ASCII Announces 2026 Schedule for ASCII Edge Conference Series

My friends over at ASCII sent me this news so you can begin planning your 2026 . . .  

The ASCII Group Announces 2026 ASCII Edge Conference Series: Where Community Builds Business

Washington, D.C. – September 30, 2025 – The ASCII Group, the original and premier community of Managed Service Providers (MSPs) across North America, today announced the 2026 schedule for its ASCII Edge conference series. Since 1984, ASCII has remained the only vendor-neutral community dedicated to helping MSPs grow through peer collaboration, education, and industry engagement.

ASCII Edge 2026 will bring together more than 1,500 MSPs, technology providers, and industry leaders in eight cities across the U.S. and Canada. Each two-day event delivers business-focused sessions, actionable strategies, and high-value networking opportunities designed to help MSPs compete effectively and build stronger businesses.

ASCII Edge 2026 Dates and Locations

• Costa Mesa, CA – February 25 & 26

• Dallas, TX – March 25 & 26

• Newark, NJ – April 22 & 23

• Seattle, WA – May 27 & 28

• Washington, D.C. – July 22 & 23

• Toronto, ON – August 26 & 27

• Chicago, IL – September 23 & 24

• San Antonio, TX – October 21 & 22

To ensure high-quality sessions, all vendor presentations are reviewed by the ASCII Edge Content Advisory Committee, comprised of experienced MSP members. This peer-review process reflects ASCII’s commitment to offering content that is practical, non-sales focused, and directly relevant to MSP business challenges.

“ASCII Edge is built by MSPs, for MSPs,” said Jessie Devine, VP of Channel Development, The ASCII Group. “Our education-focused sessions give MSPs strategies they can act on, while vendors gain meaningful engagement with a community that values trusted partnerships.”

In addition to peer-driven programming, ASCII Edge 2026 will feature collaborative networking, a solution pavilion with leading technology partners, and the annual ASCII Cup Awards, which recognize the top vendors serving the MSP community. The full lineup of speakers, including the keynote, will be announced later this fall.

About The ASCII Group, Inc.

The ASCII Group is the premier community of North American MSPs, MSSPs and Solution Providers. The Group has members located throughout the U.S. and Canada, and membership encompasses everyone from credentialed MSPs serving the SMB community to multi-location solution providers with a national and international reach. Founded in 1984, ASCII provides services to members including leveraged purchasing programs, education and training, marketing assistance, extensive peer interaction and more. ASCII works with a vibrant ecosystem of leading and major technology vendors that complement the ASCII community and support the mission of helping MSPs to grow their businesses. For more information, please visit www.ascii.com. 

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Firing Clients: Abusive and Unreasonable People

Firing Clients: Abusive and Unreasonable People

- Lessons Learned, Episode 45

In recent episodes, we talked about finding your ideal and weeding your client garden. In a somewhat related topic, there are times when you take more drastic action. Sometimes, you need to take a saw and do some major pruning.

The most obviously example for me is getting rid of abusive and unreasonable clients. This seems obvious, but so many consultants live in fear that they "can't" fire clients because they need ever penny they can get. Well, some pennies (and dollars) are not worth the sacrifice!

We have only fired a few clients. So I don't want to make it sound like we drop people left and right. Aside from the basic weeding due to changing our business focus, we have fired clients for two primary reasons:

1) They are abusive to our employees

2) They are unmanageable

There are very different principles behind each of these. Let's take a look at them.

The Abusive Client

One of my absolutely unbreakable rules of IT service delivery is that you can can (and should) only work with people you like. You don't have to work with jerks or a-holes. And people don't get to treat you like garbage just because your an "outsourced resource." We are ultimately people working with people, and we have the right to work with people we like.

This is critical to building a good culture for your employees. On the rare occasions when an employee has reported abuse by a client, I immediately called the client and told them that this behavior is unacceptable. I also tell them that that was their one strike. We will not tolerate abuse of any kind. It's unprofessional and my employees do not have to work under such circumstances.

This is just generally the right thing to do. But it's also important that your employees see that rudeness and abuse are not tolerated. There are plenty of bosses that work in, and allow such environments. I find it unacceptable and don't think my employees should have to put up with it. Ultimately, I need to show employees that they are move valuable to me than money.

