Hey, this is Simone, and you're listening to Liberatory Business. Thank you so much for being here. Now, I'm bringing back some episodes from my old archived podcast that I think very much stand the test of time and are just as useful now as they were back then. I hope you listen and enjoy.

Today's episode is for you if you have been trying different things and experimenting and trying and trying and trying, and you're just not getting the results you want, and you're just wondering why. Is it time to give up? Do I just not have what it takes? Am I just doomed? Does everybody hate me? Nothing's working. Why?

I coach people who are in this situation a lot, and here's the coaching that I want to offer you. It's very important to keep trying different things, to show up again and again when you feel like nothing's happening, to keep the spirit of curiosity and experimentation. But if you've been doing it a while and it's not creating any difference in outcome, it's time to ask yourself: how ballsy have I been? How bold have I been?

Yes, I've been experimenting, but you know what's even better than experimenting? Risk. How have I taken risks? Ask yourself, how many true risks have you taken? How many times have you been willing to fail big?

A lot of the times when we think we've tried a bunch of different things, we tend to kind of amp up the number of things we do. Like, I'll just post more. I will just make more offers. I will just network more. So we just keep adding to the task list, the action items, without going deeper and asking yourself, "What am I really scared to do that I'm avoiding?"

Because it's kinda easy to keep yourself really busy on the surface, kinda staying in your comfort zone. Or if you're pushing out of your comfort zone, just like pushing ever so slightly — enough so that you can pat yourself on the back and say, "Oh my God, I pushed myself ever so slightly today." But not enough where you feel like, "Oh my God, I'm going to vomit."

How many times have you done the thing that feels truly uncomfortable, truly unfamiliar? We all have a thing or two like that in our minds where you're like, "If I was really brave, I would try X. If I knew there was an absolute guarantee of success, if I knew I couldn't fail, I would totally go for X, but I'm not, because I'm too scared." Like, what is that thing?

Because I will tell you — our results are in proportion to not how many actions we take, not even how much we show up, but how brave we're willing to be, how willing we are to fail in a big way.

Oftentimes the feelings that we're avoiding feeling are things like embarrassment, shame, right? The feeling of being a failure. I'm gonna feel inadequate if nobody responds. I'm gonna feel so embarrassed if I get up in front of a group of people and bomb my speech.

What if you're willing to feel those terrible feelings? What if you said, "I'm willing for this to be a failure so that I can grow, so that I can really try something different in a way that sets all my nerves on fire"?

The point is, of course — I'm not a sadist. The point isn't to just torture yourself. But it kind of takes the mystery out of it if you keep getting the same unsatisfying results over and over again when it feels like you've just been doing so much and trying so much and experimenting so much. It actually might give you such a relief to think that, oh, it's because I haven't really been showing up for the really scary things.

That's gonna be different for everybody. So maybe it's talking about your offer in a more bold way. Maybe you've been kind of wishy-washy talking about the benefits of what you do — but what would it be like if you made the boldest offer that you could possibly imagine, and it kinda made you wanna throw up? What would it be like if you were so in people's faces, if you showed up so much with such force, such conviction, such grandiose energy that you felt like, oh my God, who even am I?

I'm not saying everybody has to do this. But if that's something that scares you, and it's still something you admire in other people, it might be time for you to try doing that.

These questions will be such a useful compass to lead you to what action you need to take next in order to actually change the results you're getting. How can I be willing to fail? How can I take a true risk? What's the really scary thing that I'm avoiding doing?

And then if you go out and do that thing, and then do it again, and then do it again, right? And find the next scary thing, and do it again, and do it again — I guarantee you're gonna start seeing different results.

I hope this inspires you to new, bold, brave, next-level action. I hope this helps you become the kind of resilient entrepreneur who isn't afraid to challenge herself or himself, and knows that in anything you could attempt, there's only two possible outcomes. You either succeed or you learn — and when you learn, that's a form of success. So every time you try something, you really end up succeeding anyhow.

So let's go for big successes, big learning. I'll talk to you next time.