You’re Not Scaling, You’re Just Swelling

Most MSPs believe growth happens by adding people. It’s the standard equation: More clients require more technicians. More work requires more hands.

On the surface, this seems obvious. But it’s also the fastest way to build a fragile, low-margin business that exhausts its best talent.

This brings us to Rule #3 of my Ten Golden Rules of PSA.

Rule 3: Everything We Can Automate, Outsource, or Do Remotely, We Will

This rule exists because time does not scale evenly.

If every new client adds proportional weight to your operation, you aren't scaling. You are just slowly crushing your own team.

To relieve that pressure, you have to identify where your service delivery is most rigid. And usually, the biggest source of rigidity is the belief that "good service" requires physical presence.

The Rigidity of "Being There"

On-site work is the most expensive form of service delivery, even when it feels productive.

It’s not just the travel time that kills your margins; it’s the fact that on-site work destroys flexibility. Once a technician is on-site, they are locked in. They cannot be reassigned. They cannot absorb interruption gracefully. Their time becomes rigid.

Remote work, automation, and outsourcing exist to restore elasticity to the system. This rule is not about avoiding work. It is about managing work to leverage resources and multiply time.

Are Your Architects Doing Janitorial Work?

Organizations that ignore this rule trap their most skilled people in the least valuable work.

We see it all the time: Senior technicians become firefighters. Architects become janitors. You have highly paid problem-solvers spending their days resetting passwords, reinstalling agents, and chasing issues the system already knows how to prevent.

Over time, frustration sets in – not because the work is hard, but because it is beneath the level of thinking the organization actually needs. This is how talent leaves without ever formally resigning.

The Economics of Effort

Automation changes the economics of effort.

In every MSP, there are categories of effort that occur again and again: onboarding steps, remediation tasks, routine fixes. When these are performed manually each time, the organization is quietly choosing to pay full price forever. That decision compounds, even if no one ever says it out loud.

A task done once and reused a hundred times costs less than a task done manually a hundred times. Standardization makes automation possible. Outsourcing makes non-differentiated work movable.

Together, they turn time from a fixed cost into a lever.

The "Too Busy" Fallacy

Teams that resist this rule often insist they are “too busy” to automate.

That belief is the trap.

The busier the organization feels, the more urgently this rule is required. When everything requires human intervention, the organization becomes sensitive to load spikes. A few busy days turn into backlog. Backlog turns into SLA pressure. SLA pressure turns into exceptions. None of this shows up as a single failure; it shows up as constant tension.

Changing the Question

Teams that live by Rule #3 develop a reflexive habit of asking a different question.

They stop asking, “Who should do this?” and instead, they start asking, “How do we make sure this doesn’t require a human next time?”

That shift changes how problems are approached. Root causes matter more. Patterns become valuable. Fixing the system becomes more important than fixing today.

Break the Ceiling, Not Your People

It is important to be clear: This rule does not mean eliminating human judgment or removing client relationships. It means you stop racing to automate chaos. Automation applied to unstable processes simply accelerates failure.

The sequence matters: Standardize first, then automate. Make work visible, then decide who or what should do it.

This rule is about leverage. If every outcome requires proportional effort, you are capped. Remote-first execution, automation, and outsourcing are how service organizations break that ceiling without breaking their people.

The Only Way Out

So you should ask yourself: "Am I building a business that scales, or one that just swells?"

If you want to grow without the constant chaos, you have to stop solving the same problems over and over again. Remember, automation isn't a luxury for when you finally have time. It is the only way you will ever get time.

Get the Full Framework

This rule is just one part of a larger system. If you are tired of "controlled chaos" and want to see the full system I use to fix service operations, grab my FREE Info Guide. It’s a fast, no-fluff checklist of the non-negotiable rules for tickets, time, and handoffs.

Download the 10 Golden Rules of PSA

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