Why Indecision is Killing Your Results (And How to Fix It)

0:01 Welcome to The Coaching Equation, brought to you by Empire Partners and hosted by Ryan Lang and Brooke Bishop. Our mission is to help you build a profitable and impactful coaching business by cutting through the noise and all the expert advice to deliver tried and true, actionable insights that you can deploy in your business today. Each week, we bring on expert guests, unveil cutting-edge tactics and strategies, and share the secrets and stories that we've gathered from working with the most successful coaching companies on earth. Welcome to episode 28 of the Coaching Equation podcast.

0:42 I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners, alongside my co-founder and co-host, Brooke Bishop. And in this episode, we're going to dig into one of the single most important factors in running a successful, profitable business, and that is decision making. And that's what we're going to do. And not just being able to make small decisions, but how do we effectively make the big decisions, the hard decisions that are truly going to define the destiny of our business, of our company, of our team, of our clients, of us and our families and our lives? This is an episode that is absolutely chock full of gold from some of the personal and professional stories that we're going to tell you about some of the biggest decisions we've had to make to the very clear and actionable steps that you can take to start making better and more importantly faster decisions in your business right now today.

1:39 Buckle up and let's dig into it. It's episode 28 of the Coaching Equation podcast. Welcome back to the Coaching Equation Podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners, alongside my co-founder and co-host, Brooke Bishop. What's going on, brother? What's up? What's up? So today, you know, as we record this episode, we're currently here in late October and we are getting, you know, closer and closer to the holiday season. And one of the things that's present in business all the time, it certainly isn't just in the vacuum of the holiday season, but something that's present in business all the time and probably gets, I think we both find amplified is probably the right word during the holiday season is having to make tough decisions in your business.

2:25 And today we're going to get into how do we figure out the tough decisions are going to be there. Like we can't avoid that. If you're a business owner and you've taken the plunge to go do this, that's part of what comes along with the job, man, is just you're going to have tough decisions that you're going to make. Well, how do you know how to make the right decision in those tough moments? How do we kind of figure out the path that can guide us to the right decision or making decisions that we're in? at least going to feel solid about moving forward, regardless of what the outcome is, all of that kind of stuff. This is really where we're headed in this episode. And dude, I'm really excited to dive in. So in kind of kicking us off here, you mentioned this to me recently, and I can't wait to hear you explain this because I don't even know what it is.

3:12 What in the world is the grandfather sentiment? What is that? So my grandfather was a crazy eccentric human being. Did you ever see the movie Big Fish? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So that was very much like my grandfather. So growing up, he made crazy claims, big stories. Like when I say big stories, like literally. So he was a self-made millionaire before he had reached 12 years old. And so he was a boy soprano in the Hollywood Orchestra. He had his own TV show. It was right when they went from radio to television. And so back then to be a millionaire at 12 years old is kind of unheard of, right? No YouTube back in those days. Far from it, right? Like, I don't even think they had color in the original TV shows.

3:53 But with that, he led this crazy life. Like he was good friends with Walt Disney. He actually filmed a lot of the old nature films for Disney. His senior prom date was Elizabeth Taylor. Like when I say it was Big Fish. So here's the kick. Somebody listening to this is gonna be like, yeah, Brooke, you're full of shit. That's what we thought. Yeah. about him. And when he passed away many, obviously many years later, he had the storage unit and we went to clear out the storage unit that he had stopped making payments on, obviously, because he passed. We started opening up all the boxes and seeing all of his memorabilia. We saw his senior yearbook and had the prom picture of him and Elizabeth Taylor on the cover. And all these things started getting validated that we always thought he was, you know, we'll just say he wasn't very honest is what we thought.

4:34 So in the spirit of that, he had made mega millions and he lost tons of it. And then he'd go back and he'd make mega millions and he'd lose it all again. And one of the things that he shared with me, there's there's two sentiments that he shared with me. One was he said that the most successful people on the planet are the best decision makers. Hmm. And within that, he said, look, they don't always make the right decision, but they make decisions quickly. And so that was the first piece that really hit home where I'm like, okay, you don't have to necessarily always be perfect in making the right move. It's a matter of moving quickly and then adjusting again quickly and adjusting again quickly. It's that speed of decisiveness that was more important than necessarily making the perfect decision.

