39. The “I Don’t Know” Trap and How to Stop Feeling Stuck
Do you ever find yourself stuck in your business, not knowing what to do next? You're not alone. As moms, we have tons on our plates, and falling into the "I don't know" trap is easy. But saying "I don't know" isn't just a statement of fact - it's a mindset trap that keeps us stuck and disempowered.
In the early days of my business, I was doing everything except actually finding clients. I kept telling myself "I don't know how to find clients" and used that as an excuse to stay in my comfort zone. But after months of overthinking, I finally hit a breaking point and started taking imperfect action. And that's when things started to shift.
In this episode, I dive deep into how the "I don't know" trap is holding you back, and I show you how to break free from it. You’ll learn the mindset shifts and practical strategies that have helped me embrace the learning process and keep moving forward in my business, even when I don't have all the answers. If you're ready to stop letting "I don't know" hold you back, this episode is for you.
Ready to start your networking journey? Join us every 2nd Thursday for my free Mom Entrepreneurs Circle. Sign up below for support, advice sharing, and the tools you need for both you and your business to thrive.
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why saying "I don't know" is actively disempowering and keeps you stuck.
How to reframe "I don't know" into an opportunity for growth and learning.
The importance of approaching your business like a scientist and embracing experimentation.
How to break down overwhelming tasks into smaller, actionable steps.
Why taking imperfect action is the key to building momentum in your business.
How to change your relationship with not knowing and embrace the learning process.
The real reason why figuring things out is the best part of building a business.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
Click here for step-by-step instructions to leave a rating and review to let me know what you think, and don’t forget to share the podcast with others who you think would benefit!
If you want to realize your dreams of leaving corporate and starting your own business in 2025, join me for a free strategy session by clicking here!
Everything Is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo
Full Episode Transcript:
Okay, you're sitting at your laptop another late night after the kids are in bed and that familiar feeling creeps in your mind's racing with all the things you could do in your business should do in your business, but you're completely stuck. That phrase pops into your head over and over again, “I don't know what to do next.” If you've ever felt this way, you're in the right place because today we're tackling what I call the I don't know trap, and more importantly how you can break free from it.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. It’s a podcast that helps working moms just like you, optimize your time, manage your mind, and start a business that helps you create more freedom, flexibility, and, yes, fun. I’m business and mindset coach Jenna Rykiel. And I offer practical tips to help you ditch the nine-to-five. I have been exactly where you are and I know what it takes to make the transition without trading one form of burnout for another. So, let’s get started.
Hi mom friends today we're diving deep into something I see holding back so many brilliant moms from getting momentum in their business. It's those moments when you're faced with a decision or task and your default response is, I don't know. Maybe it's about pricing your services, maybe it's about finding your first clients, or maybe it's about setting up your business systems and let me tell you I've been there.
I will never forget sitting in front of my computer late one night staring at the Squarespace website feeling completely overwhelmed. I was trying to set up a simple domain for my business, which by the way I didn't even know what a domain was at that point. So hours were ticking by and I kept hitting wall after wall. Domain names email connections website builders, it was like trying to read a foreign language.
So I reached out to Squarespace customer service, desperate for help. They sent back this technical article that might as well have been written in hieroglyphics. I just sat there fighting back tears feeling completely lost. That phrase, I don't know, kept echoing in my head on repeat. I don't know what a domain is. I don't know how to set up an email address. I don't know how to build a website. And with each I don't know, I felt smaller and smaller. That voice in my head started whispering, if you can't even figure out these basic things, maybe you're not cut out for running a business.
Saying I don't know isn't just a statement of fact, it's a mindset trap that keeps us stuck and it's particularly sneaky for those of us coming from the corporate world. When we say I don't know, what we're often really saying is I'm afraid of making the wrong choice. Or I wish someone would just tell me exactly what to do.
And I get it. In our corporate roles, we're used to having clear paths, established procedures, and someone to ask when we're unsure what to do next. But here's what's fascinating about this trap. It's often more comfortable for us to stay in, I don't know, than to take action. Because I don't know feels safe. It feels responsible. After all, shouldn't we know everything before we take action?
Let me take you back to the early days of my business. I was doing what I thought entrepreneurs were supposed to do. Even before I knew exactly what my perfect niche was, I was posting on social media, endlessly tweaking my website, having coffee chats with other coaches. I was basically doing everything except actually finding clients to figure out my niche. And I didn't know how, right? I didn't know how to find clients. I don't know. And when they didn't come knocking on my door, well, I took that as a sign that maybe I wasn't cut out for this whole entrepreneurship thing.
