You can only do so much as the leader of your business. That is why one of the most powerful tools for scaling your business is delegation. In the third episode of the ‘From Solo to CEO’ series, Tonya Kubo and Gwen Bortner dive into the art of effective delegation and building a high-performing team. Learn how to overcome perfectionism, embrace mistakes as opportunities for improvement, and create a culture of empowerment and trust within your organization. If you feel like you’re still doing everything yourself, or you’re struggling to trust your team to get things done without you, this episode is for you. Tonya and Gwen discuss how to delegate effectively and build a high-performing team that can run without you micromanaging every detail.
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From Solo To CEO: The Art Of Delegation And Building A High-Performing Team (Part 3)
Tonya Kubo here, joined by my favorite operations expert, Gwen Bortner. This episode is all about how to delegate effectively and build a team that not only supports your business but helps it thrive. Before we jump in, I just want to remind you that this is the third episode in our series of four that focuses on making that jump from solo to CEO. What we are addressing is one of those most powerful tools when it comes to scaling your business, which is delegation.
We know how much CEOs, especially those of us who identify as women, struggle with the feeling that we must do everything ourselves. If you are somebody who just feels like you can’t trust your team to get things done without you, we have designed this episode for you. Gwen, before we jump in, here’s what I’m hoping you can do for us. I want you to share one quick tip on delegation that our audience could apply that would start freeing up more of their time.
Delegation Tip
Delegation only works well when all of the important information is out of your brain and in someplace else that other people have access to.
When I say give me a quick tip, you’re not supposed to drop a bomb like that. Say more for me. I need you to explain.
Sorry, because that was like the first thing that came to my mind, because we’ve been telling people, we don’t actually prep this. It’s what was the first thing that came to my mind. Part of it is because that really is the first and most important thing for delegation. This is a human characteristic. This isn’t about women or men, and this is just a characteristic of being human. We make way too many assumptions about everything, quite honestly.
We make way too many assumptions about everything. Share on XWhen we’re talking about doing things, we make leaps that seem so obvious to us because how would you not do that? Because this is the way that you do this. It feels like we’re talking about step A, step B, step C, step D. It feels that way in our head and the way that we do it. Even when we start getting it out of our head and we say it’s step A, step B, step C, step D, as soon as someone else looks at it, what they’re seeing is step A, step E, step J, step K, step O, step B, and there’s a whole lot that’s missing in between.
Part of the challenge is we often think that when we get it out of our head and on, I’m going to say paper, I don’t necessarily mean physical paper. It can be any of a dozen forms of outside communication. As soon as we get it out of our head and onto paper, we think we’ve done it all because everyone knows what to do, and it’s so frustrating because that step between step A and step E for us, we thought was one step, but for everyone else, it’s like, what are all these things going in between?
We get frustrated. It’s like, obviously, you’re going to do this and then you’re going to do this and this because how would you not do that? That’s not helpful for anybody. Understanding that this kind of a thing is a very iterative process because the first time getting it out, it will seem right to you. As soon as someone else starts doing it, you’re going to find there are things that are missing.
Full transparency, we’re dealing with that.
I’m sure that’s why this came to my head.
We’ve got a key player on our team who is out unexpectedly. First of all, we thought we appreciated her before. We’re recognizing how much we appreciate her. Second, we’re recognizing that our brains are wired differently, and the things that she did that looked so easy, that looked like they were just one step, I asked a question, and she did a thing. I’m personally finding that there were five steps in between that she just naturally did and didn’t think about, so why would she write it down? I feel like we’re in the pain that a lot of our listeners have been in with one exception, Gwen.
We know delegation is crucial. We understand that we could not do as much as we do in our organization if you weren’t somebody who was so comfortable releasing both the role and the full responsibilities associated with the role. I’m not sure that there are very many CEOs who have the same level of comfort with delegation that you do, but I’m curious, aside from what you’ve already said, what do you think is the sticking point? Why is this such a barrier for so many CEOs, especially when they’re going from, remember, we’re focused on going from solopreneur to then having a team?
Perfectionism: Barrier To Delegation
The thing that popped into my head as you were saying that, and I almost interrupted you, but it was like, we’re trying to be better, not do that. I won my little gold star because I didn’t do that.
You get an emoji, adult gold stars.
