Beyond Margins: Designing Calmer B2B Agencies & Consulting Firms
Beyond Margins: Designing Calmer B2B Agencies & Consulting Firms

Beyond Margins: Designing Calmer B2B Agencies & Consulting Firms

Susan Boles

Overview
Episodes

Details

Can you build a business based on… “calm?” On Beyond Margins, host Susan Boles looks beyond the usual metrics of success to help you build a business where calm is the new KPI. With over 15 years of experience as an entrepreneur, CFO, and COO, Susan shares the business strategies that lead to a business with comfortable margins—financial, emotional, energetic, and scheduling margins. Join her and her guests as they counter the prevailing “wisdom” about business growth, productivity, and success to provide a framework for making choices that align with your values and true goals. Episode by episode, you’ll get a look at the team management, operations, financials, product development, and marketing of a calmer business.

Recent Episodes

How to Build a Client Report Card for a Calmer Business with Karen Sergeant
FEB 11, 2025
How to Build a Client Report Card for a Calmer Business with Karen Sergeant

Managing client relationships is one of the biggest challenges of running a service-based business. Expectations, boundaries, and communication all play a role in whether an engagement runs smoothly or goes off the rails. So, how do you actually know if you're doing a good job?

Karen Sergeant has a solution: a Client Report Card. This system helps her measure and manage client relationships proactively, identifying potential issues before they become problems. As a fractional COO, Karen has spent years refining this process to keep her work feeling calm—even when working inside chaotic businesses. In this episode, we break down her weekly client evaluation system—what metrics she tracks, how she uses the data, and how you can implement a similar approach in your own business.

If you’ve ever struggled with scope creep, unclear expectations, or misaligned client relationships, this conversation is packed with insights that will help you create a calmer, more intentional business.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

  • Why Karen created her Client Report Card—and how it helps her business
  • The 10 criteria she evaluates weekly to measure client relationships
  • How tracking qualitative vibe-based data helps prevent burnout
  • How you can build your own Client Report Card to keep your business running smoothly

Learn more about Karen Sergeant: 

Learn more about Susan Boles:

 

We value your thoughts and feedback. Feel free to share them with Susan here. Your input is not just valuable, it's crucial in shaping future episodes.

  • (00:00) -
  • (00:36) - Managing Client Relationships
  • (02:06) - The Importance of Boundaries and Scope
  • (08:31) - Karen's Report Card Criteria
  • (14:35) - Applying the Report Card in Business

Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

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38 MIN
Fresh Content, Fewer Posts: Kendall Cherry's Calmer KPI
JAN 28, 2025
Fresh Content, Fewer Posts: Kendall Cherry's Calmer KPI

In this episode of Beyond Margins, we explore the concept of calmer KPIs with guest Kendall Cherry, founder of The Candid Collective. Kendall shares her innovative metric, “Fresh Content Inked,” and how it has transformed her content creation process, business systems, and sales cycle—all while doubling her income. We geek out about how to build sustainable systems that create spaciousness in your business, reduce overwhelm, and prioritize what truly matters.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode: 

 • What “Fresh Content Inked” is and why Kendall set a goal of writing six or fewer new pieces of content each month.

 • How building a content library can create a “maintenance mode” for your marketing and free up time for other priorities.

 • The benefits of an asynchronous sales process and how it aligns with calmer business principles.

 • Why posting less—and strategically repurposing content—can lead to better results and higher-quality client connections.

 • Kendall’s personal practices for staying creatively and emotionally balanced as a business owner.

Learn more about Kendall Cherry

Learn more about Susan Boles:

 

We value your thoughts and feedback. Feel free to share them with Susan here. Your input is not just valuable, it's crucial in shaping future episodes.

  • (00:00) - Introduction to Calmer KPIs
  • (02:04) - Exploring Fresh Content Inked with Kendall Cherry
  • (11:15) - Building a Content Library
  • (17:15) - Impact on Sales and Business Strategy
  • (23:05) - Communicating Your Value Effectively
  • (24:01) - Building a Content Ecosystem
  • (26:12) - Leveraging Email Newsletters
  • (28:36) - Streamlining Sales and Client Management

Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

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44 MIN
Making Calm Your New KPI: How to Set Goals That Truly Matter
JAN 14, 2025
Making Calm Your New KPI: How to Set Goals That Truly Matter

In this episode of Beyond Margins, Susan dives into the heart of goal-setting, breaking free from default metrics and focusing on what truly matters to your business and life. She shares her own approach to prioritizing calm as a core business metric and gives a behind-the-scenes look at how she set and tracked a single impactful goal in 2024—taking 12 weeks off to rest (spoiler: she surpassed it).

