Uncle Marv’s IT Business Podcast: Practical Business Advice for MSPs and IT Professionals

Mike Smith joined me live in South Florida after a day on-site with a client, and we turned his trip into a full-on therapy session for MSPs dealing with Adobe, ISPs, and over-engineered networks. We dig into Acrobat crashes, painful uninstalls, and why I lean on tools like Ninite Pro and Action1 to deploy and patch software without all the bundled nonsense. From there, we pivot into law firms that demand every browser under the sun, iCloud users getting winmail.dat instead of PDFs, and how a simple Microsoft 365 setting can make or break delivery.

We also share some hard-earned lessons from ISP “solutions” like Comcast Security Edge that silently hijack DNS and cause more trouble than they solve, plus stories about move projects blocked by county approvals and wrong suite numbers. I wrap up with a NetAlly EtherScope tip where I walked into a seven-user shop running multiple VLANs for no good reason, and how simplifying that network instantly fixed their printing issues and future support costs.

=== Chapters

=== Guest: Mike Smith, Mike Tech Show

=== Companies / Vendors / Products / Events / Organizations

=== SPONSORS: 

=== SHOW MUSIC: 

=== Connect with Uncle Marv

🌐 Website: https://www.itbusinesspodcast.com/
🎙 Host: Marvin Bee
🛒 Uncle Marv’s Amazon Store (gear & tools I recommend): https://amzn.to/3EiyKoZ
☕ Support the show: https://ko-fi.com/itbusinesspodcast

If you found value in this episode, share it with another MSP, IT provider, or tech entrepreneur. Your support helps keep practical, no-nonsense IT business conversations coming every week.

Melanie Curtis joins me to talk about pivoting careers, building a coaching and speaking business, and choosing family, boundaries, and fun over the nonstop hustle grind.

We start with Melanie’s shift from investment banking into pro skydiving, then from skydiving into coaching, driven by a subtle realization that her “dream job” still wasn’t the whole story. She unpacks the decision to lean into life coaching when it wasn’t cool, how she navigated the fear of it being a scam, and what it took to trust that quiet sense of calling anyway.

From there, we get personal about missed flights to family events, the danger of filling your calendar with only client work, and the moment she decided she couldn’t outrun future regret. Melanie outlines how a coaching relationship starts with business problems and quickly hits deeper human patterns, why she pushes for year-long masterminds with real structure, and how she uses humor and her “comedy content creator” side to keep the pressure of entrepreneurship from boiling over. We close with her real-time experience of building a keynote speaking practice: long prospecting cycles, thousands of emails, warm intros that actually convert, and a clear stance on why discipline must sit alongside boundaries, rest, recovery, and connection if you want to stay in the game.

=== Chapters

=== Guest: Melanie Curtis, Melanie Curtis Coaching / Speaking

=== Companies / Vendors / Products / Books

=== SPONSORS: 

=== SHOW MUSIC: 

=== Connect with Uncle Marv

🌐 Website: https://www.itbusinesspodcast.com/
🎙 Host: Marvin Bee
🛒 Uncle Marv’s Amazon Store (gear & tools I recommend): https://amzn.to/3EiyKoZ
☕ Support the show: https://ko-fi.com/itbusinesspodcast

If you found value in this episode, share it with another MSP, IT provider, or tech entrepreneur. Your support helps keep practical, no-nonsense IT business conversations coming every week.

Melanie Curtis joins me to unpack how skydiving, world records, and adversity actually map to client issues, cash flow stress, and growth decisions inside an MSP. We explore smart risk‑taking, realistic timelines for “overnight” success, and how to build an IT business that matches the life you want instead of someone else’s revenue goals.

Melanie explains why fear around leaving a steady paycheck feels like mortal danger, and why that reaction is normal for MSP owners whose livelihood supports families, staff, and clients. She shares how she spent eight to ten months saving money, paying off her car, and pitching a brand‑new role at her drop zone so she could move into skydiving with a safety net instead of a blind leap.

=== Chapters

=== Guest: Melanie Curtis, Melanie Curtis Coaching 

=== Companies / Vendors / Products / Books

=== SPONSORS: 

=== SHOW MUSIC: 

=== Connect with Uncle Marv

🌐 Website: https://www.itbusinesspodcast.com/
🎙 Host: Marvin Bee
🛒 Uncle Marv’s Amazon Store (gear & tools I recommend): https://amzn.to/3EiyKoZ
☕ Support the show: https://ko-fi.com/itbusinesspodcast

If you found value in this episode, share it with another MSP, IT provider, or tech entrepreneur. Your support helps keep practical, no-nonsense IT business conversations coming every week.

This conversation starts with a confession: I’ve been living in Lifecycle Manager just for hardware reports and ignoring the big SaaS management piece sitting right in my Pro license. Ryan breaks down how ScalePad pulled in tech from their Produce8 acquisition to build a SaaS management layer that finally gives MSPs visibility into the cloud side of the stack—apps, users, time in app, and historical usage—so you can see what’s actually being used and what’s burning budget for no reason.

