The BMK Vision Podcast

Ask an MSP owner what a good per user rate is and watch what happens. Most of them will not say a number. They will contextualize, credential themselves, and explain the whole methodology before the answer ever arrives. Andrea Lipton has spent thirty years studying why we do that, and she has a framework for stopping. Andrea Lipton is Director of Delivery for Training as a Service at ISG (Information Services Group), with a career that runs from JP Morgan to Harvard Business Publishing to NIIT. In this conversation we explore why explaining before answering costs you trust, how to build rapport without running an interrogation, and AEIOU, the self-coaching framework she built and now teaches to her teams. ---------- What We Cover in This Episode - Trace the habit of explaining first back to school, credentialing, and the fear of being challenged - Flip the funnel with the pyramid principle: deliver the conclusion, then the analysis - Run AEIOU in a live conversation: answer, explain, inquire, onboard, update - Separate relational selling from diagnostic selling, and why both get called salesy - Replace "why" questions with what and how questions that do not trigger defensiveness - Ask someone to put the real question on loudspeaker when the stated question is not the real one - Diagnose why early career technicians lose client trust without knowing it - Plus: a bonus segment on poker, game theory, and mapping a buyer's utility curve ---------- Guest Links Andrea Lipton on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aflipton/ ---------- Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ---------- SEO Keywords - MSP sales calls - MSP sales training - Managed service providers - Client communication - Rapport building - AEIOU framework - Pyramid principle - Direct communication - Soft skills for technicians - MSP business growth - BMK Vision Podcast - Game theory in sales ---------- Credits Host: Josh Peterson Guest: Andrea Lipton Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #119 - MSP Sales Calls: Stop Over-Explaining, Answer the Question

Most MSP strategic plans do not fail because the goal was wrong. They fail because the plan carried more initiatives than the company could ever execute. In this BMK Vision Roundtable, Josh Peterson and Gary Boyle take apart a real example: a client plan Josh built that Gary told him was overbuilt. The goal was sound. The volume underneath it was not. What follows is a working definition of an initiative, the reason most owners misfile efficiency work under a revenue goal, and a hard number for how much a six month plan can actually hold. Gary Boyle is a Partner for Strategy & Business Development at Bering McKinley and co-hosts the roundtable with Josh. ---------- What We Cover in This Episode - Why excitement in a planning session reliably produces an unexecutable plan - Where the attainable half of SMART quietly breaks - Defining an initiative as a driver, and what sits below it - Why "two new clients a month" is a trap without the math behind it - The reason efficiency drives gross profit and not revenue - The full set of revenue levers available to an MSP - How many initiatives fit in a six month window, and how they split by quarter - The rule that disqualifies anything already working from your plan ---------- Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ---------- SEO Keywords - MSP strategic planning - Strategic initiatives - MSP revenue drivers - Goal setting for MSPs - SMART goals - Six month planning - Managed service providers - BMK Vision Podcast ---------- Credits Host: Josh Peterson Co-Host: Gary Boyle Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #118 - MSP Strategic Plans: How Many Initiatives Is Too Many

Most MSP owners think the risk in a contract is the part the client might sue over. The real damage is quieter: the work you never priced, the increase you never took, and the invoice you let age past ninety days. Tom Fafinski has spent 35 years as an attorney to managed service providers, and Alexander Caplan runs an international MSP out of London. Josh Peterson puts the two of them in a room and works through the agreement from first handshake to final collection. Tom Fafinski is co-founder of Virtus Law in Minnesota, a firm he describes as a general counsel's office for MSPs, covering master services agreements, mergers, governance, and estate planning for owners. Alexander Caplan is founder of Synergy Associates, a London-headquartered MSP running for more than twenty years with teams in Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and the UAE. Between them they see the same contract from both sides of the table. ---------- What We Cover in This Episode - Diagnose why a small managed services agreement now gets routed to a client's legal team - Replace the twenty eight page MSA with a staged four page document plus addenda - Avoid the unlimited liability hiding in a client's standard NDA - Document what is excluded, not just what is included, and log every declined service - Build an inflation clause that earns more than inflation - Calculate what a two percent cost increase really does to a twenty percent margin - Set a termination fee a judge will actually enforce - Escalate AR before ninety days instead of after - Convert a payment plan into a promissory note secured by a confession of judgment - Withdraw services without it reading as an act of aggression ---------- Guest Links Tom Fafinski LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasfafinski/ Virtus Law: https://www.virtuslaw.com/ Alexander Caplan LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandercaplan/ Synergy Associates: https://synergy.tech/ ---------- Subscribe and Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ---------- SEO Keywords - MSP contracts - Managed services agreement - MSP collections - Accounts receivable - Termination fee - Contract negotiation - Agreement gross profit - Out of scope billing - Managed service providers - BMK Vision Podcast ---------- Credits Host: Josh Peterson Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #117 - MSP Contracts and Collections: When a Client Stops Paying

Most MSP company goals say the same thing. Hit a valuation, sell the business. It is an honest goal and a reasonable one, and it satisfies every conventional rule about how a goal is supposed to be written. It is also a goal nobody on your leadership team will ever get out of bed for. Josh Peterson and Gary Boyle, Partner for Strategy & Business Development at Bering McKinley, work through what a company goal is actually for, why MSPs stall at two million, why identical tactics build very different businesses depending on what they are pointed at, and where the reason for a goal belongs once you finally write the goal down. ---------- What We Cover in This Episode - Diagnose why MSPs plateau at two million and what changes above it - Separate pushing tactics into a business from pulling them through a vision - Interrogate "provide for my family" into a real number and a real life - Ask the two questions that precede every long term goal - Explain why a valuation target mobilizes nobody but the owner - Show what an owner independence goal does to a leadership team - Decide whether the number or the purpose belongs in the headline - Name the peer group as the real ceiling on what an owner believes is possible ---------- Host Links Josh Peterson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshdpeterson/ Gary Boyle LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyboyle/ Company Website: https://beringmckinley.com ---------- Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ---------- SEO Keywords - MSP company goals - MSP goal setting - MSP strategic planning - MSP two million ceiling - MSP exit planning - leadership team alignment - owner dependency - long term business goals - Vision Operating System - MSP business strategy ---------- Credits Host: Josh Peterson Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #116 - MSP Company Goals: Why Nobody Rallies Behind a Valuation | BMK VISION ROUNDTABLE

Robert Weber has run Weber TC in the Kansas City market since 2003 and has never once used a termed contract. His reasoning is not about trust. A term contract does not hold a client, it schedules the exact moment that client is required to decide whether to leave. Month to month clients could go any day, so they never do. Robert Weber is the CEO of Weber TC, and in this conversation we explore contract structure, the blend of hourly and managed services inside one client base, and what recurring revenue is actually earning. Josh Peterson brings the margin side that most owners have never measured. ---------- What We Cover in This Episode - Why managed services fails on execution rather than design - The agreement gross profit report most MSPs cannot produce on request - Pricing to the client instead of forcing everyone onto one model - Requiring baseline security on every account, including hourly clients - How a termed contract manufactures the churn it is meant to prevent - When 35 to 50 percent gross profit still loses to your own hourly rate - Trading known margin today for a bet on the exit multiple later - Why arguing about inclusions means the model has already lost - Hiring for communication and teaching the tech afterward ---------- Guest Links Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-weber-7b48b216/ Company Website: https://www.webertc.com/ ---------- Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ---------- SEO Keywords - MSP term contracts - MSP client retention - Month to month MSP agreement - Agreement gross profit - Hourly vs managed services - MSP pricing model - MSP profitability - Managed service providers - BMK Vision Podcast ---------- Credits Host: Josh Peterson Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #115 - MSP Term Contracts: Why Month to Month Keeps Clients

Most MSP owners can name the exact week they first borrowed money to make payroll. Josh Peterson and Gary Boyle treat that moment as a diagnosis rather than a cash flow event, and work backwards from it through gross profit, spending discipline, and the reason a new revenue line almost never rescues a business that is already unprofitable. Gary Boyle is Partner for Strategy and Business Development at Bering McKinley, and this roundtable is drawn from a client conversation that Josh recognized as his own situation two years earlier. We get into what to check first, what to stop spending, and what a healthy MSP net profit actually looks like. ---------- What We Cover in This Episode - Read borrowing to make payroll as a structural signal rather than a timing gap - Ask the two questions that decide whether the draw is defensible - Apply the one month payoff test before the balance becomes permanent - Separate revenue from gross profit and stop reporting the vanity number - Recognize why new service lines inherit the margin you already have - Understand why MSPs carry debt worse than businesses with lumpy, high margin deals - Distinguish a personal guarantee from the corporate debt large companies raise - Run a line by line spend review going back a full twelve months - Price a write off honestly, at your tax bracket rather than at 100 percent - Sequence the fix: below the line spend first, then the two gross profit levers ---------- Host Links Josh Peterson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshdpeterson/ Gary Boyle LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyboyle/ ---------- Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ---------- SEO Keywords - MSP payroll debt - Borrowing to make payroll - MSP net profit - MSP gross profit - MSP profitability - MSP spend review - MSP line of credit - Personal guarantee risk - Managed service provider finance - MSP owner compensation ---------- Credits Host: Josh Peterson Co-Host: Gary Boyle Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #114 - MSP Payroll Debt - You Can't Grow Out of a Profit Problem

