Tired of receiving bad business advice that just doesn’t fit? Gwen Bortner and Tonya Kubo are throwing a lifeline to business owners sick of the same old, useless platitudes. They’re ripping apart the “guru” playbook, exposing why those cookie-cutter programs crumble under the weight of your real-world challenges. Get ready to learn how to spot the bad advice a mile away and finally build a strategy that actually works for your business.
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Bad Business Advice: How It Can Cost You More Than You Realize
Have you ever felt like you’re doing everything right in your business, you’re following the expert advice, you’re implementing all the recommended strategies, you’re the A++ student, but you’re still not seeing the results you want? Today on the show, we are going to talk about why following someone else’s blueprint might be what’s holding you back. This is true. Being the A++ student may not be in your best interests. I’m Tonya Kubo, joined by business advisor extraordinaire, Gwen Bortner.
We are tackling a challenge that affects every entrepreneur at some point, which is what happens when you’re doing all the “right things,” but they aren’t working for you. Gwen, this is something that came up when we first started having business coffee together. I know you’ve seen the pattern countless times. I know you’ve seen it with clients. They come to you frustrated when they have tried everything experts have recommended and still find themselves struggling. I’m curious about what you’re observing.
The Struggles With Year-Long Business Programs
One of the conversations I’ve had with a number of people in a variety of conversations where it has popped up is one of the historically pieces of knowledge that everyone says is that you need to do a program, and it should be a year. Plan on a year-long program. A year-long program is the way to go. There are some positive reasons to do a year-long program because that means you’ve now figured out what your income is going to be for a year. There are positive reasons to do it.
However, this is one of the things that a lot of people are no longer wanting to sign up for a couple of reasons. One is, “I’ve committed to the year-long program, I’m four months in, it is not delivering at all what I want, and I cannot get out, so now I’ve committed.” That’s a big problem. Sometimes it is, “I don’t understand why it’s going to take a full year. Why do I need to be committed for a year to do this thing, whatever it is?” They’ve realized that the year is not for them. The year is for the provider. It’s not for the customer.
It’s to guarantee the provider’s income and to make sure that they’ve got their cashflow as opposed to it’s what you need as a customer. They’re finding a lot of times like, “It’s doing what I want, but at six months, I was done. I got what I needed out of it.” The opposite side of it is “Why am I still in the program?” There’s been enough of that conversation now outside of people’s heads that people are like, “That happened to me too.”
Now, folks are pushing against it. A number of folks have said, “I’m going to do a program that’s going to be a year long.” The first question I ask is, “Does it need to be a year long?” Often, they look at me and are like, “What do you mean?” It’s like, “I’m seeing people who have year-long programs, and their signups are dropping drastically.” There’s another reason to do it on the provider side as well. That is, you don’t know if your people are staying for a full year.
You may assume that you’re going to get some amount of re-signups, but because they’re disappointed so much earlier, you could have fixed it, but you didn’t know to fix it because there was no real check and balance. It comes to the end of the year, and it’s like, “I’m expecting a 30% renewal,” and making up a number. They get there, and it’s like, “I only had a 5% renewal. Now I don’t know what to do because I was counting on that.” Year-long program, that’s one right off the top of my head.
Let’s break that down because that’s a great example. As always, I could do a whole episode on just that. We’re not going to.
This is what we do. Luckily, we’ve got a lot more episodes ahead of us.
This is what I love about the fact that we do this every week. I like this partially because of where I’m at in business, because I am seeing the same thing you are. I would have framed it differently. What I’m seeing, and part of it is my stage of life, I still have school-age kids. It’s like I don’t know what I’m going to be doing in six months. I don’t know what life’s going to look like in six months.
Honestly, Gwen, there’s a trip I take every July. It is the same weekend every single July. I’ve been taking this trip since 2019, and I haven’t bought my plane ticket because I’m like, “I don’t know what July is going to look like.” That’s the status of life at this point. You’ve got that argument against a twelve-month purchase. I do think for a lot of people, even if they trust you as a provider to deliver twelve months of great value, they go, “I know me, I get excited. At about the three-month mark, life gets in the way, and I tap out. I don’t want to be stuck paying for this if I’m not going to be using it.”
