Meet The Team

Rex Frank

Rex Frank is President of Sea-Level Operations, LLC. He founded the company in 2010 with the core purpose to “Coach IT Managed Service Providers on achieving operational excellence.”

Rex has over 23 years industry experience in IT Service Delivery, specializing in delivering Managed Services.

He spent 19 years teamed up with Oli Thordarson as the Chief Technology Officer at Alvaka Networks in Irvine, CA. He joined Alvaka in 1988 as a Computer Technician and quickly began supporting early Novell networks. He became the Service Manager in 1992 and began developing a network monitoring service in 1994. Alvaka won the Solutions Integrator Magazine award for The Best Remote Management Solution in 1999.

In March of 2004, Rex was an inaugural member of the True Profits! Service Executive peer group where he learned to be accountable for service financial metrics, documenting and implementing Managed Services best practices policy and procedure and how to focus his time working “ON” Service Delivery rather than “IN” Service Delivery.

In 2008, Rex joined Northwest Computer Support in Seattle, WA as the Vice President of Managed Services. In just eighteen short months, he was able to join the Million Dollar Club (monthly recurring managed services billing of $83,333). He accomplished this by developing the team of NOC/Help Desk engineers, working with the large team of Senior Engineers on how think differently to support MSP clients and most importantly, coaching the sales staff how to understand and sell Managed Services.

In Late 2009, Rex joined JWCS as the Director of operations. The company grew from 10 to 25 employees in just 12 months, while dramatically improving profitability as operational efficiency improved.

Rex founded Sea-Level Operations, LLC in December 2010 and began coaching MSPs, primarily the service managers, on a myriad of MSP Operations tasks.

Ken Sponsler

Ken Sponsler is a Partner and Senior Executive Coach of Sea-Level Operations, LLC. He joined the company in 2011, mentoring and training Service Executives in the IT industry. Ken has over 20 years industry experience in Managed Services and over 45 years in Operations Management.

Ken has extensive knowledge of computers and their applications, dating back to 1970; utilizing and working on a mainframe while in High School. A proud veteran, he has held many roles within the US government, utilizing his skillset to be extremely active in the management and leadership of teams to accomplish specific goals; dating back to the mid-1970s.

In 1998, Ken joined Connecting Point of Greeley as a computer engineer and was promoted to the Vice President of Services Position in 2000. Ken successfully assisted in the transition of Connecting Point from a product oriented computer reseller to a managed service provider of over 100 networks.

Ken is certifiably crazy about cars, bicycling, and photography and is active in the community. Ken resides in Colorado, has been married to his amazing wife, Meggan, since 2006 and has one son, Josh, who lives in Bozeman, Montana.

Chris Butler

Chris Butler is a Partner and Senior Executive Coach of Sea-Level Operations, LLC. He joined the company in 2014.

Chris has over 25 years in Operations Management and over 17 years directly with management of IT Service Delivery.

In the late 1980’s, Chris started working with computers. He studied Computer Science, and majored in Business Management. By 1992, Chris was consulting small businesses and assisting with office IT needs – including building business computers, implementing local area networks, and helping with long term technology planning.

After maximizing help-desk efficiencies as a Network Manager for a large enterprise, Chris found new challenges in MSP Service Management. During this time, he was an intricate part of the executive management team in the startup of two different MSP practices. Chris has firsthand knowledge in what it takes for excellent client relationships, service delivery, employee motivation, and sustaining healthy growth organically and through acquisition.

After 11 years of direct day to day management and continuous growth of MSP revenue with best in class margins, Chris started to look for another challenge. He found Sea-Level Operations as a great opportunity to share his experiences and provide guidance to other MSP’s helping them achieve the same successes.

Chris is passionate about sharing ideas and helping others through tough challenges, and is a proud member of the Sea-Level team. When Chris is not coaching MSP’s he stays busy having fun with his family.

Robin Frank

Biography coming soon

James Davis

James Davis is the Managing Director Sea-Level Operations Pty LTD in APAC. Originally from Canberra, he recently moved as far south as he could to Hobart. He joined the Sea-Level family in 2020 to grow the Sea-Level Operations offering locally in the APAC Region.

James has over 14 years’ experience in owning and managing small businesses, with 7 of those being in the MSP industry. He has been tightly involved in the HTG/ConnectWise Evolve Peer Group as a member and as the founding APAC Service Exec Group Facilitator.

He has a wide and varied career working in retail as an inventory manager, in sales roles, owning and operating gardening/trade services businesses, managing an MSP and a over the last 3 years as business coach and consultant to MSPs and other service-based businesses.

James’s passion is small business and seeing small business owners succeed by creating freedom from the chaos that owners deal with every day. Nothing is more rewarding than helping a small business owner remove the shackles of working for the business to having the business work for them.

