Welcome back to Superheroes in Heels! I’m Kimberley Borgens, and in today’s episode, I’m diving deep into a crucial topic for women entrepreneurs and leaders: How do you know when to persevere, when to pivot, and when it’s time to quit? If you’ve ever struggled with the idea of not giving up but also sensed deep down that something needs to change, this episode is for you.

We often hear messages like “Winners never quit” and “Stay the course!” But sometimes, perseverance is misunderstood. Today, I challenge the conventional idea of grit and discuss the difference between stubbornly sticking with a plan that isn’t working and creatively adapting your approach to achieve your mission.

In this episode, I break down:

• The real meaning of perseverance: It’s not about never changing, but about refusing to abandon your bigger mission—even if that means throwing out your entire plan and starting with a new strategy.
• The power of adaptation and creativity: Successful women entrepreneurs and leaders are those who adapt, adjust, and evolve in pursuit of their goals, not simply those who stick it out no matter what.
• Private realities vs. public stories: While it may look like pure perseverance on the outside, the truth is, most success stories are filled with pivots, adjustments, and learning moments along the way.
• Changing the way to win: There’s often a third option between quitting and persevering—I discuss how you can change your method without abandoning your dreams.

I share a powerful client story about “Molly,” who faced a crossroads in her business partnership and learned how making the right pivot not only brought her more joy but also realigned her business with her true vision and values.

You’ll learn my three-part “PPQ Framework”—Persevere, Pivot, Quit—to help you make smart decisions in your business and life:

• When and how to know if you should keep going
• When it’s time to change your strategy but not your mission
• When it’s okay to walk away—for the right reasons
• The five essential questions to ask yourself before you quit on anything important

I use relatable analogies (like finding different roads to Grandma’s house or needing to update your GPS) to illustrate how flexible and creative approaches often lead to growth, success, and personal fulfillment.

Key takeaways for today’s ambitious, purpose-driven women:

• Don’t confuse changing the plan with abandoning your dream
• Don’t mistake a pivot for failure
• Evolution doesn’t mean quitting
• Update your roadmap as you grow—don’t stay loyal to outdated methods that no longer serve your mission

If you’re feeling exhausted, questioning your direction, or simply wondering if you’re on the right track, this episode will help you gain clarity and confidence. Let’s embrace evolving, adapting, and leading with wisdom.

Looking for more practical support or a community of empowered women? Join the Hive Hangout at KimberleyBorgens.com and connect with others who are committed to growth, leadership, and supporting each other’s missions.

Listen now and discover how to lead, adapt, and thrive—because superheroes in heels know that every roadblock is just an opportunity to find a better path forward.

Don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with the women in your life who are ready to unleash their power and lead boldly!

Mentioned in this episode:

Superheroes in Heels is part of the eWomenPodcastNetwork

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Have you ever been told, don't give up? Maybe it came from a coach, a mentor, a friend, spouse, podcast, motivational quote plastered across social media. I don't know. Keep going. Push through. Stay the course. Winners never quit.

Right?

And while all those messages can be in Incredibly inspiring, right? All right, I want to challenge that idea today. Not because perseverance isn't important, because it is, but because sometimes perseverance gets, I don't know, a little misunderstood. So let me ask you this question. Have you ever known deep down that something needed to change, but you kept going anyway because you didn't want to seem like You're a quitter? And on the flip side, have you ever walked away from something that might have worked if you had simply just stayed with it a little bit longer? Well, if you're nodding your head right now, or you're feeling to yourself, yeah, I've done that, well then welcome to the club, because both have happened to so many people, myself included. And today's conversation is somewhat of a continuation of last week's episode about making decisions and then making the decision right. Today, we're going to take it just a step further because after you make a decision and you're committed to it, there usually comes a moment with every entrepreneur, every leader, every woman building something that's meaningful. And she asks herself the same question. Is it time to quit, or is it time to get creative? Because I just want you to know that those two things are not the same.

