Rex Frank - Winning MSPs Follow A Process

Rex Frank on the Process-Powered MSP: Why Heroics Aren’t a Strategy

In this episode, Carrie Richardson sits down with Rex Frank, VP of PAX8 Academy, to unpack the real reasons most MSPs stall out. 

From the dangers of hero culture to the strategic misuse of vCIOs, Rex shares decades of insight on what separates mature MSPs from the rest. He doesn’t pull punches—and he doesn’t believe talent alone is enough. If you're tired of duct-taping your business together with hustle, this conversation is your roadmap to building a resilient, scalable MSP.

Topics Covered:

• Why “doing it all yourself” is holding your MSP back
• How to reposition the vCIO role for long-term client impact
• The one thing your org chart says about your growth ceiling
• Why PAX8 Academy is reengineering the MSP maturity model

Find Rex Frank onsite at Pax8 Beyond! 

Read the article inspired by this interview on the Fox and Crow Group blog.

Carrie Richardson and Ian Richardson host the WIN Podcast - What's Important Now?

Serial entrepreneurs, life partners and business partners, they have successfully exited from multiple businesses (IT, call center, real estate, marketing) and they help other business owners create their own versions of success.

Ian is certified in Eagle Center For Leadership Making A Difference, Paterson StratOp, and LifePlan.

Carrie has helped create and execute successful outbound sales strategies for over 1200 technology-focused businesses including MSPs, manufacturers, distributors and SaaS firms.

Learn more at www.foxcrowgroup.com

Book time with Carrie here!

Be a guest on WIN! We host successful entrepreneurs who share advice with other entrepreneurs on how to build, grow or sell a business using examples from their own experience.

Transcript

Carrie Richardson: 0:53

Good afternoon everybody. My name is Carrie Richardson. I'm your host for win. And with me today is Rex Frank, VP of PAX 8 Academy. Rex, how are you doing today?

Rex Frank: 1:03

I am thumbs up.

Carrie Richardson: 1:04

As always, I am glad to hear it. Thanks for joining us. So for people who are coming to PAX 8 for the first time, and who maybe just became PAX 8 partners, tell us about Academy.

Rex Frank: 1:19

I started in the industry in 1988 doing Novell networks and rode through a lot of different business transitions from selling hardware to selling services, to managed services to, this whole cloud transformation. And now we're onto the AI transformation after security, It's been quite a ride. I was with several MSPs over 25 years I started Sea-Level operations in 2010, initially focused on teaching that technician promoted to service manager how to stop being a tech and start being a leader of the service organization and ultimately become that service executive role. We added some financial coaching and security coaching and a few other things. Coaching, helping companies build their valuation that they're targeting, a couple of years out. And then in May of 21, PAX 8 was talking to some of its fastest growing partners. working with C level was one of those common denominators. they were like, we would like more of that for all of our partners. six months later we. Became part of PAX 8 Academy, we were celebrating our four year anniversary with PAX 8. One thing I'm super proud of is that every person that came with me four years ago is still here at PAX 8 today, so that's pretty exciting. The reality is this is a group of people focused on helping partners grow, mature, drive their businesses to be better. And we've continued to have the opportunity to do just that. So everybody's still, from what they tell me, living their best life. So I love that.

Carrie Richardson: 2:59

What was it like going from the owner of Sea-Level and being responsible for everything at Sea-Level to going to PAX 8, having Academy and having a team of people to support you?

Rex Frank: 3:12

So I remember, talking with some of my mentors through that transition and, it was made clear to me that the average tenure of an acquired CEO is like 8 months. It's not so much that the, CEO wanted to quit, it's more the acquiring company is done with their bs. I took it to heart. It was interesting. People think that the acquisition was about money, but it really wasn't. Nick Heddy came to me and he understood what drove me and Sea-Level is making a measurable, positive impact on businesses. And he painted a picture of how we're gonna be able to do that 10 x making a. 10 x impact on businesses and that's what drove the acquisition. And that's why we're all still here. And it's interesting Carrie, you could probably relate to some of this, right? When I started my consulting practices, it was me impacting one company or tens of companies, And then through the years. C level was impacting the number of companies measured in the hundreds. And now coming to Pax 8 we're impacting companies measured in the thousands at any given moment. And that satisfaction really drives me.

