It’s time to learn how to pivot without starting over when your initial, beautiful plan meets reality. Tonya Kubo and Gwen Bortner explore the classic trap of the sunk cost fallacy, which often causes leaders to resist necessary changes and dig in their heels. They also tackle the opposite extreme: the modern temptation to pivot too easily because of accessible technology, often leading to confusion and a lack of real plan. Drawing on uncomfortable, tactical examples—from addressing poor employee performance to navigating business model shifts—they clearly distinguish a minor adjustment from a major pivot. Listen for their best advice on how to stay grounded, keep your team aligned, and inform customers during any level of change.

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When The Plan Stops Working: How To Pivot Without Starting Over

We are going to talk about when the plan stops working, how to pivot without starting over or maybe something even better than that. Who knows? A pivot isn’t failure. If anything, it’s a sign that you’re paying attention because every plan works in theory but when it hits reality, reality almost always wins. In this episode, we’re going to walk through how to recognize when it’s time to pivot, how big the pivot should be and how to adjust without spiraling yourself or confusing the people who work for you or with you.

Overcoming The Sunk Cost Fallacy: Why Leaders Resist Change

Gwen, we were going to start this off. I had this beautiful outline. It was a beautiful outline. I want everybody to take my word for them. I’m not going to show it to anybody. I wanted to kick us off by talking about why leaders resist pivoting because I see that a lot. It was a little bit of a passive-aggressive way for me to talk about the sunk cost fallacy because I think that holds business owners back so often. That is a fact. “I’ve already spent so much time, energy, effort, whatever. I have to keep going.” When I brought that up, you were like, “Yes, and.” Why don’t you go ahead and finish the yes, and for us.

I also said I think we often are pivoting too easily because everything is so accessible, it makes it easy to change.

I just got a little ouchie there and the reason I got a little ouchie there is because I’m a big tech fan and you’re right. Everything is so accessible that we can just change, many years ago even. In 2015, it would not be easy to scrap your email service provider and start using a different email service provider. Now, you could do that and probably have your deliverability back to what it was before in 1 to 2 weeks. Versus, back in the day, it would feel like 3 to 6 months. You could build a course in a week and be selling it on Monday.

I’ll put on my very old hat of when I first started doing knitting as a profession and I wrote patterns. This was back in 2000. All knitting patterns were delivered as physical pieces of paper. Within probably ten years, most patterns were being sold as PDFs. I would say it took a different commitment back when I started to be a pattern writer because you had to either buy an expensive printer to be able to print the patterns and to let that you needed at that time or you had to do a print run with a printer

With a printer, you mean a printing house.

A professional printing house. If you made a mistake, it was there on all 100 copies that you paid for. There wasn’t a quick and easy way to fix it. None of that happened. Although, people will say, “Why don’t you just do a PDF back then?” It was like, because the software that you needed to create a PDF back then was $500. It wasn’t included as an option on every print screen.

Two things. Let’s be fair to those of us who are dinosaurs over here. $500 back when a McDonald’s Happy Meal was $5. Let’s control for the cost of inflation, but also back then, that software wasn’t like, go to a website and download it immediately to your computer. You had to go to a special store and buy the box, and then spend two hours with all the CDs loading that software into your computer in order to print that one pattern.

Most people didn’t know how to do all that on top of it. It was a whole different whole different world. Back in early 2000, the number of people writing knitting patterns was significantly less than it was in 2010, just ten years later because you didn’t have the same barrier of entry. I feel like we’ve gotten to the same point with pivoting. We don’t have the same barrier of entry of deciding to do something different because there are lots of options out there. We have so much more access, not only just within tech. That list is enormous, but even access to others.

Writing a program used to be like we have to find a programmer in this, that, and the other thing. Now, you can find a programmer. You can find a programmer that will charge you dirt compared to what your current pay is. We have VAs in the Philippines that are making way less, but it’s still a good living wage for them there than what that same rate would be here. We’ve got access to the world in a way that we never had access to even not that long ago.

Depending on what we’re trying to write programs for. We can open up ChatGPT. Tell ChatGPT what we want to program and it will spit out the code. We don’t have to know what any of the gobbledygook means because ChatGPT will tell us where to put all of that information then we’ll have something that is fairly usable that doesn’t cost us anything more than our $20 a month subscription.

That’s the thing. We’ve got so many more possibilities. It’s become too easy for us to change and where I get concerned where we’re talking about the pivot and the non-pivot is, we often don’t pivot where we should and we pivot where we shouldn’t.

