Advance — Use It to Upgrade Your Actual Life

There’s a line I keep repeating. If you’re not reaching for AI every working hour of every day, you’re leaving a silly amount of productivity on the floor. That’s not a pep talk. That’s the baseline now.

But the bit I don’t say loudly enough — the part that actually matters — is this: work is the shallow end. The real compounding doesn’t happen in your quarterly numbers. It happens in the life you build around them.

The job isn’t using it at work

Most people I talk to are still framing AI as a work tool. A faster way to write an email. A quicker way to build a deck in PowerPoint. A cleaner summary of yesterday’s Teams meeting. All useful. All, honestly, the least interesting thing it can do for you.

The long game is personal. You have been handed, for the price of a monthly subscription, a patient thinking partner who will sit with you on any problem, any time of day or night — no ego, no judgement, no billable hour. Whether that’s a Saturday morning over coffee or the drive home after a rough day. Most of my team haven’t really used it that way yet. Honestly, neither had I, until recently.

Every friction point is now a prompt

Think about the things you’ve been avoiding for weeks. They tend to share a shape. A hard conversation with a business partner. A decision about whether to move the family interstate. A contract for a property that you don’t fully understand and don’t want to ask your agent about in front of the vendor.

Every one of those is now a prompt.

Last month I dropped a forty-page purchase agreement into Copilot and asked it to surface everything that wasn’t in my favour. It took about ninety seconds. I walked into the next conversation with three questions I would never have thought to ask, and one clause I’d been about to sign away without a second look. The deal shifted. That moment — that shift — is what I’m talking about.

The conversation you’ve been dreading? Open Copilot in Word, write out what you want to say, and have it stress-test the tone, the gaps, the places you’re being unfair or being walked on. Weighing a big life decision? Give it your situation, the options and what you actually care about, and let it play devil’s advocate until you can hear your own thinking more clearly. Piles of messy personal documents sitting in OneDrive? Point Copilot at them and start asking.

Disrupt yourself first

The job of a good CEO is to look eighteen months down the track and protect the business from whatever’s coming. Most of us accept that as obvious for the companies we run.

Almost none of us apply it to our own lives.

Your job, right now, as a human being, is exactly the same. Look eighteen months ahead. Ask what’s going to be true then about how work, relationships, careers and decisions get made. Then disrupt yourself before the world does it for you — because the world absolutely will.

The people who quietly pick this up — who use Copilot not just for their inbox but for the harder, more personal stuff — are going to look up somewhere in 2027 and realise they’re living a noticeably different life. Not because AI saved them a few minutes on email. Because they used it to think better, decide better, and act earlier than the people around them.

Absorb. Assemble. Align. Advance.

Start today.

Absorb — You Can’t Use What You Don’t Know

The other day, a business owner told me he’d “heard” that AI could now write emails. He said it like it was news. That capability has been sitting on his desktop for well over two years. He wasn’t behind because he lacked tools. He was behind because he didn’t know what was already available to him, inside software he was paying for every month.

This is the quiet problem with AI right now. The technology is moving faster than most people’s awareness of it. The models shipping today can do things that would have sounded like science fiction six months ago. But if your mental picture of AI was formed from a dinner-party conversation eighteen months back, you’re trying to build on a map that no longer matches the territory.

You can’t use what you don’t know exists.

Second-hand AI is a losing game

Most people I talk to get their AI news the same way they get most news — accidentally. A friend mentions something at a barbecue. Their teenager shows them a clip. The barber has an opinion between the scissors and the mirror. By the time a capability filters through that chain, it has been misunderstood, exaggerated, or it has already been replaced by something newer.

That gap between what AI can actually do today and what you think it can do is not a small thing. It’s the entire opportunity. The people who will get real leverage out of AI in the next twelve months are not the ones with the biggest budgets or the fanciest titles. They’re the ones with the clearest, most current picture of what’s possible right now.

