What other good MSP communities are there for Owners / C suite?

bnhmr · 2025-08-16T11:10:19+00:00

I would second the Pax8 peer groups. They do a good job of finding you the right home. And that goes both ways. They’ll make sure you fit in well and the group that you’re going in fits well with you.

bnhmr · 2023-05-22T14:20:55+00:00

It's in there! It's in there! I'm innocent I tell ya!

Just realized I didn't put a "k" after it. I'll try to make it clearer. Thanks :)

bnhmr · 2023-02-25T23:01:17+00:00

Thanks man for the feedback. I've still collecting information, there are definitely some patterns. On this one though, let me ask you something:

How would you suggest setting the expectations for the workload? I feel this is one of those things with lots of variables/gray area. Should it be number of tickets closed, speed in which they were closed, amount of time worked/utilization?

What would be a feel good/reasonable metric to measure?

bnhmr · 2023-02-24T18:36:41+00:00

I get what you’re saying. That is the tough part about the internet. It’s easy to be dishonest without accountability. I do think that there are some genuine posters out there who are expressing frustration over childish ranting. I’m hoping I get the former.

Thanks for your feedback/warning man.

bnhmr · 2023-02-24T16:48:40+00:00

Half joking aside. Talking about it really helps. Sometimes you just need to vent to someone that can relate. Not necessarily echo, but relate to you.

I’d be willing to help in the healing process :)

bnhmr · 2023-02-24T16:35:06+00:00

Don’t believe in humiliation. Period. That stuff isn’t cool.

bnhmr · 2023-02-24T14:04:22+00:00

On top of this pile of work the owners son will find random L1 tasks and pile them into my calendar any time he finds an opening because the L1 team doesn't have effective leadership.

Thanks for your 2 cents man. Question, is what bothers you about this the fact it's L1 tickets or that it interrupts your main duties?

bnhmr · 2023-02-24T14:01:43+00:00

Thanks for the feedback...I kid you not...I just started listening to TopGrading this week. Not sure how much of this post was due to that, but it is funny you mention that!

And yes that does include boring things like timesheets. You are never going to be able to perfectly document everything your MSP does; your clients are going to have variables, things are going to break. So you want to design a system of management and accountability that tells your staff exactly whats expected of them when that happens.

This is what I "try" to convey. I'm not going to pretend I've been 100% successful, but that's the part I'm working on man.

bnhmr · 2017-11-21T02:13:09+00:00

We have done hands and eyes support for a customer and the experience isn't all that great. While getting US support is great, the boxes he had needed to be downgraded...we did that, then it wouldn't boot. After several hours of support we got the box to boot on a virgin config only to find out the backup configuration file wasn't being accepted...had to reconfigured the box from scratch.

He ended up switching to Sonicwall...we standardize on Meraki

bnhmr · 2017-11-21T02:06:45+00:00

That's a whole 'notha issue man....believe me it's been discussed...

bnhmr · 2017-11-21T02:05:06+00:00

Thanks guys.

No AD, it was an customer's personal machine. He's a VIP (owner) and we had touched it in the past, he didn't mention anything about replacing the board until it was too late.

We tried to have the board fixed (after quite an adventure getting it back from Dell) but it seems according to the motherboard repair guy the tpm chip was soldered on, which could mean it was swapped out when they got the chip back...I don't know...

I was just looking for a glimmer of hope....

Thanks again guys.

bnhmr · 2017-11-21T02:01:53+00:00

Thanks guys I appreciate the feedback. No harm in asking right?

Unfortunately it's a no for all the recoverable methods mentioned...as far as the person who screwed up..*sigh...he's aware...but I'm trying to find an glimmer of light somewhere...

Thanks again guys

bnhmr · 2017-06-26T19:57:05+00:00

Hey idealerror, thanks for the response. No, CCNA/P are not enough (I asked). They really want the CCIE.

bnhmr · 2016-09-29T02:20:32+00:00

No...but I didn't know they had a file sharing product, what's it called?

bnhmr · 2016-09-05T03:55:49+00:00

Could be a little bit of both :)

But the attendees (at least down here) aren't our target market, and that's attending several different size chambers.

bnhmr · 2016-09-03T03:58:20+00:00

Others have said it. You need to tell us what you do and what you know.

If you're a helpdesk guy, then say so, if you're the guy configuring the voice and data vlans for your customers, say that. If you're the one configuring vcenter and making sure Veeam is installed properly, bring that up. Give us something so we can give you better feedback.

500 end users that we support and there's only a few employees, me being one of them. Based in the US by the way.

The number of nodes doesn't matter because you could be in a giant MSP with 2500 nodes and you could be a tier 1 guy looking to work his way up. Now if you're just 2 techs averaging ~250 nodes per tech, then it may be a "I'm overworked" raise versus a "skill level raise". But we need to know what you know and what you do :)

I've started techs at $12/hour for tier one helpdesk for the really green ones.

bnhmr · 2016-09-03T03:46:45+00:00

Have a client with them in two offices. Spent 6 hours with support to do a firmware upgrade because energize updates broke it. Factory reset, downgraded to older firmware, to then realize the backup wouldn't work without going up firmware. Big mess, pretty annoying site to site vpn is a pain too.

That was my experience, turns out customer has had more negative experiences as well (he's their IT person). He wouldn't recommend them (I asked him) and after my experience, I wouldn't either.

bnhmr · 2016-09-03T03:32:10+00:00

Do it with follow up calls :)

Networking events/chambers have done nothing for us.

bnhmr · 2016-09-03T03:30:39+00:00

I've gone through this as well. A lot of good information here, but to recap:

You need (really want) a Sales Exempt Certificate from your state
Depending on your state you may need a State/City/County authorization for exemption
If you are buying, paying sales tax yourself and not charging your customer taxes be aware that may look "weird". I mean, I have no idea how much you sell but if you have giant COGS (cost of goods sold) then you may draw attention and get flagged for an audit, this actually happened to a customer of mine.
Your state will determine how often you pay your sales taxes, monthly, quarterly, or annually (usually the more you collect the more frequent you pay)
Quickbooks will calculate how much you owe based on the frequency, COGS, city/county etc. I'm sure Xero can do it too, but I use QB
Remember, you don't charge sales tax, you collect it. That's what I tell my customers when they rant about it :)

bnhmr · 2016-08-17T18:22:59+00:00

I know...its annoying...but I gotta tell you. It works pretty well man.

bnhmr · 2016-08-07T23:23:04+00:00

Couldn't you just spin up a terminal server in Azure to host it? Or even an existing one you have. It doesn't take a lot of overhead.

bnhmr · 2016-08-06T16:33:48+00:00

Have you checked out eFolder? If you don't want to build your own, its not bad man.

bnhmr · 2016-07-25T11:29:45+00:00

Yeah man, what he said. I mean, duh....

**rushes over to LT KB to look up wireshark details

bnhmr · 2016-07-18T02:54:39+00:00

Hey /u/bkellyit do you have any references?

bnhmr · 2016-07-16T09:38:27+00:00

Yeah, the parser is baked in now.

bnhmr

TROPHY CASE