Opt In

Hosted by Melissa Franks

Business CareersInterviews guests

Website RSS feed

Episodes

201

Latest episode

Oct 2026

Language

EN-US

About the show

Do I have to be friends with my co workers to get ahead? Should I take the promotion even if I hate the job? Is my salary big enough or am I getting screwed? Do I have to choose between having a family and having a career? I've been laid off now what do I do? I'm Melissa Franks, and I've spent the last 25 years building my corporate career and a family to along the way, there have been bumps and bruises and some epic going down in flames of glory moments. My journey up the corporate ladder found me forging new ground without a safety net. Through my real life stories, experiences, and special guests on the show, I take the mystery out of how to succeed in the corporate world. I'm going to spill all the tea about how decisions are really made, how to tell who the hidden influencers are, and how to realize your full potential while enjoying the process at the same time. Each week, we will dive into a topic where I will share the good, the bad, and the ugly of my experiences and what we can all learn from them. You will walk away each week with a clear set of next steps to take action and improve your circumstances. We are going to speak frankly and freely about when it's time to opt in or to opt out. Opt In is a place where you can come to get practical, actionable advice to propel your career and your life in the direction you want. Work with me: www.melissafranks.com/offers

Listen to episodes

60 recent

October 21, 202627 min

How to Give Feedback Your Team Will Actually Act On

You've given the same feedback three times and nothing has changed. What if the problem isn't your team at all? This isn't a people problem. It's a feedback problem, and you can fix it without becoming the boss everyone dreads. Today, I'm sharing the one thing that turns feedback into follow-through. After decades inside Fortune 500 companies training new managers, I've seen exactly why most feedback goes nowhere: it's vague, it's delayed, and nobody follows up. In this episode, I walk you through a simple framework for giving feedback your employees and contractors will actually act on, with real examples you can use this week. You'll leave knowing what to say, when to say it, and how to make it stick. In This Episode Why "be more proactive" means three different things to three different people The three feedback failure points: vague, delayed, and no follow-up Why feedback is the start of a commitment, not just a conversation The 48-hour rule: keep it fast, short, and private (and why good feedback gets the same treatment) The Observe, Impact, Ask, Agree framework, with a client-report example What to do when you keep giving the same feedback to multiple people How a pricing complaint turned out to be a policy problem, not a people problem Why a human has to check the work, even in the age of AI Homework: Pick one piece of feedback you've been putting off, deliver it this week using the four steps, and write down the check-in date before you leave the conversation. Connect with Melissa: Identify Your Operational Leaks Masterclass: https://oncallcoo.melissafranks.com/3operationalleaks Consultation Call Link: https://www.melissafranks.com/fractionalcooservices Learn more about On Call COO fractional services → https://www.melissafranks.com Watch the Episodes on Youtube Instagram: instagram.com/melissa_franks LinkedIn: Melissa Franks

October 14, 202626 min

The 3 Meetings Every Small Business Should Cut (and the 1 to Keep)

Is your calendar packed, but nothing is actually getting decided? The problem isn't your team. It's not that people aren't working hard, but that the meetings on your calendar are quietly eating the time they need to actually get things done. In this episode, I'll show you the three recurring meetings you can cut forever, starting tomorrow, and the one meeting that does more than all of them combined. By the end, you'll know exactly what belongs on your calendar and what doesn't, and why it will change how your business runs, grows, and keeps your team happier long term. In This Episode Why one hour with six people costs your business almost a full day Why meetings are for decisions, not for sharing information Meeting #1 to cut: the daily status round robin, and the three-line async update to use instead Meeting #2 to cut: the zombie recurring meeting, plus the three questions to run on every recurring meeting Meeting #3 to cut: the "everybody needs to be here to decide" meeting, and how to build consensus before you walk in The one meeting to keep: the 45-minute weekly accountability meeting and its four-part agenda Why leaders have to put their own commitments on the list Your homework: Audit next week's calendar, politely decline anything you're not needed in, cut at least one meeting, and if you don't have a weekly accountability meeting, start one. Free Masterclass: Find Your Operational Leaks https://oncallcoo.melissafranks.com/3operationalleaks Connect with Melissa: Identify Your Operational Leaks Masterclass: https://oncallcoo.melissafranks.com/3operationalleaks Consultation Call Link: https://www.melissafranks.com/fractionalcooservices Learn more about On Call COO fractional services → https://www.melissafranks.com Watch the Episodes on Youtube Instagram: instagram.com/melissa_franks LinkedIn: Melissa Franks

October 7, 202632 min

Why Your Business Is Shrinking (And It's Not Your Marketing)