After months of overthinking everything, I finally hit a breaking point. I opened Google and typed "how to find coaching clients", simple as that. No fancy strategy. No elaborate plan, just a desperate search for answers. That one search led me to several coaching directories. One of those directories ended up bringing in 40% of my early revenue. Even today, it still accounts for about 25% of my client base. But what's really interesting is I tried five other directories that didn't work out at all.
Each attempt, whether it worked out or not, taught me something about my business and myself as a coach and more importantly, it showed me that I don't know doesn't have to be the end of the story, right? It's just the beginning. When we say I don't know, but we make an effort to figure it out, it doesn't mean that that process is quick and simple and easy. But what it does mean is that we start learning. Right, we start learning more about ourselves. We start learning more about our business and we start being able to learn from our actions.
Here's what I want you to really understand. Saying I don't know isn't neutral. It's actively disempowering. It's like putting your car in park and expecting it to move forward. When we say, I don't know, we are giving ourselves permission to stay stuck.
And I want to bring up something that might feel a little uncomfortable. Sometimes saying I don't know is just plain lazy. Yes, hot take, but stay with me here. In this age of Google, YouTube, and endless online resources, there's very little we truly can't figure out. What we're really saying is I don't wanna put in the effort to figure this out.
And I get it. As moms, we have so much on our plate and we feel like we have no time to figure things out. But what I want you to know is that as you figure things out, the next step gets easier. And as you figure things out, you learn more, and then things move quicker.
Looking back now, everything that at one point seemed impossible at first has become routine after I invested a little bit of time in figuring it out. And those various run-ins with I don't know taught me something crucial about what really holds us back in business. It's not so much the not knowing, it's our relationship with not knowing.
When I was a few months into my business doing what I like to call productive procrastination, you know, endlessly planning and preparing but never quite launching or taking action. I was stuck in this cycle of feeling like I needed to know everything before I could move forward.
Then I had this coffee chat, coffee meeting with another coach and it really changed everything for me. He'd been in business for years, but as he sat across from me his energy was completely defeated. He talked about how exhausted he was from constantly trying to figure things out, how overwhelming it felt to always be learning something new in his business. And his words hit me hard because I could hear my own frustrations in him.
But here's where things clicked for me. I realized I was looking at this all wrong, just like I think he was looking at this all wrong. The challenge wasn't that there were things to figure out, that's just part of being in business. The real problem was my relationship with not knowing. I was treating each I don't know moment as a roadblock, something to dread, something to judge myself about when I needed to see it as an opportunity to grow. That meeting became an absolute wake up call, but not necessarily in the way you might expect, right?
Instead of seeing it as a cautionary tale about the struggles of entrepreneurship, it showed me that I needed to change my relationship with figuring things out early on, or I would not be able to make it in this business. Because here's the truth. The learning never stops in business. The question isn't whether you'll need to figure things out because you will. The question is whether you'll embrace it as part of the process.
So let's talk about how to embrace it with a few simple mindset shifts. This is where the magic happens as always in the mindset shift. Instead of I don't know, shift to I don't know yet. Or instead of I don't know, shift to I'm figuring it out. Or instead of I don't know, try I'm learning how. See the difference here? Like these phrases keep you in motion, right? They acknowledge where you are while keeping the door open to progress, to learning.
So whenever you run into I don't know, I want you to pause and allow yourself the space and grace to say, I don't know yet, but I'm figuring it out. The next mindset shift is one of my favorites. And I know I've mentioned this before, I want you to approach your business like a scientist.
Scientists don't know the answers when they start their experiments, right? That's the whole point. They form a hypothesis, they test them out, they collect data, and they learn from those results. So if you approached your business the same way, instead of, I don't know how to get clients, you would say something like, let me test three different marketing approaches this month.
Right, instead of saying, I don't know what to charge, try saying, let me test these price points and collect feedback from clients that say yes or no. Instead of, I don't know if this will work, try, let's run this experiment and see what we learn. There is no failure. There is just learning what doesn't work, which is data. And the more we know what doesn't work, we get closer and closer to what does work. And I know I've said that plenty of times on this podcast before.
Here's something that took me a while to understand. All this stuff we don't know, it's not something to rush past. It's actually the best part of the process.
Every piece of technology you figure out, every marketing strategy you test, every sale you make, they're all building blocks of your business expertise. As I've said, owning your own business is the best personal development in disguise. And the figuring it out is chipping away and making you that stronger, better version of yourself. Who knows more about business, who knows more about what a domain is and how it connects to Google email.
