey in IT
Welcome to the IAMCP Profiles and Partnership. The podcast that showcases how Microsoft partners and IAMCP members boost their business by collaborating with other members and partners. I'm your co-host, Anthony Carrano. And in each episode, I'll be talking to some of the most innovative and successful partners in the Microsoft ecosystem. The International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners, otherwise known as IAMCP, is a community of Microsoft partners who help each other grow and thrive.
Anthony Carrano:Members can find and connect with other partners locally and globally and access exclusive resources and opportunities. Whether you're looking for new customers, new markets, or new solutions, IAMCP can help you achieve your goals. We'll hear their stories, learn from their experiences, and discover the best practices and strategies they use to increase customer loyalty and grow revenues. Whether you're a new partner or an established one, you'll find valuable insights and inspiration in this podcast. We hope you enjoy this podcast and find it useful and inspiring.
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Anthony Carrano:But before we dive into our interview, let me ask you a couple of questions. As a Microsoft partner and member of the IAMCP, how are you investing in the continuous learning and development of your employees and customers as a way to grow your business?
Anthony Carrano:And how do you build and deliver the right solution to help you achieve that? These are some of the questions we'll explore in this podcast with the help of our guest, a P2P Americas and worldwide finalist for the Adviser Awards. He'll share stories, challenges, and successes, and give you practical tips and advice on how to build for success. Are you ready to join us on this journey? Then stay tuned because we have a great show for you today.
Anthony Carrano:Our guest is Carl Mazzanti, the president and CEO at eMazzanti Technologies, a four-time Microsoft partner of the year award winner in CISSP servicing clients worldwide since 2001 as an outsourced IT consultant focusing on security first. Let's hear what he has to
Anthony Carrano:say. Welcome, Carl, to the podcast today. Thank you for joining us. We really appreciate having you.
Carl Mazzanti:Thank you, Anthony, for having me.
Anthony Carrano:Excellent. Excellent. Well, let's start off. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your role in the company.
Carl Mazzanti:So, 24 years ago, Jennifer Shine, my, business partner and best friend, had an idea that we could we could service the community in a way that would really pay attention to them, inspire, and, you you know, be cost effective, help our customers achieve their goals. It was her idea that been trying to help, build on that vision, now for twenty four years. I can't believe it's been twenty-four years.
Anthony Carrano:Wow.
Carl Mazzanti:I was, coming out of an inner circle, partner, Cole Systems, in the dynamic space. And while I knew CRM and ERP really well, we were both in the World Trade Center Towers when the first plane hit. It really solidifies your security first mindset when things like that happen, and we pivoted, we pivoted to being a security first, company that, was gonna do infrastructure. So instead of doing ERP and CRM, which was my pedigree, we had a lot of people in the New York Metropolitan Area that were in need of opening up office space, getting their businesses restored, and that was a focus. We grew tenfold. I mean, it was just, amazing times, trying to restore and get everyone back up and running. And we were doing a good job, and people were voting with their dollars. Twenty-four years later, we've seven out of those first ten accounts. It's just the neatest thing ever.
Carl Mazzanti:And one of those accounts is our architect. And I mentioned to her all the time that I I've spent way more with her than she ever did in the twenty-four years. But, it's been a fun journey.
Anthony Carrano:Yeah. Twenty-four year life cycle. That's, that's gotta boost up those, retention and renewal numbers. That's great. That's great.
Anthony Carrano:Now, when did you join IAMCP?
Carl Mazzanti:Probably within the first three years. So in 2003, we won our first Microsoft award. And believe it or not, Bill Gates was there. Isn't that just amazing?
Carl Mazzanti:That, you know, that's so long ago. Anyway, we were at, Comdex, if people can even remember that. And we had just gotten in, Channel Magazine and, you know, Redmond Magazine and stuff like that where we're all starting to pay attention to us because we were making waves. So it was just so neat. So I joined IAMCP.
Carl Mazzanti:That's, really when we started to understand the power of partnership.
Anthony Carrano:Well, so that's also really fascinating, it's interesting as we were, doing a little bit of research, I heard through the grapevine that, you're a walker.
Carl Mazzanti:I am.
Anthony Carrano:You've, you've walked, all six continents?
Carl Mazzanti:I have, and gone to school in three of them.
Anthony Carrano:Get out.
Carl Mazzanti:Yeah. I went to, Chinese University of Hong Kong, during handover. I chose that I chose to go there over, going to Oxford because, there were literally tanks lining up at the border, and I thought that would be such a pivotal moment to take Hong Kong from a British territory to a Chinese managed territory. Everyone was so freaked out at the time, and it, you know, it was world history at the time. So it was nice to be at the school, during the transition and to see Prince Charles, you know, fly off. And literally, like I said, the, you know, the changing the guard, took place so quickly.
Anthony Carrano:Wow. So I can imagine, I mean, I've got a few questions here. I know we're gonna get to the partner story here, in a minute, but, really fascinating. So what, in walking, you know, six continents, I got a few questions. One, what, what prompted you to to start doing that?
Carl Mazzanti:Well, I feel like that you come up with really good ideas. You come up with the great ideas while you're you're, you know, putting two feet in front of each other. And, you know, I'm super Italian. So, you know, my, when I meet with people, I like to put legs underneath the table and and clearly some nice food or something, in front of both of you to facilitate an open dialogue in a safe place. And then with my management team and customers and some of the staff, I take them on walks.
