How to Make Tough Decisions

Everything that is involved in your business was a decision that you either made or a decision you did not make, you failed to make. When you've got a lot going on in your business and you don't feel that you have the clarity and the control to manage it all and that it's all going to go the way that you want it to go, that will take a shot at your confidence. You're in control of what happens to you. And it all starts with the decisions that you make. Today I want to talk about making important decisions because this is really your job as a leader in your business and your family and just, you know, being a productive member of society, right? To be able to profit and thrive, you've got to be able to make good decisions. The people that aren't able to make good decisions are those that most of them sit in indecision and kind of wallow through life or just make terrible decision after terrible decision after terrible decision, which that doesn't lead anywhere good for anybody. So I wanted to share with you today how I think through decisions. I happen to have a few major decisions going on right now. And I was like, you know what? This would be perfect. I've got another private client's got a major decision that he's thinking through, and I wanted to share with you how I think through decisions to help give you kind of a framework and a process to follow so it doesn't have to be so challenging. And, you know, when we look at decision making as man, the cornerstone of what we do as leaders, it really starts to shift the way we think about our role. Right. Because at the end of the day, everything that is involved in your business was a decision that you either made or a decision you did not make, you failed to make. Right? Every success you had, every failure, and everything in between was all from decisions that you made. I know this group understands that there's a lot of people that don't understand that. There's a lot of people that are in a victim type of mentality that feel like, you know, things happen to me. But I know this group understands the fact that you're in control of what happens to you. And it all starts with the decisions that you make. Right. Asking the right question. Right? What is the decision that we're trying to, you know, figure out and what's the right answer? And a lot of times it's not so much, you know, what's the right answer? It's who do you want to be? Who do you want to be? Puts you in the context of how do I want to address this? Because it's never black and white. I'm looking at all of you here and some of you may have the same decisions to make. What do I do after season? Do I open another office? Should I franchise? Should I scale? Should I sell? Should I take a break? Should I, you know, whatever it is you want to do, it's different for everybody. So you've got to be able to evaluate it based on your values of who you are and what your long term vision is for your company. So the first thing that we have to come to terms with is that we need to have think time, think time. We need dedicated time to think through. You know, we're trying to make decisions. We can't just think about it while we're in the car. We can't just think about it while we're in the shower. We can't just, you know, think about it as we're trying to do other things throughout the day. We need think time to sit down and in writing go through our decision making process which we're going to walk through. But it's so important that you get this in writing part right? For me, I mean, all I might think about stuff as I'm going about my day. You know, I call that actively gaining clarity, right? Just I, you know, put the question or I put the decision in my mind. I'll write about it, but then I'll actively gain clarity as I'm going through my day. I'll give myself a timeline of when I'm going to make this decision by. Because sometimes you can't just sit down, make a decision and move on, right? For a lot of what we do on a daily basis, yes. This is for tough decisions, things that you can't just rapidly come up with an answer for. So what I like to do is just really sit down in writing. Whether you do it on the computer, whether you do it with pen and paper does not matter. What matters is you get it out of your head. What's important about that is we get ourselves out of this place of looping. If you've ever tried to think about something and you're thinking about this way, this outcome, right? You're thinking about this option and it's all just looping in your mind and you just kind of get obsessive about the thinking, it's because you're trying to process it all in your mind. You've got to get it down on paper. Alright? So that's the first thing that you've got to do. I recommend that you schedule a minimum, a minimum of two to three times a week where you've got a block of time for think time. One of those being specifically for decision making. Right. Because there's other things you need to think about too. And so the think time, you know, I'm going to kind of give you some things to go through now once you have that. But that's crucial that we do it in writing, the think time, then what we need to do is we need to look at, okay, what is the decision here? Right. What is the decision we want to make? Sure we're focusing on the, on the, the real question, right? Should I do this or should I do that? So when you're writing it down, you want to write down what are the outcomes and the options? What are the outcomes and the options? Okay. So, so when you're making a decision, you gotta focus on what's the outcome I want here. Too many times we get tunnel vision and we sit there and we're just trying to focus on. Yes, no, left, right, this city, that city, this person, that person, this opportunity, that opportunity. We need to take a step back and look at how