Carrie Richardson: 4:23

So it's been four years. I still think it's 2020 most of the time,

Rex Frank: 4:29

PAX 8 was supposed to have their first beyond event in 2020, and obviously that didn't happen. in a lot of ways, we can probably say that was a good thing because when we did our first one in 23, we were much more prepared. And had just a lot more resources to bring to the table to make that happen. I remember having some meetings with Jen Bodell before Rob Rae was around, and she was saying, I want beyond to be a different experience. I remember saying, if we really focused on education, that really wasn't around any vendor driving product. Let's do education focused on helping these partners grow, mature their businesses. And she went all in and, academy was, three quarters of the sessions they allowed us to really say, look, let's not zero in or focus or promote any individual vendor in these sessions. Let's focus on helping the partner grow and mature their businesses. ultimately the outcome is they grow. become qualified to work with more clients or larger clients, and Their spend with PAX 8 increases because their businesses are improving. the evidence and numbers all point to that's working. the partners really love that experience as well.

Carrie Richardson: 5:43

Yeah, we hear great things about P 8 Academy.

Rex Frank: 5:45

One of the cool things is a year and a half ago, we decided that the professional services organization within PAX 8 was closer aligned with, academy than with support. the idea is if a partner doesn't have the skillset or the bandwidth to do a rollout of a product in our marketplace we can do that end user rollout on behalf of the partner, then both the partner and us get to start getting those benefits sooner. So that organization is now under me as well. And that's been fun to really make sure that there's a partner enablement focus on what we're doing. I run the Americas organization of both Academy and ProServe, and we're up to about 95 people that are focused on helping partners, do what they do better, more efficiently, drive more revenue and reduce risk.

Carrie Richardson: 6:38

this year at PAX 8, what are the major session talk tracks. How were they divided out?

Rex Frank: 6:45

I put this shirt on today, right? Because this is the Beyond 24 speaker shirt. it's funny. Everybody says, how do I get one of those shirts? I'm like, oh, it's super easy. You just have to like nine months in advance, submit an idea for a speaker topic, have it get through the selection committee while they design, the sessions that they want for each of the personas, whether it's owner, sales service, engineer, and then get through that committee and work with marketing for, six more months on developing your deck and your talk track, and then show up and deliver it to a few hundred people. And, that's all you have to do to get this shirt. But I was wearing it because I wanted to talk about, the pillars here, the innovation community. And education is what that stands for. And so you're gonna see a lot of innovation content talking about what's happening with the PAX 8 marketplace and the platform. And you're gonna see a lot of community related activities happening. The sharing and the comeraderie that occurs when you attend an event like this. Then obviously The enablement that you're seeing happen in a lot of the sessions as well. Come prepared and just take advantage of everything that you see happening around there. It's exciting how much we've, put together. It's amazing the ability to keep a secret. I still don't know where next year's beyond is. that's being kept as an announcement that you're gonna see. And I still don't even know who the big show, the musical artist is.

Carrie Richardson: 8:11

We don't either. We've been speculating.

Rex Frank: 8:13

there's gonna be a lot of exciting stuff going on.

Carrie Richardson: 8:16

I understand they moved it to the main floor this year after some. Floor wobbling last year.

Rex Frank: 8:22

The floor wobbling. I have a video of, they bring out the carts that are spread around with all the alcohol on them. And I got some video of that liquid splashing around in the bottles. And it's the best thing I've found to illustrate what that floor felt like. I was sketchy, but yes. I think we're downstairs.

Carrie Richardson: 8:44

All right. So we still don't know who the headliner is. However, what are some sessions that you think are not to be missed this year?

Rex Frank: 8:51

Our CEO Scott Chason is gonna be talking about the vision of where AI is going. Some enhancements to the Pax 8 marketplace are coming. the sessions are laid out by your role in the company, if you're in sales, there's a track specifically for sales professionals. If you're a service manager or an engineer just, zero in on what the sessions are for that track if you're a security professional. We've got the entire security track, laid out with Matt Lee and Dom Kirby running those.

Carrie Richardson: 9:23

And will there be a place where people can go and learn more about Academy on the floor in the exhibit hall?

Rex Frank: 9:29

In the exhibit hall, there's I think within the big PAX 8 booth, there's six kiosks for if you wanna zero in on, what's happening in the sales or what's happening in academy and ProServe, what, what's happening in the, what we call guided growth out of our partner experience group, I believe there's a Voyager Alliance, our new partner program, and we got that launched in in May The academy benefits you get by your Voyager Alliance tier are just released. So there's some fun stuff to learn there.

Carrie Richardson: 10:02

Thank you for joining us to share about what's gonna happen this year beyond. It was great learning about your background, and we're gonna look forward to seeing you in June.

Rex Frank: 10:10

fun. It always is. Thanks.