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Decision Making for Small Business Owners. 

Embracing and improving decision making for small business owners, with hosts Henry Lopez and David Begin.

As the business owner, you, and perhaps your partners, must make all the important decisions. You can’t push it up the ladder to your boss or ask a committee to come up with a consensus opinion. How do we avoid Decision Paralysis and make the big decisions necessary to start, and then continue to run and grow a successful small business?

Small Business Owners must make decisions. Big decisions, small choices; all day, every day!

Embracing Decision Making: You must want to be the decision maker.

Decision Making for Small Business Owners:

In this episode of The How of Business podcast, the best podcast for small business, Henry Lopez and David Begin dive into the critical topic of decision-making for small business owners. They discuss the challenges and strategies involved in making both day-to-day and significant business decisions, including these key points:

  • Importance of Decision-Making:
    • Decision-making is a core responsibility for business owners.
    • It is essential to avoid decision paralysis and decision fatigue.
  • Embracing Decision-Making:
    • Business owners must accept and embrace the need to make decisions regularly and often quickly.
    • Owning the decision-making process is a fundamental trait of successful entrepreneurs.
  • Delegation and Empowerment:
    • To mitigate decision fatigue, it is crucial to delegate decision-making to capable team members.
    • Empowering employees to make decisions can lead to more effective and efficient operations.
  • Risk Management:
    • Assessing and managing risks associated with decisions is vital.
    • Breaking down larger decisions into smaller, manageable steps can help in mitigating risks.
  • Partner Dynamics:
    • Understanding and leveraging different decision-making styles in business partnerships can enhance decision quality.
    • Effective communication and alignment with business partners are necessary to avoid conflicts.

Episode Host: Henry Lopez is a serial entrepreneur, small business coach, and the host of this episode of The How of Business podcast show – dedicated to helping you start, run and grow your small business.

Resources:

Books mentioned in this episode:
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Other Podcast Episodes:

Episode 423: Overcoming Decision Paralysis

You can find other episodes of The How of Business podcast, the best small business podcast, on our Archives page.

Transcript:

The following is a full transcript of this episode. This transcript was produced by an automated system and may contain some typos.

Henry Lopez (00:16):

Welcome to this episode of The How of Business. Today I have my co-host back with me. David Begin. David, welcome to this episode.

David Begin (00:24):

Thanks for having me, Henry. It’s always a pleasure.

Henry Lopez (00:26):

I’m looking forward to this dive on this big topic of decision making. So it’s a big one, big topic and a lot to it. So we’re going to probably break this up into a couple of episodes, but we will take a first round at it here. This concept of the not concept, the process of making decisions, the hard decisions as the business owner, you and maybe your partners. If you’ve got partners, you have to make all of the important decisions. You can’t push it up the ladder to your boss or ask a committee probably to come up with a consensus opinion. You have to make the decision. And so how do we avoid often what can happen, which is decision paralysis or as you’ve termed it often, David, we’ve talked about this previously, decision fatigue that comes into play, but these big decisions are all ours to make on top of all of the day-to-day decisions that we have to make.

Henry Lopez (01:21):

Sometimes as business owners, it feels like that’s all we’re doing is making decisions, but that’s what it’s about. That’s what it takes to start and to grow a successful and profitable small business. To get more information about the how of business, including the show notes page for this episode, and to learn more about my one-on-one coaching and group coaching programs, please visit the how of business.com. I also encourage you to please subscribe to my show wherever you might be listening so you don’t miss any new episodes. So what do I say about David Begin? Those of you who’ve been listening to the podcast from its inception might know that David and I were co-hosts on the show initially for the first two or three years. And then now because he’s moved on to bigger and better things, he is an occasional co-host, but David has a vast background in business. We met each other back in the early nineties, I mean like 91, 92 when we worked for the same enterprise software company in sales. And then amazingly we stayed friends and then eventually, eventually we were in business together. He was my business partner that I often, we referred to on this show, my primary business partner, and we’ve had several businesses together, so I just realized I have a typo on your name. It’s Beacon, B-E-G-I-N. David, welcome back to your co-host role on the show.

David Begin (02:45):

Thanks. Yeah, I love it. I love this podcast. You’ve done so good. We were at the car wash show a couple weeks ago in Nashville and somebody came up and said they were huge fans of the how of car washing, but also a huge fan of the how of business. Oh, that’s

Henry Lopez (03:02):

Wonderful.

David Begin (03:02):

And he was someone who was in high technology, had bought a carwash in Bend, Oregon, and he said he’s listened to all your episodes. So he had been binging on the how of business, but good example where there’s a lot of value for what you’re bringing people out there in the world.

