MSP commoditization is accelerating — and the old playbook of per-user pricing and monthly packages isn't going to protect your business forever. In this BMK Vision Roundtable, Josh Peterson and Gary Boyle explore the two biggest opportunities MSPs are overlooking right now: advisory services that make you a strategic partner and software development that creates enterprise value beyond MRR.

Guest Introduction This is a roundtable episode featuring Josh Peterson (CEO, Bering McKinley) and Gary Boyle (Partner, Bering McKinley). Together they unpack how AI is compressing development costs, why the highest MSP exits have always been software plays, and how to start having value-driven conversations with your clients.

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🎙 What We Cover in This Episode

• Why MSP commoditization is accelerating and what's driving it
• The AI and software development opportunity for MSPs
• Advisory services — how to actually get the seat at the executive table
• Project work vs. MRR — rethinking how MSPs generate revenue
• Enterprise value through product ownership, not just service delivery
• The productization path — from bespoke automations to SaaS
• How to have the right client conversation (business first, technology second)

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📝 Credits

Host: Josh Peterson Co-Host: Gary Boyle Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #97 — MSPs Are Being Commoditized — Here's the Way Out

Every MSP owner has argued about ticket statuses. But that argument is almost always a symptom of something bigger — a service operating model that isn't clearly defined. In this BMK Vision Roundtable, Josh Peterson and Gary Boyle unpack a real listener question about status hygiene and use it to expose the deeper issues: unclear ownership, the absence of a dispatcher, and the financial blind spots that come from poor ticket discipline.

🎙 What We Cover in This Episode

• Why status debates signal a broken service model
• The dispatcher role — even at four techs, you're overdue
• Ownership clarity: no ticket should exist without a name on it
• Completed vs. closed and why invoicing takes five days
• Agreement gross profit (AGP) and its link to time entry
• Balancing operational and financial excellence as you scale

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👤 Host Links

Josh Peterson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshdpeterson/ Gary Boyle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyboyle/

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📝 Credits

Host: Josh Peterson Co-Host: Gary Boyle Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #95 — Ticket Statuses Won't Fix a Broken Service Model

Most MSPs say they're different. Bryon Beilman actually is. As CEO of iuvo Technologies, he made a deliberate decision to hire consultants — not technicians — building a team that averages 24 years of experience and delivers strategic business value that goes far beyond uptime and ticket resolution.

In this conversation, Josh Peterson and Bryon explore why traditional managed services are becoming table stakes, how narrowing your ideal client profile can unlock growth, and why AI-powered projects are the next frontier for MSPs willing to have real business conversations with their clients.

What We Cover in This Episode

• Hiring consultants over technicians and why it changes client relationships
• Evolving from per-device pricing to a retainer-based consulting model
• Narrowing the ICP and firing customers who don't fit
• AI as a go-to-market strategy: from two-week quotes to one-day turnaround
• Project-based revenue as a growth lever for recurring and non-recurring clients
• The vendor conference trap and death by a thousand $300/month tools
• Building an empowering culture where consultants make autonomous decisions
• Why asking "why" five levels deep is the most valuable skill in IT

Guest Links Bryon Beilman LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bbeilman iuvo Technologies: https://www.iuvotech.com

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Credits Host: Josh Peterson Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #94 - Consultants Over Technicians - The Premier MSP (Bryon Beilman)

Most MSP owners describe their typical client and call it an ideal client profile. That gap is costing them real revenue. In this roundtable, Josh Peterson and Gary Boyle break down the difference between an ICP and a TCP — and introduce pull-through rate as the metric that reveals whether your clients can actually drive growth.

Josh Peterson is the CEO of Bering McKinley. Gary Boyle is a Partner for Strategy & Business Development at Bering McKinley. Together, they explore why MSPs get stuck at $2 million with the wrong client mix, how to staff and plan for project work, and what the AI wave means for defining your ideal client going forward.

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🎙 What We Cover in This Episode

• Ideal Client Profile vs. Typical Client Profile
• Pull-through rate: what to target and how to measure it
• Why a $2M MSP with 17 clients is an anomaly worth studying
• Account management as a growth thesis test
• Data Rich, Information Poor (DRIP) — mining what you already have
• Staffing for project work most MSPs ignore
• The AI and automation opportunity reshaping MSP positioning

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👤 Host Links

Josh Peterson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshdpeterson Gary Boyle LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyboyle/

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📝 Credits

Host: Josh Peterson Co-Host: Gary Boyle Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #93 - Your Ideal Client Profile Is a Revenue Strategy - Not a Description | BMK Vision Roundtable

Most MSPs invest in security tools — firewalls, endpoint protection, SIEM — but few have a reliable way to know whether those tools are actually configured correctly. Misconfigurations in the very products designed to protect your clients are one of the leading attack vectors in cybersecurity today. Adam Bennett has spent 25+ years on the front lines and built a company to solve exactly this problem.