And I also want you to know that the technology, the strategies, the marketing tactics that you're figuring out, those are actually the easy part. You want to know what's really hard, believing in your business when someone says no. Setting up a funnel is easy compared to hosting another webinar after only one person showed up to your first one. And I want you to check out episode 19, how to stay motivated when you aren't seeing results for more on that topic.
But that's the real hard part. Figuring out the technology, the marketing tactics, those things are easy. There are thousands of answers to those questions of what to do next. The hard part is truly the believing in your business and believing in yourself that you are capable of figuring anything out.
So what do you then do when you hit that I don't know wall? I want you to pause and reframe like I talked about before. Catch yourself when you say I don't know and immediately add yet to the end of it or but I'm figuring it out, okay that simple reframe that simple mindset shift in the language that you're using, the sentences in your head is huge for giving yourself grace and for encouraging you to take action.
Okay, the next thing I want you to do is get specific. What exactly don't you know? Break it down into smaller searchable questions. Break it down into things that you can figure out in a day. If it's this big question of, I don't know how to run Facebook ads, you might not be able to figure out running Facebook ads in a day, right? But you can figure out how to set up ads. Maybe then you figure out how to run your first test ad. Maybe you then figure out how to change it in order to see more results. I want you to break these things down into smaller actionable steps, okay? And figure it out one piece at a time. So that brings me to the third actionable step, which is start researching.
Give yourself 15 minutes to Google your specific question. Look for free resources, YouTube tutorials, courses. Look for the article that shows you exactly how to set up the Facebook ads. Look for the YouTube tutorial, right? That's telling you how to maximize your search. And then I want you to take imperfect action.
So that's step four. Choose one small step that you can take and document what you learn, especially from things that don't work, right? Progress over perfection.
I want to wrap this up with some tough love. The only thing standing between you and your business goals is your willingness to figure things out. Trust me, you don't need to know everything. You just need to be willing to learn anything. Remember, I don't know is a trap. It's not the truth. Everything is figureoutable. I think there's a book on it. I haven't read it, but I'll recommend it since I'm using that word. So you'll see it in the show notes.
The learning process is the business building process. Don't try and rush past it. This is the process that we need to sit back and enjoy. And you are more capable than you think.
Okay, just because you don't know what a domain is, or how to set up your email does not mean that you're not capable of figuring it out.
I want you to do something right after this episode to help you break free from the I don't know trap. Take one thing in your business that you've been saying I don't know about and just spend 15 minutes researching it, then take action. I promise the action will help you to see what needs to happen next. The next thing to figure out.
Okay, the more you know, the more we realize we don't know. So get comfortable with the process of learning and figuring out all these little things. And understand that the I don't knows don't go away. They just look different as your business grows.
The more you build this muscle, the stronger you and your business will be down the road. Thank you so much for being here this week and for listening. If you're loving these quick, actionable business tips, make sure you're subscribed to the podcast. Make sure you share it with other moms who are thinking about building a business of their own and tune in each week. We're building momentum together one step at a time. Okay? Because you might not know everything about building a business yet, but you know enough to take your first step or that next step.
Until next time, keep taking action and please let me know how it's going. All right. We'll talk soon. Bye-bye.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. It’s a podcast that helps working moms just like you, optimize your time, manage your mind, and start a business that helps you create more freedom, flexibility, and, yes, fun. I’m business and mindset coach Jenna Rykiel. And I offer practical tips to help you ditch the nine-to-five. I have been exactly where you are and I know what it takes to make the transition without trading one form of burnout for another. So, let’s get started.
Hi mom friends today we're diving deep into something I see holding back so many brilliant moms from getting momentum in their business. It's those moments when you're faced with a decision or task and your default response is, I don't know. Maybe it's about pricing your services, maybe it's about finding your first clients, or maybe it's about setting up your business systems and let me tell you I've been there.
I will never forget sitting in front of my computer late one night staring at the Squarespace website feeling completely overwhelmed. I was trying to set up a simple domain for my business, which by the way I didn't even know what a domain was at that point. So hours were ticking by and I kept hitting wall after wall. Domain names email connections website builders, it was like trying to read a foreign language.
So I reached out to Squarespace customer service, desperate for help. They sent back this technical article that might as well have been written in hieroglyphics. I just sat there fighting back tears feeling completely lost. That phrase, I don't know, kept echoing in my head on repeat. I don't know what a domain is. I don't know how to set up an email address. I don't know how to build a website. And with each I don't know, I felt smaller and smaller. That voice in my head started whispering, if you can't even figure out these basic things, maybe you're not cut out for running a business.