Henry Lopez (03:22):

Well thanks, appreciate that and thanks to him and Bend Oregon for listening. I appreciate that. Alright, so business decisions, making decisions, big topic here. Small business owners, again must make the big decisions and it’s feels like you’re making big decisions and small choices all day every day, right? You do. So I talk about embracing decision making and I’ve done a whole episode on this and I have a free download that you can download from the show notes page for this episode. So when you go to the how business.com, and you either go to this episode or just search for a decision making, the download is one I wrote quite a bit ago, but it’s still so applicable. It’s entitled Two Responsibilities Business Owners Must Embrace, and one of those is decision making, those hard decisions. I think that is probably one of the key personality traits or personality traits, whatever you want to call it, that you must have or skills rather, that you must have to be a successful business owner. What are your thoughts?

David Begin (04:27):

No, I would definitely agree. I think it’s one of the most important essence to be a business owner is you got to making decisions and you got to owning the decisions. And that’s a big characteristic I think, of being a business owner and that’s the advantage of being a business owner is you get to make the decisions. That’s right. And so this topic’s been such top of mind for me for the last two or three months based on the current partnership I have with the new car wash partnership I’m in. I talked to one of the partners quite a bit, who’s a good friend of mine about decision-making. He’s in the car wash business, he helps people build car washes and how difficult it can be for people to make decisions on equipment packages and layouts and all these things you’ve got to think about in order to run a carwash. And the frustration he gets when he gets the right or the wrong personality type that really struggles with making those. And so yeah, you’ve got to feel comfortable making decisions and you’ve got to be able to make them, I’m going to say relatively quick, you can’t sit there and dole about it, but you’ve got to get a lot of energy in making a decision and you’ve got to get a lot of satisfaction in being in the person that can do that because if you don’t, then nothing moves forward.

Henry Lopez (05:50):

Yeah, I agree. Either in this part or in the second part, we’re going to lay out an approach for the more complex decisions, the ones that do require more time. But you’re right, the challenge that gets layered on not only are we making all the decisions, but we often have to make them very quickly and that adds a whole level of complexity and so that adds to it. But if we do have kind of those, where are we going next year? Do we stop this product line, add that product line, do I let go of a key employee? Do I take on this client? Do I let go of this client? Those bigger decisions, often we have a little bit more time and so we’ll lay out a methodology, if you will, for making those decisions. But otherwise, day to day we’re being bombarded and we’re being expected and we have to embrace decision making.

Henry Lopez (06:41):

That’s the key like you just articulated. I remember clearly when I was in the corporate world wanting to be that person that made the decisions. Fortunately both you and I were in sales where you’re fairly empowered relatively speaking to other corporate positions. So that was wonderful for us. I could make a decision about something to a certain level, but that’s what I wanted. I think that’s got to be part of the hunger. If you haven’t started your first business yet, that’s got to be part of it, that you have enough confidence to know, not that you’re going to get every decision, but that you’ll get most of them and that you’ll learn from the ones you don’t get. Right, but you want to be the person making the decision.

David Begin (07:27):

Yeah, I would agree. And I think that’s an indicator as I look back at my corporate career that you and I were in, we had a level of frustration working in the corporate world because we weren’t the guys in the room or the gals in the room making the decisions on product line launches and sales quotas and things like that. Those decisions were made for us and for me, I think I finally identified that was part of the frustration I had working in a corporate environment was so many of those decisions were made for us. We didn’t have much input in that. And if I would’ve realized that earlier, maybe you and I might’ve jumped into owning our own business sooner.

Henry Lopez (08:10):

Absolutely. No, and it triggered, at least I know for you as well, but it triggered that control, that need for control, right? Yes. So yeah, that’s there. Now, if you’re an existing business owner, you’ve been at it for a few years and you are hitting that fatigue, you’re exhausted, overwhelmed, well then that’s a little bit more difficult. You got to look at maybe this wasn’t for you and isn’t for you, and so you got a decision to make. If I’m going to continue as a business owner, well you either need to get better at this or probably what you need is to get some help in the way of a coach, a mentor, a partner. You want to leverage your team, develop a leadership team if you’re at that point in your business and try to then leverage them as much as possible to make some of these decisions offload some decision making were appropriate to the people on your team. You’ll often be surprised at how much they can take on and how often this has to do with delegating, but how often they might do better at it even than you in some circumstances, right?

