Why You’re Still Stuck in the Day-to-Day (And How to Break Free)

by faye.eScale Smart, Grow Fast PodcastPosted on Comments are Disabled

Why You’re Still Stuck in the Day-to-Day (And How to Break Free)

If you’re a founder or business leader still caught in the weeds—managing calendars, answering emails, and putting out fires—you’re not alone. But staying stuck in the day-to-day is not the cost of building a successful company.

In a recent episode of Scale Smart, Grow Fast, host Harley Green sat down with Ken Wimberly, founder of Laundry Luv and a serial entrepreneur with over two decades of experience. Ken has mastered the art of scaling with systems, service, and soul—without burning out.

Preferred listening on the go? Catch the full podcast episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Here’s what you’ll learn from his journey—and how you can apply it today.

🚧 The Trap: Doing Everything Yourself

Ken’s early entrepreneurial days were all hustle, no structure. Like many founders, he thought doing it all was the only way to succeed.

The breakthrough came when he realized: you can’t scale if you’re the bottleneck.

🧰 The Tools That Changed Everything

To escape the grind, Ken implemented the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS)—a game-changing framework that helped him align his team, define roles, and lead with clarity.

He also built a powerhouse team of virtual executive assistants. One VA has been with him for over 12 years, helping run four different companies.

“If you don’t have an assistant, you are the assistant.” – Ken Wimberly

💡 Daily Huddles = Daily Clarity

Ken starts each day with a 15-minute huddle to align priorities and check in personally with his team. These meetings, inspired by Dan Martell’s Buy Back Your Time, are followed by focused 1-on-1s.

Short. Consistent. Game-changing.

🕒 Calendar Blocking = Time Ownership

Ken “weaponizes” his calendar using color-coded time blocks for deep work, family, strategy, and more. His VAs overlay this framework to protect his focus and maximize every hour.

📈 KPIs That Reflect Purpose

At Laundry Luv, impact is more than a buzzword—it’s a business metric. His team tracks:

  • 📚 Books given to kids
  • ❤️ Lives positively touched
  • 🛠️ Community engagement initiatives

Because when your business is built to serve, the profits follow naturally.

🔄 Want to Scale Without Burnout?

If you’re tired of being the bottleneck:

  • Build systems like EOS
  • Hire before you’re “ready”
  • Empower your team with clarity
  • Track what really matters
  • Start small—with a daily huddle

📬 Connect with Ken Wimberly

🔗 Learn more about Laundry Luv: https://www.laundryluv.com/
🔗 Connect with Ken and access free tools: https://www.kenwimberly.com/ 

Ready to stop drowning in daily tasks and start leading with focus?

💼 Book a discovery call with Workergenix and find your Ultimate Executive Assistant today.

Like what you read? Get weekly insights on scaling, efficiency, and profitability—straight to your inbox. Click here to subscribe.

Transcript

Harley Green:
Hey everybody. Welcome back to Scale Smart, Grow Fast. Today we’re going to talk about what if scaling a business didn’t mean burning out or compromising your values? Today’s guest, Ken Wimberly, is proof that growth doesn’t have to come at the cost of your soul. He’s the founder of Laundry Luv, a modern community-centered laundromat brand, and a serial entrepreneur who spent 20 years building scalable businesses rooted in legacy, leadership, and purpose. In this episode, you’ll learn how to systemize for freedom, lead with clarity, and grow a business that makes you proud. Ken, welcome to the podcast. Maybe you can tell us a little bit more about your background as an entrepreneur.

Ken Wimberly:
Hey Harley, thanks for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this. Entrepreneurially, it’s almost all I’ve ever done. I spent a short stint in the Navy in the middle of college. When I graduated, I had my first and only two jobs. One was in the insurance and investment business. From there, I launched a pizza startup. It wasn’t a full franchise, more like a quasi-licensed brand. It failed, oddly, because of real estate issues, which is ironic since I spent the next 20 years in real estate.

After that failure, I worked briefly for about a year as a GM at a restaurant. Then it was into the rest of my entrepreneurial career, which for decades was in the commercial real estate business. I started as a broker in land brokerage, then moved into investment sales. Through that, I got affiliated with the Keller Williams Network, ended up becoming a Keller Williams franchise owner, and started buying real estate. That led to buying a shopping center. We were looking for tenants and realized it would be ideal for a laundromat. We tried to find a laundromat operator and couldn’t, so my partners and I decided to become the operator ourselves. That was the beginning of Laundry Luv.

We wanted to do something different. Laundromats were often gross, dingy, unstaffed, not places for families. We wanted to be the opposite. We aimed to be the family-friendly laundromat—the Chick-fil-A of laundromats. So we created dedicated children’s play spaces in every location. We bring in books, promote childhood literacy, read to kids, and give away books. We do something for our communities every single month. It’s been a blessing—a way to make an impact, have purpose, and build a thriving business.

Harley Green:
That’s an amazing story. I love how it sounds like you learned from some of the challenges or failures that you faced early on, pivoted, took that knowledge, and then made it your special skill or unique advantage. I’d love to hear, what are some of the turning points you experienced with your approach to scaling business?

Ken Wimberly:
One of the most important is the team. Having the right people in the right seats doing the right things is imperative. We’ve got both a physical and virtual team. Virtually, we have team members from around the world. Physically, I’m in Fort Worth, Texas. My partner’s in Austin. We have team members and stores in multiple cities. COVID helped everyone embrace remote work and how to build remote teams. That’s been a game changer.

The other big thing is implementing EOS—the Entrepreneurial Operating System. Not just dabbling, but full-on implementation. We hired an EOS implementer who comes in quarterly. We use all the tools properly. It has streamlined our business, helped define the right seats, identify the right people, and assess whether they want the job, can do the job. It’s been a huge win.

Harley Green:
I love that you brought that up because one of the questions I was going to ask was what systems you use for your hybrid teams. You’ve got people all over the world and you answered it with EOS. That’s something we’ve also implemented. I also love how when we were coordinating this podcast, you immediately brought in one of your executive assistants. I’d love it if you could share your thoughts on leveraging executive assistants for founders and business leaders. A lot of people think it’s easier to do it themselves or don’t want to give up access to their inbox. What are your thoughts?

Ken Wimberly:
The first hire we need to make is the executive assistant. If you don’t have an assistant, you are the assistant. Managing your inbox alone is hours of time. My calendar too. That’s been harder for me to give away, but now during my morning huddle with my EA, I just say, “Davidson, add this, change this, move this meeting.” It saves so much time.

He coordinates everything. Instead of emailing back and forth to change a meeting, Davidson handles it. That alone saves hours. But there’s more—Davidson is a master at graphic design. That’s his core skill set. He handles my presentations, branding materials, and more. Right now, he’s building a brand book for Laundry Luv. He’s so good. Sure, I could do it, but it would take forever and wouldn’t be nearly as good. My time is better spent on deep thinking and vision for the company.

He also manages my social media. I was telling him yesterday—it’s like listening to my own voice when he posts. He watches my podcasts, listens to my language, and uses AI tools for clips. He’s become that good. Then there’s Melissa, my first VA hire 12 years ago. She’s now my wife’s primary EA. She’s been with us through four companies. Melissa and Davidson are like family to me. Every morning, we do a huddle: me, my wife, and our two VAs. We each share something we’re grateful for, then the three main priorities for the day, and if we need help. Then we go into our 1:1s—me with Davidson, my wife with Melissa.

We use Dan Martell’s “Buy Back Your Time” format. The 30-minute morning structure gets us aligned and moving fast. It’s been crucial. I can’t say enough about the importance of bringing on a VA or EA.

Harley Green:
I love that you brought up morning huddles and check-ins. Many people struggle with VAs because they don’t do regular check-ins. They treat them like a black box. I’m curious—what strategies or mindset shifts helped you build trust with your team and allow them to take ownership?

Ken Wimberly:
It’s an evolution. Like with any hire, they come in not knowing anything. They need to be trained. When I first hired Melissa, I wasn’t great at training her. But once I had an in-house admin take over her training, it got way better. When Davidson came on, Melissa trained him. Every team member needs proper training and oversight. The daily huddles are critical. I didn’t use to do them, but I’ve learned to implement them. I also R&D a lot—rip off and duplicate. If I see a model working, I adopt it.

