112. Mastering Difficult Decisions: A Guide to Clear and Confident Choices

What's up guys. Welcome back to Never Stop Building Sam Kaufman here, as always, excited and grateful to be talking to you today, coming at you a little different today. I got you on a mobile recording for this episode coming out I believe first week in April. This episode is going to be about making decisions. I want to share with you guys a practice that has worked for me to make some of the biggest business and life decisions that I've had to make in my life and career. It's super simple, it's going to sound super easy, and that's because it is Now in the process. You will still have to eventually make the ultimate decision, but what I found is for myself and what I found for so many other people, which is why I'm sharing this and why I had to develop this to begin with is so many of us overwhelm and overcomplicate the decision-making process on big decisions so much that we exhaust ourselves so much in the process of making a decision that we become too tired to implement properly once we actually do make a decision. Or, worse, we over-exhaust ourselves into a position where we try not to make a decision at all. Both of those are terrible, terrible ways to go about decision-making If you're going to try to do anything big, ambitious, wonderful, great grand in your life. You're really trying to build something which I believe a lot of you are I know I am. You're going to have to make some big decisions and in the beginning of anything, in the beginning, decisions seem clear, right. They seem right, wrong, black, white. This makes sense. This doesn't make sense. As things get bigger machines get bigger, businesses get bigger, decisions become less clear. There's no longer. This is right and this is wrong. And oftentimes you can be faced with a multiple decision tree all of them right, all of them wrong, but you have to make one. Them wrong, but you have to make one. Indecision is the killer of results. I'm telling you right now and this is coming from a guy who went through multiple seasons of being indecisive and slowing down his own progress and the only things I've ever regretted in my career on the heels of getting through the implementation of something, we're not deciding to do it faster. Getting through the implementation of something, we're not deciding to do it faster. I can tell you that every time I've ever thought I regretted something, it was I wish I decided faster Whether it was because it would have sped up the ROI because it would have reduced the amount of pain involved. Because, whatever it was, my only regrets have ever come from I wish I did it faster. So I'm going to walk you through my process now for making some of these really big decisions.

So what I like to do is and I do this on a whiteboard. You can do this however you want, but I like to get this visually in front of me. And typically in most scenarios you've got two to three decisions that you're really between when you're in a complex decision-making scenario. It's never 14, 15, or 10, or 1, or 2. It's usually 2 or 3. And I like to write down, almost like a tree. I like to write down, let's say, you have a whiteboard in front of you and you draw two lines and you cut the whiteboard into thirds and you title the top of each column the decision that you're going to make right Decision one, decision two, decision three.

In the column of decision one, you're going to start bullet pointing all of the pros of decision one. When you're done with the pros, you're going to go either next to and go vertical or go below, depending on how much space you have. You're going to bullet the cons, okay. So I don't even call it pros and cons, though it's exactly what it is. I call it positive impact, negative impact. And then I like to get even more granular and on who and on what. And so, for me, if you're going to positive impact, negative impact, I'm looking at positive and negative on me, my family, my emotional well-being, my physical well-being, my money, my employees, clients, market share, budget, expenses, all those things Positive impact, negative impact, and if it's none, it's none. But those are generally like you want to kind of visualize who and what is affected by your decision. You can even write down in a fourth column who and what is affected by this decision. That's where you're going positive impact, negative impact, okay. Column two you're going to repeat the same process. Column three repeat the same process for each decision.

Now you have a visual representation of what each decision is going to look like for you, both positive and negative impact, because, look, every decision has a positive and negative consequence. There is no decision. That's perfectly right. You know, I have a teenage daughter and I'm constantly trying to help her understand, because I didn't understand, nobody taught me this. I learned this when I was a full-blown adult, having made a lot of good and a lot of bad decisions. So I'm constantly trying to teach my kids that the world is not black and white. Decisions are not black and white. There's a lot of gray and there's positive and negative consequence to everything. And so, instead of overworking yourself and overcomplicating and overwhelming yourself and trying to make the right decision, just understand that making a decision is what's important. And yeah, there are some very clear.

