Why Other People’s Success Strategies Don’t Work for You

Why do some success strategies work beautifully for other people, but feel wrong, heavy or impossible when you try to follow them?

In this episode of Sky High Coaching Conversations, Janelle explores why the answer isn’t always to try harder, be more disciplined or find yet another plan. For high-achieving professionals, leaders and business owners, this conversation is about the quiet cost of copying someone else’s formula and what it means to build success, leadership and confidence in a way that actually fits who you are.

If you’ve ever followed the advice, tried the strategy, or wondered why everyone else’s plan doesn’t seem to work for you, this episode will give you a very different way to think about growth, self-trust and your next chapter.

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Download your gifts, as mentioned by Janelle:  The Unshakeable Woman and Success Was The Warm-Up

Transcript

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Hello, welcome to or welcome back to Scar High Coaching Conversations. I'm Janelle Ryan. I'm happy you decided to join me today. As always, I invite you to listen along, notice what comes up for you, maybe even make some notes, and then decide later what you may wish to do with those ideas, thoughts, or insights. Let's dive in. So you've decided it's time to make a change. Maybe it's the promotion you've been circling for longer than you care to admit. Maybe it's the business you're ready to grow, the healthier relationship with work you know you need, or the next chapter you can feel tugging at you. Whatever it is, something in you knows you're ready to move. And because you're intelligent, you do what intelligent people tend to do. You seek help, you read the book, listen to the podcast, download the guide, you follow the person who seems to have cracked the code. You hire the teacher, the mentor, the consultant, the expert. And they give you, in capital letters, the plan, their strategy, their framework, their five, ten, twelve steps, their content system, their leadership approach, their exact formula for how they got from where they were to where they are now. And at first, and I know I've been there, it can feel like such a relief. There is something so comforting about being handed a map when you're standing at the edge of something new and you don't quite know how to move. It is so lovely to believe that if you just follow these instructions closely enough, the thing you want will finally begin to happen. So, maybe even excitedly, you implement. But nothing moves. It actually doesn't feel quite right. So you try harder, you adjust. You wonder if you're being resistant, lazy, inconsistent, or maybe difficult. You override that quiet internal nudge that something feels off because well they know what they're talking about, don't they? It worked for them, and it's worked for other people. There are testimonials, there are results, and yet something isn't quite landing for you. The plan doesn't seem to fit your life, the strategy doesn't quite fit your voice. Now the strategy makes sense intellectually, but something contracts in you, or or you hesitate, you hesitate, excuse me, every time you try to follow it. You can actually see why it worked for them, but the harder you try to make it work for you, the more you start to feel like you're failing. I know, believe me. And this is when so many capable people do something that breaks my heart a little. They turn on themselves. They assume the problem must be their discipline, their confidence, their courage, their commitment, or their desire. And they start wondering whether the promotion, the business growth, the greater visibility, the next chapter, the more powerful version of themselves simply isn't for them. But what if that's not true? What if you didn't fail the strategy? What if the strategy was never properly built for you in the first place? We tend to think that if a strategy is successful, it should be successful for everyone. But often a strategy works because it's sitting on top of a particular person's history, values, confidence, timing, resources, relationships, risk tolerance. That's a big one, body, personality, and their life circumstances. Take all of that away, hand the same strategy to someone else, and we're no longer dealing with the same equation. Because that someone else is a real person with a real history, a real body, a real life, and a whole inner world. The strategy may know nothing about. I want to tell you a personal story about why I fired my marketing coach. When I first launched Sky High Coaching, there was no AI to help build a website, write copy, map out a content strategy. I didn't have a sales background. I hadn't come from marketing. I'd never built a website before. I was learning on the fly. I knew enough to know that I needed help. So I hired a marketing coach. She gave me her strategy. But when I implemented it, it didn't work. But more than that, parts of it felt wrong for me and not just an uncomfortable, you know, that uncomfortable growth stretches you way. I'm very familiar with