The BMK Vision Podcast

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

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👤 Your Hosts

Josh Peterson - CEO, Bering McKinley

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

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🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision

YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1

Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision

Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form

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🔎 SEO Keywords

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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

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👤 Guest Links

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

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🔎 SEO Keywords

- MSP cybersecurity

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📝 Credits

Host: Josh Peterson

Most MSP owners say they're great at sales — but when you examine what's actually happening, many are confusing orders with selling. In this BMK Vision Roundtable, Josh Peterson and Gary Boyle unpack why sending quotes too early kills deals, why the order of selling matters more than any closing technique, and how a simple three-pillar framework can transform close rates for MSPs at any size.

Co-Host Introduction

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🎙 What We Cover in This Episode

- Why most MSP "sales" are really just order-taking

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👤 Host & Co-Host Links

Josh Peterson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshdpeterson/

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🎙️ Co-Host Bio — Gary Boyle

🎙️ Host Bio — Josh Peterson

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📝 Credits

Host: Josh Peterson

Most MSP owners will tell you they want to improve profitability. But when the solution involves cutting recurring revenue, the conversation gets uncomfortable fast. This roundtable tackles the hard truth: not all revenue is healthy revenue, and the clients you're afraid to lose may be the ones destroying your margins.

Josh Peterson, Gary Boyle, and Ryan Alter dig into a real client scenario where 15% of agreements were operating below sustainable margins — and explore why MSP owners tolerate it, what it costs them, and how to break the cycle.

🎙 What We Cover in This Episode

• Why revenue growth masks profitability problems in MSPs

👤 Guest & Co-Host Bios

Ryan Alter is the founder and former CEO of Alter Enterprise, a managed IT services provider he built over 17 years in Missoula, Montana. Ryan successfully exited in 2023 when Alter Enterprise was acquired by Fisher's Technology. He now runs Silver Stream AV.

Gary Boyle is a Partner for Strategy & Business Development at Bering McKinley. With a background spanning network engineering, entrepreneurship, and strategic consulting, Gary brings real-world operator experience to helping MSP owners build stronger, more profitable businesses.

Josh Peterson is the CEO of Bering McKinley and host of The BMK Vision Podcast. Since 2004, Josh has worked with hundreds of MSP owners to build operationally sound, profitable businesses through consulting, peer teams, and direct coaching.

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📝 Credits

Host: Josh Peterson

Not every MSP story ends with a big exit or a moonshot growth curve. Some of the most important transitions in this industry happen when an owner realizes that ownership itself was never the right fit — and does something about it. David Norelid spent nearly a decade running his own MSP before making the decision to close it down and take a role at another MSP, a move he now calls the best decision of his career.

David Norelid is the Technical Alignment Manager at 5 Factor Technology, and in this conversation, we explore the hidden costs of solo MSP ownership, the mindset shift from "get to" to "don't have to," and what the future of managed services demands from technologists who want to stay relevant.

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🎙 What We Cover in This Episode

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👤 Guest Links

Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidnorelid/ Company Website: https://www.5factortech.com/

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🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision

YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1

Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision

Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form

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📝 Credits

Host: Josh Peterson Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #87 — MSP Owner to Employee: Why He Walked Away | From the Trenches

Most MSP owners don't plan their hires — they react to them. A great person shows up, excitement takes over, and suddenly you're building a role around a person instead of filling a seat you've already designed. In this BMK Vision Roundtable, Josh Peterson and Gary Boyle break down why that pattern keeps repeating and what it's actually costing you.

Gary Boyle is a Partner for Strategy & Business Development at Bering McKinley, and in this conversation, we explore the hidden cost of reactive hiring, the clarity gap behind most role failures, and why designing the seat before finding the person is a leadership discipline — not an HR task.

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🎙 What We Cover in This Episode

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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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🚀 Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision

YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1

Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision

Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form

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🔎 SEO Keywords

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📝 Credits

Host: Josh Peterson Co-Host: Gary Boyle Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #86 — Stop Hiring People — Start Designing Roles

In this episode of the BMK Vision Podcast, Josh Peterson sits down with Gary Boyle, Partner for Strategy & Business Development at Bering McKinley. They dig into why MSP partnerships break down, how undefined roles create a slow-burning disaster, and what owners can do right now to get ahead of it — drawing from real client situations happening right now.

This conversation explores how the most common partnership problems — misaligned expectations, weak operating agreements, and murky equity structures — quietly erode MSP businesses for years before anyone faces them head-on. Practical and honest takeaways for any MSP owner in a partnership or thinking about starting one.

