Building A Business With Purpose:
What Two Founders Can Teach Every Business Owner About Scaling With Intention

Two founders. Two completely different industries. Two stories that arrive at the same conclusion. Building a business with purpose sets tips the scales with a different weight.

Over the past several months, our Charting Opportunities series has featured conversations with business owners who built genuinely successful companies. Two of those conversations, in particular, keep coming back to us, because they point at something we see consistently in the most successful business owners we work with: the businesses that scale the furthest are rarely the ones built around a single-minded pursuit of profit. They’re the ones built around purpose, people, and intention.

Doug Roe, founder of Code Red Roofers, and Dr. Mark Brinson, founder of Evil Bone Water, arrived at that lesson from entirely different directions. Their stories are worth sitting with, especially if you’re a business owner thinking about what comes next for your own company.

Doug Roe:
From “Make Millions and Get Out” to Building Something That Matters

Doug started Code Red Roofers with a simple goal. Build the business, make millions, and get out. It’s a goal a lot of founders share, and there’s nothing wrong with it on its face.

But somewhere along the way, an employee’s personal crisis changed the trajectory of everything. Doug found himself confronted with a decision that had nothing to do with growth strategy or operational efficiency. It was a moment of generosity, what he describes as giving away his “Rolex money,” that shifted his entire perspective on what success actually meant.

What happened next is the part of the story most business owners don’t expect. The shift from a profit-first mentality to a people-first one didn’t slow Code Red Roofers down. It accelerated it. Revenue grew five-fold, from $7 million to over $30 million, as Doug built a purpose-driven culture around initiatives like the company’s “Love Your Neighbor” program, which provides free roofs to community members in need, and a deliberate practice of offering second chances to employees recovering from addiction.

That’s not a coincidence, and it’s not just a feel-good story layered on top of a business. It’s a genuine strategic insight that shows up consistently in the data on what drives long-term business value: companies built around a clear sense of purpose tend to attract better talent, retain employees longer, build stronger customer loyalty, and create a culture that can operate and grow without the founder personally driving every decision.

Doug’s full conversation, including the story of the moment that changed everything and how the “Love Your Neighbor” program took shape, is available in our Charting Opportunities episode, Building With Purpose.

Dr. Mark Brinson:
From the Front Porch to the C-Suite, One Deliberate Step at a Time

Dr. Mark Brinson’s story starts in a very different place: his own front porch, tinkering with what would eventually become Evil Bone Water.

What makes Mark’s journey particularly instructive for other business owners isn’t just that the company grew. It’s how deliberately he has approached his own role within it as it has grown. Mark didn’t simply found the company and stay planted in the founder’s chair. He has methodically worked himself through the operational structure of his own business, from tinkerer, to warehouse manager, to Chief Operating Officer, with a clear and stated intention of eventually working himself into the role of CEO.

That progression is worth pausing on, because it’s a real-world, lived example of something we talk about constantly with business owners who are thinking about the long-term value and sustainability of their companies: the deliberate reduction of founder dependency.

Most owners build a business where everything runs through them. Mark has done the opposite. By moving through each operational layer of the business himself, building real expertise and real systems at each stage, he has ensured that as he steps into a higher-level role, the layer below him is staffed by people who understand the business deeply, not by a gap where his own hands-on knowledge used to be.

This isn’t a business owner thinking about an exit. It’s a business owner thinking about sustainable, scalable growth. But the underlying principle is identical to what we see drive value in companies that are preparing for a future transition: a business that doesn’t depend entirely on one person is a business that has genuine, durable value, whether that value is realized through a sale or through years of continued, healthy growth.

Mark’s full conversation about building Evil Bone Water from the porch up is available in his “Viral Growth. NO Ad Spend.” Charting Opportunities episode.

What These Two Stories Have in Common

Doug and Mark built different companies in different industries with different founding stories. But the underlying lesson in both cases is the same, and it’s one worth taking seriously regardless of where you are in your own business journey.

Purpose and intention aren’t soft concepts layered on top of a real business strategy. They are the strategy. Doug’s shift toward a people-first culture didn’t compete with growth. It drove it. Mark’s deliberate, step-by-step progression through his own company’s operational structure isn’t a detour from building the business. It is how the business gets built to last.

Both stories also point to something we see consistently in the most successful business owners we work with at Portus: the businesses that create the most value over time are rarely built by founders who try to do everything themselves indefinitely. They’re built by founders who are intentional about culture, intentional about people, and intentional about building a team and a structure that can eventually function, and even thrive, without the founder occupying every critical role.

That’s true whether your goal is to scale toward an eventual sale, or simply to build a healthier, more resilient business that gives you more freedom and more options over time.

What This Means for Your Own Business

If you’re a business owner reading Doug’s and Mark’s stories and recognizing something of your own journey in them, here are a few questions worth sitting with.

Is your business built around your personal presence and effort, or is it built around a culture, a team, and a set of systems that could function well even as you step back? Are you intentional about who you hire and how you treat them, or has that taken a back seat to the daily pressure of growth? And perhaps most importantly: if you achieved the financial outcome you’re working toward tomorrow, would the business you’ve built actually be worth what you think it is, to a buyer, to your employees, and to the community you operate in?

These are the same questions we work through with business owners across our business financial planning practice, whether the conversation is about succession planning, exit planning, or simply building a business with the kind of intentional structure that Doug and Mark have each found their own way toward.

Hear More Stories Like These

Doug’s and Mark’s conversations are part of our ongoing Charting Opportunities series, where we sit down with business owners, founders, and industry experts to talk candidly about the challenges and lessons of building, growing, and eventually transitioning a business.

You can also download our free e-book, Charting Your Exit, which features additional in-depth interviews with successful founders, attorneys, and M&A specialists who have navigated the full arc of building and exiting a business.

Portus Wealth Advisors is a Charlotte, NC-based wealth management firm serving business owners throughout the Southeast and eastern seaboard. We specialize in integrated financial planning for business owners/founders, executives, and retirees navigating growth, transition, and legacy.