Now That's IT: Stories of MSP Success
Now that's IT: Stories of MSP Success dives into the journeys of some of the trailblazers in the Managed Service Provider industry to find out how they used their passion for technology to help turn Managed Services into the thriving sector it is today.
Every episode is packed with the valuable insights, practical strategies, and inspiring anecdotes that lead our guests to the transformative moment when they knew, Now, That's IT.
This podcast provides educational information about issues that may be relevant to information technology service providers.
Nothing in the podcast should be construed as any recommendation or endorsement by N-able, or as legal or any other advice.
The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the podcast does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent.
Views and opinions expressed by N-able employees are those of the employees and do not necessarily reflect the view of N-able or its officers and directors.
The podcast may also contain forward-looking statements regarding future product plans, functionality, or development efforts that should not be interpreted as a commitment from N-able related to any deliverables or timeframe.
All content is based on information available at the time of recording, and N-able has no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.
Now That's IT: Stories of MSP Success
Chasing Cyber Crisis: Bart Lageweg on Thriving in High-Stakes IT
When the stakes are high, and the systems are down, who do governments and enterprises in the Netherlands call? Bart Lageweg, founder of Bizway, has built one of Europe’s most trusted MSPs by running toward the toughest IT challenges—cyberattacks, ransomware recovery, and compliance-critical crises.
In this episode of Now That’s IT: Stories of MSP Success, host Chris Massey sits down with Bart to explore how Bizway thrives in the “firefighter” role of managed services. They discuss:
- How Bart turned a solo IT operation into a leading cybersecurity-focused MSP
- The strategy behind small, frequent acquisitions and high-value client selection
- Why compliance (including NIS2) is both a sales tool and a security necessity
- How to lead and scale without losing the agility to handle emergencies
- The role of coaching, boards, and constant evolution in MSP leadership
Whether you’re building an MSP, leading an internal IT team, or navigating the shift toward compliance-driven services, this conversation offers a rare inside look at thriving in high-stakes IT environments.
Let us help you unlock your business's full potential.
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Book a Call with Chris Massey now to learn what Business Transformation can do for you!
'Now that's it: Stories of MSP Success,' dives into the journeys of some of the trailblazers in our industry to find out how they used their passion for technology to help turn Managed Services into the thriving sector it is today.
Every episode is packed with the valuable insights, practical strategies, and inspiring anecdotes that lead our guests to the transformative moment when they knew….. Now, that's it.
This podcast provides educational information about issues that may be relevant to information technology service providers.
Nothing in the podcast should be construed as any recommendation or endorsement by N-able, or as legal or any other advice.
The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the podcast does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent.
Views and opinions expressed by N-able employees are those of the employees and do not necessarily reflect the view of N-able or its officers and directors.
The podcast may also contain forward-looking statements regarding future product plans, functionality, or development efforts that should not be interpreted as a commitment from N-able related to any deliverables or timeframe.
All content is based on information available at the time of recording, and N-able has no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.
One, two, three, four. It's nice to be a hero. It's nice to fix things with other people saying, okay, that's difficult. Welcome to Now, that's it. Stories of MSP success, where we dive into the journeys of some of the trailblazers in our industry to find out how they used their passion for technology to help turn managed services into the thriving sector it is today.
Speaker 2:Over the last 25 years, you would build one of the most trusted MSPs in Netherlands, taking on most vital and complex needs, without private equity, I may add. Today, Bizway is the team companies call when everything's on fire, whether it's a cyber attack, a data breach or a full systems failure. So how did a kid with a passion for tech become one of the most respected voices in European cybersecurity? Well, that's what we're going to find out today. Welcome to the Now that's it podcast, Bart Lagaway.
Speaker 1:What an introduction. Thank you.
