Your Cornerman: The Person Every Entrepreneur Needs (Beyond A Business Coach)

Ever wished you had a wise, experienced cornerman to guide you through your business challenges? Gwen Bortner and Tonya Kubo explore the power of having a business cornerman, a seasoned expert who provides holistic guidance and helps you anticipate challenges. A cornerman offers tailored advice specifically for your unique business battles, asks insightful questions that unlock hidden potential, and acts as a trusted partner truly invested in your long-term success. Discover how a cornerman’s strategic insights and big-picture perspective can help you dominate your market, outmaneuver the competition, and achieve lasting success. Tune in now and unleash your inner champion!

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Your Cornerman: The Person Every Entrepreneur Needs (Beyond A Business Coach)

What do boxing and entrepreneurship have in common? Give up? Even the most skilled boxers, like Tyson or whoever else, because I’m not a sports fan, I can’t really go too far into this analogy, but even the most skilled athletes, like the most skilled, successful business owners, need someone in their corner between rounds. You know it. If you’re running a business, you need somebody in your corner, someone who can see what you can’t see, offer you some strategic guidance, and keep you focused on winning, right? Keep your eye on the prize. Boxers need it. You need it. We all need it.

We are talking about why every entrepreneur needs that kind of support and why it matters more now than you may think. My name is Tonya Kubo. I am here, as always, with business operations expert extraordinaire, Gwen Bortner. Gwen, we are having yet another conversation that we’ve been having privately that really needs to come into public view. What I’m talking about is the concept of the corner man and how it applies to business.

Here’s what I’m going to ask you to do, Gwen, because I like to put you on the spot. It’s fun for me. I want you to give us your perspective on the topic, and then I’m going to jump in with what I know, or at least what I think I know, and I’ll let you correct me in all the places I’m wrong. How does that sound?

Perfect.

Take it away.

The Power Of A Cornerman In Business

Let me start by saying that this concept is not my concept. It is somebody else’s concept. I’m always about trying to give credit where credit’s due. I first heard about this concept several years ago when I was at an event where Dr. Jeff Spencer was speaking. This is his concept that he, I don’t know if he originated it, but he has seen it and has implemented it. He functions in this way.

The idea of having someone in your corner and having what he calls a corner man is twofold. The first fold is exactly what you were saying, Tonya, the idea of the corner man concept in boxing. Assuming that a lot of our folks don’t necessarily know about boxing, but maybe they do, we’re going to try and level the playing field here. Common terminology, the person that sits in the corner while the boxer’s out there and then pulls out the chair and is doing all of the things but is also whispering in the boxer’s ear, because sometimes there are multiple people in the corner.

The corner man is the person who’s whispering in their ear between rounds. What they’re whispering in their ear about is sometimes encouragement. Sometimes it’s saying what they are seeing the boxer doing. Sometimes it’s seeing what they’re seeing the other corner men doing. Sometimes it’s seeing what they’re seeing, how the audience is responding. Sometimes it’s seeing what the ref is doing. Sometimes it’s seeing what the judges are doing. They’re not just watching their boxer, they’re watching the entire picture. Based on their history and experience, they are able to say, “Having seen all of this many times before, and maybe not just with you, Boxer X, but with tens, hundreds, however many boxers in the past, you may think you need to do X, but I know you need to do Y. I’m telling you to do Y even though your instinct is to do X.”

A cornerman is watching the entire picture and based on their history and experience can say, “I know you need to do Y even though your instinct is to do X.” Share on X

That’s what the general corner man concept is. The more specific idea that Dr. Jeff talks about is having enough experience to see around a corner that there’s no way for you to see around. When they tell you what’s on the other side, you’re like, “I don’t believe that,” and then you go around the corner, and it’s like, “Holy crap, it was exactly what they said.” It is about seeing the big picture, not just looking in a narrow area, and also having enough experience.

