Written by Jessica Murray

A little over two weeks ago, I led my last in-person workshop of 2025 (I think) for a group of entrepreneurs in partnership with the Arts and Business Council of Greater Nashville.

The topic?

Built to Scale: Streamlining Operations to Power Creative Business Growth

The content was geared toward creative entrepreneurs, with a goal of providing a strong framework for how to understand and audit foundational business systems. I also aimed to instill the message that structure within a business isn’t a mechanism for stifling creativity.

The three questions

At the start, I asked three warm-up questions to get a feel for who was in the room.

Q1: What’s the #1 reason you attended this event?

The answers ranged from:

I hate Ops (my favorite).
Supporting ME (my second favorite).
Juggling multiple businesses and looking for guidance.
Trying to scale.
I was just put into a brand new role, don’t have experience and don’t know where to start.
To bring learnings back to my team.

Q2: How long have you been in business?

This one surprised me the most. A handful had launched just a couple of years ago, while one attendee had been building since the 1970s.

Q3: What’s the #1 challenge in your business today?

The answers sounded familiar: scaling ceilings, forecasting, growth, structure, focus, repeatability, streamlining.

I share those highlights (especially from Q3), in part, to say: If you’re staring at your screen thinking you would respond similarly, you’re in good company. You’re not alone.

Most businesses hit these walls at various points in the journey. They’re not signs of failure. Instead, signals of growth and evolution, and a “soft” nudge that it’s probably time for a system audit and tune-up.

Where the conversation took shape

I shared a framework I’ve found helps emerging entrepreneurs stay grounded, break down their business into more manageable component parts and better grasp the key systems powering the work. I call it The Core Five.

In short, the structure helps owners and founders:

Develop a common language around business systems.
Identify and understand The Core Five (Core Operations, Sales & Marketing, Customer Relationship Management, Communications and Financial Management).
Assess where you stand today using prompts from my System Scorecard to see which areas need focus next.

If you want the full workbook that explains all this in more detail, you can reply to this newsletter and I’ll share a copy.

After the first 20 minutes or so of setting the stage, the room came alive. I gave people the opportunity to score their systems, reflect, recognize patterns and share with others.

Each entrepreneur sat with their business and ran through a short version of the System Scorecard exercise, reviewing various prompts for each system and rating their business.

The end result

It took me a couple of tries on the mic to quiet the conversation when it was time to come back together. A solid marker of an engaged audience.

When we shared as a group, the takeaways poured out:

The importance of reinventing, even after decades in business.
Frustration with tech setup, but acknowledgment that infrastructure matters.
Sometimes starting simple (like a Google Sheet vs. a complex CRM) is the perfect way to get going.
The tension between creating and running a business.
Excitement about exploring automation.
A shared feeling that “I’ve never had time to stop and think about this before.”
“My friends need this.”

How do you eat an elephant?

One piece at a time.

An attendee shared that line during the discussion. I immediately jotted it down, and it stuck with me.

Building a business is overwhelming. There will always be more to do than hours in the day. Progress comes from taking one intentional bite at a time.

‘Built for Scale’ isn’t always about speed. It’s about architecting the foundations smarter and leveraging key systems well, so you can build more intentionality and with sustainability in mind.

BUILT TO SCALE: LESSONS FROM CREATIVE ENTREPENEURS