If you blinked and somehow it's already May, and you have no idea if you're on track to hit your goals this year, you're not alone, and you're not behind. There's one thing you need to do this week, and you need to do it fast.

In this episode, Melissa Franks unpacks why May is the most overlooked month in a founder's year, and why it's the only clean window you have to course-correct before summer slows everything down. You'll walk away with a simple, repeatable mid-Q2 audit you can run on your business in less than an hour.

What you'll learn in this episode

• Why May is a setup month, not a coast month, and the "summer cliff" most founders never see coming
• The 5 numbers every founder should be looking at right now (revenue vs. plan, gross margin trend, cash on hand, Q3 pipeline coverage, and team capacity)
• The 3 honest questions to ask about Q1 and Q2 so far: what worked, what broke, what you've been avoiding
• How to find the one bottleneck that's actually slowing your business down (and why fixing five things means fixing nothing)
• Two real client stories, one that almost hit a brick wall from succeeding too fast, and one that nearly went bankrupt from flying blind
• The 4 things to lock in before June so your business runs without you all summer
• How to install a weekly operating rhythm that carries you past summer and into a calmer Q4

Want help running this audit on your business?

Book a free 30-minute Mid-Year Audit consultation with our team. Walk through your 5 numbers and pinpoint your one bottleneck before summer slips away. Visit www.melissafranks.com to grab a time.

Connect with Melissa

• Website: www.melissafranks.com
• LinkedIn: Melissa Franks
• Instagram / TikTok: @melissafranks
• YouTube: Optin Podcast

About the show

The Optin Podcast is where business owners go from surviving to thriving. Hosted by Melissa Franks, founder of On Call COO — fractional COO services for founders who want to get out of the weeds, build scalable operations, and make faster decisions backed by real data.

If this episode hit home, follow the show, leave a review on Apple Podcasts, and share it with the founder friend who keeps saying "I'll look at the numbers later."

Connect with Melissa:

Watch the Episodes on Youtube

Instagram: instagram.com/melissa_franks

Schedule a call: melissafranks.com

If you started your business for freedom and somewhere along the way it started running you instead of you running it, this episode is for you. Melissa walks through why founders really stay stuck in the weeds (it's almost never the reason you think), introduces the four-tier CEO Time Audit framework, and gives you a 7-day assignment that will change how you spend every hour of your week. Plus: a free worksheet that does the math for you.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

• The three unmistakable signs you're operating in the weeds (not just busy)
• Why "just delegate" is useless advice, and the five real reasons founders stay stuck
• How to calculate what your hour is actually worth (and why you're hemorrhaging money you don't see)
• The four-tier CEO Time Audit framework: $1,000 / $100 / $25 / $10 per hour work
• The three-step process to free up 10–20 hours a week: audit, categorize, reassign
• The honest truth about why this exercise feels uncomfortable, and why that's the point

CEO Time Audit

Ready to find out what your week actually looks like? Download the free CEO Time Audit, run the 7-day exercise, and bring the results to a free 30-minute consultation. We'll find your biggest leverage point together — no pitch, no pressure. Just one operator helping another founder figure out the next move.

https://oncallcoo.myflodesk.com/ceoaudit

ABOUT MELISSA

Melissa Franks is the founder of On Call COO and host of the Optin Podcast. Before launching her fractional COO practice, she served as COO of a Fortune 100 financial services business, where she helped grow the company from $50M to $350M. She now works with small business founders to help them grow, scale, and actually love the life they've built — without being the hardest-working employee in their own business.

Book a free consultation https://www.melissafranks.com/fractionalcooservices

Connect with Melissa:

Watch the Episodes on Youtube

Instagram: instagram.com/melissa_franks

Schedule a call: melissafranks.com

What if the culture that makes your company feel like home is the exact thing keeping the right people from ever walking through the door?

In this episode, Melissa Franks — founder of On Call COO and 25-year operator — tackles one of the most under-examined growth levers in small business: company culture. Drawing on real client work, her own corporate-turned-startup experience, and lessons from companies like Hobby Lobby and Ben & Jerry's, Melissa makes the case that the culture that got you to your first ten employees is rarely the one that will carry you to your first hundred.

You'll hear the two truths every founder has to hold in tension, why a strong culture can quietly become an exclusionary one without anyone meaning for it to, and the three reasons homogeneous cultures cost more than founders realize, in talent math, legal exposure, and slower, worse decision-making.

Then Melissa walks you through her 8-step Culture Audit, the same framework she uses with fractional COO clients, so you can honestly assess whether your culture is an asset or a ceiling, and decide exactly what to keep, evolve, or let go.

Free Download: The Culture Audit Worksheet

Want to run the full 8-step audit on your own company? Download the free Culture Audit Worksheet, the same framework Melissa uses with her fractional COO clients

https://oncallcoo.myflodesk.com/cultureaudit

Work With Melissa

If you're not sure whether your culture is an asset or a ceiling, that's exactly the kind of thing On Call COO helps founders figure out. A culture audit is one of the first things Melissa runs when she steps in as a fractional COO. Book a free 30-minute consultation and she'll tell you honestly whether your culture is going to get you where you're going.

Book your free consultation: https://www.melissafranks.com/fractionalcooservices

Connect with Melissa:

Watch the Episodes on Youtube

Instagram: instagram.com/melissa_franks

Schedule a call: melissafranks.com