🔗 Learn more about the BMK Vision Operating System: https://beringmckinley.com/vision

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About Gary Boyle

Gary Boyle is a Partner for Strategy & Business Development at Bering McKinley. With a background spanning network engineering, entrepreneurship, and strategic consulting, Gary brings real-world operator experience to helping MSP owners build stronger, more profitable businesses.

About the Host

Josh Peterson is the CEO of Bering McKinley and host of the BMK Vision Podcast, helping MSPs grow through operational maturity, financial clarity, and leadership development. Learn more: https://beringmckinley.com/vision

🎤 Apply to be a guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form

You don’t need time tracking to survive at $1M — but you absolutely need it to scale past $2M.

In this episode, we break down one of the most common growth ceilings in the MSP industry: the belief that “we don’t track time” is a culture win. Josh Peterson and Gary Boyle unpack why that mindset often leads to stalled margins, mispriced agreements, technician burnout, and emotional decision-making instead of operational clarity.

Gary Boyle is a Partner at Bering McKinley, and in this conversation, we explore service profitability, agreement gross profit, technician capacity, and the real economics behind scaling a managed services business. This episode challenges the idea that time tracking equals micromanagement and reframes it as leadership discipline.

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• Why MSPs stall between $1M–$3M in revenue

• The “noisy vs quiet client” profitability problem

• Agreement gross profit and why it matters

• The illusion of flat-rate pricing

• Service salary to service revenue ratio

• Capacity modeling for technicians

• Why “we’re profitable” isn’t enough

• Leadership discipline vs micromanagement

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Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyboyle/

Company Website: https://beringmckinley.com

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YouTube (Video Podcast):

https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1

Learn More About the Vision Platform:

https://beringmckinley.com/vision

Apply to Be a Guest:

https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form

In this From the Trenches episode of the BMK Vision Podcast, Josh Peterson sits down with Ray Stasieczko for an unfiltered conversation about the copier-dealer-to-MSP transition—and why so many businesses lose their way chasing relevance instead of building real value.

Ray shares hard-earned lessons from decades in the print and IT services space, challenging vendor-driven MSP models that promise easy growth but often lead to low margins, outsourced complexity, and stalled businesses. Together, Josh and Ray explore why most copier dealers only convert a small percentage of clients into managed IT customers, why outsourcing the help desk breaks the economics for many MSPs, and why clarity of intent (“why”) matters more than chasing the next trend.

This episode is a candid look at what actually works, what doesn’t, and what MSPs and copier dealers need to rethink as disruption accelerates.

• Why many MSPs get “lost on the way to relevance”

• The reality of the 3–5% copier-to-MSP conversion rate

• Vendor-driven strategy vs. business fundamentals

• Why outsourcing the front-line help desk hurts margins

• The difference between lifestyle MSPs and growth-focused firms

• Why fee-based assessments and consulting matter

• “Why comes first, how comes second” as an operating principle

• What mature MSPs do differently to protect value

Ray Stasieczko

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raystasieczko/

YouTube (Video Podcast):

https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1

Learn More About the Vision Operating System:

https://beringmckinley.com/vision

Apply to Be a Guest:

https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form

At around $5M in revenue, many MSPs run into a leadership problem that has nothing to do with effort or intelligence—and everything to do with role fit. In this episode, the BMK Vision Podcast team breaks down a real client scenario where an owner is sitting in the sales seat but doesn’t truly want sales leadership.

Josh Peterson is joined by Gary Boyle and Ryan Alter to explore why ownership does not automatically mean seat fit, why delegating tasks is not the same as owning outcomes, and how avoiding hard role decisions quietly taxes the entire business. The conversation digs into the tension between partnerships, ego, accountability, and growth—and why sales leadership is a non-optional seat at this stage of maturity.

This episode is especially relevant for MSP owners navigating multi-partner dynamics, stalled growth, or the shift from tactics to strategy.

Why ownership does not equal seat fit

The difference between delegating tasks and owning accountability

Why sales leadership becomes non-optional around $5M

How misaligned seats create friction across sales and service

When coaching turns into avoidance

The real cost of delaying role-fit decisions

How leaders can surface truth without confrontation

The role of consultants in guiding difficult ownership conversations

Josh Peterson

CEO, Bering McKinley

https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshdpeterson/

Gary Boyle

Senior Partner, Bering McKinley

Ryan Alter

Founder, Silverstream AV

YouTube (Video Podcast):

https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1

Learn more about the Vision Operating System:

https://beringmckinley.com/vision

Apply to be a guest on the podcast:

https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form