How to Bounce Back from Setbacks

In partnership with

QBR prep used to take a week. Now it lands in Slack Monday.

Your best CSMs block an hour before the strategic QBR. They pull NPS trends, dig through support history, check adoption deltas, draft the deck. The customer feels seen.

The other 190 QBRs this quarter don't get that hour. The CSM scans the dashboard five minutes before the call. The customer answers the same baseline questions again.

Viktor changes that ratio. Before any QBR, message Viktor. He pulls account health, open tickets, product usage, and recent company news. Drafts the brief. Attaches the deck. Posts it in your DMs before the day starts.

Every CSM walks into every QBR prepared. Even when there are 200 of them.

20,000+ teams. Connects to Gainsight, Zendesk, Salesforce, and 3,000+ other tools. SOC 2 certified.

Get Started for Free

Upcoming Featured Events at Executiv

The Annual Executiv Women in Leadership SUMMIT is HERE!!!

You know I can’t hold back my excitement for our summit. It’s the ultimate event we put together.

This year, we’re having twice the fun. That’s right—we’re hosting two summits: one in Toronto and one in Montréal.

Here’s why you can’t miss it.

The Executiv Women in Leadership Summit is the flagship and largest gathering of women executives in Canada. The best of the best will be in the room.

What can you expect?

• 30+ Women Executives on the Executiv C-Suite Stage

• 4 Industry Panels

  • Retail, B2B & Consumer

  • Tech & AI

  • Health & Women’s Health

  • Government & Non-Profits

• 4 Iconic Keynotes

• 400+ ambitious, smart, talented corporate women leaders like YOU in the room

Our summit experience is just as epic, curated, and thoughtful. We're sweating every detail because we're building the kind of conference we would have wanted to attend ourselves.

As former corporate women leaders, we know what truly makes an event worth your time: meaningful conversations with nice people, practical insights from executive leaders who are doing the work, inspiring diverse speakers from some of Canada's top brands, exceptional food, and genuine connections that open doors for your career.

For Toronto, we'll be at the beautiful Hotel X.

For Montréal, we'll be hosting our first-ever summit at the Four Seasons Montréal.

🎟️ Early Bird tickets for our Executiv Women in Leadership Summit Toronto are officially live.

Get Your Tickets Here.

As a loyal reader of The Executiv Newsletter, you get first access. We won't be announcing tickets publicly until next week, so you have the opportunity to secure yours before everyone else.

Early Bird pricing is available until July 31st (or until tickets sell out). Grab your ticket now before prices increase.

See YOU there!

Today is Executiv’s two year anniversary and I have been reflecting on what has helped me push through and hit this major milestone in my business, and what I need to do to keep pushing through.

While some things get easier, like the long work hours, being Chief Everything Officer, dealing with surprises in the business or from clients, a lot of it gets harder. Much harder.

There is also the impact on my mental health from two years of building, on my body, family, and even my kids.

The guilt of being a founder who is also in the best years of motherhood is heavy.

There are plenty of successes to be seen on the outside, but inside it is rarely ever rosy.

Founders get it. We are all somehow living very similar lives. Most of us at least.

Recently, I went through a major setback in the business I wasn’t expecting. Investing in areas with no return, burning cash in a way that felt painful, running events solo after help falling through the night before, and even people's lack of discernment at events I pour into.

As resilient as I am, I am human. I have feelings and emotions that come with dealing with all of that.

So, today I wanted to share with you how I bounce back from major setbacks:

1. I have a 24-hour rule to complain and sulk. After 24 hours, I'm not allowed to complain anymore. I have to take action and move on. I'm not sure where I picked this up, but I have a real system around it now. I let myself wallow and complain, and then I intentionally disrupt the pattern my brain wants to run. That might mean working out of a completely new location, going on a random movie date with my partner, or picking up and leaving the city for a weekend trip. If it takes physically putting myself in a new space to change my state, I do it.

2. I audit what led me here, then make a game plan to fix it. I borrow a tool from the military called the After Action Review. It comes down to four questions: What did I expect to happen? What actually happened? Why is there a gap? And what do I keep or change? That first question is the one that stings, because it forces me to look at my assumptions, not just my decisions. Once I know why it happened, I decide what I do about it over the next 3 to 6 months. Is this a skill gap or a resourcing issue? Once I can name it, I tackle it.

3. I don't process it alone. For a long time I did, and it made every setback heavier than it needed to be. Now I have a small circle of founders and operators who get it. I am also lucky to have friends who are coaches who will coach me through a setback. These are not people who will tell me it's fine, but people who will listen when that’s all I need or those that will ask me the hard questions I'm avoiding thinking through. One honest conversation with my board of directors can collapse a week of spiraling into the realm of doom and gloom, into an hour.

I'm not saying this is bulletproof, but it has helped me come out of some pretty awful setbacks.

Maybe some of these can help you too.

What’s a setback you’re dealing with this year? Reply and let me know.

As always, thank you for being here. See you next week.

Accelerate Your Career Growth with Executiv

To learn more about our private network for women in leadership (Directors to C-Suite), as well as our coaching programs, community, and events, email us at [email protected] or visit www.executiv.ca.

Our invite-only network brings together 205+ top women in leadership from global Fortune 500 companies like Miele, Google, Amazon, and Colgate, as well as leading Canadian organizations including RBC, TD, Scotiabank, Canadian Tire, and many more.

We are a community that is highly vetted, deeply connected, and committed to each other’s success.

Our services are made available on-demand through our platform and app!

Follow Executiv on LinkedIn and IG!

“If you surrender to the wind you can ride it.”

Toni Morrison