We’re talkin’ “bad” business decisions in this episode. 

You know, the ones where you hired someone to help you with your business, you said yes to investing in something to grow your business, or you hired an employee…

…and it just didn’t work out? So you then beat the crap out of yourself for making that decision? 

Yeah, those decisions! 

Well, we’ve got some thoughts ‘em, like…

• Why most business owners fall into the “I’m a terrible business owner!” after they made a “bad” decision
• Why we stopped using the word “bad” to describe business decisions that didn’t go exactly like we wanted them to 
• How to avoid thinking about a “bad” business decision for weeks, months, or years after you made it
• How to use “bad” decisions to your advantage as a business owner 

*Important Disclaimer: in this episode, we’re not referring to business-related decisions that negatively or significantly affect your overall financial, physical, or emotional well-being.

Head over to iwannacollaborate.com and let us know what you took away from this conversation.

Music credit: The Funkster by Sweet Spot

A Podcast Launch Bestie production

Hello.

Hello, and welcome back to the Eaves Drop on US podcast.

I am Jessica.

And

I am Susan, and today

I am excited for us to talk about a, a topic

that I think literally affects every single business owner that.

We know, certainly we know, I think every business owner that's out there,

and that is the concept of sort of beating yourself up over the quote, bad

business decisions that you have made.

You know, the time that you decided to invest with someone and you didn't.

Quite get what you wanted or you didn't get along with the person, or you decided

to hire someone and it didn't work out.

You know, whatever that dis decision may be, you know, that's what

we're gonna dig into today because.

I would say in the last, like two weeks alone, Susan, a combination of our clients

and business friends have been like, oh my God, I've been, I did this thing,

or I invested in this, or I hired this person, and it just, it didn't work out.

And we've just seen people literally, like the self-flagellation and

emotional, like beating themselves up is what prompted us really to do this

episode.

Yeah.

I'm not a huge believer in regret.

I think it's negative energy, number one.

negative energy around regret is framed in the following way.

For me, I clearly did not make the right decision.

I should have known better.

I could have done better.

I must have.

it's just wasted energy, so I tend not to swim in that regret pool for too long.

And that's why I think you had such a, a helpful take.

On this that I wanted for us to have a conversation about it for

the benefit of our listeners.

And before we get into all of that, I think we obviously wanna say at the

beginning of this that the decisions we're talking about how we're defining

decision are the decisions that you're making where your overall livelihood

and business, your personal and emotional livelihood, as well as your

business' livelihood, are not at stake.

So, for example, we're not talking about a decision that

would suddenly render someone.

homeless or destitute or would not require them to have to literally

shut down their business because they can no longer, function.

You know?

So what we're talking about are those decisions that

you made where it just, yes.

It kind, it stings and it affected your business in a way.

And it, it certainly stung personally, but overall you are

fine and your business is fine.

So I think just to be clear with that.

Yeah, I love that, clarity call.

ultimately, folks, what we're talking about is imminent danger, right?

we're not unpacking that clearly.

If there's an emergency, you call what, nine one one or whatever.

We're not, going to take that on today.

I think we, we really wanna take you is those decisions that are not necessarily.

Life or death, of course.

but that, we as business leaders and senior leaders and owner operators,

we're making a lot of darn decisions.

And, you know, sometimes we just, you know, go back on a decision

and we current ourselves inside out over decision not made well.

And that's where we want to focus our conversation and

our give and take today on.

Yeah.

So, and I'm sure as you're listening to this, you are

probably a, an example comes readily to mind, you know, it was someone you said,

you know, you either hired as the team member or it was someone you said yes to

investing with for consulting or guidance or support, or d a sort of a service.

Um, or it could even be like, I made the decision to do this X thing in my

business and that was, that was a mistake.

So I think let's start with Just where people have been coming

to you in the last two weeks.

They're sort of in that, the decision was made, the fallout happened, and

now they're in this space of beating the literal crap out of themselves,

oh my God.

Into hamburger, quite frankly.

Or minced meat as our European friends would say.

you know, in the past two, I would even go out as far as three or four weeks.

Folks are much more focused on what they're spending,

quote unquote, or investing.

See, there's two different mindsets there.

Um, what they've committed to or what they've got pulled into.

See different perspectives there.

But all, you know, it's all about reevaluating a committed

behavior, action, or investment.