The good news is that closing the gap doesn’t require a course, a certification, or a consultant. It requires a habit. And the habit hides inside something you’re probably already doing too much of — scrolling.

Use your feed to feed your mind

The same social platforms that eat your attention can be quietly retrained to deliver a daily education. Two tactics I recommend to anyone who asks.

Schedule it. Open YouTube and search “AI + [your industry].” Subscribe to the top three channels that come up. Then put a twenty-minute block in your calendar called AI Absorb Time. Treat it like a meeting you cannot cancel, because that’s exactly what it is — a standing appointment with the thing that is going to reshape your work. Twenty minutes a day is a hundred minutes a week. Inside a month, you’ll know more about what’s actually shipping than ninety percent of the people in your industry.

Hack the algorithm. Find the strongest AI videos in your niche and drop “FYP” in the comments. It stands for For You Page. Engaging with those videos tells the recommendation engine what you want more of. Do it for a week and your feed quietly rewires itself into an online university, delivered free, on your phone, in the margins of your day. You are paying for social media with your attention anyway. You might as well buy something useful with it.

The habit is the edge

AI literacy is not a one-time event. It’s a drip. The people who stay current are not smarter than everyone else — they’re just in the flow. They’ve built a small, boring habit of absorbing what’s new, and it compounds quietly in the background of their week.

Before you automate anything, build anything, or spend anything, do this first. Know what’s actually possible this week. That is where every real AI decision starts.

Getting Defender for Endpoint onto Windows without the headaches

Most of the MSPs I talk to already have Microsoft Defender for Endpoint sitting in their licensing stack. Plenty of them haven’t actually rolled it out to a single device. That gap between “we own it” and “it’s protecting the fleet” is where I see real risk hiding, and it’s the gap I want to help you close today. Here’s the path I walk through when I’m onboarding Windows machines into MDE, from licensing right through to the bit everyone skips — tuning.

Get the prerequisites right first

Before you touch a single endpoint, check the licensing. Defender for Endpoint Plan 1 ships with Microsoft 365 Business Premium and is fine for most SMBs. Plan 2 sits inside the E5 stack and is what you want if you need full EDR, threat hunting, and automated investigation. Don’t assume — open the Microsoft 365 admin centre and confirm what’s actually assigned.

Next, head to security.microsoft.com and run the initial setup wizard. Pick your data storage region, set your retention (180 days is fine), and turn on preview features so you see new capabilities as they land. Confirm the tenant is connected to Intune as your MDM authority, because that’s the path I recommend for almost every Windows fleet.

Choose your onboarding path

There are three doors into MDE for Windows, and the right one depends on how the device is managed.

Intune (my default). In the Microsoft Defender portal, go to Settings, Endpoints, Onboarding, choose Windows 10 and 11, and pick “Mobile Device Management / Microsoft Intune.” Click the link through to Intune and you’ll land on the EDR policy page. Create a profile, assign it to your “All Devices” or pilot group, and that’s the heavy lifting done. Devices check in on their next sync — usually within an hour.

Group Policy (for on-prem AD environments). Download the onboarding script and the matching ADMX templates from the same Onboarding page. Drop the script into a startup GPO targeting your machine OU, import the templates into your central store, then enable the Defender ATP policies under Computer Configuration. It’s old-school but rock solid.

Local script (pilots and one-offs). Download the .cmd file, run it as administrator on the target machine, and you’re done in under a minute. I use this when I want to prove the pipeline works before scaling.

Verify and then tune

Don’t trust the green tick — verify it. On the device, run the detection test command from Microsoft’s docs. Within fifteen minutes the device should appear in the Defender portal’s Device Inventory with an “Onboarded” sensor status and an active risk level.

Tuning is where most rollouts stall. Push attack surface reduction rules in audit mode first via Intune’s Endpoint Security blade, leave them there for a fortnight, then flip the noisy ones to block and exclude the genuine false positives. Turn on tamper protection, web content filtering, and network protection. Set up email notifications for high-severity alerts so the SOC inbox doesn’t become the place alerts go to die.