We also zoom out and talk about the bigger picture of where ScalePad is heading. Lifecycle Manager has been rebuilt to bring more of the MSP workflow inside the platform: assessments, comparables, initiatives that sync to your PSA, roadmaps tied into budgets, and automated QBR reports that save you from copy-paste hell. On top of that, ScalePad is going API-first and AI-enabled, exposing Lifecycle Manager through MCP, adding an AI agent and ScalePad Copilot, and lining up CSAT, NPS, UI refresh, and alignment modules so you can measure client sentiment and grow inside existing agreements.

=== Chapters

=== Guest: Ryan Sigouin, ScalePad

=== Companies / Vendors / Products / Books

=== SPONSORS: 

=== SHOW MUSIC: 

=== Connect with Uncle Marv

🌐 Website: https://www.itbusinesspodcast.com/
🎙 Host: Marvin Bee
🛒 Uncle Marv’s Amazon Store (gear & tools I recommend): https://amzn.to/3EiyKoZ
☕ Support the show: https://ko-fi.com/itbusinesspodcast

If you found value in this episode, share it with another MSP, IT provider, or tech entrepreneur. Your support helps keep practical, no-nonsense IT business conversations coming every week.

I caught up with Victor Lopez from FlexPoint live at Pax8 Beyond in Salt Lake City to talk about one of the least‑loved parts of running an MSP: getting paid. Victor breaks down how FlexPoint sits alongside QuickBooks and your PSA to automate accounts receivable, from credit card and ACH payments to client self‑service through a portal, all while keeping your existing billing workflows intact.

We get into cash‑flow friendly features like same‑day ACH funding, short‑term financing that lets clients spread big projects over 30 days to 12 months while you still get paid upfront, and a fixed monthly subscription model that doesn’t scale your fees every time your revenue grows. Victor also previews FlexPoint’s AI voice agents that can call clients, explain invoices line‑by‑line, resend invoices on the spot, and show you opens and clicks, all designed to protect the MSP–client relationship while reducing back‑office friction.

=== Chapters

=== Guest: Victor Lopez, FlexPoint

=== Companies / Vendors / Products / Books

=== Connect with Uncle Marv

🌐 Website: https://www.itbusinesspodcast.com/
🎙 Host: Marvin Bee
🛒 Uncle Marv’s Amazon Store (gear & tools I recommend): https://amzn.to/3EiyKoZ
☕ Support the show: https://ko-fi.com/itbusinesspodcast

If you found value in this episode, share it with another MSP, IT provider, or tech entrepreneur. Your support helps keep practical, no-nonsense IT business conversations coming every week.

Gene Kim brings a channel-first perspective to Absolute Security’s move into the MSP space, after years of working as a reseller and service provider himself. He shares how Absolute grew from the “LoJack for laptops” days into a firmware-embedded platform already present in over 600 million devices worldwide, enabling location, geofencing, and security controls that don’t depend on the OS.

We dig into real-world concerns MSPs have today: increasing attacks targeting providers, management tools being turned against us, and the operational pain of agent drift and offline tools. Gene explains how Absolute can maintain integrity for EDR and RMM agents, auto-heal disabled services, and even restore devices that were wiped via tools like Intune—all delivered with MSP-friendly consumption-based licensing through Pax8. If you’re trying to improve uptime, reduce tickets, and differentiate your security story, this one will get you thinking differently about what “endpoint resilience” should look like.

=== Chapters

=== Guest: Gene Kim, Absolute Security

=== Companies / Vendors / Products / Books

=== SPONSORS: 

=== SHOW MUSIC: 

=== Connect with Uncle Marv

🌐 Website: https://www.itbusinesspodcast.com/
🎙 Host: Marvin Bee
🛒 Uncle Marv’s Amazon Store (gear & tools I recommend): https://amzn.to/3EiyKoZ
☕ Support the show: https://ko-fi.com/itbusinesspodcast

If you found value in this episode, share it with another MSP, IT provider, or tech entrepreneur. Your support helps keep practical, no-nonsense IT business conversations coming every week.

I share some summer MSP war stories—court reporters with broken Wi-Fi, a small airport’s noisy digital logger, and my go-to Windows commands for quick network checks—and then I get honest about vendor behavior that crosses the line.

From hidden billing and broken portals to reps calling my wife’s cell phone, I lay out what respectful partnership should actually look like in our channel.

=== Chapters

=== Companies / Vendors / Products / Books

=== SPONSORS: 

=== SHOW MUSIC: 

=== Connect with Uncle Marv

🌐 Website: https://www.itbusinesspodcast.com/
🎙 Host: Marvin Bee
🛒 Uncle Marv’s Amazon Store (gear & tools I recommend): https://amzn.to/3EiyKoZ
☕ Support the show: https://ko-fi.com/itbusinesspodcast

If you found value in this episode, share it with another MSP, IT provider, or tech entrepreneur. Your support helps keep practical, no-nonsense IT business conversations coming every week.

