Finding Clarity Through Action

Ever felt stuck in the cycle of overthinking, waiting for clarity to magically show up before you take action?

Spoiler alert: It doesn’t work that way! In this episode, we’re diving into one of the best pieces of advice ever dropped by Marie Forleo—clarity comes from engagement, not thought. 

We’re talking about how to embrace the learning curve, stay motivated even when the road feels bumpy, and why it’s totally fine to feel overwhelmed. 

Whether you’re stuck at step one or knee-deep in entrepreneurship, we’ve got you.

Tune in, get inspired, and remember: clarity comes from doing, not thinking.

Hit play, take that first messy step, and let's figure it out together.

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• Not Nice Clever
• Candice Carcioppolo
• Kat Torre

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Transcript

Hi, I'm Kat, marketer turned brand storyteller. And I'm Candice, educator turned entrepreneur. And you're listening to Not Nice, Clever. As CEOs and leaders, it's your job to always have the answers. But sometimes you need a little help. Leverage, if you will. We get it. This is the place for you. So wherever you're listening, 530 AM Club at the gym, on your way to your next meeting or putting out today's fire, let's get into it.

In today's episode of Not Nice Clever, we are talking about clarity and action and the ever elusive motivation that apparently has been lost and we need to help you find it. And so this episode is going to be all about that. And, you know, on the heels of us filming a mini

episode about overthinking, which we'll link in the show notes if you haven't watched or listened to that one yet. Today we wanted to discuss one of Marie Forleo's most impactful pieces of advice. If you haven't heard of Marie Forleo yet, she is an author, a speaker, an all around motivational human being, copywriter, storyteller, all the things. So very much a boss in her own right. And the quote that she talked about is how clarity, knowing what to do,

comes from engagement, not thought. And what that really means is clarity comes from doing the thing instead of thinking about the thing, right? It's taking that messy action. It's feeling really uncomfortable. the damn thing. The damn thing, not just the thing. The damn thing. Yeah. The damn thing. So if you are not familiar with Marie Forleo, you can...

check out her book, is how I was first introduced to her years ago. I love the title of this book. is Everything is Figureoutable.

Isn't everything figure audible, Kat? I mean, so far, I'm very young and I have a lot to learn, but like I figured out some hairy ass shit. Okay. And I can figure that out.

Also, here's a fun fact. Years ago, first year of entrepreneurship, I took one of her courses called... Wait, what is it called? on. Was it called B.S. School? No, but that is one of them. It is called The Copy Cure.

Yeah, it's all about writing copy. like how to write your website copy or copy about your course or anything online essentially. And it was such a great course. I probably still have access to it and I might actually revisit it now that I am looking at and pulled it up online. like, that was really good and super impactful on my business. So I love her, love the content that she creates.

And so her quote is clarity comes from engagement, not thought. And essentially to me, that just means you have to decide to take action and gather the data. And then as you continue to take action, you will get clearer and clearer about the path. You're never going to know every single step that it takes to

accomplish the goal that you want to accomplish. You just have to be willing to be malleable and figure it out as you go. Like Marie Forleo says, everything is figure outable. So my husband Dom often says that if he knew everything that would go into building his business now, he probably wouldn't have done it because it would have been too overwhelming and scary.

Right. But since every single day you just learn something and take an action and then decide the next day you're going to learn something and take another action, it feels manageable. But if you just like saw a manual written out of all of those tasks that you would have to learn and accomplish and problem solving that he'd have to do over the last 10 years, he probably would have been like, that's a bit much. pass. But he's so grateful that he did and

And I'm so grateful that I took a chance on my business as well. And yeah, it would have been really scary and really overwhelming and I wouldn't have felt equipped if I knew in the beginning, every step I'd have to take. It's almost like you're and I've you're not the only person to have to have shared this. I've heard other people that I look up to other role models and mentors have shared the power of being naive in this situation, not ignorant. Right. That's willful.

naive is just you just don't know what the journey is going to look like, right? You don't know. So then you figure it out step by step. I always think back to whenever you say experiment and data, I always think back to like the science experiments that we would do in school growing up. even when I was in nursing school and we would have clinicals and we would do labs and we would have an idea of what might happen, hypothesis. create a hypothesis. Right.

