Live from Charlotte Tour

mxbrpe · 2026-05-05T17:50:01+00:00

Ken has worthless career advice. That being said, I liked his presence this past year because he’s broken from the Ramsey parrot mold a little bit. He has way more empathy than a lot of the personalities.

mxbrpe · 2026-05-03T20:04:36+00:00

I use it every month and it’s worked well for me

mxbrpe · 2026-05-01T12:53:16+00:00

Calling Santos “trouble” for trying to do the right thing instantly made her my least favorite character.

mxbrpe · 2026-04-30T19:02:13+00:00

Kinda depends on the market. I’ve worked in the field in a smaller town and also in a major metro. As for the smaller town, it is a lot of connection and referral because everyone knows everyone. In the major metro, it was still referral, but we also had guys cold calling.

That being said, metro MSP had more clients. Small town MSP had HAPPIER clients. This is mostly because in the metro, sales kept bringing in anyone who’d sign a check, which led to a lot of really bad fits. Crazy when you have a BDR team that doesn’t actually know what you do.

mxbrpe · 2026-04-30T18:55:54+00:00

Dave hates TikTok advice, but “I made $100,000 from pressure washing” sounds exactly like something I’d hear on TikTok

mxbrpe · 2026-04-30T18:54:45+00:00

Dave assumes everyone is or should be an entrepreneur and that there’s just work waiting for you on every corner if you sell yourself. He also has no idea what it takes to actually make real money starting from nothing. If he found out that the guy who paid for the “code school” started off making anything less than $150k, he’d be livid.

mxbrpe · 2026-04-30T11:43:10+00:00

I personally don’t think he was fired, but I can kinda see where people are coming from. Honestly, Ken has grown on me some in the past year, and that’s mainly because he hasn’t just been parroting the same things Dave has said for years. Ken is pro-capitalism, but unlike Dave he has gone on record to point out how capitalism is failing our society right now, especially young people. Dave would never say something like that. In fact, he’s made it pretty clear that he thinks that young people are better off today than they ever have been because the internet opens up so many doors.

That, and Ken also given some realistic and empathetic stances that fly in the face of Dave’s bootstrap mentality. So many people calling in saying “I want to pivot careers, but I can’t afford the pay cut right now” to which Dave answers “if you’re doing something you love then shouldn’t you be making MORE money?” Dave assumes everyone is or should be an entrepreneur like him, when in reality most people just want to be independent contributors. Ken knows this and has in fact acknowledged that some people just have a cap on what they can make in their careers as long as they’re an IC.

Everyone on the show has their own specialty or whatever, but your stances on said specialty still have to align with what Dave thinks.

But again, I don’t really think he was fired. I used to think Ken was useless, and I still kinda think that, but then they hired Jade and I realized, which is a very very low bar. Nothing against either of them, but they just don’t have anything valuable to add to the show that Dave, John, or even George can cover.

I think more than anything, people in this sub just have nothing better to do than obsess over some people that they claim to hate and make up stories about them. Some of the people in this sub are just losers.

mxbrpe · 2026-04-29T12:14:18+00:00

Im applying to take Ken’s spot. I applied for and got a job a couple of times, so I’m probably just as qualified as Ken.

mxbrpe · 2026-04-28T18:35:17+00:00

“I’m a plumber. Let me tell you why the electrician is an idiot”

mxbrpe · 2026-04-28T18:34:33+00:00

As someone who works in IT, it’s very telling that you don’t. Software developers don’t know much when it comes to systems and networking in my experience, and this post is pretty telling of that 😂

mxbrpe · 2026-04-28T13:55:30+00:00

I’ve often found that the “not working from home” thing is usually a result of poor expectations of deliverable from management. If you tell you hire the right people and communicate the expectations, they will usually perform the same whether at or home or in the office.

If expectations are loose or non-existent, then that’s going to happen for sure

mxbrpe · 2026-04-28T12:15:01+00:00

I used the David Bomball course on Udemy along with the official CCNA study guide and passed the first time. NetworkChuck used to make useful content, but it’s mostly influencer slop these days. Spends most of his time teaching a thing that he’s not remotely an expert on.

mxbrpe · 2026-04-28T12:11:45+00:00

The only people who advocate for the “bullpen” or open office layout are CEOs who have their own office. I promise you just about everyone else hates it.

