Taking the National Stage
The Story of The 20 MSP
What is The 20?
That depends. If you’re asking about The 20 MSP Group, head over to this blog post for a great overview from our CEO and founder, Tim Conkle. But if you’re asking about The 20 MSP, stick around.
That said, you can’t talk about The 20 MSP without talking about The 20 MSP Group. And you can’t talk about The 20 MSP Group without mentioning Roland Technology Group, where it all got started…
It’s the early 90s.
Some people are wearing Zubaz and rollerblading. But if you’re Tim Conkle, you’ve just quit your 9-to-5, emptied your bank account, and purchased a little IT shop called Roland Technology Group.
Tim remembers walking into Roland for the first time. “The place looked like an old TV repair shop.” But he saw a golden opportunity behind all the dusty junk, and he was determined to achieve his goal: transform Roland into an elite, million-dollar MSP.
And he did – but it took him eighteen years. Seventeen years of struggle, and then – everything changed.
As Tim explains it, he experienced a “radical shift” in his perspective on how to grow an IT company. He admits that before this shift, he was swimming against the current: “I knew IT, and I knew business. But I hadn’t consolidated my knowledge into a single framework for growing my IT business.”
When he finally got his framework, he didn’t keep it to himself, nor did he retire early and ride off into the sunset. Roland’s success was deeply gratifying, but Tim was hungry for more. And besides, he had a new idea.
Shortly after Roland took off, Tim founded The 20 MSP Group, commonly known as “The 20.” The 20’s name is a reference to the Pareto principle, and expresses the group’s fundamental purpose: helping MSPs reach the top 20% of the managed IT services industry.
Tim’s goal with the group was to share his “MSP blueprint” with other MSP owners so they could “skip the decades of struggle” he went through and “skip straight to the fun part: growing like crazy.”
The experiment worked.
MSPs that joined The 20 found success. They grew. And as the MSPs in The 20 grew, so too did the group itself, attracting more and more MSPs in search of the right combination of tools and processes.
Today, The 20 boasts 170+ members. The reason for our group’s growth is simple: our system works. We know there are small and medium-sized MSPs out there capable of operating at a higher level. They just need a key to unlock their full potential. We give them that key and let them drive.
Seeing the success of our members got us thinking.
Can we take The 20’s business model and use it to launch the first truly national MSP for small and medium-sized businesses?
So, can we?
We can – and we are! Last year we founded The 20 MSP with a clear vision: build an MSP with coast-to-coast reach and unmatched scalability.
Twenty-three (and counting) acquisitions later, we’re well on our way to achieving this. That’s right – we’ve entered the M&A arena and consolidation is a key growth strategy for The 20 MSP.
But unlike other MSPs playing the M&A game, we don’t have to go hunting for quality MSPs to roll up. That’s because we already have a full pipeline of acquisition candidates – The 20 MSP Group. The MSPs we’re acquiring all belong to the group, which ensures a relatively seamless integration, as well as that elusive chemistry known as “cultural compatibility.”
No Pressure
Does the fact that we’re exclusively purchasing companies that belong to The 20 mean we expect every MSP in the group to sell to us one day and become part of The 20 MSP?
Not at all! There are multiple reasons for this (check out this blog post for the full explanation), but the bottom line is this: We never pressure the MSP owners who are members of The 20 to sell their companies to us. If you’re a member of The 20 and decide you want to sell your company, we have a well-established process to acquire your MSP (if we think an acquisition makes good business sense). But if that’s not the route you want to take – if you want to remain an independent MSP or take a different M&A path – you won’t get any resistance from us.
That’s because, at the end of the day, we’re committed to both projects: building a national MSP and providing small and mid-sized MSPs with the tools they need to succeed. We’ve got two good things going on, and we’re excited to see how far we can go.
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Learn more about The 20 MSP and our best-in-class managed and co-managed IT services. We provide businesses across the U.S. with unmatched IT support, around-the-clock service, and leading-edge cybersecurity solutions – and all for one truly flat monthly rate.
