Amy Babinchak on exits, AI, and an industry growing up
After 23 years running her own MSP, Amy Babinchak coaches owners through the sale. On her new book, AI-driven early exits, and why the industry must grow up.
MSP owners are retiring early right now, and not because they're tired. Amy Babinchak, who spent 23 years building and running her own MSP before selling it in 2023, says the reason is simpler and more unsettling: AI is disrupting the industry faster than anything before it, including the shift to the cloud, and a lot of owners would rather exit than rebuild their business around it.
Amy has spent the years since helping other MSP owners get their businesses ready to sell, work she does through B² MSP Advisors (formerly SellMyMSP), and she's just written a book distilling what she's learned into 20 questions every owner should be asking. The book, titled "20 questions every owner asks before selling their MSP," is organized around exactly that: 20 questions grouped into four sections covering mindset and timing, valuation and preparation, buyers and deal structure, and life after the sale.
Each question gets a practical answer grounded in her own years of deal experience, a short parable following a composite MSP owner working through the same decision, and a set of takeaways an owner can act on immediately.
We sat down with her to talk about the book, what's actually changing in the industry right now, and a lot more.
You've written the book from the coach's seat, but you lived the seller's seat first. What's one decision you didn't understand the weight of until years later?
I had been helping other MSPs sell, but I never understood the emotions those owners were having until I sold mine. Now I realize the entire process is emotional, and it continues to be emotional for a long time afterward too. Rayanne Buchianico and I recently rebranded SellMyMSP into B² MSP Advisors to better reflect the full scope of the work from prep to exit, and we've added a 90-day continued coaching engagement after the sale because of that emotional impact. As an MSP owner you grow this business from nothing into success, you have employees you care about, you spend most of your life energy on it. Then poof, it's gone. That's a shock to the system.
You say the best time to sell is when the business, the market, and the owner are all ready at once. Which of those do owners get wrong most often?
There's always a market for a well-run, profitable business. Getting the owner into the mindset of selling, and the business into that well-run stage, is the most difficult part. Well-run doesn't necessarily mean the way you've always done it. Well-run means running the way a buyer expects it to, and understanding how they can take it forward from here.
What's the question owners ask you most, and what's the one they don't know to ask until it's too late?
The biggest surprise for business owners is the level of organization that the buyer expects and the speed of the transaction. Buyers like to move fast, and you need to have all of your ducks in a row before you start to talk to them. Any duck out of place and the buyer walks or lowers the offer. The other thing is that your business needs to be in growth mode. A steady stream of new clients over the past three years is ideal. You can't let the business go into autopilot.
You advise against running the business "always for sale". This is a bit counter to conventional wisdom. Where does that advice go wrong?
Running your business like you're going to sell means you're not able to take as many risks as you would otherwise. Risks are generally big investments, big changes. Buyers don't want to see that. They want to see stability, a gentle growth slope, because that's sustainable for them while they're recouping their investment. But your business could grow faster and be better positioned if you take the big gamble and go for big growth. You just can't do that if you're going to sell it tomorrow.
What's the fastest, cheapest thing an owner can do in the next 90 days to move their multiple in the right direction?
Marketing. Invest in marketing every day so that you can add a new client every month. Get that gentle growth slope into place. That makes a company worth more than the others buyers are looking at.
You sold after 23 years. What's the one thing about your own exit you'd do differently?
Honestly, I was well prepared from having helped others through the process. I spoke with four firms before making my decision. Today I'd like my MSPs to talk to ten, but I think I did okay.
Now that the book is done, is there more coming?
Do you think 20 questions could be a theme? I do. Yes, there will be more books coming. I run mastermind groups for MSP owners that focus largely on operational excellence and efficiency. There's a lot more than 20 questions there, but I think I can distill it, and this will likely be the next book. My whole career has been about helping, and I intend to continue helping for many years to come.
Zoom out from any single sale, and Amy sees an industry splitting in two. One half is heading for the exit. The other is consolidating and defining itself for the first time. Both halves are being pushed by the same thing - AI.
"This is the first time our industry has been disrupted," she says. "The shift to the cloud came closest, but it's nothing compared to the size of the opportunity and speed of change happening right now." The disruption isn't abstract, it's a direct hit on what MSPs have sold for years. "Helpdesk, endpoint protection, that's old news. AI is going to automate away most of what MSPs are doing today, and that's okay. We need to look at what MSPs are good at, leverage it, and refocus on identity, automation, data lifecycle management, and security as our top service offerings."