There are a million and one reasons why people are hesitant to invest in the year-long program that has absolutely nothing to do with the price point of a year-long program. That’s the point I wanted to make because a lot of people go, “Those year-long programs are $10,000, $20,000, $50,000.” That’s why people aren’t buying. I don’t think that. To your point, it’s the time commitment. It’s also that if I’m looking to solve a problem that feels acute right now, do I want to wait twelve months for the solution?
One of the issues is, do you need all of this time to make it be the way that it needs to be, or is what you have is a three-month program and you’d like to have them stay in for an additional nine months to support and shore up their behaviors, their habits, whatever the case may be? That’s one of the things that I talk to some clients about. I say, “Let’s make it a three-month program and then let’s have a follow-on offer that’s a month-to-month offer that’s a version of support,” for lack of a better description, depending on what it is.
The Hidden Costs Of Bad Business Advice
We can use the example of the twelve-month program or we can move on from there. When I think about bad business advice, because that’s our topic, what is the hidden cost of following bad business advice? I could be speaking for myself here, but I happen to not think I’m that unique. There are times that I go, “Worst case scenario, I’m out X amount of dollars, I’m out X amount of time.”
I’ve been around this particular block long enough to know that there are other costs that I oftentimes don’t see until I’m on the other side, and I grow resentful of them. The biggest cost is not the time and money specifically, but it’s what I could have been doing with the time and the money that would have gotten me closer to the goal instead.
For sure. Anything that you say yes to means there’s something somewhere that you’re saying no to. It doesn’t mean that the thing that you’re saying no to is a better thing. Sometimes, the thing you’re saying yes to is the right thing. As soon as you say yes to it, you cannot say yes to something else with that same money and with that same time. This is my very tiny-T trauma around a lot of marketing that I see.
It is that there are these giant promises that are given, and these giant promises are well done. The marketing and the sales process are both top notch, and you believe that it’s what you want, it’s what you need, and it’s going to provide the answer. You truly believe all of those things. As you get into it, it’s like, “That’s not going to do it for what I need based on my business.” We get to say it again, context matters.
We both planned ahead on that one with my coffee mug.
That becomes the issue. I don’t want to say that they’re out to deceive you, even though it often feels that way in the moment. I can tell you every time in my mind, it is like, “They did that on purpose.” Even though I know most of them aren’t that devious to try and do that on purpose, they believe that whatever they’re selling is the end-all be-all answer for whatever the problem is. It is usually a single answer, which doesn’t have enough flexibility to deal with everyone else’s context.
There will be some people who will also be very frustrating because there will be at least 1 or 2 people who are like, “It’s made all the difference in the world for me.” You’re like, “I must be an idiot. I must be the dumbest person on the planet because I cannot make this work for me.” If it sounds like this is the voice of experience, it is the voice of experience because that is exactly the way that I have felt when I’ve been in this. It’s like, “Why are these people so excited? This is not working for me at all. I know I’m doing the work.”
Context matters. It changes a ton of the answers. Share on XGenerally, I know I’m not stupid. Typically, these are women who have been A++ students. It’s like, “I’m doing the work, I’m doing the thing, and I’m not getting the grade,” continuing with the metaphor. It’s like, “It’s not going to work for me because of some aspect of my business, my business model, my list size, my approach, my personality.” There are all sorts of things that can play in that make it not work. It becomes bad advice because it’s given as the answer when it’s an answer.
My business career is littered with corpses of things that some expert told me should have panned out. I think of another common one, and I’ll use a marketing one. It’s like market research. There are a lot of people who teach you to pre-sell an offer, which I 100% support. Do not create things that you do not have a validated market for. That is good advice. They’ll tell you to start with market research, to come up with the concept that you pre-sell.
I have an audience that knows what they should want, but very commonly is out of touch with what they really want. They will tell me all sorts of things. I have done every survey you can imagine. I have hired people to help me with research question design. These results are always very similar. Every time I have created those products, I have had a whopping zero sales. Not one, not two, zero.
It’s because once I started having one-to-one conversations and deep conversations with my people, I realized they are so immersed in guru advice that they have been conditioned to believe they want those things, but when it comes to laying dollars on the line, they don’t. When I worked at a university, that market research, surveying, focus groups, and all of that were highly effective at figuring out admissions campaigns and stuff. It was my particular type of service provider business, and the people I attracted did not work.
