What happens when your five-month onboarding plan suddenly becomes three months, your processes are outdated, you decide to launch an entirely new internal app, and then you leave the country for 10 days?
Apparently, you onboard an operations manager.
In this behind-the-scenes episode, Sam is joined by Auxo Operations Manager Sonia Narvaez to break down what actually happened during Sonia’s onboarding. And no, it did not involve handing her a beautiful binder of perfectly documented SOPs.
They talk about the original plan, why it blew up, what they did instead, and how Sonia went from helping with a project to running point on the business while Sam was mostly offline.
More importantly, they dig into why founders often focus on the wrong things when preparing to delegate. Documentation can help, but it cannot replace clarity, communication, trust, and giving someone enough context to understand how the business actually works.
In this episode:
Why Sam originally planned five months to onboard an Operations Manager- What happened when that plan suddenly got cut almost in half
- Why outdated or nonexistent SOPs didn't derail the onboarding
- The communication cadence Sam and Sonia used during the first few months
- Why overcommunicating with a new team member is usually better than trying not to “bother” them
- How they handled trust, access, permissions, and decision-making
- The pre-vacation “everything in my brain” roll-up that helped Sonia take over
- What Sonia ended up handling while Sam was away for 10 days
- Why knowing the desired outcome matters more than prescribing exactly how someone gets there
- How healthy disagreement helped them build a stronger working relationship
- The difference between hiring someone to complete tasks and bringing someone into the business as a real team member
If you've been telling yourself you'll hire an assistant, VA, or operations person after you get all your processes cleaned up, this episode may ruin that excuse.
What is Can We Not? Business Is Hard Enough. ?
Can We Not? Business Is Hard Enough. A Podcasts for Working Founders (previously Strategies, Solutions, and Sanity).
Running a business is hard enough. The advice you've been given shouldn't make it harder.
Can We Not? is the podcast for founder-led businesses that are done overcomplicating the work. No eight-figure frameworks. No systems that require a full-time project manager to maintain. Just the real, behind-the-scenes decisions that shape how a business actually runs.
I'm Sam Prestidge, founder of Auxo Business Services, and I work with visionary doers, the people who want to stay in the work but want that effort to actually build something instead of just keeping up. We talk about delegation, operations, team support, and the unsexy stuff that makes the difference between a business that grows and one that just stays busy.
If you're running a small team, or no team at all, and you're tired of chasing strategies that sound smart but don't fit how you work, you're in the right place.
Let's uncomplicate this thing.