What If I Fail?
This podcast is about what success looks like when you don't hide parts of yourself or lose yourself to it. It looks at the hidden costs of success, how success brings its own fears and how we can do it anyway.
What If I Fail?
Lip Service
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After six years of working with business owners and senior leaders, I’ve developed a sixth sense.
I can tell who’s going to grow… and who’s going to stall.
And it’s not about strategy, intelligence, or experience.
It comes down to one thing:
Can you keep going when it stops being exciting?
In this episode, I break down what “lip service” really looks like in business and leadership, and why so many capable, hard-working people stay stuck without realising it.
We’re not talking about laziness.
We’re talking about distraction disguised as progress.
If you’ve ever found yourself:
- Jumping between strategies
- Second-guessing your next move
- Doing a lot… but not seeing results
This episode will show you why.
This podcast is a window into the conversations I have every week with the leaders I work with.
If you want to be inside those conversations, not just observing them, why not book a call with me to discuss The Actual Results Club or my 1-1 work.
Hello, and welcome to What If I Fail, the podcast with me, your host, Alex Cowart. Now, I have a bit of a controversial topic to discuss this episode because after six years of working with business owners and directors, I've developed a bit of a sixth sense in terms of who is going to grow and who is going to stall. Now, why is that controversial? Well, it's controversial because I've just said that I can tell, I can actively identify if you are going to see success soon, or if you're going to struggle, flounder, and stagnate for a little bit. And it's got nothing to do with strategy. It's got nothing to do with the niche that you're in or the messaging that you use, and it has nothing to do with how smart you are or the expertise that you have. It comes down to one thing. Can you keep going when it stops being exciting? Now, this is an episode about discipline. I've done that episode. So it's not about whether or not you can do hard things. It's not about whether or not you can do the boring parts of running a business, parts of the job. I've called this episode lip service, which is a strong title, I know. Because lip service is when your words and your actions don't match. It's when you say you want something, you talk about it, you think about it, but your behaviour doesn't actually line up with it. And most people are not doing this on purpose. It comes from misalignment. It comes from misinterpretation of certain signals and how some distractions feel like productive actions when they're not. They are very well disguised, misleading acts of sabotage, self-sabotage, and procrastination. And this is not just an entrepreneur problem. I see this with business owners, and I see it with directors in 50, 90, 100 million pound companies. I see it with senior leaders who are responsible for teams, strategy, growth. Because this thing that we are talking about here, this shows up at a very specific point. It shows up at the point where what got you here stops being enough to get you where you want to go next. It's a transition point, it's a stretch moment, and it's the moment where things stop feeling obvious. And it because of that, it covers a broad spectrum. It doesn't matter if you're employed or you're running a business. This transition point happens to all of us, and the pattern is very similar. And this is the part that actually matters. When you're in that position, the actions you're taking make complete sense. They're logical. You're operating in this noisy environment where everyone has the answer, everyone's got a framework, everyone's telling you that they know the one thing that you should be focusing on right now. And it all sounds so convincing. They all have proof, they all have testimonials, they all have a method that works and they can show that it works for other people. And so you listen, of course you do. You try something, you implement a strategy, you follow a process, and you give it a bit of time. And when it doesn't immediately click, when it doesn't instantly translate into results, something else comes along. Something else that sounds smarter, that's faster, that feels more aligned, that feels more you. And so you shift, and then you shift again, and then you shift again. And you do all of these shifts before anything has actually had the chance to work. And this is what I like to call spreadbetting your strategy. You're not committing to one path long enough to see it through. You're constantly reallocating your effort based on what feels most promising in the moment. And again, this is not because you are doing something wrong on purpose. It's because the environment that you are in rewards novelty and punishes patience. We've been sold this idea that results should be quick, they should be obvious, they should be linear, that if something's working, we'll know about it, and we'll know about it quickly. And if something's right, it will feel right. Our gut will tell us. If something's aligned, it will flow. And sometimes that is true, but most of the time it's not. Quite often, growth is boring. It requires repetition. It requires sticking with something long after it stops feeling exciting. And that's the point that most people don't get to. We've been sold this lie in society that if you turn your passion into your job, you'll never work a day in your life. And it's simply not true. People don't stall because they're lazy, they stall because they get distracted. And the distraction itself looks and feels like progress. It looks like learning, it looks like refining, it looks like getting clearer, but it is still a distraction. It sounds like I just need to tweak this before I go all in, or I'm not 100% clear yet. I think there might be a better way to do this. Um I think that might work faster if I do X. And it's all very logical. It's all very reasonable. It's all keeping you exactly where you are. Because at this level, and this is something I have been saying over and over again recently, at this level, fear doesn't look like fear anymore. It looks like logic. It looks like intelligence. It looks like good decision making. You're not avoiding action. You're just justifying why now isn't the right time to take it. And