176: Decisive Moments: How Hard Choices Shape Creative Success

Hi there. Welcome back to the Professional Creative Podcast. Thanks for tuning in today. It means so much to me to have you listen and join me. We're going to dive into a topic today that I think is so incredibly important and that is all about making decisions, being able to make decisions, how to make difficult decisions, strategies for making decisions. And also at the end of today's episode, I'll be sharing with you one of the hardest decisions that I've had to make in a really long time and one that I just had to make this past month. So we'll be diving into that and what that has meant for us as well. What a teaser, right?

I'm Bonnie Christine, and this is where all things creativity, design, business and marketing unite. I'm a mama living in a tiny town tucked right inside the Smoky Mountains, running a multi seven figure business, doing

the most creative and impactful work of my life. But when I first set out to

become an entrepreneur, I was struggling to make ends meet and wrestling with how to accomplish my biggest dream of becoming a fabric designer. Fast forward to today. I'm not only licensing my artwork all over the world, but also teaching others how to design their creative life and experience the same success. I'm here to help you spend your life doing something that lights you up. I'll help you build a creative business that also creates an impact, changes people's lives, gives you all of the freedom you want, and is wildly profitable. Welcome to the Professional Creative Podcast.

I want to start by talking about the importance of being able to make decisions and making them quickly. I think that it is one of the roles of leadership and one of the signs of good leadership when a leader is able to make informed decisions and do so quickly, even when they're really tough. And I think that, that it's such a fundamental aspect of being able to lead effectively. This ability to either make a decision or not directly impacts the success and direction really of an entire business, an entire team, an entire organization. You know, and if you're like me, this doesn't necessarily come super naturally. It doesn't come easily. I used to be the only decision maker in my business. And so I think that was really tough just because I often didn't really have many people to bounce my thoughts off of. It was just me and my husband for a long, long time. And so then slowly, as my team began to grow, my team became the people that I could turn to for more business decisions. But even still, over the years, when I look back at some of the really big and Difficult decisions that we've made. We've gotten better and better and better. I've gotten better and better at better. Whereas in the beginning maybe I would get too many opinions from team members or really hem and haw over something, now it has become more structured. Like we clearly need to make a decision about this, that or the other. And I'll give you some examples soon to where we can pretty much identify, okay, a decision needs to be made here. This is why it feels difficult. Let's move forward. Let's move through the decision making process really quickly. And sometimes as the leader, I'm raising my hand here. It's just important to make the call and make it informed, but make it quickly so that you can just start moving forward from there. And so this is tough. I'm going to back up and talk about something that I think can really make decision making much easier and that is a clear vision. I think that when we have a vision for where we're going and we've really taken the time to slow down and think about what does our vision look like, it's going to give us kind of this filter to use when decisions come down the pipeline. And so without a clear vision, it really does feel like decisions are coming at us left and right and we don't have this long term kind of guidance to get us to the right decision today. And that means that again, we're kind of hemming and hawing. We're circling the drain. Sometimes we call it, we're not sure what to do today in order to get to where we want to go because we haven't slowed down long enough to think about where exactly we're going. And so oftentimes people will ask like, what's your 10 year vision? Quite frankly, I can't do that one. Maybe like super big vision, like, you know, I want my family to be in a particular place. But honestly, 10 years ago, I could have never imagined where I am today. And I without a doubt know that I can't possibly imagine where I'm going to be in 10 years from now. I can definitely wrap my mind around one year and I would say up to five years. This is something that we did just recently for our business and our brand. We mapped out what the next five years could look like. And if we met the goals that we have in five years, what would that have to mean? That we're hitting benchmarks? Would we have to hit over the next one year, two year, three year, four years and five years? And so this isn't something that's written in stone, but it is mapped out and it's something that we're able to use when we're making decisions in the short term. And it actually vastly helped us this year get really focused on what gets our best yeses and what we need to say no to. So it's been really, really helpful in just giving us something to measure up our decision making, too. Now, before we get to strategies on how to make a decision, I want to talk about what is the result of not being decisive? Right. I think so many things happen when we're not able to be decisive. One I think is just missed opportunities. Kind of delaying decisions can mean missing out on something that needs us to act quickly. So think about kind of emerging trends or tools that could elevate your business or your work or maybe a new revenue stream that requires you to act quickly or be decisive on quickly. It means kind of just general uncertainty. And if you're working with a team, that can also lead to low morale. Indecision creates confusion on your team. It makes them unsure about the direction that you're going in. It makes them confused about the project direction that you're going in. And. And it can just kind of across the board, stifle creativity and lower the enthusiasm that people have for what you're working on. I would also say that it leads to decreased productivity and honestly increased costs over time because projects can stall without decisive leadership. And that just naturally in turn leads to inefficiencies and slow progress and increased costs due to just kind of being slow. Right. The next one is elevated stress. And I know you can feel this. It's like when you're in that indecision time period, you're constantly weighing both sides, what to do. And this will just naturally increase your stress, meaning as soon as you make the decision, whether you're still not sure if it's right or wrong, as soon as you actually make it, you can feel your stress level reduce. And so the tension of kind of these unresolved decisions, sometimes I reference them as just open loops. They permeate your life. They permeate your sleep, your weekends, your evenings, and they can also permeate your team. And that's going to increase not only your stress, but the stress across the team as a whole, which can honestly lead to burnout. And it's particularly detrimental if you're a creative. If you're in a creative field where mental space and clarity really drive your creativity