The Dangers Of One-Size-Fits-All Solutions
What we’re talking about is that a lot of people teach from their own perspective. They teach from their own experience. It’s not intentional. They’re not trying to cheat anybody, but they are selling a one-size-fits-all solution. Can I go so far as to say that they are selling a one-size-fits-all solution, and they’re selling it to as many people as possible? There is always going to be a percentage of A++ students who do all the homework, who show up for all the things, and do exactly as they’re told that are going to fail. Can you tell us a little bit more about why that is?
Back years ago, when I was teaching knitting, one of the things that came up is you do not need to know about knitting to care about these details, but there are eight different ways to correctly make a knit stitch, which is pulling one loop through another loop. This is truly not rocket science.
I’m going to believe you right now.
I understand. Some people would say the best way is to get this particular style of knitting, or one of these eight styles of. What we realized is what they were really saying was, “When I discovered this way, it was life-changing for me. It made it so much easier, so much faster,” so much fill in all of the blanks, whatever. In their mind, it is the best way.
It was the best way for them.
A version of that is what we see a lot in the guru space. I took someone else’s advice and I added my own thing to it or I figured something out on my own, it doesn’t matter what the process was, but in their mind it was like, “It changed everything for me, and because it did, I believe that if you do all of these exact same things, it will change everything for you too.” I don’t think they have mal-intent.
This is what’s happening in their brain, but they cannot separate that. They cannot say, “It changed it for me, so I think it’s going to change it for you.” In many cases, they’ve experienced some of the other things, but because they failed, they don’t see how those could work for somebody else. That’s where the problem lies. They want to put everybody into their particular box or pole or however you want to describe it. It’s like, “Yeah, but I’m round. I don’t care.” Square is the right answer.
We do not get the results because we’re trying to solve a complicated problem with a simple solution. Share on XSometimes it’s like, “I’m not filling up the corners,” if you think about a round peg in a square hole, “We’re shaving off a whole lot of the roundness to force you into the square.” Either way, it’s not a good fit, whether you don’t fill up the corners or whether you’re having to shave off parts of your roundness. Both cases can get you into the square hole, but it’s not a good fit. They say in their mind, “Square was so perfect. When they kept putting me in round, round wasn’t working. There’s no way that round is going to work.” It could work.
That’s why our whole context matters is so important to me because the context changes a ton of the answers. A lot of the context is what I call tiny context. It’s not the big context of are you a service provider or a product provider? That’s a giant context. If you’re doing an online service business versus selling a physical product, those are giant changes in context. Most everyone can see how advice might be different for those two businesses.
It’s the tiny context. It’s the difference between having tiny children, school-aged children, nearly-out children, adult children, and no children. That can be part of the context of the whole answer, which you’re like, “It has nothing to do with my business.” Yeah, but it has to do with your life. Your life is part of your business. Kids are not tiny context, but yet it is a tiny context.
It reminds me of somebody I worked with a couple of years ago. They had taken up a program that taught them to write books and sell the books on Amazon. This was going to be passive income. They’re going to take all their knowledge, they’re going to put it in books, sell it through Amazon, and the money is going to come rolling in.
They were on book five, and the money was not rolling in. I asked the standard marketing question of, “How are you trying to sell it?” Crickets because they were taught to put the book on Amazon, use some certain keywords. The money would come rolling in. They didn’t have anything else around it. They were going to invest in a funnel program that promised them that it would engineer a funnel so that people would buy the book.
We started talking and I’m talking to them about market research and what is involved in selling a book. Nobody is more passionate about your book than you are. You’ve got to schlep it out there. What they kept coming back to is like, “You don’t understand. I’ve got three kids, special needs, I work full time. I don’t have time for another job. If I had time for another job, I’d consult in my field. I wrote these books because I had this knowledge, but I don’t have time to work one-to-one with people to give them the knowledge, so I wrote these books.”
That’s great, but you have to find a way to get the books in front of the people. This person genuinely did not have the time to spare. I know somebody is going, “I could help them do that in just an hour a week.” I’m sure they could have, but they didn’t know you then, so that’s not an option.
They really might not have an hour.
Recognizing The Wrong Path In Business Advice
That’s the other thing. They may not have an hour, but this individual had spent so much money already building this pretty castle that nobody wanted to live in but them, all based on this idea that if I do all the things I’m told to do, I’ll get the results I’ve been promised. Here’s where I want to step back. I want to ask the question on behalf of the audience. What are the signs that we can be looking out for that clue us in to being on the wrong path?