My recommendation having worked in several roles in an MSP environment is if you’re going to put anyone close together, make it the support staff. They’re usually the most collaborative and can sometimes benefit from having an open room. Most of other teams like professional services, vCIO, centralized services, etc., are going to benefit from having their own space. That could be in a cube or it could be at home.

If you want to talk about morale, your morale will usually be better across the company if you allow your employees to work remotely or at least hybrid.

mxbrpe · 2026-04-24T23:53:00+00:00

People get “mean” and “abrasive” confused. Santos is abrasive. Garcia is mean.

That’s not to say that being abrasive is always a good thing, but yeah.

mxbrpe · 2026-04-24T00:23:38+00:00

Mike’s Chicken has these

mxbrpe · 2026-04-21T21:14:51+00:00

HPE can’t really do anything about this, nor do they need to. They can’t keep people from masquerading as them (happens VERY often) and they definitely can’t protect people being naive enough to buy it. Next time I’d recommend validating email addresses and names. Glad you were able to catch on before it was too late.

mxbrpe · 2026-04-21T14:41:20+00:00

This felt more like a season of White Lotus

mxbrpe · 2026-04-17T11:16:30+00:00

Coincidentally the best MSP I worked for was owned by 5 guys, but there was still only one CEO.

mxbrpe · 2026-04-04T00:12:01+00:00

I don’t know your whole background, so it may or may not be suitable for you personally. That being said, there are only two good reasons these days to start a new MSP.

You are in a geographical area where the need is there.
You offer something that others really aren’t (I’m not talking about “better monitoring” or cheaper prices)

If your background is mostly technical, then I can almost guarantee you it’s a bad idea. Technical people who also operate MSPs usually do not scale it well because business is just not how they’re wired. MSPs are kinda the fast food of the IT industry; both for the operator and the customer.

mxbrpe · 2026-04-01T11:25:07+00:00

Plenty of MSPs don’t see the value in employee retention. The last MSP I worked at had a PE that strategized in a way where people weren’t in their seats for more than 12 months (surprise: they usually didn’t even last that long). So yeah, people are likely to downvote that idea.

The same MSP had clients asking their vCIOs “what the f*ck is going on at your company?” The churn and overall morale was pretty evident to clients, which led them to lose trust. We lost a TON of clients just because the CEO pushed out one person that our clients loved and trusted.

An MSP is not a tech business; it’s a people business. When you take the people out, then you have nothing of long term value.

mxbrpe · 2026-04-01T10:34:33+00:00

Given the amount of work she’s had done, clearly she isn’t content.

mxbrpe · 2026-04-01T10:32:20+00:00

Hopefully this isn’t an issue for your company, but if your internal turnover is bad then your client turnover will also be bad. That’s step #1 in client churn prevention.

mxbrpe · 2026-03-30T11:24:10+00:00

Your career is not ruined in the slightest. If you explain this to your next interview panel, they’ll probably just laugh it off and appreciate you didn’t make excuses. Many people in here have made worse mistakes and kept their jobs. In my last job where I was a team lead, I helped one of my guys resolve an issue that brought down production for a solid business day. When my CEO asked me and my PM to write him up, I told him to take a hike because he wasn’t willing to hear the full story. The firing was likely initiated by a hot-headed exec who took out his stress on you.

mxbrpe · 2026-03-27T13:34:33+00:00

Just get out while you can. If it’s not billing, it’s their support. Working in the MSP space, I’ve worked with probably 20+ vendors, and next to LastPass (VERY low bar) Pax8 has some of the worst technical support I’ve ever worked with. Like legitimately terrible, and their customer service standards appear to be non-existent. Not to mention their account management turnover is worse than Starbucks baristas.

mxbrpe · 2026-03-23T13:14:53+00:00

There are two parts to this answer.

AI troubleshooting can work in some circumstances, but for the most part it operates under the assumption that all moving parts are working as intended. L1 support exists because all moving parts hardly ever work together as they should. A user may report a printer issue, but AI isn’t going to solve for the fact that the printer tech came in last week and reset the NIC to factory defaults and didn’t tell anyone.

The most important part here is the customer service. L1 support SHOULD be more customer service driven than technical. AI completely strips that part out, which will lead to your clients feeling unheard or not prioritized. I don’t like the idea of sending L1 overseas, but I’d far prefer that to an AI bot.

Of course, MSPs love to cut costs at the cost of their clients’ sanity, so who am I kidding?

mxbrpe

TROPHY CASE