The 20 is pleased to announce that it has taken all necessary steps to prove its good faith effort to achieve compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Through the use of Compliancy Group’s proprietary HIPAA solution, The GuardTM The 20 can track their compliance program and has earned their Seal of ComplianceTM. The Seal of Compliance is issued to organizations that have implemented an effective HIPAA compliance program through the use of The Guard.
HIPAA is made up of a set of regulatory standards governing the security, privacy, and integrity of sensitive healthcare data called protected health information (PHI). PHI is any individually identifiable healthcare-related information. If vendors who service healthcare clients come into contact with PHI in any way, those vendors must be HIPAA compliant.
The 20 has completed Compliancy Group’s Implementation Program, adhering to the necessary regulatory standards outlined in the HIPAA Privacy Rule, Security Rule, Breach Notification Rule, Omnibus Rule, and HITECH. Compliancy Group has verified The 20’s good faith effort to achieve HIPAA compliance through The Guard.
“We are all very excited to have completed the thorough process of becoming HIPAA compliant,” said Tim Conkle, CEO of The 20, “Our partnership with Compliancy Group will greatly benefit our MSP members and end clients. We will ensure that both their business and IT practices are adhering to HIPAA regulations and standards.”
Clients and patients are becoming more aware of HIPAA compliance requirements and how the regulation protects their personal information. Forward-thinking providers like The 20 choose the Seal of Compliance to differentiate their services.
About The 20:
The 20 is an exclusive business development group for Managed Service Providers (MSP) aimed at dominating and revolutionizing the IT industry with its standardized all-in-one approach. The 20’s robust RMM, PSA, and documentation platform ensures superior service for its MSPs’ clients utilizing their completely US-based Help Desk and Network Operations Center. Extending beyond world-class tools and processes, The 20 touts a proven sales model, a community of industry-leaders, and ultimate scalability. For more information, visit https://www.the20.com.
Follow The 20: Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook
About Compliancy Group:
HIPAA should be simple. That’s why Compliancy Group is the only HIPAA software with expert Compliance CoachesTM holding your hand to simplify compliance. Built by auditors, Compliancy Group gives you confidence in your compliance plan to reduce risk, increase patient loyalty, and profitability of your organization. Visit https://www.compliancy-group.com or call 855.854.4722 to learn how simple compliance can be.
Founded in 2002, PacketLogix has worked with organizations of all different sizes and in a broad spectrum of market sectors. In the early days of PacketLogix, we focused exclusively on the corporate enterprise marketplace assisting large organizations and agencies mainly with network security and wireless design. As cyberthreats became more omni-present, we have invested significantly in our capability of helping better protect both clients’ networks, but also their end points and servers. For the past fifteen years, we have been working with the United States federal government through our own GSA blanket contract. We have worked on national classified networks at various intelligence agencies, trained network technicians in Baghdad, Iraq, and even worked with the US Secret Service, US House of Represtatives, and the US Senate. In recent years, PacketLogix has taken a focus closer to home in Rhode Island helping the small to medium business community.
How long have you been a member of The 20?
Since January 2020.
Why did your MSP originally look to partner with The 20?
The model, the Support Desk and tools were clearly first class and what we needed to get to our next level.
Tell us about the biggest change in your business since joining The 20.
The biggest change I have had since joining The 20 was the realization and action I have taken in seeking our larger clients that I can now handle with the support of The 20 Support Desk and community of like-minded partners.
What do you like most about being a member of The 20?
Hands down – the other members. Their generosity and honest desire to help me grow my business has been so overwhelming. I hope when I get on my feet I’ll be able to repay it forward with other members.
What do you think is the most important quality necessary for success?
Never, ever, ever give up. You can screw up 7 ways til Sunday, but don’t ever give up.
What are your biggest business challenges?
Sales and marketing. Getting new clients.
What are your areas of focus for 2020?
New client acquisition and bringing our operations in line with the best practices of The 20 and its members.
What advice would you share with an MSP looking to scale their business?
Sales and marketing is everything. Yes, you need great operations, but without sales and marketing excellence, you won’t have anyone to support.
Well, that’s a wrap on our first Virtual Quarterly!
Spring Quarterly was held on Zoom on May 28th and 29th and we had an incredible time with all of you! We look forward to these events every year, and while this one was a little different, it was every bit as fun and informative as its always been.
Our first day was entirely dedicated to in–depth training sessions by 3i International, Deep Instinct, BLOKWORX, and TruGrid. We then wrapped the day up with a Q&A session with Kris Blackmon of Informa, talking about the MSP 501.