For my first IT company, one dramatic event showed this very clearly. We fired our largest client. Yes, we really did. They had grown wealthy and arrogant, and they became abusive of our employees. When I got a report of shouting and abuse in a simple client meeting, I wrote them a letter and said that we were giving them notice, per our contract. I offered to help them find another IT consultant.

That "ending" was messier than I would have liked. They threatened us with a law suit because that's what people like that do. And they refused to pay their last bill. They are one of the only two companies I have ever sent to a debt collector.

That incident shook me personally. Those folks had been a great client. They were super friendly for a long time, although I did get a glimpse of how they treated other vendors. Until something snapped, they were civil with me and my people. But when it was over, it was definitely over.

At that time (about 2005), they were our largest client - worth more than $75,000 per year, primarily labor. They were also very profitable, although they'd become less profitable as they started challenging invoices and decisions.

Two things happened immediately. First, my employees expressed gratitude for not having to go back to that client again. Second, a lot of labor time opened up very quickly. We used some of that to give faster service to the remaining clients. We used the rest to sell additional clients. In the end, we signed up clients at a higher rate and on recurring revenue plans.

It will always be the case that clients will treat your employees more "employees" than they will treat you. With you, there's a sense that an owner-to-owner decorum will prevail. With employees, that's not required.

Of course, with the best clients, politeness is the order of the day. It's not that there will never be a disagreement, but issues will be handled professionally, and frustration will not be taken out on your employees.

I don't want to be cavalier with your money, but there are plenty of nice people in the world. You will find another client. And your business will be better off for it.

The Unmanageable Client

The next time we fired our largest client, it was because they were unmanageable. That means they refused to follow our systems and processes. They literally did whatever they wanted to do and expected us to clean up after them.

One clue of what was to come was their very hierarchical structure. There were managers, at least in title, but they couldn't make even small decisions without the approval of the owner. So even though they were close to seventy-five employees, everything had to go through the owner.

Everything included all of our activities. 

We worked hard to be treated like a team member, and to take ownership of their technical spending. But time and time again, the owner would override our decisions and then want to know why we were over budget.

This was also the owner who though he'd get a faster response if he told everyone to flood our systems. So we'd get a massive flood of twenty tickets all at once, all urgent, and all about the same issue. At the same time, every phone number they could get their hands on would get twenty calls and leave twenty messages about the same issue.

And, you guessed it, the issue was rarely urgent.

I could go on, but you get the message. While this client was about twice as much revenue as the one we discussed previously, they were far less profitable and caused no end of frustration and anger inside my service department.

We calculated the actual profit on this client, and it was significantly lower than it should have been. So, we wrote them a note and informed them that they needed to find another company to provide tech support. We told them why, and explained that they needed to find someone who was more consistent for the way they wanted to operate.

We did find them another IT service provider. We were honest about our reasons for departing, but they were mesmerized by the top line revenue and took on the client. A year later, that client called me and asked if I had another recommendation because the new guy would not renew the contract.

The key to managing your business profitably, and providing good customer service, is to align expectations for both parties. Ultimately, you cannot make good money if you give too much service and don't get enough money. There's always a balance.

We knew our business model worked, and that we could make great money when we provided service our way. But when one client disrupts our entire system, we make less money on all clients.

Once again, we lost a lot of revenue when we fired this client (about $150,000), but we knew we didn't have to replace that revenue: We needed to replace the profit we were earning, which was unreasonably low. And once again, with the extra time and energy, we were able to fill that gap and grow from there.

As I mentioned before, we haven't fired very many clients. But when we have, it has always improved our business.

All comments welcome.

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Episode 45

This Episode is part of the ongoing Lessons Learned series. For all the information, and an index of Lessons Learned episodes, go to the Lessons Learned Page. 

Leave comments and questions below. And join me next week, right here.

Subscribe to the blog so you don't miss a thing.

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Thank You, Richard Tubb. A Tribute to a Unique Soul

I almost teased this announcement in my Monday newsletter, but I didn't know the time of the announcement. 

This morning, Richard Tubb announced that he is closing down Tubblog operations and Tubblog.co.uk. 

Richard has been a true pillar in this community for a couple of decades. He was far more than a blogger or podcaster or author. He was an honest-to-goodness community builder - on both sides of the Atlantic. 

Richard is an acknowledged thought leader in the world of managed services, and I have been honored to be on stage with him in countless cities. To me he also always been a friend and sometime travel companion.

Richard has the unique ability of being a true super-connector. He didn't just introduce people. He sincerely worked to help them get to know each other and, when appropriate, work together. 

