3 Questions to Ask Yourself When Making a Big Decision in Your Business

One of the big distinctions between successful business owners and those just scraping by is the ability to take decisive action. But it's not always easy to make big decisions in business, especially when you don't have the tools to do so.

Tune in for 3 questions to ask yourself to gain clarity when trying to make the best decision for your business and an example of how I used these questions to make a tough decision in my business recently.

If you've been looking for a sounding board, a little guidance, someone to ask you the tough questions so you can move the needle in your business... I'd love to help you through private business coaching. Book a free clarity call to find out if this is the right next step for you.

Key Takeaways

• Your bigger vision should drive every decision you make. It's easy to get sucked in by the idea of a quick win or instant gratification - but the slow, steady pursuit of the long-term goal is the only thing that's going to get you where you want.
• Your audience is always at the core. If an action isn't going to serve your people, it's not worth doing.
• We're humans, and that means sometimes our feelings get the better of us. Sometimes you need to take a step back before making a decision to make sure emotions aren't clouding your strategic judgment.

Resources Mentioned

• Book your free clarity call to find out if private business coaching is your next step
• Watch the free masterclass
• Follow Amy on Instagram @artfulcontracts

Next Steps

Thank you so much for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, please reach out and let me know by sending me a DM on Instagram @artfulcontracts

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Episode Transcript

I had to make a tough business decision last week. I really agonized over it. And this is one of the areas of entrepreneurship that I think people don't talk about enough, one, but also it's something that really sets apart the successful entrepreneurs from those who struggle. And that's the ability to make these big decisions on your own because there is nobody else who's telling you what to do. Yes, you can get advice from coaches, from strategists, you can rely on other people's expertise, but ultimately you are the one making the decisions. You don't have a boss or a room full of other C-suite executives making choices for you. You are the ultimate decision maker.

So as I was making this decision last week, there were three questions that really helped me work through it and come to a choice I feel good about. So I wanted to share those with you. Okay, you're probably sitting there thinking, what was this decision you had to make, Amy? If you listen to my previous podcast, the one that came out before this one, two weeks ago, I announced a live workshop happening in February. The decision I made was to cancel that workshop. I had already pre-sold tickets to this workshop at a discount during Black Friday. So I was already on the hook for it. And now, since I've made the decision, I've already reached out to those people, given them refunds, and offered other options. But as I'm making this decision, that was really weighing on me. This was something I had committed to and a lot that brought up a lot of feelings to even have the desire to not move forward with something I had committed to really didn't feel good.

But ultimately, not doing that workshop was the best thing strategically for my business, emotionally and capacity-wise for myself, and also for the attendees, for my audience, for everyone who I was planning on selling it to, not doing it is really the better choice. I'll go into that a little bit more as I go through these questions that I ask myself. So here they are: the three questions to ask yourself when you are making a big decision or moving forward with an action in your business.

Is this aligned with my bigger vision? Is this moving the needle forward? Does this action move me towards my goals, towards that bigger vision or away from it? So for me, in this situation with the LLC bootcamp, this workshop, as I was working on it, working on the sales page, working on the content for the workshop itself, I just kept feeling like it was a distraction. It was not moving me towards the goals that I had for this year. And I struggled with that because this was a decision that I had made. It was something I had decided to do back in the fall. And at that time, a lot has changed between then and now. And at the time it felt good, it was aligned, and now it's not. It was becoming more of a distraction from the other things that I wanted to accomplish than it was serving the bigger vision; it wasn't serving the bigger vision, it was an obstacle.

Am I letting my emotions dictate my actions? Am I letting my emotions interfere with a strategic decision? Or is this decision emotional and should it be? Do I need to be separating out the emotions here and looking at it strategically? Now that is not to say that all emotional decisions are bad. It's just that you need to have awareness around when you're making a decision based on feelings and when you're making a decision based on strategy and whether those feelings are based in reality or based on a story that's made up in your head. And that is a lot to process. Sometimes it really takes a step back. You have to just let yourself feel the feelings if they're coming up and not make the decision in that moment, in that emotional moment. Take a step back, process what you're feeling, and then look at it again.

Is this action, is this decision the thing that serves my audience the best? Am I making this choice because it is truly what is best for my people? Or is there some other reason, like wanting to take a shortcut or being in your feelings about it? And this is really the thing that drove the decision home for me to not do the workshop. Because as I was building out the content, I realized that all of the things I wanted to teach on this topic were not going to fit into a live workshop format. So I was faced with the choice of leaving things out or going really shallow, not taking as much depth and really rushing through things that deserved more attention just to fit it into the time frame that was allowed for a live workshop. And it is never okay for me to offer something, to invite you to pay for something that is not going to serve you the best, that's not going to be my best work because of artificial constraints that I put around it. That's just not okay.

And it didn't make sense to just change the format because this is stuff I already teach. There is already an entire module inside Cover Your Assets about forming your LLC. And looking at it now, it's that way for a reason. It needs an entire module; it doesn't need a quick workshop. So having the workshop format was not going to serve my audience. Changing the format of the workshop to something else didn't make sense strategically because it's something I already have. It already exists. So ultimately, this workshop was not going to be my best work. It was not going to be able to have the depth that was necessary to cover the content in a comprehensive way. I didn't want to just cut stuff out and say, oh, I have this other thing you can buy in order to get the rest of the information because I hate that. So really, this workshop wasn't serving anyone. It wasn't serving me. It wasn't serving you. It wasn't serving my business.

So even though I had feelings around canceling it, I had to put my CEO hat on and say, we're not doing it. This really, it really took me about two weeks of processing all of this to come to that decision. And something that really helped me was talking it through with other people. I have my assistant who is great. She understands my business like nobody else, of course. So we talked through all of that. And then I also had a conversation with my business coach to work through that emotional side of it. And sometimes you just sometimes it's really nice to just have permission from somebody else, even if it's meaningless, just to hear that you have permission from somebody else to move forward with what you want, to move forward with what you think is right, and to make the choice, make the decisive action.

So if you are stepping into that CEO role, if you have struggled with decisions and separating out that vision, the strategy, and the emotions in order to make a really decisive and positive choice. If you just need a sounding board and someone to bounce ideas off of, I would love to help you with all of that. This year I am starting business coaching. I love this stuff. I love talking about the mindset behind it, the strategy that goes into it, and really making the best choices for your clients and figuring all of that out. And it can be really hard and lonely as an entrepreneur to do all of that on your own. And having someone who's been there, who's made the hard choices, and understands how difficult but also rewarding it can be can really be a game changer.

So if you would like to go deeper with me this year, if you would like support in your business, you can book a free clarity call with me to find out if we are a good fit for private business coaching. I'll put the link for that down in the show notes. You can also DM me on Instagram to talk through it or get that link directly sent to you. And of course, my DMs are always open for feedback or thoughts about the show. Have you had to make a hard decision in your business? And what tools have you used to make that easier for yourself? My handle is at ArtfulContracts. I would love to hear from you. Alright, that's it for today, and I'll see you next time.