David Begin (09:13):

Yeah, I would agree. And it was interesting, I think President Kennedy in an interview sometime, I remember this interview he did, he says, I don’t get the easy decision. So by the time decisions filter through the federal government and get to the president’s level, all the easy decisions have already been made and the president gets only the most difficult decisions, even his staff probably make most of the decisions on behalf of the president. And then the president gets the really tough ones, and it’s the same situation for any business owner or business leader is they get the tough decisions. And so you’ve got to carve out mental space to work on the hard tough decisions. I think where most business owners get decision fatigue is when they’re having to make decisions on behalf of their employees. And the episode we did on, like you talked about 4 23, overcoming decision paralysis, delegation, all of that gets into play.

David Begin (10:15):

I think a lot of times when business owners are suffering from decision fatigue, it’s when they’re having to answer questions for the employees. And for me, it became a real indicator when everybody was coming to me asking me to make a decision for them. There were some problems I found culturally in their organization where either I micromanage them, I didn’t let them make decisions, or I over criticized the decisions that they made so they didn’t feel comfortable making decisions. But I finally got to the point where I said, look, I got to do a better job of delegating this decision making process out to them and let them make the decisions. The other part of that, Henry, I think we might’ve talked about this, if we’re always making the decisions for the employee, there’s an intellectual laziness that starts taking place amongst your team members where they say, I’m not going to take the risk.

David Begin (11:14):

I’m going to ask David and let him take the risk, but I’m not going to make the risk in making the wrong decision. So instead of them thinking about it, they would throw it over to me and have me think about it. And so I started this mantra of, Hey, I’m not going to do your thinking for you. You’ve got to do your own thinking. And the way I kind of corrected that was I would ask them, well, what do you think? I don’t know. Well, why don’t you go back and think about it and come back and give me a couple alternatives and then we can talk about it. And so I finally got in that habit of turning it back to them to think about and tell me what they thought.

Henry Lopez (11:51):

Yes, so much there that you’ve shared. So I want to unpack some of this, a lot of content there at the very end there so I don’t forget. The thing that we have to be careful with is that we both had to learn is that at the end there, if nonetheless when they make a decision, if you then undermine it and question it and highlight why it was the wrong decision, well then you’re defeating you the purpose, right? They’re not going to do it. They will learn that, yeah, you might say, you want me to make a decision, but you’re going to go against every decision I make, therefore I’m no longer going to do it. But the point there on this point that the so huge David was, I’m glad you brought it up, is that if we are fatigued because everybody’s coming to us to answer all of the questions, it’s almost a hundred percent of the time our fault. We created that environment, we’ve enabled that environment, we’ve fostered that environment either because we’ve hired the wrong people and allowed ’em to stay there, or more likely because we haven’t empowered them for them to make decisions.

Henry Lopez (12:54):

And that’s huge, I think. So for an existing business owner, if you will address that, you will then find, as David said, that you are able to now focus on those critical decisions that should be coming to you as the president or CEO of your business.

David Begin (13:12):

Yeah, it was interesting. I think President Eisenhower was individual that did a great job of delegating and he was accused of not making decisions a lot of times. He was just interesting. He was just kind of an ornamental president that liked to play a lot of golf and right

Henry Lopez (13:29):

With a lot of medals on his chest…

David Begin (13:31):

Didn’t really do much, but he understood the concept of delegation and letting team members make choices. And even so much as people would bring him things and go, why are you bringing me this question? And it was like, it’s not appropriate for the president to make this type of choice or decision. And so he was very good about delegating those things out. I think what’s important when you start training people to make decisions on your team is you not only want them to make the decision, but you want to work with them on how did you arrive at this choice? And so when I finally got my last operations manager, one of the things I would do with them is, okay, I want you to make the decision and tell me about the decision, but I want to know the thinking that you put in behind that decision because what I wanted to do was train the thinking process.

David Begin (14:30):

How are you thinking about this? And I want you to think about it the way I want you to think about it, right? Here are the considerations you got to think about. And one of them, that’s a big one, Henry, is risk is a lot of times employees don’t think about the risk factors of the choices they’re making. And as a business owner, I feel like I was really good at assessing risk of making a decision. Sometimes they were small, sometimes they were large. And so training that employee to take the right pieces of information in consideration when they’re making the choice, if you can teach ’em how to think, then you’re going to be happier with the quality of the choices that they’re making. And then you can sort of let them loose at that point

Henry Lopez (15:16):

And to the point of risk also what you see larger corporations do, which I’m not saying that’s what we’re supposed to mirror immediately, but there’s something to be learned there or mirror directly is what I meant to say, is putting guardrails to that. So that’s why you see you have authority up to this level or this amount or within this narrow focus and it can get too restricted. But the point is if you will enable your team up to a certain level. So probably nobody on my team has the ability to contractually obligate us to a big spending agreement unless I approve it. But when it comes to taking care of the customer, for example, they have a lot of leeway there. Depending on what we sell. If we’re selling aircraft, well then I probably don’t want to give them the free ability to say, oh, we’ll give you a new one. But if we’re selling ice cream, definitely. So there’s boundaries there, but it also comes back to not being a control freak and to manage everything. That’s how we end up with having to make every decision. It’s our fault that those environments exist.

