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

Tonight I kicked back and pulled together everything I’ve learned so far from this Money, Marketing, and Growth series, and I didn’t hold back on how it applies to my own MSP world. I walk through five big pillars that kept coming up from folks like Laura Johns, Colin Knox, Nate Freedman, Dave Scott, Dori Spade, Tim Fitzpatrick, and Lisa Shorr: fix your foundation before you spend, close more from the pipeline you already have, protect your margins before you chase growth, use AI to support execution instead of replacing strategy, and remember that human trust still wins the deal. I talk about tightening your ICP and website, speeding up proposals and follow‑up, finding billing leakage in licenses and devices, and using AI for SOPs, email drafts, and workflows once you’ve actually figured out who you serve and what you offer.

I also share some real‑world stories from my day: spotting offline workstations via RMM, catching a client moving a UPS in real time, and sending out an FBI flash alert about a ransom group impersonating IT staff that my client was smart enough to question. You’ll hear why I love tools like ThreatLocker for zero‑trust endpoint protection, TruGrid for secure remote access when I don’t want to touch home PCs, and OneStream for Teams‑based calling, plus how Domotz is tying into AI so you can query environments and alerts with natural language. I wrap up with what’s coming next: Pax8 Beyond in Salt Lake City, TechCon Unplugged in Chicago, an August all‑MSP lineup with no vendors, some EnGenius networking gear and test tools on the bench for review, and even a quick dash‑cam rabbit hole live with Cory in chat.

Chapters

=== Shout-outs

=== 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.

Sitting at ACES in cold Minneapolis, I pulled Justin Maxwell aside after his wealth session because the room literally shifted once he started making us write down real numbers for the life we actually want. Justin has a teacher’s gift for taking the scary, foggy “money ball” in our heads and breaking it into clear targets, simple math, and real choices that don’t make you feel sleazy or like you’re selling out your values. We dig into the biggest fear most of us have, which isn’t taxes or markets, it is quietly worrying that we’ll outlive our money and end up shrinking our lives out of scarcity instead of using our business to expand our options.

Justin also calls out the mess most of us live in with our “money people” where the accountant, financial advisor, attorney, and insurance folks never talk to each other and definitely are not pointed at the same long‑term goal. He explains how Big Life Financial built an umbrella team that handles accounting, proactive tax planning, wealth management, insurance, estate planning, and even making your MSP a sellable asset, then shows what that same structure can look like when you build your own crew. We walk through when it makes sense to invest in proactive tax strategy, how to use the “tax savings arbitrage” to buy real assets instead of toys, why hitting around 200–300k in personal income opens up accredited‑investor opportunities, and how to start behaving like the owner of a 10 million dollar MSP before you ever cross seven figures. If you’ve had good years on paper but nothing to show in net worth, this one might feel uncomfortably personal in the best way.

Chapters

=== Guests: Justin Maxwell, Big Life Financial

=== 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 brought back my friend Dori Spade, founder of Call to Action, to talk about something most MSPs quietly struggle with: you spend money on marketing, hire a sales rep or two, and still only close a few deals a year. Dori walks me through how she has helped MSPs move from the industry standard 25 percent close rate up to 70 percent by closing what she calls the “trust gap” that prospects feel when every provider sounds the same. We talk about turning around a struggling acquisition region that was losing clients and staff, why proposals should read like they were written for one specific business, and how bringing in technical and client success folks during the sales process actually pays for itself when you win just a couple more 5K MRR deals.

We also get into real world scenarios: a 10 person MSP with only 10 good leads all year, big shops averaging just 2 to 3 solid leads a month, and the friction owners feel about “pulling” techs into sales meetings. Dori explains her Seamless Sales Delivery Model in plain English, shows how the same framework powers both retention and expansion, and shares why MSPs should use it to operationalize AI offerings the same way they did with cybersecurity. If you are a one person shop wearing every hat or a multi region MSP trying to get your team rowing in the same direction, this episode will give you a practical blueprint to turn the pipeline you already have into real, predictable revenue.

Chapters

=== Guest: Dori Spade, Call To Action LLC

=== 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 grabbed Richard Wingfield at ACES Conference in Minneapolis to talk about something every MSP and IT consultant secretly worries about: how do you actually get out of the business without it collapsing or ticking off your best clients. Richard has been running Envision Design out of Houston since the early 90s, starting as a Mac‑only consultant when you could “throw a rock and hit a Windows guy,” then shifting into a cross‑platform MSP as iPhones and iPads forced everyone to live in mixed environments. We dig into why he’s always led with true consulting instead of one‑size‑fits‑all stacks, and how that mindset shaped the way he built his company and his client base of 20 to 50‑user firms.

Chapters

=== Guest: Richard Wingfield, Envision Design, LLC

=== Shout-outs

=== 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 brought back my friend Dave Scott from Scott Growth Strategies to poke the bear a little and talk about why so many MSPs feel stuck, even when they’re working their tails off. Dave lives right in the middle of that problem as a fractional CMO/CRO for MSPs and B2B firms that have hit a growth ceiling, and he does not sugarcoat the reality that a lot of us are fantastic engineers and pretty rough business owners. We dig into the difference between being an “idea-heavy” entrepreneur and a disciplined business owner, why 77 percent of MSPs are under a million in revenue, and how that shows up as burnout, bad clients, and lumpy, random sales.

