Navigating Crisis, Pivoting Business Models, and Building Resilience

Navigating Crisis, Pivoting Business Models, and Building Resilience With Anna Rembold

Anna Rembold is the Founder and CEO of Metavent, a company that specializes in comprehensive corporate event operations and strategy, helping clients execute everything from intimate gatherings to large-scale events for up to 5,000 attendees. Under Anna’s leadership, Metavent experienced rapid growth, reaching $4 million in annual revenue and earning a place as #403 on the Inc. 5000 list in 2019.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[03:49] How Anna Rembold’s youth group leadership training shaped her leadership style
[05:11] The influence of a family legacy of entrepreneurship on Anna’s ambition and long-term vision
[14:14] Why Anna left operations and private equity to start her events company
[18:36] What it’s like when the pandemic wipes out 90% of a company’s revenue overnight
[21:54] How pivoting to technology became a survival strategy during the pandemic
[24:44] The mental health impact on a founder handling prolonged uncertainty, isolation, and nonstop pressure
[37:39] Anna’s advice for founders navigating crisis, uncertainty, and major business pivots

In this episode…

When everything you’ve built suddenly disappears, what keeps you moving forward? For founders and leaders, a crisis isn’t just a strategic test — it exposes habits, assumptions, and the inner resilience that reveals itself when survival becomes the only goal.

According to Anna Rembold, a seasoned entrepreneur shaped by both rapid growth and abrupt loss, the answer is grounded realism paired with adaptability. She believes that surviving a crisis starts with staying calm, taking decisive action, and being willing to let go of rigid plans in favor of what the moment demands. Her experience navigating a near-total revenue collapse during the pandemic reinforced that resilience isn’t about avoiding hardship, but about building systems, support, and perspective that allow you to endure it and emerge stronger.

In this episode, John Corcoran is joined by Anna Rembold, Founder and CEO of Metavent, to discuss navigating crises and pivoting business models during extreme uncertainty. They explore how the events industry was forced to reinvent itself during the pandemic, the realities of shifting from services to software, and the mental toll of prolonged instability. Anna also shares advice on protecting mental health, leaning on community, and rebuilding stronger after disruption.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Quotable Moments

“Events are the perfect trifecta of business strategy, solutions, people, and humans, which I love.”
“I realized I was totally lying on the applications, and I didn’t care about what I had written.”
“There is nothing quite like being in a room and having those chance encounters.”
“We lost 90% of revenue essentially overnight.”
“I didn’t pay myself a salary for almost five years.”

Action Steps

Build a strong personal support system: Having trusted people who will take your call can help you survive the darkest moments of entrepreneurship.
Take decisive action early in a crisis: Moving quickly to cut costs or pivot strategy can preserve optionality and prevent irreversible losses.
Stay flexible with your business model: Being open to changing direction allows you to adapt as markets, technology, and customer needs shift.
Prioritize mental and physical health: Sustained performance during long periods of uncertainty depends on caring for yourself, not just the business.
Lean into your core strengths: Using what you naturally do well can create stability and momentum when everything else feels uncertain.

Sponsor for this episode…

EO San Francisco

This episode is brought to you by EO San Francisco.

The Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) is a global, peer-to-peer network of more than 14,000+ influential business owners with 198 chapters in 61 countries.

If you are the founder, co-founder, owner, or controlling shareholder of a company generating over $1 million a year in revenues, and want to connect with other like-minded successful entrepreneurs, EO is for you.

The EO San Francisco chapter enables leading entrepreneurs in the Bay area to learn, grow, and achieve greater success.

The EOSF chapter was founded in 1991, and today we have over 100 members in industries ranging from marketing to agriculture to tech and professional services.

To learn how it works, or to come do a test drive come join us at www.eonetwork.org/sanfrancisco/.

This episode is also brought to you by my company, Pacific Crest Group.

Pacific Crest Group provides outsourced CFO, Controller, and bookkeeping services. You can learn more about us at https://www.pcg-services.com/

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