Impact Founders, Listen Up!

A new podcast from Linda van Egmond about honest shifts and smart moves for overwhelmed, mission-driven founders.

You're building an impact business that matters, but you're drowning in decisions and day-to-day actions. This Is Harder than I Want It to Be gives overwhelmed impact founders practical frameworks to delegate effectively, build independent teams, and create systems that work for you.

Linda van Egmond draws from a lot of failure and success during 20 years of supporting im…

About the Host

Linda van Egmond

Fractional CMO & Integrator aka Temporary Co-Founder for Impact Founders

If you want someone to tell you you're doing great..., I’m not your person.

If you want to know exactly why your company isn’t scaling the way it should, and how to fix it, that’s my zone.

I step into the messy middle: between “we have great plans” and “we’re actually pulling them off.” The part where everything feels urgent, but nothing is running as smoothly as it should. There I fix the stuff you don’t want to deal with (but know you should).

I’m a Fractional Integrator, or temporary co-founder, for impact-driven founders who want to grow without burning out or losing sight of their mission.

Recent Episodes

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Delegating

July 2, 2026

Done Is Better Than Perfect: Season 1 Review + Season 2 Preview

You don’t have to be a “podcast person” to start a podcast. In this episode, Linda shares the behind-the-scenes truth of Season 1 and the simple system that helped them ship ten episodes, even with perfectionism in the room.What You'll Learn:The Hook: Why “I don’t even listen to podcasts” can still be the start of a podcast.Reality Check: The honest constraints: no commute, no headphones, and a brain that needs quiet to think.The Shift: The moment it clicked that voice carries nuance text

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June 18, 2026

Your Business Needs to Work Without You

Thought you were building a team, but it still feels like everything depends on you? In this episode, Linda breaks down what actually has to change for your business to run without you and gives you a practical 90-day roadmap to make it real.Link to Operational AssessmentFree Scoping Session with LindaWhat You'll Learn:The Hook: The real question isn’t “can you take a vacation?” It’s “would the business still function if you had to disappear for two weeks with no warning?”Reality Check: A

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June 4, 2026

'Just Hire Someone' - That's Terrible Advice

When you’re overwhelmed, hiring sounds like the obvious fix. But if you don’t have clear outcomes and simple processes first, you’re not hiring help, you’re hiring more questions (and more chaos). In this episode, Linda shows you the “pre-hire” work that makes bringing someone on actually reduce your workload.What You'll Learn:The Hook: Hiring doesn’t solve overwhelm; it often turns chaos into expensive chaos.Reality Check: A founder hired three people fast and ended up working more because

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May 21, 2026

How Small Problems Become Big Fires

Ever notice how the thing that “wasn’t urgent” somehow becomes the thing that blows up your week? In this episode, Linda explains why small problems escalate when they have nowhere to land, and how a simple weekly ritual can keep issues from turning into emergencies.What You'll Learn:The Hook: The real reason issues don’t surface early is usually the system, not the people.Reality Check: A client complaint sat untouched for two weeks because it felt too big for chat but not big enough for a

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May 7, 2026

The Meeting That Saves Me 10 Hours a Week

Your team is flooding you with messages and “quick syncs,” but somehow you still don’t know what’s actually getting done. In this episode, Linda breaks down the one 30-minute weekly meeting that replaces the chaos with a simple rhythm: everyone sees the same numbers, surfaces the real issues, and leaves with clear priorities.What You'll Learn:The Hook: Why constant Slack pings and endless meetings are usually a symptom of missing one key weekly rhythm.Reality Check: How a growing team can c

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April 23, 2026

It's Not A Process If It Only Works When YOU Do It

You take a day off and everything grinds to a halt, because the “process” is actually just you. In this episode, Linda van Egmond shows you how to turn what’s in your head into a system your team can run without constant check-ins.What You'll Learn:The Hook: Why your phone blows up the moment you step away, and what that reveals about your business.Reality Check: How growth can increase pressure when the critical knowledge lives in one person’s head.The Shift: A process doesn’t have to be

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April 9, 2026

Stop Measuring EVERYTHING: Measure What Moves

Thought more metrics would make things clearer, but you feel even more stuck? In this episode, Linda breaks down why tracking everything leads to overwhelm and inaction, and how to choose the handful of numbers that actually change your results.What You'll Learn:The Hook: More dashboards do not mean more clarity when you do not know what to do next.Reality Check: Tracking everything can paralyze you, but tracking nothing leaves you blind until it is too late.The Shift: Lead indicators pre

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March 26, 2026

Your Team Can't Read Your Mind: How to Use the Vision Check-In

You have a clear vision in your head, but your team is building from an older version of it. That gap is where good work quietly goes off the rails. In this episode, you’ll learn why “I already told them” is rarely enough, and how a simple, repeatable check-in keeps everyone executing the same priority, with the same context, at the same time.What You'll Learn:The Hook: Your team is working hard, but still missing the mark, because they cannot execute the updates you never explicitly shared.

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March 12, 2026

Goals Keep Slipping? Why It Happens and How to Fix It.

It's the end of the quarter. You look at the goals you set 90 days ago and realize you did maybe one of them. The rest are still sitting on the list. In this episode, Linda breaks down why goals keep slipping and shares a simple weekly rhythm that makes your 90-day priorities actually happen.What You'll Learn:The Hook: Why ambitious 90-day goals quietly slide when there is no weekly rhythm to keep you connected to themReality Check: The real reason goals do not get done is not laziness or l

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Feb. 26, 2026

Strategy is Not A Plan: The Bridge Between to Action

You spent a full day on strategy. You mapped the vision, set the goals, and left energized. Then Monday happened, and that beautiful plan went straight into a drawer. In this episode, Linda shows you why your strategy stays stuck on paper and exactly how to bridge the gap between thinking and doing.What You'll Learn:The Hook: Why strategic plans feel productive but disappear the moment you're back at your deskReality Check: The pattern Linda kept seeing in strategy sessions—great alignment,

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