025: Want to Make Better Choices for Life and Business? Give your Decision-making Process a Makeover and Reap the Benefits!

Hey, mom, what's for dinner? Mom, what's for dinner? Amber, what do you want for dinner? Hey, have you heard? There's a new style of CEO on the block. The modern CEO. And she is changing the way businesses are run. She's setting her own hours and her own salary. She's creating a business around what matters most to her. Freedom, family, and impact. And her corner office looks nothing like what you'd see on Wall Street. It's a kitchen table, your grandma's lake house, a spacious home office, the living room floor, maybe surrounded by kids and crayons or the local coffee shop. Your business, your way. This modern CEO is here to stay. Because when you embrace your role as modern CEO, you will have more freedom, more profit, and more fun. Most importantly, you'll fall in love with your life and a business in a way you've only dreamed. Trust me, this isn't a pipe dream reserved for only a select few. You are the modern CEO. You are creating a business and life you love because a better business means a better life. Hey. Hey. Welcome back to the podcast. I am so happy to be here with you in this episode. And you know what? Since we are talking about decisions today, let's talk about all the decisions that you make every day. Think about it. Think about the decisions you've already made today since you woke up. You decided to roll out of bed, maybe decided to hit the snooze button a couple times like I did. Maybe you decided to grab a cup of coffee first. I forgot we had coffee, so I grabbed my cup of coffee. Just before I ran out the door, I stopped and made a decision to be a couple seconds, getting into the car so I could have that coffee. Deciding on your pricing, deciding on if you should make a big career change or not. Deciding whether now is the right time to have kids, Whether you need to invest in that new business, that property, that house. Deciding whether you're going to be on time today or whether you're going to take it slow and you're going to have a leisurely day working from bed. You've got a lot of choices to make every day, including what to make for dinner. Yeah, that's my least favorite question of every single day. Now, fortunately, sitting here in Addis Ababa, I don't make that decision anymore. I got really lucky and I designed myself. We designed our life in a way that I didn't have to make that decision anymore because my husband, when I was working in corporate, when I was working in the U.S. my husband would Call and say, hey, what's for dinner? Now, he wasn't saying I had to make it, fortunately, because that's not pretty. Don't count on me to make dinner every day. But it'll be smoothies and cereal and salsa, chips and salsa. There's vegetables in there, right? We can even make it a seven layer dip and have some beans in in that salsa for some protein. But my husband was just asking, what do you want? What do you want to eat? What should we eat as a family tonight? And he would call on his way home from work. He would leave a little bit earlier, before I was wrapping up, and he would ask me this question. And I was speechless. My brain could literally not pull out an answer of what we should eat for dinner. And I gotta say, that's a problem. It's a problem because then when you can't make decisions and you're not setting yourself up for success in your decision making, I mean, I'm sure that you have potentially done this before. Please tell me I am not in this alone. But I get to the end of the day, I'm like, I don't care, I don't care. What's for dinner? Let's have Pizza Hut. We haven't had chick fil a in a while. Okay, yeah, you want McDonald's? Go for it, let's do it. And that sets me up for not eating healthy, for not living life in a way that's in alignment with who I want to be. And it's a real thing when you get to the end of the day and you have no more capacity to make decisions. That, my friend, is called decision making fatigue. I'm serious. It's real. I did not make this up. And I was so relieved when I learned that decision making fatigue is a thing. It explained so much. It explained why I couldn't answer a simple question, what do you want to eat tonight? He would even go to the grocery store, get the ingredients and make it. But I didn't care. Nothing came to mind. I had lost all ability, all energy, all brain power, all to make a decision. And I wanna invite you, as we move through this workshop today, this action packed episode today, to start shifting your mindset around how you make decisions. It is okay to make decisions from a place of power instead of making decisions from a place of fatigue, from a place of low energy, from a place of I don't care. I mean, truly, there will be sometime when you don't care. No problem. No worries. Sometimes Matt would ask, you know, where do you want to go for dinner tonight when we were going out, let's say on a dinner date or taking the family out or on vacation. And so many times, I truly do not care. You pick it, you pick it. Just give me some vegetable options instead of an all meat place. Or if it's an all meat place, let me make sure there are a couple of vegetarian options because that's my eating preference. Right. But outside of that, no worries. So there will be times when you don't care, but there are other times when you care and