How To Know What’s Not Working (If Nothing’s Working)

I'm Kinsey Machos, your host and founder of the category Queen. Welcome to the podcast for coaches, consultants, and course creators who don't just want to dominate their niche, but they desire to play in their own league. My mission is to help you unlock the power of your unique brilliance and use it as a vehicle to gain recognition, reach more people, and make more money. Not too long ago, I took a bold leap, leaving behind a six figure corporate salary with nothing more than a used MacBook and a burning desire for more freedom. Today, our brand has become globally recognized, helping thousands of female founders to become industry leading experts. Join us each week as we go on a journey together to discuss mindset, marketing and money, and more importantly, the real life discussions about balancing success with motherhood and marriage.

Because we're a community of women who build and scale impact driven businesses, but do it without sacrificing the things that matter most to us. Welcome to the category queen show. Hello my category queens. It's so good to be here with you today. I'm coming to you with a really fun question that comes up all the time, but this is going to serve you in any season of growth, probably in any moment of your day, you will be able to use this principle to help you better problem solve. Okay, here's the thing about being a CEO. And if you haven't considered yourself a CEO, now is the time, right? You own a business, you are a CEO. You have to become a better decision maker. And a lot of that means the data points that you use to make your decisions.

And so one of the questions we get all the time is, how do you know what's working and what's not working? Or how to know what's not actually working when nothing's working. And this is a really great question, because again, this gives us so much opportunity to really figure out how do we problem solve when things aren't working our way? Because if you think that everything's always going to work your way as an entrepreneur, you have a big surprise coming to you. I already know that you don't believe that. But part of that process is learning how to really look at the things you need to look at and make decisions based on certain circumstances, or really knowing where to pivot, when to adjust, what to change, etcetera.

This could be at the literal micro level, like knowing what piece of content to write for the day. And this is at the macro level, right? Knowing how an employee is performing or how to increase your profit margins. I mean, there's so many things here that you're going to have to really start to develop a skill around when it comes to making decisions. And so especially when you think about how to know what's not working or how to know what is working, right? This is going to be in all facets of your business or even your life. But one of the things that I want to really hammer into this principle and this concept here is first of all, to really remove any sort of all or nothing thinking or like that black and white thinking.

So using words like nothing or always or nobody. So if we think about even how this plays out in a thought protocol, if you think to yourself nothing is working, that is going to create a very deflated type of result cycle, right? Because that thought is just so icky, right. It just doesn't generate a good feeling. And then the actions that are going to follow that are not going to be great and then the results you get are not going to be the ones you desire. And also, it's not true to say that nothing is working, right? It's just not a fact. And when we can remove ourselves out of, even when you think about, like, nobody is taking me up on my offer or nobody likes what I have to say, like, it's a very activating way to talk.

So when we start to even address problems and start to solve for them, we need to speak about them in a way that is empowering, right? So we need to tell ourselves the truth and we need to really make sure that we're honing in on the right things so we're not solving for problems that are not problems. Okay? But here's the thing about this, is that no matter how good you are at what you do, and no matter how much data you have or don't have, you will never, there is nobody or nothing that is going to say to you or that can say to you, this is exactly why or why not. This is working, right? There is no certainty around anything.

All we're doing is we are a creating assumptions around a certain problem or solution and then we're building a hypothesis around that, okay? Now a lot of a better hypothesis, obviously is going to come from more data and more experience and more knowledge, but it's still a hypothesis. It's a guess. And so whether you have a lot of data or not, right, or you even know what you're doing or not doing, I mean, you're always going to be in a season where you're on a learning curve, right? And you have to make a decision about something and it's always going to be somewhere around like, okay, how do I either improve this or optimize this, or how do I figure out what's not working so we can change, adjust, or what have you, or do I even need to change anything yet?

And this is where you just have to, again, a remove any, like, activating language around this so we can again solve at a higher level, solve problems at a higher level, and then build a hypothesis. Okay, so let's go into a scenario where you're writing content and it's not converting the number of clients that you would like. Now, notice how I set it versus my content's not converting. Nothing is working, right? So I even just changed the language around it, right? So my content is not converting the number of clients that I would like to. Okay, so first of all, we have to state the problem in a very factual manner. This is like a circumstance, right? If you think about the thought protocol, we want to make sure that it is neutral, okay? It doesn't activate a feeling. It's literal fact, right?

