Get a Grip On Your MSP

When I was running an MSP, there were days it felt like I was strapped into the passenger seat of a runaway car. Every twist and turn? Fires to put out. Employee issues. Client emergencies. Tools piling up. And no matter how hard I worked, I was still behind. Sound familiar?

If you’re living in that kind of chaos, you’re not alone… but there’s a way out! It’s called the Entrepreneurial Operating System: EOS for short. We discovered it through a book called Get a Grip by Gino Wickman. And let me tell you, this system flipped our business on its head in the best possible way!

EOS is a framework that helped us transform our MSP from a Frankenstein of duct-taped solutions into a streamlined machine. Read on for exactly how it helped!

Why You Might Be Stuck (Even When You’re Growing)

Here’s the truth most MSPs won’t admit: success can be overwhelming.

More clients. More staff. More tools. More expectations. At some point, you stop running your business and it starts running you!

That’s where EOS comes in. One of the first things it teaches is: your business is broken, and it always will be.

Wait, what? Yep. That realization actually freed us. Once we stopped chasing perfection, we started building with clarity and control.

Step 1: Vision

Can you tell me exactly who you serve, what makes you different, and where you’re going? If not… you need to Get a Grip!

EOS introduced us to the Vision Traction Organizer (V/TO): eight questions that forced us to clarify what the heck we were doing:

1. What are our core values?
2. What’s our core focus?
3. What’s our 10-year target?
4. Who are we marketing to, and what do they care about?
5. What does our business look like in 3 years?
6. What’s the 1-year plan?
7. What are our quarterly rocks (goals)?
8. What issues are getting in the way?

When we answered those questions honestly, everything changed. We stopped chasing the wrong clients. We stopped hiring the wrong techs. We grew with intention.

For example, we focused on clients who needed uptime: law firms, financial groups, businesses in disaster-prone regions. Our 3-year goal? $2.5M in revenue, 90% of clients fully in the cloud, and documented SOPs across the board.

Step 2: People

One of the hardest parts of scaling is people. EOS keeps it simple: the right people in the right seats.

They’ve got to:

1. Get it
2. Want it
3. Have the capacity to do it

We had techs who were brilliant… but couldn’t follow a documented process to save their lives. Or they didn’t care about the client experience. At first, we made excuses. But when we finally committed to EOS, we made the hard calls. And while our team got smaller, it also got stronger!

Step 3: Data

Too many MSPs make decisions based on feelings or whoever yells loudest.

Not anymore!

EOS taught us to trust the numbers. We implemented a scorecard of 5–15 weekly metrics that told us whether we were healthy or not.

We tracked:

• Cloud assessments booked
• Cloud deals closed
• MRR added
• Average ticket resolution time
• % of clients fully in the cloud

If a metric was off, we didn’t wait for a 90-minute meeting. Five minutes with the scorecard, and we had clarity!

Step 4: Issues

If your team keeps tripping over the same problems, you don’t lack solutions: you lack discipline.

EOS gave us IDS: Identify, Discuss, Solve.

We used to let issues fester: tech blamed sales, sales blamed tech. Once we started using IDS, we added issues to a list, tackled them one by one, and got to the root cause.

One example? Our cloud migrations were a mess. Turns out… no one was following a standard onboarding SOP. Once we documented and trained it? Problem solved!

Step 5: Process

If you want a smooth-running MSP, you have to document your processes.

Standard operating procedures gave our team the consistency to deliver value without babysitting. Everyone knew what to do and how to do it.

Step 6: Traction

This is where the rubber meets the road.

Vision without execution is just dreaming. EOS helped us build traction using rocks, which were 3 to 5 big, important goals per quarter.

One quarter, our rock was to move five clients from on-prem to cloud. Everyone knew their role, we tracked it weekly, and we got it done! That’s how momentum builds with the EOS framework.

Final Thoughts

Most MSPs don’t have a growth problem. They have a clarity problem. Or a people problem. Or a process problem.

And that’s fixable!

Start with one step. One meeting. One better hire. Then another. You can do this!

Want to start today? Build a quick scorecard with 5–7 meaningful metrics and assign an owner to each. Set a weekly target and start tracking!

Today, I’ll leave you with this quote from Benjamin Franklin: “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

Have a great week and weekend!