5:15 I love that you bring this up and we're going to dive in deeper on this, but this is something that I'll just I'm not afraid to out myself on this. My God, I spent years of my life. I mean, I would say probably a good majority of the first at least 30 years of my life and probably even a decent portion of the next five hung up on like what was going to be the right decision. And I was so deathly afraid. I think this is a lot of like old psychology for me. And you might be listening to this and maybe you can identify with this. Maybe you can't. But, you know, I had a lot of things happen in my childhood that put me in a spot where growing up, I was very judgmental of myself. And I was deathly afraid of feeling like I made the wrong choice or that I made the wrong decision.

5:58 And I was always armchair quarterbacking myself after the fact and going back to, you know, what I should have done and blah, blah, blah. And man, I can just tell you one thing. When I started to free up from the idea that the decision had to be perfect and that it was better to make the best decision you could make with speed. Holy shit, did things change? I mean... Even in a business that I built to eight figures very, very successfully, there were a lot of moments where things got held up because I wasn't quick in making decisions. It's really a big deal. It can absolutely halt everything in terms of progress and not to mention the emotional and mental bandwidth that it takes up when you try to run on that hamster wheel.

6:40 Very true. Yeah. And we always want to make the right decision. We want to do the right moves. We want to make the right investments. We want to pick the right people. We want to say the right thing. And of course, we always want to do our best. But within that, and this was the second part of his sentiment, he said, indecision is also a decision. Yes. Right. And that's the worst decision you can ever make is indecision. And so that was really that piece that just it struck a chord where I'm like, OK, I am going to work really hard to make the best moves and the best decisions that I can. However, I'm going to let go of that perfection piece and I'm going to focus on speed. And here's the key piece. If when I make the wrong decision. being okay with it and pivoting faster. Because what oftentimes happens for people is they'll have indecision and they'll overanalyze the crap out of it.

7:23 They finally make a move and they make the wrong decision. Then they beat themselves up. Then they make it an identity piece of I'm a failure. I'm at this. And then they go into this whole imposter world. And then guess what? You start to build. You build a muscle of indecision because now you're afraid to make in the wrong one. It's a really shitty feedback loop. Uh, right. And that's if a decision actually gets made, because so many times when we're trying to make the perfect decision, we actually don't make one. I mean, to your point, when we're indecisive, yes, we're deciding to be indecisive. But in a lot of cases, when we're trying to make that perfect decision, like shit just doesn't get done. And it's awful. Let me ask you a question. When we're in that moment of going, OK, I'm at a crossroads here or I've got something that's sitting in front of me that's not like, oh, should I wear the black shirt or the white shirt today?

8:12 But literally, maybe it's something big that we got to kind of figure out. How do we know that we're not just literally making a hasty, dumb decision? Because I think we can do that, too. Like there are moments where we make snap decisions that have virtually no thought or backing to them and very, very poorly, very, very quickly. So how do we differentiate between the two of those? Really good freaking question. This is going to be like a masterclass that we should turn this whole thing. This whole episode could be its own coaching certification course. The first one is you have to be present when you're making your decisions. And I think that so many people are making reactionary decisions.

8:53 Hmm. Right. So here's one that's a here's a business one, just as an example. So we have a client who just turned on their paid ads the first week. They're getting snowballed with tons of leads hitting their calendar. So at first they're like, woohoo. Well, one week goes by and then they're like, oh my gosh, the quality of leads that are coming through are not good. So guess what their reactionary decision was? Shut them up. Turn it off. It's broken. No, it's working. You're just not getting the right people through. So in that space of like, oh, gosh, we're melting money. Let's turn it off entirely. Instead of going, wait, let me get present with this for a moment. This is actually working. It's just not giving me what it is that I ultimately want.

9:33 How can I adjust this? So and it's funny because we just said make decisions quickly. And now we're saying to slow down. But it's the first one is to not be reactionary in your decision making, because that's not making a decision. That's reacting. So there's a big distinction between them. That's a major, major distinction. Yes. Agreed. So the first part is be present and make an actual decision. The second part of that, and this is where I think that I don't want to state this. There's a lot of times we will make decisions from our head space and not our heart space. And so decisions made from our head space more times than not, they have a lot of question marks or hiccups that can come from there. Decisions made from our heart space, 99.9% of the time, it's going to be the right move. And so as trite as it might sound or as corny as it might sound, I know we have a lot of woo-woo.

10:16 If you're listening to this and you're part of the woo-woo crowd, we love you. Shout out. There's this element of even when you have to make a tough decision, close your eyes, put your hand on your heart space and just go, what's the right thing to do? Or shifting your question and go, what feels like the right thing to do? Right. Because that's usually often going to be accurate. Yeah. Well, and so I think this is kind of like trust your intuition. Right. It goes back to the old saying about trust your gut, like what feels right. when you're really considering that and you're really tuning into yourself and your body and your heart and all of that, it does not take long.