The connector economy is under real pressure for the first time, and the numbers behind that are uncomfortable. Josh Peterson has spent about $12,000 over twenty years on one piece of middleware. Rob Miller rebuilt a $20,000 website in an afternoon for roughly $2,000 in tokens. This conversation sits in the gap between those two facts. Rob Miller is the founder of VIP IT, Inc., a Los Angeles managed IT services and cybersecurity provider, and one of the most AI-forward operators in the MSP channel. We explore what MSP owners should actually build, what they should keep buying, and where the production line has to be drawn. ---------- What We Cover in This Episode - Separate the subscription price from the cost of not owning the roadmap - Distinguish automation from AI, and build accordingly - Budget for consumption pricing instead of counting seats - Draw an explicit production line before the first build, not after the first incident - Assess vendor risk through the lens of security debt they cannot fund - Treat every third-party document as untrusted input - Stand up an AI practice with one hire and a client time study - Price against hours returned rather than technology delivered - Map AI adoption appetite vertical by vertical across your base - Weight API quality over a vendor's in-product AI agent ---------- Guest Links Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robmiller73/ Company Website: https://vipitinc.com ---------- Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ---------- SEO Keywords - MSP middleware - Build vs buy for MSPs - MSP integrations - AI for MSPs - MSP automation - AI practice for MSPs - ConnectWise API - MSP vendor risk - AI security for MSPs - Managed service provider strategy ---------- Credits Host: Josh Peterson Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #113 - The End of MSP Middleware: Build It Yourself?  

Every MSP owner who hires a salesperson eventually hears some version of the same complaint: I hired you to sell, so let me sell. This roundtable puts that argument under real pressure. Josh Peterson and Gary Boyle open an unprompted email from a sales manager titled "Your Activity Tracking Obsession Is Killing My Soul," and use it to separate two questions owners usually collapse into one. Is activity tracking worth doing, and has anyone actually built a quota worth tracking against? Josh makes the case that data is what makes coaching and firing decisions possible at all. Gary agrees, then argues that most owners bolt tracking onto a quota they never designed, and that paying a setter only for appointments quietly buys the wrong behavior. Josh gives ground on a position he has held for years. ---------- What We Cover in This Episode - Diagnose why a quota you've never enforced isn't a standard - Separate leading indicators from the trailing revenue number - Rebuild the SDR day into hours that map to the quota - Set outreach and appointment targets for the first 60 days - Decide how long a new sales hire actually gets - Structure appointment pay so ICP qualification matters - Spot the incentive that quietly buys the wrong behavior - Connect a rep's daily work to the company outcome Plus: why this conversation needed a companion episode on the full sales-rep role. ---------- Host & Co-Host Links Josh Peterson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshdpeterson/ Gary Boyle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyboyle/ Company: https://beringmckinley.com ---------- Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ---------- SEO Keywords - MSP sales activity tracking - MSP sales time tracking - SDR compensation - Sales quota design - Leading indicators - ICP qualification - MSP sales management - BMK Vision Podcast ---------- Credits Host: Josh Peterson Co-Host: Gary Boyle Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #112 - MSP Sales Activity Tracking - You Can't Coach a Quota

"We run EOS" usually turns out to mean "we bought a tool." Josh Peterson sits down with Michael Caito — the CEO who built Restaurants on the Run into a $40M pre-internet DoorDash, sold it to Grubhub, then bought MAP, the consulting firm that had coached his own company for fifteen years. Michael Caito is the Owner & CEO of MAP (Management Action Programs), and in this conversation we explore EOS vs MAP, why self-implemented operating systems stall into to-do lists, and why every MSP business should be built to sell — even if the owner never intends to sell it. ---------- 🎙 What We Cover in This Episode - Compare EOS and MAP where it actually matters: facilitation, cadence, and manager training - Diagnose the "to-do list in a tool" failure mode of self-run systems - Understand why a CEO can't facilitate and participate in the same meeting - Swap quarterly planning theater for monthly compounding accountability - Reclaim management: one person accountable beats seven player-coaches - Build enterprise value early, so selling is a choice — not a scramble - Escape the peer-group trap that caps you at the average of the room - Qualify like MAP does: hungry and humble, or no deal ---------- 👤 Guest Links Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcaitomap/ Company Website: https://mapconsulting.com ---------- 🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ---------- 🔎 SEO Keywords - MAP vs EOS - Business operating system - EOS alternative - CEO coaching - Business accountability - Enterprise value - Build a business you can sell - Managed service providers - BMK Vision Podcast ---------- 📝 Credits Host: Josh Peterson Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #111 - EOS vs MAP: Why Self-Implementing Stalls Your Business | FROM THE TRENCHES

Your ticket surveys come back 95% satisfied - and Josh Peterson doesn't care. In this BMK Vision Roundtable, Josh and Gary Boyle bring in customer discovery expert Bob London to settle what actually measures client loyalty, and the answer isn't a score. It's a conversation most MSPs never have. Bob London is the creator of Radically Authentic Discovery (RAD) and a former CMO with 3,000+ customer discovery conversations behind him, and in this conversation we explore why surveys mislead, how "seller's itch" derails discovery calls, and how curiosity becomes a competitive edge. Along the way: the board-meeting question, the mute-button discipline, and where a listening tour fits for MSPs still shaping their go-to-market. ---------- What We Cover in This Episode - Why 95% post-ticket satisfaction scores tell you nothing about loyalty - Where NPS misleads - and the qualifier question that exposes it - The board-meeting question that opens executive conversations - Seller's itch: the moment sellers pounce and deals stall - Dwell before you sell - and the mute-button discipline - Grading discovery calls with AI against the RAD standard - Why "I'm not a sales guy" might be your biggest advantage - Listening tours: hearing gaps before they become churn ---------- Guest Links Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boblondon Guest Website: https://boblondon.co ---------- Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ---------- SEO Keywords - Customer discovery - MSP sales - Discovery call questions - Net Promoter Score - Client listening - Sales coaching - Radically Authentic Discovery - MSP client retention - BMK Vision Podcast ---------- Credits Host: Josh Peterson Co-Host: Gary Boyle Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #110 - Customer Discovery for MSPs: Dwell Before You Sell | BMK VISION ROUNDTABLE

Owner-led sales: a necessary stage, a deliberate strategy, or a cop-out? Josh Peterson and Trevor Dierdorff, Founder & CEO of Amnet, take the question head-on and land somewhere more useful than either extreme. Trevor Dierdorff is the Founder & CEO of Amnet, a Colorado MSP he's run for 26+ years, and in this conversation we explore why sales and sales management are different professions, why his salesperson hires failed, and how an intentional culture became his real competitive edge. ---------------------------------------- What We Cover in This Episode - Why owner-led sales frustrates Josh - and where it's genuinely justified - Sales vs. sales management: two skills owners keep conflating - The owner's halo and why teaching a rep your pitch backfires - Managing activities, not people, to hold sellers accountable - Culture by design: "Good morning, superheroes" - Hiring for fit: don't put chocolate chips in the beef stew - Marketing air cover: a prospect-driven podcast and an executive forum ---------------------------------------- Guest Links Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevordierdorff/ Company Website: https://amnet.net ---------------------------------------- Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ---------------------------------------- SEO Keywords: Owner-led sales, MSP sales management, Hiring a sales manager, MSP company culture, Hiring for culture fit, Managed service providers, MSP marketing, BMK Vision Podcast ---------------------------------------- Credits Host: Josh Peterson Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #109 - Owner-Led Sales: Why MSP Owners Can't Let Go | FROM THE TRENCHES

A listener sent The BMK Vision Podcast a one-line challenge: "Your 33% service salaries to service revenue benchmark just means fire people. Admit it." In this roundtable, Josh Peterson and Gary Boyle take the accusation head-on — and concede more ground than you might expect. Gary Boyle is Partner for Strategy & Business Development at Bering McKinley, and in this conversation, we explore what the 33% payroll benchmark actually measures, when the math really does point at headcount, and the decision owners must make before either answer is right. ⸻ 🎙 What We Cover in This Episode   - Decoding the 33% service salaries to service revenue benchmark - Restructuring your chart of accounts so service costs sit above gross profit - Confronting the PTO math that breaks 75% utilization targets - Weighing firing against raising rates when cash runway is short - Exposing the phantom pipeline that keeps MSPs overstaffed - Diagnosing the rare ratio that's too low — and why it's still a risk - Reframing every MSP as a supply and demand equation ⸻ 👤 Guest Links Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyboyle/ Company Website: https://beringmckinley.com ⸻ 🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ⸻ 🔎 SEO Keywords   - MSP payroll benchmark - Service salaries to service revenue - MSP utilization - MSP profitability - MSP KPIs - Managed service providers - MSP financial management - BMK Vision Podcast ⸻ 📝 Credits Host: Josh Peterson Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #108 - Does the 33% Payroll Benchmark Just Mean Fire People? | BMK VISION ROUNDTABLE

