Engineering Calmer Agencies & Consulting Firms: Calm is the New KPI

After 11 years, Tanya’s business hums. She's got warm leads, proven offers, talented contractors. And yet… projects that should take two weeks stretch to two months because she’s the translator between client and designer. In this live diagnosis, we map a transition from “Tanya-as-critical-path” to a productized, reliable service with automated coordination, a structured client-feedback loop, and...

Meetings don’t equal management—most of the time, they’re just control theater. Freelance project manager Kacie Brennell joins Susan to unpack how autonomy—not attendance—drives real outcomes. They dig into async accountability, why tools fail without culture shifts, and how perfectionism + codependency quietly sabotage calm. If you’ve ever looked up from a day of calls with a longer to-do list, t...

What if your most important KPI wasn’t about revenue, leads, or efficiency—but about people? In this episode, operations strategist Layla Pomper shares the story of her Death List KPI: a surprisingly human metric born out of emergency planning that reshaped her entire approach to resilience. What started as a morbid exercise—writing down who her partner should call if she died—became a powerful re...

When your signature skill is the thing clients line up for, it’s easy to accidentally build a beautiful trap. In this live diagnosis, Jeremy Enns, the founder of Podcast Marketing Academy, shares how his rave-review podcast audits started running his weeks (and energy) into the ground.  We focus on Business Design and Margin Mindset to keep the magic intact while redesigning delivery so results sc...

If you've been sharing the same ideas for years but still feel like you're reinventing the wheel every time you explain them, this episode is for you. Susan sits down with Melanie Deziel, creator of the IRON Framework, to explore how to transform raw, unstructured ideas into scalable, repeatable frameworks. Go behind the scenes of the Calmer Framework’s evolution, explore why naming comes last, an...

Susan sits down with leadership and culture consultant Melissa Carson to tackle a challenge so many entrepreneurs face: digital tool sprawl.  Together, they unpack the overwhelm caused by scattered systems and explore how creating a single source of truth—your personal data warehouse—can unlock mental clarity and free up energy for more meaningful work. Melissa shares her struggles with multiple o...

This episode is part 2 of a 2-part conversation with Joe Casabona, a systems architect for solopreneurs and a self-described automation geek. You can catch part 1 over on the Streamlined Solopreneur feed here What if the difference between a chaotic, scope-creeping project and one delivered calmly, on time, and on budget wasn’t just better estimating - but a totally different approach?  Joe shares...

What if the reason you're stuck isn't mindset—or even procrastination? What if you're just solving the wrong problem? In this episode, I’m talking with Cat Mulvihill, creator of the Momentum Framework—a diagnostic tool that helps you figure out exactly why you’re stalled out in your business and what to do about it. Whether the block is a skills gap, an energy mismatch, or a lurking fear, Cat’s ap...

What if your brand voice didn’t live solely inside your head? What if it was a system —a tool that helped you write faster, delegate confidently, and create calm across your business? In this episode, I share how I took my brand voice from “just a vibe” to a repeatable, documented system with the help of voice strategist Justin Blackman. We dig into how building a voice guide changed the way I wri...

Most advice about scaling a service business means giving up the work you love or cranking your rates until clients walk away. But what if you could grow your revenue with your clients—without adding more to your plate? In this episode, Susan revisits a standout 2019 interview with business coach Lacey Sites, who doubled her revenue without taking on a single new client. Lacey did it by shifting t...

Tired of hitting a wall with your client-based business? You don’t have to build a course or start a membership to scale. In this episode of Calm is the New KPI , host Susan Boles talks with Janet Alexandersson—an international licensing lawyer and founder of Piggy Bank Legal—about how licensing can become a powerful, margin-creating revenue stream for service-based business owners. If you've ever...

You’ve duct-taped your service business together with tools and automations. But now things are breaking, you’re chasing Zapier errors, and client delivery is starting to feel like a drag. What if the next step wasn’t hiring a team or flattening your services—but turning your system into the service? In this episode, we're geeking out with Dylan Kinder, founder and CEO of DataCose, about how servi...