11:00 You close your eyes. And if you're doing this, if you're really focusing, it doesn't take long. That's the beautiful part about it. It's when we get up here, up in our head, that things start taking longer because we guess and we second guess and we triple guess. And then we go back and we go left and we go right. And then what if this and what if that and blah, blah, blah. And here's the cool part about it is that I think when it comes down to making decisions and tough ones, if I can look inward and ask myself what I really feel is the right thing to do right now and I make that choice. I personally cannot think of a single time that I've done that. And I look back and I go, my God, I mean, I was obviously just way off base.

11:44 It doesn't mean that it worked out perfectly because not every choice is going to. But what it does mean is that in the moment, I listened to my intuition and I wouldn't take it back because it took me down one road. And eventually, here's the other beautiful part about making decisions, especially tough ones. is that we have a tendency to believe that we're going to make this big, tough decision. And it's the only decision or moment that's going to matter in the outcome that we're after in making the decision. And that is so rarely the truth. More often than not, we make a decision. And if it doesn't get us the outcome that we want right away, then we just know we just got feedback.

12:25 That's all. We just know we need to pivot. We know we need to do something different. We know we need to shift. So I think there's really a lot to that part of it, too. And I love that you talked about heart space versus head space because it's a big differentiator as we try to figure these things out. Yeah, there can be a tough moment too, because I'll say it this way, the more risk that's on the table, the harder it can be to get into your heart space, right? Because it can be really tough to let go of the telephone pole when you're flying down the highway. Sometimes it's really hard to take your focus off of that if you lose control of the car. We're hardwired into looking for the thing that could potentially kill us, right? Like that's just where we go to. So if when the stakes are highest, you do have to have a strategy to navigate through those decisions.

13:11 I was really fortunate. This was shoot. This was probably 15 years ago. There's a woman I got to work with when I was with Tony Robbins. She was an executive at the company. Her name was Elaine Holland. Still isn't Elaine Holland, but nonetheless. But she came from more of a corporate background, whereas I came from like figure shit out background. It's like hustle, be creative. Technical name for it. Yeah. School of hard knocks. Right. Like she was very much like your, you know, went to the Ivy League school, went to the traditional corporate job, worked up the corporate ladder, got all the corporate training. And she taught me a process or process for our British folk. This process was called CIPAB. OK, so S-C-I-P-A-B.

13:52 Are you familiar with CIPAB, by the way? So I am, but I can't wait to hear you kind of break it down further because there's more to it than even I understand at this point. Yeah. So for her, we had a tough decision to make. And I don't I can't remember if it was about should we fire somebody or should we go forward with a specific product offering? Something that had. potential ramifications. And it was too much to try and figure out and just like sitting there and going, what route do we go? And so she sent me this template and it helped within like a five minute window of sitting down with this thing. I'm like, oh, I know what to do. And that was crazy because I literally went days and days of not being able to make a move on something because I kept going, well, if I go down this road, here's the risk. Here's the opportunity. But like, what if I fall short?

14:32 Well, if I go down this road, well, here's the risk. And like, oh, crap. It felt like every road that I could potentially go down, the risk was too big and it caused me to be deer in headlights. And so what SciPab is, we'll put a link in the show notes that we can send people to the template. But basically what it stands for is first you have to get really clear on what is the situation. So the key piece there was I had to take the story out of the situation. I had to get really pragmatic about like, here is the black and white, like not here's how I feel about it. Not here's what everyone's going to think or say about it. But like the truth. Yeah, the truth is the facts. Without embellishing, without making it worse or better than it was like the truth. Okay, so first, once I got clear on the situation, I'm like, okay, yep, that's right.

15:13 The next piece we went into is for the C is complication. So because of this situation, here's the complication that is now here because of it. Again, pragmatic, real, the truth, not worse, better, etc. Like, let's get everything on the table of exactly what is complicated now because of this situation. OK, the third piece is the I, which is the implication. So because of this problem, it's making these complicated things happen as a result. here's the negative blowback that this is now creating in our world. Here's the other people it's having an effect on. Here's everything that this is now creating. And for me at the time, it was a shit storm, right? That's where the emotional piece got to be documented. Okay. Now, so that's the first half.