The first thing that came to me a number of years ago, when I first identified this as an ongoing issue, not just an I’m an idiot issue, but everyone feels like an idiot.
We all go through the I’m the idiot issue. I’m the common denominator. I’m the one who keeps buying the products that don’t work.
A course is only a good choice if it addresses a very narrow problem. Share on XYou have enough conversations like, “There’s only a few people that aren’t idiots.” Most of us have our idiot moments. It generally makes you feel better because the other people you’re hanging with are like, “Maybe it’s not just me.” The thing that I identified at the time was that so often, what we’re looking to do is solve a complicated problem with a very simple answer.
It’s a simple solution to a complicated problem.
That’s what we’re being sold. We’ve got this complicated problem, and we’re being sold, and we use the phrase all the time, “All you have to do is.”
What are you going to do?
“All you have to do is.” When I lived in IT, that was our first sign when someone is like, “All you have to do is this one.” It’s like, “No, that’s not what the IT department is going to have to do for you. We have a lot more that we have to do than that.” We want it to be “All you have to do is.” They believe “All you have to do is.” I didn’t leave your example, but I know what you’re talking about with your example. Going off of that, the person who sold it to them, automatically part of their context was they understood marketing and naturally did a whole lot of marketing stuff.
It never occurred to them that you’d have to tell people to do that because everyone knows you’ve got to do that. They would feel like they were talking down to their people by saying that. This is that whole curse of knowledge, the expert’s curse of knowledge. That was part of the issue. They didn’t put it in the program. They didn’t talk about it. They didn’t say that this is part of what’s going to have to happen on the backside. They were just giving the piece that they thought the world needed.
The reality was that this is a pretty complicated problem that they were giving a very simple solution for. They were looking at the hard part of getting it on Amazon and having the right keywords and doing those things. For them, at the time, back to “This changed my life, it’ll change yours too,” that was the hard part. That’s the part that they were selling.
I run across them all the time. People who are good at marketing, whether they know they are or not. They naturally do it. They’ve got lots of natural instincts. They don’t ever talk about, “This is how you have to market it.” Of course, you have to market it. If you’re someone like me, who doesn’t duh on marketing, then that’s a big, giant piece you left out of the equation. Now, it’s not working for me because you’ve left this giant black hole that I don’t know how to fill, although you say you’ve delivered everything that you were going to deliver, which technically you probably did.
Using this gal’s example, she got the information that she probably needed, but they left this giant black hole, which was the question you asked. She was like, “Why would I need to do that? How would I do that?” As you said, if I had realized I needed to do all of that, I wouldn’t have even started this thing. That’s what the issue is. It’s that it’s a bigger, more complicated problem that we look for a simple solution to.
That’s the core issue. We are looking for and we’re being sold simple solutions to complicated problems. I would even say some issues are not complicated, but they are complex. They have multiple parts, multiple assets.
Complicated or complex, yes.
When To Choose One-on-One Advice Over Online Courses
Complicated or complex problems, and then we’re trying to throw these simple solutions at them. What do you think could be some signs that we might see that tell us we’re on the wrong path?
Don’t make any assumptions on a definition that’s not very clearly defined. Share on XThe first is to say, “Is this a complicated or complex problem?” If it is, there needs to be some consistent one-on-one advice. As soon as it’s complicated or complex, the context-matters issue starts popping up. Your context needs to be taken into account. There’s no way to take it into account if it’s a course because a course is fixed. I’m talking about an online course.
I think you’re talking about an online, prerecorded, on-demand course.
That is going to pre-answer a preset of questions, not necessarily your unique question. If they say, “We do Q&A,” part of it is also to understand how much time, how many questions they cover, how many people are showing up. “We’re going to do a 30-minute Q&A every week.” That sounds great unless 100 people are showing up. You’re jockeying to get your question answered, among others, during that 30 minutes.
It’s not even great if there are only 30 people on that call.
That’s only great if you’ve got 3 or 4 people on the call. That becomes the next issue. How big is the cohort that you’re in and working? How often can you be on those calls? You may need more of the call time than you do the course time. Of course, there’s the other piece of are you motivated enough to do the things that you have to do with it? Presuming everyone is being an A++ student and writing all of the things. At some point, not getting the results is enough anti-motivation that we also stop doing all of the things. That’s another piece of it.