After 20 years inside ConnectWise and AutoTask, two MSP operators decided they were done waiting for the unified PSA the industry kept promising — so they built one. In this From The Trenches episode of The BMK Vision Podcast, Josh Peterson talks with the founders of IgnitHQ about what it actually takes to start a PSA from scratch in 2026. Guest Introduction Yaron Baitch is the founder and CEO of IgnitHQ and the CIO of Digital Practice Inc., a dental-focused MSP with offices in Hawaii and Connecticut. Tom Goembel leads operations for IgnitHQ and brings front-line MSP execution experience to the platform's day-to-day workflow design. IgnitHQ launched publicly in May 2026 with 80+ native modules sharing a single data model and AI built in at the database layer. 🎙 What We Cover in This Episode - Why a "unified" platform on a disparate database is not actually unified - Single source of truth — and what it actually unlocks across PSA / RMM / billing / documentation - AI at the database layer vs. AI bolted on top after the fact - Familiarity bias — the hardest moat in the PSA category - The skeptics corner — answering every objection in public - Month-to-month pricing and the dual-write bridge — reducing buyer anxiety on the cutover - The Arizona Iced Tea pricing thesis — being profitable enough at the low price - Marketplace and partner-driven go-to-market over blast email - Preparing the customer-success team before the scaling problem arrives ⸻ 👤 Guest & Host Links Yaron Baitch (LinkedIn): [NEEDS VERIFICATION] Tom Goembel (LinkedIn): [NEEDS VERIFICATION] IgnitHQ: https://www.ignithq.com/ Josh Peterson (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshdpeterson/ ⸻ 🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ⸻ 🔎 SEO Keywords unified MSP platform, IgnitHQ, PSA alternative, ConnectWise alternative, AutoTask alternative, AI native PSA, single data model MSP, BMK Vision Podcast, From The Trenches MSP, Bering McKinley 📝 Credits Host: Josh Peterson Guests: Yaron Baitch (Founder & CEO, IgnitHQ); Tom Goembel (Operations, IgnitHQ) Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #107 - The MSP Owners Who Got Tired of Waiting and Built Their Own PSA

"I've been giving onboarding away for years and I close a lot of deals. My competitors who charge for it lose deals. So why would I fix something that doesn't seem broken? What am I actually missing?" That's the listener question. In this Roundtable episode of The BMK Vision Podcast, Josh Peterson and Gary Boyle answer it directly — and the answer is not what the asker wants to hear. Giving away onboarding feels like a sales strategy. It is actually a positioning decision. Gary's first move is to stop the framing: how do you know that was why you won? How do you know the competitors who charge are actually losing those deals? The asker has built a sales story on data he does not have. And underneath the sales story is a structural problem he has not named — when an owner gives onboarding away, the operating reality is almost always that there is no real onboarding to give. The free price tag is the financial signature of the work that never got built. The episode walks through the new-MSP client who could not sell until he had a real offer to put in front of prospects, the doctor-patient frame for what buyers are actually paying for, why one month of recurring revenue is a number not attached to reality, and the close that names the whole frame: the thing that works in the short term is not the thing that works in the long term. 🎙 What We Cover in This Episode - Sales strategy or positioning decision — which choice are you actually making? - "How do you know that's why you won?" — the question the asker has not answered - Free onboarding usually means there is no onboarding - The new-MSP client who could not sell until he had a real offer - Assessment, onboarding, support — one system, not three - Scoping onboarding like a project, not pricing it like a discount - The doctor-patient frame for what the buyer is actually paying for - The trap — if you give it away, you better actually do the work - Selling the assessment first, not the MSP proposal - Why the thing that works in the short term is not the thing that works in the long term ⸻ 👤 Host Links Josh Peterson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshdpeterson/ Gary Boyle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyboyle/ ⸻ 🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ⸻ 🔎 SEO Keywords MSP onboarding, MSP free onboarding, MSP onboarding fee, MSP assessment, MSP discovery, MSP sales process, MSP positioning, MSP pricing strategy, MSP roundtable, BMK Vision Podcast, Bering McKinley 📝 Credits Host: Josh Peterson Co-Host: Gary Boyle Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #106 - "Why Would I Fix Something That Isn't Broken?"

"Do either of you actually believe an owner can fully get out of the day-to-day of an MSP and not have it fall apart? I've tried twice. Both times something blew up and I had to come back in." That's the question a listener sent. In this Roundtable episode of The BMK Vision Podcast, Josh Peterson and Gary Boyle answer it directly — yes, it's possible — and then walk through why the asker's two attempts didn't hold. Getting out of the day-to-day isn't a decision. It's a construction. The owner who never asked "how do I get big enough that I don't have to do everything," and instead just asked "I want to get big, full stop" — that owner gets there. The owner who treats stepping back as a single decision typically watches the structure underneath them collapse at the first stress test. Gary's line lands the whole question: yeah, your business is doing fine. Let me know what happens after your first hire. The first hire is when the game changes — and the structure most owners need to build before that hire never gets built. They train the task without transferring the accountability for the outcome. Six months later something blows up, the owner re-engages, the cycle repeats. 🎙 What We Cover in This Episode - The listener question — two failed attempts, and whether it's even possible - Why getting out of the day-to-day is a construction, not a decision - "Let me know what happens after your first hire" — the line that changes the game - Why most owners arrive at this through pain, not planning - The peer-group catalyst — EO, BMK Community, exposure to what's possible - The gestalt method — experience share over prescriptive advice - The phone-off-for-four-hours diagnostic - Training the task vs. transferring the outcome - Loom-recorded SOPs and the addictive feeling of giving work away - Builders vs. billers — making every seat's role legible - Close — it feels less like stepping back, more like building something strong enough to hold ⸻ 👤 Host Links Josh Peterson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshdpeterson/ Gary Boyle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyboyle/ ⸻ 🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ⸻ 🔎 SEO Keywords MSP owner out of day to day, MSP owner step back, MSP first hire, MSP SOP, MSP delegation, MSP strategic plan, MSP peer group, MSP roundtable, BMK Vision Podcast, Bering McKinley 📝 Credits Host: Josh Peterson Co-Host: Gary Boyle Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #105 - "I've Tried Twice. Both Times Something Blew Up."

"I didn't get into this company to pay myself less." That was the disdainful read from one partner in a three-person MSP partnership when the advice came up to cut owner W-2 and tie additional comp to profit. In this Roundtable episode of The BMK Vision Podcast, Josh Peterson and Gary Boyle take the position apart and walk through why the cut is not punitive — it's diagnostic. The W-2 floor that covers the owner's household nut is the same floor that mutes every signal the P&L is sending. Year after year of substandard profit becomes background noise because the W-2 number keeps moving. At some point the owner forgets how the business actually makes money. The cut is the only thing that makes the next unbilled hour, the next un-captured product cost, the next half-point of service salary feel real again. Gary's reframe lands harder underneath the math: are we actually owners — or employees who happen to own the company? 🎙 What We Cover in This Episode - Why owner-comp conversations always get uncomfortable — and what the discomfort is actually about - The W-2 floor that covers the nut and mutes the P&L - Josh's BMK confession — "you've forgotten how your business makes money" - The write-off mindset and the 35% reality most owners get wrong - The 33% service-salaries lever — bombastic for years, ignored because of the $12K paycheck - "I could go make 300K" — the math owners assert but never run - The recapture-the-signal exercise — the cut paycheck as diagnostic - Are we actually owners — or employees who happen to own the company? - The sub-$3M owner-as-billable-resource trap - "You didn't build this company to pay yourself — you built it to actually build something" ⸻ 👤 Host Links Josh Peterson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshdpeterson/ Gary Boyle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyboyle/ ⸻ 🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ⸻ 🔎 SEO Keywords MSP owner compensation, MSP owner pay, MSP W-2 vs distribution, MSP partnership comp, MSP P&L discipline, MSP under 3 million, MSP roundtable, BMK Vision Podcast, Bering McKinley 📝 Credits Host: Josh Peterson Co-Host: Gary Boyle Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #104 - "I Didn't Get Into This Company to Pay Myself Less."

