The Five Facets of Business™ Podcast

Most founders know what exhaustion feels like. Fewer can say whether they are under chronic stress or have reached burnout, and the difference changes what you do next. Chronic stress still fights. Burnout resigns. This week, we explore what each one sounds like in your own head, and why the stories we tell ourselves may be the earliest warning sign.

We also take on a harder question: how much of our stress do we invent? Goals we set ourselves, worst-case scenarios we rehearse, and notifications we treat as emergencies all trigger the same survival response in the body. The conversation looks at what it means to feel regulated, how that state shows up physically, and why more thought does not get us there.

Our guest this week is Rita Ainsworth. Rita spent more than a decade in performance marketing and burned out twice before she walked away at the peak of her career. That experience led her into the science of stress, and to a discovery that runs against most founder instincts: a pause and a reset are often the highest-leverage move in a high-stakes moment. She now coaches founders, operators, and marketers on how nervous system state shapes performance, decisions, and leadership.

We talk often about how to take the burden off your shoulders and put it into your systems. Rita brings the other half of that picture: the leader who carries the burden internally. She shares a few simple tools you can use in the middle of a stressful day, and a short phrase to carry with you when your system tells you the danger is real.

If you would like to reach out to Rita, follow the links below:

Rita’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rita-ainsworth/

 Rita’s website: https://www.ritaainsworthcoaching.com/

 Nervous System State Quiz: https://www.ritaainsworthcoaching.com/quiz

To watch the entire episode check out our Youtube channel here.

To find more information on The Five Facets and Evolve Leadership Consulting, visit:

www.fivefacetsos.com

www.theevolvedifference.com

Or email us at:

[email protected]

Host & Producer: Dave Newell

Edited by: Judith Gonzalez

Coordination: Loli Basualdo

Nobody hands a leader an anvil. The weight arrives one small request at a time: a water bottle at mile one, a jacket at mile two, a camera at mile three. Each item is easy to accept, and nobody ever takes anything back. By mile eight you are exhausted and cannot say why. We call this leadership accumulation. It happens when the habits that made you effective five years ago become the reason you are overloaded today.

In this solo episode, we share the DAD framework: Delegate, Automate, Delete. It is a four-step exercise you can complete tonight with a blank sheet of paper. We start with the one role only you can fill for your business. Then we map everything else you own, sort it into five categories, and run each item through the filter, starting with administrative work only.

We also share the story behind the framework. A few years into our firm, one founder held 15 clients across three continents. Revenue was good and clients were happy, but he woke at three every morning, and the business could not run for a week without him. We explain how a company ends up with one problem solver and a team of problem forwarders, and why every decision along the way can be a reasonable one.

The list you write in one evening is the easy part. The hard part is the months after, when something goes sideways and the old habit says "I will just handle this one." We talk about why delegation is a track record rather than a single act, and what that means for how you follow through.

If you try the exercise, send us your core role in one line through the show notes. We read every reply.

To watch the entire episode check out our Youtube channel here.

To find more information on The Five Facets and Evolve Leadership Consulting, visit:

www.fivefacetsos.com

www.theevolvedifference.com

Or email us at:

[email protected]

Host & Producer: Dave Newell

Edited by: Judith Gonzalez

Coordination: Loli Basualdo

Most agencies say their client base is "whoever walks through the door." We talk with someone who did the opposite and built a business because of it.

This week, we sit down with Danny Decker, who built his agency around a single decision most owners are afraid to make: narrowing in on one type of client instead of chasing every opportunity. We talk about how that focus didn't limit his growth, it created it. Once Danny and his team knew exactly who they served, every other piece of the business got easier to build: marketing, hiring, and the systems that let the work run without him in the room for every decision.

Our guest this week is Danny Decker, Partner and Co-founder of Spotlight Marketing & Branding and MyMarketer.com, where he helps entrepreneurs fix their marketing and grow their businesses to make a bigger impact on the world around them. Having built his own seven-figure business from the ground up, Danny brings real, in-the-trenches experience rather than academic theory to everything he teaches. He's the author of The Automatic Marketing Machine and Marketing Simplified, and hosts multiple podcasts on business and marketing.

