The most satisfied clients aren’t the ones you bend over backward for—they’re the ones who work with businesses that have clear boundaries. If you’re constantly scrambling to meet last-minute client requests, dealing with never-ending projects, or struggling with scope creep, it’s time to rethink how you set boundaries. In this episode, Tonya Kubo and Gwen Bortner explore how creating structure doesn’t limit possibilities—it actually expands them. They discuss why boundaries protect both your time and client relationships, how to stop reinforcing bad behavior, and the real cost of weak boundaries on your business. Get ready to learn how to set clear expectations, enforce them with confidence, and create a business that thrives without burnout.
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Client Boundaries: The Secret To Sustainable Success
Service providers, our episode is for you. Especially if you find yourself constantly scrambling to accommodate last-minute client requests and finding yourself with projects that are dragging on endlessly while new clients wait. We are tackling what might sound like a counterintuitive thought, which is that the most satisfied clients are not the ones you bend over backwards for.
The most satisfied clients are often the ones who work with businesses that have the clearest boundaries. We’re going to show you how creating structure doesn’t limit possibilities. We’re going to show you how creating structure expands what’s possible for both you and your clients. My name’s Tonya Kubo, joined by the incredible business advisor, Gwen Bortner. We’re discussing something that comes up all the time.
The Biggest Mistake Service Providers Make With Clients
Comes up all the time with my clients. Honestly, I’m a service provider, comes up all the time with me and my business. It does not come up for Gwen except through her clients because she has the best boundaries of anybody I have ever encountered. The struggle is real. I hate to use a trope here, but it is just true. The struggle is super real. Gwen, I’m just going to let you take it from here. Why do you think this topic is so critical for service-based business owners, especially?
One of the phrases I used for years is don’t reinforce bad behavior.
Don't reinforce bad behavior. Share on XSay more.
We probably should put that on one of our mugs, “Don’t reinforce bad behavior.” I’ll say we’ve often been trained to do that. We see it happening a lot out in the world. My classic example is the child who’s misbehaving, and the mom says, “If you do that again, you’re going to get in trouble.” They do something very similar, and they don’t get in trouble. Get another if you do that again. It’s not always the case, but probably what the child is wanting is attention.
Why Entrepreneurs Thrive On Firefighting
They’re reinforcing the bad behavior because when you do the bad behavior, I’m giving you attention. That’s an example. In the service provider world, one of the things most entrepreneurs are really good at is a Dan Sullivan, probably a butchering of a Dan Sullivan quote from Strategic Coach, but is most entrepreneurs are good at heroics, at firefighting. There’s something that it’s the adrenaline hit, it’s the dopamine hit, it’s all of those chemical hits of, “Look at me, I just did something amazing for you.”
The problem, as Dan Sullivan says, is when you’re a really good firefighter. At some point, you start to become an arsonist. You start setting the fires. In my world, it is we’re reinforcing the bad behavior so I can show you how well I fight the fire. Very few of us would want to admit that. It’s like, “I hate it.” It’s like, “Why do you keep doing it?” “It’s because I have to.” There’s very little in our world that we have to do. Most of the people listening, possibly everybody listening, are not dealing with real fire, real flood, or blood, which I call fire or blood.
Lives are not going to get lost if that newsletter doesn’t go out on Tuesday like it’s supposed to go out. No one is going to die. No one but we act like, “We have to have it done by then.” “No, we don’t. It may frustrate you. It may mean you have to push your launch back a day there, but no one’s going to die. That is not true.” We like to have that feeling of “We saw this giant thing.” When we get our clients in the habit of allowing them to make us heroes, then we’re reinforcing bad behavior. We’re shocked why they don’t ever get things done on time.
What they know is that they don’t have to get it done on time because you will come through in the clutch with the thing that they need until you say, “Nope, not going to happen for three weeks now.” For them to like lose their frickin mind. They aren’t going to believe that you meant the deadline that you meant. It’s all about once you start establishing those boundaries, so long as you are consistent in holding them and being very clear if and when you allow someone to cross them, that this is what this was and this was this time, and that is because of this unique situation and it’s not happening again, they will keep pushing because all of us are fundamentally seven-year-old kids on the playground.
