I believe one of the biggest challenges in the aesthetics industry isn't clinical skill, it's business education.

In this episode of Business on Top, I'm sharing why so many talented providers struggle with leadership, finances, hiring, and scaling their practices, despite being exceptional at what they do. If you've ever felt confident in the treatment room but uncertain reading your financials, leading a team, or making strategic business decisions, this conversation is for you.

I dive into why this gap exists, how it keeps high-achieving founders stuck, and why mastering your craft isn't enough to build a sustainable, profitable business. I also share why I created Aesthetic Business School, a six-week accelerator designed to give aesthetic founders the practical business education they never received in school.

We'll talk about leadership, financial literacy, hiring, KPIs, operations, and the mindset shift required to step into the role of CEO. My goal is to help you stop relying on talent alone and start building a business that creates freedom, impact, and long-term success.

If you're ready to think like a business owner, not just a provider, this episode is for you.

Resources

→ Watch this episode on YouTube

→ Learn more about Aesthetic Business School

→ Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, The Blueprint

→ Learn more & book a call with our team to learn if the POP Leadership Academy is right for you!

→ Follow Kaeli on Instagram: @kaeli.lindholm

In Part 2 of this series, I'm continuing the conversation around the six stages every business moves through and the leadership evolution required to successfully navigate each stage of growth.

As your business grows, your role as a founder has to evolve. The strategies, habits, and decisions that helped you build your business are not always the same things that will help you scale it. In this episode, I'm breaking down the final four stages of business growth: Toddler, Teenager, Young Adult, and The Zone, and the mindset shifts required to move from being the person who does everything to the leader who builds something that can thrive beyond them.

I'll share why founders often get stuck in "management by interruption," how constantly solving problems for your team can unintentionally create dependency, and why true leadership is about developing people who can think, decide, and lead without you. We'll also talk about navigating growth, protecting your culture, making intentional decisions about what to add and what to eliminate, and building a company where leadership exists at every level.

The ultimate goal isn't to become unnecessary. It's to become irreplaceable in a completely different way.

Because extraordinary businesses aren't built by founders who do everything forever, they're built by leaders who evolve alongside the business they're creating.

In this episode, I also share why we created Aesthetic Business School, a six-week program designed to help aesthetic and wellness founders build the leadership, systems, and business foundations required to move from exceptional provider to exceptional CEO.

If you're ready to build a business that creates more impact, more freedom, and more sustainability, this episode is for you.

Resources

→ Watch this episode on YouTube

→ Learn more about Aesthetic Business School

→ Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, The Blueprint

→ Learn more & book a call with our team to learn if the POP Leadership Academy is right for you!

→ Follow Kaeli on Instagram: @kaeli.lindholm

I've learned that every stage of business growth requires a different version of you as a leader.

Just like parenting, your role evolves over time. The way you lead your business in the beginning is not the way you lead a million-dollar company, a growing team, or a business designed to give you your life back.

In Part 1 of this two-part series, I'm sharing one of the biggest lessons I've learned from working alongside hundreds of founders: businesses don't outgrow strategy first, they outgrow leadership.

I'm breaking down the first two stages of business evolution, Birth and Infant, and the leadership shifts required to move from leading yourself and doing everything alone to trusting other people with pieces of your vision.

If everything still depends on you, growth feels heavier instead of easier, or your business cannot function without constant access to you, this episode is for you.

In This Episode, I Cover:

• Why businesses outgrow leadership before strategy

• What leadership looks like in the Birth and Infant stages

• How the habits that help you survive can eventually keep you stuck

• Why being needed is not the same as being successful

• How to stop being the bottleneck and start creating capacity

The question isn't just, "How do I grow my business?"

It's: "Who do I need to become so my business doesn't outgrow me?"

Resources

→ Watch this episode on YouTube

→ Learn more about our NEWLY LAUNCHED 6-week program, Aesthetic Business School

→ Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, The Blueprint

→ Learn more & book a call with our team to learn if the POP Leadership Academy is right for you!

→ Follow Kaeli on Instagram: @kaeli.lindholm

Last week, I released a 7-part series on operational excellence, and the response was incredible. So many founders reached out saying these conversations completely shifted the way they think about growth, leadership, and building a business that doesn't rely on them for everything.

So, I wanted to bring the entire series together in one place.

In this episode, you'll hear all seven parts back-to-back as we dive into the systems, leadership, and operational frameworks that I've seen transform businesses over the last decade of working alongside hundreds of founders as they've crossed their next million-dollar milestone.

If you've ever felt like your business can't function without you, your team constantly needs your approval, or growth has started to feel more exhausting than exciting, this episode is for you.

Together, we'll explore:

• What systems actually are (and why software isn't one of them)

• The difference between systems, processes, and SOPs

• Why founder dependency keeps businesses stuck

• The five core operating systems every million-dollar business needs

• Why accountability starts with clarity

• How broken systems break great people

• And why operational excellence is the foundation for building a Life-First Business

My hope is that this episode helps you stop reacting to your business and start intentionally designing one that creates more consistency, more profitability, more freedom, and ultimately, more life.

