In-Telecom CEO On Building For Growth: ‘If You Make No Deposits, You Get No Withdrawals’

‘Just go back to the deposits that you put in every single day into your life and I can promise you, I’m kind of proof that you’ll get a lot more withdrawals out of what happens for you,’ says Shawn Torres, co-founder and CEO of In-Telecom.

For Shawn Torres, the lessons of building an MSP over 17 years can be summed up in a phrase his father always repeated to him: “If you make no deposits, you get no withdrawals.”

Torres, co-founder and CEO of Slidell, La.-based In-Telcom, built his $60 million MSP mostly through organic growth before making its first acquisition in 2024. He started the company with his college roommate after working as a Verizon Wireless sales representative. With no technical background, he learned by moving from sales into installations and whatever other jobs needed to be done. For Torres, those years created the grit that later fueled In-Telecom’s growth.

That organic growth continued for years. And by the company’s first acquisition, he said the business had already developed a sustainable growth engine.

“I do believe you need organic growth first and foremost in order to go out and do acquisitions successfully,” Torres said from the stage at CRN parent company The Channel Company’s XChange August 2026 event in National Harbor, Md., this week. “I think a lot of people that are trying to build enterprise value in their business obviously think that’s the ultimate goal. That’s one thing about this industry that I’ve learned over the past five years: Everybody wants to sell a company. And it seems like everybody just hears these big multiples, and they’re going to go out and just transact, and they’re going to be rich.”

But it’s less glamorous than that, he said.

The company’s first acquisition, a Dallas-based business, took about a year to fully integrate. The second deal with an Atlanta-based MSP in October 2025 took about four months.

The first deal exposed how much could go wrong when the acquiring company itself was still building its infrastructure.

“When you add an acquisition into the mix and your house isn’t in order, I can tell you, it definitely creates some challenges,” he said. “I always tell everybody I was just a hustler. You could never outwork me. I would make 150 calls a day, I’d pull 35 doors and I would just constantly sell. And I thought I could just keep doing that and build a big business. And I can tell you that’s not the case.”

When the company started to scale, he had to become a different kind of leader for the business. Processes, systems and a strong leadership team became more important than individual hustle.

Financial discipline was another major lesson.

“Get your books in order,” he said. “If you don’t have your books in order, I would start now. Get them audited. Make sure that things are right and accurate in the way your revenue is being booked. I know sometimes our businesses can be very complex when it comes to selling products and service and time and all these different pieces and the way we recognize revenue. So I would highly encourage you to fix that now.”

He also learned that acquisitions are not just about combining people but combining systems, contracts, processes, cultures and expectations.

At the Dallas-based MSP In-Telecom acquired, employees who had spent decades with the company were abruptly introduced to Torres and his business partner when the previous owners announced their retirement. Torres had expected a gradual transition but instead found himself standing in front of about 35 employees on day one, setting the stage for a difficult integration that later saw about 30 percent employee turnover.

“People think they want growth, but they might not,” he said. “And I think understanding that about people in an organization and understanding the profiles of those employees is super important. Go out and do a personality test. Understand who they are, what they’re about on the front end.”

The ultimate lesson, he said, is not to avoid acquisitions but to approach them deliberately. Know what type of revenue is being purchased, understand margins, have capital available, pay for quality due diligence, and develop an integration playbook before closing.

Corey Kirkendoll echoed Torres’ sentiment about acquisitions and said MSP owners should prepare well before an acquisition is on the table, adding that early planning can make a major difference when the time comes.

“Prepare, prepare before the first acquisition,” Kirkendoll, president and CEO of Allen, Texas-based 5K Technical Services, told CRN. “That up-front due diligence will pay off big time in the end. If you’re able to get ahead, put together the playbooks, begin with the end in mind, knowing that you’re going to be acquired or going to make an acquisition, and then start living that way.”

Like Torres said, that also means building a business that can operate without its owner, Kirkendoll said.

“I’m not ‘the’ business,” he said. “I have a business that I can transition and I have a team that can make that transition happen.”

Today, Torres measures success not on how busy he is, but how well the company operates without him.

“I get to choose to go to work every day, I don’t have to go to work,” he said. “The team that we put in play; they’re good at their job. They’re better than I could ever be. They’re more organized and more structured.”

Which brings him back to his father’s advice. Growth is not about the next acquisition or the next revenue milestone, but about the deposits being put into the business, people and relationships.

“Just go back to the deposits that you put in every single day into your life and I can promise you, I’m kind of proof that you’ll get a lot more withdrawals out of what happens for you,” he said.