This is also where Copilot for Security earns its keep. I’ll ask Copilot in the Defender portal to summarise an incident, walk the kill chain, or draft the client-facing notification, and a forty-minute writeup becomes a ten-minute review.

The bit nobody talks about

MDE deployment isn’t a project, it’s a posture. The clients who get value are the ones whose MSP looks at the Secure Score in the Defender portal every fortnight, treats the recommendations as a backlog inside Planner, and reports progress to the business owner in plain language. Buying the licence is easy. Operating it is the work — and that’s exactly where you justify your fee.

Purpose Is Not a Strategy (And MSPs Are Paying the Price)

You didn’t start your MSP just to make money.

There was something more. A problem you wanted to solve. A frustration you saw in the market. A sense that “IT could be done better” for small businesses that kept being ignored or overcharged.

That purpose matters. It still does.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth many MSP owners don’t like admitting:

Purpose without a plan is just a story you tell yourself.

I see plenty of MSPs who care deeply about their clients, their staff, and “doing the right thing”… yet wonder why growth has stalled, margins are thin, and every year feels harder than the last.

Caring is not the problem. Lack of focus is.

When Good Intentions Don’t Move the Needle

Most MSPs I talk to aren’t lazy or incompetent. They’re overloaded.

They’re saying yes to every request, every new tool, every vendor promise, and every “quick opportunity” that pops up. Slowly, almost invisibly, their original purpose gets diluted by noise.

Here’s what that looks like in the real world:

Offering ten different service bundles because “every client is different”
Chasing the latest security product while last year’s one is barely implemented
Talking about standardisation, but never enforcing it
Claiming to be “strategic” while the business runs on reactive tickets

None of this is malicious. It’s what happens when there’s no clear plan anchoring decisions.

You care about security, but do you have a defined baseline every client must meet?

You care about client outcomes, but can you clearly articulate the outcomes you deliver repeatedly?

You care about your team, but is the business designed to support them—or exhaust them?

Focus Is the Real Competitive Advantage

In the SMB market, MSPs don’t win by being everything. They win by being consistent.

The MSPs making real progress right now aren’t necessarily smarter or bigger. They’ve simply decided what matters—and stopped apologising for it.

They draw clear lines:

This is our core stack
These are our minimum standards
This is how we onboard, secure, and support clients
This is what we don’t do

That focus creates momentum.

Technicians know what “done properly” looks like. Clients know what they’re buying. Sales conversations become simpler. Tool sprawl reduces. Security improves because execution improves.

Most importantly, energy stops leaking.

Every “yes” you don’t think through properly costs far more than the revenue it brings in.

Turn Purpose Into Something That Actually Scales

If your MSP purpose is more than a feel‑good origin story, it needs structure.

Ask yourself three hard questions:

What problem do we solve better than most MSPs our size?
What standards are we no longer willing to compromise on—even if it costs us a client?
What would we stop doing next quarter if we truly backed our own strategy?

None of these require new tools. They require leadership decisions.

Purpose is the why.
Planning is the how.
Discipline is the difference.

The Real Takeaway

You can care deeply and still stay stuck.

Progress doesn’t come from passion alone—it comes from choosing fewer things and doing them consistently well.

If your MSP feels busy but fragile, successful but stretched, it’s not because you’ve lost your purpose.

It’s because it’s time to turn that purpose into a plan you’re willing to defend.

Start there. Everything else gets easier once you do.

Breaking the MSP Growth Plateau: Why “Fine” Is Killing Your Business

If you’ve been running a Managed Service Provider (MSP) business for a few years, chances are you’ve hit a growth plateau.

You’re not failing. You’re not panicking. You’ve probably built $50k–$100k in Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR). Clients are stable. Cashflow is predictable. The business works.

And that’s exactly the problem.

Most MSP growth stalls not because of bad strategy, weak marketing, or the wrong tools — but because the business has reached a level that feels comfortable. Once that happens, growth quietly switches off.