Our CEO Tim Conkle kicked off day 2 with hammering on the importance of marketing and building pipeline. This was followed by a presentation from Danny Astin of Ciardi, Ciardi & Astin. We also held 3 insightful panel sessions: “How to Get the Most out of The 20” featuring several of our Elite members, “Growing is Not Magic” with Tim Conkle, Crystal McFerran and Mark Elliott, and a Support Desk/NOC Q&A with our CIO Jeff Griffin.
Last, but certainly not least, Nerdio and Crayon joined us to talk in-depth about Azure and Microsoft year-end incentives.
Everyone is adjusting within their businesses and we are glad to have had theopportunity to bring Quarterly to you during these ever-changing times!
So much was learned, and so much fun was had— we hope to see you at our next Quarterly!
If you have any questions about future Quarterly events, or would just like to learn more about The 20, please contact us today!
Meet Gary Blawat of Businertia!
Tell us a little about your MSP…
Businertia was established in 2006. Originally, we were going to be a management consulting business and had an opportunity to start an IT business for a real estate investor that wanted to diversify. We actually had two articles written about our flat-rate IT model in 2007. However, when the market crashed in 2008, we were able to negotiate an asset purchase for the IT company we started. Twelve years later, we are still enjoying delivering IT services to the SMB market.
How long have you been a member of The 20?
I saw Tim talking about Cytracom at ASCII for a couple of years before we joined and kept hearing about this great idea called ‘The 20.’ So, in May of 2018, I decided to dig a little deeper and I signed up a month later. Michael Vu, Michael Wayland, and others were big influencers to our decision. When you can hear the vision and then talk to people that are working to make it a reality, it was a game changer.
Why did your MSP originally look to partner with The 20?
The bottom line was scale. With every new customer we always seemed to hit a resource limitation to perform technical work to a high quality and focus on growing the business. The biggest thing I realized was that we needed to focus on building our competitive advantage and that was not going to happen by organically growing a support desk or just outsourcing it. So, the idea of us joining a group that was building a common support desk, leveraging core tools, and most importantly: giving us access to a dynamic, mastermind group, became too good to pass up. It quickly became an integral part of our future growth plans.
Tell us about the biggest change in your business since joining The 20.
Ensuring that we continue to create face value with all of our clients. Once the documentation is done and the support desk starts handling the day-to-day ad hoc requests, it became increasingly noticeable that we are in the ‘people business.’ We needed to ensure we were still reaching our customers in ways that maintained our local presence, but demonstrated the depth to handle their every day demands. The challenging part of that was not bypassing the support desk and doing simple work to create that value. With the amount of information that flows in the Teams channels, the question is not ‘how’ to create that value, but implementing ideas in planned stages over the course of a customer’s agreement.
What do you like most about being a member of The 20?
The people. There is so much business and technical acumen within the group. Every VISION, Quarterly, or daily peruse of Teams gives another ‘Aha!’ moment to solve a problem.
What do you think is the most important quality necessary for success?
Self-discipline. It is so easy to get carried away on fun items or worry about items that cannot be controlled. I’m always in awe over those leaders that have mastered it. They know when to push themselves enough to move ahead or just seem to focus on the right things at the right time.
What are your biggest business challenges?
Setting the right expectations. Really identifying where I want to take this business so it supports the right balance for my lifestyle and for my employees.
What are your areas of focus for 2020?
Setting the wheels in motion to become the best communicating MSP (MID) Service provider in South Eastern Wisconsin. This also includes re-branding the organization to better match who we are.
What advice would you share with an MSP looking to scale their business?
Stop looking at support desk as a cost-per-hour as it relates to dollars spent in correlation to amount-of-time on tickets. Having the support desk should be looked at as an operational cost that provides you scale in a very budgetable way. However, keep in mind, having a 24/7/365 support desk is only one facet of how you create value to your customers. There is still work to be done in justifying the price points you need to grow your business.
A Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi. – How can you not be interested in learning a philosophical way of battle/life from a Samurai?
Favorite blogs / podcasts
I look forward to my daily dose of The Insider News from Code Project.
The humorous subtitles in response to the article title starts my day with a laugh. For instance, take article title ‘The new surf game in Microsoft Edge now available for everyone.’ — the subtitle to the article is ‘I guess this means all the bugs are fixed (and they’ve run out of icons to change)?’
Interested in becoming a member like Businertia? Click here for more information!
Meet Caleb Brown, Owner of JS Computek!
