📍  Hey guys, welcome back to No Silver Spoons. I'm Sarah Beth Herman, and we are officially starting our season six,  I can't believe it. It's crazy. , When I started this podcast, I was in such a different head space, and I was nervous, and I was scared, and I was keeping a list next to me of all the things not to do, and all the ways I should talk, and what people would wanna hear, and how they would wanna hear me.

And now I just kinda blabber on and on, and here we are at season six. So if you spent the summer with me going through The Human Side of Leadership, thank you so much. I loved that series, but I also think we ended it exactly where we needed to.  We spent an entire season looking at ourselves. We talked about the stories that we tell ourselves, and why smart people stay stuck, and why employees rarely leave overnight.

 Authenticity, respect, integrity, accountability. We talked about rescuing people, and eventually we turned the mirror around and we asked, " What if I'm the problem?" And then we ended with the biggest question of the entire series: What will people remember about the way that you led them? So now what?

Because you can listen to 10 episodes about leadership. You can become more self-aware. You can understand your employees better. You can read another leadership book. You can save another Instagram quote about company culture. You can highlight something in a book about emotional intelligence and send a really good message to your team on Monday morning, and your business can still be a mess.

And I don't mean that disrespectfully. I mean it literally. You can be a good human being and a good leader and still have too much payroll. You can care deeply about your employees and still have the wrong employee in the wrong seat. You can have a wonderful company culture and a terrible margin. You can have more customers than you ever had and less money in the bank.

You can be growing and still building something that is becoming harder and harder to operate. You can spend so much time learning how to lead that you forget leadership eventually has to produce something. At some point, leadership has to leave the notebook And guys, for you, for me, for all of us, that's season six.

We are in September, and I actually think September is one of the most useful months in business. Not January,  September.  Because January is full of assumptions. September has receipts. January Sarah Beth had plans. She had goals. She had spreadsheets. She had a calendar. She probably had some wildly optimistic expectations about how smoothly everything was going to go.

How I'm finally ready to do this. I'm gonna do it. We're gonna kick this year off. It's gonna be incredible. Everything's gonna be amazing. September Sarah Beth, she has evidence, and so do you. Think about what you thought your business was going to look like when this year started. Maybe you were going to finally hire that person.

Maybe you were going to hit a revenue number. Maybe you were going to get out of the day-to-day operations. Maybe this was your year that you were finally going to stop answering your phone at 9:30 at night, and text messages were gonna be on do not disturb. Maybe you were going to launch something.

Maybe you were gonna open another location, or fire someone, or promote someone, or pay off something, or increase your profit margin, or take Fridays off. Actually take a vacation without checking Teams from the pool. How's that going? I don't ask that sarcastically, because some of it probably did happen, but some of it probably didn't.

And some of the things you wanted in January, you may not even want right now, or anymore, or ever again. And that's important information. Changing your mind because you learned something is not failure. . I want you to remember that this season, you are allowed to use the information you have now. There's no prize for finishing a bad plan. . We tell everybody we're going to do something, and suddenly we feel like we have to keep doing it because now we've announced it, or we spent twenty thousand dollars on something, so we convince ourselves we need to spend another twenty thousand trying to make the first twenty thousand make sense.

We hired somebody, and six months later, we know the role isn't working, but we've invested so much time training them that starting over feels worse. Or we've launched a service because customers asked for it, and then we discover those customers apparently meant they wanted it in theory because nobody's actually buying it.

I've done versions of these things. I run multiple companies, and many people hear that and they're like, "There's no way." But I really do. There are things I've launched that did work, and there are things I've launched that I thought would work faster. There are people that I've hired that I was completely right about and people I've hired that I was completely wrong about.

I've had ideas that sounded brilliant in my head and looked much less brilliant once they had an expense line attached to them. That's part of running a business. That's part of running businesses for me.

What I don't wanna do is become so committed to proving an old decision was right that I keep making new bad decisions to protect it. You do not owe an old decision your future money. Write that down. You don't owe an old decision your future money. Because we're gonna talk about that kind of thing this season.

This is not the season where I sell you a secret. I also wanna tell you what season six is not going to be. I'm not going to spend the next several months telling you just enough to convince you that the real answer is hidden inside a ten thousand dollar mentorship program.

There isn't going to be an episode where I tell you I discovered the one morning routine used by every successful CEO. I don't have seven secrets billionaires don't want you to know, and I'm definitely not going to tell you that if you just shift your mindset, the payroll company will suddenly stop withdrawing actual money from your bank account.

Sometimes the problem isn't the mindset, sometimes the problem is the math. Sometimes the problem is the employee. Sometimes the problem is you And sometimes the business needs more revenue, and sometimes it desperately needs fewer expenses.

