The Sallie Ogden Show

In this episode, I sit down with Ashleigh and Kat of Allora Solutions Group — two women who have made a business out of solving the operational mess that quietly eats up most founders' time. Allora handles the kind of work that doesn't grow your business but absolutely has to get done — the administrative, the back-end, the small-but-relentless tasks that consume the hours you should be spending on the things only you can do.

Ashleigh and Kat make a case I find myself echoing constantly with my own clients: the leap to outsourcing and expanding your team is one most founders make later than they should, because they don't feel ready. The truth is, you'll never feel fully ready. You'll feel ready only after you've made the move and seen what it gives you back. The cost of waiting until the perfect moment usually exceeds the cost of moving before you're sure.

We talk about what to outsource first, what to keep close, how to think about the hire-versus-contractor question, and how to identify the work that's quietly draining your capacity to lead. We also get into one of the more uncomfortable truths about scaling a business: at some point, continuing to do the small stuff yourself isn't humility. It's avoidance.

If you've been telling yourself you'll outsource eventually — when revenue is bigger, when things slow down, when you have time to onboard someone — this episode will help you see why the eventually-thinking is the actual problem.

This episode originally aired on Hitting Rock Middle, the show that has since evolved into The Sallie Ogden Show.

Connect with Ashleigh, Kat, and Allora Solutions Group:www.allorasolutions.com

About the show:

The Sallie Ogden Show is for the woman who's already built something — and is stuck at the plateau where the old playbook stops working. Tactical when you need a number. Honest when you need a mirror. Hosted by former lawyer turned consultant Sallie Ogden.

Stay connected:Newsletter (Further): https://www.growwiththebrimm.com/furthernewsletterFree business assessment — The BRIMM Business Scan: https://thebrimm.typeform.com/to/fuYmBbJIWebsite: growwiththebrimm.comInstagram: @the_brimm

When you launch a business, the cultural pressure to do everything at once is enormous. Hit the sales numbers. Build the distribution. Open the brick-and-mortar. Land the press. Do it all faster than the founder you saw on Instagram last week. Most entrepreneurs absorb that pressure without questioning it, and most of them burn out, plateau, or build something that doesn't quite fit them as a result.

In this episode, I sit down with Carrie Morey, the founder of Callie's Hot Little Biscuit — the Charleston-rooted company that turned her mother's biscuit recipe into a multi-million-dollar business with a national following. Carrie didn't get there by following the playbook. She got there by deliberately ignoring it. She started slowly, with a clear vision, and grew at the pace that fit the business and the life she was building around it.

Her line — there's no traffic in your own lane — captures the heart of her approach. We talk about how she resisted the urge to scale faster than she should have, the moments she could have made a different (faster, riskier) choice and chose patience instead, and the practical wisdom that comes from running a business at the pace it actually needs to grow rather than the pace your competitors seem to be moving at.

If you've been quietly worried that you're falling behind — or that your business should be further along than it is — this conversation will give you both perspective and permission. Carrie's journey is proof that the slow, intentional path is often the one that gets you to a better destination.

This episode originally aired on Hitting Rock Middle, the show that has since evolved into The Sallie Ogden Show.

Connect with Carrie and Callie's Hot Little Biscuit:[Callie's Hot Little Biscuit website — see note below][Carrie's Instagram — see note below]

About the show:

The Sallie Ogden Show is for the woman who's already built something — and is stuck at the plateau where the old playbook stops working. Tactical when you need a number. Honest when you need a mirror. Hosted by former lawyer turned consultant Sallie Ogden.

Stay connected:Newsletter (Further): https://www.growwiththebrimm.com/furthernewsletterFree business assessment — The BRIMM Business Scan: https://thebrimm.typeform.com/to/fuYmBbJIWebsite: growwiththebrimm.comInstagram: @the_brimm

In this episode, I sit down with Elizabeth Rees, the co-founder of Chasing Paper — a brand that turned removable wallpaper from a niche concept into a category-defining business. Elizabeth has built Chasing Paper through a combination of design instinct, operational discipline, and one trait she keeps coming back to: relentless curiosity.

Most of us were taught to set our sights on a specific outcome and march toward it. Elizabeth makes the case that curiosity — actively pursuing what interests you, even when it doesn't have an obvious return — is one of the most underrated business strategies for a founder trying to grow something distinctive. She's used curiosity as a tool, not a distraction. As a way of finding unexpected connections, opportunities, and collaborators that more goal-focused entrepreneurs would have walked right past.

