The Growth Focus Podcast

How much revenue could a tech services company be leaving on the table because of the way it leads, prices, follows up, or communicates its value? On this episode of the Growth Focus Podcast, Gary Lafferty talks with Reshma Moorthy, CEO of Frontier Technologies, a second-generation IT infrastructure business. Reshma shares what she has learned from 20 years inside the family company, including a costly mistake she had to own, a pricing decision that tested her confidence, and the work of building a team she can trust. They also discuss how the move toward recurring revenue has changed tech services, where AI is helping Reshma’s team in its sales process, and why a founder’s own stories can help clients understand who they are buying from. Growth Focus is built around a simple idea: better before more. Before spending more to create demand, look closely at the revenue opportunities already inside the business. That means examining the customer journey, the sales process, the client experience, and the decisions that affect conversion and profitability. This conversation is especially relevant if you lead an MSP, VAR, IT services firm, tech consultancy, or another founder-led B2B service business. Reshma’s experience is a reminder that revenue performance depends on more than bringing in new leads. Leadership, pricing, trust, follow-through, and the ability to explain your value all play a part. Chapters00:00 Why Gary wanted Reshma on the podcast00:51 Reshma’s path into the family business02:12 Who Reshma is outside the CEO role03:25 First impressions and the value of listening04:51 Choosing the family business over nursing07:45 Frontier Technologies and the clients it serves08:56 What helps a business keep growing12:07 Delegation, trust, and getting things done14:28 Cash flow and the challenges of leading a small business16:38 Owning a costly business mistake20:52 Finding the confidence to raise a project price23:59 The shift toward recurring revenue in tech services25:39 How Reshma’s team uses AI in sales27:00 What her team sees as her greatest strength28:51 Reshma’s vision for the next three years30:50 Why tech founders should share their stories33:13 Building authority by showing who you are36:13 Reshma’s advice to founders: bet on yourself36:57 How to connect with Reshma Connect with ReshmaFrontier Technologies: https://ftiusa.com/Tipsy Technologists: Available on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMkB2WG91lD2F5Xmr7d05mgLinkedIn: Search for Reshma Moorthy Gary Lafferty is a revenue performance advisor and founder of Growth Focus Partnerships. The Growth Focus Podcast explores how founders and business leaders can generate more revenue from the business they have and the opportunities already in front of them. Subscribe for conversations on revenue performance, sales, leadership, customer experience, and growing a more profitable B2B services business. #GrowthFocusPodcast #RevenuePerformance #B2BServices #TechFounders #ITServices Chapters (00:00:17) - Introduction and Welcome(00:01:12) - Reshma's Background and Family Business Story(00:02:16) - Life Outside the CEO Role(00:03:27) - Misconceptions and Being a Good Listener(00:05:13) - From Nursing Dreams to Joining Frontier Technologies(00:07:53) - What Frontier Technologies Does(00:09:06) - Leadership, Discipline and Stoicism(00:11:03) - Setting Goals and Being Unapologetic(00:12:32) - What Leaders Get Wrong and Delegation(00:14:30) - Learning from Family Leadership and Cash Flow Lessons(00:16:29) - Owning Mistakes: The Misquote Story(00:20:04) - Growth Through Ownership and Vulnerability(00:21:24) - A Scary Pricing Decision That Paid Off(00:22:55) - The Value of External Coaches and Masterminds(00:24:05) - Industry Trends: Managed Services Evolution(00:25:43) - Using AI in the Business(00:27:04) - Team's View of Reshma as a Leader(00:29:08) - Vision for the Next Three Years(00:31:07) - Public Speaking and Sharing Your Story(00:33:57) - Belief, Manifestation and Owning the Room(00:36:05) - Final Advice: Bet on Yourself(00:37:10) - Where to Find Reshma and Closing Remarks

Every founder I talk to is using AI to grow faster. Almost none of them are asking what AI is quietly costing them. This week I sat down with Travis McGregor, CEO of SLC Digital, who's built and exited one company already and is now building a second around mobile SIM security. Travis put his finger on something I see constantly working with MSP owners and B2B tech founders: AI isn't the problem. Treating AI like the source of your thinking is. Travis was at an event in San Francisco recently with forty AI companies in the room, and they all sounded the same. Same pitch, same language, same positioning. That's not a coincidence — it's what happens when everyone feeds the same prompts into the same models and lets the output do the talking. The companies who actually grow revenue are the ones who use AI as what Travis calls a clerk, an assistant for the repeatable work, while the founder keeps total ownership of the thing that actually closes deals: understanding the customer well enough to speak their language back to them. We get into why AI can only hand you probability while a human in the room