Texas-Based Clear Guidance Partners Set For Growth In 2022

‘We’re at a point to where we are picking what opportunities we pursue, which is a good position to be in,’ says Dustin Bolander, CIO, partner and founder of Clear Guidance Partners.

Dustin Bolander, partner and founder of Clear Guidance Partners, said his company is looking at about 30 percent revenue growth in 2022.

“We’re starting to be a lot more selective with who we work with,” Bolander, who works as CIO at Houston-based Clear Guidance, told CRN.

Clear Guidance Partners, based in Austin, Texas, provides technology strategy and support to SMB and midmarket companies. The company serves about 40 customers, primarily in the legal sector. About 90 percent of its clients are based in Texas, with the rest in other states such as California, Florida and New York, Bolander said. Bolander said he expects 2022 sales to hit $3.5 million.

Threat research firm Huntress is one of the biggest vendors that Clear Guidance Partners works with, according to Bolander.

On the MSP side, Bolander said it has a plan to incorporate what he calls a “high security baseline.”

“We’re including all the multifactor software backups of on premise and the cloud, firewalls, the whole nine yards, that we say gets you pretty close to the full stack of software that you need to be fully compliant,” he said.

Bolander spoke with CRN this week about the company’s 2022 plans. Here’s some of what he had to say:

What is your outlook for 2022 in terms of growth?

Very high. We’re at a point to where we are picking what opportunities we pursue, which is a good position to be in. We’ve had some companies call in about potential additional industries for us to get into and we‘re kind of sitting here thinking ‘I don’t know, if we need to pursue that, let‘s just focus on our core:

competencies.’ The law firm industry is absolutely continuing to grow. There’s one other MSP in the whole country that we know of that’s doing what we’re doing, combining the IP and operation side of it. There’s a really high demand for that. And then again, with financial services, the SEC just announced that there‘s some new big compliance, it’s not 100 percent done, but it already passed the first round of voting, that‘s going to impose a lot more cybersecurity rules. We’re in a really good place for the industries that we support. Let’s call it half luck, half being in the right place at the right time. But we also had purposely zeroed in on these industries because of the high needs that they have in both security and strategically.

What would you say is the fastest growing part of your business, if you had to pick one thing?

It would definitely be security. We have the baseline package with MSPs. Security is a journey, not a destination. Our clients are constantly asking us, ‘We got this done, what should we be doing next?’ It’s really clicked for a lot of companies that they’re actively wanting to push forward on the security front. And looking for us for guidance.

Are you making investments to support that growth?

Absolutely. We’ve been trying to get people to focus more on security not by building out a SOC or anything like that, but more the management of the tools, the risk, the vendors. So as we’ve hired, shifted around that, and then we’re also starting to swap out tools to be more focused. We’ve incorporated a couple tools into our base stack at no additional cost to customers to improve our security stance. That’s probably our primary area of investment at this point.