Kim Simmonds is back with me live from day three of Pax8 Beyond 2026, and we’re talking about what actually works when you mix AI, contracts, and MSPs. Cloud Contracts 365 uses AI where it makes sense—review and redlining—on top of contracts that are built the old‑fashioned way by lawyers who live in this world every day. We walk through how the platform leans on MSP-specific playbooks, machine learning, and LLMs to flag legal risk without letting the robot be the lawyer.

Kim shares some of the wild assumptions she hears at the booth, including MSPs asking if Cloud Contracts 365 can “guarantee” they’ll never be sued and folks who proudly fed Claude or Copilot a prompt and called it a contract. She breaks down real examples where AI‑drafted agreements quietly added “termination for convenience” language, turning what owners thought were three‑year commitments into 30‑day rolling terms that kill recurring revenue and spook buyers and investors. We also dig into how their templates are tuned for each U.S. state, how you can tap into U.S. counsel directly through the platform, and where integrations like Halo PSA make the legal workflow feel more like an MSP tool than a law firm visit.

=== Chapters

=== Guest: Kim Simmonds, Cloud Contracts 365 / Law 365

=== Companies / Vendors / Products / Books

=== SPONSORS: 

=== SHOW MUSIC: 

=== Connect with Uncle Marv

🌐 Website: https://www.itbusinesspodcast.com/
🎙 Host: Marvin Bee
🛒 Uncle Marv’s Amazon Store (gear & tools I recommend): https://amzn.to/3EiyKoZ
☕ Support the show: https://ko-fi.com/itbusinesspodcast

If you found value in this episode, share it with another MSP, IT provider, or tech entrepreneur. Your support helps keep practical, no-nonsense IT business conversations coming every week.

I’m catching up with Ryan Walsh at PAX8 Beyond to talk venue vibes, partner trust, and what their latest SMB Pulse Report reveals about real-world AI adoption, spend, and results for small businesses. We unpack why so many AI projects get stuck in pilot mode, what MSPs are missing, and how to move fast with secure agents that clients can actually trust.

This conversation starts with the shift from Denver to Salt Lake City and why the new convention center layout changes the feel of the entire event. Ryan and I talk about the opening ceremony, where the energy hit, where it dragged, and how seriously PAX8 takes survey data, direct partner conversations, and even the uncomfortable feedback when something doesn’t work.

We then dig into the SMB Pulse Report, which combines PAX8 marketplace data, partner insights, and external research to track how small businesses are adopting generative AI, where they’re spending, and why returns are lagging. The data shows strong adoption and increased spend, but also stalled pilots, low trust in agents, and a big gap between time saved and profit realized—exactly where MSPs can step in with security, governance, data quality, and tightly integrated workflows. We also talk about emerging AI-native competitors, the importance of owning the “last mile” to the customer, and why vendors and MSPs alike need to be customer zero so they can confidently deploy secure, reliable agents at scale.

=== Chapters

=== Guest: Ryan Walsh, Pax8

=== Companies / Vendors / Products / Books

=== SPONSORS: 

=== SHOW MUSIC: 

=== Connect with Uncle Marv

🌐 Website: https://www.itbusinesspodcast.com/
🎙 Host: Marvin Bee
🛒 Uncle Marv’s Amazon Store (gear & tools I recommend): https://amzn.to/3EiyKoZ
☕ Support the show: https://ko-fi.com/itbusinesspodcast

If you found value in this episode, share it with another MSP, IT provider, or tech entrepreneur. Your support helps keep practical, no-nonsense IT business conversations coming every week.

I’m talking with Evergreen co-founder Ramsey Sahyoun about their Berkshire-inspired, buy-and-hold approach to MSP acquisitions and what makes their decentralized model stand out in a crowded M&A market. We dig into how Evergreen evaluates deals, supports owners who stay or exit, and why AI-driven automation and ERP consulting are becoming real revenue engines.

Evergreen has quietly become one of the biggest players in MSP acquisitions, but they’re not running the typical private equity roll-up playbook. In this conversation, Ramsey walks me through how Evergreen aims to be a permanent home for MSPs, keeping brands, tech stacks, and local leadership in place while layering on support, peer groups, and vendor leverage to help each business grow. We talk through their Berkshire Hathaway inspiration, the first MSP deal with Wolf Consulting in Pittsburgh, and how they built trust in an industry they weren’t originally from.

=== Chapters

=== Guest: Ramsey Sahyoun, Evergreen Services Group

=== Companies / Vendors / Products / Books

=== SPONSORS: 

=== SHOW MUSIC: 

=== Connect with Uncle Marv

🌐 Website: https://www.itbusinesspodcast.com/
🎙 Host: Marvin Bee
🛒 Uncle Marv’s Amazon Store (gear & tools I recommend): https://amzn.to/3EiyKoZ
☕ Support the show: https://ko-fi.com/itbusinesspodcast

If you found value in this episode, share it with another MSP, IT provider, or tech entrepreneur. Your support helps keep practical, no-nonsense IT business conversations coming every week.