I'm the kind of business coach who gets her hands dirty. While other coaches stay at 30,000 feet talking strategy and giving keynote speeches, you'll find me in the trenches with entrepreneurs and leadership teams—turning big, shiny visions into actual plans and building the systems and accountability to make dreams happen.
Most days, I'm knee-deep in scorecards, processes, team huddles, and bringing order to the beautiful chaos of small businesses running remote global teams. But every so often, I like to step back to reflect—and write. Consider this my version of business therapy, except instead of a couch, I've got a keyboard and way too much coffee.
Someone cornered me before my online kickboxing class the other day and asked, "You work with a lot of entrepreneurs. Isn't their success more about mindset than their brilliant ideas?" Absolutely! A game-changing business idea is only as powerful as the person trying to execute it. And here's what I've learned after 15 years in the trenches: mindset—not the idea—is what separates dreamers from doers.
I've worked alongside countless entrepreneurs who have crystal-clear visions of where they want to go, but somehow the day-to-day chaos—the emails, the fires, the endless decisions—keeps getting in the way. What I've learned is that most successful businesses aren't necessarily run by the smartest or most talented people. They're run by founders who've figured out how to think like executors—and they hire the right people to build systems that actually work.
THE PROBLEM
Here's what I see happening over and over: talented teams spinning their wheels, unable to gain real traction. Leaders burning the midnight oil—not because they love the hustle, but because nothing meaningful gets done during regular hours. Brilliant ideas that spark excitement in Monday meetings but somehow vanish by Friday. The same issues resurface in meeting after meeting, like a broken record nobody knows how to fix.
Sound familiar?
It's not about working harder or having better ideas. It's about having the right business operating system (BOS) in place and a founder who thinks like an executor.
Here's the kicker: I've successfully implemented BOS’ for over 100 companies, and about 95% of them had already tried to do this before. They had the frameworks, the templates, even the consultants. But there's a massive gap between creating a pretty plan in a conference room and making it actually work when Monday morning chaos hits.
HOW IT ACTUALLY WORKS
You start with an entrepreneur who has great ideas and vision. The founders I work with blow me away—they can see around corners, spot opportunities others miss, and paint a future so compelling you want to drop everything and help them build it. That's their superpower, and it's exactly why they shouldn't be buried in spreadsheets and daily operations.
Next, you need a system that actually works in the real world. This means getting crystal clear on what you're trying to achieve and why it matters to everyone on your team. We figure out who owns what—no more "I thought you were handling that" moments. We set up simple ways to track progress that don't require a PhD in data science. And we break those big, audacious goals into bite-sized pieces that won't make your team want to hide under their desks.
Then comes the team piece. You need people who trust each other enough to have real conversations, who aren't afraid of conflict when it matters, who commit to decisions even when they weren't their first choice, who hold each other accountable without waiting for the boss to play referee, and who care more about collective results than their individual scorecards. Yes, this is basically Patrick Lencioni's pyramid, but it works. But here’s where most founders struggle – even with great systems and solid teams in place.
Here's where it gets tricky: how does the founder stay involved without creating what we know as "CEO chaos"—that special kind of mayhem that happens when they jump into the weeds but lack the patience to see things through to the level of detail required for real traction.
The answer isn't for entrepreneurs to disappear completely—because let's be honest, it won't work without them. Instead, they need to channel their execution mindset into the right activities:
#1 - Set clear outcomes, not methods. Define what victory looks like, then step back and let your COO figure out how to get there. Give them metrics, deadlines, and quality standards—but not a detailed playbook. And yes, this only works if you actually have a qualified COO, not just someone with the title but without the skillset to match.
#2 - Build accountability that doesn't need you. Create regular check-ins focused on "What's blocking you?" not "Why did you do it that way?" Remove roadblocks, not create them.
#3 - Use your influence strategically. Clear bureaucratic hurdles, secure resources, resolve cross-departmental turf wars. And yes, this absolutely includes publicly backing your COO's authority. When team members try to go around the COO to get to you, redirect them back. Your COO can't succeed if people think they can get a different answer from the founder.
#4 - Don't become a bottleneck. If every decision must wait for your approval, you've just created the most expensive traffic jam in your company. Delegate decision-making authority and trust it—even when you would have chosen differently.
But here's the catch: this only works if you've hired people who can actually handle these decisions. Trying to save money by hiring "smart but inexperienced" staff will cost you more in the long run than paying for proven expertise. Why? Because you'll end up fixing their mistakes and micromanaging their every move—which completely defeats the purpose of delegating in the first place. You can't delegate authority to people who don't have the judgment to use it wisely.
#5 - Translate vision into action. Show what execution looks like at your level—fundraising, partnership deals, strategic vision work. Then help your team understand not just what you're building, but why their specific work matters to that bigger picture.
#6 - Celebrate results loudly, not effort. When your team and COO deliver actual results, make serious noise about it. What gets celebrated gets repeated—so if you're only recognizing people for "working hard" or "giving their best effort," you're accidentally training your team to stay busy instead of being effective. By spotlighting wins that moved the needle, you're building a culture where people focus on outcomes, not just activity.
Your business has the potential to be something really special. You wouldn't have started it if you didn't believe that. But potential only matters if you can turn it into reality consistently, week after week. The companies that figure this out don't just hit their goals—they create environments where good people want to stay and do their best work. Where the leader can focus on strategy instead of constantly putting out fires. Where ambitious goals stop feeling impossible and start feeling inevitable.
That's what we're really building here: not just better systems, but a better way to work. The question isn't whether you have a great vision—I already know you do. The question is: are you ready to think like an executor?