They are not the same thing. And the truth is, is that women often put them, uh, put themselves into the same two categories: either I quit or I persevered. But what if there's a third option? What if the answer is, is I changed the way I was going to win, right? Not that it's a completely different conversation, but imagine I changed the way that I was going to win. Well, welcome back to Superheroes in Heels. I'm Kimberley Borgens, and today we're talking about the difference between giving up And changing the game. Look, the lie that we often tell ourselves about success as entrepreneurs, I think, is simply that people refuse to quit. Like, we celebrate grit, okay? We celebrate resilience. I do.

I'm thrilled with it, right? We celebrate determination. And don't get me wrong. Right? Those things all matter. They do. They matter. But here's what we don't talk enough about. Successful people don't just persevere. They adapt consistently.

Right? We're— and we're constantly adapting and making changes and making adjustments. The woman who built a successful company, she probably changed her plans 20, 30, 50 times. Right? The speaker who filled stages, she likely adjusted her message repeatedly. I know that I have. The entrepreneur who hit 7 figures, I can guarantee you she, she absolutely abandoned several strategies that weren't working along the way, right? I'm right now in a crossroad of abandoning, abandoning a strategy right now in my business. Because something isn't working. Right? And I might have to shift that strategy. The public story sounds like perseverance.

The private reality, though, is usually creativity. Right? It isn't that I never changed. I never changed the process. Right? Really what it is, is I refused to abandon what matters most. That's where the creativity comes in. There's a big difference between the two. Sometimes perseverance means staying the course. We just keep going, we keep going, we keep going.

You know, last week I talked about, you know, a lot of people just quit and they just change the whole thing and they do something completely different. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about how sometimes perseverance means Throwing the entire plan in the trash while you're refusing to let go of the mission, while refusing to let go of that goal. It stays. But the process, the plan in which I thought I was going to make it happen was not working. The strategy changes. Okay, sometimes the goal changes, but most of the time, no. But the mission stays.

Occasionally you learn that the mission itself has even evolved. It changed in the process. That doesn't make you inconsistent; it makes you self-aware. Okay, look, let me tell you about Molly. Molly hired me to work with her around her decisions in business. Right? She was a partner in business with a family member, but her heart just wasn't in it anymore. She was struggling to be a good partner and. Doing what she really loved to do, what she really wanted to do.

She wanted to do some amazing different things, but it conflicted with the partnership that she had. And she had offers from people to do what she loved to do, and she just felt stuck because she had made this agreement to be in business with a family member, right? That's where the— you could get into that stubbornness trap. Okay, the difference between being committed and being too stubborn to admit that the plan isn't working. And I said it, yep, I did, because this happens all the time. It does. Women stay in situations because they don't want people to think that they failed, or they don't want to let somebody else down. You keep investing in things that aren't producing results You continue defending decisions that you made years and years ago that aren't working, right? Or maybe they're working but not great because admitting that they aren't working feels really uncomfortable and feels like a failure. Look, we become emotionally attached to it, right? The business model, the product, the timeline, The revenue goal, the employee that we hired, the idea, the identity of being the CEO, and sometimes even a version of ourselves because we become emotionally attached to.

And before we know it, we're spending more, I don't know, energy defending the original decision than pursuing the actual mission. Think about that. How many times have you continued something simply because You've already invested too much time. Maybe you invested too much money, too much effort, too much pride, right? That's not commitment, that's attachment. And guess what? Attachment, it's expensive, because every minute spent protecting a broken plan is time not spent creating a better one. This is where I really want those of you listening to lean in, right? Just lean in because this might completely change how you view your business. Pivot does not say I failed. A pivot says I learned something.

That's it. I learned something and I'm going to make an adjustment. I'm going to make a tweak, a shift. A change. Let's look at some examples, right? Maybe your goal was to get 100 coaching clients through one-on-one services, and you worked incredibly hard, right? You start growing your business, and then something interesting happens. You just discovered that you're the bottleneck for your own business, right? You're exhausted. You can't even scale. So what do you do? You quit.

No, you don't quit, right? You pivot. Now you create a group program, right? Same mission, different method. Maybe your goal was to open another location for your business, and everything tells you, you know, bigger equals better, expansion equals success. And then the numbers show you a different story. A second location would create more headaches than profit. So instead, you build recurring revenue. Same mission, different strategy. Maybe your goal was to become a keynote speaker.