One of the qualifications that Dr. Jeff talks about is you’ve got to have someone who’s at least 60 years old to be a corner man because it’s about having seen enough cycles as an adult. The first cycle, we only observe as children and very young adults, where we don’t have a lot of context yet. The cycles generally run in about a 20-year cycle, so 60 means you’ve probably seen two full cycles by now as an adult.

Let’s pause here because you gave us 16 key points, and I’m not going to remember all of them, but I’m going to try to remember some. For the benefit of the listener, especially the listener who has no idea about boxing, I have no idea about boxing aside from, well, I did watch Rocky when I was a kid. Maybe that counts, but for that individual, the corner man in a fight is looking at the fight, all aspects of the fight, but they’re also looking outside of the fight.

In addition to that, they are bringing to the table everything they’ve ever seen with every boxer they’ve ever worked with, with everything they’ve ever done in a gym or seen a gym do, conversations they’ve had at the bar after a fight, all of those things. They bring the sum total of that experience, and they’re bringing that into their work with this particular boxer during the fight. Is that piece accurate?

One hundred percent.

We’ve got that piece accurate, and then when we apply it to business, I love what you said about seeing around the corner because I think that’s where the business application is so easy to connect. That being, it is so hard, I speak as a business owner myself, it is so hard to be able to see outside your own scenario. Sometimes, especially whether you’re going through a high or you’re going through a low, it’s like, here is what I always say, it’s like right here. You need somebody who says, “That’s not a gigantic brick wall in front of your face. That’s just your hand, Tonya. We’re going to move it.” Or, “It’s a single brick,” for instance.

As a business owner, it is so hard to be able to see outside your own scenarios, sometimes, especially whether you're going through a high or a low. Share on X

They can see around the corner. What I like that you brought up is this idea of experience. I am going to try really hard right now not to take us down a rabbit hole, but the reason I like what you said about experience is because we have primarily a female audience. We designed this podcast for female entrepreneurs. You can be a solopreneur, you can oversee 150 people, we don’t care, but it’s for the female entrepreneur.

If you come from a corporate background, ageism is a real thing. Part of why I’m an entrepreneur is because it didn’t take long into my 30s for people to start making comments about me being a little long in the tooth to be focused on digital marketing. This idea of somebody with 40 years of experience, somebody who’s in their 60s, actually being highly valuable in this, what I would consider a pivotal role with a business, is something I don’t want our listener to skip over. I don’t want to talk about that too quickly. Is there anything you want to add to that specific point?

The Importance Of Having Seen Enough Business Cycles

I think the key point here is it’s being able to have seen enough of the cycles in the big way. I don’t know, can you hear the dog barking? She’s having dreams.

I just thought that she was like in my corner, on my soapbox against ageism. That’s what I was taking.

She is. I think that’s what’s happening here. She’s like, I have to do this.

Pick up your thought.

The idea of the cycles is important, and being able to see, that’s how we’re actually able to see around the corner, is because we can say, this kind of thing happened here, and then this is what happened. This is what happened and one data point. Let’s say you’re in your early forties, really isn’t enough. You think you may have it, but it’s not quite enough. Thus, having a couple of data points so you can actually create a line and say, this happened here, and this happened here, and then this happened here, and this, and it’s like, so this is what happened next.

This is probably what’s going to happen next, so that we’re actually able to create and see around the corner is an important piece. There is just no shortcut. That’s the other piece. You can’t shortcut it. It’s not about how smart you are, although most corner men are also very smart. It’s really about time, and you just can’t shortcut it.

What I just heard you say, it’s not about the ten books that I just read this year. It’s not about winning the Goodreads “How many books can you read in a year?” contest.

It’s not about having a 250-point IQ.

You have to live it.

You have to live it. You have to live it to be able to see it. When I heard that concept a couple of years ago, I was not yet quite 60. I’m now very close. Probably by the time we post this, I’ll be really close to 60. It’s like, I totally get it. I was close enough to 60 then to be able to say, I can see that this is the cycles. At that point, I started watching how I was working with clients and what I was doing, and that was when I saw, I see these things way ahead of time. I see them because of two things. One, I’m old enough to have done enough of these cycles, but the other thing is not everyone who’s 60 can be a corner man. Part of it is you have to be paying attention to a very broad scenario and recognize patterns.