Saying I don't know isn't just a statement of fact, it's a mindset trap that keeps us stuck and it's particularly sneaky for those of us coming from the corporate world. When we say I don't know, what we're often really saying is I'm afraid of making the wrong choice. Or I wish someone would just tell me exactly what to do.
And I get it. In our corporate roles, we're used to having clear paths, established procedures, and someone to ask when we're unsure what to do next. But here's what's fascinating about this trap. It's often more comfortable for us to stay in, I don't know, than to take action. Because I don't know feels safe. It feels responsible. After all, shouldn't we know everything before we take action?
Let me take you back to the early days of my business. I was doing what I thought entrepreneurs were supposed to do. Even before I knew exactly what my perfect niche was, I was posting on social media, endlessly tweaking my website, having coffee chats with other coaches. I was basically doing everything except actually finding clients to figure out my niche. And I didn't know how, right? I didn't know how to find clients. I don't know. And when they didn't come knocking on my door, well, I took that as a sign that maybe I wasn't cut out for this whole entrepreneurship thing.
After months of overthinking everything, I finally hit a breaking point. I opened Google and typed "how to find coaching clients", simple as that. No fancy strategy. No elaborate plan, just a desperate search for answers. That one search led me to several coaching directories. One of those directories ended up bringing in 40% of my early revenue. Even today, it still accounts for about 25% of my client base. But what's really interesting is I tried five other directories that didn't work out at all.
Each attempt, whether it worked out or not, taught me something about my business and myself as a coach and more importantly, it showed me that I don't know doesn't have to be the end of the story, right? It's just the beginning. When we say I don't know, but we make an effort to figure it out, it doesn't mean that that process is quick and simple and easy. But what it does mean is that we start learning. Right, we start learning more about ourselves. We start learning more about our business and we start being able to learn from our actions.
Here's what I want you to really understand. Saying I don't know isn't neutral. It's actively disempowering. It's like putting your car in park and expecting it to move forward. When we say, I don't know, we are giving ourselves permission to stay stuck.
And I want to bring up something that might feel a little uncomfortable. Sometimes saying I don't know is just plain lazy. Yes, hot take, but stay with me here. In this age of Google, YouTube, and endless online resources, there's very little we truly can't figure out. What we're really saying is I don't wanna put in the effort to figure this out.
And I get it. As moms, we have so much on our plate and we feel like we have no time to figure things out. But what I want you to know is that as you figure things out, the next step gets easier. And as you figure things out, you learn more, and then things move quicker.
Looking back now, everything that at one point seemed impossible at first has become routine after I invested a little bit of time in figuring it out. And those various run-ins with I don't know taught me something crucial about what really holds us back in business. It's not so much the not knowing, it's our relationship with not knowing.
When I was a few months into my business doing what I like to call productive procrastination, you know, endlessly planning and preparing but never quite launching or taking action. I was stuck in this cycle of feeling like I needed to know everything before I could move forward.
Then I had this coffee chat, coffee meeting with another coach and it really changed everything for me. He'd been in business for years, but as he sat across from me his energy was completely defeated. He talked about how exhausted he was from constantly trying to figure things out, how overwhelming it felt to always be learning something new in his business. And his words hit me hard because I could hear my own frustrations in him.
But here's where things clicked for me. I realized I was looking at this all wrong, just like I think he was looking at this all wrong. The challenge wasn't that there were things to figure out, that's just part of being in business. The real problem was my relationship with not knowing. I was treating each I don't know moment as a roadblock, something to dread, something to judge myself about when I needed to see it as an opportunity to grow. That meeting became an absolute wake up call, but not necessarily in the way you might expect, right?
Instead of seeing it as a cautionary tale about the struggles of entrepreneurship, it showed me that I needed to change my relationship with figuring things out early on, or I would not be able to make it in this business. Because here's the truth. The learning never stops in business. The question isn't whether you'll need to figure things out because you will. The question is whether you'll embrace it as part of the process.
So let's talk about how to embrace it with a few simple mindset shifts. This is where the magic happens as always in the mindset shift. Instead of I don't know, shift to I don't know yet. Or instead of I don't know, shift to I'm figuring it out. Or instead of I don't know, try I'm learning how. See the difference here? Like these phrases keep you in motion, right? They acknowledge where you are while keeping the door open to progress, to learning.