Chapters

=== Guest: Dave Scott, Scott Growth Strategies

=== Florida Man Stories

=== Shout-outs

=== 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 am still here at ACES in Minneapolis, and this segment with Allen Edwards really hits home for any MSP owner who hides behind tickets and wonders why the pipeline feels dry. Allen talks about treating networking as a skill, not a personality trait, and walks through how he made a room full of techs actually stand up and practice real conversations instead of just listening to another slide deck. The big idea is simple, if you want more opportunities, you need to be present in the room, ask better questions, and leave people feeling heard, because that is how those chamber and BNI events turn into real business instead of just another stack of cards.

Then I pivot to Tim Fitzpatrick’s reminder that most of us do not have a leads problem, we have an execution problem. Tim’s “stop leaving money on the table” message pushes us to look at existing clients and ask where we are avoiding conversations about phones, internet, security, or projects they already trust us to handle. The practical play here is to make a short list of current customers, pick up the phone, send the emails, and have real business talks that uncover new revenue without chasing a magic campaign.

Chapters

=== Guests

Allen Edwards, Cdaeris

Tim Fitzpatrick, Rialto Marketing

=== Shout-outs

Justin Esgar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinesgar/

=== 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.

Referrals are slowing down, phones are too quiet, and every vendor swears they have the magic funnel that will fix your pipeline—for a nice monthly fee, of course. Meanwhile, most MSP websites are still glorified digital business cards, and when a real prospect does reach out, that inquiry can sit in an inbox long enough for them to sign with another provider before you even know they exist. In this episode, I sit down with Nate Freedman from Tech Pro Marketing and MSP Sites to talk about what actually works for sub–5 million dollar MSPs that want predictable growth without handing their future over to yet another “black box” agency.

We get into modern SEO (or “search everywhere optimization”), why key phrases beat single keywords, and how MSPs can realistically show up when prospects search terms like “IT services company near me” instead of chasing vanity terms they’ll never rank for. Nate explains how top MSPs think about Google Ads, lifetime value and customer acquisition cost, and why private-equity-backed rollups are willing to pay 80 dollars a click while smaller providers need different, more human strategies to compete. We also talk about directories, Google Business Profiles, inbound call handling, and why speed to lead is still one of the most underrated growth levers in the MSP space.

Chapters

=== Guest: Nate Freedman

=== Shout-outs

=== 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 Melanie Curtis at ACES 2026 in Minneapolis after her keynote, and this conversation goes way beyond “what does skydiving have to do with tech?” Melanie walks through how she went from traditional corporate track to professional skydiver, coach, and full‑time keynote speaker, and how that journey reshaped how she thinks about fear, risk, and reaching the edges of our potential.

We dig into what it really takes to prepare for a world record jump: years of skill‑building, coaching, repetition, systems, and mental discipline so you can perform when it counts. Along the way, we map those same ideas directly back to MSP life—landing clients, handling outages, leading teams, dealing with rejection, and learning to detach from outcomes so you can show up as a better leader for your staff and your customers.

Chapters

=== Guest: Melanie Curtis – Keynote Speaker & Coach

=== Shout-outs

=== 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.

Recorded on‑site at the Elliott Park Hotel during ACES 2026, this conversation kicks off with a quick behind‑the‑scenes look at the venue, the vibe, and why this Apple‑centric event cares more about P&L than power users. I walk through how ACES is structured as a business‑first conference for Apple IT providers, covering topics like pricing, marketing, HR, scaling, and work‑life balance, with zero tool pitches from the stage and everything bundled into a focused two‑day experience.

Then I catch up with Brian Best from Best Mac, who has attended and spoken at all twelve ACES events, and we get into the real talk about running a Mac‑focused MSP in a Windows‑dominated world. Brian shares how the Apple side of the channel is mostly small to mid‑sized MSPs, how his own M&A experience with LogicNow and SolarWinds reshaped his business, and why co‑managed Apple support is a powerful play for Windows‑first MSPs serving mixed environments.

Chapters

=== Guest: Brian Best

=== Shout-outs

=== 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.

Most of us put huge effort into our tech stack and very little into how our team actually shows up in front of clients. In this conversation with MSP owner, branding coach, and author Lisa Shorr, we talk about why a “solid stack” is not enough if your clients experience you as slow, unresponsive, or robotic. We dig into real stories from the field, including a law firm that fired their IT provider for being “not responsive,” and how simple shifts in communication, presence, and expectations can completely change that story.

We also tackle the AI rush head‑on: how to decide whether a new automation actually strengthens or weakens client relationships, where QBRs and client touchpoints fit into a more automated world, and why empathy, adaptability, and critical thinking are still your unfair advantage. If you’ve ever felt the tension between “being efficient” and “being human,” this one will hit home.

Chapters

=== Guest: Lisa Shorr

=== 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.