Founder, Get Your Life Back, is a podcast for owner-operators of founder-led businesses who are trapped by the very business they thought would give them freedom.
Hosted by Jennifer Todd, CPA, MBA, a business advisor with 28 years of experience, this show provides founders with the integrated answer most advisors never deliver: financial clarity and a team framework that works together to get you out of the weeds and into an actual leadership role in your own business.
This podcast covers the full picture of what it takes to stop being Chief Everything Officer and start leading like a CEO: conversations about small business cash flow problems and what your numbers are really telling you, the reason business owner burnout isn't a personal failing, how to raise prices without losing customers, how to delegate as a leader without watching quality fall apart, and what it takes to build a business that can run without you.
We'll answer questions like:
How do I stop being the bottleneck in my business?
How do I delegate without losing control?
How do I build a business that doesn’t depend on me?
How do I get out of the day-to-day of my business?
Why can’t I take a vacation as a business owner?
How do I hire my first employee?
How do I create systems in a small business?
How to scale a small business without burning out?
This show gives founders in skilled trades, personal services, professional services, and care businesses the financial grounding and structural framework to stop being the bottleneck and start building something they could someday step back from, sell, or hand off with confidence.
If you're a founder who's tired of being the last line of defense in your own business, Jennifer built this show for you.
Connect with Jennifer on LinkedIn to continue the conversation between episodes https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferltoddcpa/
If a business profitability analysis shows that none of your offers earn what you hoped, you’re probably covering the gap with your own time and money. This episode is for the founder who wants offers that pay for themselves and a business that no longer leans on them to deliver every part of it. I talk about what I look at first when nothing is profitable, and why founders who built their business from scratch have the hardest time seeing it. I also share why a business can show a profit on ...
12 Oct 2026
14: Fix the Founder Mindset Habits Keeping Your Business Dependent
If your business still depends on you after the new software and the extra hires, a founder mindset habit you can’t see may be the reason. This episode is for the founder who wants a business that runs without draining their cash and calendar, and who is willing to look at what keeps them in the weeds. I talk about what happens when you take every lost client personally, and how a zone you feel safe in can quietly keep your team waiting on you. I also share why I dreaded Mondays at my own CPA...
6 Oct 2026
13: Stop Founder Dependence: Why the Usual Business Fixes Don't Last
If you've already tried a dashboard, a price increase, a new hire, and some cost-cutting, and your business still depends on you, the fixes didn't fail by accident. Each one left the root cause of founder dependence untouched, so the same problem keeps coming back in a new form. This episode is for the founder who wants a profitable business that runs without draining their cash and calendar. I walk through why each fix falls short, from KPI dashboards to raising prices without losing custome...
21 Sept 2026
12: How to Make Your Team and Systems Work Without You
If your business can't run without you in the room, that's not a compliment. It means profit, customer experience, or your team's decisions still run through you, and you're the one absorbing the cost. This episode is for the founder who's holding the whole thing together and wondering why that's starting to feel like the problem. I break down the three places that dependency usually lives: profit visibility, the customer deliverable, and team autonomy, plus the GovCon story about what happen...
14 Sept 2026
11: Make Better Business Decisions in Half the Time
You made the call fast because that's what a strong leader does, and you're still cleaning up what it cost. Fast and right aren't the same thing. This episode is for the founder who decides in the moment and pays for it later. Jennifer walks through the CEO decision making process she runs every call through: three checkpoints, one story about what happens when a checkpoint gets skipped, and the fourth factor she adds specifically for founders. 00:00 – What Successful CEOs Do Differently 01:2...
7 Sept 2026
10: Stop Fixing Weaknesses: Lead With Your Strengths
You're doing every job in the business and calling it leadership. Chief Everything Officer is what happens when a founder never draws the line between running the business and running every part of it. This episode is for the founder ready to stop measuring the business by what it's bad at. Jennifer breaks down the difference between a weakness and a missing strength, how a SWOT analysis gets misused, and why building around what your company already does well changes what it can become. 00:0...
31 Aug 2026
9: Protect Your Time and Escape Founder Burnout
You're the last one paid, the last one to take a day off, and the first one still working when everyone else has logged off. Founder burnout is a business running out of room to grow. This episode is for the founder-led business owner ready to stop treating exhaustion as the cost of doing business. Jennifer breaks down the four-way win she uses to evaluate every decision, what boundaries actually protect, and why putting yourself first changes what the business can become. 00:00 – Why Founder...