The Real Reason MSPs Stop Growing

This is something I see repeatedly with SMB MSPs: growth doesn’t stop due to lack of opportunity. It stops because of an internal money set point.

Your business expands until it reaches an income level that feels safe, familiar, and “enough”. Then, without realising it, you start protecting that level instead of pushing past it.

New risks feel unnecessary. Big changes feel uncomfortable. And momentum fades.

To break through — whether your goal is $2M, $5M, or $10M in annual MSP revenue — you don’t need another tactic. You need to reset the way you relate to money and growth.

The Three Financial Zones Every MSP Owner Lives In

Almost every MSP owner operates in one of three zones. Identifying yours is the first step to escaping it.

1. The Panic Zone

This is where money is tight. A major client churns. Cashflow gets scary. Stress levels spike.

It’s unpleasant — but effective. Panic forces action. Sales happen. Decisions get made. Progress follows.

2. The Comfort Zone

This is where most MSPs get stuck.

You’re making “enough”. Nothing is on fire. Revenue is steady. The business is fine.

And “fine” is lethal.

There’s no urgency, no pressure, and no reason to do the hard work required to scale. Comfort kills growth faster than failure ever will.

3. The Complacent Zone

Revenue is higher than ever, but the edge is gone. You lose interest. Spending increases. Growth slows because you’ve stopped caring enough to push.

If you’re honest, you already know which zone you’re in.

Strategy #1: Make Money Matter Again

The fastest way to break out of the comfort zone is to make money emotionally relevant again.

Abstract goals like “higher margins” or “more MRR” don’t move behaviour. People do.

Most of us will work harder for others than we will for ourselves.

Instead of setting a generic revenue goal, attach your next six‑week target to someone you care about:

Hit the goal, and your family gets the trip you’ve been talking about.
Miss it, and you have to explain why — face to face.

That emotional leverage creates pressure. Pressure creates momentum.

Strategy #2: Play a New Growth Game

If you’ve crossed $1M and feel bored or flat, that’s not a failure. It means you’ve completed the survival phase of business.

Now you need a new game.

Some that work well for MSPs:

The Team Wealth Game
Shift from “How do I get richer?” to “How do I make my best engineers and account managers financially secure enough that they never want to leave?”

The Business Model Game
Every major income jump I’ve seen follows a change in sales or delivery.
If you’re still running every sales call, QBR, or escalation — your next growth lever is removing yourself from the process.

The Contribution Game
Tie MSP growth to something bigger than profit. For example, funding a specific outcome for every new endpoint onboarded. Meaning creates momentum.

Strategy #3: Write Yourself a Pool

There’s a famous story about John Lennon wanting a swimming pool and saying, “I’ll write us one.” He wrote a hit song to pay for it.

MSP owners can do the same.

Instead of endless grinding, create a short, focused cash campaign tied to a specific goal:

A cybersecurity audit
A compliance sprint
A fixed‑scope project block

Run it hard for a week. Get paid fast. Build energy.

I call this the Payday Playbook — and it works far better than hoping MRR slowly creeps up.

What MSP Owners Should Actually Do Next

If you want to break your MSP growth plateau:

Identify your current zone
Work in six‑week revenue sprints
Attach real emotional stakes to your goals
Get into rooms where your numbers look small

If you’re the smartest person in your peer group, you’re in the wrong room.

MSP growth isn’t about the technology you manage. It’s about the mindset you bring to the machine — and whether you’re willing to move beyond “fine”.