So whenever you run into I don't know, I want you to pause and allow yourself the space and grace to say, I don't know yet, but I'm figuring it out. The next mindset shift is one of my favorites. And I know I've mentioned this before, I want you to approach your business like a scientist.
Scientists don't know the answers when they start their experiments, right? That's the whole point. They form a hypothesis, they test them out, they collect data, and they learn from those results. So if you approached your business the same way, instead of, I don't know how to get clients, you would say something like, let me test three different marketing approaches this month.
Right, instead of saying, I don't know what to charge, try saying, let me test these price points and collect feedback from clients that say yes or no. Instead of, I don't know if this will work, try, let's run this experiment and see what we learn. There is no failure. There is just learning what doesn't work, which is data. And the more we know what doesn't work, we get closer and closer to what does work. And I know I've said that plenty of times on this podcast before.
Here's something that took me a while to understand. All this stuff we don't know, it's not something to rush past. It's actually the best part of the process.
Every piece of technology you figure out, every marketing strategy you test, every sale you make, they're all building blocks of your business expertise. As I've said, owning your own business is the best personal development in disguise. And the figuring it out is chipping away and making you that stronger, better version of yourself. Who knows more about business, who knows more about what a domain is and how it connects to Google email.
And I also want you to know that the technology, the strategies, the marketing tactics that you're figuring out, those are actually the easy part. You want to know what's really hard, believing in your business when someone says no. Setting up a funnel is easy compared to hosting another webinar after only one person showed up to your first one. And I want you to check out episode 19, how to stay motivated when you aren't seeing results for more on that topic.
But that's the real hard part. Figuring out the technology, the marketing tactics, those things are easy. There are thousands of answers to those questions of what to do next. The hard part is truly the believing in your business and believing in yourself that you are capable of figuring anything out.
So what do you then do when you hit that I don't know wall? I want you to pause and reframe like I talked about before. Catch yourself when you say I don't know and immediately add yet to the end of it or but I'm figuring it out, okay that simple reframe that simple mindset shift in the language that you're using, the sentences in your head is huge for giving yourself grace and for encouraging you to take action.
Okay, the next thing I want you to do is get specific. What exactly don't you know? Break it down into smaller searchable questions. Break it down into things that you can figure out in a day. If it's this big question of, I don't know how to run Facebook ads, you might not be able to figure out running Facebook ads in a day, right? But you can figure out how to set up ads. Maybe then you figure out how to run your first test ad. Maybe you then figure out how to change it in order to see more results. I want you to break these things down into smaller actionable steps, okay? And figure it out one piece at a time. So that brings me to the third actionable step, which is start researching.
Give yourself 15 minutes to Google your specific question. Look for free resources, YouTube tutorials, courses. Look for the article that shows you exactly how to set up the Facebook ads. Look for the YouTube tutorial, right? That's telling you how to maximize your search. And then I want you to take imperfect action.
So that's step four. Choose one small step that you can take and document what you learn, especially from things that don't work, right? Progress over perfection.
I want to wrap this up with some tough love. The only thing standing between you and your business goals is your willingness to figure things out. Trust me, you don't need to know everything. You just need to be willing to learn anything. Remember, I don't know is a trap. It's not the truth. Everything is figureoutable. I think there's a book on it. I haven't read it, but I'll recommend it since I'm using that word. So you'll see it in the show notes.
The learning process is the business building process. Don't try and rush past it. This is the process that we need to sit back and enjoy. And you are more capable than you think.
Okay, just because you don't know what a domain is, or how to set up your email does not mean that you're not capable of figuring it out.
I want you to do something right after this episode to help you break free from the I don't know trap. Take one thing in your business that you've been saying I don't know about and just spend 15 minutes researching it, then take action. I promise the action will help you to see what needs to happen next. The next thing to figure out.
Okay, the more you know, the more we realize we don't know. So get comfortable with the process of learning and figuring out all these little things. And understand that the I don't knows don't go away. They just look different as your business grows.
The more you build this muscle, the stronger you and your business will be down the road. Thank you so much for being here this week and for listening. If you're loving these quick, actionable business tips, make sure you're subscribed to the podcast. Make sure you share it with other moms who are thinking about building a business of their own and tune in each week. We're building momentum together one step at a time. Okay? Because you might not know everything about building a business yet, but you know enough to take your first step or that next step.
Until next time, keep taking action and please let me know how it's going. All right. We'll talk soon. Bye-bye.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
Enjoy the Show?
Don’t miss an episode, follow the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or RSS.