My partner Skyler had another great system—Friday one-on-ones with each team member. It’s a check-in: how are they doing personally, with family, health, etc. If something’s wrong, that’s all we focus on—how to help. If things are good, we move on to weekly goals, what got done, communication, and support needs. It’s not robotic—I know the questions, and we have a natural conversation. Sometimes I lead, sometimes my wife. It builds a deeper relationship beyond just business.

Harley Green:
I’m glad you brought up checking in with employees on a personal level because so many times that side isn’t talked about. There’s often no natural opportunity to bring it up in traditional business meetings, and that can lead to negative performance, burnout, or turnover. As business owners, there are often simple solutions—time off, a small adjustment, support—that can make a huge difference. We’ve seen major improvement in our business by doing the same thing.

Speaking of balance and helping people, you’ve got a lot going on. In addition to Laundry Luv, you’re still active as a commercial real estate investor. How do you balance your time between your different endeavors?

Ken Wimberly:
The first thing I do is weaponize my calendar. Everything goes on it. If someone looked at my calendar, it might overwhelm them, but for me it creates clarity. I know exactly what I’m supposed to be doing at any given time. Most of my time is spent on Laundry Luv. We’re growing, franchising, building stores, and supporting franchisees, so it requires a lot of focus.

I still do real estate investments with partners, but I don’t do brokerage anymore. I do maintain referral relationships because people still see me as the real estate guy. Again, it all goes on the calendar. It’s color-coded—Laundry Luv, real estate, personal, family. Date nights with my wife are on there. My kids’ sports events are on there. Everything is intentional.

Davidson helps manage my calendar. He knows what’s coming in and how to prioritize it. I also mapped out what I call my ideal calendar. I took this from Dan Martell. I mapped out everything—from my early morning personal routine, workouts, family time, deep work blocks, and flex time.

Davidson has this overlay of my ideal calendar, so he knows not to schedule meetings during deep work time. That alone took a few hours to build, but once it was done, everything started flowing better.

Harley Green:
I love that. We do something similar with time blocking. How often do you revisit that ideal calendar? Do your priorities shift enough that you need to adjust it, or does it give you enough flexibility?

Ken Wimberly:
There’s enough flexibility built in. The reality of my calendar doesn’t always match the ideal perfectly. Some days require full-day commitments, travel, or discovery days. But the ideal calendar serves as a guide. When I’m traveling or in all-day meetings, that takes priority. Having a framework helps me return to balance faster.

Harley Green:
You mentioned EOS earlier, so I’m sure you’re big on KPIs. What are some of your favorite metrics that tell you when systems are working—or when something’s off?

Ken Wimberly:
EOS has been incredible for that. As a team, we defined the KPIs that truly matter. We revisit them annually to make sure they’re still relevant. For my role, it’s about pipeline—how many people are active and how many are moving toward meaningful engagement.

Because we’re community-focused, we also track impact. We track how many books each store gives away to children every week. We track how many lives we’ve positively touched. That wasn’t always on the scorecard, but we realized if it’s important, we should measure it. Our store managers report these numbers weekly, and it’s powerful.

Harley Green:
I’d love for you to share one of those stories—how you’ve impacted lives in the community and what effect that’s had on the business.

Ken Wimberly:
One example is our Thanksgiving dinner giveaway. We give $50 grocery gift cards so families can have a Thanksgiving meal. We hear stories every year from people who say they wouldn’t have had Thanksgiving dinner without it.

Every August, we do back-to-school backpack giveaways. With our vendors’ support, we provide hundreds of backpacks filled with supplies. Families line up outside the store. Kids are excited, parents are relieved. It’s incredibly meaningful.

Another story that always moves me involves Clay, our first store manager and now Director of Facilities. We call him the Minister of Love. One day, he noticed a customer who was visibly upset. The man was being evicted and his truck was broken down. Clay didn’t hesitate. He spent hours helping him move his belongings so they wouldn’t be lost. Clay is in his 60s, moving furniture without question. Stories like that happen every week. Sometimes it’s just showing up, seeing people, and doing something small that makes a big difference.

Harley Green:
That’s incredibly inspiring. For those listening who might be interested in Laundry Luv, what makes an ideal franchisee or operator?

Ken Wimberly:
We look for people who want to work with a team and appreciate structure and systems. You don’t have to do it alone, but you do need to be aligned with leadership and service. Some business or leadership experience helps—marketing, accounting, operations. Veterans are a great fit for us. My partner and I are veterans, and we support them heavily.

This is a profitable business, but profit isn’t our first driver. We believe in doing good by doing good. The more good we do, the more good comes back.

Harley Green:
We feel the same way. As we wrap up, what’s one shift business leaders can make this week to free up their time and feel more in control?

Ken Wimberly:
Get comfortable with delegation. Ask your team to bring three potential solutions when they bring you a problem. That teaches them to think critically and solve problems on their own. Over time, you stop being the bottleneck, and the business starts running smoothly.

Harley Green:
Ken, where can listeners connect with you and learn more about Laundry Luv?

Ken Wimberly:
You can visit LaundryLuv.com—L-U-V—to learn about the business and franchise opportunities. For more about me, go to KenWimberly.com. I share a lot of free resources there—systems, documents, and tools that help streamline business and life.

Harley Green:
To our listeners, if you got value today, hit follow and subscribe, leave a rating, and share this episode with someone who needs it. Thanks for tuning in to Scale Smart, Grow Fast. Until next time, keep scaling smart.

How to Avoid Hiring Mistakes When Scaling Your Business (with Lynn Talbott)

by faye.eScale Smart, Grow Fast PodcastPosted on Comments are Disabled

How to Avoid Hiring Mistakes When Scaling Your Business (with Lynn Talbott)

Hiring during a growth phase can feel like a scramble. You’re stretched thin, juggling sales, operations, and your team — and suddenly you need someone yesterday. But rushing the hiring process can quietly sabotage your company’s momentum.

In a recent episode of the Scale Smart Grow Fast podcast, host Harley Green sat down with Lynn Talbott, founder of The Bookkeeper’s Coach, to break down how to avoid the most common hiring pitfalls that hurt growing businesses.

Preferred listening on the go? Catch the full podcast episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Here are the top takeaways every founder needs to hear:

1. Your First 5 Hires Are Make-or-Break

Lynn compares early hires to “cornerstones” of your company. They shape your culture, pace, and scalability. Hiring someone who can’t grow with your business — even if they solve an immediate pain point — will cost you more in the long run.

✅ Tip: Think 3–5 years ahead when hiring. Choose people who can evolve with the company, not just fill a gap today.

2. Don’t Just Delegate—Lead

Founders often struggle with delegation — or worse, fall into abdication (handing something off and walking away). Lynn emphasizes the need to develop leadership in your team. Your hires should lighten your load, not add to it.

✅ Tip: Hire with leadership potential in mind. Can they take ownership, or will you be babysitting?

3. Culture Fit > Technical Fit

Many entrepreneurs rush into hiring someone with the right skills — but overlook cultural alignment. That’s a fast track to team dysfunction.

✅ Tip: Define your mission, values, and team vibe. Then hire people who live them, not just talk the talk.

4. Watch Out for the “Halo Effect”

One of the biggest mistakes? Letting your gut override structure. Entrepreneurs often make a snap judgment and then spend the rest of the interview convincing themselves the candidate is “the one.”

✅ Tip: Use structured interviews with behavioral questions. Stick to a checklist. Don’t wing it.

5. Don’t Hire Just Because You “Trust” Someone

Hiring a friend, family member, or neighbor because you “trust” them — not because they’re qualified — is a common trap Lynn warns against.

✅ Tip: Trust is great, but competency and fit are non-negotiable. Hire based on merit, not convenience.

6. Hire Slow, Fire Fast

If you realize you’ve hired the wrong person, act quickly. Avoid dragging out the pain — it affects your team, your culture, and your momentum.

✅ Tip: Have open conversations early. If it’s not working, make the call and move forward.

Final Thought: Structure Doesn’t Have to Feel “Corporate”

Many founders resist structure, thinking it will kill their creative edge. But according to Lynn, a bit of structure — especially around hiring — actually frees you up to lead and grow.

🔗 Resources & Links

💼 Tired of hiring in panic mode or doing everything yourself?