without it with this indecision, it really Kind of just makes it harder. And then finally, if you're the leader, indecisiveness can really degrade and negatively impact the trust that your leadership has. And so you want the people who are underneath you to be fully committed to your vision and trust your direction on projects. Part of that is your ability to make quick and effective decisions. So let's talk about when it's not just a decision on, you know, a color palette to go with for your next collection. It's like a really difficult decision. It's one that could mean it has a lasting impact. Right? So a couple of really difficult decisions that we've had to make over the years. Just some that come to mind, right? Maybe removing a customer or student from one of our programs, this is not something that we would ever do lightly, and maybe something we've only had to do maybe once or twice. But it has arisen that someone in our community, in our, you know, community platform or course or student, is clearly unhappy and causing more problems than is acceptable. And so we have to take action to remove them. And that's a really difficult decision, but also one that needs to be made quickly whether or not to keep a program. You know, the longer you're in business, the more opportunities you're going to have, and they eventually stack and layer on themselves. And at some point, you oftentimes have to pare down, you have to pull back. You have to refine the things that you're doing so that you're reserving only the best, best yeses for the things that make the most sense and align with where your vision is going, whether or not to outsource something. So, you know, if you look at the things that you are currently holding onto, the tasks, the to dos, the different areas of your own business that you are touching, it can be really, really hard to decide what to give someone else. What are you ready to delegate? What are you ready to kind of release your grip on? What are you ready to give someone else with trust in order to take? Super difficult decision. Sometimes it is whether or not to keep someone on your team. This is probably the most difficult decision you might have to make ever, is whether the flow of the team is working. And if you're going to have to make decisions around that. Tons of really difficult decisions just arise as you build your business, as you build your team. I think one reason that decisions can feel so incredibly difficult is because there are challenges when it comes to making a decision. Like, why are some decisions so incredibly hard? One of them is fear. Of failure or fear of success. Right. So there are two sides to this fear. And if we get really honest with ourselves, we typically struggle with both. We fear failure based on the decisions that we make. What if this is the wrong decision? What if it means that we're going to fail? What are people going to think about that or say about that? Or what does that mean for my future success or future decisions? Or what does that mean for our financial success right now? And then there's a fear of success. Okay, so what if we do this and what if it is wildly successful? Can we handle that? What will that change in my life? How will that make people think about me differently? And that all makes us show up differently. It is wild that both of those fears, fear of failure and fear of success, will make us play smaller or act smaller or act differently. So when we know better, we can do better. And so I think it's really important to just figure out where is our fear showing up? Do we have a fear of failure and is it showing up in our decision making? Do we have a fear of success and is that showing up in our decision making? Another challenge in decision making is overwhelm. I think that leaders are often overwhelmed by the options in decisions. It's oftentimes not just a yes or no. It's like there are so many options, I don't know which one to choose. There are so many different potential outcomes, and it can lead to decision paralysis. Or sometimes we call that analysis paralysis. Specifically, I think about decision fatigue. And so when you are a leader or a solopreneur, you oftentimes are the sole decision maker. And so the fatigue that comes with just being the one that has to make all the decisions is so much weight to carry. You know, this kind of ebbs and flows in my business. Generally, I'm fine, but on occasion, there will be something that's happening that requires so many decisions that I get so fatigued from just decision making. And so it's like, at the end of the day, don't even ask me what. What we should do for dinner. Don't even ask me what I want to eat. Don't even ask me where we're going this weekend. I'm done making decisions. Like, just tell me what to do and I'll do it. And so I've learned a couple of things that really, really help me when I start to this level of decision fatigue. One of them is simply responding. Like when someone is coming to you with a decision or they need a decision from you One of them is simply to respond with this simple phrase. What would you do if you were me, if you were in my shoes, if this was your business, what would you do? That is so incredibly helpful because not only does it give you something to work with, meaning you can get some advice from the person who's coming to you with that kind of need for the decision, but it also gives them some say in the matter. It encourages the person who's coming to you needing a decision to use their own decision making skills to really think about it from a different perspective. And so my team is very well versed in this response. Like, well, tell me what you would do. Another way to look at this is through a method that I learned from Dan Martell in his book Buy Back youk Time. And he calls it the 1, 3. So if someone comes to you with a problem or a decision that needs to be made, you can ask for the one three. One, that's tell me what the one problem is, tell me three possible solutions, and then tell me your one recommendation. That's another really great way to just change this. Like, I need a decision about this big topic into something more like give me a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Here are some ideas on how we could solve this or move forward or make a decision around this, but I'm going to kind of frame them up for you. That way you can just be the one that says green light, green light, red light, rather than just have to make the decision completely on your own. And so using those two things, really pulling in the people around you to help you make decisions, will allow you to save the biggest decisions for you, the ones that you really need to be in charge of. I also highly suggest keeping those big decisions that are only yours and yours to hold for your highest energy and highest focused time. So if you leave big decisions for the end of the day or the end of the week or whenever time for you, you're generally feeling zapped or kind of tapped out. It means that these decisions are going to be even more difficult. And so if you know that you have some big decisions coming up, maybe you have a meeting on what to do with a particular topic or person or project or program, then schedule that in when you know you're going to be at your best. You're going to have mental clarity, you're going to have energy, you're going to have focus, and you're going to have the ability to make that decision more quickly.