You have to live it to be able to see it. Share on X

Not everybody’s brain is wired that way. Not everybody recognizes patterns. That’s just part of being human. My thought on this is, because I’m not confident in my thought enough to say a declarative statement here, but what I’m wondering is, does career path play into it? Because I feel like I would get maybe a different perspective from somebody who spent 40 years working for the same company or 40 years working in the same field, even if they bounced around to, say, two to three employers, versus somebody who has either had maybe a solid career but a very rich hobby life or a lot of outside pursuits. I almost feel like you’ve got to have been fired, laid off, had job changes, moved some states here and there in order to have this kind of holistic experience that we’re talking about.

I do believe that’s true. You can still have a focus, but I think that you have to have worked small. You have to have worked big. You have to have been an entrepreneur, but you also have to have been an employee. I think it’s all of those things. I also do think if, and I’m not saying these are bad people, but like if you were in finance and you were all about accounting and all about finance, and everything you did was very much about finance, are they super valuable? Yes. You know how I love people that know the numbers, but they may not have seen enough of the biggest picture because their lens ultimately is still going to be through a finance lens.

Part of what a corner man is, is their lens is not through just the boxer’s lens or the trainer’s lens. It’s through the boxer’s lens, the trainer’s lens, the audience’s lens, the judging lens, the ref’s lens, the rumor lens, the betting lens, all of the lenses that come through it. They may not have had deep, deep experience in any one of those, but they’ve had enough experience. They paid enough attention to it that they can say, this is the type of thing that’s happening here. We didn’t actually say this, but because of that, I could be a corner man for you. Given all the situations that we’re in, I’m going to give you one piece of advice but put another boxer, we’re going to keep using the boxer analogy, put another boxer in with all of the exact same parameters, which of course never would really happen in life, but we’ll just pretend.

I’m going to give you a completely different piece of advice, even though it feels like you should be getting the same advice, because all of these other factors are the same. Why wouldn’t I get the same advice? Maybe your arm reach is a tiny bit shorter, or maybe I know you’re a tiny bit more tired, or I know you have more stamina. There are just the little tiny subtle things, and being able to take all of those and not say, this is the answer always for this situation.

We say it a million times on the show, but why not say it again? It’s about context. Context matters, and the context shifts. I think what I like about what you just said is you’re pointing out that sometimes it is one degree of a variable. Sometimes it’s an entire variable. Sometimes it might be five, but a corner man can even note the one degree of a variable and see how it needs to shift response.

Why A Cornerman Is Neither A Coach Nor A Consultant

I feel like anybody listening probably knows more than they wanted to know about boxing and more than they wanted to know about a corner man. But I think this is what is important to me here, helping anybody listening understand what we’re talking about is different than what they may think about when they’re thinking about coaches, consultants, so on and so forth.

Because I know, having worked with so many businesses, that everybody says, “We’ll get a coach.” Or my favorite is, “Do you think you need a coach?” You know that when they ask you that, they think you need a coach, but they’re just not sure if you’re open to hearing their thoughts on that. I feel like the term coach has lost its meaning. It means everything now. Everybody is a coach, and there are sub-niches of coaches and all of that. How do you see a corner man differing from, let’s say, the stereotypical view of a coach or consultant?

I don’t know if we’ve actually done my whole little soapbox on what the difference is between a coach, a consultant, and a somebody else.

Even if we have, why not repeat it?

I know that doesn’t stop us from saying the same thing again, but this feels like the perfect time to talk about this in a relatively concise way. A coach technically, and if you’ve listened to many of these, you know that I care about the details and the technical piece, a coach technically is asking you questions and pulling information out of you that you already know but are fighting, for whatever reason.

Right, or don’t know, you just have to be asked the right question.