15:55 So here's the situation. Here's the complication. Here's the implication. Now, when we go to the second half, this is where we get to now start to pivot into how do we fix the damn problem? So the second half with the P is here's my position. This is really important. You have to land and pick one position. And I go, OK, great. Here's my first position about this. If we make this move, this is the route I think we should go. Here's my position. The next piece for the A is here's the actions I'm going to have to take. If I take this position, I go down this road. Here's the actions I'm going to put into play. And then the last letter there, B, is here's the benefits that come from it. Now, I did this with at the time, I believe it was like three different pathways I could go. So like situation, complication, implication stayed the same with all of them.

16:36 But the position, action and benefits changed because I had a different position for each potential path. Whichever one had less actions and more benefits, that's what immediately went go that route. Makes 100% sense. So let's kind of talk about practical application for this. So let's just say right now, I've got a tough decision that I've got to make in my business. And I don't want to get hung up on the hamster wheel of getting caught in my head space. I still want to be able to come from my heart space, but I also want to be able to at least have... thought through this to some degree. I don't want to be willy nilly in my decision making process. Let's say I'm going to take Brooke's advice and I'm going to use SciPab.

17:16 What's a reasonable timeframe in your mind for using this and then actually taking action on what you find out? Ooh, it's loaded. The way I look at it, if it's a decision that affects me alone, we used to joke, we'd be like, how long should you wait? It's like, throw your pen in the air wherever it lands, walk to go pick up your pen, and that's where you take your next action. So if it affects you and you alone, Like the reality is you should be making those moves really, really fast because there's less casualty potential. If when there's more people involved, I'm a big fan of 24 hours and sleeping. So go through the process, document everything that you can sleep on it. Allow your subconscious mind to take over.

17:58 And literally I had this happen yesterday. Had a client that she was running up against some challenges and she needed to make some decisions in the space of helping her as one of our clients. I went through SciPab on her behalf. She didn't know this. Documented and mapped everything out for her. Allowed 24 hours to sleep on it. I woke up at 4 a.m. and my brain was just like, it was like a download came through. Documented all of it for her and I sent it to her in a document. And she's like, oh my God, right? So there's magic that can happen in allowing that sleep to kick in because there's other parts of your brain that'll wire things up and allow things to connect in a different way. By the way, that's something that I've conditioned over time. There's some people that will just take days and days and days. You really don't want to have to deliberate days and days and days.

18:40 Well, I what are your thoughts on that, too? Because I know you you're really good with big decisions because we've had to make quite a few of them. Well, you actually said the number that I was thinking, which is 24 hours. I think that if you can carve out some time to get clear on these kinds of things and go through this process, which I love, by the way, I like 24 hours. Honestly, I like the idea. And maybe you stretch it to 48. But here's the thing. We start to get into law of diminishing returns. We start to have this belief that like if we stretch this out even further, that something fucking magical is going to come to us. No, it's not. All it really requires is just getting quiet, going through the, you know, this is a wonderful exercise to go through.

19:25 Now you have a framework going through the framework and sitting with it and seeing what resonates for you and then checking back in with your heart. One of the things that I want to mention about this too is that this is a wonderful process that we can go through. And one of the things you and I talk about a lot is environment and physiology. And one thing that I like to do is when I've got a really big decision that I need to make, I like to change my environment and change my physiology. I am one in particular where I prefer to be moving. I really when I'm making big decisions, I like to make big decisions. To be honest with you, I'll take it into the gym and just get after a really tough workout and just let it kind of simmer.

20:10 And by the time I'm done, oftentimes I know exactly where I need to go. The other thing that I like to do, I love being out in nature. And so going out for a walk, going out for a hike, something like that. Again, my body is in motion. My brain is firing. I don't have all the other normal distractions of the office around me. And I really like that in terms of coming to a place of peace. It can be harder to do this when you leave yourself in the space of chaos. And expect yourself to make a really great decision from, you know, or swift decision from a space of chaos. So that's another thing I would kind of throw into this. That is spot on.

20:51 Yeah, because usually we're we're in a seated position. We're usually at a computer. We're usually not in the most optimum physiology for all the wiring and all that electricity in our system to be going. So I think that's brilliant feedback in terms of in the midst of a workout or a walk or even getting out in nature, getting barefoot, getting out somewhere where you don't have the same normal environment where you make a lot of your moves and decisions in changing it up so that it's got more of a neutral canvas, I think is a brilliant, brilliant move. I want to ask you something we could go through all of life, at which point we would be here all day. I want to ask you in the course of business or your career, what were a couple of the bigger decisions that you had to figure out that have landed you in the spot that you're sitting in now?