Carl Mazzanti:You know, that's where really some of the ideas start to flow. You know, I think hiking early age and and the like, just began that. Now that the fact that you have mobile and AirPods off, it's awesome. You could just be out and about doing other things and and working.
Anthony Carrano:You know? Listening to podcasts. Right?
Carl Mazzanti:Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. There's one continent, though, I haven't been to yet, and that's Antarctica. And I've, finally mapped out, how that trip's gonna go because I don't wanna just walk on Antarctica or run on Antarctica or bike on Antarctica or climb on Antarctica. I wanna go to the South Pole.
Carl Mazzanti:And there's less than 500 people a year that go there, maybe less than 5,000 in the history of us having knowledge of the continent, who've ever done that. To put that in perspective, when you're, at the South Pole, the closest humans are, in the International Space Station. It's really just such such a next level item and a logistical challenge. So, for us, innovators and and Microsoft partners on here, we're so used to talking about things that run on Microsoft, but this one is just so neat, right, to to get there and and to have that experience.
Anthony Carrano:What have you learned, in your journeys, in your in your hiking across these, six continents?
Carl Mazzanti:Well, I think diversity is a really big one. If you are in our office, it's like being in the United Nations. Everyone speaks multiple languages. So, yo habla espanol, you're probably Italiano. You know, I find that people speak different languages.
Carl Mazzanti:They have to find ways to solve a problem faster. So if you look just a couple years ago, AI wasn't even a thing. We were talking about robotic process automation, but it wasn't really a consumable, customer item. It was something we would sit with a customer, and we would say, hey, we could use computers for some digital labor, but, it wasn't in their- it wasn't in their pocket.
Carl Mazzanti:It wasn't someone, sitting there and writing and redoing their resume. It wasn't someone, you know, you know, composing their emails or something like that to be more effective. So I feel like our staff are really fast, and our customers pay us for speed. Many of our services, you know, either through Microsoft partners, like, you know, that many of the listeners on this call or direct to a customer that, will engage us because they called. One of the goals is they wanna get from point A to point B, and we try and get them there as fast as humanly possible.
Anthony Carrano:Mhmm. One more question about the hiking. So what was your biggest, either surprise or moment, in your journeys?
Carl Mazzanti:Well, I had said that I've, you know, I've lived in a bunch of different countries or states. So I was living in France at the time, and I was going to school between France and Italy. And I was, in Mont Blanc, camping on the side of a cliff face when it started to rain and our tent poles gave out, we slid down the mountain. When we got out, we were just a few feet from going over. And then and even, you know, the middle of the night trying to hike up, tent down with a stream of water going through the center of the tent, your body's cold.
Carl Mazzanti:You're super afraid. You've no idea the conditions. I do not speak French, and, there's no humans anywhere around. So you have to solve one problem, then solve the next problem, then solve the next problem.
Carl Mazzanti:I would describe that as going into space. I'd describe that going into submarine and really just running the business is kind of the same thing. Whatever the issue that comes up, you just have to solve the next problem, solve the next problem, solve the next problem. And I feel like from the hiking, experience I have, any of the walking, it's a lot of it. You can get caught off guard.
Carl Mazzanti:Like, you could be in Arizona where it's super hot and dry and arid. And then if it starts to rain, you're in a torrential tsunami where you could be wiped away and just gone in a second because the land doesn't absorb the water. It just flows, and it massively amplifies. So I have a deep respect, for changing conditions and, a little bit of paranoia that's probably kept us going in the right direction for a long time.
Anthony Carrano:Well, indeed, you have 24 years. So that's fantastic. Really appreciate you sharing, some of those stories, Carl. I definitely, you know, as a fellow Italian, we'll definitely have to get together and, you know, get some food and wine, and, we'd have a good time.
Carl Mazzanti:Agreed. That offer pretty much stands for anyone on this call. You wanna come and visit the office, I have a nice cappuccino waiting for your arrival.
Anthony Carrano:Fantastic. Fantastic. So you've actually shared just a lot about your personal background. So I really appreciate you sharing that. Tell us a little bit about, eMazzanti Technologies, you know, areas of specialization.
Carl Mazzanti:Well, we try and do a few things and and do those very, very well. So we try and be one or two in the market place, so I'll take GroupWise. I mean, it's amazing that GroupWise is still around, but we've moved 1.2 to 1,400,000 mailboxes to Office 365, and Microsoft pays us. I mean, that's really kind of one of the testaments. I feel like there's only three providers left, and one of them just announced that they're just not gonna do the service any longer.
Carl Mazzanti:It wasn't worth keeping some of the staff and evolving the product. But in 2018, I bought, one of the software packages and, all the intellectual property around it. We've kept that, infrastructure running off of Azure to stream confidence, give telemetry into the moving of the data to Office three sixty five, and then so many other services come out of that. But you have those tool sets where you can monitor and see visibility into it. We can do reporting.
Carl Mazzanti:We can now apply that to things like Copilot. So, like, that's on a ton of our communications that goes outbound to start doing privacy flags and figure out, you know, where's your data, where the leaks, you know, are there are there, you know, shares out there, just visibility into unstructured data. You know, the trying to tame that, figure out the rot and the like. That brand, you know, serves largely enterprise customers because the ones that were made with group buys are not the 50 user shops anymore, someone with five or ten users. Their municipalities, their financial institutions, and the like that, have a team that's been supporting it.
