When Rashaad and Michelle Bajwa launched Integris in 1997 as Rutgers University law students, they had no idea their side business serving law firms would evolve into one of the largest MSPs in the U.S. What began as a lifestyle company generating a few million in revenue transformed into a $240+ million national powerhouse with dozens of locations, thanks to a mix of strategic growth, private equity backing, and a relentless focus on leadership and process.
This past June, after decades as CEO, Bajwa transitioned into the role of executive chairman of the board. In this candid Q&A with Robin Robins, founder of TMT and MSP Success, he reflects on the hard-won lessons from his journey, including how to escape the “cult of personality” trap, when to invest in sales and marketing, and what it really takes to build a scalable, acquisition-ready MSP.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. For the full conversation, watch the video above.
Robin Robins: Can you give us a brief history of Integris?
Rashaad Bajwa: The quick, 30-second story of Integris is, we started in 1997, when my wife, Michelle, and I were seniors at Rutgers University (we were not married at the time). We started doing IT for law firms, because we were going to go to law school, and 1997 was a good time to get into tech.
We grew it as a lifestyle business—a good lifestyle—we were getting into the millions of revenue. It wasn’t until around 2010 or so that we hockey-sticked a bit. That’s when we started getting involved in the MSP community, learning from other people’s mistakes, not just running through every wall as an entrepreneur ourselves. Then the hockey stick really got accelerated in 2020, when we did our first private equity recap, and then most recently in 2024, we did our second recap. And now we are off to the races.
Robins: What changed? You’re at $2 million, you’ve got this lifestyle business, why muck it up and try to grow?
Bajwa: I think it’s probably similar to a lot of other entrepreneurs. I got bored. I’d love to tell you it was some grand awakening of, “I know how to scale a business.” Absolutely not. We started this when we were in college, so I had not done anything other than this. So there was a point where, do we sell it? I didn’t even know what EBITDA was back then. I’m sure there was something worth selling if I could figure it out, but to me, it was easier to try to scale it. And so that’s when we hired our first salesperson.
This is around 2010. I realized that even though I was a good salesman, I had no clue how to develop a salesperson. That was a big aha moment for me, that I didn’t realize until I screwed up hiring multiples. The lesson learned is the scar tissue of doing it the wrong way and then realizing if I can just open myself up and put my ego in check, and then go out to the community, share with peers, learn from peers, then duplicating their success. That is what allowed us to experience that hockey stick.
I had to learn a new sales process myself, one that wasn’t necessarily designed for myself, but designed for a professional salesperson and can scale. For us, it was Gary Pica’s TruMethods that we picked up in the mid-2010s. That was the first methodology that was not tied to a Rashaad personality but tied to an actual professional sales motion. One lesson was you don’t have all the answers as the entrepreneur. Take some humble pie and figure out what you don’t know and get help. So a big part of our success was listening to the ideas of others
Robins: If an MSP is just getting started, under $1 million in revenue, what are the most important things they need to get in place to get over that $1 million?
Bajwa: I use the terminology, “cult of personality,” around the entrepreneur very intentionally. We have a tendency to be a sun in the solar system of our business. So the first step is starting to detach your ego from the business, and [trust] other people’s ability to represent the business, because that’s really when it scales.
I find sub-million-dollar MSPs [are] really good techs who started this business. You’ve got to be able to develop other really good techs, and you need to relish the fact that they are just as good as you, maybe even better. As soon as you start loving the fact that they’re better than you, you’re ready to take it to the next level, and that is scaling the business. Then you start getting into managers and building a sales team.
I don’t know of any successful business owner that doesn’t know how to develop talent. On the flip side, I do know of plenty of mediocre to OK businesspeople and entrepreneurs, where good talent goes to die and then quits, because the sun refuses to let anyone else shine.
