How Adam Spencer Went From A Dead-Broke Break/Fix Shop To A $3 Million MSP In 4 Years

Robin RobinsMSP Marketing Leave a Comment

(Part 1: From Break/Fix To 120 Managed Services Clients)

I want to introduce my brand new spokesperson for Technology Marketing Toolkit, Adam Spencer. He had a break-fix company that didn’t have any systems, processes, or marketing (a lot of the things that MSPs are missing) and turned it into a company with good profit, good growth, and good customers. In four years, Adam took a company that was doing about half a million in revenue to being on track to hit $3 million this year. He also did this during COVID, things were a little cuckoo and everybody got a little sideways there. His story is really powerful. I am proud to have Adam as my spokesperson because I do think he represents what we are about in this organization.

Adam’s Journey

My name is Adam Spencer and I am the CEO of 911 IT. I started my business in 2004 as a way to pay for college, then I got married in 2006. We moved into an apartment that was contaminated with methamphetamine and we ended up losing everything, including the clothes on our backs. We couldn’t keep any of it. It just kept making me sick. I was sick, covered in hives from head to toe, on tons of medication, and medical bills coming out of everywhere. Our first daughter was born with a hypoplastic left heart, which means that she had half of her heart. She needed multiple open-heart surgeries and spent her first year of life in the ICU at the local primary children’s hospital. So, as you can imagine, medical bills are crazy. Then we couldn’t even afford to have an office anymore. We moved the office into our basement and had employees coming and working in my basement while my wife is upstairs trying to keep the kids quiet and allow us to work. It doesn’t get much sadder than that.

Then I got Robin’s letter in the mail. At that time, I had to take money out of my personal savings just to make payroll. Then this letter comes and it’s just this shining gleam of hope… and we didn’t have money for it. We had to put it on a credit card and we said, this has to work. We jumped in with both feet and it was the best business decision that we’ve ever made.

That letter shifted me from $500,000 in revenue to being on track to hit $3 million this year. We went from break-fix for 15 years to an MSP with 23 employees and 120 managed services clients in four years.

How He Went From Half A Million To $3 Million In 4 Years

So we jumped in with both feet. I was dripping with desperation and went about it the wrong way. I went to my customers and said, we’ve heard of this new thing and we want to get you on these plans. We’re going to take care of these things for you. It’ll give you unlimited service and unlimited support. We’ll do all of this for you and we’re going to charge you $45 a computer to do it. ALL my clients said no way, we’re not going to pay that. They didn’t see the value in it because I wasn’t able to properly persuade them to do what was best for them.  

We attended Rapid Implementation and learned how to move from break-fix to managed services correctly. Our tactic was using seminars. We needed change quickly so we started hosting Lunch and Learn seminars. We invited clients (and this was really scary because it’s not like I started with the bottom of my clients). I invited everybody and said, “Hey, come to this lunch and learn. Let’s talk about this and talk about where things are going.” We put a little invitation in a little box that said, “Hey, don’t be a sitting duck.” We sent that out to our clients and rented a room at the city hall for three days.

The Pitch

I presented with a PowerPoint that went through survey results and when I got to my sales pitch section I said, “Here’s what you need to do to be to be safe and to do these things in this world (and would give them this handout for coming to the class).” Then we’d say, “If you really want to be safe, you need to do a few more things.” And these things would pop up one at a time. It was a little bit overwhelming for them and that was the whole idea. I said, “Hey, there’s a lot that you need us to do to watch your network patch things, check your services, all these things that we use tools to help us automate and to do.” “We put together this package that does this all for you,” and included a couple of bonuses in it for dark web monitoring.

We sold that package at $150 a seat. The SAME service as before, but packaged a little differently and every single client converted to a managed client. Every single one. The same ones that said no to $45 a seat.

We went from doing zero marketing to charging $150/seat. The secret: We started with low-hanging fruit. We started with the people already paying us. Anyone can do this. I just did what Robin taught me.

God Bless Adam

I am amazed at Adam’s story. He had so much stacked against him. Covid, medical bills, and debt and he turned it around. God bless him. I mean, really, he is a shining example of following proven processes and implementing them. Keep following my blogs to learn more from Adam. We will be revealing early-stage marketing to increase revenue next in Part 2 or to get the entire 90-minute session immediately go to: https://webinar.technologymarketingtoolkit.com/deepdive-success

Want to quickly and easily blow past a million in profitable revenue this year? Attend our next FREE MSP Marketing Training to learn how.