I could always rely on Richard when I planned a trip to the UK.  I'd say I'm going to this city or that city and he would often meet me there, show me around town, organize a community pub meetup, and many times a dinner. Among the dozens of such connections, my favorites were visiting his home, touring Newcastle upon Tyne, and our week-long adventure through Scotland.

One time, I was headed to New Orleans for one of my roadshows and got WhatsApp from Richard. He and his wife Claire were coming to NOLA to see the World Wrestling Championship. They are seriously into superstar wrestling and the place to be was in New Orleans. I invited him to sit on a panel with me at the roadshow and he agreed. 

And when I decided - for no good reason whatsoever - to tour Scotland, see the Falkirk Wheel, and head to Manchester, he agreed to come along, organize the dinners, and find a sponsor to foot the bill for food and drink. Now that's a friend!

Finally, I will note that Richard is never shy about the personal side of running a business (and being a human). He has given presentations about his struggle with depression and provided sincere tips for business owners with these and other problems. 

I can tell you, it's hard to stand on a stage and tell your most personal stories.

You can catch Richard's final "goodbye" podcast at https://tubblog.co.uk/podcasts/final-goodbye-to-tubblog/.

I promise you, Richard will still be seen from time to time. Because he's just not the guy who's going to spend the next forty years cleaning his garage!

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Finding Your Ideal Client

The Ideal Client

- Lessons Learned, Episode 44

One of the biggest lessons I learned in my consulting business was to create an "Ideal Client." I didn't start out calling it that. It started out trying to figure out how to get the next client.

Last time, we talked about moving from no minimum up to five users and then ten. Then I came up with a better approach. 

Since I'd been filtering clients, and weeding some, I started thinking about what I really wanted in the next client if I could have anything I wanted. I started with what I wanted, and then asked the staff.

For me, it was not too difficult. My favorite clients were nice people, good to work with. They paid their bills on time and didn't argue about every detail. They took their technology seriously, and were happy to have regular monthly maintenance. I could name my top ten favorite clients easily, so I made a list and then starting thinking about all the things they have in common.

Next, I asked the staff. Technicians had no idea who argues about quotes or insisted on paying late. They wanted interesting work, people who treated them with respect, and people who clearly liked working with us as a team.

The office manager was very focused on who just paid their bills and who always argued or paid late. But she also preferred clients who were nice to work with. This is more than, "Doesn't yell on phone." It was people who actually talked to her as a human being, working for a key vendor.

We made a big list of all the things we could think of. Then we narrowed it down as a team. Some things, everyone wanted. Some were of secondary importance but clearly very important. Ultimately, we came up with about ten criteria of what is important to us. (Your mileage may vary.)

Then I asked every member of my staff (I think it was about ten at time) to rate every client on each of the criteria - anonymously. The top scores were no surprise. And the bottom scores were no surprise. In a big meeting, we talked about these criteria and I made an announcement.

From now on, we are going to try to only get new clients who look like our favorite clients. If someone yelled at us or their employees, they were out. People who were rude or pushy were out. People who wanted to argue about money before they even sign a contract were out.

Many people think they have to spend their entire career chasing after large clients and then running their business just to please a few elephants. Since I came from a world of large (huge) clients, I didn't want that. I wanted to have a place where I enjoyed coming to work every day.

We discovered something interesting, but not necessarily surprising, in this exercise. Our favorite clients to work with were also the most profitable. You can already guess why. They paid on time. They didn't argue about upgrades. They required less rework because they saw us as a valuable part of their team, so we weren't rushed or hassled during service calls.

And because they let us do our job, their systems were always in great shape. They had good, business-class equipment, and all the hardware and software was patched and updated. As a result, their systems were very trouble-free. That meant less labor (and more profit) for us.

If you think about it, the clients at the bottom were known to have all these bad traits by their other vendors: Their lawyer, their accountant, the people who cleaned their office, and so forth. They probably had un-fun, difficult relationships with everyone. As a result, they lived in a world with people who tolerated late payments and abusive behavior. The difficult relationships affected their profit.

Nothing's Perfect, and This Was Difficult

Of course, you never know how great a client is going to be until they've been with you for a while. During the courting period, they're on their best behavior (and so are you). But we could see the red flags, if we looked, and eliminated a number of prospective clients.