Eliminate Sales Calls? Yes, Really. What if your entire sales process could feel human, high-touch, and not require a single call? This week on Calm is the New KPI , I’m joined by Becky Pierson Davidson, founder of Affinity Collective, a product strategy agency for community-driven businesses. Becky shares how she’s turned the traditional, time-consuming sales process on its head—closing $15K+ cli...

Business is personal—so why do we so often separate relationships from our work?  In this episode, Tara Robertson, leadership coach and DEI consultant, shares why she set a KPI around the number of new friends she makes this year. We explore how measuring relationships impacts not only joy but also business sustainability. Tara realized that working alone was draining her energy, so she made a bol...

We all want our work to resonate—but how do we know if it actually does? In this episode, I sit down with storytelling and speaking expert Jay Acunzo to explore the concept of resonance over reach and how we can track something that feels inherently unmeasurable. Jay shares his Unsolicited Response Rate (URR) framework, a KPI designed to measure whether your ideas truly connect with your audience....

Managing client relationships is one of the biggest challenges of running a service-based business. Expectations, boundaries, and communication all play a role in whether an engagement runs smoothly or goes off the rails. So, how do you actually know if you're doing a good job? Karen Sergeant has a solution: a Client Report Card. This system helps her measure and manage client relationships proact...

In this episode of Beyond Margins , we explore the concept of calmer KPIs with guest Kendall Cherry, founder of The Candid Collective. Kendall shares her innovative metric, “Fresh Content Inked,” and how it has transformed her content creation process, business systems, and sales cycle—all while doubling her income. We geek out about how to build sustainable systems that create spaciousness in you...

In this episode of Beyond Margins , Susan dives into the heart of goal-setting, breaking free from default metrics and focusing on what truly matters to your business and life. She shares her own approach to prioritizing calm as a core business metric and gives a behind-the-scenes look at how she set and tracked a single impactful goal in 2024—taking 12 weeks off to rest (spoiler: she surpassed it...

How do you reduce urgency in a world where urgency is so deeply embedded? How do you market yourself and your work in a way that is anti-oppressive?  We're continuing in our mini-series on my calmer framework for a calmer business. This week, we're focused on reudcing urgency and techniques for anti-oppressive marketing.  We're joined by Natalia Sanyal, an anti-oppressive copywriter and brand mess...

We live in a society obsessed with productivity and working more, so how can we lean into rest? What are the benefits of building rest into our businesses? And how can we begin to do that?  We're continuing in our mini-series on my calmer framework for a calmer business. This week, we're focused on rest. Rest is often a challenge for us go-getters, solopreneurs, and entrepreneurs. But, it's essent...

Why are efficient systems so essential for building a calmer business? And how do you go about finding the right systems and processes for yourself?  We're continuing in our mini-series on my calmer framework for a calmer business. This week, we're focused on my favorite aspect of my CALMER framework -- efficient systems. We dive into the importance of understanding our own processes before buildi...

What if you could build in more space to your business? An extra day off? More time to strategize? Less urgency and more rest?  We're continuing in our mini-series on my calmer framework for a calmer business. This week, we're diving into margins -- financial margins, capacity margins, and energetic margins -- to decrease urgency and burnout and create calmer, more sustainable businesses.  We're j...

Taking care of people in or around your business isn't the default when it comes to business and what we're taught business should be. How is this way of doing business actually hurting us? And, how can we change our systems to be more authentically people-first?  We're continuing in our mini-series on my calmer framework for a calmer business. This week, we're diving into lens of care and how ope...

Can we create calm workplaces that are not only remote, but also asynchronous? And can we do it while avoiding micromanaging from afar?  We're continuing in our mini-series on my calmer framework for a calmer business. This week, we're diving into autonomy. Why is autonomy essential for a calmer business? What does an autonomous work environment even look like? And how can you apply some of the be...

How can defining your business values and success more clearly lead to a calmer operation? This episode kicks off our miniseries on deconstructing the common elements that all calm businesses share. We're starting with the most foundational element: clarity. Clarity in business is often summarized by a simple yet powerful term: "freedom from ambiguity." In today’s discussion, Susan Boles explores...