"I fired a client doing 15 grand a month. I've replaced maybe half of it so far, and I'm kind of pissed about it." That question came out of a peer-group room, and it is the most common form of buyer's remorse in MSP ownership. In this Roundtable episode of The BMK Vision Podcast, Josh and Gary walk through why the regret is almost always a measurement problem, not a decision problem. The short answer: you were not supposed to replace the revenue. You were supposed to replace the gross profit. At BMK's 65 percent AGP target, a fired $15K client running at 35 percent AGP becomes two $4K clients — same gross profit, less servicing load, less capacity drag. Underneath the math, the deeper truths land: top-line revenue lies, net profit lies, AGP per account is the tell. And the toxic client tax — the cultural drag on the team — almost never shows up in the financial review that justified the fire in the first place. 🎙 What We Cover in This Episode - Why the regret is a math problem, not a decision problem - Replace the gross profit, not the revenue - The BMK 65 percent AGP target — and what it means for replacement math - The two-lever rule — bad client and bad profit both have to be true - The $5M ego anchor — and why owners protect the round number - Gary's $17M client and the "would you start this business today?" reframe - The "fire some technicians" gift — the recalibration owners usually avoid - Everyone gets paid except the owner — the quietly damaging norm - The toxic client tax — culture drag never shows up on the P&L - Hard call vs bad call — the two feel identical for the first six months ⸻ 👤 Host Links Josh Peterson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshdpeterson/ Gary Boyle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyboyle/ ⸻ 🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ⸻ 🔎 SEO Keywords MSP fire bad client, MSP gross profit, AGP, MSP owner pay, MSP P&L review, MSP toxic client, MSP under 5 million, MSP roundtable, BMK Vision Podcast, Bering McKinley 📝 Credits Host: Josh Peterson Co-Host: Gary Boyle Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #103 - "I Fired a $15K Client and I'm Pissed I Did It."

"Hire green and train them up is a cop out." A frenemy of the show sent that line in an email, and Josh and Gary spend this Roundtable episode taking the position apart. The senior MSP sales hire most owners are chasing is a unicorn — and even if one exists, the affordability math rarely supports it. In this conversation, Josh and Gary walk through the harder truth underneath the senior-hire fantasy: below five million in revenue, you don't know what good looks like, and you will be tricked. Salary surfers, the pedestal-prevents-accountability dynamic, and the ninety-thousand-dollar mistake that drags on for six months — all of it is real, all of it is common, and all of it points toward the same answer. 🎙 What We Cover in This Episode - Why the senior MSP sales unicorn is mostly fantasy - The affordability matrix — percent of revenue, not revenue they generate - You don't know what good looks like — and how that trips every interview - Salary surfers and the pedestal-prevents-accountability dynamic - Why the owner is the de facto closer and what to actually delegate - Opener vs closer — the role split that fits a 1–5 person sales team - Where to find green talent — military, athletes, waiters, daily life - Always be interviewing — the fortitude move that keeps you out of hostage situations ⸻ 👤 Host Links Josh Peterson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshdpeterson/ Gary Boyle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyboyle/ ⸻ 🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ⸻ 🔎 SEO Keywords MSP sales hire, MSP appointment setter, hire green sales, owner-led sales, MSP sales process, opener vs closer, MSP under 5 million, MSP roundtable, BMK Vision Podcast, Bering McKinley 📝 Credits Host: Josh Peterson Co-Host: Gary Boyle Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #102 - "Why Would I Hire Someone Who Doesn't Know What They're Doing?"

AI is collapsing the cost of building software — and quietly multiplying the cost of building it badly. Bryan Reynolds, founder and CEO of Baytech Consulting, has been architecting enterprise-grade software for 30 years. In this conversation with guest host Gary Boyle, he separates the AI hype from what actually holds up in production. Guest Introduction Bryan Reynolds runs Baytech Consulting, the team building the Vision app for Bering McKinley. With 17 years running Baytech, a perfect 5-star Clutch rating, and a Microsoft / AWS partnership stack, Bryan sits at the exact intersection where vibe coding meets the demands of paying enterprise customers — which is why his answers cut through the noise. 🎙 What We Cover in This Episode - What "vibe coding" actually means when you have to ship to a real customer - The senior-vs-junior AI productivity gap (81% vs. 15-25%) and why mentors matter more than ever - The 6-month wall — when AI shortcuts make a codebase unmaintainable - Why documentation-first architecture and unit testing became load-bearing again - Build vs. buy vs. wrap — the SMB AI decision framework - How MSPs should position AI services without competing on license resale - Why "common sense" doesn't disappear, even when the model gets smarter ⸻ 👤 Guest & Host Links Bryan Reynolds (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryanreynolds/ Baytech Consulting: https://www.baytechconsulting.com/ Gary Boyle (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyboyle/ ⸻ 🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ⸻ 🔎 SEO Keywords vibe coding, AI software development, MSP AI strategy, AI for SMBs, build vs buy AI, AI governance, custom software AI, BMK Vision Podcast, From The Trenches MSP, Baytech Consulting 📝 Credits Guest Host: Gary Boyle (this episode only) Guest: Bryan Reynolds — Founder & CEO, Baytech Consulting Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #101 - Development in the Age of AI - When Vibe Coding Hits Production

A Chicago peer team. A confident new owner. One quiet sentence: "I'm comfortable. Why would I blow that up?" The room went silent. Josh and Gary use that moment as the opening for an honest conversation about the most expensive sentence in MSP ownership. In this Roundtable, Josh Peterson and Gary Boyle break down the natural plateau-to-valley cycle every MSP hits, why inflation and attrition erode comfort even when you do nothing wrong, and how to know whether your real goal is growth - or protected stability. 🎙 What We Cover in This Episode - The peer-team moment behind the episode - Why "I'm good" is usually fear in disguise - The plateau-to-valley cycle no MSP escapes - How inflation and attrition silently erode margin - Smart goals: if the number doesn't make you emotional, it's too small - The "I never want to sell" reflex - and the optionality move underneath it ⸻ 👤 Host Links Josh Peterson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshdpeterson/ Gary Boyle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyboyle/ ⸻ 🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ⸻ 🔎 SEO Keywords MSP growth, MSP $2M plateau, MSP profitability, MSP comfort zone, managed services growth, MSP roundtable, BMK Vision Podcast, MSP optionality, MSP exit strategy, MSP peer team 📝 Credits Host: Josh Peterson Co-Host: Gary Boyle Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #100 - I'm Comfortable. Why Would I Blow That Up?

The most expensive problem in your MSP isn't who you hired — it's who you keep hoping they'll become. In this BMK Vision Roundtable, Josh Peterson and Gary Boyle unpack the mirror problem: the way MSP owners project their own work ethic onto staff and call it a standard, then spend years frustrated that no one else operates at their level. Josh and Gary go deep on time entry as the canary in your accountability culture, why micromanagement and management get confused, why every people problem traces back to the job description, and why "leadership debt" — the gap between who you wanted and who you got — is the most expensive line item nobody puts on a P&L. ⸻ 🎙 What We Cover in This Episode The mirror problem — why owners project themselves onto their teams Micromanagement vs. management as a leadership choice Time entry and what it reveals about your culture The reasonable-man fallacy in MSP sales The role table and continuous feedback as core operating tools Leadership debt and the reset conversation every owner needs ⸻ 👤 Host Links Josh Peterson (Host): https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshdpeterson/ Gary Boyle (Co-Host): https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyboyle/ ⸻ 🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ⸻ 🔎 SEO Keywords MSP leadership, MSP hiring, MSP accountability, MSP job descriptions, time entry, micromanagement vs management, MSP team management, BMK Vision Podcast, leadership debt, employee expectations ⸻ 📝 Credits Host: Josh Peterson Co-Host: Gary Boyle Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #99 — Stop Hoping They Become You

Time entry is the most boring topic in the MSP industry — and almost everything that matters financially, operationally, and legally traces back to it. In this BMK Vision Roundtable, Josh Peterson and Gary Boyle argue that the MSP story doesn't start with vision, sales, or strategy. It starts with time entry. And if you don't have honest, daily time entry, every downstream conversation — agreement gross profit, pricing, capacity, exit value, audit defense — is operating on fiction. Guest Introduction This is a roundtable episode featuring Josh Peterson (CEO, Bering McKinley) and Gary Boyle (Partner, Bering McKinley). Together they unpack the operating model that actually fixes time entry — not tools, not threats, not AI agents — and why the answer has been the same since 2003: inspect at the same rate you expect. ⸻ 🎙 What We Cover in This Episode Why time entry is a leadership problem and not a technician problem The BMK standard — 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, enter as you go Agreement gross profit and the math that makes time entry non-negotiable Decision fatigue — the real reason techs skip time entry The 10/12/2 inspection cadence and how to run it without a dispatcher Why ConnectWise, Halo, MSPbots, and AI agents do not solve the problem How AI changes the surface of time entry without changing the operating model Pricing, capacity, and exit value — the downstream cost of bad time data The audit, litigation, and cyber liability case for clean time records How long it actually takes to turn time entry into a habit (and the trap of stopping early) ⸻ 🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ⸻ 📝 Credits Host: Josh Peterson Co-Host: Gary Boyle Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #98 — Time Entry Is the Whole MSP Story - Inspect at the Rate You Expect

