This week I had the pleasure of having one of our ACE peer groups in town for their quarterly meeting. They toured Grunder Landscaping and met with the GLC leadership team, before heading to the beautiful campus at Aileron for an afternoon session focused on conquering the biggest challenges they’re facing now as owners. Then we went out for a great dinner, filled with learning and laughs, before meeting the next day to drill down on finance and the enormous importance of monitoring those metrics if you want your business to succeed.

Today, when I looked back over the notes I took over the course of the two and a half days we spent together, my eyes were immediately drawn to something Vince Torchia, my partner at MGI, said to the group: “Energy and grit are not how you’ll grow your company. Processes and systems are.” It’s a terrific piece of wisdom he picked up from Mark Thompson, our business advisor at MGI, and it’s something everyone in the green industry would be smart to remember.

As owners and entrepreneurs, we tend to think we can do it all—and that we have to do it all if we want to come out ahead. We think it all rests on our shoulders, so we keep pushing ourselves to work harder and longer, believing that’s what will make the difference. I used to take that approach myself, but the truth is that Mark and Vince are right: That’s not how you’ll grow your company. You’ll really only grow by putting the processes and systems in place that lessen reliance on you as the owner and enable your whole team to operate at peak efficiency.

Do you have the right processes and systems in place at your company? Identify the area of your business that’s troubling you the most and spend some time this week thinking about a process or system you can improve or implement to make it better.

See you next week!