Tell us a little about your MSP…
JS Computek is headquartered in Columbia, MO and we’ve been serving Mid-Missouri since 1997.
How long have you been a member of The 20?
We chose to strategically partner with The 20 in early 2019.
Why did your MSP originally look to partner with The 20?
There were many factors, but here are the most influential:
A. The ability to scale with confidence. B. The extra knowledge, cooperation, and human resources. C. The ability to deliver the MID model which aligned with our company mission of delivering “IT Sanity” to our clients and staff.
Tell us about the biggest change in your business since joining The 20.
Since joining, the biggest impact has really been internally — thinking about making documentation and processes clear, concise, and accurate.
What do you like most about being a member of The 20?
The helpful members; so many great resources in the group to share with.
What do you think is the most important quality necessary for success?
Be willing to grow and adapt in your mindset and processes.
What are your biggest business challenges?
Breaking through the mindset of the prospect’s belief that IT should be like calling a plumber and that break/fix is a smart way to run a business.
What are your areas of focus for 2020?
For 2020 our core areas of focus are cloud migrations and new client acquisition.
What advice would you share with an MSP looking to scale their business?
Find your uniques, define and sharpen your core processes, and then build systems around those processes that allow you to scale up or down on demand.
Interested in becoming a member like JS Computek? Click here for more information!
Meet Michael Wayland, Managing Director of Byte-Werx!
Tell us a little about your MSP…
We’re Byte-Werx, an MSP out of Houston, Texas. We started business in March of 2013. Originally we were a web design and development company. After years of trying to be both, I realized I wanted to laser-focus on being an MSP. So, in January of 2017, I bought out my partners and made it happen! Since then we’ve had amazing growth and found success with CPAs, law firms, and a variety of other clientele from several industries.
How long have you been a member of The 20?
We joined the 20 in June of 2017 — we’re looking forward to our 3rd anniversary coming up!
Why did your MSP originally look to partner with The 20?
As a small local shop, I wanted to be able to offer my clients 24/7 service, assistance when we were unavailable, and best-in-class software that being in a big group provides.
Tell us about the biggest change in your business since joining The 20.
The biggest change is the community and drive to always make ourselves better. It has allowed me to learn and implement best-in-industry policies and procedures as well as letting me focus on growing my business.
What do you like most about being a member of The 20?
The outstanding community. We are a member of several industry groups and none of them feel like The 20. The relationships we’ve built here have been some of the most beneficial in my career and I know there are several members that would be willing to drop what they’re doing and fly out to my aid if I really needed it.
What do you think is the most important quality necessary for success?
It doesn’t matter how big or small you are, you need to run your business like it’s a business and not a job. This means building process and procedures that scale, documentation, and being ready to hit the gas to grow when you’re ready.
What are your biggest business challenges?
One of our biggest challenges is getting our message out to new businesses who may have never heard of us. Lead generation has never come naturally to me but we’re starting to see a lot of promising returns on our investments now.
What are your areas of focus for 2020?
For 2020 our primary focus will be on business workflows and implementing a modern workplace to our new and existing clients. With the jarring COVID-19 events, it is clear that all businesses need to be able to pick up and work anywhere at anytime and we truly believe that is the future of work.
What advice would you share with an MSP looking to scale their business?
As an MSP our real value-add and profit driver is automation and efficiencies. You can’t roll a truck for every problem or do one-off remote log-ins. To scale you need to create a flexible and complete stack so you can focus on learning and perfecting your procedures.
What book are you currently reading?
I’m currently digesting Getting Naked and would highly recommend it. It shows how being completely honest with your clients will win you loyalty and allow you to grow your business. I will always recommend The Checklist Manifesto for any MSP just getting started on getting their process and procedures in order.
Favorite blogs / podcasts
I listen to a lot of podcasts. Non MSP-related podcasts include FiveThirtyEight, EconTalk, and Planet Money. My favorite MSP/industry podcasts are: Frankly MSP, Security Now, and MSP Voice.
Interested in becoming a member like Byte-Werx? Click here for more information!
Meet Allan Sivils, CEO of Sivils IT Consulting!
Tell us a little about your MSP…
Sivils IT Consulting is located in Virginia Beach, VA. We were established in 2014 after I spent 15 years managing enterprise IT operations. I wanted to create a niche business that focused strictly on partnering with our clients’ IT operations, and not selling software or hardware. We focus on building true partnerships with our clients that allow us to advocate for their business growth.
How long have you been a member of The 20?
We joined in December 2019!
Why did your MSP originally look to partner with The 20?
