The Operator's Playbook

Pavel and Stefanie grew Desert Sports to about 350 members in Dubai without spending a single dollar on paid marketing. When they left Dubai, they had already set it up so it lives in the community, not in them.

Pavel Strandh and Stefanie co-founded Desert Sports in 2023 as one beginner-friendly floorball session and grew it, request by request, into a cross-sport social wellness community: floorball, lacrosse, padel, youth academies, tournaments, hikes and recovery sessions. We talk about building the community before the business, growing on word of mouth and Google searches, not cancelling a single session through a month of closed venues, handing the day-to-day to hosts and coaches from the community, and what breaks first when a business runs on WhatsApp.

If your business only works when you're in the room, this one is for you.

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:37 How Desert Sports started
4:10 What expats in Dubai were missing
8:06 When it became more than sport
20:10 Running it without the founders there
23:45 Growing without paid marketing
28:09 The hardest part of running it
34:32 From drop-in to membership
38:38 Scaling without losing the soul
41:10 Where to find Desert Sports

Connect with Pavel and Stefanie:
Website: https://www.desertsportsuae.com
Sessions and WhatsApp groups: https://linktr.ee/DesertSports
YouTube (Pavel and Stef): https://www.youtube.com/@pavelandstef

The Operator's Playbook is hosted by Bianca Basilio, founder of WeFlow Pro. Honest conversations with the people who run service businesses.

If your bookings, payments and reminders still run through messages on your phone, we build the systems that run them for you: https://weflowpro.com

Pavel and Stefanie grew Desert Sports to about 350 members in Dubai without spending a single dollar on paid marketing. When they left Dubai, they had already set it up so it lives in the community, not in them.

Pavel Strandh and Stefanie co-founded Desert Sports in 2023 as one beginner-friendly floorball session and grew it, request by request, into a cross-sport social wellness community: floorball, lacrosse, padel, youth academies, tournaments, hikes and recovery sessions. We talk about building the community before the business, growing on word of mouth and Google searches, not cancelling a single session through a month of closed venues, handing the day-to-day to hosts and coaches from the community, and what breaks first when a business runs on WhatsApp.

If your business only works when you're in the room, this one is for you.

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:37 How Desert Sports started
4:10 What expats in Dubai were missing
8:06 When it became more than sport
20:10 Running it without the founders there
23:45 Growing without paid marketing
28:09 The hardest part of running it
34:32 From drop-in to membership
38:38 Scaling without losing the soul
41:10 Where to find Desert Sports

Connect with Pavel and Stefanie:
Website: https://www.desertsportsuae.com
Sessions and WhatsApp groups: https://linktr.ee/DesertSports
YouTube (Pavel and Stef): https://www.youtube.com/@pavelandstef

The Operator's Playbook is hosted by Bianca Basilio, founder of WeFlow Pro. Honest conversations with the people who run service businesses.

If your bookings, payments and reminders still run through messages on your phone, we build the systems that run them for you: https://weflowpro.com

Andi Yablonski stopped selling her hours. "My time isn't for sale," she says. What she sells is the outcome, and the clarity that gets her clients there.

Andi is the founder of Studio Yablonska, an art-led interior design studio in the San Francisco Bay Area, and has spent 22 years in design. We talk about learning to run a business after leaving a big firm, the expensive mistakes she stops clients from making, the systems behind every proposal and presentation, why she moved from hourly to flat-fee billing, why there is no such thing as too much communication, and building a brand after years of referrals.

If you still bill by the hour and your best thinking happens off the clock, this one is for you.

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:45 Learning to run the business, not just the design
6:15 What broke first when it was just her
8:59 Stopping a client's expensive mistake
19:09 The systems clients never see
20:58 Juggling chainsaws and babies
24:58 Why she stopped billing by the hour
27:30 Keeping every client in the loop
29:38 Marketing and finding her brand
34:02 Who really needs a designer

Connect with Andi:
Website: https://studioyablonska.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andi_yablonski/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andi-yablonski/

The Operator's Playbook is hosted by Bianca Basilio, founder of WeFlow Pro. Honest conversations with the people who run service businesses.

If proposals, invoices and client updates still eat the hours you'd rather spend on the work, we build the systems that run them for you: https://weflowpro.com

Almost 70% of the work in a clinic is done before the patient goes into the practitioner's room. Jennifer Cook ran a 25-practitioner clinic that way, with her front-of-house team at the centre of it.