What popped into my head, and it really is the answer to your question, is I think a lot of female entrepreneurs have a strong tendency toward perfectionism in some capacity. There’s a lot of different versions of that. If you want to learn more about it, we just shared the perfectionist guide to losing control. That’s one of the things that she talks about in that book, there are a lot of different ways that we actually can be identified as perfectionists that may not quite be the way we typically think of that. The idea of if it’s not right, I’m going to feel bad about myself, I’m going to be shamed, all of those things.
When we start giving it to someone else because it still is our business, then if I give it to someone else and they don’t do it 100% exactly the way that I had intended it to get done, I’m bad, which of course is not true. None of this is about being good or bad, but we get into that space. We worry that if it’s not done exactly right, part of this is just lots of experience. Part of this is me being really comfortable with saying, I’m really sorry, we made a mistake. I’m sorry, something didn’t work the way that it was supposed to. I am so grateful that you shared it so we can make it better next time and not say, by the way, I’m a horrible person, you need to hate me.
Even in my head, I’m not saying that. Definitely not saying it out loud, but I’m not saying that in my head either because I don’t believe that. I think that’s one of the reasons I’m probably better at this than a lot of people. I just see it as an opportunity to iterate and improve instead of finding an opportunity to place blame and get upset. I think that’s a really key piece here. It also is a place that I don’t shame myself about either. I also look at it as a place for me to iterate and improve, not give myself shame over it.
That’s good. That’s my experience. I’m working with you too. It’s not like that just sounds good. That is the reality of working in our organization. I think one thing where I have got tripped up in the past, I like to think that I’m a little bit more evolved, but where I’ve got tripped up in the past is people love to tell you, and I say, people, experts, coaches, consultants, whoever you tend to hire or you tend to look up to in business, they tend to position delegation as this way of allowing you to put on your CEO pants, focus on high-value tasks for the organization, strategy, innovation, leadership, and not getting bogged down in the day-to-day. That sounds good.
I do think that a lot of times, and I know this was true for me, is getting bogged down in the day-to-day actually honestly sometimes feels good because I feel like I’m good at that. I wouldn’t have started a business on this if I wasn’t good at what I did. I’m good at that. I wasn’t always good at my own strategy, my own innovation, my own leadership. That’s where I’m trying to make decisions, and I don’t know for a fact if the decision I’m making is right or wrong. It’s uncomfortable to delegate. It’s uncomfortable to say, I’m going to give up all the stuff I know I’m good at to then focus on the stuff that I’m not sure I’m good at.
Where I’ve landed at my wise old age is, though that sounds great, and I talked myself into being like that for a long time, it’s also a fast track to burnout. What I want you to talk a little bit about, what I really want to hear, is how can I overcome that feeling, that resistance to putting the stuff I know how to do and I think I do better than everybody else, giving that to somebody else to go live in this very uncomfortable space of being a visionary leader for my company and how that’s going to help me out in the long run.
Tiny Consistent Steps
The first piece is something that we talk about a lot at Everyday Effectiveness, which is tiny, consistent steps will get you way farther than big steps from time to time. Because they’re tiny, they’re easier. It’s easier to get comfortable with them instead of saying, oh my gosh. I’m just going to use a crazy example, but I don’t generally walk around that much. I like walking, it’s not something I do, but my average day is definitely below the 10,000 steps people say. It’s probably closer to 3 to 5, but a few weeks ago, we were at Disneyland, and we did 30,000 steps in one day. The reason that was easy is because we were just taking the steps and doing the thing and going forward and forward. However, if you would have said the day before, get prepared, you’ve got to do 30,000 steps or you will not have officially done Disneyland the way you want to do Disneyland.
Tiny consistent steps will get you way farther than big steps from time to time. Share on XI would have been freaked out about that. When we’re talking about delegation, to me, it’s approaching Disneyland. Take it a step or two at a time, and don’t try and delegate everything all at once because part of the delegation process is learning how to delegate. If we’re delegating a ton of stuff and it’s going really poorly, we feel really poorly about a ton of things in our business, which is overwhelming, and it’s not fun, and we can put all sorts of negative emotions associated with it. If we do it on one thing and it doesn’t quite work, and so we tweak it, and we make some adjustments, and it’s like, oh, here are the couple of things that I wasn’t thinking about.