If this series resonates with you, I'd also love to invite you to join me inside the 90K in 90 Days Strategic Planning Masterclass, where I'll walk you through building a focused 90-day plan to strengthen your business, increase profitability, and create sustainable growth without sacrificing the life you're building it for.

Resources

→ Watch this episode on YouTube

→ Download the Ultimate Practice Growth Audit to uncover the hidden operational, leadership, and financial opportunities inside your business.

→ Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, The Blueprint

→ Learn more & book a call with our team to learn if the POP Leadership Academy is right for you!

→ Follow Kaeli on Instagram: @kaeli.lindholm

If you've ever felt like your business is growing, but you're carrying more stress, more responsibility, and less freedom than ever before, this episode is for you.

Today, I'm sharing Day 1 of our five-day SPARK Leadership Intensive, where I dive into one of the biggest shifts every growing practice owner has to make: realizing that sustainable growth isn't about working harder, it's about leading differently.

In this session, I'll walk you through why so many successful businesses hit a plateau, how leadership, not demand, becomes the biggest growth constraint, and what it really takes to build a business that can thrive without depending on you for every decision.

We'll talk about:

• Why growth eventually becomes an infrastructure challenge, not a marketing challenge.

• The leadership capacity gap that's keeping so many practices stuck.

• The three foundations of sustainable growth: clarity, prioritization, and focus.

• What it means to build a Life First Business™ that creates health, wealth, impact, freedom.

Whether you're a practice owner or a practice manager, my hope is that this conversation helps you step back, refocus on your vision, and begin building a business that supports your life, instead of consuming it.

Resources

→ Watch this episode on YouTube

→ Learn more and register for our Strategic Planning Masterclass

→ Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, The Blueprint

→ Learn more & book a call with our team to learn if the POP Leadership Academy is right for you!

→ Follow Kaeli on Instagram: @kaeli.lindholm

Most leadership conversations focus on what founders need from their teams. But in this episode of Business on Top, I want to flip the script and talk directly to employees, emerging leaders, and team members who want to grow their careers, increase their impact, and become indispensable within their organizations.

One of the most valuable lessons I learned climbing the corporate ladder was this: if you want to be a great leader someday, you first need to learn how to be a great follower.

In this episode, I share what I've learned from both sides of the table, as an employee who worked her way into executive leadership and as a founder responsible for leading a growing team. We'll talk about how to create more value for your company, why the most promotable employees focus on growth before compensation, and how developing skills and solving problems ultimately creates greater earning power than simply asking for more.

I also pull back the curtain on the realities founders face every day, the decisions, pressures, responsibilities, and unseen challenges that most team members never fully see. My goal is to help you better understand the perspective of your leader while identifying practical ways you can make a bigger impact within your role.

If you've ever wondered how to position yourself for greater opportunities, become a stronger leader, or earn more by contributing more, this conversation is for you.

And if you're a founder who's realizing that your team needs stronger communication, clearer accountability, and greater leadership capacity to support your next level of growth, I'd love to invite you to join me for our free Strategic Planning Masterclass on July 22 at 4 PM PST.

During this live 90-minute training, I'll walk you through the same three-pillar framework we use with our private clients to evaluate business performance, assess team capacity, and identify the leadership shifts required to finish the year strong. You'll leave with greater clarity, stronger priorities, and a practical plan for creating momentum through year-end.

Because extraordinary businesses aren't built by leaders doing everything themselves. They're built by teams that know how to grow, think, lead, and solve problems together.

Resources

→ Watch this episode on YouTube

→ Learn more and register for our Strategic Planning Masterclass

→ Learn more and register for The Owner + Practice Manager Leadership Intensive

→ Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, The Blueprint

→ Learn more & book a call with our team to learn if the POP Leadership Academy is right for you!

→ Follow Kaeli on Instagram: @kaeli.lindholm

If there's one thing entrepreneurship has taught me, it's that there are no guarantees.

Not in hiring. Not in growth. Not in leadership. Not in life.

In this episode of Business on Top, I'm sharing one of the most important mindset shifts every founder must make if they want to reach their next level: stop searching for guarantees and start becoming one.

Over the years, I've worked alongside hundreds of entrepreneurs navigating employee turnover, cash flow challenges, competitive threats, leadership loneliness, and unexpected setbacks. What I've learned is that the founders who build extraordinary businesses aren't the ones with perfect circumstances. They're the ones who learn to trust themselves in uncertain circumstances.

I share a powerful story from our client, Jessica Christy, who experienced one of every founder's worst nightmares when a team member she had spent years developing left to become a competitor. While devastating in the moment, that experience ultimately became the catalyst for her next level of growth and leadership.

Throughout this conversation, I explore why your circumstances become your curriculum, how adversity develops the leadership capacity required for sustainable success, and why growth often has less to do with your skills and more to do with your ability to regulate yourself through uncertainty.

The reality is that entrepreneurship is one long exercise in moving forward without guarantees. Nobody can promise your next hire will work out, your expansion will succeed, or your plans will unfold exactly as expected.

