The Alignment Table

Dilution might be the most feared word in business ownership, and most of the fear comes from the word itself rather than what it actually does. Sharon Preston runs the actual numbers, showing how a smaller percentage of a genuinely bigger business can be worth considerably more than full ownership of a small one, and where the maths only works in your favour. This episode unpacks: What dilution a...

Every pound of outside money that enters a business arrives with strings attached, and those strings are rarely explained plainly before the money lands in the account. Sharon Preston breaks down exactly what different types of funding actually cost you in control, from a bank loan to an investor to money from someone close to you, using plain English instead of jargon. This episode unpacks: The t...

Every business owner leaves their business one day, sold, handed over, closed, or stepped back from. Sharon Preston breaks down the difference between a planned exit and an accidental one, and why most owners end up in the second category without ever meaning to. This episode walks through the four real ways to exit a business, sale, merger, gradual wind-down, or handover, what each one actually d...

There's a belief that sits under a lot of funding decisions without ever being said out loud, that bootstrapping is the noble path and raising money is for people who couldn't cut it alone. Sharon Preston takes that belief apart, including her own honest story of why she bootstrapped three businesses, and what it taught her about confidence, identity, and the environment that shapes what y...

Every month your business pays you something, and that number is quietly answering a question most business owners never ask outright. Are you paying yourself to run the business or building something the business will eventually owe you for? In this episode, Sharon Preston breaks down the real difference between salary and equity, using two contrasting business scenarios to show how the same choi...

Every entrepreneur hits the same moment. You make the right call, hiring your first member of staff, raising your prices, stepping back from the parts of the business only you have ever done, and your stomach still drops. In this episode, Sharon Preston unpacks why that feeling isn't a red flag but proof you're growing, and how to tell the difference between a genuine warning sign and the...

What got you here was never meant to carry you the rest of the way. In this episode of The Alignment Table™, Executive Mentor and Strategic Advisor Sharon Preston explores what every leader must eventually sacrifice to keep growing, - the habits - control - identity built in earlier stages that quietly become the ceiling on what comes next. Whether you lead a team or build entirely alone, this epi...

The people who challenge you well are not a threat to your leadership. They are evidence it is still working. In this episode of The Alignment Table™, Executive Mentor and Strategic Advisor Sharon Preston names one of the quietest leadership blind spots there is, the moment a business succeeds and the room around its leader grows a little too agreeable. Learn why:- the people who once disagreed wi...

Most leaders don't miss a warning sign because they weren't looking. They miss it because listening would mean admitting the business they built might need to change. In this episode of The Alignment Table™, Executive Mentor and Strategic Advisor Sharon Preston explores:- the quiet leadership blind spots every business owner learns to explain away the client who's gone cold the colleag...

Most leaders of us who undercharge do not have a pricing problem, they have a leadership problem . In this episode, Sharon Preston makes the case that what you charge is one of the clearest signals available about how you see yourself, what you believe you are worth and whether the identity you are leading from has kept pace with the value you are actually delivering. If you have ever - discounted...

You are six days away from the second half of 2026. Before you get there, there is one conversation worth having. Not with your team. Not with your business partner. Not with anyone who needs something from you. With Yourself! In this episode ,Sharon Preston pull together the themes from June and asks the honest questions underneath them all:- - What have you actually decided about what the next c...

Not ready is one of the most used phrases in senior leadership and one of the least examined. In this episode Sharon Preston gets honest about:- what it actually means what it is protecting you from why the leaders who build the most significant careers are not the ones who waited until they felt ready. They are the ones who decided that ready was the wrong standard entirely. This episode drops mi...

There is a specific kind of loneliness that arrives at a certain level of leadership. Not the loneliness of being isolated. The loneliness of being surrounded by capable, well-meaning people and still feeling like nobody around you quite operates at the level at which you are actually thinking. In this episode Sharon Preston gets specific about who you genuinely need around you at this level why t...

You have broken through a ceiling before. You know what that feels like. So why does a new version of the same ceiling keep appearing at every level? In this episode Sharon Preston explains:- the specific mechanism that reinstalls the ceiling even after you think you have moved beyond why it is almost never about capability, always about belief what it actually takes to stop the pattern recurring...

Most leaders review their business regularly. Very few ever honestly review their leadership. In Episode 28 of The Alignment Table™, Sharon Preston walks through the leadership audit that most high achieving people avoid, not because it is complicated, but because it requires a level of honesty that is genuinely uncomfortable. What it uncovers, what surfaces, and why it is one of the most useful t...

Most people in leadership can recognise ego in others immediately. Very few can recognise it in themselves. In Episode 27 of The Alignment Table™, Sharon Preston explores one of the most important and least honestly examined distinctions in senior leadership: the difference between genuine authority and ego-led leadership. Not the obvious version of ego. The subtle one. The kind that looks like hi...

If every significant decision in your business still runs through you, if your team brings you problems instead of answers, if the whole thing would slow down the moment you stepped away then this episode is for you. In Episode 26 of The Alignment Table™, Sharon Preston gets honest about the dependency trap that the most capable, high-performing people tend to create without realising it. Why it h...

What would actually happen to your business if you disappeared for 60 days? Not the version you would tell a client. The honest version. In Episode 25 of The Alignment Table™, Sharon Preston uses the 60 day question as a lens to examine what genuine business sustainability looks like, what it requires you to build, and why most high-performing businesses are one person's absence away from a cr...

This episode is about failure. Not the polished, retrospectively reframed version that sounds good in an interview. The real kind. The kind that costs something, teaches something and builds something that no amount of success alone ever could. In Episode 24 of The Alignment Table™, Executive Mentor and Strategic Advisor Sharon Preston explores: What failure actually produces in female founders an...

In Episode 23 of The Alignment Table™, Executive Mentor and Strategic Advisor Sharon Preston explores where the discomfort around money comes from for high achieving women, how it shows up in leadership and business, and what genuinely changes when female founders and senior leaders develop an honest and powerful relationship with their own financial worth. This is not a conversation about budgeti...

This episode is about one of the most consistent and least openly discussed patterns in senior leadership. The brilliant, capable, accomplished woman who is operating in a room that is quietly too small for her. Not obviously. Not dramatically. In the subtle, cumulative ways that compound over time into something that is very difficult to name but impossible to ignore. In Episode 22 of The Alignme...

If you have built something significant and privately wonder why it doesn't feel the way you thought it would, this episode is for you. In Episode 21 of The Alignment Table™, Executive Mentor and Strategic Advisor Sharon Preston explores one of the most common and least honestly discussed experiences in senior leadership: the gap between external achievement and internal alignment. Sharon brea...

There comes a point where success feels stable, but something deeper begins to question direction. Not what you need to achieve next. But what you are actually building. In this episode, Executive Mentor and Strategic Advisor Sharon Preston explores the shift from personal success to meaningful contribution. Many high performing women reach a stage where external achievement is no longer the focus...

There comes a point where personal growth is no longer about mindset. It becomes about alignment. In this episode, Executive Mentor and Strategic Advisor Sharon Preston explores what happens when your internal standard evolves, but your external life has not yet caught up. Many high performing women and leaders experience a subtle disconnect as they grow - where success looks right on paper, but n...

There comes a point where growth is no longer about doing more. It becomes about becoming more intentional. In this episode, Executive Mentor and Strategic Advisor Sharon Preston explores the shift from reactive achievement to conscious identity. After seasons of proving, over performing, and navigating rapid expansion, many high performing women reach a quieter but more powerful stage - where cla...