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An Owner’s Responsibility

Posted on | Author Gary Pica

I believe that owning a business comes with significant responsibility — not just the responsibility of managing the tasks and details required to run the business, and not just the responsibility to your customers who rely on your services.

Your primary responsibility lies with the people who work for you. At a basic level, this means providing a safe, non-toxic work environment where employees feel comfortable working every day. It also involves giving them a well-defined role, so they understand what success looks like. Beyond these basics, there are two other critical areas of responsibility.

The first is creating opportunity and growth. The only way to achieve this is by growing your business — specifically, adding new customers at the right price. Consistent growth is essential for long-term success, as it enables you to provide new opportunities for your team. Without growth, you cannot offer your employees the chance to advance.

The second is helping loyal, long-term team members achieve financial stability. This requires running a highly profitable business and educating your team. For example, at TruMethods, we offered a 401(k) program with two different profit-sharing plans for our employees. Each year, we invited our 401(k) provider to educate the team on planning for their financial futures. We could do this because we maintained a very profitable business.

Whenever I speak to a group of MSPs, I ask if they have long-term team members they care about deeply and want to help achieve their financial goals. Recently, I asked this question, and nearly every hand in the room went up. However, here’s the reality: if you don’t run a business with a true net profit — after the owner’s salary — of at least 20%, and if you don’t achieve financial independence yourself, you cannot help your people. Think of the advice given on airplanes: secure your own mask first before assisting others.

You cannot give to others what you do not have, no matter how good your intentions. This is why I tell our TruMethods Peer members that building a profitable business isn’t just about you and your personal goals. Every team member, no matter their position in your organization, depends on your success.

This perspective is why I don’t like to see any quarterly “Goose Eggs” from our members. A “Goose Egg” is going an entire quarter without adding a new ogo sale. Consider what a “Goose Egg” could mean for others in your business. Developing this mindset has helped me become a better businessperson throughout my career. It has also led me to connect my company’s growth and profitability directly to my role as a leader and to my self-image.

Shifting to this way of thinking takes effort, but it’s worth it. I’ve learned that most people are more motivated to achieve goals that impact others. While we may let ourselves down occasionally, we work hard not to let others down.

As you plan your life and business goals for 2025 and beyond, I encourage you to adopt this perspective. It could transform not only your business but also your role as a leader.

The Coming MSP Revolution: Why AI Will Fundamentally Reshape Our Industry

Posted on | Author Gary Pica

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to speak with numerous MSPs at our North American and EMEA Peer meetings, as well as Kaseya Connect in Vegas. There’s a lot of optimism in our industry. Everyone seems excited about where things are heading. SMBs, our customers, continue to invest more in technology, and more companies are outsourcing. The growth opportunities feel endless right now. I love it when people have higher expectations.

However, when I ask about the future changes that are coming and how they’ll impact our business model, I feel that people are underestimating the impact of what’s to come. Most of the conversations I’m having suggest leaders are thinking about small adjustments, not the massive shift that’s actually coming. I believe we have experienced an evolution of our business model up until now, and a revolution is on the horizon.

Over the past decade, our industry has evolved. Many MSPs have matured operationally, while the security landscape has changed tools and technology. We’ve weathered economic ups and downs, figured out remote work, and adapted to countless new technologies along the way. These evolutions have resulted in more MSPs becoming larger and more profitable. But through this, the basic structure of an MSP is the same, with support being the foundation of cost and value. We have piled a lot of tools up, but our foundation has remained. Whether it’s RMM, PSA, security tools, or backup solutions, we’ve basically been stacking more stuff on top of the same core business. Your team closes a lot of tickets and deals with a lot of alerts.

Over the next three to five years, advancements in AI and automation will dramatically change what we have known as support. We’re not talking about simple chatbots here—this is AI that can actually diagnose problems and fix complex issues. There will be fewer tickets and alerts, and AI and automation will accomplish an increasing percentage of support noise. Password resets, software installs, network tuning, system maintenance—all of it happening without your techs touching anything. This will be the first fundamental reshuffling of the MSP industry.