There’s a great research where when they had no fence, the kids all huddled together. As soon as they had a fence, once they knew what their boundaries were, they were at all the far edges of the playground. We are all fundamentally seven-year-old kids that are wanting to know where are our boundaries. Where do we push them? Until we know what they are, we’ll keep pushing past them.
The Cost Of Weak Boundaries
The cost of weak boundaries, which anybody wants to know my boundary issues, we can just go back to the episode where Gwyn walked me through a 5, 3, 1 goal setting session very briefly, but it’s a good enough example. I have experienced in my own business never-ending projects. The project just never seems to get tied up and off-boarded. Scope creep is probably my biggest.
The one that frustrates me the most, because it is the one that I believe affects my ability to deliver with excellence, is having the stress of multiple urgent deadlines converging. For instance, in my business, there is an offer that I have done for several years, and it’s a strategic roadmap. That is what it is labeled as. I would tell people, like I’ve done it all sorts of different ways. I’ve done it in a single-day session.
I’ve done it over a couple of weeks. I started doing one more. The work was asynchronous versus live and in real time with the client. I would say, “It’s 4 to 6 weeks, largely dependent on you getting me the stuff I need in a specific period of time because we’re going to do this, and then you’re going to go off and collect these things and get them to me. Once I get those things, I’m going to do this. My part is two weeks after I get this.
Hands down, never is such a week, one day. It’s not one week in three days. It is always for two weeks. I got this down to a science.” What happens is it gets to their part, and they are off chasing shiny objects or, quite honestly with my clients, they are dealing with their own fires and they are putting out fires. I’m over here going, “I cannot do my part until I get your part.” Their answer was, “It’s because I work with the nicest people you could ever imagine.”
This isn’t all my clients, but all of my clients are pretty amazing people, but they would be like, “That’s okay, Tonya. I don’t mind. We cannot launch it in October, we’ll launch it in November. We’ll launch in December.” Meanwhile, I was counting on the project to launch in October so that I could bring on two new clients to serve in the month of October, launch them in November, and so on and so forth. What happens is if this project isn’t launching until November, now instead of launching four clients in a month, I might be in a position, if this happens with more than one client, I’m expected to launch 6 or 7 and I’m not sleeping and it’s not fun. I’m questioning my life choices.
I shouldn’t laugh.
You should totally laugh. We’re not going to go into the psychology of why I do this. You’ll have to listen to the other episode for that.
I have to say I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing with you, but no, I’m liking it.
You’re totally laughing at me because this is not a problem you have. Gwen, because we’ve talked about this privately, both you say, “Tonya, as your client, I can tell you this.” Also, as a service provider to other business owners who struggle with the same issues that I struggle with, I want you to break down for our readers why clients appreciate structure.
Why Clients Actually Appreciate Structure & Clear Deadlines
One of the things is that it becomes very clear as to what to expect. They’re also not surprised on the other end. It allows conversations to be less emotional and more matter-of-fact. It doesn’t become about them. It becomes about the thing. What most people are wanting is they are wanting the result, whatever the result is. It allows you to be able to consistently give them the result and/or update them very realistically about what the result now is going to be based on whatever happens.
Sometimes things happen. It’s not because all clients are bad and evil and they’re they’re trying to do this on purpose. We do not believe that. Everyone on the planet is most worried about this person, ourself. That’s it. Everything in our mind doesn’t say, “I want to make sure that Tonya can deliver what I’ve asked her to do.” We think about, “I need this now,” until we get in the habit of how do I make sure that Tonya is delivering the highest quality work that I want her to deliver.
That’s by allowing Tonya to be able to set boundaries and guidelines and do all of those things. Fundamentally, that’s what I really want, but I don’t think of it that way. When you, as my service provider, set that up for me, then I stop having to worry about, is it going to be the best quality? Is it going to be delivered in the way I want? Is it going to be delivered by the deadline? Is it going to be all of the fill-in-the-blank things? That takes out a piece of my cognitive load when I know exactly what to expect and how to expect it.
We’re reducing decision fatigue.
It’s not even decision fatigue. It really is a cognitive load of like, I’m just worried about. It’s not even a start like I’m making a decision, but it’s sitting back here taking cycles because it’s like, “Is she going to get it done?” Once we know that it’s like, “No, she’s going to get it done. I don’t have to worry about that.” The classic example, a physical example, is I used to teach knitting, and one of my big things is I’m always on time. I always start on time.