you do not have the energy, the mental brain power to make a decision in that moment. And I wanna invite you and encourage you to say, I can't make a decision on this right now because you want to make especially the important decisions from a place of power. And yeah, one off. It's okay if we're eating at Pizza Hut, but if becomes a daily habit, that's not going to work for me and my family. Right. And of course, this bleeds over and we're going to dive into some examples today of how I've made decisions, how we made the decision to move around the world, how we make investments in our business or in our life. Actually, we've got some questions that came in from people. Maggie asked, how do you decide what investments to make in your business? People regularly ask me, how do you know who to hire in your business or what business, or what project in a business should you give attention to right now? What idea should you pursue or not? Right. And so I'm gonna walk through some of those examples around how I make decisions and some strategies that you may wanna have in your back pocket. But before we do that, know that it's okay not to decide right now. And that's a decision too. And ways that you can respond when someone asks you a question or invites you to make a decision that you are not ready to make yet. You can say, that's a great question. I've got to check on something and then I'll follow up with you. I need a little bit more data on X, Y and Z. And I'll get back to you. Give me 24 hours. Give me a week. Let me get back to you tomorrow morning on this. This is an important topic and I want to think about this a little bit more before we decide. Cool. What's your timeline for this? Right. So there are a lot of ways that you can respond when someone has a question or someone's inviting you to decide on something and you are not ready yet. Sometimes when my husband would call, I would realize when I started to have awareness that I did not have capacity to make this decision. Sometimes for a bit, I would say, call me back in 10 minutes, can you? I'm right in the middle of something and I have no idea. I can't process this right now. Call me back. Cool. And he called me back. Or because I was still in work mode otherwise, you know, I might have called him back, but I was in the zone. I needed him to pull me out of it again in 10 minutes. Awesome, right? We do that for the people we care about. We do that for the people on our team. Right? It doesn't. The dinner question didn't need to be answered immediately, but it had to be answered as we realized we were not very good at making those decisions. At the end of the day, we set up a system and a framework and we're going to talk through a lot of those decision making frameworks today, but they even matter for the dinner making process. And our framework worked out really well for us for about nine months. Months. And then we moved and we changed our flow and we changed our framework again. But what we did so we didn't get bored with our dinner making decisions and we didn't have to make last minute dinner decisions that ended up not serving us, we decided to set up a meal plan. Now, I gotta tell you, I would get so bored with a meal plan if it was the same meal every week. If we did Taco Tuesday, every Tuesday, uh, we'd be back to Pizza Hut, we'd be stopping at Taco Bell, but which I actually strangely like Taco Bell. Ah, I feel weird admitting that, but I do. So instead of deciding like, every Tuesday's Taco Tuesday, every Monday's Meatless Monday, you know, whatever that routine is for the week. What we did is we set up a two week rotation so we'd have our meal plan that was set up for two weeks, and there was a week A that had one set of meals and there was a week B that had another set of meals. And we just planned for Monday through Friday because on the weekends we got a little bit more capacity to make decisions. So we didn't plan for the weekends as stringently. We would go out to eat, sometimes we'd eat leftovers, whatever. We kind of flow with it, but two weeks at a time. We'd have two different rotations for each week. Week a week B. And I got into a routine and I set up a grocery delivery list at the time where we were Safeway was our preferred option for our grocery delivery. And since then, I had become partial to Instacart if you're looking for some grocery delivery options. And that rotation that week, a week B, was seasonal. So we allowed ourselves further variety by season. So the first three months, fall, second three months, winter, we wanted to get a little bit cozy with our meals and filling our hearts and our souls a little bit more through food, comfort foods when it was cold out. And then in the spring, we'd have a different rotation, fresher, lighter foods as the weather got warmer. This freed us up to have to make decisions just once a season, four times a year, we would have to make decisions about what we were gonna eat for dinner Monday through Friday. And that freed us up to focus our attention on other things during the week, to have more ease, to have more freedom, to have truly more flexibility in our lives, and to not have to give that brain power to this decision that we knew we were gonna have to make every single day anyway, right? So we built a system around it. And I feel more confident in my decisions. Two things, when I have a framework in place on