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The Business Fix

The Business Fix

By: Josh Troche and Chrissy Myers
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Tune in to The Business Fix, the podcast where CEO vision meets on-the-ground operations. Join Chrissy Myers, HR expert and CEO, and Josh Troche, marketing and operations guru, as they tackle the challenges facing small and medium-sized businesses today.

Each episode, Chrissy and Josh dissect a common business problem, offering diverse perspectives and actionable solutions. Whether you're in service industries or product development, with 10 or 150 employees, you'll gain valuable insights to improve your business. This isn't your typical dry business podcast. Chrissy and Josh bring a conversational, down-to-earth approach to the critical aspects of building a thriving business.

Follow us on social media or visit thebusinessfix.com for more resources and to connect with our community. Let's fix your business together!

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Episodes
  • Cognitive Diversity at Work: How to Be Fair Without Treating Everyone the Same

    Cognitive Diversity at Work: How to Be Fair Without Treating Everyone the Same
    28 Oct 2026
    Send us Fan MailWhat does it really mean to be fair as a leader? Does fairness mean treating every employee exactly the same, or does it mean giving people what they need to succeed while holding everyone accountable to the same standards?In Episode 79 of The Business Fix, Chrissy, CEO, and Josh, the marketing and operations guy, tackle one of the most important challenges facing small business owners and managers: how to lead people who think, communicate, process information, and work differently without sacrificing accountability or creating a culture of perceived favoritism.Welcome to the world of cognitive diversity in the workplace!A strong team needs different perspectives, skills, and ways of thinking. After all, you don't want a soccer team made up of eleven goalkeepers! But hiring people with different strengths is only the beginning. The real leadership challenge is figuring out how to help those people work together effectively.Chrissy and Josh introduce a practical leadership framework: Standards, Scaffolding, Same Finish Line.Here's how it works:Standards: Clearly define the work, what success looks like, the deliverable, the deadline, and the handoff. Employees shouldn't have to guess what their manager expects.Scaffolding: Provide the tools and support people need to meet those expectations. That might mean written instructions, checklists, videos, project boards, fewer interruptions, or time to process information before a meeting.Same Finish Line: Keep the outcome, accountability, and essential job responsibilities consistent. Flexibility in how people work doesn't mean lowering the bar.You'll hear why fairness isn't sameness, how one-size-fits-all management can stifle talented employees, and why leaders often make the mistake of assuming everyone should work the way they do. Chrissy and Josh also discuss the importance of employee self-awareness, communicating individual work needs, and creating an environment where people can ask for the support that helps them perform at their best.But where is the line between providing support and avoiding accountability? The conversation explores why cognitive diversity doesn't eliminate the essential functions of a role, why clear job expectations matter, and how managers can distinguish between a support issue, a performance issue, and a potential role-fit issue.They also examine how accommodations and better workplace tools can benefit the entire team. A checklist that helps one employee might prevent mistakes for everyone. A training video can reduce repeated questions. And a quieter work environment might help more people concentrate. Sometimes, what begins as support for one person becomes a smarter way to run the business.Throughout the episode, Chrissy and Josh bring the discussion back to the leadership principles that make businesses stronger: clarity, consistency, compassion, and accountability. Because great management isn't about forcing everyone into the same mold. It's about creating the conditions for different people to deliver excellent work.In this episode, you'll learn:How cognitive diversity strengthens teams and business performance.Why fair leadership doesn't require identical treatment.How to use Standards, Scaffolding, Same Finish Line in your business.How to adapt communication and workflows to different thinking styles.How to offer appropriate support without creating perceived favoritism.Why role clarity and consistent accountability are essential to a healthy workplace culture.How small business owners can build more effective systems for managing people.If you're a small business owner, entrepreneur, CEO, HR professional, or business manager who wants to improve employee performance, strengthen workplace culture, and become a more effective leader, this episode is for you.This episode is sponsored by Patriot Software.You didn’t start your business to spend your weekends wrestling with payroll, taxes, and spreadsheets. We use Patriot ourselves because it keeps accounting and payroll simple, fast, and affordable, and when you need help, you get their USA-based support team. No endless phone loops, just quick solutions.Get out of the weeds and back to growing your business at The habits that built your business can become the bottlenecks holding it back. We help leaders eliminate culture drift, reduce conflict, strengthen accountability, and build a company that thrives without them in every room. Because kindness without clarity is expensive avoidance. Learn more at https://businessfixpodcast.com. Tired of keynotes that inspire your team for an hour but change nothing on Monday morning? The Business Fix Live delivers practical tools for stronger leadership, better accountability, healthier culture, and real business growth. Book Josh and Chrissy for your next keynote, summit, or manager workshop at https://businessfixpodcast.com. If you're looking to get help with your culture, or to help out an entire group, reach...
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    51 min
  • Leadership Confidence: Stop Waiting for 100% Certainty