You just have to be asked the right question, but the knowledge somewhere is inside it. Coaching really often started out from the personal side because that’s where it is, but we often know a lot of things about our business that we’re not also acknowledging.

Like the episode with the 5-3-1 goal-setting strategy, where I was in the hot seat. That one.

5-3-1 really is primarily a coaching process. That’s a great example because I’m really just asking questions to help pull information out because I can’t set your agenda. I could, but that’s not the way that we work. We work very much about, it’s your agenda, not my agenda.

If you were to set the agenda, wouldn’t that be consulting?

Look at you, totally read my mind. It’s like we’ve been working together for years. Consulting often is I’ve got a solution that I’ve seen work some number of times. I say that because often it’s presented like, I’ve seen it work. It works every single time. It’s like, you’ve actually only seen it work three times, sold it to a thousand people, but it’s really only worked the way you said it’s worked three times. To me, that’s consulting.

Quite honestly, we often put courses under coaching, but often courses are actually consulting because if you’re just watching a video, they’re telling you a way to do things. That’s consulting. That’s not coaching. If there’s a big point, if there’s a big element in the course of spending time doing lots of feedback and lots of conversation, then it might be coaching. This, to me, is the distinction, a consultant is I’ve got an answer to your problem. I know what needs to be done. I know how to help you do it. Whether it’s DIY, done for you, or done with you, all of that would be consulting.

The corner man is neither of those. It’s a little bit of both of those, is what it is. I know how to ask the right question. I also know six different answers, not just one. Based on how you answer the question, I can sift through those six answers and say, for you, this is probably your best answer. I don’t have just one answer as someone who really functions as a corner man. I have lots of answers. I don’t automatically pull out certain answers. I pull out certain answers based on the questions that I ask and seeing the entire landscape.

The cornerman is neither a coach nor a consultant. It's a little bit of both. Share on X

Most people would call me, and a lot of my clients call me, either a business coach or a business consultant. As we were reworking our website and whatnot, one of the things that you had to keep fighting with our copywriter, bless her, was, Gwen does not call herself a business coach. She calls herself a business advisor. That’s why I use the term, because I am advising, but I’m not saying it’s one thing.

There’s no point, I’m not saying that there are no coaches or consultants that do this, but there’s no point where you say, if you don’t do what I say to do, I’m going to take my toys and go home. You’re fired. It’s not that sort of thing. It is very much a collaborative process. Also, this may be my limited experience because I’m not 60 yet, I hope to get there one day, though, I also think there’s a measure of ownership’s not the right word. Investment. There is investment in the solution and how the solution plays out.

I think I have been in environments before where I have heard the experts say, I told them what to do. It’s up to them to do it. Or, I told them what to do. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. Where I feel like this corner man concept is more like, no. I expect this to work. I want this to work. If a surprise pops up that I didn’t anticipate, that you didn’t anticipate, I’m here. I’m a partner with you in figuring out the way around that as well.

Coaching Out Of Success Vs. Failure

This is the thing that we’ve talked about some, and I know we haven’t talked about on the podcast yet, is, and it never occurred to me until a conversation about a year ago, a corner man is functioning out of lots of success. As opposed to saying, I know this didn’t work, so you should do this other thing instead. The phrase that we use is coaching out of success versus coaching out of failure.

Can you explain that before you come to your point? Because I don’t think anybody is going to know what that means.

I’m not going to put names on it because I can’t give an absolute specific example, but a lot of folks have talked about, I did this and I burned down my business, but then I did this other thing and it worked, and now what they’re selling is the thing that worked. That’s actually coaching out of failure, not coaching out of success, because they know one thing that didn’t work, and they know one thing that did work, and so they always assume that the thing that worked is the only thing that works, is the best answer.

Where actually, the thing that failed may also work for somebody else, but they don’t understand enough of the nuances about why it failed for them to be able to say that. It’s also around, they haven’t seen enough varied versions of success to be able to say, this is going to work. The other piece of it is being confident enough in your own success, in what you’re doing, that when your clients outpace you in some category of success, income is a really easy one because it’s a really tangible thing to measure, your response is, awesome. It’s not like, I probably can’t be valuable anymore, or, that’s because of me.