The Dangers Of Misplaced Pivots: Avoiding “Change For Change’s Sake”

Hold that thought because I’m going to want you to come right back to it. On one hand, we have this issue that the plan stops working and we dig in our heels. We resist a necessary pivot because we’ve already spent so much time, energy and money into this single course of action. We don’t want to look inconsistent.

We don’t want to look like we don’t have our stuff together, and we’re afraid that switching gears will make it look like the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing or whatever. The original vision is like we can so clearly see the future state and we can’t let go of the fact that reality is telling us that it’s not going to pan out. That’s on one hand. The other hand, it’s so easy to switch gears that we’re switching gears so much that we’re not following a plan.

As I said, what I think the interesting problem is probably the places that we need to pivot were not and the places that we don’t need to pivot, we’re putting energy and time into pivoting.

Explain that more. I need more words. Please and thank you.

I’m going to give you a very tactical example.

You know I love those.

Here’s a tactical example. We have an employee that we know is just not cutting it anymore for whatever reason. Either they’ve never quite cut it or they work cutting it but life is changed enough and it’s no longer working. Whatever. I watch my clients take weeks and months and in some cases years to let that person go. Which is a pivot because we’ve got to stop using this person. We have to train somebody new. We have to reevaluate this position. Even the position that we need to be hiring for. There’s a whole lot of things there. You might not think of it as a pivot but it’s a pivot within your business.

We’re waiting a tremendous amount of time on that. At the same point, we think that because we can save a dollar, we need to move from payroll system A to payroll system B. Not counting all of the hassle of moving payroll systems. I’m trying to make them both HR related issues. They are similar. It’s like, was that pivot worth it? Probably not in the big scheme of things but it felt like, “I’m making progress because we’re going to be saving some money or now, we can do this one thing that we weren’t able to do before or whatever it happens to be.

Where the bigger issue, the thing that we need to be making the pivot on, we’re avoiding as it’s hard because of some cost, because of loyalty, because of any of a number of things that we don’t want to address. We use pivoting into other things as another one of those, “I’m doing something productive. I’m making a productive change,” but we’re often not doing it where it is providing productive value.

When The Plan Stops Working: How To Pivot Without Starting Over Share on X

I’m thinking it through because I liked your example of the staff member who’s just not doing what we need them to do or is not fulfilling the function we need.

It’s no longer the appropriate role.

I want to use that example because first of all, you’re right. Most people don’t look at performance management issues or letting somebody go, reclassifying somebody or restructuring. I don’t think they look at those as pivots. I think they look at them as failures and it feels finite because they might think a pivot is, “We’ll take them from doing data entry to doing graphic design.” They don’t think, “We’re going to let somebody leave the organization so we can bring somebody different in to fulfill that function as a pivot.” I like that example.

I would say, using that example, some early warning signs. One thing that I have heard you coach clients through is setting a reasonable timeframe for where you’re actively working with the individual to manage their performance, to help them understand what’s expected of them, what is needed, how to do it and make sure they’re appropriately trained. All of that good stuff and then having a timeline. We’re not going to give it a year but we’re going to give it a set period of time. If at the end of that set period of time, we don’t see improvement, then that’s a sign that this is not the person. This person got you here but they’re not necessarily the person to get you there. Is that a fair parallel?

Absolutely.

3 Warning Signs: How To Spot The Need For A Business Pivot

In other examples, what we would say is you don’t see any traction after a reasonable test period. You try that new marketing tactic, whatever it was and we’re just not getting any traction. The second thing is when there’s friction in your processes. You could probably say that people are one of those areas where there can be a lot of friction if you have the wrong person in a role. Help us understand what that friction looks like because here’s what I hear when I’m working with teams, “That’s just so and so. They’ve always been that way.”

Maybe they don’t like change. That’s another one of my favorites. They don’t adjust to change well. That can be fine but maybe not here. It can also be things like, “They got me through this.” This is one of my favorites. It’s the loyalty one. It’s what I call misplaced loyalty. That they helped me get through this particular situation and so now I have to be loyal to them forever. Keeping in mind, they never did it as a favor.

Especially when we got our solopreneurs or anybody who started as a solopreneur and hired one person and then another person. They do feel like those early hires did them a favor.

You didn’t. They didn’t work for you for free. You paid them to do a job. Maybe they were outstanding and did help you get through a time but that doesn’t mean that they get to just keep getting paid. “They helped me through the time.” “They’ve been with me forever.” Any of those things are all big flags in my world.

