Empath, Tampa, FL (2026)

05/08/2026

Your clients are already experimenting with AI.

AI agents. Random automations. Vibe-coded tools.
Integrations nobody told your team about.

And guess who gets the ticket when something breaks?
The help desk.

Dean Trempelas, Empath's Head of MSP Success, is joining NinjaOne’s ITX Rise Boston at Fenway Park for his session: "Help Desks That Survive AI vs. Those That Don’t"

He’ll dig into what happens when client-side AI adoption starts creating new support issues, new risks, and new expectations for MSP teams.

Because AI readiness is not just about having better tools.
It’s about whether your people know how to respond when the weird tickets start showing up.

If you’re heading to ITX Rise Boston, make sure Dean’s session is on your list.

Check the event out here: https://hubs.la/Q04fY2vx0

05/08/2026

Scaling an MSP looks a lot cleaner in the success story than it does in the operator’s seat.

Going from zero to 1,000 employees is not just about more clients, more revenue, and a bigger team.

It also means harder pricing decisions.
Bigger sales targets.
Margin pressure.
Ex*****on gaps.
And leadership moves you can’t keep avoiding.

In the next episode of The Elephant in the Room, Kyle Christensen sits down with Steven Freidkin, Founder & CEO of Ntiva, for a candid conversation on what it really takes to scale in today’s MSP landscape.

They’ll get into:
• Why Ntiva’s pricing moved from low-cost to value-driven
• The real reason deals stall, and why it’s not always price
• Why Q1 has been especially tough for MSPs
• The math behind chasing a $330K new logo MRR target
• Why bringing in a COO became critical for ex*****on and focus

This is not the polished “growth is easy” version.
It’s the version MSP leaders actually need to hear.

🗓️ May 12
🕑 2PM ET

Add it to your calendar:
https://hubs.la/Q04fXC2H0

05/07/2026

There’s a big difference between “we have ImmyBot” and “we actually know how to get a device onboarded correctly.”

Because the first few steps matter.

Account access. Test devices. Physical or virtual setup. Installers. Tenants. Primary users. Deployments.

Miss one piece and suddenly “quick onboarding” turns into a Slack thread with 37 replies and one person saying, “Did we assign the right tenant?”

Good news: ImmyBot Onboarding, is now live inside Empath!
It aims to walk MSP teams through the practical first steps of getting started with the platform and managing a computer the right way.

With this training provided by ImmyBot, you’ll learn how to:
🔷 Prepare what you need before onboarding begins
🔷 Create an installer and connect your first computer
🔷 Assign the correct tenant and primary user
🔷 Create a deployment and run maintenance to apply and verify changes

If your team uses ImmyBot, or wants a clearer path to using it inside your MSP, this is a solid place to start.

Explore the course here
👉 https://hubs.la/Q04fT3r60

05/07/2026

Who owns training in your MSP?

For a lot of teams… it’s kind of a game of professional hot potato.
Training responsibilities get passed between HR, Service Managers, and Senior Engineers with no real system for ownership. Eventually, senior engineers become accidental full-time mentors, technicians are left piecing things together, and everyone assumes someone else is handling it.

Sound familiar?

In our recent blog, we explore how the RACI Matrix can help MSPs bring structure and accountability to internal training, so team development stops relying on tribal knowledge, “free time,” and shoulder taps.

Read it here: https://hubs.la/Q04fMvR90

05/06/2026

Scope creep does not start at the service desk.
It starts in the way you package, price, and sell the work.

If your MSP is selling vague bundles, discounting too early, or leading with tools instead of outcomes, your margins are probably paying the price.

Join Kyle Christensen, Co-Founder of Empath, for a Flamingo webinar built for MSPs who want to stop being busy and start being more profitable.

Stop Leaving Money on the Table: Pricing, Packaging & Profitability for MSPs
🗓️ May 14, 2026
🕑 4 PM ET

We’ll cover why most pricing problems are really positioning problems, how packaging affects profitability, and what MSPs can do to stop leaving money behind.

Register here: https://hubs.la/Q04fFYcc0

05/06/2026

Training usually gets treated like a “when we have time” thing. Which is funny, because the problems it solves usually show up every single day.

- Tickets that bounce around too long.
- Security processes that depend on one person knowing what to do.
- Managers repeating the same explanation for the 47th time.
- Teams scaling, but consistency not scaling with them.

Skill development doesn’t start in a course catalog.
It starts in operations.

In the next episode of The Accidental Learning Manager, Keith Craig is joined by Josh Hohbein, Manager of Cybersecurity and Automation at centrexIT, for a conversation on Service, Security, & Skills.

Drawing from their experience in the restaurant industry, they’ll talk about why training isn’t a separate function. It’s part of how you run a team.

Because whether you’re in restaurants, MSPs, or cybersecurity, the quality of the work depends on the skill of the people doing it.

They’ll get into:
✅ Why skill development is an ops responsibility first
✅ How better skills create scale and consistency
✅ What breaks when teams aren’t trained for real work
✅ Why investing in skills makes life easier for managers and teams

If you’re responsible for growing people, improving delivery, or making operations run smoother, this one will feel very familiar.

🗓️ May 12
🕑 1PM ET
📍 Empath app

Add it to your calendar here:
https://hubs.la/Q04fBknG0

05/05/2026

A lot of teams are still treating AI like an intern with no onboarding.