Carl Mazzanti:They just, they're loud and they're proud on on Novell NetWare. You know, beyond that, I mentioned a security first mindset. You know, the IT industry is an unregulated one. If you look at the credit card industry, you've got PCI.
Carl Mazzanti:If you look at the health care industry, you've got, HIPAA. And in the IT industry, we make the rules. So so there's no oversight. And and at any given moment, like, on this call, there'll be one quarter of the listeners that are losing money in their ear going out of business. There'll be a quarter of the users that are losing money, but they may be a lifestyle, they'll flip flop between making money one year and not making money that year.
Carl Mazzanti:It's just a lifestyle. And there will be a quarter that are best in class that are taking off. They've built a better mousetrap, and they're doing well. Well, if two thirds or three quarters of the group are marginal, they typically aren't spending on information security. So it exposes all the people that they service.
Anthony Carrano:Mhmm.
Carl Mazzanti:Because there's just there's no regulation out there. When the person walks in and they say, "Hey. I'm gonna install your new computer," or "I'm gonna do that server to manager Microsoft three sixty five," even though Microsoft as a corporate may have policies, maybe their CSP accounts are exposed.
Carl Mazzanti:If there was an IT firm in Northern New Jersey that was servicing an entire county of municipalities, one, they're they had a shared admin account across all of municipalities. So all the municipalities in a single week were hit.
Anthony Carrano:Wow.
Carl Mazzanti:All of them. You know, the things like that just happened.
Carl Mazzanti:So I feel like we get phone calls from other partners when the proverbial shit has hit the fan, and we try and pull them out with as little stink as possible. The first time that happened was in Joplin, Missouri. Joplin John Motazedi called us up, and he he was not even really speaking English. I mean, he was saying to me, would you like me to show you the video? Like, he was driving around.
Carl Mazzanti:There were dead bodies around. There was laptops that had hit walls at 200 miles an hour were crushed. And his email in the system wasn't working. There was no power. And I said to John, "We're gonna get you up and running."
Carl Mazzanti:We set up a hosted exchange server, got all of his staff into email, got email filtering up and running and and restored all of his services that same day and and got him back on his feet. Some of it was just business coaching. You know? Because who else do you call when everything has gone sideways? If you look a number of years later in 2012, Hurricane Sandy came and hit.
Carl Mazzanti:Talk about the power power of IAMCP. We had 500, 800 servers go down and so many customers. And where when it started, where it was just coming up the coast and we just started to see the alerts. It was like literally sitting back there and knowing it was gonna get you. There was no way around it.
Carl Mazzanti:I was sitting in my apartment, and I watched as cars started to float outside. The lights when the water hits the battery packs, the lights just start to come on, and it's eerie because it's under the water. And it's just approaching your home, and there there's nothing you knew about it. There all the roads were closed. Police stopped everything.
Carl Mazzanti:All the sandbags were out, and you just start to pray. I was doing an exchange migration for someone, and the power went out in my home in the middle of migration. Just everything flickered out, and that was it. It was over. Then you start to lose cell phone towers in the area.
Carl Mazzanti:Well, the power of the partner is I brought in five other IT firms from different areas, including Joplin John from SNC Squared in Missouri to help us out, and we had every customer restored in seventy two hours.
Carl Mazzanti:Give you a funny little story. When I hit my low, point twice, during that time, I was walking around in sewage, and I was using baby wipes because there was no running water. And I didn't realize the sewage was acidic, so my toenail came off. Gives you how how disgusting this scenario was.
Carl Mazzanti:The I had a staff member who, we were carrying servers on our heads trying to get out of the water, and he stepped on a nail, went through his foot.
Carl Mazzanti:Just give you an idea of how dedicated our team is. He went off the ambulance, and I said, oh, I'm not gonna see him again. You know what I mean? Because the ambulance picked him up, took him to the hospital. He came back to the job site with his shoe wrapped in tape. He had the shot.
Anthony Carrano:Wow.
Carl Mazzanti:He kept helping us. You know, the Sammy Lopez, he's he's been with me for over twenty years. The he's nearing retirement, and I almost can't imagine a day not having Sammy around. You know, every hero at one moment has a section.
Anthony Carrano:Yeah. I wanna jump in on that, though. So what do you I mean, obviously, you have, obviously, you know, great, you know, employee loyalty, obviously, about customer. What do you attribute, on the employee side? What do you attribute that to?
Carl Mazzanti:Well, we try and do right people in the right seat. When you put the right person in the right seat, they're generally very happy. That would include myself. I'm always surprised that people pay us.
Carl Mazzanti:You know, the fact that they do is great because I would do this for free. I just I love it so much. The fact that they'll compensate us or do something, you know what I mean? It's great. The second item out of that is, we spend we're really running a university.
Carl Mazzanti:If you had to look at a core competency of our of, eMazzanti Technologies is we're a school. So we understand the concepts that our customers pay us for speed. And as people join us, we're educating them on on the eMazzanti way of delivering items. So, like, we're SOC2 compliant. We did our SOC2 type one and passed the attestations and everything else, and then continue to evolve our process.
Carl Mazzanti:So from one customer to the next customer, it just keeps getting better.
Anthony Carrano:Mhmm.
Carl Mazzanti:And then in that school, when people join us, there's just people studying around, and it's a culture of continuous learning, and you educate the others as you learn things, and you're never alone. You know, we live our core values on a regular basis that, never alone in helping out others, you know, that translates into the IAMCP community. I'll take a phone call from anyone on the planet. I really don't think there's any competitors.