Adam Bennett is the Co-Founder & CEO of SureStack and CEO of Crosshair Cyber. In this conversation, we explore why security stack misconfigurations create silent compounding risk, how cyber insurance gives many SMBs a false sense of protection, and why the MSP that takes ownership of security posture earns the trust — and contracts — of serious clients.

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🎙 What We Cover in This Episode

• Why the tools meant to protect you may be your biggest vulnerability
• Real-world incidents caused by two unchecked configuration boxes
• The growing role of regulation and compliance in driving security adoption
• How SureStack automates continuous security stack validation using AI
• Why MSPs should enforce minimum security stacks for every client
• Using security posture assessments as a pre-sales differentiator
• Adam's journey from government cybersecurity to building a product company
• Cyber insurance gaps: what happens when the application doesn't match reality

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👤 Guest Links

Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-bennett-0290881bb/ Company Website: https://surestack.ai

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📝 Credits

Host: Josh Peterson Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #92 — Your Security Stack Is Lying to You | From the Trenches (Adam Bennett)

Most MSP owners who struggle with sales performance aren't dealing with a bad salesperson - they're dealing with no system. In this roundtable, Josh Peterson and Gary Boyle respond to a real listener email from an MSP owner who has tolerated five years of inconsistent results from a salesperson he's afraid to hold accountable. The diagnosis: this isn't a sales problem. It's a leadership problem wearing a personnel costume.

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🎙 What We Cover in This Episode

• Why no quota means no sales role - not a flexible arrangement
• How the owner's vision must precede the salesperson's target
• The two-quota framework: activity quota and results quota
• What base pay is actually purchasing - and why most MSP owners have it backwards
• How to interview a salesperson to reveal whether they're metrics-driven before you hire them
• What to do when the horse is already out of the barn
• Why accountability is clarity, not punishment - and how to introduce structure without blowing up the relationship

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👤 Your Hosts

Josh Peterson - CEO, Bering McKinley

Gary Boyle - Partner for Strategy & Business Development, Bering McKinley

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🔎 SEO Keywords

• MSP sales management
• MSP salesperson performance
• MSP sales system
• Managed service provider sales quota
• MSP accountability
• BMK Vision Podcast

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📝 Credits

Host: Josh Peterson

Co-Host: Gary Boyle

Producer: Bering McKinley

Episode: #91 - No Quota, No Sales Role: The MSP Sales System Reset

Most MSPs have invested heavily in perimeter security. But there is a financial risk hiding in plain sight: the unstructured data organizations create every day — spreadsheets, Word docs, old deal rooms, payroll files — that has never been inventoried, valued, or protected at the file level. That gap is what Return on Mitigation was built to close.

James Oliverio is the Founder & CEO of ideaBOX and a Senior Advisor at Actifile. With 30+ years spanning Wall Street CIO roles, MSP ownership, and a Harvard certification in cybersecurity risk management, James developed the ROM framework to help C-suites quantify data exposure in dollars and connect that number to the controls that actually reduce it.

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🎙 What We Cover in This Episode

- What Return on Mitigation (ROM) is and how the financial calculation works - Why traditional DLP tools detect risk but stop short of real remediation - How AI tools like ChatGPT are creating a new hidden liability for organizations - Why 44% of 2024 cyber insurance claims were denied — and how to protect clients from that trap - How to run a data risk assessment on your own MSP before offering it to clients - The FAIR Institute methodology and financial modeling for breach exposure - File-level encryption as the true remediation strategy — not just detection - How to position the ROM conversation at the C-suite level

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👤 Guest Links

Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-oliverio-7659ab/ Company Website: https://ideabox.com

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🔎 SEO Keywords

- MSP cybersecurity - Return on Mitigation - Data risk management - Cybersecurity insurance - Unstructured data security - DSPM - AI data exposure - MSP security strategy - Data breach liability - ideaBOX

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📝 Credits

Host: Josh Peterson Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #90 — Data Risk Is the MSP's Invisible Liability