We Need to Talk About Frogs

I want to ask you something, and I want you to actually think about it before you keep reading.

What’s the one thing in your MSP right now that you know you should be doing, but you keep not doing it?

You already know what it is. I’d bet money on it. Maybe it’s that sales call you’ve been rescheduling in your head for two weeks. Maybe it’s the follow-up email sitting in your drafts. Maybe it’s the conversation with a client you’ve been dreading, or the price increase you know is overdue but can’t bring yourself to pull the trigger on.

Whatever it is, it’s your frog.

Where the Frog Comes From

Years ago I picked up a book called Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy. The title alone was enough to make me stop. When I read it, I remember thinking the core idea was almost laughably simple: if you had to eat a frog, you’d want to do it first thing in the morning and get it over with. And if you had two frogs, you’d eat the biggest one first.

But here’s what I noticed after 40 years of running an MSP: simple ideas that actually work have a way of proving themselves over and over again, in every kind of situation, until you can’t pretend they’re not true anymore. And this one did exactly that.

The Frog Isn’t a Task

What Brian Tracy understood, and what took me longer to internalize, is that the frog isn’t just some item on your to-do list. It’s the thing you’re avoiding because it makes you uncomfortable. The thing that, if you actually did it, would move your business forward. There’s a difference between filling your calendar and actually pushing the needle.

MSP owners are not lazy people. I’ve never met one who was! But we are people who feel discomfort, and we get very good at filling our days with work that doesn’t require us to feel it. Answer tickets. Check email. Handle the urgent stuff. And at 5pm, we’ve been productive without moving an inch on the thing that matters most.

You end up buried in technical work instead of building the business. I’ve talked about this pattern a hundred times because I lived it myself.

I Knew Better… and Still Did It

I had read the book. I knew I needed to make sales calls. I had no real excuse. And I still found ways to push it to later in the day until the day disappeared.

Brian Tracy says it directly: if you don’t deliberately tackle your most important task first, something else will always fill that space. And it will. There’s no version of this where the day stays open for you.

What Your Frog Usually Looks Like

For most MSP owners, the avoidance shows up in a few recognizable places. Sales is the big one: making calls, following up, actually asking for the decision.

Marketing is close behind, whether that’s sending a long overdue price increase email or running a webinar that has been on your to-do list for months.

Your biggest opportunity tends to be hiding right behind your biggest resistance. I’ve watched that play out too many times to dismiss it.

Doing It First Is the Whole Point

Reading the book and applying it are two different things. A lot of people do the first one. The actual leverage comes from doing it first, before anything else. Before email, before tickets, before the day has a chance to fill itself up with lower-stakes work.

When you eat the frog first, the mental weight of it is gone. You’ve already done the hardest thing before most people have finished their coffee! Everything that comes after that is easier.

How I Finally Made It Stick

Getting honest about my frog was the first part. Not what I wished it was, but what I was actually avoiding. That took more honesty than I expected.

From there I made it non-negotiable; I also made it smaller. Not “do marketing”, but send one email. Not “build my pipeline”, but make three calls. Brian Tracy is explicit about this; break your from down into something you can actually do, or you’ll keep finding reasons to delay.

Eventually it just became part of how I ran my day!

Your Challenge This Week

You already know what your frog is. Write it down. Tomorrow morning, before you open email, before you touch a ticket, eat it.

Then do it again the next day.

This business doesn’t pay you for being busy. It pays you for moving things forward, and usually the task that moves things forward most is the one sitting at the bottom of your list!

As Brian Tracy puts it: “If you have to eat two frogs, eat the largest one first.”

Have a great week and weekend!