Simplify To Amplify Part 4: Take Control Of Your Business Commitments

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The Business You Really Want | Business Commitments

Feeling like your business commitments are running you instead of the other way around? It’s time to tackle the biggest business bottleneck most entrepreneurs overlook: the commitments themselves. In this episode, Tonya Kubo and Gwen Bortner wrap up their “Simplify to Amplify” series by dissecting the four types of business commitments—time, relationships, financial, and marketing—that could be draining your energy and bandwidth. Gwen, an expert in everyday effectiveness, and Tonya explore how to identify these energy-draining obligations, gracefully exit the ones no longer serving you, and build a commitment strategy that aligns with the business you actually want. If you’re ready to stop rushing from one obligation to the next and finally take control of your schedule, this episode is your roadmap to reclaiming your time and amplifying what truly matters.

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Simplify To Amplify Part 4: Take Control Of Your Business Commitments

Are you running your business, or are your business commitments running you? We are wrapping up our Simplify to Amplify Series with a look at what might be your best business bottleneck, your commitments, and the things that you say you will do and keep doing. If you are constantly rushing from one obligation to the next, wondering where your time went at the end of the day, and feeling like you never have enough bandwidth for what matters, this is the episode for you!

We talk about how to identify the commitments that are draining your energy, how to gracefully exit ones if they’re no longer serving you, and how to build a commitment strategy that aligns with the business you want. In our last two episodes, we looked at simplifying offerings and simplifying processes.

In this episode, we’re focused simplifying your commitments. These are the four types of business commitments that you should be taking the time to evaluate.

Unveiling The Four Types Of Business Commitments

The first one is always time. Time is your big commitment. Where are you using your time? Time, technically, is our most limited resource. The next one is relationships. When we’re talking business, we’re talking about client business relationships. Your personal relationships fall into this as well because they all interrelate. That’s one of the things that we talk about. We’re not doing this stuff in a silo.

Then there’s the financial commitment piece of it. What are we committing to being able to support financially long-term? Laslty, one of the ones that I have fought tooth and nail most of my time in business is content creation, or marketing, commitments, like getting your information out there and keeping up with it. 

Some of these also overlap. A marketing commitment could also be going to a networking event. That’s also a time commitment, and that’s also a relationship commitment. There are lots of intersections of these commitments. The big thing we’ve got to remember is that when we start talking about commitments, we’ve got to be very aware of the shoulding all over ourselves. The shoulds get us in a big, bad way when we start talking about commitment.

Managing Time Commitments: Meetings and Minutes

I feel like there are certain areas where the shoulds bubble up more than others. Part of why we come up with these four types is that these are four types that we’ve worked on in your business. I’ve worked on them in my own business as well. Let’s start with the time commitment. When I think of all the things that I have to commit time to, I think there are formal meetings that I have with clients or that I might have with a service provider who is helping me out.

There are check-ins between making sure things are on track and all of that good stuff. You already mentioned networking events. Maybe there are professional development events like conferences, any of that professional development stuff, and then volunteer stuff. We’re still talking about business, not even anything out there with life.

The Business You Really Want | Business Commitments

The thing about all of these time commitments is that we get very focused on the big pieces. We’ve talked about this quite a bit already in this series in previous episodes. We get very focused on the big things. For example, that is a two-day conference. We say, “That’s two days.” What we miss are the little time commitments. I’m going to check in every day and do a quick huddle. It’s like, “That’s only five minutes,” but it’s five minutes every day.

It’s not just five minutes because we have to make sure that we’ve stopped doing what we were doing to start that thing, and then we have to get back into whatever it was we’re doing to do the thing. All of those things end up playing in. A lot of them can become shoulds at some point when maybe they no longer should be on the list at all, as opposed to, “I should be doing this because someone says it was best practice,” or, “I should be doing this because I made the commitment.”

Relationship Commitments: Loyalty and Connections

That covers time. What about relationship?

All of these interlace to some degree or another. Time is going to cross over all of them because anything that we do takes time. Time is going to run across all of them. We’ve talked about doing a separate episode on it, probably soon, which is what I call misplaced loyalty. Relationship commitments can be a big deal of, “I don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. I don’t want to back out of something that I said that I would do because now, they’ll think I am unreliable or they can’t count on me.”

In all of that, there are all sorts of things that we keep doing because we said so, but they aren’t still providing value for us in the longer-term. Sometimes, things in our lives, whether it’s our personal life or our professional life, have shifted greatly. Where I did have space to do this, I no longer have space to do this. Unfortunately, life doesn’t look and say, “We’re not going to throw you any curveballs until the end of December when your commitment for this board or this activity is up.” That’s not the way life works.

