Business owners often reach a painful tipping point – their company is growing, but they’re stuck handling every small detail instead of focusing on bigger opportunities. That’s where The C-Suite Group steps in, offering fractional chief operating officer services to help owners break free from daily operations and get back to achieving their vision. By combining practical operations expertise with a background in healthcare, founder Nadine Green brings a unique perspective to scaling businesses. Her approach has already helped guide multiple companies to successful exits, including one to the largest medical transcription provider in the United States.
Discovering a Talent for Operations
A career in operations wasn’t Nadine’s original plan. “I’m a speech pathologist by background,” she says. Yet her natural drive to help others led her from healthcare to business operations, where she discovered her knack for solving organizational challenges.
Over three decades, Nadine honed her skills across industries—including healthcare, education, technology, manufacturing, and professional services. Her impact was substantial: she contributed to two successful business exits, one to a leading medical transcription provider in the United States and another to a global integrated communications agency during the pandemic.
Nadine has an eye for identifying when businesses hit their growth ceiling. “My sweet spot is helping businesses with annual revenues around the $2.5 million mark. That’s when things are just starting to fall apart,” she explains. “They have no sales process, no sales pipeline. The way they did things before just can’t work anymore because everything’s happening faster.” The signs are often similar — stagnant sales, employee turnover, and owners drowning in daily tasks. These owners typically face a dual challenge: they try to micromanage everything and simply lack time to properly train and develop their team.
Gaining Trust to Delegate Operations
Getting owners to loosen their grip on daily operations isn’t easy. “You can’t do what I do without having the trust of the CEO,” Nadine notes. “Having them trust you enough to give you the keys to their world and having them step out and ungluing them from their day-to-day — that’s probably the hardest challenge to overcome.” The shift affects employees too. “These are small to medium-sized businesses,” Nadine explains. “They’re used to just going to the founder-owner to help solve problems.” Her role isn’t to block access but to help create systems where employees can make decisions independently.
Embracing Tools for Smarter Operations
Nadine stays practical about adopting new tools like AI. “It’s just one more tool in your toolbox,” she says, comparing it to past technological shifts. “Back when speech recognition made its debut — how scary that was for everybody. We had to reform the business to embrace that change. We changed our medical transcriptionists to editors because they were no longer doing the first draft but teaching the engine in the background to make it better.”
She introduces technology gradually to clients, many of whom are hesitant about security risks. Her focus stays on using tools to improve efficiency and decision-making through better data.
Planning Ahead for Business Success
For others considering the entrepreneurial path, Nadine offers straight talk from experience. “I thought I’d own a speech pathology practice. That was my dream,” she shares. “When I went to start it, it didn’t work. Either it wasn’t the right time or wasn’t the right market or I didn’t have enough passion in my belly to do it.” Her advice? “Surround yourself with good people. Ask for advice. Don’t go it alone,” she emphasizes. “Put a plan together — don’t go out and do it willy-nilly. But try it. The worst that’ll happen is that it doesn’t work and you try something else. If you don’t try it, you’ll never know.”
Today, Nadine owns two successful businesses, helping others achieve their growth goals while staying true to her helping nature. She continues working directly with clients rather than just offering advice from afar. “I not only do the roadmap for them, but also I get in there and work with them side by side,” she says. “I don’t walk away.” To learn more about Nadine Green and The C-Suite Group, check out her LinkedIn profile.