When we do the next one, we do those things, and we say, oh yeah, this went better, but there are still some places for some improvement, and then we do the next one, and all of a sudden, at some point, you’re like, hey, this is working pretty well, which is what happened with us when we onboarded the person who’s on leave. It was like, we got to a really good spot. When she left, we were back in that spot again to say, here are some places that we didn’t document well, that we didn’t do all the things we needed to do. We’re taking it as little steps again and not just saying, we’re horrible people, this didn’t work, right?
Those little incremental steps, as opposed to saying, I’m going to take everything that’s in my admin and take it off my plate and delegate it, even though I’ve never delegated anything before in my life, bad choice. You’re setting yourself up for failure, frustration, all of those things, unless you’ve done a ton of delegation somewhere in your past and you really do know how it works and how it works for you.
I like that. One more question. I’m just trying to think of how we make this episode most useful to the average listener. There’s one thing that I’ve seen bubble up over time with clients that we’ve worked with, but also in other spaces that I’ve been in, which is the feeling, trying to think of how to articulate it, but you’ll know what I mean when I say it, that the concern that it seems that if I delegate this task, I think I’m too good for it. I should be willing to roll up my sleeves and do all the things. How do you help that business owner, Gwen?
To me, that’s just a different version of perfectionism.
I don’t like that but keep talking.
Because my attitude, which works, I think a huge percentage of the time, is I’m going to assume that the people I hire will actually do a better job than I do. I know that’s true with you. I know it’s true with all of the people that I have hired, but not every time. There have been times where it’s like, you’re not actually doing this better than I would. That’s probably a sign that maybe this isn’t a right fit, which is also okay.
I know that 95% of the things that we have delegated into your bucket within our business, you do way better than I do. There are a few that I might do a tiny bit better, but not so much that it makes sense for me to have it back because then we’ve got handoffs, and that’s a whole other episode. I know that you do it better. Instead of saying, I should be doing this. To me, that’s a bit of a martyrdom kind of attitude.
I can see that, actually.
Martyrdom is a part of perfectionism. Read the book.
We will put all of the information on the book in our show notes, promise.
That also, to me, is that piece of saying I’m always the one who can do it best. I want to say that I am not the one who can do it best. I want to be focused on the things that I really can do the best on and/or that I enjoy the most. Sometimes there’s a little bit of both, and that’s also yet a whole other episode, but really being okay with, no, they really can do it better. Could I do it if I absolutely had to? Yes, because when I started out by myself, I was doing everything. Part of the reason that I brought in other people is because they can do it better. It’s not because I’m better than they are. That’s just their skill set.
Where To Begin
That makes sense. Let’s just say I’m bought in, I am ready to delegate. I’m ready to go. Where do I begin? I know people say to write out the list of things that you hate and just start offloading those. Write out the list of things that only you can do, but you’ve just established that many of us think we’re the only people who can do all the things. How would you start to identify tasks to delegate versus tasks to keep?
If this was easy, everyone would do it really well. I’m going to start with that statement because people always make it sound like all you have to do is dot. That is never the answer when it comes to delegation. Part of it is because people are involved. As soon as we put people in, we have the nature that people are problematic because it’s the nature of being a people. Transferring that information and communication and all of that is challenging. If you can first open your mind to this is going to take work and I’m not going to see instant results in the first week, month, often several months before it really is starting to take hold, that helps a lot.
That’s the first thing, getting yourself into the right mindset of, “This is going to be work.” This is not just going to be, I’m going to hand this off and I’m never going to worry about it again, and poof, because it just doesn’t work that way. That’s the first piece, but when we think about what makes sense to hand off, I would love to give you a great answer on that. This is where our favorite phrase of context matters means I can’t on a podcast because with all the clients we’ve had when we’ve talked about this, I’ve come up with very different answers, even though in some cases the clients were in relatively similar situations, and it’s not an obvious answer.
Part of it is really thinking through how will this benefit me in creating the time that I need, in the space that I need it, and in the way that I need it. I’m sure we’ve said it before somewhere, but I’m going to say it again because it’s really important. Everyone says hire a VA, that’s the easiest thing to do, hire a VA. Not that that can’t be the right answer, but that isn’t always the best answer. Hiring the cheapest, easiest, and fastest isn’t always the right answer. For a number of my clients, actually hiring a top-level consultant who was making a lot of money was a better answer for what they were doing.
