Growing community, conference, or business without losing your original vision — and your sanity — can be a picasso painting that easily gets distorted.

Host Samantha C. Prestidge chats with Megan Shapiro, construction attorney and founder of the Converge Construction Summit, about strategic community growth, what sustainable business building actually looks like, and how to stop people-pleasing your way into something you didn't mean to create.

Megan grew Converge from 13 people in Savannah to 55 in Chicago — and her most important work wasn't any of that growth. It was the months she spent figuring out why her best-reviewed event left her completely drained.

In this episode:

• 
  How to grow a community or event without losing what made it work
• Why strategic growth beats fast growth — and how to tell the difference
• What people-pleasing in business actually costs you, even when things look successful
• How to hear what your audience wants and identify what they actually need
• Why sustainable business growth requires knowing your vision before you scale it
• What months of business coaching, therapy, and a mastermind finally unlocked that a successful event couldn't

You’ve hired an assistant before. It didn’t stick. And if you’re honest, you’re not totally sure why.

Host Samantha C. Prestidge of Auxo Business Services breaks down the three areas of clarity founders need to have in place before they bring on an assistant — and why skipping them is almost always what tanks the working relationship.

This solo episode gets into why even strong assistants fail when founders aren’t ready, the difference between delegating tasks and delegating outcomes, and the Map It → Keep It → Delegate It framework Sam uses with her own clients.

Topic Bullets

• Why building SOPs before you hire is the wrong starting point — and what to do instead

• The “cart before the horse” pattern that ends most assistant relationships early

• What “how you want to play in your business” actually means — and why founders who skip it become micromanagers

• How to write a value statement that ties your assistant’s work to real business outcomes, not just your to-do list

• When “I can’t grow because I’m at capacity” is actually a clarity problem, not a bandwidth one

• The Map It, Keep It, Delegate It framework
• Book a delegation strategy session: auxosvs.com/strategy

Timestamps

• 00:00 Hidden Expectations
  00:21 Podcast Mission
  01:49 Delegation Failures
  03:31 Skip The SOP Trap
  04:52 Three Clarity Areas
  05:08 Map What Youre Building
  07:18 Keep Your Founder Role
  09:13 Delegate Outcomes Not Tasks
  11:49 Map Keep Delegate Framework
  12:27 Book A Strategy Session

Hiring operations help for your small business is harder than it should be — and most founders are looking at the wrong things when they do it.

Ashley Connell, CEO of Prowess Project, has spent seven years matching small business owners with operations partners. She's learned that the skills on a resume tell you almost nothing about whether someone can actually run your business alongside you.

In this episode:

• Why hiring for tech stack and job titles fails service-based business owners
• How to find the right operations partner for your small business
• The four-step framework Ashley's ops partners use from day one
• Why delegating outcomes doesn't work — and what to communicate instead
• How to know if you need an operations partner or if your processes need fixing first
• What a two-week time study reveals that no hiring process can

00:00 The Need for Management

00:41 Welcome to Can We Not

01:41 Meet Ashley Connell

02:22 What is an Ops Partner

04:46 Meeting Leah

05:42 Flexible and Fulfilling Careers

06:59 The 97 Percent Statistic

07:38 The Matching Algorithm

10:47 Proven Results and Success Stories

13:14 Overcomplicating the Journey

15:38 Niching Down to Accounting Firms

17:22 Testing and Experimentation

19:22 Naming the Ops Partner

21:20 Experimentation With Intent

22:35 Accountability and Feedback

26:06 Four Step Delivery Method

29:03 Setting Clear Expectations

32:24 Behaviors Over Outcomes

34:28 Practical AI Integration

36:29 Time Study to Simplify

38:40 Closing Thoughts

Most sales training teaches you to push harder when a prospect hesitates. Aleasha Bahr teaches you to get curious instead — and the results are hard to argue with.

Host Samantha C. Prestidge chats with Aleasha Bahr, author of Black Sheep Sales and founder of a sales coaching practice that helps service business owners build strategies designed around how they actually think and communicate — not a pushy script that never fit them in the first place.

