Passion Plays are Lucrative. The Masses Say Otherwise — My Five Years in the MSP Space Say They are WRONG!

Published: May 18, 2026

Let’s talk about what happens when you pursue your passions in business. There is a long-standing conversation that is happening regarding passion-focused businesses. It is said that they are rarely lucrative, and I disagree. I believe the mind is powerful enough to find meaning even in work other people might call boring or even work that YOU – the one doing the work – consider “boring” and unfulfilling. My husband and I talk about this often. How effective applying your efforts to make work more enjoyable can be, and how valuable challenging yourself against your own standards instead of someone else’s rulebook or capabilities can be. For example, we will challenge ourselves to produce a certain volume or tasks, or complete a certain task in an amount of time that is likely shorter than what we were allotted or originally allotted for ourselves. I think many of us dread work because we compare how we do things to how others do them or how rigid the job description is, when really we should be measuring our growth against ourselves.

Let's Get Techy...Or Not - The Meat and Potatoes

I like organizing. That translates across industries and functions. I enjoy organizing files, thoughts, steps, roadmaps, product priorities, teams, and cross-functional execution. A field that I operate well in but am not particularly passionate about is the Managed Service Provider (MSP) space. 

In MSP environments, I’m not the person who wants to live in the weeds of technical delivery all day. I have no desire to live in the weeds of Security Operations Center (SOC) alert triage, Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tuning, Managed Detection and Response (MDR) runbooks, endpoint patching, backup monitoring, or the escalation queue all day. The same applies to the industrial side — calibrating Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), tuning Operational Technology (OT) sensors, chasing telemetry on a plant floor or a water utility's operations network. Cool, but not my jam. However, I am deeply energized by de-complicating, bringing, and re-establishing order. I like understanding how services, technology stacks, marketplace offers, margins, market development funds (MDF), and customer outcomes MSP solutions drives, all fit together in one business model. In that sense, I relate strongly to MSP and Managed Service Provider (MSSP) owners, operators, technical leaders, and frontline workers because I understand both the business model and the operational moving parts. From there as a marketing strategist and consultant, I can create value-centric messaging, as well as position those collective motions and business models to MSP customers, employees, executives, partners, and investors accordingly and effectively. 

In other words, I take what MSPs do, position that effectively, and help them sell their business to the customers, CISOs+, hyperscaler sellers, Independent Software Vendors (ISV) partners, and capital investors they most want to collaborate with.

Natural Parallels to The IT Services Industry

Another example, I’ve never considered myself a technician, yet I’ve been troubleshooting my own and my family’s tech issues for years. I’m the one figuring out why the Wi-Fi drops, why a device won’t sync, why an account isn’t authenticating, why a printer refuses to cooperate, or why something that was working suddenly broke. I don’t love technical work in the formal MSP sense, but I do love the problem-solving components. I love asking deep and thoughtful questions, identifying factors and variables to be considered, spotting patterns, and creating order again. That’s the same fulfillment I get in business—diagnosing root-cause issues, identifying what’s broken, aligning people and resources, and building solutions and a better path forward.

Lead With Passion, Let the Universe Align You

I believe that when you get good enough at the work that fits you, people will pay for your time, perspective, and services. And if your passion-based work is not yet paying the bills, I encourage you to find meaning in the work in front of you without abandoning the bigger vision. That mindset helps you master your craft, set better boundaries, and condition both employers and clients to value you for what you do best. For me, that means making conscious choices around the work I’m passionate about so I can create the right combination for my business and my family—and build a business around strengths that are both fulfilling and valuable.

Partners with transferable GTM systems pivot faster. Splunk's ecosystem spans AWS, Azure, on-prem, hybrid environments. Partners who built systematic joint messaging frameworks and multi-cloud marketplace authorizations (AWS + Azure + Google Cloud) accessed MDF pools from multiple sources. When one platform shifts, systematic frameworks transfer. The operational infrastructure matters more than single-vendor dependency.

Stay tuned for more insights and perspectives like these.

Best Regards,

Shaun Martinez, PMMC™ 

Co-Founder of ExSailIQ 360° 

GTM Strategist & Consultant | Strategic Alliances, Marketing, Sales, & Customer Success