I’m always in the classroom at least ten minutes, if not 15 or 20 minutes early so that I can start on time. One time, I had gotten the wrong time in my head because the two gals that I was rooming with were doing a class and their class started a half an hour later. Usually, all the classes started at the same time. This one had this weird schedule. I had in my mind that it started a half an hour later than it did. The organizers had worked with me enough. They panicked when someone said, “Gwen’s not here.” That was like, “Gwen must be dead.”
That’s what I would think.
They’re like, “Are you okay?” It was like, “Yeah.” It’s like, “Your class was started at 9:00,” and it was like 9:10. It was like, “I thought it started, I got in my mind, it was 9:30.” I thought it was 9:30, I was like, “I will be there in like three minutes as fast as I can get there.” I was mostly big apologies, but because my boundaries of how I behave were so consistent, they didn’t like, “No, she’ll be there. She’s always late.” They were worried. I had enough consistent students that the students knew if Gwen’s not here when it starts, something is going on. They also went to go find a person to tell them right away, “Gwen’s not here?” Not like, “Gwen’s not here again.” This is like, “Gwen’s not here.”
“Check her hotel room. Look for a pulse.”
“Check her hotel room. Make sure she’s not dead or injured or sick.” That’s the power of the boundaries is everyone knew exactly what to expect which makes it more comfortable for everybody. It also wasn’t weird for any of the people who wanted to like it to react strongly because they knew exactly what to expect.
The Four Essential Components Of Effective Boundaries
In all my great years of practicing boundaries, otherwise known as every day, just trying to get a little bit better than the day before and still so far to go, I see four essential components to effective boundaries. I think part of the problem that people like me run into is that we look at boundaries as a monolith. It’s this one unified thing. You set a boundary, and then you, I don’t know, go off and have tea or something. Boundaries have components. The first is having very clear prerequisites.
Having necessary elements that are required before the work begins. As a service provider, that may be as simple as, “You have to pay the invoice before I start work with you.” It may be, “You have to sign the agreement before I send the invoice because I’m not taking your money until you have already agreed to our terms. I’ll send the invoice, and then once you pay the invoice, work gets started.” Having those clear prerequisites, I think a structured timeline and I fight this left and right. I’m still fighting this, just so everybody reading knows.
I have my own hills to climb, folks, but the structured timeline where you’re creating realistic deadlines with client input. I think that’s key. We hesitate for a structured deadline because we’re like, “We don’t know where this is going to go.” Fine. Maybe it’s not. I think maybe it’s just, “This is Tonya’s problem here.” I don’t know because there are cases where I’m like, “They tell me they have all of this, but until I see it in my hand, I don’t know really what we’re doing.”
What I’m personally recognizing is I still have been doing this long enough to set a realistic timeline deadline and then have the client collaborate with me on what makes sense based on what’s going on in their life and what’s going on in mine. To your earlier point on defined consequences, I think that’s the biggest. Having options that are explicitly stated for what happens when deadlines aren’t met. Finally, the backup system.
What are your alternate pathways to keep projects moving? I think so far, all we’ve really talked about Gwen is it’s me saying, “I cannot do my part until you get me this. Now I’m in a holding pattern,” which quite honestly is a position of powerlessness. Like, “I cannot help it. I’m a victim.” In reality, if I went into the agreement saying, “If you don’t get me this on time, we’ve got option one and option two. Option one is I move ahead without you. Option two is you appoint somebody else who can get me this stuff within five days.”
Setting Consequences: How To Enforce Deadlines Without Guilt
Option three is you go to the end of the line, and by the way, that’s months from now.
Say more because that’s just like, “I almost have to go to the bathroom now. That makes me so nervous.”
This isn’t true for everybody, and I’m not making a critical judgment, but if your services are truly in demand, and I’m going to use the example you used at the beginning of your strategic roadmap. You are saying, “I’m expecting this to be done within six weeks.” You can just say six weeks, which means I know I can start another one on this date. I know that many times you’ve then had the next one signed up for that date, and so on and so forth. Right down the line. The problem is, if they don’t do it by this date, four weeks out so that you have your two-week deliverable timeframe.