21:35 Oh, boy. It's interesting. So, some of them were made for me, which then led to me having to make a big decision, right? So, like one was I got fired from a company. I thought that I was going to be like moving up the corporate ladder and I thought I was going to be a lifer and, you know, I was heartbroken. And then that... So, I didn't make the decision to leave. They made that for me, right? Like you're gone. But the big decision I got to make was how did I show up the very next morning? Which is a major decision. Yeah. It was a major decision because I could have been like, woe is me. I'm the victim. I'm going to take some time off. I'm going to go find myself. I'm going to play and milk this negative situation out and go down that road. But I didn't. The next morning, I was up at 5 a.m. I was at the gym. I had my suit on. I didn't know what I was going to do. That was a big ass decision.

22:15 And it was hard. It was hard in the sense of doing it because it felt so like emotionally. I'm like, I felt broken and like I lost. And again, emotionally, I felt victimized, even though it was my fault for getting fired. But then the flip side of it was I'm like, I have a choice. And, you know, Tony uses the language. He says, you know, in your moments of decision, your destiny is shaped. Right. I think it's such a beautiful sentiment. Right. Like, it's just this this piece where I'm like, I have a choice. I can wallow or I can wow. I can either be an example or I can be a warning. And I was like, I'm going to be an example, right? Like I wanted to do the right thing because I didn't want them to be victorious and letting me go. I'm like, internally, I was like, fuck you. I'm going to come back with a vengeance. So that was one that was huge.

22:55 The other, which was really, really tricky. So when I got promoted with Tony Robbins, I got promoted from being a salesperson selling coaching for him. And then they had me take over their business mastery division. I was all gung ho. I'm like, woohoo, like I get promoted. The first day of my new promotion, they're like, well, all right, you're now in charge. You're a director. You know, you're overseeing business mastery. Here's the first thing we need you to do. And they literally put on my plate. They go, you need to go tell the whole team that their commissions are getting cut in half. And here's three people we need you to fire. Oh, great. Awesome. Yeah. Right. First day. Day one. And so I'm like, I had a decision in that moment. I'm like, at first, I'm like, what did I just walk into?

23:36 But the other part was, I'm like, how do I get to handle this? And how if I was in the seat of my team? I'm like, how would I want to receive this information? And what's the right thing to do? And I just went I actually went through CYPAB and I went up up up and went down the line with it. I'm like, all right, these are the cards that are dealt. I have a decision of how I'm going to handle this. I can bitch about it. I can tell the leadership team, no, I'm not going to do it. I can hand in my resignation or I can step up to the plate and do it the way that I believed would have been the right way to do it. And my team respected me for the way I handled it. And I earned their trust right out of the gates because I led the way I wanted to be led, right? There's infinite moments in time where we've had to make decisions. And I think this is, it shows up in little stuff that I think can be a little bit more relatable.

24:17 No question. Yeah. And even non-business related, like we have a reservoir that's here by both of our homes, right? And there's some really cool rock scapes at the lake or at the reservoir here. And there's some really high cliff pieces you can jump off of into the water. And so for anyone who's ever went to jump off of a rock or jump off a cliff, the longer you look over that ledge and the longer you wait, it doesn't get easier. It gets harder. Yeah. No. And our physiological body reacts to it chemically, right? Biochemically. And literally, the longer we wait, it releases more hormones and it causes us to be more scared and we get more of that rush of don't move, lock up. The same thing happens when we have to make decisions in the other parts of our life.

24:59 I think that's so well said. And one of the things that I think about decision making as well, and especially when it comes down to tough decisions, a lot of the decisions that we're going to make in our life and our business, to Tony's point, are literally going to shape our destiny. But I love that you just brought this down to smaller decisions that are a little bit more relatable, but also what they are, are there the little micro decisions that make up our identity? Because one of the things is that when you are faced with a decision and you consistently decide not to make a decision, to stall, to put it off, to procrastinate, etc., you're just feeding your subconscious mind the food it needs to tell you you are an indecisive person.

25:45 And when big decisions come up, guess the shit that's going to come out of your mouth? Oh, man, I'm going to need some time with that. I just can't make decisions quickly. Oh, listen, I'm just the type of person. I really got to let things sit for a while. No, you don't. You're just telling yourself that. And more importantly, you're asking. Actions are telling your subconscious that that's exactly who you are and how you're going to operate. One of the reasons I love that you brought this up is that this really gets down to the identity of what are the things that I can be doing day in and day out to put myself in a position where I actually believe that I am a decisive human being. Which, by the way, if you want to be successful in business, you damn well better be.