that sort of discomfort, and I have a lot of respect for it. This was different. There were moments when the strategy felt pushy, icky, and I've got to be honest, at times, borderline unethical. So I'd raise this in our calls and I'd ask whether we could try a different approach. And the answer was always no. This was the plan she'd used. This was the plan that had worked for her. Therefore, this was the plan I was expected to follow. And the more I questioned it, the more combative the calls became. I mean, I don't think you're supposed to be in a downright argument with your coach, right? I started to dread the calls. I didn't want to get on them. And instead of feeling supported to build my business, I felt as though I was being squeezed into her idea of success. And eventually I bit the bullet and I fired her. And looking back, I'm so grateful I did. Not because she was a terrible person, not because she knew nothing, not because her strategy had zero value. I'm sure there were people for whom her approach worked beautifully. But it wasn't my way. It didn't account for my values, my voice, my instinct, my relationship with people, or the kind of trust I wanted to build with my clients. I didn't want to manipulate people into working with me. I wanted to speak clearly, honestly, and powerfully to the right people and let the relationship begin from there. Now, at the time, I didn't have the language for all of this. I just knew my body was saying no, my integrity was saying no, and the business I wanted to build wouldn't survive if I had to abandon myself in order to grow it. And that's become one of the greatest lessons of my work. The right strategy shouldn't require you to leave yourself behind. And I've seen this pattern with clients many times, and I want to introduce you to Rose, may or may not be her real name. When Rose came to meet me, she was frustrated. She is brilliant, capable, experienced, and deeply committed to her work and her industry. It's very important work. In her professional life, she was a woman people relied on, the safe pair of hands, the one who could be trusted to deliver. The second in command, who quietly held everything together while other people took up more visible space. She really wanted the top job. That was her goal, her dream, her desire. But the top job kept eluding her. On paper, she ticked every box. She had the intelligence, she had the work ethic, she had the experience, she had the respect of people around her. She's highly respected in her industry. She also had a mentor, and she'd been following his advice for years, but there was no real movement. We had one coaching conversation, and in that conversation, we uncovered something his strategy had never touched. When Rose was a teenager, someone she trusted told her she'd make a great two IC one day, but she would never be the boss. There it is. One sentence, one throwaway comment, perhaps. One opinion from someone who probably does not even remember saying it. But Rose remembered, or at least some part of her did. That old sentence had become a box she lived in, it had become an instruction. Not consciously, not dramatically, not in a way she would have written on a piece of paper and, you know, stuck to the fridge. But quietly, underneath the surface, it had shaped what she'd allowed herself to want, claim, and become. Her mentor's advice may have been excellent. It may have helped many people. It may have even contained exactly the kind of strategic guidance she needed at one level, once upon a time. But it was never going to fully work while some part of her still believed she wasn't allowed to be the one at the front of the room. And this is where so much development work stays too shallow. It addresses the visible behavior, but not the private instruction underneath it. It tells the woman to speak up, but it doesn't ask what happens inside her when all eyes turn her way. It tells her to back herself, but doesn't explore when she first learned not to. It tells her to take up more space, but doesn't get curious about the cost she once paid for being seen. And yes, sometimes technique helps. Of course it does. I share techniques with my clients all the time. But sometimes the issue isn't that she doesn't know what to do. Sometimes the issue is that an old part of her still believes doing it is unsafe, selfish, arrogant, disloyal, risky, or simply not available to someone like her. A strategy that ignores this will always be incomplete. And sometimes the plan was simply not made for your life. And I've got another personal story. A few years ago I set out to complete my first long-distance walk. It was 35 kilometers. And uh the organization that was running or hosting the walk had a training plan on their website. So of course, I downloaded it and I followed it religiously. I did exactly what it told me to do because we assume that they know better than us. We assume that if something has been designed by experts, it must be right. But the plan didn't build me up to the full distance. It didn't account for my body, my pace, my niggles, like my old injuries, my recovery, my age, my existing fitness, my