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Building a business shouldn't mean losing your mind.
Strategy, Solutions, & Sanity is the real-world business podcast for owners and leaders who are serious about scaling — but don't want to drown in chaos while doing it.
Host Samantha C. Prestidge cuts through the noise with practical insights on hiring, delegation, team building, operations, and leadership for family businesses and second-stage entrepreneurs.
(No vague "10x your mindset" fluff here — just the strategies, systems, and sanity moves you actually need.)
Each week, you'll get short, actionable episodes that help you untangle the bottlenecks, lead with more confidence, and build a company that runs smoother — without losing the heart, hustle, and humanity that made you successful in the first place.
Whether you're navigating early team growth or getting ready to finally step out of the daily grind, this podcast gives you the tactical tools and real-world advice to build your business the smart, sustainable way.
👉 Follow Strategy, Solutions, & Sanity for practical strategies to help you lead, grow, and actually enjoy your business again.
📍 📍 If you don't feel like you're in total control of your business and leading confidently and from a clear vision, but you also don't feel like you're drowning, or in survival mode. Then the strategy in today's episode is for you. I'm gonna walk through what you can do in your business and with your team to turn things around in just 90 days.
We're gonna break everything down into three simple phases.
Maybe you've got a small team. But they're not really taking things off your plate the way you'd hope. You're still in all of the decisions and a lot of the day-to-day fires.
Maybe you are making progress on your goals, but only because you are the one really doing the work to move things forward.
Or there's just something else going on in your business where you feel like things aren't quite right, it's just a little bit off, so you're not in that survival mode, but you're not feeling awesome and confident in the business either. 📍
The strategy we'll break down today is for that exact in-between zone.
All right. Welcome to Strategy Solutions and Sanity. This is the show for the owners in family run businesses, those second time entrepreneurs, or just those small team leaders who are done with chaos running the show.
If you're trying to lead with confidence, build something that lasts and not lose your mind in the process, then you're in the right place. I'm Sam, your host and guide in making the messy parts of business feel manageable from hiring the right people to building the systems that aren't gonna explode.
The second you take a vacation, we're gonna figure it all out together. So let's bring the strategy, the solutions, and most importantly, the sanity to your business.
All right, let's dive into how you can turn things around in just 90 days the three phases we're gonna look at in this strategy is getting the lay of the land simplifying and then getting into a growth rhythm.
In each of the phases, we're gonna be looking at what's the focus for the long-term, and also what are our short-term wins. The reason for this is the short-term wins are gonna provide you with that immediate relief and also that quick analysis of is this actually working right?
Do we need to adjust or pivot quicker? And it's going to give you that motivation and the momentum to keep going and maintain some of the discipline for those long-term goals. And then we want those long-term goals because that's.
Obviously just essential in any business, right? I almost said that's the key, but I always say the key is simplicity. We're gonna get into that in phase two, but our long-term goals that's what's gonna provide us with the stability, with the predictability in the business. And really be driving the vision and the goals for us.
So each of the three phases that we'll look at, we're gonna identify what's your long-term focus, and then also what are your short-term wins for that immediate relief. Alright, so phase one is getting the lay of the land. Now it's kind of phrased this way because it's a little bit more of, if I were to be stepping in alongside with you.
However, if you're doing this DIY, you still want to have a moment to take a step back. Evaluate, reflect, and get the lay of the land for yourself. You wanna get out of the mindset of the day-to-day fires and just really get that bird's eye view for everything. So yes, you can get the lay of the land even if you're stepping on that land every day.
All right, so our theme here with getting the lay of the land is all about clarity. Most of the owners I meet with have some kind of an idea of a vision, and I use the term vision very sparingly because I feel like it's just gotten like way overused, especially since COVID visionary tends to lean toward a little bit more of like our up in the clouds, um, solopreneurs, but still, it is a, an essential term when it comes to business is what is your vision? What are we aiming toward? So a lot of the business owners I'll meet with have an idea of their vision, but they really struggle to communicate what that vision is clearly and concisely. Without clarity around this vision, your team doesn't know what they're striving for.
Even if you have some small goals here and there, they're still in this like, okay, short term milestone mindset. And also they're going to continue having a reactive mindset rather than bringing proactive problem solving into the business and being innovative with new ideas. They can't get to that place if they don't have clarity around where you're trying to take them, where you're trying to go with the business.
Another thing I see is business owners who only think of their vision when they are in some kind of brand or marketing meeting, because that's usually when you look at it, right, is oh, vision statement, mission statement. Let's build the brand around that. And you're not carrying over the vision into everything else in the business.
