Media & Speaking
Stephanie Maassen-Deason
Founder and CEO, Propel + Flourish
I help agency founders stop being the bottleneck in their own business.
hello (at) propelflourish.com · I reply within 48 hours.
For journalists
Cleared for use, as written
Everything below is cleared for use as written, so you can file without waiting on me. If you need something that is not here, email hello (at) propelflourish.com and I will reply within 48 hours.
Bio, 25 words
Stephanie Maassen-Deason installs AI-enabled operating systems for founder-led agencies. She removes the founder as the bottleneck without removing their judgment from the work.
Bio, 50 words
Stephanie Maassen-Deason is the founder of Propel + Flourish, where she installs AI-enabled operating systems for founder-led agencies. She built it on her own company first, where a live AI operating team returns 20 or more hours to her every week. She spent 20 years in ecommerce marketing and operations before that.
Bio, 100 words
Stephanie Maassen-Deason is the founder of Propel + Flourish, where she installs AI-enabled operating systems for agency founders who have become the bottleneck in their own business.
She built it on her own company first. A live AI operating team runs P+F’s content, pipeline, and follow-up, and returns 20 or more hours to her every week.
Before Propel + Flourish, she spent 20 years in ecommerce marketing and operations at Balsam Brands and Home Depot, influencing more than $500 million in revenue. She is a PMP-certified project manager, so clients never have to project-manage the install.
She created the Time Liberation Framework™, a 12-week system installation.
Headshot
Square and horizontal, high resolution, direct download. No form.
Selected press
What I can speak to
- AI operations, agentic workflows, and AI governance
- Systems design, process mapping, and workflow bottlenecks
- Removing founder bottlenecks and human-in-the-loop AI
- Brand-safe automation and quality guardrails
- Marketing operations, lifecycle strategy, and content systems
- Founder-led ecommerce and DTC operations
- Project management and operational execution
For community and event organizers
Bring this to your community
I run sessions for founder communities on the problem I solve for clients: the founder who became the bottleneck in their own business.
The talk
The human part is not creativity. It is ownership.
Ask a room what makes us human and you get creativity, empathy, intuition. Those are outputs, and machines produce outputs now. So I ask a different question. What breaks when a person stops doing the work?
Three things break, and creativity is not one of them. Taste is knowing which of five acceptable options is the right one. Judgment is knowing which rule to break, and when. Ownership is having your name on the call when it goes wrong.
Hand over the preparation and keep the call. I show a room where that line sits using decisions I made with budget and headcount attached, including the two ways founders draw it wrong. Both of those look like productivity for about a quarter.
Why me on your stage
Most people giving this talk are futurists, ethicists, or vendors selling the thing they are describing. I am none of those.
I run a business where AI agents report on the hours they hand back, and it is 20 or more every week. Before that I led a 30-plus member global team at Balsam Brands and managed a $10M+ annual marketing budget at 10x ROI across a $100M+ portfolio. Every time I decided what a system could own and what a person kept, there was a budget and there were people attached to it.
I have run breakout sessions at SuiteWorld and Bronto Summit. I hit my time, and I write your promotional copy so your team does not have to.
What your room leaves with
A way to tell which decisions to hand over and which to keep, and the first three places their own judgment is trapped in their head.
For podcast hosts
Topics I can carry for 45 minutes
Previous speaking
Breakout sessions at SuiteWorld and Bronto Summit, plus Alignable sessions.
Setup
Riverside or Zoom, wired connection, dedicated mic.
Verified figures
Every number here is sourced and cleared for publication
Own-business proof first. Borrowed scale last.
My own business
20+ hours given back every week, on my own business
Operational inefficiencies reduced 50%, with 285% project ROI
Client results
Monthly reporting under 90 minutes across two territories, down from 6 to 8 hours
Content production under 2 hours a month, down from 10 to 15
Roughly 87% of content production capacity unlocked
Career scale
30+ member global team at Balsam Brands
$10M+ annual marketing budget at 10x ROI across a $100M+ portfolio
Revenue per customer up 67%, service inquiries down 33%
Email revenue share from 3% to 10%, across 300+ campaigns a year
Lead-gaps reduced 41% within a single quarter
$14M+ in sales at 46% over plan, managing 300 vendors at Home Depot
$500M+ in revenue influenced across premium ecommerce
20+ years in ecommerce marketing and operations
PMP-certified project manager
Want to see the systems?
Browse the actual systems behind these results, live and running today.
Start here
Stop being the bottleneck. Start being the leader.
The Founder Bottleneck Diagnostic is a 90-minute working session with your real workflows on the table. You leave with your bottlenecks mapped in hours, not hunches, and your three highest-leverage fixes in writing.