The first few days of my month in Bali, I barely left the room. I had Bali belly, a notebook and a lot of time to think. Somewhere between naps I wrote down a question I couldn't let go of:
“Do I believe if you want something really badly and it still isn't working, that you don't want it enough?”
I asked it because I'm often very hard on myself. Yet I hate it when my mom tells me that, and then in therapy I realise she’s probably right. My podcast is called Fail to Win, my event is called The Imperfect Event, and I literally sell mugs that say ‘perfectly imperfect’. Yet I still set my own bar so high that I'd rather not fail at all.
Why “no excuses” never told the whole story
You might remember the fitness campaign with the mom in the red suit and her 3 kids, the whole “no excuses” message. The internet had a lot to say about it, and rightly so, because income, genes and environment all shape what's possible.
And yet most ambitious women I know still carry that message around. We decide on January 1st that this is the year for 10K steps, or that this quarter we'll triple our revenue. A client told me exactly that. When I asked for the plan, she said she was going to try really hard. Trying hard is a feeling. A plan that supports tripling your numbers looks very different.
So after a lot of journaling, my answer was no. Some things we want badly and still don't achieve, and the reason usually isn't desire.
It's this formula: results = motivation × system × environment × capacity.
1. Motivation: an emotion, not a strategy
We treat motivation as if it will last forever. I do it with my 10K steps and with eating well, every single time. Then a client gets needy, someone on the team quits, someone you love gets sick, and life starts lifing. Motivation drops, because it behaves like an emotion.
That's fine, as long as the rest of the equation keeps working. And because it's multiplication, a part that drops close to zero drags the whole result down with it.
2. System: what catches you when motivation drops
I love systems, and this podcast is my favourite example. I decided a Fail to Win podcast episode goes out every Tuesday at 7AM, and then I made recording as easy as possible. Right now I'm recording 4 of them while driving to my team retreat, with a tiny mic clipped on. Once they're recorded, they run through a fixed set of steps and turn into newsletters, blogs, quotes and carousels, whether I feel motivated that week or not.
A system can also be a person. My PT comes to my house, so skipping means cancelling on someone standing in my kitchen. Last Sunday I went to CrossFit for the first time and wanted to cancel 5 times that morning. The booked session kept me accountable and afterwards I was glad I went.
3. Environment: the people and the room around you
My boyfriend helped me load a car full of merch, notepads and mugs for the retreat without a single sigh. He does that every single time I host an event. That's a good example of ‘environment’. So is the 1 corner of my house I finally made beautiful, with a painting and a new couch, because no angle of my house looked good on camera and it was quietly stopping me from filming. It was a scary investment at the time, but I've never regretted it.
Environment is also the phone holder stuck to my car window, the one in my kitchen and the one in my bathroom. And a small walking treadmill, which you can now find from around €100, removes the “it's raining” excuse entirely so you can get your steps in.
If you're building a personal brand, involve your partner. Tell them how much it matters, and maybe they'll learn to take your photos instead of quietly making fun of it.
4. Capacity: the part ambitious women forget to count
A client signed up for coaching recently and apologised for never finishing all the videos of the courses she'd bought from me. In those same years she left her husband, rebuilt her income from scratch and took care of her 2 kids. I told her she should feel proud, not guilty.
A 22-year-old with no kids, no sick parents and a lot of privilege simply has more capacity for an all-nighter than a mom who was woken up 8 times last night and had to change the bedsheets (again!). That isn't an excuse, it's information. Sleep, stress and your nervous system set limits, and growing your business means growing your capacity to carry and to receive, through inner work, coaching and rest.
What to do with the formula
If you're not getting the results you want, it isn't a verdict on how badly you want them. It also doesn't mean nothing can change. You can stop relying on motivation, build a system that catches you, set up your environment to make the right thing easy, and treat your capacity like something worth protecting and growing. You work too hard and care too much to keep blaming your willpower for a missing system.
My content system is the one I'm proudest of, because it's why this podcast has gone out consistently for years now. My content isn't always my best work, I'm just ridiculously consistent, and that makes up for a lot.
Listen to the full Fail to Win podcast episode here:
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