Overcoming Decision Paralysis.

Decision paralysis keeps entrepreneurs stuck, and learning how to assess risk, limit over analysis, and take action is essential to moving a business forward.

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Decision paralysis, often called analysis paralysis, can quietly stall a small business or prevent an entrepreneur from ever getting started. In this episode, Henry Lopez and guest co-host David Begin unpack why decision paralysis happens, how it shows up differently in big strategic decisions versus daily operational choices, and why small business owners are especially vulnerable to it.

Drawing from real-world experience, Henry and David explain how fear, risk miscalculation, perfectionism, and decision fatigue all contribute to inaction. They explore the difference between intuition and expertise, referencing Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink, and discuss why relying solely on “gut instinct” can be dangerous for new entrepreneurs but powerful for experienced operators.

The conversation also covers practical strategies to break through paralysis, including risk mitigation, breaking big decisions into smaller ones, setting go/no-go dates, and using a “pretend decision” technique to reduce pressure and clarify direction. They emphasize the importance of self-awareness, leadership responsibility, and building teams that can make decisions independently.

As Henry puts it, “There are no guarantees in business, but there is a cost to not deciding.”

This episode is a must-listen for anyone feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or hesitant to make the next move in their business.

Overcoming Decision Paralysis – FAQ:

Question: What is decision paralysis in small business?
Answer: Decision paralysis occurs when fear, over analysis, or uncertainty prevents a small business owner from making necessary decisions, often leading to stalled growth or missed opportunities.

Question: How is decision paralysis different from analysis paralysis?
Answer: Analysis paralysis is a common cause of decision paralysis, where excessive research and data gathering delay action, even when enough information is available to move forward.

Question: Why do entrepreneurs struggle with decision-making more than employees?
Answer: Entrepreneurs carry the full weight of risk and consequences, often without peers or supervisors to share responsibility, which can amplify fear and hesitation.

Question: How can small business owners overcome decision paralysis?
Answer: Effective strategies include assessing worst-case scenarios, breaking big decisions into smaller steps, setting firm decision deadlines, reducing risk exposure, and seeking input from experienced mentors or coaches.

Henry Lopez (00:15):

Welcome to this episode of the How of Business Podcast. This is Henry Lopez and my guest co-host returns. David Begin. David, welcome.

David Begin (00:25):

Thanks for having me, Henry.

Henry Lopez (00:27):

This episode, David and I are going to discuss the topic of decision paralysis, which is, as I describe it, the fear of making that final decision either for something like starting a business, a big decision, or making a significant change or pivot in your small business. So I think it applies either way, depending on where you’re at in your entrepreneurial journey and that fear of making that final decision that then paralyzes us. And we either make no decision or we delay or wait so long that we miss an opportunity potentially to receive more information about how a business, including links to the show notes page for this episode and how you can continue supporting my show and receive exclusive content and discounts through a Patreon membership. Please visit the how a business.com. Alright, David, well, let’s talk about overcoming decision paralysis. Again, my definition of it, let’s just start.

Henry Lopez (01:20):

There is it is also, people also refer to it, and I’ve referred to it as analysis paralysis. I think that’s one way that we get to this paralysis on making a decision, but it’s simply when you’re not able to decide to move forward on something either because you have overanalyzed it because, and I’m very guilty of that, and perhaps it’s an exaggeration of the fear of failure that often is part of it as well, but it leads to never making any real progress, sometimes on either on starting your business or on making a critical change in your business that is critical to the survival of your business. So it could impact us throughout our entrepreneurial journey. That’s how I’m defining it.

David Begin (02:00):

Yeah, I think that’s a great definition, and I think this is a pretty common problem, and I think everybody goes through this, whether you’re a business owner, whether you’re an entrepreneur, whether you’re just working at a company, I think we all suffer from this. This is a very common issue.

Henry Lopez (02:17):

Agreed. And it gets exacerbated. You mentioned working at a company, both you and I, of course started in a corporate world, our careers where our individual decisions didn’t have as much impact as the decisions that we’re making as business owners, right?

David Begin (02:34):

Right. And I feel like when you’re the person that’s looked on to make decisions, it gets worse. So I think it does get exacerbated by business owners and entrepreneurs because a lot of times you don’t have anybody to go to make that decision. You’ve got to make it on your own. You can’t collaborate with other business owners necessarily sometimes. And sometimes it’s difficult to collaborate with your employees. So you’re the person who has to make the decision and live with the results of it more often than if you work in a team or if you’re maybe an employee.