And I think.

You know, the energy around.

That's pretty interesting from my perspective as an advisor helping and

guiding and supporting them through it, because it's one of those instances

of, all right, first, what is to be gained by beating yourself up on this?

W what's the point?

You know, where are you going with this?

How does this possibly serve you going forward?

I think a better question, a more interesting question.

Something that really.

conserve you going forward is, could I learn to make a better, more informed,

well informed decision going forward?

What, what did I miss?

What could I learn?

What could I gather as a benefit of that experience?

To me, I think that's, you know, cooler, sexier, more productive.

what I've appreciated and why I was so excited

to talk about this topic today is because I was in that camp of, I.

oh my gosh, I made this horrible decision.

I can't believe we did this.

I can't, can you believe that it didn't work out?

And for a variety of reasons.

And then I would just be in this space of for days, weeks, months,

just beating myself up over it.

And really, I would say for me it was indulging in the emotionality of it.

And it was, you sort of taking that question.

Of, well, what can we learn from, from this and how can

we make a better decision?

Was literally like throwing, you know, the what, wait, what do you

put in when you have a kitchen fire?

What do you put on the fire?

Is it baking soda?

Baking powder?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Baking.

Like, it's like throwing that onto the emotional fire and

being like, well, wait a second.

You feels good and indulgent to be in this emotional space, you know?

And how can you instead, as a business owner, Use that information as intel.

that's what it is, right?

Because, um, we often use these phrases in small business as, you

know, continual process improvement, that's really sexy, right?

all that type of stuff.

This is one of those, you know, to be an evolving learning,

intuitive small business.

We have to be introspective, but with sobriety, not emotionality.

Now, I'm not suggesting become stoic in this, right?

We can have emotion.

I'm just suggesting not to be indulgent and wallow in the damn thing.

Right?

There is a difference and because at that point now we're throwing good.

Money at a very bad investment.

The money, time, time is dying.

I've always said this, and you know, we can go in over that at some other point.

But the, the, you know, the point comes back to how do you

recover from an a bad decision?

do you want to wallow in the emotionality of it or do you wanna,

come at it soberly and ask, okay, what is that lesson as you, pointed out?

That to me is a more productive use of time.

And what I love about our clients and our small business community

right now is that there's more, attention being given to investment.

There's more attention being given to, what are we going to do?

that was not in play.

As far as back as January, December or November 22, people were just doing.

So there is a, a shift, and I think that's a really interesting thing to

be able to share with our listeners.

That if you find yourself in that space of, gosh, I should have made a better

decision, I could have done this, but just, you know, take two steps back, take

a deep breath and ask where's the lesson?

And I

can ask you something though.

All right?

Yeah, sure.

Be honest with me because, you know, for, for those listening who are like,

okay, so that sounds easy to do, right?

Just think about the lesson, not, okay.

So I was, I was just curious, you know, cuz you were saying you don't, you don't

wanna be totally stoic about it, but how have you sort of balanced that, that

feeling of the, the emotionality with the sobriety of what can I learn from this?

Because earlier this year there was a moment where we had made a

frustrating business decision, right?

And, and I say, I say frustrating because again, it did not impact

the overall business's wellbeing.

It did not cause us to be in a place where we were in financial, you know, strain.

But it did staying.

It, did not turn out the way we wanted it to turn out.

And so, I'm just curious, you know, cuz you, I remember there was a moment where

you were sort of emotional about it, but how did you pull yourself out of that?

Oh, let's be clear.

I was pissed off.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, can we just be real about this?

the emotion was anger betrayal, angery at myself that I didn't, didn't

see the warning signs, you know?

I fell in love with the potential and damn it.

That is one of the biggest lessons as business owner leaders, decision makers,

the potential always bites us in the ass.

Right?

Especially, you know, folks that are, you know, entrepreneurs.

We love potential.

So, you know, your question was, how did I pull myself out

of that potential spin out?

There were always three questions I ask always.

What worked.

So I start listing out what worked, what didn't work, and, and those two questions.

Now, in all sincerity, there's emotionality and there's

sobriety in there too, right?

but I put 'em on paper and then I just look at it, okay.

Could I, would I have made a different decision if it was today, and the reality

is I would've made the same damn decision and so, I had to just suck it out.

I'm like, yeah, you know what?