Not every new client was an amazing top-ten favorite. But we never hired objectionable, argumentative, cheap clients after that. Even if a new client was solidly in the middle, they were in the middle of a group of people we wanted to do business with.

Slowly, we asked folks at the bottom to find alternative IT service providers. And with each new, more-ideal client, we got ride of one we'd rather not work with.

This strategy worked as well as we could have hoped for. It showed our employees that they were important to us, and that we valued an environment where they would be treated well and work on fun projects. And, of course, we were more profitable as we went after larger "ideal" clients, shedding all of those who were a negative force in our company.

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Since that time, I have developed a very mature process and understanding for developing your business around your ideal clients. In fact, when I teach customer service and several other classes, I start with an "Identify your ideal client" exercise. 

Eventually, I got the opportunity to build an IT business 100% out of truly ideal clients. Oh, that was a great business, very profitable, and a wonderful place to work.

But that's another story.

All comments welcome.

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Episode 44

This Episode is part of the ongoing Lessons Learned series. For all the information, and an index of Lessons Learned episodes, go to the Lessons Learned Page. 

Leave comments and questions below. And join me next week, right here.

Subscribe to the blog so you don't miss a thing.

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Five Users and Above? Ten?

 Five Users and Above? - Lessons Learned, Episode 43

Last time, we talked about identifying your ideal client, and what kind of "minimums" make sense. Remember, these are very time-bound decisions. Just because you decided something last year does not mean that has to be your policy next year.
(See last week's episode: https://blog.smallbizthoughts.com/2025/09/weeding-your-client-garden.html)

Once we settled on avoiding the smallest, lowest-paying clients, our revenue improved. In large part, this was because we now were only taking on clients who signed contracts for ongoing maintenance. They made a commitment to us. No client who pays you $500 per year can put any claims on your time or attention. But someone who pays you something every month can.

The next step in our evolution was to look at the size of the client's office. Let's face it, offices that have or need a network will provide more work and maintenance going forward than one-person shops or two people who sit across from each other.

We looked at our client list and realized that we only had a few clients who were five or fewer users. As you might expect, the total revenue from that was not large. But when we added all the clients who had between six and nine users, the numbers got better fast.

As you can guess, we were considering moving to a minimum of ten users. Ultimately, we decided not to do that. Instead, we calculated where clients jumped in profitability. This was easy.

We'd already created a spreadsheet that listed all clients, how many users, and how many devices they had, along with the size of their monthly spend. When we sorted this table by total labor revenue, it was easy to see some break points where clients were paying enough to constitute a healthy portion of our income.

That number turned out to be (for whatever reason) $900 per month. Most had one server, some had more servers. Some had five users, some had ten users. They had unique characteristics here and there. But the common thread from a labor revenue perspective was that barrier of $900/month.

So rather than setting a minimum based on users, such ten, we set a minimum based on dollars. From then on, we only worked with clients who brought in at least $900 per month in labor revenue. Interestingly, that number stuck with us for five years, even when we started designing cloud service bundles.

In this case, we did not drop any clients, but we were very clear about our minimums. Then, quarter after quarter, we worked to take on clients who increased the average revenue per client. Which is to say, we tried to clients larger than our largest client.

And that strategy served us well until the recession that started in 2008 and was in full force in 2009.

Lesson learned: Minimums don't have to be based on users or even endpoints. In my opinion, revenue is the best measure of client "minimums." The served us well for many years. 

I introduced the concept of an "ideal client" in the last episode. Next time, we'll take more of a deep dive on that topic.

All comments welcome.

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Episode 43

This Episode is part of the ongoing Lessons Learned series. For all the information, and an index of Lessons Learned episodes, go to the Lessons Learned Page. 

Leave comments and questions below. And join me next week, right here.

Subscribe to the blog so you don't miss a thing.

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Weeding Your Client Garden

Weeding My Client Garden - Lessons Learned, Episode 42

Once my consulting business was up and running, I spent a little time each year reviewing two related things:

1) Who is our ideal client? What do they look like?

2) What are the minimum requirements for someone to be our client?

Many people will argue with me on this, but I believe you need to have a minimum level of income from a client. In the big picture, a client who gives you $300 per year is taking more of your time than you are being compensated for. 

They're clearly not on a recurring revenue program. They must have problems during the year that they are fixing themselves, or having Cousin Larry look at. You do not control anything in their environment, and you will be held responsible if anything goes wrong.

