Brian HoppeBoard-Level Advisor to MSP CEOs, Brian Hoppe Coaching · Board-Level Advisor to MSP CEOs at Brian Hoppe Coaching

The Team That Got You Here May Not Scale With You

23 Jun 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:06

In this segment, speaker Brian Hoppe reflects on the common adage that the people who helped a company reach its current state may not be the ones who can take it further. He observes that Managed Service Providers (MSPs) often operate with a servant‑leader mindset, valuing client service and caring for their teams. However, this caring approach can lead to holding onto employees longer than optimal or placing them in roles for which they lack the necessary qualifications. Hoppe argues that rapid scaling requires a deliberate, structured leadership development program to create multiple layers of capable leaders—something many MSPs lack. He recommends building such a program intentionally to continuously develop people and prepare the organization for growth.

Chapters

The reality of the situation, it's the old saying, the people that got you here may not take you there. And I've just seen that be true many times over the years. And look, I think MSPs tend to, like, we're people people at the end of the day. We got in the business because we love serving clients. Yeah. I use that term servant leader a lot. I certainly was as I built my business. I like to think I still am today. We tend to take care of people and hold on to people and oftentimes longer than we should. And maybe it's not hold on to them, it's put them into roles for which they just really are not qualified. Hmm. And so I think one of the most important things that you could do is if you're going to really rapidly scale an organization, like build a real program around leadership development because it's going to take layers of leaders. That, that you likely don't have in your business. So that's kind of the one tactical thing I would do is to build that leadership program in a very intentional way so that you are constantly developing those people.