by Lilia Guan
The ICT services sector has always demanded resilience from managed service providers (MSP), but the sustained pressure is unlike anything before. Long‑standing leaders have built businesses through years of disruption and uncertainty, but endurance alone is no longer a viable leadership strategy. MSPs are currently operating at the edge of tolerance as the modern technology landscape continuously shifts.
This has become increasingly layered with complexity, accountability and risk into every facet of businesses.
According to The TSP Advisory founder James Davis, the complexity of what technology service providers do, expectations of clients, the rapidly and ever-changing landscape, lack of professionalism and entry point into the industry have created the perfect storm of pressure for owners.
“We are a young and immature industry with all the founders having to build everything from scratch,” he told ARN in an interview. “This means working long hours and overnight to solve issues for their clients, issues that they never created but are fixing on behalf of vendors.
However, in recent years, things have gotten more complicated and business owners are dealing with added legislation and liability on top of the changes with technology itself.
“As a tech services business owner, we have the threat of cyber-crime on us and our clients, as well as technology dramatically changing, vendors changing their pricing and engagement models,” Davis said.
This is on top of clients expecting more from their service providers, inflation of wages outstripping most other industries, much of their costs being tied to the US dollar and the fluctuations that brings, and many more challenges.
These stresses are creating huge cognitive overloads, adding to constant anxiety, imposter syndrome, high stress, and “all the fun that comes with all of it”, noted Davis.
“The pressure has been building for quite some time, and I am really starting to see the toll it is taking this year,” he said. “Leaders aren’t handling the pressure; I am seeing more sick leave occurring – people are going into their shells and not asking for help. They are dreading additional work. I see people not willing to put in some extra time to solve a problem; they are defaulting to high stress and resigning themselves to their situations which is only exacerbating the challenges they are facing.”
Davis also said he sees “owners really starting to show the cracks – they are resisting complexity at every turn”.
“They are looking for the easy silver bullets to solve their challenges because they don’t have the energy or mental capacity to work through things,” he explained. “This is causing more problems, but they are defaulting to their resilience – what got them to here over the years.
“They used to be able to grind through a challenge or wait and things would resolve themselves, but that is not the modern world for a technology partner. They are putting their head in the sand to cope, but all it is doing is ignoring the problems that aren’t going away and they are getting bigger and bigger.”
Davis is genuinely worried for many owners especially as they have “sacrificed so much of themselves, their money, and their time with their family to look after clients.”
He questioned who was looking after these technology service providers, with the whole industry hurting.
One former technology service provider owner who understands what Davis is talking about is former Blackbird IT co-founder Richard Stafford.
He founded the business with Ben Corbett in 2007. It was originally called LeetGeek and was focused on being an Apple integration consultancy. By 2016 it had it evolved into the professional services provider it is today.
In October 2025, Stafford and Corbett sold the business to Evergreen and its operating company Lyra Technology.
After selling the business, Stafford said he is still recovering from burnout.
“One of the reasons why I exited the company is because I was so burnt-out,” he told ARN. “I was suffering from depression and anxiety.
“I was stressed and not because I had so much work to do – it’s because I just couldn’t do the work.”
At the time, Stafford had a number of personal issues that had him examining the way he examined his emotional stress and neurodiversity, especially as a man. Although men are generally getting better at discussing the issues that are contributing to their stress, Stafford believes his “whole upbringing of harden up and men don’t cry” has contributed to the ongoing stigma around men seeking help.
“Not only that, but emotional immaturity as well – within yourself and in identifying that within others,” he said. “If you can’t get in touch with your own emotions, it’s very hard to be empathetic to other people.
“If your bucket’s full because you’re dealing with stress, whether it’s work-related, or personal relationships, a little thing can tip you over. I’ve been guilty of that so many times myself.”
Stafford acknowledges that there’s a certain irony in life. When people are born, they’re “innocent”. Then they inherit values and belief systems from parents and surrounding environment. Afterwards they spend their adult life trying to undo those beliefs, he observed.
“I’m rediscovering that in myself, and that’s helping me to build my emotional intelligence,” Stafford said. “With men, I’ve experienced them getting defensive, dismissive, or deflective. You’ve got to question what’s actually under that and what’s going on for them.”
Exploring his own mental health meant understanding that when he was feeling upset, his emotions weren’t recognised, which led to a feeling of being shut down and not being named. For certain men, this has meant not having the right language to explain what they were dealing with internally.
As an example, Stafford equated the situation to an operating system.
“If you remember when you install Windows XP, Windows 7 or Windows 10 fresh, it’s super-fast, and then it bloats out over time with updates from Microsoft,” he explained. “It just gets slower over time.
“If you’re not dealing with that fragmentation of emotions over time … [it’s] only going to get worse.”
To help deal with these internalised conflicts, the industry needs to have more conversations around the challenges and issues faced by technology service providers as well as the impact on their lives.
Global Technology Industry Association (GTIA) Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ) chair Maria Armstrong said the obstacle the community faces when it comes to discussing issues they may have is its nebulous nature.
“Too often people don’t see the benefit. They view it as a social club, or a drink,” she told ARN. “It’s not until they need to call on their community that they find how impactful it truly is.
“Often, that’s when things are so rocky that it’s borderline too late. Those who lean into the community the most are generally people who’ve been in the trenches, faced challenges, and had the support from the community.”
Part of the solution for this is normalising when things are going wrong without feeling shame, said Stafford.
“If there’s more conversations around burnout [and] leading with vulnerability, I think that will help with the problem,” he suggested. “People in our community need to be vulnerable enough to talk to each other.”
As part of Stafford’s need for transparency, he said there was a particular situation that occurred during his time leading Blackbird IT that he wasn’t prepared for as leader — and probably not something that anyone should prepare for in leadership.
“We had to get counselling for our staff, inform customers, and steady the ship,” he said. “It was extremely triggering for me on a personal level, but I had to deal with it.”
“Growth isn’t in the comfort zone, and I’ve been uncomfortable so many times.”