real life, or the gap between looking prepared on paper and actually being prepared on the day. And more than 10 kilometers, count them 10 from the finish line, my body seized. Oh my gosh, I was in so much pain. I kept going and I crossed the line. Of course I did. I'm still me. But it was painful and it was avoidable. And that experience stayed with me because it's such a clean metaphor for what so many people do in work, in business, in leadership, in life. They find the plan, they follow the plan, they trust the plan. And then when the plan doesn't work for them, they blame themselves. But a plan that doesn't account for the person following it isn't a complete plan. It might be polished, it might be popular, it might be official, it may have even worked for hundreds of people or thousands. It might be the strategy everyone in your industry is suddenly talking about. But it doesn't mean it's right for you. And it certainly doesn't mean you're wrong if it doesn't work. Now, this isn't an argument against support. Please don't hear me saying that every strategy is useless and we should all sit under a tree waiting for our inner wisdom to whisper the next step, although sometimes that is part of my strategy. I love a good strategy. I love good structure. I love wise counsel. I've built my life and business with enormous support from mentors, from coaches, teachers, friends, books, conversations, and rooms that challenged me to see myself more clearly. But I've also learned that the best support doesn't ask you to abandon your own knowing, it sharpens it. That's the difference. Poor support makes you doubt yourself and become dependent on the person providing it. And I joined a program with a coach a few years ago who did exactly that. It made me question myself more. It taught me to override my own instincts in order to be a good client, a good student. Now, for you, it could be a good employee, leader, or business owner. It handed me a formula and implied that if that, if her formula didn't work, I must have been the issue. And thankfully, I'd already had the experience with the marketing coach. I saw it early and I could get out. Powerful support does something very different. It helps you listen more honestly. It helps you separate fear from truth. It helps you notice where you're resisting growth and where you're betraying yourself. It gives you structure without swallowing your authority. It challenges you. Yes, of course it does, but it doesn't require you to perform someone else's version of confidence, leadership, business, or success. And that's the work I'm much more interested in now. Helping professionals and entrepreneurs build enough self-trust to know what guidance to take in, what to adapt, and what to leave behind. The person selling you the formula hasn't lived your life. The person whose strategy you're trying to copy didn't grow up in your family. They didn't sit in your classrooms. They didn't absorb the same expectations, disappointments, praise, criticism, silence, pressure, or fear. They weren't there when you learned it was safer to be agreeable. They weren't there when you decided you had to be impressive to be respectful, respected, excuse me. Useful to be loved, perfect to be safe, or quiet to be accepted. They weren't in the meeting when you were the youngest woman in the room. They weren't in the business you've built from nothing. They weren't in the workplace where your good ideas were ignored until someone else repeated them. They weren't in the moment you realized you'd become very good at looking composed while quietly carrying far too much. They don't have your exact body, your responsibilities, your energy, your desires, your fears, your gifts, your season of life, or your private history with power. They also don't have your exact brilliance. They don't know the way you see things before other people can articulate them. They don't know the standards you hold, the care you bring, the rooms you've already survived, the instincts you've learned to trust or mistrust, or the parts of yourself that are finally ready to come forward. So, yes, my beautiful friend, learn from people. Please do. I do. We're here to learn from each other. But don't outsource your authority to them. Don't assume that because something worked for them, it should work for you. Don't assume that because his leadership style is celebrated, yours must become a copy of it. Don't assume that because someone else built a business, a body, a career, a relationship, or life through one particular path, that your task is to squeeze into the same shape and then call it growth. You're allowed to be discerning, not cynical. I didn't say cynical, I said discerning. Because cynicism closes the door before anything useful can enter. Discernment opens the door, lets the guidance come in, pause it a cup of tea, and then decides whether it's staying. There comes a point in many people's lives where the next level doesn't come from gathering more information. It comes from telling the truth. Not the dramatic, burn it all down version of truth. Although, let's be honest, sometimes that has its place. I mean