can hand you certainty, why funding can quietly erode the thing that made your business different in the first place, and the one growth lever Travis says still works no matter what the market is doing. If you've ever wondered whether your AI-assisted growth is actually working, or just making you sound like everyone else, this one's for you. 00:00 — Why AI changes how founders hire, not who gets replaced 01:14 — AI as a clerk, not the source of ideas 02:25 — Good data in, good data out: the discipline most founders skip 04:14 — Where tech founders waste the most time and money 07:01 — Forty AI companies, one identical pitch: the sameness problem 08:23 — Why polish matters more once everyone has the same tools 12:19 — The 2018 mindset still running modern companies 13:52 — A hard lesson on scaling most founders learn too late 18:42 — What Travis would do differently in the first 12 months 19:11 — Funding, KPIs, and the slow erosion of founder passion 23:48 — The one action every founder should take after this episode 26:28 — Quick-fire round: stop doing, double down, the AI myth, the most dangerous scaling habit, and the growth lever that never stops working Guest Contact Travis McGregor, CEO, SLC Digital (Sovereign Line Communication) Website: slc.digital Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/travis-mcgregor-33a41219/ Gary Contact LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/growthfocus Website: growthfocus.io ───────────────────────────── Book your Revenue Leak Audit In 30 minutes, you'll find out exactly where the holes are in your revenue, and how AI should — and shouldn't — be helping you fix them. growthfocus.io/revenue_leak_audit ───────────────────────────── Chapters (00:00:00) - Growth Focus: AI and the Startup Process(00:01:16) - Meet the CEO of SLC Digital(00:01:48) - How to Build a Business With AI(00:03:42) - WSJDLive: The Uses of AI in Business(00:05:30) - What Do Tech Founders Need to Do To Win?(00:07:04) - How to Get Your Message Heard in a noisy Marketplace(00:12:24) - Creating your own stories in tech(00:13:35) - What Businesses Need to Do to Survive in the Next 5 Years(00:15:07) - Tim Ferriss on Personal Growth(00:17:16) - Have You Reached a Point in Your Business That Nearly Broke You(00:19:22) - What Would You Have Done Different in Your First 12 Months?(00:20:26) - Have We Lost the Passion of VCs?(00:24:51) - 5 Tips for Growing Your Business(00:27:43) - What is the one thing founders should stop doing(00:30:08) - The One Growth Lever We Still Believe in(00:30:44) - Travis McDaniel on Tech Entrepreneurs(00:31:27) - Growth Focus: Revenue Leak Audit

Most tech founders are still running lead generation the hard way — cold outreach, event booths they hope will pay off, a sales team grinding through the funnel. Drew Allgeier has a different problem. He has more leads than his salespeople can handle, an 80% close rate, and Fortune 1000 clients including ConAgra, Tyson, and Cornerstone Building brands on his books. None of that came from cold calls. Drew is the founder of Starken Tech, a nationwide network infrastructure and LAN deployment company that's spent a decade building what most founders talk about but few actually build: an indirect channel that generates warm introductions daily. Not occasionally. Not when a contact remembers you. Every single day. What makes this different from the referral networks most tech companies try to build is the structure behind it. Master agents, strategic partners, and deeply embedded relationships across the technology supply chain — each one incentivised to pass deals because they get paid when Drew closes. The result is that by the time Drew gets on a call with a prospect, the trust is already there. The partner has done the work. The close is almost a formality. We also get into the 80% close rate in real terms — how active business intelligence from partners tells Drew where he sits against competitors, what the prospect is thinking, and when to adjust pricing before the proposal even lands. That's not luck. That's a system. And then there's the growth ceiling most fast-moving companies don't see coming — the plateau that hits when you can sell but can't deliver. Drew's take on why back-office investment has to run ahead of sales growth is one of the most practical things on this episode. If you're in MSP, VAR, or B2B tech and you're still building revenue the slow way, this conversation is worth your time. 00:00 — Introduction: Drew Allgeier and Starken Tech 00:53 — The 10,000 foot view: 10 years, Fortune 1000 clients, 80% close rate 01:27 — The genesis of the indirect channel: Jay Sherman Henderson and the authorised agent model 03:21 — What most founders miss when trying to build partnerships 05:15 — How master agents like Telarus and Sandler Partners work — and what it actually costs to get in 07:59 — Why events aren't lead generation — they're relationship maintenance 10:15 — The psychology of the booth cheque and why Drew's approach is different 11:10 — The 80% close rate: how partner intelligence shapes every deal in real time 13:51 — Qualifying everything: how to tell a real partner opportunity from a quote shop exercise 16:07 — Strategic partnerships vs. master