If it’s five more days, you’ve now pushed five days into this next one. Where the answer, for me, because I’m really good at boundaries, would be, “If you don’t hit this date, I will let you know when the next available slot is. Currently, I’m scheduling for July.” Now that may freak them out, but it’s like, “When we contracted, you knew you had four weeks to get me this information. I understand like everything in your life went to hell in a handbasket, but your crisis isn’t necessarily my crisis.” Back to this is not life and death. Most of us are not dealing with life and death.
“If you needed someone else to do it, you should have thought of that five days prior. That’s your responsibility to figure out who else is going to do it and/or I proceed without you.” Like, “Proceed without you is fine, assuming you can, you cannot always do that, but assuming you can is fine.” Say, “You get two choices. Either I proceed without you, or we’re going to reschedule you to the next available slot, which currently is such and such.” By the time four weeks have passed, the next
available slot may be September because if you’re really selling these like hotcakes, by the time those four weeks have passed, that could be September.
You don’t say the date. You say, “The next available slot, which currently is.” When they get there, it’s like, “You have two options. I will proceed without you, or we can go to the next available slot. The next available slot is X.” “I cannot do that.” “I also cannot deliver the quality product that I want to deliver in the way that I want to deliver. I am not going to punish all of my other clients who are getting me stuff on time by doing a half-assed job for them because your deadline has run into their day.”
Is that a direct quote? I supposed to follow that script, Gwen?
Yes. Here’s the thing that we forget. Books that struggle with boundaries often have some amount of people-pleasing issue. They don’t want to make this person mad, but what you forget is when you’re doing that, you’re not punishing the person who’s misbehaving. You’re punishing all the people who are behaving. You’re saying, like you said, you take on four at a time. “These other four people who I wanted to give ample time to, what I’m doing instead is I’m going to jip you out of some of your time, some of my brain cells, some of my energy, because this person screwed up, but you’re going to get the slightly less work.” Now, when you say it that way, all of a sudden it’s like, “I don’t want to do that.”
I don’t like the person that you’re talking about.
That really is what you’re doing. If we go the extreme, the four this month, all pushed before the next month all were getting their deadlines, they’re only getting half of your time experience not with brain. Even though they paid for the full and they did what they were supposed to do. Why are they the ones getting punished?
Myth: “The Customer Is Always Right”
I was going to ask this question later, but I’m going to ask it. “The customer’s always right, Gwen.”
Screw that. That is not true. That is one of those biggest lies on the planet.
Fair, but people still say it. I still hear that, especially from potential clients. Of course, I now have a better filter for red-flag clients.
The first thing is the someone who’s saying, “I’m being totally irrational, and I’m right because of it is not a good client.” It doesn’t matter that they don’t like you. It also doesn’t matter that they bad talk you to everybody because everybody knows they’re a bad client. When someone hears that you told them, “Nope, I’m not doing it.” They’ll be like, “Tonya is amazing.” They won’t be like, “Tonya is horrible.” They’ll be like, “She stood up to that horrible person.”
The reason I asked the question, I knew you were going to have a strong reaction. I didn’t know you were going to have that strong of a reaction. Part of why I asked the question is because what you said is for people who have a little bit of people-pleasing in them. I think a lot of people would say, “That’s not true. I am not a people pleaser. I do not have that in me.” They’ll have some service-based business background, maybe retail or whatever, and they will say, “The customer’s always right. I have to let the customer always be right.” They’ll view it not as people-pleasing but as great customer service. That’s what I really want you to speak to.
Great customer service is only appropriate for great customers.
Great customer service is only appropriate for great customers. Share on XJust give me a moment there.
I love it when I give you a mic rock moment in the middle.
Keep going.
That’s the thing. Great customer service for someone that you are never going to make happy because the customer is always right isn’t great customer service because they don’t see it as great customer service. They just see that you are not filling my every whim. When you fill their every whim, there are now a hundred more whims. This means you’re never getting them what they want. You cannot provide great customer service to someone who is not a really good fit customer for you. It’s just impossible.
You can't provide great customer service to someone who is not a really good fit customer for you. Share on XI like to leave our episodes on a little bit of an upbeat note. What are some tips? I think you’ve given us some already, but maybe it’s more a matter of providing a summary. How do you frame boundaries positively as a benefit to the client?