We get into how Danny turned his agency's deliverables into repeatable, documented processes (down to a 70-step system for building a single website), how checklists catch the small mistakes that cost client trust, and why the real test of a business isn't how hard you're working; it's whether the business can run without you.

If you would like to reach out to Danny or his companies, follow the links below:

Danny's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danieljdecker/

 Spotlight Marketing & Branding: https://spotlightbranding.com

 MyMarketer: https://mymarketer.com

 Book a Discovery Call: https://confirm.spotlightbranding.com/website-booking

To watch the entire episode check out our Youtube channel here.

To find more information on The Five Facets and Evolve Leadership Consulting, visit:

www.fivefacetsos.com

www.theevolvedifference.com

Or email us at:

[email protected]

Host & Producer: Dave Newell

Edited by: Judith Gonzalez

Coordination: Loli Basualdo

We kick off Season 5 with a shift in format, more one-on-one conversations where we get specific about implementation, not just concept. And we're opening with one of the most common traps we see in businesses of every size: mistaking organization for direction.

Cleaning up processes and getting people into the right seats feels like progress. But if the destination only lives in the founder's head, that work is motion, not momentum. In this episode, we walk through what happens when a leadership team is executing against different pictures of where the business is going, and why that gap creates what we call the drift: not one bad decision, but hundreds of reasonable ones, each made against a slightly different version of the future.

We introduce the Clarity Canvas, a one-page tool built around seven questions that cover all five facets of a business. We walk through the first three in full, vision, purpose, and core intent, along with the structure and the test for knowing whether you got them right. We also share the story behind building this tool, including a September that nearly ended the business before a shift in clarity turned the next quarter into the strongest in company history.

Get the free Clarity Canvas here:
 https://fivefacetsos.com/getclarity

To listen to The Five Facets of Business™ Podcast, click here:
 https://www.buzzsprout.com/2379330/episodes

To find more information on The Five Facets and Evolve Leadership Consulting, visit:
 www.fivefacetsos.com
www.theevolvedifference.com

Or email us at:
 [email protected]

Host: Dave Newell
 Produced by: Dave Newell
 Edited by: Judith Gonzalez
 Coordination: Loli Basualdo

To watch the entire episode check out our Youtube channel here.

To find more information on The Five Facets and Evolve Leadership Consulting, visit:

www.fivefacetsos.com

www.theevolvedifference.com

Or email us at:

[email protected]

Host & Producer: Dave Newell

Edited by: Judith Gonzalez

Coordination: Loli Basualdo

Most business owners already have the tools to run their company. Software's never been easier to find. What's hard is the leadership work: get buy-in from the team, put a system into practice, and stay consistent when things get busy.

In Season 5 of The Five Facets of Business™ Podcast, we move past the theory and go straight to the how.

We open the season with a shift in focus. In the past four seasons, we explored what a business needs to grow past its founder. This season, we take on the next question: what does it take to lead a business that runs on an operating system, day to day?

Each episode tackles one specific problem business leaders face and gives a path forward you can use right away and bring on guests who've put these systems to work in their own businesses, so you hear from leaders who've done the work, not just theorists.

Subscribe now to catch every episode when Season 5 begins.

To listen to The Five Facets of Business™ Podcast, click here:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2379330/episodes

To watch the entire episode check out our Youtube channel here.

To find more information on The Five Facets and Evolve Leadership Consulting, visit:

www.fivefacetsos.com

www.theevolvedifference.com

Or email us at:

[email protected]

Host & Producer: Dave Newell

Edited by: Judith Gonzalez

Coordination: Loli Basualdo

Thank you for joining us this season! We learned a lot and we hope you have as well. In this episode, Hannah and Dave discuss all the case studies they explored with each "fake business" and reiterating best practices. 

They also discuss the benefits of taking space from your work. Separation from ideas allows room for more and sometimes better solutions to arrive. So take that vacation and take a breath! Summer is here!

If this is your first episode please go back and check out the rest. We look forward to having you back for Season 5! Enjoy your summer and take break! Thanks for listening!

