LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT
If we wait for the
moment when everything , absolutely everything , is ready , we shall never begin .
– Ivan Turgenev
I first met Robin in mid-2005 at the Microsoft campus during one of the old SMB Nation annual conferences . Although still very early in the business , she was a force to be reckoned with on stage and could talk a room of IT professionals ( including me ) into purchasing something they really didn ’ t want : a kit on marketing your IT business .
We were all there to learn more about Small Business Server and all things IT , but we walked away from that event with the tools that could explode our businesses . That chance encounter resulted in the massive growth of my IT business over the next 18 months and completely changed my perspective on running a true business .
Little did I know that Robin ’ s own business at the time was a twoperson operation running in a small office over her garage . She was running a successful micro business and could sell like no one else , but she didn ’ t yet know how to run a real business with a successful team ( she admitted years later that she was afraid to build a team at the start ). For years , employees were a four-letter word around here . But just five years after my initial encounter , I had sold my MSP business to come help build the organization . and a small mastermind group into a $ 35-million per year , 120 + staff operation with the largest peer mastermind group in the MSP industry , a world-class CRM and marketing automation software platform , an industry magazine with over 45,000 MSPs on its distribution list , the third largest event in the MSP channel every year , and a separate media company ( Big Red Media ) for channel companies .
She is an inspirational leader within the community and is not afraid to speak her mind ( even if a bit controversial at times ). I ’ m thrilled that we are finally able to share Robin ’ s full story in this issue with the MSP community as a whole .
Sincerely ,
Jeff
Jeff Johnson President , Technology Marketing Toolkit
Over the last 10 years , Robin has turned Technology Marketing Toolkit from a small , six-person startup with self-study products
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