Running an MSP can feel lonely. You’re wearing every hat. You’re guessing what to fix next. Most days, it feels like if you stop, EVERYTHING stops.
Ian Luckett from the MSP Growth Hub talks honestly about that journey: thirty years in corporate, a ‘happy storm’ with his boss, leaving to start his own business, running out of money within six months, and then rebuilding by changing the people around him and the roles they played in his life and business.
This blog turns that conversation into a simple, people-first plan you can actually use. We’ll look at how to:
- Surround yourself with people who have done what you’re trying to do
- Spot when ‘what got you here’ won’t get you any further
- Stop clinging to work you should have handed over years ago
- Build a team that can make decisions, solve problems and grow the business without you in every conversation
If you feel like you might be the bottleneck in your own MSP, this one is for you.
Contents:
FREE Download: Guide to Building an MSP that Runs Without You
Why people are your real advantage (not tools)
When Ian walked out of corporate after nearly 30 years, he didn’t leave because of tech. He left because of people.
He stepped out on his own, and very quickly realised all his old habits, language and ways of working didn’t fit anymore.
- “I never realised how long it takes you to de‑corporatise yourself… I knew at that point I needed a new group of people around me. I needed some new friends now.”
So, he went looking. He joined a group called Escape the Rat Race to learn how to get out of a corporate job and run a business. That group doesn’t even exist anymore, because it turns out what he was trying to do is really hard.
That’s the point. It wasn’t a new product, a clever process or a shinier brand that moved him forward. It was the people he chose to have around him.
The same is true in your MSP. From the outside, most providers look the same: same vendors, same tools, same “we care about your business” lines.
What makes you different is your people:
- The people prospects meet before they ever see a proposal
- The people who pick up the phone when something’s broken
- The people who carry your values when you’re not in the room
And just like Ian, your results are driven by three layers of people:
- Who you learn from:
Are you learning from people who’ve actually built and grown MSPs
or from people who’ve only read the books and never had to make payroll?
- Who you hire:
Do you keep hiring another ‘you’ – technical, fixing everything and doing too much – or people who are better than you at certain jobs, so you can stop doing those jobs yourself?
- Who you listen to: When you’re stuck, do you listen mainly to family and friends who’ve never run a business, or to owners and leaders who’ve already made and fixed the mistakes you’re about to make?
Be honest. If those answers aren’t great, it’s no shock if the business feels stuck.
You probably don’t need another tool to unlock growth. You need a different mix of people around you and inside your MSP.
Start with the end in mind: what do you actually want?
Once you realise people are your real advantage, a bigger question shows up:
Where are all these people actually taking you?
Most MSP owners don’t know. They say things like “I want a £5m business” or “I’d like a nice exit one day” then go straight back to tickets, projects and hiring another tech because that’s what’s in front of them.
The problem is simple: if you don’t know what ‘done’ looks like, you can’t possibly know who you really need on the team.
Ian talks about this in very real terms. His driver isn’t a random revenue number. It’s his son.
- “I need to build an independent living home for my son.”
His business partner has his own driver: building a business school for autistic people. Both are using the business as a vehicle to build something that matters to their families long after the day-to-day work stops.
When you get that kind of clear picture in your own life, the way you think about people changes fast.
You stop hiring just to get today’s work done.
You start asking, “Who do I need so this business can run without me?”
You stop clinging to work that doesn’t move you towards the future you actually want.
Here’s a simple way to bring this down to earth:
- Take a blank page and write at the top: “In 10 years, my life looks like this…”
- Then describe a normal Tuesday in that future. Where you wake up. What you do. How often you work. What kind of work you still choose to do, and what you never touch anymore.
- Only after you’ve done that, ask yourself “What kind of MSP would I need to own for this to be true? And what kind of people would I need around me to make it happen?”
At that point you’re not just filling seats.
You’re building a team on purpose, for a clear end goal.
