Twenty years ago this year, Mazteck IT was born. For the first 15 years of my business, I was content. Content with being a one-man shop. Content with being 99% break-fix with barely a drop of monthly recurring revenue. Content with working early mornings, late nights and weekends. Practically 24/7. Vacation? What’s that?
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One day, because my kids were hungry (I was hungry), we ordered Chinese. As the sesame chicken arrived at the door, I picked up the mail and carried it and the dinner back into the house. As I quickly shuffled through the mail, this one letter in a big red envelope stood out, so I opened it. My interest was further piqued because there was a REAL dollar bill stapled to the top of it! I thought, Who’s this crazy redhead sending me money? And she claims her program can help me bring in one or two new clients a month?
Back then, it took me several months just to get one new referral, so I thought this was crazy talk. However, I read the letter and it really struck a chord. What if she was right? Or even HALF-right? Even one new client a month would be a huge improvement. As I gave the kids dinner, I kept thinking of that letter and what it promised.
After cleaning up, I found a fortune cookie the kids had missed. The fortune read, “Don’t be afraid to take a chance when the opportunity of a lifetime appears.” I thought that this could be my opportunity to finally LEVEL UP. The next day, I booked an appointment and spoke with Aaron, who signed me up with Accelerators Club. Shortly thereafter, I booked my first trip to Nashville to attend the Rapid Implementation Workshop and begin what would be an incredible journey of transformation from a one-man shop to a R.E.A.L. entrepreneur and serious MSP.
My First Taste Of “Better Your Best” Fame
Fast-forward to my first TMT Boot Camp event. I’ll never forget watching the Better Your Best contest and hearing the stories of the people going from broke (like me) to multiple millions of dollars. Sitima Fowler won that year, and I remember thinking, Just imagine being one of these winners and owning a multimillion-dollar company! But how can I start from scratch and build something to the level of these five finalists?
Sitting in that audience, I aspired to one day stand on that stage as a Top 5 Better Your Best finalist. Little did I know what my real fortune would be.
Some Really “Good News” Worth $28,875 In MRR!
The first marketing campaign we executed during the Rapid Implementation program is what I believe to be the SINGLE MOST POWERFUL CAMPAIGN on the Dashboard today – the Good News, Bad News campaign, designed to convert break-fix clients to managed services. Simply, the BAD news = significantly raising our clients’ rates, BUT the GOOD news = they will be far better served by enrolling in our managed services program and won’t have to worry about the per-hour rate increase. (NOTE: This campaign has been updated and enhanced and is available in MSP Launch Academy. The NEW webinar and instructions will be provided with the Brief on the Dashboard so you can utilize it.)
What’s really amazing is that in my first 15 years in business, I NEVER raised my prices – not once. In fact, since we lived off a break-fix model, the year before I joined TMT, our MRR was barely scraping $1,000 a month. So, we sent out this initial campaign to all my clients and was surprised that every single one of them booked quarterly business reviews (QBRs) with us. That’s a 100% response rate!
Best of all, the campaign worked! In my first 90 days of the Rapid Implementation program, I leveled up by adding almost $28,875 in new MRR and dramatically increased my net profits and personal earnings.
From Curing Headaches To Reducing Heartburn, Our Direct Mail Campaigns Have Delivered Results
With more recurring revenue than I had ever imagined, I finally had the budget to rent an office, hire a tech, hire an admin and run more TMT campaigns. And that’s just what I did. My first direct mail campaign was Robin’s proven Aspirin campaign. By running this campaign and following up via e-mail and phone calls, we quickly added TWO NEW CLIENTS with $4,685 in MRR and $26,400 in project work!
When there was a shortage of aspirin, we simply tweaked the copy and sent the letters out with Alka-Seltzer. After gaining confidence in sending the letters and making the calls, we began sending out additional TMT campaigns. We’ve had success with the Closer Look campaign that puts a magnifying glass on what their current IT services provider is doing to protect them from a breach. We also mailed the Poker Chip campaign, which poses the question of whether they’re gambling with their data and network security.
Today, we are sending at least three different campaigns at a given time AND making all the calls just as Robin’s team instructs. Currently, we’re sending 150 to 200 mailers out every week and seeing the results along the way. I just keep leveling up.