It really should be influencing your operations, your team structure, all the goals and things that you're setting up. That all ties back to the vision. So we've gotta have clarity there and we've gotta figure out how to get it out of your head and communicate that to your team in an effective way.
So that is your long-term focus in phase one of getting the lay of the land is really what are you striving for and what are some of the key priorities and goals, maybe two to three that tie back to the vision that will help you get closer to achieving this vision and. Part of this is really also just getting honest about the type of business you want to lead, and that will also lead us into our short-term wins here, is getting honest and real about what's actually frustrating you in the business right now.
This is where it is helpful to have a third party person, whether that is a friend that's. Has no equity in the business, whether that's a business mentor or it's someone like me stepping in , as a fractional COO and strategist with you. It's helpful to have somebody outside of your team that you can talk with about what's really frustrating you.
What's really frustrating you in the day to day of the business? Who's getting on your nerves? What's kind of annoying, but you feel like you've just had to put up with it? What has felt like, oh, this is a problem I can't solve, but maybe it's my fault, maybe I'm not being a good leader. All of those thoughts, get those out of your head journal if you have to.
If you don't have someone to talk through this with and just write it all down and get clarity on what's really frustrating you. I've worked with some owners where they think that it's all about, oh, well we just need more process. We just need more structure.
'cause that's usually what you think about when you think of operations, right? And then we get into the weeds and it's, oh, well, we haven't really held this person accountable. And oh, we haven't been able to have some accountability in this team because maybe we've been avoiding some tough conversations, but also maybe we just hired the wrong people for the wrong roles.
We've gotta get clear on what's the root cause of, of the issues that you're experiencing in the day-to-day. And that goes back to the theme of this phase is clarity for some people, phase one is gonna last one week. Two weeks. If you're doing a strategy day with me, this is a one day thing.
For other owners that I know that have DIYed this and they're being a little bit more methodical about it, phase one is the whole first month, or it is six weeks or something of this 90 day turnaround. It really just depends on how honest you're going to be with yourself when it comes to vision and day-to-day frustrations.
Once we've got clarity on that, we can move into phase two, which is all about. Simplification. If you have followed any of my content, you know that I love simplicity. It doesn't matter how complex your business is, all the federal regulations you might be dealing with if you're in construction, then the Davis Bacon Payroll that you have to put up with however complex your business is, simplifying the team structure and simplifying the processes that you are in control of is your key to success.
As humans, we have a tendency to get bored with simplicity. We have a tendency to want to over complicate things, and that just makes it harder to problem solve and unravel all the stuff. So phase two is all about simplification. The theme is that a lot of our root causes are not just about avoiding those tough conversations that we hinted at in phase one, but it's also just the tendency to overcomplicate.
Most businesses don't need to add more to get the structure they want. Most businesses need to remove and clean things up a little bit to have the structure they want. This is where less is more. Our long-term focus here is really figuring out what are the simple goals and simple things that we can do to help achieve the vision that we identified in phase one, and also alleviate the frustrations you identified in phase one.
Practical action items here would be looking at your org chart and actually not even looking at your current org chart, but just starting with a blank whiteboard and saying, okay, here are the players that I need to have in place to do X, Y, Z. And then from there, compare it to the current org chart and say, do I have the right people in the right roles?
Do I need to maybe move people around? Do we need to let go of somebody? Do we need to bring someone new in? What should the org chart look like and how can we also simplify that org chart? Have more of a flat structure there rather than. A lot of management layers that lead to a vertical org chart.
That's where things get complicated. So looking at your org chart and then really outlining what are the SOPs and processes that we need to have in place where even if we have a lot of customization in what we do, where can we have some kind of standardization I have.
Heard from a lot of different owners, from a lot of different managers. Oh, what we do is just so specialized. There's no way we could have an SOP around this. That is not true. Absolutely, yes. You can have an SOP. You can write down like, what are the things that we have to take in into consideration with each client?
What are at least the checklist of items we have to have for this type of project? Even if the deliverables in the project will vary a little bit from client to client there's a checklist of things that at the end of the project, you need to make sure you have. That can be the SOP.
It doesn't matter how specialized things are, we can still standardize some of it and get it written down on paper. So you wanna look at what's the list of SOPs that we need to have in place to reach our vision, to alleviate stress and to simplify things in the business.
And again, this is long term focus. So this is not saying we need to build all these SOPs right now. This is just saying we have to have an understanding of what SOPs we need to have and maybe also what processes we can start to get rid of. Where have we over complicated stuff and we really don't need this process.