Build your inner circle on purpose, not by accident
Now, once you’re clear on where you’re heading, the next question is: who’s helping you steer?
Your first “people problem” usually isn’t staff. It’s your inner circle.
These are the people whose voices live in your head when you make decisions. Family. Friends. Old bosses. Other owners. If they’re the wrong voices, they can hold you back without ever meaning to.
When Ian decided to invest serious money in a coach, everyone close to him thought he’d lost it:
- “My wife, my mum, my dad … everybody’s saying, that’s crazy. You don’t want to do that. No, that’s ridiculous money!”
He did it anyway, for one simple reason:
He’d never built a business before. But his coach had.
That’s the filter you need. Every time someone gives you advice, ask yourself a very simple question: “Is this from experience, or from a book?”
If it’s from a book and they’ve never done it themselves, that’s fine.
Just don’t bet your MSP on it.
If it’s from someone who has built, grown or exited a business, or stepped out of the day‑to‑day in their own company, pay more attention. They’ve already hit the walls you’re about to walk into.
You can reset your inner circle in a very practical way.
Start by listing the five people you talk to most about your business. That might be your partner, a friend, another owner, a mentor. Then, next to each name, write a simple score from 1 to 10:
- How close are they to having already done what I want to do?
- Have they built something bigger than you have now?
- Have they stepped back from day‑to‑day?
- Have they sold a business, or at least made it less dependent on them?
If most of those scores are low, don’t panic. Just upgrade one relationship at a time. Spend more time with owners who will tell you the truth, not just cheer you on. Join a room where you’re the smallest MSP. Pay for help from someone who has actually walked the path.
As Ian puts it:
- “You don’t go to a driving instructor to learn how to play football.”
Stop asking people who’ve never built what you’re trying to build for directions!
Get out of your own way and drop some hats
Even with the right people around you, there’s still one person who can slow everything down.
YOU.
Most MSP owners are doing far too many jobs at once:
You sell. You help on the service desk. You chase invoices. You sort HR problems. You manage projects. You still take calls from that one client who only ever wants to speak to you.
It feels important. It also makes you the bottleneck. Nothing really moves unless you touch it.
Ian shares a moment from his corporate days that flipped his thinking:
- “One of the bosses pulled me in the office and he said, ‘Your job is to put me out of a job.’”
At the time, that sounded mad. Now it makes perfect sense.
That’s the mindset you need as an owner.
Your job is not to hold on to every hat. Your job is to keep dropping hats and handing them to people who can do those jobs as well as you, then better than you. That’s how you grow leaders. That’s how you build a business that doesn’t fall over when you get ill or want a break.
A simple way to see where you’re in your own way is to write down every role you play today. Be brutally honest. If you still approve every quote, sign off every discount, jump on every big escalation, write it all down.
Next to each one, mark what kind of job it really is:
- Small‑value job: basic admin or simple approvals
- Mid‑value job: running one‑to‑ones or leading a team meeting
- High‑value job: setting strategy, hiring key people, or shaping a big partnership
Now pick one small‑value job to get rid of this month. Just one.
Document how you do it.
Choose the person who will own it.
Tell them, “Your way just needs to be good enough to start. You’ll get better over time.”
You won’t go from 100 hats to 5 hats in a week. But you can go from 100 to 99 this week, then 98 next week. That’s how you get your life back without the wheels coming off.
If you refuse to do this, here’s what happens:
- You stay busy all the time, but nothing really changes
- Your team never grows because you never let them take real ownership
- Valuation stays low because serious buyers pay more for MSPs that don’t need the owner in every decision
You can’t build a sale-ready MSP and still be the hero who does everything. At some point, you have to become the person who makes yourself less needed on purpose.
Stop hiring unicorns and fix the roles first
Once you start dropping hats, you run into the next problem: who are you actually handing them to?
A lot of MSPs don’t really have a people problem. They have a role problem.