agents: the Vtech example 18:28 — The continuum of technology services and how to identify partner adjacency 19:14 — Decentralised data centres, product development, and building end-to-end solutions 21:53 — M&A context: what founders get wrong when building a company to sell 22:44 — Organic growth vs. new logo acquisition — and why most people get the balance wrong 24:00 — Increasing consumption: the Seth Godin Purple Cow concept applied to client growth 25:05 — The three levers of revenue growth 26:04 — The plateau problem: what happens when sales outrun delivery capacity 27:47 — Why back-office investment has to run ahead of sales headcount 28:33 — Final question: what should a tech founder do differently this quarter 29:00 — Seek to be of service: the relationship-first philosophy behind consistent revenue 30:55 — "If they're not talking to you, they're leaving you" 31:31 — Close: people remember how you made them feel Drew Allgeier | Founder, Starken Tech starkentech.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drew-allgeier-3910384/ Gary Lafferty | Host, Growth Focus Podcast | Founder, Growth Focus Partnerships - growthfocus.io   linkedin.com/in/growthfocus  =============================== Book your Revenue Leak Audit In 30 minutes, you will find out exactly where the holes are in yo... Chapters (00:00:00) - How to Build a Lead-based Networking Company(00:01:50) - How to Build a Fortune 1000 Company Through the Indirect Sales Channel(00:05:31) - What's the Core Principle of the Indirect Channel?(00:07:56) - What Does It Cost to Develop an Indirect Channel?(00:09:51) - Sponsoring Events: The Cost of Doing Business(00:13:27) - How to Identify the Right Partner to Close a Deal?(00:16:41) - The Search for the Right Partner(00:18:01) - Strategic Partners: The Key to Growth(00:24:04) - What's The Mistake Companies Make When They're Planning to Sell(00:25:55) - The 3 Ways to Increase Client Spending(00:27:23) - How to grow your business without plateauing(00:30:07) - The New Way of Talking to Your Clients(00:34:27) - Growth Focus: Episode 38(00:34:57) - How To Find The Revenue Leak Audit

Most founders think growth stalls because they're not selling enough. Sean Miles built RGX — a two-sided marketplace for enterprise asset disposition — landed AT&T as a client, tripled revenue, then deliberately hit the brakes. Not because things weren't working. Because they were working too well, and the infrastructure underneath couldn't hold the weight. That decision — to flatline intentionally, rebuild the platform, and absorb the short-term cost — is one the vast majority of founders in any sector won't make. They'll keep pushing deals through a system that can't deliver them, and wonder why churn follows growth like a shadow. Sean has 25 years in sales and built RGX from a cold idea into an enterprise platform handling multi-site asset disposition for some of the largest organisations in North America. He coined the term "enterprise asset disposition" deliberately, because language shapes what buyers think is possible. He evolved from pure SaaS self-serve to hybrid managed services to a sell-through white-label model — not because it was the plan, but because the market kept telling him what it wanted and he listened. In this conversation: what it actually takes to land and keep enterprise clients, how to pilot without giving everything away, when to say no (and why most founders are still struggling with it), and the $15M deal that didn't land on schedule and what it taught him about time-boxing every pipeline opportunity — even the ones that look like slam dunks. If you're running a tech business and your pipeline feels healthy on paper but fragile underneath, this is the conversation to have. 00:00 — Introduction: Sean Miles and RGX 02:25 — Why language matters: coining "enterprise asset disposition" 04:44 — Landing AT&T as a first major client through pilots and relationships 07:32 — The water balloon pipeline: managing growth pressure without breaking delivery 09:37 — Land and expand vs. freemium: what actually works with enterprise clients 11:38 — How the marketplace evolved: from self-serve SaaS to managed services 13:38 — Pivoting from sell-to to sell-through: the white-label opportunity 15:43 — Tripling revenue then flatlineing deliberately: the rebuild decision 18:30 — The MVP reality: selling before you've built it and the delivery gap 20:06 — When sales outpaces delivery: what that costs you 22:12 — Learning to say no: the discipline most founders are still lacking 25:00 — The $15M deal that didn't land: time-boxing your pipeline 27:29 — What most founders in the e-waste space are getting wrong 29:07 — Where to find Sean Miles Sean Miles Co-Founder and CEO, Recycle GX (RGX) Website: recycledgx.com Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean-miles-5717952/ Gary Lafferty LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/growthfocus/ Website: growthfocus.io =============================== Book your Revenue Leak Audit In 30 minutes, you will find out exactly where the holes are in your revenue and how to fix them. growthfocus.io/revenue_leak_audit SEO KEYWORDS Primary: enterprise asset disposition, B2B SaaS growth, e-waste marketplace, founder-led sales Secondary: enterprise sales cycles, pilot strategy, marketplace business model, revenue scaling, sell-through model HASHTAGS #B2BTech #FounderGrowth #EnterpriseSales #GrowthFocus #CircularEconomy Chapters (00:00:00) - How to Grow Your MSP Business With Growth Focus(00:01:33) - Recycle GX: The Enterprise Asset Disposal Marketplace(00:06:16) - In the Elevator: How to Build a New Enterprise(00:08:45) - How To Manage Your PIPES(00:11:18) - Pilot Programs: How Do They Work?