All of those are actually coaching out of failure, not coaching out of success. The success piece really is saying, I want you to be absolutely as successful as you can be, and I believe that can look like a thousand things, but I’m not going to tell you what it is. I’m going to let you tell me what that is, and I will also ask you questions to help you realize that the thing you think is success is not the thing that is success for you. Back to, I’ve done this enough. I’ve seen this enough that I know that you’re giving a pat answer, not your real answer. You’re giving the answer that you think you’re supposed to say, not the answer that you really truly believe for you as an individual.

When folks have 1 or 2 answers, they’re usually coaching out of failure. They’ve tried something that didn’t work. They’ve tried something else. It does work for them in their situation. It must work for everybody. When someone else doesn’t get the results, then it’s their fault, the other person, their client who didn’t get the results. It’s their fault that they didn’t get the results. That can still be true, because I can’t get results for anybody. They have to get their own results, but I’m not necessarily blaming them for that.

When folks have one or two answers, they're usually coaching out of failure. Share on X

I always love to go back to the pandemic as the prime example of coaching relationships and consulting relationships. However, everybody can come to the table and do their absolute best, and external forces can still create failure. It’s nobody’s fault, like we saw with the pandemic, we saw launches completely flop. It wasn’t because people didn’t bring their A-game, it was because the world went sideways.

We also saw launches, and I think this is what I think about when you talk about, “I saw this one thing, and therefore everything is just like this.” We saw businesses have extraordinary success. We saw programs have triple-revenue launches and business owners going, “I got it. I clinched it. I have arrived,” only to find they could not repeat that level of success. It’s because the world went sideways. People were willing to check out things that they didn’t check out before. I think some of us were so numb we weren’t reading fine print on things. There were all these reasons we were much more eager to buy things that had absolutely nothing to do with the quality of a program or even how persuasive a sales page was. It goes in both directions.

The Importance Of Separating Emotions From Strategic Thinking

I’m curious though because I could see, I’m thinking of coaches who have had extraordinary success and maybe some equally extraordinary failures. I know I have been in spaces where sometimes you can’t tell if what you’re getting is true strategic perspective or if what you’re getting is a projection of emotion. How do you think that fits in with what we’re talking about? I stumped you. I can see your thinking face.

Fabulous question. I think this really comes back to something that we talk about all the time, which is, How is the success or failure of your client? How do you feel about the success or failure of your client? For me, my client’s success is always theirs. I have clients all the time say, “I would have never done this without you,” and my answer always is, “You would have. I probably helped you do it a lot faster, but this is back to, I don’t actually control anything they do.” I advise them. I help them. I reflect back to them. I ask them hard questions. I do all of those things, but I don’t control anything they do. I am not in their business in any way nearly enough to control any outcome.

Their success or failure is theirs. When it’s their success, I celebrate with them, and when it’s not, I help them figure out what went sideways, what could we do differently. I don’t own either side. I don’t get to own the failure, but I also don’t get to own the win. To me, that’s where it’s strategy. The other is I don’t make assumptions about what success is going to look like for any one person. We’ve talked about it before. I have a client that I helped ten times their business in less than two years. I don’t put that out in my marketing or any of the rest of it because not everybody can do that. They don’t have all of the conditions to do that.

What I see a lot of people do in the coaching and consulting space is they have one of those clients, and they start talking about that all the time. What ends up happening is, “If I work with Gwen, I’m going to ten times my business in two years.” Sometimes it’s like, there is nothing that we can do to make that happen because of who you are, your space, your time, your industry, your drive. The list just goes on and on and on.

Sometimes it’s even simply profit margin. If you only have a ten-percent profit margin, whatever you’re selling, ten times is going to be really hard.

