The Alignment Table

Dilution might be the most feared word in business ownership, and most of the fear comes from the word itself rather than what it actually does. Sharon Preston runs the actual numbers, showing how a smaller percentage of a genuinely bigger business can be worth considerably more than full ownership of a small one, and where the maths only works in your favour.

This episode unpacks:

• What dilution actually is, explained plainly with real numbers
• A worked example showing when a smaller stake is worth more than a bigger one
• When dilution genuinely does hurt you, including flat and down rounds
• Why the percentage feels so personal, beyond the pure maths
• The different ways dilution happens: option pools, funding rounds, and convertible notes
• Protections worth knowing exist, including pro-rata rights and anti-dilution provisions
• How this same trade plays out for a restaurant partnership or a franchise deal, not just cap tables

For entrepreneurs and business owners weighing up a partner, an investor, or equity for a key hire, bricks and mortar or online.

Ways to work with Sharon:

• Join The Alignment Circle™, her community for high achieving leaders ready to stop performing and start aligning
• Explore her workshops, built for entrepreneurs ready to grow past where they are now
• Join her group coaching programs for structured, ongoing support as you scale

Learn more and get involved at sharonpreston.com.

Every pound of outside money that enters a business arrives with strings attached, and those strings are rarely explained plainly before the money lands in the account.

Sharon Preston breaks down exactly what different types of funding actually cost you in control, from a bank loan to an investor to money from someone close to you, using plain English instead of jargon.

This episode unpacks:

• The three very different kinds of money, and what each one actually costs you
• What a bank genuinely expects from you beyond repayment
• What an investor actually expects, and the governance terms explained in plain English
• The informal money from friends and family that often costs the most control of all
• Four questions to ask before any money changes hands
• Whether you can ever buy control back once you've given it away

For entrepreneurs and business owners weighing up funding decisions, whatever size the deal, bricks and mortar or online.

Ways to work with Sharon:

• Join The Alignment Circle™, her community for high achieving leaders ready to stop performing and start aligning
• Explore her workshops, built for entrepreneurs ready to grow past where they are now
• Join her group coaching programs for structured, ongoing support as you scale

Learn more and get involved at sharonpreston.com.

Every business owner leaves their business one day, sold, handed over, closed, or stepped back from.

Sharon Preston breaks down the difference between a planned exit and an accidental one, and why most owners end up in the second category without ever meaning to.

This episode walks through the four real ways to exit a business, sale, merger, gradual wind-down, or handover, what each one actually demands, and how long they genuinely take.

This episode unpacks:

• The difference between a planned exit and an accidental one
• The four routes out of a business, and what each one actually requires
• A simple readiness test for whether your business could run without you
• The emotional side of leaving something you built, even when it's the right decision
• Three questions to start exit planning now, whatever stage you're at
• Why businesses built without an exit in mind are worth less when the moment comes

For entrepreneurs and business owners, bricks and mortar or online, ready to build with the end in mind rather than leaving it to chance.

Ways to work with Sharon:

• Join The Alignment Circle™, her online community for high achieving leaders ready to stop performing and start aligning
• Explore her workshops, built for entrepreneurs ready to grow past where they are now
• Join her group coaching programs for structured, ongoing support as you scale

Learn more and get involved at sharonpreston.com.

There's a belief that sits under a lot of funding decisions without ever being said out loud, that bootstrapping is the noble path and raising money is for people who couldn't cut it alone. Sharon Preston takes that belief apart, including her own honest story of why she bootstrapped three businesses, and what it taught her about confidence, identity, and the environment that shapes what you even think to attempt.

This episode unpacks:

• What bootstrapping actually buys you, and what it genuinely costs
• What raising outside money actually buys you, and the control it quietly costs in return
• The hidden shame and guilt narratives carried on both sides of this decision
• Sharon's own honest story of why she bootstrapped, and what she wishes she'd known sooner
• Three questions to ask before choosing a funding path for your own business
• The middle ground options between fully bootstrapped and fully backed
• A thirty second practice for making this decision with a clear head

For entrepreneurs and business owners deciding how to fund their next stage of growth, whichever path that turns out to be.

Ways to work with Sharon:

• Join The Alignment Circle™, her community for high achieving leaders ready to stop performing and start aligning
• Explore her workshops, built for entrepreneurs ready to grow past where they are now
• Join her group coaching programs for structured, ongoing support as you scale

Learn more and get involved at sharonpreston.com.

Get your copy of The Blind Spot Playbook here

Every month your business pays you something, and that number is quietly answering a question most business owners never ask outright. Are you paying yourself to run the business or building something the business will eventually owe you for?