You have a hypothesis. You're like, I think this is to happen. You're like, okay, Kat, let's figure it out. Let's see if that's true. And then you have your, your variables and you have your testing environment and you have the things that you're going to measure before, during, and after. you're like, was I correct? And it doesn't matter if you were correct. No, or not correct. It wasn't a bad thing. There was no good or bad descriptors. was like, that hypothesis was incorrect.

Let's try again. Let's try again. With different variables. differently. Yeah. That's it. I think people are, this sounds like a previous episode that we just recorded, but people are looking for that perfect path. Yeah. And that's just not what it is. And if Kat and I, if you learn anything from Kat and I, it's knowing that it's going to be messy. You're going to step into the

things that are unknown and uncomfortable. And that's great. We're excited for you about that. We want that for you. Yeah. And, you know, like, I just think removing like removing any sort of feelings or any sort of like, it should be this way, or it should be that way. And embracing like the fact that there's a learning curve for everything and that life doesn't like grade you like A, B, C, D, F, you know.

It's a curve. It's an experience and it's like uncomfortable. yeah, when I'm working with totally when I'm working with my clients in the content lab, which I named the content lab a lab specifically on purpose because I want people to feel like they are doing an experiment and they're unattached to the outcome. So I call every social experiment that we do. I call it, hey, this is social experiment number one, social experiment number two.

Let's just see what happens. And I frame it like that on purpose. Also, it's the teacher and me, I just got to go back to middle school science. that helps to alleviate some of the pressure from my clients who are showing up on social media. One thing that I say on repeat to them is I want you to be unattached to the outcome. If I tell you to go live on Friday, I want you to go live and I don't want you to feel like you're a failure.

if two people watch. That doesn't mean you're a failure. The accomplishment is that you pushed live and you showed up. did the thing. That's the first thing we're gonna celebrate and that's the first milestone. And it doesn't mean you're a failure. It doesn't mean you don't have anything of value to say if the numbers aren't what you want them to be. Because right now, and this is something that you talk about often, Kat,

Like we're just, this is an inside job right now. It's just you working on your mindset and putting yourself out there. And that's the first thing we're going to celebrate. Yeah. It's, know, people want, people want answers. They want, they want certainty. They want what's known, what's familiar. I totally get that. Like how many times, Candice, have we done like workshops where we've hopped on client sessions and they're like, I need to know that this is going to work. And.

Sometimes I'll say, yeah, I've seen this system work for others. I've seen this approach work for others. I'm like, but the biggest X factor is if you're actually going to do it. That's the, that is the thing. That I can't guarantee. Right. I guarantee that if you continue to do this, things are going to happen. That's it. But it's literally like going to the gym, right? It's like, this training program going to work?

100 % it's gonna work if you do what it's asking you to do. You gotta eat right and you gotta show up to these workouts before you feel stronger and see a change in your body composition, duh. But I can't just give you this paper that tells you what to do and you'd be like, this shit doesn't work. Yeah. That's not how change happens. No. And it's like the...

The transformation, the results, the results, whenever they're like, I need ROI, I'm like, I need commitment and action from you. I say it nicer than that because I'm sure she does. Cat is actually, I think much nicer as a coach than I am. Yeah, kinder about you. Kind of. not nice, but we're kind. That's right. Yeah. Literally not nice. We are. We are clever, though.

So I think another important thing about Marie Forleo's quote of clarity comes from engagement, from doing, not thinking. And this is something that is always a work in progress for me, is when I'm in the middle of the doing and I'm like, ooh, this is exciting. I'm doing, I'm moving, I'm learning, I'm taking action. And then it's like, skrrp, something goes wrong. And I'm like, no, it's all coming crashing down. This hard left turn, what's going on? What did I ever think? This is a failure. I shouldn't just crawl back into a shell.