All of a sudden, maybe an elderly parent gets seriously ill. You’re having to do way more parent care, for example. It’s like, “I had time to be on this board and do all of these things, but now I don’t. I don’t have that time. I need to put that time elsewhere.” Dealing with that, how do I deal with the relationship that is the family relationship versus the relationship that may be a long-term business relationship? It’s like, “I don’t want to leave them in the lurch, but at the same point, I’m not doing a very good job.”

Relationships are a huge thing, and that ties right into the financial side. A lot of times, the thing I find I’m dealing with a lot with my clients is that they don’t want to let somebody go because they aren’t going to have a job. That’s also a financial commitment to you as the business owner to be making that payment. If the business doesn’t support it, it is not your job to keep someone employed. It’s your job to have a successful business.

The whole Software as a Service, technically, is people, but dropping that is way easier because you probably don’t have to talk to anybody. You can probably do it online. There’s no one to see. There are no tears that are going to be coming through the computer screen. It’s a whole different thing. Financial commitments are in that same space. These all start crossing. That can be a big thing too, and/or we get comfortable with the financial commitment.

Financial Commitments: Smart Business Decisions

We’re shifting from the relationship commitments to the financial commitments. You’re right. A lot of our financial commitments have a relationship connection. I have had some version of this conversation three times because, as we’re recording this, we’re in tax season. I am having so many conversations with other business owners. Everybody’s in a period of growth. They’re having to consider, like, “Is this bookkeeper and/or accountant the right service provider for me as my business is shifting?”

One of my colleagues has been having that conversation back and forth for the last several years, “Is it time to move to an S Corp?” One of the things that she recognized this 2025 was when her accountant brought it up and said, “You could have saved $3,000 in taxes if you were an S Corp last year versus being an LLC.” She went, “Yikes.” She hadn’t realized the cost. What she recognized was that her bookkeeper is not going to be the appropriate bookkeeper when she’s an S Corp. That bookkeeper was her first “grown-up business hire”.

Time technically really is our most limited resource. Share on X

That is a great example of it, where the person who got you here is not the person who’s going to get you there. I love this example. Her accountant was like, “You could have saved $3,000 in taxes,” but I also bet she’s not going to get a bookkeeper who’s ready to do S Corp work at the same rate that her current bookkeeper is. Let’s say it’s $100 a month more. I’m picking a random number, but that’s a reasonable assumption. That $3,000 became only $1,800 because you had to pay another $1,200 for your better bookkeeper for that piece of it. That’s an ongoing expense.

The tax saving is a one-time savings, but back to a financial commitment. I’m committed to spending an extra $100 every month. Those financial commitments, which one do I want to make? Am I willing to make it? What are all of those pieces? It’s tricky. The same thing is true on the other side, where I’m paying for this level of service, but I don’t need this higher level of service. We don’t want to let them go because I might need them at some point.

That’s the whole getting grandfathered in on Software as a Service. I only use 2 of the 12 things they offer, but maybe one day, I’m going to need the other 10. I don’t want to leave and then come back later, paying an extra $20 a month.

In the meantime, I will pay $2,000 for 10 years.

Can you tell I’ve audited my Software as a Service subscription?

Yeah. It’s pretty specific.

Marketing Commitments: Breaking Free Of “Shoulds”

My examples end up being oddly specific in each one. Let’s talk about marketing commitments. What do those look like?

Marketing commitments, out of all of these, are where the most shoulds happen. There’s so much information out in the universe that says, “If you do this, this is what’s going to happen.” That starts sounding like the big should, like, “You should be posting 3 times every day on at least 1 major channel. You should be writing long-form content at least once a week. You should be sending out newsletters.” The list goes on and on.

It is not that any one of those things is bad, and not that it won’t deliver because it often does, but we get so caught in it. Part of the thing for all of these is that we add on things without taking off other things.  All of a sudden, the list gets higher, and we are underwater. We’re not quite sure why because it wasn’t like we jumped in the deep end and we’re drowning.

Quietly, over time, the water level kept rising, or we kept sinking, whichever way you want to think about it. All of a sudden, it’s like, “I’m underwater here. I probably need to get out.” Usually, at the time that we realize it is when the commitments, which are time, relationship, financial, marketing, and whatever, have become way overwhelming. It’s not about dropping 1 or 2. It’s about dropping a whole bunch because we can’t keep this thing up at all.