They hand it a task, hope for brilliance, and then act surprised when the output is weird, shallow, or just plain wrong.

The issue usually is not the tool. It’s the lack of structure around how people use it, why they use it, and what success is supposed to look like.

A reminder that Hatz AI Champion Certification is already available inside Empath, with content provided by Hatz AI.

If AI is becoming part of how your MSP works, this course helps turn scattered experimentation into something a lot more useful.

What learners will get from it:
• AI fundamentals explained in a way that actually makes sense
• Best practices for prompting that improve consistency and save time
• A practical path for introducing AI into the business with intention
• A better handle on how to prove value instead of just saying “it helps”

No technical background required. Just a willingness to stop guessing and start using AI with more purpose.

Explore the course here 👉 https://hubs.ly/Q04b_sRC0

05/04/2026

Incident response has a funny way of turning “we’ve got this” into “why is everyone silently stress-eating at 2:13 AM?”

When an incident hits, your team is not just dealing with tickets, alerts, clients, vendors, timelines, and technical triage.

They’re also dealing with pressure, fear, fatigue, graphic or sensitive material, and the very real weight of being the people everyone expects to stay calm.

New course now live inside Empath:
Mental Health in Incident Response by Fidan Mirzad

This course looks at the human side of incident response and why protecting your responders matters just as much as protecting your clients.

You’ll walk away with:
🔷 An understanding of the mental and emotional strain IR places on teams
🔷 Practical ways to reduce burnout, silence, and emotional overload
🔷 Boundaries that help protect judgment, service quality, & client trust
🔷 Ideas for supporting responders before stress turns into mistakes

Incident response is technical work.
But the people doing it are still people.

Explore the course here
👉 https://hubs.la/Q04fkkKM0

05/04/2026

The longest lightsaber in the galaxy still won’t save you if you don’t know how to use it.

Same goes for your MSP tool stack.

You can have the shiniest PSA, the fanciest RMM, the newest AI add-on, the most intimidating security platform, and enough dashboards to make the Death Star jealous.

But tools don’t create maturity.
People do.

A great tool in untrained hands creates noise.
A simple tool in skilled hands creates outcomes.
Because the real difference isn’t the tech.

It’s the person who knows:
✅ What to look for
✅ What action to take
✅ When to escalate
✅ How to communicate clearly
✅ Why the process matters in the first place

That’s where training matters.

Not random training.
Not “watch this video when you have time” training.
Not “we bought the tool, surely the team will figure it out” training.

Role-relevant, reinforced, accountable learning.

Because in the MSP galaxy, the strongest teams aren’t the ones with the longest saber.
They’re the ones who actually know how to wield it.

May the 4th be with your tech stack.

But may the skills be with your team.

05/01/2026

Somewhere between the vendor price hike, the disappearing feature, and the licensing change nobody warned you about… the help desk got hit by another "SaaS meteor".

And once again, you’re expected to “just figure it out.”

This month’s Managing Up! is for the T1s, T2s, and rising MSP leaders dealing with tool chaos every day.

Dean Trempelas will break down what’s happening behind vendor decisions, why the impact lands on operators first, and how to communicate that impact to leadership without just venting into the void.

Because “this tool is killing us” is a feeling.

“Here’s how this is affecting tickets, clients, workflow, and business risk” is a conversation leadership can act on.

Tools, Vendors, and License Chaos: Living Under the SaaS Meteor Shower
🗓️ May 7
🕑 2 PM ET
📍 Empath app

Mark this on your calendars:
https://hubs.ly/Q04f5th30

05/01/2026

MSPGeekCon is coming up, and the Empath crew is heading to Orlando. 🐘

Kyle Christensen, Dean Trempelas, Mark Ignacio, and Hunter McCampbell will be there to connect with the MSPGeek community, talk training, and probably get pulled into a few hallway conversations that turn into full-blown therapy sessions for MSP operations.

Plus, you’ll be able to catch Kyle and Dean in their sessions:

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🎤 Dean Trempelas
Welcome to MSPGeekCon: Goots' First-Day Orientation

A pre-day workshop for first-timers, vendor booth staff, and anyone who wants to figure out the conference before the conference really starts.

Dean “Slater” Trempelas and Ashley “Kapowski” Cooper will help attendees get the context, confidence, connections, and social survival tips they need to avoid spending day one pretending to check email in a corner.

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🎤 Kyle Christensen
Run with Safety Scissors: Fail Fast, Fail Safe, Level Up

Kyle will unpack why uncertainty can feel unsafe and how the Expectation Flywheel helps people define what “done” means, align quickly, execute, and review without blame.

Because “fail fast” sounds great until someone actually fails.

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🎤 Dean Trempelas
You’re Not Bad at Hiring, You’re Just Boring: A Pragmatic Guide to Modern MSP Talent

A hiring session for MSPs who are tired of writing the same job ads, asking the same interview questions, and wondering why they keep attracting the same candidates.

Dean will break down practical ways to write better roles, spot hiring red flags, and build a talent bench that can actually scale.

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Whether you’re joining for the sessions, the hallway conversations, or the chance to find your MSP lunch table, come say hi to the Empath crew at booth 319.

And if you haven’t grabbed your ticket yet, now’s a good time:
https://hubs.la/Q04f62V60

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