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So I want to talk about seven different strategies quickly that I use for decision making. The first one is flexibility and decision making. I think it's really important to remember that we can always change our mind. We can make a decision, but decisions are not permanent and they can be adjusted based on new information or new outcomes. You know, an example of this that comes up for me is that in our recent shop. So we're starting a new product shop. It's called Flowery. We just released a podcast about it, but you can go check it out@shopflowery.com that's f l o w e r I e.com so anyways, we had decided to carry aprons in the shop and we worked with a manufacturer that did beautiful work. We got a sample and the sample was just. It was a bit funny. It was sample material, not the material that we were going to use, but the it kind of fit funny. And so we ended up making some adjustments, some new measurements, and sending it back to the manufacturer. And so they made a new pattern and sent us a New sample. So this new sample arrived. We're so excited about it and we just start trying it on. And when I say we, I mean Erin Godbe my shop lead myself. And then I quickly took it to my mom and my sister. So there's really four, four different body types to try this apron on. And at the end of the day, it just was not flattering on any of us. It was a bit weird to put on. It was difficult to tie. It didn't look great. It wasn't. Yeah, it just didn't work on any of us. And so we had made the decision to move with this manufacturer and kind of at the last minute we had to pull back and just say, you know, this is not up to our standards, we don't want to move forward with it. We've got to completely readjust. And we weren't working with a super lenient timeline. Like we needed to make decisions pretty quickly. And so we knew that this would mean either we weren't going to have an apron in our collection launch or we were going to have to significantly change our approach. And so we decided to significantly change our approach. I'll leave that story for another time. But at the end of the day, we had to change the decision that we had made based on new information and a new outcome that had arrived. The second strategy for really effective decision making is to gather all the information that you need or have someone in your arena gather all the information that you need in order to make the best decision that you can. So I always like to research first. You don't have to make a decision until you feel like you have all the information that you need in at your fingertips. So seek out data, talk to people, get their opinions and insights to help guide your choices. I think it always feels so much easier when you feel fully informed to finally make a decision. After that, the next one is consultation and collaboration. I think having a support system such as a team or a mentor or a peer group to help with your decision making is so incredibly important. I have different kind of groups of people that I tap into for all different types of decision making. For instance, my very best friends, I'm typically going to them for help with parenting decisions. I'm not necessarily going to them for big business decisions, but I am going to them for real life decision making with my parenting or how I'm doing something with my home or how I'm doing something in my real day to day life. I also have a mastermind. A mastermind is so incredibly impactful. Because it's a room of people who have accomplished or are at similar places in their life and business as you are. Which just means that if you are going through something that's unique to your stage in life or business, you're surrounded by people who are like, hey, me too, or I did that already and this is how I navigated it. Incredible. Your team also is great when making decisions around how to handle something like a customer service issue or the direction overall for the year of the business. I have a coo. So Lisa Jacobs is my coo, and I know that I can go to her with really big decisions for the business and that I can't necessarily take to the rest of the team. I can't necessarily take to someone outside of the business either, because no one knows it like she and I together. My husband, of course, David, is my rock, my sounding board that I take all of the above to business life, parenting, spiritual leadership, just all of it is my husband. And then I also have a coach. So I work one on one with a mentor, with a coach. And this has also been really incredible because he really does something that no one else can do. My friends can't do, my mastermind can't do, my team can't do, my CEO can't do. And so my coach, my business coach is really someone incredibly wise who has gone before me and done everything that I aspire to do and can just pour into me from like a professional and personal development standpoint. And so I just encourage you to have all of those moving parts to help you in your decision making as well. When you grow in your business. It's a lot. It's so many decisions that at the end of the day come down to resting on your shoulders and having this support team, a group of friends, a mastermind, a team, someone in the business with you, a spouse, a coach, they all kind of play a different part in helping you carry the weight of all this decision making that has to happen when you grow in your business. The next one would be to get comfortable setting decision deadlines. And so there are some things that just tend to never get decided upon. And so there are often things that are maybe projects that you want to start, but they're not mandatory or, I don't know, all kinds of decisions that don't naturally come with a deadline.

