I first heard about Tugboat Institute® when Dave Whorton spoke at Washington University’s annual Family Business Symposium in 2018. It was refreshing to hear someone articulate principles which we had been instinctively operating under for years. In 2021, we were finally ready to consider joining Tugboat. As we went through the evaluation process, we enthusiastically checked the box for six of the Evergreen 7Ps® but were hesitant about “Paced Growth.” BSI Constructors has never had a revenue goal in our entire (now 53-year) history despite being aware of the emphasis on, and celebration of, growth in much of the popular business literature:

• “If you’re not growing, you’re dying”…Funny, I don’t feel dead!
• “Fail Fast, Fail Often”…Not on my project, you don’t!
• “What got you here won’t get you there”…What’s so bad about “here”?
• “Go Big or Go Home”…Our small project customers wouldn’t appreciate that!

Once we learned from Tugboat that “Paced Growth” could refer to things besides revenues, we were all in. Still, I’m told it’s unusual for a firm like ours to not have any revenue goals. But that is just one of several “unusual” characteristics that help define the culture that we maintain at BSI. Some others include: (1) We have 124 employees but no human resources department, (2) We have less than one FTE dedicated to marketing and business development, (3) Unlike most construction firms our size ($240 million revenue in 2024), we are solely focused on one (low-growth) geographic area for all our work, (4) We are in a litigious industry, but have no in-house counsel or legal budget, (5) We are a third-generation family business, yet we sell company stock to key employees at a fraction of the price we could obtain through an ESOP.

We readily admit that our business approach is not for everyone; in fact, it’s not for most normal businesses that view things like steady growth and maximizing share price as important metrics. Yet it seems to work for us. In spite of operating in a very cyclical and competitive industry, we’re riding a 35-consecutive-year streak of raises, bonuses, and substantial profit-sharing distributions for our team members. We are regularly selected to work on high-profile construction projects in our market including recent examples like the new world headquarters for Emerson Corporation, and a $140 million addition/renovation to the Jack C. Taylor Music Center – home to the world-renowned St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. And, not unrelated, we have some of the lowest employee turnover in our industry.

If there is any one strategy that defines our approach to business, it is that we “Just Say ‘No’” a lot. We don’t say “No” cavalierly or out of laziness; we do so to protect and preserve what’s good and unique about BSI. The great economist Thomas Sowell once said, “There are no solutions, there are only tradeoffs.” We agree! Every hour we spend on an activity is an hour we can’t spend doing something else. At BSI, we’re practically militant about spending our time (and money) in ways that support, and don’t distract from, our mission. Knowing when to say “No” starts with an unflinching recognition of what is truly important to us. At BSI we’ve decided, first and foremost, that we want to be really good builders for people we like and who appreciate a job well done. That’s it. There’s nothing about growth, or scale, or even profits in that statement.

Some specific things we say “No” to include: (1) Projects that don’t fit us – we’d rather decline an opportunity than take on one likely to have an unhappy (even if profitable) ending, (2) People that don’t fit us – we’ve declined to make offers to talented project managers who thought small projects were beneath them, (3) Fixing things that aren’t broken – we’ve worked with the same CPA firm for our entire 53 years, (4) Bureaucracy – ESOP and captive insurance programs are good options for many companies, but they’re too complex and time-consuming for our approach, (5) Unproven Technology – we’re content being late adopters; we don’t maintain the overhead to be “bleeding edge.”

Lest one think we’re still using typewriters and rotary phones, we actually say “Yes” to a lot of things, too. It’s just that we need to convince ourselves of a clear benefit that is consistent with our culture, supports our mission, and doesn’t detract from our “day jobs.”

We do our best to live all the Evergreen 7Ps, but especially “People First.” So, when we attained Certified Evergreen status earlier this year, we were pleased to learn that our Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) was among the highest the team had seen. We believe knowing when to say “No” is a major reason why. For example, we understand that frequent company social and team-building events are important for building camaraderie at many organizations. It’s just not us. We celebrate, and therefore attract, people who take pride in the quality of their work, and who take ownership of their deadlines and outcomes. But they also tend to be the types that just want to do their jobs well and then go home to spend time with family and friends. We respect and guard their time by saying “No” to excessive meetings, and to most (not all!) extracurricular activities. We force ourselves to find ways of fulfilling our goals without taking away from the productive efforts of our team members. As just one example, when it comes to supporting our community, we tend to do it through meaningful donations (an average of 13% of our profits goes to charitable causes) instead of organized volunteer events.

We are fortunate to be in a business where our product (noteworthy, well-built structures) is very tangible and visible. At BSI, we’ve decided that “just” being a really good builder is enough. And by saying “No” to anything that might divert our efforts from what matters, we are saying “Yes!” to our customers, our people, and our long-term future.