That happens.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes.

you win more than you lose.

And that's the game, right?

We wanna win more than we lose in our decisions.

And in that instance, I'm being really honest, that's how I,

pulled myself out of the spin out.

So then I had to literally say, To the folks that we had this working on.

I literally had to say, love you, kisses, hugs we're done.

And that is perhaps one of the more difficult things to say, but I had to

do it because it just wasn't working.

I.

It wasn't working out for our betterment.

And I think also for theirs, you know, and sometimes as decision makers, we don't

always get to make the fun decisions.

Sometimes we have to be able to say, this isn't gonna work.

Love you, kisses, hugs.

I honestly wish you the best, but we're gonna stop.

I think a few things that, that, I'm thinking of with that

specific instance is, we, at the time when we made the decision, we had

the, the information in front of us.

Yes.

You know, it, we, we made the best decision at the time that we could have.

And I think, uh, you know, on the other side of it, after what happened happened,

I looked back on it and I was like, why am I so an, like, why was I so angry?

And I was like, I'm more angry with myself.

Because I think, again, there was the potential of this I didn't ask, I knew

I should have asked this question and I know the should have, like people

listening don't come at me with it.

Like, don't shoot on yourself.

But there was that like, wow, these are certain questions that I know.

That I should consistently ask.

And so we just, I think we used that and said, okay, so yeah, that sucked.

It was annoying.

Whatever, you know, we'll, we, we need to move on and use this to

inform our decisions going forward.

And so I.

If it's a matter of, in this specific case, if it's a matter of hiring,

you know, someone to support us in some capacity, well we kind of

know what questions we need to ask this person upfront going forward.

And so I think that's, you know, I was thinking of someone who just

recently, messaged us and said, you know, I've been beating myself up over

this decision I made for over a year.

And I think, my God, what you said about time is so true.

It's like, can we use that energy and harness that?

For more productive things in our business and more importantly, some

of the most successful business owners that we've been around.

wonder if there's the perception, Susan, that when people beat themselves

up over decisions, is it because we think that successful business

owners don't make bad decisions?

Do we get into that space of like, oh, I'm a bad business owner because I made

this this decision and it didn't work out.

Or there's, do you, do you know what I'm saying?

I wonder if people are sort of internalizing it that way.

I think inexperienced ones do.

I think no, I don't think I actually, I'm gonna say I believe this, that,

look, no one ever gets up from a knockout, ever without understanding.

When they get up off the floor, they're wiser and stronger for getting up.

can we acknowledge that?

So when you are in the privileged position of being a business owner and a

leader, decision making is understood to be part of the role and responsibility

of that particular individual?

No.

Getting around it so you learn right quick, you're not the hero of every day.

There are times you're gonna make not so great decisions, so you have to

recognize it's not a personal failing.

It's just, you know what this is, part of getting through it

and advancing, and evolving.

I think though when business owners are junior, you know, newbies if

you will, respectfully, I don't say that disrespectfully to you.

New business owners and leaders, we all had to be there.

I am saying that you don't necessarily have muscle memory yet on how to recover.

From a bad decision because it's like life.

You will make bad decisions.

You will trip, you will fall.

You don't lay flat.

If you are a leader, you don't lay flat.

You get up and you dust yourself off and you either, you're raw

and you have an open wound, eventually it's gonna scab over.

You'll recover, It's like the old question, should I worry?

And the reply usually is, would it help?

And it doesn't.

It doesn't, So, you gotta remember to give yourself some grace

and ease through this process.

Well, and I think

too, Through.

I think the, just the way you, you've mentored me around this, which

is, you know, you use it as intel.

Yeah.

You, it stings for a moment, but use it to propel the business forward.

And I think two things have sort of happened because I wouldn't

say we make bad decisions all the time, but it happens and it's gonna

happen to, to you listening to this.

you can do what you can and you can make as much an informed choice as possible.

But in the end, not all of them are going to be the right one or the one

that's going to work out the best.

And I think looking back on some of the decisions that we've made that haven't

worked out the way we wanted them to, one, I think it's helped just in terms of.

Better questions to ask ways to, make the decision itself.

And two, I also think that, at least in the line of work that we do, it

has made us much more dynamic coaches and consultants because then you're

speaking from experience of like, well, we tried this and this is what happened,

this was our experience with it.