Carl Mazzanti:I think there's annoyances. There really is no competitors, and we're helpful for them. Even in transitions, because, like, people will decide to move on from us, we service our customers very well to the very last day, and we'll give ideas to the next person who's coming in. Then, you know, I think we do a solid. So very rare, will you know, more than one customer ever leave us and go to a same supplier more than once.
Carl Mazzanti:You know what I mean? That's just, very rare. But, in the community, we, you know, we've just helped out. I'll even call, I'll call another company. I'll say, "Hey. I wanna let you know your customer is looking at hiring us. You know, if you wanna hold on to them, I think if you do this or that, you probably do it." But if, you know, if you've come to a point you don't wanna service them anymore, we're gonna put in a bid. And and most of the owners, I'll get surprising reactions.
Carl Mazzanti:Well, we'll be like, oh, that jerk. Absolutely take them. I don't want them.
Anthony Carrano:Yeah. Yeah.
Carl Mazzanti:There's a question of whether I wanna service them myself, but it's a classy way of handling the community.
Anthony Carrano:Yeah. Yeah.
Carl Mazzanti:And I think some of our competitors walk into, walk into other places. They say, "Hey. You're using eMazzanti. You're really lucky."
Anthony Carrano:Mhmm.
Carl Mazzanti:You know? And they'll speak positively about us.
Anthony Carrano:Well, on that note on, you know, the part about with running a university and the emphasis on continuous learning, I think it's a great segue into the partner story where you guys, you know, were not only, you know, The Americas, but also worldwide finalist, for the Adviser Awards and about your MasterClass series.
Carl Mazzanti:Sure. So we, in 2020, we chose this concept of thought leadership. I kept 100% of our bench where other people were declining out and weren't sure whether they're keeping some of the staff or they were doing riffs or furloughs. We kept 100% of them. We use the staff to call our customers and educate them on what was possible, and then we thought we started our thought leadership series.
Carl Mazzanti:So that became the MasterClasses. There's one or two sessions every week, and the ones we probably advertise the most now are Microsoft Copilot. Even though we do, securities agents, robotic process automation, automation in general, vertical items for legal manufacturing, nonprofits, The Copilot's, classes are by far the most attended. They're hands on with people who do dialogues, where we do breakout rooms, and they get to see some of the best, the best ways to use stuff. And it's even so cool while we're doing demonstrations.
Anthony Carrano:Mhmm.
Carl Mazzanti:Like, new features are still being lit up by Microsoft along the way. You know, we're happy. Like I said, we give back to the community. So there probably are, all sorts of IT firms that join for the sessions.
Carl Mazzanti:And, you know, if you if you have a customer where you're trying to map something out, I feel like we speak Copilot Studio and and can help you with Power Automate, Copilot Studio, one of those to help your customer achieve the goal. You don't have to be an expert in every Microsoft technology. You just need to find a partner in IAMCP that can help you along the way. That's really what this is all about.
Rudy Rodriguez:So, Carl, I've got a question there. So, you know, you won this award in America's, for partnering with SkyKick. Can you tell us a little bit about what that solution was and how that evolved into your MasterClass as well?
Carl Mazzanti:So we, I mentioned back, a few minutes ago that in 2018, I bought this groupized migration platform. Well, one of the items was, let's say, an Office 365 O2O migrations, or, we're doing Gmail to Office 365 outside the web space. We engage with SkyKick to figure out a way to not only do the migration, but do the long term backups of customers. You know, the customers never care about a backup until you have to do the restore. They really care about the restore.
Carl Mazzanti:You know, can we get your data, and how fast did you get it? That's really how you're measured. So, you know, 2020 when they're doing all the riffs, all the lawsuits start coming up. You know, there was, people who were upset about how they're being handled. There was so fear and all this other stuff, so it happens. You also had a lot of people who are now sitting at home with idle, and they start to compete against their own customer. They they started to compete against their own employers. You know? They were sitting at home, and you saw an incredible number of small businesses take place, but you had data loss, theft, and and, well, a whole bunch of businesses go out. So, SkyKick was just a great partner of ours from inception, all the migrations, the ongoing care and feeding of our our customer bases, as backups, they've just been great along the way.
Rudy Rodriguez:So I've got a question about the MasterClasses because, one of the things that I wanted to to find out about. So what are what's the profile of the of the people that come into the classes? Are they more more office workers? Are they admins? I'm sure you're doing different ones. And so can you tell us a little bit about those?
Carl Mazzanti:I'll tell you about one of my favorite restaurants in Hawaii. It's called Zippy's. And the, executive assistant came into the class for the CEO. And then all of a sudden, seven other people around the firm, after this one took it, joined the next class. You know?
Carl Mazzanti:So it's so neat because people find the value, and then they turn around and they tell others. So we see a lot of the same companies come. You know? The like, one person will come, then they'll tell the rest of the the neighbors or other people around them, and then it spreads from there. And just like you're talking about it, on this call, it's nice that there's this open dialogue.
Carl Mazzanti:On the day of, we get 100% more registrants on the day of the event than we do even the months leading up to it. So, like, it because people start to say, "Hey. I'm on it," or "I'm going to this today," and it just it upticks like a rocket ship in a way I've never seen before for something that's being done virtually. Anyway, the goal is just, you know, give away as much of the secret sauce items as you possibly can, and and the participants who come just love you for it. They feel empowered. They learn something, and some of them keep coming back.
