–>And why it changed almost nothing about the agenda — because we already knew.
A couple of weeks ago, we ran N-able’s Business Transformation: Profit & Growth workshop in Raleigh-Durham. Twelve MSP owner-operators. Two days. No vendor pitch, no product demo — just benchmark data, peer conversation, and the kind of candor that only happens when you get owner-operators in a room together without their teams watching.
We ask every group the same three questions at the start:
- What is your company’s greatest strength?
- What is your greatest operational weakness?
- What is your greatest strategic weakness?
The answers are always the same.
- Strengths: Relationships, technical depth, culture, responsiveness. The things that got them where they are.
- Operational weaknesses: Scope creep, giving work away, can’t say no, billing discipline, reactive demand volume.
- Strategic weaknesses: Sales and marketing. New logo growth. Owner dependency.
Twelve companies. Eight states. Combined team headcount in the hundreds. And within 20 minutes of introductions, every single one of those themes had appeared — unprompted, from the floor — at least twice.
This is not a coincidence. It is the structural condition of how most successful MSPs are built.
The Number We Put in Front of the Group
Industry median true net profit — net profit after paying the owner a market-rate salary — is around 8%. Top-quartile MSPs are at 18% or better. That gap, across a $3M MSP, is roughly $300,000 per year.
They don’t know their Labor Loaded Gross Margin. They haven’t done an ABC analysis of their client base. They don’t have black-and-white in-scope / out-of-scope definitions that their techs can apply without calling the owner.
The companies in the top quartile aren’t smarter or luckier. They’ve built their business like a financial instrument — with targets, with measurement, with deliberate decisions about which clients to keep, which to reprice, and which to fire.
What the Group Took Home
We covered a lot of ground over two days: managed services margin mechanics, professional services delivery models, variable compensation design, AI-enabled services, compliance as a growth vertical, and a session with Ted McKenna — co-author of The JOLT Effect — on why buyers freeze even after they’ve said yes.
But the conversation I keep returning to is the one from the first 20 minutes. Twelve MSP owners, some running companies for 20 or 30 years, sitting in a room and describing the same wound. Not with embarrassment — with the kind of recognition that comes when you realize the problem you thought was unique to you is actually structural. Predictable. And solvable.
That’s what good peer facilitation does. Not give you new information. Gives you permission to act on what you already suspect.
If This Sounds Familiar
If the “giving it away” problem is in your company — if your team won’t charge for scope, if your strategic weakness is new logo growth, if you’ve been busy but not quite building what you want to build — that’s the exact problem we work on every day at MSP Advisor.
We do it through peer groups, through one-on-one coaching, through benchmarking, and through events like this one.
The next conversation starts with a call.