This week, we are excited to highlight one of our industry veteran coaches, Amy Luby. If you have been in the channel, you have likely met Amy in one of her various leadership roles and we are honored to have her as part of the ConnectStrat team! Following is a bit of our recent Q&A with Amy:
Tell me a little bit about your personal life. Where did you grow up? School? Family?
I grew up with my mom and dad in Omaha, Nebraska. My dad was a doctor, my mother a stay at home mom, and I was an only child. I was into art, animals and playing outside.
How about your early business life? Where did you get started?
I started in tech working a side gig while a stay-at-home mom. I worked for a small marketing firm managing & building database applications to track and manage marketing activities. I had an opportunity to take that side gig full time after my husband was laid off from his sales job. I worked to get several tech certifications and spent those first few years installing and managing networks for small businesses. The business grew from there and we focused on selling specific services for a set monthly fee.
How did your passion for coaching, teaching, and facilitating start?
In the early 2000’s I had 2 vendors that we partnered with who paid me to travel the US hosting workshops on “How to be an MSP.” Those workshops gave me exposure to 100’s of break/fix companies looking to transition into Managed services which then also presented a new business opportunity. My NOC & Help Desk were already running 24x7, and through the workshops I now had an opportunity to support those business owners who attended my workshops. These small break/fix companies were looking to scale their businesses and by leveraging our NOC & Help Desk teams to service their clients, they were able to scale their businesses profitably. We pioneered the Master MSP business model and ended up partnering with 1500 service providers over the next 3 years.
Tell me more about your experience in that regard. Where have you focused your work since you began coaching?
In 2010 I sold the Master MSP business and went to work for several different companies from one of the big 3 tech distributors to small, Silicon Valley SaaS start-ups. In each organization my role was to build programs to help service providers build bigger, more profitable businesses. I have been able to gain a broad level of experience from multi-billion-dollar fortune 100 businesses to scrappy, creative and innovative startups learning a lot along the way.
As much as I’ve learned, when I reflect on my career my most fond memories are when I am helping a business owner solve a problem. Every business owner has problems at one time or another. In fact, one of the most important jobs a CEO has is to identify problems and remove them. When a business owner comes back to me some time later to tell me that the one small change we made in their business had such an impact on their business that it changed the trajectory of their lives in a positive way, that’s my definition of consulting success.
Finally, bringing it back to the personal side, what are you passionate about outside of work? What do you do to balance?
I do things that take me apart from my day to day life. I love to fish from my kayak. Some days I just sit. Other days, I fish for hours. Either way, I don’t have my phone or anything else to distract my mind which allows me to think deeply & reflect. I love the sun on my face and the quiet.
I am still into creating art. My office is also a small studio where I have space to create, and I especially love my potter’s wheel. I enjoy writing as well, and I am writing a book which I’ve committed to completing in 2022.