Sometimes you need another person. Sometimes adding another person is exactly the wrong answer. Sometimes you need patience, and sometimes you've been calling procrastination patience for six months. That's business. There isn't one answer, And I'm not interested in pretending that there is just because pretending that there is makes a better sales funnel.

I want you to be able to listen to this podcast for free, to take something from it, to use it in your company and become better at making decisions. That's the deal This season is about building. We spent season five asking who are you as a leader, and now I'm asking, what are you building with that leadership?

And maybe even more importantly, is what you're building actually what you intended to build? Because business is drift. That's something we don't talk about enough. Nobody wakes up one morning and says, "You know, I'd really like to create an unnecessarily complicated company with bloated payroll and seven software subscriptions nobody uses, and three meetings that should have been emails, and two employees doing essentially the same job, and an owner who can't take a vacation."

It's just that it happens a little at a time. One hire, one exception, one new process, one subscription, one client accommodation, one meeting, one workaround, one we'll fix that later. Then three years pass and everyone is working around systems nobody remembers choosing. So this season, we're gonna start questioning things, and not because everything needs to change, but because everything should have a reason Here's one thing you can do before the next episode that we have here at No Silver Spoons.

I want you to open your bank statement, not your accounting dashboard, not the pretty report, your actual bank or credit card statement, and I want you to look at the last 60 days. I want you to find three things you're paying for that you haven't personally question in the last six months. Don't automatically cancel them.

Just question them. Why are we paying for this? Who uses it? What problem does this solve? If it disappeared tomorrow, would anybody notice? Here's the question people forget. Did we add something else later that now does the same thing? Businesses accumulate expenses the same way houses accumulate junk drawers.

Nobody intentionally creates the junk drawer. It just happens because putting something in there is easier than deciding where it might belong. Your P&L can become a very expensive junk drawer.

That's one carrot I'm giving you before episode one forty-two, so go find yours. Then I want you to look at your payroll differently. Look at your payroll and stop looking only at salaries. Look at work. If I removed the employee names and I showed you only the work being performed, would you design those positions exactly the same way today?

That's a very different question because sometimes we build positions around people instead of building positions around what the business actually needs. Someone starts doing a little bit of A, then they inherit B, then somebody leaves, so they temporarily take C, and C never gets reassigned.

Two years later, that's their job, and nobody designed it. It just happened. And now leadership is wondering why responsibilities are unclear. So ask, " If I were building this company today, knowing everything I know now, would I build this position this way?" Don't fire anybody because Sarah Beth told you to ask a question on a podcast.

That's not the point. The point is to look. Good leaders need to become comfortable looking at things before they become emergencies. And please, for the love of everything holy, stop confusing revenue with success. We're going to spend time on this because it drives me crazy.

Someone tells you their business did five million dollars last year. Okay. And? How much did it cost to produce the five million? How much was payroll? What did the owner actually make? How much cash is available? How much debt did the business take on? What did it cost to acquire those customers? What happened to margin?

How many hours did the owner work? Did the company become stronger? You see, revenue is information. It's not a personality trait. A bigger business is not automatically a better business. Sometimes a three million dollar company with disciplined operations, healthy margins, and a sane owner is a much better business than a seven million dollar company held together by overtime debt and the owner's nervous system.

I want us to get comfortable saying that. The strategy execution problem. There is research behind why I want to spend an entire season here. Harvard Business Review has discussed what it often called the strategy execution gap, including research showing how uncommon it is for leaders to be excellent at both developing strategy and executing it.

And that makes sense to me because vision is exciting. Execution is Tuesday.  Vision is saying, "We're gonna grow twenty percent," and execution is figuring out who owns the follow-up report every Wednesday at Vision is, "We're going to improve the patient experience," and execution is figuring out why nobody answered the phone yesterday between noon and 1:00.

Vision is, " We're going to reduce turnover," and execution is asking why your best employee has quietly started doing three other people's jobs. You see, vision photographs better, but execution pays the bills, and that's where I want to spend some time. Not just have a vision. But now what?

Accountability is going to follow us into season six. And one thing from season five that isn't going anywhere is the word accountability. Gallup published research this year identifying creating accountability as the lowest-rated leadership competency in its study. Fewer than half of leaders rated themselves outstanding or exceptional at creating accountability, and managers who rated their leaders highly on accountability were substantially more likely to be engaged.

That really matters because accountability isn't just what happens after somebody makes a mistake. It's the infrastructure underneath execution. So who owns this? When is it due? How will we know it happened? What number are we looking at? Who checks it? What happens if we miss it?