Many relationship commitments have a financial connection, and many financial commitments have a relationship connection. Share on X

Psychology Of Overcommitment: FOMO And People-Pleasing

Since we’ve unpacked the main categories of commitments, you’ve talked a little bit about the psychology piece that goes into those commitments. There’s also some overarching mindset that gets at work when we overcommit ourselves. I know for myself, I’ve seen fear of missing out. It’s like, “The grass is always greener on the other side. How am I going to know if I don’t go run through it barefoot?” What I’ve seen in some environments, and I see this especially with the mastermind groups, which some of those can be quite a high investment, is that it’s hard to say no. There’s that people-pleasing that comes in.

You want to get your value out of it. It’s like, “I paid a lot of money for this, so I need to be doing all the things. If I’m not doing all the things, I’m not getting the value out of it.” It’s a different version of fear of missing out.

That’s true. I would also say there’s an identity thing. People like us do things like this, and I want to be people like us.

There is an identity thing as well. Let’s use this as an example. Good moms make sure that they are all able to do field trips at least X times per year. They always bake cupcakes. They do not go and buy them at the local bakery. Fill in the blank. There’s probably someone who set that rule on you also outside, but they probably don’t matter in the world. They’re mostly the rules that we set on ourselves. We have set, “This is the rule that we’re supposed to follow.”

I’m curious. From your perspective, and maybe it’s with your clients, where do you see that kind of psychology piece playing out? Do you see people struggle more with fear of missing out, people-pleasing, or identity, or is it a mix?

It’s a bit of a mix. Fundamentally, there’s always some amount of people-pleasing in there. That’s more about who I work with. They tend to say, “I care about people.” There’s this deep caring. Part of that caring gets misappropriated into people-pleasing. I want to do the thing that’ll make a difference in all of that. It’s a bit of a struggle there. The relationship piece out of the four is usually the driver, but it often shows up not as the relationship commitment but as the financial commitment and the time commitment.

That people-pleasing piece, I’m glad you brought that up. I know that you tend to work primarily with people who consider themselves heart-centered business owners. It’s important to them to do good work but also to make a powerful impact in the world. Impact in the world and people pleasing can very easily get conflated. There’s the identity piece, too. It’s like, “Am I heart-centered if I don’t do this or if I do do this?”

The identity gets thrown in there. The series is Simplify to Amplify. What we don’t realize when we start making all these commitments is that we can’t do as good of a job on any one thing when we’re doing way too many things. This is the simplified piece of being able to say, “What are the things that are important to me and my business right now in this space and time, not what I think I’m going to need in the future?” That’s often where we find it becomes a problem. It is when we say, “If I do this, that will get me here.” We often need to be taking the next step, but what I’m talking about is when it’s about six steps beyond where we are.

What you’re talking about is filtering the commitments.

It is. The word I use, which everyone bristles against, is boundaries. It’s being clear about what your boundaries are. What are the things that make sense for you to do, and what are the things that don’t make sense for you to do? We talk so much about alignment and sustainability. To me, that’s how you simplify to amplify. It’s to make sure that the things that we’re saying yes to are fully aligned and are going to be sustainable for whatever is a reasonable period of time until it’s not.

As a business owner, it is actually not your job to keep someone employed. It's your job to have a successful business. Share on X

That goes back to sometimes, life is going to throw you a serious curveball. That means that something that you thought you could do or you should do for 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, or whatever your commitment time is to say, “I can’t keep doing that now. It’s not because I’m a weenie and I give up on things.” That’s where our brain often goes. We beat ourselves up over it.

That is not what’s happening here. We are not beating ourselves up over this. It’s that something came up that there was no way for us to anticipate. We have to deal with that instead. We can’t keep piling on because, at some point, the pile is way too high. I’ve heard of folks that if something new comes into the house, something goes out of the house to maintain balance. It’s that kind of thing, though, because in some cases, there is no more space.

One of the things that I’ve heard you talk about in the past is you walk people through how these commitments align with current goals. For instance, in the 5-3-1s that I’ve sat in on. We have an episode on that. Do you know what the most embarrassing thing is? It is when I reference the 5-3-1, and then somebody wants to tell me all the things they remember about that episode because they read it. I’m like, “Thanks. I had forgotten that. I will revisit that now because I did say I was going to do that and didn’t.” Talk about accountability. I promise if anybody’s reading and they do a 5-3-1 with Gwen, we will not broadcast that as an episode.