For owners nearing the end of their career, that roadmap is exactly what a lot of them don't want to walk. "People reaching the end of their career are taking this time to exit because of the AI disruption," Amy says. "It's going to be a big learning curve, lots of uncertainty and reinvestment, and they just don't want to do it." That's the half of the industry heading out the door, not from fatigue, but because rebuilding around a service model they didn't grow up with is a bigger ask than retiring early.
The half that's staying is doing something the industry has rarely done before. They're consolidating and defining themselves on purpose. "We used to rarely see acquisitions except from big firms. Now everyone does it as a matter of course. Acquiring another firm or book of business has just become normal practice."
Amy has been pushing that same instinct toward definition through the National Society of IT Service Providers, which she founded to bring professional standards and regulation into an industry that has mostly operated without either. "It's time for our industry to grow up, and it's happening," she says. "We're seeing the start of that through cyber insurance and regulations driving standards. It's still important that we allow space for the new person to hang out their shingle, but I think our industry is slowly moving toward having some type of recognition for who an MSP really is and what their capability truly is." Without that, she says, customers are the ones absorbing the risk. "Consumers deserve it. Right now they're making a decision on who to hire by blind faith. That's going to bite us someday."
Amy says it's just as urgent for individual IT professionals who will never sell a business but are watching their own value proposition shift under them. "The rate of change is the same everywhere in the industry. IT professionals have to reshape their careers and get into learning mode, so they can position themselves as data lifecycle and security managers, identity protection specialists, and trainers."
We are entering the era of the empath. People with people skills are going to be valued much more than those with just tech skills.
Amy Babinchak
She thinks the skills in demand are moving in a specific direction. "We are entering the era of the empath. People with people skills are going to be valued much more than those with just tech skills. Now is the time to retrain yourself, don't wait for your employer to provide it, get started now." She's seen the appetite for that firsthand. "I taught a course on planning AI services, and just as many internal IT managers were in it as MSPs."
Amy spent 23 years building the kind of company now facing that same reckoning. She started her MSP in 2000, after burning out at a corporate job that had her flying around the country putting out fires on failed projects. She skipped break-fix work entirely and went straight to contracts, a decision built on wanting income security and a real IT budget to work with.
"IT has no purpose other than to make a business great" was the line she ran her team on, and it's not a coincidence that the same instinct now shows up in how she talks about the industry's future: figure out what the work is actually for, not what it's always been. Running her own MSP for over two decades also left habits that don't fully transfer to coaching instead of operating.
"I'm pretty good at leaving behind the old. I'm not a person that looks back," she says. "If anything, I'd say my tech skills can get in the way sometimes. I have to catch myself from getting too deep into the how-to, technical side of things."
One problem hasn't moved with the rest of the industry. Amy has spent years trying to make IT more welcoming to women, and by her own account, it's gotten worse, not better. "It's shameful that when I started there were 3% women, and now there's 1%. We're graduating just as many women as men. Women start in this industry and then leave, it's a well-documented fact."
She points to culture and hiring practices as the two biggest drivers. "We have too much bro culture, and it drives women away. Women also present themselves differently, they don't tend to brag about their skills, and it gets their resume tossed before they even get an interview, if they apply at all. The wording of many job openings repels women, so they don't reply." She's tried to close that gap through sitting on CompTIA's Advancing Women community board, reviewing resumes, and running sessions for business owners on writing job descriptions and interviewing women. "Women present differently, and learning to hear them is a skill."
Meet Amy Babinchak
Amy built her career around IT services long before selling was on her mind. She started her MSP, Harbor Computer Services, in Royal Oak, Michigan, in 2000, and grew it into a top 40 company on the MSP 501 before selling it in 2023. Alongside Harbor, she also ran Third Tier, providing advanced technical support to other MSPs and vendors, and she's been recognized as a Microsoft MVP for 18 years running. She now splits her time between coaching owners through B² MSP Advisors, building out the National Society of IT Service Providers, and co-hosting the SMB Community Podcast. None of that, though, comes close to how she feels about the water. "Sailing and boating. I'm a lifelong water person. I can't imagine my life without it, I would shrivel up and die. I'm actually answering these questions while traveling through Nebraska, and I'm a little uncomfortable being this far from the Great Lakes."