2372 - Quilting Your Way to Business Success and Stitching Together Joy and Achievement with Everyday Effectiveness' Gwen Bortner

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0:46Visit podverified.com if you'd like to be featured as a future guest. I'm Josh Elledge. Let's get into it. With us right now, Gwen Bortner. Gwen, you are a consultant, you're a speaker, and you are the owner and founder of Everyday Effectiveness. Your website is everydayeffectiveness.com. I love your headline here, build the business you really want on your own terms. Even, Gwen, I'm certain for established business owners, there is likely a lot of opportunity to do a little bit of remodeling. But we'll talk about that in a moment here. You know, Gwen, I always love starting up the conversation with just, you know, hearing what high-level leaders who are typically multi-passionate, most of us are pretty serious about our hobbies.

1:32And I think you've got some as well. Well, yeah. And it's one of the things that I love to talk to my clients about is hobbies are really important. And I am an excellent hobbyist. I am going to be awesome when I am retired because I've got all sorts of hobbies. The one I've been spending most of my time in lately is doing quilting. And specifically, it's called English paper piecing, which is a very unique type of quilting where you take a little tiny piece of paper, you fold the fabric around it, and then you hand sew the pieces together. And so it's actually a very portable form of quilting where a lot of the quilting that most people are familiar with and they see is done with machines and whatnot.

2:15And so they don't think about it being, you know, a portable hobby. But mine, I can take with me when I'm traveling, and I can work on it, little bits and pieces at a time. At some point, it starts to become big and unruly because all the pieces go together, and it makes a big thing. But in the meantime, I can work on the bits and pieces of it. What I've heard about quilting, and I think, you know, other, you know, other hobbies like that is that, you know, we think about, you know, mindfulness and meditation and, you know, just kind of being in this little bit of a Zen state. And that is just a very, what I've heard, it's a very natural outcome of doing something like quilting, yet there still is some element of, you know, problem solving and, you know, kind of planning and, And, you know, you got to you can't completely check out.

3:06But there's definitely those moments where you kind of just like you get into that groove. And well, and that's the beauty of the of the hand sewing is because it's just the simplest little whip stitch, you know, kind of process. So that part is very, very not quite brainless, not quite mindless, but but definitely in that that zone that you're talking about. But the planning for it, choosing, doing the cutting, doing all of that is very, very precise. And so that uses the other part where, like you said, the problem solving, the figuring things out. And so you feel like you're getting to use, you know, exercise some of those muscles, which I think almost every entrepreneur has the desire to do problem solving.

3:50I think that's part of the natural entrepreneurial journey. I agree. I think, you know, even if it's, you know, playing a cozy game or something like that, you know, these are things that don't discount this. These are things that, you know, if you're already an achiever, you don't have a problem. Like, you don't have a motivation, you don't have a success or accountability, you know. Chances are, like, those things are going to make you better at doing and being 100 % present during the work you do, you know, during your work hours. And, Gwen, you've been a business and accountability specialist over 40 years in 47 industries.

4:33Tell me about the work that you do. And by the way, your website for our friend that's following along, everydayeffectiveness.com. But share with us, Gwen, the work that you do. So my work started as a programmer back in the early 80s. And I worked for a variety of firms. But basically, I functioned as a programmer consultant or freelance programmer for other firms. So that's where I was able to dip in over many, many years of lots of industries because I would be hired out to go work at Company X to help them solve a programming issue. And this was back when PCs were brand new. Like, I don't even think we called them PCs yet.

5:17I think we only called them personal computers. I don't think they'd even gotten their acronym. It was so early stage for it. And so I started dropping into all of these industries very, very early on in my career and was able to do that probably for about 20-ish years. And so that allowed me to touch lots and lots of industries. But part of the job of doing the programming allowed me to see how these various businesses worked. I had to understand them to be able to do the programming, the custom programming that they were asking me to do. And so did that for a number of years, ultimately became a vice president of IT.

6:02And our IPO that was scheduled to happen was scheduled for Thursday. And on Tuesday, we had the dot-com crash in 2000. Wow. And so two days before our IPO, the dot-com crash happened. Oh, no. So talk about really bad timing. Wow. And so from that point, I actually took a very hard left turn. And we were talking about hobbies. And I decided I would explore my hobby of knitting. And I became a professional knitting instructor for a chunk of time. Knitability. Knitability was your company. Yeah, Knitability was my company. And I taught knitting all over the world and became famous in that world. I would describe it, I am a big minnow in a tiny drop of water.

6:57is the way I would describe my fame. And, but while I was in that industry was when I realized I really missed doing, you know, interacting with businesses. And in that industry, a lot of folks don't have business background. You know, you talk about business adulting. They start because it's like, oh, I love knitting. I love yarn. I love, you know, and they haven't thought about the business pieces of it. And so that was when I actually started my business consulting business that I've now had since I've lost kind of track somewhere about 2012, 2013, something, something in there, because it was a really interesting way to help them make sure that their businesses were successful, that they would be around for the long term.

7:43And so, and because I had such a wide variety of experience, I didn't focus on one particular area of the business, I looked at the entire business. And so I was doing more strategic business advisory services. And that's what I continue to do today. And that is my primary focus, focusing specifically with women entrepreneurs. Well, Gwen, so I have your website pulled up. What does it mean? And by the way, I wanted to point this out. I forgot to mention this. You have a podcast. It's called The Business You Really Want, a podcast for women entrepreneurs seeking alignment, sustainability, and success.