My answer these days is that a course is only a good choice if it is a very narrow problem. I’m only looking to solve the narrow problem. Going back to your example, my narrow problem is I’ve got all of these ideas. I know they’re good for a book. I know how to talk about it, but I don’t know how to get it on Amazon so that people can find it in a search. If that was the only thing I was trying to solve, that course probably would be a beautiful course.
Types Of Problems Coaching Programs Can Solve
I’m going to change the question up on you because I like this direction that we’re going. Instead of thinking of the signs that you’re on the wrong path, what are some appropriate solutions to common problems? You gave us one big one, which is that courses are great for very specific problems. They are great solutions for very specific, narrowly focused problems. I’m going to drill you is how we’re going to do this. What’s a coaching program good for? What kinds of problems could a coaching, and I’ll let you define, because you might want to say, “A three-month coaching program. Group versus one on one.” What problems can coaching programs solve?
The first thing is, is it truly coaching? Are they only asking you questions and pulling it out of you? Do you need to have the answers somewhere? Is it much more of a training advisory, whatever kind of program? There’s a distinction there and you need to know which way we are going. Are they going to keep asking you questions? If you keep asking me questions about something that I truly don’t know, I’m not going to ever get anywhere. It doesn’t matter whether it’s an individual, a small group, or a big group, I’m not ever going to get anywhere because I’m stuck. There are times that I do know deep in my soul I have the answer. I just don’t know quite how to get to it.
You haven’t been asked the right question yet.
Exactly. You need to be thinking about how quickly you want to get to the answer. The more personal and individual you are, the more you’re going to always move faster than you are with a group program. It’s natural because every question will be directed specifically to you. Every answer will be specifically your answer. You aren’t having to extrapolate your answer from someone else’s answer. The next piece is the speed, and of course, an individual is usually more expensive than a group.
How much money do you have to invest? That’s going to make a decision as well. Also, do you like group interaction and getting insights from other people? Some people like that and can extrapolate well from them. It’s like, “Susie asked this question. They gave this answer. I’ve got a problem that’s not that problem, but I can see how to take that answer and apply it to my problem.” That makes great sense to be in a group environment.
If you're hiring someone, make sure you understand what you're hiring for. Share on XBack to how much access do you want to have, then that’s how big the group environment. I encourage people to always ask very specific questions because people say it’s a small group. How do you define a small group? I know people who define a small group as 100 people. I also know people who define a small group as 30 people. We define a small group as 8 people.
Those are all very different. Depending on how you envision the market, you may say, “100 people is never a small group.” If you’re used to working in rooms of thousands, then 100 is a small group. Don’t make any assumptions on a definition that’s not very clearly defined. If you’re comfortable in a group of 100, great. If you’re thinking small group and you’re wanting 8, make sure that you’re getting in a group that’s 8 and not 100.
When To Hire Service Providers For Your Business
We talked about the appropriate problems that coaches can solve. What about direct service providers? When do I hire somebody to do the thing for me?
We’ve talked about this a lot on the show before, and I have great faith that we will be talking more about this on the show in the future. The thing about direct service providers is, do you need or want to be involved long term? If you’re hiring someone to do your social media, is that good or not, based on whether you need to be involved long term or not? Are you offloading the pieces that make sense or not?
If what you’re selling is you and your personality, you probably still need to be somewhat involved in it unless you’re hiring a pretty high-level person who can do your voice well for you. If you’re paying $15 an hour, you are not getting that person. There’s no way. It may be, “I just need to have a presence there. It needs to talk about what I’m doing. It’s not that critical. I’m selling a very well-defined product. I can put the product.” Great, then you can hire a service provider for that.
Back to make sure you understand what you’re hiring. This is a different version of the coach question. What are you really hiring? Using social media as an example. Are you hiring someone who is going to make it pretty and get it posted on a schedule? That’s one level of person, but are you hiring someone to write in your voice, to take your thought leadership, to get it out there, to do it in a way that it feels like you? If at any point they go away, you start in, and no one says, “Who are you?” That’s a whole different level of person.
