John SmallMtn (00:01:10)

Welcome to another episode of Founders Growth. My name is John Hill, AKA Small Mountain. I’m the founder of Adapted Growth. And today on the show, we have Dawn Sizer. Dawn is the founder of Third Element, and they are in the IT MSP consulting space. Dawn, can you talk with a little bit more depth about who you serve in that space? Because IT can be very niche or very general. And I’m kind of curious if you could share a little bit about where you specialize.

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:01:37)

Sure. So I think typically when people talk to an outsourced IT provider, it’s like, “You have helped us,” and that’s not who we are.

Right? So when you think about the MSP of today, it is very different from the MSP of five years ago, of 10 years ago. We started out as a consulting agency, and we’re coming back around to that—which I think is actually a really nice cyclic way of doing things—but also from the standpoint of being able to really come in and facilitate growth for any client that we have. Some of the clients that we have—I mean, legal is one of our verticals, law enforcement’s been a vertical for us for a very long time, professional services, and we do some work in the cannabis market as well. There’s a joke there somewhere. Long story short, it really is all about facilitating growth for the client and leveraging technology appropriately to do so.

John SmallMtn (00:02:32)

I want to—you said, “We’re coming back around to consulting,” right? And that’s kind of an interesting take, because I think there’s a lot of pressure to not consult—to have the package, have the offer, and have the plug-and-play thing. So when you say that we’re coming back into that, can you talk a little bit more about that and what that means for your segment?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:02:55)

Anytime you have a market shift, right—and whether it was the .com era, that was a huge market shift for everybody, cloud computing, huge market shift, AI, huge market shift, right—you have to come back around and say, “Okay, great. We’re going to”—and I don’t want to say handhold, because that’s not the right word, but guide you through that next market shift and what that’s going to do to your business, Mr. and Mrs. Client, whatever that looks like for you. Whether it’s the legal field and how you’re going to navigate that, or just from the professional services standpoint, there’s a lot of efficiency and a lot of really good things that can happen with the age of AI. But you know as well as I do the old Spider-Man adage, right? We want to make sure that we’re very responsible with it as well.

John SmallMtn (00:03:42)

Yeah, my old business partner had a secondary business in MSP, and he was talking about not just being break-fix, right? And this was back in 2012, I think. This was a novel idea to me that you didn’t just want to be the guy who gets called when something breaks. But now there’s this other shift that’s happening, being able to guide, being able to reduce risk, and kind of like, “We’re here to help, but we need to be able to help in this way.” It’s not just the way that they think that help might show up.

Do you have to spend a lot of time educating clients around where some of those potential misalignments are, so that way you can come in and actually help them in the way that you want to and are trying to?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:04:33)

Yeah, for sure. I mean, some people see IT as having been a cost center for a very long period of time, and I don’t know that we’re going to change that in some people’s minds.

But the flip side of that is there’s a real strategy around IT and how you leverage it appropriately, whether it is from the liability, the risk, or the efficiency side of it. There’s automations; there’s all kinds of really cool stuff that I can talk about. But the reality of the situation is, if you leverage it properly and let somebody help you build a strategy with it—especially if you can say, “Hey, this is what we want to do with our business”—then we can say, “Well, we can look at this piece, this piece, and this piece, and here’s how you realign all of the things that we can do to facilitate that strategy.” Those are the conversations that should really be happening instead of, “So, I came in this morning and I can’t print.” Yes, we’re here for that too, but the strategy part of it is really where the client gets the best bang for their buck.

John SmallMtn (00:05:27)

I love that. Right. I’m a big believer in the idea that if strategy is part of what you deliver, your discovery has to give some space and some room to see if there is room for them to accept you as someone who has strategy, right? Because if they don’t really let you bring the full measure of help, it’s just going to lead to frustration, agitation, and churn.

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:05:59)

100%. And there are plenty of people out there that would rather believe somebody in their own organization that has never actually done anything or isn’t a subject matter expert than they would an actual subject matter expert. It’s unreal. Like, why would you do this to yourselves?

John SmallMtn (00:06:08)

Oh, yeah. Yeah. The dissonance can be quite thick, right? And there’s always going to be dissonance. This is where I think some of the pressure that founders go through is like, “Just put it into a box. Put it into a box that way everyone can buy it, and then everyone gets the value that they need.” I think in some lanes that’s really great thinking, right? Make it easy. But in certain situations, if you need to be heard, we need to be going the other way in pushing for, “Do you see us as someone that you should be taking advice from?” Because if not, that’s going to lead to frustration and potentially even sending them on their way, right? Because we can’t force someone to change how they want to interact with us. We just need to be checking for alignment, is how we talk about it with our clients and stuff.

Do you find yourself being able to woo others over with this kind of thinking? Is it one of those things where half the people say yes and they’ll give you room to be strategic? Or do you have to fight for that seat at the table with clients, like earn the trust, earn the right, kind of thing? How do you approach that in your sales and growth for your company?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:07:25)

I would say phenomenal question. I think I’m going to answer it two different ways, just from the standpoint of there’s the ideal client that you’re looking for, right? That ICP—what you’re actually looking for is the one that’s actually looking for what you’re offering, right? So you have that ideal fit that is doing exactly what you want them to do and says, “Hey, I’m looking for somebody. This is out of my league. I know it’s out of my league. I’ve gotten us this far, but I can’t take us the rest of the way, so I need the subject matter experts to be able to go do that.”

Yes, that’s what I’m looking for.

Sometimes you have the ones that have been burned over and over and over again, right? They are still looking for that, they are your ICP, but they’ve been burned so many times that it takes time to build that trust. So you can get them there; that’s great.

Then there are the ones that are kind of in between, where you’re never really going to get them to that ICP, but they’re okay. They’re just there doing the necessary.

And then there’s the ones that no matter what you do or what you say, they know better than you do, right? They’re just not a fit for you, but they’re going to be a fit for somebody else, and then you send them on their way.

John SmallMtn (00:08:25)

Oh, yeah. “They’re not a fit for you; they’re a fit for someone else,” right? Because I had a place in my own development and path of, “Well, if you didn’t see value in my way, you were just kind of dumb. You weren’t on the level.” With time and experience, there’s a bunch of different ways of getting things done, right? I’m just very excited about my way. But in a sales conversation, we can’t be too excited about our way; we need to be trying to figure out what is their preferred way, if they have one.

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:09:10)

To work.