MSP commoditization is accelerating — and the old playbook of per-user pricing and monthly packages isn't going to protect your business forever. In this BMK Vision Roundtable, Josh Peterson and Gary Boyle explore the two biggest opportunities MSPs are overlooking right now: advisory services that make you a strategic partner and software development that creates enterprise value beyond MRR. Guest Introduction This is a roundtable episode featuring Josh Peterson (CEO, Bering McKinley) and Gary Boyle (Partner, Bering McKinley). Together they unpack how AI is compressing development costs, why the highest MSP exits have always been software plays, and how to start having value-driven conversations with your clients. ⸻ 🎙 What We Cover in This Episode Why MSP commoditization is accelerating and what's driving it The AI and software development opportunity for MSPs Advisory services — how to actually get the seat at the executive table Project work vs. MRR — rethinking how MSPs generate revenue Enterprise value through product ownership, not just service delivery The productization path — from bespoke automations to SaaS How to have the right client conversation (business first, technology second) ⸻ 🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ⸻ 📝 Credits Host: Josh Peterson Co-Host: Gary Boyle Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #97 — MSPs Are Being Commoditized — Here's the Way Out

Most MSP owners are asking whether they should sell, scale, or pivot — but they can't answer a more fundamental question: do you actually understand your own business at a financial and operational level? In this BMK Vision Roundtable, Josh Peterson and Gary Boyle break down the four strategic paths every MSP owner faces and expose the uncomfortable truth that none of those paths work without data clarity and a real plan. Guest Introduction This is a roundtable episode featuring BMK co-hosts Josh Peterson and Gary Boyle. Together they bring decades of experience consulting MSP owners on operational maturity, financial structure, and strategic growth. ⸻ 🎙 What We Cover in This Episode Why the sell, scale, or pivot decision isn't actually the first decision How real are AI and private equity threats to MSPs? The technology adoption S-curve and why AI disruption is slower than you think Why most MSP owners can't answer basic financial questions about their own business Service GP, EHR, utilization, and the metrics that separate guessing from scaling Vision and execution as the non-negotiable foundation for any strategic move Why simple plans focused on what you already do outperform ambitious new initiatives The execution gap between MSPs that exit at 8-12X and everyone else ⸻ 👤 Host Links Josh Peterson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshdpeterson/ Gary Boyle LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyboyle/ ⸻ 🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ⸻ 🔎 SEO Keywords MSP sell or scale MSP exit strategy MSP financial metrics managed service provider growth MSP EBITDA AI for MSPs MSP strategic planning MSP operational discipline BMK Vision Podcast know your numbers MSP ⸻ 📝 Credits Host: Josh Peterson Co-Host: Gary Boyle Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #96 — Sell Scale or Pivot - Know Your Numbers First

Every MSP owner has argued about ticket statuses. But that argument is almost always a symptom of something bigger — a service operating model that isn't clearly defined. In this BMK Vision Roundtable, Josh Peterson and Gary Boyle unpack a real listener question about status hygiene and use it to expose the deeper issues: unclear ownership, the absence of a dispatcher, and the financial blind spots that come from poor ticket discipline. 🎙 What We Cover in This Episode Why status debates signal a broken service model The dispatcher role — even at four techs, you're overdue Ownership clarity: no ticket should exist without a name on it Completed vs. closed and why invoicing takes five days Agreement gross profit (AGP) and its link to time entry Balancing operational and financial excellence as you scale ⸻ 👤 Host Links Josh Peterson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshdpeterson/ Gary Boyle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyboyle/ ⸻ 🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ⸻ 📝 Credits Host: Josh Peterson Co-Host: Gary Boyle Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #95 — Ticket Statuses Won't Fix a Broken Service Model

Most MSPs say they're different. Bryon Beilman actually is. As CEO of iuvo Technologies, he made a deliberate decision to hire consultants — not technicians — building a team that averages 24 years of experience and delivers strategic business value that goes far beyond uptime and ticket resolution. In this conversation, Josh Peterson and Bryon explore why traditional managed services are becoming table stakes, how narrowing your ideal client profile can unlock growth, and why AI-powered projects are the next frontier for MSPs willing to have real business conversations with their clients. What We Cover in This Episode Hiring consultants over technicians and why it changes client relationships Evolving from per-device pricing to a retainer-based consulting model Narrowing the ICP and firing customers who don't fit AI as a go-to-market strategy: from two-week quotes to one-day turnaround Project-based revenue as a growth lever for recurring and non-recurring clients The vendor conference trap and death by a thousand $300/month tools Building an empowering culture where consultants make autonomous decisions Why asking "why" five levels deep is the most valuable skill in IT Guest Links Bryon Beilman LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bbeilman iuvo Technologies: https://www.iuvotech.com Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form Credits Host: Josh Peterson Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #94 - Consultants Over Technicians - The Premier MSP (Bryon Beilman)

Most MSP owners describe their typical client and call it an ideal client profile. That gap is costing them real revenue. In this roundtable, Josh Peterson and Gary Boyle break down the difference between an ICP and a TCP — and introduce pull-through rate as the metric that reveals whether your clients can actually drive growth. Josh Peterson is the CEO of Bering McKinley. Gary Boyle is a Partner for Strategy & Business Development at Bering McKinley. Together, they explore why MSPs get stuck at $2 million with the wrong client mix, how to staff and plan for project work, and what the AI wave means for defining your ideal client going forward. ⸻ 🎙 What We Cover in This Episode Ideal Client Profile vs. Typical Client Profile Pull-through rate: what to target and how to measure it Why a $2M MSP with 17 clients is an anomaly worth studying Account management as a growth thesis test Data Rich, Information Poor (DRIP) — mining what you already have Staffing for project work most MSPs ignore The AI and automation opportunity reshaping MSP positioning ⸻ 👤 Host Links Josh Peterson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshdpeterson Gary Boyle LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyboyle/ ⸻ 🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ⸻ 📝 Credits Host: Josh Peterson Co-Host: Gary Boyle Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #93 - Your Ideal Client Profile Is a Revenue Strategy - Not a Description | BMK Vision Roundtable

Most MSPs invest in security tools — firewalls, endpoint protection, SIEM — but few have a reliable way to know whether those tools are actually configured correctly. Misconfigurations in the very products designed to protect your clients are one of the leading attack vectors in cybersecurity today. Adam Bennett has spent 25+ years on the front lines and built a company to solve exactly this problem. Adam Bennett is the Co-Founder & CEO of SureStack and CEO of Crosshair Cyber. In this conversation, we explore why security stack misconfigurations create silent compounding risk, how cyber insurance gives many SMBs a false sense of protection, and why the MSP that takes ownership of security posture earns the trust — and contracts — of serious clients. ⸻ 🎙 What We Cover in This Episode Why the tools meant to protect you may be your biggest vulnerability Real-world incidents caused by two unchecked configuration boxes The growing role of regulation and compliance in driving security adoption How SureStack automates continuous security stack validation using AI Why MSPs should enforce minimum security stacks for every client Using security posture assessments as a pre-sales differentiator Adam's journey from government cybersecurity to building a product company Cyber insurance gaps: what happens when the application doesn't match reality ⸻ 👤 Guest Links Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-bennett-0290881bb/ Company Website: https://surestack.ai ⸻ 🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ⸻ 📝 Credits Host: Josh Peterson Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #92 — Your Security Stack Is Lying to You | From the Trenches (Adam Bennett)

Most MSP owners who struggle with sales performance aren't dealing with a bad salesperson - they're dealing with no system. In this roundtable, Josh Peterson and Gary Boyle respond to a real listener email from an MSP owner who has tolerated five years of inconsistent results from a salesperson he's afraid to hold accountable. The diagnosis: this isn't a sales problem. It's a leadership problem wearing a personnel costume. ⸻ 🎙 What We Cover in This Episode Why no quota means no sales role - not a flexible arrangement How the owner's vision must precede the salesperson's target The two-quota framework: activity quota and results quota What base pay is actually purchasing - and why most MSP owners have it backwards How to interview a salesperson to reveal whether they're metrics-driven before you hire them What to do when the horse is already out of the barn Why accountability is clarity, not punishment - and how to introduce structure without blowing up the relationship ⸻ 👤 Your Hosts Josh Peterson - CEO, Bering McKinley Gary Boyle - Partner for Strategy & Business Development, Bering McKinley ⸻ 🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ⸻ 🔎 SEO Keywords MSP sales management MSP salesperson performance MSP sales system Managed service provider sales quota MSP accountability BMK Vision Podcast ⸻ 📝 Credits Host: Josh Peterson Co-Host: Gary Boyle Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #91 - No Quota, No Sales Role: The MSP Sales System Reset

