Transforming how clients see your business can be the difference between short-term projects and long-term partnerships. In this episode, Tonya Kubo and Gwen Bortner dive into the critical shift from being just another service provider to becoming a strategic partner. Gwen shares her experience in fostering client relationships that last for years—without contracts or forced commitments. They explore why businesses often rely on rigid agreements, how to create value that keeps clients coming back, and why trust-based relationships lead to greater success. If you’re tired of constantly chasing new clients and want to build a sustainable business, this conversation is for you.
—
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
The Partnership Mindset: Transforming How Clients See Your Business
Transforming How Clients See Your Business
Most business owners settle for being just another vendor when they could actually be irreplaceable partners. Being a vendor might work if you’re a shop owner, but it’s actually a liability if you’re a coach, a consultant, or a service provider. I promise you this isn’t word salad or word magic. I’m not playing with semantics here.
The difference fundamentally transforms your client relationships. It can transform your business model. It will definitely transform your level of fulfillment and your long-term profitability. In this episode, we are going to explore how you can move beyond transactional client relationships into true strategic partnerships. We are exploring this critical distinction between being just another service provider versus being that true strategic partner to your clients.
Gwen, I’m going to take you on a little walk down memory lane. Back a few years ago when we started working together in 2022, most readers already know that when you hired me, you were in the depths of trauma. We love to call your tiny T marketing trauma, which was actually based on a history of working with marketing professionals who applied a one size fits all approach to their work with you and unfortunately, just never yielded the results that you were promised.
I, like you, take a personalized approach to the work I do. The initial engagement, because you hired me and then you went on this like three-week cruise somewhere. I had all this time that I thought, “I’m going to do some market research. I’m going to get to know your clients really well.” In that introductory period, two things emerged that, honestly, I would totally label as weird if it wasn’t so dang impressive. Thing number one was that you have truly incredible clients. Let’s take a moment.
It’s true. I do. I remember you saying, “Your clients are amazing.” I totally took it for granted because I do know my clients are amazing. You were like, “No, at a whole different level.”
Exactly. Not a dud in the bunch, but also not a problem child. Not even what I would call a mildly prickly pair. Two, which is really the inspiration for this episode, is many of them were loud and proud committed lifers. I want you to just take a quick moment if you can, and tell us the average length of your client engagements and your longest running client relationship to date as of right now.
Of course I can. I’m a numbers person, so I know that and I can pull up my spreadsheet that I keep track of. My average length of client is 30 months, so two and a half years. My longest running client officially at the end of this month will be 96 months, which is 8 years, which is exactly how long I’ve been offering this particular service.
Why Long-Term Client Relationships Are Not An Accident
Every other service provider just wept a little bit. There is no need for us to weep because we are going to talk about how this isn’t accidental. This is by design. First, I want to say thank you for the context because I think it’s important. I think we have a lot of readers who want some of what you got going on here because they’re on a sales to delivery rollercoaster.
Constantly having to find new clients to backfill spaces open by those who exit. To some degree, we all accept that’s the nature of business. Every business, every industry expects some measure of churn. I remember my very first course that I ever took back when I decided I wanted to be a grownup business owner. I was told average lifecycle of a customer at that time for online businesses was eighteen months.
That was eighteen months from the moment they got on your email list to hiring you to then exiting to go work with somebody else. That was fast. They painted that as like only if you do superlative service are you going to get that. I have this hunch that nowadays, we’re tired. We don’t want to do that if we absolutely don’t have to. I just want to make sure I’m speaking to the reader here because I know that there are some service providers who have specialties that lead to short-term engagements. You’re a wedding photographer, you don’t get married every single month. Your launch strategist. You’re probably launching a few times a year. Designers, recruiters.
I’m very upset. My wedding photos took two years to get to me.
Yes, that would also be upsetting. It’s very short-term. Photographers launch strategists, designers, recruiters. Even like the work I do in communities oftentimes is very short-term. However, I happen to believe with great confidence that I can speak collectively for everyone involved and say even when you work on a project basis, you still want to be the service provider on speed dial if the client needs the service again.
