In this episode of From the Trenches on the BMK Vision Podcast, Josh Peterson sits down with Steve Brickner (Founder/CEO of Kraken Technology Solutions) for a leadership conversation that starts in an unexpected place: high-end residential painting. The point isn’t nostalgia—it’s a cleaner mental model for how MSPs actually win. In painting, the outcome is decided before the first coat goes on. The prep is the product. And in an industry that constantly over-credits “technical talent” while under-investing in planning, positioning, and expectation management, that analogy lands hard.
Steve’s story—construction to network engineering to IT leadership to launching his own firm—frames the real tension most MSP owners feel but rarely name: the market is shifting from “fix my tickets” to “help me lead.” Clients are more tech-aware than they were a decade ago, cybersecurity has become table stakes, and the differentiator is increasingly the ability to sit in the boardroom and translate technology into business outcomes. That demands a consultative posture, a repeatable operating cadence, and the confidence to pivot away from what’s merely familiar.
This episode is for MSP owners who sense the industry is moving, but aren’t sure what to change first. It’s about the leadership move from vendor to trusted operator, the economic reality of selling outcomes to CFO-driven buyers, and the practical discipline required to build credibility in a market where clients are handing you the keys to their kingdom.
Steve’s painting analogy is more than a clever opener—it’s a leadership diagnostic. In service businesses, the visible work gets the credit, but the invisible work determines the outcome. For MSPs, “prep” looks like setting client expectations, defining what success means, establishing operating cadence, and creating a plan the client can understand and fund. When you skip that, you don’t just deliver worse service—you train clients to measure you on the wrong things.
Most MSP frustration is not technical. It’s relational and operational: misaligned expectations, unclear ownership, and a service model that conditions the buyer to think “tickets = value.” The preparation work is what upgrades you from “vendor” to “operator.”
The episode names a shift many owners feel: cybersecurity bought MSPs time, but it didn’t permanently solve the “commoditization problem.” If your client only experiences you as the team that fixes problems, you’re stuck in a narrow lane. The consultative leap is not adding a vCIO label—it’s changing how you lead the client relationship and what you believe your job actually is.
Steve describes leaning into fractional technology leadership (not “virtual,” but embedded) as a way to align IT with revenue, efficiency, compliance, and decision-making. That means you’re present where the business plans the year—not only where the business reacts to the week.
One of the most important tensions in the conversation is this: many MSP buyers are not qualified to evaluate MSP work. So they default to shallow proxies—do they like you, do you answer the phone, is the staff complaining. Those are table stakes, but they become the scoreboard when nobody in the organization owns technology as a business function.
This is where “fractional leadership” becomes more than an upsell. If the executive team can’t translate technology into risk, growth, and operational capacity, then you’re not selling IT—you’re selling comfort. A credible advisory layer changes the questions leadership learns to ask, which changes what your MSP is allowed to be.
Steve highlights a practical reality MSPs can’t ignore: many IT decisions route through finance. That isn’t always because finance is “wrong”—it’s because IT has historically been treated as a cost center. The unlock is not arguing philosophy; it’s translating risk reduction, compliance readiness, and operational efficiency into business language leadership can defend.
If you can quantify the downside of inaction and the upside of improved controls, you stop sounding like a vendor asking for budget and start sounding like a leader protecting enterprise value.
Steve Brickner is the Founder/CEO of Kraken Technology Solutions, a managed IT and cybersecurity provider based in Central Florida. Steve’s career path runs from construction and high-end residential painting into network engineering and IT leadership, before launching Kraken to help business leaders improve security, compliance, and technology outcomes through a more consultative approach.
Visit Kraken Technology Solutions →
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What does it mean for an MSP to be “consultative”?
It means the MSP leads with business outcomes—planning, priorities, risk, budgets, and roadmaps—then uses service delivery to execute that plan, instead of letting tickets define the relationship.
Why are MSP buyers often “not qualified” to evaluate MSP services?
Because they default to surface-level proxies like responsiveness or user complaints, rather than measuring technology decisions by risk reduction, operational efficiency, and business performance.
What is fractional technology leadership?
It’s an embedded leadership role (often vCIO/CTO-adjacent) that participates in executive planning, aligns technology to revenue and operations, and manages priorities so IT becomes a business function—not just a help desk.
How do MSPs prove ROI to CFO-led decision makers?
By translating security and operational improvements into business terms: risk exposure, cost of downtime, compliance readiness, process efficiency, and defensible budgeting tied to outcomes.
Why does “prep work” matter so much in MSP delivery?
Because expectation-setting, scope clarity, cadence, and planning determine whether service feels like leadership or chaos—long before the technical work begins.
If you’re an MSP owner trying to move from reactive delivery to consultative leadership—and want help building the operating cadence that makes that real—explore the Vision operating system or apply to be a guest on the podcast.
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