How to be Intentional with Your Decision-Making Process

Finding childcare as a working parent – let alone a full-time business owner – is a difficult journey. My husband and I recently went through the exhausting process of researching, contacting, touring, and ultimately choosing the best daycare for our toddler. To summarize, there were a lot of steps between when we decided we’d need to utilize the services of a daycare (and therefore pay for those services) and when we actually picked out which one was the ideal fit for our family.

Is Your Business Your “Baby”?

The decision-making journey of a small business owner hiring or outsourcing work in their business is pretty similar to what I mentioned above. When you’re looking to employ the services of another business or independent contractor, you’re looking for someone trustworthy and talented to care for the business that you have poured your heart and soul into. Businesses, just like kids, require a lot of care and attention to stay alive, let alone to grow! You need someone who will not only keep your dearly beloved alive, but help them to thrive by taking your unique needs into account. And you need them to do it for a price you can afford.

If you find your small business facing a big decision and feel caught in a painful fight, flight, or freeze response, you’re not alone! When it comes to working with another business, an independent contractor, or hiring an employee there are A LOT of what-ifs and unknowns that can leave you doom scrolling, like:

• What if you invest your money in a service that isn’t what your business actually needs right now?
  
  
• What if the company you go with isn’t a good fit?
  
  
• What if you end up paying more than it was worth?

And so on. Having an intentional decision-making process for moments like these can help small business owners to break out of the spiral of what-ifs and make important decisions with less fear and more certainty, allowing you to break free from the fight, flight, or freeze and move your business in the direction you desire.

Taking Baby Steps

Don’t let the big picture overwhelm you. Breaking the decision-making process up into smaller steps makes it easier for you to approach the problem, and it gives you a way to be intentional with your choices at every step. Here’s a simple list of steps that you can adapt as needed:

1. What is the problem? Not just the symptoms, but the root cause. Are you feeling burned out because there’s too much work for one person, or because you’re pouring too much energy into tasks that could be automated? Are you struggling to find new clients because of your marketing strategy, or is your branding not geared towards your target audience? Do you need more expertise or a certification to break into a new area, or do you need to focus on more networking to get better connected?
   
2. Now that you know the root cause of your problems, what’s a reasonable strategy to address it? If you need to automate some tedious housekeeping tasks, what would that look like? Can you do it yourself or should you hire an expert? If you need more networking opportunities, what would work best for you and your business right now?
   
3. Next, research options for solutions. You know what’s causing your problems and what you need to fix them, so now you need to find who or what can help you. My advice is to make a pros and cons list as you find options and narrow it down to the two or three best options based on expected results, affordability, and compatibility.
   
4. Make a decision! This step honestly may be the hardest; you’ve got a few good options to choose from, but you have to actually commit to one. It can be scary, but steps 1-3 won’t be helpful if you reach this point and stagnate. Progress requires action!

The Decision Isn’t the End

Here’s the good news: if you make a choice and it isn’t a perfect fit, that’s okay! We learn through experience. And at the end of the day, you don’t have to keep doing something that isn’t working (see: Step 1). For example, if you decide to get a subscription to Adobe to help with content creation and learn that it isn’t the best software for you, you can cancel the subscription and try something else! The goal is always to avoid spending your hard-earned dollars on unhelpful “solutions”, but sometimes you’re just gonna make a bad call, or your needs will change and what was a good fit at one point just doesn’t work anymore. There’s absolutely no shame in making a change to do what’s best for you and your business as you continue to grow and develop.

To be honest, when my husband and I finally decided on a daycare, our daughter didn’t end up staying there. After a little while they decided to raise their rates (multiple times), and what was once a good fit didn’t work for us anymore. Then we had our daughter in a 2-day a week program as a temporary fix and hoped a better opportunity would open up. Finally she got a spot in the center she’s currently enrolled in, but it took three tries before we got here, and who’s to say things won’t change in the future? The point is, if at first you don’t succeed, try again.

If you’re having trouble moving past steps one and two of the decision-making process, we can help. Our business audit helps you discover exactly what support you need and from who or where, so you can move forward with clarity and confidence. We’d love to open the conversation with you to see if this is the right next step for you.