David Begin (16:25):

Yeah, they are. But it’s also kind of a cultural thing. If you’re hiring an employee from another company, chances are they weren’t in an environment where they were empowered to make

Henry Lopez (16:34):

No no. But the culture is our responsibility to develop and to foster and to nurture. Yes.

David Begin (16:40):

And you have to have the mindset. I think as a business owner or leader to say, I think there’s a lot better ideas out there than mine. And I’m always interested in what other people are thinking about things. And I really love it when I get an opinion or get a perspective that I didn’t even think about and somebody comes up with a much better way of solving the problem than the way I did it. So I’m anticipating great ideas for my team because they’re the people actually doing the work for the most part. And so I want to hear their opinions. I want to hear how they’ll solve it because chances are they’re going to have a much better idea than I do,

Henry Lopez (17:17):

Especially as your business grows and those people are closer to the customer, to the client. That’s often where the answer is. That’s often the best perspective. So the download that I refer to again is called two Responsibilities Business Owners Must Embrace. You can find that at the show notes page for this episode at the how a business. So one is of course accepting that you’re going to make decisions. So embracing decision making. The flip side of it that we’ve touched on is accepting mistakes, accepting the fact that every decision I make is not going to be right and being okay with that. And listen, both you and I have talked to each other off ledges before where we feel like we’re on a streak of bad decisions, and that certainly is one of the advantages of having a partner or a mentor or a coach to kind of talk us back from that. But the reality is that if you educate yourself, if you continue to learn, if continue to take outside perspectives like you just said, if you over time develop, then that knowledge that seems like it’s instinctive, then most of your decisions are going to be the right decisions, is what I’ve found.

David Begin (18:28):

Yeah, I think it goes back to risk management, Henry, and maybe this is one thing I feel like I did a good job of was when I made a decision, I said, okay, what if this decision’s wrong? What’s my risk factor with this? And I figured out that if you make a lot of small decisions, the chances of you being able to correct them are better than if you make a few very large ones. And so that gets into the timing aspect of making decisions and being able to make decisions relatively quickly. And they don’t always have to be quick, but getting back to the paralysis part of making a decision, people get paralyzed when it comes to decision making because in their head, the risk is too high and they can’t either go left or go right? Because they’re thinking, well, if I go right, I’m going to go off the cliff and if I go left, I’m going to go into the fire. And then they get stuck whether they’re going to go left or, and so if you have developed a concept where you can make decisions relatively quick and they’re smaller decisions, the risk of being wrong isn’t that great and feeling comfortable, as you said of being wrong. You say, okay, it was wrong, let’s change it. There’s always going to be a lot of that. And if you’re one of those people that have to be right when you make a decision that’s going to stop you,

Henry Lopez (19:52):

Yeah, this is a huge takeaway. I’m glad you focused it here because I have found that in almost all of decisions, not all of them, there are some where we’re faced with big decisions and there’s no way to break it down, but mostly we are able to break it down and it applies in so many ways. If we look at it, for example, the decision of starting your first business and how monumental that is, and certainly can feel the best approach there is to break it down into logical steps. What’s next? What’s next? What’s next? The point of risk is a huge one, and that’s why I always ask the question similar to what you’re saying for people who are starting a business and the risk is kind of overwhelming them, is that very question, what is the worst case scenario? If I start this business and a year from now, I have to shut it down?

Henry Lopez (20:43):

What happens if what happens is that I lose my house and the kids are not going to go to college and I don’t know where the next meal is going to come from, then that’s too much risk. And so the way that we break that down is we scale down how I’m starting my business and maybe I’m launching with a pop-up instead of signing that 10 year lease. Similarly, in an existing business, if I’ve got a huge directional change to make or maybe a new product line, I can do a small project on it or test it or validate it or do a short run of it to get some feedback. So for most of these issues that we face either in starting our first business or running and growing an existing business, there is this opportunity to break it down into multiple decisions as opposed to one monumental decision.