8:21You lived it, Gwen. How might somebody know that there is opportunity to, like most folks that listen to this podcast, they already own a successful company, you know, but I have been at the helm of companies that I started and created. And I, I would feel exhausted at the, at the end of a day. And I feel like that might be one indicator that, that there could be some room to evaluate, reevaluate what's going on. Also, you know, maybe even leading to dread, like, Oh my gosh, it's already Monday. Business owners, leaders, entrepreneurs, you should not be feeling that way. Gwen, help us out. Otherwise, just go get a job if you dread Mondays.

9:13I think in an ideal world, I mean, we all have to do work. I think that, you know, maybe we don't love, but help us, Gwen. Set us straight. Well, and so to me, that really is the focus for me, is to help people say, first, what does success actually mean to you? as opposed to what have you been conditioned to believe success is going to be? And being really conscious of that, realizing that that may be very, very different than what most of society is telling you success is. And so one of the ways that I also help people identify it, all the things you said are absolutely true. If you're feeling success, you know, if everyone's like, oh, you're so successful, Josh, and you're like, I hate what I'm doing.

10:01Okay. That, this is probably a bad, a bad. Oh, sure. Right. And I know that there's countless stories of, of what would seem to be very successful people, um, you know, entertainers and so forth. Um, you know, people were excellent at what they do and they put on a great show, but behind the scenes, they're incredibly depressed. Yeah. And, and, and, And my whole piece with folks is to say, what does success actually mean to you? And not get caught into either society's definition, social media's definition. Often your family's definition of success may not be your definition of success. The other big identifier is if you hit the goal that you set for yourself and there is no joy in it.

10:50Right? Because then that was somebody else's goal that you hit, right? Is you're actually hitting other people's goals, not your goals. And my third criteria is if it's not joyful on the way to the goal, there is no amount of success that is going to compensate for misery on the path to the goal. And so it shouldn't be a miserable path. Not that it can't be hard. Not that it won't be challenging. Not that there won't be bad days, but it can't just be misery the entire time, because that means you're headed towards something that that is never going to satisfy you. There is no goal that can be worth misery for months and months at a time.

11:34I feel this in my stomach because I know that for myself and I think a lot of us as founders, as leaders might be kind of in that type A category, very high expectations of ourselves. And that is a superpower to some degree. But at the same time, I know, for example, my wife has to remind me, Josh, take a victory lap, you know, because I'm always thinking about, oh, I have this to do now. I have this to do. And I don't, I know that I don't pause long enough to say, you know what? Months ago, I was dreaming of this day and here it is. And now it's like, here I am again, thinking about what I want months from now.

12:18Again, that's, you know, that's probably part of what's led to our success. However, it's probably keeping us from a lot of happiness that we deserve. Yeah, entrepreneurs are really good at moving the goalposts just about the time that they cross the end of the end zone. Awful. Awful. Really, really good about that. That is one of the things that I focus on with my clients is saying, hey, let's look back and see where we were versus where we are. And really acknowledge the accomplishment, the achievement, you know, and to also learn from it. what, you know, what are the things that got us here?

12:59Let's do more of that. Um, and spend less time focusing on all the things that went wrong. I think that's another thing that we get caught doing a lot as all the things that went wrong. It's like, yeah, but to get where you got a whole lot of things went right. How do we, how do we do more of that? Um, instead of, you know, always trying something new because sometimes the best success is doing the same thing that worked twice. Yeah. Well, Gwen, share how people can engage with you. Obviously, you know, if you're listening to a podcast right now, well, real simple, just go find Gwen's podcast.

13:34It's called The Business You Really Want, a podcast for women entrepreneurs seeking alignment, sustainability, and success. My suspicion is you have some men listeners too. We probably do, but it is very woman-focused.

13:51So that's one of the easiest ways. The other thing that I spend a lot of my time with my clients doing is asking them really hard questions. And so we actually have a question a week that's a free opportunity. If you go to everydayeffectiveness.com slash question, you can sign up for it. And I'm not giving you tips. I'm not giving you insights because a lot of us don't actually need more information. We need to be thinking about the hard questions more. And so it's one question to ponder. And if you take time to reply, I'll reply back to you. Your website, again, is everydayeffectiveness.com. If somebody, and then regarding your services, you obviously do consulting.

14:42What does that look like? So my primary service is working one-on-one with women entrepreneurs. And we have different levels of service depending on what makes sense. But I'm really focused on working with the CEO, helping them think strategically about their business. And the way I describe it is I consider myself a business advisor. I'm like an advisory board of one. and so I'm my job is to keep you focused so that we don't get too distracted in our entrepreneurial way that it's easy to get distracted by if we're going to change direction we're doing it with intention that I'm going to also hold you accountable to whatever you define as success not my definition of success for you but whatever your definition of success is and I'll help you figure that out because that's one of those very simple but not easy things to actually do and then And the third thing is I'll ask you a lot of hard questions that probably no one else in your world will ask you, either because they don't know to ask you, it doesn't occur to them, it feels disrespectful, you know, to push back.

15:53And so I'm going to ask those hard questions and we'll have the discussion about it so that we can really be focused on making sure that your business is moving forward in the way that you want it moving forward on a day-to-day sort of basis. Gwen Bortner, your website, everydayeffectiveness.com. Gwen, it's been a great conversation. Thank you for joining us. I've really appreciated it, Josh. Thanks for having me.

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