Book your free discovery call with Workergenix and discover how an Ultimate Executive Assistant can help you escape hiring chaos, delegate smarter, and scale your business with less stress.

Like what you read? Get weekly insights on scaling, efficiency, and profitability—straight to your inbox. Click here to subscribe.

Transcript

Harley Green: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Scale Smart Grow Fast podcast. Growing your business doesn’t have to come at the cost of burnout or chaos. In this episode, Lynn Talbott, a successful founder who scaled and sold her seven-figure bookkeeping firm, shares the most common pitfalls leaders make when scaling and how to avoid them. From hiring too quickly to holding on to work that should be delegated, Lynn offers clear, hard-earned insights to help business owners grow sustainably and build a company they actually enjoy running. Welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today?

Lynn Talbott: I’m doing great. Thank you for having me, Harley.

Harley Green: That’s our pleasure. So Lynn, tell us a little bit more about your background. Tell us about your bookkeeping firm that you started and how you got through that and what brought you to what you’re doing today.

Lynn Talbott: Yes, so I’m sort of a serial entrepreneur. I got a human resources degree and went out and did the corporate world like most people do when they graduate from college. I was in HR. I really liked it, but I knew I always wanted to own my own business. So when I started my business, I called it HR Business Solutions, because I was going to help people with their back-end office doing human resources and maybe some bookkeeping. I started doing HR and found out quickly that entrepreneurs and startups don’t really want to talk to people about HR. They have their own way of doing things and they like to feel like they can make those HR decisions. I don’t need somebody telling me what to do. So quickly my HR Business Solutions company became more of a bookkeeping company simply because that was the need. And that’s what we do as startups—we shift when we have to, right?

Harley Green: I got that. Good pivot there.

Lynn Talbott: Yes. Over the years, I’ve helped hundreds of entrepreneurs at the startup level with their messy HR and bookkeeping—anything in the back office—helping them hire, figure out job descriptions, create handbooks, just creating some structure around when they’re ready to scale. Because when you start to scale, you get pulled in a lot of directions. I find the entrepreneur can get a little bit caught up in “I can do everything. I wear all the hats. I make all the decisions.” There’s something about being an entrepreneur that makes you feel like you can do everything, that you’re just Superman and you have all the answers. But what happens is a couple of years down the road, they find, “Wow, I didn’t do the right hire or I didn’t set up my back office right and now I’m scaling and trying to do a thousand things, but I might not have the right people in place.”

Harley Green: Yeah, I think we’ve all seen and experienced that. One thing you’ve mentioned before is how the first few hires—maybe the first five—can really make or break a business. What makes those early decisions so high-stakes?

Lynn Talbott: Your early hires set the tone for the culture, the pace, and how your business is going to go. I always say your first four hires are like your cornerstones—your building blocks. What does your company need so that you can delegate, be successful, and scale? That involves thinking three years, five years, or ten hires down the road. We all scale at different times. But if you don’t hire the right people at the right time, it can really cost you. You’re too busy growing and you can’t afford to hire the wrong people—those who need to be babysat, or who are constantly battling with you, or aren’t helping you build your dream. One of the top issues I see entrepreneurs make is not taking those first hires seriously. They might hire quickly to fill a need—data entry, marketing, etc.—and while the person might have the skills in the moment, they may not be able to grow with your company long-term.

Harley Green: That’s really impactful. And you mentioned rushing into that first hire because you’ve got this pain point—let’s say marketing, right? You get the marketing person. What are some tips or strategies you’d share with leaders to slow it down a little and make sure that hire is strategic and the right one?

Lynn Talbott: One of the mottos I use is “Hire slow, fire fast.” I remember when I moved from corporate HR to owning my own business, I thought I knew everything and I could hire whoever I wanted. Even with my skills, background, and a degree in HR, I still didn’t heed that advice. I’d find somebody outgoing with great skills, do a quick interview, and off they go. Later, I’d find out they weren’t a culture fit. They were battling things internally. Every startup has a culture—and that culture is you, the entrepreneur. It’s everything you stand for and what you want your company to be. You have to ask, “Is this person going to fit my culture, or am I going to battle with them forever?” Toxic hires can poison your company and bring it down quickly. Entrepreneurs often realize it too late.

Harley Green: What are some tools or interview strategies you recommend to ensure a good culture match? We know how to evaluate technical skills. Are there particular methods for culture?

Lynn Talbott: That’s a great question. It’s hard to discern if you haven’t defined your culture, mission, and vision. I’m assuming your listeners have done that before hiring. They need to remember those during interviews—”Is this person able to meet those goals? Can they fit into this culture?” What I often see is entrepreneurs winging it. They trust their gut. They get on Zoom or a phone call and just start talking. That leads to what we call in HR the “halo effect.” Maybe you liked their resume or talked to them previously. You already decided you want to hire them. So instead of vetting them, you’re convincing them to work for you. You’ve put a little halo on them. No matter what they say, you pivot around it. They may not have the soft skills, the culture fit, or the ability to grow with you. That halo effect is real. It’s happened to me, and it can happen to anybody.

Harley Green: This goes back to how entrepreneurs often think they can do everything—including hiring. Is there a time or situation when it’s better to delegate the hiring to someone else like a professional recruiter?

Lynn Talbott: It depends on who you’re hiring. If you need an operations manager to run everything, yes, you might want to go outside. If it’s a marketing person or virtual assistant, you can probably do that yourself. But even then, you need some guidelines. Before hiring, define the job. What exactly are you hiring for? Is it just marketing, or do you also need someone to manage your CRM, do backend office work, or maybe even sales? When I say things like “job description” to entrepreneurs, they often say, “I left corporate to get away from people like you telling me I need an HR department.” I get it. HR has changed, and structure can feel stifling. But even a quick task list—something simple—can help you focus on who you’re hiring for. Tools like ChatGPT can help with that. And you’ll often think of more tasks while creating that list. Hire someone who can do that job or grow into it. Not everyone will come in ready to do the perfect job.

Harley Green: You’ve worked with teams that skipped defining roles. What problems show up when expectations aren’t clear from the start?

Lynn Talbott: I often get called in as a fractional HR person to talk to employees or departments who are disgruntled. Why? Usually because they don’t have clear roles. They have “free flow”—which entrepreneurs love—but once your company grows beyond 10 people, that starts to cause conflict between departments. People compete for the owner’s attention. If you don’t have the right leadership in place, you’ll be pulled in every direction. If you hire too fast, you might miss hiring people with the leadership skills you’ll need a year from now. If no one owns their tasks or department, you end up spread too thin. Those early hires need to take control and truly manage their areas.

Harley Green: That makes sense. And it leads into the next question. Entrepreneurs often hear “HR” and cringe—it’s not what they got into business for. So how should they think about culture while building a team without becoming too corporate?

Lynn Talbott: Everyone will have their own opinion and culture style. There’s no one-size-fits-all. But the owner sets the tone. What do you stand for as an entrepreneur, and how do you share that with your team? One company I worked with gave their team books that reflected their culture. They’d have lunch meetings to discuss them and give PTO for finishing the book. It was well received. It created open conversations and stronger communication. Not everyone will love that, but it worked for them. The key is to be intentional.

Harley Green: That’s a great example of strong culture. If someone has their culture in place and their team aligned, what’s the next step to build a strong interview process? How do they grow the business fast without hiring mistakes?

Lynn Talbott: Don’t wing it. Use an interview sheet with specific questions. In HR, we use behavioral questions—past behavior predicts future behavior. Ask how they handled certain situations, or how they performed under pressure. If you ask about a past role and they start with, “My boss was terrible,” believe them—that’s how they’ll treat you too. Their answers reveal how they behave, not just what skills they have.

Harley Green: Great segue into red flags. What are some red flags founders shouldn’t ignore, especially when desperate for help?

Lynn Talbott: One big red flag is hiring people close to you. It’s common—your spouse, child, mother, or sister-in-law doing your marketing because she’s a stay-at-home mom. Founders often say, “I can trust her, I’ll teach her.” That usually turns into chaos. Just because someone is trustworthy or nice doesn’t mean they’re qualified. I’ve had to “rescue” many startups because a family member was doing the books but didn’t know what they were doing. Avoid hiring just based on trust or familiarity.