Lack of traction after a reasonable test period, which I’m testing these thoughts against like the human element of somebody in the organization. I know that people always like, “That’s different,” but it’s not different. Somebody who you’ve trained and you’ve explained what the expectation is. They’re not getting any better. That’s a lack of traction after a reasonable test period. The second is the high friction in processes. The person who resists change but we always. We never did like, “It was fine before,” or my personal favorite, “I don’t mind doing it this way.”

I don’t mind it. It doesn’t matter to me that it takes me ten hours when doing it the other way would only take me two.

I like typing all that stuff manually, Gwen. It’s fun. That’s high friction in the process. The third and this is a biggie when it comes with teams, but it manifests in other ways as well, is confusion among the team. When people are like, “Isn’t Susie supposed to do that?” You’re like, “No. Susie’s not going to do that. Somebody else is.” They’re like, “Doesn’t that fall within Susie’s role?” It’s because you’re working around Susie. There’s too much friction involved in trying to get Susie to do what you need to do. It’s uncomfortable.

Susie doesn’t like change.

All of those things, you start to work around and then people don’t quite understand why the payroll person isn’t doing payroll. Somebody else has to jump in and help them. What else do you think is confusing for the team that might be the sign that you need to pivot or in the case of Susie. We need to set Susie on to greener pastures.

The other biggie is, functionally, is it getting the results that we needed to get? That’s a little bit related to traction, but is the person getting me the results that I want or is the process or is the marketing tactic or whatever it happens to be. Getting me the result that we predicted it should get and were our assumptions on that prediction reasonable and accurate.

The assumptions piece is an important piece of it. If I say, “Tonya, we need to have 1,000 new customers in the next month and I want to do it all via email.” That would be a reasonable assumption if we had a list of probably 50 to 100,000 people on the list based on all the numbers and expectations. My list is closer to 300 or400 or something like that. That would be an unrealistic assumption with my list because the data doesn’t line up.

That becomes the other piece of, is this a reasonable assumption or is it not a reasonable assumption? Are we able to get the thing that we’re looking for based on what we’re trying to do? You could have the perfect email campaign but if we’re only emailing it out to 200 people, there is almost no chance on earth that we’re going to get 1,000 new customers out of that.

Is it the assumption or is it the actual activity or do we have 100,000 people on an email list? What you’re writing is complete gobbledygook. That’s about that we’re not doing the right thing. The specifics of the tactic are not working. Back to, is the person capable or not capable if we’re putting it toward people. Can they actually do the work or not do the work?

Moving out of the people’s example and thank you for walking through this, because it was a good one. It’s not one that people typically use when talking about pivoting. We’ve talked about the polar opposites of what makes leaders resist pivoting plus what can make them pivot too much. We’ve talked about those early warning signs that indicate you do need to pivot.

Small Shift Vs. Major Move: Defining Adjustment And Pivot

Now I want to go back to the initial conversation, which is the difference between a small pivot and a big one because as you pointed out. It is so easy to change course these days that we convince ourselves that we’re making tiny little shifts or tweaks. When in reality, we’re making large movements. Do you have off the top of your head how you would differentiate between a minor adjustment versus a major adjustment in a business?

We are often pivoting easily, because everything is so accessible. It makes it really easy to change. Share on X

To me, a minor adjustment is it takes less than a week for sure and probably less than a day to make. It generally doesn’t affect more than one person on your team. If you’re the team of one, it’s always only going to affect one person but thinking about if you had a team. Is it affecting marketing, accounting and HR? You may be doing all those roles but that’s three team members. That’s not simple.

To me, if it’s only one, that’s probably okay because it also means that the person that may be affected can say, “This feels like it’s tiny, but this is big,” because they’ve got enough understanding and ownership of what’s going on. When it starts crossing multiple team members or roles or functional roles, it may seem little per each person but we multiply that and that becomes a much bigger thing pretty quickly because it’s not. It’s rarely additive. It’s usually multiplicative.

It’s not one, two and three is six. We’re doing multiple locations here. We’re growing exponentially as we go and it becomes a very big thing very quickly but it seems small to everybody. For you it’s two. For me it’s two. For them, it’s three. That doesn’t seem too bad. That’s like seven, but it’s 2 times 2 is 4 times 3 is 12. That’s a fairly big number. That’s one of the places that why if it’s over multiple people. Also, how quickly can you do it?

