Scaling a company is exciting. It’s also where complexity begins.
A trusted operational partner, working alongside founders and leadership teams as you scale.
Clarity is what turns ambition into action
Led by Lainie Strempel, Next Step Studio helps scaling companies turn ambition into execution. When things start to feel messy, we bring clarity to how the business actually runs. Teams align, decisions stick, and progress is visible. Scaling companies don’t lack ambition. They lack clarity.
How We Work Together
I’m brought in when growth has made the business harder to run than it should be; when the same decisions keep coming back, and everyone’s working hard, but not towards the same thing. We find what’s actually slowing things down, fix that first, without adding unnecessary process. Here’s how we can work together:
What Its Like To Work Together
I’m usually brought in when things feel harder than they should. The goal is simple: get the team clear, aligned, and moving again. Here’s what founders and leadership teams say after we’ve done that.
Lainie became the connective tissue between our teams. For the first time, product, sales, and operations were speaking the same language... and actually moving in the same direction.
Alex Chen
Cofounder, SaaS marketplace startup
"We had the vision and the drive, but figuring out how to build a team that could actually scale? We needed someone that has done it before. Lainie brought calm to the chaos and helped us find the right expertise at exactly the right moment, she even brought in some others from the industry to shadow the team and share their experience with our juniors. We stopped second-guessing ourselves. It really feels like we have someone in our corner"
Jess Martin
Founder, b2b tools startup
We've been working with Lainie for 6 weeks fractionally to embed scaling best practices. She knows her stuff and the team look forward to the days they work with her.
Josh Tamblin
Founder in Bio Tech
Ready to figure out what's next? Let's chat.
If things feel harder than they should right now, it’s worth a conversation. We’ll get clear on what’s actually going on and what your next steps are.