Henry Lopez (03:03):

Exactly. Exactly. That’s why it gets amplified and it makes it that much harder sometimes. You were mentioning it just before as we were preparing to record that you look at it as there’s really two types of decision making. There’s the day-to-day stuff that we have to do, lots of small decisions, and that can lead to, as you’ve called it before, decision fatigue. And then there’s those big decisions that I’ve been alluding to as well, but they’re both challenging in their own way. Right?

David Begin (03:32):

Yeah. I think there are two types of decisions you have to make. And I think if you’re making a big decision, you should take some time to go through the process and you’re going to talk about Henry, how, what are some ways or constructs you can use when you’re trying to make a big decision. But I don’t know if you can get paralyzed in making big decisions, but I think when you’re involved in your business and you’re making a lot of decisions that I look at, I use the analogy of kind of swatting away foul balls in baseball practice. Somebody’s throwing pitches at you and it’s your job to either hit the ball into the field or hit a foul ball. But these things are coming at you all the time. And so good business owners are the ones who can sit there and take the pitches and respond to the pitches. But I think there are periods where things happen where all of a sudden you can’t decide where to have lunch.

Henry Lopez (04:29):

Yeah, no, exactly. But just to continue with that sports analogy, the thing is though, you got to step up to the plate. You do, as business owners, this is what we have to do. And continuing again with as a hitter, if you are averaging 300, you are doing tremendously. If you’re averaging 400, you’re probably going to be in the hall of fame if you continue that for any streak of time. So it’s a perfect analogy to express the fact that sometimes what paralyzes is the fear that we’re going to make the wrong decision that we’re going to make a mistake, right?

David Begin (05:00):

Yeah. And I think you have to be self-aware enough to know that, hey, I’m in this season of, I can’t make a decision. I don’t know what’s going on with me, and we’ll talk about what I think causes it, but you got to be aware enough to say, I’m really having difficulty making decisions right now. Why is that the case?

Henry Lopez (05:20):

Yeah, and I smile when you say that because you and I both have hit those walls at different points in our business ownership. And fortunately that is one of the benefits of having a partner or someone that you trust or a mentor or a coach, is we were able to talk each other and kind of help each other pull ourselves off the edge on that.

David Begin (05:42):

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Henry Lopez (05:44):

But that is an example of paralysis that I’m talking about here. It can be either the big decisions, but it can also be the cumulative effect to your point of the small day-to-day decisions that add up and lead to fatigue and then to paralysis.

David Begin (05:59):

That’s right.

Henry Lopez (06:00):

So book recommendation here, one of my favorite books, one of my favorite authors, Malcolm Gladwell, in part because I think his content is easy for my mind to consume. It’s not overly complex, but Blink, I think you’ve read Blink, have you not?

David Begin (06:13):

Yeah, yeah. I love that book. Great book,

Henry Lopez (06:16):

Insightful book. Blink The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. And if I were to summarize, one of the key premises is that what experts do, and I’ll come back to that point because that’s an important point. What experts do is that they go with their gut instinct, that initial feeling. And of course throughout the book, he also uses sports analogies of how in a split second, an athlete has to make a decision and there’s not a lot of time to think about that decision. Do I swing? Do I not swing? But he talks about that what we build over time is this knowledge and understanding that allows us to make what we think is a gut decision, but it’s really we’re leveraging and bringing to bear our experiences. Right?

David Begin (07:00):

Yeah. And it would be interesting to talk about the differences between a gut decision and a decision that we, with you and I being high fact binders, the decisions that we make based on doing a lot of study and a lot of information gathering. The analogy he uses in that book, which I love, is the one where an expert looks at a painting or an expert looks at a sculpture that the museum in Los Angeles just purchased for millions of dollars. And they said, and the guy walks in and said, that’s a fake. It was

Henry Lopez (07:31):

The Getty, right? It was a sculpture at the Getty, I think it was.

David Begin (07:34):

I think it was, yeah, it was a sculpture. And this guy walks in and says, that’s a fake. And he made that decision in just a few seconds.

Henry Lopez (07:43):

He didn’t pull out any tools, he didn’t do any sampling. He didn’t do an x-ray of it. He knew because he’s seen the real thing so many times that he just instinctively knew. Yeah,

David Begin (07:55):

Yeah. And I think somebody asked him, how do you know? And he didn’t have an answer. He didn’t have an answer right away. Now, eventually they did the fact finding and found out it was a fake, but it was very interesting. He had that quick decision. He didn’t know why he thought that, and then he backed it up with facts.