John SmallMtn (00:09:14)

Staying with this idea for a second, how do you tell someone in your sales conversations when you’re at that impasse? Do you do an “it’s not you, it’s me” kind of thing? Do you challenge them? Do you just pull the ripcord? How do you approach that when it does show up for you?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:09:33)

I think there’s plenty of times where you know, right? The conversation’s going off the rails; you just know. Those are obvious, but there’s other ones where you’re starting to hear little red flags, right? “I’m not liking that. I don’t really like that.” They have some serious liability around things, or they have some serious compliance around things that they’re not following. Do I want that liability in my organization? Because that’s where it’s going to land at the end of the day.

When you explain to them, “Hey, this is what I’m hearing. Is that the case?” “Yeah.” “Okay, great. Then here are my concerns, and this is where I need you to be to meet those concerns. Because you’re asking me to come into a relationship, which is basically this marriage that we’re going to create, right? No matter what goes wrong, I’m going to be the one at fault, because that’s what’s going to happen. But I need you to understand that this is a relationship that has dual liability, right? There’s shared liability here, and I need you to be able to accept that shared liability. Here’s what I’m liable for; here’s what you’re liable for. And if we can’t agree on those things, this isn’t the relationship I want to get into.”

John SmallMtn (00:10:54)

Absolutely. Absolutely. Did you start out with this mindset and this ability to hold that line? Is this something you’ve learned with time? Because I talk with people who have been in business for a while, and they’re still not at that place of, “We can’t take on more risk than makes sense.” How’d you get to that plane?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:11:18)

I think we’ve been here for a long time. The kicker of it is the way that IT has moved. We went from serious security—where we started from—everything from cybersecurity to physical security. That’s where we came from. Then into the standard MSP model—we’ve always been the standard MSP model before there was an MSP model, like that monthly recurring, all-you-can-eat, blah blah blah. That’s what we’ve done from the very beginning. So we’ve always been there, but after COVID, I think we probably sat back and said, “Look, these are really the things that we have to stand on. You need to understand as a client that if you are making decisions that we are now responsible for, we all have to agree on what those decisions are. If we can’t agree on those, then we need to part ways.”

John SmallMtn (00:12:25)

How do I ask my question? Because I’m always fascinated whenever people get to these… Okay, I’m just going to be blunt then. What changed? What happened that caused you and your team to come together and be like, “We need to draw the line higher. We need to put the standard higher. We need to be asking for more around this”? Was there one thing that changed, or…?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:12:28)

Insurance is a big one, right? So insurance from our side, insurance from the client side. We can’t be insured properly on E&O for cyber and that kind of thing if our clients aren’t doing certain things, which is crazy. Because they’re just a point of breach for us, frankly, is really what it boils down to.

So that’s where some of it started. I think a lot of the clientele didn’t understand that their decisions actually rolled uphill strangely instead of downhill for a change. But yeah, that’s what was happening. Our cyber insurance came back and said, “Hey, are all of your clients doing these things? Are you enforcing these things?” And we’re like, “Yeah, we’re going to have to start enforcing that.”

They didn’t understand some of that to begin with. I’m like, “Well, you’re going to see it start to come through on your end insurance as well, whether it’s your errors and omissions—which is what it is for ours—but also on the cyber side of things. They’re going to require you to do certain things, right? MFA is one. There’s a couple other things that are a hard and fast line in the sand. Like, if you don’t have this, we’re just not going to insure you.”

John SmallMtn (00:13:44)

Yeah. Whoa. Coming from finance and working in banking and in some very regulated industries, right, it’s always, “You got to do the right thing. You got to do the right thing.” Sometimes, if you’re not really brought up in an environment where you have to do the right thing—especially sales side and growth side—it becomes very easy to go chase down anything that makes sense, you know? That is very interesting.

So when you sat down with the team and had that conversation, and you guys came together and decided, “Okay, cool. This is the bar, and we’re not going to cross this,” what changed in your conversations, in your qualification, in your discovery? Did anything change initially, or was it just that you got better with time?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:14:46)

I mean, everybody gets better with time, right? It didn’t come out smooth the first couple of times. Exactly. So there’s things that aren’t going to be perfect. It just is what it is. Actually, I think internally it was a little bit more tough, I’m going to say.

John SmallMtn (00:15:07)

How did… What did that toughness feel like? Was it like being gun-shy?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:15:25)

I think explaining to our internal staff that there are certain things that we have to do on the cybersecurity side of things, and making sure that they understood that that has to be done, period, the end. When you have people that are getting yelled at by a client because security is inconvenient to them, right, it’s difficult on your support staff. That’s not fair to them.

But the flip side to that is we’ve already told our insurer we’re doing this. They’ve told their insurer we’re doing this. It has to get done. Because if they have an issue, they’ve told their insurer that they’re doing this, and now the insurer finds out they’re not doing it, one, they’re never going to get insured again. That’s going to be bad. And if they did have an incident or a breach, it’s not going to get covered.

John SmallMtn (00:16:11)

Yeah, absolutely. Wow. I mean, the stakes are so real, right? It’s not just a preference or like, “Well, we want you to be here.” There’s real stakes to this. Do people hear that when you talk about it?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:16:18)

They really are. I don’t think they believe it because they’ve never been in the situation, right? They’ve avoided it up to this point. They’ve never had an incident. They’ve never had a breach. They’ve never had something they actually had to go back and collect on insurance for, because they weren’t down for any real amount of time. Or if they had an issue, they didn’t report it, or whatever the situation was.

The only thing that we hear on repeat is, “We’re too little for that. We’re too little for that.” The reality is that you’re just a payday for somebody—for a bot, usually—because the bots are just out doing what bots do. I don’t care whether you’re big or small; if they hit, they hit.

John SmallMtn (00:16:57)

Interesting. Wow. It’s always a weird thing to try to communicate standards if you have high standards, right? When I was in banking, it was, “Well, you just have to tell them that we can only do the right thing.” Sometimes that would lead to just as much frustration in the moment of those conversations, right? But when there’s real stakes, I love when it’s clean and clear, right? Because a lot of salespeople struggle, and a lot of founders struggle because it’s not big enough to easily see the “no.” It’s tight enough that they’re going to spend extra cycles and time trying to run it down, trying to make it fit, trying to compromise on something that maybe they wouldn’t compromise on because they want the revenue, they want the deal, or different things like that. I love when it’s a very clear line in the sand, right? That’s something I’m always trying to do with my clients. Absolutely.