One of the things that you talk a lot about in the 5-3-1 is how these commitments align with the goals that you have set or the goals that you say that you want. Sometimes, we say we want things that we don’t. What are some questions I could ask myself that would help me decide if all these commitments that I feel like are non-negotiable are in alignment with what I want to be doing?

Aligning Commitments: The Five Whys Method

It’s one of the processes that I believe has been credited to the Japanese leader and innovator about the five whys, to say why. When you give that answer, why that? We talked about it further throughout the whole episode. Someone was like, “I want to sit in a bigger business.” My first question is, “Why do you want to sit in a bigger business? Often, the assumptions that we’re making about that thing aren’t true.

The same thing can be true with our commitments. We’ll take a volunteer role, as an example. You’re like, “Why do you want to be on the board?” They’re like, “I care about the issue.” You’re like, “Why is being on the board important as opposed to being an active participant?” There may be reasons. Why does that matter? It’s getting down and saying, “Are the whys there? Are they substantive enough?” At some point, it’s like, “I thought that was the thing we’re supposed to do.”

Is it somewhere coming into some version of should? Sometimes, it is, and sometimes, it’s not. I’m not saying that having a board role is a bad idea because I have lots of volunteer board roles and have found a lot of value in them. I also re-evaluate them on a regular and ongoing basis. A lot of my process, how long, and all of the things are based on decades of experience of doing this and understanding.

I also know things like I’m not on a whole bunch of boards at the same time because I can’t do that well. I’m not saying that you couldn’t because maybe you could, but I am getting clear about what my boundaries are around those kinds of things and how I am making that process. What I think is the why. Why am I doing this? What is the value of my doing whatever the thing is?

It starts helping us figure out, “Is it aligned? Am I doing it because it sounded cool, because I read it on social media? I had a book that I read, and I got very excited about. I’m doing all the things.” You talk about this well in some other cases, about where people start solving a problem they didn’t know they had. Do you want to talk about that? That, to me, is a version of this.

Tell me if I’m going in the right direction here to what you’re thinking of. I always talk about this in terms of making intentional buying decisions. I believe strongly in professional development, but I believe every professional development investment is only a purchase if it’s not intentional and in alignment with your goals.

A lot of times, people confuse time limits with time minimums. Share on X

One of the questions I will always ask when you’re thinking of buying something, whether it’s a course, a program, or getting into a mastermind, is, “What is the problem that you think this is going to solve? How long have you been trying to solve it? What have you been doing to solve it? Is this a problem you already knew existed, or was it in the process of being in the marketing funnel for this product? What identified this problem for you?”

We’ve talked about this before. One of my favorite examples is that people will spend a lot of money on lead generation solutions. Oftentimes, we’ll find out their problem was not lead generation. It’s that they don’t have a sales process. They have plenty of leads if they had a process in place to make offers, but they don’t have a process in place to make offers. That’s not a sexy marketing language, like, “Let me help you create a sales system. “Let me help you find more leads so that the sales come naturally,” is sexy.

That’s where this whole alignment piece comes in. Is this something that is on your mind, that you’ve been working on, that you can see where the path is leading you? To me, that’s what we’re talking about. It’s alignment.

I like that approach because what it enables you to do is list down all your commitments in the categories that we’ve given you, because it’s overwhelming to try to list everything off the top of your head, and then ask yourself those five why questions for each commitment. One thing, though, that I will add to this is the question of do these commitments support your business model and your revenue streams?

The reason I bring that up is because I happen to know a lot about the women who tune in to this show. Many of the women who listen to this show are service providers. Since I am a service provider and you are a service provider, I know that we tend to be surrounded by people offering marketing solutions that are designed for traffic-based businesses and product-based businesses. These are businesses where you have to sell a lot of volume.

Those solutions are great solutions if you need a lot of traffic, but you and I don’t need a lot of traffic. We need strong relationships. That’s an entirely different commitment to our marketing strategies and such that are required. I would add that little piece of asking yourself, “Does it support my business model? Does this support the revenue streams?” You’ve touched on this before. There’s where my money is coming in from, and where I wish my money is coming in from.

I am not saying that everything you have to do supports your business, but we’re doing this from a business perspective. Are there things that you’re doing under the guise of supporting your business? That’s also okay, so long as you know that it’s not. You’re like, “The reason I’m doing this is because I like the people, and I want to have these conversations in my world.” That’s fine. Don’t pretend like it’s supporting the business because we also should have some commitments that are part of our personal life that can still be in alignment, but it may not be in alignment with the business.

