The first time I attended a Technology Marketing Toolkit (TMT) Roadshow, I almost didn’t go. My wife, Mandy, had to drag me there. I thought it would be a waste of time. We were running Impress Computers, a 17-year-old break-fix shop in Katy, Texas: four technicians, more chaos than we could manage, and not building anything. Just running.
I sat in that Roadshow and listened to 2020 Better Your Best winner Charles Swihart and other MSP owners – real people, not gurus – describe how they had walked away from break-fix mayhem and stepped into real recurring revenue, profitability and freedom. We immediately attended the Rapid Implementation Workshop. As we got involved, we saw some terrific successes, but what I didn’t know back then was how that involvement would completely revolutionize our business and change our lives.
5 Years Ago, I Needed Someone To Show Me It Was Possible. Now I’m That Someone.
Today, Impress Computers is doing $4.2 million in ARR, with MRR that has grown from $20,000 to over $300,000. And this year, instead of sitting in the audience taking frantic notes, I stood on the stage at TMT’s Boot Camp as a Better Your Best contest finalist. Not to show off the numbers, but because I remember exactly what it felt like to need someone to show me it was possible. Now it’s my turn to be that person.
I Fled A Country. Rebuilt A Business. Then Spent 10 Years Going Nowhere.
Before we get into my growth, there’s a backstory you should know. Born in Zimbabwe, I built a thriving 150-person IT distribution business across Africa – until civil unrest and currency collapse forced my family to flee in January 2003. We bought a house and signed a five-year office lease in Texas, sight unseen, knowing no one, with no capital. The money we’d worked so hard to earn was essentially gone – lost to the highest inflation rate ever recorded.
Starting over in the US was brutally hard. Break-fix meant starting every day at zero, grinding 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. just to survive. By 2013 – a decade in – we’d grown to $2 million in revenue. But by 2020, we were still stuck there: 14-hour days, unpredictable income, drowning one week and slow the next. We couldn’t build the business or plan vacations. We could barely breathe.
What We Thought Was Strategy…Was Actually The Problem
The first thing TMT dismantled wasn’t our marketing; it was our thinking.
We spent two decades telling ourselves we could do IT for everybody. TMT told us to narrow WAY down. We became laser-focused on manufacturers and construction/engineering companies with 50 to 200 employees within 20 miles. Then we created ads, blogs and videos specifically for those industries, targeting one or two clients per month instead of everyone we met.
That felt terrifying. After 20 years of “Make the phones ring,” we were supposed to spend money on campaigns and potentially walk away with one client to show for it? But that one client added $4,000 in monthly recurring revenue. The next month, two clients added $8,000. By year’s end, we had added $1 million in annual recurring revenue. The math was undeniable.
The Fix That Took Our Recurring Annual Revenue From $300K To $4.2M
You can’t scale a unified business on a fragmented foundation. At the end of 2023, we closed our break-fix operation entirely and migrated everything to Kaseya, running on a single unified platform. Once we went to full MSP in 2024 and 2025, our overall revenue grew to $4.2 million. But the number that matters most? Recurring annual revenue went from $300,000 to $4.2 million.
Even after changing our marketing, invoicing and contracts, we’d had a mismatch: different security tools and different backup systems. To really grow, we needed everything on one platform. Kaseya solved that.
The Industry Average Is 30%. Ours Is 76%. Here’s Why.
Our close rate has risen to 76% on qualified leads – up from an industry average below 30%. We took the TMT sales playbook and supercharged it with AI and an experience no local MSP prospect had ever seen.
When a prospect fills out our form, I’m notified instantly, and our AI agent screens for fit. If the prospect qualifies, I call them personally. We record the call using Plaude AI, pinpoint their three main pain points and within 20 minutes generate a personalized AI video of me addressing their specific issues – bundled into a digital Shock-And-Awe package. That same afternoon or the next morning, a team member hand-delivers a physical box: cookies, our AI and cybersecurity books, client testimonials and a personalized letter. Prospects who haven’t signed a thing are already saying, “Wow – and we’re not even clients yet.” Our team member’s response: “Wait until you become one.”
