Episode Summary
Have you ever followed expert advice to the letter… only to feel more off-track than ever?
If you’ve been trying to “market smarter” and follow all the right strategies—but something just isn’t clicking—this episode is for you. I grabbed my voice recorder on my morning walk (recorded right from the Mallorca countryside) to reveal how I broke my own lead gen strategy… and the powerful steps that fixed it fast.
In this episode you will:
Find out what happened when I followed expert advice—and how it nearly derailed things.
Discover the hidden cost of trying to “market smarter”—and why your energy might be more powerful than your strategy.
Learn the subtle mindset shift that helped me go from podcast pitch rejections to a fully booked guest lineup in one month.
Press play now to shift from “Why isn’t this working?” to your own unstoppable uncommon way.
Resources Mentioned:
Clarity Accelerator: Schedule a call with Jenna about joining the Clarity Accelerator--the same mastermind that we talk about in this episode--to unlock your inner genius, streamline your strategies and offers, and dial in the mindset that lets you work smarter, not harder.
https://www.theuncommonway.com/schedule
Find Jenna on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theuncommonway/
This podcast dives into the potential of balancing a business and life without sacrificing revenue or impact. It helps women business owners and mompreneurs overcome overwhelm, decision fatigue, and the guilt of working less and stepping away from hustle culture while increasing leadership, strategic decision making, alignment and delegation / team building. Learn to build powerful habits and mindset, embrace smarter and higher vibration work methods, and master time management by streamlining tasks, implementing business systems, and even prioritizing self-care. We explore efficiency and energetics, productivity and filling your cup, automation and where to personalize your efforts … all to reduce overworking, and finally take time off—without the fear or shame—whether that is with high-ticket offers, scalable offers, or passive income. Say goodbye to imposter syndrome and people pleasing while running a small business: It's time to shift your mindset, reclaim your work-life balance, and thrive!
Full Episode Transcript:
Jenna Harrison: [00:00:00] In this episode, I'm taking you on my morning walk and sharing how I lost my way figuratively in the business, not literally as I was walking. I'll be sharing how you can fix a broken lead generation strategy and how using this formula allowed me to turn a podcast tour that had totally flopped. Into a booked out success in just six weeks.
Welcome to the three day work week, helping women entrepreneurs run profitable, meaningful businesses in just three days a week if they like without stress, guilt, or sacrificing growth. I'm your host, Jenna Harrison, sharing practical strategies, mindset hacks, and even some woo, to help you work smarter leap boldly and find true balance.
Let's dive in. Welcome, welcome to the three day work week. I've got a little something different for you today. I was taking a morning walk after dropping my son at summer camp, and I just thought I'd pull out my phone and record something on my voice recorder. So obviously you'll notice a difference in audio quality, but I hope you [00:01:00] still enjoy it because I hope that this story helps you learn from my mistakes and this strategy helps you create great success.
Starting today. You're gonna find out what happened when I followed expert advice. How it nearly derailed things. You'll discover the hidden cost of trying to market smarter and why your energy might be more powerful than your strategy, and you'll learn the subtle mindset shift that helped me go from podcast pitch rejections to a fully booked guest tour in about a month, six weeks before we dive in.
A point on that. In my audio, I said it was about a month, but I think it was more like six weeks. Just full transparency. And also something that I forgot to mention that is so important. It's not just that I booked more guest spots, it's that I booked more aligned guest spots. When I made the change, the people that came back and said, [00:02:00] yes, please come on our show.
Were actually people whose show I would wanna be on. In fact, I was just on one. It was so good. It just felt like pure alignment. It was a guest panel and every other entrepreneur on there, I, we were just, there was this man, he was so wise, he was sharing so much wisdom. And then there was just a lot of fun, rapport and laughter.
And I'll share that in my newsletter sometime after it finally comes out. It led to good things all around, not just the numbers. Numbers are important, but in my mind, quality over quantity. This other piece is even more important. So without further ado, I hope you enjoy this morning, walk through the Mallorca countryside.