Could your customer explain what you sell in one sentence? Could your 10-year-old? Your business isn't stalling because of the economy, the election, or AI. It's stalling because complexity crept in, one good decision at a time, and now your best prospects are opting out instead of saying yes. Spoiler: the fix is a five-step framework called CLEAR. Melissa walks you through how to audit your business without bias or emotion, find where you've overbuilt and over-messaged, and cut back so clearly that anyone can repeat what you sell. This isn't a snap-your-fingers fix, but you'll leave with a step-by-step process and the exact framework we use with every client at On Call COO. In This Episode The signs complexity is creeping into your business, from slide decks to prospects who go quiet How one-off requests, extra tiers, boredom, and fear of looking small create complexity A client who made millions on a simple offer, then watched their tiers cannibalize each other C: Collect every way you describe your business, and why the gap between what you say and what people hear is where complexity sits L: List and score every offer, including the freebie that turned out to drive sales and the 10% vs. 90% margin surprise E: Eliminate, combine, or hide, and why your menu is not your capability list A: Articulate it at a fifth grade level, with a simple script you can use today R: Road test on 10 sales calls, plus the "one in, one out" rule and why to repeat this quarterly Your homework: Do step one only. Within the next week, collect everything you use to describe your business and ask your team, your customers, and a few lost prospects to explain what you do in their own words. Save Your Seat for the 3 Operational Leaks in Every Business Master Class: https://oncallcoo.melissafranks.com/3operationalleaks Connect with Melissa: Identify Your Operational Leaks Masterclass: https://oncallcoo.melissafranks.com/3operationalleaks Consultation Call Link: https://www.melissafranks.com/fractionalcooservices Learn more about On Call COO fractional services → https://www.melissafranks.com Watch the Episodes on Youtube Instagram: instagram.com/melissa_franks LinkedIn: Melissa Franks

September 30, 202628 min

The Staff Promotion Mistake Small Business Owners Keep Making (and How to Fix It)

Is your best employee asking for a promotion, and did your stomach just drop? The question isn't "Does John deserve it?" It's "What does the business need?" Spoiler: the right answer might be a promotion, a brand-new hire, or a retention bonus and a firm "not yet." If you've got a team member asking for more money, more responsibility, or more autonomy (or you already promoted someone and it isn't working), this episode walks you through the process Melissa honed in corporate and brought into small business. You'll learn how to decide who to promote, when to do it, and how to set them up to succeed, so you can say yes, not yet, or "what we actually need is this" with clarity instead of panic. In This Episode Why promotion conversations start, and why your gut panics when your longtime team asks for more Why specialists and people managers are rarely the same person (and what Bob taught Melissa about it) The one question to answer before you promise anyone a promotion: what does the business need? Why you need to know if the role is permanent or seasonal The 5 questions to answer before you say yes, including the backfill math most owners skip Why retention has nothing to do with title, and the alternatives to consider How to onboard a promoted employee like a new hire with a 30-60-90 plan What to do if you already promoted the wrong person (and why you can't sit on it) Your homework: Before you talk to anyone, write down what your business needs at your current goal and the one after it. Connect with Melissa: Identify Your Operational Leaks Masterclass: https://oncallcoo.melissafranks.com/3operationalleaks Consultation Call Link: https://www.melissafranks.com/fractionalcooservices Learn more about On Call COO fractional services → https://www.melissafranks.com Watch the Episodes on Youtube Instagram: instagram.com/melissa_franks LinkedIn: Melissa Franks

September 23, 202628 min

Skills Over Degrees: What to Really Look for in Your Next Hire

Do your employees need a college degree to be successful in your business? It's not "degree or no degree." It's "what skills does this role actually need, and how do you prove someone has them?" Spoiler: an 18-year-old with zero work experience might already have ten years of the exact experience you're hiring for — you just haven't been trained to see it. In this episode, Melissa breaks down why companies have been quietly relying less on degrees and more on experience for decades, how to separate hard skills from soft skills before you ever write a job description, why lived experience can carry as much weight as a diploma, and why a multi-generational team — Gen Z disruption included — might be the most valuable team you can build. In This Episode: Why "what do I need them to do" is the wrong first question to ask when hiring The client story that reveals how most job descriptions are really just task lists Hard skills vs. soft skills, and why you need both before you consider a degree requirement Why the hard skills businesses need most can't keep up with a college curriculum The bilingual-translator story that reframes what "lived experience" is really worth Where degrees are still non-negotiable (doctors, CPAs, lawyers, scientists) Why younger workers optimize for liking the work over climbing the ladder The pay conversation most employers avoid — and why avoiding it costs you the hire The intern story that shows why a multi-generational team is a magnifying glass on your business Homework: Before you post your next open role, write down the actual skills — hard and soft — the job requires, separate from the task list. Then ask yourself where a degree is genuinely required versus just the default. Connect with Melissa: Identify Your Operational Leaks Masterclass: https://oncallcoo.melissafranks.com/3operationalleaks Consultation Call Link: https://www.melissafranks.com/fractionalcooservices Learn more about On Call COO fractional services → https://www.melissafranks.com Watch the Episodes on Youtube Instagram: instagram.com/melissa_franks LinkedIn: Melissa Franks