They hire one good person and slowly dump random jobs on them. A bit of tech. A bit of marketing. A bit of QBRs. A bit of projects. Before long, you’ve invented a role that only that one person understands.
Then they leave.
Now you’re stuck asking, “Do I need a tech? A marketer? A project manager?” You don’t even know what job you’re trying to replace.
Ian sums it up perfectly:
- “All of a sudden you end up with this hybrid bit of a tech, bit of marketing… then they leave and you go, ‘What do I replace them with?’”
The way out is simple to describe but takes discipline to do: fix the role before you look for the person.
Start by deciding what that seat is actually responsible for. What will this person own in 90 days if it’s going well? What problems should land with them, and just as importantly, what problems should not land with them?
- Service roles should own tickets and client issues.
- Sales roles should own pipeline and deals.
- Ops roles should own process and data.
You get into trouble when you glue three of those together into one ‘unicorn’ job just because someone is nice and willing to help. It feels flexible at the time, but it hurts you later.
Once the role is clear, then you look for the right person. Here, values matter more than tools. You can teach someone a PSA, but you can’t teach them to care and tell the truth when things go wrong or to take ownership without being chased.
When they join, be painfully clear: “This is your lane. This is what good looks like. This is how we’ll know it’s working.”
Most underperformance is born from vagueness. People are failing in jobs that no one ever properly defined.
When you clean up the roles, two things happen quickly:
- The wrong people can no longer hide behind confusion
- The right people finally get a fair shot to win, because they know exactly what game they’re playing
Generalists, specialists and growing leaders from within
When your business is small, you can’t hire one person for every tiny job. You need all‑rounders.
These are the people who can do a bit of everything: help customers, fix problems, write things down, jump into whatever needs doing that day.
As you grow, that has to change. You start needing people who mostly do one main thing and do it very well.
One of the key ideas Ian shares is this:
- “What you are actually doing is building generalists, then bringing specialists. Then those specialists almost become the next level of generalists. Then you hire again and bring in specialists again.”
When you’re small, you hire people who can wear lots of hats. As you get bigger, you slowly:
- Give one person the Service hat and let them focus on looking after customers
- Give another person the Projects hat and let them focus on getting work finished
- Give someone else the Sales hat and let them focus on bringing in new business
Over time, the people who are really good in those seats can grow again. The person who ran the service desk might one day lead all service teams. The person who ran projects might one day lead all delivery. They move from doing the job to guiding others who do the job.
A big warning here: not everyone wants that. And not everyone is suited to it.
Some people love talking to others and leading. Some people hate that and are happiest quietly solving problems. If you drag the wrong person into a manager role just because they’ve been with you the longest, you make them miserable and you weaken the team.
Your job is to make two good paths:
- One path for people who want to lead others. Show them what that role means and help them learn how to do it
- One path for people who want to stay as experts without being a boss. Make sure they can still earn well and feel proud of their work
If you only reward people who become managers, your best problem-solvers will leave to find that balance somewhere else.
When you build your team this way, you end up with a simple shape:
- At the bottom, strong doers who are great at their main job
- In the middle, a few steady leaders who guide and support the doers
- At the top, you, free to think about the future, not stuck inside every task
Busy vs productive: give yourself time to think
There’s a BIG difference between being busy and being productive.
Busy feels noisy. Your inbox is full. The phone keeps ringing. People are walking up to your desk. You are doing things all day and you fall into bed shattered. It feels like you’ve worked hard.
Productive often looks much quieter. You stop. You think. You look at your numbers. You notice what’s really going on. Then you choose the few things that will actually make life easier for you and your team.
Ian had to learn this the hard way:
- “Someone said to me, you need to have time to think. I said, no you don’t, just get on with one thing and get to the next thing. Absolutely wrong.”
He used to believe that real work was just doing the next task. Now he treats thinking time as part of his job, not a luxury.
