The BMK Vision Podcast

Every MSP has a pull-through rate, the project and hourly revenue clients buy on top of their monthly agreement, and most owners have never measured it. Josh Peterson sees it sit around 10 to 15 percent when nobody is paying attention, about 30 percent with decent account management, and into the 40s and 50s when the client profile is right. Josh and Gary Boyle dig into what closes that gap: an account manager who owns the client relationship, a clear line between that sales role and the billable vCIO, a ranked client list with meetings on the calendar, and the willingness to show up before the perfect client report exists. ---------- What We Cover in This Episode - Calculate your pull-through rate and see where you sit today - Learn why most MSPs land near 15 percent without trying - See what 30 percent takes, and what pushes an MSP past 40 - Separate the account manager from the vCIO and put each on the right payroll - Hire for the seat: personable, business-literate, unafraid of technology - Set a hardware standard that gives every client meeting an agenda - Rank clients A through D and match a meeting cadence to each tier - Track meetings scheduled and meetings held as leading indicators - Start the first round with lunch, not a report ---------- 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 Read the Full Episode Write-Up: https://beringmckinley.com/blog/what-does-an-msp-account-manager-actually-do Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ---------- SEO Keywords - MSP account management - pull-through rate - MSP account manager - account manager vs vCIO - MSP project revenue - client meeting cadence - client tiering - technology refresh planning - MSP sales role - managed service providers - BMK Vision Podcast ---------- Credits Host: Josh Peterson Co-Host: Gary Boyle Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: MSP Account Management - Is Your Pull-Through Stuck at 15%?

An MSP owner with 70 clients and about twenty signed contracts is getting ready to sell, and the question is what the thin paper will cost. Devin Rose has the data, and his answer is not the one most owners expect: contracts barely move the valuation. They move the payment terms, and that is where the money actually lives. Devin is an Associate at The Host Broker, a brokerage for MSPs and IT services businesses in North Vancouver, British Columbia. In this conversation with Josh Peterson he walks through why multiples of MRR are a gut check and not a formula, how The Host Broker values an MSP from closed deals, the nine times myth, the real LOI to close timeline, why multiples may slip, and who belongs on a seller's deal team. Josh brings the former owners who were excited for fifteen minutes after the wire landed. ---------- What We Cover in This Episode - Separate the valuation formula from the gut-check multiples - Explain why customer contracts change the terms more than the price - Prepare for due diligence and the SBA lender's moving goalposts - Debunk the nine times multiple heard at industry events - Value an MSP from comps, then adjust for geography, concentration and niche - Set a realistic LOI to close timeline: 90 days, 180 with SBA - Read the market: seasonality, boomer supply and the AI question - Spot the new buyer profile, AI startups acquiring MSPs - Plan for the emotional side and for life after the wire lands - Build the deal team: an M&A attorney, a CPA at the LOI, asset sale vs share sale ---------- Guest Links Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrdevinrose/ Company Website: https://www.thehostbroker.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 - selling an MSP - MSP valuation - MSP customer contracts - adjusted EBITDA - MSP multiples - letter of intent - due diligence - MSP acquisition - MSP exit strategy - The Host Broker ---------- Credits Host: Josh Peterson Guest: Devin Rose, The Host Broker Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #133 - Selling Your MSP - Contracts Change Terms, Not Price