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:17:49)

But it should be clear, right? There are plenty of cybersecurity frameworks out there. Pick one, stick to it. It’s clear, you know? This isn’t like strange things, and they haven’t just randomly popped up over time. I mean, this has been around for a very long time, whether it’s NIST, CIS, whatever the case is. Just follow a framework.

John SmallMtn (00:18:01)

“Just follow the framework.” I love that. I might need to make that a t-shirt for both of us. So, changing topics just a little bit: How long have you been running Third Element? When did you guys start the company?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:18:21)

That would be amazing. “Just follow a framework, whichever one. Here are all of them, pick one.”

’05 officially, and then we incorporated in ’06.

John SmallMtn (00:18:38)

When we were first connecting to talk about you coming on as a guest, one of the things that kind of stunned me was how much you get really excited about the operations side of the business, right? A lot of people are kind of focused on the front end. They’re very focused on growth and revenue and everything. I think you need to be mindful of both, but I’m curious, where does that appreciation of operations come from for you?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:19:00)

You know, I don’t know. I wish I could say there was some weird switch that turned on, because I came from the network engineering side of things and it’s all about the tech. Love the tech; it’s amazing. Blinky lights, great!

Then I went back to school and decided, “You know, I really just want to check off that bachelor’s degree box. That’s just a thing I want to get done.” I decided to go back for IT management, which is a bachelor’s in IT, and did that and realized there was this whole world about running a business, what this looks like, and the actual management in the company.

Then I got so in love with it, I decided that it would be a fantastic idea to get a master’s in the same thing. Which, it turns out master’s degrees are all about writing. Like, who knew? I didn’t know that was a thing, but I found out and completed my master’s degree.

After that, I realized that we had a lot of room to grow from the operational side of things: how we document, where documentation is, how we onboard, our HR, and all of the things that technical people do not think about in running a company. They just don’t, because it’s all about the tech.

John SmallMtn (00:20:13)

Yeah. I know a few MSP people, and a lot of them default into the tech stack: “Here’s the things that we’re selling, here’s the things that we’re repping for,” and stuff like that. Some people can hear me when I’m like, “Hey, they’re not buying the tech that you’re reselling. They’re buying you, your standards, your service levels,” and stuff like that. Some people can hear that, and other people can’t.

We’ve had another episode where someone had run a business, and then they went through college and realized how much they were E-Myth-ing it a little bit, right? Back of the napkin, not following best practices, and stuff like that. What did you take away from that time that has changed the business the most? Is there like one nugget, one different way of thinking, or actually following the best practices as opposed to just trying to make it through? Is there anything that stands out or comes to mind, like, “This thing alone was worth all that time, all that writing, all that pressure”?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:21:13)

So what I found out—and this is one of those things that’s total common sense, but maybe not as common as it should be—the things that got you to where you are today will not get you to where you are going, right? We’ve all heard this. We’ve heard it a million times.

But what we don’t take into consideration is even the people that we have, right? You might have a really good employee, and that employee doesn’t improve themselves year-over-year. So all they’re doing is repeating the same year over and over and over again, right? Maybe you’re not facilitating growth, maybe you’re not training them. Maybe it’s you, maybe it’s them, maybe it’s all kinds of different things, right? But that doesn’t do anybody any good. Doesn’t do you any good, doesn’t do your clients any good.

So I think there’s that, right? What got you to here isn’t going to get you to the next step, and it’s figuring out what’s going to get you to the next place. It may not be your people. It may be your processes. It may be a combination of different things. It may be that you have to bring in a different line of business. There’s all kinds of different—I’m going to call them levers—that can really start changing how you do things, the way you do things, and actually start getting you to that next level of growth.

I think you have to really dig into your own business and say, “Okay, these are all the things that got me here. Are they the right things to get me to the next level?” And that’s hard. It’s so hard. The honesty and the brutal honesty that has to come along with that to yourself, to your team, and to your clients—it’s awful. It is really awful.

John SmallMtn (00:22:41)

It’s so hard, right? One of the things that I have to talk about a lot with my clients are blind spots, right? Because you don’t even know to look over here. Do you have any examples or frameworks or maybe things that you and your team do to be able to see where you might be leaning into status quo thinking—like, “Let’s just keep our head down”—versus, “Hey, maybe we need to change the question, change the game, change our thinking”? Have you guys found any ways of being better at that as you continue to grow?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:23:04)

Yeah, for sure. This is another one of those really simple things that everybody overlooks, or a lot of people overlook, or they don’t have the right things in place, right? And it’s metrics.

John SmallMtn (00:23:38)

Yeah. You can’t manage what you’re not measuring.

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:23:41)

Right. So what we have found is that they tell you who the right people on your team are. They tell you who the right clients are. They tell you whether or not you’re making the right amount of money. They tell you all kinds of things.

But if you’re not getting the right metrics or not looking at the right metrics—because you can look at all the metrics on the planet, but if they’re not the right ones, it doesn’t matter. But I think that’s one of the best ways to tell.

John SmallMtn (00:23:53)

Epic. What a great answer.

I’m going to dive in. I’m going to push on this a little bit, Dawn, because I’m curious. I’m a data nerd. One of the things that I think about all the time, much to your point, everybody wants all the data until they think about the costs, the tracking, and the systems to build those things. Then a lot of people also like one data point, you know? One of the things that I talk about with people is any one data point is going to be a vanity point, right? But two points, we start to define our culture a little bit. So I’m curious: What is the weirdest thing that you have tracked, put a metric behind, or put a goal behind that caused some lift, caused some change, or caused some visibility in a way that you weren’t expecting?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:24:53)

Let’s see. There’s so many of them, right?

John SmallMtn (00:24:56)

Feel free to—if there’s three that come up—because talk about blind spots, you know? Like, “Okay, how many dials did you make?” “I made 150 dials.” “Okay, great. How many conversations did you have?” “Three.” Why are we bragging about wasted effort? There’s metrics that matter, and then there’s vanity metrics. So I love whenever people talk about data because it’s like, “Okay, cool. What is the weirdest thing you’ve tracked, right?” It’s always the most random conversation. If you have multiple things top of mind, feel free to go down the list.

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:25:28)

Yeah, so let’s do the easy one first: reopened tickets.

John SmallMtn (00:25:31)

Okay. Interesting. Okay.