does this relate to my long term vision? How does this relate to where I'm going and is it in alignment with that? What's the outcome that I want from this specific decision and why do I want that outcome? What is the outcome and why do I want that outcome? So whether that's a decision on whether to open a new location. Well, the question might not be whether or not to open the new location. The question might really be how do I earn X amount more dollars? Right. That becomes the main question where opening a new location just becomes one of those options to be able to do that. Right. So again, as you're writing, like you'll never be able to do all this in your mind. If you can, please let me know. I'm going to call you whenever I have a decision to make and help, you know, help me walk through it. But we've got to lay out the outcomes and it's important to write this down. The outcomes. We need to know our reason why it's important. Right. What are we after in this specific decision that we're trying to make? Right. How would it be ideal for us? And then what are the different options for us to get there? Right. What are the different options for us to get there? The outcomes and the options. Okay, so now let's say you're evaluating what to do In a business situation, we need to think about how is it going to impact our day to day. So the first kind of questioning that you want to run it through, after you write down the outcomes that you're after, the reason why, and the options are time, energy, resources, money and sanity. Time, energy, resources, money and sanity. These essentially are the negatives of what you might move forward with. Right. A decision that you might need to make. If you're evaluating a deal, is this a good deal? Is this not a good deal? Should I initiate this new process in my business? Well, let's talk about it. How much time is it going to take from you? How much of your energy is it going to take? What about resources? How much of your team and equipment is it going to take to fulfill that? How much money and how much of your just personal sanity is it going to take away? Right? So if you look at it says terms, what are the terms? Time, energy, resources, money and sanity. And so when we look at this, we understand that anytime we're trying to do something, it's going to cost us. This is what it's going to cost us. Right? It's never just money. We've got to assess all of it. And we tend to overestimate what we could accomplish in a short period of time and underestimate the kind of fallout or what we, what it costs us. This is what it costs you to take on an opportunity. Right. So we want to make sure that this is less than. Right. I'll show you this in a second. Kind of the equation here is less than profit and thrive, future value and personal growth. Profit and thrive, future value and personal growth. So what that means is, doesn't make the situation negative, doesn't make because it's going to take time, energy, resources, money and maybe some of your sanity. Right? But we have to make sure, first of all, when we say profit and thrive, to me that's the gauge of every decision, every opportunity, how to what to do next. It's not, oh, we can make some money doing this, it's can we make some money doing this? And I'm also thriving in my life where my daily life experiences is not interrupted or changes in a way that is still enjoyable. Right? I mean, that's the. If you just simplify the entire thing down to am I going to be able to continue to profit and thrive? Not one or the other. That alone will help you just clarify every decision that you need to make. Because there's, you know, there's opportunities that come up all the Time where you can make more money, right? Or where you could thrive and chill, but you're not making more money. How do you lift both of them at the same time? Like, that's the lens that you really want to look at everything through, right? Because once you start justifying, you know, what this is going to, you know, if you're just getting started in your business and you've got to, you know, really grind it out a little bit to get it going, that's okay. But there needs to be a period where you start backing off of that, right? And you start making the thrive part a priority. And it's tough. You know, like, for me, there was periods in my career, let's call it that, you know, I saw something that I wanted to go after, and I knew I had the ability to kind of turn the turbochargers on and just go after the profit part and then sacrifice the thrive part. And you start to feel burnt out. You start to get out of balance. It doesn't fulfill you the way that you wanted it to. And when I really started to look through the lens of, you know what, it's a great opportunity, but how is it going to impact my thrive? We just call it thrive, right? My daily life experience, my relationships, you know, my ability to just have a clear mind. That's what I mean when we say we have to look through it, through profit and thrive, right? It's never profit or thrive. Then we have to look at the future value. You know, a lot of times when I'm talking with people, they're looking to make a decision. They're looking to make a decision that's going to impact them. Now you want to look at what's the future value. If you were to take kind of like a pie chart, if you will. Right, right. And you looked at the pie chart here, I'll just draw this out for you. You know, what portion of that thing that you're trying to figure out is future value, right? Because this is, you know, we talked about last month, we talked about building the business that you're becoming, right? You've got to be running the business that you're running now, but also running the business that you're building. So there's got to be a good portion of future value in there in order to make it outweigh the