I don’t think the leaders I have spoken to over the past few weeks fully realize what this shift will mean to their business and, more importantly, what they need to do to succeed in this transition. The technology is already here, and some MSPs are using it now, which means this is happening faster than most people think.

I’ll discuss more in the future about what you need to do to make the first real revolution in our industry a huge opportunity, but for now, start to think about what your business, your operations, your packaging and pricing, your value proposition—all of it—will look like when support is a small percentage of what it is today.

The MSPs who figure this out early will have a huge advantage over those who wait.

Linchpins: The People and Events That Shape Our Paths

Posted on | Author Gary Pica

You may have heard me talk about a concept in the past that I call linchpins. This refers to people or events that set us on a different path in our lives and our career. Every story of success and failure always has several linchpins. These critical junctures often appear small in the moment but show their true importance later on.

I’ve been thinking more about this recently. I had to do a presentation about my life and career to a group of trusted advisers a few weeks back. If you’ve never sat down and mapped out your life and career in detail, I will tell you it’s a different kind of experience. It pushes you to look at yourself in ways that can be uncomfortable but really eye-opening.

It was much harder than I thought it would be, and it made me remember some pivotal moments from my past. Some of those moments I had all but forgotten. Our memories have a curious way of burying certain defining experiences, perhaps as a means of self-protection or simply due to the constant forward momentum of life.

They fall into two basic categories, people and events.

When I started to write down some of the right people I had met at the right time, the list was longer than I had imagined. Not all the people were great mentors to me. Some were just people that changed how I thought about a situation or how I thought about myself. Even brief encounters — a single conversation or an offhand comment — have sometimes altered my trajectory in ways I couldn’t have predicted.

Some were even bad experiences, people that didn’t see value in me or treated me poorly. But the few that stood out were the people that took time with me when they didn’t have to. They believed in me even when I didn’t fully believe in myself at that moment. Their faith served as a mirror reflecting back potential I couldn’t yet see, creating a powerful self-fulfilling prophecy.

Then I thought about the events, and what was interesting is that almost all the big linchpin events that had shaped me were mistakes, failures, tragedy, and loss. Although the people that were linchpins for me were mostly positive relationships, almost none of the events were my successes. This pattern suggests that comfort rarely breeds growth; it’s the friction and resistance of difficult circumstances that forge our character and capabilities.

I found this super interesting.

I think there’s more here. I’ve even thought about starting a podcast series on the topic of linchpins to interview people and pull on this thread. When I look back to these pivotal people and events, it gives me a different view of who I am. We’re all the sum of our decisions.

Each linchpin has the ability to change in some way the path we are on over time, and it means we reach different destinations far from where we’ve set off. I wonder how many of us recognize our linchpins as they’re happening, and how different our lives might be if we cultivated greater awareness of these critical moments as they unfold before us. Perhaps by sharing our linchpin stories with each other, we can better appreciate how these pivotal moments shape not just our individual journeys, but our collective human experience.

What Truly Drives Career Fulfillment

Posted on | Author Gary Pica

A little while back, I spoke to a group of peers about my life and career. Afterward, I had dinner with a friend who had attended my presentation, and he caught me off guard with a question.

He asked, “Gary, I loved your story. What has been the best thing about your career?”

I had to think for a minute (or several).

I eventually told him that there’s nothing better than being united around a single mission.

I’ve been part of teams that were unified around a common goal three times in my career. At my first MSP, it was about being an MSP in a way no one had ever done before. No one had ever built a truly proactive MSP at that time. My team was aware that we were part of something special. We weren’t just fixing problems — we were preventing them before they happened.

TruMethods was similar. We all shared the goal of leaving this industry better than how we found it. We challenged conventional wisdom because we believed in something bigger than ourselves.

