Uncle Marv's IT Business Podcast (Real Talk for IT Pros & MSPs)

Callen Sapien, Co-Founder and CEO of Synthreo, joins the PitchIT 2026 series to discuss building an AI service practice for MSPs. Synthreo provides white-label, multi-tenant AI infrastructure that helps IT providers build, manage, govern, and bill for client-facing AI workspaces, workflows, and agents. Guest: Callen Sapien Website: https://synthreo.ai/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/callens...

Kevin Rauch, Co-Founder of pivot, joins the show to discuss how the company’s proactive AV lifecycle-management platform helps MSPs bring deployment, monitoring, support, maintenance, and refresh planning into one operational workflow. Pivot is designed to give IT providers greater visibility and control of business-critical AV environments, including AI-assisted incident troubleshooting through p...

Michelle Coombs, founder of Oprising, joins the IT Business Podcast as a member of the 2026 IT Nation/ConnectWise PitchIT cohort. Oprising is a service optimisation platform that helps MSPs turn continual service improvement into structured, visible work—assessing operational capability, prioritising actions, assigning accountability, and tracking progress across people, process, technology, and c...

Steve Martin, CEO of FrictionlessIT, joins the IT Business Podcast to discuss FITware, a profit-intelligence platform built for MSPs. FITware brings together operational, financial, service-delivery, capacity, and client-experience data to help providers spot profit leaks, reinforce accountable behaviors, and make more informed growth decisions. Guest: Steve Martin Website: https://frictionlessit....

Saurabh Sandhir, CEO and Co-Founder of Kipling Secure, joins the IT Business Podcast to discuss AI Detection & Response (AIDR) for MSPs and MSSPs. Kipling Secure helps providers discover shadow AI, monitor AI usage and data exposure, apply governance guardrails, and turn AI security into a recurring managed service. Guest: Saurabh Sandhir Website: https://kiplingsecure.ai/ LinkedIn: https://www.li...

Tyler Smith, CEO and Co-Founder of TechAlign, joins the IT Business Podcast to discuss a platform built by MSP professionals to streamline technical alignment reviews and QBRs. TechAlign combines assessments with PSA/RMM data to help IT providers identify client gaps, present recommendations, track remediation, and turn review findings into roadmap and project opportunities. Guest: Tyler Smith Web...

Clayton Mouney, founder of MSP Report Card and a PitchIT 2026 participant, joins the show to discuss a strategic client-management platform for MSP account managers, vCIOs, and CSMs. MSP Report Card helps providers create consistent client-meeting cadences, capture business goals, prepare client-facing reports, and turn conversations into roadmaps rather than purely technical QBRs. Guest: Clayton...

Susan Nemeth, Co-Founder and COO of Aportio, joins the IT Business Podcast to discuss AI-powered email and conversation automation built for MSP service desks. Aportio helps IT providers reduce inbox backlog, classify and route incoming work, and improve shared-inbox workflows—while also supporting more consistent discovery and pricing for complex customer solutions. Guest: Susan Nemeth Website: h...

Anson Dorsey, CTO and Co-Founder of QuellSecure, joins the IT Business Podcast’s PitchIT 2026 series to discuss active ransomware containment for MSPs and IT providers. QuellSecure deploys as a lightweight endpoint agent that monitors file-system activity, aiming to stop malicious encryption after only a small number of files are affected—helping reduce operational disruption and recovery exposure...

Dan Spray, founder and president of Precision IT and Consolidated Consulting, joins me for part two of our conversation about building and operating a scalable, multi-unit IT services business. Dan shares the technology stack and operational discipline that help his organization support clients across a broad footprint, including HaloPSA, NinjaOne, Meraki, UniFi, Huntress, Petra Security, and Domo...

If you’ve ever wondered how far you can really scale an MSP without selling out or moving to a big tech hub, Dan Spray’s story is a roadmap. He started in a small Norfolk, Nebraska shop building white‑box PCs and selling dial‑up internet, then bought the business and evolved it into Precision IT with a strong MSP and ISP backbone. Over time, he layered on recurring revenue, proactive monitoring, n...

Ray Cline from Tech Knowledge Worldwide joins me to share how an MSP-led community turns “community over competition” into real impact through TEKSGiving. We talk about how this group of MSPs and IT pros comes together for one intense weekend to rebuild the full technology stack—access control, networking, Wi-Fi, cameras, and cabling—for nonprofits, with this year’s project focused on the original...

NSITSP just hit its five-year mark, and I break down why this professional society still matters for MSPs, IT consultants, and service providers who want a real voice when security headlines, compliance rules, and industry standards start to shape how we work. The organization has grown from a grassroots response to unfair blame on “the IT people” into a formal professional society with elected le...

I kick this one off with a real-world vendor story from my own MSP, talking through changes at Intermedia, CORE program fees, and what those decisions mean when you’re trying to protect margins while keeping clients fully supported. From there, I roll into a quick “know your network gear” segment that breaks down hubs, switches, modems, routers, firewalls, and Wi‑Fi access points in plain language...

Ann Cloyd, CEO and co‑founder of Deep Tech Inc., joins me to share how she took a Mac‑focused niche supporting New York art galleries and turned it into a 30+ person, dual‑platform IT services company serving both Mac and Windows clients. She walks through why she positions Deep Tech as an outsourced IT department instead of “just an MSP,” how staying hands‑on with clients and committing to on‑sit...

I sat down with my buddy Stan Louissaint to talk about a reality most of us are already feeling: MSPs are under fire from shadow IT and shadow AI popping up in client networks. We unpack why employees and even attorneys are spinning up their own agents, apps, and AI workflows just to get work done, and how that can leave us and the business completely out of the loop on risk, support, and complian...

I start by sharing a real-life update on my mom’s health and how that’s pulled my attention away from work and the podcast, because I believe family and personal life have to come before business—even when you run an MSP and a show that people count on. I talk honestly about what it feels like to keep pushing through while your head isn’t fully in the game, and why I’m finally letting the communit...

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 tha...

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...

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...

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 historic...

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 historic...

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...

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...

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. === Chapte...