Harley Green: Let’s move to another area—handing off tasks. At what point should a founder bring in a right-hand person, like an executive assistant or COO?

Lynn Talbott: As soon as possible. You’re already working 40, 50, 60 hours a week. You need to lead, sell, and drive vision—not clean up CRMs on weekends. The biggest mistake is not delegating. We tell ourselves, “I can do it in 10 minutes,” and push things to Saturday. But by Monday, you’re too busy again. If you want someone to be your operations manager, CFO, or take over finances, develop leadership early. Hire people who own tasks, not those who push them back to you. Delegate soon and develop leadership beneath you.

Harley Green: Great advice. As we wrap up, what’s your top advice for a founder who realizes they’ve hired the wrong person? How can they recover without losing momentum?

Lynn Talbott: Be honest. Sit down and talk to them. If you’ve had open conversations before, this will be easier. If you hate confrontation and want them gone, it’s tougher. But don’t let someone stay if they’re not pulling their weight, fitting your culture, or helping you grow. Hire slow, fire fast. Say, “This isn’t working, I’m going in a different direction.” And make it clean. Have someone else cut off access to systems. Laws vary by state, but act quickly before things escalate.

Harley Green: Lynn, you’ve shared incredible strategies today. If people want to connect with you, what’s the best way?

Lynn Talbott: You can find me at coachingbookkeepers.com. We have a training circle where we coach bookkeepers to scale and sell their bookkeeping firms.

Harley Green: If you got value from this episode, hit like and subscribe so you don’t miss future strategies to help you scale smarter. Share this with a business owner or colleague—it could be just what they need right now. Thanks for tuning in. See you on the next one.

Marketing Without Strategy Is Costing You More Than You Think

by faye.eScale Smart, Grow Fast PodcastPosted on Comments are Disabled

Marketing Without Strategy Is Costing You More Than You Think

If you’re a small business leader juggling roles and drowning in “random acts of marketing,” this one’s for you. In our latest episode of Scale Smart, Grow Fast, Harley Green sat down with Sara Nay, CEO of Duct Tape Marketing, to talk about why marketing strategy must come before tactics and technology—especially AI.

Preferred listening on the go? Catch the full podcast episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

🎯 Why Most Marketing Fails Small Business Owners

Many founders approach marketing with a to-do list: “We need a new website, some paid ads, maybe some SEO.” But as Sara shares, without a clear strategy, you risk spending thousands with little return—and a lot of frustration.

Her team often steps into companies spending $10K+ monthly on marketing with no idea what’s working. Sound familiar?

🧭 What Strategic Marketing Actually Looks Like

Sara breaks down a proven process that includes:

  • A marketing and brand audit
  • Ideal client interviews
  • Competitive research
  • Messaging development
  • Customer journey mapping
  • A focused execution calendar

This foundational work brings clarity, confidence, and control—and often helps businesses do less with better results.

🤖 Don’t Just “Do AI” — Train It on Strategy

With AI tools like ChatGPT trending, Sara warns against adopting them without intention. Instead:

  1. Align business and marketing goals.
  2. Identify your team’s gaps.
  3. Choose AI tools based on specific objectives.
  4. Train AI with your brand voice, values, and strategy.

Smart AI integration enhances your marketing—it doesn’t replace strategy.

🧠 From Doers to Managers: Elevating Your Marketing Team

Sara also emphasizes helping teams evolve by:

  • Auditing their roles
  • Identifying tasks AI can support
  • Upskilling them into strategy-focused roles

Bringing in a fractional CMO (like Duct Tape Marketing offers) can help founders stay in their zone of genius while giving their team the guidance and structure to succeed.

🚀 Take Action: Start with Strategy

If you’re scaling a business and overwhelmed with marketing decisions, here’s Sara’s advice:

“Don’t rush into AI or shiny tools. Start with your business goals, then build a marketing strategy that supports them. Everything else should flow from there.”

🔗 Resources from Sara Nay:
 • Duct Tape Marketing
 • The Unchained Model
 • Connect with Sara on LinkedIn

⏳ Ready to Focus on Growth, Not the Grind?

Schedule a free discovery call to see how an ultimate executive assistant from Workergenix can free up your time to focus on what really drives growth.

Like what you read? Get weekly insights on scaling, efficiency, and profitability—straight to your inbox. Click here to subscribe.

Transcript

Harley Green: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Scale Smart, Grow Fast podcast. Now in today’s fast-paced business world, growth without intention leads to exhaustion and missed opportunities. In this episode, Sara Nay, CEO of Duct Tape Marketing, shares how leaders can scale strategically by aligning their marketing efforts, leveraging AI, and building a team that thrives. With over a decade of experience advising thousands of business owners, Sara offers a grounded, actionable approach to sustainable growth that protects your energy and maximizes your impact.

So thank you for being on the podcast today. How are you doing?

Sara Nay: I’m doing well. Thank you for having me on. Excited to be here.

Harley Green: Tell us a little bit more about your background. What brought you to Duct Tape Marketing in this role of helping other people with their marketing?

Sara Nay: Duct Tape Marketing as a business has been around for about 30 years. I actually joined the team back in December 2010 as an intern. I had graduated college, done some traveling, was a ski bum and went to South America for a while, four months or so, and came back and didn’t really know what I was going to pursue. So I started honestly as an intern saying, “Marketing sounds interesting. Let’s see where this goes.” Obviously, it stuck. I’ve been around for about 15 years now in the company. Even though I started as an intern back in the day, I’ve moved throughout the company through multiple different roles. I was community manager for a while, account manager. I served as fractional CMO to our clients for a while, COO, sales. Most recently, last year, I moved into the seat as CEO. I’ve been involved in all the different areas of a marketing agency at this point and have learned a lot along the way.

Harley Green: I can imagine. That is quite the journey and I think it speaks to a great business if it’s able to keep someone as talented as you there that long and have all this experience. That’s really impressive.

Sara Nay: Thank you. I caught the bug. Our founder, John Jantsch, is really passionate about serving small businesses. So back when he started Duct Tape Marketing, he saw that marketing was really complicated and confusing for small businesses to buy because they just really didn’t even know what they were buying in a lot of cases. So he set out on a mission to make marketing as simple and practical to the small business space as possible. I’ve really been passionate about that myself now over the years. As I said, I’ve been in the sales role for a while and I’ve seen so many small businesses come to us frustrated that marketing doesn’t work. They’ve tried to hire different agencies. They’re spending all this money. They’re getting complicated reports with no actual customers and all that stuff. So I’ve heard all of these stories myself. I’ve also then walked through taking someone from frustrated with marketing to then creating a strategy, to them understanding the what and the why behind the things they’re doing. I’ve seen that transformation. So that’s caused me to become very driven and passionate to help those small businesses as well.

Harley Green: I think you really are speaking to a lot of the pain points people feel with marketing there. What are some of the examples of strategies that you employ that help marketing stay simple and still impactful?

Sara Nay: A lot of times people will come to marketing companies and they’ll say something like, “I need a new website” or “I need to launch paid ads” or “I need tactics,” essentially. What we’ve always said is strategy needs to come before any tactics. Now we’re even shifting to say strategy needs to come before tactics and technology, because now people are diving into AI without the proper strategy in place. Marketing strategy has so many definitions. We usually work with clients in an initial 30 to 45-day engagement where we are doing things like a marketing and brand audit to get a baseline of their marketing and brand today. We’re interviewing some of their best clients. We are doing competitive research to ultimately develop ideal client profiles or personas and then core messaging. Step one and two of marketing is you need to understand who you’re talking to and what message resonates with them. Then we move more into the planning phase of strategy, which is mapping out the customer journey, mapping out a content strategy, identifying the four to six biggest growth priorities over the next quarter, and putting that all into an execution calendar. A lot of times when I talk to businesses, they’re like, “Yeah, I have a marketing strategy,” and they have a list of tactics. Like, “We’re going to do this, this and this.” That’s a piece of marketing strategy. It’s an important piece, but you need all of the stuff that goes on the front end. If you’re telling me you need to be focused on Meta ads, but your clients aren’t on Facebook, it probably doesn’t make sense. Also, you need to understand what messaging actually resonates with them as well. That’s where I see a lot of people waste money on marketing. They’re just on these channels spending. They don’t have any idea if it’s working or not, but they haven’t put the work in on the front end. A lot of times when you go through creating a marketing strategy, you can actually simplify what you’re doing from a marketing perspective and focus on the right channels with the right message at the right time to your ideal clients.