Or if I did it again, I would've done this differently.

And so you just don't know until you go

through it.

You gotta get through the fire of it.

And, you know, there's also, I remember, uh, listening to a

presentation and he actually, what was the author of Stoicism right now?

Who's that Fella.

Ryan Holliday, very, very well known.

He's the author of the Daily Stoic and talks about stoicism on social media.

So yeah, we saw him at.

Funnel hacking live.

Yeah, baby.

And that was a couple years ago.

Yeah.

out of the whole presentation, the one thing that this always happens

to me, I usually walk away with one or two nuggets per a presentation,

and he gave a hell of a presentation.

So if you ever have a chance to see him do it, I highly recommend it.

But here's the thing I took away from that presentation

was he made the comment of AI.

AI was really amazing that we can take as humans as a lesson from

it is its decision making model.

It doesn't emote now I don't wanna say that you should

make decisions emotion free.

Let's not be extreme here.

Um, you know, we're people, we are emotion.

That's what makes us fabulously human.

But we can minimize the fog of emotion in our decision making.

And AI as he went on in his presentation, just makes a mistake and

compute it for the next correction.

That's it.

It's just, oh, that didn't work.

Okay, next.

Oh, it didn't work.

Great.

Okay, next.

And what do you mean that say, right?

Because there's no emotion, right?

There's no, judgment on it, good or bad, healthy, sad.

It just, it doesn't do any of that.

So how did I take that back to my business?

Working with my clients was how can we turn down the emotion

in this particular decision?

If you had to do it all over again, let's look at the facts

that were available to you.

In that moment when you made that decision to do it or not,

and use that as a teaching tool.

So that's all I do.

I I really, honestly, that's, I I have to give him the credit for

helping me with that one they all have better decision making abilities.

Yeah.

I think it's the striking a balance between Absolutely.

Okay.

You know what?

Wasn't fun, not happy that it went that way, but I'm not

going to lose sleep over this.

I'm not going to spend time thinking, overthinking, you know,

imagining different scenarios and just think wallowing in

it for days, weeks, or months.

You know?

That's just, it's not productive.

A for the business and more importantly for your own

mental and emotional wellbeing.

can you talk about

that, your emotional and long-term wellbeing?

Oh my gosh, because I

think this was my personal, like specifically for me, but

I would think about it as, as I was lying down in bed at night and like playing

it over and over in my mind of like, oh, I would've done this differently.

Or, oh my gosh, I can't believe this happened and that affects sleep.

Oh my, you're okay, so you're not sleeping.

This is what happened.

You know, so it, it creates this very unproductive.

Space for it did for me anyway.

And I think I've said this to you so many times, Susan, if I'm not careful, I can

very easily slide into all or nothing.

and I can just be like, you know, in the indulgent space that was for me.

Right.

I'm not saying everybody is indulging in their emotions, that was just for me.

Mm-hmm.

And.

It's the balancing of, okay, yes, acknowledge it, acknowledge the emotion,

but then, okay, so we've gotta move on.

Right?

I cannot put my body and mental wellbeing through this and the business.

I've gotta move on.

I love all of that insight and because I love how you connected too,

the renson repeat of that, memory loop.

And how that impacts your body and your overall wellbeing.

Folks, there's not enough time in the day to overemphasize how important

that and that alone is because this is a, a cliche and I'm gonna use it.

This is a marathon.

This is not a sprint.

This is really a marathon.

So it's about conditioning your mindset and your body because you

have to be able to take the hits you know, you gotta get back up.

This is not about those.

And, you know, finally, I would probably put a real emphasis on this.

Recently I shared with a client who was just, an amazing

businesswoman, number one.

Truly, truly an amazing businesswoman, very successful business.

you know, one of the things you can expect as you scale and grow your business,

the punches are gonna feel harder.

You know, at first they're like little pillow swipes.

You know, you just got swed in the head by a pillow.

you know, as you get bigger in this business, it's, it goes

right to the the bread basket.

You know, the gut, you get a gut shot.

Really, cuz I can tell you that first year of business,

everything felt like a gut punch.

So I don't know what kind, maybe for some people, I don't know.

Here we go.

You know it.

This is why we do this, you know.

You have that.

And I didn't, I mean, Tamir

was like, oh my gosh.