Exiting Commitments: Practical Tools And Strategies

Where I want to spend our last few minutes is I want some practical tools. I go through my list and go, “This doesn’t work.” How do I exit? The thing is, I can exit or I could renegotiate my commitment, especially if it’s a board position or whatever, or a volunteer commitment. How do I get out from underneath this without feeling like I’m a terrible human? That’s what I need to know.

Part of it is being confident and knowing why you’re making the decision. Do you have to get out of it right this minute, or do you say, “I’m going to do this at a natural turnover process.” I am a believer that if we make a commitment, we should maintain a commitment unless we can’t. Sometimes, life throws some pretty surprising curveballs at us, and then we can’t. Too bad, so sad. If we’re realizing, “I’m overcommitted,” it is to look and say, “When would be a natural turnover point? When would it be relatively easy to get someone else to come in and fill this position?”

One of my clients, a number of years ago, was president of her local HOA and was realizing it was taking way too much of her time, and she wasn’t able to focus the way that she was supposed to. I said, “Is it being president or is it being on the board?” She’s like, “The president makes it worse, but I don’t even have time to do the board work. I’ve been on the board for quite a long time.” I said, “When’s your term up?” She said, “Not for another fifteen months.”

Over a year.

The person who got you here is not the person who's going to get you there. Share on X

I said, “Could you resign at the end of this school year? Let people know now so that they can bring in another board member, and the vice president can move up to president. They can do the things.” That was one of those classic things where, to me, this seems so incredibly obvious. It was a giant light bulb for her.

That would not cross my mind at all. I know myself.

She was like, ‘I could do that.” It’s not overly painful for the board. It’s not fulfilling your full commitment, but there’s a cycle for them to bring in new people every year. That particular role, they typically do as a two-year role. This was her 2nd term, so she was in years 3 and 4 of this. It wasn’t like she’d done two months and was like, “I’m out.” She had made a pretty serious commitment over time. Lots in her world were changing, part of that curveball of what was happening. She went, “Oh.”

I talked with her a few weeks later, and she was like, “I talked with the board. They’re all good with it. They understand. The vice president is more than happy to move into the presidential role for the last year. They’ll bring in an additional board member. I’m out. All is good.” I’m not on the board, but I’m in the HOA. I have never heard any grumblings about it. There wasn’t any of that because it was done in a relatively smooth way.

Would I have had the same answer if the term wasn’t going to be up for ten more months? Maybe not because it would be like, “That’s a long time. A lot’s going to be happening.” Part of it is saying, “Is there a way to do this that isn’t as painful for the person that we’re dropping the commitment from?” At the same point, it is also understanding that if you’ve got some major curve ball happening in your life, you’re not going to be performing at the level that you’d want to be performing either.

You know this. Anyone who’s been around me for more than a minute knows honesty is always my best policy. I’m going to be as honest and as transparent about what is going on as I can so that they understand. I’m doing this because there is a reason for what’s going on. For the things that we’ve overcommitted and not necessarily having huge curve balls and other things, part of it is like, “You probably need to fulfill your commitment,” but be okay saying, “I’ve done my thing. It’s been lovely. Peace out.”

Many different examples came up for me in your single example. First of all, when we’re talking about volunteer commitments, but anything that has a term to it, I find a lot of times, people confuse term limits with term minimums. They join a board. The bylaws say, “You have a six-year term limit.” It never occurs to them that they are serving 3 consecutive 2-year terms. They can exit any of those 2-year terms with no harm, no foul, and they’re still good people in the end, but they feel like it would be a failure not to live out all 6 years.

If we make a commitment, we should maintain a commitment unless we can't. Share on X

I love that. I did not say that, but that was a great little piece to pull out. You’re right. It’s true.

When you were talking about the HOA, that’s all I could think about. I also know myself. I’m like, “I would’ve done this,” and then I’m like, “I’ve seen this happen with other people.” On the topic of renegotiating commitments, whether it’s life-altering or not, and this is something you’re good at pointing out, there is so much more flexibility in most agreements than we recognize or even have enough awareness to acknowledge.

For instance, let’s say you’re tied into a service agreement. You have a client, and it’s no longer working for you. Maybe you underbid the contract. Maybe you’ve got some serious scope creep, whatever that could be. You can go back to the table and say, “We need to do this for fewer hours,” or, “We need to do this at higher pay,” or, “I’m going to need to pair off this into a different service provider.” There are a lot of options there. You have to be aware of them. You have to be looking for the alternates. You also have to understand how you ended up in the commitment in the first place, which is back to that question that you were saying with the five whys.