terms. And there's also got to be personal growth, right? Because listen, if you haven't realized it by now, in business, it's a personal growth game. That's it. I mean, I was Talking to a private client Monday and it was like the whole conversation was, was personal growth. And he's just like, yeah, it's, it's everything. Because at a certain point your hard work and your hustle, you hit a wall. And so in order to get around that wall, you've got to figure out situations and people and management and systems. But before you could even get there, you've got to figure out how to get out of your own way and optimize yourself to be able to do that, right? So it's like if you're going to see an opportunity and it's going to cost you time, energy, resources, money, part of your sanity, well, let's also make sure that you've got the profit and the thrive, right? That you've got future value in that opportunity. It's not just a quick, it's, it's not a quick buck, right? You've got future value and there's personal growth because now it becomes more than just the thing, right? It's making you better, it's making your future better. It's not rocking the boat on your day to day life. And it helps you to start to get to a place where you could really start doing what most people will start with, which is like a pros and cons list on a situation where now we move on to the upsides, the downsides, the majors and the unknowns. The upsides, the downsides, the majors and the unknowns. So the upsides, the downsides. All right, so now you're thinking about your options, right? So we go back to this. If you think about this as kind of like your template for coming up with a decision, right? You've got your, your outcomes that you're after, the options that you have. Then you've went through, what are the, what are the terms, right? The time, the energy, the resources, the money, the sanity that it's going to cost you for each one of those options, then you look at it and say, okay, will I, you know, am I going to be able to maintain profit and thrive, right? Or is it. And look at the profitability of the question at hand as well. Is there future value and will I grow personally? You know, is it going to challenge me and make me into a better person? Because if you want to handle a bigger business, you need to become a bigger person. That's no shot at you now where you are today. That's reality. If I want to handle a bigger business, I need to become bigger and I need to become better and not in an egotistical way. But how do you manage more? Right. While balancing the profit and thrive? So then you come down and we go through the upsides, the downsides, the majors, and the unknowns, okay? So think about it like this. As you're looking at your different options, okay? Because every decision, you've got options. You should have at least three options with every decision, right? It's usually not go left or go right. And if it is, you've got to say, okay, how can we go straight? How can we bring a third possibility into the mix that I might not be thinking about? And that's the power of doing this all in writing, you know, that's the power of, you know, getting it out of your head, thinking about it, seeing it is being able to, you know, think through. You know, think through where you are, where you want to go, the obstacles along the way and see it all, right? And so the upsides are, okay, if I go with this option, if I go with this option, what are all the upsides? What are the pros, right? Pros. And think about pros and cons. What are the pros? What are the upsides of this option? What are the downsides of that option, right? Then this is, you know, this is where, you know, kind of most people start with. With just pros and cons, right? But we've also got to look at what are the majors, what are the major upsides, and what are the major downsides. Because not all pros and cons or upsides and downsides are equal, right? So on our list, whether we're doing it on paper, whether we're doing it on a note app on our phone or a document on the computer, doesn't matter. We've got to identify what are the majors, right? The major upside, major downside. And now for each option, there might not be a major or there might be a major upside, but not a major downside, or there might be a major downside and not a major upside, right? But we just need to be able to identify them and not lump the majors in with. Let me give you an idea. So if you're trying to figure out where to open up an office, where to open up a location, and you find out that there is some extraordinary tax that is just going to eat into your profits in one location that's not in another location, well, that's. That's a major. Right? That's a major downside of the location that you're going to have to deal with, right? Whereas, you know, another downside would be like, I don't like the weather there. That's just a downside. That's not a major, right. You know, you've got upsides, you know, might be, it's a good, it's a good area, there's a good location. One of the majors might be the person that I want to go run that location is from there and already has a built in workforce. Right. I'm just coming up with examples for you. Then there's the unknowns, right? Then there's the unknowns. So the unknowns, that's where again a lot of people get caught up is the unknowns. And I used to, I say this because I used to get caught up on that. It's like, what am I missing? What am I missing? And the unknowns are just any information that you don't have to be able to put in a pro or a con, right? So again, if you're looking to open up an office in another location and you don't know what the tax rate is or you don't know what, what the workers comp, you know, requirements are, or you don't know how much the competition charges, these are all unknowns. And you've got to