There are so many factors. I’m not going to guarantee or even really talk about a specific result because the results aren’t mine. To me, that’s where we get the difference between strategic and emotionally projecting. When it says, “This worked for me, it’s going to work for you,” for me, that is my biggest flag. Whenever I see that in any marketing, advertising, or sales page, “This did this amazing thing for me, and it can do the same for you,” it may be true. I’m not saying it won’t be true, but it doesn’t mean it will be true.

That, to me, is back to coaching out of failure as opposed to success. We have a data point of one, and now we’re doing it. I remember you and I were having a conversation where someone was asking about getting into somebody’s program and if it really does this. We were talking because we knew, you and I both had enough history with not only the industry but this particular person, and everyone was like, “I know someone who that happened to. I know someone who that happened to,” and there were like 15 or 20 or 30 comments that all said that.

What someone got to was, “Are you all saying it’s this one person that we all know about?” What that was, it was like, anybody reading it until someone said that, said, “There’s 30 people who’ve had that level of success.” It’s like, no, there’s only one person. They’ve served thousands of people, but everyone only knows of one person.

I think that’s such a prime example. Also, how incestuous the online space can be because if you’re at this long enough, and I think that’s the other piece, I’m going to bring this online business, though. I know that you work with manufacturers and other brick-and-mortar businesses as well. The online space moves so quickly that for years, two years in business, you were a raging success. That was a lot of history but now, online business has been a thing long enough that most of us who are still here can see the patterns. We can see how, “I’ve heard this before.”

For instance, there was a conversation I was having, and somebody said, “I heard that they’re closing their business.” I was just like, I think this is the fourth business I’ve seen them close. They’ll probably pull back, lick some wounds, and they’ll be back. Like, them closing their business isn’t a sign that the market is dead, that that offer is dead, or anything else. They’ve done this before, and they’ll probably come back again.

How A Cornerman’s Proactive Insight Helps You

That’s part of the history piece. I’m curious. Something that I want to make sure that I get an understanding of is, I don’t even know how to put it, but I envision that a corner man is somebody who doesn’t just answer my question but also helps me to appreciate the things I need to know that I may not know I need right now, and also why. Let me just give a quick example. Let’s take the case of an accountant because we like to use finances. A lot of times, we like to use a lot of financial examples here. There are a lot of accountants.

In fact, I had an accountant for several years who was happy to prepare my taxes and then tell me how much I owed. There was one year I had some extreme sticker shock because I had never owed that much in my life. My accountant went, “I went through everything three times because you’re right, you’ve never owed this much before,” and then they pointed out that this was the first year since we’ve been working together that I hadn’t done any home improvement.

At no point in time in our work together did they ever tell me that my home improvements were making an impact on my tax liability. I had no clue that that was a thing. The year I decided not to make any home improvements, I was just thinking of saving money, I wasn’t thinking about liability. I’m not saying my tax preparer should have done anything differently, but I can tell you now, in hindsight, I would have really appreciated an accountant who walked me through all the potential deductions based on my family, how old I am, how many kids I have, like all of that stuff, so that I could then forecast how decisions would affect me at the end of the year.

A corner man will often be doing that kind of thing, and they will say things that, when you hear them, you’ll think, “I’m not sure. I’m not sure if that’s true, or I hadn’t ever thought about that before.” Or my favorite, which I do from time to time, is I will say something, and they’re like, “That’s absolutely true. How on earth would you know that?” Because a corner man, back to boxing, is looking at every aspect of the fight, not just looking at their boxer. They’re looking at all the pieces and just saying, “By the way.” I’m making up a completely random example of boxing. Also being able to say, “ I know enough about these judges that unless you do this, there’s no way you’re going to win this fight.” It has nothing to do with you as an individual, it has to do with them and how they’re going to respond because I’ve seen them before.

