Starting a business takes two things: ignorance and courage. The courage part most people get, but you need a certain amount of ignorance about the difficulty, stress, workload and problems you’ll face, or you’d never have gotten started. Such is the case with this month’s Genius Of The Month, Lesley and Scott Verbus, founders of Linear 1. They had greatness thrust upon them when they weren’t looking for it when Scott suddenly found himself out of a job, through no fault of his own.
Today, they’re crushing it with growth AND profitability, which is the right combination. This is particularly impressive given how tough this year has been for all MSPs. Now, here’s their story…
An unexpected tragedy launched my husband, Scott, and me into entrepreneurship. It was September 2016 when, just as Scott and I were preparing to leave on a backpacking expedition, a motorcycle accident claimed the life of the owner of the MSP where Scott worked.
This didn’t just end Scott’s job, it left unpaid employees, stiffed vendors, and abandoned clients in its wake. Standing in the wilderness on that planned backpacking trip turned into a soul-searching retreat. When Scott told me he didn’t want to go back to another unsatisfying IT job, I replied, “You can do this without them.”
With those six words, Linear 1 Technologies was born from family savings, faith and a whole lot of knowing nothing about owning a business.
Hyperinflation And Cheap Competition Nearly Took Us Out
Despite not knowing what we were doing, we built our business to $2 million+ off referrals and acquisitions. Good strategic growth came through acquisitions made between 2020 and 2023, starting with a major purchase of a telecom company in early 2020, followed by acquiring two small MSPs.
This meant we’d evolved beyond a typical MSP, running our own PBX, operating as a telecom provider and delivering fiber Internet. We were doing well with client growth just through these acquisitions and internal referrals; however, in 2023 we began to see clients downsizing across the board.
As they returned to the office after Covid-19, they realized they could do the same work with 30 people instead of 50. Because it wasn’t just one or two clients, we began to feel the effects of this mass downward shift in endpoint count. Scott is an excellent salesman who could sell a comb to a bald man; however, to sell, he needs to get in front of qualified leads, and neither of us knew anything about how to get them.
We’re also in one of the hottest tech beds in the Midwest, where hyperscalers gobbled up talent, making labor 20% more expensive. Being in a hotbed also means everybody and their brother starts an MSP, undercutting established companies like ours.
How Losing A Major Client And 20% Of Our MRR Led Us Down The Path To $136,800 In New Business
As our company got bigger, we had labor costs, employee benefits and other costs that made it difficult to compete with smaller companies. While referrals almost always signed with us because they were unsolicited and genuine, we weren’t winning enough new business from what trickled in through word of mouth. We had no real strategy and recognized the need for a reliable pipeline of quality leads.
That’s when we had our “oh sh*t moment” – losing a major client in early 2025 that represented 20% of our monthly recurring revenue when they decided to bring their IT support in-house.
After clicking on a sponsored ad in my newsfeed, I signed up for a Technology Marketing Toolkit webinar on generating leads through education-driven content. Understanding the urgency of replacing our lost MRR, we joined TMT’s Accelerators Club.
The results exceeded expectations: We added $3,000 in MRR on 36-month contracts, totaling $108,000 in new revenue, plus an additional $800 MRR from a field association deal worth $28,800 over the contract term. More importantly, TMT delivered a whole business makeover that taught us to create legitimate packages and finally account for labor costs we’d been giving away for years without realizing it.
The 3 Business Blind Spots That Were Silently Killing Our Profits (And How We Fixed Them)
We immediately experienced unexpected value (far more than what we signed up for) when we discovered TMT wasn’t just about marketing solutions. Through their business coaching, tools, accountability and community, we received a complete business transformation. We are now operating more profitably and developing a reliable system to grow beyond acquisitions and referrals.
The three critical fixes that transformed our business were:
1) Comprehensive Packaging: We created legitimate, professional packages complete with comprehensive tech and cybersecurity stacks. This streamlined billing and clarified exactly what our tech team supports for each client. Previously, we had done everything à la carte and couldn’t articulate proper packages. This was tedious and time-consuming for billing and confusing for our technicians, who struggled to understand what they were supporting from client to client.
TMT’s mini-series on packaging and pricing enthralled us – we watched it three times before attending the Rapid Implementation Workshop (RIW)! To create our packages, we followed the same methodology used by application and solution vendors.
