Ep 568 | These 4 Traps Are Screwing Up Your Decisions (And You Don’t Even Know It)

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. I think that every entrepreneur wants to make faster, better, more confident decisions. But I think most of us are walking around with invisible weights tied to our thinking, tied to the way that we think. These weights, I would call these weights our decision-making traps. And they cause us— these decision-making traps, they cause us to repeat the past, they cause us to ignore the obvious, and sometimes they cause us to overestimate ourselves. In today's episode, I'm going to show you 4 of the most common traps, traps that I've personally experienced. I'm going to show you these 4 and I'm going to walk you through a real-life decision where all 4 showed up. So I want you to make believe there is this, uh, I don't want to make believe, there really is this person, but we're going to call her Sarah. And Sarah runs a rather successful real estate sales team in the city of Phoenix. She has 8 agents on her team. She has a full admin staff. And that team did about $100 million in sales volume, which would be revenue of, call it, $3 million. Pretty big business. She's, she's running a really strong business. But Sarah, she's offered a job. She's actually offered a job. A large national brokerage wants her to move from Phoenix to Denver to drive or lead that company's expansion. They're offering her a big paycheck. There's some profit share. There's some equity. And this company wants an answer from Sarah in 10 days. Now, on the surface, this seems to be a really huge opportunity. But our friend Sarah here in the story, she hesitates. Something doesn't feel right. And she can't tell if that feeling is wisdom, or if it's just fear. So she turns to her, her friends or peers or network for help. And without knowing it, she falls into 4 of the classic decision-making traps. Let's run through these. The first trap I want to talk about is known as the status quo trap. The status quo trap looks like, for Sarah, looks like something like her saying to herself, I've built everything here in Phoenix. I've built everything here in Phoenix. She tells herself, Sarah tells herself she can't leave because she's rooted to Phoenix, her team, her brand, her clients, her career. Phoenix is home. This is where she started from the ground and built something rather significant. That's the status quo trap in action. In this case, Sarah is defaulting to what she's always done because change feels pretty risky. And as a result, she may confuse familiarity— gosh, sorry, tough to say that word apparently today— confuse familiarity with safety. So how does Sarah escape the status quo trap? I think she's got to ask some really great questions. Frankly, in getting through all these traps, it's about asking great questions. She could ask something like, if I were starting from scratch, would I still choose this path? Or am I staying because it's right? Or am I staying because it's comfortable? Now, the second trap that, that Sarah may encounter, it's known as the anchoring trap. Early in this offer process, you know, I didn't mention it earlier, but as when I was describing the story, but early in this, this offer process, Sarah hears that the role is going to pay her over $500,000 in total comp. Not to mention her equity and some of the other benefits. She hears that very early in the process. She gets locked in on that number. Every part of her decision now orbits that figure. It's anchored to that figure, even though relocation costs, taxes, you know, team breakup might erode a lot of that $500K+ equity and all that. Maybe all of that might erode much of it. She's still anchoring to that number. Anchoring blinds her to the real value of the opportunity versus what she initially heard. She hears $500,000 in salary, which is a lot of money, plus all these— this equity, and she's not really taking into account anything that could negatively impact that amount. She's thinking only an upside because she anchors to that early number but doesn't think Gosh, is that truly the net? So she's anchored to, um, maybe what she initially heard versus the real value. How could she escape this? I think she could ask, what would I think if I hadn't heard that first number? I think she could also ask, how else could I frame the value of this opportunity outside of pay? Remove the $500K+ from the equation that number, and where does her mind go? Where does it go beyond, say, year 1? Now, the third trap that Sarah could find herself running into is the overconfidence trap. I think this is one I've, I've encountered a number of times in my career. Sarah thinks to herself, well, I've built something really big here in Phoenix. I've built it in this one city. I can crush it pretty much anywhere else. I can crush it in building, rebuilding in another city. I can Crush a new job. You know, I built in one, I built one big business, I could do it again. She assumes success will transfer seamlessly. It'll transfer seamlessly to a new market, to a new team, to a new model. And as a result, she may not really investigate the differences. That's the overconfidence trap. It's when we trust our past wins so much, we forget that every game actually has a different set of rules. So, in this particular case, Sarah should be asking, "Where could this go wrong?" Or maybe, "What am I assuming will be easy but actually isn't?" Now, the last trap— there's lots of traps, but the big 4 for me— this last trap is the confirming evidence trap. This is where, you know, Sarah hears this opportunity, she's been assessing it, And now Sarah goes and talks to 3 friends, and all 3 friends say to her, wow, Sarah, that's a killer offer. You'd be crazy not to take it. So as a result, Sarah scrolls past feedback that challenges the role's long-term upside or might warn about the company's high turnover or that the opportunity may not be as great. That's the confirming evidence trap. When we seek validation versus seeking the truth. How could she avoid this? How could she escape it? She could ask, what evidence would convince me not to take the offer? Or maybe another question, who disagrees and why might they be right? So in this scenario, Sarah eventually steps back. She writes down all of her assumptions. She reruns the numbers. She interviews two people who left similar roles. And after going through the analysis, guess what? She actually turns down the offer. Not out of fear, but because now she has some clarity. She decides instead to double down in Phoenix, but she restructures her team a bit to reduce her dependency on day-to-day sales. In my opinion, that's real decision-making. Seeing clearly not reacting quickly. Makes sense? Now, I think for all of our No Days Off Nation, I think there's a great challenge for you this week. I want you to pick a decision that maybe you're wrestling with right now. And I want you to ask these 4 key questions, okay? Maybe write that decision down right now. And then let's go through these questions or at least jot the questions down so you can write them up on the whiteboard this week and think through them. Number 1, am I clinging to the status quo out of comfort? Number 2, am I anchored to an early number or idea that's clouding judgment? Number 3, am I overconfident, overconfident that this will go well without testing it? And number 4, am I just looking for confirming evidence to support the choice I already want? I want you to again write down one decision that you're wrestling with. Write your answers to those 4 questions. Share them with someone you trust, because I think the fastest path to better decisions is just asking better questions. That's all I have for you today, the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it. [MUSIC] [MUSIC]