September 16, 202628 min

5 Things to Do When Your Business Is in a Slump

Is your business in a slump right now — and are you hiding it from everyone instead of dealing with it? It's not about hustling harder to push through. It's about diagnosing before you react. Spoiler: the founders who make it through a slump aren't the ones who cut the fastest — they're the ones who talk to the most people. In this episode, Melissa breaks down the exact five steps she tells every founder to take the moment sales slow down, including the diagnostic question most people skip entirely, the two numbers you need on paper every month, and the masterclass she flopped so badly the first time that she almost didn't try it again — until she did, and it changed everything. In This Episode: Why you have to diagnose before you react — and the client whose sales dropped 80% in a week How to tell if you have a demand, pipeline, retention, or cash problem (and why each needs a different fix) The #1 mistake founders make: cutting the wrong thing under pressure The two numbers you need on paper, month by month, no matter how much you hate looking at them Why chasing new customers during a slump is the expensive way out The 80/20 vulnerability hiding inside almost every business What "stirring the pot" actually means, and how it turned Melissa's own slow summer around Homework: Pick one number in your business that's changed recently, and write down exactly why you think it changed — before you cut anything. Connect with Melissa: Identify Your Operational Leaks Masterclass: https://oncallcoo.melissafranks.com/3operationalleaks Consultation Call Link: https://www.melissafranks.com/fractionalcooservices Learn more about On Call COO fractional services → https://www.melissafranks.com Watch the Episodes on Youtube Instagram: instagram.com/melissa_franks LinkedIn: Melissa Franks

September 9, 202629 min

How to Know a Client Is a Good Fit Before You Say Yes

What if the client you're about to sign is the one you'll wish you never had? This episode isn't about learning to spot red flags after they blow up your business. It's not about having better luck, being pickier, or trusting your gut more. It's about building a real, repeatable step into your sales process — one final "vibe check" — so you catch the mismatch before the contract, not after the reviews start coming in. Here's the spoiler: the best predictor of how a client will treat you after they sign is how they treated you before they signed — and almost none of us are watching for it. By the end of this episode, you'll have a 5-signal framework you can start testing for on your very next sales call — one that tells you whether a prospect is going to protect your team's capacity or quietly drain it, before you ever sign the contract. In This Episode: Why one bad-fit client costs far more than lost revenue Why bad-fit clients almost never look like bad fits on paper How one client built a 15-minute founder "fit call" into her sales process Using AI to identify patterns across your past bad-fit (and best-fit) clients The 5-signal framework: process behavior, expectations vs. fantasy, how they talk about their last vendor, boundary testing, and the "saying no protects a yes" reframe Homework: Before your next sales call ends, ask one boundary-testing question — response time expectations, weekend availability, what's in scope versus billable — and pay attention to how they push back. That single answer will tell you more than the entire pitch did. Connect with Melissa: Identify Your Operational Leaks Masterclass: https://oncallcoo.melissafranks.com/3operationalleaks Consultation Call Link: https://www.melissafranks.com/fractionalcooservices Learn more about On Call COO fractional services → https://www.melissafranks.com Watch the Episodes on Youtube Instagram: instagram.com/melissa_franks LinkedIn: Melissa Franks