David Begin (21:35):

Yeah, I would agree. And then figure out how to minimize your risk. I’m always thinking about risk mitigation anytime I make a business decision and risk mitigation goes back to, as you said, Henry, what if I’m wrong? What if this is wrong? And we’ve got to entertain the other side of the coin. And I think as business people, we get naturally optimistic about believing that the business is going to be successful. And you’ve got to have that innate drive to push yourself. If you didn’t believe it was going to be successful, then you wouldn’t be doing it or you shouldn’t do it however you do got to play with the dark side of it. What happens if it’s not successful? What happens if this is partially successful? What happens if the partnership I’m establishing doesn’t work out the way we thought it was going to work out then? And that’s where you’ve got to play with that dark side. And when you play with the dark side and it’s, okay, what can I do to minimize that dark side or the risk of the decision that I’m about to make? I think it’ll make it much easier for you to move forward.

Henry Lopez (22:39):

Yeah, it is a delicate balance, isn’t it, of on the one hand, confidence in ourselves, in our team, in our abilities, in our business and confidence in our decision making. But on the other side, well, what’s the worst case scenario? What’s the risk here? And we’ve talked about this before that I think that what’s related to this that you and I and other business owners that we know that do it well is we think about it, a couple moves ahead. So what I have found as people who don’t have as much experience with making these kind of big decisions, don’t think through, all right, if I do that, this is going to do this, this person’s going to react this way, this client’s going to respond this way. We very quickly, because we’ve done it so many times, will think through that and then come back and say, okay, I can deal with the risk there. And that’s what people need to learn to do is that maybe it’s called analytical thinking, but it’s taking it more than just a decision you’re about to make. What are the consequences good and bad? And that’ll help you make that decision, I think.

David Begin (23:46):

Yeah, and I think it will give you different ideas too. If you think about the risk component of it, can you break it down like you said, in smaller steps, not signing the 10 year lease, but maybe developing a pop-up standard instead of building a restaurant, let’s get a food truck. I mean, there’s people that are doing these risk mitigation factors. It was interesting yesterday when I was back in Missouri, Chick-fil-A had a truck that was in that particular town. It’s a town of 10,000, so it’s not many people, but Chick-fil-A comes every couple of weeks they bring a truck really, and people are standing in line buying this stuff that they got to go to Kansas City to go get or something like that. So it’s a good example of Chick-fil-A not building a store.

Henry Lopez (24:31):

They’re validating the demand there, not that they need to, but look, isn’t it something, isn’t it a takeaway that even for them that in part I assure you is validating the market

David Begin (24:43):

And if they get enough business or transactions that you might consider building a bricks and mortar store,

Henry Lopez (24:49):

It’s also what they’re doing is they’re priming the pump there, they’re creating excitement. That might be that they already have planned a new location, but it’s going to take a couple of years for all kinds of obvious reasons. So they’re already conditioning the market, and so they’re doing that as well,

David Begin (25:05):

Right? Yes. So people are becoming very good about risk mitigation instead of making an investment in a huge asset, maybe renting that asset would be a better choice. Maybe sharing that asset amongst different businesses might be a better choice, but sitting down and thinking about those things might give you some really interesting ideas and alternatives to help really minimize the risk.

Henry Lopez (25:31):

Now, our personality types comes into play here, and you and I are a perfect example to use for this discussion. I am very analytical, sometimes, often overly so I want to see the numbers, I want to do the analysis, I want to put my pretty spreadsheet together. We’re caricaturing here, but you’re the other extreme. You’re a fire first name later type personality. And I think that’s one of the reasons we compliment each other. Well,

David Begin (26:01):

I think that’s interesting because my Kolbe score, if you’ve ever taken the Kolbe test, I think you did. I’m a high fact finder. I know,

Henry Lopez (26:08):

Which is interesting. So it much just be that the way you go about fact finding is a lot different than I go about fact finding.

David Begin (26:16):

It is. I think it is. I think you are more analytical and you want to look at more of the data. And I do too. And it’s interesting because having, I’m not going to say a conflict, but we’ve got an interesting perspective with one of the partners on the car wash. I’m involved it, he is very much fire aim type of person. He is way on. The other just feels good. Let’s do it, let’s do it, let’s do it. Because he’s dealt with people who get stuck in decision making when it comes to building car washes and deciding on what equipment layout and package and what particular point of sale system they want to buy. And they get so stuck in making the decision, they don’t make any decisions. And I don’t know if that’s because, and as a result of that, his decision making is very quick and he doesn’t like doing a lot of analytical work where compared to him, I look like you, right? I’m in. Interesting. I’m looking at all the data, but it is a balance, and it’s interesting, I wrote down in my notes, is decision making a feeling or a fact-based event? And I think it’s both. And I think you can get to either end of the extremes where it is unhealthy.