Most MSPs have decided what to do about AI: lock it down. In this BMK Vision Roundtable, recorded as our first live stream, Josh Peterson and Gary Boyle ask whether restriction alone is actually serving clients, or quietly costing them. Gary Boyle is a Partner for Strategy & Business Development at Bering McKinley, and in this conversation, we explore what happens when client data goes into Claude, why public AI share links have already leaked information to Google, and how invite-only sharing borrows the governance MSPs already run in Teams and OneDrive. Then the argument turns: a small MSP rebuilt a client's broken legacy app in Claude Code over a weekend and billed about four grand. Is that better for the client or not? Gary also makes the case that MSPs can now own the client's website and deliver real leads. ---------- 🎙 What We Cover in This Episode - Weigh whether client data belongs inside AI tools at all - Turn spreadsheets into working apps with Claude artifacts - Avoid the public share link that ends up indexed by Google - Apply invite-only sharing and roles the way you govern OneDrive - Spot the versioning trap when a shared AI document stops updating - Turn a quick AI demo into a paid proof of concept - Challenge the "we don't touch AI" stance with what clients value - Rebuild a legacy client app with Claude Code for about $4,000 - Replace "we don't do websites" with websites that deliver leads ---------- 👤 Co-host Links 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 AI strategy - AI apps for MSP clients - Claude artifacts - AI data governance for MSPs - public AI share links - MSP AI services - Claude Code for MSPs - MSP advisory services - legacy app modernization - MSP growth ---------- 📝 Credits Host: Josh Peterson Co-host: Gary Boyle Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #132 - Should MSPs Build AI Apps for Clients or Just Block AI? | BMK VISION ROUNDTABLE

The night two critical PHP flaws leaked before their patches, Josh Peterson asked Gary Boyle what was really happening. Gary's answer: AI has made attackers faster than any MSP can patch, the open-weight models they run have no guardrails, and the frontier models defenders use refuse the targeted vulnerability work attackers do freely. Then Gary turns the question on MSP owners. Most MSPs became brokers of security, handing backup, cloud and antivirus to someone else, and a thousand unpatched endpoints mean something different when the bots never sleep. He argues against freezing AI development and for learning the tools, because AI security expertise is the differentiator MSPs have chased for twenty years. ---------- What We Cover in This Episode - Unpack the PHP flaws that leaked before their patches - See why security is just code, and why AI can read it - Compare open-weight models with no guardrails to frontier models that refuse - Learn why hackers and developers scanning code do the same thing - Hear what a Bitcoin red team spending $10,000 a day revealed - Rethink patching when a thousand endpoints meet unlimited bots - Decide whether to freeze AI development after a breach - Question whether your MSP is a broker of security - Turn AI security expertise into a real differentiator - Find forgotten API keys before they become a surprise bill ---------- 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 - AI cyberattacks - MSP cybersecurity - MSP security responsibility - PHP2Shell - AI guardrails - open-weight AI models - API key security - unpatched endpoints - MSP differentiation - managed service providers - BMK Vision Podcast ---------- Credits Host: Josh Peterson Co-Host: Gary Boyle Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: AI Cyberattacks - Who Owns Your MSP's Security Risk?

Josh Peterson gave Claude a ConnectWise API user with write access to his time entries and did not lose a minute of sleep over it. Then he asks Gary Boyle the question every MSP owner is now facing: where is the actual security risk, and how much of it should you accept? Gary's answer starts with where API keys really leak and ends with a cheat code. An MSP that already trusts ConnectWise and QuickBooks with everything cannot single out the LLM as the bigger risk, you cannot stop data leaving a small business anyway, and the owners who stay AI-first while their competitors lock everything down are the ones pulling ahead. Together they work out what a sane risk assessment looks like, and where an MSP should be on the levels from one to four. ---------- What We Cover in This Episode - Decide what a Claude integration with ConnectWise actually exposes - Separate one-shotting an app from plan, code and goal - Find out where API keys leak, and why pasting one into an LLM means re-keying - Ask why an MSP that trusts ConnectWise and QuickBooks would fear the LLM more - Recognize when a locked-down Claude has become unusable - Accept that you cannot stop data leaving a small business - Weigh the two forms of risk: leaking data, and holding clients back - Place your MSP on the levels from one to four - Pick two practice projects: dashboards and the PSA-to-accounting connector ---------- 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 AI security - AI risk tolerance - Claude for MSPs - ConnectWise API security - API key security - LLM data security - AI governance for MSPs - AI-first MSP - managed service providers - BMK Vision Podcast ---------- Credits Host: Josh Peterson Co-Host: Gary Boyle Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: MSP AI Security - How Much Risk Should You Accept?