To watch the entire episode check out our Youtube channel here.

To find more information on The Five Facets and Evolve Leadership Consulting, visit:

www.fivefacetsos.com

www.theevolvedifference.com

Or email us at:

[email protected]

Host & Producer: Dave Newell

Edited by: Judith Gonzalez

Coordination: Loli Basualdo

This week is about branding! What does it truly mean to focus on your business's branding? Prospective clients should know exactly what the story is your business is trying to tell. The strongest thing a company can sell is an idea. You need them to buy in early and stay with you for the long haul. This is branding.

Our guest this week is Kristen Graham Brown (or KGB to her friends). Kristen Graham Brown, founder and CEO of Hoot Design Company — a culture-driven branding agency focused on helping companies align who they are internally with how they show up externally.

Kristen’s work sits at the intersection of brand, leadership, culture, and organizational identity — helping founders build companies that don’t just look aligned from the outside, but actually operate that way from the inside out. 

She’s also the creator of the Brand Being Method® and writes extensively about leadership, culture, founder identity, and the future of brand-driven businesses.

If you would like to reach out to Kristen our her company Hoot Design, follow the links below:

Kristen's LinkedIn

Hoot Design Company

To watch the entire episode check out our Youtube channel here.

To find more information on The Five Facets and Evolve Leadership Consulting, visit:

www.fivefacetsos.com

www.theevolvedifference.com

Or email us at:

[email protected]

Host & Producer: Dave Newell

Edited by: Judith Gonzalez

Coordination: Loli Basualdo

A.I. is a double edge sword. In modern business practice every company, big or small are trying to understand ways to implement this powerful tool. The biggest question is "Are we using this right?" That can be asked in more ways than one, but we explore those questions in this weeks episode.

Our guest, Jeff Schacher, is an expert on A.I. functionality and breaks down simple ways your businesses can use these tools effectively. Jeff Schacher is a technology and product leader with more than 20 years of experience building digital products and leading innovation teams. Today, he’s focused on AI and large language model innovation, while also speaking and writing about the human side of leadership — including trust, communication, and the reality that even in the age of AI, most organizational problems are still people problems.

If you would like to stay up to date with Jeff or look up any of the resources mentioned in the episode, follow the links below:

Jeff's LinkedIn

The AI Daily Brief Podcast

80,000 Hours - Work in AI

To watch the entire episode check out our Youtube channel here.

To find more information on The Five Facets and Evolve Leadership Consulting, visit:

www.fivefacetsos.com

www.theevolvedifference.com

Or email us at:

[email protected]

Host & Producer: Dave Newell

Edited by: Judith Gonzalez

Coordination: Loli Basualdo

A common pitfall in business is working without seeing the bigger picture. It's easy to but your head down and just get through the workday. Especially when your company offers a million different services. This might be the problem.

In this weeks episode, Hannah and Dave identify pitfalls in a busy organization without a clear message. They revisit with the A.C.E framework and speak on getting the core business model on the same page. Wanting to provide everything to your customers comes at a significant work cost. 

Start small, keep it simple and scale when the time is right. The most important part is making sure everyone is rowing in the same direction.

To watch the entire episode check out our Youtube channel here.

To find more information on The Five Facets and Evolve Leadership Consulting, visit:

www.fivefacetsos.com

www.theevolvedifference.com

Or email us at:

[email protected]

Host & Producer: Dave Newell

Edited by: Judith Gonzalez

Coordination: Loli Basualdo

Cash is King and it is the obvious make or break foundation to any company. It is also the most difficult component to wrangle if it get's out of hand. Talking about money is a difficult thing to do. It can be an emotional powder keg.

However, money works best with a plan and accountability. You can't lose sight of profit if you know where it is most times and where it's going in the future. Plan and Profit go together like peas and carrots!

To watch the entire episode check out our Youtube channel here.

To find more information on The Five Facets and Evolve Leadership Consulting, visit:

www.fivefacetsos.com

www.theevolvedifference.com

Or email us at:

[email protected]

Host & Producer: Dave Newell

Edited by: Judith Gonzalez

Coordination: Loli Basualdo