But as you continued speaking, you notice audiences respond most strongly when you discuss, I don't know, women in leadership, confidence, business ownership. So you narrow your focus, you get known for your expertise. Same destination, different road, right? Instead of being to everybody, now you're focused on that specific person. The pivot isn't evidence that your idea was stupid to begin with. The pivot is evidence that you're paying attention to what the first idea was telling you. And smart leaders pay attention. So let's get back to Molly, right? She and her family member were profiting, but Molly was exhausted doing the thing that she didn't love to do. She was paying attention to the evidence and what it was showing her.

And here's what she said, her testimonial: In this past year, what Kimberley has done is make me realize that's what success is for me. And seeing myself in that role, I realized that everyone's success or definition of success is not the same. Kimberley helped me grow and become more successful by taking some risks, closing one business, starting new ventures, and dealing more appropriately with different personalities and negotiating outcomes. The end result of the year was— My debt's been paid off. I became more secure in my role as a leader and understanding that I love the thrill of having 100 balls in the air, and it's OK if someone else does not. Kimberley has done this through listening, coaching, and advising when appropriate. She challenged me to reach, grow, and push myself. This may not work for everyone, but it has worked for me.

You see, Molly was paying attention, and she decided that she needed help to figure out what her pivot would be. She, she loved being in this relationship, but she didn't love doing the work that they originally thought would be fun. Now, to the partner's credit, that family member is still to this day is running that business. Molly just is not there. So let's make this practical. Okay, here, I'm going to give you— the next time that you're questioning a goal, whether or not you want to persevere, pivot, or quit, I want you to run it through my PPQ framework. The next time that you're thinking about it, here's what I want you to do. First off, should I persevere? Number one, persevere.

Is this still the right goal and is the strategy showing signs of it working? And if the answer is yes, guess what? Keep going. Woo-hoo! Keep— get on that. That's when that motivation comes in. It's working. Let's keep going. Don't abandon something just because it's taking longer than expected. If the strategy is working, you can either amp up the speed or know that it's still on process. Many women quit right before the breakthrough.

We've heard this in many philosophies along the way throughout the years because we often confuse slow progress with no progress, and they're not the same. So the first thing you ask yourself is, am I going to persevere? And is, is this still the right goal? And is the strategy showing signs of it working? The second part of this would be whether you want to pivot. And you want to ask yourself, is the mission still right, but the strategy isn't working? If my mission is still right, then I might need to change my approach. I might need a different audience. Different marketing, different pricing, right? You see how I said you change the process, right? Different team of people, different timeline, same destination, just a different road. That's what a pivot is. You're still going towards the same destination, right? But things shift. You make a pivot.

It's not failure to change something. Look, Grandma's house didn't move when I was going to her house when I was young as a kid. All right, but I know that there were multiple different roads to get to Grandma's house. My parents, I'm like, which— how are we getting there? That's not— this isn't the road we're supposed to turn on. I knew where Grandma's house was, but there were so many different roads to get there. The same thing in our business. We have a mission, we have a goal. There's many ways to get to that destination.

When—

and when you're working towards that destination, sometimes you have to pivot. Sometimes you come up against road construction. Right? An accident in the way, right? All these things. Think of it metaphorically. If you're pivoting, that means all that, that means is that you've come up against a, a blockage, right? Construction, a different way, some other way to move around it. That's what a pivot is. So pivot, when you ask yourself, is the mission still right? But the strategy is not working for you anymore. Then find a way to make the shift, the pivot, so that you can get the strategy back on track.

And number 3, quit. If you're going to quit, ask yourself this question: have I learned that this goal is no longer supporting the mission that I actually want? If the goal is no longer supporting the mission, Right? Or the vision or the, the goal that you wanted, right? If, you know, think about the mission. If I wanted, you know, my goal was to create safe communities, right? But my goal, you know, my, my mission is to create safe communities, but maybe my goal says I want to, you know, reach X amount of dollars, and then I realize I'm focusing more on the dollars than I'm focusing on the mission. Then I either have to pivot or I might need to step out. If I've learned that the goal no longer supports the mission of what I actually wanted in my life and in my business, if I'm spending too much time away from my kids and it's not benefiting them in any way whatsoever, like, look, I get it. I struggled on quitting. I struggled on pivoting. I struggled on persevering many times while I was raising my kids.

