From Frustration to Flow: Building a System-Driven, Growth-Minded Business (for less than 50 employees)

Most of the businesses we work with have less than 100 employees. In fact, if you were to do a bell curve, you'd see that most of our clients fall somewhere between five and 50 employees in that sweet spot. So we tend to give a lot of examples. The majority of our clients are in the contracting space or the AEC space—architecture, engineering, contracting—or industries that support those. It’s a privilege to work with them. Within that, what we typically run into is not a lack of ideas or concepts, but a mindset barrier—that tends to be the rub—that keeps them from being liberated from chaos and making time for what matters most. Hey, it's Scott Beebe with Business On Purpose. Always a delight to bring you a few nuggets that can be helpful as you own a business you’re trying not to be owned by. That leads to our mission: to liberate you from chaos and make time for what matters most. Make sure to visit our website, businessonpurpose.com, where you’ll find all sorts of free resources. If you go to businessonpurpose.com/healthy, you can take a five-to-seven-minute assessment to evaluate the backend health of your business. Recently, I shared examples from American Paving Designs, clients of ours for years. I told you about how they had that systems mindset—whatever task they do, they document it, capture it, and record it like it's the last time they'll ever do it. Their approach to training and information management showcases the power of a growth mindset in action. By creating training videos their team can access and rewind as needed, they've implemented a system that saves time, reduces frustration, and empowers their team. That is the ultimate task and indication of a good leader: equipping the team. This method benefits both new employees seeking information for the first time and experienced staff who would otherwise answer the same questions repeatedly. How many times have we heard clients say, "How do I get people to stop knocking on my door asking to pick my brain?" One of the biggest barriers isn’t ideas or opportunities—it’s mindset. Their commitment to systematizing knowledge reflects a mindset shift crucial to growing businesses. What holds people back from systematizing isn’t usually skill—it’s mindset. Carol Dweck explains in her great book Mindset that a fixed mindset—locked up and padlocked—can hold you back and trap your business in chaos. A growth mindset, on the other hand, opens up continuous improvement, or what we call RPM: repetition, predictability, meaning—and also efficiency. With a growth mindset, you can begin to intentionally and systematically map out your business processes. Why? Not because you're a robot or obsessed, but because you want to equip others. This isn’t just about process—it's about creating an environment of equipment where continuous, relentless learning (one of our five core values) and improvement are prioritized. You might be thinking, “But I'm not a systems person—that's not who I am.” Well, if that’s the case, you have two options: push yourself to learn and develop the skills, or find people who excel in that area to help you. Either way, you must shift your mindset to understand the power of systematizing so that you can equip others. What’s the purpose? To equip others. Why? So you and they can be liberated from chaos and make time for what matters most—not just leisure time, but meaningful work time, too. As a leader, your role is to provide the vision, mission, values, culture, resources, and support necessary to build and refine systems over time. Isn't it interesting how quickly I rattled those off—vision, mission, values, culture, resources, support? That takes a lot of time. I recently mapped out every element that needs to be trained in our business—not including the coaching task—and I’m already at 150. Creating effective systems isn’t a one-time or one-module task. It’s an ongoing effort to build, manage, and sharpen your tools. Continuous improvement is what separates businesses that thrive from those that merely survive—or worse, leave you stuck with a business run by a boss you hate and a job you don’t like. By embracing a growth mindset and committing to systematization, you're setting your business up for long-term success—not just financially, but in solving today's problems and building a framework for tomorrow's challenges. It’s both/and: learning from the past, acting in the present, and shaping the future. So what stops you? Again—it’s the mindset. Visit mybusinessonpurpose.com/healthy, take the five-to-seven-minute assessment, and get a clear picture of where your business stands process-wise. Let us help you get closer to being liberated from chaos so you can make time for what matters most.

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