That’s frequently not case because when you’re doing project-based work, a lot of times it’s out of sight out of mind. We get treated like vendors where they’re just like, “I’m going to put this project out to bid, see who comes in with the lowest bid or the best terms or whatever.” You, Gwen, and I know we talk about this a lot, but it’s one of those things where we talk about it so often that I think we lose sight of being different for other business owners, develop true partner relationships with your clients. What gives?
Why Gwen Doesn’t Require Long-Term Contracts
This is one that would technically probably be better to have all of my clients on and let them tell you why. I’m going to tell you what my perspective is. The first being, and this throws people off and has thrown them off for a very long time, is I don’t have any minimum contract engagement time. I’ll say other than a month. You pay for a month at the beginning of the month and that’s it. If at the end of that month, give or take 24 hours, you say, “This isn’t working,” it’s like, “Okay, great. We’re done,” without any fuss or muss. We have some steps that we go through, but it’s not like, “You have to submit it in writing and you have to do this and you have to give us 30 days’ notice.”
We get none of that. None of that at all. Every once in a while, I know someone who ends up being not a good fit and wants out is actually like saying, “I’m going to show you that you don’t actually mean what you say,” and I actually deliver on it. You give 24 hours’ notice, we’re done. That’s cool. No problem. Without any guilt on their part either. I’m not going to guilt them about it because I know I can’t do good work with them if they aren’t feeling like they’re getting good value out of the work.
Trying to guilt them to stay isn’t actually going to help either of us. I’m going to get frustrated because they’re still not going to do the work. They’re going to be frustrated because they feel like they’re wasting money. Part of this is having the confidence that the right people will stay and that the right people will also show up.
That, to me, is the first thing. Related to that, and it’s an extension to that is their reason to keep paying me is because they’re continuing to see value from the work that we’re doing together. It’s not because we have a contract that says you have to keep paying me. That allows them to make the choice. I’ve had a number of clients over the years who have worked with me for a period of time have stopped because they’ve said, “I feel like I’ve got what I need right now,” and 99.9% of the time, I totally agree with them.
The reason clients keep paying you is because they're continuing to see value. Share on XI stay in touch with them just to check in on them, see how they’re doing. No giant, like, “You need me now.” I’m not making a big sales call in the conversation. I’m really just like, “We spent time together, I’m interested in you. What’s going on?” From time to time, not always, they come back and at another point. It’s like, “I’m now at a new point that I know you and your insight in the way that you work, and the way that we work together will help me get past whatever this thing is that we’re dealing with.”
We can work again for a period and then we may stop. It’s not like, “That would’ve been different if you would’ve just continued to work with me,” because to me, that’s all about the journey and I can’t manage someone else’s journey. I can walk alongside them. I can advise them, I can guide them, I can do all of those things. Sometimes it’s like, “No, this part of the journey I need to do by myself.” Okay, great. Do it by yourself. At a point that you say, “I want someone with me,” I’m happy to come back and be a part of that when it makes sense for both of us. The fact that that’s happened multiple times says a lot to me. In some cases, it’s like, “I don’t actually need you back. I just need you back for like an hour.”
It’s like, “Great. Sign up with me. We’ll have a one-on-one consultation. We’re good to go. Let me help you,” then we’re off again. We’re off to the races. Great. Not putting my success on them that I see my success because of what I’m making them do. No. Their success is their success. I think that is part of what allows them to see me as a strategic partner because I’m not valuing my work based on them. I’m valuing my work, based on how they perceive the work. Does that make sense?
It does.
I know you have questions and you’ve watched it a lot, so hit me.
The problem of course is like there’s six questions which would pretty much take us to the end of the episode and I wouldn’t get to any other part of my outline. It would be good. I just don’t know how much value it’d be to the reader just to listen to Tonya answer her own curiosity over here. I know that the average coaching consultant who has learned from all the people that I’ve learned from and others instantly is going to not bristle necessarily, it’s going to have some resistance to the idea that you can have long-term clients without a minimum engagement.