In this episode, Sharon Preston breaks down the real difference between salary and equity, using two contrasting business scenarios to show how the same choice plays out everywhere from cap tables to shop tills.

This episode unpacks:-

- The real difference between salary and equity, and why you can have plenty of one and none of the other.

- Why a comfortable monthly wage can quietly mask a business that isn't actually building any value.

- What equity genuinely requires from you psychologically, not just financially .

- The three questions to ask before you set your own pay this year.

- A real example of how this exact decision played out in one of Sharon's own businesses.

- A 30 second practice for making clearer decisions.

For entrepreneurs and business owners, bricks and mortar or online, ready to build something worth more than the wage it currently pays them.

Ways to work with Sharon:

- Join The Alignment Circle, her community for high achieving leaders ready to stop performing and start aligning.

- Explore her workshops, built for entrepreneurs ready to grow past where they are now.

- Join her coaching programs for structured, ongoing suppor as you scale.

Learn more and get involved at sharonpreston.com

Every entrepreneur hits the same moment. You make the right call, hiring your first member of staff, raising your prices, stepping back from the parts of the business only you have ever done, and your stomach still drops.

In this episode, Sharon Preston unpacks why that feeling isn't a red flag but proof you're growing, and how to tell the difference between a genuine warning sign and the ordinary wobble that shows up right before every scale point in business.

This episode unpacks:

• Why confidence isn't the absence of doubt, and what to do instead of waiting for it
• Three ways to tell a growth wobble apart from a genuine warning sign
• How the same wobble shows up whether you run a salon, a building site, an online consultancy, or a restaurant
• What staying in the old way of waiting for certainty actually costs you
• A thirty second practice for making bigger decisions with a clear head
• Why "imposter syndrome" is the wrong name for what you're actually feeling

Real talk for entrepreneurs and business owners, bricks and mortar or online, ready to grow past where they started.

Ways to work with Sharon:

• Join The Alignment Circle™, her community for high achieving leaders ready to stop performing and start aligning.
• Explore her workshops, built for entrepreneurs ready to grow past where they are now
• Join her group coaching programs for structured, ongoing support as you scale
• Attend her international retreats for immersive, in-person work on your business and yourself

Learn more and get involved at sharonpreston.com.

What got you here was never meant to carry you the rest of the way.

In this episode of The Alignment Table™, Executive Mentor and Strategic Advisor Sharon Preston explores what every leader must eventually sacrifice to keep growing,

- the habits

- control

- identity built in earlier stages that quietly become the ceiling on what comes next.

Whether you lead a team or build entirely alone, this episode names the specific moment growth asks you to let go, and why that release is an act of leadership, not loss.

Everything you need to continue this conversation is at sharonpreston.com.

The people who challenge you well are not a threat to your leadership. They are evidence it is still working.

In this episode of The Alignment Table™, Executive Mentor and Strategic Advisor Sharon Preston names one of the quietest leadership blind spots there is, the moment a business succeeds and the room around its leader grows a little too agreeable.

Learn why:-

• the people who once disagreed with you stop doing it,
• what it costs a business when they do
• how to build genuine challenge back into your leadership before the silence becomes expensive.
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Take the free Blind Spot Assessment at reports.sharonpreston.com to find out where your own leadership may have stopped being challenged.

Everything you need to continue this conversation is at sharonpreston.com.

Most leaders don't miss a warning sign because they weren't looking. They miss it because listening would mean admitting the business they built might need to change.

In this episode of The Alignment Table™, Executive Mentor and Strategic Advisor Sharon Preston explores:-

• the quiet leadership blind spots every business owner learns to explain away

• the client who's gone cold
• the colleague who's stopped pushing back
• the feeling you keep talking yourself out of in the same meeting every week.

This isn't about reacting to every flicker of doubt. It's about knowing the difference between noise and a signal your leadership has already half heard.

If you've ever wondered whether you're the last person in the business to notice something everyone else already has, this one is for you.

Complete the free Blind Spot Assessment at reports.sharonpreston.com

Everything you need to continue this conversation is at sharonpreston.com.

Most leaders of us who undercharge do not have a pricing problem, they have a leadership problem .

In this episode, Sharon Preston makes the case that what you charge is one of the clearest signals available about how you see yourself, what you believe you are worth and whether the identity you are leading from has kept pace with the value you are actually delivering. If you have ever

- discounted

- hesitated

- felt uncomfortable stating your fee out loud

Then this episode is for you.