Rudy Rodriguez:No. I like the story because it talks about your culture as well, that whole learning environment. And that's all that's always great in growing a company is building that culture where everybody learns and is dedicated towards helping customers. So really appreciate the story. So I've got one more question.
Rudy Rodriguez:So how long are these classes? How much time commitment is required of your customers when they come in?
Carl Mazzanti:Hour and a half.
Rudy Rodriguez:Hour and a half? Okay.
Carl Mazzanti:Yep. Ninety minutes. We try and get it all done in ninety minutes.
Rudy Rodriguez:And then how did your team, I mean, you talked about, I read the story that you create a simulated environment. How much work is required by your staff to create the simulated environment or, you know, how exactly are you building those? Because, apparently, you're doing different different scenarios, so I know that's work.
Carl Mazzanti:We are. It's, well, it's not it suddenly works for the ongoing care and feeding, but it evolves. So you have to stay current. Like, every couple weeks, the product is so different. You know?
Carl Mazzanti:Some like, if you look, we have one coming up next week and then one coming up the week after that. And the sessions are different. Even just in seven days. They're different from each other or nine days in this scenario. You know?
Carl Mazzanti:So, we try and keep evolving and staying, current. And if, you know, some Microsoft lights up something else, you know, we start to talk about that. So if something's happening in Planner or Dynamics 365 or beyond the the the ones that we love, like Copilot and the the normal Office apps that you're used to, like Word, Excel, and the like, we'll bring something up about it.
Rudy Rodriguez:And is it dedicated staff that do these MasterClasses, or do you incorporate a lot of your techs into this?
Carl Mazzanti:We use our techs to do the presentations because those are the same people that are gonna be in front of our customers. There's no third parties that come and join us. It's, 100% focused on, you know, the the same staff you would see every day.
Rudy Rodriguez:Oh, that's great to hear. It's, like I said, I'm very familiar with that whole learning environment, having run an organization that did that. And we used to do it for the military. So I know what challenges you go through.
Carl Mazzanti:Yeah. What military were you in?
Rudy Rodriguez:Well, we did a lot of work. Company I used to own, we did a lot of DOD work. We'll just say that. And so, one of the things that we did was, like, being out at Fort Hood, which is, you know, small base, or small small organization, only 70,000 troops. And we had to incorporate Microsoft technologies into how they used it in their battlefield communications. And so one of the things that we did was we taught them how to build battlefield networks. So we would dismantle all the equipment, put it in a tent, dismantle it, go now, reassemble it. You got ninety minutes to put it back together again. And so you'd have different technologies in there, so you're gonna laugh at these.
Rudy Rodriguez:But you'd have ArcNet, Ethernet, and token ring on all and now put it back together. And so we had you know, when you're teaching 18 year old boys how to do all this stuff, it was challenging. It was challenging.
Carl Mazzanti:I was born on Philadelphia's naval base. That's why I asked the question, you know, to a lieutenant commander. Thank you for, you know, for your service and and what you've done for everyone. I wonder how many people listening to this are have some military experience.
Rudy Rodriguez:Oh, I'm sure there's quite a few because we run into those in the tech community quite a bit. And I worked with 25 colleges and universities where we built, training Microsoft and Cisco and Linux training programs to get, you know, troops that were being that were coming out of the service and using VA benefits to get them educated and help them get jobs.
Carl Mazzanti:They make for great staff. I try and hire, ex-warriors all the time. You know, I mean, anyone who's got service, they tend to, do great things for for those they serve and especially the ones that chose to serve.
Rudy Rodriguez:Yeah. It's a great level of commitment. That's for sure.
Carl Mazzanti:Yeah. That's for sure.
Rudy Rodriguez:Anthony, have you got some other questions?
Anthony Carrano:Yeah. I do. So question I have, like, going back to, like, with your partnership with, SkyKick, did you have any challenges, during, you know, that engagement? And if so, what were they, and how did you guys work together to overcome those?
Carl Mazzanti:Well, they were recently purchased out by ConnectWise, so there's always, there's always things that happen during that time frame. And, you know, over fifteen years, because they were funded by external parties, they would grow very rapidly and then contract and grow very rapidly and contract. And, as a partner, you can feel the funding rounds. You know, the, if the funding round went very well, all of a sudden, we get some features and stuff that we wanted. If the funding round didn't go well, you'd have six or nine months of no attention or worse.
Carl Mazzanti:You might lose the people that were gonna pay attention to you. I think over the period of time, we rose to the top. So that that helps out. When you choose to do a few things and do those very, very well, you can almost write your story. And I feel like that happens with some of our partners that we work with.
Carl Mazzanti:You know, we're, WatchGuard's five time worldwide partner of the year, and we're a platinum partner. There's only 11 in the globe. So when something's going on with a WatchGuard deployment, we walk into any environment that has it, I know we can make an improvement. We're just so good. But it's you know, I'm able to get the CEO of the organization on the phone and say this is happening out in the field and then get the support we need.
Carl Mazzanti:So that's led to retail stores in a couple hours having new replacements because something died. It's a firmware update that all of a sudden stopped wireless in the middle of a shopping season, and then a few hours later, that patch being pushed out to all the devices. You know, I describe the IT industry like, you know, CrowdStrike where it takes everyone out. The planes are crowded. I mean, it happens. If those things didn't happen, we wouldn't have jobs.
Anthony Carrano:Mhmm.