Today, I’m getting another chance with our TruMethods Peer and Powered Services Pro team. There’s something magical about starting fresh with lessons learned. Our team brings diverse perspectives but shares a unified vision.

As our conversation continued, my friend asked, “So it’s the mission that drives people, not money?”

I said that money was a big motivator early on when I didn’t have any. Like many entrepreneurs, I started out hungry — both figuratively and sometimes literally.

Then, I used business planning to help me think about money less. I spent time planning each year, quarter, and month so that in between, I could focus on having fun with my team and the mission. This structured approach to finances allowed me to be present in the day-to-day operations.

Once I reached the point in my life where money was no longer the biggest motivator, things got interesting. I made better decisions and enjoyed the process more. And the funny thing is that was when I made the most money — when money was only the result of the mission.

There’s no better feeling than being a part of a team where everyone is aligned on the why of the business and where everyone feels like what they do really matters. Customers sense this unity and are naturally drawn to organizations where people genuinely believe in what they’re doing.

When you get in that sweet spot, everyone feels it. The work doesn’t feel like work anymore. Looking back now, I realize that those moments of perfect alignment with talented, passionate people — that’s the true wealth my career has given me.

The Growth Paradox: Why Optimism Isn’t Enough for MSP Success

Posted on | Author Gary Pica

We recently surveyed our TruMethods Peer members about how they feel about their businesses in 2025. I’m happy to say that most were excited to grow their businesses and felt optimistic — and that’s awesome.

At the same time, I want to be sure you’re planning for success. For many MSPs, optimism may mean that they expect different results in terms of growth and profitability in the future than they have achieved in the past. Putting a solid plan with accountability in place is step one, but there’s more to consider. Your strategy needs to align with your goals, and sometimes that means making difficult choices about your team and client roster.

If you expect very different results in the future, what will be very different? When I ask this question, people usually say something like, “Well, I’m going to start focusing more on sales and marketing,” or “I’m going to hire a salesperson or a marketing person.” These are positive steps, but they’re only part of the equation for transformative growth.

Next, I ask them, “Which employees or customers will you fire?”

They say, “What do you mean? We haven’t lost a customer or an employee in four years,” and they say that with pride. This stability can be a double-edged sword — continuity is valuable, but sometimes it masks complacency.

My reply is, “Let me make sure I understand — these employees and these customers have gotten you these results, but the same employees and the same customer base are now going to get you dramatically different results?”

Less-than-great team members and the bottom third of your customer base are holding you back. You can kid yourself or use hope as a strategy, but the reality is, if you want change — real change — by definition, things can’t stay the same. Every minute and dollar you spend on underperforming clients or team members is a resource not invested in growth opportunities.

I know this is a hard concept for many of us. Believe me, I’ve tried to make water run uphill in my businesses over the years. But here’s the moral of the story: being a great leader, great company, great person, doesn’t mean that you don’t let people go. It doesn’t mean that you don’t part ways with customers. It means that you make decisions that are best for the business, so that the team grows along with you, and everyone has the most opportunity.

Consider conducting a thorough assessment of your current team and client base. Identify which relationships are truly aligned with your future vision. Sometimes, the most compassionate thing you can do is to part ways professionally when the fit is no longer there. This creates space for better matches — both for your company and for the people or businesses you’ve outgrown.

If you really want better results over the next year, make some tough decisions. I want your future results to match your current optimism. The most successful MSPs I’ve worked with understand that strategic pruning leads to healthier growth. Remember, this isn’t about being ruthless — it’s about being intentional with your most precious resources: your time, energy, and focus.

4 Leadership Reads That Will Transform Your MSP This Year

Posted on | Author Gary Pica

Leadership isn’t a fixed point you eventually reach and remain at — it’s a continuous journey of growth and adaptation. Those who become complacent often fall behind the rest, eventually becoming followers rather than leaders in their industry.