The most common arguments against having minimums come from two sets of people: 1) Consultants who believe they have to pick up every nickel they find and take in every dog left on their doorstep. and 2) Coaches and advisors who claim that a certain number of these businesses will grow to become major corporations with lots of licenses, and you'll be their tech support.

To the consultants, I'm sorry, but I have some tough love for you. If you believe you have to take all clients and all jobs, no matter how small, you have a poverty mentality. The reality is that you cannot run a successful business based on these clients. 

Let's say you're a sole proprietor and  need to bring in $120,000 per year so you can take home $100,000 profit. How many $300/year clients do you need? Answer: 400. You literally cannot build a business on that - especially since these clients have demonstrated ZERO loyalty to you or your service.

To the coaches and advisors who advise that you to take all clients, no matter how small, I would ask how many $300/year clients they keep on their books. In round figures, it's also zero.

Anyway . . .

About once a year we look at whether we should increase the size of our client minimums. For example, will we take companies with one user, or do they have to have five or ten? Alternatively, what's the minimum monthly financial commitment?

Note: You might not change these minimums every year, but it's worth considering every year. Similarly, you should consider raising your rates each year (or just do it).

Bottom line: From time to time you will need to get rid of some current clients to make room for new clients who are closer to your ideal client. Ultimately, the primary reason you have an "ideal client" is so you can market to those companies and get them onboard.

About twenty years ago, I started referring to this process as Weeding Your Client Garden. Since them, many other people have adopted that term. In the big picture, you're going to establish (or update) your minimum requirements, and you're going to weed your client garden, making room for larger clients to fill the gaps.

Note: It's possible that you won't drop any clients. That would mean that all of your clients fit in to the "ideal" category. Congratulations. But the process is still useful because you need to reaffirm that you want to keep those clients!

How to Weed Your Client Garden

Step one is to identify your ideal client.

Step two is to set or verify your minimum requirements.

Step three is to determine who needs to go.

Unfortunately, you might have a few clients that you just want to get rid of. Maybe they don't pay on time. Or every little visit turns into a major (unprofitable) project. Or they're not nice to work with. All of those thing violate the ideal client vision.

Those folks are easy to get rid of. Write a letter and tell them that you can't provide them technical support anymore. You don't have to give a reason, but if you feel that you should, just say, "We've decided to focus on a different market segment." 

If you feel you can hand them off to another consultant with a good conscience, do so. Don't worry, you won't get any push-back on this. These people might not even consider your they're IT person!

Remember, also, that there's no benefit in delaying. If they DO consider you to be their IT consultant, it won't be nice to drop them when they call and say the server's smoking. You need to pass them off before that, so they have someone (else) to call.

Note: If you've gone this far and only identified one or two clients who need to be cut, consider raising the minimums a bit more. You need to make room to hire at least one client who is the size of your favorite ideal client. You can't be over-committed when that new client comes onboard. And you'll have more time for prospecting once you clear out some clients who are too small.

Eventually, you'll have monthly minimums. For example, $1,000/month means a $12,000/year client. That's a good minimum, in my opinion. And a good start to recurring revenue.

Remember, you're not looking to slash half your clients. If most of your clients are under $1,000 per year, you really need to get larger clients. So get rid of a few clients, make room, and then go get one more (larger) client. Once you sign a new, larger client to a monthly plan, it will be much easier to replace the next three.

Enough about money.

If business were just about money, I'd probably be into offshore gambling or running a doggy day spa). But life isn't about money. And, if you're honest with yourself, business isn't all about money either.

Life and business are about enjoying what you do, working with people you enjoy, and having fun. Yes, you need to make money, but you can probably make money doing anything you want. Why do you want THIS business?

Aside from the money question, we have our employees give feedback on each client. If we love working with a company, then we definitely want to do what it takes to keep them. If they're a pain in the neck? Well, then we'll cut them loose. 

With a little examination, I guarantee you have at least a handful of superstar clients that you'll work very hard to keep and a handful of losers who are a pain in the ass to deal with. 

You literally improve your life and your mental health when you get rid of clients who you don't like working with. And you improve the work environment for all your employees. Ideal clients are great to work with!

All comments welcome.

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Episode 42

This Episode is part of the ongoing Lessons Learned series. For all the information, and an index of Lessons Learned episodes, go to the Lessons Learned Page. 

Leave comments and questions below. And join me next week, right here.

Subscribe to the blog so you don't miss a thing.

:-)