Why Most Small Businesses Fail to Scale (The Systems Problem Nobody Talks About)

Bradley Hamner, October 6, 2025

Last week we talked about the first core problem small business owners face: lack of clarity.

Today, we’re diving into what I believe is the biggest, most common problem I see. And this was absolutely the case for me.

Core problem number two: Lack of true, documented systems and processes.

The Toronto Moment: When Everything Changed

Fast forward to 2015. I burned out, experienced panic attacks (didn’t know what it was at the time), but a few months later, I’m in Toronto at Strategic Coach. Many of you are familiar with that program by Dan Sullivan.

I was actually in the wrong group. I was supposed to be with my regular group, but the dates didn’t work out. So they allowed me to attend a different session—and it ended up being with much higher-level people.

I sat next to a gentleman. Found out later he had played Major League Baseball and was in an adjacent industry to mine.

We’re doing this exercise called “10x is easier than 2x.” He goes first and says: “Well, last year we made 40 million topline and I made 5 million personally. So here’s what 400 million and 50 million would look like 10x.”

He had written it all down on one piece of paper. “Well, our company would be here and then we would do this and then we would do that.”

I was completely floored. Those numbers had just blown me away.

Then of course he says, “Now you go.”

I said, “I’m not about to go. You make more personally per month than my company does in an entire year.”

He said, “Look, it’s just systems and processes.”

And at that time I was so frustrated with small business that I kind of smarted off—not towards him, but to that comment. I said:

“I’m so tired of hearing people say ‘systems and processes,’ but nobody ever shows me what it actually looks like. What does that actually mean?”

It was like the inner voice finally came out of me.

He said, “Well, at lunch, I’ll show you.”

Behind the Curtain: What Real Systems Look Like

And so he did. We grabbed lunch and he pulled up his computer. He started going through:

“This is how we do this. This is how we get leads. This is how we convert the leads. This is our system for that. This is how we train people.”

He was just flipping through documents. I remember how beautifully structured the documents were. I don’t remember anything ON the documents at all.

But it left such an impression on me.

When I came back, yes, did I get on that plane and pull up Word and start trying to document things? Sure.

But way more important was the identity shift inside of myself.

Instead of seeing myself as the doer of all the things, I ultimately saw myself as really the architect of the business.

This is the shift from Rainmaker to Architect. And this time, it wasn’t just a good idea to go build systems and processes—I was actually going to go do it.

[See how Phil R. built repeatable processes and 2.5x his revenue in 2 years →]

The Challenges Nobody Warns You About

Now that brought up a whole set of challenges:

• How do you actually document a really good process?
• Where do you put it? What file folder digitally?
• Do I put it in three-ring binders? Do I have it on people’s desks?
• How do I train the team on that?
• Am I doing this right?

I mean, there were all of those questions. At the time there wasn’t AI, but even when it got tough, I was like: “No, I’m going to continue to do this. I’ve got to. I can no longer allow the business to be personality driven. It really needs to be a process-driven business.”

I started to do work thinking: What is the difference between a system and a process and a playbook and a play and a procedure?

And ultimately, the more research I did, the more confused I actually got. I realized that everybody was just using words interchangeably.

I wanted to have words that actually meant something. Say: This is what this is. This is what this is.

Building a Business Operating System

So ultimately what we ended up building was really a business operating system for the business—something that ran outside or independently of myself.

I began to externalize and get the business simply out of my head.

The more that I did that, the more that I began to externalize the intellectual property and the way that we did things, the more commonalities I began to see.

I was pulling in so many different directions from books I was reading. Maybe I’d read a Patrick Lencioni book about the Ideal Team Player. Now, because I had this operating system, I could take some of those ideas and language from a book like Ideal Team Player and I knew where to put it.

That was really key. Because before, on my desktop or in paper folders, things were kind of all over the place. I never had a unified way to actually run the business.

That took me a very, very long time.

[See how Tyler M. transformed his approach with documented playbooks →]

The 12 Core Playbooks That Run Your Business

Ultimately, the way that I believe it now is that the business itself runs on just a handful of core playbooks. In fact, I think it’s 12 playbooks:

1. Blueprint Playbook – Your vision and roadmap
2. Culture Playbook – How your team operates
3. Game Plan Playbook – Your strategic plan
4. Communication Rhythms Playbook – How you stay aligned
5. Keeping Score Playbook – Your metrics and KPIs
6. Operations Playbook – How the business runs
7. Attract Playbook – How you find A-players
8. Develop Playbook – How you grow your team
9. Retain Playbook – How you keep great people
10. Marketing Playbook – How you generate leads
11. Sales Playbook – How you convert leads
12. Cash Playbook – How you manage finances

Once I began to organize it into these sections (and trust me, it took all kinds of iterations), everything started to fall into place.

These handful of playbooks together form your operating system. Now you have file folders, these buckets, these places that you can actually slot things into for the business.

The 12-Month Operating System Build

I believe with the right approach, with the right amount of allocation from you as the business owner, with a little bit of support from your executive assistant and a little bit of support from AI, you can get your operating system done in 12 months.

Does it sometimes take a little bit more time than that? Sure, it does for some people. But I think you really can.

Think about how different your business will be when you’ve finally externalized all of that intellectual property that you have in your head. When you have places to actually begin to put it. When you have a team headquarters so that your team is not going on scavenger hunts all the time looking for documentation.

“Where is that XYZ thing?”

“We know where that thing is. We can point to it. It’s inside this playbook. You can go into this folder, this three-ring binder to be able to find it.”

It creates so much clarity, but also so much calm for the business that you actually feel like you’re on top of things as the business owner.

You’re not running around like a chicken with your head cut off all the time.

[Learn how Dave C. rebuilt his leadership foundation with Blueprint systems →]

Building on Sand vs. Building on Rock

Yeah, you’re ambitious and you’re driven, but that can come at a cost if you’re just winging it all the time.

I think we know intuitively that if we just wing it, we’re building the business on a deck of cards—building it on sand as opposed to really building it with a solid foundation.

The People vs. Process Problem

I’ll leave you with this.

About a year after I got back from Strategic Coach and started to really lean into this systems and processes thing, I had hired my first EA. I’ve talked about this before, but we started to get a really nice process in place for this one particular thing. It was working great and making money.

She got an incredible offer. She left about 11 months later.

As she walked out the door, I thought to myself: “Wow, there goes all of that knowledge, all the things that I had poured into her.”

The business was people-dependent. And look, you need to have people on your team. You want to have great A-players for sure.

But there’s a big difference between having a people-dependent business and a process-driven business.

Getting Above the Business Means Getting It Out of Your Head

The second core problem that business owners face is that they know they need to have systems and processes, but nothing’s really documented. It’s not put anywhere.

There’s no institutional knowledge, no shared knowledge within the team of how to do things.

It all sits on your desktop, an individual team member’s desktop, on their drive. They have the thing. Well, what happens if they leave?

And even if they don’t have it documented, they have it in their head. They know how to do it. So if they leave, all that knowledge leaves too.

The way to solve the problem of lack of systems and processes is you’ve got to learn how to externalize it. Get above the business so you can see what needs to be documented. Become the architect of the business. Learn how to run the business on a business operating system.

That’s obviously what we do. It’s a core part of the program we have at BlueprintOS—to teach people literally how to do that. We give them access to our tools, our templates, our playbook templates, so that you’re not starting from a cold start.

You have the community pouring into you and the encouragement to be able to get your operating system built.

Next week, we’ll talk about core problem number three.