This example that you brought up is super important for people to realize. Most of the time, when we get overcommitted, what’s happened is not necessarily in all cases, but some versions of scope creep, even if it’s a volunteer board position or other things, either we didn’t understand what was expected of the role or over time, it’s moved and has become bigger.

When we talk about being able to sustain your business and for it to be fully aligned, part of it is you’ve got to own what it is that you own. Whenever I talk about boundaries, everyone pushes against boundaries. If you don’t hold them, who does? That’s the thing. Who is going to hold them? Undoubtedly, there are a few people, but most people are not saying, “Let’s see if I can get a little more out of them.” That is not on people’s minds. They often don’t understand what you were saying in your agreement. You were saying, “I’m going to write three blog posts.”

What they heard was, “I’m going to write three blog posts. Plus, I’m going to do all the posting. Plus, I’m going to reformat those for a newsletter, plus I’m going to do this. Plus, I’m going to do that.” You didn’t say that, but in their minds, they’re like, “Why would you only do the three blog posts? That’s not worth anything.” They’re asking for more. If you don’t say, “That was not what was included,” or, “I’ll do it this time,” how is this time different than next time? It’s not.

We’re talking about simplify to amplify. Part of it is being clear on your side of the equation as to, “What am I committing to doing?” As soon as it starts falling outside of those parameters, you have the conversation. This is where the people-pleasing gets in trouble because a lot of times, people don’t want to have the conversations. They’re like, “I don’t want to seem whiny. I don’t want to seem like I’m not able to do the work. I don’t want to seem like I don’t care.” That’s not what this is about. This is about, “I want to do the best job that I possibly can, but to do the best job I possibly can, I have to be clear.” We’re rarely as clear as we think we are, almost never.

I want to disagree with you because I want to be like, “I am so much better than that,” but I am not.

That is not true. We have worked together long enough to know it is not true for you or for me.

The Business You Really Want | Business Commitments

 

Key Takeaways: Simplifying For Time And Energy

None of us. As we wrap up this series of Simplify to Amplify in the talk about commitments, I hope that if you’re reading, at the very least, you recognize that you’ve got four key types of business commitments. There’s the time, relationship, financial, and marketing. We wrote it down in our notes as content creation, but it’s marketing.

You want to explore what is driving the overcommitment if you’re overextended. Do you have a fear of missing out? Is it people-pleasing? Have you fairly or unfairly connected your identity to the commitments? Go through and ask yourself why. Go through the whys of the commitments to get down to the heart of whether this is aligning with what you want and where you want to be.

We gave you some tips for gracefully exiting, or at the very least, renegotiating those commitments. It all comes down to boundaries. All of it. This is not about how you have to do less or you have to cut things away. This is about clearing away the obligations that drain your resources and don’t move you forward either in life or in business. Gwen, you are the person who says this. Every yes to something is a no to something else.

We rarely know what we’re saying no to when we say yes to something else, and even more rarely find out what we said no to when we say yes to something else. We’re saying no to something else. Sometimes, it’s better, and sometimes, it’s worse. Not everything that we’re saying no to is like, “I should have said yes to that.” Sometimes, it’s like, “I’m glad I said no to that. That is okay. This was a better choice.” It is about being able to say, “What do I want?”

Keep that list down to a small enough piece. The whole series here is about simplify to amplify. Even if we have all the good things on our plate, at some point, too many things are still too many things. It is being able to say, “This is something that’s going to have to come off so that I can focus on the thing that I need to focus on at this point in time.”

We didn’t talk about it a ton, but it is about at this point in time. It doesn’t mean something can’t come back on the plate later.  It is about this point in time. Life is dynamic. What was appropriate yesterday may not be appropriate for tomorrow. The thing that we’re doing now may last us for a long time or may be for a season.

Good stuff. That brings us to the end of our time. If you’re ready to reclaim your time and your energy by simplifying your commitments, we’re here to help. We’ve got From Insight to Impact, which is a weekly accountability subscription that provides you with a thought-provoking question each week designed to help you evaluate your business decisions and stay focused on what truly matters. When you respond, you get a real-life human response from Gwen, and sometimes me, that will help support you in simplifying these commitments, or at least practicing the natural steps that it takes on the journey. Head over to EverydayEffectiveness.com/impact to learn more and start creating the space your business needs to thrive.

 

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.