Henry Lopez (08:16):

So I want to break this down a little bit because this really is complex. I want to come back to the point that I emphasize of expert. So the challenge for us, let’s take it from a scenario of I’m looking to launch my first business. Well, I’m not an expert at that point, so that is part of what we have to understand, that I cannot in that case, rely on my gut instinct because I haven’t developed that instinct yet. So I have to gather some knowledge to the point that you’ve made. I have to gather some facts so that then I can get closer to that point, but I’m still not going to get to that years of expert level. That’s where it comes into play. Also to lean on others, a partner that has the experience, a coach, a mentor, a peer, someone who’s done it before and that get that valuable input, that’s one way that you can overcome not being an expert.

David Begin (09:08):

Yeah, that’s a great example of, and this whole idea of time gets put into play too, is if you’re going to quit your job and start a business, that’s a major life decision. That’s something you shouldn’t make based on intuition or you shouldn’t make it a snap decision. That’s something that you should gather as much information and knowledge and expertise as you can before you decide to make that jump.

Henry Lopez (09:34):

That’s right Now as we’re running our businesses, as we’re getting more and more experience, that’s when we’ll get better and better. It’s that batting practice, if you will, and it’s actually taking the swings. In other words, you got to hit enough foul balls, strike out enough times that you’re going to develop that instinct and become an expert in your business.

David Begin (09:56):

Yeah, and if you look, you’re saying that I think about the decision to start a business or the decision to buy a business is a very major decision for you, and we don’t do it very often, but look at the people on Shark Tank. Remember the TV show Shark Tank, those guys are making decisions on whether a business looks like it’s a good opportunity or not very quickly because they have that expertise. They’ve done it enough times, they know what they’re looking for, and so they’re making very big, big decisions. Now, they’re not risking all their money to buy these startups, so it’s not that big of a deal. There’s not a lot of risk associated with it. But for what you and I would take a lot of time to make decisions on, they do it very quickly.

Henry Lopez (10:40):

Yes, exactly. Now, the other point I want to make though on this is what I see often and I’m guilty of it, is hiding behind. I need more knowledge. I need to take another class, or I need to go to this workshop, or I need to read this other book, or I need to go back and do some more analysis. And while as we very clearly highlighted, especially when you’re doing something like starting a first business, you have to do that research. I mean, to me, it’s just part of who I am as a fact finder, high fact finder and analytical. But at some point you are taking a leap of faith, and that’s where I think it gets hard.

David Begin (11:14):

Yeah, I would agree. And there is always that point where you’re saying, I’ve gathered as much information as I can and I’m willing to go ahead and take the risk as long as I understand what the risk is, it makes that decision making process a little bit easier. Now, it could be a big risk that you’re taking. You could be spending all your life savings on a business, but if you say, okay, I understand what the risk that I’m taking, and I don’t know what the outcome is going to be of this decision, but I’m willing to go ahead and make that decision anyway. I think that’s where you finally get to that point. But there’s the leap. You’re always going to have to take a leap on a big, should I start a business? Should I sell my business? Should I get married? Should I not get married? Is this the right person to get married to? I mean, you gather as much information as you can and then you just, yeah, there is a gap. There is that crossing the canyon of unknown, you do your very best to minimize that, but there will always be an unknown component to it. Absolutely.

Henry Lopez (12:16):

Yeah. There are no guarantees, there’s no crystal balls, there’s no magic eight balls here. I mean you could use them, but it’s not going to predict the future very accurately. And we’ll sell

David Begin (12:26):

You some if you

Henry Lopez (12:26):

Want and we’ll sell you some. Yeah, we’ve got some online. Go to the how business.com. And the other thing I always say is I wish I could call up Uncle Buffet and say, Hey, is this going to work out? Should I do this? That doesn’t exist. However, what does exist is to, again, a partner, a mentor, a coach, a peer, someone who’s been there before, that person can help you answer that question that you poised of, have I done enough analysis?

David Begin (12:55):

And that can

Henry Lopez (12:56):

Also help or know I need to go research. But that’s hard because you get so deep into it that sometimes you don’t know when to stop

David Begin (13:02):

And they can help you frame the decision making points that you’ve got to go through when you’re making a big decision. And then they’ll also help you frame the risk. So again, most decisions in business as business owners is managing your risk. And as I was developing my management team, it was difficult for me to get them to start thinking in that way in terms of, okay, what’s the risk of this decision either in money, time, liability, losing employees or whatever it is, what’s the risk that we have here and is the risk that we’re about to take an acceptable risk for the return of the reward? So yeah, so I think what happens a lot of time in big decisions is people don’t think about or they don’t want to anticipate the risk. They don’t want to think about the dark side of this thing blowing up. When we started the carwash, for example, I still had my old job in technology, and so in the decision making process, we said, well, if this thing blows up on the pad, I still have my job and I’ll be able to pay off whatever the loan will be for the money that’s left over on the business. Now it might take me 20 years, but we can get it paid off.

Henry Lopez (14:11):

Exactly.

