In 2020, after 20 years in business, I came clean.
It was uncomfortable to admit, but I finally realized that as the owner of an MSP, I needed to grasp what real growth required.
There was the assumption that I knew how to grow a business. After all, I had built my business from scratch to seven figures. But I confess, I didn’t really understand the difference between sales and marketing. Or a business plan, apparently.
In fact, when I look back, the best description of my growth strategy came from an episode of South Park that made me laugh (at the time), where the Underpants Gnomes explain their business plan:
Phase 1: Collect underpants.
Phase 2: ???
Phase 3: Profit.
Then I realized that was basically my business plan too (minus the underpants):
Phase 1: Hire a salesperson.
Phase 2: They do their thing.
Phase 3: Collect MRR.
Suddenly… not so funny.
For 20 years, I assumed Phase 2 would somehow take care of itself… until I finally came to the conclusion it wasn’t going to.
The Message That Kept Repeating
eNet Systems launched in 2000. By 2020, revenue had reached $1.3 million. We had strong technical capabilities, a loyal client base, and years of hard-won industry experience. But looking at the pipeline, with no reliable way of knowing where the next client would come from—that was an extremely frustrating place to be.
That frustration is what led to Robin Robins and Technology Marketing Toolkit (TMT). Diving into the TMT dashboard revealed a lot. We found content on marketing strategy, marketing templates, implementation tools, and something even more valuable: guidance from Robin and a community of MSP owners who had already figured this out.
Listening to Robin and other successful MSP owners, the same message kept coming up over and over: “Do the boring things… consistently.”
That’s it. No magic campaign. No viral trick. No silver bullet hire—just the boring things, done consistently, without stopping. James Clear captures the underlying principle precisely: “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” We had ambitious goals, but no real systems. And until the systems were built, the goals were just wishes.
The Problem Was Never The Salesperson
With that framework in hand, the real diagnosis finally became clear. When business was good, it felt great. When it slowed, there was no engine running in the background. We’d try something for a few months and stop. An email campaign here. Outbound calls there. Nothing sustained long enough to build momentum. There was effort, but no rhythm. Sales were inconsistent because marketing was inconsistent. That one realization, when it finally landed, changed everything.
The salesperson was never the problem. The missing system was. And no amount of talent, experience, or good intentions replaces a system that runs every single week, whether you’re watching it or not.
The Boring Weekly Checklist Behind 2.5x Revenue Growth
I discovered that Phase 1 was really about doing boring marketing consistently. The marketing cadence that eNet Systems committed to wasn’t complicated. It was relentless:
- 250 calls every single week to clean and maintain our prospect list.
- 1,000 outbound calls every week to set new appointments.
- 125 direct mail campaign letters sent every single week.
- 2,000 emails deployed every week through the drip campaign.
- 400 postcards sent every single month.
- Daily social media posts to stay visible and relevant.
- $2,000–$5,000 every month in Google Ads and Bing pay-per-click advertising.
Is any of that exciting? No. Is any of it glamorous? Absolutely not. But the real difference wasn’t the tactics. Those had been tried before. The difference was that this time, we stopped stopping. We stopped overreacting when a week didn’t produce immediate results. We just kept doing the activities, measuring the results, and fine-tuning along the way. Because by now, we understood: boring builds pipelines.
One more piece of the system: authority. We wrote and published Mastering AI for Business Successan Amazon best-selling book, because nothing pre-qualifies a prospect faster than a book with your name on it. It positioned our expertise and authority in our field, and filtered out bad-fit prospects. It also opened doors that cold calls alone never could. The cadence fills the pipeline. The book elevates whoever walks into it.
The Unglamorous Math Behind 20% Net Profit
The financial discipline was just as unglamorous and just as essential. The product gross margin had to be at least 25%. Service gross margin had to stay above 55%. When the numbers drifted, adjustments were made immediately. Sales and marketing expenses were held within 15% of revenue. General and administrative expenses were kept within 10%. That structure enabled us to maintain a net profit of at least 20%. As Jim Rohn put it, “Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines practiced every day.” That’s all we did.
The Phase 2 That Added $58,805 MRR and 5x Profits
In Phase 2, we committed to building a predictable pipeline. The results are compounded in ways that are difficult to believe until you live them.
In the five years since starting with TMT, from 2020 to 2025, our revenue has increased 2.5x. Our MRR has more than tripled, up 3.3x. Our profits have increased 5x. We maintain a net profit margin of at least 20% through disciplined tracking.
In 2025 alone, we gained $54,000 in new MRR and added $1.6 million in contract value. Our MRR per client jumped from $2,494 to $3,295, an increase of $801 per client in a single year. Our total increase in MRR was $58,805.
Those numbers tell a compelling story, but they don’t tell the most important one.
The biggest change once the system was running consistently wasn’t a line on a spreadsheet. It was this: when the pipeline became predictable; we stopped operating out of fear. We no longer had to accept poorly fitting clients because we knew that every single month, six to ten qualified leads were coming in. We could say no to the wrong ones and uphold our standards because we trusted the engine running in the background.
Our long-term targets now reflect that confidence. We’re aiming for 20% year-over-year growth through 2035, with a goal of building eNet Systems into a $19M+ MSP valued at $30M-$40M. That’s not a wish. It’s a forecast backed by a system.
What Significant Profit Increases Made Possible
Phase 3 is where the story takes a turn that I didn’t predict. And it’s the part that makes me most proud.
Once our business became predictable, it didn’t just change the balance sheet; it changed lives. When we stopped operating out of fear and started operating from a place of stability, I finally had time to spend with my family without worrying about the business. It gave me the ability to help pay for my kids’ college education, and the capacity to support our aging parents. It also gave me the bandwidth to step up for team members facing personal hardships. The business became something more than a revenue engine, it became a foundation.
And it created something unexpected: the ability to become a business for good.
Through that commitment, eNet Systems has helped provide:
- 1,228 days of mobility training for children with special needs.
- 4,680 meals for students in need.
- 1,227 eyecare consultations and treatments for children.
That body of work, including the revenue growth, community impact, and the increased profit is what earned eNet Systems a spot as a 2026 Better Your Best Finalist with TMT. Not because of one big swing, but because of thousands of small, consistent ones.
I’m not sharing this to impress. I’m sharing it to impress upon you what happens when you build a predictable business by doing the boring, repeatable things consistently. It creates opportunities—for you, your family, your team, and the community around you.
The Real Business Plan
It took 20 years to see it clearly. The business plan we thought we had—hire a salesperson, hope for the best—was never really a plan at all. The real one was simpler. Less exciting. And it was sitting there the whole time.
Phase 1: Do the boring marketing things consistently.
Phase 2: Build a predictable pipeline.
Phase 3: Create opportunities for everyone.
No mystery, Phase 2 or underpants gnomes. Just a system, executed every single week, without stopping.
Looking back, the version of me that was staring at a flat pipeline in 2020 didn’t need a better idea. He needed a system that would run whether he was fired up or exhausted, whether the phone was ringing or silent. Once that system was built, and once we stopped stopping, everything else followed. The revenue. The margins. The confidence. The time with family. The community impact. All of it came from doing things that, on any given Tuesday, felt completely unremarkable.
That’s the part nobody tells you when you’re grinding through week three of a direct mail campaign with nothing to show for it yet. The pipeline doesn’t care about your enthusiasm. It responds to your consistency.
We went from a $1.3 million business with no marketing engine to an MSP with revenue up 2.5x, MRR up 3.3x, and profit up 5x—not because we got smarter, but because we stopped quitting on ourselves.
