Fix My Business

B. Scott Todd
  • 5.0 (8)
  • ENTREPRENEURSHIP
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

Business problems feel overwhelming because you're trying to fix everything at once. Fix My Business cuts through the noise by answering one real question per episode—giving you clarity, a clear diagnosis, and one action you can take this week. Hosted by author and entrepreneur Scott Todd, this show isn't about theory or motivation. It's about solving the actual problems that keep business owners stuck: revenue up but profit down, marketing that doesn't work, chaos that won't stop, and the constant feeling that you're one step behind. Scott left a Fortune 300 VP role to build multiple seven-figure companies. His book, Fix This Next for Real Estate Investors (releasing January 2026), introduced the Investor Priority Pyramid (IPP)—a framework for knowing exactly what to fix next when everything feels urgent. Now, he's bringing that same diagnostic approach to business owners across every industry. What makes this show different: Every episode starts with a real question from a real business owner. Scott diagnoses the actual problem (not the surface symptom), explains why it's happening, and gives you one clear move to make progress this week. No 10-step plans. No vague advice. Just: here's what's wrong, here's why, here's what to do. You'll learn how to: -Identify the real problem hiding underneath the chaos -Use frameworks like the Investor Priority Pyramid (IPP), the Survival Trap, and the Scaling Trap to understand where you're stuck -Fix margin erosion, cash flow issues, and operational breakdowns -Build systems that let your business run without running you -Move from grinding for revenue to printing profit Scott's background spans over three decades in corporate leadership (Fortune 300 executive in IT, operations, and finance) and entrepreneurship (Landmodo, Passion IT Group, and other ventures). He thinks like an operator, not a guru. His frameworks—IPP, the Freedom Number Formula, ACRE, and the DREAMS Framework—translate complex strategy into simple, repeatable actions. This show is for: -Business owners working harder but taking home less -Entrepreneurs stuck in the Survival Trap (revenue grows, chaos grows faster) -Operators who want clarity on what to fix first when everything feels broken -Anyone tired of motivational advice who wants tactical, diagnostic problem-solving Each episode includes: -The Question: A real problem from a real business owner -The Diagnosis: What's actually wrong (the thing you can't see on your own) -The Action: One move you can make this week to fix it If you're ready to stop guessing and start fixing, this is your show. Scott Todd is an entrepreneur, real estate investor, and author of Fix This Next for Real Estate Investors (January 2026). He's the creator of the Investor Priority Pyramid™ and the Freedom Number™ framework. Through his companies, writing, and this podcast, he helps business owners escape overwhelm and build businesses that operate without consuming their lives. Learn more at ScottTodd.net.

  1. 4D AGO

    The Traps Never Leave (And Why Patches Make It Worse)

    The four traps—Control, Variability, Memory, Visibility—never go away. You can minimize them. You can manage them. But you can never fully eliminate them. They're baked into every process. When business owners see a trap, their instinct is to patch it. Add a checklist. Add an approval. Add a reminder. Add a review. But patches don't fix traps. They create operational debt. The bathroom checklist example: A checklist that requires someone to remember to use it is a patch on the Memory Trap... that itself has a Memory Trap. The checklist didn't solve the problem. It just moved the problem. Patches are workarounds disguised as systems. Memory Trap → checklist, reminder, calendar inviteControl Trap → approval step, sign-offVariability Trap → review, quality checkVisibility Trap → report, dashboard Operational debt is like financial debt but not on your balance sheet. Research shows it can cost up to 25% of your revenue. Every checklist, approval, review, and dashboard adds weight. Operational debt creates three types of drag: Speed (every patch slows things down)Confusion (new employees can't figure out the buried system)Brittleness (patches don't adapt; changes break them) The alternative isn't more patches. It's seeing the traps for what they are. Patching is reactive—you see a problem, you slap something on it. Managing is intentional—you ask: Can I remove this step? Can I redesign so the trap doesn't exist? Can I automate so humans don't have to remember? "Patches add to the process. Managing subtracts from it." "Remove before you automate. Simplify before you systemize." If you automate a trap without fixing it first, the trap gets amplified. Now you have faster, more consistent chaos. The key insight: Seeing the traps is the advantage. Once you see them, you can't unsee them. You're not seeking perfection. You're seeking awareness. Your action: Find one patch in your business. A checklist nobody uses. An approval that's rubber-stamped. A report nobody reads. Ask: Is this solving the problem or just moving it? Next episode: How to audit a process before you automate—Clarify the Flow. Got a business question? Ask Scott here: scotttodd.net/ask

    17 min

  2. 6D AGO

    The Visibility Trap: Why the Data You're Missing Is More Dangerous Than the Data You Have