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:25:36)

It’s an easy one, right? How many tickets have been reopened?

Now, you have to take out the ones where people are like, “Thanks, this is working great.” Take those out, throw those away, because that happens—no big deal. But the ones that are like, “No, it came back,” and then it came back again, and then it came back again, right? Because the first time, you can have the conversation around, “Hey, we’re going to try this. I’m not convinced that this is going to fix it, because I think it’s something else.” You may need that confirmation in order to actually get to the root cause, right? But when you’re just kicking the can down the road on repeat, what we found was that our Level 1s were not as useful as we thought they were.

John SmallMtn (00:26:28)

Wild. Okay. What I love about that is—I hope that everybody who hears that is like, “Duh,” right? Because it is one of those things that when it comes—this is why I love this conversation—yeah, that obviously makes sense. But until you—because I’m sure everyone else is just like, “How many total tickets were opened in our last reporting window?” and stuff like this. There’s no further thought process around it. I love that. Do you have any more?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:26:53)

Well, let’s put it contextually, because I think that’s appropriate too, right? Then it’s, “Okay, so did we fail the Level 1s?” I think that’s an appropriate look. So we look over the context of the ticket. No, those are all things that the Level 1 should have been able to do. “So, okay, did we give them training options?” 100%. “Did they take them?” 100% they did not.

So now we’re seeing trending data, right? Not only do you have to have the data point, but you have to have the contextual data around it, supporting data that goes around that, and figure out, in this case, “Is it the right people? Are they in the right seat? Are they on the right bus?” We’ve all heard that before, right? Because we’ve read Good to Great or we’ve read Traction. Figure that out.

John SmallMtn (00:27:23)

Those are smaller circles than you think they are, unfortunately so. Because one of the things I love talking about with people is that you can become a conspiracy theorist with your data points as well and draw the wrong conclusions and just go get mad at your people like, “You don’t care enough to close these loops,” as opposed to like, “Maybe we didn’t give them the training.”

That’s the same thing that I run into, right? “Well, John, I had the conversation.” “Okay, cool. Did you get anything out of it?” “No, it was a waste of time.” Okay, if they’re all a waste of time, at some point you have to admit that you’re part of the problem, you know? But you can go and infer anything you want, right?

Here’s my question from that: How does someone get better at drawing the right conclusions from their data? Do you have any thoughts or thinking on that as opposed to just being like, “Well, someone else is not enough”?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:28:53)

Hindsight. It’s always hindsight, right?

John SmallMtn (00:28:53)

So just fail a lot.

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:28:56)

I mean, we’re all human. I want to say I’m smarter than this, but we’re all human. We just are. Again, I think you start looking at things when you realize there’s a problem, so immediately it goes to hindsight. Then you’re looking back over time, cause it’s not like you can look forward on data. I wish you could—that would be amazing—but that’s not how that works.

So we’re looking at it from hindsight, and you’re putting on different lenses every single time that you’re doing that. Maybe you’re looking at it from your client lens, maybe you’re looking at it from your own lens. There’s all kinds of lenses that you can look at it through. You can look at it from the financial lens; you can look at it however you want to look at it. But again, you have to contextualize everything and figure out where the emotion is in it too, right? Because you have to take that out, and that’s hard to turn off.

John SmallMtn (00:29:50)

Super tough, right? Our personalities can play a huge part in what we’re assuming is true, valid, and real, and what isn’t.

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:30:07)

Well, and then the ego plays into it, right? You have to turn that off. So now you’ve had to get rid of your emotions, your ego, all kinds of different things, and say, “Okay, well, I’m going to take the blame for all of this because this is me, 100%.” Then whatever’s left out of that, can you support it with data? Yes, no. Can you go looking for data? Yes, no. And then figure it out from there.

John SmallMtn (00:30:19)

You said that you were already running the business when you went through the college program, the master’s program, and everything. I have to imagine that because of your excitement now about operational improvement, you might have come back in like a CrossFit vegan, almost—excited for tearing everything down to the studs, ripping it all out, and starting over with intention and everything. Were you unpopular during that season of, “We’re going to go fix this and do it the right way”?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:31:08)

I’m probably still unpopular. I mean, to be fair, we have a really good 3:00 PM Monday afternoon meeting. With all the crazy that goes on Monday through the day, right, we all have a chance to take a breath, do whatever we need to do, go have lunch after the rush of, “I didn’t do the thing I should have done on Friday, and I’ve waited until Monday, and now it’s a problem for you guys.” That wears off, and then we all sit down Monday afternoon and say, “How can we make things better?”

What is something that we can talk about? A lot of it has run around communication—communication internally, how do we make our tools talk better, how do we talk better to clients, how do we get information out?

Like the big Cloudflare thing that happened not long ago. How do we push that information out? Not only that, but how do we make clients not mad at us? Because we’re not Cloudflare. We don’t control that, but they’re like, “Well, I need this to do my job.” Okay, I understand that, but I can’t control the internet. I wish I could! That’d be cool; I’d be wealthy. But that’s not how it works.

We’re looking at that kind of thing, or our portals. What needs to be in there? What would make things more helpful? Basically, we’re talking about client experience at the end of the day. What does that look like for us? How do we make that better both for us and also for them, especially from the ease of use for the client?

John SmallMtn (00:32:45)

To me, I think most problems inside of an organization—whether it’s on a sales team, revenue team, or bigger, looking at the whole organization—come down to expectations, communications, and then assumptions that come from those communications that aren’t checked.

I’ve been in meetings where they’re like, “Okay, we’re going to go create…” or we could just slow down and communicate a little bit better. Me being a sales coach, I’m obviously going to be, “Hey, we need to work on our communication.” “Well, we just need a better ticketing system,” or, “We just need a better CRM,” or a better dialer. People will go chase solutions as opposed to realizing that they’re playing a part in some of the friction that they’re creating. If you’re not ready to hear that, you’re not ready to work with me—that’s one of those things.

So IT and MSP land has historically been very guy-oriented. I know ponytails and guys in vans and things like that coming into this. Being a founder who’s a woman in this very male-focused area, how do you adapt to that environment? Do you call it out? Do you run into it a lot? Do you get bucketed badly in your sales conversations, or has that happened in the past? Does that show up for you at all?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:34:18)

In this day and age, not as much. I mean, I’ve had everything from, “What are you doing here?” to… Yeah, so it all depends on the situation, right? I think there’s contextual things, but there’s also the… I’m just going to go with it’s a little harder in some respects. I think there’s cultural norms that come along with it. It’s the unexpected thing.