Carl Mazzanti:The so, you know, if you can rise to the top and service only a few and be an expert in those few things you do, you can anticipate customers' needs that they love you for. Seven out of ten, those customers still twenty four years later.
Carl Mazzanti:It's just an amazing item. You know, you know, to still have sitting out there. Now I think I probably need to start raising their rates or do something like that. You know? Because we haven't raised their rates in twenty four years. So, twenty four years.
Anthony Carrano:Wow. That's fantastic. That's fantastic. Rudy?
Rudy Rodriguez:So, Carl, you know, in in reading the the story you submitted, I know that you have great customer satisfaction. I think I saw a percentage like 97%. Are you tracking any growth in revenue for some of those companies, or do you talk about that with in your quarterly business reviews with business owners?
Carl Mazzanti:Yep. By the way, we flipped to TBR's, technology business reviews, because some of the smaller customers just don't want quarterly interactions. There's just not enough that happens with them. So we went with TBR's, and I'll give that out to the community. The next item is our our customer base is generally growing at 5% without us doing anything.
Carl Mazzanti:You know, well, on some of the upticks years, it'll grow at 12, but the standard customer base is growing somewhere around 5% on the corral because we have such a high retention of it. If we just say back and do nothing, we're gonna grow. It's a really nice position to be in. That same concept is, we get to choose our customers. We're not funded by anybody else.
Carl Mazzanti:So if a IAMCP member calls me up, it's our choice to do something with them. We don't, we're not forced by any external parties, to, you know, to to make one choice or another. The next one is we're always adding net new logos. So we now add to our our internal goal is two net new logos a week no matter what, and we probably average between three and four. The, you know, the minimum of two net new logos a week is, you know, that baseline is probably too low for us at this point.
Carl Mazzanti:That started off when Microsoft told us when we joined at the time, it was the Exchange Online Accelerator Program. Oh my god. I'm so old. You had to add 50 net new customers a year. And if you lost a customer, you needed to replace the customer in order for you to stay within the program.
Carl Mazzanti:I remember walking in the office going, how are we gonna do this? At the time, we had, like, a hundred to two hundred customers. And I was thinking, well, you know, if you have just a percentage that drops off, it's not just 50. You really need to be at, like, you know, 75, a hundred net new customers a year because you're gonna get this little flower shop that opens up with a couple users that turns around and says, "I don't wanna run flowers anymore," or "I'm allergic to the ballad."
Carl Mazzanti:So, so that's where we built our engine, you know, to to add net new people, and there's still great referrals that are coming in. So we're all happy about the new logos that come back. We're always happy with the engagements and the choices, but the existing customers are the ones we love and we pay the most attention to.
Rudy Rodriguez:That's great to hear. You know, again, so much of this just relates to the culture of your organization. And in fact, I was talking with another customer this week. We were just talking about they're just hitting their tenth year right now and how important culture is. So they're having their first town hall for for with other employees and bringing them in from across the world. So it's pretty exciting.
Rudy Rodriguez:Are all your employees located there in in the Philly area, or where are they are they located across the country?
Carl Mazzanti:So, if you worked for, in 2019, there there were almost all the New York, New Jersey area. And then in 2020, by April or May, people scattered all over the place. All new hires come out of of Hoboken, New Jersey, you know, where our corporate headquarters is.
Rudy Rodriguez:Okay.
Carl Mazzanti:And, we try and keep them in the corporate office for two years, and we do that because we're really, we're running a school. So it shows you the way of doing the service delivery, put you in the field. We have you come in on Saturdays and Sundays, do some projects for customer migrations, moves, something like that while it, so it doesn't impact the customer during the course of the week. You can make improvements ahead, and then it gives, you know, it gives people great insight. Then kind of after that second year and you've learned the Imazanti way of doing things, if you wanna move out to another area, like, we've guys in Dominican Republic.
Carl Mazzanti:We have a huge concentration in Florida, Washington State, now Texas. You know, the New York Metropolitan Area is super easy. Guys have moved to Philadelphia because they didn't really wanna pay New Jersey sales the state tax any longer. You know? It's like an 8% raise just by moving across the border, so they do it.
Carl Mazzanti:You know? Then they buy their first home out there. So we'll go all the way out through Lancaster, Hershey, the sweetest place on Earth. You know, do we'll do those things. But, one of our our goals was a hundred million dollars in revenue between New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC.
Carl Mazzanti:And we've been picking customers up everywhere in between, and then we get these born-on-the-cloud customers that are across The United States, whether it's municipality, a construction company, you know, someone that wants to use us as their Microsoft innovator. And then for whatever it is, I guess people start to retire in Florida. We just have such a huge corral between Tampa, Sarasota, Orlando, and then a whole bunch of retail in Miami.
Rudy Rodriguez:So full transparency. I first heard your name back in 2003 from two people that you know.
Carl Mazzanti:Get out.
Rudy Rodriguez:It's Jeff Goldstein and Howard Cohen.
Carl Mazzanti:Oh, yeah. Love them both. They, you know, they could never retire. They have to continue to work. When you tell them, you remind them of that.
Carl Mazzanti:Jeffrey helped me so much on our on Solomon. I've a bunch of customers that we've done with him because, you you know, Q Associates, Jeffrey's business, is the best at Dynamic Solomon. And, I'm so happy what he's been able to do with some of our customers. But and then even just, on some of the BCGP items, you know, because it pops up in our customer base.