Welcome. Welcome everyone. I thought I would try something different this morning and bring you with me on my morning walk. So I dropped my son off at summer camp out in the countryside, and I saw a trail and I thought, oh yeah, I'm gonna [00:03:00] do it. And oh, it's so beautiful. I wish you could see it. I'm gonna.
Actually, I'll take a picture. I'll put it on, uh, on the socials. But I thought today I'd just bring you as I'm thinking about something that happened recently that I know can serve you as well, because it has to do with really going back to your roots, which is what I'm, the theme that I'm getting is I'm walking here through the country with the olive trees, and even though it's like smack dab in the middle of summer, there are still these gorgeous little blue wildflowers, like a corn flower blue that are hopping, popping up.
In the middle of stones, right in the middle of this kind of mm, sort of dusty path that I'm on walking through a, looks like some orchards of some sort. I can't tell what these trees are, but they're definitely olive trees that just grow natively around here and getting back to our roots. [00:04:00] What happened is I hired some consultants, which.
I love their great people, but they were helping me grow the podcast. And what happened is that it wasn't growing as quickly as they would've liked and as quickly as my retention time would indicate. So retention time is how long somebody spends actually listening to your podcast if they listen to the end or if they drop off in the middle.
And so usually when you see that people are actually listening to the end, then. It grows over time because as more and more people come on, they start also sticking around and listening to the end. So they suggested that I narrow the focus, which is when the three day work week was born. I still love the three day work week.
I think that it is just. Emblematic of what you can do when you stretch your mind and really [00:05:00] lean into an imagine possibility and then reverse engineer your way there. I also love that it's not. Money focused because while we all love money, there's just too much meaning put on it, too much scarcity around it.
It creates a lot of destructive behaviors. If you haven't done your work around money, I. But time is so much more precious than money, and while of course we don't have to work a three day work week, what is interesting is this idea of creating more life even outside of your business. So I. With that, we started looking at ways to, of course, niche down the podcast, uh, so that people would have a really burning pain point specifically of feeling overworked, feeling overwhelmed, which a lot of my people do, but a lot of my people are also feeling.
Uncertain or [00:06:00] stuck, and so many things that come up as a general business coach, as somebody that helps with a lot of things. You know, I help with the tactics, of course, the strategies, but also mindset, but also energetics, but also the nervous system. And this is something that drives the pro marketers.
Crazy, right? They want to really niche us down and put us into a nice little box that can be tied up with a bow. So you all, I really lost my way because I, of all people should have realized that this was what was starting to happen. But I told myself in the moment, this is a fun experiment. Let's just see.
Well, guess what? The numbers started going down on the podcast, not up as predicted. And I'll tell you another thing that happened as I was pitching, um, to be [00:07:00] guests on other podcasts, we had crafted a really like dynamic pitch letter and they'd helped me come up with these titles that were very like bold and attention grabbing, right?
But they were. Also a little click Beatty, I have to say a little bro. And we were not seeing the positive response rate that they had seen with other clients of theirs. Now, other clients of theirs are maybe selling a very specific niche like. Gut health or something. And I of course am talking to a really, really saturated market business coaching for women.
And I have a very general approach. So we started implementing this three day work week pitch with really targeted, powerful pitch topics, three of them. And we weren't seeing the, the results that we would've expected. So I [00:08:00] finally kind of had a. Come back to my roots moment and I thought, I am just going to, I'm gonna craft a letter that is to these people that I'd like to be on their podcast.
That's really more speaking from the heart, and I'm just going to tell them a few different aspects of my story that I could be sharing with their listeners that I really think would bring value, right? And. Guess what I am now booked out on as a podcast guest through September with one to two podcasts a week, and I'm, I have some sporadic ones that go all the way through February.
