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Play It Smart

Play It Smart

Von: Alexej Pikovsky
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Play It Smart is the show where Alexej Pikovsky sits down with MSP operators and business owners and takes apart how they actually do it: winning clients, pricing, staying lean, using AI, and building toward an exit worth having. Season 2 is dedicated to MSP operators. Past guests include Rand Fishkin of Moz and SparkToro and the founders of Chili Piper, Flowchat and 3DLOOK.© 2026 Alexej Pikovsky Management & Leadership Marketing & Vertrieb Ökonomie
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  • 12 Acquisitions, One Brand: Inside Nexus IT’s MSP Integration Playbook

    12 Acquisitions, One Brand: Inside Nexus IT’s MSP Integration Playbook
    Oct 10 2026
    Buying a managed service provider (MSP) is only the start. Earl Foote, founder and chief executive of Nexus IT, has done 12 deals, eight in Utah and four outside it, and he explains how his team brings each acquired business into one brand, one operating model and a shared technology stack. Earl joins Alexej Pikovsky to talk about the capital search behind Nexus's acquisition strategy, the people and systems it takes to integrate a deal, and why a collection of separate businesses can be harder to sell. He also shares where artificial intelligence (AI) is already doing useful work inside Nexus, including service desk and escalation workflows he says save roughly 400 staff hours a month. What we cover: - Moving from opportunistic acquisitions to a defined buying strategy - Finding capital while keeping founder control - How Nexus assesses acquisition fit, margins and cash flow - The work behind combining teams, systems and brands - Keeping local client relationships as the platform grows - AI in dispatch, service desk and security operations - Where smaller MSPs have an early edge in bespoke AI services, and why Earl still expects scaled platforms to win Earl Foote: https://www.linkedin.com/in/earlfoote/ Nexus IT: https://www.nexusitc.net/
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    57 Min.
  • Your Difficult Client Might Just Be a Pipeline Problem

    Your Difficult Client Might Just Be a Pipeline Problem
    Sep 25 2026
    A managed service provider (MSP) owner stood up at an industry event and complained about an aggressive, demanding prospect. Tarek Meliti suggested the issue might not be the prospect at all, but a lack of opportunities in the pipeline. Tarek has run TDM Group, an MSP based in London, since 1997, mostly serving investment banks, hedge funds and other financial services clients. After roughly a decade of informally supporting UK clients' offices in the Middle East, TDM made regional expansion an explicit strategy about a year and a half ago, opening in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the Emirates and Kuwait. In this episode of Play It Smart, Alexej Pikovsky talks with Tarek about competing on value instead of price in a crowded market, starting a business straight out of university before he had enough experience, and running an internal "AI month" that gave every employee a budget to experiment with artificial intelligence (AI). They also get into locking down AI agent permissions, what Broadcom's price increases on VMware taught him about vendor lock-in, and his advice for someone starting an MSP solo. What we cover: - Why TDM made Middle East expansion an explicit strategy after a decade of informally following UK clients there - Competing on value instead of price when entering the Emirates, and staying selective about which clients to take on - Targeting Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) clients through certifications and an existing network - Starting TDM Group right out of university with two friends, and the advice he'd give his own son about doing it too soon - Running an MSP across Ireland, the UK, America, Jordan and a Dubai back office, and hiring for values over skills - The industry-event story where Tarek reframed a difficult prospect as a possible pipeline problem - Searching for the right peer group after hearing, with caveats, that many MSPs stay under $1 million in revenue - Getting more from Microsoft 365 licenses clients already own instead of selling them another tool - An "AI month" with no budget limits, and why he calls AI adoption non-optional - Locking down AI agent permissions so client-built agents don't get admin-level access they shouldn't have - Why he says using AI to write conventional software beats running AI to operate it, on cost - Why Tarek sees Broadcom's price increases on VMware as a warning about getting stuck with one vendor, and building with containers and Kubernetes instead - Lightning round: the one tool he can't run TDM without, and why he thinks human skills, not technology, are most underrated - Cloud versus on-premises in five years, and running TDM's own data centers for clients who can't move to the public cloud - His advice for someone starting a solo MSP tomorrow: specialize on one cloud product and don't chase every client Tarek Meliti: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tarek-meliti/ TDM Group: https://www.tdmgroup.net/
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    36 Min.
  • He Ran Security for The Weather Channel. Now He Keeps Factories and Fleets Online.

    He Ran Security for The Weather Channel. Now He Keeps Factories and Fleets Online.
    Sep 17 2026
    If a just-in-time supplier is late with a windshield, the entire car plant shuts down, and John Penrod says that supplier can be fined $50,000 every 15 minutes. Customers like that have to stay up. At Transcend Networks, his managed service provider (MSP), that means redundancy and monitoring built so something can fail while operations keep running, plus recovery plans that start from what the business needs. Then the same lessons go to their smaller clients. John founded Transcend Networks, an Atlanta MSP, in 2003. He ran it solo for a number of years and brought on a partner in 2014, and today they own it 50-50: John's background is technology and information security, his partner's is operations and sales. John has also served as chief information security officer (CISO) at the Weather Channel. Automotive manufacturing is one of the firm's best core businesses. Word of mouth brought in broadcast video and state government work, and the best fit right now is companies with 25 to 75 users. What we cover: - How a late windshield can shut down an entire car plant, and the fine he says the supplier faces - Redundancy and monitoring, so something can fail while operations keep running - Why a disaster recovery plan starts with business needs, and what an outage would mean for a client with one server - A Kaseya and Datto shop that adds open-source tools such as Zabbix where they are needed - Cold calling, a full-time vice president of sales, and speaking at the Georgia Automotive Manufacturers Association - Using artificial intelligence (AI) for engineering answers that once took days with a vendor, while keeping confidential data out of it - Buyers who call about acquiring the firm, and why he treats every one of those calls as training - Phishing emails that include an entire conversation thread, so the request looks already approved - The good hurricane: a speaking engagement from his Weather Channel days, and why more business from fraud is still a shame - Scam Microsoft Teams calls, money wired abroad that you will never see again, and the time Hong Kong police laughed at him - Cyber insurance checklists that can be almost impossible to satisfy, and why you still have to have it - Open source where necessary, rather than where possible - Getting a busy client's time for the risks, from admin rights to bad batteries - Co-managed information technology (IT): a client's own IT person takes tier one and Transcend covers tier three and higher - Letting clients hear they are down from their provider before the front desk tells them - Staff on site full-time at state agencies in Georgia and North Carolina, working at the client's pleasure - After a larger equity-backed MSP bought the firm he worked at, the sales meeting where losing five customers and gaining 10 counted as a net win - Lightning round: deep web monitoring as a scare tactic, and training with simulated phishing as the most underrated thing - Cloud or on-premises in five years: VMware licensing, Azure costs and a dishwasher that has to be online for rinse mode - The MSPs that survive the next five years, and starting out on open-source tools John Penrod: https://www.linkedin.com/in/penrodcc Transcend Networks: https://www.tnius.com
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    37 Min.
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