(00:13:44) - WSJD Live: The Future of Enterprise Asset Disposition(00:18:16) - Deliberate Breaks in the Sales Cycle(00:23:28) - Apple's Lessons Learned From The Palm(00:24:22) - How to Say No to Business(00:24:55) - Say No to Businesses(00:27:05) - What was the biggest deal You Lost?(00:28:37) - Gavin Walsh on Looking Outside Your Industry(00:29:01) - Growth Focused: What's Working In Your Business? With(00:32:25) - A Revenue Leak Audit(00:34:10) - How to Find a Revenue Leak

There is a gap that sits quietly inside most tech products. It is not a feature gap or a funding gap. It is the gap between the user you pitched and the user who actually shows up. Courtney Poulos has been a real estate broker for over two decades. She runs Acme Real Estate in Los Angeles and Acme Florida in Orlando. She has also become one of the most honest and direct testers of PropTech products in her industry - reviewing platforms publicly, giving founders unfiltered feedback, and watching what breaks when theory meets the actual working day of a professional in the field. This conversation is not about real estate. It is about what happens when a founder builds a product for the person they imagined rather than the person who will use it. It is about the IKEA effect, the way proximity to a problem warps how clearly you can see the solution you have built. And it is about what AI actually costs a business when the quality control sits with the human operator, not the platform. If you run a tech business and you have ever wondered why churn comes earlier than the numbers predicted, or why "user friendly" is the most expensive phrase in your product documentation, this episode gives you the answer from someone sitting on the other side of the sale. 00:00 — Introduction: Who Courtney Poulos is and why her perspective matters to tech founders 01:35 — What 21 years across a disrupted industry actually teaches you about business survival 03:55 — The competitive reality: being out-teched while you are still building 05:50 — Why most PropTech is not informed by the people it is supposed to serve 07:20 — The Real Estate AI Coach channel and what honest product testing reveals 08:42 — How rare it is for a founder to actually respond to criticism and what that tells you 10:07 — Why Perplexity is replacing specialist platforms and what that means for your moat 10:31 — The holistic approach: sitting with the user for a full working day before you write a line of code 11:31 — The pitch deck user versus the actual user — a live example from the dot-com era 13:36 — The VC-driven AI bolt-on problem: what it costs when AI is added without accountability 15:02 — AI hallucination in regulated industries and the liability gap nobody has solved 16:30 — Is AI actually saving time or creating a new layer of quality control? 17:48 — Why some buyers respond better to an AI voice than a human one — and what that means 18:36 — Where AI integration genuinely works and where it is still being oversold 20:28 — The fireplace analogy: why AI is making human expertise more valuable, not less 21:47 — The case for keeping the human in the loop — and what happens when you do not 25:28 — What the best PropTech products are getting right that most are still missing 27:00 — AI and fiduciary responsibility: who is accountable when the consumer loses? 29:14 — The one thing tech founders consistently get wrong about their end user 30:37 — Why human customer service is still the most underrated retention tool in tech Guest contact Courtney Poulos — Broker Owner, Acme Real Estate Instagram: instagram.com/theclosedcloses YouTube: youtube.com/@AcmeRealEstate Real Estate AI Coach Channel: youtube.com/@AcmeRealEstate Host contact Gary Lafferty — Growth Focus Partnerships LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/garylafferty Website: growthfocus.io =============================== Book your Revenue Leak Audit In 30 minutes, you will find out exactly where the holes are in your revenue and how to fix them. www.growthfocus.io/revenue_leak_audit Hashtags: #GrowthFocus #TechFounders #PropTech #AIinBusiness #ProductMarketFit Chapters (00:00:00) - Courtney Polis on Tech Recruitment & Growth(00:01:16) - Real Estate Broker Courtney Polis on CNBC(00:02:19) - How to Survive a Career With a Unique Brand(00:04:22) - Real Estate Business Owners vs Tech Founders(00:12:11) - Pitch Deck and Proptech: Overvaluing What They(00:14:39) - Real Estate: The Impact of AI on Business(00:19:31) - The Future of Telemarketing Is AI, Not Humans(00:21:42) - Will Real Estate Jobs Go From Computers to Humans?(00:26:16) - Does AI Make Real Estate Jobs Harder?(00:29:57) - Real Estate AI Coach: The Human Customer Service(00:34:07) - What Every Tech Platform Needs to Know