In episode 168 of the Woodard Report Podcast, Joe Woodard sat down with Dr. Sabrina Starling to discuss two of her books, How to Hire the Best and The 4 Week Vacation®. Their conversation focused on a question that resonates with many firm owners and advisors: How do you build a business that grows revenue and profit without consuming all of your time, energy, and attention?
Dr. Sabrina Starling, Ph.D., PCC, BCC, known as The Business Psychologist, is the international bestselling author of How to Hire the Best and The 4 Week Vacation®. Her work has been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur.com, and Thrive Global. She is the founder of Tap the Potential and cohost of the Profit by Design Podcast.
Joe began the podcast by asking Dr. Starling about the outcome her work promises to small business owners. He noted that this is not a theoretical framework. Business owners who work through her process are getting real capacity back in their weeks.
Dr. Starling explained that her coaching model is designed for established small businesses that want more efficiency in both time and money. The goal is not simply to create more free time, but to create more time while revenue, profit, and owner pay continue to grow.
Over a 12-month period, the aim is to build a business that allows the owner to take a fully unplugged four-week vacation while the company continues to operate and grow.
Dr. Starling said the first mistake is mindset. If owners do not believe this kind of outcome is possible, they will never work toward it. The second mistake is one most advisors will recognize immediately. Owners convince themselves that it is easier to do the work themselves than to train someone else. That belief limits the growth of the owner and also limits the growth of the team.
Dr. Starling described this as creating glass ceilings throughout the business. Owners create them for their teams. Leaders inside the company can also create them for the people who report to them. The result is a company full of capable people who are never given the room to rise.
Her answer is to rethink how each hour in the business is used. She teaches what she calls “$10,000 an hour work.” She made clear that this is not about billing rates. It is about the value created in the business. A $10,000 an hour activity is one that uses a person’s strengths while making things easier for others. That can apply to an owner, a leader, or an assistant whose work frees up time and creates capacity elsewhere in the company.
The conversation then shifted to client service. Dr. Starling said many entrepreneurs overcomplicate what they deliver because they decide what they think clients need instead of listening closely enough to what clients are actually experiencing. She said, “We need our clients to tell us.”
That means paying attention not only to direct requests but also to the concerns, frustrations, and pressures clients carry into the relationship. Some of those concerns may have nothing to do with accounting on the surface. Even so, a firm that can make life easier for its clients creates real value. In her view, the role of an advisor is not to add more information to an already overloaded world. It is to simplify.
That point led naturally into a discussion about artificial intelligence (AI). Joe noted that AI can complete tasks and provide information, but he questioned whether it can connect those tasks to the deeper human realities clients are dealing with. Dr. Starling agreed and made one of the most important points in the interview. “AI will never replace the relationships and the connections that we make.”
Joe then turned to Dr. Starling’s hiring framework and asked how firms can find the right people. She said her work on hiring began by challenging a belief she heard often from rural business owners who assumed they could not attract top talent. Her research led to a different conclusion. A-Players exist at every level of a business, and they can be attracted if owners learn how to speak their language.
Dr. Starling defined an A-Player as someone who is intrinsically motivated, solves problems, and wants to do a good job for the sake of doing a good job. She said the traditional hiring process often turns these people away because it does not reflect what they value most.
She explained that firms need to identify their immutable laws, which are essentially their core values, and use those values to attract the right people from the beginning. She also stressed that vision matters. A-Players want to know where the business is going and how their role fits into that future.
Joe connected that idea to his own experience, noting that the hiring process often resembles recruitment more than simple screening. The goal is not to sort through a random pool of applicants. The goal is to attract the right pool in the first place and then filter from there.
Joe asked Dr. Starling about her TEDx talk, From Burnout to Balance. She explained that the talk became deeply personal after the sudden death of her husband, Ned, shortly before she delivered it.
She said one of the greatest gifts of building a business that supported her life was that it allowed her to be fully emotionally present in her marriage. In the midst of grief, that presence mattered. It meant she could say she had no regrets.
This episode offers practical guidance for advisors and firm owners who want more than a busier business. Dr. Starling’s message is that growth and freedom do not have to compete with each other. A business can become more profitable while also becoming more sustainable for the person leading it.
For professionals in accounting, bookkeeping, and advisory work, that message is especially timely. AI continues to reshape routine work, and clients need more than technical answers. Teams need leadership, clarity, and room to grow. The firms that respond well will be the ones that simplify, delegate, hire intentionally, and stay rooted in human connection.
🎧 Listen to the full episode at woodard.com/podcast.
Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to The Woodard Report Podcast on your favorite platform for weekly insights that move your practice—and your life—forward.
Thank you to our show sponsor, Puzzle!
The next generation firm, AI-powered human lead. Puzzle replaces manual QuickBooks workflows with AI-driven books built for review, approval, and audit-ready accountability. Learn more at puzzle.io.
This article was written with the assistance of AI and edited by a human.