I. And this was within one month maybe, of having changed the pitch letter. So the moral of the story is that what we've all known to be true or hoped to be true. It just got reinforced for [00:09:00] me. Like, we really have to find our uncommon way. And even when the experts and the pros and the specialists tell you otherwise, and you start falling into the mindset or the the thought pattern of I have to right, or I should, let me do it this way.
We give away so much of our agency, of course our power, but also. The energetic touch, right? That frequency that is uniquely ours and it backfires. Um, I've seen it with clients that have come to me from that place and then want something different, and now I really got to experience it for myself in a way that I haven't done since the early parts of my business.
So if this is you. No shame. It happens to all of us. It's tempting. It's tantalizing. Wouldn't it be [00:10:00] great if we just do it this way? And then all of the growth happens immediately, right? Like where is the shortcut? But I also have to tell you some of the topics that I've been talking about lately. I haven't been looking forward to the podcast, to doing, to creating the podcast as much as I used to.
And. They were starting to feel a little forced, which is the opposite of how we wanna spend our days in our business, in this business that means so much to us and lights us up and is our our calling, right? It's the thing that we really wanna be spending our days doing. If our time is valuable, if our life is valuable, we wanna be spending our days doing something that counts and doing something that matters.
And let's all get back to that, shall we? So this is my little pep talk to you if you are on that path, just to keep going, to actually know, to lean in even [00:11:00] further to what you are really about, to believe that you are enough, that that frequency of yours, that gift of yours, that superpower of yours, that is gold.
That is enough, and the more that we go back to that and believe in that, the more success finds us. Hey again, Zoe, in the original title, I promise, the three simple steps for fixing a broken lead generation strategy. Obviously, I don't want clickbait, so I'm gonna give them to you now, but I'm also gonna ask for your help in naming this episode.
I'll tell you about that in a sec. So if you're listening in the future and you wanna see the original title, 'cause you don't know what I'm talking about right now, you can see it in the episode description because I'm curious, would you have been as likely to click play if there wasn't a direct benefit [00:12:00] to you in the title?
You know, a three step formula to solve a specific pain point? This really underscores the line that we need to walk as entrepreneurs nowadays. Our human non-AI generated content is going to be even more important than it ever was. People will want connection even more than before to real humans, and I've seen it over and over and over again that it's really our energy that sells.
And the rest is just supporting documents. Really, it's just supporting tactics. But our brains don't always work in perfect benefits. Focus three step processes, right? At least my a DH brain doesn't I. In fact, I'm sure you heard that in all the tangents I went down as I was wandering along on my walk.
For me, that kind of thinking that comes after the fact, right after the download when I'm been thinking or I've been reflecting for a while, but then by the time I deliver that and then condense it [00:13:00] down so it's concise and actionable, it's never gonna be as raw and real as the original would've been.
So I am going to be playing around with mixing in both and maybe some hybrid models, which is what this episode is like. Those three takeaways at the beginning of the episode that I said you would learn, those were created by chat GPT, and they're really good. Of course, I've taught chat, GPT how to sound like me and exactly what I want in those bullets.
So there's some of me in there too, but it was designed after the fact to help you see the benefit of listening to this episode. So this is just a really fun time to be an entrepreneur. You know, we're in a period of so much change and we're forging new paths on the fly, and really walking that line between sound business practices on the one hand, and our most authentic giving on the other.
Because authentic giving or being real, whatever [00:14:00] you wanna call it, if that's too unstructured, it can lead to a whole lot of output with not a lot of business results. I think most of us have experienced that in the beginning of our businesses. I. But also sound of business practices. If they are taken too far, turn into, you know, this detached sensationalist bro marketing that makes you wanna cringe and look around in amazement and be like, how can this stuff actually work?
Right on the tabloids, on the news channels. There's a, a podcast here. I don't know if it's popular in the States, but so a couple friends, a few different people have told me, I've just got to listen to this, and it's called Diary of a CEO. And this person interviews thought leaders and experts in their field.