All of the mental She goes down the rabbit hole. I live sometimes, used to live sometimes in the rabbit hole. But I think being open to hitting roadblocks, hitting obstacles, speed bumps, that's a part of it too. But you learn from everything that doesn't quite work or hits a snag or isn't quite right for you. That's more data. talk about a few of the things that are go-to things when we do hit maybe unexpected

roadblocks, turbulence in maybe a project that we're working on. Like what are some of the go-tos? Can I say drink tequila or is that not I don't know if that's exactly the vibe we're trying to give off here, but you know, do you? Enjoy your life in moderation. five o'clock, yes, in moderation when you're okay. No, I would say the first thing I do is like take a breath and not react. I pause. When there's a speed bump,

in the road and you're driving in your car, you slow down when you see, mean, hopefully, you you slow down, right? So like if there's something that happens unexpectedly, I don't react to it immediately. Yeah, I'll step away from it and take some space, you know? Yep. One thing that I've learned from watching male leaders in my life, I have the privilege of watching some really great ones. Obviously, Ryan and

also Dom, my husband, is that they are very good at separating emotion from what's happening in their business. Where naturally for me, if someone is unhappy with something, I'm like, oof, it means I'm a bad coach, I'm a bad business owner, whatever. Like those are the first things that pop up. Or they feel like,

I scammed them or whatever. I just build the story in my mind about what my own worth or value, which I know is not right with their experience. And I think watching Ryan and watching Dom, I see them not do that. I see them very much being like, well, this is what happened. This is what I did. And then this is how they reacted. And so what's the next thing that I should do?

that will get them to react the way I want them to react in this situation or get them to feel how I want them to feel. And they just take that data and take the next action. And it's in their mind, not a reflection on their value or their how smart they are or anything like that. And I, borrow that from them sometimes. Yeah.

I hear you and I see that too. And I think one of the most amazing things about being more intuitive and more sensitive and more feminine as a woman is like such a superpower in so many ways. But when the unexpected happens, that's where I think it's a bit more useful to be more logical, be more masculine and like just kind of almost, which is why one of the first things I do is like I step away from the situation because I'm like, I don't want to get sucked in.

Yeah, you want to get some space from it. emotion of it without having the space to think it through and make a plan. ultimately remember that you're probably, you and your client are on a team, essentially. That's how I see it. We're working towards the same goal. And so if I need to rethink how I approach this so that we both feel good about the outcome, then I'm the leader in the situation and I'm going to do that.

Yeah, I was on Instagram the other day and there was this reel that talked about it was this couple that I follow and they do a lot of like couples content and it's really interesting to see like them talk about the obstacles and the disagreements and the agreements that come up. And she was saying that, you know, if there's one person in an argument or an unfortunate situation, unexpected situation and that person's aware

of like the larger picture and what's going on. It's almost your responsibility to remain neutral like that so that you can defuse the situation so that you can de escalate it right because you're you're not always that person in the situation but if you realize that you are you're like this is let's breathe let's look at the facts we're not fighting to the death here this is not life or death if it is life or death okay but most of the time it's not and

Remembering the shared goal. So the first the first tip that we have is take a breath take a step back evaluate the situation Remember that you likely have a shared goal with this person or this roadblock or whatever is coming in your way Keeping your eye on the prize super important. Another thing that I do is I ask people Who have been there before? Yeah, so I might call my dad. Yeah, I'll call Giselle

Hey, so this happened and this doesn't happen before. How would you handle a situation? Yeah. And she'll give me your top two tips and tell me like, I would do this or this like, cool, thanks. And that just gives me even more confidence going into the situation because I know I'm talking to someone who's likely been there and is still thriving. Shortens the learning curve, which is good. So once again, just going back to those people who you know, support you, who you admire, who

are in similar situations, maybe a few steps ahead of you, who can help you navigate the problem. And, know, by doing all of these things, you will become more and more clear, like truly, like, like we said, clarity comes from doing it comes from more data, it comes from understanding, it comes from experience too. And this is just and And Will's there looking like...

When I was there, here felt impossible, crazy, like a wild idea. So the next place I want to go, it's probably going to feel like that again. And that's okay, because I remember that feeling and I still got here. So really just seeing how far you've come and helping that be a catalyst for you to continue going. Well, if you've enjoyed this episode of Not Nice Clever, feel free to send it to a friend who might be caught in an overthinking spiral.

and could do with a bit of doing in their life. And remember to leave us a five star review and we'll catch you on the next episode. Thanks for joining us on Not Nice, Clever. Remember to follow Not Nice, Clever wherever you listen to audio. And if you haven't already, drop that five star review, share your takeaways, tell us your story. We love to hear it. Signing off, you're not so nice, but so clever besties that mean business. See you soon.