Boundaries: A Benefit For Clients & Business Growth
Part of it is what we talked about just a little bit ago, which is that by holding these boundaries, however you define them, you can say, “I’m able to give you my very best. Not only do I want to do that for you, but I want to be known for doing that for all of my customers. Where I know you wouldn’t want me to not give my very best to someone else, I also know you wouldn’t want someone else taking from me, so I couldn’t give my very best to you.” This is the fairness play. We’re going to treat everybody and everything the same so that it’s as fair as it can reasonably be. Things are never equal, but reasonably equal, that everyone’s getting the same type of fairness, attention, brainpower, all of those things. Most people want to be fair.
Perceived as fair at the very least.
It allows for that to be part of their motivation. Also, by setting it up ahead of time and making it clear, not just what I need you to do, but if you cannot, here are your options. One of the things sometimes is, keep using your example, one weekend to your four-week timeframe to get me stuff. “Things are going crazy. Reach out to me then, and I can let you know what I can do. Maybe I cannot get it done within the next week, but possibly I’ve really only sold three of my four spots and I can put you in this other spot which means you’re only going to be running a few weeks late as opposed to a lot of weeks late.”
As an alternative, someone who’s in next, I’m going to call it month, next month spot would love to get moved up a spot. I can swap you, too, but I can only do that if I know early enough. Part of this is saying I need to communicate as soon as I know. If you’re waiting until one hour before the deadline, I got nothing for you. There’s only so much I can do. Being clear about why this works and that there are alternatives, the sooner I know it’s back to I’m not being responsible for your behavior.
You get to be responsible for your behavior. This is how you can help me help you. Being clear about that from the get-go. I think that the other thing is that we don’t want to talk about the what if situations because we’re afraid we’re encouraging them to do it, but it’s usually the opposite. To I already thought about this, and this is, we have alternatives, but you cannot be waiting till the last minute. This is too bad.
You are responsible for your behavior. This is how you can help me help you. Share on XWe’re using an example from our own business. We encountered this on the client side a year ago when we were rebranding. Now, we entered that thinking we were refreshing the brand. We were just making a little update, we were just going to zhoosh it up a bit. Lined up several providers to help us. One person who was going to help us just with a few visual elements and some new updated templates.
One person who was going to help us with some copywriting. One person who was just going to help us in our minds, swap out the copy on a few web pages and maybe even redesign it. Lined everything up, got our timeline going. This is going to happen in May, and this is going to happen in June and July, and we’re going to be all set and ready to go by August.
What happened is when we were working with that first service provider, we were like, “It was you because it’s your brand, but I don’t like this as much as I thought. Now that we’re digging into this, and I’m seeing how we’re going to expand this out, I don’t want to expand this.” It went from a little just a little cosmetic touch up to like a full blown Brazilian butt lift, complete mommy makeover, head to toe cosmetic surgery.
What I needed to do was I reached out to every service provider in the line and said, “This just got a lot bigger than anybody anticipated. You said you had this timeline. Now my question for you is I’m thinking we’re probably going to be about six weeks delayed because we have to push pause on provider one, start working with provider two.”
Every single person was more than happy to say, “These things do happen.” One person was like, “Instead of May, we can do August.” Somebody else said, “I’ve got a lot of flexibility in July, gets really tight come August 1st.” When we got to that person’s turn, I went to you, and I was like, “It’s August. Your exact words.” “Yeah, but she already told us that she didn’t have space in August.” “Tell her we’re ready and ask her when the soon as she can fit us in is.”
I like to believe I’m a good customer.
One, you’re a good customer. Two, like I remember in that moment thinking not that I actively expected a different reaction from you or a different response, but I was prepared for one that was different. I was prepared for frustration. I was prepared for, “We really wanted this.” You were just so matter-of-fact of like, “No. She told us when she was available and when she had crunch time, we didn’t get her this stuff in time to take advantage of this window.” Back to, “It’s not fire, it’s not flood, it’s not blood, Tonya, just ask her when she can get it done.”