how I'm going to make this decision, what's important to me, what matters to me around this decision, and when I am conscious about the decision I am making. So this enables us to do two things. When you can build out a framework as to how you're going to make your decision, you can ensure that all the important variables are considered. For example, my husband likes to have some meat in there. I like to have some vegetarian options in there, right? That's important to us. We need to work that into the flow. In addition, we want to rotate. We need a little bit of variety in our routine. And we know that we want different foods at different times of the year. It's just who we are. It's just how we roll. Maybe different for you, right? So you've got to decide as you're thinking about your decision making framework, what's important to me as I go to make this. And then I want to be conscious about it. I don't just want to fall into whatever order, Pizza Hut, whatever. Oh, my gosh, you guys, I got to tell you, Pizza Hut is coming to mind for me right now because there are not a lot of western businesses in Ethiopia. I actually can think of two Pizza Hut, which just came to my neighborhood. And you guys, it tastes like Pizza Hut. It's been a problem for me. It tastes authentic. Like what I grew up with eating Pizza Hut. I didn't even love Pizza Hut that much, but I love it here. And the other store is Diageo, which is a drinks distributor. And I don't even actually know where Diageo is based. So there are two companies, but there is a Mac Cosmetics coming to town also, which is a big deal because, again, there aren't a lot of businesses from out of the country that are established here in Ethiopia. So you think of, you know, a store that you love or you think of a food or a cuisine that you love, it's likely not available here. So when there is something that's available that like, oh, I kind of like that. Even if I don't love it, I kind of like it. It's nice to have that option or something that is from home. So that is why Pizza Hut is top of mind for me right now. Just to give you a little bit of scoop and behind the scenes. Now back to our decision making. So the other thing, when I make a conscious decision. Decision, right. Let's say someone asks you a question, you don't have the answer yet. I feel terrible. I don't feel aligned when I just ignore the question. But when you can confidently go back and say, like, hey, this is important. I'm gonna get back to you. I just need to follow up on this. I just need a couple more minutes to think about this. Right. I feel much more confident that I've made a clear choice and I've communicated that choice to the person I'm working with, to the person I'm talking to. My husband, my family, my kids. Whatever it is, it takes the pressure off. And I don't have to constantly think about it in the back of my head because I know I've got a dedicated time that I'm going to come back to this decision on. Right. I call that the decision date. I'm gonna get back to you in two weeks. I'm gonna get back to you tomorrow on this. Can you give me a couple hours? Or like I said to my husband, can you just give me 10 minutes? I've gotta process this for a second. I'll call you right back. Or I've got to wrap up this thing that I'm doing and I'll call you back because we can't have Chick Fil A again. We got to think of something real. So with that in mind, I feel like I should also say this is not a sponsored episode by any of these parties. They're just the things that are coming to mind right now as I sit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and think back on our habits and how we made decisions. Now let's talk about how you make decisions from power in different areas of your life. And as we do that, I'm gonna give you some examples and walk through how we made those decisions in our different areas of life. Again, from moving to making investments, to hiring, to what you should give attention to in your ideas. Right, all of the ideas. Which one should you focus on? But as we step into that, remember, we're gonna be making decisions from a place of power, not a place of passivity. And we're gonna know that decision making fatigue is real. So don't make all these decisions at once. Give yourself some space and some time. Because in that pause in between where you're deciding not to decide and deciding to take a pause, deciding to slow down, you're slowing down so you can accelerate and speed up later. And there is power in that pause in between the moments that you make decisions or choose not to make decisions. All right, first up, let's talk about how we made the decision to move from our comfortable five bedroom house in Maryland to all the way around the world, halfway around the world to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Now, maybe for you, you aren't looking to make a physical move of this size, but maybe you have a significant decision and change you're trying to make in your life, but it's not tied to physical location. And I'm going to say that this, there might be some nuggets that you can pull out of this because a lot of our decision making frameworks around this physical move actually had nothing to do with where specifically we were going to move. We knew, right, we had an alignment with my husband and I, that we wanted our kids to have a cultural out of the United States