Anytime I bring this up in any of my like new networking referral call just any of my normal calls with someone who has typically had an engagement contract, the first thing they say is, “How long do they stay with you?” I give the numbers that I just gave and they look at me and their eyes fall out of their head because they’re sure that it will never be as long as their engagement.
I just need to know, why do you think that is? Let me clarify the question for you.
I’ve got so many answers to that.
On one hand, I know that we believe that people only stay through a minimum engagement because we have been told that that is true. I know that because I am in marketing. I’m not going to say I personally am responsible for that belief, but I run in circles with the people responsible for those beliefs. I get that. There’s also, like you would think anybody who’s good at their job would have enough outliers in their own experience that would tell them that what they’re told is always true is not always true. I’m just curious from your perspective, I guess what I want to know is where that belief comes from and also, how on earth you didn’t own that and didn’t adopt that.
Rethinking Best Practices: Common Vs. Actually Effective
I think this is that concept of rarely best practices. They’re just common practices, which doesn’t mean that they’re best, which goes back to your earlier statement. It’s what everyone says you’re supposed to do, it’s what I do. I think it’s also related in that same category of the only way to make sure that your income is stable is to make sure that you have a contract that guarantees your income is stable.
Best practices are rarely best practices. They're just common practices, which doesn't mean that they're best. Share on XIt is true. It is possible. I was just looking over at my list. I’ve got about 15 or 20 clients that right now in various parts of my program that are on my list. It’s true that all of them before the end of the month could say, “We’re done.” I would be both shocked and like in deep doo. I don’t have the guarantee of continued income. I also don’t have to get it to re-up in big chunks at a time. Yeah, someone will drop, but that also means someone else will probably join.
My income isn’t steady, but it’s steady enough. It bounces up and down. I think the steady income is also part of where these best practices, but actually common practices comes from. You can then predict what’s going to happen over the next twelve months or I’ve gotten all the money so now I have control over when and how I use it, depending on what their sales model they’re paying monthly or not. There’s all of those things. I think that’s part of it. I think that’s part of where it comes from.
In some cases, there is reason to actually have the contract because we need for you to actually get through all of these things before you start seeing value. If you aren’t financially committed, you’ll probably stop before you actually get to value. I’m not saying that it never works or is never appropriate because that’s also not true. That’s way less true than it usually is.
I think that’s also part of it. Some of it came out of that environment where I’ve got to have you go through this process and this process and that’s going to take four months. Somewhere on month 5 and 6, you’re going to start seeing the results. That’s why you have to commit to six months at the beginning. It totally makes sense then. I think that’s very limited.
In my own experience, what definitely would drive a need for that is if the work that you do relies on data. A lot of times, you’re going to need at least three months of data to draw any conclusions. That’s like one area where you can definitely like, “Okay, the time it takes is the time it takes.” Of course this is not a marketing show, so we’re not going to go down this path, but this also speaks to what we’re seeing in the marketplace.
I love this because we can go down both paths.
Why Clients Hesitate To Sign Long-Term Contracts
We can, but this also speaks to what we’re seeing in the marketplace where people are resistant to sign up for long-term engagements as well. It’s not because they don’t want to stick it out through the painful parts of the engagement. It’s not because they don’t believe in the service provider. Oftentimes, it’s simply because they don’t know what life has in store for them in the next 3 months, 6 months, 12 months and so they hesitate to make any long-term commitments.
I’ll also say, because almost anyone I’ve talked to at all about this topic, I’ve heard them all say at least once, “I made the commitment, I either got the result way sooner and I didn’t need the rest of the time,” or, “I wasn’t getting the result I wanted and there was no way to get them help me get the I wanted.” There’s a burn factor. If I try and get out, they’ve made it hard. There are penalties.
There’s all sorts of things. There is a resistance to saying, “Why am I giving you all this money without any evidence you’ll actually get me the thing that I’m looking for?” I think almost everybody has had some variant of that expense of that experience, which is also one of the reasons I think people are being more hesitant for it as well. A lot of times, they’ll stay in, it’s like, “I haven’t gotten the thing yet, but it must happen at month nine. It must happen at month ten.” It’s not going to happen. Part of that is the standards like, “That’s a year I’m never going to get back.”