Your short term win as the owner in phase two is simplifying your job description. What are the day-to-day things that you wanna get out of? What are the tedious, trivial things that you wanna get out of as the CEO or the president or the founder, whatever you call yourself, what is your job description?
We usually don't write that up because why would you Usually, we only write job descriptions when we wanna post it and hire somebody and you're not gonna hire yourself. So most owners don't have a job description for themselves. I think that this is a really important thing to have.
Just be clear on what do you actually want on your plate and what do you absolutely not want on your plate? Obviously there are gonna be things that come up that you just have to be involved in. We're not gonna write all of those things down, but in general, where do you wanna be involved and engaged?
In your business, get clear on that, and then we can say, okay, everything else, either that makes sense to hand off to a manager or director, or, Hey, maybe we do need an administrative or executive assistant here to handle X, Y, Z, and we can really get clarity on what that org chart should look like. Once we've got that, once we've got focus on simplification and we understand what we need to do to alleviate those frustrations and stresses, we're gonna move into phase three of your 90 day turnaround.
Phase three is all about getting into a rhythm for growth
here, your theme in the Rhythm for Growth is about building up the habits in the business and in your team that will allow you to grow the business without you being the engine and driver for every little thing day to day. This is all about helping elevate your team, the performance of your team, and elevating where you sit as the leader and CEO of the business.
Our long-term focuses here are really about building operational efficiency. The secret here that a lot of people don't get is that the more efficient we can run, the more structure we have, the more space we have to be creative. Some people think structure kills creativity. I hinted at that a little bit at the people I called out in phase two that think that they're too specialized to have SOPs.
That which isn't true, it's also not true. That structure kills creativity. The more structure we can provide for your team and for yourself in your day to day, the more space you actually have to be creative and to have fun in the business. Because now we're not dealing with daily chaos. Now we've got a rhythm and we have the capacity to be like, oh, here's an idea, and actually execute on that idea.
So our long-term focus are really around operational efficiency and improving accountability in your team. So this is looking at how do you lead your team? What does aligning your team really look like and getting everyone on the same page and having tough conversations and communicating with people, and what does it really look like to protect your time long term?
Maybe we have brought on an assistant that we realized we needed from phase two. We're starting to delegate and lean on them, and now you have clarity around how you wanna protect your time moving forward. Those are the things that you're gonna focus on for that operational efficiency and accountability in the team.
Your short term wins are going to look at how you can continue to have fun in the business. We spend a lot of time in phase one and phase two is all about getting it out of your head and then figuring out how to get your shit together. Which is not totally fun. Alleviating feels good because we've got clarity, but it's not fun.
It's just the like, okay, we gotta do this in the business. This will make us feel better about business. We need to find the fun again. Realizing that our short-term wins give us motivation. They give us momentum to have the discipline for the long-term wins.
So looking at what does it mean for you to have fun? What are some of the ideas that you've had that you just really haven't had time to flesh out or to think through? Identify this as an owner only priority, so maybe that's engaging with your team in a fun way. If you have an executive assistant now, hey, they can help plan some of those team engagement type of stuff, if it's developing a new product or developing a new service, just having the time to think through what that's gonna look like, who's gonna own it, what your involvement's gonna be, what is a only you priority that that you can start time blocking on your calendar and have the space to be creative and think on. Because when you can start to see some momentum there, then we can say, oh, okay, the structure from phase two, the structure of these new processes, that's giving me the time to be fun over here.
This is gonna allow you to feel like, okay, we are elevating our team with this accountability and our long-term focus. And I'm elevating my role as a CEO because now I get these new ideas. I'm elevating our standing as a business, maybe our revenue for the year because we can launch this new initiative or something.
That is gonna be your short term focus, is just figuring out what are these priorities and initiatives that you can focus on and start blocking out time 📍 for.
All right. That is your simple three phase, 90 day turnaround that you can implement with your team.
You don't need a full overhaul to make this work in your business. You just need to identify those small tweaks to really get you out of the weeds, put out those day-to-day fires and start getting a few early wins to work towards having a more sustainable business.
If you feel like this is a heavy lift or like, oh yeah, I'm gonna get stuck in one of these phases, then I'm here to help. You can book a mini strategy session that focuses on delegation and team structure, or you can book a full day strategy day with us where we can dive into all of this with you and really get the clarity and the momentum that you need to turn things around in your business.
You are gonna reach out to me at info@auxosvs.com. That's our primary email for our sponsor company, Auxo Business Services.
Here's to getting your business working with you instead of against you. And I'll see you next time on Strategy Solutions and Sanity.