    Leadership Confidence: Stop Waiting for 100% Certainty
    21 Oct 2026
    Send us Fan MailHow confident are you as a leader? More importantly, does your leadership confidence help your business move forward, or is your need for certainty keeping your team stuck?In Episode 78 of The Business Fix, Chrissy and Josh take on one of the most misunderstood parts of leadership: confidence in decision making. Because confidence does not mean having every answer, never showing doubt, or pretending you are always right.Real leadership confidence requires a balance of conviction, curiosity, and correction. Leaders need enough conviction to make the call, enough curiosity to listen to other perspectives, and enough willingness to adjust when new information changes the situation. As Chrissy and Josh explain, ego wants to be right, while curiosity wants to get it right.The conversation explores the difference between genuine leadership confidence and ego driven arrogance, including a simple test: genuine confidence can tolerate questions. Arrogance cannot.The episode also looks at what happens when business owners and leaders demand 100% certainty before making decisions. While that may seem responsible, it can create a hesitant team that waits for approval instead of taking initiative. Employees can learn that being wrong is more dangerous than being slow, eventually creating a business where every decision comes back to the owner.Chrissy and Josh discuss how to build confidence within your management team by giving employees decision making reps, starting with lower risk decisions, establishing clear guardrails, and increasing responsibility over time. Confidence is built through practice, not simply by telling someone to "be confident."They also discuss hiring for courage and coachability, including interview questions that reveal how candidates respond when their ideas are challenged, when new information proves them wrong, and when a decision does not produce the expected result.The conversation then moves into practical operations and the difference between one way and two way door decisions. Not every decision requires the same level of certainty. Learning when to move forward, when to gather more information, and when a decision can be reversed can help leaders avoid both reckless decisions and decision paralysis.For small business owners, founders, CEOs, managers, and emerging leaders, this episode offers a powerful question:Are you building a team that can think and make decisions independently, or have you accidentally trained everyone to wait for your permission?Listen to Episode 78 of The Business Fix, then tell us what you think. Have you ever created a "business cage" without realizing it? Have you worked for a leader whose confidence crossed into arrogance? Or have you learned to make better decisions without waiting for perfect information?Leave a comment, send us a message, and tell us what you are working on and what you need to fix.For more practical conversations about business management, leadership, people, and workplace culture, visit thebusinessfix.com.The habits that built your business can become the bottlenecks holding it back. We help leaders eliminate culture drift, reduce conflict, strengthen accountability, and build a company that thrives without them in every room. Because kindness without clarity is expensive avoidance. Learn more at https://businessfixpodcast.com. Tired of keynotes that inspire your team for an hour but change nothing on Monday morning? The Business Fix Live delivers practical tools for stronger leadership, better accountability, healthier culture, and real business growth. Book Josh and Chrissy for your next keynote, summit, or manager workshop at https://businessfixpodcast.com. If you're looking to get help with your culture, or to help out an entire group, reach out to Josh and Chrissy today! We would love to see how we can help you, your business, or your event. Contact us!🎙 Ready to Fix What’s Holding Your Business Back?The Business Fix podcast delivers real-world strategies to grow your business, lead your team, and reclaim your time. New episodes drop weekly—packed with insights for business owners and managers who want to do better.🔗 Connect with Chrissy and Josh at https://www.businessfixpodcast.com/ for more tools, support, and clarity.Enjoy the episode? Leave us a review, share it with your leadership team, and let us know your biggest takeaway in the comments!
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    45 min
  • When Business Goes Sideways: How Leaders Handle Disruption