David Begin (14:12):

And so we were managing the risk and mitigating the risk, but also understanding what the overall risk is. And I think a lot of times what keeps people from making a decision is they don’t really dive into what are the risks. They don’t understand it. And so that’s why they feel like they got to go get more information. They either don’t understand it, they’re not looking at it, they’re not willing to look and say what’s the risk, or they’re not willing to take the risk, which is fine too. That’s okay if you’re not willing to take the risk, that’s fine.

Henry Lopez (14:41):

That’s right. But being honest with yourself about what is that reason you’re being paralyzed. And again, it could be real as you’re articulating, which is if this fails, I lose my home, I lose my kids’ college fund, I am in major dire straits. Or I just keep my job, which is it? What’s the worst case scenario? Yeah. Alright, we’ll come back to that because that’s such an important point. Thanks for sharing that. I just want to finish up on the point of personalities and how that impacts this challenge of decision paralysis and overcoming it. As I’ve shared already, and for those of you who’ve been listening to show, probably know that I’m a high fact finder. I’m an analyzer. I’m great at putting spreadsheets together you’ve never seen,

Henry Lopez (15:26):

But I can get lost in that very easily now. That’s what I need to some point to help me put the risk in perspective and to validate it for me and help me take then that leap at the end. But that’s my personality type. So what then bogs me down, and this is what we’re talking about, big decisions. I’ll talk about day-to-day decisions in a moment. So for big decisions, I need time to do my analysis and research. That’s how I process it for you. You’re a fact finder, but much more different than I am in that you’re more of a fire and then maybe aim or assess the damage later and that’s why we balance each other so well. But in your perspective, what situations would big decisions tend to paralyze you a bit?

David Begin (16:15):

Yeah, it’s really interesting because I am a high fact finder too. That’s one of my, we will have that same characteristic, but I don’t always make decisions based on a lot of analysis. I’ll make decisions based on risk. If I want a car I go through, if I like it, I’m buying it, right? I don’t go through a lot of decision process for cars. I’ve bought houses that way sometimes too, but there’s very little risk to buying a car. I might lose a little bit of money, but it’s not that big of a deal. I’m buying a house. We can sell a house if we don’t like it. I don’t look at it when I make decisions a lot of times and it does kind of freak my wife out sometimes how quickly I can make decisions on some things and not other things. But I think I do it based on risk.

David Begin (16:57):

If I feel like it’s a very risky decision, I’ll spend more time analyzing it if I don’t think there’s much risk, even if it’s a lot of money. And I think a lot of people say, well, you should be spending more time, a lot more money. Well, I don’t think in terms of that. I think in terms of what’s the risk of making this decision, it’s much easier for me to make a quicker decision. I can get bogged down and oh, should I get this color or that color, these options and I don’t like doing it, I like it, I’m going to buy it.

Henry Lopez (17:27):

That’s

David Begin (17:28):

It. So I think from my perspective it’s more about risk, but what bogs me down sometimes is if it’s something I feel like I should do versus I want to do. So I’ll get into analysis paralysis if it’s something in my heart I don’t really want to do. Now there are some things in my heart that I don’t want to do, but I’ve got to do anyway. So there’s those situations

Henry Lopez (17:59):

And that could apply to maybe letting somebody go or making or replacing a piece of equipment even though you feel like maybe you can get more life out of it. Those kind of things where you don’t want to do it, you might tend to put those off.

David Begin (18:14):

Yeah, so those are the big decisions. I can talk about why I get analysis paralysis for the day-to-day if you want to go into that. So a lot of times if I’m physically tired, so if I’ve been traveling a lot or working a lot, if I’m not physically up to speed, that will impact my ability to make a decision. If I’m not in the right emotional place sometimes that it’s like I feel sorry for somebody. Sometimes I’ll feel really sorry for ’em when I fire ’em as opposed to this is really the best decision for the company and best decision for them. Sometimes focus on, I don’t want to give people bad news. I don’t want to confront this company because they charge me a bunch of money for something they shouldn’t charged me for. I’ll get in those states sometimes where I don’t want to have that conflict and it’s because I’m not in the right place.

David Begin (19:08):

So that happens quite a bit. I might’ve made some bad decisions, so I’m coming off a bad decision and then I start my confidence sometimes will start dropping and my ability to make decisions or the outcome is probably a little bit more than I’m willing. It is going to be a big outcome. And so sometimes that’ll get me in that position. And the good thing about business, if you’re making, instead of making the two or three really big decisions a year, if you’re making multiple decisions per day, then they’re small decisions. If you can get in a position in your business where you’re making smaller decisions consistently, you don’t have to make the big decisions like we ran out of money, what did we do? That’s a big decision as opposed to did I make the right decisions to manage my cash flow throughout the entire year so I don’t have to make the big decision? Making a series of smaller decisions is much easier than having to make lots of big decisions at the end.