Harley Green: What are some of the biggest surprises people you’ve worked with have had as they’re going through this process and having this strategy developed, whether it’s finding details about that ideal client or what technologies or platforms they should be using? I’m curious, what are some of those aha moments they’ve had when working with you?

Sara Nay: It’s maybe less “aha moments” and more so clarity is what they’re getting. A lot of small businesses out there are just spending money on marketing. Then I ask them, “Are these channels working for you? Are you hitting specific goals? What are you tracking? Should you keep doing these things?” A lot of times they don’t know. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve started working with a small business when we back up and do strategy, and maybe they’re spending $10,000–$15,000 a month across all of these different channels. When I ask them why, they say, “Because we’ve always done it and we don’t know what’s working and we need to be on these things.” It’s not always ah-has, it’s more about putting clarity behind the why. Analyzing and actually getting metrics and tracking set up. Then understanding what’s working and shifting the budget towards that versus being spread thin across all the channels. So it’s really more of a clarity, confidence, and control thing than anything.

Harley Green: One thing you mentioned is having that strategy before technology, especially with AI coming in and everyone being like, someone said I should use AI in marketing. What kind of advice do you have for people when it comes to making those marketing decisions and staying focused when there are shiny tools everywhere?

Sara Nay: We have a process that I think makes sense for that. A lot of small businesses right now are bringing in AI solutions like ChatGPT. Everyone on their team is doing it differently. There’s no consistency, there’s no proper training for the AI or for the team on how to use it effectively. There are no systems and processes in place. All of a sudden, these teams are confused and creating noise. It’s really important to take a step back. Just like bringing in technology and tools without a reason complicates things. We often say: take a step back, understand the business strategy. What’s the business trying to accomplish? Then map the marketing strategy from there, then analyze your team strategy. Then you can start to say, okay, if these are our specific goals and priorities for the next quarter, here’s who we have in place already as humans. What AI systems can we layer below them? Then you’re bringing in AI to accomplish a specific goal versus just bringing in AI for the sake of it. Once you’ve identified the right tool, say ChatGPT for content repurposing, then you need to train AI on your business—your vision, mission, values, ideal clients, your messaging, how you want to be seen in the world. You give AI that context so when it starts creating or helping with repurposing, it’s on-brand. Your tone of voice matches. You create the strategy, train AI on it, and then have systems in place so your team uses AI consistently rather than everyone doing their own thing.

Harley Green: So having that strategy upfront actually makes it easier to leverage these tools then, because you’re able to take that information that you’ve already developed, feed it into tools like AI, and get much better outputs.

Sara Nay: Yes, and you can even use something like ChatGPT to help with strategy creation on the front end. The important thing is that you’re giving AI the context on your business. I see a lot of stuff on LinkedIn or different platforms where it’s clearly AI-created and generic. That’s a problem when businesses use AI without direction. But if you give AI the context of your business, your viewpoints, values, stories—then it can help you create content that still tells your story. One of our favorite uses of AI is to create a video on a topic you want to be known for, then feed that into AI to repurpose it into different formats. It’s still coming from you. AI just helps you turn that video into emails, blog posts, social posts, and all the things. You’re getting more bang for your time spent, but the core is still you, not generic AI filler.

Harley Green: Great advice. You talked earlier about the business goals and strategy and aligning those things. Where do you see most businesses getting stuck when trying to align marketing with business goals?

Sara Nay: Unfortunately, too many businesses think of them as separate things. They think, we have business objectives and goals over here, and marketing is over there. It’s all siloed. We have a marketing strategy pyramid and the bottom layer is the business strategy. We can’t think about marketing until we understand what the business is trying to accomplish. One example: in sales and onboarding with new clients, I’m always asking things like, what’s your current revenue? Your one-year goal? Your three-year goal? Hopefully, they know the answer. If not, they need to figure that out before we move forward. If I don’t know how aggressive their growth goals are, I don’t know how aggressive we need to be in marketing. If they’re aiming for fast growth, we need a bold marketing push. If they want to streamline and grow steadily, we can be less aggressive but more focused on systems and stability. We also factor in their mission, vision, and values—those need to be part of the marketing strategy and content production because we should represent the brand how they want to be seen. So again, I don’t think of them as separate. It’s business strategy first, then layer marketing strategy on top.

Harley Green: That’s absolutely right. They’re totally connected. Now, many of our listeners are probably wearing multiple hats in their business. What is your approach to building these systems and helping marketing teams that actually support that visionary at the top?

Sara Nay: One of my favorite exercises is having everyone on the team—including the business leader—do a time audit. People don’t love it, but it’s important. Write down everything you’re doing consistently: tasks, priorities, skills. Then analyze: are these things increasing in value because of AI, staying stable, or decreasing? From there, focus your time on the increasing-value work. Bring in AI to support the stable or decreasing tasks. It’s a great way to assess how AI fits in your business. It’s also powerful for your team. There’s a lot of uncertainty when AI enters: “Am I being replaced?” “Will I have to work harder?” If you walk them through this, they’ll see you’re using AI to elevate their role, not erase it. You’re helping them focus on strengths and future-proof their careers. When you identify skill gaps, you know where to invest in training. Marketing teams especially are going from doers to managers. They used to write everything, run SEO, manage ads themselves. Now they manage AI platforms. They’re not managing people, but they are managing systems—which is a different skillset. We’ve invested in helping our team become better communicators, strategic thinkers, and leaders.

Harley Green: I love that. That’s something we always recommend with our clients as well. It’s the exact same process—where can you leverage AI, and maybe there are some things that AI can’t do just yet. That’s where an executive assistant can come in, and maybe they can be the one who helps manage the AI tools as well to help those visionaries stay in that strategic space.

Sara Nay: Yes, exactly. And one thing that I think helps tremendously is bringing in a fractional CMO. That’s something we offer. A fractional CMO creates the strategy, oversees execution, and owns the budget and metrics. Often, in small businesses, the CEO becomes the default CMO because they can’t afford a full-time one. They may not have marketing experience, but they’ve learned enough to get by. Maybe they have one marketer under them who they’re trying to manage. When we come in, we work alongside the CEO so they can stay in the CEO seat. We run the marketing department with them. We spend the first 30 to 45 days mapping out the business strategy, marketing strategy, and team strategy. Then we move into a long-term retainer where we’re really running the department, ensuring execution, and up-leveling any internal marketers who are doing the hands-on work.

Harley Green: Do you work with companies who already have in-house marketers? Do you help manage and guide them as that fractional CMO, or does it have to be your team doing the work?

Sara Nay: We provide a lot of flexibility because every team structure is different. In some cases, we’re the fractional CMO and we have a full execution team—so we’re acting as a fractional marketing department. In other cases, the client has one or two marketers already. We stay in the fractional CMO role and up-level those internal marketers by layering AI systems below them and plugging any gaps. Maybe they don’t have a technical developer—we can fill that need with project-based support. We’re flexible and adapt to the team’s needs.

Harley Green: Very nice. I imagine that’s a huge relief for a lot of those leaders who are wearing all those hats. Maybe you could share some examples of the positive changes those leaders have experienced working with you—when they no longer have to wear that CMO hat themselves.

Sara Nay: I’m really big on the idea of staying in your zone of genius. A lot of people start businesses not because they want to be marketers, but because they’re passionate about something else. Yet they end up becoming the marketer by default. When we come in, we ask strategic questions—what lights you up? What does success look like a year from now in your role? If we can get clarity on that, then we do everything we can to take marketing off their plate. They still need to be involved in key decisions, understand the metrics, and do quarterly planning. But we handle the daily grind so they can focus on what they do best.

One recent example: we worked with a home service company. The CEO had one marketer on staff, but it was a friend with little marketing experience—eager and growth-minded, which was great. They hired us to create the strategy and partner with the CEO while taking over managing the marketer. We helped upskill her and built an AI system underneath her to support content production—landing pages, ad copy, email campaigns, eBooks. She went from doing things manually without guidance to having a fractional CMO mentor above her and an AI content system below. Now she can grow her skills and work at a higher capacity.

