Cosmo Tech | The Decision Twin Platform for Supply Chain, Finance & Asset Leaders at Fortune 500 Scale | Simulate Tomorrow. Decide Today.

I specialize in the messy middle of B2B SaaS scaling—taking companies from erratic growth to a disciplined, high-performance revenue engine.

Most sales teams don’t fail because they lack talent; they fail because of ambiguity.
When forecasts can’t be trusted, pipelines move only through founder heroics, and managers report activity instead of owning outcomes, you don’t need another playbook—you need an operating system.

My operating philosophy: Cadence | Ownership | Process

I install a repeatable flywheel of operational excellence:

Cadence
A rigorous Rhythm of Business—daily, weekly, and monthly operating cadence that surfaces execution risk early, before it becomes a board-level surprise.

Ownership
Managers own outcomes, not just activity. Forecasts are built bottom-up so leadership can commit without caveats.

Process
Qualification and execution are standardized before adding headcount, ensuring hiring is tied to capacity and real revenue impact—not hope.

The proof (Ekahau — SVP, Global Sales, 2019–2024)
	•	Revenue: Scaled $25M → $65M ARR in five years
	•	EBITDA: Increased $7M → $32M (margins ~20% → ~50%)
	•	Team: Built a 130-person global organization while reducing per-employee cost 25%

Selected wins
	•	Healthentic: Doubled ACV ($5M → $10M) and drove 10× pipeline growth through GTM transformation
	•	ControlCase: Delivered 34% YoY growth and 300% expansion revenue growth

Currently

Available for VP of Sales or Fractional GTM leadership with B2B SaaS companies $5M–$30M ARR. I also lead SalesGSS (revenue operating frameworks) and DigitalRegIntel (regulatory intelligence for AI/fintech).

The Senator perspective

Two terms as a Washington State Senator taught me the value of high-stakes negotiation and public accountability. I bring that same discipline to sales: clear ownership and execution when the pressure is real.

“Steve is ‘Instant Offense’ for sales—rare and valuable. World-class at creating strategic, data-driven sales teams.”
— Jeff O’Mara, CEO (Healthentic) / GM (Ekahau)

Steve Litzow

AI didn’t kill sales reps.
It killed excuses.

In 2026, AI isn’t a productivity tool — it’s a truth serum.

It exposes:
• Broken process
• Weak management
• Fake activity dressed up as “effort”

If your sales motion is tight, AI compresses time-to-decision.
If it’s sloppy, AI just produces more noise — faster.

Most $10M–$50M ARR teams are about to learn this the hard way.

This is Week 1 of the SalesGSS 2026 Operating Series.
Eight weeks. Eight uncomfortable truths.

AI didn’t come for your reps.
It came for your excuses.

Comment “2026” if you want the series.

VP of Sales / Fractional VP (B2B SaaS, VC & PE-backed) for $5M–$30M B2B SaaS | Scaled $25M → $65M ARR | SalesGSS

Your closers aren’t the problem.
Your committee is.

Roughly half of qualified B2B deals don’t lose.
They stall.
“No decision.”

At $10M–$50M ARR, the pattern is consistent:
• Strong champion
• Positive calls
• Deal “feels good”

But it’s single-threaded.

One relationship trying to carry internal selling across:
Finance. IT. Security. Procurement. Operations.

The closer is persuasive.
The organization isn’t aligned.

With 10+ stakeholders involved, persuasion no longer scales.

Elite closers in 2026 aren’t smoother.
They’re better at internal selling.

They multi-thread early.
They equip champions.
They sell the decision process.

Quick diagnostic:

Can your reps name five stakeholders—and each one’s priority—in their top deals?

If not, you’re optimized for persuasion when you need consensus.

Week 2 of the SalesGSS 2026 Operating Series.
(Week 1: AI doesn’t fix execution—it exposes it.)

Comment “2026” if you want the series.

If you can’t prove value in the first 60 days, you don’t have a deal.

In 2026, long sales cycles aren’t what kill deals.

Delayed proof does.

Buyers will wait longer to buy —
but they won’t wait longer to know if they made the right decision.

57% of B2B buyers expect positive ROI within 3 months — not at renewal.

If a champion can’t point to a concrete win inside 60 days:

Confidence erodes
Finance steps in
“Commit” turns into “let’s wait and see”

That’s why the strongest teams aren’t closing faster.

They’re proving faster.

They define Day-60 success before the contract is signed.
They scope for proof, not size.
They treat time-to-value as a deal quality metric, not a CS problem.

If value only shows up at renewal, the deal was insured by hope — not evidence.

This is Week 3 of the SalesGSS 2026 Operating Series.
Next week: why slow product cadence is becoming a silent deal-killer.

When supervision exists only in email, it doesn’t exist at all.

This week didn’t bring a sweeping new regulation.
That’s exactly the risk.

Across the U.S. and EU, regulators continued applying existing authority while legislative clarity remains unresolved. That combination — active enforcement discretion + unresolved rules — is where most future compliance failures are born.

Fast-forward 24–36 months and the question won’t be:

“Was the guidance clear?”

It will be:
“What did you know — when did you know it — and how was that knowledge supervised?”

This week alone:

SEC and CFTC signaled regulatory coordination is moving forward without Congress
EU AI Act transparency expectations quietly locked in
FinCEN delayed rules while Treasury intensified enforcement
Enforcement volume dropped — but guidance-based expectations accelerated

None of this required a new rule. All of it creates exposure.

If your supervisory awareness lives in emails, Slack threads, or people’s heads, it won’t survive diligence, exams, or enforcement.

That’s why we published this week’s DigitalRegIntel Supervisory Brief — and why we believe supervisory awareness needs a system of record, not a newsletter.

Because when the question comes,
explanations don’t count. Records do.

This week’s brief formally documents each supervisory signal referenced above.

#RegulatoryCompliance #DigitalAssets #AIGovernance #RegTech #Compliance

This week’s regulatory signal isn’t clarity — it’s formation.

In the U.S., digital asset market structure legislation stalled again. In the EU, regulators are already questioning AI Act transparency practices well ahead of enforcement.

Different jurisdictions. Different tools. Same supervisory pattern.

Expectations are forming before rules finalize — and long before penalties appear.

That’s what shows up later in:
- Board and audit committee questions
- nvestor and acquirer diligence
- Bank and payment-partner reviews

Not “what did the law eventually say?”
But “what did leadership understand and monitor as expectations evolved?”

I publish a short Digital Regulatory Intelligence brief each Tuesday that documents these early supervisory signals — not predictions, not legal conclusions — just what’s forming in real time.

Most regulatory risk doesn’t show up as a rule violation.

It shows up later as a question regulators now ask routinely in enforcement actions:

“When did you become aware of this risk?”

Across new digital regulations and recent enforcement matters, regulators have shifted from checklist compliance to supervisory posture — an expectation of continuous, documented awareness.

Exposure today isn’t just what you did.
It’s what you reasonably knew — and when you knew it.

That’s why this is increasingly a board-level issue, not a compliance exercise.

Curious how others are documenting supervisory awareness before it’s asked for.

The roadmap slide used to be the closer.
In 2026, shipping is.

Buyers don’t evaluate products by vision anymore.
They evaluate them by momentum.

Before they ever talk to your sales team:
• They’ve checked G2 for recent updates
• They’ve Googled what you shipped last quarter
• They’ve asked their network if you’re still actively building

They’re not asking “Where is this going?”
They’re asking “What have you shipped lately?”

Here’s what most teams miss:

Products that can’t show visible momentum during evaluation are assumed incapable of delivering value fast after purchase.

If buyers can’t see progress now, they won’t believe you can produce results in their first 60 days.

The strongest teams in 2026 aren’t winning on features.
They’re winning because buyers can see execution before the first call.

This is Week 4 of the SalesGSS 2026 Operating Series.

Next week: Why waiting for clean data is now officially malpractice.

If your business is making money but still isn’t delivering the upside you expected, you’re likely at an inflection point, not a failure.  Many leaders of established, growing businesses reach a stage where revenue is strong, the company is multi-million, and yet the business still depends too heavily on them to function well. Decisions stall without you. Execution varies. Cash flows, but never quite settles.You didn’t do anything wrong.Growth simply exposed what never fully moved into the system.This is where symptomatic fixes stop working.More sales, new tools, or another leadership program won’t transform a business where judgment, decision rights, and accountability are still concentrated at the top. The result is effort without relief, an itch you can’t scratch no matter how hard you work.That’s where my work begins.I work with leaders of established small and mid-market businesses who are ready to move from personal oversight to organizational reliability.  Performance, people, and profit no longer depend on the owner being everywhere at once.The work is strategic and practical: seeing the system as it actually operates, diagnosing what’s constraining performance, and designing corrections that fit the reality of your business. Nothing is added for the sake of growth, scale, or sophistication. Some of that work we do together. Some is implemented directly. Some requires specialist expertise brought in deliberately for speed and impact.This is not coaching, motivation, or incremental optimization.It’s business strategy at the intersection of performance, people, process, and profit, applied at the moment where growth alone is no longer enough.Most leaders begin by getting clear on what’s really holding their business in place.From there, the right path becomes obvious.If you’re at that point, you’ll know how to start.(Clarity Call available in Featured.)

Frances Strickland

Growth doesn’t just add volume.
It adds pressure.

Decisions multiply.

Coordination gets heavier.
 
Small mistakes stop being small. 

And the margin impact shows up before anyone understands why.

That pressure doesn’t arrive all at once.

It shows up as volume increases.

More team members mean more coordination touchpoints.

More volume means errors cost more to fix.

It overloads them.

At first, founders absorb the load themselves.

At 10 clients, the founder can handle most calls personally.

At 30 clients, decisions stack faster than one person can process.

Work waits.

Bottlenecks form.

People escalate instead of decide.

The business slows to match the constraint.

As teams grow, informal coordination stops working.

Small teams coordinate informally.

Larger teams need structure.

Without it:
Information doesn't flow.
Handoffs break.
Duplicated effort rises.

What felt seamless at 5 people becomes chaotic at 15.

The real damage isn’t visible at first.

It shows up in the cost of fixing mistakes.

Mistakes at low volume are cheap to fix.

Mistakes at high volume compound quickly.

A pricing error on 3 projects costs hours.

The same error on 30 projects costs weeks and erodes margin across the portfolio.

And the response is predictable.

They add more rules.

More meetings.

More oversight.

Creating more drag.

More delay.

More frustration.

Growth doesn’t simplify unstable businesses.

It multiplies the cost of every weakness.

More revenue.

More cost per dollar earned.

Lower profit per hour worked.

Businesses don’t fail from growth.

They fail because they weren’t ready for it.

Growth without stability doesn't create leverage.

It creates complexity you can't manage.


#strategy #business #creativity #innovation #richbutbrokenomorewithfran

Frances Melvina Strickland 

Helping leaders of 7-figure SMBs build predictable performance and profit

Growth doesn't fix instability.

It multiplies it.

Revenue can rise while profit predictability falls.

More clients.

More work.

More stress.

But margins thin.

Chaos rises.

Business owners chase growth thinking it will solve current problems.

It doesn't.

Expansion without day-to-day reliability amplifies every weakness in the 
business.

Growing before stabilizing is like adding floors to a building with a cracked foundation.

The structure collapses under its own weight.


#strategy #business #creativity #innovation #richbutbrokenomorewithfran

Growth doesn't fix instability, It multiplies it.

Here's why slow decisions are so expensive:

Work doesn't move in straight lines.

It waits.

While it waits:

• People context-switch

• Information decays

• Momentum breaks
• Quality drops

Then, when the decision finally comes, it often arrives late enough to create rework.

Multiply that by dozens of decisions a week.

That's not inefficiency.

That's margin erosion baked into the operating rhythm.

What actually happens:

Someone needs approval to move forward.
They ask.

You're in meetings, handling something else, or buried in other decisions.
They wait.

While waiting, they shift to another task.

When your answer finally arrives, they've lost context.

They have to rebuild their thinking.

The work that should have taken 30 minutes now takes two hours.

Spread across your organization.

The cascade:

One slow decision doesn't just delay one task.

It delays everything downstream.

Schedules slip.

Deadlines compress.

Rushed work produces errors.

Errors require rework.

Rework consumes margin.

The business truth:

Businesses with decision drag don't look chaotic.

They look busy.

But busy is not productive.

And it's rarely profitable.

Profit comes from flow.

Decision drag destroys flow.

When judgment bottlenecks at the top, the entire system slows to match the 
constraint.


#strategy #business #creativity #innovation #richbutbrokenomorewithfran

Decision drag doesn't look dramatic.

It looks like normal business conversation:
"Let me check."
"Run it by me."
"We'll circle back."

And it quietly destroys profit.

Every delayed decision slows throughput.

- Increases rework.
- Adds hidden cost.
- Trains hesitation.

By the time owners notice, they're already deep in the weeds again.

Answering questions they thought were handled months ago.

The issue isn't intelligence.
It's where decisions live.

When decisions default upward, margin collapses downward.
And no amount of hustle fixes that.


#strategy #business #creativity #innovation #richbutbrokenomorewithfran

Decision delays cost more than you think.

Availability is not leadership.

I learned this the hard way.

Early in my career, I believed being available was what great leaders did.

If my team needed me, I was there.

Questions? Answered.

Problems? Solved.
Fast.

I thought I was accelerating performance.

What I didn't see was what I was training:
People stopped deciding.
They started delivering problems instead of solutions.

Eventually, they told me directly:
- "We need you to stop solving everything so we can think."
- That moment changed how I understood leadership.
- Speed without restraint doesn't scale judgment.
- It replaces it.

When leaders confuse responsiveness with effectiveness, they become the system's crutch.

And crutches feel supportive…
until you realize no one can walk without them.

If stepping back makes your business wobble, it's not because people can't perform.

It's because they've never been allowed to.

Watch the video to hear the full story.
If this feels uncomfortably familiar, it's worth a short conversation.

Start with a 30-minute call. You'll walk away knowing exactly where dependency is preventing capability from developing. Link is in the comments.



#strategy #business #creativity #innovation #richbutbrokenomorewithfran

Burnout doesn’t arrive as exhaustion.

It arrives as system shock.

I didn’t recognize it the first time it happened to me.

My first factory startup was chaotic by nature. That part wasn’t surprising. 

What was damaging was the lack of clarity and decision flow.

No decisions could be made without the President or the Executive Vice President. Strict reporting lines. Everything routed upward.

On paper, it looked like leadership.

In practice, the system couldn’t think.

I had access to both leaders, which should have helped. Instead, it put me in the middle of conflicting priorities and quiet power struggles, with no shared judgment and no stable decision logic.

Only pressure.

When I left the organization, my body collapsed within 48 hours.

Not emotionally.
 
Physically.

It felt less like getting sick and more like shedding what my system had been carrying for too long.

That’s when it became clear.

Burnout wasn’t caused by workload or resilience.
 
It was caused by a system that forced people to compensate for missing structure.

When judgment has nowhere to live but inside humans, humans pay the price.

Burnout isn’t the failure.

It’s the signal.

And it almost always points to design.

Saturday feels like the right day to sit with that.

Frances Strickland in a quiet, reflective moment, looking downward with her hand resting on her chin, wearing a red sweater in soft natural light.

Your business isn't truly profitable if it only performs when you're everywhere inside it.

That's not leadership.

That's dependency dressed up as dedication.

I see this pattern constantly:

Revenue looks solid.

The team is busy.

Clients are served.

And yet, 

The moment the owner steps back, performance slips.

Decisions are slow.

Quality wobbles.

Profit gets thin.

That's not a people issue.

It's a design issue.

When a business depends on one person's judgment to function well, profit is fragile by default.

Because profit isn't created by effort.

It's created by repeatable decisions made at the right level.

If your business needs you everywhere to perform, it's not scaling.

It's surviving on borrowed attention.

And that's an expensive way to operate.

Swipe through to see how owner-dependency quietly destroys margins.

Most owners don't realize this is the constraint until it starts costing them their health, their margins, or both.



#strategy #business #creativity #innovation #richbutbrokenomorewithfran

Partner to Established SMBs to Regain Control, Predictable Profits, and Their Lives | Fortune 500 Insights Brilliantly Sized for SMBs | Structure • Leadership • Flow | Rich But Broke No More | The Fixer

Real profit doesn’t depend on One Person.

Why owner-dependent businesses bleed profit quietly.


Here’s what actually happens when everything runs through you:
• Decisions stack up
• Work waits instead of flowing
• People hesitate instead of acting
• You become the slowest, most expensive process in the system

Not because you’re bad at what you do, but because no human can carry that much judgment without distortion.

So people escalate decisions they could make, wait for clarity that never arrives fast enough, and optimize for safety instead of outcomes. 

Meanwhile, you’re answering questions instead of building capacity.

This is how margins erode, momentum stalls, and founders burn out while “being helpful.”

The business isn’t broken. It’s overloaded.

Every decision that defaults upward creates:
Delay → more context-switching
Hesitation → slower execution
Rework → compounded cost
Dependency → weakened capability

Profit doesn’t disappear overnight. It leaks out through delay, hesitation, and over-reliance on the founder to make calls the team should own.

Leadership structures that funnel all decisions to the top don’t protect quality. 

They create bottlenecks, and bottlenecks don’t just slow delivery, they quietly destroy margins through inefficiency you don’t see until the damage is done.
If your team can’t move without you, the issue isn’t their capability. 

It’s the system design that never gave them decision ownership.



#strategy #business #creativity #innovation #richbutbrokenomorewithfran

Most leaders think they have a delegation problem.

They don't.

They have a decision ownership problem.

If everything still funnels to you, you didn't delegate responsibility.

You outsourced execution.

The difference matters:

Execution without judgment doesn't scale.

It stalls.

Because execution is just motion.

Judgment is what determines whether that motion creates value or waste.

When you delegate tasks but keep decisions, you create a system where:

People do the work

But wait on you to think

What that looks like operationally:

Your team completes deliverables.

Then stops.

Waiting for your approval to proceed.

Waiting for your input on the next move.

Waiting for your judgment on what's good enough.

They're not leading work.

They're managing tasks on your behalf.

The structural reality:
If your team is "doing the work" but still waiting on you, you're not leading a business.

You're running a help desk.

And help desks don't generate profit.

They manage demand.

The leadership shift required:
Decision ownership means people don't just execute.

They evaluate.

They adjust.

They own outcomes, not just outputs.

When decisions live with the people doing the work, flow accelerates.

When decisions funnel upward, everything slows to match your capacity.

The constraint:

You can only make so many decisions per day.

If your business requires more decisions than you can handle, growth creates 
gridlock.

That's not a people problem.

It's a design problem.

If this feels uncomfortably familiar, it’s usually a signal worth paying 
attention to.

Link is in the comments.


#strategy #business #creativity #innovation #richbutbrokenomorewithfran

Episode 12: Flash-back! Tonia, where are you now?

In this special flashback episode, we’ll explore Tonia’s journey, from the past to where she is now, and how she’s been a powerful force in helping others—me included—stop hiding and get seen.

Tonia’s insight and dedication to leadership are a true testament to the power of supporting others in their personal growth.

Frances Melvina Strickland, 🔸️Roeland VanderHelm and 2 other attendees

Episode 12: Flash-back! Tonia, where are you now?

Watching Queen and Max always reminds me how systems really work.

Max knows exactly when it’s time to eat.

If I don’t move fast enough, he doesn’t bark.
He doesn’t whine.

He goes to his crate, flops down, and starts chewing his ball.

The ball squeaks.
That’s the point.

At first, I get irritated.
The noise.   
The timing.

But the pattern is simple.

He’s hungry. 
I delayed.
So the system adapted.

Not gracefully.

He chews harder.
The noise escalates.
He’s not solving the problem.
And I still haven’t moved.

Nothing is “wrong.”
But everyone’s uncomfortable.

Eventually, I feed him.
The squeaking stops.
The system settles.

Not because he changed.

Because I did.

Frances Strickland interacts with her two small dogs outdoors, holding a yellow ball while they stand on leashes facing her near a wooden play structure.

Episode 11:  More than Mechanics - Fit Presenter Speaking

World Class speaking coach and author Mike McQuillan and I have a rich exchange about what it takes to deliver a talk that captivates your audience.

Frances Melvina Strickland and 1 other attendee

Episode 11:  More than Mechanics - Fit Presenter Speaking

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The Battle

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Frances Strickland

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