But I think what we all need to take away from this is that while women are generally bucketed into things like teachers, nurses, helper jobs—if you will—what is IT? It’s a helper job. Right?

But it has that added twist of puzzle solving. I love a good puzzle. I love to sit down; I love to play board games that are puzzles; I love puzzles themselves, like Legos, all of those things. If you have a daughter that is really into puzzles and figuring things out, push them towards IT—we need more women there. Realistically, it’s a huge thing, and we all get excited when we figure something out.

So it is 100% a helper job with that little puzzle twist to it. Yes, it’s a little bit harder, but the flip side of that is that most IT people see other IT people for being IT people, and not their color, not their gender, not the way they look. It’s a “one of us” kind of thing, which is great.

John SmallMtn (00:35:58)

Yeah. Epic. I love that answer.

It’s nice to know that people are seeing that it is changing for the better, right? Because some people don’t do enough volume to see that change for themselves. The hard part about being a coach is that we have to develop ourselves to be able to navigate that stuff, as opposed to just expecting that it’s going to be okay or that it’s not going to be a problem. If it becomes a problem, we need to be able to see it, have a conversation about it, and see if it’s a deal killer. Because that risk of not being seen as a strategic person—if what you do involves strategy—means that you should cut bait 100% of the time, in my not-so-humble opinion about it.

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:36:39)

Yeah, I mean, there’s plenty of times I’ve said, “You know, I’m going to need you to repeat that and maybe explain that to me.”

John SmallMtn (00:36:48)

I can see that being your rapid-fire response, right? And it being so well-honed, because I get the gist that that is an intentional response, and maybe the emotional, unintentional response might have some heat on it in those moments.

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:36:52)

You might have a little heat on it, but I think it stops whatever the thought process behind it was. It stops it dead, and it’s like, “No, I didn’t mean anything by that.” “Okay, cool. Moving on.”

John SmallMtn (00:37:10)

I love that you check the assumption, right? Because sometimes it’s just, “This person is just the worst,” and we can check. Our job is to check, honestly. How stringent are these opinions? How hard are they being held? Because if they’re too hard and it doesn’t align, we just need to go find something else to go do or someone else to go talk with.

When we were talking before the call, you said this other thing that I found really interesting. You talked about the modular side of the business and finding—I think the exact words that you said, and forgive me if I’m wrong, I might have been putting them in my own format—feeling the snap between the boxes. Can you talk about what that idea means for you?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:38:01)

Yeah. I liken it back to the Lego thing again, right? Because if you’re building your little Lego creature, you have to start—if they have feet, you got to start at the feet, because there’s nothing else to build on it. Or you’re putting things together in a very modular fashion. Even if you follow the instructions for a Lego build—like, I’ve got one behind me somewhere, there’s a cool little Vespa back there. They give you a really nice—it’s fun, I love Legos. Anyway—

John SmallMtn (00:38:39)

I do too. I never have time for them, but every time I’m in any store and they have Legos, I’m just like, “I would buy that one. I would buy that one.” Then I’m like, “When are you going to have the time?” Then I put them down and walk away.

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:38:48)

Never. I’d end up with a whole bunch of Star Wars things.

They give you this really nice book, and in there, they do everything piece-by-piece. Really nice instructions: “Here’s exactly the way that you need to build this.” Businesses aren’t that much different, right? And they all have to work together. If they’re not working together, you’re going to have this weird dysfunction, or you’re going to have toxic people, or you’re just going to have broken processes and things aren’t going to work properly.

So it’s that click when you know you have something right. All of a sudden, it’s like, “Look, that’s working perfectly.” And then it snaps with the next piece: “Now these two pieces are working really well together, service delivery is going really well, and I can see the relationship between all of that. Look, there comes account management! Look at the synergy that’s actually working behind this now.” Now we just need to get marketing working well. That’s on me; I’m working on that.

John SmallMtn (00:39:41)

I love that because EOS talks about the different lanes of the business and everything. When you think about—and maybe you’ve labeled them differently or hold them differently—the modular paths of the business, where have you had to adapt yourself the most to get good at improving that modular component?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:40:11)

Oh my gosh, how many hats do we all wear? So maybe the vulnerability piece, the ego piece, right? I think that’s the big one. Like, “Am I doing it right? Am I serving my people properly?” I think that’s a big thing. When you come down to it, if you have good people and you take care of your people, not only do things work well, but they start to take care of you back, which is great. So I think that’s really where it is for me.

John SmallMtn (00:40:48)

You seem like a very driven person. I sometimes—being kind of a driven person as well—forget that just how I approach the world can sometimes come across as unapproachable to other people. Sometimes when we’re moving very quickly, the faster we move, the less room we have to appreciate the struggles of other people. How did you realize that you needed to shift there, that it wasn’t serving you and that change needed to come from you as opposed to expecting other people to change?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:41:32)

This is a funny story—not so much the crazy piece, we’ll get to that in just a second.

What I have found is that when I’m presenting, I forget to smile a lot because I’m thinking, right? I’m thinking on my feet. I don’t really put together this big thing that I memorize. I have my slides, and I do my thing. And I have “the face.” We know “the face,” right? I don’t mean to have the face, but I have the face. So I’m not unapproachable; I’m not mean—I swear I’m not, I’m really actually pretty nice. But the face… I forget to smile, and my husband’s like, “You look so angry up there.” I’m like, “I’m not angry!”

John SmallMtn (00:42:17)

If I had a dollar for every time someone was uncomfortable just because my face is in “I’m trying to figure out the puzzle” mode, right? Because in every conversation—especially now—I’m looking for things. I’m looking for these things and whether they are holding them the right way. It’s super easy for me to be like that for the entire meeting and not make a connection. They don’t feel heard, and then they feel like they need to pull back, right? I love that.

Do you have any tricks? Have you found any cool ways for Dawn to…?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:42:52)

I started a long time ago. When I first started public speaking, I was afraid, I was miserable, I was scared to death, right? As we all are when we first start doing this. I was like, “I’m just going to go throw up.” I think we’ve all been there.

What I have found is—I use a phrase when I get up on stage. The first thing I do is, “Hello, friends.” That’s like my phrase. That’s the kick-in for me, and it turns off the crazy. At least I think it turns off the crazy. Maybe it really doesn’t, but it feels like it does, right? Or at least the anxiety of being up there and vulnerable in front of hundreds of people. You get up there, you have your phrase, and that turns it off.

