Welcome to Ctrl-Alt-Deliver: MSP Service Delivery Mastery.
I’m Jeni Clift, joined by my husband and business partner Nick Clift. Together, we spent nearly 30 years building, scaling, and eventually exiting our own MSP business.

And here’s what we learned along the way:
Great service delivery isn’t about working harder or being more reactive. It’s built on visibility, discipline, focus, and leaders who understand how to balance people, process, and customer expectations.

This episode is a little different. It’s just Nick and me behind the microphones.

In this Deep Dive, we reflect on key moments from past Ctrl-Alt-Deliver conversations and unpack the ideas that made us stop and rethink how service delivery really works inside an MSP.

We talk openly about the hidden cost of poor time visibility, why overwork often goes unnoticed until it becomes resentment, and why technicians should never be left to decide what is or isn’t billable. We explore how lack of focus creates complexity, slows delivery, and damages customer trust.

We also dive into why marketing often fails MSPs when it isn’t aligned with real delivery experience, and how testing your own business as a customer can reveal gaps no dashboard ever will.

Throughout the episode, we share real stories from our own MSP journey, including mistakes we made, lessons learned the hard way, and the changes that had the biggest impact on service consistency, team wellbeing, and client relationships.

This is an honest, practical conversation for MSP leaders who want to improve service delivery without relying on heroics, burning out their teams, or overpromising to clients.

In this episode, we talk about:

•  Why transparency around time and capacity protects both teams and clients
• The real cost of overwork and why it often goes unseen
•  Why technicians should never decide what gets billed
• How focus and standardisation improve service quality
• Why MSPs cannot be everything to everyone
• The danger of marketing that promises more than delivery can support
• How to test your own MSP as a customer
• Why collaboration and partnerships matter more than ever
• Lessons learned from projects that blew out and acquisitions that didn’t go to plan
• What we would do differently if we were building an MSP today

If you’re serious about strengthening service delivery, building trust with your clients, and creating a business that scales without chaos, this Deep Dive will resonate.

Listen to this episode and explore more Ctrl-Alt-Deliver conversations at
https://www.ctrl-alt-deliver.blog/episodes