Most MSPs have invested heavily in perimeter security. But there is a financial risk hiding in plain sight: the unstructured data organizations create every day — spreadsheets, Word docs, old deal rooms, payroll files — that has never been inventoried, valued, or protected at the file level. That gap is what Return on Mitigation was built to close. James Oliverio is the Founder & CEO of ideaBOX and a Senior Advisor at Actifile. With 30+ years spanning Wall Street CIO roles, MSP ownership, and a Harvard certification in cybersecurity risk management, James developed the ROM framework to help C-suites quantify data exposure in dollars and connect that number to the controls that actually reduce it. ⸻ 🎙 What We Cover in This Episode - What Return on Mitigation (ROM) is and how the financial calculation works - Why traditional DLP tools detect risk but stop short of real remediation - How AI tools like ChatGPT are creating a new hidden liability for organizations - Why 44% of 2024 cyber insurance claims were denied — and how to protect clients from that trap - How to run a data risk assessment on your own MSP before offering it to clients - The FAIR Institute methodology and financial modeling for breach exposure - File-level encryption as the true remediation strategy — not just detection - How to position the ROM conversation at the C-suite level ⸻ 👤 Guest Links Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-oliverio-7659ab/ Company Website: https://ideabox.com ⸻ 🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ⸻ 🔎 SEO Keywords - MSP cybersecurity - Return on Mitigation - Data risk management - Cybersecurity insurance - Unstructured data security - DSPM - AI data exposure - MSP security strategy - Data breach liability - ideaBOX ⸻ 📝 Credits Host: Josh Peterson Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #90 — Data Risk Is the MSP's Invisible Liability

Most MSP owners say they're great at sales — but when you examine what's actually happening, many are confusing orders with selling. In this BMK Vision Roundtable, Josh Peterson and Gary Boyle unpack why sending quotes too early kills deals, why the order of selling matters more than any closing technique, and how a simple three-pillar framework can transform close rates for MSPs at any size. Co-Host Introduction Gary Boyle is a Partner for Strategy & Business Development at Bering McKinley. A former MSP owner and entrepreneur, Gary brings firsthand sales experience to a conversation about what it really takes to earn the right to deliver a proposal. ⸻ 🎙 What We Cover in This Episode - Why most MSP "sales" are really just order-taking - The order of selling: yourself first, company second, services last - What happens when you send a quote before earning the right - How to establish budget without asking "what's your budget?" - The three-pillar sales framework: FTA → Discovery → Close - Why the proposal should memorialize what's already been agreed - The trial close and solution delivery meeting - Close ratio and its dangerous relationship to pricing - Hidden revenue opportunities inside your existing client base ⸻ 👤 Host & Co-Host Links Josh Peterson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshdpeterson/ Gary Boyle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyboyle/ ⸻ 🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ⸻ 🎙️ Co-Host Bio — Gary Boyle Gary Boyle is a Partner for Strategy & Business Development at Bering McKinley. With a background spanning network engineering, entrepreneurship, and strategic consulting, Gary brings real-world operator experience to helping MSP owners build stronger, more profitable businesses. 🎙️ Host Bio — Josh Peterson Josh Peterson is the CEO of Bering McKinley and host of The BMK Vision Podcast. Since 2004, Josh has worked with hundreds of MSP owners to build operationally sound, profitable businesses through consulting, peer teams, and direct coaching. ⸻ 📝 Credits Host: Josh Peterson Co-Host: Gary Boyle Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #89 — Stop Sending Quotes: The MSP Sales Process That Actually Closes

Most MSP owners will tell you they want to improve profitability. But when the solution involves cutting recurring revenue, the conversation gets uncomfortable fast. This roundtable tackles the hard truth: not all revenue is healthy revenue, and the clients you're afraid to lose may be the ones destroying your margins. Josh Peterson, Gary Boyle, and Ryan Alter dig into a real client scenario where 15% of agreements were operating below sustainable margins — and explore why MSP owners tolerate it, what it costs them, and how to break the cycle. 🎙 What We Cover in This Episode • Why revenue growth masks profitability problems in MSPs • The real cost of low-margin agreements on service capacity and team morale • How Gary and Ryan both repriced 100% of their clients — and lost none • The ego trap: why owners protect revenue that's hurting them • Standardizing pricing as the first step toward financial clarity • Why buyers purchase EBITDA, not top-line revenue • The vicious cycle of underpricing to zero 👤 Guest & Co-Host Bios Ryan Alter is the founder and former CEO of Alter Enterprise, a managed IT services provider he built over 17 years in Missoula, Montana. Ryan successfully exited in 2023 when Alter Enterprise was acquired by Fisher's Technology. He now runs Silver Stream AV. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-alter-896a5b11/ Gary Boyle is a Partner for Strategy & Business Development at Bering McKinley. With a background spanning network engineering, entrepreneurship, and strategic consulting, Gary brings real-world operator experience to helping MSP owners build stronger, more profitable businesses. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyboyle/ Josh Peterson is the CEO of Bering McKinley and host of The BMK Vision Podcast. Since 2004, Josh has worked with hundreds of MSP owners to build operationally sound, profitable businesses through consulting, peer teams, and direct coaching. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshdpeterson/ 🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form 📝 Credits Host: Josh Peterson Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #88 — Revenue Is Vanity: Why MSPs Must Fire Unprofitable Clients | BMK Vision Roundtable

Not every MSP story ends with a big exit or a moonshot growth curve. Some of the most important transitions in this industry happen when an owner realizes that ownership itself was never the right fit — and does something about it. David Norelid spent nearly a decade running his own MSP before making the decision to close it down and take a role at another MSP, a move he now calls the best decision of his career. David Norelid is the Technical Alignment Manager at 5 Factor Technology, and in this conversation, we explore the hidden costs of solo MSP ownership, the mindset shift from "get to" to "don't have to," and what the future of managed services demands from technologists who want to stay relevant. ⸻ 🎙 What We Cover in This Episode - The 25-year journey from Craigslist trunk slammer to MSP owner to MSP employee - Why the transition from break-fix to managed services was both exciting and financially dangerous - Losing a whale client and the cascading impact on tools, staff, and morale - The liberating power of asking "What if that's okay?" - Why MSPs get stuck at $500K–$1M and what actually holds them back - The Technical Alignment Manager role: half sales, half technology - Microsoft's long game and the licensing squeeze on MSPs - Where AI adoption really stands in MSP client environments - Why the most important skill in IT is learning how to learn ⸻ 👤 Guest Links Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidnorelid/ Company Website: https://www.5factortech.com/ ⸻ 🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ⸻ 📝 Credits Host: Josh Peterson Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #87 — MSP Owner to Employee: Why He Walked Away | From the Trenches

Most MSP owners don't plan their hires — they react to them. A great person shows up, excitement takes over, and suddenly you're building a role around a person instead of filling a seat you've already designed. In this BMK Vision Roundtable, Josh Peterson and Gary Boyle break down why that pattern keeps repeating and what it's actually costing you. Gary Boyle is a Partner for Strategy & Business Development at Bering McKinley, and in this conversation, we explore the hidden cost of reactive hiring, the clarity gap behind most role failures, and why designing the seat before finding the person is a leadership discipline — not an HR task. ⸻ 🎙 What We Cover in This Episode Why "I found a great person" is the start of most hiring mistakes The real reason your best tech shouldn't become your service manager How undefined roles turn great employees into failed hires The one number that defines the service manager job: 55% gross profit Why evangelizing your vision is a three-time exercise — not forever The planning gap that forces reactive hiring at the 1–3M mark How a $600,000 lesson inside Bering McKinley changed everything Signs you're already falling into the trap and don't realize it ⸻ 👤 Host Links Josh Peterson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshdpeterson Gary Boyle LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyboyle/ ⸻ 🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ⸻ 🔎 SEO Keywords MSP hiring mistakes MSP role design MSP service manager MSP leadership MSP business planning Managed service providers MSP staffing MSP org design Small business hiring BMK Vision Podcast ⸻ 📝 Credits Host: Josh Peterson Co-Host: Gary Boyle Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #86 — Stop Hiring People — Start Designing Roles

In this episode of the BMK Vision Podcast, Josh Peterson sits down with Gary Boyle, Partner for Strategy & Business Development at Bering McKinley. They dig into why MSP partnerships break down, how undefined roles create a slow-burning disaster, and what owners can do right now to get ahead of it — drawing from real client situations happening right now. This conversation explores how the most common partnership problems — misaligned expectations, weak operating agreements, and murky equity structures — quietly erode MSP businesses for years before anyone faces them head-on. Practical and honest takeaways for any MSP owner in a partnership or thinking about starting one. 🔗 Learn more about the BMK Vision Operating System: https://beringmckinley.com/vision ⸻ About Gary Boyle Gary Boyle is a Partner for Strategy & Business Development at Bering McKinley. With a background spanning network engineering, entrepreneurship, and strategic consulting, Gary brings real-world operator experience to helping MSP owners build stronger, more profitable businesses. About the Host Josh Peterson is the CEO of Bering McKinley and host of the BMK Vision Podcast, helping MSPs grow through operational maturity, financial clarity, and leadership development. Learn more: https://beringmckinley.com/vision 🎤 Apply to be a guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form