the quieter truth. The truth that says, I don't actually want that. I'm tired of pretending this version of success still fits me. I know what I want, but I'm scared of what it will ask of me. I keep asking for advice because I'm hoping someone else will actually give me permission. I've been trying to become more confident by copying people who aren't me. I don't need another plan. I need to stop abandoning myself inside the plans I already have. This is where the work becomes deeper. Instead of asking, what did they do? You begin asking, what's true for me? What do I value? What am I no longer willing to betray? What kind of success am I still chasing out of habit? What does my real life actually have capacity for? Where am I trying to force myself into a pace, voice, style, or identity that was never mine? Where do I keep waiting for permission? Where am I making myself smaller, sharper, busier, or more impressive than I need to be? And perhaps, most importantly, what would change if I trusted that my way forward doesn't have to look exactly like anyone else's? This doesn't mean you become precious or uncoachable or impossible to challenge. It's quite the opposite. The more deeply you know yourself, the more powerfully you can be supported. You can receive feedback without collapsing. You can be challenged without handing yourself over. You can hear an idea and decide whether it's medicine, noise, or simply not for you right now. That self-awareness and inner knowing. The right strategy helps you stay with yourself. For years, I think many high-performing professionals have been taught that growth requires self-abandonment. We may not say it that way, but that's often what our culture rewards, doesn't it? Push harder, be more disciplined, get up earlier, the 5 a.m. club, I think it's called on LinkedIn. Care less, toughen up, speak louder, be more visible, be more strategic, be more like her, be more like him, be less sensitive, be more commercial, be more polished, be more impressive, be more palatable, be more everything. No wonder so many people are exhausted. They're not only trying to grow, create, evolve, or lead, they're trying to do it while leaving half of themselves outside the room. I'm no longer interested in that kind of growth. The right strategy shouldn't split you in two. It should help you move forward and remain intact. It should give you enough structure to create movement and enough space to remain honest. It should take into account your ambition and your humanity. It should respect your desire for more without turning you into a machine. It should help you become more visible without becoming more performed. Because the point isn't to become someone else. The point is to become more fully, clearly, and powerfully yourself. Now, this is one of the reasons I created the soft strength salon. Intelligent, high performing women don't need another formula that ignores the truth of their lives. They need a room where the real woman is welcome. The woman who has achieved So much already, and can feel the next chapter is asking for something more honest. Inside the salon, we're not all chasing the same goal or following the same strategy. Some women are growing their leadership, some are expanding their businesses, some are preparing for a more visible chapter. Some are untangling their identity from achievement. What unites them is the desire to move forward in a way that's honest, aligned, and deeply their own. A desire to uncover what's been holding them back under the surface. Remove it and get moving. If this episode has stirred something in you and you know this is no longer about needing another generic plan, you're welcome to apply for a no obligation call with me about the salon. We'll explore where you are, what you're trying to create, and whether the soft strength salon is the right room for you. And we're going to pop the link in the show notes. Now, if you're not quite ready for that, if you would like to download a couple of blueprints that are not my strategy, there are tools, activities, exercises, and some theory in both these blueprints, and you can pick out the ones that call out to you and use the ones that you know will work for you. So the first one is the unshakable woman. This is for the women who are highly successful in their lives and are looking for more courage, more confidence, maybe to feel more calm and steady in their body. The next one is success was the warm-up. Now, this is for the woman who has achieved a lot in her life and career, and often while carrying a lot for other people. So she's come to a point in her life where she finally has the opportunity to do something she wants to do. But she may not be quite sure what that is, or maybe she is sure what it is, she's not quite sure how to get started. If that sounds like you, success was the warm-up is the blueprint for you. And we will pop those links in the show notes as well. Thank you for being here today. If you know someone who will find this episode of value, please feel free to send it on. Until we meet next time, continue expanding, creating, and leading. Enjoy the rest of your day. Bye.