    Why do your customers buy from you? Not what you think—why do they actually choose you? Why do your employees work for you? What do they actually think? If you hesitated on either question, you're in the Visibility Trap. Scott shares the story of David—a business owner with perfect financials who watched revenue drop 30%. He cut costs, adjusted pricing, ran promotions. Nothing worked. Finally, he called his customers. They didn't buy because of his product. They bought because of Maria—one employee who made them feel taken care of. Maria left six months earlier. David barely noticed. His customers noticed. One by one, they left. The Visibility Trap shows up in three blindspots: Financial data (margins, cash flow, CAC, LTV—not just revenue)Customer data (why they buy, stay, leave)Employee data (why they work here, what they think, what would make them leave) The diagnostic question: Do I have the data I need to make this decision? Why it's the most dangerous: The Visibility Trap is the meta-trap. It hides the other three. You can't see the Control Trap until someone burns out. You can't see Variability until a customer complains. You can't see the Memory Trap until revenue disappears. The uncomfortable truth: You might prefer not to see. Visibility means accountability. "Ignorance feels easier. But that's not leadership. That's hiding." The three-part escape: Identify your blindspots (list the questions you can't answer)Build feedback loops (surveys, check-ins, dashboards, conversations)Look at what you don't want to see The key insight: "The data that makes you cringe is usually the data that matters most." Connection to SCALE: L = Leverage the data. Visibility isn't just collecting data—it's using it to make decisions and building alerts for failures. The truth about all four traps: They never go away. They exist in every process. Once you see them, you can't unsee them. And that's half the battle. Next episode: How to find the traps before you automate—because automating the traps amplifies chaos. Got a business question? Ask Scott here: scotttodd.net/ask

    16 min

  3. MAY 14

    The Memory Trap: Why Calendar Reminders Are a Symptom

    How many calendar reminders do you have right now? How many Post-it notes? How many to-do lists? Every single one of those is a failure point waiting to happen. Scott shares his own memory trap failure: sales tax due on the third Thursday of every month. Calendar reminder—skipped because low priority. To-do list—bumped to the next day. Post-it note on the monitor—blended into the background. Missed deadlines. Fines. "Hope is a terrible strategy." The reframe: Calendar reminders are just digital Post-it notes. They still require someone to see them, acknowledge them, and take action. And when that person is sick, on vacation, or overwhelmed? The reminder fires, they dismiss it, and it never gets done. The diagnostic question: How much work in your business depends on someone remembering to do it? Where the Memory Trap hides: Recurring tasks (time-based triggers)Follow-ups (how much revenue lost because someone forgot?)Handoffs (how does Person B know it's their turn?) Why it's dangerous: The Memory Trap is invisible until it fails. When someone remembers, nothing happens—the work gets done. When someone forgets, everything breaks. And then you blame the person. But you built a system that required them to remember. That's a system problem. The three-part escape: Identify every memory-dependent task (calendar reminders, to-do lists, Post-it notes)Convert time triggers to action triggers (when X happens, do Y—not "remember on Monday")Build alerts for failures, not just reminders for tasks Scott's payroll example: To-do at 8am every other Thursday. But also: at 3pm, if that to-do isn't marked complete, send a text. "Urgent. Payroll not approved." The alert catches what the reminder missed. The Post-it note distinction: Capturing a problem is a one-time act of awareness—that's a tool for seeing. Relying on Post-it notes to execute recurring work—that's a crutch for remembering. One is improvement. The other is a trap. Connection to SCALE: A = Automate the trigger. L = Leverage the data (visibility into what's NOT happening). Your action: Find one recurring task that depends on someone remembering. Convert it from a time trigger to an action trigger. Automate it. Set up an alert. Got a business question? Ask Scott here: scotttodd.net/ask

    18 min

  4. MAY 12

    The Variability Trap: Why Your Business Feels Chaotic Even When Everyone's Busy

    Starlink raised prices and cut data. Customers were furious. They opened support tickets. And what happened next was a mess. Some customers got large refunds and personal phone calls. Others got their last charge refunded and their account canceled—no call, no conversation. Then customers started comparing notes in online forums. "Wait, you got a phone call? I didn't." The inconsistency made everything worse. They weren't just upset about the price change. They were upset about being treated differently. That's the Variability Trap. The misconception: Most people think variability is about doing steps differently. It's not. It's about the OUTPUT being different. Two people can take different routes—as long as they arrive at the same destination, same quality, same standard. The diagnostic phrase: "It depends on who does it." If you've ever said that about any process, you're in the trap. Scott's due diligence example: Two people doing due diligence on the same property type. Completely different reports. Different depth, different data points, different conclusions. "I don't have a person problem. I have a standards problem." The real problem: You defined the TASK but not the OUTPUT. You told them what to do, not what done looks like. The key question: "Would a customer know who did this?" If yes, you have variability. The three-part escape: Define the output standard (what does done look like?)Create examples of good (examples beat descriptions every time)Audit the outputs, not the inputs (compare finished work across people) Connection to SCALE: The C = Clarify the flow. You're not just mapping steps—you're defining what the output of each step looks like. Your action: Pick one process where the output depends on who does it. Create an output standard. Find examples of good. Give the same input to two people and compare. Got a business question? Ask Scott here: scotttodd.net/ask