You don’t need time tracking to survive at $1M — but you absolutely need it to scale past $2M.   In this episode, we break down one of the most common growth ceilings in the MSP industry: the belief that “we don’t track time” is a culture win. Josh Peterson and Gary Boyle unpack why that mindset often leads to stalled margins, mispriced agreements, technician burnout, and emotional decision-making instead of operational clarity. Guest Introduction   Gary Boyle is a Partner at Bering McKinley, and in this conversation, we explore service profitability, agreement gross profit, technician capacity, and the real economics behind scaling a managed services business. This episode challenges the idea that time tracking equals micromanagement and reframes it as leadership discipline. ⸻   🎙 What We Cover in This Episode   • Why MSPs stall between $1M–$3M in revenue • The “noisy vs quiet client” profitability problem • Agreement gross profit and why it matters • The illusion of flat-rate pricing • Service salary to service revenue ratio • Capacity modeling for technicians • Why “we’re profitable” isn’t enough • Leadership discipline vs micromanagement ⸻   👤 Guest Links   Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyboyle/ Company Website: https://beringmckinley.com ⸻   🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision   YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1   Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision   Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form

In this From the Trenches episode of the BMK Vision Podcast, Josh Peterson sits down with Ray Stasieczko for an unfiltered conversation about the copier-dealer-to-MSP transition—and why so many businesses lose their way chasing relevance instead of building real value.   Ray shares hard-earned lessons from decades in the print and IT services space, challenging vendor-driven MSP models that promise easy growth but often lead to low margins, outsourced complexity, and stalled businesses. Together, Josh and Ray explore why most copier dealers only convert a small percentage of clients into managed IT customers, why outsourcing the help desk breaks the economics for many MSPs, and why clarity of intent (“why”) matters more than chasing the next trend.   This episode is a candid look at what actually works, what doesn’t, and what MSPs and copier dealers need to rethink as disruption accelerates. 🎙 What We Cover in This Episode   • Why many MSPs get “lost on the way to relevance” • The reality of the 3–5% copier-to-MSP conversion rate • Vendor-driven strategy vs. business fundamentals • Why outsourcing the front-line help desk hurts margins • The difference between lifestyle MSPs and growth-focused firms • Why fee-based assessments and consulting matter • “Why comes first, how comes second” as an operating principle • What mature MSPs do differently to protect value 👤 Guest Links   Ray Stasieczko LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raystasieczko/ 🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision   YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1   Learn More About the Vision Operating System: https://beringmckinley.com/vision   Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form

At around $5M in revenue, many MSPs run into a leadership problem that has nothing to do with effort or intelligence—and everything to do with role fit. In this episode, the BMK Vision Podcast team breaks down a real client scenario where an owner is sitting in the sales seat but doesn’t truly want sales leadership.   Josh Peterson is joined by Gary Boyle and Ryan Alter to explore why ownership does not automatically mean seat fit, why delegating tasks is not the same as owning outcomes, and how avoiding hard role decisions quietly taxes the entire business. The conversation digs into the tension between partnerships, ego, accountability, and growth—and why sales leadership is a non-optional seat at this stage of maturity.   This episode is especially relevant for MSP owners navigating multi-partner dynamics, stalled growth, or the shift from tactics to strategy. 🎙 What We Cover in This Episode Why ownership does not equal seat fit The difference between delegating tasks and owning accountability Why sales leadership becomes non-optional around $5M How misaligned seats create friction across sales and service When coaching turns into avoidance The real cost of delaying role-fit decisions How leaders can surface truth without confrontation The role of consultants in guiding difficult ownership conversations 👤 Guest & Host Links   Josh Peterson CEO, Bering McKinley https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshdpeterson/   Gary Boyle Senior Partner, Bering McKinley   Ryan Alter Founder, Silverstream AV 🚀 Subscribe & Learn More   YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1   Learn more about the Vision Operating System: https://beringmckinley.com/vision   Apply to be a guest on the podcast: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form

Many MSP owners reach a stage where progress slows, not because of a lack of effort—but because everything still depends on them.   In this BMK Roundtable, Josh Peterson, Gary Boyle, and Ryan unpack the real reasons founder dependence reappears as MSPs grow. From broken buy-in and stalled initiatives to internal projects replacing billable work, this conversation tackles the leadership and operational discipline required to scale without burning out.   If you’re an MSP owner or executive feeling stretched, frustrated, or stuck doing too much yourself, this episode will help you rethink priorities, delegation, and what it really takes to move the business forward.   Learn more about Vision: https://beringmckinley.com/vision   Apply to be a guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form

Most MSPs don’t get stuck because they lack skill, tools, or effort. They get stuck because they’ve never clearly answered one foundational question:   What do you actually want?   In this episode of the BMK Vision Podcast, Josh Peterson (CEO, Bering McKinley) and Gary Boyle (Partner, Bering McKinley) continue the conversation about why MSPs stall—and go deeper into the question that unlocks real strategy, alignment, and momentum.   They discuss why revenue and valuation alone are often insufficient goals, why many owners are uncomfortable naming a number, and how the most effective strategies start with goals you can feel in daily life—time, control, optionality, family, and impact.   The conversation also explores how a lack of clear direction shows up inside teams as “poor communication,” why accountability and culture are not opposites, and how simple operating rhythms (like daily huddles) can dramatically improve clarity, alignment, and morale.   If your MSP feels busy but directionless—or your team is quietly asking, “what are we even doing?”—this episode will help you reset the conversation and define a target worth executing toward. 🔍 Topics Covered   • Why revenue is a tool, not the goal • What a sufficient answer to “what do you want?” really looks like • Why valuation goals drift—but purpose-driven goals don’t • Time, control, and optionality as strategic anchors • The culture fallacy: accountability vs. “good culture” • Why teams feel lost when direction isn’t clear • Using daily huddles to build clarity and community • Aligning personal goals with company strategy 👥 Hosts   Josh Peterson – CEO, Bering McKinley https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshdpeterson/   Gary Boyle – Partner, Bering McKinley https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyboyle/ 🚀 Learn More   Learn more about the BMK Vision Operating System: https://beringmckinley.com/vision   Apply to be a guest on the podcast: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form

Most MSPs don’t get stuck because they lack technical skill. They get stuck because the business reaches a point where brute force stops working — and the owner hasn’t made the shift from operator to CEO. In this weekly BMK Vision Roundtable, Josh Peterson (CEO, Bering McKinley) is joined by Gary Boyle (Partner, Bering McKinley) and Ryan Alter (Former MSP Owner) to break down why so many MSPs plateau around the $2M mark and what actually needs to change to move beyond it. This episode goes deeper than sales tactics or tools. The conversation focuses on mindset, leadership, strategy, and the hardest work most MSP owners avoid: clearly defining what they want from the business and building a plan to get there. If your MSP feels busy, successful on paper, but somehow stalled, this episode will help you understand why — and what needs to change to get unstuck. 🔍 Topics Covered • Why $2M has become the “new $1M” ceiling for MSPs • The operator vs. CEO mindset shift • Why touching tickets creates trust issues at scale • Sales vs. strategy — what really drives growth • The accidental entrepreneur trap • Why most owners struggle to define what they want • Peer groups, advisors, and escaping the MSP echo chamber • Turning strategy into execution (objectives → milestones → actions) • Building an MSP that’s an asset, not just a job 👥 Hosts Josh Peterson – CEO, Bering McKinley https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshdpeterson/ Gary Boyle – Partner, Bering McKinley https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-alter-896a5b11/ 🚀 Learn More Learn more about the BMK Vision Operating System: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to be a guest on the podcast: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form

Most business owners assume the R&D tax credit is only for labs, scientists, or massive corporations. In reality, many MSPs and service-based businesses qualify every year without realizing it. In this episode of the BMK Vision Podcast, Josh Peterson sits down with Val Majewski, Partner at American Incentive Advisors, to break down what the R&D tax credit really is, why most companies self-censor themselves out of qualifying, and how innovation in everyday business processes can translate into real tax savings. Val explains how MSPs, IT firms, and professional services businesses often meet the IRS requirements through process improvement, software development, automation, and service innovation. The conversation also covers recent tax law changes that reopened credits for 2022, 2023, and 2024, common audit misconceptions, and how proper documentation protects business owners. This episode is especially relevant for MSP owners and leaders investing time and money into improving operations and wondering how innovation can reduce tax liability. ⸻ 🎙 What We Cover in This Episode • What actually qualifies as R&D for service businesses • Why MSPs frequently miss the R&D tax credit • The IRS four-part test for R&D qualification • Retroactive credits for tax years 2022–2024 • Why most CPAs do not proactively bring this up • Audit fears versus real-world risk • Real recovery ranges from small businesses to large firms • How discipline from professional sports applies to business success ⸻ 👤 Guest Links Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/valmajewski/ Company Website: https://thinkabx.com ⸻ 🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form

