Episodes

Click to start your Business Reality Check "Being Everything to Everyone Is Not a Strategy" Your product works, but your increasingly broad message is getting less attention instead of more. In this episode, Linda explains why trying to include everyone makes it harder for anyone to recognize themselves in your offer and shows you how to repair unfocused messaging with the One Audience Test. What You'll Learn: The Hook: Why adding audiences, use cases, and broader language can make a good produ...

Start your Business Reality Check Now Data doesn't lie. But it doesn't always tell the whole story either. Your numbers look healthy, but sales are flat and progress has stalled. In this episode, Linda explains how measuring the wrong things can hide what is already broken and shares a simple way to find the metric or uncomfortable truth you need to face. What You'll Learn: The Hook: Why rising engagement can create false confidence when it does not translate into sales. Reality Check: How a f...

Click to start your Business Reality Check "Growth is great. Until it isn't.” Growth can feel like proof that everything is finally working, until the team, systems, and follow-up underneath cannot keep up. In this episode, Linda looks at what breaks when momentum arrives before the infrastructure is ready to carry it. What You'll Learn: The Hook: Why the moment right after momentum picks up is often where things start to go wrong. Reality Check: Linda shares the story of a startup with st...

Start your Business Reality Check Now "The System Looked Great on Paper" Your new process looked logical, clear, and complete, but your team quietly stopped using it. In this episode, Linda explains why good systems still break and the three questions that help you repair the conditions around them. What You'll Learn: The Hook: Why a well-documented process can fail within weeks of rollout. Reality Check: How one growing company's new system collapsed because the team understood what to do, bu...

Click to start your Business Reality Check "Why do founders get stuck researching instead of launching?" Sometimes the work that looks productive is actually protecting you from finding out whether something will work. In this episode, Linda looks at the founder who is not overwhelmed by too many decisions, but stuck because they keep waiting until they feel completely sure. What You'll Learn: The Hook: Why some founders stay busy refining, researching, and aligning instead of making the deci...

Start your Business Reality Check Now “We Thought We Had a Communication Problem” When the same team problems keep coming back, it is easy to blame communication. But often the real issue is missing structure: unclear ownership, fuzzy decision-making, low trust, and constantly shifting priorities. What You'll Learn: The Hook: Why adding more meetings, messages, or tools rarely fixes the real problem underneath. Reality Check: Linda shares the story of a team stuck in low-level conflict, re...

Click to start your Business Reality Check “I Was the Problem and I Didn't Know It” Sometimes the thing slowing the business down is not the market, the team, or the timing. It is the founder who has become so central to everything that the business cannot grow without cracking. What You'll Learn: The Hook: Why founders often look everywhere else for the problem before realizing they may be the bottleneck. Reality Check: Linda shares the story of a founder who thought she was holding the b...

This Is Harder than I Want It To Be: Season 2—What Happens After Things Break Linda van Egmond introduces Season 2 of "This is Harder Than I Want It To Be," focused on what happens after failures and breakdowns in leadership, teams, systems, or growth. She argues that failure is part of good leadership and highlights founders who acknowledge mistakes and fix them. Unlike Season 1, which covered shifts made before things break, this season begins each episode with a real failure from her or...