Bruce McCully’s 4-Step Process That Resulted In Over $1 Million In New Sales During His First 10 Months Of Partnering With Robin Robins And Big Red Media

In 2019, Bruce McCully, founder of Galactic Advisors, had an epiphany. 

Attending one of Robin Robins’ events, Bruce heard a speaker who got him thinking that what he really wanted to do in life was secure 1 million endpoint users.  

At the time, he owned Dynamic Edge, an MSP serving health care providers. “We’d gotten to 33,000 endpoint users,” Bruce said, “but I had a personal desire to help secure and protect a million people. And I just couldn’t figure out how to do that inside my MSP.”  

The desire to help people was ingrained in Bruce from his upbringing on a farm in rural Michigan. His parents modeled this by taking in foster kids. They exemplified generosity by giving their neighbor and his family a place to live for six months when his house burned down. “My parents always had an open door,” Bruce said, “and I learned the joy of helping people.” 

At an early age, he also became enamored with computers. When he was 8 years old, his mom, an elementary school teacher, brought home an Apple IIe computer. One day, his parents were out baling hay when a curious Bruce wanted to know how the computer worked. “My favorite thing to do was to type in things on that computer and get it to do stuff,” Bruce recalled. “My parents left me home alone, and I took the entire computer apart. It was in pieces all over the dining room when my mom came home. She was so angry!” Bruce lived to tell the tale after he successfully reassembled the computer and got it running again.  

Those early experiences influenced Bruce his entire career. “I tried to figure out how I could help people,” Bruce said, “and when I founded Dynamic Edge, that became one of our core values: ‘We enjoy helping people.’” It’s so important to Bruce that he only hires people who “get joy from helping people.” His employees have been known to do things such as clean every car in the parking lot after a big snowstorm.  

Bruce got into cyber security in 2007 when he started working with data protection in small health care organizations. That quickly turned into recovering hospitals from ransomware. “I started learning how vulnerable people were,” Bruce said. “People couldn’t get their medication or the proper tests because it was locked up with a computer system, and everything was down because of ransomware. In our first hospital, we cleaned over 700 infected computers. People were crying, and I couldn’t help but think, ‘How can we prevent this from ever happening again?’” Today, Bruce is a highly sought-after speaker on cyber security and the author of “Plagued,” a book about cyber security for hospitals. Many of the tools he uses today came from the forensics analysis that his team did in hospitals on how ransomware was moving in those facilities. 

A Successful Launch 

When Bruce was considering a move, he was also witnessing the MSP community get hit hard with ransomware. “I was interested in how I could protect my MSP community in a way that was more than just telling them what to do,” Bruce said.   

Bruce sold Dynamic Edge and founded Galactic Advisors in 2020. Today, he provides third-party auditing for MSPs and their clients. “By engaging with us for a third-party audit, MSPs can use this to build trust and both help their MSP business and their clients be more aware of security and what steps are needed to protect themselves.” 

From Zero To 7 Figures In Under A Year 

In the 10 months since he opened his doors, Bruce has already protected 137,158 users, a 357% increase over what he protected in the 20 years he was an MSP. Here are four ways he created fast growth. 

1. Create A Competitive Advantage. “I got some really good advice from Robin Robins,” Bruce said. “She told me, ‘If you’re building a company that’s going to help people secure themselves, make sure that whatever products you build create some sort of competitive advantage for the people buying it.’” Bruce figured out how to make it so his partners have a competitive advantage and make more sales. He helps MSPs make decisions about what should be in their security stacks by giving a vendor-agnostic, completely data-driven answer. “We look at how long it takes for vendors to respond, what they respond with, what they’re looking at, and how their stuff actually works,” Bruce said.  

2. Get In Front Of Buyers. Bruce launched his company at Robin Robins Bootcamp on May 4, 2020. Partnering with Robin, he secured a spot to speak. “Robin’s Bootcamp was one of my favorite events to attend as an MSP,” Bruce said. “So, I knew I wanted to invest in that from the start.” 

“It was incredible how interested that Bootcamp audience was in investing in the right tools and in creating a competitive advantage,” Bruce said. “They were there to buy tools. It was extremely clear that people were interested in improving their security posture.” 

3. Come Up With An Irresistible Offer. Bruce enlisted Robin’s team to help him with his offer. Despite Robin pivoting to virtual due to the COVID-19 shutdown, Bruce signed up 24% of the people in his breakout session!  “It was definitely a big, important piece to our launch process,” Bruce said. “Robin and her team didn’t miss a beat with Bootcamp. To go from an in-person event to completely virtual that quick — they totally pulled it off.”  

4. Repeat What Works. Being 100% self-funded, Bruce hadn’t planned on doing additional events in 2020 after Robin’s Bootcamp, but he changed his mind. “Bootcamp was so successful, I thought it doesn’t make sense for us to not continue this investment,” Bruce explained. Bruce partnered in a variety of events with Robin, including the June 2020 Cyber Livecast, her five-city Road Show tour, and sponsored parties for Producer’s Club. “At least 10% of the room is signing up at every event,” Bruce said. “During the Road Show, we did five cities, and each time got no less than 25 hot first-time appointments. We are seeing a 54% close rate on all of our sales leads coming from Robin’s events.”  

During the first eight months of working with Robin’s team, Bruce has generated over $1 million in recurring revenue sales that can be directly traced back to his partnership with her. 

“Our goal is to help the MSP community secure and protect themselves from hackers and advanced, persistent threats,” Bruce said, “and to do that, we need everyone’s help. Whether you’re an MSP with a few clients or a channel vendor with a couple of hundred MSPs, we’re interested in collaborating and helping to improve the security posture of our entire community.”

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