Why Power Fails and Purpose Wins When Growing a Company

Bring fresh, real-world insights on leadership, culture, and scaling to your podcast audience.

Mike Chaput is the CEO of Endsight, a $35M IT services firm he built from the ground up. With over 25 years of entrepreneurial experience, including leading through bankruptcy, scaling through acquisitions, and shaping a values-driven culture, Mike blends Ivy League strategy with hard-won operator grit. He’s been featured on podcasts like MSP Mindset and M&A Unpacked, delivering candid, actionable lessons leaders remember and share.

You can have everyone on the same payroll and still not have a team.

If your team doesn't know where you're going or what matters most along the way, leadership becomes babysitting and culture becomes chaos.

A logo on a business card doesn't make people a team. A shared goal does. Without one, you've got a group of individuals each optimizing for themselves. The friction you're feeling is what that looks like from the inside. Mike's been on both sides of that. In this keynote he walks audiences through what changes when vision and values stop being a poster on the wall and start being the operating system the business actually runs on.

The keynote: What Actually Makes a Team a Team

What actually makes a team a team. (Hint: it's not the org chart, the offsite, or the happy hour.

Why a shared goal changes what your team sees. Two people can look at the same problem and one walks past while the other stops to fix it. The goal is what decides which one of them you've got.

How to cascade an audacious 10-year vision down into what your people have to do on Monday morning. The blueprint approach Mike uses with his own team.

How Endsight's RSVP values (Respect and Connect, Servant's Heart, Value Value, Progress Over Comfort) actually show up in hiring, in feedback, in how problems get raised and solved.

Why vague values create the drama you're trying to fix. When the values at the top of your hierarchy permit bad behavior, you get bad behavior.

The neuroscience under all of this. Why a real goal turns your team into a coordinated pride of lions, and why "we're going to double revenue" leaves them as a herd of zebras instead.

The hiring, onboarding, and meeting rhythm that keeps values alive. Without the rhythm, values are decoration.

Why leaning on structural power keeps your best people in stress mode and shuts down the work you actually want from them.

The spirit of play. What it is, why it's the highest-performing motive on the scale, and how a leader invites people into it.

The thread that runs through all of it: vision and values aren't a culture exercise. They're the difference between a team and a collection of individuals each optimizing for themselves.

Founders, CEOs, and leadership teams scaling through the messy middle

Leaders whose values exercise is on a wall and isn't doing any work

Companies whose culture used to be great and now feels fragmented

Industry associations and peer groups serving operators in growth mode

Anyone tired of leading from structural power and ready to lead from a shared goal

About Mike Chaput

Mike Chaput didn’t wait around for permission to lead. He bought his first company at 24 with borrowed money and zero experience. What followed was a crash course in leadership, finance, & failure that ended in bankruptcy and began a lifelong obsession with learning how businesses really work.

He took those lessons and built a new company from the ground up, scaling it to $35 million in revenue with best-in-class margins and a team of 140. Along the way, Mike discovered what truly drives business success: not control, not hustle, but clarity of vision and a values-driven culture that people want to be part of.

Mike holds degrees from both Columbia Business School and UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, and has continued learning long after the diplomas, auditing courses and studying with the intensity of someone who never assumes they know enough. His approach blends top-tier business theory with hard-won experience in the trenches.

Today, he’s the CEO of Endsight, a member of the CEO Advisory Council for a multi-billion-dollar software company, and a board member for two private equity roll-ups. He brings a grounded, operator’s perspective to topics like M&A, leadership, team motivation, and sustainable growth.

Mike believes that when leaders trade structural authority for shared purpose, companies grow faster, teams perform better, and the whole thing becomes more human and more scalable. That’s the heart of what he brings to the mic. If your audience is full of founders, CEOs, and executives navigating the challenges of growth, culture, and staying true to what matters, Mike’s the kind of guest who will leave them thinking, quoting, and ready to lead better.

Mike Chaput

@thechaputperspect

@chapperspective

@thechaputperspective

Mike Chaput

I would highly recommend Mike as a guest on other podcasts. As the editor, I often gauge the quality of an episode by how engaged I am during the editing process and Mike’s episode had my full attention.

What stood out the most was his willingness to be open and honest. He didn’t hold back when sharing his past struggles or successes. I know this interview will resonate with other MSPs because it highlights what’s truly necessary for growth.

As a producer, when I’m evaluating guests, I’m looking for more than just a nice shot and good audio. I want someone who’s willing to be real and share their story, because that’s how we genuinely help others. Mike didn’t disappoint. Honestly, and I promise I’m not just saying this, his episode was one of our best because of that.

Zac Hudson, Producer of the MSP Mindset podcast

Mike's presentation is something that should happen when architects and engineers are in school before they get to the point where they are running a practice! … Mike is a gem whose knowledge and experience should be shared far
and wide in the A/E/C industry

Betsy Nickless, Society for Design Administration, Orange County Chapter

Values that work, and values that don't.
Most companies' values are written once, framed in a hallway, and quietly ignored. Mike walks through what it looks like when a value set is doing actual work in a business and what it looks like when it's quietly causing the problems leadership is trying to solve.

Lessons from the brink.
What Mike learned from going bankrupt at 28. Not the bankruptcy itself, the four and a half years of decisions that led to it. The most expensive education he ever paid for, and what it taught him about what holds a team together when things get hard.

No magic in the systems. Magic in the discipline.
What Lean, EOS, Rockefeller Habits, and Built to Last each get right, and where they each leave you stuck. Why the team that actually executes isn't the one with the best system. It's the one with the discipline to run any system long enough to see what's working.

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IT That Works Where You Do

Secure Systems. Smarter Operations.

Not Just IT Support. A Strategic Partner.

People First. Technology Second.

Why Power Fails and Purpose Wins When Growing a Company

Bring fresh, real-world insights on leadership, culture, and scaling to your podcast audience.

If your listeners are founders, CEOs, or executives navigating growth, culture, and purpose, Mike is the kind of guest who sparks engaging, high-value conversations.

What Actually
Makes a Team

A 45 to 60 minute keynote on the vision and values work that turns capable individuals into a team that can scale.

You can have everyone on the same payroll and still not have a team.

The keynote: What Actually Makes a Team a Team

Who this is for

About Mike Chaput

What Others Are Saying

How To Book Mike

Schedule a Discovery Call

Have a Conversation

It's Finally Set!

Mike's Company

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