Why Cornermen Are Hard To Find

I think any true sports fanatic knows that, knows that if that ref’s on the field, this is what we’re in for. That coach always does running plays or whatever. I’ve heard that term. I’ve heard that said before. I have no idea what it means, but I’ve heard it said. Those sorts of things are also really good examples to help listeners understand what we’re talking about. I am curious, is there a specific type of expertise, industry, or profession that is more likely to lead somebody to becoming a corner man? Assuming, like you said before, they can identify patterns, they can observe, they’ve been around the planet long enough, or do you think it’s just some of us do, some of us don’t?

I definitely believe the latter. It’s some of us do, some of us don’t. I think it’s folks that are used to being highly observant about everything all the time from the time they were tiny. I don’t think it’s necessary. I believe almost everything can be developed as a skill, so could you develop a skill? Sure but to me, being a corner man is a version of being a concert-level pianist. It’s not just the ability to play the piano to be a concert-level pianist. There are so many things that mean you can be a concert-level pianist.

Almost everything can be developed as a skill, but being a cornerman is like being a concert-level pianist. Not everyone can be that. Share on X

Do I believe that everyone could learn how to play the piano? I believe that, given access and all the things. Could everyone on the planet learn to play the piano? Yes, I believe that. Could everyone on the planet be a concert-level pianist? Absolutely not, because there are innate things in our personality and our behaviors and all of the things that are also needed to be able to be at that level. And I actually think that’s part of being a corner man.

I think there are some really innate things with some people, and, like I said, one of them is being highly observant about all sorts of things. It starts at a time, at a super young age. You have no idea that you’re doing it. And then, if you decide to hone that, like, “I actually understand music. I like playing the piano. Do I hone it to be a concert-level pianist or do I not?” That’s yet another choice because just because you can be a concert-level pianist doesn’t mean that you are a concert-level pianist.

It doesn’t mean that you should be, given other circumstances that may be going on.

Other choices, it’s not like it’s a right choice or a wrong choice. It’s just what you have chosen to do. And so, I do think that there is a limited number of people who actually can, will, and do this. To that same point, we talked about women in this role being really rare. Most of the time, if you’re going to find someone who’s in this role, it’s going to be like Dr. Jeff Spencer. It’s going to be a guy and, no harm or shade, but an old white guy because they’ve had enough access to enough experiences and all of the things. It’s not because they’re better. It’s just because they’ve had access to all of the things, done all of the things, and been able to do all of the things.

Just to clarify, what’s important to know is if the rule, the hard and fast rule, absolutely, positively is you have to be at least 60 years old, and you have to have had about a 40-year-long career. In 2025, there still aren’t that many women who have had the opportunity to be in the workforce that long to have that kind of career background. That’s going to take another generation, probably, for those numbers to pick up.

My kids’ generation will have way more than my generation has.

My kids’ kids’ generation will have even more. We’re going to have to end here. I have six more questions. We’ll have to do another episode down the line. This is the first time we’ve discussed the corner man concept on the show. Again, it’s not going to be the last. I think now that we’ve kind of explained it, it’ll make sense when we reference it in future episodes, and we’ll definitely dig a little bit deeper, especially in terms of talking about situations where a corner man actually makes a big difference versus having a coach or a consultant.

Having a strategic partner invest in your sustainable success is woven into the very fabric of what we do here in Everyday Effectiveness, which is the business that I get to work with Gwen on. It’s our motivation for hosting the show. It’s why we have The Business You Really Want because we believe that every business owner deserves someone in their corner who can provide perspective, guidance, and that unwavering support.

Every business owner deserves someone in their corner who can provide perspective, guidance, and unwavering support. Share on X

If you’re listening and you’re thinking, “I could go for that. That might actually be what I need,” we have a brand-new newsletter, brand spanking new, first-of-the-year newsletter, for you to check out. It’s called From Insight to Impact, and what it does is it puts this corner man-style reflection and action in your inbox every single week. Check out the show notes for a link to find out more, or you can visit TheBusinessYouReallyWant.com. All of our resources are located there. Until next time, we would just love you to keep thinking strategically.

 

Mentioned In This Episode

• The Business You Really Want
• Everyday Effectiveness