Henry Lopez (20:08):

That’s right. And that’s one of the ways that I recommend you tackle the bigger decisions is can I break it down? That’s the way I always look at problems or obstacles. If you look at the entire mountain, it can be insurmountable, but if you break it down, that might be a better way to make decisions Leading up to it.

David Begin (20:27):

When I’m having to make decisions for other people because they’re not willing to make their own decisions, then that’s when I get paralyzed and get tired. You only have so much energy and even if you make a small decision, it takes a little bit of energy out of you each time you do it.

Henry Lopez (20:42):

But that speaks to then as leaders of our businesses, we need to put the right people in places that are willing have the courage to make decisions, and then we need to lead them to learn how to do so we

David Begin (20:53):

That’s exactly right. You got to train your employees to make their own decisions or to think about the problem and come to you with a recommendation. And I got to the point later in my career where I manage people, I said, I’m not doing your thinking for you.

Henry Lopez (21:07):

Yeah, I’m not doing your problem solving

David Begin (21:09):

For you. You come to me with what you think should be done and why you think it should be done. And the people that worked for me that were smart, that wanted decisions quickly were the ones that gave me, here’s what I thought. Here’s the decision I came with and here’s why I came with it. What do you think that made my decision making process so much easier? And I would bet eight out of 10 times they got what they wanted, but they demonstrated to me that they put the effort in upfront.

Henry Lopez (21:41):

This is Enri Lopez, briefly pausing this episode to invite you to schedule a free coaching consultation with me. I welcome the opportunity to chat with you about your business plans and offer the guidance and accountability that we all need to achieve success. As an experienced small business owner myself, I understand the challenges you’re experiencing and often it’s about helping you ask the right questions to help you make progress towards achieving your goals. Whether it’s getting started with your first business or growing and maybe exiting your existing small business, I can help you get there. To find out more about my business coaching services and to schedule your free coaching consultation, please visit the how of business.com. Take that next step today towards finally realizing your business ownership dreams. I look forward to speaking with you soon.

Henry Lopez (22:32):

We could talk for hours as to how we got here, but what helped us, and you could argue as our background, our corporate and sales background, but by the time we got to be business owners, we were pretty expert level at problem solving in that when you break it down, because we’ve done sales training and been conscious of why we are competent, when we look at a decision, we’re doing a couple of things very quickly. First of all, we’ve developed confidence that it’s okay that every decision isn’t going to be right. That’s not the test, that’s not the standard I can get. Most of them I’m doing well. There’s times like you said, where you go into a slump and you got to pull yourself out of it. But what I think that we do instinctively because of that experience is think a few steps ahead.

Henry Lopez (23:19):

So very quickly we can play the chess in our head of this decision. If I do this, it’s going to have these two impacts. It’s going to affect this person, it’s going to do this, it’s going to impact this other part of the business, and we can do that very rapidly. What you are speaking to is what you did is you helped your team of leaders learn how to do that because you told them, take the time to think of two or three possible solutions and then come to because you’re teaching them, then think a few steps ahead when you’re making this decision.

David Begin (23:49):

Yeah, I think nowadays in school we teach people you got to know the right answer.

David Begin (23:56):

A lot of people don’t want to have the wrong answer. They want me to make the decision because if I make the decision, they’re not going to have the wrong answer. And so you’ve got to train your employees to start making decisions and for themselves, and it’s a long process because unfortunately, I don’t believe our school system is teaching people to think and make choices and make decisions and take a little bit of risk. But once you start doing that, it becomes a very, very effective team and you’re starting to develop the next generation of leaders either in your business or going off in other businesses, but do not get in a situation where you’re making decisions for your employees that they can make if they spend a little bit of time and effort on it.

Henry Lopez (24:42):

Huge point. But as you also are highlighting, the flip side of it is if I create an environment where there is fear of making the wrong decision, there’s no room for making errors, then that’s going to continue to paralyze people. And as much as I might want to pretend like I’m teaching them how to make decisions, they’re not going to because they’re afraid of making a mistake and that will paralyze them.

David Begin (25:04):

That’s exactly right. And I probably had an environment like that where if you made the wrong decision, I lost my mind. Well, that doesn’t encourage any. I said, well, I’m not going to do that again. Yeah, absolutely. I think I lived both sides of that in my management career where if people made the wrong decision, they probably got their head chopped off for it, which was terrible. It didn’t create a culture of people allowing them to take some risk and make some mistakes,

Henry Lopez (25:28):

And part of it is that perfectionism that we bring to it and that expectation that everybody should be performing equal to a hundred percent of how we would do it.

