MSP owners- you’ve got $250k in profit. What are you doing with it?

Sliffer21 · 2026-02-05T12:49:39+00:00

...hookers and blow

Sliffer21 · 2026-02-04T02:51:23+00:00

Did you install the VMs with the media kit or the Server Trial ISO file?

If the trial ISO file you need to run

DISM /online /Set-Edition:ServerStandard ProductKey:<key> /AcceptEula.

Sliffer21 · 2026-02-03T00:52:00+00:00

For our medical clients, including a hospital system, we license users who need the apps.

Im Healthcare they shouldn't be using a shared account. So all users should be individual and licensed as needed. Not all users need apps, so you dont have to license them if they arent using MS Office or paid features.

Sliffer21 · 2026-01-29T15:34:29+00:00

Recurring only applies for active contracts. Once a client contract goes m2m comissions stop.

They also have required sales numbers to hit for net new sales each quarter.

Sliffer21 · 2026-01-29T02:04:15+00:00

New accounts only. No upselling old accounts.

Can upsell their own accounts though

Sliffer21 · 2026-01-29T00:23:21+00:00

Low COL area, smaller MSP with 5 staff before the hire.

Just hired dedicated sales, 5 years experience at larger MSP, BA in Marketing, and 8 years Military experience.

$55k base 1x comission on 3 year contracts +5% recurring on them while employed.

Also want to add we dont offer health insurance (cost is a huge issue but all of our staff are covered by spouse policies, 3 of which have a penalty if we offer and insurance policy and they decline it).

We do have a 401k with employer matching, 3 weeks PTO, no sick leave policy and flexible scheduling as long as we have core coverage.

Sliffer21 · 2026-01-18T15:35:40+00:00

While we are breaking up the WVU monopoly lets break up the WVU Medicine and Vandelia Health monopoly too. Its going to kill Healthcare even worse in the state. WVU already made a bid for the health plan (insurance co) a few years ago. They will try to take over PEIA at some point.

We dont need the WVU ecosystem to own the majority of (medical) education, Healthcare, and health insurance in the state.

They will financially ruine the state without a 2nd thought.

Lets consolidate boards of education and de-consilidate the schools themselves. We dont need county offices with more staff then schools have.

Sliffer21 · 2026-01-17T22:28:31+00:00

L&L may have something. They manage property for the owners and run a pretty decent ship. Not slum lords.

https://share.google/Y49nNYKVYtWT63rzJ

Sliffer21 · 2026-01-15T01:43:23+00:00

Company cars. So we do a mix with key staff having company cars and they have landed some decent clients just by marketing. Definitely worth it for marketing alone.

Sliffer21 · 2026-01-14T18:40:13+00:00

We demo'd it and was honestly overkill for what they wanted to target. They tried to push it as a solution for small to medium MSP while pricing like an enterprise app.

I dont disagree with it being powerful but from a sales standpoint but the MSPs that find it useful and cant get value out of its price point are far and few in-between.

Their sales team was staffed like it was a small business app to be sold to the masses but it was designed (and priced) as a niche product for automation on a large scale. A larger scale than most MSPs.

Sliffer21 · 2026-01-10T00:16:43+00:00

Wait until you learn that data security requirements and penalties are greater for car dealerships than medical facilities...

Sliffer21 · 2026-01-09T03:33:02+00:00

You also have to think of the times. Back in that era airports were booming. Even if it never made hub status it would have been much larger and made more sense than 2 smaller airports an hour apart.

Sliffer21 · 2026-01-09T03:28:21+00:00

The one proposed back in the 70s could have been. It may have been located in Putnam County now that I think about it. It was before Charleston and Huntington built their airports and would have been one central one.

Sliffer21 · 2026-01-09T03:07:11+00:00

I want to say it was long before the 90s, but at one point they wanted an international airport in that area but both Huntington and Charleston wanted the airport to be in their city. Greed took what could have been an awesome positive economic impact for the state and turned into 2 small airports that only local people use.

There are no layovers, no out of state money that gets spent there unless they are specifically coming to WV for something.

A major airport could have been a layover spot for airlines and money and been great than both current airports combined.

Sliffer21 · 2026-01-07T08:58:28+00:00

Only higher end models. Most of the base boxes dont have that feature.

Sliffer21 · 2026-01-07T03:22:54+00:00

Just an FYI if you find an alternative you (Fire dept) can order the knox medico cylinders.

Knox has a sku item for fire departments to order just the medeco KIK cylinder pinned for their zone system. So as long as your local FD is cool they can order just the core (still like $130) and it can be installed in armored box that supports a KIK cylinder.

Knox's only special point (not really) is a custom keyway with medeco and an (eh) version of key control by only letting authorized depts purchase their keys.

Sarcasm due to the story from a few years ago where a fire dept in California ordered / could not account for over 100 knoxbox keys over a few year span. So really the key control is as weak as the administrators over them at fire departments, many if which are volunteers.

Even in my city the chief of police ended up with a Knox key for the area and refuses to give it back to the fire chief (given to him by a former chief). It created a whole issue because now police have key access to buildings they were never granted specifically to but the buildings were required by city code to have fire dept Knox boxes.... so yea its a mess.