A year of my life I will never get back.
I’ve heard a lot of people talking about that more and more.
The Key Differences Between Vendors And Strategic Partners
In my mind, when I think of the characteristics that make up a vendor versus say the characteristics that I would consider making up a partner in business, I think that vendors tend to deliver something very specific, a very specific service, a very specific deliverable. Whereas a partner contributes to the overall business success. I would say a vendor focuses on their narrow expertise. Yes, we all should stay in our own lane.
Vendors tend to deliver a very specific service whereas a partner contributes to the overall business success. Share on XFor instance, I’ve met people who are Convertkit experts, but they’re like, “Actually, I only organize your Convertkit. I won’t tell you whether your automations are out of whack or not. I won’t tell you whether you have Convertkit set up to appropriately guide your customer on a journey. I am just in there to make sure everything’s organized.” Vendors focus on narrow expertise, I think, of partners as connecting their work to the broader business context.
I think of vendors responding to requests and partners actually anticipating needs and opportunities and filling them, telling me what I need to know, not just what I want to know because they understand that I don’t always have the knowledge to know what I need to know. I think in some cases, this is not true in all sectors, but a lot of times, vendors will compete on price. Where partners really tend to focus in positioning themselves among competition based on the value and the outcomes. Do you have anything to say there anything that you think is off base or maybe that you agree with?
No, I think all of that is true. I also think it’s important to know, and I think this is the place where a lot of folks get done a disservice by what I’m going to call social media best practice memes.
I love me a good meme, Gwen.
That’s a way overgeneralization, but, “I’m taking this information. Everyone says this is true. It’s the best way.” One of the things is not everybody and not every role, job or service can be a strategic partner. It’s not that we’re saying you’re better if you’re a strategic partner than if you’re a vendor. That’s not true. Where the problem is when you are a vendor and you try to act like a strategic partner, or when you are a strategic partner and you’re acting like a vendor, it’s not that one’s better than the other because it’s absolutely not true at all. I would never say that.
Understanding what you’re offering and then designing the business around that so that that can be as successful as possible to me is the really important piece here. It’s the one that pops into my head. If you have a course, a course really is a vendor activity. It is not a strategic partner because we’re providing information. They’re supposed to be taking action on it. It’s to get them a specific result. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s perfectly acceptable. Believing that they should stay in your course for 24 months and trying to design it so that happens is probably actually not doing anything positive for your business.
Courses are priced that way. You pay one fee. You start, you finish. You’re right. Even if a course creator has a consulting or a service providing component, the course business itself is very much a vendor business. That was actually what had me thinking about this episode and coming to the table with this. What I see in the marketplace, what I’ve seen for years, is people are course creators and they’re really happy course creators.
They are so stinking happy having their $297, $497 courses out there. They run some social media ads to it, they get some PayPal deposits, life is good. Maybe they go to a webinar, but they take a course. They hire a coach or consultant, and the coach or consultants tells them that the big box lies in high ticket consulting, high ticket coaching services.
Now they find themselves in the position of service provider, but the business model that got them there is not the same. They still have course creator mindset but it’s like they’re still approaching the relationship as if they were a course creator where I have presented the material step by step by step the best I know how to present. You either do it or you don’t. They’re not actually in a place where they want to or maybe even have the ability to guide the client along the bumpy road.
As you were saying that, I was cracking up because it’s absolutely true in the opposite direction as well. You have someone who loves doing one-on-one work, who’s really good at being a strategic partner. Someone comes in and says, “The way to make a lot of money is build a course and scale by having all of this done automatically.”
Work one to many, Gwen.
That is the exact same problem in the opposite direction. Neither one is actually right. They’re each right for the right person. Trying to force for any reason best intentions into the other direction isn’t necessarily good. It’s not good advice. We both have our context matters caps on. Context matters. Part of the context is what actually lights you up, what works for you, what makes you happy as the owner, CEO, founder, business owner or how you define yourself. That’s why I was laughing because it’s absolutely true this way, but it’s 100% true the other way and both are as bad information.
