My Secret Weapon for Making Decisions in My Business

Emily Thompson [00:00]: Making decisions in your business is next-level difficult. If you think it's hard to decide what you want for dinner at night, imagine how hard it is to make decisions that will not only potentially affect the entire trajectory of your career and your life, but the lives and careers of everyone on your team, your vendors, even potentially your clients and customers, making decisions in your business is not.

Emily Thompson [00:00:26]: For the faint of heart. And quite often that people are looking for the silver bullet to assist them and making the best decisions in their business. I don't know if I have a silver bullet, but I am here to share with you my secret weapon for making, especially the big decisions in my business. Easier to make.

Emily Thompson [00:00:50]: Hello. And welcome back the 10 Minutes to Being Boss a bite-size show, offering tips, tools and tactics for helping you do business. I'm Emily Thompson. And today we're talking about my secret weapon for making decisions in my business, but before we dive in too deep, I do want to share it more about our sponsor Podia. If you run a business online, I think it's a pretty easy decision that you should make selling digital products, a part of your business model because making money while you sleep is the dream and the internet is the tool that makes it possible. Which is where Podia comes in. It's an all-in-one digital storefront that makes it easy for you to sell digital downloads of courses and memberships all in one place.

Emily Thompson [00:01:29]: Learn more and sign up for a free 14-day trial with no credit card required. And at 15% off for life, by going to podia.com/bosses. Now let's get into this little chat about my secret weapon for making decisions. This is coming up because over the past two, three months, I have been presented with a number of very large opportunities in both being boss, but also my product business, Almanac Supply Co and

Emily Thompson [00:02:03]: Deciding whether or not I'm going to pursue those opportunities has presented me with some of the most major decisions I've ever had to make in my business. And even though every time one of these decisions, it comes up, I go through the normal. Two dues, basically of making these decisions. I run my numbers.

Emily Thompson [00:02:27]: I weigh the pros and cons. I have conversations with my team around our goals. I set goals based on facts and then necessary return on investments. I do some hardcore gut checks and make sure that everything is aligned with my values, but even with all of those things in place, there are still, or there is.

Emily Thompson [00:02:48]: Still, one thing that I do that I think for me, makes all the difference in the world. Whenever it comes to me, tapping into my secret weapon for making these major decisions in my business. And that secret weapon is my boss friends.

Emily Thompson [00:03:08]: Because I can know the numbers all day long. I can check in with my gut and my values all day long, but at the end of the day, I am humble enough to admit that there are things that I don't know and deeper than that, there are things that I don't even know that I don't know, but you know, who might know.

Emily Thompson [00:03:29]: My boss pals, which is why whenever I'm confronted with a major decision in my business, it is a decision that I recognize that I make all by myself, but it is a decision that I will make. Once I have talked with my boss, friends, and I have several of them that I will tap for specific things. I have to have a conversation with them first to

Emily Thompson [00:03:54]: help me do a number of important things that really helps me get a handle on the decision that I'm making and help me understand what it is that I don't know. So, the first thing I do whenever I'm talking to my pals is I always tell them. I'm telling you this, I'm presenting you with this opportunity that I am being presented with, with the idea that you are going to help me poke holes in this helped me see the things that I am not seeing, help me identify the questions that I need to know the answers to.

Emily Thompson [00:04:30]: What am I not asking either of the person who's presenting me with this opportunity or of myself or my business? It really helps me to uncover what it is that I don't know. I see. And not only that, it assists me in tapping into the experience and see things through the lenses of people who run businesses, either similar to mine, because sometimes I will talk to people whose businesses are very similar or people whose businesses are very different from mine to really gain. A diverse perspective of this opportunity to make sure that I am making the best decision that I can

Emily Thompson [00:05:11]: obviously building a community has always been a very important part of what we do here at Being Boss. It is an important part of what we do as a brand and as a company, because it is absolutely an imperative part of my process for running a business creatives and business owners cannot work alone.

Emily Thompson [00:05:32]: And I believe you cannot achieve greatness if you are working alone, which is why not only is it important for me to cultivate a community around myself, of peers, of boss friends in both similar and not similar industries, but it's important for me to make it part of my process, to engage with these people in a way that helps me move forward in my business.

Emily Thompson [00:05:58]: So plain and simple, my secret weapon for making decisions in my business. It's not a tool. I wonder if anyone would be mad if I call them tools. I think they'd probably get the joke. I'm pretty sure they would.

Emily Thompson [00:06:12]: It's not software. It's not an exercise. It's conversations. It's conversations with other business owners, with my boss, friends, people with whom I have known for years in most cases who understand my business. And I understand theirs in a way that allows me to tap into their brain and to their experience into their insight.

Emily Thompson [00:06:35]: Yeah. For the purpose of my business. And it's through these highly reciprocal relationships of business support that I am able to make big decisions in my business.

Emily Thompson [00:06:47]: Which is where I present you with your challenge. If you are not already cultivating relationships with like-minded business owners, again, both in your industry and outside of your industry, this is the time for you to begin that. I cannot tell you how many times I have been able to more easily make decisions in my business, because either someone reflected back to me, what I already knew myself,

Emily Thompson [00:07:13]: They gave me the insight or help me pose the right questions to make the right decision for myself,

Emily Thompson [00:07:19]: or they were otherwise there to support me. As I made these decisions for myself, making it easier for me to make these decisions.

Emily Thompson [00:07:31]: At Being Boss for a really long time, we've talked about an exercise that we call the hot shit 200. And I think it's a really relevant exercise for anyone in a place where you're wanting to cultivate more of these relationships for yourself. I will leave a link to the hot shit, 200 sort of workbook or cheat sheet or worksheet in the show notes or the description for this podcast or videos that you can access it there with the idea that you are going to pinpoint people that you want to connect with and actually reach out to them one after another.

Emily Thompson [00:08:07]: Enabling you to cultivate around yourself, this community of like-minded business owners. I'll also say, this is exactly why I've built the being boss community, a place where creative entrepreneurs and business owners can gather to connect with each other. And even in that space, so many bosses have

Emily Thompson [00:08:23]: found their business besties, the people with whom they can talk to about anything in their business and help them get closer to making the best decisions that they can for the path that they are trying to take.

Emily Thompson [00:08:36]: And with that, I'm done. That's my secret weapon. My secret weapon is my boss friends, the people with whom I have built engaging, authentic, and very vulnerable relationships with whom I can connect to help me make some of the biggest decisions in my business and having really great business besties or boss, friends as what I hope for every single boss listening or watching this podcast or video.

Emily Thompson [00:09:05]: So make those connections, nurture those relationships and use those connections to help you move forward in your business.

Emily Thompson [00:09:13]: For me, I think I have a couple of boss chats. I need to go schedule, always hanging out with my boss friends and for you until next time, do the work be boss.