Comparing AI services–Image generation

A while back I wrote this article : Comparing AI services–an objective analysis? –

https://blog.ciaops.com/2025/09/12/comparing-ai-services-an-objective-analysis/

I gave various AI services the same image prompt and this is the result

Copilot (default) – 75 seconds

Copilot (Think deeply) – 88 seconds

Copilot (Create infographic) – 100 seconds

Claude Sonnet 4.6 – 357 seconds

Gemini – Thinking [Nano Banana 2] – 54 seconds

Grok – Create image – 7 seconds

ChatGPT – 60 seconds

My Business Apps 2026

pexels-mohi-syed-50614

I’m a low-volume mobile app user and prefer accessing corporate data on a large screen with a full-size keyboard. I install apps on my device very selectively, keeping them to a minimum. My limited use of mobile apps is primarily due to ergonomics—less is definitely more for me.

To see what I was using at the beginning of last year check out the article:

My Apps – 2025

My daily driver when it comes to a phone is an iPhone 12 Pro Max. The other device I occasionally use apps on is my iPad mini.

My most used business apps on mobile devices over the last year were:

Outlook – for email access across multiple Microsoft 365 accounts secured via Intune.

Spotify on iOS to listen to all my podcasts.

Lastpass password manager and authenticator for general password management. I spilt my authentications across multiple app to provide some way to minimise a single point of login failure issue.

Microsoft Authenticator – I use this for a number of select web sites as well as Microsoft 365.

I have Microsoft Defender protecting all my devices with Global Secure Access enabled full time.

Car Play – Connects to my daily drive to provide the ability to listen to podcasts as well as use Waze for navigation.

OneNote – is a must on every device I own. Syncs all my notes to every device. Allows me to not only truly have my information everywhere I am but also capture information quickly and easily.

OneDrive – This mobile app now not only allows me to manage my Microsoft 365 files but it also incorporates the more advanced Office Lens technology that scans and uploads, documents, whiteboards, etc.

Tripview – One of the few apps that I have happily paid for. I use this to let me know the Sydney train schedule to help me get around when I need to negotiate the ‘real world’. Although not much travel is happening at the moment, this app is super handy for negotiating local public transport.

Qantas – Given the amount of interstate travel I generally do having all my business flight information is handy. It also has my boarding pass so I can remove the need for paper.

Audible – This app allows me to listen to my audio books where ever I am.

Amazon Kindle – If I don’t have access to my Kindle then I can still read my books. In my case that will most likely be on my iPad. I also use the Kindle app on the iPad when the ebook has a lot of images that sometime don’t display well or are too small for the Kindle device.

Of course I have all the social media apps, such as X, and Linkedin on my devices, although I will say that I’m not a big users of these apps at all. They are used occasionally but I really limit my usage of these apps which I find very distracting.

I’ve been trying to understand Instagram in a business context so that app is now on my phone. I still struggle to see the point or how to use this effectively for my business. I’m going to keep trying but I honestly find Instagram such a distraction and of little business value but I do appreciate that I am the minority.

I also have all the Microsoft/Office 365 apps. The ones I use the most are probably To-Do, Outlook, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams, although Word and Excel also get used regularly. Just about every Microsoft Office 365 service has an app that you should have on your mobile device. I also have the Brave browser on my devices as I no longer use Chrome at all.

I have most AI services on my phone with Microsoft 365 Copilot being the main one I use. I prefer to use the desktop with AI services so I can copy and paste the results into OneNote say. I don’t spend much time ‘talking/dictating’ to AI services but will use them in the car to carry on a conversation if needed.

I’ve also added the Intune app to all my devices so they can be better managed.

I use the Signal messaging app for private conversations and groups that I am part of.

Some occasional ones I use include:

– Uber

– Amazon music

I use the normal personal apps for things like Internet banking, fitness, payments and so on.

One my iPad, which also serves as a personal entertainment device, I have the streaming services Youtube, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. I also try apps regularly just to see what they do and whether they can benefit me. However, most don’t and summarily removed.

I will generally also update the apps on my mobile devices manually, so if there issues for some reason I know what has happened recently.

The above are my used apps across my various mobile devices. My aim to try and keep the apps standard across all the devices and as few as possible. I try and standardise on the Microsoft apps on all platforms and use these as much as possible. I certainly use a wide variety of apps on my devices by prefer the desktop versions if available.