A couple of reasons – The 20’s model is very similar to what we have been building since we started our business; to focus on being the best “Managed IT Department” for our clients. So, it made perfect sense from a partnership standpoint. Second, we have clients on both coasts, and being a part of The 20 gives us the resources that we need in order to serve clients across the United States. This allows us to scale faster, while not sacrificing the quality that our clients should expect. Lastly, the shared expertise of being a member alongside other top MSP’s allows us to work together to bring the best solutions to our clients.
Tell us about the biggest change in your business since joining The 20.
We do not feel limited by how much we can scale our business by being a member of The 20.
What do you like most about being a member of The 20?
The network of being a member. Being part of such a large community has already helped us since joining in December operationally. We’ve been able to provide onsite resources to our clients that are thousands of miles away, and have these resources follow the same processes we do internally. We’ve been able to implement better technical solutions and processes that have helped us internally to service our clients.
What do you think is the most important quality necessary for success?
Relationships. Both within our MSP community, our vendors, and especially our clients.
What are your biggest business challenges?
Managing the ebb and flow of IT projects around our clients growth – while we do our best to ensure that we can schedule to meet expectations, sometimes the volume of projects needed at one time can be difficult to manage. Also, sometimes projects require a wide range of very specific expertise. Being a member of The 20, this is quickly becoming less of a challenge.
What are your areas of focus for 2020?
Microsoft Azure, Windows WVD and Nerdio. We see that these have a huge operational advantage and efficiency versus having workloads onsite. It also helps us scale our clients faster, while ensuring their business continues to have the highest availability for their operations.
What advice would you share with an MSP looking to scale their business?
Stay focused on the relationships I mentioned above and being the IT Department advocate. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the business, with a lot of us being engineers that get too focused on the details, leverage your fellow partners/vendors instead of trying to take the entire pie for yourself. Follow this up by a repeatable IT operational standard and processes that will be clear and focused for your team to support and, most importantly; stable, secure, and protected for your client.
What book are you currently reading?
I travel a lot, so by “reading…” that really means “audio book” for me. This would be Traction by Gino Wickman. I’m actually listening to it again! I will listen to audio books that I have enjoyed, multiple times — that is — if I find the information extremely valuable.
Favorite blogs / podcasts
Honestly, I don’t have any. I spend so much time investigating, reviewing, testing, and reading about various IT solutions and methods. I guess I would say, I read “the internet.”
Interested in becoming a member? Click here for more information!
Meet Mark Elliott, CEO of 3i International!
Tell us a little about your MSP…
3i International is located in Houston, TX. We have 25 employees and have provided expert IT services since the year 2000. We are awesome at security and managed services, and our mission is to help people be their best by making technology easy and secure. We have a great team and have a lot of fun every day!
How long have you been a member of The 20?
3i International joined The 20 in December of 2018.
Why did your MSP originally look to partner with The 20?
Great question, this is a two-part answer for us. First, we were looking to move upmarket to larger clients and wanted a way to deliver services on a national level where we did not lose control of our customer or have degradation in support by hiring one-off boots on the ground. Secondly, we were having challenges scaling the business, and it kept leading to service delivery issues. Before The 20, we had a great company with talented engineers, and our clients loved our support and personal touch. At our size, we did not have separate teams for the helpdesk and onsite engineers. Every engineer had a seat in the call center, and when needed, they would be sent onsite. This methodology worked well as long as we did not grow. Every time we had major projects or a large new client onboarding, we would have to move resources from the call center to install equipment or onboard new seats. As soon as we reallocated resources from our call center, the level of service that our clients had become accustomed to would fall. We would then move some resources from the field back to call center only to have project deliver suffer. We found our company stuck on a staffing teeter-totter with happy and then unhappy clients. The 20 gave us the ability to truly separate our call center from the onsite and project team, which has been a Godsend. We now have happy clients all the time, not just in between waves of growth.
Tell us about the biggest change in your business since joining The 20.
We are closing more new MRR deals every month with the 20 offering and pitch. Our pipeline has grown with higher monthly recurring opportunities than we had before. The 20’s footprint has allowed us to focus on larger companies with multiple locations in different cities. We have found a real need here as an internal IT department with 500 employees cannot successfully support 20 locations with a couple of engineers. Our customer satisfaction with project delivery is through the roof. The 20’s call center handles the majority of our tickets, so we were able to shift our team around and create a dedicated team focused solely on project delivery. During our growth, we can now provide great support from the call center, our local onsite team, and the project team.
What do you like most about being a member of The 20?