Henry Lopez (27:34):

Oh, agreed. Agreed.

David Begin (27:36):

Yeah. And so you might be a decision maker where you kind of go off your gut, your intuition, and I think that’s fine, but I don’t think you can get too far from identifying the facts either. So if you’re a feeling type of decision maker, you might have to lean a little bit more into the facts. If you’re a fact decision maker, you might have to lean a little bit more into the feelings part of it because if you get too far outside the boundaries of those decision-making models, then I think you’re going to either make very bad decisions or you’re not going to make decisions.

Henry Lopez (28:12):

Yeah, well said. That brings to mind, I just recently released an episode with Bill Kennedy who happens to be the father of my daughter McKenna’s freshman roommate back when she was a freshman in college, and he just released a book titled the 80 20 CEO had on episode 5 23. But this quote is perfect, what we’re talking about here, he talks about decision making from the perspective of A CEO in corporations as well as small businesses. But he says as far as decision making that for him, it needs to be somewhat data-driven, but this is what I thought was very practical. He says, quote, if you are making decisions with less than 20% of the information, you’re guessing if you have more than 80%, you probably waited too long. I thought there was a great guardrail there to kind of how he thinks about it. In other words, it’s another way of saying you got to have some analysis someday. This is where the big decisions here, we’re talking about the bigger decisions.

Henry Lopez (29:20):

It speaks to your point. I might be the guy who tends to go beyond that 80%. I need more, I need more. I need more. Because what I’m looking for sometimes is an assurance and there is no such thing an assurance, a guarantee that decision I make is going to be the right one, and it doesn’t work that way. On the flip side, the gentleman you just referred to doesn’t do any research, no gathering information, just seat of the pants decision making. And that’s not always the best route either. The sweet spot is somewhere in between.

David Begin (29:51):

I would agree. I agree. And I think there’s this feeling when you just kind shoot from the hip that you’re a big business decision maverick and good point. That’s how they used to do it in Texas in the 1940s when it came to the building oil wells. That’s right. It’s just that type of model,

Henry Lopez (30:09):

Maverick, pioneer

David Begin (30:11):

Attitude. Yeah, a business owner. I guess the interesting thing about that quote though is when do you know you’ve got 80% versus 20%?

Henry Lopez (30:17):

Well, good question. Good question. I’ll have to follow up with him on that, but I think you’re good. You’re right. That’s a good point. When do I know I’m at 80%? I might tell you all day and until I’m blue in the face, I’m only at 50% and I’m at 90%. That’s a good question. I’d have to follow up with him on that, but at least gave me some. It was the first time I’ve heard anybody kind of quantify.

David Begin (30:39):

No, I think it’s good

Henry Lopez (30:39):

Analysis. I think the way I would answer the question is I would, because I’m the one that tends to be more analytical, I would lean on you as my partner to say, where am I here? Am I over analyzing or do we have enough to move forward?

David Begin (30:54):

Or if you keep looking for more data and more data and more data and it’s harder to find, maybe that’s when you say, okay, I think I’ve done enough. Good point. You’re looking at the NIS in this particular case and you’re not looking at the big chunks of information. And then maybe you ask yourself, why am I continually digging into this? And the 80 20 rule, as you said, I think that’s what he was trying to say here is the level of effort to get the additional N percent isn’t really worth

Henry Lopez (31:23):

It. It’s not worth it. Yeah, yeah, no doubt. That’s the takeaway for me. Okay, so we touched on, we just mentioned partners. Making decisions is complicated or complicated by having partners, one or more partners, because now those bigger decisions, you might need to take them into account, you might need a consensus. So what are your thoughts there? What are some thoughts on how to do that well, to take into account that you need to run it by your partners?

David Begin (31:55):

I think you’ve got to understand your partner’s decision-making style. And if it’s complimentary, understand that you both have different ways of going about making decisions and there’s advantages, the disadvantages for both. And if I’m the analytical one in the decision making process, I might have to move a little bit more toward the feeling part of it, and the person that kind of makes decision based on intuition might have to move a little bit more toward the fact finding. But if you realize you’re different, then I think you can have to realize that those are complimentary styles and take advantage of each one of those complimentary styles. And I believe you’ll come up with good decision if you understand that, but it would be much better for both analytical. But again, you might get to the point, if you’re both analytical, you might never make a decision. So there might be some disadvantages there, but I think you’ve got to sit back and understand how does the other person make decisions? And by understanding that, I think then you can figure out how to move forward.

