Case Study: Scaling Leadership and Operations to Achieve 10x Growth Across 42 States
Client: Chris Hagenbuch, CEO
Industry: Tech‑enabled services / government program support
Company Size at Start: ~15 employees, ~$3M revenue
Company Size Now: ~175 employees in 42 states, $30-40M revenue
Introduction
Chris leads a tech‑enabled services company that supports large, complex government programs. As the company took on bigger opportunities and more demanding work, the leadership team faced a serious challenge: they needed to scale quickly and substantially-from a small, founder‑centric organization to a national operation-without the systems or leadership structure to support that growth.
Chris knew he did not have the internal playbook to scale from a tight core team into a multi‑state organization without risking a breakdown in delivery, leadership, or culture.
The Problem
When Chris first reached out to Howard, his core problem was:
Impending scale without a scalable system or leadership bench
"It basically meant I had to take a company of, like, at the time, 15 people to be 100 or more. And I was like, I don't know how to scale this like that."
Underneath that were several related issues:
- No clear path to build mid‑level and senior leadership capable of carrying growth.
- No disciplined goal‑setting, planning, or tracking cadence across the company.
- Heavy reliance on the founders to keep everything moving and under control.
Even when some early growth scenarios shifted, the underlying challenge remained:
How do we build a company that can scale from a small, founder‑centric team to a national organization without blowing up?
Chris Hagenbuch
CEO
How Activate Group Helped
The relationship with Activate Group began around this scale challenge and evolved into a long‑term coaching engagement focused on both the executive team and the leadership system.
Executive team coaching
Howard worked first with three, then four executives, and over time a broader executive team, through:
- Quarterly and annual planning sessions, and
- Ongoing one‑on‑one or two‑on‑one coaching with Chris and his business partner.
Leadership system and goal‑setting cadence
Activate Group helped install a quarterly and annual rhythm for:
-
Setting Goals
-
Tracking Progress
-
Involving a growing second tier of leaders in planning and execution
Building concentric circles of ownership
The company moved from:
- Two founders personally holding everything together
To:
- Multiple tiers of leadership who could own key outcomes and drive execution independently.
Metrics and accountability (adopted over time)
- Introduced metrics and scorecards for key goals.
- It took time-and several years where metrics were more talk than practice-before the company fully embraced consistent metric tracking. But once they did, as Chris puts it, it was "all starting to come together."
Activate Group did not just provide a framework; Howard stayed alongside Chris and his team for years, guiding them through each growth stage.
Results
Chris is clear that market opportunity played a role in their growth-but equally clear that without Activate Group, they could not have executed on that opportunity at the same level.
Scale of people and footprint
"When Howard met us, [we had] 15 people; we have 175 now in 42 states."
Scale of revenue
"We went from a $3 million business to a 30 to 40 million dollar business."
Ability to execute on growth
"I don't know if the coaching was the catalyst for growth or it was what allowed us to deliver right, to execute on growth… because we were working with Howard, it helped us be able to actually execute and take advantage of that."
Leadership capacity and ownership
Multiple tiers of leadership are now engaged in planning and execution:
"We actually held to [our goals this year], and we involved a whole lot more people in the process…"
"Now I have a whole new set of executives… and now they're taking it and running with it."
Adoption of metrics and discipline
After years of exposure, the team fully embraced metrics:
"We finally added metrics this last quarter, and we're finally tracking the metrics… he's been telling us about metrics for, I don't know, four years… But finally, we're doing it. So… it's all starting to come together."
Bottom line:
Activate Group helped Chris build the leadership capacity, goal‑setting discipline, and operating cadence required to grow revenue by more than 10x and headcount by more than 10x across 42 states, without losing control.
Client's Words
On whether coaching was the catalyst or enabler:
On the combined impact on growth and leadership: