Ep 86: The Identity Shift That Changes How You Lead Your Service Business with Samantha Jaras
Sometimes your business doesn’t need another strategy.
It needs you to become the person who can run the version of the business you say you want.
That was the rabbit hole Samantha Jaras and I fell into in this episode, and it took us everywhere from delegation and leadership to systems, content, mentorship, seasons of business, and the very uncomfortable realization that you can absolutely build a successful business you don’t actually enjoy running.
Samantha knows this firsthand.
After years of doing systems, implementation, and backend work for clients, she started realizing the most impactful part of her work wasn’t always the thing she was physically building.
It was helping her clients think differently, lead differently, and become the person capable of sustaining what they were building.
Which meant her own business had to change too.
Your Work Can Change Before Your Identity Catches Up
Moving from implementation into strategy sounds straightforward on paper.
Stop doing as much of the work. Charge for your brain. Spend more time advising, mentoring, or leading.
Easy enough.
Except when you’ve spent years being paid because you’re really damn good at doing the thing, stepping away from the doing can mess with you.
Samantha talked about realizing how deeply her value had become connected to what she produced for clients. As she moved toward coaching and higher-level strategy, she had to learn how to protect her energy and spend more of her time on the work that actually moved the business forward.
I’ve experienced a version of this from the opposite direction.
My clients already hired me for high-level strategy and creative direction, but as I’ve built out more team support, I’ve been able to offer more implementation without personally being the one executing every piece.
And I still catch myself saying, “Okay, I’ll go build this…”
Wait.
No.
I literally hired someone who can do that.
The hard part isn’t always trusting someone else to do the work. Sometimes you genuinely like doing it.
But liking something doesn’t automatically mean it still belongs on your plate.
Delegation Is a Leadership Skill, Not a Disappearing Act
Handing something off successfully requires more than creating an SOP and hoping everyone figures it out.
One of the biggest leadership lessons I’ve learned is to overcommunicate what done looks like.
I’ve built that directly into how I onboard and manage my team. Tasks have context, Loom walkthroughs, priorities, expectations, and a clear definition of what a completed version should actually look like.
Because your team cannot crawl inside your brain.
You have to teach them how you think.
When that works, something pretty magical happens: more of your expertise gets baked into the company without requiring you to personally touch every deliverable.
That gives you room to lead, sell, create, think, or simply stop spending your entire day inside the weeds of client execution.
Be Careful Who You Build Your Business After
One of my favorite parts of this conversation was talking about the people we choose to learn from.
It’s very easy to see someone’s growth strategy and assume you should copy it because the results look impressive.
More content.
More offers.
More platforms.
More team.
More scale.
But before you take someone’s advice, look at the business that advice created.
Do you actually want that business?
If someone built their company by becoming a content machine, they’re probably going to teach you how to become a content machine.
That can be a perfectly great strategy.
Unless you hate creating content.
The same thing applies to agencies, digital products, massive teams, paid ads, speaking, communities, or any other path someone can take to grow.
The person teaching you should ideally be headed somewhere you’d also like to go.
And Samantha took that even further. Look at their values. Look at their character. Look at how they spend their time. Look at how their business fits around the rest of their life.
Success on paper doesn’t tell you whether you’d actually want to wake up and run that company every day.
Sometimes the Business Isn’t Broken
We also talked about the seasons where everything technically works, but something feels off.
I used to believe there would eventually be a final brick wall.
I’d solve enough problems, grow enough, learn enough, and eventually reach a version of business where everything just clicked into place forever.
Lol. That is not how running a business works. You change. Your capacity changes. Your interests change. Your family changes. Your goals change.
The work you loved three years ago might bore you now. The role you wanted when you started might be the exact role you’re trying to hire yourself out of today.
That doesn’t automatically mean you made the wrong decision before.
It might simply mean you’re ready for a different one now.
The business can evolve because you evolved.
Structure Can Give You More Freedom
Toward the end of our conversation, we got into something that I think a lot of creative service providers resist: structure.
When your brain can go in 15,000 directions, freedom does not always come from removing structure.
Sometimes you need more of it.
Systems, boundaries, automations, workflows, clear offers, clear positioning, and a tech stack you actually understand can remove an enormous amount of mental load.
You stop spending every day figuring out how you’re going to operate and get to spend more time actually doing the work.
For me, that has also meant recognizing my own seasons.
There are times of the year when I want to tear things apart, rebuild systems, and get the backend ready.
Then there are seasons when I want to write, sell, collaborate, show up at events, and say yes to opportunities.
Knowing the difference lets me build the structure before I need the freedom.
Your business does not need to operate at the exact same rhythm 365 days a year.
Neither do you.
Your Next Level Might Look Different Than You Expected
There’s no prize for becoming the busiest version of yourself.
And there’s definitely no prize for successfully building someone else’s dream business.
Your next level might mean hiring.
It might mean simplifying.
It might mean getting out of implementation.
It might mean adding implementation back in with a team.
It might mean committing to one platform, one offer, one audience, or one way of working long enough to see what happens.
Sometimes the business strategy isn’t the thing standing in your way.
You’ve simply outgrown the version of yourself who built it.
And now you get to decide what the next one looks like.
Chapters
00:00 Coffee, Kids & Catching Up
02:19 From Implementation to an Identity Shift
09:01 Protecting Your Energy as Your Role Changes
17:44 Delegation: What Does “Done” Actually Look Like?
25:17 Leadership, Mentorship & Who You Learn From
31:38 Integrity, Authenticity & Taking Off the Business Mask
37:42 Rebranding When Your Business Identity Changes
44:24 How Do You Sell Your Brain?
47:45 Build the Room You Want to Be In
52:10 Create Content Around the Symptoms Your Clients Feel
56:27 The Level 10 Client Formula
59:32 Becoming the CEO Who Attracts Level 10 Clients
1:02:23 You Can Serve, Sell or Create
1:03:54 The Power of Going All In on One Thing
1:06:00 Why Structure Creates More Freedom
1:07:11 Building Around Your Natural Business Seasons
1:13:15 Where to Connect With Samantha
About Samantha Jaras
Samantha Jaras is a business coach, mentor, systems strategist, and self-proclaimed joy machine who helps women step more fully into who they are as they grow their businesses.
After building her business through backend systems and done-for-you implementation, Samantha began shifting toward coaching, leadership, identity work, and higher-level strategy. Her work brings together practical business strategy, systems, mindset, and her faith, with a focus on helping women build and lead in a way that feels aligned with who they actually are.
Resources Mentioned
Systems Over Stress by Ashley Rose/Pendergraft - Airtable systems and automation support for service providers.
Project Management Hub Airtable Template - this is the specific Systems Over Stress template I mentioned using as the foundation for my own project management hub. The current shop lists the Project Management Hub directly.
Airtable - what I use to run a frankly unreasonable amount of my business.
Zite - the app/interface layer I use on top of Airtable for team and client-facing experiences.
Loom - what I use for video SOPs and walkthroughs for my team.
Asana - Samantha’s team uses Asana for internal task and project management.
Ivorey - Samantha’s team uses Ivorey for client delivery; Ivorey is an all-in-one business platform built on GoHighLevel.
GoHighLevel - the underlying platform Samantha referenced when talking about Ivorey.
Connect with Samantha
TikTok: @samanthaonpurpose
Instagram: @samanthaonpurpose
Ready to Restructure and Productize Your Service?
Inside Sold Out Services, I help service providers examine who each offer serves, what happens after someone buys, and where qualified clients are being left without a clear next step.
You do not need to create an entirely new business every time you reach capacity.
There may be more revenue, impact, and long-term client value hiding inside the client relationships you have already built.
If you’d like to see a library of all published episodes in a gallery with easy-to-find links to all listening platforms be sure to check out the Sell The Damn Service Episode Library.