experience when they were growing up, right? To travel, to experience different cultures. And part of this is tied to the fact that my husband traveled a lot for his career. In addition, it's tied to the idea that I lived abroad when I was a kid. I lived in Saudi Arabia for five years when I was a kid, had incredible opportunities to travel. The Great Wall of China, the Sphinx and the pyramids in Egypt, the mountains in the middle of nowhere, Alaska. They literally dropped us off on a helicopter and said, we'll see you in a week. And we did some camping there with giant mosquitoes. I might have been a little bit traumatized, but I had these cultural experience as a kid that absolutely impacted my sisters and I, and I wanted that for my children as well. Didn't really know where we wanted to move. But I had two things in mind. Again, they're just, you know, sometimes I'm like up for the adventure. But I've just got a couple of requirements and there are a couple of places I did not want to move. Think cold and snow. And I knew I needed Internet. So those were my two requirements. You know, take me anywhere, preferably a beach. We didn't end up at the beach, but I didn't. That wasn't a requirement. I just didn't want to be in a snowy wintery place for too long of the year. And I needed Internet. So we had just a few simple requirements. And what was driving this change for us was my husband wanted to make a business, big career change that would take us abroad. And it was a job that he had been interested in for a while. In addition, we had been setting up our businesses. Amber McHugh.com, our consulting business, and Three Boudoir, our photography business. We were designing them in a way that I could be anywhere. And as my husband was moving further and further along in the job process and as we were preparing, right, even as he was preparing before that and doing applications, we didn't know where we were going to move. We didn't know when we were going to move. We just knew that we were going to move. That's it. We just knew that we were going to move. Have you ever had that knowing? I just know that I'm going to be an entrepreneur and I'm going to be a success. I just know that I'm gonna be a good mom. I just know that I'm not gonna have kids in this lifetime. Right? That's not my path. Whatever it is that your knowing is, hold onto that. Cause that's powerful. And that drove our decisions. We had a knowing we were moving, didn't care where. We had a couple stipulations around it. I didn't care where. Now my husband had some other stipulations in terms of work. He wanted to be in some, some smaller offices where he could be more nimble and have more autonomy and do presumably cooler work, right. And not be sort of bogged down by big office bureaucracy. So that shaped his side of the decision making process. But I brought my asks to the table and he took it away from there, right? He took it away. So it gave him liberty. And when he'd say, what do you think about this country? What do you think about the country? I'm like, I don't care. No Big deal. Yes. No. Right. Because I had a framework in mind and that gave him a lot of liberty and it made our decision making process as a couple much easier. So when he said, we're going to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, like, cool. How's the Internet? We talked to people about that. We got set up with some Internet options. I'm good and I know it doesn't snow, so I'm really good. Right. All other things, lifestyle. I was up for the adventure. I was up for the adventure, whatever that was going to be. And it didn't exactly work out as planned. We were supposed to be moving to the Congo. We ended up in Ethiopia. I've shared that story in a prior podcast episode, so I won't go into the details again. Right. But that was okay. I still felt like I was operating from a place of power because I didn't care where we were moving. We just knew that we were moving to a place with Internet and not a lot of snow. So you could see there that we had alignment on a couple of values. We had alignment on this idea of adventure, and we had identified some things that were important to us as we made those decisions. And you're going to see a theme here as we go through these decision making frameworks. You, your values, and what's important to you at any given time. Next up, let's talk about those investments you want to make in your business. What should you invest in next? Should you invest in Facebook ads? What course or program should you invest your time in launching? Or where should you make an investment in a new hire on your team? I want to give you a resource here to go check out, which is the Prioritize Everything framework. This is a framework I come back to mentally in my head over and over when I'm making emotional decisions that also need a touch of logic and rationality. So I try to balance my emotions with what is really happening and what the reality of the situation is. And when we're making hard, cold, tangible investments of our time or, or of cash, I like to balance those two things. So check out the prioritize everything framework@ambermcch.com prioritize. Nice and simple. So as we think about making decisions around investments, the top two things I consider are, number one, strategically, what are you working toward right now? What is your big goal? What's that big kahuna thing that