197. They Kept at It Anyway
Episode Summary
They had every reason to abandon the plan.
They didn't.
It shows us something about greatness.
Who This Episode Is For
Women entrepreneurs struggling to trust their strategy when results take longer than expected.
CEOs who second-guess business decisions after temporary setbacks, slow sales, or inconsistent growth.
High-achieving leaders who want to strengthen conviction instead of constantly reacting to short-term evidence.
Founders building premium brands, empowered teams, or long-term businesses despite external pressure to pivot.
Business owners seeking greater emotional resilience during uncertain seasons of business growth.
Entrepreneurs who want to distinguish between meaningful business data and temporary market feedback.
Leaders committed to making values-based business decisions rather than chasing immediate validation.
Women who want to develop unwavering leadership conviction while scaling with intention.
Key Takeaways
Why temporary results can have an outsized influence on your decisions, and what that pressure quietly tempts leaders to abandon.
The surprising difference between confidence and conviction, and why that distinction changes everything when results lag behind effort
How elite performers stay committed to a direction long enough to find out whether it was truly the right one.
Full Episode Transcript:
Welcome to The Uncommon Way, where high-achieving women entrepreneurs and leaders pitch the rulebook and design success on their own terms. I'm your host, Jenna Harrison, a top-ranked business coach sharing business growth strategies, mindset mastery, and power moves to help you attract ideal clients, leverage your unique genius, and scale with freedom. Let's dive in.
Welcome, welcome back to The Uncommon Way.
This last weekend, at the time of this recording, my eight-year-old son stood in a crowd of hundreds of people wearing a Spain jersey cheering for his team. He was up way, way past his bedtime on a Sunday night because of the World Cup final. We were watching the game on this giant outdoor screen, surrounded by strangers who suddenly felt like neighbors, while the streets were just filled with people in red and yellow. And somewhere in the middle of the match, something struck me. Not about my son, about how this Spain team was playing. So Spain dominated throughout the entire match. They had the ball the whole time, and they repeatedly tried to score. But every single time, Argentina's goalkeeper blocked it. One incredible save after another. We're talking something crazy, like 12 times. And you know soccer games don't normally have that much goal action. And I remember thinking, how many times can this happen before you start questioning everything? Because that's exactly what most of us do. You do the work, you execute the plan, you keep creating the openings, and the result still isn't there.
That's usually exactly the point where people abandon the thing that was working. But here's the thing. Spain not only stayed calm, they stayed committed to their style of play. They kept slowing the game down. Same long passes back and forth to their teammates. Same trust in each other. Exactly how they came there to play. They didn't suddenly start taking reckless shots. They didn't panic or get physically aggressive. They kept playing Spain's game. Meanwhile, not only weren't they scoring, but the Argentina game was pretty brutal. Hard tackles, guys getting clipped with cleats. One player literally flipped another player over.
So there was pressure everywhere. They never let that pressure rewrite the game that they were there to play. I see entrepreneurs do the opposite constantly. You decide you're building a premium brand, sales dip for a month, suddenly you're thinking about discounting. Or you decide you're building an empowered team, someone drops the ball, suddenly you're back in every project checking every detail. Or you decide you're going to create thoughtful content instead of chasing every trend. Someone else's reel blows up. Now you're reconsidering because maybe you've been doing it wrong this whole time. Nothing actually changed in any of these examples.
Only thing that looked different was the evidence in front of you in that moment. Temporary evidence has an astonishing ability to rob us of our power and become the center of gravity. Picture Spain deciding halfway through the match, forget this, let's become a completely different team.
Honestly, it happens all the time. Teams cave under pressure constantly. It's very human.
Which is exactly why the teams that don't are the ones we call elite performers and become champions. And here's the part that actually gets me. Even if Spain had changed their approach and still won that game, it wouldn't have been the same win.
They wouldn't have become the kind of team they were becoming, which is champions capable of victory in that way. They would have won some other way, as some other team. And I don't think that's the story anyone would have wanted to tell afterwards. That is the level I want to play at. Not just getting the result. Getting it as the person and the business I actually set out to build. And here's the thing about staying that locked in when the evidence hasn't shown up yet. It's not a personality trait. It's not something you either have or you don't. It's something you build. And that's when something clicked for me. This isn't a confidence problem. It's a conviction problem. Confidence answers one question. Can I do hard things? That one is earned through reps and through having done hard things before and judgments of your character and how you come out on the other side. You can have a ton of it. You can be a serial entrepreneur who has built and sold and rebuilt who knows without question she's capable. And still feel completely unmoored on whether this specific move, this specific bet, this specific direction is still the right one. Because conviction answers a different question. Is this still the right hard thing? And that one doesn't come from a track record. It doesn't come from how many times you've proven yourself before. It comes from clarity. Confidence says, I know I can do this. Conviction says, I still believe in this. Now conviction is not the same as being stubborn.