So I think there’s that piece to it. And then, what was the other piece of your question?

John SmallMtn (00:43:43)

I honestly forgot, because I’m so fixated on this idea of “Hello, friends” being a key for yourself. Did you learn that from a coach? Did you learn that from a book, or was that just something you kind of fell into by doing lots of reps of speaking?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:43:57)

I think it was lots of reps of speaking. I’m sure somebody else has said this, because they’re way smarter than I am, but it works really well. It’s one of those where I had no idea that you could turn off that bit of anxiety that you have with a simple phrase. Okay, it’s the light switch of turning on the persona that has to go up on stage, and that’s the phrase that does it. Who knew?

John SmallMtn (00:44:26)

That’s crazy. I love that.

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:44:26)

It is crazy. It’s absolutely insane, but for me, it works.

Once you’re up there, then it’s, “How do I connect best with these people?” I don’t like to stand up on stage and just yak at people, because that doesn’t do anybody any good. I don’t feel like I’m serving them. Then it’s, “I can stand up here and talk to you all day long, but if we have a conversation—if you ask questions—this will go much better for everyone. And I get a break to take a drink of water every now and then.”

I think everybody finds their style; they find their stride in what that looks like, whether it’s speaking, in your business, or whatever that is. It’s finding that one thing that calms you down, that finds that inner Zen, if you will, that allows you to do the next thing that’s on the other side of here.

John SmallMtn (00:45:16)

That feels like something you would have to go find a coach for, right? That feels so cool, deep, and like one of those hidden tricks. It feels like something you would have to pay a lot of money for, and then someone says it to you and you’re like, “Oh, well, duh.” But I love that. That’s so cool.

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:45:42)

We all have that little something to give, right? If that works for somebody, great—you got it here first.

John SmallMtn (00:45:45)

I’m a big fan of routines, right? I like having a warmup for my day, and I like having a winddown for the day—little things like that to help put me in the right mode.

“Hello, friends”—that’s so cool. What I found for myself is I’m still newer to speaking and everything, and I like more of a workshop vibe than I do a keynote, right? I’ve only done one keynote, and it was cool. It was really great to have the opportunity and everything. But everyone is like, “Okay, show us the way.” And it’s like, “I want to help you find the way,” kind of thing, right? So I’m more of a workshop guy in my current stage.

The aside for that is: It’s okay to be a workshop guy, you know? For a while, I was like, “Well, I’m not doing good in this lane unless I am doing these things.” It’s really okay for you to find your lane of greatness that puts you into a flow state, right? If that’s more collaborative speaking stuff and workshops, there’s not anything wrong with that. Once again, it’s super easy to chase a vanity metric that doesn’t actually serve you.

I just love that whole thing about noticing the discomfort and noticing how easy it is to talk at people versus actually having a connection and giving them something that is actually going to help them. That is very cool, Dawn.

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:47:09)

Well, even when you’re keynoting, right? You have to get through certain things in order for the keynote to make sense—that’s a thing, you just have to do that. But there are strategic places you can always build in for that, and then it draws the connection deeper with every little piece that you’re bringing in. Because you can even stop and just say, “Is everybody with me?” Again, you get that connection. Or, “What questions do you have?” because you’re assuming that they have one. Then somebody will be like, “All right, how’d you do that?”

“Okay, here we go,” because I have my next slide prepped exactly for that.

John SmallMtn (00:47:48)

It’s weird. It’s like we’ve been here before.

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:47:50)

It’s like I’m prepping you to ask that question. But again, depending on what you’re doing, right? It’s no different whether you’re standing on a stage or whether you’re talking with your team through the day—same conversations phrased differently, doing different things, but it’s the same type of thing. I like the fact that I can come in and I can have a conversation with my team, whether it’s my service team or whether it’s the admin side of things, and we’re all learning from each other all day, every day.

John SmallMtn (00:48:24)

That is awesome. How big is the team, Dawn? How many people?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:48:28)

We’re about 15. We’re not huge.

John SmallMtn (00:48:38)

When you think about the growth of that team, I’m curious: Was there a space that felt like a ceiling, right? Was it like 10, and then to 11 felt like a big deal? Was there a place in your growth where you’re like, “Okay, we can’t grow past this,” because you either felt like you shouldn’t or you weren’t sure how?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:48:56)

Yeah, for sure. We were 21 at the beginning of the year. So, yes, that’s a unique question to ask, right? Because there’s a certain strategy in “shrink to grow,” as you well know.

The thought around some of this: You get to about five employees, and you have this really well-oiled machine. In our case, we had a core of three when we got started, and adding that first one after that core was hard. But then the one after that, not as bad. The one after that, totally fine. Once you get to about seven, things get a little wonky because you don’t have all of your HR stuff—you don’t have a lot of the bones in place, if you will, to start to actually grow.

If you’re starting to scale—because MSPs start to scale pretty quickly once you get past about five people, which sounds really ridiculous, right? Because you think of scaling like, “Oh, you went from 20 to 50 to 70.” Because we can do things at scale because of the tools that we have, we scale with a lot less people.

John SmallMtn (00:50:06)

Interesting. Interrupting you for just a second, because I’m curious: Since it scales so differently, is there a piece of business advice that you think MSPs in specific should ignore when it comes to thinking about scaling? Like a piece of dogmatic advice, a tweet, or something else that might work for other people, but is categorically not the way to be thinking about it in MSP because it scales differently?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:50:18)

Yeah. Headcount is not capacity.

John SmallMtn (00:50:44)

Headcount is not… Okay, can you talk a little bit more about that? What is that?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:50:47)

Yeah. So the capacity to do any job for us does not depend on headcount. Again, because of tools, because of scaling, because of what we can accomplish, capacity is not headcount.

John SmallMtn (00:50:56)

Is there a big segment of people who are just mapping capacity to their headcount, and that leads them to bad ceilings? What’s the negative output if you’re not thinking about it that way?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:51:18)

Yeah, I think it boils down more to the thought process of, “You can always get more done if you just hire more people,” right? And that’s not always true with this industry. I can hire all the Level 1s I want, but their capacity is actually very small with what they can do. But if I hire a Level 2 or a Level 3 that knows how to do really good root-cause analysis and has a really good background, their capacity is so much larger and deeper than a lower-level person. It’s no different than if you hire somebody right out of college: They’ve never actually done the job before, so their capacity is small, but they have the ability to increase that capacity considerably. It’s just a matter of time—time and training, right?