26:28 Because the people that are, to Brooke's point well earlier in the episode, the people that are willing to make decisions at speed are going to lap you. They will run circles around you. And so one of the things that comes to mind for me, and this is just like, it's a simple one, but it's one that I've anchored in that really helps me when I face a really hard decision. You know, over the years, I have put myself from a physical training perspective in some very, very, very uncomfortable situations on purpose. Like I've voluntarily done a whole lot of things that nobody else is going to do voluntarily. And one of the things that I agree to is that even when I don't have some, you know, a lot of people from a physical standpoint, like they got to have an event that they're training for, or there's got to be something that they've got that like, it's a big extrinsic motivator that's going to keep them on track.

27:27 And I've been doing this for so long and it's so conditioned in me, it is part of my identity, that I don't personally need that. One agreement that I have with myself, however, is that unless I am physically injured and unable, if I put a workout on my calendar, it's getting done. I don't give a fuck if I slept an hour. I don't care if I'm tired. I don't care if there's all kinds of shit going on. I don't care if it's outside and the weather sucks. It doesn't matter. If I put it on the calendar, I'm doing it. That's an agreement that I have with myself. And one of the things that I can tell you is when I get done, I'm not shy. Like I will be by myself.

28:08 My wife hears me talking to myself all the time. Like downstairs in my studio. Or if I'm at the gym, I have to like wait till I get in the car to do this. But literally, I'll get done. I'll be like, yeah, motherfucker. I just showed up and crushed that. I absolutely hammered that. Or maybe I didn't, but I showed up. I totally got through that. Man, I slept two hours last night like dog shit. And I still showed up and did the thing and did the workout. And it goes down to, you know, keeping those little promises to yourself. But in that moment, one of the things that I can tell you where this comes around to decision making is that there are moments where I look at the physical challenge and I honestly go, I don't want to do that.

28:55 I literally just did this yesterday morning. This workout's been on my calendar for two days and I've had to stare at this fucker and I'm like, damn it, I do not want to do this. And then I got down there and I got in it. And by the time it was over and done, I had made the decision. I had made the choice. I didn't die. And not only did I not die, I felt good and I felt proud that I made the choice and the decision to get it done. From a pride perspective, and this is another thing that comes along with this, guys. From a pride perspective, it's less about, oh, man, I just performed so well during the workout. That's not it. The moment of pride is this was going to suck. I had to stare at it for two days and I actually made the choice to go do it when I'm the only one who would have known.

29:40 And that's one of the things that I would really encourage you to do is find your own little things that you can make decisions on even when you don't want to. that will inform your subconscious that even when it sucks, this is we're going, we're moving, we're doing this. There's so much gold in what you just shared. And in the spirit of knowing that you trained and did the Navy SEAL training for civilians and for anyone who wants to know the craziness that Ryan's participated in, he is a beast and he hasn't shared too much with the world about all the craziness that he's done. He is a freakazoid. But with that, you know, the Navy SEALs talk about it. It's like, what's one of the most important things you can do? It's like, make your bed. Why? Because so many people don't do it because it doesn't really have that great of a benefit.

30:24 But guess what? Doing that one thing that you know that most people on the planet don't do, and you do it the first thing you get out of bed, it's that domino that trickles into brushing your teeth, trickles into eating something healthy, trickles into moving your body. And you're now in a state of good decision making. Yeah. Because that's what decision making is. It's a state. It's a state of being. It is. That's right. Right? And so if you can condition, I love that you brought this up, dude, because this is so freaking brilliant. If you can make those hard decisions when you're the only one that knows to be making them and you can condition that muscle, the decision making muscle. You're going to make more right decisions than you are wrong decisions because you're in the space of making good decisions and you get faster at it. You get quicker at picking up those nuances and listening to your intuition and really having that energy that's there.

31:08 It becomes a neural connectivity. It's like a superhighway of good decision making. I think it's freaking brilliant. We should write a book. I like that idea. One of the things, too, to just piggyback on what you just said is that if this right now, if you're listening to this and you're like, oh, dang it, you know what? Like I am kind of indecisive. I do have a tendency to hesitate when I've got a bigger decision to make. Start with the smaller things. And I would challenge you to, you're going to think this is silly. Trust me, it's not. It's the little micro things that will add up in the background to inform that this is the type of person you are. Next time you're at the grocery store and you're like, hmm, chicken or hamburgers, make a choice and challenge yourself to do it quickly.

31:53 You know, next time that you've got a decision to make in your own personal finances, just make the choice and do it from the place that feels good for you. The cool part about this is that our business is always going to benefit from our own personal growth. The more we cultivate ourselves as better decision makers in our personal lives, the easier it is for that to transfer into business, especially as a small business owner, entrepreneur, you are the business. So, you know, it's a natural fit from that standpoint. I want to look now, we kind of open up the episode by talking a little bit about the holidays and kind of how some of those big decisions can start to kind of get amplified a little bit during the holidays.