Harley Green: Speaking of building those skills, it sounds like you’ve got a great program for helping people level up. How do you help teams adopt a growth mindset, especially when they’re navigating all the change and uncertainty with marketing, tech, and AI?

Sara Nay: I think growth mindset is something people usually either have or don’t. But you can create an environment that encourages it. That’s one of our company values, and we hire for it. We design our interviews to determine whether someone is growth-minded. That’s crucial in marketing—it changes so fast. Once they’re on the team, we support that mindset through things like our bi-weekly “Lead and Learn” meetings where we present new topics on AI and discuss how we can apply them. We also do a monthly book club, reading books on various topics and talking about implementation. So it starts with hiring the right people and then giving them space and tools to grow continuously.

Harley Green: Nice. What is one leadership habit that’s helped you scale with clarity and calm, and how might our listeners apply it to their own businesses?

Sara Nay: Communication. I started as an intern, so I’ve been in a lot of roles. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in leadership is the power of communication. When assigning a task, don’t just say, “I need this done.” Explain why it matters. How does it connect to other goals? How does it impact the team or client? Also, meet with your team regularly. Be available. Do thoughtful quarterly reviews. Really invest in those conversations. Listen. That kind of open, consistent communication is what’s made our company culture strong. We support each other, and that starts with how we communicate.

Harley Green: I love that. That’s something we’ve observed too. Leaders who have regular check-ins and clear communication get the best results. The ones who don’t delegate, just dump tasks with no context, tend to get frustrated with poor outcomes.

Sara Nay: Exactly. And there’s a saying: “Don’t throw good people at bad systems.” That’s why, in our onboarding process, we start with daily meetings no matter the role—even part-time contractors. We do daily check-ins during onboarding, then move to every other day, then twice a week, and eventually once a week. The more time and attention you give someone in their first 30 days, the better set up they are for long-term success.

Harley Green: That’s so smart. I’m a huge fan of a 30-60-90 day onboarding plan. It’s been a game-changer in our business. It helps leaders stay clear on what they’re handing off and helps team members know what’s coming. It’s super powerful.

Sara Nay: Absolutely.

Harley Green: As we wrap up, what’s one thing you’d like to share with leaders today—something they could take action on this week to make a big impact on their marketing?

Sara Nay: What we talked about earlier. AI is here. You should be using it in your business, no matter your industry—but don’t rush in. Take a step back. What are your four to six biggest business priorities for the next quarter? Hopefully, you’re doing quarterly planning. Look at your team, then decide which AI tools make sense. Don’t just sign up for everything. Breathe, analyze, and bring it in strategically.

Harley Green: Love it. Sara, if people want to continue the conversation or learn more about your business offerings, what’s the best way to connect?

Sara Nay: We have a page on our website: https://dtm.world/growth. There are a bunch of free resources there. I’m also very active on LinkedIn—just search for my name, Sara Nay.

Harley Green: Awesome. Thank you so much, Sara. And for those of you listening, if you got value from this episode, do one quick thing—hit like and subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes to help you scale smarter. And if you know a business owner who could use this information, share this episode with them. It might be exactly what they need. And if you’re listening on a podcast platform, leave us a quick rating. It helps us reach more leaders just like you. Thanks again, and we’ll see you in the next episode.

Scaling Without the Burnout: Andy Reinhold’s No-Hustle Blueprint for Business Owners

by faye.eScale Smart, Grow Fast PodcastPosted on Comments are Disabled

Scaling Without the Burnout: Andy Reinhold’s No-Hustle Blueprint for Business Owners

 In the latest episode of the Scale Smart Grow Fast podcast, we welcomed Andy Reinhold, founder of Studio Spark and former Deloitte executive turned automation strategist. Andy shared a deeply personal journey—from burning out in corporate life to overcoming cancer—and how these experiences inspired his no-hustle approach to entrepreneurship. If you’re a solopreneur or small business owner juggling growth with sanity, this is your roadmap.

Preferred listening on the go? Catch the full podcast episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

1. Redefining Success Post-Burnout

After managing $55M in corporate projects, Andy realized that health and happiness are non-negotiable. Therapy and values-based decision-making helped him pivot toward building a business aligned with freedom, authenticity, and self-care.

2. Designing a Business That Fits Your Life

Using frameworks like Designing Your Life by Stanford professors Burnett and Evans, Andy helps clients create “Odyssey Plans” for their businesses—clear five-year visions that prioritize both financial goals and personal fulfillment.

3. The Studio Spark 12-Step Framework

Andy walks clients through a comprehensive system that includes values alignment, capacity and revenue math, offer refinement, and automation. His approach balances strategy with soul—building businesses people are proud of, not burned out by.

4. Smart Automation: Amplify, Don’t Replace

For teams running lean, Andy recommends starting with content creation and lead generation. By pairing AI with virtual assistants, small teams can operate with the efficiency of enterprise-level businesses, without losing their personal touch.

5. The Mindset Shift That Changes Everything

“Will I be happy with how I lived when it’s all said and done?” This question drives Andy’s choices today. His advice to overwhelmed founders: align decisions with your values, invest in what truly matters, and use technology to amplify—not override—your humanity.

Final Thoughts:
 Andy Reinhold’s no-hustle blueprint is a timely reminder that scaling smart doesn’t mean sacrificing your well-being. For business owners striving to do more with less, his mix of automation, strategy, and self-awareness is a masterclass in sustainable growth.

Connect with Andy:
 Visit Studio Spark to explore Andy’s frameworks, tools, and community.

Ready to Scale Smarter?
 If you’re inspired by Andy’s approach and wondering how you can apply these principles in your business, let’s talk. At Workergenix, we specialize in helping founders and lean teams scale with strategy, systems, and smart delegation.

👉 Schedule your free discovery call today and take the first step toward a business that grows without grinding you down. Book a call now!

Like what you read? Get weekly insights on scaling, efficiency, and profitability—straight to your inbox. Click here to subscribe.

People, Profits, and Progress: A Business Owner’s Framework for Sustainable Growth

by Harley GreenScale Smart, Grow Fast PodcastPosted on Comments are Disabled

People, Profits, and Progress: A Business Owner’s Framework for Sustainable Growth

Growing a business isn’t just about increasing revenue—it’s about building the right foundation to support it. In this episode of the Scale Smart, Grow Fast podcast, host Harley Green sits down with Cameron Montgomery, Principal Consultant at Equipricity, to talk about how successful leaders scale without compromising team alignment, profitability, or execution.

🎧 Prefer to listen on the go? Catch this episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Cameron’s 3-part framework—Align People, Amplify Profits, Accelerate Execution—is built for businesses that want to grow with intention.

Here are the key takeaways for business owners ready to scale:

1. Align the Right People

Your growth depends on the people you hire. Surround yourself with team members who believe in the mission and bring skills you don’t have. Hire for strengths. Don’t wait to find the “perfect” candidate—start by identifying passion and potential. Interns, apprentices, or fractional help can be a powerful way to delegate as you grow.

2. Amplify Your Profits by Expanding Your Market

Too many entrepreneurs get stuck selling to just one segment. Instead, look at the multiple levels where your product or service solves a problem—B2C, B2B, and even government. Diversify your revenue streams and make your offer work harder without adding complexity.

3. Accelerate Execution with Systems & Automation

Don’t let the work bury your vision. Use tools like CRMs, automated dialers, and AI (strategically) to simplify operations. Cameron warns: automation should support your quality, not replace the human element. Know when to lean into tools, and when to delegate to a real person.

4. Revisit Your Business Plan Quarterly

Scaling requires regular recalibration. Cameron recommends reviewing your business plan every quarter to stay aligned with your mission and performance goals. What worked 6 months ago may no longer serve your direction. Don’t wait until things break to optimize.

5. Don’t Burn Out Trying to Do It All

Leaders who try to be everything to everyone eventually stall. Delegation is a growth strategy, not a luxury. Whether it’s sales, admin, or client onboarding, outsource the right tasks so you can focus on high-impact decisions.

Final Thought:

If you’re stuck in the grind and not sure how to scale without burning out, it may be time to rethink your people, your systems, and your execution. Cameron’s approach is simple, strategic, and actionable—exactly what growth-minded entrepreneurs need to hear.

Ready to build a people-first, profit-smart business that runs with clarity and purpose? Schedule a discovery call to see how our Ultimate Executive Assistants can help you scale without the burnout.