A pivot may be a tiny adjustment. It can be done quickly. A pivot is going to be affecting more people. Even though it still may be able to be done fairly quickly, but there’s other people that have to be made aware of it and what’s going on. Keeping in mind that some of the people may not be your employees but they may be your customers. If you need to tell one employee and all your customers, that’s not too many people. That’s one person on your team, and I don’t know, maybe 10 or 20 or 100 other people. It’s probably a pivot.

An example for me that’s a pretty easy example that many of us have dealt with at some point in time is changing your calendaring system. That sounds like a relatively simple thing and it could be a minor adjustment. To some degree it’s a pivot because it affects you. It affects all of the people and all of the things. It’s a classic example of it’s so easy to do. We just do those things without necessarily thinking about them. That’s where I feel like that’s not an adjustment. That’s a pivot. We’ve pivoted from one system to a completely different system.

Now, as I said, it may not be hard to implement. It may not be hard to communicate or to do any of those things, but it’s still a pivot that we need to think about what all of the consequences are. An adjustment would be we’re no longer offering 30-minute calls. We’re only offering 25-minute calls. We’re just discontinuing one and creating another or changing the 30 minute to say 25 minutes adjusting the time. That would be an adjustment.

That’s pretty minor and I could easily see that. Where I might say, “I need to have five minutes in between my calls.” I don’t want to put a five-minute block in there. I just want five minutes between my calls, so make them 25 and 55 and that’ll be fine. To me, that’s the adjustment versus a pivot. Versus what we think of as a pivot of, I’m offering one-on-one services and now I’m offering a group program, which is obviously a pivot.

Business Funnel Change: Is Going To Group Coaching A Pivot?

That’s a good example. Would you consider a change in the business model or in the offers or in the structure? Where do you classify that because that is such a common one too? People will say, “I’m just doing a slight little adjustment here. I’m just going to go from working one-on-one to working one to many.” Without realizing you’ve got to change your marketing.

The answer to your question of, is it a business model?

Is that changing your model, your offer or your structure?

My answer is yes. It’s all of those things, which is back to its a major pivot. Not only are we affecting a ton of people but we’re touching pretty much everything that we do.

I feel like this is the day, this is the episode of the hard uncomfortable examples. As we were talking about those early warning signs of needing to pivot, we used a human example like the staff member who’s just not quite doing what we need them to do in the way that we need them to do it. For here, I want to talk about this going from one-to-one to one to many because that is the great poster child of a successful business.

At least successful coaching, successful online business in that realm. We’re told that working one-on-one trades time for money and working one to many is the way to scale. How do you go about deciding if that’s the adjustment to make? Also, the trajectory. How long do you take to make that adjustment? If it is major, which I agree it is but talk me through that.

To me, that’s one of the things that is also bad about the term pivot. We’ve made major changes. “I just pivoted.” You didn’t. You change freaking everything about your business. That is not a pivot. Changing from Asana to Airtable. That’s a pivot. Deciding to offer one-on-one sessions twice a month and once a month is a pivot. Going from one-on-one to group is a whole business funnel change. There’s so many things that go with it. I don’t even know what we want to call it, but that’s part of the problem. We’re lumping way too much under the pivot.

What that reminds me of as you were talking about those. I worked for an organization prior to me working for them. They had a very successful course creation program. At one point, they decided that they were so successful in the course creation space that they wanted to branch out into professional development working with HR departments to deliver professional development because they did have this great system of course creation.

It took losing about $1.5 million to $2 million at a major event for them to recognize that though in their mind it was just an extension of their core offer. We’re great with course creation here. We can be amazing with course creation over there. It was an entirely different business because while they were great with course creation here and the mechanics of course creation are the same.

Who they were targeting in that business had no overlap with HR departments and large corporations. The sales cycle was different and the language. Everything about how you sell. What seemed like the same basic offer was an entirely different animal. Unfortunately, they didn’t recognize that until they were like $2 million deep.

That’s the issue. We have to realize that pivots should be relatively small. You think about pivoting. That’s a tiny move.

Pivots really should be relatively small. Share on X

I only think about pivoting in like basketball and figure skating. It is very subtle.

That is what a pivot is. I love your basketball because I used to play when I could. A pivot is one foot stays exactly where it was. It may spin, but it has to stay exactly where it was. Which means you can’t jump tracks and pivot. To me, this is the piece that when we start looking at these bigger pieces, it’s not a pivot. It is a business model change. It is a customer addressing change. As you have pointed out to me multiple times, the person who wants a one-on-one surface is often a different person than who wants a group program.