32:43 I want to dig into that, man. What are some of the decisions that you see people struggling with or some examples that we can give people of things that might be, you know, it's the word that I'm looking for, speed bumps and stuff like that as we get closer to the holidays? Yeah. It's very timely. The biggest decision that I see that people make at this moment in time, especially this year, they make the decision to be indecisive. And I know we kind of opened with that, but this is how it shows up. I'm going to wait till after the election where I've got so much things going on. I have to go grocery shopping for Thanksgiving and I've got family coming over for Hanukkah and I've got Christmas plans. And well, the weather is likely not going to be very good. Or I've got people coming in from out of town. So I just really can't do that.

33:23 Or I don't want to make any hasty decisions until after the new year. And those are kind of some of the obvious pieces, but this shows up and literally it's like, oh, I'll get to it Monday. I'll get to it next week. Let me wait till after the holiday weekend. It just, we kick this can. It's like, as soon as October kicks into gear, like the world just punts everything. And lo and behold, we've got three full months. Well, now we're almost in that zone of two full months, but there's like one of our coaches, Chad Cooper, he talks about the rule of 168. We have 168 hours in every given week. That's a lot of freaking time, right? For many people, that's a lot of binge watching of TV. But for business owners, that's a lot of hours and that's a lot of minutes and that's a lot of seconds that we can be making a decision because a decision takes that much time.

34:11 And what I think a lot of people don't pay attention to is that it's the indecision that eats up tons of time. The decision is actually literally it's momentary. And then we move. It's the indecision that takes a shit ton of time off of our clock. And this is just that pressure cooker where it's just so easy for everybody to be like, eh, okay. I'm just going to wait. I'm going to wait to see what happens with the election before I make any decisions on my business. I'm going to wait to see what happens to the stock market after the election before I spend any money on my marketing. I'm going to wait till after the holidays because I don't want to bombard my clients with reaching out to them. Like it's all this story. And that's really what kind of going back to your original question. I just see a lot of story that happens because it's really easy to get lost in it.

34:53 So true. And I think that there are two big words that I want to kind of bring into the conversation, especially this is true at any time of the year, but it's especially true at this time of year is that people are not in tune with their intentions nor their outcomes when they're deciding to be decisive and or indecisive. So let's talk about intentions for a minute. And I'm going to round this around a business. But you know, one of the things that I used to see all the time, like clockwork, every single year when I was working in the health and fitness industry is we would get right about to October, people would start feeling that Thanksgiving getting close and... We would go head first into the holiday shitstorm, right?

35:36 That leaves people basically on, you know, January 2nd waking up and going, oh my God, I put on 10 pounds or 15 pounds. I feel like dog crap. And now I've got to turn around and try to get it all off again. And here we go with the same cycle that I do every single year. And one of the things that I used to talk to my clients about was navigating holiday meals. And one of the things that I would see, you talked a little bit earlier about some of that decision making and then the judgment. And we talked about that whole shitty feedback loop. When we think about holiday meals as an example, and all of us can relate to this, if you're in a position where you're currently working towards some physical goals and maybe you're on a nutrition plan or, you know, you're doing some physical training or a combination of both and you're trying to get yourself healthier or achieve some kind of health goal or lose some weight or whatever it might be.

36:30 And you get to a holiday meal. Well, what most people do is they, with no intention whatsoever, they just go to the holiday meal. And they show up and it starts off with, no, no, no. Okay, you know, and then they eat everything in sight and they get done and they feel gross and they judge themselves and they literally tank the rest of the year because of one meal. The flip side of that is they go and they are like, oh, you know what? I'm going to, I am going to use a little intention and I'm going to decide that I'm not going to eat anything that isn't on my, you know, current nutrition plan.

37:13 And so, they show up to the meal and everybody's eating all the wonderful things. And they're like, do you even know what you're putting in your body right now? Meanwhile, they're like dying inside. Oh, my God. I wish I could just eat some fucking gravy right now. Right? And they're like, oh, my God. I can't even believe that you're going to eat that. Are you really? Oh, you're going to eat pie now too? Haha. Oh my gosh, really? And they judge everybody else around them and they still leave the meal feeling like absolute dog shit, right? The thing is, then there's judgment on that and eventually they wear down because no one wants to feel that restricted all the time.

