We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tim Conkle. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tim below.

Tim, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with what makes profitability in your industry a challenge – what would you say is the biggest challenge?

Labor. People forget, but IT is a labor-intensive industry, and while promising the moon can get you a client, if you want to keep that client, you need to be able to deliver the goods. The modern MSP needs to constantly be figuring out ways to spin out more services, better services, faster services — all while keeping costs under control. That’s just what it takes to remain competitive, let alone profitable, in a market as saturated as ours.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

All through high school, I never touched a computer. Then I joined the military and got into a job that let me work with one. And just like that, I fell in love. I wanted to know everything there was to know about that machine. So I went on to study computer science in college, and learned enough to think I was ready to grow my own IT business. I wasn’t ready. But that didn’t stop me from doing it anyway!

* What type of products/services/creative works do you provide?
We give companies an “IT department in a box.” In other words, we can give your organization everything it could hope to get from an internal IT department: software, security, upgrades, making your computers talk to each other — if it’s IT-related, we handle it. With most outsourced IT, you’re just getting a hireling. But with us, you’re getting a true partner — an entire department that’s dedicated to your organization’s success.

* What problems do you solve for your clients, and/or what do you think sets you apart from others?
We make outsourcing IT predictable. This flips the traditional way of doing things on its head. Outsourced IT used to be about taking advantage of business owners at their most inopportune moment — when their technology fails. Your servers go down, and your IT guy says it’ll cost ten grand to fix. You say yes because — well, what else are you going to do? Watch your business go down in flames? H*ll no. It’s the same reason people agree to all sorts of repairs at the mechanic — we need our cars to work!
But we’re changing all of that with our business model: all-inclusive IT support for a predictable monthly fee. A lot of business owners don’t realize such a thing exists, which is why we’re working hard to get the word out. There’s a better way!

* What are you most proud of and what are the main things you want potential clients/followers/fans to know about you/your brand/your work/etc.?
Without a doubt, the thing I’m most proud of is our culture. It’s a culture of service and it’s at the heart of everything we do, from the way we talk to our clients (plenty of plain English, minimal technobabble) to the way we price our services (transparently and predictably). Thirty years ago, we had this crazy idea to build an IT company on a foundation of honesty and service. We weren’t afraid to do the right thing even though were weren’t sure if it was going to work. Luckily, it’s worked out really, really well.

Let’s move on to buying businesses – can you talk to us about your experience with business acquisitions?

In the early nineties, I stumbled on a little company called Roland Technology and decided to buy it. What was the acquisition process like? It was me, scared sh*tless, leaving a good job to spend every penny I had on a tiny tech company that looked like an old TV repair shop. I believed that if I put people first, and treated clients fairly, things would work out. That culture of really wanting to help people was right there from the beginning. I’d like to say that it translated into growth from the beginning, but it took me a little while to solve the riddle of MSP growth (18 years!). But that’s a story for a different time.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

You’ve got to capture people’s time and attention if you’re serious about growth, and the way to do that is marketing. But the thing about marketing is, you can’t just dip your toe in — you’ve got to go the whole hog. This is tough for a lot of business owners, because there’s this enormous psychological barrier: our innate desire for instant gratification. What business owners want from marketing is for it to work like a coke machine — put a dollar in, get something sweet right away. But in reality, it could take three months for that dollar you spend on marketing to yield something. You’ve got to stick with it. Trust in the process. Most don’t, which is why the patience to do marketing the right way still gives companies a huge competitive advantage, regardless of industry.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.the20.com
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