We talk about how Elizabeth got Chasing Paper off the ground, what she's learned about managing a growing business without losing the original spark that made it work, and the specific habits that have kept her open to the next idea even as her company has scaled. She's the kind of founder who proves that staying curious isn't soft — it's strategic.

If you've been so focused on the results in front of you that you've stopped following the threads of your own interest, this conversation will give you both the permission and the practical reason to start again.

This episode originally aired on Hitting Rock Middle, the show that has since evolved into The Sallie Ogden Show.

Connect with Elizabeth and Chasing Paper:www.chasingpaper.com@chasingpaper

About the show:

The Sallie Ogden Show is for the woman who's already built something — and is stuck at the plateau where the old playbook stops working. Tactical when you need a number. Honest when you need a mirror. Hosted by former lawyer turned consultant Sallie Ogden.

Stay connected:Newsletter (Further): https://www.growwiththebrimm.com/furthernewsletterFree business assessment — The BRIMM Business Scan: https://thebrimm.typeform.com/to/fuYmBbJIWebsite: growwiththebrimm.comInstagram: @the_brimm

In this episode, I sit down with Maddie Clark of Nice Commerce — a third-party logistics company that handles fulfillment, inventory, and shipping for product-based businesses so the founders running them don't have to. If the operational side of selling physical products has been the part you secretly dread — the warehousing, the order management, the daily logistics of getting things from your hands into your customers' — this conversation is going to be a real exhale.

Maddie talks about what 3PLs actually do, what they do well, and where the line is between I should be handling this myself and I should have outsourced this six months ago. She also walks through how Nice Commerce specifically approaches the partnership — not just as a vendor relationship, but as a strategic collaboration that helps founders make better operational decisions and unlock growth they couldn't access while doing fulfillment by hand.

We talk about why operational stress is one of the most under-discussed reasons product businesses plateau, what to look for when you're evaluating fulfillment partners, and how the right kind of automation can take an enormous weight off a founder's shoulders without sacrificing the customer experience.

If you've been running a product business and quietly drowning in the back-end work, this episode will give you both the framework and the permission to consider getting help.

This episode originally aired on Hitting Rock Middle, the show that has since evolved into The Sallie Ogden Show.

Connect with Maddie and Nice Commerce:www.nicecommerce.com

About the show:

The Sallie Ogden Show is for the woman who's already built something — and is stuck at the plateau where the old playbook stops working. Tactical when you need a number. Honest when you need a mirror. Hosted by former lawyer turned consultant Sallie Ogden.

Stay connected:Newsletter (Further): https://www.growwiththebrimm.com/furthernewsletterFree business assessment — The BRIMM Business Scan: https://thebrimm.typeform.com/to/fuYmBbJIWebsite: growwiththebrimm.comInstagram: @the_brimm

Every decision you make in your business is based on a paradigm — a set of assumptions about how things work, what's possible, what's required, and what counts as success. Most entrepreneurs don't think of it that way. We tend to treat our operating assumptions as just the way things are. But they're not. They're inherited. And many of them are seriously out of date.

A lot has changed in the last several decades. Technology, science, the way we understand human behavior, the way we work, the way we communicate, the tools available to a single founder running a small business. The world that built the assumptions most of us are still operating under no longer exists. And yet, the rules we're using to make decisions about pricing, hiring, scaling, marketing, and everything else were written in a different era — by different people, for different conditions.

In this solo episode, I introduce what I call the new paradigm: a fundamentally different way of thinking about business that reflects how things actually work now, rather than how they used to. We talk about which old assumptions are quietly holding the most ambitious women back, what the new paradigm looks like in practice, and how shifting your perspective can make decisions that used to feel impossible suddenly become obvious.

If you've been working hard inside a model that no longer fits and quietly suspecting there has to be a better way, this conversation is for you.

This episode originally aired on Hitting Rock Middle, the show that has since evolved into The Sallie Ogden Show.

About the show:

The Sallie Ogden Show is for the woman who's already built something — and is stuck at the plateau where the old playbook stops working. Tactical when you need a number. Honest when you need a mirror. Hosted by former lawyer turned consultant Sallie Ogden.