    16 min

  5. MAY 7

    The Control Trap: Why Everything Comes Back to You (And How to Escape)

    A woman takes a four-week vacation to Ghana. No laptop. The room erupts in applause. Scott sits there thinking: "Is this what we're celebrating now? Taking a vacation?" But here's the reality: 67% of small business owners check in on work during vacation. 14% only take a vacation every two to three years. Their health is suffering. And the question is why. The answer: They're the bottleneck. The business is too reliant on them. They're in the Control Trap. The lie you tell yourself: "I'm not a control freak. I'm just maintaining quality." The five symptoms: Your team asks questions they should know. You can't vacation without checking your phone. You're the only one with passwords and access. You delegate then redo. You think "if something happened to me, this would collapse." The real question: Not "how do I delegate more?" but "why does everything come back to me?" The answer: Your standards live in your head. Your team comes to you because you're the path of least resistance. What the Ghana woman did differently: She trained her team on decisions, not just tasks. They knew her criteria. They didn't need her. The three-part escape: Define what winning looks like (outcomes, not steps)Teach them to think, not just do (under what circumstances would you do X?)Remove yourself as the path of least resistance The trick: When they ask a question they should know, say "I don't know. What do you think we should do?" The catch: It feels like losing control. They will mess up. That's fixable. Don't jump back in. The key insight: All businesses scale because you get more people thinking. Your action: Pick one thing that requires your approval. Define what winning looks like. Next time someone asks, say "What do you think?" Got a business question? Ask Scott here: scotttodd.net/ask

    19 min

  6. MAY 5

    The Four Traps That Keep Business Owners Stuck

    You captured the frictions. Post-it notes on the wall. You know what's broken. So why don't you fix it? The Resistance. Steven Pressfield calls it the invisible force that stops you from doing work you know you should do. The inner critic trolls that sit on your shoulder. They show up as procrastination, perfectionism, "I'll get to it next week," or "I need more research first." In business, the Resistance hides inside four specific traps. If you don't know which trap you're in, you'll keep fighting the wrong battle. Trap 1: The Control Trap. You or someone on your team becomes the linchpin. All information, decisions, and approvals flow through one person. You think you're maintaining quality. You've actually become the bottleneck. Trap 2: The Variability Trap. The output depends on who does the work. One person does it this way, another does it differently. Results are inconsistent. Most people think this is a people problem. It's a systems problem. Trap 3: The Memory Trap. Work depends on someone remembering to do something. Calendar reminders, to-do lists, Post-it notes everywhere. Every time execution relies on memory, you've created a point of failure. People forget. People get sick. Things fall through the cracks. Trap 4: The Visibility Trap. You don't have the information to manage your business. Flying blind on financial data, customer data, operational data. You can't fix problems you can't see. You end up solving the wrong thing. The diagnostic questions: Control: "If I disappeared for two weeks, would the business keep running?"Variability: "Does the output depend on who does the work?"Memory: "How much work relies on someone remembering?"Visibility: "Do I have the data to make this decision?" Which traps are you in? Be honest—probably at least two. Maybe all four. Over the next episodes, Scott goes deep on each trap: how to diagnose it, how to escape it, and how it connects to the SCALE framework. The bottom line: Think about a friction in your business. Ask yourself: which trap is creating it? Control, variability, memory, or visibility? Once you know the trap, you know exactly what to fix. Got a business question? Ask Scott here: scotttodd.net/ask

    12 min

  7. APR 30

    The One Thing You Need to Know What to Fix Next

    Every business has problems. You can't fix them all at once. But most business owners don't have a system to capture what's broken—so they walk past the same problems every day without seeing them. Scott introduces the concept of frictions: the little annoyances throughout the day. "I have to do this one more time." The moments that slow you down, slow your team down, and impact the customer experience. The system is simple: Post-it notes. A wall. Make it a game. For remote teams, use a virtual whiteboard. Call them friction points—for every one your team submits, they get friction points. Fight for simplicity. Don't vibe code some fancy tool. You're just creating more friction. Where frictions hide: email, Slack, repeated questions, manual triggers, things you've trained over and over but still answer yourself. Ask your team every day: "What do you hate doing?" First time, they'll think you're crazy. Ask anyway. What's annoying you? What system is broken? Scott shares the open gate story from his VP days at a rental car company. Cars were being stolen. Walking the lot after hours, the gate was open. The manager walked right past it. Scott stopped. "Why is that gate open?" The manager said maybe someone's working inside. Scott said maybe they're not—let's go check. We train ourselves to walk past problems. Frictions hide because we stop seeing them. But not everything should be fixed. Prioritize by impact. Look at the wall of Post-it notes and find the one that, if fixed, fixes everything else. The bottom line: Grab a Post-it note right now. What's annoying you about your business? Dedicate time every day to capturing frictions. Make it a game. You'll be further down the road of improvement than you ever imagined—if you stop walking past the open gate. Got a business question? Ask Scott here: scotttodd.net/ask