Knowing what you’re hiring and making sure that they’re capable of that is where that piece plays in. That’s where a lot of people feel like they get taken is they say words and either people say, “I can totally do that.” It’s like, “You’re 22 years old. You’re not a native English speaker. Yet, we think that you should be able to speak in my voice and write long-form content that sounds like me. Do all those pieces line up? Is it possible?” Yes, it is possible. There’s someone out there who can do that. Is it likely? No, it is not likely. Being able to do that is a high-level skill, and it takes a lot of time.
I feel it’s important to insert the fact that your standard of excellence matters too. I’ve worked for people, and I should say, as a service provider, my standard of excellence was about five steps above theirs. They just wanted it done. They didn’t care. I have worked for people whose standard of excellence was about five steps above the market rate for what they were paying me. You’ve got to get clear on that as well.
The Role Of Consultants In Business Problem Solving
We’ve talked about the appropriate problems to be solved by courses, the appropriate problems to be solved by coaching, and the appropriate problems to be solved by service providers like hiring somebody to do it for you. I didn’t mention consultants because consultants are this interesting space that people don’t know what they do, but do you want to touch on that for a moment?
Consultants typically are working with much larger organizations because they’re a bit of a hybrid between a coach and a service provider. They’re working with you, but they usually have a solution, something that they’re focused on, something that they have excellence. Sometimes, they will have multiple solutions, but it’s still what I’m going to call a fixed number of solutions. It could be someone who’s installing a CRM system, as an example. They don’t know all of them, but they know Zoho and they know Salesforce.
They may know 2 or 3, and they can help you figure out which is the right one and then help you get it implemented into your system the way that you need it to be implemented for you. Typically, consultants fall into the larger business than who I think of as our audience. That’s why I call myself a business advisor because I fall in between all three of those, between coach, consultant, and service provider. I don’t do any service-providing work.
I also don’t call myself a consultant because I’m not actually delivering physical things, but I am delivering ideas and advice that may not be able to be pulled out of you because you may not know it exists as an option. All of those are a little bit different, but in all cases, the same questions apply. Do they have enough experience to get you to where they need to be? Are they more experienced than they need to be? The coaching questions still apply both to the consultants. The coaching and the service provider questions both apply to the consultants and business advisor pieces as well. Are you getting what you’re needing? Are they narrow enough, or are they broad enough in their knowledge to get you what you need?
There is a piece where I’ve had folks say, “I use my fill in the blank.” It could be, “I’m going to pick an accountant for the moment because it’s tax season while we’re filming this,” and say, “My accountant does my business advice for me.” That’s fine, but they’re looking at everything through a financial lens. They’re not looking at it through the broader lens of human resources, technology, leadership, all of the other things. Can they give you great advice on the financials? Yes, positively. Is that the correct advice for all of your business problems? Probably not.
Creating Your Path To Business Success
Gwen, thank you. What we’ve done now is not a framework, but we’ve laid out a process by which our audience can create their own path to success. The first step in the path is getting clear on what problem you’re trying to solve with the business advice you’re seeking. We’ve already established all the costs that are associated with following bad business advice. First, you want to get clear on the problem that you’re trying to solve.
Second, you need to get clear on what is the ideal way you want that problem solved. Do you want to learn how to do it yourself? Do you want somebody else to take it off your hands and you’re perfectly okay having somebody else do it forever and being blissfully ignorant? Do you feel like there’s some internal knowledge that you have that needs to be pulled out before you can move forward? That’s important. Figure out how it is that you want your problem to be solved.
To your point, it is figuring out what’s the right timeline for solving that problem, what’s the budget for solving that problem. We didn’t say this, but I’m going to say this because it’s fully in alignment with our show, and everything that we stand for here. Everything should have a budget. Your budget for solving the problem should not be based on what people are willing to charge you. It should be based on what value you place in getting that solution.
Also, understanding that sometimes your budget and what you want don’t align, and they’re never going to align.
That’s important information too. That brings us to the end of this episode. I want to thank you for tuning in and say that whether you are just starting out in business or you have been in business for years, it is important to remember that your path to success doesn’t have to look like anybody else’s. In fact, it likely won’t.
The key is finding strategies that align with your values, with your strengths, and your individual definition of success. Gwen would throw in your business model as well. If you’re struggling to figure out what strategies make sense for your business, you don’t have to figure it out all alone. We have From Insight to Impact, which is our premium weekly email subscription that helps you gain clarity on your business, one reflection at a time. Head over to EverydayEffectiveness.com/impact to learn more.
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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.