Speaker 2:I did my best, I tried to give you as much justice as possible, but let you tell your own story. So I always find the origin story really interesting from our guests, bart. So finding out, you know like what are your connections Like? Tell us what were your earliest memories of technology.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the earliest memory, I'm 45. So a lot of people with my age. Internet was a thing then and I was one of the first person with a mobile phone in the classroom. So when the mobile phone is going off I can say, hi, no rules, no classroom rules. And I did some street things. So I helped in the city with computer problems and very fast I get to know people, companies, that is hard to manage. So it was very nice to do things that other people finding hard to manage. So that's the story.
Speaker 2:So you're a teenager helping business with technology. What was the thinking between more schooling and starting your own business? What was the decision? You were always the same.
Speaker 1:Yeah I don't like school, yeah, but my kids are gonna hear this school is good but stay in school, stay in school.
Speaker 1:But the the problem is if you can manage your own time and your own decision. It's very hard to, uh, you know, stay on school. And the other problem was, um, I was not very much on school, sorry, yeah. So uh, the the school are saying okay, uh, if you can, if you want to manage this time, you can help us in the evening for evening school, and then is everything gone, because if you are one of the guys in the evening, you're not one of the childs in the day.
Speaker 2:That's right. So for 10 years it was just Bart right Doing things your way. What kind of work is that Like? Who were your clients in that first decade?
Speaker 1:No, the clients are from little banks. That's very nice. Uh, data text I don't know what it's called in the, yeah, but it's the thing about after the, the, the old tv screens. You got some text. For example, the normal providers or the old providers for now are uh, are very hard to manage. Traffic information needles and all sorts of feeds Now we call it feeds and I like to manage that and in the same time I'm bold. You see, I was also very young bold. So one of the nice things not everything was very nice if you're bold when you're young, but when I was 20, people were thinking I was 30, so it was nice. So one of the things I've managed strange enough is you have 112 in Europe and in the past, in year 2000, I've managed one of the things of 112 because they don't know my age and I like that sort of stuff of projects.
Speaker 2:So, after 10 years of solo, doing it by yourself, you rented your first office and you hired your first employees. What triggered that? What was the moment you said I should do this, I should go get this building.
Speaker 1:Time. The time was up, so I want to manage my clients and one of the most interesting things but maybe one of your questions that we will see is that was break-fix. Everyone did break-fix in that time. So I hired my first employee and I'm firing three months later because I was thinking, okay, okay, it's not good enough, but the problem is handling handling it to other persons except of yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, still problem sometimes yeah, you try to hire yourself yeah you're never gonna hire yourself always along with owners, right, you want to, you almost want to hire somebody that's better. Right, surround yourself with better people, and that's hard to do as an owner as well. So you, some msps, just they prefer to grow organically. They build their teams, they continue to grow, at whatever pace that is. You took a different path. You had a small acquisition, yeah, early on. Who were you targeting? What? What? What is it specifically that you were looking for? Every?
Speaker 1:six months.
Speaker 1:We bought a company and it's starting very small 10,000 euro revenue a year. So it's very small to 1,000 to 1 million. And why we did that is there was always one or two customers that need very much extra help, so it was our acquisition marketing sales. Much extra help, so it was our acquisition marketing sales. Everything inside and it was easy because you get a lot of customers and you can pick which one needs more attention for security, compliance and all sort of stuff so you said a real breakthrough was when you sold half the company.
Speaker 2:yeah, talk that, talk that, tell us about that story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, six years ago I sold the half, so 50%. So a little bit risky there, yeah, but my co-owner now and I did like it very much because we need to be sure that we are having the same focus. A lot of private equity are buying companies and the owner will go away, and most of the time not in the two years buyout, but one year or three months, because we're not very good with Excel and other people managing. So what we did is we sold the half, so I get the same energy. I'm talking to you six years later and I'm very happy with that because you got some now some nice things. You got some money on the money on the bank. Yeah, that's one of the solutions that's great for the family and all sort of stuff and you chose IMG right.
