In 2006, what should have been one of the happiest times in Adam Spencer’s life quickly turned into a nightmare.
Newly married to his wife Rachel, they moved into a small two-bedroom apartment. Two years earlier, he’d founded his break-fix computer business, 911 IT, while still in college. Due to the slow growth of their business, these newlyweds had to go into debt to furnish their apartment.
To add insult to injury, Adam was suddenly plagued with a mysterious illness. Seemingly out of nowhere, large red hives covered his entire body, spreading to his feet with every step he took, causing huge, painful welts. “My throat would close off, and I needed multiple trips to the emergency room,” Adam said. Finally, the mystery was solved, “We found out our apartment was contaminated with methamphetamine (aka meth), which caused my hives and illness.”
To make matters worse, meth contaminates everything. Their apartment was condemned by the Salt Lake County Health Department, and there was no way to clean their belongings. “We ended up losing everything, including the clothes on our back,” Adam said. “The only thing we got to keep was all the debt we collected. I also got to keep the hives that covered my entire body like giant welts for the next 15 years.”
With nothing to show for it, Adam continued to work his business, struggling to climb out of debt.
Another Devastating Blow . . .
Three years later, in 2009, Adam and Rachel’s first child, Zoey, was born. But instead of a healthy baby, Zoey had a condition called Hypoplastic Left Heart, which means the left side of her heart didn’t develop. “Zoey was given a 70% chance of surviving until the age of five,” Adam said. “We were told the only way for her to live to adulthood was if she received a heart transplant.”
Zoey required multiple open-heart surgeries and was in and out of the ICU her first year of life. Adam continued to run and manage his break-fix 911 IT company as medical bills poured in. “Medical debt became a way of life,” Adam said. “It seemed debt would be something we would always have.”
While he grew his company to $500,000 in revenue, adding three more children to their family mixed with mountains of debt brought Adam to a place where he could no longer afford the rent for office space. He moved the company to his family’s home, running it out of their basement. “We had cubicles set up in our basement, and all seven techs worked there,” Adam recalled. “My family of six lived upstairs in 1,300 square feet, where Rachel would try to keep our four kids quiet until 5:00 p.m. when everyone would leave.”
“I Was Dripping With Desperation.”
For more than a decade, Adam struggled to move the needle above the half million-dollar revenue mark, but he didn’t break through. “I couldn’t see how I was ever going to make enough money to move the company out of our basement and into a real office and still make enough money to pay for medical bills and our other needs,” Adam said.
Besides the pressure of being a boss, husband, and father, Adam was still sick and covered with hives from the meth-contaminated apartment. Things got so bad that in November of 2018, he took money from his personal savings account just to make payroll.
That same month, he received a letter from Robin Robins, CEO & Founder of Technology Marketing Toolkit (TMT). “It looked way too good to be true,” Adam said. “But I was dripping with desperation. What stood out was page after page of testimonials. My life needed a change in a big way, so I got on a call with TMT.” Taking a leap of faith, Adam put Rapid Implementation on his credit card, hoping this was the answer to their prayers.
The 2019 Implementor Of The Year
In January 2019, Adam immediately began TMT’s Rapid Implementation. Every day, Adam and Rachel stayed up until the wee hours of the morning implementing the TMT material. “We needed results, and we needed them fast,” Adam said. “We rebranded from 911 Computer Repair to 911 IT and planned lunch-and-learn seminars to educate our current customers to convert them from break-fix clients to managed services clients. Within 90 days of starting Rapid Implementation, we had $14,728 of new MRR [monthly recurring revenue] and $467,343 in new contracts. We also won ‘Rapid Implementor of the Year.’”
A New Set Of Problems . . .
In June 2019, Adam was invited to join the coveted TMT Producers Club, a group made up of TMT’s top-tier clients. After accepting the invitation, he joined the Accountability Group “Amp It Up.” Things were really looking up. But, within 24 hours of joining the group, once again Adam faced a life-altering situation and a whirlwind of problems. “As we walked off the plane back home, we were handed our four-year-old nephew to care for,” Adam said. “We also ended up losing a valued technician that same month. Our lives seemed to be falling apart.”
“Every Time We Solve A Problem, We Grow.”
Adam admits that trying to grow the business, keep up with his new accountability group, and find a replacement technician while also adjusting to having another child was a real challenge. But he kept his nose to the grindstone and continued to follow the TMT marketing plan. This brought in new clients which gave him the means to finally get a lease on a building. After more than a decade of working out of his home, he moved the company out of his basement on March 1, 2020. Only two weeks later, the COVID-19 shutdown orders came in, forcing Adam to send his employees home. However, as he continued to implement the TMT plan, his business grew, and his personal problems improved too. “It’s amazing how taking away the financial stress gave us the ability to focus on our other problems and solve them as well,” Adam said. “It gave us the freedom and the means to find solutions. Growing the business using the TMT marketing and sales techniques was exciting, and we celebrated every new customer that came our way.”
“We Tripled Response . . .”
Toward the end of 2021, Adam discovered the list-cleaning method he was using wasn’t delivering reliable information. “We were spending our marketing dollars on many companies too small to afford our services,” Adam said. “So we started making quick phone calls. We talked to the business, found out the correct company contact, and how many computers the business had. Then we let them know we’d be sending a package and when to expect it.”