get the unknowns into, right? You've got to move them from the unknown section into either the upside, the downside or the major, right? There can't be any unknowns left because anytime you're stuck on a decision, you know that even simple decisions, right? This we're talking about going through major decisions and really thinking them through, getting it out on paper, going through this process, it's usually because you're missing information, right? You're not indecisive. You know, people will, you know, sometimes, you know, as a leader you get, you have a lot of pressure on you, you know, and sometimes people will, you know, somebody on your team or somebody in your family will be like, oh, you're indecisive. Some of you maybe not, right? I've been called indecisive at times and that's not the case. Right. But what I've realized is that when you're in that place, there's just more information that you need, that's all. So identify the information that you need and go seek that information so that you now can make intelligent decisions. Right. This is research, but we don't do the research until we identify everything else. Then once you've done that evaluation, it's a matter of decide, declare and deploy. Decide, declare and deploy. What that means is you've Got to make a decision. I know this sounds so obvious, but there's a difference between having a preference of how things are done and making a decision on this is how we're going to do it. And for me, what's been really helpful over the years is making a declaration to myself on that decision. Because really, if something is a tough decision, I believe it's a fantasy to think that as soon as you decide that you never second guess it again, right? That you just, you made the decision and that's it. You burn the ships behind you and it's all over. You might have burnt the ships behind you, you might start marching in the direction, but if you've got a human mind, it's going to start, you know, doubting what you believe, right? And if you start believing what you doubt, you're just going to go into a loop, continue to think about it. So for me, having experienced that, I came up with a statement I'm going to share with you guys today where anytime I make a tough decision, where I have to go through this whole process and I know I might second guess myself, I do a written declaration for me to keep in my phone. And anytime I'm second guessing it, I pull it right back up. This is the reason why I'm doing it. This is what it's going to mean to me in my life. Here's what the opposite looks like. In other words, if I said yes, here's what no looks like, here's how that's going to impact my life. I identify how it's going to impact other decisions in my life and ask myself, what is it that I'm still unsure of about this and what do I need to do to resolve that? Then run it back through the whole process again, Right? Listen, tough decisions, again, aren't just sit down, make the decision and go. Some people have that ability, all right? And that's great because the wrong decision, I'm sure you guys have heard this. The wrong decision is better than no decision because it's. But it's also worse than uninformed, unthought out decision, right? So like, we don't want to mistake that. They say that, you know, it's, you know, people, people are quick to make a meme that's like the wrong decision is better than no decision. However, that doesn't mean you should just not think through important things. What it means is once you've done your analysis, once you've evaluated it, you've got to move forward. And the only way that you're going to know if it's the wrong decision is to move forward, and it's the wrong decision. And guess what? That's okay. That's okay. I make wrong decisions all the time. But the only way that I find out that they're wrong decisions is by making that decision and moving forward with it. Had I sat on the sidelines and wondered which way to go, I would have never known. So the quicker that you can make a bad decision and identify it for what it is, the quicker you could adjust, pivot, and move either in the other direction or find a new alternative. So that declaration will help you do it. Then deploy. Like, what is it? Like, make it happen. Once you make a decision, you've got to put it in action. Whether that's deploying your team on a plan that you're going to design and put together, whether that's doing something yourself. But as soon as you make that decision, take one step, one step, and spend the time to design the plan, create your declaration to yourself, and move forward. You know, there's something that I call the indecision cloud, right? The indecision cloud. And how I envision the indecision cloud is, you know, all of the things, you know, pretty much everything that you've got going on in your mind that you're thinking through, you're stressed out about. For the most part, all it really is is a bunch of decisions that just need to be made, right? And the more that we let go without making those decisions, I envision them floating up into an indecision cloud that follows you around, just makes all of your thinking, all of your processing abilities, all of your, you know, just ability to enjoy the moment harder. And what that does is it starts to weaken your confidence. And every time something else gets thrown at you, right? Usually whatever gets thrown at you is a decision. When we talk about, you know, I go into the office, there's nothing but problems. Well, how do you resolve the problems? But making decisions. And so the more that we don't make the decisions or fail to make the decisions, they go in the indecision cloud. And time and time again for myself, time and time again for people that I work with, whenever you fail to make a decision, that's an important decision. Should I fire this person? Right? Should