John SmallMtn (00:52:11)

How should people think about it differently, right? Because if it’s not, “Okay, we’re going to have five users per person,” how do you redraw the map so that way you’re doing it intentionally in the right way for MSPs and IT?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:52:30)

The kicker of it is, I think we’re all trying to redraw the map probably on the monthly. Tool efficiency is a big thing for us—a huge thing. The better we can make our tools either talk to us or talk to each other, the more efficiency and capacity we end up with. Exactly.

Which is why you always hear, “I’ve got these tools that all integrate really well together.” It’s huge for us—huge. So where it used to be like 200 to 300 seats per person, now it can be 500 to 700 seats per person. So, again: Headcount, not capacity.

John SmallMtn (00:53:01)

One of the things that I caution a lot of my clients on is: Do not take someone else’s benchmark and try to run your business on it, especially when it comes to sales, growth, and marketing.

How do I phrase my question…? Is there a range of thinking around this? How can someone do it right if they’re starting today? They’re like, “Okay, sounds like a very smart person, and this thinking makes sense to me. How should I be thinking about this at the jump?” Because it’s super easy to hire a salesperson and be like, “Okay, we’ll just make 100 dials, because that’s the standard,” right? But that might once again be leading you in a different direction. How do you get good at that, especially in the early days?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:54:07)

You don’t. You fail a lot.

John SmallMtn (00:54:12)

I love how blunt you are! You’re just like, “You’re not going to sugarcoat it at all.” You’re just like, “No, you’re just going to screw up a lot.”

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:54:18)

I wish there was a better way, right? Unless you have somebody that says, “Hey, here’s the exact thing that we use. This works really, really well.” There’s coaches out there. Pax8 Academy has something really cool. There’s a bunch of other coaches out there that will show you like, “If you do it this particular way with these particular tools, it actually works out pretty good.”

Can you tweak them? 100%. Can you take something that’s off the shelf and make it work better together by yourself? Sure. There’s no tried-and-true, “this is the only way it works.”

John SmallMtn (00:54:57)

Moving into the backside of the show—because I want to respect your time, and we’re coming up on our time here—I’ve got a couple of questions that I’ve been asking everybody who comes on the show.

My first question: Because you’re in IT, right—a lot of founders, as you said earlier in the show, will say, “We’ll do that when we’re big enough, when we grow up,” and things like that. If someone is starting today as a founder, what do they need to know about IT and cyber so that way they can start with some intention and at least be on the path to where they want to go?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:55:32)

I wish I could say that the company that we have today is the same as the company that we had in 2005 or 2006. It is not. We have turned from a technology company into a liability and risk company, and the technology is—I want to say—secondary to reducing that liability and risk.

The world has changed, and you have to change with it. I think if you go into it with that mindset—or just run the other direction, I’m not sure which—but if you’re going into it with the right idea, you can love the technology and that’s okay, but you have to understand that, one, the client’s not going to care. They just don’t; they don’t care about the technology. If they’re really into it, it’s kind of a red flag. But we really are focused on reducing liability for ourselves and for the client, risk for ourselves and for the client—that kind of thing, whether that’s on the cyber side or whether it’s on just the IT side of things. We’re all about outcomes these days and not blinky lights. I wish I had lived it, but it’s only a few days.

John SmallMtn (00:56:36)

I love that. Epic. It speaks to the idea that I think of a business as a living thing, right? Anything you want to set and forget probably comes from a lack of expertise and depth, and it’s probably going to set you up for failure, right? Because what I find is most people are either always looking at operational improvement, but they want to set and forget their sales and marketing because they’re more of an operational thinker; or they’re all over here doing this thing on the sales, marketing, and growth side, but delivery and fulfillment is all over the place. You know, you can’t keep a client and stuff like that.

I think it’s important to know that every aspect of this can be improved, and it also takes some of the pressure off of just starting, because you’re not going to be great when you start, to the point you were saying a moment ago. What a great, great point.

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:57:27)

Failure isn’t a bad thing all the time, right? There’s always lessons to be learned in that. As long as you learn them and you don’t repeat the same thing over and over and over again, that’s fine. Because you’re going to have big failures, little failures, things that you laugh about, and things that aren’t so funny until years later. But as long as you turn it into a lesson, it’s not failure—it’s just a lesson learned.

John SmallMtn (00:57:33)

Yeah, I love that.

We talked a little bit about community in the call before this, right? I’m curious: With community comes lots of hot opinions, hot takes, business dogma, mantras, and everything. What is the piece of advice that you hear regurgitated, talked about, and posted about constantly that you can now appreciate, but you couldn’t really appreciate until you had to work your way through it yourself?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:58:22)

I know I gave you an answer about this previously, but I’m going to change it, and that’s okay. What we hear—and I think this goes to any industry, it really doesn’t matter whether it’s this one or another one—we’re sold to all day, every day, right? Doesn’t matter what the situation is.

What we don’t think about at the forefront—or at least I don’t think about at the forefront… I listen to somebody’s pitch and I think, “It’s an interesting product, blah blah blah blah.” But that person is there to sell you something. They’re not there to address your pain point; they’re not there to fix anything. They’re there to sell you a thing, right? We don’t always keep that first and foremost in our mind. Yes, we need to buy things. Yes, we need to resell them. But just because somebody is standing in front of you trying to sell a thing doesn’t mean that’s the right thing.

John SmallMtn (00:59:27)

Do you think that shows up more for MSPs because of the tech stack and stuff like that?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (00:59:34)

I think the marketing has gotten pretty well ahead of what some of the capability is on some of these things, right? Which is why I’m saying it the way that I’m saying it. I’m not saying that they’re out there to do a bad thing; I’m saying that their job is to sell you a product, right? Have a goal. We forget about that sometimes.

John SmallMtn (00:59:42)

As a sales guy, I know there’s no such thing as a free lunch, right? I’m always shooting down things that are not worth my time. “Hey John, we’d love you to…” “Okay, this doesn’t make any sense for me,” and stuff like that. How do you ride that line about being informed about what’s in the market and looking at new products and making sure that you have industry-leading tech in your tech stack, but also protecting your time, protecting your focus, and staying in your lane? How do you ride that line?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (01:00:38)

One of the things that I’ve started doing is: Tell me how it fits into the framework that I follow. Tell me how you’re legally going to attest that you fit a control.