When you do that, when you do your three trees, your three columns, for each decision, you're going to see some negative impact things that are going to make that decision clear, that you are not going to make that decision, you're going to see a negative impact on your family and you're going to go. I'm not willing to do that to my family. It's not happening. That decision goes out the window. This is why core values are so important. A mission is so important. If your core values and your mission are clear, the negative impact side makes the decision for you. So when you do negative impact on and you have core values and a mission in place and you look at negative impact on your family or on your clients or on your employees, certain decisions are going to have certain negative impacts that immediately remove them from the decision tree. Right, there's certain positive ROI that's never going to outweigh the negative impact certain decisions can make. And then there's going to be decisions where there's a lot of negative impact but maybe the positive impact on your emotional well-being or on your family or your wife or your child is so big you have to make that decision. Maybe you have to make that really hard decision that does negatively impact your finances or a client or that employee or employees, because you have to prioritize your emotional, your spiritual, your family's well-being. You're going to encounter both of those scenarios and multiple scenarios in your business.

I only wish I had started this practice eight, nine years ago when I was making decisions. So for so long I made decisions on the fly, based on what my gut told me and what I thought, and for a while it worked. It just doesn't work at scale, and at scale things get a lot more complex and the consequences of decisions ripple a lot further. So you're going to have those three and eventually you're going to come down to two and then eventually, obviously, you're going to come down to one, and in this scenario what you have to look for is a moderate balance of positive and negative outcome for what's truly important Now, when you're coming, what I want you to review while you're making this decision process is I need you to get out, either have another whiteboard or a spot on this board or a piece of paper.

Desired outcome what is the desired outcome of the decision? The desired outcome needs to match the ultimate decision that you make. The decision you pick from your options needs to be the one that clearly takes you closest to desired outcome without sacrificing your values and your mission, gets you closest to your desired outcome without sacrificing your values and your mission. And understand something you will be faced with decisions where nobody maybe not nobody, but you will be faced with decisions where only the people truly closest to you are going to understand why you're making that decision and how it does fit your values and it does fit your mission and it does fit the desired outcome.

So often people make decisions based on what would be approved by the most amount of people and it screws them over. You aren't making decisions for approval. You are making decisions to move the needle forward in your life, to serve your mission, to go after what you believe you're supposed to go after mission to go after what you believe you're supposed to go after, and so these decisions aren't meant to be which one looks best, because what looks best hurts people, and every time I've made decisions for what looked better or what was easier or what protected my image, it all eventually blew up anyway and none of that mattered in the end, because that series of decisions didn't actually align with what I truly wanted. And the universe has a funny way of realigning us, whether we like it or not. Some people line into it and go I'm a realigned now and I'm going to walk through this fire with courage and I'm going to get to the other side and my life is going to be good. And God has my back, like he always has. And some people get realigned and it shakes them and they never come back.

I've been realigned a few times, and every time I've made the decision to have courage, walk through whatever I have to to get to this side of a line. I, god has me and God has you too, and so I'm sharing this with you. What is the desired outcome? Which decision gets me closest to it? And am I making a decision regardless of what anybody's going to think about me, because nobody's going to be there for you in the end. It's going to be you and your family and the one or two people.

If you're lucky enough to have one or two people who love you the most, everyone else will be gone. I am telling you, everyone else will be gone. There's no follower count, there's no acquaintance. Everybody disappears when the dust settles, except for the people that truly, truly love you, and so all of your decisions should be based around what gets me closer to the desired outcome, what fits the mission in my life and what protects me in my value system, my real value system. I want you to try that decision-making tree next time you're faced with a series of difficult decisions and let me know how it goes. You can email me info at samkaufmanofficialcom. You can send me a DM at samkaufmanofficial, wherever that is on Facebook, instagram, wherever and if you appreciate this podcast, I ask that you send it to somebody who needed to hear this, who's facing some decision-making dilemmas right now. That would benefit from a system that might help them along the way. Thank you guys for listening. I'll talk to you next week.