MBA1474 The Worst Time To Make Big Decisions

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More often than you think you're making big decisions in your business that will affect the trajectory of the business, the growth, the type of business is going to be, the kind of responsibilities you will inherit because of that decision. These decisions really affect not only the success of your business, but the nature of your business and the nature of your life, how you spend your days. But many times we make these decisions at the wrong time and therefore these decisions turn out to be bad decisions. Then I'm going to outline the absolute worst time to make a decision. How to create an environment that allows you to make a better decision and how to release the pressure that will cause you to make a decision that you'll regret. Business is a series of decisions. Let's make the right one in the right circumstance. Let's learn how. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. I want to start today's episode with a story that's going to explain exactly the importance of today's lesson. Back in 2012, I was running a business consulting firm. This is before the $100 MBA. This is before Webinar Ninja. I used to help people build their websites. I used to create their logos, their branding, even help them out with their sales copy. So I was doing client work. I was getting clients every month and charging them for my services. One month, I had a really slow month, and I wasn't making ends meet. I was actually short on cash to pay my bills. This is before I had a team. I was running this whole thing by myself. And in desperation to get a new client, I lowered my rates. In fact, I did it for two clients because I had to lower my rates to the point where I wasn't making the money I needed. So I had to bring on another client. And they only said yes because, again, I lowered my rates. I actually lowered it by 50%. It was pretty ridiculous. But I was like, hey, I. I need the cash. I'm going to go ahead and do it. And I took on those clients. And when you take on client work, your clients have a deadline. You need to get that work done at a certain amount of time. That means your time is going to be used serving those clients that you took on. Two days after I took on these two cheaper clients, I got an email from one of my past clients, someone that I worked with before at my normal rate. They offered me a project, but they needed it urgently, and they were willing to pay double for me to get it done. But I couldn't say yes because I would not be able to do it. I just didn't have the hours in the day. And I knew that I would fall short and I would put that client in a bad position because I would not deliver according to their deadline. So I made a bad decision. I took on two cheap clients. I lowered my rates just to make a quick buck so I can make the cash I need. Yeah, totally. I needed the money. But two days later, I had a past client that was willing to pay double, meaning that I would have made two, twice as much with one client than having two clients. Now, three months later, I was in the same scenario. And it was fresh in my mind. I remember this happened to me before, you know, a little bit short in the month. I was like, okay, I need to bring in some more clients before the end of the month so I can be able to, you know, make ends meet. But this time around, I said, hey, instead of lowering my rates and taking on, you know, double the clients to make the same amount of money, I'm going to reach out to all my past clients that paid me my due rate and ask them, is there something you're working on now or in the near future that I can help you with? And I would list all the services that I could do for them. New website, new pages, landing pages, funnels, all that kind of stuff. Right. And within hours I got an email from a client that said, yep, actually I was thinking about you the other day and I've been wanting to reach out to you cause we're working on this project that's coming up this quarter. Can we lock you in for, for this project? I got on a phone call with them, I locked in that actual project. They paid me in advance to lock me in and have that time allotted to my calendar. And it was such a big project, it took me well over what I needed for that month. So glad I didn't rush that decision. Now the reason why I rushed the decision the first time and it was a bad decision is because I was in a desperate spot. I couldn't breathe. Right. I needed the money and rightfully so. Right. But you don't think clearly when you're in that situation. Especially when you're in a time sensitive situation like oh, I need to make X amount of dollars and X amount of days or I'm going to be in trouble or my business will be in trouble or I won't be able to make payroll or I'll be able not be able to, you know, reinvest in the business, in marketing or ads. Whenever you have to make a decision and it's going to affect your business in a major way and you feel the pressure of time, you need to release that pressure of time any way possible. So in this scenario, instead of saying, oh, there is no way I can solve this problem because I have no clients, I have to reach out to other clients. What can I do? Who can I sell to? What other ways can I make money other than the tried and true way? How can I relieve myself of this time constraint? One of the things that causes this pressure of time is that it will take you time to get certain things done, to bring in more money or solve a problem or to make a hire or whatever it is for, we say we need to get something solved by X amount of time and it's going to take me X amount of time to get there. And we think one way of doing things, we have to step back and say, hey, I'm under a lot of pressure right now. How can I relieve the pressure? So I don't need to make this decision either now or this is a decision that I can solve or I can make in a totally new way. In the example I gave, you're tapping into a resource you already have, which is the customers you already have, tapping into them, asking them if they would like to buy something New. Buy something that you're offering. Buy something that you're about to launch to, you know, pre book. There are times in my business where I needed to make a hire to do a certain job, and I had to make the decision to stop spending on another area of my business in order to make it happen. And it was a tough decision because I needed to get something done quickly. And I was thinking to myself, how can I relieve myself of the pressure of time? Well, let me look at my own resources. Is there something that I. Can I do this? No, I can't do this because I. I don't have the time for it. I can do it physically, you know, I can pull off this task, but I just don't have the time. My schedule. Well, can I train somebody? I already have to do this. And I was like, hmm, maybe I can. We have an ea. Maybe I can get her to help me out. I can shoot some videos. It might take me an hour to shoot those videos, but it would take me, you know, three days to do the task. And then I can hand it over to our EA and she can do it instead of hiring somebody. I have resources I can use and immediately the problem's solved. And I don't feel a pressure of time because. Because I can hand it over in a timely fashion. When you feel the pressure of time, this is when you make the worst decisions. Time is ticking and you get nervous and you realize, uh, oh, it's almost that deadline. I need to make a decision quickly. And often that's the wrong decision because we try to just solve the problem as fast as problem, rather than thinking, what's the best way to solve this problem? So sometimes it takes a bit of investment of time to make a better decision. Let me say that again. Sometimes it takes an investment of time to make a better decision. So it could be an hour. It might be just a walk you go on where you think to yourself, okay, this is a problem I have. What do I have at my disposal that can help me solve this problem? If I need to make money, what can I sell or what can I produce in the future that I could sell right now? Who can I sell to? Do I have a customer list I can email? Do I have an email list I can email? Is there a partner I can partner up with? Brainstorm. And the best way to solve a problem is to pretend the problem is not yours. I know that sounds strange, but just for a moment, you have to pretend that this is somebody else's problem, a friend's problem. We often are very good at solving other people's problems because we're emotionally unattached. And that's what this exercise does. It detaches us emotionally from the problem and we can come up with creative solutions. Sometimes you just need to buy some time. And I'll give you another story. Another example. When we released webinar in Asia 5.0 back in 2017, we had to delay the launch by three months because the product still needed more time to be improved to be ready for release. And even though we had a deadline and we had a launch day, we had to push the launch. We emailed everybody who was anticipating this launch and getting ready to buy. We had all this momentum built up, but we emailed them all and I shot a video and I just got honest with them. I said, hey, guys, I need more time to get this done properly. As much as it kills me to delay the launch, I have to do this to make sure that I deliver a great product for you. And that's how I bought myself time. Instead of making a bad decision and saying, hey, we gotta get this out no matter what, I made the right decision and bought ourselves some time. And in fact, it actually bought us a lot of goodwill and a lot more buzz. Cause that video actually was shared. And people actually liked the fact that I got in front of the idea that we have to push it back a little bit. And I was transparent and gave reasons why. So sometimes you just need to buy some time to solve the problem properly. So think of ways, how can I buy some time? Sometimes if it's a financial obligation, look at how you can buy some finances. Whether it's an AWS bill, like your server bill, or a hosting bill or your phone bills or something like that, you can often call these services and negotiate and say, hey, I'm having a little bit of a tough month. Can we have a payment plan? Can we go from annual to monthly? Can we downgrade my plan a little bit to save some money? Often these companies want to keep you as a customer. They want to keep you as a recurring customer. And they'll be happy to work with you temporarily until you make ends meet. Find ways to release the pressure so you can make a better decision.