24 Aug 2026
8: Stop Paying for Your Business With Your Own Time and Money
You log into your bank account every morning, trying to decide whether you can afford to hire, and the numbers never quite add up. You're overworked, underpaid, and stuck answering a question your bank balance was never built to answer. This episode is for the founder-led business owner who wants a straight answer on whether their business can afford to replace them. I break down the founder subsidy, the personal effort and unpaid hours you're pouring into your business that never show up on ...
17 Aug 2026
7: Fix Team Accountability and Escape Being the Final Decision Maker
Your team is capable, your KPIs are in place, and you're still the last stop for every decision that involves a trade-off between two departments. Your people escalate instead of deciding, and you can't figure out why accountability keeps failing no matter how clearly you set expectations. This episode is for the founder-led business owner who wants an autonomous team and is tired of being the triangulation point for every conflict. I break down why "hold your team accountable" collapses with...
3 Aug 2026
6: Sell the Transformation and Escape the Expert Trap
You review every deliverable before it goes out. You take over the hard client calls. You're the last check on quality, the fixer when things go sideways, and you can't figure out why your team won't step up or why your clients keep bypassing them to come straight to you. This episode is for the subject-matter expert who built a service business around their expertise and is now stuck being the product their customers pay for. I break down why that belief keeps founders trapped in the weeds, ...
27 Jul 2026
5: Stop Being the Bottleneck: Solving the Founder Identity Crisis
You know you're good at what you do. The problem is you've been doing all of it: technical work, client delivery, team management, and you can't figure out why you're still the one everyone comes to for every answer. This episode is for the founder-led business owner who's stuck as the bottleneck and suspects the real issue isn't a systems problem or a hiring problem, but hasn't been able to name it yet. I spent two decades building a firm around work I didn't love because I couldn't say no. ...
20 Jul 2026
4: Know Your Numbers and Stop Guessing From the Bank Balance
You know your numbers are supposed to tell you something useful. You're just not sure what you're looking at or why it keeps feeling like a judgment every time you open the report. This episode is for the founder who's been running their business off the bank balance and knows, somewhere in the back of their mind, that there's a better way to do this. I'm a CPA and business advisor with nearly 30 years of experience, and I ignored my own books for a stretch because I already knew what they'd ...
13 Jul 2026
3: Work Less, Keep More Profit and Escape the Hiring Trap
You've hired to get your time back and somehow ended up with less of it, more payroll pressure, and a team that still needs you for everything. This episode is for the founder who's stuck in the weeds and wondering if the next hire will actually fix it or just make things worse. I'm a CPA and business coach, and I fell into the hiring trap at my own firm before I figured out the sequence to get out of it. I'm walking through why hiring first almost always deepens founder burnout, what you hav...
13 Jul 2026
2: Find Your Most Profitable Offer and Stop Letting Revenue Lie to You
You're tracking revenue, working harder than ever, and watching the profit not show up. This episode is for the founder who's starting to wonder if chasing that top-line number is what's keeping them stuck. I’m a CPA with nearly 30 years of experience, and my take on revenue is direct: it's a vanity metric. Small business profitability determines whether your business is working, and most founders aren't measuring it with enough precision to make good decisions about what to sell, what to cut...
13 Jul 2026
1: Get Your Time Back and Stop Being the Only One Who Can Run Your Business
You're a successful founder who's working harder than ever and falling further behind. This episode is for the owner-operator who's tired of being the one everything runs through and wants to know if there's actually a way out. This is the first episode of Founder, Get Your Life Back, and I'm starting here because this is where most of my clients start, too. I'm a CPA who owned my own firm for over 20 years, and I lived this exact trap before I figured out how to stop being the bottleneck in ...
9 Jul 2026
Welcome to Founder, Get Your Life Back
If you built your business to have freedom, and it's starting to feel like a job you can't leave, you're exactly who this show was made for. Founder, Get Your Life Back is a podcast for small business owners who've become the bottleneck in their own company, where every decision routes back to you, and nothing moves forward without you. Host Jennifer Todd is a CPA and MBA who has spent 28 years working directly with founders. She built this show because most business advice comes from people ...
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