I’ve seen MSPs grow to, believe it or not, $20-$25 million around a cult of personality. But these are really bright suns, the 0.1%. But even at that level, it doesn’t matter how good your sun is. You cannot scale unless you develop some of these other skill sets.
Robins: Paul Cissel, who’s one of our experts in residence, recently said if you’re an MSP serving the SMB market, businesses with 11 to 50 computers, you can’t afford to hire the top-level talent. You have to develop a training organization.
Bajwa: That’s right. Once you get to scale, Integris is now quite large, so we have the luxury of having some very, very expensive people. But when you’re building a business, that is cost prohibitive. You’ve got to be able to grow your own talent. It’s impossible to scale in an efficient way if you’re just buying other people’s investments in people. You’ve got to make investments yourself.
Robins: So, phase one, replace yourself, develop people. What’s the next big thing they have to do to scale?
Bajwa: The next phase is you need systems and processes, but most business owners, and I’ll speak for myself, your mind may not work that way. So get some person on your staff. It may be an office manager, it may be a controller, somebody who has a little bit of a finance hat. But you need someone who is creating systems and processes so you have a repeatable mechanism. That sometimes coincides with your first manager.
Whether you call it a service manager, a director of engineering, for the first time, you’re going to start creating an org chart. Now you can delegate to that next level person, who you can trust. That’s still you at principal-led sales, and maybe a couple of other folks that you’ve developed, but somebody who can actually just run the basic business and processes and systems, and you don’t have to think about it. That is a multiplier.
Robins: So you’re starting to build people and teams, but what about sales and marketing?
Bajwa: This might be controversial. I think principal-led sales can get pretty big. My view is that most MSP business owners are not going to be in a position to set up a salesperson for success until quite a bit later. Definitely north of $5 million of revenue, but even north of $10 million. I think principal-led sales serves you really well, even up to those sizes.
My suggestion would be invest in marketing. Get more leads for yourself or your other two rock stars that you’ve created that are now selling sales engineers, and that will build you up to $5 to $10 million.
Robins: Can you share some of the ups and downs of your journey to $20 million and how you got through them?
Bajwa: The first thing was learning how to develop leaders and that is an area that was new to me. So getting outside assistance to help develop leaders. I got a business coach for myself early on, and then as soon as I was on board there, all of the leaders that I promoted into leadership roles, I got them coaches as well. It became very, very powerful. It was money very well spent.
Robins:OK, so developing leaders. What else is required to get to that 4% of very large MSPs?
Bajwa: Then it’s creating a sales and marketing engine. So investing in putting that engine in place is really what starts that flywheel. [On the sales side] I think these need to be SDRs initially. North of $10 million, you need to hire a sales leader who can help be a partner for you in scaling this.
Robins: I don’t think most people really understand what marketing is. I think marketing is about creating a specific kind of solution for a specific kind of customer in a unique way, and then telling that story. It’s attracting prospects who genuinely want to hear about how you can help them solve their problems. Maybe you disagree?
Rashaad: No, I completely agree. A specific type of marketing that is the most powerful for us is reputation marketing. We, for example, are one of the largest MSPs for community banks. The number one reason a community bank should use us is because of [what] other community banks say about us. So, using testimonials, references, Google reviews. Understanding how reputation works online is incredibly powerful. To the extent that an MSP can have an authentic reputation, that’s incredibly powerful. Or if they have a very specific, authentic voice on something that can educate those clients, that’s powerful, too. For us, AI is really powerful, but also vertical.
Robins: Any final thoughts?
Bajwa: We’re doing a lot of M&A, but a lot of the topics that we just talked about are incredibly important to us when we’re evaluating businesses for acquisition. Meaning, if we go in, we can smell a cult of personality a mile away. It’s not something you can buy, because as soon as that person goes away, the business is just a house of cards. So not only for the purposes of scaling their business, but also for the purposes of creating enterprise value and wealth, it’s important to get your ego out of the way and build a business that is built on systems, processes, and people that you’ve invested in.