Speaker 2:Why? Why? Why IMG over just sort of regular private equity?
Speaker 1:Yeah, because two things. One of the main things that was very nice is that you can look at the kitchen. So you know the story already. I see you smiling. It's very nice that you are bought with a bigger company, but not so big with 150 people we are with 20, 30 then and you can look in the kitchen. Hey, that's really nice. That's not nice and sometimes I'm not feeling nice and two years later maybe it's a good idea. So it's very nice to look at the kitchen without a problem there. And the other thing was is we have both the same focus, only the focus with eimg is health, and the focus on our end is nothing except everything, except health yeah because you want to have some risk, you can take some risk.
Speaker 1:Sometimes if somebody, something is broken, so a system is broken totally, you can do other risk things with non-health than health.
Speaker 2:How has your business model evolved with the growth of the business?
Speaker 1:Yeah, with all the standard things. Sorry for that. So we have sales, service management, project management, itsm. We have everything. Service management, project management, uh, itsm. We have everything now because customers need it yeah, for sure it's.
Speaker 2:It's interesting and I went through a very similar. We were about a 50 person msp. Uh, that was acquired by about 120 130 personP, so very similar. All of a sudden you're the new kids on the block in the company, but you've got all this experience with different levels of service, and so you bring your own expertise into a bigger portfolio, but all of a sudden you're three times, four times as large right so that's a good and a bad thing.
Speaker 2:You have to evolve what you're doing and how you're delivering your services, and it's great that you have a group of people yeah, yeah and evolve.
Speaker 1:I, I tell people I need to evolve also every six months. So you need to involve. I'm here with you, I'm in berlin and it's to listen. You need to learn.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you're primarily attracted to the most important and critical things and the things that have been broken the most. Why is that, Bart?
Speaker 1:It's nice to be a hero, yeah.
Speaker 2:Isn't it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, people are working with us and myself I'm working also. Yeah, it's nice to fix things, but other people saying, okay, that's difficult, yeah.
Speaker 2:So is that a challenge, though? I mean the significance. Significance, the monetary value, right, always, always trying to put fires out. I mean, is that how you were built?
Speaker 1:that's how your brain was built yeah, that's a problem because always is the dark side in my head yeah yeah when it's coming. So, um, you're, I'm a technical guy so you'll always think, okay, that's change, okay, that's okay, but if that is going down, we need to fix that. Always the mindset.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a lot of technicians I don't want to say most, but a lot of technicians don't like change, right. They like I can handle these sort of things. I know I'll knock these things out of the box, but when it's outside of that scope they get a little anxious. But that's not you, bart right?
Speaker 1:No, for sure.
Speaker 2:You look for that? Ooh, I've not seen that before. Let's go figure that out. That's neat. Where do you think that came from? Why do you think you're that way?
Speaker 1:I think it's nice to acknowledge yourself and your environment. So if you want to learn and get it in, control, that's a nice feeling. I think it's a rush. It's an. It's an. Uh, how do you call?
Speaker 2:it, yeah, yeah. Well, you just said, every six months you're trying to evolve, whether it be your business or yourself, exactly, and so the only way to do that is to expose yourself to some new things, right?
Speaker 1:some new opportunities, new challenges, sometimes hard, sometimes hard, for sure, I bet you.
Speaker 2:There's days where you go home and it doesn't feel like you got anything accomplished right, yeah, that's hard. So how do you find clients in that niche, in that sort of firefighter niche, like yeah, where do they come from?
Speaker 1:um government, for example, and one of the things is you make, you need to make time for it. So I have a lot of discussion of compliance for free. So I'm working a lot of governments without sending a bill, but it's now free. I see you're smiling because you know why.
Speaker 1:Marketing know your name, name dropping, name dropping and that's one of the things I'm getting clients of, because you need to be sure. It's not free, so you cannot make a sign on the building. You must. If you give time to it, you can also get some things back because you're the expert or you know what you're talking about and that's important. So people need to know you and they need to know your company of course, sure.