Jennifer founded and ran Western Health Collective in West Footscray, Melbourne, a clinic for people with chronic conditions: three teams, 13 modalities and five receptionists, open from 8 in the morning to 8 at night. Today she consults to clinics and health businesses, and she spent six months as a special advisor to the Department of Health. We talk about why front-of-house staff are the most critical team in a clinic, how case management keeps patients from falling through the cracks, building a clinic that feels like a living room, and what to fix first when things start getting dropped.

If you run a clinic and things are getting harder to coordinate, this one is for you.

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:13 Why she built Western Health Collective
10:58 The moment she knew care had to be coordinated
14:30 What clinics underestimate: front-of-house staff
18:46 Reception is infrastructure, not a cost
23:24 Closing the clinic and consulting now
27:05 What she looks at first in any clinic
31:16 What good case management looks like
36:52 Where to start when coordination gets hard
40:36 What should change in the next five years

Connect with Jennifer:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-cook-whc/

The Operator's Playbook is hosted by Bianca Basilio, founder of WeFlow Pro. Honest conversations with the people who run service businesses.

If your front desk spends the day on calls, bookings and reminders instead of the people in front of them, we build the systems that take that work off their plate: https://weflowpro.com

Dr Izzy Lewis runs his chiropractic studio on systems and AI, and his non-negotiable is that every client still feels seen, heard and listened to.

Izzy is the founder and director of Brain to Body, a chiropractic studio in Chippendale, Sydney. We talk about the three-part framework he uses with every client, the AI that turns his consult recordings into notes, the AI receptionist that handles the curveball questions, why he skipped the digital check-in, filtering for the right patients, B plus players, and why he would vlog the journey if he started again.

If you want systems and AI in your business without losing the personal touch, this one is for you.

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:24 Growing without losing the personal touch
4:31 The three essentials framework
6:47 AI notes and an AI receptionist
12:26 When tech gets too transactional
15:48 Filtering for the right patients
19:37 Protecting quality over speed
23:34 B plus players
25:40 What he would do differently
30:14 Start with your why

Connect with Izzy:
Website: https://braintobody.com.au
Instagram (studio): https://www.instagram.com/braintobody/
Instagram (Izzy): https://www.instagram.com/izzyadjusts/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@braintobody

The Operator's Playbook is hosted by Bianca Basilio, founder of WeFlow Pro. Honest conversations with the people who run service businesses.

If calls, bookings and notes still pull you away from the person in front of you, we build the systems that take them off your plate: https://weflowpro.com

Jared Le Roy sends every set of draft accounts with a video of himself walking through the numbers. By the time clients sit down with him, they have already seen the report, and the meeting is about what they do next.

Jared is the director of Embark Accounting in Dunedin, New Zealand. He left corporate finance because he couldn't have an impact there, and built a deliberately small firm around educating small business owners. We talk about getting in early with new businesses, where firms overdo advisory, hiring for attitude, his "decision window" for new tech, and how he turns a client video into a follow-up email in under 10 minutes.

If you run an accounting firm and your clients never read what you send them, this one is for you.

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
2:35 Draft accounts sent with a video
6:00 Why new businesses need an accountant early
10:05 Education beats compliance
13:12 Where firms overdo advisory
18:15 Hiring for attitude and recall
22:48 The decision window for new tech
28:41 From video to client email in under 10 minutes
31:02 Call your accountant before you sign
39:11 Why 2026 is a consolidation year

Connect with Jared:
Website: https://embarkaccounting.nz
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/embarkaccounting/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jared-le-roy
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-hXGkD5b8Svu4cVlp1KpUw/

The Ledger is the accounting series of The Operator's Playbook, hosted by Bianca Basilio, founder of WeFlow. Honest conversations with the people who run service businesses.

When your team still types up what they already said out loud, that is admin a system can do, and it's what we fix: https://weflowpro.com

When something goes wrong in a business, the easy move is to blame a person. Chris Kendall looks upstream instead, because, as he puts it, 99% of failures are due to process failures, not people failures.

Chris is the CEO of Aretex, which he started almost 12 years ago and has grown to 350 people, six in Australia and the rest across two offices in the Philippines. In this conversation we get into the single point of failure hiding in most small businesses, why new software so often gets blamed for a skills gap, and the real difference between offshore labour and outsourcing.

If your business relies on one person who knows how everything works, this one is for you.