You can't argue with it. And then we can move through that problem so much faster. And we're not letting negative emotions drive our decisions because I will tell you 100%, because I've had to learn this the hard way too many times, if you make decisions out of negative emotions, it will never, and I can say that confidently, never bring you to where you want to be at the end. Okay? So we want to get out of that negative emotion so that again, we can solve at a much more empowered state. We want to solve the problem in a much more empowered state. So the problem we're solving for is the content that you're creating is not bringing in the number of clients that you had anticipated. Okay? So now we just have to guess. Okay?

Now, again, even if you came to me and you showed me your content, I could go through it and I could say, here's what I'm seeing. Try this, right? It might because of this and this. Now I might have a little bit more experience in you as far as content that converts, but I'm still making a guess. I'm still building a hypothesis based on what I'm seeing and what I know. And again, there's no certainty around anything. And you have to learn how to do the same, whether it's around content or your relationships or your body. Like, we're just building that self trust and learning how to problem solve without the negative emotions. So we can again get new results, get different results than we keep getting that we don't want. So we're going to guess.

We're going to create some hypotheses around these particular circumstances. One of those hypotheses could be, I'm not creating content enough. Maybe you're not putting out your content as consistently. That could be a guess. That could be a hypothesis. Another hypothesis is you're just not talking about in your offer. I'm just thinking about some things that I see when I go through people's content. They think they're talking about their offer, but there's like no call to action, so it's not really clear what next steps are. Even if somebody wanted what you had to offer, you're not even giving them next steps. Right. So those are two hypotheses you could kind of glean from when you start to think about, okay, why is, why am I not getting the result that I want to get? And then we solve for it. It's like, pick one.

Let's say it's like, okay, maybe it's a little bit of both. I'm going to increase the number of times that I'm putting my offers out there, that I'm putting my content out there, and I'm going to make sure that in every piece of content that call to action is strong, it's clear, it's compelling, and it leads them to the next steps. And so that's what you solve around. Right. And so your next action plan is going to be more consistent content with more clear and strong call to actions. And then you see, does that work? Right. After several weeks and you start to really look at what are the results you're getting? Is this leading me closer to what I want? And then you do it all over again. Okay, this is working. Or actually this isn't necessarily getting me to what I want.

What does that look like next? Is there, what is the next guess? What is the next hypothesis that I want to solve for? Right. That's going to get me into that next state. The problem is that so many of you are telling yourselves that you don't know from the lens of nothing's working. I don't know what's working. I don't know what works. I don't know what to do. And that is the most disempowered state that you could ever put yourself in. You do know. And while you're here to get the guidance and the mentorship and you're like fine tuning that in a much faster way, the ultimate goal is for you to build that self trust with yourself so you're not always relying on other people or other things to tell you what you should or shouldn't be doing.

So I want you to build that self trust. I want you to become a better problem solver and a better decision maker by building your own hypotheses around these things, right? And when you start to roll this out, what happens is it keeps you in momentum, because if you're telling yourself you don't know, and then you believe that what happens, right, you're not doing anything. It really leaves this feeling of, like, paralyzation, like just in analysis paralysis, and then you just give up. It's just like, it feels hard. It's. I don't know what to do, and so I'm not going to do anything, and that is not what we want. Right.

10:56 Kinsey Machos

So if you are at least taking a guess, problem solving for that, and then seeing how that works, you're keeping yourself in momentum, and that alone will 100% get you closer to the results you desire. But if you stop and you tell yourself you don't know or nothing's working, that obviously is the number one way to not get what you want. Okay, so all this is creating a hypothesis around it, right? Do not tell yourself you do not know. Create a hypothesis, test the hypothesis, and then see what happens. But no matter what, keep yourself in momentum. This is one of the best things you can develop as a CEO, as an entrepreneur, as a woman who desires to be in complete, again, openness and control in your desires.

We don't want to hand over the power to other people or other circumstances to tell us what we can or cannot have. And by you becoming a better decision maker and you continuing to solve the problems that you have in your life or your business, this gives you so much power and so much, to me, excitement. I can solve for any problem that comes my way and it allows you to continue moving forward. All right, my friends, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I will see you next week. Hey. If you're ready to stand out online and get paying clients consistently without having to fumble your way through tech run ads or create complicated funnels, I want to invite you to join us in the category queen School, where you're going to learn my simple, proven formula for getting clients online. It's risk free.

You either make your money back or we'll give you a refund. Just head over to kinseymachos.com/theCQschool, and join today to get instant access. We'll see you inside.