Hiring the cheapest, easiest, and fastest isn't always the right answer. Share on XThe other piece that I think is really important in this is if I free up this time by handing it off to somebody else, how am I using that time for myself? Because that is where we start seeing how I make the choice of what to hand off. If I hand this off and I’m not doing it, what am I putting into this slot that is worth the value that I am paying for to have this handed off? It doesn’t necessarily have to be work, by the way. We’ve talked about this in a previous episode. What you may first delegate is cleaning your house. That’s not directly a business thing, but that could be the very first thing you delegate, that you’re cleaning your house because you don’t have it thinking, the house is messy and it’s bothering me.
I don’t actually care about a messy house, but I also know I’d be up to here in the dirt if I didn’t outsource the cleaning of the house. It’s what are the things that my brain is not worrying about that make sense for me to delegate? As I said, don’t keep it just to the business because sometimes it’s outside of the business first, because that clears our brain to actually be able to make better use of our business hours, because we aren’t doing all of these other things. As you can see, as I’m talking about it, that’s why I can’t tell you what is the first thing. Often, this is one of those things that you need someone who can help you reflect on it instead of just going by the answer is checkbox.
I’ve seen recommendations before. Do you recommend a task audit or a task study? Is that helpful for somebody who’s trying to figure out what to delegate?
Yeah, I personally find it helpful. The way that we do it, we approach it sometimes by listing all the things that you do. I don’t do it as a time audit, not how much time it took, just what are you doing? Because the time audit sometimes becomes so cumbersome, people don’t do it. I’m answering emails, I’m doing client service delivery, I’m cleaning the house, I’m cooking meat, just all the things. Do that for 2, 3, or 4 random days. Don’t always do it on Monday, do it a Monday and then do it a Wednesday and then do it a few random days and see what comes out of that. What I encourage you to look at is what could I delegate.
Not that I should delegate, but what could I delegate? What could someone else do where it really doesn’t lose any value because I’m not doing it? Also, when you’re looking at it, are there any things that got on that list because someone told me I should do it, and I’m not feeling like it needs to be done at all? Take those things off. That’s the easiest thing first. Saying what could I delegate as opposed to what should I delegate. Because that gets us into a different space. What could I delegate? Not that we have to, because we probably, as we’re making this transition, can’t afford to delegate everything that we could delegate. That gets it into a smaller list and says, okay, of these things, then we can start asking ourselves those other questions.
What of these things would be easiest to delegate? Cleaning the house was really easy because the people that I hire know how to clean a house. I didn’t have to tell them anything other than show them a few pieces of things like where we keep this and where we keep that. It was super fast. What could be easiest? What would give me the biggest relief of delegating? Back to cleaning the house, that’s a huge relief because I really hate it, like ridiculous kinds of ways, and so we start there. Also, where could I hire someone cleaning the house who will do it better than I would ever do it and can do it in a way that makes sense for me financially?
Because you brought up the should, decide by making sure that you list what you could delegate or think about what you could delegate versus what you should. What have you seen? Maybe I want to call them misunderstandings, but maybe some problems have come up around what CEOs should be doing versus what they could hand off to others.
Challenges For CEOs
I’m going to use email because it’s a classic example that everyone says you should not be managing your own email. Yes or no? Could be either, depending on your situation. When you say it should be managed by somebody else, that’s saying if you’re managing it, you’re doing it wrong, which I don’t agree is true. If during your day, you’re spending 5 or 6 hours managing your email, for whatever reason, you probably do need someone else because there probably is something better that you could be doing in your business than managing email. That may also be a whole other set of issues besides that. If you’re spending a little time in the morning, in the afternoon, even a little bit of time in the day, and it’s not a huge distraction, it’s not a rabbit hole, it’s not all of those things.
Maybe you don’t need someone to manage your email. I manage my own email. Tonya, you’ve watched me do it from the front and the back end. At one point, we started to say, no, I’m going to have someone help me. It was like, that’s actually not more efficient because I don’t have that much email coming in. I have set it up in a way that it’s already self-managed, and so it’s not a big deal. That’s one of those where paying someone else to manage it is probably an expense I don’t need to be paying for.
That makes sense. That was really helpful.
Did that address what you were looking for in the should?
Yes, and also, the email example was not one that I expected you to bring up, but one that I think is so important because I’ve heard that too, you should never touch your inbox. A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to somebody, and they were like, I know I shouldn’t touch my inbox, you’re going to scold me for touching my inbox. I’m like, no, I’m not. I told them the story about how when we were looking to offload your inbox management, it actually created more problems than it solved, simply because one, you were so efficient with your own email, two, you had an established system that was working really well for you.