Henry Lopez (33:04):

Yeah, I agree with you, and we don’t want to go too far off on this tangent. We’ve done several episodes, you and I on partnerships, so lots of content there that you can find at the how of business.com on how to work well in a partnership, what to look for, including one of the most popular downloads that I have, which is the partnership checklist that you should go through if you’re planning to go in a partnership or even if you’re in a partnership now. Because one of the biggest mistakes that people make that now that then leads to one of the things that can lead to decision paralysis is not being in alignment with your partner. So it’s critical that you be in alignment. Therefore, these decisions, you’re not going to be paralyzed by, well wait a second, I thought we were going this direction. You think we’re going that direction? And of course that impacts your opinion on this decision versus mine.

David Begin (33:53):

Yeah, I ran into this in this current partnership I’m in where with a partner had this idea of what they wanted to do after the purchase of a carwash, and I had no idea that that was what they wanted to do. So when he was ready to get started, I go, oh, whoa, whoa, wait a second

Henry Lopez (34:09):

Here.

David Begin (34:11):

We’re not going to spend that type of money. And he was very upset about it, but it’s like, you know what? You probably had thought through that. I didn’t even know this was in your plan. So I think expectations, discussions are incredibly important. I think just taking time to, again, this gets into the other podcast I realize, but sit down every week and say, how’s it going? How are you feeling? And just making sure you guys are checking in quite often I think will be important.

Henry Lopez (34:41):

Alright, so we’re going to do a second part where we’re going to do a deeper dive on making complex decisions. Those are the ones where I do need to pause and go through a process. That’s what we’re going to come back with in a subsequent episode. But before I move on to the second part here on this one, just want to take a quick break and make sure everybody knows that the part of the resources that I offer, including of course, this podcast that’s offered to you for free and has been on the air now since 2017, I think it is. One of the things I offer is one-on-one and group coaching programs, as I mentioned in the intro. So if you’re interested, if you think it might be a fit for you or you want to explore it further, then the next step is for you to schedule a free consultation with me.

Henry Lopez (35:28):

And it’s very easy to do. Just go to the website how a business.com, you’re going to see a link right at the top of the homepage that says Schedule a consultation. There’s no obligation beyond that, there’s no credit card needed. And what that happens then as you and I get on the phone and we chat about what are you planning to do, whether it’s a business you’re looking to start or an existing business you want to grow, we can chat about what your challenge with, get to know each other and then see if one of my coaching programs might be a fit for you. So that’s my invitation to you if you’re thinking that you need some coaching assistance. David, for you, update us on what you’re currently working on and what you want people to know about that you’re doing today.

David Begin (36:09):

Yeah, we’re still doing the carwash consulting business right now, so if you’re looking to get in the car wash business and you need some operational assistance, that’s what we’re doing. And I’m trying to figure out how to develop more flexibility in my life. So that’s a never ending challenge.

Henry Lopez (36:28):

You just recently went on a little RV trip to help with that, right?

David Begin (36:31):

We did, yeah. Yeah, I got my RV, I got my Starlink, and that’s been pretty helpful. So that’s been good. So I can work most of the time. If there’s line of sight in the RV park, then I’m better off. If there’s not, it’s a little bit more challenging, but like that Starlink system. So shout out to Elon Musk, thanks for building that,

Henry Lopez (36:49):

That satellite network now that’s so comprehensive, right?

David Begin (36:53):

Yeah, it really opens up a lot of opportunity to work on the road

Henry Lopez (36:58):

With reliable connectivity. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Excellent. Alright, let’s finish it up with this next kind of piece of it, which is I want to talk a little bit about a book that I believe really applies to in a big way, what we’re talking about here. I mentioned Bill Kennedy’s book 80 20 CEO, but a book that both of you and I have read has been out for a while. Malcolm Cloud will Blink the Power of Thinking without Thinking, and there’s so much of what he talks in there that I think is still so on target and speaks to this ability to make decisions in what seems to me in a blink of an eye, right? That’s the idea behind that title, blink. You read that book, it’s been a while, I need to reread it, but I have read it a couple of times, but what are some of your key takeaways from that book?

David Begin (37:50):

Yeah, I think it’s the key that your intuition is not just based on, they said trust your gut. You’ve heard that term, but there’s something scientific to that. So the biggest example in that book is when an art expert looked at a statue and said, oh, that’s a fake. And I think the LA Museum was one of the museums.