In this episode of From the Trenches on the BMK Vision Podcast, Josh Peterson sits down with Steve Brickner, Founder/CEO of Kraken Technology Solutions, for a grounded conversation about where MSPs are headed next—and why the market is rewarding leadership more than ticket throughput.   Steve shares his path from construction into IT, why early-stage MSPs need the ability to pivot quickly, and how “fractional technology leadership” is becoming the new wedge for trust, retention, and higher-value client relationships.   ⸻   🎙 What We Cover in This Episode Reframing MSP value: from tickets to technology leadership Fractional leadership and the consultative MSP model Why cybersecurity became table-stakes—and what comes after IT as a growth driver (not just a cost center) Translating security and tech decisions into CFO-ready ROI language Relationship-first prospecting: community, chambers, and content Webinars vs podcasts in 2026: attention, intent, and repurposing Podcast production stack ideas (Riverside + automated switching)   ⸻   👤 Guest Links Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevebrickner981ba9242  Company Website: https://krakentechnology.io/    ⸻   🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1   Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision   Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form

Most MSPs delay hiring a dispatcher because they believe it will slow response times or distance clients from technical help. In reality, the lack of dispatch is one of the biggest reasons MSPs struggle with inconsistent service, forgotten tickets, poor utilization, and burned-out technicians.   In this episode of the BMK Vision Podcast, Josh Peterson breaks down why dispatch is not administrative overhead—it’s the control system that protects client experience and operational health. Drawing on nearly two decades of experience working with thousands of MSPs, Josh explains why technicians should not be responsible for prioritization, follow-ups, or workload decisions, and how a well-designed dispatch model changes everything. 🎙 What We Cover in This Episode   • Why dispatch is widely misunderstood in MSPs • The hidden cost of technician self-dispatch • How dispatch eliminates forgotten tickets and aging backlogs • The three things every dispatcher must own: tickets, time, and the day • Why utilization fails without centralized control • When to hire your first dispatcher (even as a small MSP) • Priority-based vs centralized dispatch models 👤 Host   Josh Peterson is the CEO of Bering McKinley and host of the BMK Vision Podcast. He helps MSP owners bring structure to chaos through operational clarity, financial discipline, and scalable leadership systems. 🚀 Subscribe & Learn More   YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1   Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision   Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form

In #75 of From the Trenches on the BMK Vision Podcast, Josh Peterson talks with Jocelyn Gorman (President, DSI) about building an MSP inside a copier-dealer ecosystem—and why the real advantage isn’t the client list, it’s credibility, infrastructure, and a willingness to take smart risks.    They cover the “big contract first” origin story, why large accounts can fund growth without delivering profitability, how sales teams must evolve from generalists to specialists, and how Jocelyn is using Lean Six Sigma + practical AI to reduce admin work and focus the team on higher-value outcomes.   Guest: Jocelyn Gorman (DSI)  Company site: https://www.dsinm.com  Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jocelyn-gorman-09b47422    Explore Vision: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to be a guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1

Your MSP business is doing more right than you think—but the industry rarely pauses to say it. In this episode, Josh Peterson is joined by Gary Boyle and Ryan Alter for a “Don’t Be That Guy” conversation that flips the script: why the MSP business model is awesome, why it’s often more resilient (and sellable) than other SMB categories, and what owners must do to protect margin as the market tightens.   They unpack how high retention can quietly create a comfort plateau, why price increases get delayed (even when everyone knows they should happen), and why the only metric that really tells the truth—regardless of MRR, per-seat, or hourly billing—is effective hourly rate. If you want a healthier team, better clients, and a business that can actually fund your life and your future, this one is a mindset reset.   ⸻   🎙 What We Cover in This Episode Reframing MSPs as a resilient, sellable SMB model Working on the business vs in the business (and escaping burnout) Why 90%+ retention can cause growth stagnation Margin erosion and the annual price-increase discipline “Good / Better / Best” client segmentation to create capacity CAC: how to calculate it and where MSPs overspend Recurring vs project work—and why EHR is the truth How pricing affects service quality, talent, and client behavior   ⸻   👤 Guest Links   Gary Boyle (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyboyle/  Ryan Alter (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-alter-896a5b11/ Josh Peterson (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshdpeterson/   ⸻   🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision   YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1   Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision   Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form

In this Don’t Be That Guy webinar episode of The BMK Vision Podcast, Josh Peterson sits down with Fletcher Wimbush of Discovered for a direct, no-nonsense conversation MSP owners need to hear: you suck at hiring—and it’s costing you more than you think.   Fletcher breaks down why most MSP hiring processes fail before the first interview even happens, how relying on “gut feel” leads to expensive mistakes, and why assessment-first hiring is the fastest way to reduce turnover and improve team performance. The discussion covers screener questions, integrity and attitude assessments, reference checks that actually matter, and how to keep recruiting without misleading candidates or burning yourself out.   If you’re an MSP owner juggling growth, service delivery, and leadership—and still hiring reactively—this episode will challenge your assumptions and give you a clearer path forward.   Guest: Fletcher Wimbush Founder of Discovered, Fletcher has spent more than a decade helping small and mid-sized businesses fix broken hiring processes. He specializes in recruitment automation, assessment-driven hiring, and reducing turnover by helping leaders make better decisions earlier in the process.   Host: Josh Peterson Josh Peterson is CEO of Bering McKinley, a management consulting firm that helps MSPs scale through operational discipline, financial clarity, and leadership development. He is the host of The BMK Vision Podcast, where real-world conversations challenge MSP owners to think and operate differently.   Learn more about the Vision Operating System: https://beringmckinley.com/vision   Subscribe to the BMK Vision Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1   Apply to be a guest on the podcast: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form   Connect with Fletcher Wimbush on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fletcher-wimbush/   Learn more about Discovered: https://www.discoveredats.com/

Kevin Kahn joins Josh Peterson to share the real story behind scaling an MSP through mentorship, relationship-driven growth, and operational discipline. Kevin explains how a pivotal early mentor changed his trajectory, how IntelliComp grew organically for years, and what shifts when you modernize your stack to get better visibility, reporting, and business control.   Guest Introduction Kevin Kahn is the President of IntelliComp Technologies (Baltimore) and a longtime MSP leader. In this conversation, we explore scaling pains, pricing and efficiency, tool migrations (and the real cost of change), and how MSPs should think about AI and automation without losing the client relationship that keeps the business strong.    What We Cover in This Episode • Building an MSP on relationships (and what you sacrifice for it) • Lessons from “almost going broke” moments and recovering stronger • All-you-can-eat helpdesk billing: model first, pricing second • Switching PSA/RMM: when it’s worth the pain (and when it’s not) • Why modern reporting matters for running the business • Hardware margins, leasing, and why MSPs struggle to operationalize it • AI for MSPs: where efficiency gains are real (and where risk is real) • Customer success, empathy, and why humans still matter   Guest Links Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-kahn/ Company Website: https://intellicomp.net/    Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog

In this BMK Quick Takes episode, Josh Peterson teaches the most important—and most misunderstood—sales principle in the MSP industry: the correct order of selling. Josh explains why selling yourself first, your company second, and your services last leads to stronger trust and better outcomes. He also breaks down the four essential components of a First-Time Appointment: budget, timeframe, next steps, and referral confidence. What We Cover   • Why emotional trust drives nearly every buying decision • How to structure curiosity-driven discovery • The true order of selling for MSPs • Establishing budget using revenue-based benchmarks • Helping prospects commit to a realistic timeframe • Securing next meetings professionally and consistently • Making referral requests feel natural and confident Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Vision Operating System: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog

Leaving a stable role to launch your own MSP is exciting—and brutally hard. In this episode, Josh Peterson talks with Chris Hart, founder of Hart CTO Inc and longtime IT executive, about what his first 90+ days back in the MSP saddle have really looked like: slow leads, pricing pressure, doubts about size, and the surprising lifelines that are keeping the business moving.    Guest Introduction Chris Hart is the founder of Hart CTO Inc, a Florida-based fractional CTO and consulting firm serving law firms and professional services organizations. With more than two decades leading MSP teams and technology operations, Chris has supported thousands of end users, built cybersecurity practices, and guided firms through complex infrastructure and cloud transitions. In this conversation, he and Josh explore the realities of starting a new MSP in a saturated, acquisition-heavy market—and how fractional CTO work, assessments, and subcontract projects can bridge the early-stage gap.    ⸻   What We Cover in This Episode Leaving a stable executive role to relaunch as an MSP owner Why the first 90 days were tougher and slower than expected Handling “you’re too small” objections with 75–200 user prospects Pricing realities around $85–$100 per user and why “full freight” is hard Using subcontract projects and residential work to keep cash flowing Building a referral “army” of part-time sales partners and ISPs Selling paid assessments into companies that already have MSPs Positioning fractional CTO services for legal and professional firms How consolidation and acquisitions change the local MSP opportunity Mindset, activity levels, and the long game of building a durable MSP   ⸻   Guest Links   Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-hart863/  Company Website: https://hartcto.com    ⸻   Subscribe and Follow BMK Vision   YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1   Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision   Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/bering-mckinley-podcast-blog