Delegating Effectively
Three, you get so little email that, in the back of your mind, you had too many open loops around messages coming in and not coming in, because you knew the cadence of what you were getting. When they were filed too fast, you didn’t see them, you started to worry about things getting missed. It was incredibly inefficient for you to delegate your email compared to managing your own. Let’s talk about delegating effectively. You’ve said a lot of things. I know that I’m not supposed to assume too much. I need to give people clear instructions but break down the steps for me to effectively delegate a task.
The first thing is to be clear on what the task is. In that case, what I mean is where we’re starting and where we’re ending. That, to me, is the task, where does something start with the person, and where does it end with the person? What is that outcome? That’s the first thing. The next thing is, and what are typically the steps that we use to get from here to there? This is going to be an iterative process. You’re going to write down A, B, C, D, and they’re going to see it as A, E, whatever, Z. It’s going to be iterative to get through that piece. I find when you encourage the person you’re delegating to, and it doesn’t work with everybody, it depends on where their level is, but for them to ask questions will allow you to start seeing, does it need to be that way? Or is it that way because that’s the way my brain works?
Because true delegation is when they own the acceptance of the task and the result of the task. When we truly delegate, what happens in the middle doesn’t matter. When I say that, there may be some conditions and some guidelines and things, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be exactly the way you did it. You start by saying, this is how I do it. That has to be the very first thing because most people don’t have any idea how to get from here to here without you telling them, this is how I do it. As you’re iterating, that’s when you look to say, but do I have to do it that way, or are they presenting some ideas and concepts that will allow us to do it a little bit differently but still get to the result and not have anything in the middle that’s problematic from an activity standpoint for other people, whether it be our customers or our other internal folks, whatever, then what we have to move to.
True delegation is the acceptance of the task and the result of the task. Share on XThe first is just the list. The second is iterating to get to the best answer. The third is for them to start taking ownership of it and you not need to check in or give them lots of information about all of the steps, but you’re still checking that the result is happening. Most people stop delegation there, and that is not delegation because you’re still owning responsibility, which means you’re still a bottleneck for the piece. The next piece is the very hardest piece. If you try and do it too early, it won’t work either. This is why I say this process is a long process. The last step is making sure the result is the result it’s supposed to be, and that you’re accountable for it. That means when it goes wrong, for whatever reason, there are all sorts of reasons something could go wrong, I’m not going to take it at all that I should have been paying attention to this.
I’m going to go to you, and the first question I’m going to ask is, what happened? I’m not going to accuse you of doing something wrong. I want to approach it with curiosity. What happened? Why did this not work? Is there something we need to address? Did some other process insert itself and break what was working? There are all sorts of things that can go on here. I’m also not going to own it with anyone else that’s seeing it. I’m not going to say, Tonya did this thing wrong, and I’m going to fix it the way I would have fixed it. The first thing I’m going to say is, I appreciate you bringing that to my attention. Let me talk with the person who owns this, and then we’ll get back to you. I’d love to say I do this perfectly all the time. We know I don’t. I probably do it better than most, but I boof that up sometimes as well.
We all make mistakes, but when I do that, it’s best, because then I’m not trying, it doesn’t look like I’m trying to fix somebody else’s problem. I’m not saying they were at fault. I’m just saying, thank you for bringing that to my attention. Let me see what happened, and the appropriate person is going to get back to you. Sometimes that’s me, sometimes that’s Tonya, whoever, and then we go and look at that issue. I’m truly not taking any responsibility for that activity. They own it. That’s where true delegation hits. Almost nobody gets there. They keep the responsibility, so they keep the bottleneck.
Because I was thinking, so based on what you’re saying, step one’s clear communication. I don’t think anybody would argue with that. I think that everybody’s like, you got to communicate clearly. You need to make sure your team knows exactly what’s expected. I think most of us would go next to setting milestones and deadlines, and figuring out that path. How do we actually establish a cadence of accountability that’s not micromanaging? We tell them where we want them to go, and then we say, you have to get there by this time, and then here are the milestones. There’s that piece of iteration, which you brought up, that I don’t think people think.