Even though you may be offering the same service between those two. There’s different marketing that goes behind it. You’ve got to figure out how you’re managing the payments. All of that stuff that is related to it is a big change and that’s the important piece that you have to not lose track of when we’re talking about this. We want to think of it as a pivot because of the sunk cost. I’ve already invested all of this, so this is just a tweak to what we’re doing.

How To Stay Grounded During Change: The Basketball Pivot Rule

You explain the basketball example, one-foot stays in the same spot. How do you suggest, advice, or recommend? , business owners to stay grounded when things are changing? How do they keep that foot in that one spot while shifting the other foot?

That comes back to, do you need to pivot? A true pivot or do you need to make a big change? Being comfortable with the fact that if I’m making a big change, let’s own it as a big change. Let’s realize that there’s going to be some significant pieces. If we’re going to pivot, being clear about what are the things that we’re holding on to? What is at that foot that’s not moving? What are the things that are standard that we are not changing? Even though we may be changing some other aspects about it.

Back to how big of a change will it be perceived by anyone outside of our own head because for many of us, we can say, “This is just a pivot.” You start talking about it and people’s eyes get big. If people’s eyes are getting big, it’s not a pivot. That’s a big thing. You and I have talked about this a lot. Sometimes I’ll say, “I want to do this instead,” and I feel like it’s a pivot. I have learned to ask you this doesn’t feel like this is a giant change. Is it a giant change? In my head, it makes perfect sense.

I see how all of the dot’s line up and how this is very much grounded with the same thing that I’m doing. Sometimes you say, “These lines up. This makes sense. We can make this pivot.” Other times, you’re like, “No, there’s a whole new thing.” This is completely different. I will tell you, many times in my mind, they are exactly the same.

 

 

Crucial Communication: Aligning Your Team And Customers

You’re bringing up a good point that we can end on which is that alignment with your team because that that does cause so many issues. It’s so clear in the mind of the business owner and it’s so tiny. It’s like blush versus bashful and Steel Magnolias. It’s just pink and pink. To everybody else it’s like this is changing every bit of how I work or who I am. I have an associate who’s going through like revising a mission statement. On the table, there were changing two words and people were in tears, which baffles me but that’s just because sometimes I’m heartless.

Over the change of these two words because these two words were endemic to their personal identity, and what they thought the idea of the company was. Meanwhile, the business owners are like, “If we can cut two words and this line goes up a line and then this all fits so much neater everywhere else.” It had nothing to do with the words. It just had to do with word count. How do you keep your team aligned as you’re making these pivots whether they’re big or small?

We talked about the pivot of changing your scheduler or your calendar scheduler. We did that. I’ve been talking about it. We’ve been debating and there were reasons that we did it. The one I’ve used I had used forever. A long time before people were even using scheduling systems. I was loath to change them because I know there’s always a cost to it. We debated and talked. Part of it was talking with you but also with Sophia because she does a lot with it. To say, “How big of a deal do you think this is?”

She’s like, “I don’t think it’s going to be that big of a deal. I can probably get it up and running in a fairly short period of time.” I said, “I’m not even worried about that. I can get up and running in a short period of time. I’ve done enough of this work. This isn’t a problem.” I could tell she wasn’t resistant to it. I also could see in that case she was being pleased by not having to deal with the hassles that we were having, the previous one. The pivot made sense and we probably implemented it in less than a week from start to finish. We’re going to do it to make it happen.

What I’m hearing there is keeping the team aligned. Part of it is asking the questions. It’s like, how does this change affect you? Not just going in like, “This is a great thing to do. We’re going to be so much better on the other side of it.” It’s taking the time to ask everybody involved or even minorly involved. How will this affect you? How does this affect how you work and how much time you spend all of this? What else?

If people's eyes are getting big, it's not a pivot. Share on X

The other is how much is it going to affect the customer? If it’s going to affect the customer and it affects the customer because I do a lot of one-on-one work. We talked about it. I was like, “We just need to let them know,” and Sophia will start sending out new links and they’ll figure it out.

I want to step in there because you’re like, we got to tell the customer. Sophia will send out new links and they’ll figure it out. Which is exactly what you said, but your behavior was different. What I want to address is also there is a piece of what to say to customers. Some people will intuitively know how to communicate to customers and other people will not. In this case, when you are talking to customers because you started it off. I think because we had an event coming up, just so you know.