I hire this person? Should I ramp up my marketing? Should I slow down my marketing, whatever it might be? Life has a funny way of making it happen for you. You know, if you ever, ever had somebody that you knew, you should have gotten rid of them a year ago. And then all of a sudden, they do something really, really bad in the business that costs you. Yeah, Eric, I see you. You know, I can't tell you how many times, like, I, you know, it was like, I know I should do it, but what am I doing? I'm putting the decision off into the indecision cloud. So not only is it following me around, but it's going to end up being worked out in a way that wasn't how I chose for it to be worked out. Right. Had I sat down and took ownership of that, I could have made it work in my favor, in the other person's favor. You know, that's the power of getting creative with your problem solving, getting creative with your decision making is that it's never black and white. Right. And when you sit down and really think it through, you could say, wow, you know what? This will actually. When you start writing the options down and you put them through these scenarios, you'll start to pull in other decisions that you need to make or other moving pieces in your business. Right? Because there's a lot of stuff that's fluid. There's a lot of things that can be adjusted and changed. The business that work around solid decisions. So once a solid decision of how we're going to handle this, what's our philosophy on sales, how are we going to handle sales? How are we going to handle our marketing? And you define that, let's say with a process. Right. I mean, we talked a few months ago about creating processes. Well, that's decision making, too, right? Deciding how you want it done. Right. So if you're like, hey, we're stuck. We're having a problem with anything. Anything in the business, sales, marketing, accounting, customer service, anything. How do we want it to flow from the time a customer calls to the time we call them back, till we give them an estimate, till we service the move, what do we want that to look like? That's just deciding. And so the indecision cloud is something that I want you to start envisioning on yourself because I want you to realize how damaging it is. Right. So if you feel a sense of, you know, I think there's times it's super healthy if you feel not confident in situations, you know, a real sense of confidence, not a false sense of, like, I'm confident. Not that. But when you've got a lot going on in your business and you don't feel that you have the clarity and the control to manage it all and that it's all Going to go the way that you want it to go. That will take a shot at your confidence like no other. Right. Who's had times where you feel super confident about everything, everything's flowing, everything's going good and then other times you're like, oh shit, I don't know what's happening. Who's gone through those extremes? Yeah. So the idea is to stay out of those extremes as much as possible and to realize the areas where we need to get clarity, we need to get control over our business and use our decision making muscles to make that stuff happen. You know, it's, it's the indecision cloud is fueled by, by weak decision making muscles. And weak decision making muscles are the result of not making decisions. Right. And you can skate your way through even a business at a certain level not making the important decisions. But once you start, once you're like, you know what, you're right, you're right. Like that's. It makes sense. If I just start getting like building those decision making muscles, I can move my business forward so much quicker, my life so much quicker, you know? Don't be afraid of the wrong decisions. Don't be afraid of the wrong decisions. Just spend the time to go through what we talked about today, right? You've got think time. So important. Get it in writing. I don't ever make an important decision without journaling about it, without writing about it, without running through what I'm sharing with you today, without looking at what are the outcomes and the options. What do I want out of this situation? Not necessarily what's been presented to me, what would I want out of it and what are the different options to be able to get there? Can I bring up the profit and the thrive? Right. What is the future value? Personal growth? Right. Am I going to grow from this and is this greater than this? This has to be greater than this. The time, the energy, the resources, the money and your sanity that's going to take away from you to do that thing, whatever it might be, right. Then you run through the upsides, the downsides, what are the majors, what are the unknowns? Go figure out what the unknowns are. I almost forgot. Then you've got a. Basically you've got to mitigate the downsides, right? So once you go through this, you want to now take the downsides of kind of the option that you're leaning towards because it's. They're always going to have some kind of downside and look to either eliminate or decrease the impact of that downside and I know it sounds like theoretical, but when you sit down and you write and you're. And you really, again, think time, right. We don't value that enough as a society, as business owners. Right? But that's your true power. That's your true competitive advantage. Sit down. Once you write down the downsides, once you've established the option, because you're going to write down the upsides, the downsides, the majors and the unknowns for each of the options. And now you're going to go back and you're going to say, okay, how do we minimize these downsides? And it's just time and time again. It's amazing when you do this and when you take the time to not rush through it. Right? Because I listen, I have to discipline myself to do this too. It's not like I wait. This