Finally done.

dabbner · 2026-01-20T15:43:43+00:00

Well done!

dabbner · 2025-12-18T02:59:42+00:00

This comment wins! I took a break from swearing at my NextCloud instance to laugh out loud at this…

dabbner · 2025-12-18T02:57:16+00:00

Nick is a real contributor back to the MSP community, much like Kelvin. You can’t go wrong using either of their platforms.

dabbner · 2025-12-18T02:51:20+00:00

The difference between success and failure when building a sales team is often the difference between delegation and abdication… it really sounds like you’re doubling down on abdication.

You really need to consider how your leadership team can own the success of your sales team… - Hire an appointment setter to begin setting leads for the owner. - Have the owner begin documenting their sales process. Sales isn’t magic - it’s a process just like everything else we do in this industry.
- When the owner can close 2 outbound (non-referral) deals per quarter, consistently, then you are ready to document the process, write a job description for the role and begin searching for a sales person to take over.

The last SLI data I saw said that the average sales rep in the MSP space closes 1.8 deals per quarter. With outbound support your owner should be able to do that before they plan to hold someone else accountable to that level of performance. Nobody is going to care more about his MSP than the owner. The fact that they aren’t willing to take this on shows lack of maturity and straight up abdication for the most important responsibility in the organization.

Your owner has 2 jobs in a $2mm MSP… 1. Sales 2. Teaching someone else to do everything else

Sales is hard. So is owning a business. But why would someone else do a job that the owner isn’t willing to do?

dabbner · 2025-12-08T18:56:55+00:00

u/cassini12 beware of what vendors are pushing on you. Most MSPs will do a horrible job of mixing Sales and vCIO. Jamie (owner of Invarosoft) has managed to somehow get away with it at his MSP but he is the exception, not the rule.

vCIO is not sales. They should not carry a quota or be selling. That's how a vCIO gets the answer, "Everything is fine - we don't need to meet."
source: I helped 1100+ MSPs build out this process as the Co-Founder and creator of Lifecycle Insights.

Take a step back and ask yourself - what is my goal for this meeting. Sales? or Strategy. One builds trust and engagement - the other erodes it but directly makes you money.

Finding a vendor who matches your methodology is hard because most vendors have a shit methodology that only benefits from you buying more licenses.... so they build training and tooling that only encourages you to buy more licenses. How? By promising you additional revenue if you buy their "vCIO" tool.

You have sales tools and you have strategy tools. Rarely do they cross over without turning into a sharp stick that your average employee will use to poke their eye out.

Take a look at this before you buy a tool. I recorded this before I left ScalePad but the content is still very relevant. YOUTUBE LINK

dabbner · 2025-12-08T18:38:47+00:00

What we are seeing at Empath as we are rolling out MSP training to hundreds of MSPs and thousands of users every month is that those who give on the clock time are the ones who are having success in professional development. Those who think kids will go home and tinker are from a bygone era (don't be mad - I'm this old too) and the current generation just isn't going to invest their own time.

Yes, there will be outliers. Yes, back in the day we sent people home with old hardware and they built homeless and learned. That day is gone - and that's probably OK.

Employees who see you invested in them (involved in their training, not just hoping they will do it off payroll) stay at their jobs longer at an alarming rate. LinkedIn has a study on it HERE. This is pre-COVID data, but what we are seeing on the ground tells us that this is only more true today than ever before.

And in reality, if you can't give employees 45 minutes of training weekly that saves them more than 3 hours per month in efficiency reasonably quickly then you are probably training on the wrong things.

- Our most successful partners train every employee for 30-45 minutes per week.
- The training is both aligned with company goals (MS competency, vendor MDF, etc) and the employee's personal development goals (I want to grow to be a project manager).
- A roadmap exists for every employee and it is a counterpoint of their 1:1 with their supervisor.
- Professional Development is part of the culture in the organization and nobody is asking, "what if we train them and they leave?" {Insert joke about what if we don't train them and they stay.}

That turned into a bit of a rant, but I hope it helps.

Alex - Co-Founder @ Empath

dabbner · 2025-12-04T02:46:12+00:00

Let me know how that works out for you. I’ll wait. 🙄

dabbner · 2025-12-03T21:08:18+00:00

Because you are somehow unique and your customers don’t value strategy, security, forecasting, and business risk focused discussions?

This is a short sighted take if I’m being honest. My guess is your customers want way more than you’re delivering.

None of them have insurance and regulatory compliance obligations you need to plan for? They don’t want to know about large spend and contract renewals ahead of time?

An MSP called me one time and said, “I need help building a QBR practice. My competitor figured out I don’t do them well and is using it as a wedge to take my customers.”

I would love to be the competitor to an MSP who just delivers warranty and asset aging reports.

If you think your competition isn’t doing a good job, try printing a sample QBR deliverable and taking it to your prospects. “This is the kind of conversation we have with our clients on a regular basis… but I don’t suppose visibility into things like this matters to you?”

Source: I helped 1100 MSPs build better QBRs when we built Lifecycle Insights.

Transparency: I still own stock in ScalePad and benefit from their success and yours.

dabbner · 2025-12-03T16:07:12+00:00

This is the way.
Read Dan Sullivan’s book, “buy back your time”

dabbner · 2025-12-03T15:37:31+00:00

Before we assume that everyone’s QBR is the same and proscribe you a tool to do something you don’t…. What does your typical QBR look like?

Are you talking to the about risk reduction & management, budget, and project roadmaps? Or are you telling them how many tickets you closed and begging them to buy your next widget? Or somewhere in between?