Great leaders understand they shape their organization’s direction and culture, so they’re relentless about self-improvement. They ask, “how can I do to be better tomorrow than I am today?” They actively seek feedback, embrace new challenges, and recognize that their actions and decisions ripple throughout their organization, affecting everyone from team members to customers.

Your path forward is clear: Commit to constantly evolving your leadership approach. By staying ahead of industry trends, developing new skills, and adapting to changing business landscapes, you position yourself and your organization for continued success. This proactive approach to leadership ensures you remain a true leader, not just someone holding a leadership title.

To help you on this journey of continuous growth, I recommend reviewing these essential leadership posts.

Lessons in Delegation: What I Wish I Had Known Earlier in My Career

Like most business owners, I was the center of my organization’s universe when I ran my first MSP. Every major decision flowed through me — I was the rainmaker, the problem solver, the final word. (I was in charge!) While I had a talented team around me, I held onto the reins tightly, believing this was the path to success. It wasn’t until our growth began to plateau that I realized this approach had become our biggest limitation. The wake-up call came when I saw how my grip on decision-making was holding back not just our scaling potential, but the development of strong leaders within our ranks. This insight sparked my journey to transform from primary decision-maker to mentor, learning how to empower others to lead effectively.

Ask Yourself as an MSP Leader: What Do You Want?

After a recent TruMethods Peer meeting, I reviewed members’ performance metrics. While our group’s overall numbers showed impressive growth worth celebrating, I noticed a critical pattern beneath the surface: Several MSPs hadn’t secured any new customers this quarter. This lack of new business isn’t just a temporary slowdown; it’s often a clear signal that an MSP has hit a wall in its journey of growth. When I spot these patterns, it’s crucial to step in with support to help these MSPs break through their barriers before a temporary challenge becomes a permanent ceiling.

D-Players: The Hidden Cost of Culture Killers in Your Organization

Not every employee will perform at the highest level. While you’ll have your star performers (A-Players) and solid contributors (B-Players), you’ll also encounter those who meet minimum expectations (C-Players) and underperformers (D-Players). The real danger lies in keeping those underperformers too long — they can significantly damage your organization’s performance and culture.

The Emotional Cost of Business Decisions: Navigating Facts vs. Feelings

Business decisions often come down to a battle between emotions and facts. While I’ve fallen into the emotional trap before, I’ve learned that crunching the numbers has simply served me better in the long run as a business owner. Unfortunately, I’ve noticed many leaders resist this approach. Instead of going in the direction the numbers clearly point to, they’ll choose another path based on feeling. This emotional decision-making isn’t just risky — it’s ridiculously expensive.

Stop Selling!

Posted on | Author Gary Pica

Three or four months ago, I was talking to one of our TruMethods members, a great young guy with a great attitude who works hard. He’s done a great job dialing in operations, adopting the TruMethods framework, and developing the Technology Success process, but he continued to struggle with sales. He doesn’t like selling, and he thinks he’s not good at it.

“Selling is just not for me,” he said. I could see his frustration. Despite his success in other areas of the business, sales conversations left him feeling uncomfortable and ineffective.

So I told him, “Stop selling. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? You’re not adding a lot of new clients anyway, right?”

Here’s what I told him to do: Go out and meet owners and business leaders. Look at each meeting as an adventure. Be curious. Find out what makes their business tick, then share what you know about technology and its role in business.

This approach transforms what would otherwise be a stressful sales call into something more natural and enjoyable. When you’re genuinely interested in learning about someone’s business, the conversation flows more easily.

Look for ways to add value. I told him that he knows more about how technology can enable business — and why the wrong approach can hold business back — than anyone. Act as if they paid you to understand their business and technology and offer perspective. Don’t talk about your company. Just consult with them. Don’t sell.

When you position yourself as a consultant rather than a salesperson, something interesting happens. You build trust. You demonstrate expertise. And most importantly, you remove the pressure that makes selling uncomfortable in the first place.