I wanted to be the mom that stayed home with my kids, and I wanted to create a space where women were safe in our community, right? And then I wanted my kids to have a good quality education, right? In order to pay for that education that I had to pay for, I couldn't quit because The goal still supported the mission. If it's not supporting you, then let it go. Not because you failed, but because you've evolved. If you've outgrown it because you've become a different woman than the one who originally set out to the goal. Look, I had a goal to become a police officer. I went to the police academy. I get out there and guess what? I don't want to be out there. Okay, guess what? That goal shifted because the mission shifted, right? It didn't mean that I failed at it.

It means I chose out that crazy— the politics, the— look, because you're a different woman than the person who originally set that goal, it's okay to walk away from something for the right reasons. And it's not something to mourn when you make that decision. It's something to celebrate. Whoo! Look what I did. Okay, but before you quit, all right, I want you to ask these 5 questions to yourself. Okay, before you walk away from anything significant, always ask yourself these questions. Number 1. Am I quitting because it's hard? Life is hard.

Business is hard. Being broke is hard. Okay, being on welfare is hard, right? You gotta— you get to pick your hard. Number 2, am I quitting because I'm afraid? Ladies, You can be afraid and still walk through it. You know you can. You've been doing it for a long time. If you ever gave birth to a child, it was fearful the first time. Second time was like— by the fourth time, I was a pro.

I was telling everybody else how to do it, right? But guaranteed you, I was afraid in the beginning. Number 3, am I quitting because the data says this is wrong? If the data says this is wrong, then it might be a good time to quit, or it might be time to go get some more data, right? Make an adjustment and do new data. Number 4, is the goal wrong, or is my strategy wrong? Sometimes we think it's all wrong because we're only focused that we're not reaching the goal, when in reality the goal wasn't necessarily what was wrong. It was the strategy that was wrong. If the strategy is right and it's still not working for the goal, that might be a time to stop that goal, find a new goal, and then hit it running with that strategy. And number five. If I knew what I know today when I started, would I choose this again? Even if your answer is no, it doesn't mean you need to quit. Somebody said something to me like, oh, one of your kids going to take over your business? I'm like, uh, no.

And they give me this look, right? I'm like, no, I don't even want that for my kids, right? If somebody had told me about Getting involved in a security business 24/7, 7 days a week, you know, having to deal with the employees and calling off last minute and not showing up, people getting into car accidents while driving my vehicles, having to be up in the middle of the night when my dispatch team doesn't show up for work, right? If I were to choose it all over again today, no way.

Right.

But I'm still here and I'm not quitting. I just know what it really— I have an accurate view of what it looks like now. And just so you know, if you do number 5, if you answer that question, if I knew what I know today when I started, would I choose this again? Look, that 5th question will expose everything you need to know. It will, you know, and if your answer is no, see, mine was— my answer was no. Then I asked why. You know, that's where the real wisdom is hiding. If you're willing to honestly answer, like I just said, I honestly answered to you. If I— if somebody were to say, hey, today, with the information that I know now today, would I want to start a security business? I would say no.

No, thank you. Right? But I didn't know it back then. And I'm honest, honest enough to say I now understand the consequences of it. It doesn't mean I'm walking away. It doesn't mean I'm quitting. But I'm honest enough to know the wisdom in it. And I can still persevere, and I can put new people in place so that they're managing things, which I I have more of that now. But ultimately, as the CEO, I'm still responsible, right? It's still the company that I have to oversee.