And one of my favorites, are we having the same meeting about the same problem  again? Because if the answer is yes, I'm not convinced you have a meeting problem. You may have an ownership problem, and we're gonna get there, too.

A word from Dentistry Support. This season of No Silver Spoons is sponsored by Dentistry Support, and season six is probably going to make the connection between this podcast and what we do at Dentistry Support even more obvious because so much of what we solve comes down to capacity and operations.

A dental practice can have an incredible doctor, great clinical care, and wonderful employees while its team is drowning in administrative work, and when that happens, the answer isn't always hire another person. Sometimes you need to ask a much better question: Why is this work being done this way in the first place?

That's what we care about at Dentistry Support, helping practices simplify the administrative side of running a dental office so their teams have more capacity for the work that actually needs to happen inside the practice. We support dental practices with services including eligibility verification, billing, and accounts receivable, phones, help desk support, training, systems, and workflows.

And our free training library exists for the same reason this podcast does. You shouldn't have to buy something from me before I'm willing to teach you something useful. You can find more at dentristysupport.com. Dentistry Support, delivering results and simplifying everything. Now let's get back to the show.

Don't give October, November, and December away. This might be the biggest thing I want you to hear today. Please don't mentally end two thousand and twenty-six because we're approaching fourth quarter. I see people do this every year. September basically becomes October. October gets busy, then there's Thanksgiving, then December is weird.

Then everybody says, "Well, we'll just hit it hard in January." No. You have an enormous amount of business year left. A decision made this week can have more than three months to work before December thirty-first. A process fixed this month can run through the entire fourth quarter. An unnecessary expense removed now doesn't need to hit your bank account three more times.

A difficult employee conversation had now gives that employee time to improve. A sales strategy changed now can still produce revenue this year. A client you contact now can become a client before January. A project you decide not to pursue can return dozens of hours to your team before the holidays.

You don't need to panic because the year is ending, but you also don't get to pretend time isn't passing. There's a difference. I want you to go find your January list. Before episode one forty-two, find whatever you wrote at the beginning of twenty twenty-six, your goals, business plan, vision board, notes app, spreadsheet, napkin, whatever it was, and don't look at it like a report card.

Look at it like evidence. I want you to put those goals into four categories: done, still matters, doesn't matter anymore, I've been avoiding this. The last one is where I want you to spend some time because there is probably something sitting there that you already know what to do about. Maybe you need to raise the price.

Maybe you need to stop offering something. Maybe you need to finally look at the numbers. Maybe you need to hire someone. Maybe you need to stop hiring people. Maybe you need to call the client or stop chasing the client. Maybe you need to have the conversation. Maybe you need to stop saying you're going to launch something you clearly don't want to launch anymore And your reminder is this: Not every unfinished goal deserves to be finished.

Some deserve to be deleted. if it still matters and you're simply avoiding it, stop rewriting it on next month's list. Make the decision. Before we go, here's what I want you to remember about season six and what we've got coming up.

You don't need a new year to run your business differently. You need new information, a better question, and the willingness to act on the answer. Don't keep funding an old decision simply because you've already spent money on it. The money's gone. Don't mistake a larger company for a healthier company.

Don't add another person before you understand the work. And please don't spend the next three months preparing to start doing in January what you already know needs to happen in September. Your action this week isn't complicated.

Find your 2026 goals, sort them into those four categories, then choose one thing you've been avoiding. One. And ask, "What decision am I actually avoiding here?" Not, "What do I need to research?" Not, "Who should I talk to?" Not, "What podcast should I listen to?" What decision? There's a difference. In episode 142, we get to work.

 This was our introduction. I want you to understand what I'm building with season six, because starting with episode 142, I'm not easing us into it. We're starting with Stop Waiting for January: The 90-Day Business Reset, and I'm gonna walk you through five areas: revenue, expenses, people, operations, and leadership.

Bring your numbers, bring your calendar, bring your payroll, bring the goals you just found, and bring the willingness to discover that something you were absolutely certain about in January may not make sense anymore. We're not creating 17 new goals. We're gonna figure out what deserves the remaining days of 2026, what needs to be fixed, what needs to be accelerated, measured, decided, and maybe most importantly, what needs to stop.

Season five asked, "Who are you as a leader?" And season six is asking you, "What are you doing to build with that leadership?" And I'm gonna add one more question now. Is the business you're building actually worth what it is costing you to build it? That's where we're headed. Welcome to season six of No Silver Spoons.

I am Sarah Beth Herman. No secret formula, no magic January reset, just better questions, better decisions, and the willingness to actually do something with the answers. I'll see  📍 you in episode 142. Now we get to work