Like what you read? Get weekly insights on scaling, efficiency, and profitability—straight to your inbox. Click here to subscribe.

How Are Smart Investors Scaling Without Adding More Work?

by Harley GreenBusiness Growth, Outsourcing, Productivity, Technology & AutomationPosted on Comments are Disabled

How Are Smart Investors Scaling Without Adding More Work?

Growing a business—especially in real estate—often comes with an unexpected challenge: the more successful you become, the more work you have on your plate. Managing properties, handling bookkeeping, coordinating maintenance, and keeping investors engaged can quickly consume your time. But what if scaling didn’t have to mean working more hours?

In a recent episode of the Property Profits Real Estate Podcast, host Dave Dubeau sat down with real estate investor and digital nomad Harley Green to discuss how he built a thriving real estate portfolio while traveling the world. The secret? Leveraging remote teams and systems to run his business efficiently without being trapped in daily operations.

The Hidden Bottleneck That Slows Down Growth

Many real estate investors hit a wall when they try to scale. They assume that taking on more deals means handling more tasks themselves. Instead of focusing on revenue-generating activities—like acquiring properties or building investor relationships—they get stuck in:

✔ Tenant & Guest Management – Handling bookings, maintenance, and guest communications.
✔ Bookkeeping & Financial Tracking – Manually tracking expenses, invoices, and rental income.
✔ Marketing & Investor Outreach – Posting listings, managing social media, and creating reports.

For Harley, this realization came early when he was juggling a full-time job, a growing portfolio, and family life. Instead of working 80-hour weeks, he built a remote team to take on the daily tasks, freeing him to focus on high-value decisions.

How Systems & Remote Support Changed Everything

By implementing a strategic approach to delegation, Harley now has a fully optimized real estate business that runs efficiently while he focuses on growth. Here’s how he did it:

🔹 Clear Role Assignments – Every task, from tenant inquiries to bookkeeping, is assigned to a team member with the right expertise.
🔹 Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) – Documented processes ensure consistency and efficiency, even as the team grows.
🔹 Technology & Automation – Tools like Monday.com, Google Drive, and ChatGPT streamline workflows and eliminate unnecessary manual work.
🔹 A Strong Team Culture – Virtual team meetups and ongoing training ensure engagement and long-term retention.

What This Means for Business Owners & Investors

Harley’s approach isn’t just for real estate—it applies to any entrepreneur who wants to scale without burnout. Whether you run a real estate firm, a service-based business, or a consulting agency, delegating non-revenue-generating tasks allows you to focus on strategy and business growth.

✅ More time for deal-making and client relationships
✅ Improved efficiency with streamlined operations
✅ Less stress and better work-life balance

If you’re ready to stop working in your business and start working on it, take a page from Harley’s playbook. Build the right systems, delegate effectively, and focus on growth—not the daily grind.

Like what you read? Get weekly insights on scaling, efficiency, and profitability—straight to your inbox. Click here to subscribe.

The Financial Blind Spots Holding Your Business Back (And How to Fix Them)

by Harley GreenScale Smart, Grow Fast PodcastPosted on Comments are Disabled

The Financial Blind Spots Holding Your Business Back (And How to Fix Them)

As a business owner, you’re focused on growth, delivering results, and keeping your customers happy. But if you’re not keeping a close eye on your finances, you could be leaving money on the table—or worse, losing it without realizing it.

In a recent episode of the Scale Smart, Grow Fast Podcast, we sat down with Cheryl Heller, founder of Pillar One Consulting, to discuss how entrepreneurs can take control of their financial health, eliminate hidden inefficiencies, and make smarter business decisions.

Listen to this episode on the go! Tune in on your favorite services and never miss valuable insights to help you scale smarter and grow faster.

🎧 Cash Flow Mistakes That’s Costing You – Spotify

🎧 Cash Flow Mistakes That’s Costing You – Apple Podcasts

Why Most Business Owners Struggle with Finances

Many entrepreneurs avoid their financials, only checking in when tax season rolls around. But waiting too long can lead to poor cash flow management, unexpected expenses, and missed opportunities for growth. Cheryl’s advice? Start by removing the emotion from your numbers.

“Your financials are just data—use them to inform your next steps, not as a source of stress.”

By regularly reviewing financial reports, you can spot unnecessary expenses, optimize pricing, and create a long-term strategy for scaling your business.

Key Financial Mistakes (and How to Fix Them)

✅ Pricing Without Data – Too many business owners set prices based on competitors instead of their own costs and profit margins. Calculate your true costs before setting a price.

✅ Cash Flow Neglect – Profit on paper doesn’t always mean money in the bank. Understanding cash flow ensures you have the funds needed for growth, payroll, and unexpected expenses.

✅ Ignoring Receivables – A slow-paying client can quietly drain your business. Implement systems to track outstanding invoices, enforce payment terms, and follow up on late payments consistently.

✅ Overlooking Recurring Charges – Small, unused subscriptions add up over time. Reviewing your expenses monthly can prevent unnecessary spending and increase profitability.

How Business Owners Can Regain Control

1️⃣ Check Your Numbers Monthly – Don’t wait until tax time. Set aside time each month to review key financial reports like your cash flow statement and profit margins.

2️⃣ Implement Smart Systems – Use QuickBooks, Excel, or other tools to track spending, monitor revenue trends, and forecast future needs. If you don’t have time, delegate financial tracking to an AI-powered executive assistant who can ensure accuracy and consistency.

3️⃣ Know Your KPIs – At minimum, track your gross margin (profit after direct costs) and days sales outstanding (how long it takes clients to pay). These numbers impact your bottom line more than you think.

4️⃣ Build Financial Reserves – Unexpected downturns happen. Having a cash reserve of at least 3-6 months of expenses can protect your business from disruptions.

Want to Scale Without Financial Stress?

Getting a grip on your finances is one of the smartest moves you can make as a business owner. If financial overwhelm is holding you back, our Ultimate Executive Assistants at Workergenix can take bookkeeping, invoicing, and expense tracking off your plate—so you can focus on growth.

Take control of your business finances and free up your time—schedule a discovery call today to see how our AI-powered executive assistants can help you streamline operations and scale smarter.

Like what you read? Get weekly insights on scaling, efficiency, and profitability—straight to your inbox. Click here to subscribe.
Alarm clock with a blank notebook and scattered numbers on colorful background, symbolizing time management and planning

Missed Deadlines = Missed Growth: How to Avoid Falling Behind

by Harley GreenBusiness Growth, Outsourcing, ProductivityPosted on Comments are Disabled

Missed Deadlines = Missed Growth: How to Avoid Falling Behind

Deadlines can make or break a business. Yet, for many entrepreneurs and business owners, staying on top of them feels like an impossible task. Between juggling client projects, sales calls, team management, and strategy sessions, it’s easy for critical deadlines to slip through the cracks.

But here’s the hard truth: Missed deadlines don’t just cause stress—they cost you money, reputation, and growth opportunities.

So, how do growth-minded entrepreneurs stay ahead? Let’s dive into how managing deadlines effectively can transform your business—and how the right support can help you stay on track.

The Real Cost of Missed Deadlines

When you miss a deadline, the impact goes beyond a simple delay. It can:

  • Damage your credibility: Clients and partners may start questioning your reliability.
  • Hurt customer relationships: Late deliverables can mean lost trust and repeat business.
  • Slow down growth: Delays in one area create bottlenecks elsewhere, stalling momentum.
  • Increase stress and burnout: Constantly playing catch-up drains mental energy and focus.

The truth is, successful businesses run on predictability and consistency—and deadlines ensure both.

Why Entrepreneurs Struggle with Deadlines

If you’re running a business, you wear many hats. Often, managing deadlines takes a back seat to putting out fires or chasing new opportunities. Here’s why:

  • Task Overload: You’re doing too much, from operations to sales to admin.
  • Lack of Systems: Without clear workflows, tasks pile up and get missed.
  • Poor Prioritization: Urgent tasks crowd out important ones, leading to missed long-term goals.
  • Context Switching: Shifting between tasks reduces focus, making it easy to lose track of critical deadlines.

But the good news? It doesn’t have to be this way.

