Month: November 2025

Podcast

From Kitchen Table to Thriving Academy – Marlene Dandler with Rosemary Czopek

By melgonz23 — 1 week ago

In this inspiring episode, host Rosemary Czopek sits down with Marlene Dandler, founder of Seashore Academy, to explore how a simple homeschooling idea at her kitchen table grew into a thriving educational enterprise.

Marlene shares how her journey, sparked by a mom’s desire for quality education, evolved into a full-scale in-person learning community that still prioritizes joy, hands-on learning, and excellence over spreadsheets. She built the school with no formal business plan, just a passion for community and doing what’s best for kids.

Marlene also opened up about her leadership journey, the lessons she’s learned through hiring, and how she balances on-site teachers with remote virtual assistants to keep operations smooth, efficient, and human-centered.

🎧 Tune in to hear how passion, purpose, and people-first leadership can turn a simple idea into a lasting legacy.

Check out this episode!

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Podcast

High Standards Aren’t Harsh. They’re Respect

By admin — 2 weeks ago

I believe that as female founders, high standards are our strength.

Women founders often second-guess themselves. We ask for excellence, then wonder if we’re being too demanding. We hold people accountable, then feel guilty for making someone uncomfortable.

But high standards aren’t harsh. They’re clarity. They protect our teams, our clients, and the purpose we’re building toward.

Strong boundaries aren’t unfair. They help the right people rise.

And when someone isn’t aligned, letting go isn’t failure. It’s leadership with compassion.

Because we can be kind and still be clear. We can care deeply and still expect excellence. That’s not a contradiction.

That’s respect — for ourselves, for our vision, and for the people we lead.

So don’t shrink your standards to make others comfortable. They exist for a reason. And they keep you, and your business, aligned with what matters most.

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Uncategorized

They Cut Us Out. And Here’s What They Lost.

By admin — 2 weeks ago

And no, I’m not mad. But I do want to tell you what they gave up.

Here’s what happened.

Two months after we placed a fantastic team member with a client, the client ended the contract. They went direct, cutting us out — even though it was against the agreement.

It’s a common assumption. They saw a great hire and figured they could just go direct and keep the magic going. From the outside, it looked like we added a markup and then disappeared.

But here’s what many business owners forget when they think like that.

We didn’t just plug in a person and walk away.
We listened when they told us what they needed.
We politely disagreed and recalibrated the role so it made more sense.
We filtered over a thousand candidates across three time zones.
We onboarded, aligned, and coached through the first thirty days.
We ran reviews, check-ins, and gave her a roadmap to thrive.
We stayed in the background to solve problems before they turned into churn.

What they saw was a great hire.
What they missed was the system behind her success.

Great hires aren’t just people. They’re the product of systems, coaching, and care.

If you’re not hiring every week, you don’t have hiring systems. You don’t have a ready pipeline or a backup plan. You don’t have time to coach, review, and replace.

And that’s the invisible value a good agency brings. It acts like a fractional HR department, always there to step in.

So yes, they saved money on paper. But with the next hire, they’ll be starting from scratch — without the systems that made this one thrive.

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Uncategorized

Don’t Hire a Captain If the Ship Isn’t Built

By admin — 2 weeks ago

“Should I hire an operations manager?”

Maybe not.

The inbox is overflowing, deadlines are constant, and you’re still the one catching the details. The instinct is to think, “If I just find the right person, they’ll clean this up.”

I used to believe an operations manager would save me. Until the third one quit.

Here’s what I’ve seen inside my own company, Gorilla Stationers, and in many others: operations and building are two separate things. Most operations professionals are great at optimizing, but not at building systems from scratch.

If intake happens five different ways, case handoff depends on memory, and no one’s really sure who owns what, most operations managers will struggle. They first need to understand what’s going on, then build a system, and only then can they run it. When they realize it’s not about running but about building, they often leave.

So before hiring someone to run the ship, ask yourself: is the ship built?

And by built, I mean:
• Standardized onboarding
• Clear case handoff
• A follow-up system that doesn’t rely on you at 10 p.m.

These are the things we as founders have to create first. In my experience, maybe one in a hundred operations managers is both good at building and happy to do it.

They’re two different jobs.

Don’t hire an ops lead to figure it out. Build the system first, then hand over the keys.

Because even the best captain can’t steer a ship that’s still under construction.

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Podcast

Stop Hiring the Person You Like. Start Hiring for What You Need.

By admin — 2 weeks ago

If you don’t know what you really need, you’ll hire the person you like most.

I’ve read hundreds of small business job descriptions, and 95% make the same mistake: they’re more of a wishlist than a job description.

A typical one looks like this:

We want someone who can:

  • Manage the calendar

  • Write the newsletters

  • Run operations

  • Handle support

  • Think like a strategist

  • Execute like a machine

  • And work across four time zones

What’s the problem with that?

It mixes six completely different skill sets: administrative, creative, operational, technical, strategic, and customer-facing. That’s not a job. It’s a fantasy.

If someone like that existed, they’d already be running their own business, not applying to work for yours.

Here’s what to do instead:
1️⃣ Write down everything you wish this person would do.
2️⃣ Circle the three most critical things.
3️⃣ Build a role around those, not all seventeen.

Once you’ve found that person and developed a good rhythm, go back to your list, see what’s still open, and hire the next person.

Hiring isn’t about finding magic. It’s about making trade-offs and slowly building a team that can cover all the tasks you want to delegate.

Focus beats fantasy. Every time.

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