Everything I did in the, in the very beginning it was like this, the, the

intensity the seriousness of it all.

So I would say I've, I've experienced, although, you know, to be fair,

I think, I've certainly eased and they don't feel, you know, yeah.

Anyway.

Yeah.

Well, here's what I encouraged her with and I love that you shared that.

So thank you.

That's one of those things.

See folks, this is, why we have this dynamic to me.

I was like, oh, did you say something?

Oh, oh.

You know, but as we grew, oh, okay.

That I, I felt that hit.

so I shared with her, the following quote, there is no problem outside of you that is

superior to the power that is within you.

I'll repeat it because that's a repeater.

There is no problem outside of you that is superior to the power that is within you.

that was big because you learn how to embrace a bad decision, a flawed decision.

A Mar decision.

A setback, because why?

If you understand how to capitalize and leverage a setback, if you will, you

just got one of the true keys to success.

That is a key of success if you can understand how to leverage a loss.

Into a win to a lesson to what I will never do again or

what can I share with others?

Because sharing of knowledge is one of the biggest blessings you can pass on.

Right.

And

I'd also add to, it's also the appreciation

of if I made a quote unquote bad decision, it's not a reflection of.

Who I am as a person and you know, my, how successful I'm going to be in business.

I think it's, it's the depersonalization of that.

And I think of some of the, the clients we have who have been in business, they're

certainly entrepreneurial to the bone and the way that they approach mistakes

or what we're saying with bad decisions.

there isn't the emotionality.

It's like, oh, that sucked.

All right, well, I'm not gonna do that again.

that's it.

And we're moving on.

Pick up your bags, people, let's go.

Yeah.

And that's a life lesson.

I mean, truly, see, this is why I love the craft of small business, because it, it is

both a personal and professional lesson.

If you can grab this and let it inform you in how you make what work, what didn't.

What lesson can I glean out of this to give, you know, go forward.

Sometimes these lessons too, by the way, this is a popular follow

up to me, from our clients.

What I'm teaching them.

This is, well, what do I do with this lesson?

Well, you have to ask a critical question at this point.

Does this inform our business or distract?

Sometimes it's a one off and you can say, no, you know what,

we're not doing that again folks.

Or if we do it again, this is how we're going to approach it so we

can mitigate risk or harm that this decision can impact us on.

Does that make sense?

Mm, totally.

We, we have to kind of, be intuitively curious.

Childlike in our curiosity about it, and when we detach and get childlike

with the curiosity around this, the emotionality falls right away.

It definitely falls off of it, at least in my experience.

Well, and I

think two was something that, you know, I think the two of us,

you know, have each other to sort of talk through, through that with, right?

Like, I think sometimes, you know, in the, in the lonely space that

is business ownership, you know, you can get into your own head.

This would be me, right?

I'd be in my own space thinking and overthinking and imagining, and

you know, all of those unhelpful.

Pieces in on my own.

And I think having the, the ability to verbalize it out loud

with someone is, is helpful too.

So I think again, it just, you know, has been

helpful.

thank you and I mean that, hon.

Thank you for bringing that out for our listeners and for each other as

a reminder of this is yet one more time, we can help others recognize.

You can't do this stuff in a vacuum.

You really cannot.

I mean, to do so is at your own peril.

Right.

And you know, ultimately I think what we're both stressing to our

kind listeners is, whenever you, a not so terrific decision, if you can

make that decision that it wasn't.

Honestly a productive call.

You're a wiser person because you made that.

Do you follow?

If you could judge it as not such a wise decision right there and then in

that very moment, you are a wiser, more informed individual decision maker, I

love it.

So as you are thinking on this episode and thinking about maybe there's a

recent decision, and I use bad, I'm using it in a broad sense because

that's how we usually label these things, but you're thinking of a bad,

not so great, less than terrific kind of decision that you've made recently.

Hopefully you can take one or two tips from this and a ease up on yourself.

And b, harness this to propel your business forward.

Because as soon as you sort of see yourself through that emotional fog,

we promise that the, the lesson, the silver lining, the intel that you

can use to move forward is there.

So, Susan, anything else you wanna say before we let them

go?

Just, trusting your intuition.

Be stronger and wiser and, and go gently, allow that wisdom to come to you.

And I hope you feel a good hug after this.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, thank you so much for tuning in to

another one of our episodes.