this is the exact same pattern that I see in entrepreneurs and I see in corporate leaders. They're not jumping between business strategies, but they are jumping between priorities. They're refining their plans, they're revisiting decisions, they're holding back from execution until things feel a little bit clearer. They're focusing on the immediate day-to-day instead of projecting and looking forward, because they're not sure what that needs to look like yet. And we just need to keep an eye on this first. Because the stakes feel higher where we are. You have you've already built so much, you have hit a certain level of success, and because of that, there is so much more to lose. You're responsible for more now. You might be responsible for paying bills, you might be responsible for paying freelancers or employees' wages, and so you can't risk losing the money that you will owe to another person. This pattern is identical whether you're in employment and in a senior leadership position, or you're an entrepreneur, founder, director. It's what happens at this transformation point. And this is such a pivotal point in so many people's journey. And this is often the point where people will need to get a mentor or a coach to help them push through. Because when your current way of operating is no longer enough, but your next way of operating is not fully formed yet, you kind of end up hovering in between the two. So take, for example, a current, a big topic at the moment in the online space at least, which is nervous system regulation. You can't regulate your system, or you shouldn't be regulating your nervous system before you grow, even though that feels logical. It feels logical to regulate and then grow from that as a foundation. But you need to regulate whilst you're growing, because if you wait until you feel ready, then you will be waiting forever. And if you can only regulate in isolation, if you can only regulate by stepping back and stopping certain things that act as triggers for you, then when you step forward again, when you step back into that workspace, you will not be able to stay regulated out of the isolation. So we have to do the two combined. Yes, it makes sense. In our head, this is a perfect example of where logically it would make sense to soothe and regulate and then go back into the fray. But if we can't stay regulated in the fray because it's never been stress tested, then we're not going to be able to cope and we're going to have to keep coming away and going back and coming away and going back. And this is why I can tell who is going to stall. Because when I point to things that will help someone actually move forwards, they resist it. And not aggressively, it's a really subtle tell. It's a question, it's a delay, it's a looking for something better or waiting for a little bit further refinement. And because of that, they stay exactly where they are. And the people who grow, they move anyway. They know it's not the perfect time. They know that there's other stuff going on. They know they don't have the exact answer, but they move anyway. Not because they're more confident, not because they're more certain, but because they're willing to act without needing it to feel perfect first. And they trust the process for long enough to gather the data that allows them to assess objectively instead of relying on dopamine levels to quantify their success. So this is not about you being lazy. It's not about you not wanting it badly enough. It's about misalignment between what you say you want and what you're consistently willing to do. So the question is not do you want success? The question is, are you willing to keep going when it's not exciting, when it's not obvious, and when it's not giving you instant feedback? Because that's the point that most people stop. And that is exactly where the result is built. Now, if you're recognizing yourself in this, and you might not recognize yourself in the hesitation, but you might recognize yourself in the actions that are not creating the results. You might recognize yourself in working really hard but not really getting anywhere, or doing lots of things and really struggling to hone in on the one thing that you need to be doing first. If that is something you are recognizing in yourself, if that feels true for you, if you're trying lots of things, if you're spreadbetting your strategy and it's not quite working, this is the kind of work that I cover in the Actual Results Club and the Quarterly Planning Club, where there is less noise, there is less jumping between strategies, and there is more clarity on what actually matters, and I give you the support to follow it through. So within Quarterly Planning Club, which runs quarterly, so it'll only be relevant on this podcast four times a year. So whenever you're listening to this, check my website and it will tell you when the next one coming up is. But in that process, in Quarterly Planning Club, we take the time to refine, to look at what your goals actually look like. What do you need to do to get there? And what do we need to drop so that you have more capacity and more focus to really do things well rather than just doing everything at 10%. And within Actual Results Club, we take that strategy and we implement it. And I'll hold you to account. I will tell you if I think you are self-sabotaging. I will tell you if I think you are getting in your own way or distracting yourself or procrastinating productively. And I will tell you if I think that we've tried something for long enough and the data's suggesting it's just not working, so we do need to pivot and we do need to adapt. Now, the links are, as always, below this episode for the Acture Results Club and Quarterly Planning Club. You are also more than welcome to work with me on a one-to-one basis. All of those links are available. But for now, I want you to look really clearly at what you're doing. Are you doing a lot of work? But it's the same as trying to run on a treadmill. There's lots of running happening, but you're not actually going anywhere. Stay in the one place. Lots of action, not a lot of progress, forward movement. If that feels true for you, now, whatever now is for you, now is a really good time to pause, to slow down so that you can speed up by really focusing on what you do need to do, and then just take the action. Do the thing. Whatever that is, do the thing. Don't wait for it to be perfect. I will see you next week.