David Begin (38:14):

Had just bought it in this a sale that’s a fake and that individual to be able to look at it so quickly, and it feels like it is an intuitive, intuitive decision that that person made, but it was really based on a number of different facts. When he went back and looked at why he felt like it was a fake, there was a lot of expertise around that. So just the thing I like about that is it really explores the intuitive part of decision-making, which I think all of us could understand better, do a better job in if we’re kind of analytical or appreciate our capabilities there if we are kind of an intuitive person.

Henry Lopez (38:55):

Yeah, one of the highlights is one of the terms, I don’t know if he coined it or not, certainly he shares in this book what he calls thin slicing, but what he talks about is that, and this is a summary of the book here in Part Blink, the book reveals that great decision-making makers aren’t those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of thin slicing, which is filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables. I think that’s a very interesting, we’ve spoken to this, but putting a term to it and then how he speaks to it in the book is very interesting as to how we get there as business owners over time by developing experience, by having that knowledge that then allows us to do or make what seemed like gut decisions, but they’re not really gut decisions. But this concept of taking, knowing what to look for that matters most, I think is critical. Back to the point about how do I know when I’m at 80% of the data? Yeah.

David Begin (40:01):

Yeah, I agree. And I think I’ll go back and read that book now. I think there’s some things I can pick up from it

Henry Lopez (40:08):

And I can think of somebody we have both have in mind that could benefit from reading that book as well. So that’s the key. What are the factors that matter when making business decisions? And you’ll get better and better at this as you do it, but the sharper you get at that, the better it’ll be. Now that comes with experience. For example, David, what popped into my head is that you and I came into the car wash business with you to open the third location together after you had already been in the business for what, a decade at least. Yeah. Yes. So you already had this vast knowledge that you leveraged to make what seemed to me and to our other investors as these quick decisions. And I remember there being disconnect points where I would want more as to why you made that decision or why not this. And what it was is you were tapping into that knowledge base, you knew how to narrow it down to a couple of things you needed to know, and then you were able to quickly make a decision that you trusted. Yeah,

David Begin (41:15):

Yes, yes, that was right. And going back and thinking about that, there was that friction sometimes between us because I was making very quick snap decisions and you didn’t really understand the background of where it was coming from. And also I didn’t explain it either, which probably wasn’t helpful.

Henry Lopez (41:33):

So where I think that applies is in how we think about it with our staff that we are leading. They may well be new to the industry or they certainly are new to your environment or they haven’t worked with you that long. So we need to be, as we always talk about, we talked about it as it relates to sales, consciously competent, why is it that you’re so good at it? And you explained it when you talked about that when somebody was coming to you with questions, you not only wanted them to come up with the ideas, but you wanted to explain their thought process behind that decision making. I think that’s at the root of it. Conversely, you’re taking that opportunity to coach them on the thought process and sharing with people. To some extent, that’s a level of how transparent are you, why I’m making this decision.

Henry Lopez (42:24):

Now we don’t always have the luxury of the time of doing that. I get that if I spent all my time explaining why I’m deciding certain things, we wouldn’t get anything done. But that is important as it relates to our staff and as it relates to working with partners. Alright, David, so we’ll leave it there on this topic of decision making for small business owners. At that point, we’re going to pick this back up and do a deeper dive in part two. And as I mentioned in part two, we’re going to get into what’s a recommended approach, a methodology if you will, simple one that you can follow for making more complex decisions, the ones that you’re not going to make in an instant or a blink. So what we’ll do is we’ll wrap it up here and then look for that next episode. My key takeaway for you here is I encourage you to go get the download that I mentioned at the beginning.

Henry Lopez (43:14):

So that’s available at the how of business.com and the show, no page for this episode. And that’s the two responsibilities business owners must embrace. Our book recommendation or one of the book recommendations is Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. And I think one of the key takeaways also is if you are overwhelmed, if you’re experiencing decision fatigue, is to look at, am I not empowering my team if I have a team to make decisions that takes some of that burden off of me? Or are you creating an environment where everybody has to come to you? So those are critical things to look at. And then overall, whether you’re looking to start a business or grow an existing business, often we can take those big, large, impactful decisions and break ’em up into multiple steps so that the potential outcome that’s riding on it is not as monumental. And so we suggest that approach as well. This is Henry Lopez and thanks for joining me on this episode of the How Business My Co-host today was David Begin. We wish you the best as you start and grow your successful and profitable small business. I release new episodes every Monday morning, and you can find this show wherever you listen to podcasts, including at the How a Business YouTube channel, and at my website, TheHowOfBusiness.com. Thanks for listening.

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