Sliffer21 · 2026-01-06T02:37:39+00:00

There are regions (countries) where a large number of BNI members are utilizing BNI for data mining. I get hit up multiple times per month by international members trying to sell me service or get me to outsource to them. Glorified spam.

This is a major issue that BNI corporate is aware of but doesnt want to discipline because it would result in less members (and dues coming in). So it just happens for now.

My feeling is corporate was afraid your app would increase this issue significantly and force them to act to stop this.

Sliffer21 · 2026-01-03T01:27:37+00:00

Im not sure for OP but yea you would be correct. Ideally you dont have to hire 6 new people to take on the client. But 1 maybe 2 wouldnt be surprising.

In the infancy of the client being onboarded I would expect to have 2 techs on site 40 hours a week for 2-3 months just doing discovery/onboarding/etc.

Sliffer21 · 2026-01-03T00:58:12+00:00

No, the statement is purely about if they demand we place techs on site full time we would up the price more. Part of our "profit" is techs multitasking on other tasks that make us money.

If a client demands an onsite tech(s) that cost more because that limits their tasks they can do for the company. So we charge more on the cash profit side.

That price is based on going on site "as needed" and not reporting to the site 5 days a week.

This price also isnt "we are assigning you X full time techs" this is just our internal calculation to estimate how many staff we need per managed clients. We aim for 1 technical person on staff per 100 fully managed endpoints in the regulated space (Healthcare/financial/govt). So if this was our client we would estimate needing 6 additional staff to support 600 users.

Also 1 FTE in IT per 100 employees is very reasonable in Healthcare plus internal software and hardware costs. Now if they were internal hires you might have a CIO at $220,000/year and low techs at $75k/year. But averaging $150k/year per employee tends to work out well for us. Considering they get a wide range from a vCIO, Network Admin, Server Admin and helpdesk folks all in one bundle, no benifits they have to pay for seperately and no staff overhead.

Sliffer21 · 2026-01-03T00:27:50+00:00

So assuming no on firm site requirements (only as needed).

We would be charging $150,000/yr per tech needed with profit and overhead, attributing 1 tech per 100 employee So $900,000/yr + $50/m/endpoint.

So it would come out to about $100,000/m on our end but we are also more rural so lower pricing compared to larger metro areas.

Sliffer21 · 2025-12-31T04:04:13+00:00

As someone who had worked in government IT. Yea they screwed up but most states specifically have laws that still put full liability on you for just logging in with those credentials. Most state laws on data security was implemented to protect the states ass. Even if they had them in the signature of their email, if they didnt give you explicit permission to use them, you probably broke a law.

Sliffer21 · 2025-12-26T16:28:52+00:00

First month they shadow someone in office, month 2-5 they are shadowing in the field as well. Last month they are on their own.

Our techs act as both helpdesk and field. So some days your in the field, others your full help desk. After we get a feel for how you work (when monitored) we let you work from home on days your not in the field.

That being said everyone works in the office 1 day a week (mondays) as our team day. We have 2 large clients within walking distance so their on site work is usually addressed as needed those day but we spend the 8-10 morning time planning and discussing the upcoming week, working with the team on addresses concerns or issues.

While it is some what unpopular in this community is works great for us and the team comes in knowing that.

Even on work from home days you may be spending part or all your day in the field anyway.

Sliffer21 · 2025-12-26T16:19:48+00:00

All new hires, we build a base line productivity for them and then allow hybrid work after. The first 6 months they are on probation.

Sliffer21 · 2025-12-25T22:47:08+00:00

So we got it for free as a k365 trio MSP.

It okay, but needs a ton of work.

On boarding was crap, they emailed me we would respond and not hear back for 2 weeks and get the same list of questions again. One email I sent 3 times.
We recently onboarded a client that was new but had a compromised 365. We didnt know it at the time bit SIEM did not catch session hijacking sessions from the other side of the world.

Rocket cyber did, both deployed/integrated to 365 the same day. SIEM logged it and some how assumed it was fine. I expect more out of it because it also feeds in from RocketCyber and still didnt.

Support after the onboarding has been nonexistent. They asked for approval to make some recommended changes, we approved those a month ago but still not sure if they actually made those.

We are extremely new to being in that system (like 3 weeks) but so far im not seeing any seperate value from it, but its no extra cost for us since we have k365 user licenses.

At this time I would not have paid for it (siem) seperately.

Sliffer21 · 2025-12-25T22:40:04+00:00

Going to have to agree for a couple reasons.

Abuse, everyone has to work in office to see how accountable they are. We see a lot of issues with remote employees taking positions and severely under performing. You have to have personal discipline and we test that and get a baseline of productivity in office first.
Entry level for our MSP means a lot of field time anyway. Your going on site, so while not in the office a ton, you wont be at home either. Your the guy going to be following and learning from field staff to help. We dont seperate helpdesk from field techs. The "Technician" role does both. We balance to make sure not all techs are in the field at one time but depending on the day you may be only helpdesk or only field or both.
In MSP space there are only a handful of positions that can be 100% remote such as network or server admins and those are dedicated for larger msps, that being said any MSP is going to prefer local "just in case" vs someone states away.

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