Small Business Pivots

How do you scale a small business when everything depends on you?

Growing a business takes more than working harder, hiring employees, or opening another location. It requires strong leadership, documented systems, clear expectations, and the ability to let go.

In this episode of Small Business Pivots, business coach Michael D. Morrison sits down with Jenna Bowden, founder of Delta Crown Hair Extensions, to discuss how she transformed her salon business after years of leadership challenges and costly mistakes.

Jenna started her salon at 25 with no previous leadership experience. She admits...

Struggling to generate consistent leads for your small business? You don't need a massive audience or a viral video to attract customers. You need a repeatable lead generation system.

In this episode of Small Business Pivots, host Michael D. Morrison sits down with Scott Voelker, entrepreneur and co-founder of Brand Creators, to discuss how small-business owners can use YouTube, valuable content, and email marketing to attract the right audience, build trust, and turn viewers into paying customers.

Scott has spent more than 18 years building businesses, from photography and digital education to e-commerce and...

Promoting from within can be one of the best ways to develop your people and show employees there's room to grow. But being great at the work doesn't automatically mean someone knows how to lead the people doing it.

Abbey Louie has spent her career helping organizations solve that problem.

Abbey is a leadership coach and trainer who spent 13 years at Boeing designing and managing leadership development programs before launching her own consulting practice. Today, she coaches leaders, leadership teams, and especially new managers on becoming more confident and capable.

In this episode...

What if the employee problem frustrating you isn't entirely an employee problem?

When employees aren't performing, aren't engaged, or don't seem committed, it's easy for business owners to point outward.

Meredith Bell suggests starting somewhere else:

Look in the mirror.

Meredith is President and Co-Founder of Grow Strong Leaders, a company she has built alongside her two business partners for 35 years. For more than three decades, she's studied what it takes for leaders not only to change their behavior—but to make those changes last.

Think your business needs more leads? You may be solving the wrong problem.

Small business owners often assume growth requires more marketing, more advertising, and more leads. But what happens when those leads are being poured into a leaky bucket?

Phil Risher says before spending another dollar generating leads, business owners need to understand what happens to the opportunities they already have.

Phil is the Founder and CEO of Phlash Consulting, where he helps home service businesses between $1 million and $10 million scale. His clients averaged 27% revenue growth last year...

Are you the reason your business can't grow without working more hours?

Many small business owners don't realize they're stuck. Revenue may be coming in, customers may be happy, and the company may even be growing—but the owner is still doing too much, making too many decisions, and filling every gap in the business.

Mark Skalla has lived it.

After building a successful digital agency, Mark discovered that many of the problems holding his clients back were the same problems he had experienced himself: knowing when to hire, covering payroll, bu...

What if your employee problem isn't actually an employee problem?

Small business owners often say they can't find good people. But what if you already have talented people—and they're simply in the wrong roles?

In this episode of Small Business Pivots, Michael D. Morrison talks with organizational strategist Michelle Kozin, Founder of Predictive Advisors, about using behavioral intelligence to make better people decisions, define roles more clearly, improve hiring, reduce turnover, and build teams around how people are actually wired to work.

Michelle explains why an "A player" is...

Could your business run tomorrow if you didn't show up?

For many small business owners, the answer is no. They're answering questions, solving problems, managing employees, making decisions, and holding together processes that exist mostly in their heads.

Jennifer Ann Johnson learned firsthand why that has to change.

Jennifer is a 25-year entrepreneur, professional speaker, author, and founder of True Fashionistas, the largest lifestyle resale store in Florida. Today she leads a business with nearly 50 employees—but building a company that could operate without her required learning some difficult lessons about de...

What does it actually take to go from being an owner doing everything yourself to building a scalable business with multiple locations, employees, systems, and a leadership team?

Jeff Gabelsberg, founder of Jolly Goat Garage Doors, knows because he's lived it.

Jeff returns to Small Business Pivots to share what has happened since his previous appearances—including growing Jolly Goat Garage Doors to six locations across Oklahoma, building a team of more than 20 people, adding a commercial division, and entering a strategic partnership designed to fuel continued expansion.

But Jeff didn't st...

Why do so many businesses reach a point where growth slows down—even when the owner is working harder than ever?