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As your business grows, as your team grows, you're going to start making more and more decisions. If I look back and just look at today, I'm recording this around 5pm in the afternoon. And I probably have made over 50 decisions today, small decisions left and right. Am I going to do this? I'm going to do that, Am I going to do this? Am I that? What am I replied about this? What's my answer to this? How are we going to handle this? But I can probably remember three or four bigger decisions, decisions that I'm going to pay the price for in the future. Sometimes when I'm in that position and from those three to four. Today I delayed it. I had a meeting with some of my team members and I said, hey, that's a great question. I need to make a decision on that. I can't make it right now on the call. I need to weigh out all the factors and there's no harm in delaying. So give me a moment to think about it. Let me sleep on it. A lot of us as leaders, we think we need to make decisions like we're firing, you know, a machine gun or something. No. Sometimes in their bigger decisions, that's going to affect you and the team and a lot of things. It's okay for you to say, let's hold off on that. In our next weekly meeting, I should have a decision for you. The thing about decision making, it's a skill and you learn over time and you get better and better and you get faster and faster at making decisions, the right decision. But if you're in a situation where you have to make a big decision that will affect the future of you, your business, your time, all that kind of stuff. If you have the time to make a decision, take the time it needs. If you don't have the time, buy yourself some time. If you can't buy yourself some time, invest a little bit of time to think of some creative ways, some out of the box ways to solve that problem, to make that decision. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 BA Show. If you love what you hear, leave us an iTunes rating and review. We'd love to hear what you think of the show. Also, the best way to support the show is to hit subscribe. By hitting subscribe you get access to over 1400 episodes in our archives. Over 1400 business lessons. Also, by hitting subscribe you tell the podcast player, hey, this show's awesome. Show this podcast to other people. It's absolutely free to hit subscribe and we are on every podcast platform. So whether you're listening to this episode on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher Radio or Spotify or Overcast or Himalaya or any podcast player, hit subscribe right now. Before I go on, I'll leave you with this One of the most tiring, exhausting things about being a leader in your business is is making decisions. It's very tiring. It's very fatiguing. This is why some people can leave work and have tons of energy. And some people, they leave work and they're totally spent. It depends on the type of work. If you were doing mindless work all day long, even if it's physical, you might find yourself being, you know, a little bit more energetic than somebody who's using their brain constantly. Caloric energy is spent the most when you're thinking, think about that. Really think about that. You burn more calories and you burn more energy when you're doing intense thinking more than physical movement. So sometimes when you're tired, it's not the best time to make a decision. If you've made too many decisions today, try to save the ones you can delay tomorrow to tomorrow. I hope that helps and hope to see you in tomorrow's episode Q and A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take.

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