One of the key things in the case of switching the calendaring system was you made a point to say, if anything looks weird with your upcoming appointments, such as the link isn’t where you think it should be. There are two links and they don’t match. You used to get notifications and you’re no longer getting notifications. The invite appears in your sample. You’ve been through all these possible occurrences. What you could have said is, “If anything looks weird just let us know.”

You went through the pains of saying, “If anything looks weird, which might be this and this. Here’s all the weird things that I can predict or anything that you think is weird that I didn’t mention. Please let us know because it’s probably not intentional on our side. We don’t see the same things you see so we’re counting on you to keep us informed.”

You asked Sophia how it would affect her. You asked me how it would affect me. You thought of how it would affect you. You thought through how it would affect the customer and then you advised Sophia on how to share that information with the customers. That’s the piece that a lot of, particularly visionary CEOs. That’s the piece they forget about. It’s giving advice on how to talk about change to outside.

When the plan stops working, think it through before you decide what and how to change. Share on X

It’s not like, “My crazy COO has done it again.”

The crazy CMO. I think it’s CMO who loves to change things too.

It’s all of them. The key is to be able to say, “Does this make sense in the big scheme of things given all of the pieces that have to go on?” As I said, it’s also about realizing that what we’re calling pivots because it just became a watchword. It’s another one of those inappropriate words that’s got absconded into something else. Where most of the things that people were calling pivots were not pivots. It was the fun word to use, “I’m pivoting because of COVID.” You’re not pivoting. You are making a wholesale change because of COVID.

The Final Takeaway: Think It Through And Avoid Changing For Change’s Sake

It’s because you want to survive COVID and nothing’s wrong with that. As your advice, if I had to sum up the whole episode in a single sentence. When the plan stops working, think it through. Think it through before you decide what to change, how to change and then think through all the potential consequences, positive and negative to that decision. Would you add anything?

Change for change’s sake is rarely good.

 

 

That is the truth. I don’t know about you reading but I’m going to just tell you that this episode ended in an entirely different place than I thought it was going to go when we started it.

Beautiful outline that you had.

I want you guys to know, it was beautiful. It’s not worth showing you now but it was beautiful. The reason that we ended in an entirely different place is clarity. It was, I had this idea, which sounded great in theory like communism, I like to say. I uttered my great idea out loud and Gwen had a response to it that changed everything that brought some clarity to my assumptions that I didn’t even know were there.

That’s often how these episodes go but that’s how my conversations with Gwen go. If you want that same clarity that I get for free like every week when we do these episodes. You could get that as well for free by subscribing to Gwen’s Good Question email. By the way, if you have an idea of a better name for our good question email, we’ll take that. For now, it’s just a good question email. You can sign up for that at www.tonyakubo.com/Question.

All it is, is a good question dropped into your inbox every single Friday. You can answer it or you cannot. You can internally cogitate over it or you can automatically archive it like a generous return policy. You get all the money you spend on it back because it costs you nothing but it may just give you something. It may give you a great idea. It may spark something that you didn’t even know you needed to be thinking about. That’s the purpose of a good question for the CEOs reading because every opportunity you can to get into your CEO brain is an opportunity to be more proactive in your business. That is the secret to sustainable success. Think about that.

 

Mentioned in This Episode

• Gwen Bortner on LinkedIn
• Gwen Bortner on Facebook
• Tonya Kubo
• Tonya Kubo on LinkedIn
• Sign Up For Gwen’s Email

 

About Your Hosts

Gwen Bortner has spent four decades advising executives and entrepreneurs in 45+ industries. She helps women succeed in business without sacrificing happiness by identifying their true desires and aligning their business functions. She spots overlooked bottlenecks and crafts efficient plans toward sustainable success that center your values and priorities. Known for her unique approach to problem-solving and accountability through the G.E.A.R.S. framework, Gwen empowers clients to achieve their definition of success without sacrificing what matters most.

Tonya Kubo is a marketing strategist and community builder who helps entrepreneurs build thriving online communities. As co-host of The Business You Really Want and Chief Marketing and Operations Officer (CMOO) at Everyday Effectiveness, she keeps conversations on track and ensures complex business concepts are accessible to everyone. A master facilitator with 18+ years of experience in online community building, Tonya takes a people-first approach to marketing and centers the human experience in all she does.