Episode Summary

What happens when you're newly divorced, living alone on five and a half acres, staring at a fallen pine tree, and you just decide to handle it yourself? You go to Lowe's, buy an electric chainsaw, put on a flannel shirt and your hiking boots, and make that first cut. For Donna Hunter, that moment became a blog, a handywoman business, a book series, and a mission to show women everywhere that they can fix things too.

Sabrina sits down with Donna, founder of Screw It, I'll Fix It out of Warner Robins, Georgia, for one of the warmest and most genuinely joyful conversations the show has ever had. Donna is a 35-year defense contractor who ghost hunts on weekends, survived a level-five whitewater rafting flip, remodeled her own 1,000-square-foot farmhouse, almost appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show, and brings Thanksgiving dinner to families in need with a little red wagon, just like she did when she was eight years old. This one will make you smile from start to finish.

What's the decision you've been avoiding, the one that would change everything if you finally made it? In this deeply personal solo episode, Sabrina opens up about leaving a 19-year marriage to a doctor, rediscovering herself after 13 years of staying home with her kids, and the two moves that helped her build two multi-million dollar companies from zero experience on the other side of fear.

The episode is equal parts vulnerable and practical. Sabrina walks through a five-step process for creating a living vision, the kind she used when she wrote down that she wanted her moving company quoted in a national publication without any idea how it would happen. Less than a year later, it ran in the New York Times. The second move is just as powerful: find a community that believes in your vision before you fully believe in it yourself. Two moves. Zero fluff. This one will stay with you.

Some origin stories stop you in your tracks. This is one of them. Sabrina sits down with Katie Poole, owner of The Chimney Guys in Ohio, for a conversation that covers grief, bankruptcy, a $350,000 bond, wrongful charges, rock bottom sobriety, a baby born with cystic fibrosis, and a woman who rebuilt her late father's chimney company from nothing into 13 trucks, a certification no one else in her counties holds, and a clear-eyed plan to reach $3M in EBITDA and sell within 36 months.

Katie started cold-call telemarketing for a chimney company at age 15, her father's company. When he died suddenly at 55, everything fell apart at once. What she built from those customer records, a phone call to a chimney sweep named Ron, and sheer force of will is one of the most remarkable stories the Not Fragile Podcast has ever featured. Your problems are not insurmountable. Katie's story proves it.

Don't let the title scare you, this episode is about thriving, not surviving. In this solo episode, Sabrina shares what she heard at an early morning breakfast with an economist in February: revenue will grow, but profit will get harder to protect. Wages up 20% over five years. A recession in the early 2030s. Possibly a depression.

So what do you do with that information if you're a small home service business owner who's just trying to find her next customer? You pay down your debt strategically, you run lean, and you build the kinds of relationships that make you the first call when things get hard. Sabrina doesn't just hand you the framework, she walks through exactly how she paid off three loans herself, fired an accounting firm that pulled the rug out from under her, and got a cake from her banker in return. This one is practical, timely, and worth sharing.

What do you do when you need flexibility for foster kids, a growing family, and parents in their 80s, but you still need something that's yours? You crawl into attics, squeeze through crawl spaces, and become the only woman-owned home inspection company in Washington State. Sabrina sits down with Leona Gonzalez, founder of Elevated Home Inspections in the Tri-Cities, Washington, for a conversation that covers foster care, IVF, a miracle pregnancy announced on an anniversary card, and why being a home inspector with a heart is actually a business strategy.

Leona came from HR, stumbled into home inspections on her husband's suggestion, and built a company rooted in something most inspectors skip entirely: genuinely caring whether the family in front of her should buy the house. Three years in, she's the only woman doing this in her state, checking every outlet, testing every appliance, and crawling toward the spiders so her clients don't have to.

If you've ever cringed listening to one of your employees on the phone with a prospect, this episode is the fix. In this solo episode, Sabrina breaks down the three critical elements every sales script needs to stop your people from blowing it in the first sixty seconds, and start closing deals like an ice cream cone on a hot summer day.

The framework is simple enough to implement this week: structure that flows like a real conversation, clarity that sounds like a human being instead of a brochure, and personality that makes your company impossible to forget. Sabrina wraps it all in the story of her daughter Emily, a sixth grader from a town of 500 who applied to be one of ten Time for Kids reporters nationwide, almost interviewed Taylor Swift, and just attended her first Oscars. The point: give people a framework and then get out of their way.

What if your marketing isn't the problem, but your expectations of it are? Sabrina sits down with Crystal Williams, co-founder of Lemon Seed Marketing and self-described "trade baby," for one of the most practically dense marketing conversations the show has ever had. Crystal grew up dispatching HVAC technicians via radio at her grandfather's company, watched her dad build a 30-year jingle into a multi-million dollar brand, and eventually turned her family's hard-won marketing instincts into a fractional CMO firm built specifically for the trades.

From why most contractors are either dramatically underspending or throwing money everywhere with no strategy, to what "suffocation marketing" actually means, to the single thing Crystal would focus on if she were starting from scratch today, this episode is a masterclass. Whether you're at $500K trying to break a million or at $7M trying to crack ten, Crystal has an opinion, a framework, and probably a jingle for that.

More customers doesn't always mean more profit, and in this solo episode, Sabrina makes the case that some of your customers are actually costing you money. Starting with a story about a four-year-old client she should have let go long before the scathing cancellation email arrived, Sabrina breaks down why the ability to say no is one of the most profitable skills a business owner can develop.

Then she gets into the math, clean, simple, and genuinely eye-opening. Using a straightforward price-minus-costs framework, she shows exactly how charging just 10% more can double your net profit without adding a single new customer. No new trucks. No new hires. No new headaches. Just a sharper understanding of where your money is actually going, and who deserves to be on the receiving end of your energy. Short, direct, and immediately actionable.

What do you do when your husband's former employer has a convicted murderer going into people's homes? You decide you can do better, and you build something from scratch. Sabrina sits down with Amanda Casteel, co-founder of Cherry Blossom Plumbing in the DC metro area, for a conversation that covers government contracting, Google hacking, a blind son who uses echolocation, and a company on the verge of its first million-dollar year.

Amanda left a 12-year career as a government IT consultant to run the business side of Cherry Blossom while her husband does the fieldwork. Along the way she navigated a targeted cyberattack that moved their Google pin 100 miles and nearly put them out of business, rebuilt from the ground up, and is now adding trucks, chasing an ABC morning show appearance, and raising three kids, one of whom is completely blind and already a local celebrity. This episode is funny, warm, and genuinely full of things you'll want to write down.

If your pricing strategy is "set it and forget it," this episode is your wake-up call. In this solo episode, Sabrina breaks down three immediately actionable pricing strategies and wraps them in a childhood memory about her mom's homemade Easter dresses that will stop you in your tracks.

The framework is simple enough to remember and sharp enough to actually use: Papa Bear raises prices every year without apology. Mama Bear charges more when demand is high and uses slow days as strategic discount opportunities. Baby Bear gives customers a reason, a real one, for every offer or promotion you run. Together they form a pricing mindset that treats your bottom line like the elastic it should be: stretchy, intentional, and always working in your favor. Short, warm, and packed with practical math you can apply before the week is out.