2) Operational Improvements: Our enhanced cybersecurity footprint has increased protection for our clients. We’re proud of the enormous strides we’ve made in hardening our security posture after TMT introduced us to vetted products and vendors that successful MSPs use.
After Scott and his senior IT leader reviewed multiple options, they chose complementary Kaseya products, including RocketCyber, ID Agent, Graphus and SaaS Alerts, among others. We discovered we’d missed a key step in scrubbing the data, which had previously led us to mistakenly assume Kaseya’s ticketing system was to blame.
3) Pricing For Profit: We now understand proper pricing structures and have raised prices accordingly. Through TMT’s labor cost calculator and Will Nobles’ insights on tracking time and labor per solution, we discovered that we weren’t properly monitoring margins or charging for labor. These tools and coaching helped us account for labor costs, and our biggest pricing increase came from finally charging for what we’d been giving away for free.
8 Core Strategies That Fueled Our Growth And Profits
Up until this point, Scott was doing canvassing for leads, but he hated it. So it was great to discover we could now generate leads, engagement and additional growth without knocking on doors. We’re utilizing multiple lead-generation campaigns that allow us to pursue avenues that feel natural and comfortable for us:
1) Lead-Generation Website
We worked with TMT’s team to rebuild our website with key changes: a dedicated sales phone number separate from a support phone number for current clients, strategic calls to action (CTAs) and customized pages for our telecom, fiber and VoIP services – complete with pricing.
2) Technology Business Reviews
During RIW, we scheduled 21 TBRs and completed 17. We’ve upgraded five master service agreements with existing clients so far. Previously, we hadn’t been consistent in renewing contracts or conducting regular client communication through in-depth reviews and audits. While we’re still conditioning clients to this new process, we see it as an opportunity to renew contracts and secure ongoing revenue consistently.
3) The Dual-Purpose RIW
Since completing RIW, we’ve had four clients increase their MRR, signed three new MSP contracts, have three prospects from lead generation and signed two new VoIP clients. RIW served dual purposes: I stayed laser-focused on implementation and setting up MAP, while Scott, the visionary, listened to presentations and created personal connections. RIW helped me execute and totally fired up Scott. Completing the prework was extremely beneficial to our success.
4) Celebrity-Building Events And Networking
We’re hosting our first cybersecurity awareness session with our local Chamber, based on ideas we got from TMT. Scott will present while vendors conduct Q&A sessions. We’ll capture contact information and generate buzz. While Scott regularly attends networking events with high-end prospects, this initiative came from TMT’s celebrity-building and list-building strategies.
5) Office Hours
Scott regularly attends TMT’s office hours to get burning questions answered, which helps us find different approaches to closing deals.
6) Peer Accountability Group
We find value in Accountability Groups that keep us moving forward. Initially, we felt overwhelmed because we didn’t know half the marketing terms used in training. We’ve discovered there’s a science to sales funnels and the entire client-getting process. Having an Accountability Group helps because you aren’t alone.
7) AI + Tools For Social Media
We’re consistently publishing more strategic, engaging content that drives real results. While we had social media before, we weren’t doing much with it. Prospect Hopper and AI tools from the TMT AI Summit Roadshow helped improve our reputation and leveled up our social media management strategy. We’ve added all break-fix clients to our Cybersecurity Drip Tips, working to convert them by highlighting security gaps.
8) Book Publishing
We took part in TMT publishing initiatives to build credibility, authority and trust. Writing our book lit a fire under both of us. Our book, Not Just Another MSP, focuses on being a power couple in business, marriage and community, and we believe this will have a far-reaching impact. We’re also contributing to the multi-author book Maximizing AI.
Why Our Biggest Growth Phase Is Just Beginning
TMT has had a far-reaching impact on how we approach business. We’re changing how we approach our three divisions – the MSP, Telecom and Fiber – because what we’ve learned translates to everything we offer.
Now that we have all these tools at our disposal and we’ve been trained in creating sales funnels, when we get everything clicking, this region of the country better look out.
Because if we managed to build a $2 million+ MSP without knowing what we were doing, imagine what we can accomplish once we’re dialed in and fully utilizing this knowledge and these tools.
At the pace we’re growing, coupled with the deals we’re on the verge of closing, doubling – or even tripling – isn’t a matter of if, it’s when. To our competitors: Buckle up. We’re just getting started.