When they arrive for their first appointment, they walk into an environment Mandy designed to communicate competence and warmth simultaneously. Their name is on the conference room screen. Coffee is fresh, cookies are on the table and technicians stand up, make eye contact and shake hands. Everyone is calm. We walk through tailored presentation slides: their three problems, our three solutions and a clear price. Fifty percent sign right there in the room. The rest will sign within a week or two.
Part of what makes that presentation land is what we put in it. For example, through TMT’s Producers Club, we toured Cyderes, Robert Herjavec’s billion-dollar cybersecurity company. We tell prospects, “You may know Robert Herjavec from Shark Tank, but what most people don’t know is that he owns one of the largest cybersecurity companies in the world. We got an inside look at how they deliver enterprise-level security to major corporations – and we came home asking: How do we bring that same standard to smaller businesses? When a prospect sits across the table from us, they’re not just hiring a local IT company. They’re getting an MSP that learns from the best in the industry and brings it back to them.”
6 Moves That Turned $20K In MRR Into $300K
The growth didn’t come from one breakthrough. Here are six pillars that built our growth machine:
- The Tea & Coffee Campaign: In 2025, Mandy modified the TMT Aspirin campaign by swapping the aspirin for tea bags and coffee sachets with custom-worded messaging and mailed 5,450 pieces. That single campaign, along with our digital marketing, generated 22 new clients and $48,627 in new MRR. Total annual revenue climbed from $3.329 million to $4.2 million, an increase of $871,000.
- Content Engine: We produced over 400 blogs and 100 YouTube videos in 2025, most of which were repurposed with AI from timely industry news and distributed through the full distribution chain: blog post, AI-generated video via HeyGen or InVideo, YouTube upload and e-mail summary to clients and prospects.
- SEO & Answer Engine Optimization (AEO): Today, 80% of our new business comes from people who found us online, visited our website and filled out a form. We added 15 new website pages targeting specific verticals and geographic areas. We use AI to optimize every page for both traditional SEO and AEO, because prospects aren’t just searching Google anymore. They’re asking ChatGPT and Claude, so your business needs to be findable on both.
- 630+ Google Reviews: Our 630+ five-star Google reviews do the heavy lifting before we ever make a call. The key insight: We manage 2,200 endpoints, so every closed ticket is a potential review – not just one ask to the business owner. Technicians close tickets with a personalized note and a three-option CSAT survey. Positive responses trigger a personal e-mail from me with a Starbucks card offer. A TMT-sourced ChatGPT testimonial agent helps clients write reviews with context, turning “Joseph did a great job” into a detailed, keyword-rich account of exactly what was fixed. Every review gets a keyword-optimized response that builds our local SEO profile.
- Celebrity, Authority & Trust (CAT): In 2025, we published an Amazon best-selling book on AI for SMBs, were nominated for the Titans Of The Industry award in manufacturing and construction/engineering and won the Titans in manufacturing in 2024. We also launched Tech Talk with Roland Parker, a weekly local TV show in Houston, where I interview business leaders about how they use technology.
- The $15K MRR Customer Retention System: We implemented a secure AI platform for clients that adds $15,000 per month in new MRR and generates additional project revenue, all while solving a real problem: employees using unsecured personal AI tools that leak proprietary company data.
Everything Changed When I Stopped Trying To Figure It Out Alone.
Every tool, process and confident decision we make today came from being inside TMT. Not just the marketing, but finance, operations and sales, all in one place, from people who’d already walked the road we were on. That’s what a real peer group does: It doesn’t hand you tactics, it shows you how to run a business.
We took proven playbooks, adapted them and refused to stop. Four technicians became fourteen. $20K in MRR became $300K. Scrambling to make payroll became planning our next investment. Profitability climbed into the 15% to 20% range – a world away from the days when $2 million still left us wondering how to keep the lights on. Now we invoice on the 21st. Money arrives before the month begins.
And the business runs whether I’m in the office or not.
Mandy and I take a trip every two months. She loves Cancún and Cozumel. I love knowing the systems hold while we’re gone. The $7 million mark is in view, and we’re moving toward it the same way we’ve moved toward every goal: with faith, with process and with the community that never lets us go it alone.
If you’re staring at the gap between where you are and where you want to be, hear this: The gap is closable. Be willing to learn. Be willing to do the work. And don’t reinvent the wheel – use the one that’s already rolling.
To see all of Roland’s marketing examples, visit the Dashboard here.