David Begin (25:39):

Yeah.

Henry Lopez (25:40):

Alright. We’ve been touching on it, but I want to focus now on some ways to overcome this and some of this will be restating it, but I think that first and foremost is accepting that this happens. It happens to all of us, this paralysis. It’s like it’s with mental health where people are still not completely comfortable about talking about it, but it’s okay. This doesn’t make you a lesser business owner. It doesn’t make you a lesser anything. This is human nature. I think to a big extent we learn how to manage it and how to avoid it, but it happens to all of us.

David Begin (26:12):

Yeah, I agree. I agree. But yeah, being self-aware, Hey, I’m in this process where I can’t make decisions, things are piling up on my desk, people are noticing it. Just be aware of it and just say, okay, I’m in this position. That’s half the battle.

Henry Lopez (26:28):

And then as we’ve said, you need to, my approach is for big decisions, I plan, maybe it’s financial projections, if it has to do with making an investment, I want to, as you’ve articulated, minimize my exposure. So is it acceptable risk for me and my team and the capital and resources that I have available to apply to this, and then I have to take a leap at the end of the day, I’m taking a leap

David Begin (26:54):

And very few decisions in our lives are life altering, and so the ones that are spend the time and really put some effort into it, but remember, you’re making a lot of decisions in a business. You’re not going to make ’em all correctly and you’re going to be able to adjust. If you make a decision that wasn’t right, just learn from it and move on. But don’t throw the weight of the world on that decision when the weight of the world doesn’t deserve to be on it.

Henry Lopez (27:20):

But if it does, if in fact what you’re trying to take on is so monumental that it would have devastating impact on you. If it fails, then my suggestion is always you’re starting too big. You’re trying to take on too much at once. Break it down, simplify it, reduce it. If we’re talking about starting a business to niche down, eventually take an MVP approach to developing a business. So many people have this vision for what their business is going to look like five years from now, and they want to start at that version instead of starting small, validating that there’s actually a market, all of the typical things that go into iterating and starting small

David Begin (27:59):

If

Henry Lopez (27:59):

It’s an existing business. I’ll give you a perfect example. I was working with a client, I think it was last year, and he was trying to make a decision on do I put my money on this one big marketing campaign or this other big marketing campaign, two big decisions. It was going to take all of his budget for that period of time. It might’ve been for the year. And instead what I suggest that he think about is, why don’t you do both, but split the amount, so reduce the risk, try both in limited ways and that way now it’s going to make it easier for you to make the decision because I’m not writing so much on one thing. I’m hedging my bet here, if you will, and that minimizes the risk and in fact increases your odds of success

David Begin (28:41):

And it goes back to that risk decision. And most people get paralyzed because the risk is too great. The question you got to ask yourself is, how can I minimize the risk? How can I mitigate the risk? Yeah. I love the idea that you brought up Henry of how do you minimize, how do you mitigate the risk? Because all decision making has a risk component to it, and if it’s a big risk, how do you mitigate it?

Henry Lopez (29:05):

Going back to the Malcolm Gladwell book, blink, a quote that applies here is this quote, the key to good decision making is not knowledge, it is understanding. We are swimming in the former meaning knowledge. We are desperately lacking in the latter end. There’s a lot packed into that one sentence, right?

David Begin (29:25):

Yeah. There really is. There absolutely is.

Henry Lopez (29:28):

And the key is, we’ve talked about it again, is when do I stop taking in knowledge and instead lean on my understandings of all of that data that I’ve collected

David Begin (29:40):

At

Henry Lopez (29:40):

Some point I to stop with the input because that will paralyze you

David Begin (29:45):

And then you got to take that information and synthesize it into an understanding as he talks about, which I think is good.

Henry Lopez (29:53):

Yeah. An expert does that in a moment. For those of us who are not experts on it, especially in starting a business, that’s where we have to do our work in the research and analysis. We need to get help from others and then assess the risk component as we’ve been expressing to make sure all of that is in alignment for you.

David Begin (30:12):

And that’s why, like you said, you have mentors, you have coaches. I’ve always had coaches in one form or fashion in my personal life and in my business career, if you can’t get it synthesized, get another perspective and maybe you get two or three perspectives and you start coming up with the answer. I’ve got a friend that hates it when I ask him a question and then I turn around and ask someone else the same question. Well, that

Henry Lopez (30:36):

Sounds like me,

David Begin (30:40):

But that’s

Henry Lopez (30:40):

Part your decision process on big decisions.

David Begin (30:43):

It is. Well, even small and stupid things sometimes I’ll do that, but I look for trends. I look for different answers until, okay, I’m starting to piece together a trend of what people are telling me. And so sometimes going to multiple sources is what you need to do.