Susan explores:

  • Why default metrics like revenue targets may not align with your values.
  • How to set meaningful goals rooted in your priorities.
  • A practical framework for choosing Calm KPIs that guide your decisions.
  • Why setting fewer goals—or none at all—can work for demand-avoidant or overcapacity business owners.

Stay tuned for the rest of the series, where Susan will share insights from other business owners about their Calm KPIs, including an upcoming live workshop to develop a custom KPI for one business.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

  • The pitfalls of measuring default metrics that don't serve your goals.
  • How Susan structures her business to prioritize rest and calm.
  • Tips for evaluating and tracking your progress towards intentional goals.
  • Real-world examples of unconventional metrics driving success in calmer businesses.

Support the Show:
Love Beyond Margins? Support the podcast by leaving a rating and review wherever you listen. Your feedback helps others discover the show and empowers us to continue sharing valuable insights.


Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

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11 MIN
Anti-Oppressive Marketing & Reducing Urgency with Natalia Sanyal
DEC 17, 2024
Anti-Oppressive Marketing & Reducing Urgency with Natalia Sanyal

How do you reduce urgency in a world where urgency is so deeply embedded? How do you market yourself and your work in a way that is anti-oppressive? 

We're continuing in our mini-series on my calmer framework for a calmer business. This week, we're focused on reudcing urgency and techniques for anti-oppressive marketing. 

We're joined by Natalia Sanyal, an anti-oppressive copywriter and brand messaging strategist. She’s worked with billion-dollar businesses like Apple and Lululemon, New York Times bestselling authors like Layla Saad & Deepak Chopra, and award-winning marketing agencies. Now, she teaches high-integrity personal brands to use marketing as a force for good so they can sell better and harm less.

On this episode, we learn some techniques to reduce urgency in our work, align actions with values to foster a calmer atmosphere for you, your team, and your business. 

Listen to the Full Episode to Hear:

  1. How can you move away from the default urgency-driven model?
  2. How can you reduce client emergencies and create more flexibility?
  3. What are the real-world applications of aligning business actions with values?
  • How does embracing vulnerability play into the human aspects of entrepreneurship?

Learn more about Natalia Sanyal

Learn more about me, Susan Boles:

 

We value your thoughts and feedback. Feel free to share them with Susan here. Your input is not just valuable, it's crucial in shaping future episodes.

  • (00:00) - Introduction to Human-Centered Entrepreneurship
  • (00:55) - The Elements of a Calm Business
  • (01:40) - Reducing Urgency in Business
  • (03:03) - Anti-Oppressive Marketing with Natalia Sanal
  • (24:51) - Embracing Anti-Oppressive Marketing
  • (26:20) - Taking the Leap: Transitioning to Value-Aligned Clients
  • (31:19) - Deconstructing Urgency in Business
  • (37:47) - Building a Calmer, Sustainable Business

Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

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50 MIN
Architecting Rest with Jordan Maney
DEC 3, 2024
Architecting Rest with Jordan Maney

We live in a society obsessed with productivity and working more, so how can we lean into rest? What are the benefits of building rest into our businesses? And how can we begin to do that? 

We're continuing in our mini-series on my calmer framework for a calmer business. This week, we're focused on rest. Rest is often a challenge for us go-getters, solopreneurs, and entrepreneurs. But, it's essential to stop burnout, stay creative, and have a truly calm and sustainable business. 

We're joined by Jordan Maney, a Radical Joy Coach™ and creator of the Radical Joy Collab who shares how we can build a rest ethic alongside our work ethic. She coaches others to learn the radical practice of rest so they can bring their visions to life. She’s been featured in New York Magazine, Yahoo, Attn, Oprah Magazine, and Martha Stewart Living.

On this episode, we learn how to design our work systems to include rest in a way that works for each of us, how to push back on scoetal pressure to not rest, and how our work lives and personal lives can be transformed with the power of rest. 

Listen to the Full Episode to Hear:

  1. How can rest be intentionally designed and built into a business to make it calmer and more sustainable?
  2. Why is rest a critical element of productivity and how does it contribute to better creative work?
  3. What does a rest ethic look like and how can it be developed alongside a work ethic?

Learn more about Jordan Maney:

Learn more about me, Susan Boles:

 

We value your thoughts and feedback. Feel free to share them with Susan here. Your input is not just valuable, it's crucial in shaping future episodes.

  • (00:00) - Introduction to Rest Ethic
  • (00:51) - Exploring the Importance of Rest
  • (01:44) - Challenges and Personal Experiences with Rest
  • (05:42) - Developing a Rest Ethic
  • (22:21) - Understanding Your Needs and Accommodations
  • (25:36) - Challenges of Implementing Rest in Work
  • (29:44) - The Importance of Rest and Its Impact
  • (37:58) - Practical Steps to Incorporate Rest

Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

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47 MIN