you do not want to lose sight of? Let's keep that front and center as you're thinking of investments? Number two, where do I really need help in reaching that goal? Where do you really need help in reaching that goal? Is it I need some leads and I need some traffic, so I'm gonna invest in Facebook ads. Is it I've really gotta focus my energy and market this specific program so I get some leverage in my business so I can invest that back in my business. And then maybe you need some help on your team, so maybe you need to think about hiring someone. And as you think about hiring, don't forget there are all sorts of ways that you can get support in your business. In fact, we're gonna turn to how you make decisions about h next. But I also want to give you a heads up that the next series that we're going to do in the podcast is how to Clone Yourself. So if you feel overwhelmed, if you feel like the to do list is too long and you could really use another one of you, I agree. We need more of you in the world, so be ready. The next series of episodes in the podcast is going to be a all about how you can clone yourself. And this applies to you if you are running a business, and it applies to you if you are not running a business. I use these same strategies in my personal life as well, and they work like a charm. So next up, as you think about the framework for hiring, the number one thing I want you to think about after you have determined what role you want to fill is values alignment. Values are so important. If you want to check out a great book on who hires for values, well, check out the book Delivering Happiness, which is based on the work that they did over at Zappos around ensuring that you know what your values are. And when you're bringing new people on the team, make sure their values align with your values as a person and as an organization. Because if there isn't values alignment, as you face challenges as these people go to implement things on your team and represent your brand, things are going to look and feel off. And it might just feel a little bit off to start, but little by little, those things where there is massive values misalignment will show and they will add up and you will be kicking yourself. Now, if you don't actually know what role you're going to hire for yet, don't worry, we're going to break that down in the upcoming how to Clone Yourself series. But as you've defined that role and you've defined your values, think about what's your budget for the role, because oftentimes you can hire someone who's highly skilled who has deep subject matter expertise in a specific area and they might be at the higher end of the range for the role. Alternatively, if it's a role where someone's doing data entry or it's a repeatable task that you have systematized and documented and you can hire someone more junior as a result or who has less deep subject matter expertise, then you might pay a little bit less for that role. So your budget will look a little bit different. And third, I want to make sure when you are hiring you don't just say, oh, Amy told me this person would be great. Oh, I really like them. They're hired. No, no, no, no, no. I want you to leverage a very structured interview process because that's how you will become more objective. Did you know that like attracts like? So there is a thing where people are more likely to hire someone that is less like them. It's natural that you're going to like someone and want to hire someone that is like you. But let's make sure that we've dug deep and we know that that person is truly a good fit for this particular role. Like I said, I use this how to clone yourself process when I'm hiring on my team, when I hired in corporate, when I hire for other organizations and we do dunn for you hiring. And I use this hiring process when we're hiring for our family and people that will engage with our children on a day to day basis. So really we have great success with this leveraged and structured interview process. So again, stick around. We're going to go through that in the upcoming episodes of the podcast. Next. Our fourth area that I wanted to share a framework with you when you're making decisions in your business is what in the world gets attention right now? Because there are a lot of things that need you. I told you we need more of you in the world and I was not kidding. Whether it's your friends, your family, your significant other, your children, places that you volunteer, your career, your business, we need you. So what gets your attention right now? I like to think of how I decide on what's gonna get my attention right now in terms of seasons. Now of course, we're never letting go of that question of what are we working toward right now. What is my big goal? For example, plan A thon season rolls around every single fall. We plan with thousands of entrepreneurs on how we're gonna set ourselves up for success in the year ahead. You can check out theplanathon.com if you want to get on the wait list for that, but we're still a little ways out at the time that this episode drops. We're still rocking the current year. But I always like thinking ahead so I can plan and block space and time because every season is going to require something different from you. We are rolling into summer right now. The kids are off school. That requires a different kind of attention than when they're in