Sometimes the data really is telling you something. Sometimes you should change course. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the moments where nothing has actually changed except how uncomfortable you feel. The scoreboard hasn't caught up yet. The market hasn't caught up yet. The team's still learning. The audience is still finding you. And somehow you find yourself renegotiating a decision that felt completely aligned two months ago. The founders I admire most are good at one specific thing, separating temporary feedback from long-term direction. They don't ignore setbacks, but they don't give every setback a voice at the table. A slow month doesn't outweigh your knowledge of positioning. One hard conversation doesn't outweigh the culture you're building. One failed experiment doesn't outweigh the vision behind it. Honestly, I think that might be one of the most important skills in leadership. Not predicting the future, not making perfect calls, just building conviction and protecting it long enough for reality to catch up. Because every meaningful thing I've ever built had a season where the results hadn't validated the decision yet. Moving to Spain, reinventing my business, building offers people didn't immediately get.
If I'd treated every uncomfortable season as proof I'd chosen wrong, I would not be living this life. So here's what I want to leave you with. How often are you renegotiating who you are and what you're building simply because today's results haven't caught up to yesterday's decision yet? If I'm honest, business isn't where I struggle with this much anymore. I've built conviction there deliberately, like a practice. But parenting? That's a completely different story. There, I backtrack frequently. One week, I'm sure, about an approach. The next week, my son does something and I'm rethinking the whole strategy. And maybe that's actually proof of what I'm saying. I have deep conviction in one part of my life and shaky conviction in another. Not because one matters more, because I've deliberately built one and haven't done that work yet in the other. So the real question isn't whether you're capable of conviction, it's where you've built it deliberately, and where you're still waiting for something outside of yourself to create it for you. Sit with that for a while. I know I will, in one part of my life even more than others.
It was great being here with you. Have a great couple of weeks and I'll talk to you next time.
Core Concepts in This Episode
Power Consolidation in Scaling
Power is preserved when leaders refuse to let temporary setbacks dictate long-term strategy. Maintaining focus on the intended direction prevents energy from scattering into reactive decisions that dilute momentum and strategic advantage.
Leadership Capacity in Business
Leadership maturity is demonstrated by the ability to protect long-term vision while navigating short-term uncertainty. Strong leaders evaluate feedback without allowing every obstacle to redefine the business they are building.
Leadership Conviction
Confidence is believing you can handle difficult challenges. Conviction is believing the direction itself remains worth pursuing. Sustainable leadership depends on developing conviction that withstands delayed results, uncertainty, and external pressure.
Strategic Discernment
Not every setback signals the need for a strategic pivot. Exceptional leaders learn to distinguish between meaningful data that warrants change and temporary evidence that simply tests their consistency and commitment.
Identity-Based Leadership
Lasting business success comes from becoming the kind of leader who achieves results without abandoning core values, leadership philosophy, or strategic identity. The process of growth shapes not only outcomes, but who the founder becomes.
Long-Term Decision Integrity
High-performing founders avoid continually renegotiating well-considered decisions simply because immediate results have not yet appeared. They create stability by allowing thoughtful decisions sufficient time to produce meaningful outcomes before reassessing direction.
Work with Jenna
Decisions on Demand — A practical mini-course designed to help you make cleaner, higher-quality choices — the kind that unlock momentum, authority, and follow-through. The framework mirrors decision-making principles used in high-stakes environments, adapted for real life and business.
The Clarity Accelerator Mastermind — If you want to be surrounded by other visionary entrepreneurs while rapidly aligning your business to the conditions and strategies that let you thrive and excel naturally, this intimate mastermind will stretch you into your next level. Schedule your call today here or visit this page to find out more.
Private Coaching — If you’re craving the highest level of support, strategy, and partnership to create all the freedom, impact, and success you’re designed for, this is the space for it. Schedule your call today here.
Find Jenna on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theuncommonway/
The Uncommon Way is a leadership and business podcast for ambitious women entrepreneurs, founders, and leaders who are scaling companies and expanding their influence.
Hosted by business and leadership coach Jenna Harrison, the show explores how power, authority, and leadership capacity shape business growth. Episodes focus on decision-making, founder leadership evolution, team stability, and the structural shifts that allow companies to scale without overwhelming the person leading them.
This podcast is especially relevant for women navigating:
• Business growth and scaling challenges
• Increasing leadership responsibility
• Team expansion and higher-stakes decisions
• Founder authority and executive presence
• Identity and leadership evolution during scaling
The Uncommon Way approaches growth differently.
Not through hustle, constant self-optimization, or endless inner work — but by upgrading leadership, strengthening decision structures, and expanding the capacity required to run the company you’re building.
Topics include:
• Founder leadership capacity expansion
• Decision-making at higher levels of responsibility
• Authority and power dynamics inside scaling businesses
• Structural business leadership
• Founder psychology and identity shifts during growth
• Sustainable scaling and operational clarity
Whether you’re an experienced founder, a rising leader, or building something that’s starting to matter at a bigger level, this podcast helps you access more power and lead accordingly.