    11 min

  8. APR 28

    The AI Starting Point: How to Actually Begin Without Wasting 100 Hours

    70% of a room raised their hands when asked if they're exploring AI. But most of them are doing it wrong—starting with tools instead of systems. Scott tells the Dr. Ryan story: a physician who spent 100+ hours trying to force Airtable into his business with no clear problem to solve. "He's not unusual. He's you. He's me." This is the hype trap—picking a tool and forcing it into your business. The shift: It's never tool first. The tool is always the last decision you make. Scott teaches the SCALE framework for building any process—manual or automated: S - Scope the solution. Don't boil the ocean. Focus on one specific play, not end-to-end. Business is a series of plays, like football. Five yards at a time. C - Clarify the flow. Map the process. Know where it starts and ends. Humans are better at certain things, machines at others. It's a braided river—handoffs between the two. A - Automate the trigger. Manual triggers fail. People forget. People get sick. Automate how the workflow starts. L - Leverage the data. Know if it worked. Know if it failed. Too many automations run silently with no feedback. E - Elevate the experience. Make it sound human, not robotic. Every touchpoint—outputs, errors, notifications—should feel like you. The Tesla story: The 2012 Model S had 5,000 parts. The 2026 version has 3,000. Only 3% of parts overlap. Most manufacturers take 36-40 years to reach that. Tesla did it in 14—because they focused on the system, not the parts. They asked: what can we remove? That's the deeper principle: before you automate, ask if you can eliminate the step entirely. Even after you've automated something, revisit it and ask what can be removed. The bottom line: Build your company with SCALE. Every process—manual or automated—starts with the system, not the tool. Got a business question? Ask Scott here: scotttodd.net/ask

    13 min
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
8 Ratings

About

Business problems feel overwhelming because you're trying to fix everything at once. Fix My Business cuts through the noise by answering one real question per episode—giving you clarity, a clear diagnosis, and one action you can take this week. Hosted by author and entrepreneur Scott Todd, this show isn't about theory or motivation. It's about solving the actual problems that keep business owners stuck: revenue up but profit down, marketing that doesn't work, chaos that won't stop, and the constant feeling that you're one step behind. Scott left a Fortune 300 VP role to build multiple seven-figure companies. His book, Fix This Next for Real Estate Investors (releasing January 2026), introduced the Investor Priority Pyramid (IPP)—a framework for knowing exactly what to fix next when everything feels urgent. Now, he's bringing that same diagnostic approach to business owners across every industry. What makes this show different: Every episode starts with a real question from a real business owner. Scott diagnoses the actual problem (not the surface symptom), explains why it's happening, and gives you one clear move to make progress this week. No 10-step plans. No vague advice. Just: here's what's wrong, here's why, here's what to do. You'll learn how to: -Identify the real problem hiding underneath the chaos -Use frameworks like the Investor Priority Pyramid (IPP), the Survival Trap, and the Scaling Trap to understand where you're stuck -Fix margin erosion, cash flow issues, and operational breakdowns -Build systems that let your business run without running you -Move from grinding for revenue to printing profit Scott's background spans over three decades in corporate leadership (Fortune 300 executive in IT, operations, and finance) and entrepreneurship (Landmodo, Passion IT Group, and other ventures). He thinks like an operator, not a guru. His frameworks—IPP, the Freedom Number Formula, ACRE, and the DREAMS Framework—translate complex strategy into simple, repeatable actions. This show is for: -Business owners working harder but taking home less -Entrepreneurs stuck in the Survival Trap (revenue grows, chaos grows faster) -Operators who want clarity on what to fix first when everything feels broken -Anyone tired of motivational advice who wants tactical, diagnostic problem-solving Each episode includes: -The Question: A real problem from a real business owner -The Diagnosis: What's actually wrong (the thing you can't see on your own) -The Action: One move you can make this week to fix it If you're ready to stop guessing and start fixing, this is your show. Scott Todd is an entrepreneur, real estate investor, and author of Fix This Next for Real Estate Investors (January 2026). He's the creator of the Investor Priority Pyramid™ and the Freedom Number™ framework. Through his companies, writing, and this podcast, he helps business owners escape overwhelm and build businesses that operate without consuming their lives. Learn more at ScottTodd.net.

Information

  • Creator
    B. Scott Todd
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    59
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © B. Scott Todd
  • Show Website
    Fix My Business

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