Create Your Impact (Pt 6): When It Looks Like It’s Not Working

I tried that once. It didn't really go anywhere.

Maybe it was the workshop where four people signed up. The newsletter whose open rates you stopped checking. The offer you launched and all you heard was silence.

You did the brave part. You put it out there.

Then the numbers came back small, nobody said much, and you quietly closed the drawer on it.

You haven't opened that drawer since.

When you're building something on your own, there's no one down the hall to tell you what the silence means. 

So you decide for yourself. 

And most of us land in the same place. It didn't work. Maybe I'm not cut out for this.

This is where you stop and take a breath. That step told you something. You just haven't read what it said yet.

An Impact Attempt I don't talk about much

Before the podcast I host now, there was another one. It was called “Soft and Strong: Midlife Women On A Mission.”

I didn't know a thing about how to podcast when I started. I learned by doing it. I wanted to share my heart, that’s all I knew. I didn’t invite guests. It was just me.

So I went looking for how to record, edit, upload it, how to make my voice sound like I wasn't reading from a page.

And the numbers were vague, the way they are for most of what we put into the world. 

A handful of downloads. Very few likes. No real way of knowing who was listening, or whether it was helping anyone at all.

If I'd judged Soft and Strong by its statistics, I would have called the whole thing a failure.

But I'd been listening to what others were saying about this as I did my research. I learned how quiet this kind of work can be, and that quiet doesn't mean nothing is happening. 

Slowly, I also learned something harder to hear. The show was pointed in the wrong direction. I could feel it.

So I pressed pause. I didn’t explain it to anyone. I just stopped.

And waited.

I kept building my business in other ways. And let one question sit with me. What do I really want this to do? 

The answer wasn’t instant. It became clearer in the stillness than it ever had while I was pushing. 

About 2 years later, I was able to put it into words. I wanted women to know they could do hard things, that they could move from not enough to brave enough. 

And one way I could do it was by letting women tell their own courage stories.

That became Tiny Brave Steps: Real Women. Real Fear. Real Courage Stories, my most recent podcast. It exists because Soft and Strong showed me what wasn’t quite right for me.

The voice keeping the file

There's a voice in each of us that works hard to keep us safe. I call mine Fred. He's fear, the small kind. 

He's like a worried little dragon in glasses who has been with me through everything, keeping a careful record of every time something went wrong.

When a step doesn't land the way you hoped, Fred files it. Tried it. Didn't work. Let's not do that again.

He's trying to keep you from feeling that sting twice. But his file only records how it felt. It leaves out what you learned.

That part is yours to write down.

‘Not this way’ is an answer too

We expect every step to say yes. This is it. Keep going.

Some steps say no. Not this way. Not this shape. Not yet.

That's a real answer. Sometimes we find out who we are by finding out who we aren't. Every "not this" narrows the field until what's truly yours starts to stand out.

Picture the distance between who you are now and the woman you're meant to become as a wide chasm. 

Each small step you take is a plank laid across it. 

A step that teaches you "not this" still holds your weight. You're closer to the far side than you were before you tried.

This is how the impact you're reaching for gets built. You don't have to get every step right. You only have to be willing to find out.

Most of the women I work with are building something on their own, and nearly every one of them carries a drawer like this. 

When we open it together, it's almost never empty. It's full of what they learned.

Opening the drawer

Think of one thing you tried that didn't go the way you hoped. The one you filed under didn't work.

Take a breath before you look at it. Give the feeling about ninety seconds to rise and settle.

Then open the drawer and ask it a few honest questions. 

What did I learn how to do? What did I learn I don't want? Where is it pointing me now?

Write down what you learned. Leave the numbers out of it.

Then choose one small experiment that grows out of it, something you could try this week to find out a little more. 

Before you do it, decide what you'll pay attention to afterward. That way, whatever happens, you come back with an answer.

When Fred says, “Remember last time”, thank him. He's looking out for you. 

Then let him know you're doing research now. You’re looking for the answers. Learning.

That’s what will tell you the truth.

That's how the horizon you've chosen draws closer. One Tiny Brave Step at a time, and every one of them counts, even the ones that say, “Not this way”.

If you'd like a thinking partner, paste this into your favorite AI. Attach your business plan and a personality assessment you've taken, so it knows who you are:

Here's something I tried in my business that didn't go the way I hoped: [describe it]. Help me look at it as research instead of failure. What did it teach me, what might it be saying "not this" about, and what's one small experiment I could run next?

And if you're building on your own and want company while you do it, join us in Creative Spaces every other Tuesday, (Next one is September 29th, from 9:30 to 11:00 a.m. GMT -6).

It's a free 90-minute Zoom gathering for solopreneurs who want to keep moving. Bring the thing you've been circling. You'll leave with a little more courage and one real thing done.