Onboarding 4 New Clients And $11,400 In MRR With Our Unique Referral Program
To help boost our referrals, we created a referral card that looks like a folded hundred-dollar bill. Some clients were disappointed it wasn’t real money. But we told them, “It CAN be real! That’s because we offer one month’s free service to our managed services clients who refer a client to us.”
In just two months, that program brought us six referrals and four new clients that added $11,400 in new MRR and $26,690 in project work.
A Clever Solution To Prospects Who Ghost You
How many times has this happened to you? You meet with a prospect. Maybe even multiple times. You send them a proposal. Then they GHOST you. Your e-mails don’t get a response. Your phone calls are sent to voicemail hell. Well, when they ghost us, we simply ghost them back! Yes, we send them a friendly plastic ghost and silly poem.
It worked! For several prospects, this out-of-the-box approach lowered their barriers, and they talked to us again. We even CLOSED a couple of them!
We Asked Prospects To Give Us A Chance. They Did!
The more prospects that sat for an appointment with us, the more “Yes” responses we got. While our closing rate jumped from 35% to 65%, is it wrong of us to want it to be at nearly 100%? Ultimately, we want EVERY prospect to just give us a chance. So, we send them our Chance Card and tell them, “If you can’t get in touch with your IT support guy or he can’t solve your problem, just give us a chance.”
With this card, even the few prospects who haven’t yet committed to Mazteck get:
- A free security network assessment, or
- 2 free hours of service, or
- 1 free support call, or
- After-hours emergency help
Several prospects have even taken advantage of our Chance Card. After we proved our worth at no cost to them, a few of them signed with us!
More Marketing Oil Wells = More Leads And Deals
Even though Robin’s direct mail campaigns have yielded the most success, we have built additional marketing oil wells to keep the leads flowing. The more campaigns we do, the more leads, sat appointments and closed deals we produce. Since joining TMT, we have been sending out monthly newsletters and running pay-per-click ads online, and we even started conducting webinars on a monthly basis.
Our custom Shock-And-Awe box helped us to nearly DOUBLE our close rate! And, of course, we have completely “Robinized” our website by including “4 Big Reasons To Choose Mazteck IT To Support Your Computer Network,” a free report titled “21 Critical IT Security Questions,” client testimonials and more.
Always Hungry And No Longer Content, I’m Leveling Up Every Year
Last year taught me a lot about running a business, specifically:
- Never be content. Just like entrepreneur Jesse Itzler says, “I didn’t come this far to only come this far.”
- You cannot reach the next level without setting goals and entering KPIs and initiatives. Unless it’s written down, you will not have a road map to that next level.
- If you’re not being held accountable to what you’re supposed to do, you will fail, make excuses and become content again.
- Trust in your team and provide them with the right tools to do their job. Delegate, delegate, delegate so you can focus on growing your business.
Finally Breaking The $2 Million Topline Barrier, Adding $678,108 In Revenue To Become This Year’s “Better Your Best” Winner!
I think back to that fat, dumb and happy (content) man from just a few years back, and I want to shake him. I was a break-fix business with almost no recurring revenue. I was a party of one (me). And I worked out of my house (my kitchen, really). Today, I have a real company with real employees and can go on vacation (and actually BE there) while trusting my team to run the business.
I’m no longer content, but hungry for more. I’ve become a student of sales and marketing, thanks to that leap of faith I took when I read that fortune years ago. Before I discovered TMT, Mazteck IT was a $200,000-per-year break-fix business with almost no recurring revenue. We closed out last year at just over $2 million, with over $145,000 in MRR! We were ranked #85 on the MSP 501 list and awarded the Power Partner by Inc. Magazine.
In just one year, my MSP has seriously LEVELED UP. We increased our revenue by $678,108, added an additional $89,803 in net profit and increased our MRR by $32,858 a month! And just in Q1 of this year, we’ve already brought on eight new clients for an additional $27,600 in MRR. And today I am blessed to be this year’s Better Your Best winner. Now it’s YOUR turn to level up.
To access all the campaign examples mentioned by this month’s Marketing Genius Of The Month, go to the Dashboard under the Marketing Strategy Brief resource and access them there.
