About Arlin
Arlin Sorensen grew up on a farm near Harlan, Iowa, and started farming himself in 1977 with 300 acres. In 1982, he bought an Apple II Plus to help with the books — and discovered that none of his neighbors had ever seen a computer up close. He spent his evenings showing them VisiCalc and WordStar, then driving them into town to help them buy machines of their own.
That informal tech-helper role became a business. In 1985 he founded Sorensen Computer Connection, which grew over the next two decades — through a series of mergers — into Heartland Technology Solutions (HTS), an IT solution provider with seven offices across five states. Along the way, in 1995, he also founded HTS Ag, a precision-agriculture technology company that’s still part of the family business today.
His most far-reaching work began in 2000, when he founded HTG Peer Groups — a coaching and accountability community for MSP owners. By the time ConnectWise acquired HTG in 2018, it included more than 600 member companies across North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. HTG is now known as IT Nation Evolve, and Arlin has continued to lead and shape its peer-group programs ever since — most recently as VP of Ecosystem Evangelism.
Starts teaching neighbors to use it — the beginning of his IT career.
Arlin joins ConnectWise as VP of HTG Peer Groups; HTG later becomes IT Nation Evolve.
Decades of his writing, talks, and notes are digitized into a searchable archive.
This site was started around the same time, as a way of saying thank you.
Arlin and his wife Nancy live on the family farm in Harlan, where Sorensen Brothers Farmers still works about 3,000 acres. He’s a grandfather several times over — “Pop” to his grandchildren — and a committed Christian whose blog, Thoughts on Scripture, has run for years as a kind of public devotional journal. A recurring theme in his writing is stewardship of “168 hours” — the idea that how we spend every hour of the week, not just our working hours, is part of our legacy. He’s also long pointed to The Go-Giver as a touchstone: the idea that giving more in value than you receive in payment is what defines your worth.
This page is a draft. Dates and details are pulled from public interviews, press releases, and award write-ups — Arlin and family are welcome to correct, expand, or remove anything here.