How Nucleus Networks Keeps and Grows Its People

Jennifer Roy (0:07) So my name is Jennifer. I'm the CEO of Nucleus Networks. We're an MSP in Vancouver, British Columbia. We have about 85 employees currently.

Wes Spencer (0:17) Talk to me a little bit about what does your MSP look like today? Do you guys have any particular industry focuses? Just give us a picture of what has made you an 85-person MSP today.

Jennifer Roy (0:30) So we work across all verticals, but we do specialize really in engineering and construction. So we do a lot of work with those verticals as well as architecture. Recently, we've started to get more involved in legal in Vancouver. So we've got a hefty client base in legal, but we've really just focused on client experience. I think part of our growth has really been around keeping a small boutique feel as we scale our organization.

Wes Spencer (0:59) So I would imagine at 85 employees, you guys hire quite a bit, right? And not only do you hire quite a bit, the scale of 85 employees keeping everyone up to speed and in sync with who Nucleus is and all the training that goes with it, I'm sure is immense, right? So I'd love to know how have you been successful as an MSP at this size? How have you been successful at that?

Jennifer Roy (1:25) So I would say it's constant effort. It's something that you can't just set and forget, especially as you grow and you scale. So we spend a lot of time and energy with our HR department, with our operations, looking at where's our knowledge today? Where do we need it to be? Who are we hiring and recruiting? What is their foundation level and what do we need to do to scale them up? So there's a pretty heavy investment at the beginning of new hire orientation and really just understanding if we're hiring a student straight out of university, where's their basic knowledge versus hiring someone who's had five years in the industry. So just really looking at that and creating kind of training path for each different level.

Wes Spencer (2:09) Talk to me about why employee growth is so important at Nucleus.

Jennifer Roy (2:16) We're really fortunate. We've got employee number one still with us after being in business for over 20 years. So our average tenure here is almost four years. That's pretty remarkable in this industry that has a fair amount of churn. So, for example, my leadership team, majority of the team has been here 10 plus years. So I'm very fortunate that we've had a lot of retention. And I think a big piece of that is employee growth and looking at how can we train, develop and grow our employees with us so that they're not looking for opportunities elsewhere.

Wes Spencer (2:53) What does a new employee into an MSP look like today? I mean, I'm sure they're coming in with little to zero technology experience, little to zero customer relationship skills, all of that. Walk me through what a new employee normally looks like.

Jennifer Roy (3:09) So ideally, I like to hire kind of a level one technician as all of our new hires. I would rather grow and mentor people internally to get those level two, level three. It doesn't always happen. Sometimes there's a need that we have to hire a more senior technician with experience. But for the most part, we have a really great relationship with a local university here in Vancouver that we do a lot of recruitment. We usually do an intake twice a year where we'll have a team come in that just start with workstation deployments. They have the education, but not necessarily the tech skills that they've been able to kind of get enough experience. They might be the tech at home or the family friend that fixes computers, but they really haven't had professional experience. Typically, we look for someone who's had customer service experience. We want somebody that's worked with the public, understands how to communicate. I always say, we're a customer service industry. We just happen to do it through technology. So really looking for those people skills first, culture fit is huge. And then we can train them the technical stuff that we want them to know. So that's secondary. They need to be technically minded, but they don't necessarily need to be high tech from day one.

Wes Spencer (4:23) And so then that leads us into Empath. What initially attracted you to what Empath was doing as an augmentation to your employee growth?

Jennifer Roy (4:32) So timing was actually perfect. We were at a conference. I had just an employee engagement survey. And some of the feedback was we want more in training. We want more in development. And I'm a big believer you've got to invest in your people. So, I just happened to meet you guys at a conference, had a demo of the product and thought, that's really powerful. Training that's specific to our industry. It's not just technical training that may or may not work for our industry. It was really geared at an MSP. And not only did it have the technical, there's also soft skills. I recently promoted a couple of my directors to VPs and I was able to assign them courses on P&L. So there's more than just the basics of what an MSP is or how to fix a firewall. There's so much content in there. We've got junior vCIOs that now can get courses through Empath. It's been a game changer for us in terms of learning.

Wes Spencer (5:32) How have you decided to roll Empath out in sort of the early initial days?

Jennifer Roy (5:42) So we're starting pretty small. We've opened it to our leadership team so that they can get an idea of the courses that they want to assign out to their team. And then we're doing all new hires. So we started with our new hire orientation, assigning them courses. We've uploaded our previous content that we had. So we're enhancing that, redesigning some of that and putting that into Empath as well. So we've got all our new hires going through tracks and then we've got our management team also testing. I went through and did a couple of courses just so that I could see what I wanted to assign some of our leadership teams to.

Wes Spencer (6:16) And so initial, give me some feedback from what your employees have said so far that have gone through the training and areas that you can tell it's been effective and useful.

Jennifer Roy (6:29) So we've, as I mentioned, we've got our new hires that come straight from university. They don't know really what an MSP is. They just know we've got a great relationship with the university and that we're recommended as a place to work. So it's been really great to have some of these fresh students that are coming in, don't really understand what an MSP is or what we do. And then they're taking some of those introduction courses like what is an MSP? And the feedback that we've been getting is, wow, like that was incredible. I learned so much, like it's very different when someone just talks about it versus watching a course understanding from a different perspective. So I've had really, really positive feedback from our new hires.

Wes Spencer (7:12) Walk me through, like what kind of advice would you give to other MSPs that are your peers or smaller than you in terms of employee growth and investing back in your people? Because clearly you've done well with it with employee retention, the size that you've grown into. So give me some advice that you would give towards others when it comes to employee growth.

Jennifer Roy (7:34) So I would say, I think people often see training, development, one-on-ones, stuff like that as a cost. And I would say it's not a cost, it's a necessity. If you're not investing in your people, if you're not scheduling regular one-on-ones, having touch points, conversations that are important to employees, you're gonna have churn, and that's way more costly than investing in your people. So that would be my biggest advice. If you're not doing one-on-ones now, if you're not investing in training and development, you need to start immediately.

Wes Spencer (8:05) If others were to ask you about Empath, what would be some of the key points that you would say on why it's a valuable tool for them and for their MSP?

Jennifer Roy (8:18) So I would say first, a lot of people think like rolling out a new tool, it's a big task, it's a heavy lift, and it is, start small. We started with just our management team and new hires, and we're adding department by department. So starting small makes it a lot more digestible. It's easier to do something when you have a tactical plan versus just we're gonna flip the switch and hope for the best, that doesn't work. So I would say that that's a piece of my advice. I would also say is be prepared to put the investment and the time and energy into it, because again, it's gonna benefit your company, it's gonna benefit your team. And we've been super happy with the progress that we've made. I'm very pleased with the investment that we chose to go with Empath in 2024.

Wes Spencer (9:04) I don't have, I think that covers, I think all the main questions I wanted to ask. Anything else that you wanted to add or that you thought of?

Jennifer Roy (9:12) Your team's great to work with. That also is a benefit, right? It's a true partnership and to me, that's really important. I always say, I like to partner with people I trust, I like to partner with people I have respect with and I think that's great about your team, so.

Wes Spencer (9:27) Yeah, appreciate that and that means a lot to us too. Yeah, that whole Bob Berg quote that Alex taught me of people do business with those that they know, like and trust, right? Like that goes a long way.