To your point, it’s like you can be really happy doing one, you can be really happy and successful both doing the other. There are people who can be happy and successful doing both. I think what you’re saying, though, the key is you got to know what you’re doing when you’re doing it. It really does have to fit in with your own definition of what success looks like for you, your business, your lifestyle, and all those things.
I talk about this with my clients all the time. They’ll say, “I want to do this other thing,” but you need to be prepared that functionally is a completely different business than this business that you’re currently doing. It feels like it’s the same business. It’s not the same business. This would be an example we’re using here of courses is one business and one business model. We’ll just say one-to-one consulting.
There’s a whole lot of variance in here, but one-to-one consulting is a very different business model. If you’re going to do both, you may be functionally running two separate businesses. Even though it feels like it’s one business, which is often why that world falls apart because we’re trying to still run it as one business and it’s not one business. It’s like two divisions of one business. We’re not thinking of as a division, we’re thinking it’s the same thing. It’s a different product and it’s like, no, it’s more than just a different product.
I would say the equivalent of education. I went to a very small school, so it was K to 12. You just crossed a parking lot to go from elementary to junior high and junior high to high school. While they were in the business of educating us, the goal and outcome, the elementary program is very different from the junior high program, which is entirely different from the high school program. Elementary program, they want to make sure we can read, we can write, we are positioned for success later on. In high school, it’s all about are you prepared for college? Are you prepared for the workforce? Totally different business models if you think about it, even if it’s under the same umbrella.
For the reader who says, “I think I know what you’re talking about, Tonya. You’re saying a lot of words here. Gwen’s making it a little bit more clear though, but I could see where my business and my clients would benefit if they viewed me less as a vendor and more like a partner. What are the steps I need to take?” In my mind, the first step I think would be you’ve got to change how you talk about your business and what you offer. What would you say?
I think that’s true. Back to when we first started working together, one of the challenges that “all the marketing people say” is what are your results? I always bristle at that question. Finally, like quite honestly, it’s only been in the, I don’t know, in the last six months or so that I finally have got my answer. My answer is, I don’t actually get any results. I hold my clients accountable to get their own results. I think that that’s the huge shift of being strategic. I’m not saying I’m going to get you this thing.
It’s back to it’s not about me. It is not about me at all. Whether I can 10x your business in three years or I can make it possible that you don’t have to work in your business at all. It still runs and you can be fully focused on your family. Those are both results I have gotten clients, but those are not my results. Those are their results. I didn’t actually do anything to get them their results. If they weren’t willing to do the work, it would’ve never happened. Unlike, “I am going to deliver you a course.” Still, in that case, I can’t get you the results. You actually have to watch the course do the work. The real result is I’m going to deliver you all of this material.
I think what you’re talking about is it’s shifting those conversations from a focus on deliverables, ‘This is what you’re going to have in your hand when you walk away,” to what are the outcomes. I think this is a good example. I’ve seen this because I have a lot of authors as clients. There was a time where you’d hire a book coach and the book coach would say, “After X amount of time, you’ll have a manuscript. After X amount of time, you’ll have a book outline. After an X amount of time, you’ll have a proposal.” That’s really all they can promise. They can’t promise you a traditional book deal. They can’t promise you X number of book sales. That’s out of everybody’s control. They’re smart enough to know that they can’t make those promises.
Now what I see in the messaging that I’m surrounded by is I can promise that you’re going to get farther on the project than you were alone. If you could write the book all by yourself, you would’ve done it already. You haven’t. I can’t promise you that we’re going to get through 50,000 words, but I can promise you we’re going to get farther on that manuscript than you did all by yourself. I think an example of the difference between looking at deliverables versus outcomes. Even if the service you provide, people expect a promise of a deliverable.
People will ask me and it’s like, “What do you deliver?” It’s like, “I deliver absolutely nothing.” Really, I don’t actually deliver anything. What I do is ask you really hard questions and help you figure out what are the things that you got to do and how you know how to do this. It is so rare that someone gets something from me that I have created.