John SmallMtn (01:00:46)

Boom. This goes back to the concept that if you have a framework that you’re running on, it becomes this kind of interesting thing. You talked about Traction a minute ago—Traction and EOS are very popular in MSP. Your framework is also your values, right? If you take them deep enough, if you make your values and all that stuff with intention, it becomes really clear where it’s not in alignment. Really leaning into, “Okay, what is the use case? Here’s how we’re running—does that fit within this?”

That’s awesome. I love that. This goes back to a cultural thing, right? Because if you have a real, actual consultative sales motion in there that’s solutions-focused and looking for high alignment, we should be having the philosophical discussion about, “How do you see your IT? Do you see them as a partner, or do you just see them as a cable monkey?” “Okay, we just see them as a cable monkey.” “Cool. I hope you find exactly what you’re looking for over here.” Not, “Well, let me tell you why you’re wrong and why you need to treat us differently.” If that’s how they feel, that’s how they feel, you know?

If it weren’t for misaligned goals, lack of training, or lack of awareness, I think it would be easier for salespeople to hear that “no.” With MSP having so much tech that’s available to purchase—I’ve spoken at some MSP conferences, and the vendor hall is a full-court press to get into the space, you know?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (01:02:33)

100% in, right? There’s great vendors in our space. Please don’t get me wrong—there’s plenty of phenomenal ones. I really wish that I could walk into that vendor hall and actually see the CIS numbers above their booths so I’d know exactly which ones I should just go talk to. That would be my dream world. So conference people, if you’re listening, that would be great!

John SmallMtn (01:03:00)

If you’re a vendor and you’re listening to this, take the note: Be able to differentiate yourself, right? Know where you fit in, and know where you’re forcing a fit. Because those force fits… If we just zoom out and look at it, desire is not enough, grit’s not enough, follow-up is not enough, right? If we’re not making sense to them, it might come down to their framework, and our solution just doesn’t make sense. As opposed to trying to push through that, let’s just listen. Let’s just hear them where they are and call it, right? If it doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t make sense. I love that.

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (01:03:33)

Exactly. The best things that I see from salespeople: When they come in and they have a slide—if they’re pitching to me and they’re like, “Here are the pain points we solve: Boom, boom, boom. Are you in here? Yes or no? Are you in, or are you out?” Just ask me; get off your ICP. It’s just easy, right? It’s not a bad thing. It gives you time to move on to find the right person.

John SmallMtn (01:03:57)

Where I get so frustrated is when people come to me coming in the door with this crazy expectation that my job is to either force the “yes” or to give them some sort of magic pill to get them to the “yes.” One of the early conversations is, “No, I’m going to help you find clarity as to whether or not this warrants more of your time.” Because if it doesn’t warrant more of your time, put it down, right? Because the bigger your deals get, the more effort it takes to get them done, qualified, and across the line with good expectations.

I love that there’s the opportunity for frameworks to be this nice tip of the spear, and hopefully some of the vendors can take that note and use it in their thinking and strategies, because sales is more about filtering than it is about trying to manipulate people into a “yes,” right? If we’re not even filtering correctly, we’re going to spend our time trying to get “yeses” from the wrong people.

Last question, Dawn, and then I’ll let you go. Really appreciate you coming on here and being so open and very rad and direct. This is very cool.

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (01:05:07)

It’s my pleasure. It’s been such a great conversation.

John SmallMtn (01:05:14)

Knowing that you’ve been in the space for a while and seeing how everything has shifted—zooming out a little bit, not just from the IT/MSP lane—for someone who’s starting today that doesn’t have your experience, what is the word of advice or the word of caution that you would give them to try to lessen some of the friction on their path?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (01:05:36)

Go find your people really quick, right? It wasn’t until 2017, I think, until we went to our first conference. Had no idea that the whole IT channel existed—like, had no clue.

John SmallMtn (01:05:40)

Community is such a cool thing. One of the cool things about IT/MSP land is that there are lots of peer groups, community-driven things, and stuff like that. But you can also spend your time in slightly the wrong one, right? Then you’re drinking bad Kool-Aid, and you might be selling yourself on the fact you’re supposed to like this Kool-Aid, as opposed to maybe doing a little bit more work and effort to find the community that really aligns, so that way the Kool-Aid is fun to drink as opposed to trying to pinch your nose and make it through.

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (01:06:25)

100%. 100%, yeah. But find your people is definitely the big one.

The idea that everybody is your competitor would be the other one. That’s not true in this industry, right? So while, yes, you might be right down the street, picking up the phone and saying, “Hey, we’re new to the market. This is our lane. Is there any place that we have synergy? How do we work well together?”—that kind of thing. I like co-opetition.

John SmallMtn (01:06:36)

I like that! I’ve never heard that label before: co-opetition.

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (01:07:00)

I’ve done plenty of work for other MSPs for something very specific that they didn’t have that we do, and I’m happy to throw their shirt on, go to work for them, service their client, and do the right thing by them. 100%.

John SmallMtn (01:07:05)

I got really lucky. My sales coach was part of a franchise model, and one time I looked around and saw how many other people were in the same framework. I was like, “Aren’t you mad?” In this super surreal conversation, he goes, “Why would I be mad?” I was like, “There’s five to six other trainers here in DFW in the same franchise model.” He goes, “Do you think it’s more important that I win the deal, or do you think it’s more important that the person gets the help that they need?” I was just like, “What?” And he said the line, right: “The only competition I have is the one that I create, and why would I do that to myself?”

Epic. Dawn, thank you so much for coming on. I know I already said that, but very cool conversation and so helpful. If people want to come learn more about you or your company, where should they come seek you out? Are you on social? Is it just a website?

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (01:08:25)

I’m on LinkedIn, which is the important part, right? I’m an extroverted introvert, so there’s that! But yeah, you can always find me on LinkedIn. I think I’m the only Dawn Sizer there. Maybe they broke the mold, I’m not sure! But also, you can find us at https://3rdelementconsulting.com/

John SmallMtn (01:08:35)

Awesome, Dawn. Thank you so much for coming on. I really do think that this is going to help some people.

Dawn Sizer | 3rd Element (01:08:44)

I hope so. Thank you for having me. Bye-bye.

John SmallMtn (01:08:46)

You’re welcome. We’ll talk soon.