With the correct information, his marketing list grew with bigger companies that hit the sweet spot for his ideal prospect. “We immediately saw an increase in sales after implementing this process,” Adam said. “Our results increased three times what we had previously gotten from sending the exact same number of letters. By the end of 2021, we had grown our MRR to $100,156.”
How Losing A $6,000-Per-Month Sale Led To Huge Growth
Solving problems became the way 911 IT grew. A valuable lesson came after pitching a prospect that would have added $6,000 MRR to their bottom line. “We didn’t have enough credibility or authority in our marketing materials, so we lost the sale,” Adam said.
Adam realized that even though they were doing the right things and providing value to their clients, he was never going to automatically be rewarded for his good behavior. Wanting to avoid losing contracts to competitors, his main objective for 2022 was to raise his authority.
Enlisting the help of TMT, he followed the steps in their Trust-Based Authority program. He became an author of an Amazon best-selling book, Cyber Storm, got media coverage, and made a sizzle reel. He rebuilt his website, added new marketing campaigns, and redid his Shock-and-Awe box so that they displayed authority. He increased the number of times he got in front of his farm list to a minimum of 42 times a year by adding automation, mailing newsletters, and postcards, and he sent out Tech Tip emails every week. This massive action increased his authority, building critical trust with his audience.
Game-Changing Advice Doubles Sales In Second Half Of Year
By July 2022, Adam had closed $24,436 of new MRR for the year, but his sales were inconsistent and closing slowly. “During the TMT Producers Club meeting, I had a defining moment after hearing Robin’s speech about planning your growth by the numbers,” Adam said. “It was that moment when I shifted to thinking BIG.” Fired up, Adam put together an Excel spreadsheet that allowed him to use his numbers to create a new marketing plan. Implementing these changes, he doubled his sales growth in the last half of 2022. “I ended up closing $53,865 in new MRR the last five and a half months, which brought our total new MRR to $78,301 for the year,” Adam said. “Growing by numbers has allowed us to not only grow at the speed we want but it is predictable and allows us to forecast future growth. This has completely changed my mind-set. What I once thought was ‘thinking big’ turns out to be a drop in the bucket to the reality that I truly can grow my company to any size I desire.”
In 2022, Adam increased his gross revenue by $451,755, up 138% from the previous year. His net profits increased by 176%, and he brought in 37 new clients. This qualified Adam as one of five finalists for the TMT Better-Your-Best contest.
What Is Better-Your-Best?
Introduced sixteen years ago, the Better-Your-Best contest motivates participants to be the best they can be. Based on the TMT mission to build a community of success-minded entrepreneurs that inspires excellence, encourages collaboration, and expands the capacity of all members to achieve great things, Robin Robins designed the contest to inspire members to implement and report their progress. The contest is open to all TMT Producers Club members to submit an essay about how implementing better marketing strategies and other business lessons learned as a Producers Club member changed them into a smarter, more strategic business owner.
In April 2023, each finalist, including Adam, presented their story, results, and key strategies to the sold-out Technology Marketing Toolkit Annual Sales and Marketing Bootcamp. In addition to a room of 1,100+ peers, there was also a judges panel made up of three “Sharks” Robert Herjavec, Kevin O’Leary, and Daymond John from the American business reality TV series Shark Tank and the CEO of Kaseya, Fred Voccola.
To ensure the Sharks didn’t sway the audience vote, they did not give their opinion on stage. However, Robins revealed that the Sharks voted exactly in line with the audience.
During the TMT Awards Ceremony, Robin Robins ripped open the envelope to reveal Adam Spencer as the grand-prize winner of the 2023 Better-Your-Best contest. Adam was awarded a brand-new luxury Mercedes-Benz vehicle and will act as the spokesperson for Robin Robins and Ambassador to the MSP Industry over the next year. In addition, Adam along with the other finalists received a prize package from Kaseya valued at $260,000 which includes a VIP game package to the Kaseya Center and fully paid year-long subscriptions to Kaseya’s Powered Services Pro and TMT’s Trust-Based Marketing Program.
Winning the contest is the icing on the cake for Adam. Thanks to the financial freedom he’s gained, medical bills are no longer a burden. He pays in full for all medical needs at the time of service and has even been able to donate money to Primary Children’s Hospital to help pay other people’s medical bills. Taking back their home, each of his kids has their own room now with the basement serving as the “hangout” place for friends and family. His hives are gone, and Zoey is now a healthy 13-year-old girl. Miraculously, she grew the other side of her heart. Now, with four chambers, her doctors don’t think a heart transplant will be necessary.
“TMT has opened our eyes to a new world of possibilities and growth,” Adam said. “I can’t say enough good things. I tried for over a decade to get my office out of my basement, and I could never do it alone. It wasn’t until I attended Rapid Implementation that led me to this (TMT) community that changed my life and the lives of my family forever. All we did was follow the campaigns and instructions TMT provided. We’ve had amazing results. So don’t address the problems in your business and life with dread. Face them head on, because every time we solve a problem, we grow.”
For more information on 911 IT, visit www.911it.com