Speaker 2:Can you talk a little bit about compliance? When did that come around? You mentioned government, so if you're working with governments, that's the first thing that's on their mind, right? Did you realize that compliance was an avenue that Bizway should be focused on early on? How long ago?
Speaker 1:Maybe from the wrong thing, because one of the most important thing if you want to make hurry, if something is on fire, you don't want to have problems with compliance Right, so you need to be sure you have all the stamps.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's why we're beginning with the compliancy Now. It's helping a lot because it's a framework and you can say, okay, it's an iso or an n or something like that, but it's um. The first thing why we did it was because we don't want to have an in a government or another company saying, okay, you can help, but you don't have this stamp, so sorry yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's a, it's a sales tool for you as well, right? Because, uh, it's one thing if bark comes in and says, oh, this is what you need, yeah. But if you show a regulated bodies document that says these are the things that you know the government needs, or or a finance sector needs, uh, they believe it. It's from the government, right?
Speaker 1:so on the other hand, you see also from a big escalations. For example that's very interesting now is one of the governments say to a big cyber incident, for new customers, azure is the only thing you can do. And we can say, okay, we don't do azure but we cannot help the customer. But not a year later. That may be a little problem now, but you need to be sure that you have the stamps and that you do the technical stuff to keep them quiet so you can do your work.
Speaker 2:How has your employees their training, their skill set? How has that evolved as you've offered compliance? Have you had to train people internally? Have you been able to do that? Have you had to go out and hire new types of individuals? What?
Speaker 1:we do and I hope everyone is doing, that is, if somebody is coming to audit us, everyone must say the true story, no strange things. Say what you're're doing, because we have written down what we're doing, and then it's iso, not a problem right then it's also not a problem. If you uh make stuff up, then it's a problem.
Speaker 2:Documentation is half the battle, right yeah the battle is always documentation. For sure, it's still a battle, yeah so talk a little bit about how bizway has matured and evolved. What? What do you do differently than than maybe others, like, how have you really separated yourself?
Speaker 1:um, one of the things that's very helping is coaching. So, yeah, that takes time, also time, yeah, so if, if you're an owner and you're a technical owner, that's one of the hardest things, because if you ask me at 4 o'clock in the night, can you help me with some CLI, I don't say no, that's a big problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So you must do other stuff, and one of the things is that you get a coach and you make promises with the coach about your uh, home life, about your work life, of your everything, and stupid coach is asking a week later hi bart, how is everything going? Yeah, did you help four o'clock or did you say you can do, do and go to sleep again? Okay, and the second time I say okay, I didn't go to sleep again. I'd F5 a lot if it's working again, but I didn't lock it. Wow, next time they didn't, don't. I need that you click down the laptop. I didn't do that, but it helped a lot.
Speaker 2:That's great. That's great advice getting a coach, getting someone that a mentor, somebody that you can work with, because you're, naturally, again, a problem solver, even though you're you. You've evolved your profession right. You're now a business owner, yeah, and you've been able to give up half right Half, of that sort of business. You've been able to turn over to a larger group of people as well. It you would think it would free you up, it would give you more time to focus on the business, but naturally you're a problem solver and so you need someone that can tell you Bart, don't do that, right, cut down on the amount of time those calls at four o'clock in the morning. You've hired somebody that can handle those calls yeah, that's really really important.
Speaker 2:So for a time you were finding clients that were recovering from ransomware incidents, but you don't see that as a long-term strategy right?