Thinking time means things like:
- Looking at your business numbers and understanding what they’re telling you.
- Asking yourself, “Why is this not working as well as it did last year?”
- Taking a step back and asking, “What’s really going on here?”
You can build this into your week in a very simple way.
Pick one time every week where you won’t take calls, answer tickets or check email. It might be Wednesday morning from 9-10:30. Put it in your calendar and protect it.
In that time, sit with a notebook and ask yourself three plain questions:
- What feels heavy or annoying in the business right now?
- Is this mainly a people problem, a process problem, or something about how I’m working?
- What small change this week would make that problem a little bit easier?
Then choose just one of those small changes and decide who will do it in the next seven days: you, or someone in your team.
You don’t get a better team, or a better business, by only thinking in the gaps between fires. If you never stop to think, you will stay busy forever and nothing important will change.
You have to create the quiet on purpose, or it never comes.
How to build your first real leadership team
If you want a business that can run without you one day, you can’t stay as the only decision-maker in the room. At some point, you need a real leadership team.
Not just the tech who’s been here the longest plus your mate from school.
You need people who take responsibility without you chasing them. People who can look you in the eye and say, “I don’t think that’s right,” and explain why. People who can make big calls while you’re away and keep things steady.
Ian is very clear about this:
- “One of the biggest things that’s going to give you your biggest valuation is for you not being in that business every single day. You’ve got to get out. Owner not needed”
That doesn’t mean you disappear. It just means the business doesn’t fall over if you’re not in every call.
A simple way to start is to picture your business a few years from now when it’s working well. At the top is you as the owner. Underneath you, there are a few clear leaders: one looking after service and support, one looking after projects and delivery, one looking after sales and growth, and maybe someone keeping a close eye on money and operations.
Now be honest with yourself: which of those jobs are you still doing today? If you’re ‘just helping a bit’ in an area, that usually means you still own it.
Pick just one of those areas to free yourself from over the next year. For most MSPs, that’s either service (because you’re still pulled onto tickets and escalations) or operations (because everything practical still ends up with you).
Before you think about who should do it, get very clear on what the job actually is. What results should this person be responsible for? How will you both know if it’s working? How often will you meet them to talk about it?
Only then look at who might sit in that seat. You might already have someone in the team who’s close and just needs support and training. Or you might decide you need to hire from outside. Either way, accept that if they truly own that area, your own day‑to‑day will change. That’s the point.
A simple test for whether you’ve built a real leader in a role is this:
If you went on holiday for four weeks with no phone signal, would that part of the business keep running in a way you’d recognise when you came back?
If the honest answer is no, that shows you what to work on next. Not another tool. Not another client. The person who needs to be able to lead without you.
FREE Guide: Building an MSP that Runs Without You
-
Stop Being the Bottleneck in Your MSP
See exactly where you’re in the way, which jobs you should never be doing, and how to hand them off without everything breaking. -
Turn “Helpful Techs” Into a Real Leadership Team
Learn how to clean up messy roles, grow people in layers, and give both future leaders and deep experts a clear path inside your MSP. -
Build a Business That Works Without You on Every Call
Use simple tools to design an MSP that keeps running, growing and gaining value even when you’re not in the room.
scaleUP Podcast: Listen to the Full Episode
This blog only scratches the surface of what Ian shared on scaleUP. Hearing it in his own words hits differently, especially the parts about rock bottom, family pressure, and paying for help when everyone around him thought he was mad.
In the full episode, you’ll hear:
- How Ian went from corporate comfort to running out of money in six months
- The exact moment he decided to pay ‘ridiculous’ money for a coach
- How he and his business partner blended two coaching businesses, two styles and two teams
- Real examples of MSP owners getting out of their own way and finally building leadership teams
If you want practical, honest talk about people, leadership and getting yourself out of the middle of everything, it’s worth an hour of your time.
Then do the hard bit: take one thing you hear, and actually change something in your MSP this week.