Stay connected:Newsletter (Further): https://www.growwiththebrimm.com/furthernewsletterFree business assessment — The BRIMM Business Scan: https://thebrimm.typeform.com/to/fuYmBbJIWebsite: growwiththebrimm.comInstagram: @the_brimm

Goal setting. I know — your eyes just glazed over a little. The phrase has been so worn down by motivational posters, journaling prompts, and end-of-year listicles that the actual practice has lost most of its meaning. Most ambitious women have a complicated relationship with goal setting: they've done it, they've ignored it, they've done it again, they've lost faith in it. Somewhere along the way, the practice stopped feeling like a tool and started feeling like a chore.

In this solo episode, I make the case that goal setting — the real version, not the vision-board version — is one of the most underrated tools in business. And specifically, that the reason most women aren't getting where they want to go isn't that they're not working hard enough. It's that they've never set goals in a way that actually directs their effort toward something specific, measurable, and chosen on purpose.

We talk about why most goal setting fails (it's almost always too vague, too unrelated to actual decisions, or too disconnected from how the business actually works), what real goal setting looks like at this stage of business, and the practical shifts that turn goal setting from a January ritual into an actual operating discipline. The kind of goals that change what you do on a Tuesday — not the kind that sit pretty in a journal you stop opening in February.

If you've been quietly skeptical of goal setting because of how badly it's been done to you in the past, this episode might give you a different way in.

This episode originally aired on Hitting Rock Middle, the show that has since evolved into The Sallie Ogden Show.

About the show:

The Sallie Ogden Show is for the woman who's already built something — and is stuck at the plateau where the old playbook stops working. Tactical when you need a number. Honest when you need a mirror. Hosted by former lawyer turned consultant Sallie Ogden.

Stay connected:Newsletter (Further): https://www.growwiththebrimm.com/furthernewsletterFree business assessment — The BRIMM Business Scan: https://thebrimm.typeform.com/to/fuYmBbJIWebsite: growwiththebrimm.comInstagram: @the_brimm

Working more doesn't mean you'll get more results. It's one of the hardest lessons for an ambitious woman to internalize, because we've been rewarded our whole lives for putting in the hours — and somewhere along the way, that pattern stopped serving us. The math of running a business simply doesn't reward effort the same way school or a corporate job did. Hours don't equal output. Output doesn't equal impact. And most of the women I work with are filling their days with small, mundane tasks that feel productive but barely move the business forward.

In this solo episode, I walk through three operating moves that change everything: automate, eliminate, and delegate. Specifically, how to figure out which tasks belong in which bucket, why most business owners get this wrong (they delegate the wrong things and automate the easy things instead of the high-leverage ones), and what happens when you stop confusing motion with progress.

We talk about how to identify the work that's actually moving your business — versus the work that's just keeping you busy — and the practical, often-uncomfortable shifts required to free yourself up for the higher-leverage things only you can do. The reward isn't just a more profitable business. It's also more time. Time you can put toward the parts of your life that have been waiting for you to come back to them.

If you've been quietly suspecting that you're working too hard for the results you're getting, this conversation will help you see what to do about it.

This episode originally aired on Hitting Rock Middle, the show that has since evolved into The Sallie Ogden Show.

About the show:

The Sallie Ogden Show is for the woman who's already built something — and is stuck at the plateau where the old playbook stops working. Tactical when you need a number. Honest when you need a mirror. Hosted by former lawyer turned consultant Sallie Ogden.

Stay connected:Newsletter (Further): https://www.growwiththebrimm.com/furthernewsletterFree business assessment — The BRIMM Business Scan: https://thebrimm.typeform.com/to/fuYmBbJIWebsite: growwiththebrimm.comInstagram: @the_brimm

Most business owners think growing revenue requires doing something dramatic — a new offer, a bigger team, a complete strategy overhaul. The truth is much more boring, and much more useful: most of the meaningful revenue gains in a small business come from small, deliberate adjustments to things that are already working. You don't usually need to reinvent the business. You need to fix the leaks in the one you already have.

In this solo episode, I walk through four specific methods for increasing revenue that work across virtually any industry — service businesses, product businesses, consultants, creative practices, brick-and-mortar, online. They're not industry-specific tricks. They're patterns I've watched produce real, measurable results in business after business, and they're the ones I find myself recommending most consistently in my consulting work.