Speaker 1:No, no, because gladly a lot of backups, cyber recovery plans are working on this moment.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:But we see a new kid on the block. Yeah, we see regulation. So NIST, too, is a very big thing in europe. And the other end is we're seeing a lot of private equity that buying companies and they're saying, okay, cut off the the niche, com, the niche customers, because we need to grow. So we need the standard, and one thing we like very much is the non-standard customer. So I'm very glad with all the private equity. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I've seen MSPs talk about those two big places. They see themselves evolving and you nailed one of them that compliance, that governance, really, really important. There are fewer and fewer service providers that are able to provide that service, that are able to assist clients, businesses, with their compliance needs. And the other one is really sort of a business outcomes right. They're talking to their businesses about how do you grow, right, how do you grow your small little car wash or your doctor's office or whatever, and and you all are not, uh, necessarily experts in their lines of business but you can help with things like, well, we can provide a higher level of service on the back end so you don't have to worry about, yeah, downtime or outages or or problems like that. So what are you the most excited for in the future, bart? What does what does bizway in uh, five to ten years look like?
Speaker 1:it's an important question. Yeah, um, of course we have. We have five year year plans and I think we focus more. Focus is the thing in the world sorry for that, but focus building. So we are. We are liking a lot of family companies, so you get families with transport, logistics, chemical oil. That's what we like and we want to go forward on that one and I think if we go on that and the way we are going, it's going to be fast and good. On the other hand, we don't want to go dead. So, for example, if I'm going 100%, I got a big problem with the other owner because he's saying okay, but you don't want to go dead because a lot of companies are doing that Right.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, You've talked a lot about the value of having a board, yeah, and the accountability side of it. So how are you and the board looking at sort of what's next right? I mean, you've talked a little bit about the growth, the direction you're heading. How can boards help? Maybe other MSPs?
Speaker 1:I think one of the things is I'm starting too late with the board.
Speaker 2:So because I'm an owner technical.
Speaker 1:I know everything better than Wooden. That's the problem. You need to have a strong board and they cost a lot of money. That's right. But if you're falling down or you need to have a conversation with you without getting the phone, you need a board. Without getting the phone, you need a board. So the strategy is to be sure that it's more professionally, more focused, and that's what a board is doing. Because if you are a helping guy, you want okay, you have a printer store. I can help you. For the last time, I will help you with the grocery store. It's not our fit, but I like you very much and you need to have a board to say oh, bart, we need to focus, we're going that way. So that's a very important thing.
Speaker 2:Same as the coach. It's just simple. Very good, bart. We talked a little bit about the future of Bizway. How about you personally, what are you hoping? Little bit about the future of bizway. How about you personally, what are you?
Speaker 1:what are you hoping? What are some of your future goals? Um, the strange thing is that I'm. I'm where I want to be. I'm here, maybe my english. What a thing.
Speaker 2:But it's beautiful. Thank you, it's beautiful.
Speaker 1:That's yeah, so uh, but for a personal goal, I hope that I can follow a long time. So I know I'm going older now, so maybe every half year, every year, involve yourself, but that's okay. I'm talking a lot with a lot of interesting people and I'm liking it very much, and I'm for sure, if I'm going away from the industry, I'm lost my nice hobby. So I'm for sure, if I'm going away from the industry, I've lost my nice hobby, so I'm not going away.
Speaker 2:You're really good at what you do. You made some difficult decisions right, Giving up half of the business a while back. But I think it's probably helped you out right. It's made you you're able to last quite a bit longer, because now you've got a bigger team that you can rely on Really really important. All right, Bart. My last question, and I always love to ask this when did you know? Now that's it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now we have COVID also in the Netherlands, and when the call was coming on a nice Sunday evening from the government we need your help because we need very fast new systems for everything, for QR code, for vaccination, for everything and every week are coming the new call hey, we need a new system. And you can call other people. Hey, we need help, you want to go outside, please help me? And they trust you. That's very nice. And at the same time, we have a small city in the Netherlands that has ransomware and we did it together with a team with a lot of external people and everyone getting up to help, and that was the end.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Bart. I thank you so much for being here. I wish you and the Bizway team the absolute best of luck in the future and I look forward to staying in touch. Thanks so much, Thank you. Thank you for this interview.