    When Business Goes Sideways: How Leaders Handle Disruption
    14 Oct 2026
    Send us Fan MailWhat happens when the disruption you prepared for isn’t the disruption that actually shows up?Every business eventually gets hit with something unexpected. A major client leaves. A key employee quits. A vendor fails. Software goes down. Leadership changes. Or something lands on your desk that was nowhere on your business bingo card.In this episode of **The Business Fix**, Chrissy and Josh talk about how small business owners and managers can lead through disruption without creating more panic than the problem itself.When things go sideways, employees do not need leaders who perfectly predicted the future. They need leadership that is **steady, specific, and safe**.**Steady** means leaders regulate themselves first instead of handing their anxiety to the team.**Specific** means giving employees useful information: What happened? What matters right now? What should they do next?**Safe** means employees can ask questions, raise concerns, and keep working without assuming every disruption threatens their future.Chrissy also introduces a practical communication framework: **Facts, Focus, and Follow-Up.**Start with the facts. Tell people what you know and what you do not know yet. Then provide focus by explaining what remains steady and what needs attention now. Finally, provide follow-up so employees know when they will hear from leadership again and where questions should go.That follow-up matters because silence creates a vacuum. When employees do not know what is happening, they create their own explanation and it is usually worse than reality.The conversation also explores what a real **human safety net** looks like during change. Psychological safety does not mean promising that everything will be fine. Strong leaders provide clarity without false certainty.Then Josh shifts the conversation to operations and explains why businesses need **broad safety nets instead of hyper-specific disaster scripts**.A 50-step crisis plan is not much help if reality changes at step three.Resilient businesses build operational buffers around the things that keep the company alive: cash, communication, payroll, customer deliverables, vendors, critical workflows, employee capacity, and institutional knowledge.That also means looking at how tightly your business is running. If every employee operates at 100% capacity every day, your company may look efficient, but it is actually fragile. One disruption can quickly create overtime, mistakes, burnout, and turnover.Chrissy and Josh also discuss the danger of **single points of failure**. What happens if only one employee knows a critical process? What if one customer represents too much revenue? What if your only vendor suddenly cannot deliver?Josh shares the story of the 1997 UPS strike and how Summit Racing Equipment responded to the sudden loss of a critical shipping partner, showing why operational resilience matters.The episode also breaks down what leaders should protect first when disruption strikes: customer deliverables, cash collection, invoicing, payroll, and basic communication. Lower-priority projects may need to pause until the business stabilizes.One of the biggest takeaways is a better question for leaders to ask.Instead of:**“What terrible thing could happen someday?”**Ask:**“Where are we already fragile?”**That question may expose customer concentration, overloaded employees, undocumented knowledge, vendor dependence, weak management, or culture problems that are already creating risk.Sometimes the biggest disruption is not financial or operational. It is a **sudden loss of trust**.If you own a small or midsize business, manage employees, or lead a team, this episode will help you think differently about crisis management, business continuity, employee communication, leadership, and operational resilience.You cannot predict every disruption.But you can build a business and a leadership team that's capable of handling the one you never saw coming.Visit **TheBusinessFix.com** to connect with Chrissy and Josh and find more practical conversations about business management, leadership, workplace culture, and building a stronger organization.This episode is sponsored by Patriot Software.You didn’t start your business to spend your weekends wrestling with payroll, taxes, and spreadsheets. We use Patriot ourselves because it keeps accounting and payroll simple, fast, and affordable, and when you need help, you get their USA-based support team. No endless phone loops, just quick solutions.Get out of the weeds and back to growing your business at The habits that built your business can become the bottlenecks holding it back. We help leaders eliminate culture drift, reduce conflict, strengthen accountability, and build a company that thrives without them in every room. Because kindness without clarity is expensive avoidance. Learn more at https://businessfixpodcast.com. Tired of keynotes that inspire your team for an hour but change nothing...
    Show more Show less
    49 min
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