People think, I gave them the deadline, I gave them the milestones, and then I let them go. They should have it. It should be fine, but your point is that it is always going to be in a constant state of improvement. There’s always going to be something that falls through the cracks, something that nobody thought about, couldn’t predict. While you can set those milestones and deadlines, you’ve got to be willing to iterate. Part of that process of iteration is also recognizing the resources and support that your team needs in order to succeed at the job that you’ve given them. I think the point that you just made about when a problem arises, when something falls through the cracks, not jumping in and going, I have to go do that myself.
I have to do everything myself around here, checking with the person, figuring out what fell short, and then giving them what they need to go solve it themselves. There is that piece of ownership. It’s theirs. It is their ball to run with. That doesn’t mean that you don’t follow up. That doesn’t mean that you don’t give them feedback as things arise. Ultimately, at the end of the day, this is theirs, win or loss. Does that sum it up?
That absolutely sums it up. The thing I kept going through my head, and it makes people laugh, and it helps them see it, is when you fully delegated, you don’t take the monkey. What I mean by that is you don’t take the monkey off of their back and put it onto your back. The monkey is theirs. Often in those early stages, it’s, here’s the monkey, and it’s, no, no, no, not my monkey.
It may be your circus, but this one’s not your monkey. I’ve used that phrase, and people really, no, I’m not supposed to take their monkey. This is their monkey to care for and feed for. The natural response early on at that last stage, which people struggle with, is they either want to hand it to you, or you want to grab it off their back. Both of those things don’t work. From time to time, I’ve considered and maybe once actually gave one of my clients a little stuffed monkey to remind them, like, no monkeys.
Building A High-Performing Team
I love that so much. One last thing that I just want to deliver on the promise we’ve made to our listeners, which is we said that we were going to talk about how effective delegation can help you build a high-performing team. I feel like this process of delegation that you just walked us through really is the process of developing a team that performs well, whether you’re present or not, and I’m going to say the foundation of a self-sustaining business, which then leads to you not getting burned out, which is so important. Is there anything else that you want to add, like when somebody’s thinking about delegating in the context of what we’ve talked about that falls under advice for building and managing a high-performing team?
We talk about it a lot, and we can talk about it for hours, but we’re not going to do that. The accountability piece in a way that is supportive and not punitive is the key to a high-performing team. Part of that accountability is not keeping people who are not performing.
Accountability, in a way that is supportive and not punitive, is the key to a high-performing team. Share on XThat’s hard.
We talked about that, too. These are both giant topics, and we can’t do what’s left of this. Those are in we can probably put links into places where we’ve talked about those and others, but those are the other two elements. It is about good delegation. Once we’ve done good delegation, the accountability piece is actually way easier. The understanding when you need to realize that someone is not the right fit, not that they’re a bad person, but they’re just not the right fit for this role.
What I would say that you’re really talking about, it’s the culture. You have to develop a company culture, a corporate culture, whatever you like to say, but everything we’re talking about is there’s a culture of accountability. It is okay to screw up, you just have to own it. You don’t have to apologize profusely over and over again. You just own it. Part of that accountability culture, I think, also builds a culture of trust. I trust you to say what you are going to do. I feel like you trust me to execute. I know how to make independent decisions because I do have ownership. Gwen, so good. We have covered the importance of delegation in growing your business, and we’ve explored some practical strategies to delegate effectively. I love it.
It all starts with clear communication. Make sure people know what you expect of them, if nothing else, and then give them a timeline, give them deadlines, and give them milestones. Most importantly, recognize that it’s a process. You’re going to learn as you go along, they’re going to learn, and it’s all going to be better if you can acknowledge the fact that some of these things other people are better suited to do than you. What I hope you remember more than anything is that the goal here that we’re looking to achieve is to build a team that you can trust, that feels trusted by you. One that allows you to focus on the big-picture strategy, because that’s what wearing your CEO pants is really all about while they handle the day-to-day execution.
If you want to start delegating more effectively and building a high-performing team, I would love for you to visit us online at TheBusinessYouReallyWant.com. We have resources and tools there that will help you take the first steps in freeing up your time and growing your business. Don’t forget, if this is the first episode you’ve listened to, go back, and listen to parts 1 and 2 of From Solo to CEO, but come back for the fourth and final episode in the series where we are going to talk about personal growth as a CEO and balancing leadership with self-care.
Mentioned in the Episode
- This is Part 3 of 4 in the Solo to CEO series. Listen to all episodes in the series:
- Find all resources mentioned in the episode at The Business You Really Want
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.