In this case, and this is something where a reader who’s thinking about doing this is going to have to decide if this is true for them. You don’t create anything and hand it over, so clients never have to feel bad about not doing what you suggest. They don’t ghost you either because they don’t have to hide their head in the sand. “Gwen did all the stuff for me and I did nothing.” At the most I’ve heard is yeah, “Gwen’s been telling me to do this for six months. I was finally ready to do it.”
Shifting Conversations From Deliverables To Outcomes
I’ll always say like, “You stuck it out for six months.” “Yeah. Gwen said when I was ready, I would do it. That made it feel safe.” The practical steps, I think, for transforming the client relationships into partnerships, if that’s something that you desire, is you first have to start having those client conversations a little bit differently where you’re focusing more on the outcomes versus the deliverables.
I think you also have to ask better questions. I’m using that tone of voice on you. You would see my mom face if you were watching on YouTube. The reason I say this is because I know because I was that service provider early in my career, we ask just enough questions to do the thing that we feel comfortable doing or that we want to do for the client, we think the client needs.
Oftentimes, when we’re asking questions that are that targeted, we are missing the broader context that would let us know that our deliverable is not the right fit for them or could give us the insight that we need to tweak whatever the deliverable is. I think you’ve got to ask questions that help you appreciate the context even beyond whatever the acute problem is. Do you want to add anything to that piece?
That is 100% right on. You personally have given a great example and I think it was on a previous episode, but if not, where someone was saying, “We want to like increase our sales by 15%,” or something. For the first year or two, you’re like, “Okay, that’s the goal. How much have you ever increased it?” “It was like 2%.” It was like, “Okay, then there’s no reason for us to believe that we can go from 2% to 15%. Maybe we go from 2% to 4%.”
It’s a very discouraging experience.
The thing is the reason we feel like we’re failing is we have said, “What I want to do is land on the moon.” It’s like, “How much access do you have to a rocket?” It’s like, “None. I’m just here at the house.” It’s like, “That’s probably not ever going to happen.” It could. Weird miracles do happen, but it’s like, yeah, when you don’t land on the moon, we need to not feel bad about that.”
I think that the third step, what most people would say, is you’ve got to create a framework. A framework makes you a strategist. I don’t know if you know that, but that’s what I’ve heard. Frameworks make you a strategist. I happen to know that you have a teensy-weensy bone to pick with not necessarily the term framework, but how people apply frameworks. I’m just going to let you tell me why that’s not the next step.
If they were watching YouTube, they saw me just lose it as you brought this up.
She lost it politely, folks.
I was just giggling really hard. A framework can be super useful. I’m not going to say that it’s not, but a framework often implies that I have the answer to every problem. If it’s a real framework, truly like a wire frame, that could be true where there’s a lot of space that’s not filled in. Framework has started to really mean, “I have a ten-step process. You’re going to do this and then you’re going to do this.” We’ve talked about this before and we’ll talk about it I’m sure 10,000 times more over time. The person receiving the framework feels like a failure when it doesn’t absolutely, positively deliver what the person said it was going to deliver.
Most of the time, it’s not their fault. They’ve been doing all the things but they’re like, “I’m not getting the result and it must be me. I must be stupid. I must be inadequate.” No, actually, it’s too prescriptive for your situation. Frameworks are not the end all by a long shot. I would say the other piece is understanding what is your lane and not trying to go too far out of your lane.
My lane is broad but it’s not overly deep. One of the things that, for my particular business, which I think throws people off is I am not a finance person. I’m not an HR person. I am not a mindset person. I am not a technology person. I’m not even a systems person, which everyone thinks I am. I’m not a goals person. I am not a leadership person.
I do address all of those at a very high strategic level. As soon as we get just a little bit deep, I bring in an expert in that lane. My lane is a weird lane because it’s more like a crosswalk than it is a lane. I also know when I’m stepping outside of the crosswalk. I think that’s the key to really being able to do good strategy, to not take my strategy that I know that fits here and try to make it fit here right across this narrow piece and try to say, “I can apply it to everything related to the business,” because it’s not true.
