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I run Lawrence Systems, make videos about networking, storage, and security, and work with the MSP community at Huntress.
10 PRINT "LEARN IT."
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LEARN IT.
DO IT.
TEACH IT.
LEARN IT.
DO IT.
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I was born in the suburbs of Detroit, where I still live. I’ve been in IT since 1995: retail computer repair, sysadmin, IT director, then more than twenty years running my own MSP. These days I share what I have learned on camera and consult on infrastructure projects.
My bias is toward open source, self-hosting, and owning your own infrastructure. If a tool works for you, great. If you work for the tool, that’s worth a second look.
On security, I like hanging out with and learning from red teams, being a blue team defender in practice, and keeping a purple team mindset.
My mission: learn what solves my problems today, and teach it so others can solve theirs tomorrow.
Once the bills are paid, money only buys you comfort, and comfort is numbness. Buy the ticket, take the ride. Use your wealth to live a life less than ordinary, and use it to empower others and do great things. Life isn’t measured in dollars or time, but in experiences.
Insert cartridge
Childhood
My adventure started with 128 bytes of RAM and 4 KB of ROM on the Atari 2600. I spent many hours losing myself in that simple 8-bit world. I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up, which gave me plenty of time to get really high scores on games like Chopper Command, Pac-Man, and Vanguard.
Childhood
I have always wanted to know how everything works. One of my prized possessions was the Radio Shack “160 in ONE” electronics project kit. It came with a book, and I did every project in it, then took notes on the projects I came up with on my own.
My parents would offer to take me to Toys R Us for my birthday, but I always wanted to go to Radio Shack instead. That is when they realized I was not like the other children.
Mid 1980s
My life was forever changed when I got my first computer, a Tandy TRS-80 my parents picked up on clearance at Radio Shack. It came with BASIC and a book that taught you the language. I started buying magazines to find more programs, wrote my own games, and spent hours learning how it all worked.
1992 to 1993
I did not get into the IBM PC world until a Pascal class in 10th grade in 1992, followed by a class in 1993 where I learned some COBOL. Those early days had me hooked and launched my career.
1995
Right out of high school, I worked at several small computer companies that mostly did sales and service for the retail market. Most of them are gone now, but one of them, Southgate Computers, is still in business.
Sources: Southgate Computers
1998 to 2003
I met the president of ALPIS, a small transportation company, and started as a junior sysadmin. ALPIS grew into a large Midwest carrier and a tier one transportation provider for Ford, hauling just-in-time deliveries for its supplier network. When my manager left, I was promoted to head of IT, with a $1.1 million budget and a lot of room to try ideas. I spent much of that time mining the data on our IBM RS/6000 to make the company run more efficiently.
To be continued: founding Lawrence Systems, PC Pickup, podcasts, YouTube, and Huntress. Read the rest of the story.
Now playing
As of October 25, 2026
A YouTube channel with 400,000+ subscribers covering networking, open source, storage, and security, a community forum, and infrastructure consulting.
Practitioner-focused security content and community work for MSPs and IT teams.
A security news podcast.
Off-road motorcycle videos. Nothing to do with IT, mostly.
On stage
45Drives Creator Summit 2026
How AI agents actually work, Meta's Agents Rule of Two, and building a sysadmin helper with the Hermes agent while keeping a human in the lead. Wilmington, North Carolina.
GrrCON 2026
With Matt Lee
Agentic AI and MCP security: prompt injection, agent-to-agent communication, OAuth abuse, and LLM supply chain risk.
45Drives Creators Summit 2025
The third summit, at 45Drives' U.S. headquarters in Wilmington, North Carolina.
All appearances: shows, podcasts, and talks
For organizers
Bios ready to paste into a program or an introduction.
Tom Lawrence is the founder of Lawrence Systems and host of its YouTube channel, which covers networking, open source, storage, and security for more than 400,000 subscribers (October 2026). He ran an MSP for over two decades and now works in community and content at Huntress.
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Tom Lawrence has worked in IT since 1995, starting in retail computer repair before becoming a sysadmin and then head of IT at ALPIS, a tier one transportation provider for Ford. In 2003 he founded Lawrence Technology Services, now Lawrence Systems, which he ran as an MSP for more than twenty years. The Southern Wayne County Regional Chamber named him Small Business Person of the Year in 2013, and he completed the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program in 2016.
He is best known for the Lawrence Systems YouTube channel, which covers networking, open source, storage, and security. As of October 2026 it has more than 400,000 subscribers, nearly 1,900 videos, and 71 million views. He also runs the Lawrence Systems forums, a community of more than 7,000 members, and co-hosted the Sunday Morning Linux Review, named one of Forrester's 100 best channel podcasts of 2021, and The Homelab Show. He consults on infrastructure projects such as VMware replacement, storage architecture, and disaster recovery planning.
Since April 2026, Tom has worked in community and content at Huntress, creating practitioner-focused security content for MSPs and IT teams. He has been speaking since 2008, from local chambers of commerce and Linux meetups to ConnectWise IT Nation, GrrCON, and every 45Drives Creators Summit, on agentic AI security, self-hosting, and open source infrastructure. He lives in the Detroit area and rides off-road motorcycles when he is not in front of a camera.
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For speaking or press: use the contact form, message me on Signal, or reach me on LinkedIn. Start your message with "nanu nanu" so I know you read this far. Looking for consulting instead? See the Lawrence Systems hire us page.