Strengthen Your Change Leadership with a Coach You Can Trust |Forbes Contributor |Accenture Alum |Former NU Adjunct Faculty

Empowering Leaders to Navigate Change and Drive Results

With over 20 years of experience guiding executives across industries, I've honed my expertise in leadership development, change management, and high-performance team building. My journey from competitive tennis to global change initiatives at Accenture and other global firms has taught me the critical importance of adaptability, resilience, and strategic communication in today's volatile business landscape.

Key focus areas:

 - Elevating leadership potential through personalized coaching
 - Mastering Change Leadership to drive sustainable transformations
 - Enhancing executive presence and inclusive leadership skills

My approach combines structured frameworks with agility, utilizing assessments, workshops, and hands-on coaching to deliver rapid, measurable progress. Drawing from my academic work at Northwestern University and insights from the Forbes Coaches Council, I provide leaders with practical strategies to navigate complex challenges and inspire their teams.

Ready to elevate your leadership and drive impactful change? Let's connect.

Email: smschwan@evolvingstrategies.com
Phone: +1.312.371.7263
Schedule a call: https://calendly.com/sandyschwan

Sandy Schwan

Empowering your people to bring their best by leaving their financial stress behind

Dave Won

Sales teams fold whenever money is on the line (which is all the time). I fix the limiting money beliefs costing them deals.

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I hated coffee until my wife changed me.


To cover up the bitter taste, I used to load my coffee with tons of sugar, syrups and flavors.

I wasn’t even drinking coffee at this poin‍t. She showed me that sourcing matters. 

High quality coffee comes down to six things: 

- the bean (organic, single origin, high in antioxidants)

- the brewing method (I prefer pour over)

- grind size (extra coarse for a smoother and less bitter extraction)

- water quality (filtered, right pH, right minerals)

- water temperature (194°F for optimal extraction)

- pour speed (slow and gentle)

For the longest time, I tried to “fix” the taste of coffee by slapping a sugary band aid on it instead of getting down to the root of the problem.

Sales leaders do the same thing with their teams.

The bitter taste is their teams performance and they keep reaching for more sugar.

More playbooks. More methodologies. More tactics. More grit.

It’s not a technique or execution problem. It’s a money belief problem.

That it's scarce. That clients can't afford it. That talking about money is uncomfortable.

You can't train your way out of a money belief problem.

Getting to the source matters in coffee. It matters in sales too.


Any coffee drinkers here?

The client never asked for your discount.

It’s drilled into your head that you need to focus on value, not price.

That advice isn’t wrong. It's just completely useless until you understand why you gave the discount away in the first place.

“This is expensive for me so it must be expensive for them.”
That’s not empathy. That’s your wallet doing the talking.

“If I offer full price, they’ll reject me.”
They never said a word. You decided for them.

“They might walk at full price. I need to keep them happy.”
You’re reading your own fear and calling it strategy.

“I’m not comfortable talking big numbers. I’ll lower it so this feels less uncomfortable.”
The discount was never about the client. It was about you.

This isn't a training problem. It's not a closing problem. It's not even a confidence problem.

It's a money belief problem.

The money beliefs you formed internally don't stay internal. They run your deals without you even knowing it.

They're costing you money on every opportunity. Which is all of them.

You can't script your way out of a limiting money belief.

The first step is knowing which money beliefs are running in the background.

This guy turned down $4000 and told me to buy his $10 book instead 👇🏼

Let me take you back to May 2012.

I’ve been living in excruciating back pain for over a year at this point after herniating 2 discs in my lower back.

I recall driving around DC in so much pain I pulled over to the side of the road and gave Dr. Sarno a call.

I told him I was so desperate to come up to New York City to see him.

He told me his rates were $1000/hr for 4 hours but suggested I read his book instead since it would be just as effective, save me money and be a better use of my time (despite having openings in his calendar).

The lucrative choice would have been to take my money.

Instead, he made a decision based on my best interest, not his.

I could FEEL that he truly cared about my well-being.

Money wasn’t even remotely a motivator for him.

There wasn’t even a hint of scarcity, desperation or viewing the world through a lens of lack.

In sales, you can say all the right things and make all the right moves, but if you have a lack mindset around money, you’ll unintentionally put a wedge between you and your clients and make forming life long fans out of your clients that much more difficult.

It’s not about rejecting money or devaluing your worth.

It’s about confidently making decisions that truly serve your clients and knowing that this approach creates exponentially more value in the long run.

So even though Dr. Sarno didn’t close a $4000 opportunity with me, he turned me into a super fan and I’ve told thousands of people about him, his book and the life changing, healing impact that he made on my life.

And that right there is worth way more than $4000.

Dave Ramsey would make a terrible sales coach.


Here’s why.

His stuff is pretty logical.

Get on a budget. Spend less than you make. Know where each dollar is going. Use the difference to pay down debt. 

But he never asks the one question that actually matters:

-> Why did you get into debt in the first place?

If you don’t answer that, the plan works until it doesn’t.

Sales leaders make the same mistake.

Sales methodologies. Processes. Frameworks. Playbooks. Objection handling. Scripts.

All logic. All tactics. All rational.

None of it asks why.

Why does your rep decide what the client can afford before the conversation even happens?

Why does your rep protect the forecast instead of telling the truth?

Why does your rep over-apologize for the price?

It's not a tactics problem.

The tactics are fine.

It's that the training never reached the level where the behavior is actually coming from.

More logic won't fix what logic didn't cause.

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Sandy Schwan

Dave Won

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taplio

The Battle

Sandy Schwan

Dave Won

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Dave Won's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreDave Won's LinkedIn Performance