Carl Mazzanti:Right? They're they wanna stay with Microsoft, so they pick up Dynamics. He's been fantastic. And then Howard as a writer, I mean, voraciously, I've been reading him for so long. I only wish I could bike as often as he does. You know?
Rudy Rodriguez:I'm good friends with both of them. So we've been IAMCP members forever, it seems like forever. And so it's, I had to let you know about them because I said, "Hey. I'm gonna talk to Carl."
Rudy Rodriguez:"Oh, really?" And so Tom said hi. So hello from both of them. Anthony, I'll turn it back over to you.
Anthony Carrano:Yeah. That was, that's fantastic. What, what a small world. Well, as we wrap up, Carl, I just got really just two questions. One is, I know you had remarked, you know, at the start of the podcast just about our books in the background.
Anthony Carrano:What are you reading and why?
Carl Mazzanti:Yeah. So my son actually, this was our dinner conversation last night. My bookshelves are filled with nonfiction, functional items. The really, like, right now, conditional access is so high on my priority list, and autopilot, you know, for our customer base and really tweaking out, items so you just don't have to touch a device any longer, but you can really drive, compliance. So that's actually in my bag.
Carl Mazzanti:I carry that around, and I try to apply that to the customers that I go and visit. There's all sorts of other books there. So Antarctica, clearly. Right? I've got like, I'm looking to the right of me, and there's a whole bunch of-
Anthony Carrano:Yeah, you have to get ready for that.
Carl Mazzanti:Yeah.
Carl Mazzanti:Well, you know, it's it was so cold this winter that I got a chance to just drive north and get to -20 because you'll get -40 wind chill in Antarctica. And what I did is I actually mapped out every 10 degrees what I needed to do. So I started 60, 50, 40, and I went all the way down. And I wrote what I need to do to change layers so that my hands and feet were fine. But when you start to get into these -20 or -40 degrees, if you sweat, like, if you sweat on your your feet and stuff, then sweat will then refreeze, and it'll crack the skin.
Anthony Carrano:Oh, wow.
Carl Mazzanti:Then your skin will start to bleed. Like, you get into all these other logistical problems when you get into these really, really, really, arctic cold, scenarios. So it was so cool to be able to do those things, this winter, you know, ahead of really I'm targeting the end of this year to go to Antarctica and and make that happen. Anyway, so the rest of the books, I mean, there's a Bible sitting next to me. So God-fearing guy.
Carl Mazzanti:I have, some old books, because I feel like, you know, if you look the Western canon, there's about 1,500 books that make up most of the writers. And if you go through the Western canon, you can kind of figure out where the rest of the things go. So I try to read some of those. Then there will be, you know, tax changes or other things, that I'll try and go through just so when I'm sitting in front of a customer, well, I'm not their accountant. If I can find ways of saving them funds, do they turn around and reinvest in their business?
Anthony Carrano:Mhmm.
Carl Mazzanti:And and then do we become really the trusted adviser because we talk to them about marketing and business growth. We talk to them about taking an applicant tracking system and deploying it for them so they could put the right people in the right seat at the right time. You know, just all the things that you can do from, a lens of being a great consultant.
Anthony Carrano:Mhmm. So I say I only have two questions. I actually I'm gonna sneak one in there. It's kind of a- because one of the things I found fascinating about, you know, our time together is as you were talking about, like, with building up your firm and, just with the level of, you know, customer experience, employee retention, all that, just such an emphasis on culture. So what's what's a resource, whether it could be a book, a website, etcetera, something that you would recommend to the other owners out there listening?
Anthony Carrano:Yeah. You know where I'm going with this.
Carl Mazzanti:I know where you're going with this. So I said this, earlier, that we went for SOC2. I think everyone needs to choose a framework. You know, Microsoft used to have these ads where they would show a guy climbing up a mountain and Microsoft called them partner guides.
Carl Mazzanti:You know, that was their guide to lead you through, you know, case studies to do your marketing and then the like to try and activate the community. Well, if you choose a framework and you deploy that inside of your organization, it gives you a little bit of the road map. So it for us, we chose EOS, the entrepreneur operating system. And, you know, based on traction in those books, so like, when you ask for some of the books, we hand them out for our staff.
Carl Mazzanti:Oh my god. Look at you reaching back, and you've got one on your shelf. That's so cool. Look at that.
Carl Mazzanti:Yeah. But I don't see enough pages folded over. Oh, come on. You know? You know?
Carl Mazzanti:Some highlights and tacked on the wall, but, EOS was quite good. We thought so highly about that that at our twenty-three... we run an event every year, our major in person event, typically around September. It's, you know, and it's last year, it's twenty three years learning. The next one will be Twenty four years of learning, so it's an annual event. We had an EOS speaker open up, really try and help our customers put a roadmap in front of them.
Carl Mazzanti:I had a customer it's actually the neatest thing ever. We, you know, this one is early uses of Copilot. She had her laptop open and had Microsoft Word recording every single thing the person said. And then when it ended, she had Copilot turn into slides.
Anthony Carrano:Wow.
Carl Mazzanti:You know? So she could end the summary that she could bring it back to their team. It was such a neat idea. Anyway, so, if people leave the call and they just take this concept of choose some framework, you know, SOC in The United States, Sarbanes Oxley's, any of those, HIPAA, PCI, any of any of them. NIST, you know, you choose some framework that you start to, strive to in whatever segment of your company is important.
Carl Mazzanti:You'll find that that that'll give you the framework for repeatable business that reduces a lot of the stress and, you know, makes it fun again.