Henry Lopez (31:03):

The caveat I would add to that is that be careful who you go to go to people that you trust and who have probably had similar experiences or existing business owners or in the arena, be careful with going to your friend or your parent that they’re well intended, but if they haven’t been there, that advice might be skewed.

David Begin (31:23):

Yeah. You and I talked about that because our parents didn’t have business expertise. My dad was in the military, so he had no business expertise, so he wasn’t a person I can go to talk about, Hey, what’s it like starting a business? Go talk to business owners who have done it. So sometimes you have to go find those people or surround yourself. And it’s much easier nowadays to do it because you’ve got the internet, you’ve got YouTube channels of people who are doing it. You’ve got podcasts like this one of people who are doing it. So you’ve got so much more access to resources nowadays than you ever had before.

Henry Lopez (31:59):

Absolutely. Alright, so other ways to overcome the decision paralysis. We’ve touched on this as well, which is to ask yourself, this is the big question I always ask people, what’s the worst case scenario if this fails? And if the worst case scenario is I keep my job or I go back and get a job and yes, it’s going to be painful, it’s going to be embarrassing, I’m going to maybe lose a chunk of money. But if you can live with that, if it doesn’t detrimentally impact you and your family, then that helps. Answering that question helps to put that risk in perspective.

David Begin (32:29):

Yeah. I had a sales mentor who told me one time, and especially in a sales deal, you and I worked at the same company, but you and I used to work at companies that competed with each other too. And the sales manager says, as long as they can’t eat you or they can’t kill you, it’s going to be okay.

David Begin (32:47):

Like that. So he brought things into perspective that yeah, we’re not going to win every sales opportunity we get involved in. Okay, so this is not a do or die situation and has always stuck with me in decision making process. And I’ve told other people that as long as they can’t eat you and they can’t kill you, it’s going to be okay.

Henry Lopez (33:05):

Yeah. And the reason that’s so applicable is what happens in our caveman brain as we go back to that, the saber tooth tiger is going to kill me. And so that’s how we deal with fear. We are not good at ranking fear that fear meter gets pegged to one end or the other, and we got to learn to analyze and say, okay, what’s the real exposure here?

Henry Lopez (33:32):

Another thing is that I find as effective is to set a date, a go, no go date. As I say, put a stake in the ground and that helps also with the analysis paralysis. So I’m going to set a date by which I’m going to have this decision or this gate completed. It goes back to what we talked about. If sometimes to say I’m going to start the business or not, well that’s a huge decision. What if we take it a step at a time with go no go decisions As I do the research and validate this idea,

David Begin (34:03):

The one thing I learned, which was I just learned this a couple years ago, but put an arbitrary stake in the ground. So if you’re stuck, for example, put an arbitrary, say, I got to make a decision by May, but by April 15th I’m going to quote make the decision, so I’m just going to pick the one I think I want. And then for the next two weeks, act as if you made that decision. Okay, I made the decision. And then see what comes up for you in that two weeks. And you might get some indications or some clues that might tell you what my gut is saying. This was not a great decision. So kind of create a pretend decision and then see what comes up for you. But act in your brain, act as if you made that decision. That’s really helped me quite a bit in certain things that I get stuck on is kind of do the pretend decision.

Henry Lopez (34:55):

Yeah, I think that’s brilliant. I think as you were saying that, I’m thinking back to a decision I made end of last year. I was about to invest in a business, and I think I did just that. David, I envisioned, I told myself and I told Pam, my wife, okay, we’re going to do this. We’re doing it. And so I think what it allowed me to do is put myself in a mentality of envisioning myself doing that business day to day. And what ended up happening for me in that is that after a couple of weeks, I realized I don’t know that I want to do that.

David Begin (35:22):

Yeah, that’s perfect. See, and I think what it does is it takes the pressure away of making the decision. You’ve made the decision. So the stress level drops quite a bit. You’re acting like you either decided to do it or not decided to do it, and then you can see what’s going to come up for you. But I think you end up in a different mindset once you’ve pretend made that decision and now all this information is coming up that you couldn’t have accessed when you’re in this decision making process, if that makes any

Henry Lopez (35:54):

Sense. It does. Brilliant. Alright, a couple other things, and we’ll start to wrap it up here, except that there’s no perfect timing, as with people who tell me they can time the stock market. Yeah, good luck with that over time. So the whole thing I get, well, is this a good time to start a business? Which the best of times is the worst of times and it always will be. Right Now, are there things you just take into consideration? Especially if it’s an existing business and I’m thinking about launching a particular product line or making a pivot. You certainly have to take those factors into consideration. But usually in my experience, David, the whole, well, let’s wait to see if we get past the recession. You’re going to be waiting a long time.