September 2, 202630 min

The First 90 Days: How to Onboard New Hires So They Actually Stay

You just hired your A player. So why is there a good chance they're gone by day 90? Here's the reframe most founders need: it's not that you hired the wrong person — it's that you never built a real onboarding process for the right one. Almost every founder can recite their hiring process from memory. Almost none of you have an onboarding process at all. That gap, not a bad screening call, is where good hires quietly turn into bad outcomes. Melissa breaks down two live client situations — one company hiring 10 people at once in hyper-growth, one bleeding people to constant turnover — and the exact same fix works for both. By the end of this episode, you'll know the five specific moves that determine whether a new hire is confident and productive by day 90, or quietly job-hunting by day 60 — and the one question to ask yourself instead of "did we onboard them?" In This Episode: Why onboarding, not hiring, is the hard part of building a team The real cost of turnover (it's not just morale — it's a line item) Why A players are often the first to leave when onboarding fails Two client case studies: hyper-growth hiring vs. high-turnover roles The 5 things that make onboarding actually stick: a designed day one, showing "what good looks like" in week one, banking decisions, the 30/60/90-day plan as a conversation, and assigning a buddy The one question that tells you whether your onboarding lives in a process — or just in your head Homework: Before your next hire starts, write down what their first eight hours should actually look like — and ask yourself if anyone else in your business could run that day without you in the room. Connect with Melissa: Identify Your Operational Leaks Masterclass: https://oncallcoo.melissafranks.com/3operationalleaks Consultation Call Link: https://www.melissafranks.com/fractionalcooservices Learn more about On Call COO fractional services → https://www.melissafranks.com Watch the Episodes on Youtube Instagram: instagram.com/melissa_franks LinkedIn: Melissa Franks

August 26, 202625 min

5 Things to Do Before September Ends to Win Your Best Q4

Is your year-end goal starting to feel a little too far away? Here's the thing most business owners get wrong when September hits: they think a great Q4 is about doing more — more hustle, more new ideas, more drastic moves to close the gap. It's not. A great Q4 isn't built on addition, it's built on elimination — cutting the noise so you can go all-in on what's already working. Spoiler: if you try to burn your business down and rebuild it in four months, you won't hit your goal. You'll just be starting from scratch with none of the momentum you already have. In this episode, I walk you through the exact 5-step planning process I run with my own business every quarter — a mashup of Rachel Hollis's Last 90 Day Challenge and the book The 12 Week Year — so you can head into the last four months of the year focused, clear, and set up to actually hit your goals. In This Episode: Why "doing something drastic" backfires every time The corporate story behind this framework, and how it created more transformation in 90 days than the previous 9 months Step 1: Define the purpose of each month Step 2: Set three goals for the last four months (not ten) Step 3: Declare a focus for every team member Step 4: Compare where your business started January 1st to where it is today — and what to cut Step 5: Ask honestly, can we really do it? Your homework: Before September ends, sit down and write out the purpose of each of your last four months — even a rough first pass gets you ahead of where most business owners are right now. Connect with Melissa: Identify Your Operational Leaks Masterclass: https://oncallcoo.melissafranks.com/3operationalleaks Consultation Call Link: https://www.melissafranks.com/fractionalcooservices Learn more about On Call COO fractional services → https://www.melissafranks.com Watch the Episodes on Youtube Instagram: instagram.com/melissa_franks LinkedIn: Melissa Franks

August 19, 202627 min

The Vanity Metrics Killing 7-Figure Businesses

What if the number you're proudest of in your business is the exact reason you can't tell what's actually happening in it? This week isn't about tracking less data. It's not about a bad number to feel a little worse about. It's about the fact that the numbers you've been trained to celebrate, followers, opt-ins, traffic, even gross revenue, aren't the numbers that steer a business. They're the numbers that steer your ego. Real metrics aren't flashy. They're the ones that tell you, plainly, whether to spend more, pull back, hire, or hold. This episode is about learning the difference before it costs you. I once had to walk away from a $30 million company almost as soon as we started working together, because their headline revenue number was hiding a 2% net margin. By the end of this episode, you'll be able to run a one-question test on any metric in your business to know instantly whether it's vanity or real, and you'll know the four numbers I actually want on your dashboard: net margin, cash flow, customer acquisition cost, and founder dependency. In This Episode: What a vanity metric actually is, and the one question that separates vanity from reality Why "AI employees" is quickly becoming the newest vanity metric The real story behind a client whose huge social following couldn't actually buy anything Why I had to walk away from a $30 million company after finding a 2% net margin Why your team may be handing you good news instead of the truth, and how to fix that When EBITDA actually matters (and when it's a waste of your time) How to calculate net margin, cash flow, and customer acquisition cost in plain terms The time-study method for measuring how dependent your business is on you Your homework this week: pick one metric you currently report on or brag about, and ask yourself honestly if it's ever changed a single decision you've made. If it hasn't, it's time to replace it. Connect with Melissa: Identify Your Operational Leaks Masterclass: https://oncallcoo.melissafranks.com/3operationalleaks Consultation Call Link: https://www.melissafranks.com/fractionalcooservices Learn more about On Call COO fractional services → https://www.melissafranks.com Watch the Episodes on Youtube Instagram: instagram.com/melissa_franks LinkedIn: Melissa Franks