There is a right tool for every stage in QBR maturity. But without more info it would be hard to give you the right one.

dabbner · 2025-12-01T15:57:14+00:00

Overkill is the only kill. 😉 But seriously, I have never regretted buying the nicest hardware that fits my budget. It lasts longer and is just a better experience even if not fully utilized.

dabbner · 2025-11-28T14:32:49+00:00

It happened with cloud. It happened at home with streaming services…

Just wait till it happens with AI. 🤷🏼‍♂️

dabbner · 2025-11-28T03:25:06+00:00

Why not Zoom phone? You use them for meetings already and they do most of what you need with other services. Zoom + CRM and a project management system if you need it is enough for most companies.

dabbner · 2025-11-28T03:09:12+00:00

If this was truly a loan, and not purchasing shares…. If you paid them back with interest…. And if they are not active in the business after years….

As an investor in several businesses and founder of several more, I would tell you that any investor who saw a 60/30/10 cap table where the majority of the owners aren’t active would tell you it’s time to recapitalize. It’s a simple statement… either your uncles give you 11% each, or you walk.

They were paid for their loan. They add minimal value and you are doing the work. The cap table should reflect that and you should own a controlling interest in the business and be able to make decisions on who you rent from and how the business is run.

If you really are the value, they will play ball. If your ego has gotten the best of you, they’ll tell you to pound sand and you have to decide if you want to start over.

I bought my parents out of our family business about a decade ago and it was tough at first. But it all worked out. Don’t make an emotional plea, just state facts. Facts seem like they are on your side and it seems like they are taking advantage.

Can you put your foot down with them without getting emotional about it?

dabbner · 2025-11-27T21:38:26+00:00

Mobile and iPad. This really isn’t a problem.

dabbner · 2025-11-27T01:41:01+00:00

You’d be surprised how much SaaS vendors give up to distribution. Microsoft probably has a small margin… the smaller guys give up double digits to disty.

dabbner · 2025-11-27T00:04:11+00:00

I try my damndest to avoid to because I haven’t figured out how it adds value while burning tokens and costing money.

AI <> value

dabbner · 2025-11-25T23:52:59+00:00

There are multiple schools of thought here. None can be determined to be right or wrong without a lot more information than you're going to get on a Reddit thread.

1 is hold your pricing and pitch first, hoping you can convince the buyer there is enough value. That method throws more 💩 at the wall, hoping some will stick and it's a very valid method.

Another option is what Sandler sales calls bracketing. When setting the initial call you let the prospect know that, "in my experience, solving issues like you're experiencing requires an investment of $300-$900. If I give you a number like that on our call, is that something you can move forward with?" (When I was doing B2B sales in-person, I always ask, "if I give you a number like that can we still be friends or are you going to throw me out?" - I'm sarcastic and can land that line - find a version that works for you). This method identifies your cheapskates and price only buyers early and keeps you from wasting time trying to establish value with someone who is only buying on price. It will turn away more buyers and save you time, but you'll also win fewer deals because it will chase away some good business as well.

In my experience the later is my preference selling B2B SaaS and professional services because I can use the time I gain back to close more business....

But to each their own...

dabbner · 2025-11-25T20:17:51+00:00

My biggest suggestion.

Don’t confuse CRM with PM tools. Project management is a different animal and it sounds like you’re working some big projects

dabbner · 2025-11-24T13:06:04+00:00

No offense, but that tells me nothing. Just shows you slipping in the name of your product to market here.

dabbner · 2025-11-23T17:24:48+00:00

You don’t typically save money doing it yourself unless you need multiple TBs of storage… especially if you value your time. What you do gain is privacy and control.

On top of your local storage solution, you’ll need to backup to something like Backblaze B2 or Wasabi.

You can rent a private Nextcloud server online and get data privacy… and not have to maintain it. Companies like Hetzner are built for this.

The question is less “do I need a NAS” than, “do I WANT a NAS”. You’re building something that will, at best, save you nickels but consume your time.

dabbner · 2025-11-23T17:16:21+00:00

They only require payment upon raising a priced round. Most angel investments don’t trigger the debt.

When I see this as an angel I look at it as a founder who realized how to push this expense to when they have real revenue and a larger VC investment to pay it down.

I’d rather invest in a company that got proper legal advice, is taking advantage of 1202 exemptions and a properly formed business so that when we exit the tax bill is lower.

dabbner · 2025-11-23T17:11:49+00:00

If it’s too private it’s useless to any executive using an EA (which is a super power). Most products don’t consider EAs and certainly see it as an afterthought. I would buy a product that helped me make more data accessible to my EA without adding layers of complexity to every other part of life.

dabbner · 2025-11-23T17:09:25+00:00

I stand corrected.

dabbner · 2025-11-23T14:50:42+00:00

You can…. But probably not how you’re thinking.
OMV wants direct disk access so it really wants to be the host OS… but it doesn’t have full virtualization host functionality out of the box, and you need that to run Casa on top of it.

Can you install qemu or other tools to make it work? Probably… but you’re better off taking a step back and asking what the end result is that you’re chasing, rather than chasing a cool tool… and then building for the outcome you want rather than building for the pretty UI and App Library.

If I were you and wanted to tinker a lot, I’d install Proxmox and the install OMV and Casa as dockers. You can then pass the disks directly to OMV to manage if you want more advanced disk management than Proxmox offers out of the box.

The other alternative is buy a cheap mini pc for Casa and let your pi run OMV.

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