About a month later, he emailed me saying he had five great prospects, which was a 500% improvement. He was spending more time on the process, and it sounded like he was starting to enjoy it.

His experience isn’t unique. Many of our members come from technical backgrounds and find traditional selling approaches don’t feel authentic to them. By focusing instead on consultation and value-adding, they discover a more natural path to building client relationships.

So, stop selling and get out there. Remember, the TruMethods sales process is just a framework to help customers decide and for you to control the process. The framework provides structure, but it’s your authentic engagement that builds relationships.

Consider the sales process of the car and you are the driver. You need the vehicle to get where you’re going, but how you drive makes all the difference. Just relax, hit the gas, and, most importantly, enjoy the ride.

When you genuinely care about helping businesses succeed through technology, that sincerity comes through. Prospects can tell the difference between someone trying to make a sale and someone trying to make a difference. And in the end, that’s what turns prospects into clients — not selling techniques, but real value and authentic connection.

Stop Trying to Do It All: A Message About Focus

Posted on | Author Gary Pica

I’ve been thinking a lot about focus, and something at our Q1 TruMethods Peer meetings in Orlando really brought this to mind.

If you weren’t there, let me tell you — the energy at the meetings was incredible! Our survey results showed a high level of optimism for people’s businesses for 2025, and that’s great. But during these meetings, I observed a pattern I’ve seen throughout my career: Business leaders trying to accomplish too many things at once.

We’re a few months into 2025, and I’m sure you have a lot of enthusiasm for the year ahead. This is a great way to feel, especially if you’re looking to make some changes this year. Whether you’re newer to TruMethods or already making progress in your business, you want to move faster. In your excitement, you might try to fix too many things at once. While some of these issues may have existed in your business for years, thinking you can solve them all in a quarter doesn’t make sense when you step back. I’ve seen this approach lead to frustration, burnout, and — most importantly — missed opportunities for real, sustainable growth. And I don’t want to see that happen to you.

So look at your annual plan, then look at each quarter and set quarterly initiatives or rocks that move you forward. Be realistic about what you can actually get accomplished. For bigger initiatives, break it up into smaller pieces and get one done this quarter. Think of it like building a house — you need a solid foundation before you can start working on the roof. Have no more than three to five really important rocks for the quarter. Prioritize them and pick the most important thing that you will put top accountability on. This focused approach might feel slow at first, but it’s like compound interest, the results build up over time.

If growing your MSP is a top priority, be sure that activities related to new logo acquisition are among the top accountability items. This means dedicated time and resources, clear metrics, and regular check-ins on progress. Then next quarter, do the same thing. After three or four quarters, you have made a lot of progress and have learned how to unlock the power of a well-executed planning process. Then the sky’s the limit. I’ve watched countless businesses transform using this approach, turning their biggest challenges into their greatest achievements.

Remember, success isn’t about doing everything at once — it’s about doing the right things in the right order. When you master this approach, you’ll find yourself making more progress in four quarters than you previously made in years of scattered efforts.

So I’ll ask you now: What’s your ONE thing? What single initiative, if accomplished this quarter, would make the biggest impact on your business?

The Reactive Spiral of Death

Posted on | Author Gary Pica

When analyzing an MSP’s operational health, I always focus on three critical metrics. Today, I want to discuss what I consider the most revealing of these: seats managed per support resource. This measurement goes straight to the heart of support efficiency, telling me a great deal about your operational maturity, profitability, and scalability.

With the proliferation of additional tools, specifically security tools, we have seen the average monthly tickets per end user increase for some MSPs. This means you spend more of your tech resources on tickets and have less resources for proactive tasks. That reduces proactive work, further increasing ticket counts, and it spirals. We call that the reactive spiral.

There are two metrics that determine your seats managed per resource:

  1. Tickets per month per end user.
  2. Average tickets closed per resource.

For the purpose of this blog post, we’re going to focus on tickets per month per end user. First, you must track your tickets properly, both support and alerts. Some MSPs don’t realize the direct impact your average ticket counts have on your business.