How the Right Support Keeps You on Track

To truly scale, you need to move from reactive to proactive operations. Staying on top of deadlines isn’t just about working harder—it’s about working smarter. Here’s how dedicated support can make that difference:

1. Streamlined Scheduling & Calendar Management

When deadlines are scattered across emails, apps, and notebooks, things get missed.

  • Solution: A dedicated assistant can centralize all your deadlines into one cohesive system, set up reminders, and adjust timelines as needed—keeping everything on track.

2. Proactive Task Management

Deadlines don’t mean much without action steps leading up to them.

  • Solution: Support that breaks large projects into manageable tasks with clear checkpoints ensures steady progress, not last-minute rushes.

3. Consistent Follow-Ups

Opportunities are lost when follow-ups don’t happen on time.

  • Solution: A structured approach to following up with clients, prospects, and team members ensures nothing slips through the cracks.

4. Focus on Revenue-Generating Work

Your time is best spent on growth activities, not chasing to-do lists.

  • Solution: Offloading deadline management frees you to focus on strategy, sales, and expansion.

The Long-Term Benefits of Staying Ahead of Deadlines

When you master deadline management, the benefits compound:

  • Higher Client Satisfaction: Consistent delivery builds trust and leads to repeat business.
  • Scalable Growth: Efficient operations mean you can take on more projects without overwhelm.
  • Increased Profitability: Fewer delays mean more time spent on revenue-generating activities.
  • Peace of Mind: Knowing nothing critical will slip through gives you confidence to focus on the bigger picture.

Final Thought: What’s Missing Deadlines Really Costing You?

Missed deadlines aren’t just inconvenient—they’re costly. Every late project, forgotten follow-up, or overlooked task chips away at your credibility, profits, and growth potential.

The solution? Better systems and the right support.

Imagine running a business where deadlines are met consistently, clients are delighted, and growth opportunities are seized—all without burnout.

That’s the difference efficient deadline management makes.

If staying on top of everything feels impossible, maybe it’s time for a smarter approach.

What would your business look like if deadlines stopped holding you back?

Schedule a free discovery call!

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A tax preparation checklist, financial documents, a calculator, and a planner laid out on a desk for annual tax filing.

Is Bad Bookkeeping Costing Your Business More Than You Think?

by Harley GreenFinance & Accounting, Outsourcing, ProductivityPosted on Comments are Disabled

Is Bad Bookkeeping Costing Your Business More Than You Think?

If you’re like most business owners, bookkeeping isn’t the most exciting part of running a company. It’s one of those tasks that gets pushed to the back burner—until tax season rolls around or cash flow issues start popping up.

But here’s the truth: Messy books can cost you thousands in missed deductions, cash flow mismanagement, and tax penalties.

Let’s talk about the most common bookkeeping mistakes business owners make—and how to fix them before they become costly problems.

1. Mixing Business and Personal Expenses

It’s easy to swipe the wrong card when you’re juggling business and personal finances, but co-mingling funds is a nightmare for bookkeeping. It creates confusion, increases the risk of errors, and makes tax time a mess.

The Fix:

  • Open a separate business bank account and credit card.
  • Use clear categorization for every transaction.
  • Track expenses in real time to avoid sifting through statements later.

2. Falling Behind on Expense Tracking

Ever find yourself scrambling to remember what that $78 charge from three months ago was for? Delayed expense tracking leads to inaccurate financial reports and missed tax deductions.

The Fix:

  • Implement real-time expense tracking with a bookkeeping system or app.
  • Assign a dedicated team member (or assistant) to upload receipts and categorize expenses weekly.
  • Regularly review reports to ensure accuracy.

3. Not Keeping Detailed Records

It’s not enough to just track income and expenses—you need documentation to back it up. Missing invoices, lost receipts, and incomplete records can trigger IRS audits and cost you valuable deductions.

The Fix:

  • Keep digital copies of all receipts and invoices.
  • Use a cloud-based system to organize financial documents.
  • Ensure all transactions are properly recorded with clear descriptions and categories.

4. Forgetting to Reconcile Accounts

Many business owners assume their bank statements are accurate—but errors happen. If you’re not reconciling accounts regularly, you could be missing fraudulent charges, duplicate transactions, or accounting mistakes.

The Fix:

  • Reconcile bank statements monthly to catch discrepancies early.
  • Cross-check financial records against invoices and payments.
  • Use automated tools to flag inconsistencies before they become bigger problems.

5. Ignoring Cash Flow Management

Your business might be profitable on paper, but if you don’t have cash in the bank when you need it, you’re in trouble. Poor cash flow management leads to missed opportunities, late payments, and financial stress.

The Fix:

  • Set up a cash flow tracking system that forecasts income and expenses.
  • Ensure customer invoices are sent and followed up on promptly.
  • Maintain a cash reserve to handle unexpected expenses.

6. DIYing Bookkeeping for Too Long

Many business owners start out managing their own books, but as the business grows, bookkeeping becomes more complex—and easier to mess up. Misclassified expenses, late reports, and compliance mistakes can end up costing more than hiring help.

The Fix:

  • Outsource bookkeeping or delegate financial tracking to a trained assistant.
  • Invest in bookkeeping software that automates repetitive tasks.
  • Focus on reviewing reports and making strategic financial decisions, rather than doing the data entry yourself.

Final Thought: Clean Books = Smarter Business Decisions

Bad bookkeeping doesn’t just cause headaches—it affects profitability, cash flow, and growth. When your financials are in order, you can make smarter decisions, avoid costly mistakes, and scale with confidence.

Not everyone is equipped with the right skills and knowledge to manage their books. The smartest solution is hiring an ultimate executive assistant that could manage and fix all your bookkeeping needs.

🚀 If bookkeeping is slowing you down, it’s time to streamline the process. Let’s talk about how to make it effortless.

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Are You Losing Money by Handling Customer Service Yourself?

by Harley GreenClient Relationship, Outsourcing, ProductivityPosted on Comments are Disabled

Are You Losing Money by Handling Customer Service Yourself?

Let’s be real—entrepreneurs and business owners wear a lot of hats. But just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

Customer service is a prime example. You might think keeping it in-house (or worse, doing it yourself) ensures quality. In reality, it’s costing you time, energy, and revenue.

Let’s break down the ROI of delegating customer service—and why handing it off isn’t just a smart move, but a profitable one.

1. The Hidden Cost of Handling It Yourself

As a business owner, your time is your highest-value asset. If you’re spending hours answering emails, troubleshooting issues, or handling refunds, you’re not focusing on growth.

  • If your hourly value is $200+ (which it should be if you’re leading a company), every hour spent on customer service is an expensive distraction.
  • Meanwhile, a trained customer service assistant costs a fraction of that and can handle inquiries faster, more efficiently, and with a customer-first approach.

Bottom line: Every hour you’re tied up in customer service is an hour not spent scaling, selling, or strategizing.

2. Increased Customer Retention = More Profit

Most businesses focus on customer acquisition, but customer retention is where the real profit is.

  • A 5% increase in retention can lead to a 25%-95% boost in profits (Harvard Business Review).
  • 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a better experience (PWC).

An experienced customer service assistant ensures fast response times, personalized interactions, and proactive follow-ups—keeping your customers happy, engaged, and loyal.

3. Scaling Becomes Effortless

Great customer service isn’t just about handling issues—it’s about turning customers into brand advocates.

With a dedicated assistant:
✅ You scale without stress—no bottlenecks, no backlog.
✅ Customers get faster responses, leading to better reviews and referrals.
✅ You maintain a consistent brand voice, even as you grow.

Instead of stretching yourself thin, you create a seamless customer experience that supports your growth, not slows it down.

4. The Revenue-Generating ROI of Delegation

Here’s the math:

Let’s say you spend 10 hours a week on customer service. If your time is worth $200/hr, that’s $2,000/week ($104,000/year!) spent on tasks someone else could handle.

Hiring a dedicated assistant for ~$2,000/month saves you time, ensures better service, and allows you to focus on high-impact revenue-generating activities.

The trade-off? You gain back your time AND see an ROI that directly impacts your bottom line.

Final Thought: What’s Your Time Really Worth?

Most business owners don’t realize how much revenue they’re leaving on the table by handling customer service themselves.

By delegating, you’re not just outsourcing a task—you’re buying back your time, increasing retention, and setting up your business for scalable growth.

So, what’s your time worth?

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