37:55 And so I'm going to round this out to business. Just the same way that I would coach health and fitness clients in going into it and making some choices about what are your outcomes and what are your intentions. So if your outcome is, hey, you know what? I'd really like to enjoy myself without completely kiboshing all the hard work that I've been doing. Okay, cool. Maybe you decide to go to the meal and you've got that one. My grandmother makes the most ungodly apple pie on the face of the planet. I could pretty much eat dry turkey. If I got some of that grandma's apple pie, like I'm good. That would feel good to me. But I don't need to eat all the things. Maybe that's what you do.

38:35 Maybe you decide that you're going to just let yourself go and do whatever you want to do and indulge in all the things. And as soon as it's done, it's done. But you don't get to judge yourself. It's just over. It's finished. You decide you're going to do it ahead of time. So there's no guilt. Well, I already chose that. I didn't go against something that I said I was going to do. I didn't break a promise to myself because I chose it ahead of time. Right? Yeah. Or if you decide you're going to stick to your guns, so be it. Go stick to your guns, but allow the rest of the people around you to enjoy it, blah, blah, blah. If that's your intention and you execute on it, you can congratulate yourself afterwards. And again, there's no judgment. So as a business owner, when we go into the holidays, you might be in a couple of different situations.

39:21 Number one, you might be in a spot where you're like, shit, I'm two months till the end of the year. I'm nowhere near where I wanted to be. I just want to tank the whole rest of the thing. Well, if that's what you choose... Okay, but you better be prepared for the consequences because basically what that means is that you're going to be way behind everybody else who's still getting after it. Which if you're okay with that, that's fine. But you need to examine that in the context of your outcomes, not your outcomes for this year. That's irrelevant. What are your outcomes as a whole in your business? Because basically, that's the same thing as you deciding to just take January and February off.

40:04 Would you ever do that? Like, fuck no, you wouldn't do that. Yeah, right? And I think the one other situation is maybe you're blowing and going. You've been getting after it all year long. And you're like, man, all right, you know what? I should keep going. I should keep grinding. I should just burn this thing up until the very last moment. Maybe you should. I don't know. But you got to look at what your outcomes are. And is that in service to your outcomes? And does that involve actually allowing yourself to enjoy some of the holidays or not? Right? So understand through all of this, I hope you're picking up what I'm putting down.

40:45 Our intentions for our actions are really important. And then the decisions that we make are partially informed by our intentions. And they absolutely should be informed by the outcomes that we're after. That's going to be a sound clip right there. The whole piece. So much gold within that. And I'm still thinking about pie. I got to be honest with you. But I got some. When my grandma came unexpectedly because of the hurricane, I got some. So I think there's magic in that, right? When you make a decision, make the decision from a position of choice, not obligation, not guilt. Don't attach a story to it. It's like, here's where I'm going. This is the decision I'm making.

41:26 The end. Close it. Honestly, that the segment you just had right there, I think is a beautiful way to wrap this whole thing up and put a bow on it, just because I think at the end of the day, we all are about to walk into the holiday season. We are all running our own businesses and we have a lot of people that need us now more than ever because of the holidays, the election. all the things that are happening in the world, the hurricanes you just mentioned, the world is in dire need of us and they need the best version of us to show up. And the best version of us showing up is the version that can make decisions, not perfect decisions, quick decisions for their sake. And so that's what true leadership is. Leadership is decision makers and they're the ones who take the first step. So I think that this is just a really timely episode. And I'm pumped that we got to dig into this one today, brother.

42:08 Any last final thoughts you want to share? I hope that if you're listening to this right now, you get that this isn't about guilt. This isn't about being good, being bad or anywhere in between. But what it is about. Yeah, that's exactly right. We saved that for next week. We're just buttering you up. But you know, what it is about is the fact that there's something that we know beyond the shadow of a doubt. It is that you cannot run a successful business if you cannot make decisions effectively and swiftly. And I hope that you got that from this episode. And Brooke, did you say we're going to whip up a little graphic or something on the side thing? Well, we'll put together in the show notes here. We'll have a little downloadable PDF that you guys can grab for the side.

42:48 Rock on. I love it. All right. Well, hopefully you got a lot out of this episode. If nothing else, finish listening to this. And for God's sake, go eat some fucking pie. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Coaching Equation podcast. Until next time, go make some decisions and do it swiftly. Talk soon. Take care, everybody. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Coaching Equation. Please hit subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you got value out of this episode, we would be so grateful if you would share it out with a friend and leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite platform. To learn more about Empire Partners or to inquire about working with Ryan and Brooke, please visit www.empirepartners.io forward slash go.