If you manage 1000 seats, and your tickets per month per end user increases by 0.25, that’s 250 tickets in a month. Think of it this way: That’s 11 tickets a day. For you, that’s at least one tech. It might even be two techs, if you average only six tickets closed per day per tech.

At the micro level, small changes in tickets per month per end user have a big impact on your costs. Many times, I ask people why this number has increased, and it’s the first time they’re realizing it. The answer is often, “I have to look into it.” When I talk about command, this is what I mean. Key levers have a big impact on profitability and growth.

It’s time to get your arms around your tickets per month per end user. First, be sure you’re capturing all tickets and alerts and that they’re being reported accurately. Your PSA should provide comprehensive data that helps you spot trends and identify problem areas before they affect your bottom line.

Tracking tickets per month per end user is step one. You’ll need to look at your tickets closed per resource. Understanding both sides of this equation gives you full visibility into your support efficiency and helps identify where improvements can be made.

And finally, how do you lower your ticket count? This is the critical question that can transform your business. Through strategic standardization, targeted automation, and consistent proactive maintenance, you can reverse the reactive spiral and build a more efficient service delivery model.

The path to improved MSP profitability starts with understanding where you are today. Take time to analyze your current metrics and identify what’s driving your ticket volume. Once you have clarity on these numbers, you’ll be equipped to make strategic decisions that break the reactive spiral and set your business on a path to greater efficiency, profitability, and scalability.

You Don’t Suck: A Reality Check for 2025

Posted on | Author Gary Pica

It’s 2025. It’s time to look back at 2024 with a kind but very clear eye.

What were your goals for 2024? I’m talking about all of them — personal, business, career. Did you achieve them? More importantly, did you achieve the desired result? If not, you need to be very realistic about why.

Here’s the thing — you don’t suck. Let me say that again: You don’t suck. But your process? That might need work. It’s not about beating yourself up; it’s about changing how you approach your goals. Success isn’t about who you are; it’s about what you do consistently.

Don’t let yourself off the hook by blaming external factors. Let’s be crystal clear: You, and only you, are responsible for where you are. Good or bad. Like it or not. That’s just how it works. The market conditions, the economy, your team’s performance — sure, they all play a part. But at the end of the day, you’re the one steering the ship.

Take a hard look at your goals for this year. Are they the same ones you didn’t achieve last year? Maybe even the year before that? If so, what’s going to change — starting with you? This requires brutal honesty about what you’re willing to do differently, what you’re willing to sacrifice, and what you’re willing to commit to.

If you want different results, something needs to change. Want dramatically different results? You need to do something dramatically different. The most common thing I see when coaching business leaders is they tell me their goals, expecting vastly different results than what they’ve achieved before. I always ask them: “Tell me what you’re going to do differently.”

I’m usually underwhelmed by the answer. They talk about working harder, staying later, and pushing more. But that’s not what I mean by “different.” I’m talking about fundamental changes in approach, strategy, and execution.

Different might mean:

  • Completely restructuring your day to focus on high-impact activities.
  • Investing significant resources in areas you’ve been avoiding.
  • Having those difficult conversations you’ve been putting off.
  • Building new skills that make you uncomfortable.
  • Abandoning strategies that aren’t working, even if you’ve invested heavily in them.

Success isn’t about working yourself to death. It’s about working differently. Smarter. More strategically. It’s about making decisions that align with your goals, not just your comfort zone.

So, remember — you don’t suck, but you do need to get real about what has to change this year to move the needle. And that change? It starts with you. It starts with being honest about what’s working and what isn’t. It starts with being willing to feel uncomfortable, trying new approaches, and failing in new ways.

Because here’s the truth: The path to different results isn’t paved with the same old actions. It’s paved with intentional, strategic changes that push you beyond what’s familiar.

What will you do differently today?