school. And I'm preparing for the plan a thon in the fall. Now, the reason I like to think ahead and block time in advance is because I want to leave room. I want there to be margin so that I've got some extra space in case something comes up. For example, we've got summer plans with the kids. I've also got some business stuff to do, but I'm also going to leave space for nothing. And you know that time will get filled up because that is just life, right? But some of that time will also be used for summer R and R summer reflection and summer planning in the business. And yes, I do a round of summer planning every July and a round of annual planning for the year ahead every fall as we roll into winter. So think about your goals and think about as you map those out throughout the year, what are seasonal differences and what do you need to give your attention to at any given time? Then I recommend you only fill about 80% of your time. Leave 20% of margin for magic to happen. And lastly, the last question that we got, actually we get quite regularly, is about all of the ideas. Should I pursue a business idea or not? Okay, this is a big one because you've got a lot of ideas, am I right? Don't worry, you're not alone. I have spent a lot of time with both small business owners, startup entrepreneurs, and business owners who went from startup like $87 and a van to generating hundreds of millions in their business. And everybody's got the same challenge. We are full of incredible ideas. But how do you know if you should pursue that business idea or not? Hold on to your vision, even if it's a little bit foggy. I want you to think about where am I going? Where am I going? And does this fit? And I've gotta tell you, there are times when I don't have an exact answer of if it fits or not. But I feel a deep calling to do something. And in that case, I might pursue it. I might ask questions about it, I might talk to people about it, which will help me flesh out if it actually aligns with my vision or not. For example, I Had a vision to generate more passive income outside of my current business businesses. So think real estate, think car wash, think laundromat. And no, it does not exactly align with my core business vision over@ambermceh.com or our core business@3boudoir.com but it was something that could be done separately. An income generating activity that is not something that requires me or my presence or my face. It's something where I could leverage and engage with other people. So I was pretty sure I wanted to do this. I did some research. It aligned with my vision for continued freedom in my life. And I started asking questions and my sister and I were actually this close to buying a laundromat. We submitted a letter of intent for purchase. But we learned some things as we went through that letter of intent process that the specific laundromat that we were looking at was not in the shape that we wanted to purchase. We truly wanted something that could operate without us, that is possible to find in a laundromat, but this one needed a lot of fixing up and the specific market where this laundromat was located was declining. And we could see that in the historical financials for this particular location. So we decided not to go through with that purchase. But I still kept my eye on my vision. You've also got to keep your eye on your goals. I already brought up that I was keeping my eye on our goal of freedom for our family, freedom of time, freedom of financials and money. So I definitely keep your eye on your goals as you're thinking of if you should pursue a business idea or not. Number three, look at your 90 day plan. Does it fit? Is this something I should pursue right now or does it need to wait until another season or do I have room to just ask questions and actually pick a decision date that is somewhere in the future? Yes, decision date. When there isn't space or time to make a decision right now, turn to another date on the calendar and and say I will make a decision about this in 30 days. I will make a decision about this on August 1st when I am through this season of my life. And lastly, for all of those great ideas that you have but now is not the season or you are not sure if they align with your vision right now or yes, they align with your vision, but they don't align with your 90 day plan. Create a million dollar parking lot. That means that you're not just throwing these ideas away. Your ideas are precious. Your brilliance is incredible. So put them in a different home. Until it's time for you to come back to them and to check out everything you've been storing in your million dollar parking lot. So that brings us to the end of our decision making episode. I really hope that these examples of how I've gone through and how I think about making different decisions were helpful for you. The most important thing I want you to remember is that you don't have to decide anything right now. You don't have to have all of the answers. You make a lot of decisions every single day and it's okay to make your most important decisions from a place of power. I love you. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the podcast. I cannot wait to hang with you in our upcoming series about how to clone yourself. And again, that applies whether we're talking business or we are talking life. I will see you when we begin our how to Clone Yourself series.