And there's a different topic each show, but the titles for these episodes are so sensationalist. Here I'm gonna pull some up. Oh, here's a good one. World War III threat [00:15:00] assessment. The war has quietly started and no one's trying to stop it. Here's another one. Would you still love them if you came off the pill?
Your hormones are controlling you. Like I scrolled through these and I looked at my friend, I'm like, I just would never listen to that. I do not agree with titles like this. And she said, oh, but yeah, no, the titles are really awful. But if you actually listen to the episode, the episodes are really good for me.
I. I'm just not even gonna click on it. I just already don't like the energy of this podcast. Now watch, I'll actually listen to the podcast an episode and be like, I love this. But anyway, right now I'm keeping my distance. So to find out what we like, I am proposing a little fun and a little experiment right now.
Go to my Instagram at the Uncommon Way, pull up the stories, and you'll see a poll with three alternate titles for this episode. Let's see what style [00:16:00] you like best, and we'll see which one wins out and we'll come back and we'll change this episode title. It'll be fun because of course, I have now learned the hard way that I only care about finding the overlap between what my listeners like and what I like that may or may not fit best business practices.
If you have any thoughts on any of this, like if you really liked the ramble part of this episode, more than the more structured, more focused part here at the end, or if there's a point in the past that you really liked when of, you know, when I was doing a certain thing, please shoot me a dm. I would be eternally grateful to receive that inspiration.
I can sense that I'm in a a point of a lot of. Coming together of loose ends of things that have been going on over the year and also this rapid change. And I, of course want you to be a part of it. So let's now dive into those three steps that I promised. Step one, [00:17:00] step away from the have tos. We have been raised since little girls that this is how we have to do things.
And when I see women doing that in business, it just seems like a very old story. I mean, yeah, it's 2025. Yeah. We get to have our businesses and make our own money now. Yay. We're still forcing ourselves into non-natural ways of being. And the crazy thing is that they don't even work better necessarily.
You know, the bro marketers may wanna put us in a box with a bow, but your genius doesn't fit in one. And so as a first step, you gotta be okay with that to fix a strategy that's not working. Brave enough to find your uncommon way. If you don't know how to do that, I'd love to help you unlock it and amplify it through all areas of your business.
Step two, believe that that uncommon way is enough. You are here for something, is a part of you that wants to shine through you [00:18:00] and your work. That's to unearth it and then to lean into it and keep bringing more and more of it. Because you may be at the point where you're like, oh, no, no, no. I'm willing to do things my way.
I don't have to follow any rules. But if you aren't believing that your secret sauce is what they want and will ultimately guarantee your success, you'll not only flounder, but you'll lack the unique and cohesive messaging, and that inspires your audience and clients to make a change. You're not here to fit in.
You're here to bring more of you to the table. In a bigger way and a more impactful way. And step three, be a human connect with humans. When you try to be strategic at the expense of your soul, your audience feels it. There are people researching the effect of AI now, right? Can human subconsciously detect what's written by AI versus a human?[00:19:00]
And do they lean in closer when it's actually from a human? From what I am seeing and the conversations I've been having with other contemporaries of mine, the answer is yes. Human content wins out, and believe me, I understand the draw of ai, especially when times get busy and you're looking for efficiency.
It is extremely useful, don't get me wrong, but use it judiciously. Maybe with some of the time that you would be pumping out all of this AI generated content, you use that to create one quality, whatever, post email, podcast message letter to a human. Because first and foremost, humans buy from humans. They make purchasing decisions based on trust and resonance really, you can't go wrong selling to humans.
Humans are the most likely to buy from you, so sell to them. Okay, my friend. That's it for today. Have a great week. Let's talk again [00:20:00] on Tuesday.
Thanks for joining us here at The Uncommon Way. If you want more tips and resources for developing clarity in your business and life, including the clarity first strategy for growing and scaling your business, visit the uncommon way com. See you next time.