We talk about where the easiest revenue is hiding in your existing business, why most owners overlook it because they're busy chasing new opportunities, and how a few targeted moves can change your numbers without requiring you to bring in a single additional client.

If you've been working flat out and somehow not seeing the revenue growth you expected, the issue isn't usually effort. It's where the effort is being spent.

This episode originally aired on Hitting Rock Middle, the show that has since evolved into The Sallie Ogden Show.

About the show:

The Sallie Ogden Show is for the woman who's already built something — and is stuck at the plateau where the old playbook stops working. Tactical when you need a number. Honest when you need a mirror. Hosted by former lawyer turned consultant Sallie Ogden.

Stay connected:Newsletter (Further): https://www.growwiththebrimm.com/furthernewsletterFree business assessment — The BRIMM Business Scan: https://thebrimm.typeform.com/to/fuYmBbJIWebsite: growwiththebrimm.comInstagram: @the_brimm

In this episode, I sit down with Emily Tuttle, the founder and CEO of Pause & Purpose. Emily is on a mission to bring mindfulness and meditation into wellness studios all over the world — not just as content, but as a structural part of how those studios operate, connect with each other, and grow their revenue.

What makes Emily's work interesting isn't only that she's bringing meditation to more people. It's the way she's built an actual business around something most people treat as either a personal practice or a side offering. Pause & Purpose creates the infrastructure — the courses, the network, the resources — that lets studios fold meditation and mindfulness into their work in ways that meaningfully serve both their clients and their bottom line.

We talk about Emily's journey, what she's learned about building a business at the intersection of wellness and operations, and how the practices she teaches translate into real business decisions. Specifically: how meditation makes you a more grounded CEO, how mindfulness changes your decision-making in moments of pressure, and how the women who incorporate these practices into their leadership tend to make different — and often better — calls than the women who don't.

If you've been quietly curious about meditation as a tool for your own work, but skeptical that it actually does anything useful for the business itself, this conversation is the one for you.

This episode originally aired on Hitting Rock Middle, the show that has since evolved into The Sallie Ogden Show.

Connect with Emily and Pause & Purpose:[Pause & Purpose website — see note below][Emily's Instagram — see note below]

About the show:

The Sallie Ogden Show is for the woman who's already built something — and is stuck at the plateau where the old playbook stops working. Tactical when you need a number. Honest when you need a mirror. Hosted by former lawyer turned consultant Sallie Ogden.

Stay connected:Newsletter (Further): https://www.growwiththebrimm.com/furthernewsletterFree business assessment — The BRIMM Business Scan: https://thebrimm.typeform.com/to/fuYmBbJIWebsite: growwiththebrimm.comInstagram: @the_brimm

If you've ever felt your stomach tighten the moment a sales conversation gets real — the moment you have to name the price, ask for the yes, or push past the polite let me think about it — you're not alone. Sales is the single business activity most women I work with secretly dread, even the ones who are genuinely great at it.

In this solo episode, I push back on the cultural story that selling is something you either love or hate, something you're either built for or you're not. The truth is, almost no one is built for sales the way the bro-marketing internet would have you believe. The people who do it well have just figured out a process — a way of moving a prospect from interested to converted that doesn't require you to perform, manipulate, or pretend to be a personality you're not.

I walk through what that process actually looks like, where most women lose deals they could have closed, and the specific shifts that turn sales from a thing you avoid into a thing you can do without flinching. We talk about how to read a prospect, how to handle the objection underneath the objection, and how to ask for the yes in a way that protects both the relationship and your numbers.

If sales has been the part of your business you keep procrastinating on, this is the episode that will help you stop avoiding it.

This episode originally aired on Hitting Rock Middle, the show that has since evolved into The Sallie Ogden Show.

About the show:

The Sallie Ogden Show is for the woman who's already built something — and is stuck at the plateau where the old playbook stops working. Tactical when you need a number. Honest when you need a mirror. Hosted by former lawyer turned consultant Sallie Ogden.

Stay connected:Newsletter (Further): https://www.growwiththebrimm.com/furthernewsletterFree business assessment — The BRIMM Business Scan: https://thebrimm.typeform.com/to/fuYmBbJIWebsite: growwiththebrimm.comInstagram: @the_brimm