According to business consultant and entrepreneur Josh Post, the problem usually isn't effort. It's clarity.

In this episode of Small Business Pivots, Michael D. Morrison sits down with Josh to discuss why businesses become stuck, how leaders create meaningful change, and the four-step framework he uses to help organizations break through barriers and reach their full potential.

Drawing from decades of experience leading a family construction business and helping companies tr...

What separates businesses that stay small from businesses that continue to grow?

For Brittany Bradley, owner of The Brow Slayer Studio in Oklahoma City, it wasn't working harder—it was building better systems.

In this episode of Small Business Pivots, Michael D. Morrison sits down with Brittany to discuss how she transformed a growing service business by creating documented systems, improving leadership, understanding her numbers, developing a consistent client experience, and building a company that doesn't rely on her for everything.

Brittany shares how she opened her business with on...

Growing your business sounds exciting—until it's time to hire.

For many small business owners, payroll becomes the biggest obstacle to growth. Do you hire now and risk cash flow, or wait too long and become the bottleneck in your own business?

In this episode of Small Business Pivots, host Michael D. Morrison sits down with entrepreneur Eric Tabone to discuss how growing businesses can build stronger teams, make smarter hiring decisions, and scale without letting payroll become the reason growth stalls.

Drawing from his experience building multiple companies across the Un...

In this episode of Small Business Pivots, Michael D. Morrison sits down with leadership coach and manufacturing executive Greg Harrod to discuss one of the biggest challenges facing business owners today: building leaders instead of creating dependence.

After more than 30 years in manufacturing leadership, Greg now helps business owners and executives develop stronger teams, improve communication, increase accountability, and create businesses where success no longer depends entirely on the owner.

Greg explains why leadership always begins with self-awareness before it extends to the team. He shares practical insights on recognizing early...

Kevin Dias, founder of Ambiki and author of The Problem First Method, joins Small Business Pivots to explain why many businesses waste time, money, and energy solving the wrong problem.

Kevin built Ambiki as a software platform for speech-language pathology private practices, helping teams with scheduling, billing, clinical documentation, and practice management. Through that journey, he discovered one of the biggest mistakes companies make: jumping straight to solutions before deeply understanding the actual customer problem.

In this episode, Michael D. Morrison and Kevin discuss how business owners can slow down, ask better questions...

Most entrepreneurs start their business doing everything themselves.

Sales.

Customer service.

Accounting.

Marketing.

Operations.

But eventually that becomes the very thing holding the business back.

In this episode of Small Business Pivots, Michael D. Morrison sits down with entrepreneur, software founder, and CEO Dean Mathews, creator of OnTheClock, to discuss the leadership shifts required to grow beyond yourself and build a business that can thrive without depending on the owner every day.

Dean shares lessons learned from...

In this episode of Small Business Pivots, Michael D. Morrison sits down with entrepreneur, investor, and wealth strategist Steve Lawson to discuss one of the biggest misconceptions about building wealth—and why owning a business and investing in real estate continue to outperform traditional investing for long-term financial independence.

Steve shares his journey from financial advisor to real estate investor, business owner, and founder of Unbroken Investing. Along the way, he explains why passive cash flow matters, how entrepreneurs can create true wealth instead of simply growing savings, and why leveraging other people's mo...

Most business owners are experts at their craft—but they've never been taught how to run a business.

In this episode of Small Business Pivots, Michael D. Morrison sits down with business coach and author Rob Young to discuss the foundations every small business needs to grow, scale, and avoid becoming stuck.

After spending years in executive leadership roles before leaving corporate America, Rob transitioned into real estate renovation and construction. Along the way, he noticed a common pattern: highly skilled tradespeople and business owners were losing their businesses—not because they lacked talent, but beca...

Most entrepreneurs spend years building their businesses while unknowingly destroying their health.

In this powerful episode of Small Business Pivots, Michael Morrison sits down with Justin Roethlingshoefer, founder of Own It Coaching and author of Holy Health, to discuss the hidden health crisis facing business owners, executives, and high-performing leaders.

After battling obesity, anorexia, liver and kidney failure, depression, anxiety, addiction, precancerous polyps, and a bleeding ulcer, Justin discovered that success without health eventually becomes unsustainable.