Anthony Carrano:Mhmm. Mhmm. Excellent. And last question is, how can people find out more about you?
Carl Mazzanti:So you can always email me, you know, CMazzanti@eMazanti.net. That worked for twenty four years. So c like Carl, then Mazzanti, my last name, m-a-z-z-a-n-t-i at e like electronic, and then Mazzanti, my last name, .net. I'm most certainly on LinkedIn. I've been on LinkedIn so long.
Carl Mazzanti:That's LinkedIn slash, cmazzanti. How cool is that? Right? Because everyone's got, like, numbers and other stuff now, but mine is my actual name.
Carl Mazzanti:That tells you how old I am. Then, most certainly, a phone call away. So, (201) 360-4400, and I'm extension 4410. You know, I'm happy to take a call from anyone. The only time I don't answer is when I'm sleeping. Which is never. Right? Seems like it's never. You know you know what that's called? Teams, you schedule the message to go out, and you do the same thing in Outlook to keep on guessing.
Anthony Carrano:That's it. That's it.
Anthony Carrano:Well, excellent. Well, this was fantastic. Carl, really appreciate, your time with us, And, we look forward to kinda connecting and getting that Italian food and some, some vino together at some point.
Carl Mazzanti:Standing offer for cappuccino. Anytime you want.
Anthony Carrano:Alright. Excellent, Carl. Well, you have a great rest of the day.
Rudy Rodriguez:Great visiting with you, Carl. Take care.
Carl Mazzanti:Cheers.
Anthony Carrano:Well, that was a fantastic episode. I really enjoyed having Carl on, very conversational. We got a lot of really great side stories, between, planning trips to Antarctica to, just some of the the origins, you know, behind that behind the company as well as dealing with some of the disasters that have hit different parts of this country and how they've been involved. So what a lot of great insight and perspective on things.
Rudy Rodriguez:Oh, absolutely. I really enjoyed all his side stories.
Anthony Carrano:Made it fun for sure. But I also got a lot of really good, you know, nuggets from it. I know there was one thing in particular, when they were just talking about, you know, just about their company. And there was a line that he shared that really resonated with me, and that is when he talked about choose to do a few things and do them very well, then you can write your story. And I just thought that was just, you know, so profound because there's you know, today, especially in tech, there's so many opportunities.
Anthony Carrano:There's so many things that you can do. But just the point of, just a reminder, just to really focus, specialize, and excel. And then you you can position yourself to be able to do, you know, what you really, you know, love doing. And I thought that was just a great reminder.
Rudy Rodriguez:Oh, absolutely. You know? And, you know, going along with the that comment, you know, the thing was that that I picked up on it was the organizational culture that they've built at that company, and it's built around continuous learning and for employees as well as customers. And so in one of his little side stories, when we you were talking to him about being a walker, you know, he says sometimes he just takes a walk with employees, and that's how some of the best thinking comes through. And that's so important that, you know, if you share knowledge with your employees, that it's going to help build and and people start understanding because that's one of the great failings of a lot of leaders is they keep everything to themselves and then expect people to pick it up through osmosis.
Rudy Rodriguez:And the thing that our listeners will pick up in this was how much Carl shares on what it how important learning is to them. And in fact, they have an annual event, that they're that they're planning for already. They just conducted one in September, 23 years of learning. And now the next year is the next twenty four years of learning. And that's important because your customers as well as your employees need to to understand how the company is evolving and what you're learning and how you share that information.
Rudy Rodriguez:And that leads to satisfaction at both the employee and the customer level. So I found that very important and very enlightening that he does so much there. That to me was was near and dear to my heart, really, having come to the environment I came from.
Anthony Carrano:Yeah. Yeah. That was that was really good. It was also I really appreciated what he just talked about, just how the the power of the partner and the partnering community. And when he shared, you know, about the story with around, Hurricane Sandy and how it just it wiped out so many businesses.
Anthony Carrano:And I think there was something correct me here, Rudy, is he said they had to replace, like, 500 servers or something like something to that effect.
Rudy Rodriguez:Exactly.
Anthony Carrano:Yeah. Yeah. But how through you know, as he made calls out to the partnering community, they were actually able to get, you know, him and the partners, every customer restored, you know, from that within seventy two hours. So that's just remarkable, you know, just to see how, you know, partners can come together in, you know, the face of, you know, just, you know, a natural disaster and, you know, really come together to, you know, improve, you know, the lives of these business owners and make that impact, through partnering together. So that was fantastic.
Rudy Rodriguez:Yeah. I'd found that story really amazing because I remember when Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast and and how many people went through significant challenges during that and the flooding that happened everywhere. It wasn't just isolated. It was everywhere along the Eastern Seaboard, Upper Eastern Seaboard. So great story.
Rudy Rodriguez:Great story from Carl. Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed this this podcast. And I know you're going to enjoy it. It was really enlightening. So we wanna thank you all of you for joining us on this episode of IAMCP Profiles and Partnership powered by Dunamis Marketing.
Rudy Rodriguez:We hope you find this podcast useful and inspiring. I know I did. If you did, please subscribe, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast platform. One of the best ways to partner for success is to join IAMCP, a community of Microsoft partners who help each other grow and thrive. IAMCP members can find and connect with other partners locally and globally and access exclusive resources and opportunities.
Rudy Rodriguez:Whether you're looking for new customers, new markets, or new solutions, IAMCP can help you achieve your goals. To learn more, visit the website at www.iamcp.org.