I don’t think we were not frustrated with any service provider in that whole experience. I never got the indication that maybe they talk about us behind your back, but I don’t think they do. They were never frustrated with us because everything was clearly communicated on the front end, in the middle, and on the back end. Gwen, very quickly, here’s what I need you to tell me. I’m listening. Maybe I have some difficult boundaries, or maybe I have some clients that I’m in these existing relationships with, and I’m recognizing I have a boundary issue. Give me a couple of ideas on how I can introduce boundaries to existing clients without damaging the relationship.
Introducing Boundaries To Existing Clients Without Losing Them
I’d love to say I can absolutely answer that, but I cannot. Some clients adding boundaries, I’ll say damage the relationship. Most of those clients would be the clients that when their name pops up on their phone, when you have to get on a meeting with them, there’s a little thing in your head. It’s like, as opposed to, “Woohoo.” No, there will probably be some damaged relationships, but they usually aren’t with the clients that you want to keep. Almost all.
There can be exceptions. I’m not going to say it’s never going to happen. I’d love to say I can guarantee that. Absolutely. I’m not going to pretend like I can guarantee that. However, for the bulk of the clients, if you can say, “We are setting this new boundary,” whatever it is, “Here is why it benefits you.” I was just an event with Chris Boss, and he calls it the, when you, I feel because.
It’s a version of that of saying, “If we stop this behavior, it benefits you because of this reason that benefits you.” It cannot be all about Tonya. It cannot be all about him. Using the example I used earlier is a perfect example. When I hold you to that deadline, and I hold everybody to the deadline and make sure that you’re getting exactly my full attention that you’re paying for. Sometimes that takes a little bit of thought because our first response, because like I said, all of us as humans, our first thought is about us.
It takes a little bit of thought to say, “How does this benefit them?” Sometimes, that’s something you need to brainstorm. You need to work with someone to say, “Why does that?” Boundaries initially feel very selfish. They feel like they’re only serving me, which is true. They are serving you, but they’re usually serving you so that you can serve others better. Once you start putting that piece out there, the good customers will say, “I get that. I understand that.”
My other thing is if you’re feeling very anxious about it, start with just one aspect. Don’t try to put in this giant list of boundaries. What will happen is you’ll start slipping on a lot of them. My biggest piece of advice with boundaries is consistency, especially at the beginning, which makes all the difference. It’s real, and it takes a lot of energy to be consistent at the beginning when you haven’t held them.
With boundaries, consistency, especially at the beginning, makes all the difference. Share on XIt’s going to take you a ton of energy. Be aware of that. Having ten new boundaries is ridiculous. One new boundary you can do be super consistent with it super consistent with it. Once it becomes habit, and it’s a habit for the rest of the people that you’re holding the boundary for, they’ll stop pushing against it so far. Someone will every once in a while, but it becomes much easier, then we do the next one.
For some people who instinctively can do it, it’s like it’s easier to do it all at once to say here, “A new sheriff’s in town, and it’s the better one here.” Both can work, but for most of the people I work with, putting one in place at a time is the easier way. The clients that are really good. Once you get past the first couple, they’re like, “You can just give me the rest of them because I’m seeing the benefit of it.”
Boundaries Create A Better Business For Everyone
I’m going to have to listen to this one. I don’t want to listen to it, honestly, but I’m going to have to listen to it. Probably on repeat, no lie. Sometimes, the doctor needs the medicine worse than anybody else. Readers, while it may seem counterintuitive, you heard it from Gwen. The customer is not always right. Creating clear boundaries with clients creates a structure where both parties can thrive. You thrive, they thrive.
When expectations are clear and processes are defined, your projects will stay on track, your stress decreases, and the relationship becomes more valuable for everyone involved because their stress decreases when the projects stay on track as well. If you’re ready to implement better boundaries in your business but aren’t sure where to start, I would love to say we can help, but we cannot. Gwen can help. I just know my limits, folks. I stay in my lane. You can get all sorts of information on how Gwen can help at EverydayEffectiveness.com.
If you want to dip your toe in the water in terms of what working with Gwen looks like and what those boundaries can look like for you, we have Insight to Impact, which is our premium weekly accountability subscription that helps you gain clarity on your business one reflection at a time. Every Friday, you’ll receive a thought-provoking question to help you examine your business. When you respond, you’ll get personal feedback, especially if it involves boundaries, directly from Gwen. It will not come from me. Head to EverydayEffectiveness.com/Impact to learn more.
Mentioned in This Episode
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.
