Colin SprakeInvestor & Mentor Driving Multi-Million Dollar Growth

Loyal People Can Become Your Biggest Bottleneck.

7 Apr 2026 · 1 min

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In this monologue, the speaker argues that the most costly person in a growing business is often a long‑tenured, highly loyal employee who was once indispensable. As the company scales, founders may unintentionally structure operations around these early hires, but their entrenched habits and skill sets can now hinder the execution of the founder’s evolving vision. The speaker challenges leaders to reassess such employees, suggesting they may need to be repurposed, reassigned, or even let go to prevent them from becoming a bottleneck to growth.

Chapters

The most expensive person in your business is someone you thought you would never fire. Let me talk to you a little bit about this. So you start up a business, you get going, you have these amazing people join you. They love your culture, love who you are, become extremely loyal, they do so much for your business. But then your business grows and it grows. And then you start to plan your business around those loyal people that have been with you from the beginning. But yet you're not fulfilling your vision of where you want to take the business because they are holding you back and you are structuring, planning, organizing around them. I'm gonna ask you a question here for your own business. When are you gonna think differently about this? You might have to repurpose those people. You might have to put them in a different place. You might even have to let them go. Because if they are holding back your vision of where you want to take your business, it's a detriment to you and you'll never get to where you want to go.