They dig into what it looks like to simplify your message down to outcomes people actually want (hint: it's not your list of deliverables), why defining your anti-audience is as important as defining your ICP, and how knowing when to walk away from a sale is the thing that actually brings clients chasing you.

LINKS

• Aleasha Bahr on LinkedIn
• Black Sheep Sales book
• Aleasha's website
• Catch more episodes: canwenotpodcast.com
• Apply to be a guest
• Have Sam as a guest on your podcast: info@auxosvs.com

You're not running seven apps because you're disorganized. You're running seven apps because each one solved a real problem at the time and nobody ever stopped to ask if the pile still made sense.

Host Samantha C. Prestidge chats with Bryant Solomon, co-founder of ControlQore, who did something most founders skip — he went and worked inside his customer's business before building anything. What he found was a back office held together with workarounds, and a team trained on tools that were never designed for them.

They get into how chasing the wrong kind of growth poisons an entire industry's relationship with technology, and why the founders who build slow and stay profitable are the ones still standing when the VC-fueled competitors burn out.

Links:

• Bryant Solomon on LinkedIn
• ControlQore website
• Converge Summit
• Josh Luebker (fractional CFO mentioned) on LinkedIn
• More episodes at canwenotpodcast.com
• Apply to be a guest
• Have Sam on your podcast: info@auxosvs.com

Feeling overworked, overloaded, or like you’re the only one holding everything together in your business?
You might be stuck in the trap that catches so many founders and high performers: confusing self-sufficiency with strength.

In this episode of Strategy, Solutions, and Sanity, Samantha shares the one mindset shift that helps founders stop being the bottleneck in their own business. Through personal stories, real-life examples, and practical delegation insights, you’ll learn:

why asking for help feels uncomfortable

how over-functioning secretly drains your time and energy

the difference between being capable and overcompensating

how to make delegation simple (and not feel like letting go of control)

why receiving support is the unlock for scaling without burnout

If you’re an overwhelmed founder or small business owner trying to grow without losing your sanity, this episode gives you the clarity and permission you didn’t know you needed.

00:00 Mom’s lesson that sparked the mindset shift
00:58 Why asking for help feels so hard
02:32 What happened when Samantha tested “helping”
04:15 The hidden plague of over-self-sufficiency
07:17 How to stop being the bottleneck in your business
09:52 The mindset shift that makes delegation simple

Creative hiring for executive assistants and office managers: learn how to define day-to-day tasks, map soft skills, and find great candidates in unexpected places. We cover transferable skills, small-town recruiting, and why PTA leaders, teachers, and restaurant team leads can shine in admin and EA roles. If job boards are failing you, this will help you think outside the resume.

What you’ll learn

How clarity in tasks reveals the right soft skills

Where to look beyond resumes: PTA, education, and hospitality

When “hire for character, train the tech” makes sense

Cost trade-offs and how to train new hires well

Chapters
00:00 Intro: creative interviewing and recruiting
01:02 Why job clarity matters
02:04 Unconventional places to find talent
03:32 Leveraging non-traditional candidates
05:53 Cost benefits and training
06:43 Wrap + how to get help

Need help? Comment with the role you’re hiring. Connect with Samantha C. Prestidge on LinkedIn or email info@auxosvs.com

In this episode, we diverge from the scheduled content plan to address a critical business principle: simplicity. Spurred by early Christmas setups in stores, I discuss the importance of simplicity in both business and personal life. You'll learn three practical strategies to maintain simplicity: 1) Stop being oversubscribed with information, 2) Get to the root cause of problems, and 3) Embrace the boring but profitable tasks. These steps will help you stay aligned with your business goals and avoid unnecessary complications. Tune in next week for some creative tips on interviewing and recruiting.
00:00 Introduction and Content Overview
00:39 Holiday Decorations and Business Insights
02:22 Embracing Simplicity in Business
03:44 Strategy 1: Avoid Being Oversubscribed
05:26 Strategy 2: Identify the Root Cause
06:56 Strategy 3: Embrace the Boring
09:22 Conclusion and Next Week's Preview