And.

And so you just will not make a decision about them. And so I highly suggest getting comfortable making decision deadlines. Maybe you give yourself two weeks or one week or six months sometimes, depending on how big the decision is but giving yourself a deadline. By this date I will have decided about this particular thing, yes or no or whatever, and then really sticking to it. That is a sign of a solid entrepreneur and a great sign in leadership. And if you're not comfortable giving yourself deadlines and sticking to them, it's great practice to get used to because it will come in handy as you grow. Now, the last strategy that I really want to talk about is your mindset. I think sometimes we tell ourselves a story that we're not not good decision makers or we get too fatigued when decisions come our way. And that oftentimes is something that we can correct literally in our neuropathways. And so I like to affirm our own identity as competent decision makers. And so one way that I love to do this is to really just speak into the area of my life that I need to enhance, improve, change my mindset around. And so I think you know by now that I have a routine set of kind of affirmations that I speak. Some of them are already true things that I don't want to forget. Some of them are things that I'm struggling with that I want to bring to light and life in my everyday. And so for instance, if you find decision making difficult, you could try to write some truths down or some aspirations down and recite them every single day. For instance, I trust my intuition and make decisions with confidence and clarity. Every decision I make brings me closer to my vision of success. I'm capable and prepared to make the best choices for my business. I can make difficult decisions quickly. I'm well researched and confident in my decision making ability. Can you see how just listening to those made you feel more confident? As I read them, I kind of like sat up a little bit more straight, right. Like they feel really good to affirm your ability to make difficult decisions quickly. So my friends, let me tell you about one of the most difficult, difficult decisions I've had to make in a really long time. And that was whether or not to continue moving forward with a program that I have called the Professional Creative Business Coaching Program. So we just came up to a year on this program and we ultimately decided to sunset the program. And so just this week we had our very last call and so we've decided to sunset the program and just simply close that chapter of the the business for now. And I thought that I would kind of open you up into my decision making process. Earlier this year, back in April, we had a team strategy session and we have this huge calendar that we had, we were all in person, we're really talking about the next 12 months. What were we going to do, what was possible for us to do, what direction did we want to go? And I feel like I had just begun to get a little fuzzy, a little blurry on our five year vision. And so this was also the same time that really called us to get really, really clear on our five year vision. And in doing so, we got really clear on what we needed to focus on right now. And so out of that came our number one focus. Our number one focus was to get focused. We had just lost our focus a little bit. And our focus to the core is to serve the surface pattern design industry and help creatives create a career that they love, creating income from their artwork. And so we had just kind of absolutely continued to do this, but also a lot of other things. And so we came out of this meeting with this hyper focused ability to say, okay, if this is our number one reason for existing, how do we really, really serve this industry to our best ability? And from that came some immense decisions. You'll be seeing this play out over the next 12, 18 months for sure. And one of them, like I already mentioned, is the product shop. The shop Flowery that we just launched came out of this decision. And so we had to decide to pull back, to cut some things out so that we could move more fully into our biggest calling. And one of those things was the PCBC program. This was difficult because I loved this program. It was weekly coaching with a fairly intimate group of incredible creative entrepreneurs. And it just was such a meaningful group, a meaningful time for us. And also it just didn't quite align with our focus. And so we had to make that super difficult decision. It was difficult because the PCBC program was amazing. It was good. And also sometimes we have to say no to some really good things in order to say yes to some really, really incredible things. So that's my question for you today is what is something that's really good that you actually really need to say no to right now so that you can preserve your very best? Yes. For the thing that you might be a little afraid of. For the thing that is your absolute best. Yes. The thing that you know you need to do and that you may be holding back from doing. My friends, create the beauty that you want to see come alive and this world and remember, there's room for you.