The key to being able to do a good strategy is to not take a strategy that fits here and try to make it fit there. Share on XA Strategic Partner Doesn’t Have All The Answers
What you’re really saying is being a strategic partner does not mean you have to have all the answers.
Absolutely not.
In fact, if anything, it’s getting really comfortable admitting what answers you have and what answers you don’t.
We’ve moved above my pay grade. What I means, “I’m now stepping outside of the crosswalk. These are the couple of things. This is what you need to check.” You need to talk with someone who actually knows and that’s not me.
One last thing I think in terms of how you transform the client relationships. Because we’ve got shifting those conversations from deliverables to outcomes, asking questions that reveal the greater business context. You’ve talked about the pros and cons of frameworks. They’re not bad but they’re not the end all, be all solution that some people like to think they are.
The final one is one that I have seen you do, I’m not going to lie, that as a formerly deliverables focused service provider, it has caused me great discomfort except you haven’t died yet, so I know it’s safe to do. It’s building trust through appropriate pushback and challenging assumptions of the client. When you’re a vendor, you very rarely argue with your client. Customer’s always right, remember? What they get is what they want. Maybe charge a pain in the butt tax if you need to and you don’t. You are not a yes person to your clients and that they still stick with you for two and a half to eight years.
The Role Of Thoughtful Pushback In Building Trust
In most cases, that is the biggest value I provide. I’m also okay with me pushing back and them saying, “F you,” and dropping. That’s the other side of this. Not everybody can be okay with that. This is not like all you have to do is push back and you’re going to be amazing. It’s not just pushing back. It’s also knowing when to push back, where to push back. I remember one of the very first calls you were on, after we got off the call, you said, “You said really hard things to her.” In this case, this was a woman I had zero prior relationship with.
It was your first session.
Most of the time, even when it’s their first session, we’ve had ongoing conversations. We’ve seen each other. This was not the case with this one. This was an unusual situation for me. I’m like, “Did I?”
You were oblivious.
I didn’t what talking about, but what it was I’m able to do in a way that is not accusatory. That’s part of the reason why the pushback is accepted. I know the other reason it’s on your mind is we were on a call with a client and when I push back, there’s a point that this client just completely will shut down. The first couple times, I was pretty sure I was getting fired. I was done. I think this is the first time you’ve actually experienced It.
I believe I will forevermore call it resting serial killer face.
It was like, “I’m going to kill you.” I have now been working with this client for a really long time. I’ve learned it’s like, “I’m actually hitting a nerve and I need to tiptoe around this. I don’t need to completely back off of it.” The first time, I was sure I was fired. The second time, I was pretty sure I was fired. By the third time, I was like, “This is that.” That’s also being okay with that and being able to sit in this very uncomfortable space and knowing that someone at some point will absolutely lash out and being able to be okay with that. I know I am.
What you’re saying is the shift from vendor to partner is not going to happen overnight. If that’s the bed you’ve made and you want out of the bed, it’s not going to happen overnight. It will transform the value you provide in how your business operates and moving forward by selecting the right clients, establishing partnership expectations from day one, which is something you just unpacked for us beautifully on how you do that and structuring your business to support those deeper relationships. You can, assuming you want it create a much more sustainable business model than you may be currently having.
The shift from vendor to partner is not going to happen overnight. Share on XIf you want an example, like a living example of that loving, kind pushback that Gwen sometimes provides, you should really check out Insight to Impact. It is our high touch weekly I would call it a premium accountability subscription that gives you the perspective you need to make the strategic shift with confidence.
Every Friday, you get a thought-provoking question that is designed to help you examine your business on a deeper level. When you respond, Gwen will give you that personal feedback. Sometimes it’ll be, “Great job.” Other times it’ll be like, “I don’t know about that.” She might add a few extra words in there. In either case, you’ll find yourself making forward progress and understanding what true partnership really feels like. Head over 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.