David Begin (36:37):

Oh, I know. I hear people do that all the time. And I remember getting interviewed by the local newspaper when we started our business here. Aren’t you nervous about starting a business in this economy?

Henry Lopez (36:49):

That’s always the question. Or it can always be the question, right?

David Begin (36:52):

Yeah.

Henry Lopez (36:53):

In this inflationary period, in this recessionary period. But there’s always, now, again, there are certain businesses after the financial crisis crash. I probably wasn’t going to start my mortgage brokerage business just then, right? But other than those obvious things from a timing perspective, don’t let that come too much into it.

David Begin (37:15):

Yeah. There is never a good time. If you’re looking at the risk profile component of it, there will never be a good time.

Henry Lopez (37:21):

I think it’s an easy thing to hide behind.

David Begin (37:23):

Absolutely.

Henry Lopez (37:24):

We talked about taking it a step at a time, breaking it down, prioritizing decisions so you’re not making, if possible, you avoid making a huge decision, but instead make a series of smaller decisions that’s critical as well. So those are some tips and thoughts. There’s a couple of related episodes I want to point everybody to and a free download on this topic. So episode 2 45 of the how a business was entitled, two Responsibilities Small Business Owners Must Embrace. That’s a topic episode that I did, and it was about my belief, and I think everybody would agree who’s been doing it, that to be a business owner, you have to embrace decision making and accept mistakes. So it’s a lot of what we’ve been talking about,

David Begin (38:06):

But

Henry Lopez (38:06):

I focus on it there. And from those two perspectives, you have to be willing to make the decision. I think if you’re going to be a business owner, you have to be willing to be the decision maker

David Begin (38:18):

And people get sold on the idea of being their business. Hey, don’t you want to be your own boss? Well, sometimes that’s the worst thing in the world.

Henry Lopez (38:25):

That’s right.

David Begin (38:26):

And it was interesting. I went to my son’s high school class, there was a DECA group and I say, how many people want to own their own business one day? And less than half of the people raised their hand. Interesting. I’m like, are you kidding me? But it’s interesting because they don’t want the hassle of it. That’s right. Yeah. It’s not for everybody. So you got to like it. You got to be willing to take a little bit of failure. You got to be able to make quick decisions, and you got to be able to take on risk.

Henry Lopez (38:53):

So I have a free download for everyone. Just go to the how of business.com, go to the show notes page for this episode, or you can find all of my downloads on the resource link in the menu resources, and then downloads. And this one’s called Two Responsibilities Business Owners Must Embrace as we just talked about. So just kind of expands on that concept and some additional thoughts and takeaways. So two Responsibilities business owners must embrace free download for you at the how of business.com. The other episode I’m recommending related to this is another one that you and I did and a lot of similarities and overlap here. It was called Dealing With Overwhelm, and that’s episode 2 65. You and I talked about this component of what we’ve talked about today, which is dealing with overwhelm. So that’s another episode that I would recommend you go and listen to related to this topic. Alright, let’s wrap it up. Key takeaways for me, the way I summarize it is that there are no guarantees in business. There’s no crystal balls, no fortune tellers. You have to educate yourself. You have to plan, you have to get that input, but then you have to move forward and you have to have the courage to move forward, not the confidence as Dan Sullivan explains the difference between those things. The courage to move forward,

Henry Lopez (40:08):

Your decisions are not always going to be right and you have to accept that, but you have to have the courage and a bit of faith to take that leap. Business owners, we make decisions, the hard decisions. So that’s kind of my summary of it. Any additional thoughts, David, on takeaways on this

David Begin (40:24):

Stuff? Yeah, I think that we all get there. We’re all going to, if you’re making a lot of decisions, you’re going to get to the point where you’re going to get tired of it or you’re going to get paralyzed in it. So realize that’s the case. This is happening, and then figure out why it’s happening. So if you’re getting a lot of decision fatigue, you might realize you’re having to make decisions for all your employees because they’re not doing it. They’re being intellectually lazy. And so you might have to change your management style to get them to make the decisions, identify that’s going to happen, and then take some steps to either rest and recharge. Maybe you need to get away from the business for a little bit, but figure out what’s happening and why that’s happening and take whatever steps you need to make a difference.

Henry Lopez (41:06):

Great points. Alright, I wish everybody listening the best as you start or grow your successful and profitable small business. This is Henry Lopez, my co-host. They again was David Begin. Thanks for joining us for this episode of How Business I release new episodes every Monday morning, and you can find the show anywhere you listen to podcasts, including at my website, the how of business.com. Thanks for listening.