is supernatural for me. So if you're like, this doesn't feel natural. It's not natural for me either. But when we look at the alternative and I look at, okay, when I've just kind of rushed through a decision versus when I've gone through this process, you'll end up eliminating other problems and other issues just by going in and saying, how do I mitigate the downside? Right. You'll come up with a whole new solution, a whole new offering to your customers, a whole new product line, a whole new way to cut costs and improve profits. Right. Taking the time to do it is huge. And then a real decision, a real declaration and deploying it. Right. So I want to. Go ahead, I want to give you guys this. I'm going to give it to you here, Chris, if you could put it in the comments form, as I'm doing it as well, this is what I use. Okay. Whenever I need to make a big decision that I know I might flip flop on. Right. It's natural, right? You make the decision, you wake up the next day like, oh, shit, what did I do? You burn the boats and you're heading in that direction. You need to make sure that it sticks and that you've got reassurance. All right, so the first one is. And I journaled about this, there's eight questions and I keep it in my phone. I've got a template and whenever I've got one of these, they're not often I use these for important decisions. It's not if I do this once or twice a year, it's probably. That's probably what I do once or twice a year, but use it as often as you need. So this is the Decision, commitment, declaration for first question is what is it about this decision that is important to me? Right? And just write about it, right? Write how you feel about it. You know, we need to integrate our nervous system through our emotions as opposed to just thinking through with our mind. Right? So what is it about this decision that's important to me? How will making a commitment to this decision improve my life? Again, free form, right? Just you're writing it, you're thinking through it. You know, you guys know the power of asking the right question and writing and getting the answers. How does this decision support the other decisions in my life? Right. How does this decision support the other decisions in my life? Now, if you made a decision that you're going to buy a house for X amount of dollars and now this other decision is a way to make money to be able to do that, it's going to support that. If you made a decision that you're going to be a great parent and now this decision is going and getting your health in order, right? Exercise and working out, eating right, that's going to support that as well. So you want to tie it into the other decision so that it's not this standalone silo that if you do it or don't do it, it's no big deal. No, it's going to support other decisions as well. What is the opposite of this decision? You know, if one of you, if your decision is, I'm going to get in the best shape of my life and the opposite is I'm going to get in the worst shape of my life because I'm just not going to care about it. I'm going to continue on the path I'm on. You know, the next one would be how will that, how will the opposite affect my life? And that's when you really want to like paint a picture of misery for yourself, right? Whatever it might be. Like, how will the opposite of what I'm trying to do affect my life? Whatever's the worst thing that could happen, paint that picture for yourself. Because when you're second guessing it, we need both the carrot and the stick. We need both. You know, what's going to bring us pleasure, what's going to bring us pain to be able to go back. Because at different times we're motivated by different things. Sometimes we're motivated by what we want and sometimes we're motivated by getting away from what we don't want. Was that five, six is what could cause me to second guess this decision. Anticipate what could cause you to Second guess it. All right? By getting out in front of it, you could mitigate that in advance as opposed to waiting for it to pop up. Number seven, is there any part of me that feels unsure about this decision? So, you know, usually there'll be some little part of you that even though you made the decision, you still feel a little unsure. Write about that. Write about what it is, how you feel about it, what your concerns are, what could go wrong. And then number eight is, if so, what do I need to work through to commit to the decision, right? And that's, you know, if there's things that you still need to work through, then hopefully you've got your note or your journal or whatever extravagant, you know, note taking app you might use and you'll go back through this whole process that we talked about today and work through the upsides, work through the downsides, right? Take those downsides, mitigate them, put that reason that you feel unsure into perspective. Ask yourself, what's the likelihood of it actually happening, right? And when you start looking at what's the worst that could happen and what's the best that could happen, it usually will help you kind of make your way through that. But again, if you've never done the process of self coaching and journaling and writing through your think time to come up with answers to questions, it's powerful. It's powerful. Like if you've, if you've heard me talk about it before and have looked past it, all it is is asking a question and realizing that even though you think you know the answers until you start writing, you don't know the answers. You don't know the answers, right? And when you write for this purpose. So that's the decision making commitment declaration. Hey, my friend, before you go, you've got to hurry and watch these next few videos over here. They will absolutely help you take your moving company to the next level. Go watch them now and I'll see you over there.