Together they explore why so many entrepreneurs struggle with burnout, fatigue, brain fog, weight gain, anxiety, poor...

Many business owners spend years trying to solve the same problems over and over again.

But what if those challenges aren't actually problems?

In this episode of Small Business Pivots, Michael D. Morrison sits down with leadership experts Tracy Christopherson and Michelle Troseth, co-founders of Missing Logic and authors of Polarity Intelligence: The Missing Logic in Leadership.

Together they explore why many leadership challenges, communication breakdowns, team conflicts, partnership struggles, and work-life balance issues are not problems to solve but polarities to manage.

They share practical insights on building stronger business...

Most business owners believe hustle is the answer.

Work harder. Stay later. Handle everything yourself.

But what happens when your business depends entirely on you?

In this episode of Small Business Pivots, Michael D. Morrison sits down with Jay Adewole, executive coach, business consultant, founder of Point of View Consulting, and host of the Winner Circle Podcast, to unpack one of the biggest reasons businesses stay stuck:

Lack of structure.

Jay shares the painful story of launching his first business, losing...

Most business owners think their team is the problem.

But what if the real bottleneck is the leader?

In this episode of Small Business Pivots, Michael D. Morrison sits down with Croft Edwards, leadership coach, ontological coach, author, and founder of Croft + Company, to talk about what leadership really is and why business owners must grow before their business can grow.

Croft has coached leaders since 2001, working with frontline supervisors, CEOs, Navy admirals, founders, and business owners across industries. In this conversation, he explains why leadership is not just...

Most business owners believe customers make rational buying decisions.

They don’t.

In this episode of Small Business Pivots, Michael D. Morrison sits down with Paul Larche, branding strategist, former business owner, and author of The Divided Brain, to break down why customers actually buy based on emotion first… and justify with logic later.

If your marketing isn’t converting, your sales feel inconsistent, or your brand message isn’t sticking, this conversation explains why.

Paul shares his “Divided Brain” framework — a practical business model built around how human decision-making actually works.

Y...

What if the biggest breakthrough in your business had nothing to do with strategy… and everything to do with YOU?

In this episode of Small Business Pivots, Michael sits down with Fleet Maull — founder of HeartMind Institute, Inc. 5000 entrepreneur, and former federal inmate turned business leader — to unpack one of the most powerful transformations you’ll hear.

From spending 14.5 years in prison to building a high-growth company, Fleet shares how radical ownership, nervous system regulation, and CEO thinking changed everything.

We dive deep into:

If your business feels stuck…
it’s not the business.

It’s the owner.

In this episode of Small Business Pivots, Michael sits down with John Nieuwenburg of W5 Coaching to unpack a truth most business owners avoid:

Business problems are personal problems in disguise

From leadership mindset to delegation, cash flow to hiring, John shares what actually holds business owners back—and how to break through it.

This conversation dives deep into:

If your business feels stuck…
It’s probably not a sales problem.

It’s a people problem.

In this episode of Small Business Pivots, Michael sits down with Ryan Englin, CEO of Core Matters and author of Hire Better People Faster, to break down why most small business owners struggle with hiring, retention, and team performance.

Ryan shares the truth most entrepreneurs learn the hard way:

- More revenue doesn’t fix broken teams
 - Hiring without systems creates chaos
 - Culture isn’t accidental — it’s built intentionally

If your business feels stuck, inconsistent, or overly dependent on you… this episode will change how you think about growth.

In this episode of Small Business Pivots, Michael sits down with John Ravaris, founder of UVP Solutions, to break down what it actually takes to build a scalable business using systems, not people.

They dive deep into business growth strategy, why most companies struggle to scale, and how aligning sales and marketing can unlock consistent revenue.

If you’ve ever wondered why your business isn’t growing the wa...

If you’re thinking about starting a business—or struggling to grow one—this episode will challenge everything you think you know about getting started.

In this episode of Small Business Pivots, Michael D. Morrison sits down with Mary Scott, founder of Pitch STL and longtime startup advisor, to break down what actually works in the early stages of business.

From validating your idea before spending money… to building a clear pitch… to finding funding and customers… this conversation is packed with real-world advice most business owners never hear.

Mary shares why most startup...