The community is awesome, from weekly accountability calls with other members, the ability to message nationally on Microsoft Teams to find an answer to a tough question, the comradery at quarterly training meetings. It just a strong group of like-minded individuals with 1000’s of years of experience all fighting to make a difference in the lives of their customers and their families. The services The 20 provides encompass most of what an IT company needs to succeed. It is a great offering of tools at a fair price. We were concerned about what our customers would say about the changes, but our customer satisfaction continues to increase since becoming a member.
What do you think is the most important quality necessary for success?
I don’t. I think this question could be answered ten different ways by ten people, and no one would be wrong. You might hear answers like grit, ambition, courage, commitment, willpower, drive, integrity, and on and on, you get my point. So why is it that sometimes you see individuals with these traits fall short of their full potential? I have been at this game for 25 years now, and I know that I possess all of the traits I just listed above. I am moderately successful, debt-free, and can retire comfortably in a few more years. By national standards, I’m in the top 1%, but by no means do I have a yacht or private aircraft. My journey to this point has been a dog fight in a highly competitive market. So, I think great success takes more than character traits as they are table steaks in today’s business climate. I feel to blow it out of the water truly you have to be first, better, or different. I feel the opportunity The 20 has afforded my company compliments my character traits by creating a differentiation that allows me to reach my full potential.
What are your biggest business challenges?
Last year we spent time identifying our weaknesses and threats. Now, last year’s challenges are this year’s opportunities as we have prioritized what we will be fixing and implementing during this calendar year. This year we are working on increasing outbound lead generation to 50 leads per month, implementing an employee training program around culture and function, standardizing our QBR methodology, and executing on a new inbound digital marketing strategy.
What are your areas of focus for 2020?
We are an EOS company, so we will continue to implement and improve our use of the traction tools set. From a top-line perspective, we are focused on growing monthly recurring revenue in the healthcare, legal, AEC, manufacturing, and energy verticals.
What advice would you share with an MSP looking to scale their business?
Identify what’s holding you back, and if you’re willing to fix it, find a business coach or organization with the skill set to help you solve your challenges and hold you accountable. Don’t be afraid to partner with The 20. It is one of the best decisions we have made for our business and the people we support.
What book are you currently reading?
I recently just finished setting my personal goals for 2020, which includes a list of 36 books. Here are the three that I am currently reading in January:
Interested in becoming a member? Click here for more information!
Can you believe 2020 is here? It’s a brand new decade!
It’s a great time to reflect on on the lessons learned last year, and to set intentions for what we wish to create for the rest of the year! These are the tops MSP lessons learned by our members in 2019. Check them out!
We posed the question to our members: As an MSP, what’s one lesson you learned in 2019?
Plan, Execute, Review, Revise, & Repeat.
“Setting quarterly objectives and being accountable to them is critical to evolving as an organization. I would even go so far as breaking those down monthly as well. Big picture goals are great, but if you don’t pay attention to them often enough it is easy to lose sight of organizational priorities. Plan, Execute, Review, Revise, & Repeat.” – Gary Blawat, Businertia Group
Track Your Progress
“Write down your yearly, three years, and five year plans. Then break the yearly plans into manageable quarterly plans. Track your progress and keep pushing, especially when behind on the plans. We came verrrry close to hitting a big goal for the year that was definitely a stretch goal.” – Kevin Peterson, Peterson Technology Group
Always Be Looking Forward
“Growth does not come without pain and sacrifice but as long as you stay true to your goals, success will come. We have added great people and in order to keep that momentum you need to involve your team in interviewing new people. Mentor as much as you can and find your own mentor to surround yourself in growth. Always be looking forward and not backwards!” – Jeff Davis, Southern Data Solutions
Marketing is Crucial
“Marketing can be very effective and it is necessary to grow a company.” – George Monroy, Monroy IT Services
Security is a Necessity, not a Buzzword
“2019 reinforced security as a necessity not a buzz word. With MSPs and their supply chain being actively targeted and compromised, our hard-work and dedication to securing our systems, our vendors (and booting those that refused to harden theirs), and our client’s networks let us stand out from some unfortunate other competitors here in our marketplace.” – Caleb Brown, JS Computek
“I’ve learned that even though security is always in the front of my mind for my customers. I also have to focus on the security of the vendors/products that an MSP uses as well.” – Brad Daugherty, Hoola Technology
We hope you enjoyed reading these MSP lessons learned from The 20 members. If you’re looking to take your MSP to the next level in 2020, contact us to learn more about The 20. Don’t miss The 20’s upcoming MSP Sales Academy – learn more here!
