K7 Insights
Field notes on climbing without melting your wings.
Leadership, operations, and scaling for owners who want to grow faster than their peers without sacrificing personality or profitability.
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Is a Business Coach Worth It? When It Is and When It Isn't
A business coach is worth it when your company has outgrown how you run it and follow-through is the gap. When it pays, when it's a waste, and the math to run.
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Key Person Risk: It's Usually You (Here's the Test)
Key person risk is how much of your business stops when one person does. In most small companies, that's the owner. Here's a seven-name test and how to fix it.
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MSP Valuation: What Buyers Read Before They Believe EBITDA
MSP valuation gets quoted in EBITDA, but buyers check net revenue retention and growth rate before they believe it. Here's the math and the bar to hit.
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Free MSP Pricing Calculator (Excel, 2026)
Free MSP pricing calculator for 2026, in Excel and Google Sheets. Use your tool costs and help desk hours to check per-user pricing and margin before you quote.
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How to Evaluate AI Tools Before Your MSP Buys
MSP AI vendor selection starts with a business case. Test what the tool replaces, count the full cost, and decide what it must prove before you sign up.
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Build vs Buy Software: Should Your MSP Vibe Code a PSA?
Build vs buy software for MSPs: five questions to answer before you vibe code your own PSA or CRM, because once your team depends on it, you're the vendor.
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How to Scope an AI Project for Your MSP Clients
Learn how to scope an AI project for your MSP clients: paid discovery, a bounded first workflow, clear delivery ownership, acceptance tests, and support terms.
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How to Sell AI Services as an MSP: The Three Offers
How to sell AI services as an MSP: help employees use AI, package ongoing enablement, and price implementation separately so your team can deliver it again.
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How to Fire a Client (Do the Math First)
Most advice on firing a client is a breakup script. Make the decision first: what the account costs you, what a replacement costs, and how you hired them.
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MSP Marketing Is a Budget Line, Not a Tactic
How to market an MSP or IT business: set the budget line first. The percent of revenue each growth target takes, plus the message and your weekly number.
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What a Business Coach Costs in San Diego (Vistage, EO, YPO)
Real 2026 numbers for a business coach, Vistage, EO and YPO in San Diego, each with a source and a date, plus my own price and what each option buys you.
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Your L10 Meeting Stopped Moving the Needle
An L10 meeting goes stale five ways: all-green scorecards, Rocks that roll every quarter, an IDS that never solves. How to tell, and how to reset your Level 10.
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AI for MSPs: It Speeds Up Whatever You Already Are
AI for MSPs speeds up whatever your shop already is. Where it goes first, where it must never speak for you, and the tier-1 margin math most owners skip.
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Personal Accountability: The Excuses We Tell Ourselves
Personal accountability for a business owner starts with how you explain a bad quarter. Why we blame the market, and the one question that cuts through it.
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You Are the Glass Ceiling
Your business keeps stalling in the same spot. The market and the team usually aren't the problem. You are, every time you change the plan before it can work.
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Choosing a Business Operating System: EOS vs Scaling Up
No business operating system covers everything. What EOS, Scaling Up, 4DX, Great Game, and E-Myth each do best, where each leaves a gap, and how to choose.
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What Does a Business Coach Actually Do?
A business coach builds the operating system with you and stays on the hook for whether your team runs it. The real job, and how to tell if you're ready.
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Why San Diego Owners Cave on Price
San Diego owners cave on price more than they admit. Every discount is a quiet pay cut for your own team. Here's why you do it and how to hold the line.
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Virtual CIO Services: How to Choose the Right vCIO
Virtual CIO services are IT strategy on retainer: a roadmap, a budget, and risk management. What a real engagement delivers, the red flags, and what to ask.
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vCIO Salary and Job Description: How MSPs Fill the Seat
What a vCIO makes, what a real job description covers, when an MSP is ready to hire the seat, and the sub-it-out ladder to run before it goes on payroll.
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vCIO QBRs: Get Out of the Review and Into the Board Meeting
Most MSP QBRs train clients to cancel. A vCIO QBR agenda that works: split the meetings, set cadence by client, and get into the budget cycle in the fall.
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vCIO KPIs: How to Measure the Seat Without a Quota
The five vCIO KPIs that prove the seat works: realized utilization, reviews delivered, risk reduction, audits, and budget. Plus why a vCIO never gets a quota.
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Virtual CIO Pricing: What a vCIO Costs and What to Charge
Virtual CIO cost and rates: a vCIO bills $200 to $600 an hour, and a client's monthly fee usually runs $800 to $1,000. Here's the pricing math behind it.
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MSP Referrals: Turn Luck Into a System
MSP referrals are the cheapest pipeline you have. Build a referral engine: ask for warm intros right after you deliver, then verticalize so they compound.
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How to Hire Your First Salesperson for Your MSP
How to hire a salesperson for your MSP: sell it yourself first, then hire a BDR to fill the funnel before a closer. The signs you're ready to make the move.
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MSP Sales Compensation Plan and Commission Structure
How to build an MSP sales compensation plan: a 60/40 base-to-commission split, commission paid on recurring revenue you keep, and a quota a rep can hit.
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How to Get MSP Clients: Prospecting Without the Spam
How to get MSP clients without becoming the dialer nobody wants: sort the list, lead with a give, stack three touches a week, and keep the funnel full.
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Managed Services Sales Process: Four Phases for MSPs
The managed services sales process is four phases: plan, prospect, present, follow through. Here's what each one does, and where MSP owners lose deals.
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How to Sell Managed Services: Funnel Math for 2026
How to sell managed services without guessing: run sales like your help desk, work the funnel backward from your growth goal, and size the activity it takes.
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What Is a vCIO? How MSPs Build and Sell the Offering
A vCIO is outsourced IT strategy: roadmap, budget, and risk for the client. How MSP owners build, price, and sell a vCIO service clients actually pay for.
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MSP Business Plan: How I'd Build One, With the Workbook
A managed service provider business plan is how the business makes money: model, margins, budget, traps. Then run your own numbers in the free calculator.
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Managed Services Pricing: How to Set and Hold Your Number
Managed services pricing: SMB-focused MSPs average $150 to $280 a user a month for their fullest package. Set your number from cost and margin, and hold it.