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It must be nice to own a business.”

What people usually mean is that it must be nice to own a successful business. And it is. But what they don't see are the decisions, responsibilities, and operational problems that come with keeping that business successful.

In this episode of No Silver Spoons, Sarah Beth Herman talks about something that happens quietly inside growing companies: problems become so familiar that employees stop expecting anyone to fix them.

Temporary workarounds become permanent processes. Employees compensate for broken systems. Leadership discusses the same issues repeatedly, and eventually, “That's just how we do things here” becomes an acceptable explanation.

But just because your company has learned to function around a problem doesn't mean the problem has been solved.

In this episode:

• Why successful businesses still require difficult, everyday decisions
• How temporary workarounds become expensive permanent processes
• The danger of normalizing problems because nothing catastrophic has happened yet
• Why employees sometimes stop reporting issues to leadership
• The difference between a broken process and an accountability problem
• How recurring operational issues quietly consume management time and company resources
• Why avoiding an uncomfortable decision can cost more than making it

This Week's Challenge

Ask your leadership team:

What is the problem in our company that everybody has learned to work around?

Listen without immediately defending why it exists. Find out how often it happens, who it affects, and what it's costing your business.

Then assign someone responsibility for moving it toward resolution and establish a date to review the results.

Your team may already know what's broken. The question is whether leadership is willing to do something about it.

Coming Next

Episode 146: The Decision You're Avoiding Is Already Costing You

Avoiding a difficult decision doesn't mean you've avoided its consequences. Someone may already be paying the price.

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DISCLAIMER:
The content provided in this podcast, including by Sarah Beth Herman and any affiliated guests, is for informational purposes only and does not constitute professional advice, including but not limited to medical, legal, or business consulting services. Listeners engage with the content at their own risk and are responsible for any actions taken based on the information presented. No guarantees are made regarding the accuracy or completeness of the content. For any questions, clarifications, or crediting of sources, please contact us directly, and we will make necessary adjustments.

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“We need another person.”

Maybe you do.

But before you add another salary to payroll, Sarah Beth Herman wants you to answer a different question:

What exactly are you hiring them to do?

In this episode of No Silver Spoons, Sarah Beth looks at something that happens quietly inside growing companies: work accumulates. Temporary responsibilities become permanent. Processes get duplicated. Great employees become the people everyone depends on. Eventually the team is overwhelmed—and leadership assumes the solution is another hire.

Sometimes it is.

Sometimes you've built a bad job.

In this episode:

• Why being overwhelmed doesn't automatically mean you're understaffed
• How businesses accidentally accumulate unnecessary work
• Why your best employee may be holding together your worst process
• The danger of rewarding competence with more and more responsibility
• Why moving work between employees doesn't actually eliminate it
• How technology can create capacity without simply replacing people
• The difference between a true capacity problem and a work-design problem
• What to examine before approving another position

This Week's Challenge

Choose one position in your company that always seems overwhelmed.

For five working days, look at what that person actually does—not what their job description says they do.

Then ask:

Should this work exist at all?

If it should:

Is this actually the right place for it to live?

And finally:

If this person disappeared tomorrow and I had to build this job again from nothing, would I intentionally rebuild it exactly this way?

If the answer is no, don't start recruiting yet.

Start there.

Support the show

SOCIALS:
No Silver Spoons®: Instagram
Dentistry Support: Instagram | Facebook | Linkedin
The Dental Collaborative: Facebook
Sarah Beth Herman: LinkedIn | Personal Bio | Links
Free Training for Dental Offices

DISCLAIMER:
The content provided in this podcast, including by Sarah Beth Herman and any affiliated guests, is for informational purposes only and does not constitute professional advice, including but not limited to medical, legal, or business consulting services. Listeners engage with the content at their own risk and are responsible for any actions taken based on the information presented. No guarantees are made regarding the accuracy or completeness of the content. For any questions, clarifications, or crediting of sources, please contact us directly, and we will make necessary adjustments.

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ou crossed $1 million. Or $5 million. Or maybe you're having the biggest revenue year your company has ever had.

Great.

How much money did you actually make?

In this episode of No Silver Spoons, Sarah Beth Herman challenges one of the numbers entrepreneurs love talking about most: revenue.

Revenue can be growing while payroll grows faster. Your biggest client can be one of your least profitable. Sales can be up while cash gets tighter. And scaling a product with bad economics doesn't fix the problem—it gives the problem volume.

So before you set a bigger revenue goal for 2027, Sarah Beth wants you to understand what happened to the money you already made.

In this episode:

• Why higher revenue doesn't automatically mean a healthier business
• The difference between revenue, profit, and actual

Support the show

SOCIALS:
No Silver Spoons®: Instagram
Dentistry Support: Instagram | Facebook | Linkedin
The Dental Collaborative: Facebook
Sarah Beth Herman: LinkedIn | Personal Bio | Links
Free Training for Dental Offices

DISCLAIMER:
The content provided in this podcast, including by Sarah Beth Herman and any affiliated guests, is for informational purposes only and does not constitute professional advice, including but not limited to medical, legal, or business consulting services. Listeners engage with the content at their own risk and are responsible for any actions taken based on the information presented. No guarantees are made regarding the accuracy or completeness of the content. For any questions, clarifications, or crediting of sources, please contact us directly, and we will make necessary adjustments.