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:54 Why failure is inevitable, and what to do about it
6:09 Why 99% of failures are process, not people
7:18 When one person holds it all together
13:00 Anti-failure and taking one more step
17:06 Why new systems don't stick
21:05 Offshore labour vs outsourcing
26:44 Chasing growth before fixing the basics
31:01 How to know a firm is operating well
34:21 Where to find Chris

Connect with Chris:
Website: https://www.aretex.com.au
Anti-Failure podcast: https://www.aretex.com.au/anti-failure-podcast

The Ledger is the accounting series of The Operator's Playbook, hosted by Bianca Basilio, founder of WeFlow. Honest conversations with the people who run service businesses.

If your business only runs because one person holds it all together, that's a missing system, and it's what we build: https://weflowpro.com

Ten years into running her own luxury interior design firm, Jessica Jones says the creative work is only about 25% of her week. The other 75% is operations.

Jessica is the founder and principal designer of Jess Jones Design Group, a luxury residential interior design firm in Newport Beach, California. We talk about the hard budget conversations with clients, what she found hardest to hand over to her assistant, why procurement takes more time than the design, and how she keeps 20 projects moving at once.

If you're great at the work but running the business keeps taking more of your week, this one is for you.

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
2:12 Quit a 40-hour job to work 80
7:01 Budgets, overruns and hard conversations
17:35 Opening her own home to the public
20:39 The system behind a home that feels collected
26:32 25% creative, 75% operations
28:33 Handing work to her assistant
32:06 Procurement takes longer than design
33:50 Running 20 projects at once
36:03 Know your numbers

Connect with Jessica:
Website: https://jessjonesdesigngroup.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jessjonesdesigngroup/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicarenejones
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jessjonesdesigngroup/

The Operator's Playbook is hosted by Bianca Basilio, founder of WeFlow. Honest conversations with the people who run service businesses.

If your business still depends on you being the keeper of all knowledge, we build the system that lets your team work without needing you for every answer: https://weflowpro.com

A lot of doctors build the whole clinic around themselves. Dr Raquel Fercasy built hers around a team she can trust, so the Madrid clinic keeps going while she works from Dubai.

Raquel is a family medicine doctor who founded Clínica Fercasy in Madrid almost 10 years ago, and she now works between Madrid and Dubai. In this conversation we get into hiring for values over the CV, why you cannot be your team's mum, why her patients trust word of mouth over social media, and why her follow-up still runs on people, not a machine.

If your clinic still needs you in the room for everything to work, this one is for you.

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:43 Why her clinic does not carry her name
4:32 What gets harder as the clinic grows
7:17 High standards without being the team's mum
9:51 Why patients trust reputation over social media
11:35 Follow-up that still feels human
14:22 What clinics that scale do differently
22:02 Patients who Google you before they arrive
25:23 The bottleneck she cannot remove
28:01 First advice for clinic owners who want to grow

Connect with Raquel:
Website: https://fercasy.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clinicafercasy/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fercasy

The Operator's Playbook is hosted by Bianca Basilio, founder of WeFlow. Honest conversations with the people who run service businesses.

When a clinic only runs while the owner is in the room, that's a systems gap, and it's what we fix: https://weflowpro.com

Growth is supposed to be the good news. Neil Ashton sees how quietly it breaks accounting teams instead.

Neil is an SMSF auditor who has worked across administration, accounting and audit for over 15 years, so he sees firms from every angle. In this conversation we get into why managers keep getting pulled back into the work, what outsourcing actually fixes and what stays broken, and why a firm's growth tends to expose every bottleneck it already has.

If your best people are stuck doing the work instead of running the business, this one is for you.

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:28 How Neil ended up in SMSF audit
2:50 Where SMSF workflows break down
6:01 What causes the audit back and forth
10:21 Why managers get pulled back into the work
11:37 What outsourcing fixes and what stays broken
13:45 What the better firms do differently
15:27 Software and AI in SMSF audit
18:39 Growth exposes every bottleneck
23:08 The property valuation headache

Connect with Neil:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neil-ashton-836b583a/
Website: https://sislogic.com.au

The Ledger is the accounting series of The Operator's Playbook, hosted by Bianca Basilio, founder of WeFlow. Honest conversations with the people who run service businesses.

When growth means your best people get buried instead of freed, that's a systems gap, and it's what we fix: https://weflowpro.com