And it's a lot. And it's okay, because I know what the a lot is. So answer those before you would quit. Answer those 5 questions. Am I quitting because it's hard? Am I quitting because I'm afraid? Am I quitting because the data says this is wrong? Is the goal wrong or is my strategy wrong? And if I knew what I know today when I started, would I choose this again? That's the difference. Those are the differences between, you know, persevering, pivoting, and quitting. And, and really, if you think about it, that's— if you are willing to get honest with yourself, I think you, you're more likely gonna pivot or persevere because you understand it a lot better now. Like, if you want more on this, Come over to the Hive Hangout.

Go to KimberleyBorgens.com and you know click to join the Hive Hangout. And and just know that you know like I said this was a continuation of last week. And you know it's is it time to quit or is it time to get creative? Is it time to get creative and finding the next thing that's going to help you pivot? Is it time to get creative to find the next marketing, the next pricing, the next The next timeline, right? The next way that you're going to deliver your launch or your program or you know your business, right? It's a different road. Not you know like I said, it's a different road getting to Grandma's house. It's just just a different road. And as I wrap up today, I really just want to speak directly to the women who feel stuck. Look. Maybe you're standing at a crossroad right now.

You're someone who feels exhausted. You're someone who's questioning everything right now. You're wondering if you should quit. Listen carefully. The question isn't, can I keep going? The question is, should I keep going this way? 2 completely different questions. Because somewhere along the way, many of us women were taught that challenging things and changing direction meant that we were weak, and that changing our minds meant failure. We were mocked about it. Oh, she's a woman, she just changed her mind.

We've been mocked about it for a long time. It's not failure. The lie is that successful women pick one path and stay on it forever. But that's not what successful women do. Successful women pay attention. They learn, they evolve, they adapt. They gather information from experiences, and they use that information to make those adaptations work. The strongest leaders that I've ever met weren't the women who never changed courses.

There were women who were brave enough to admit when the map needed to be updating. I don't know about you, but I've, I've had GPSs just this last— just this weekend, my, uh, my husband, he's like, oh, I gotta turn down this road because that's what it says. And then he's like, oh, my GPS is offline. Oh, you know what? After about 10 minutes, if we had stayed on that same road, we We would have been there a lot faster, right? Our maps sometimes need updating. So for the women who refuse to abandon themselves in order to stay committed to an outdated plan, please listen. Women who understood that their dreams are too important and they limited it by a single strategy. Listen up. If you're facing a decision today, remember this: don't confuse changing the plan with abandoning your dream.

Don't confuse a pivot with failure. Don't confuse evolution with quitting. And for heaven's sakes, okay, don't stay loyal to a method That no longer serves your mission. Your purpose matters. Your vision matters. But the road, the road itself is negotiable. Okay, you can take the highway, you can take the scenic route, you can make a U-turn, right? You can go in circles for a minute until you find the, you know, the right one off of the circle. Right? You can build an entire new road if you have to, new paths, right? Don't just mistake the road for the destination.

Sometimes the bravest thing a woman can do isn't holding on tighter. Sometimes the bravest thing that she can do is to loosen the grip on the plan just a little bit so she can finally grab hold of something better. You can't get to second base until you let go of first. Remember this, you're not a quitter just because you change direction. You are not a failure just because you reconsidered a path. You're not, ladies. You're not even starting over. So stop saying that to yourselves.

Stop telling other people, I started over, because you now have new information. You're just beginning again. You're simply becoming the woman capable of creating What the previous version of you could only imagine. Keep leading, keep learning, keep adapting, and keep showing the world that whatever happens when a superhero stops asking, should I quit, and starts asking, how else can I win? Now, ladies, take your heels off of the desk and get back to work. Revolve You're blessed.

Thanks for tuning in to Superheroes in Heels with Kimberley Borgens. If you're walking away feeling a little braver, a little bolder, and a whole lot more powerful, mission accomplished. Be sure to subscribe to the show and leave a review. It helps us to reach more women who are ready to unleash their power and lead with confidence. And if you do leave a review, you might just hear your name in an upcoming episode. If today's conversation lit a fire in you, share it with your network and join us inside the Hive Society at KimberleyBorgens.com, where powerful women come together to women inspire and uplift each other. gather to break barriers and rise together. Until next time, keep showing up, standing strong, and heels or not, keep embracing your inner superhero.