The central reason small businesses fail, in Michael E. Gerber’s framework, is a structural trap: founders stay stuck doing the technical work instead of building systems that let the company operate beyond them. Gerber calls this the entrepreneurial myth. Being good at the work does not automatically make someone good at building the business that delivers it.

In this episode of Business Systems Explored, Gerber explains the thinking behind The E-Myth, the technician trap, and the operating systems that help an owner step back from daily busyness without losing control of quality.

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Effective team management in a busy software company means setting clear priorities, protecting focus, learning directly from customers, and shipping on a predictable cadence. In this episode of Business Systems Explored, Vinay Patankar and Tony Brown speak with Nathan Kontny, who took over Highrise in 2014.

Nathan moved into the CEO role almost overnight and started coding on the same day. He learned what customers needed by owning support, then balanced product delivery, hiring, marketing, and the daily work of leading a software team.

In this episode of Business Systems Explored, we talk B2B sales with Pouyan Salehi, then CEO and co-founder of PersistIQ.

Cold emailing is not about blasting huge lists of random leads. That approach burns through prospects and damages your brand. A small, focused list and one salesperson can still produce results when the targeting, message, follow-up, and measurement work as one system.

In this episode of the Business Systems Explored podcast, Aaron Lapierre, then Customer Success Director at DoubleDutch, explains the systems his team used to retain high-value customers.

The stressful month in the life of a customer success manager comes down to competing commitments: customers need results, product teams need clear feedback, and hard event deadlines do not move. Aaron shares the customer success process DoubleDutch used to keep those commitments visible without turning every account into a high-touch fire drill.

In this 2016 episode of Business Systems Explored, Armando Biondi, then CEO of AdEspresso, explains the expert system he used to manage Facebook ad campaigns through disciplined testing.

If you have ever run a quick Facebook campaign to test the waters, you know what a shot in the dark it can be. A first tentative campaign can produce a painfully high cost per click and very little else.

The following is a guest contribution from Wendy Tadokoro, Systemisation Specialist at Organising Works!

As a successful entrepreneur, your business eventually reaches the point where you cannot stay personally involved in every recurring task, handoff, and customer promise. That is when business systemization becomes more than an operations project, and these are the mistakes you need to avoid if you want documented workflows, trained ownership, and a business that can keep improving without everything running through you.

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Business Systems Explored was Process Street’s podcast about the systems behind growing companies. Season one collected 29 small business podcast interviews with founders, operators, marketers, sales leaders, and process experts on how work becomes repeatable.

These interviews cover video marketing, startup marketing, growth strategy, outbound sales, customer success, hiring, delegation, PR, SEO, and systemizing a business from scratch. If you want a practical route through the season, start with the themes below, then browse the selected episode write-ups from the Process Street archive.

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In this episode of Business Systems Explored, we talk to Dmitry Dragilev about the systems behind the marketing successes he’s engineered for startups like Polar and JustReachOut.io.

For startups, failure to get traction quickly can mean the difference between a multi-million dollar exit and another Silicon Valley tombstone.

Since it’s so vital to get exposure from the outset, you need to get the press, early adopters, and Google on your side.

This episode is all about how to do that: an interview with the growth hacker and startup PR expert Dmitry Dragilev.

Listen to the episode to find out where to start with an audit of your marketing site, how to write content that will force Google to pay attention, and Dmitry’s best hack for startup SEO.

Links to listen

• Listen on iTunes (iOS)
• Stitcher (Android)
• Listen on Business Systems Explored website

And remember, if you like the show, please leave us a review and rating.

Click below to subscribe on iTunes:

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In this episode of Business Systems Explored, we talk to Doyle Albee, host of PR is Dead and president of PR firm ‎Metzger Albee.

Public relations expert Doyle Albee shares his stories, tips, and processes on building a PR strategy for your business.

We chat about everything from building relationships with reporters to knowing the perfect time to strike with your story. And, the myth that ‘all news is good news’ is debunked!

Get inside the world of reporters and their motivations with these unique insights from the president of Metzger Albee PR firm, and host of the Rainmaker.fm podcast PR is Dead.

Links to listen

• Listen on iTunes (iOS)
• Stitcher (Android)
• Listen on Business Systems Explored website

And remember, if you like the show, please leave us a review and rating.

Click below to subscribe on iTunes:

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In this episode of Business Systems Explored, I explain how to manage your tasks, delegate work, and build systems that help your business keep costs down, and work more productively.

At Process Street, I manage several different teams and assign hundreds of tasks every month.

You’d think that when you have to explain, upload, and send information to so many people so regularly, you’d have no time to do anything else…

You’d be wrong.

Managing a busy startup means you need to take a lot of shortcuts. So, thankfully I’ve found and documented a way to assign tasks to anyone from any device without switching between apps, sending emails, or messing around.

In this episode, I break down the system I use so you can re-create it and start delegating tasks successfully and efficiently.

Links to listen

• Listen on iTunes (iOS)
• Stitcher (Android)
• Listen on Business Systems Explored website

And remember, if you like the show, please leave us a review and rating.

Click below to subscribe on iTunes:

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