He values personal development, always trying to learn something new to build his body of knowledge to grow as a person and leader. James tries to share his knowledge and experience as much as possible, believing in the go-giver mentality.

When he isn’t working, he spends his time banging up his body by playing rugby. James is also involved with his club as a committee member, utilizing his experience to benefit the rugby community. Outside that he spends time with his partner enjoying good food, playing video games and solving puzzles to unwind.

Jay Hokke

Jay Hokke is a Senior Executive Coach of Sea-Level Operations, LLC. He joined the company in 2016. He is responsible for executing client engagements as well as continued development of process and procedure for those clients.
Jay has over 17 years industry experience in IT, including 13 years directly working with multiple Managed Service Providers.

He was involved with a rapidly growing MSP, Xylotek Solutions, Inc. of Cambridge, Ontario, Canada. Jay was instrumental in building and transitioning their services to a Managed Services model. He hired and mentored talent for key areas within this fast-growing organization, which tripled in size within a 36-month period.

He helped foster a strong company culture at Xylotek Solutions, Inc. as well as ground-up operational process and procedures. His team realized exceptional utilization, breaking annual records of growth in terms of client base, profitability and team size over the course of his tenure. During his time there, he oversaw an 18-member team including Technical Engineers, Project Managers, Team Leads and Professional Services teams.

Scott Hamlin

Scott Hamlin is a Senior Executive Coach of Sea-Level Operations, LLC. He joined the company in 2017. Scott provides coaching in the areas of financial management, owner level coaching, and operational process.

Scott has over 30 years of experience working in the IT industry.

In 1998, Scott founded his own IT Outsourcing company, PacketDrivers. He became one of Sea-Level’s first clients which built mutual respect between Scott,

Rex and Sea-Level. Scott continued managing the business’s operations until its acquisition by Aldridge in February of 2016. At the time of the acquisition Scott transitioned to the role of Vice President of the Seattle Branch to provide stability during the transition. In March of 2017 Scott completed his strategic exit.

During his career, Scott’s focus has been on building a strong organization through employee development, building trust with clients and financial performance. Scott’s passion at PacketDrivers was coaching, developing and growing the team. Several members of the Management team began their career’s at PacketDrivers.

Scott ran a disciplined financial organization focusing on building both organization and personal financial security. He is excited to bring his passion to Sea-Level and to work alongside the rest of the team.

Scott graduated from Seattle University in 1996 with a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration and Finance. He lives with his wife of 27 years in Seattle, Washington and has a 24-year-old son who studies photojournalism. In his free time, you can find him on the golf course, hiking or working to check off items from his bucket list.

David Schafran

David Schafran is a Senior Executive Coach of Sea-Level Operations, LLC. He joined the company in 2016, coaching and mentoring clients on operational excellence, strategic planning, financial management and leadership.

David has over 30 years of experience in the IT services industry working with services companies and vendors as a consultant, executive coach, and speaker.

In 2007, David founded Transformation Strategies to take his extensive knowledge of the technology service space and use it to enable service providers to create scalable businesses and succeed with recurring revenue models such as managed services, cloud services or Software as a Service (SaaS).

In 1999, David began focusing on managed IT services and recurring revenue models at the beginning of their introduction to IT integrators while Senior Vice President, Technology at Devise Associates, Inc. He became the firm’s Senior Vice President of Managed Services, designing, and implementing Devise’s managed services practice from initial concept to revenue generating service, operating 24×7, serving a wide variety of clients.

In 2003, as Vice President, Managed Services at Exenet LLC, David overhauled all aspects of the firm’s managed services offering, including service definitions, pricing, positioning, staffing, operations, and infrastructure. As a result, client satisfaction skyrocketed, the business became scalable and revenue increased over 300%.

From 2008 to 2011, David was named to ‘The MSPmentor 250’, an annual listing of the top 250 executives and leaders shaping the managed services ecosystem, until 2012 when he was named to MSPmentor’s inaugural “Locked in the NOC” Hall of Fame list. David’s approach to managed services has influenced best practices in many aspects of the industry.

From 2010 to 2013, David was also a Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Cogent Growth Partners. At Cogent, David led operational evaluation of acquisition candidates and clients; pre-and post-transaction integration; and client management.

Recently from 2015 to 2016, David took on a longer-term engagement for one his consulting clients as the President of Aldridge Health. In his first four months, David assumed responsibility of a previous acquisition, Clyde Bennet & Associates, vetted and completed a second acquisition, the divestiture of Pact-One’s Texas, Oregon, and Washington markets, including over 600 dental IT clients, and successfully combined the two. As the President, David guided the strategic direction and operational delivery ensuring outstanding service that built lasting client relationships. In June of 2016, Aldridge Health was awarded the number seventeen spot on ChannelE2E’s Top 100 Vertical Market MSPs List for 2016.