But the most successful leaders I know stopped waiting for certainty. They learned to trust themselves enough to move anyway.

If you've been waiting for the perfect timing, more confidence, or some sign that success is guaranteed before taking your next step, this episode is for you. Because the guarantee you're searching for isn't found in the opportunity.

It's found in who you are becoming.

Resources

→ Watch this episode on YouTube

→ Learn more and register for The Owner + Practice Manager Leadership Intensive

→ Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, The Blueprint

→ Learn more & book a call with our team to learn if the POP Leadership Academy is right for you!

→ Follow Kaeli on Instagram: @kaeli.lindholm

One of the biggest leadership lessons I've learned is that business growth doesn't require me to become more essential, it requires me to become less essential.

For years, being the person everyone relied on felt like a badge of honor. I answered every question, solved every problem, and made sure nothing fell through the cracks. That mindset helped me build my business, but eventually it became the very thing slowing it down.

In this episode of Business on Top, I'm sharing why I believe one of the most common blind spots for high-achieving founders is the addiction to being needed. While it feels good to be the person everyone depends on, true leadership requires us to let go of control, trust our teams, and create businesses that can thrive without us at the center of everything.

I'll walk you through the three stages of leadership growth, the Hero, the Bottleneck, and the Builder, and explain why the transition from founder to CEO requires a complete shift in how we define our value.

You'll also hear part two of a powerful live panel discussion from the ALT Experience featuring Shannon Morrow, Jill Canes, and Jill Goodman. Together, we discuss the realities of team development, navigating turnover, having difficult conversations, building trust, and learning how to step out of the role of being everyone's answer.

If you've ever felt like your business can't function without you, this episode is for you.

Because the goal of leadership isn't to become more important.

It's to build something that succeeds even when you're not in the room.

Resources

→ Watch this episode on YouTube

→ Learn more and register for The Owner + Practice Manager Leadership Intensive

→ Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, The Blueprint

→ Learn more & book a call with our team to learn if the POP Leadership Academy is right for you!

→ Follow Kaeli on Instagram: @kaeli.lindholm

Most founders are not lacking information. They're lacking activation.

In this episode, you'll hear Part 1 of our Provider to CEO Panel from ALT, featuring POP Leadership Academy members Jill Canes, Shannon Morrow, and Dr. Jill Goodman. Despite leading different businesses in different markets and stages of growth, they share a common thread: a commitment to investing in their leadership development and becoming the CEOs their businesses required them to be.

We explore one of the biggest growth barriers business owners face: confusing knowledge with transformation. From conferences and podcasts to books, trainings, and endless saved content, many leaders spend years learning without ever fully implementing what they already know.

We'll talk about the difference between consuming information and activating it. Because real business growth doesn't happen when you learn something new. it happens when you operationalize it, embody it, and consistently execute it.

Together, we discuss what it really takes to transition from provider to CEO, the mindset shifts that accelerate growth, and how leadership activation creates lasting operational change.

If you've been asking yourself, "What else do I need to learn?" This episode may challenge you to ask a more powerful question:

"What do I need to fully activate?"

Tune in for Leadership Lesson #7: Don't Just Learn, Activate.

Resources

→ Watch this episode on YouTube

→ Learn more and register for The Owner + Practice Manager Leadership Intensive

→ Subscribe to The Blueprint

→ Learn more & book a call with our team to learn if the Pop Leadership Academy is right for you!

→ Follow Kaeli on Instagram: @kaeli.lindholm

In this episode of Business on Top, I'm talking about something I believe every founder eventually encounters whether they realize it or not: bombing season.

This conversation is all about the seasons of business growth and why some of the most powerful leadership decisions are not about adding more… but about refining, simplifying, eliminating, and protecting what actually creates momentum.

I share a recent conversation with one of my longtime clients, a multi seven-figure founder, who found herself in a season of strategic subtraction. Closing locations, ending partnerships, restructuring roles, eliminating distractions, and letting go of things that were no longer aligned with the future vision of the company. And while many founders associate growth with constant expansion, what we unpack in this episode is that sustainable scale often requires discernment, focus, and the willingness to stop carrying things the business has quietly outgrown.

We talk about the Pareto Principle, entrepreneurial overwhelm, operational complexity, emotional attachment inside leadership, and why so many founders stay trapped protecting what is familiar instead of strengthening what is exceptional.

This episode is really about learning how to identify your true twenty percent, the people, offers, systems, and strategies creating the majority of your momentum, and having the courage to stop overinvesting in the eighty percent that's draining your energy, focus, and profitability.

If your business has been feeling heavier than it should, if you've been sensing misalignment, operational chaos, or the need for refinement, this episode will likely hit home in a very deep way.

Because sometimes the next level of growth doesn't come from expansion.

Sometimes it comes from having a really good bombing season.

Resources

→ Watch this episode on YouTube

→ Subscribe to The Blueprint

→ Learn more & book a call with our team to learn if the Pop Leadership Academy is right for you!

→ Learn more and register for SPARK for Owners + Practice Managers

→ Follow Kaeli on Instagram: @kaeli.lindholm