Camille Rapacz: Good morning, George.
George Drapeau: Good morning. Welcome back.
Camille Rapacz: Thank you. Yes. By the time this podcast comes out, I'll have been back for a while, but for you and I, this is our first recording since I was away on my ever long vacation, which was super fabulous.
George Drapeau: I was looking at some of your posts. The photos are phenomenal. Your narration was so much fun to read. It just seemed like there was so much going on and you've been to places that I've. Some places I've heard about a lot I've never been, and I thought, huh, it looks like it'd be interesting. I wonder if I'd ever want to go.
And then there were some other places I thought, man, I, I don't know if I'm ever gonna go there, but it is on my bucket list. I would love to go. And so seeing some of the photos of those places was just amazing.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. I'm not great at social media stuff, you know?
But it was kind of fun to just be engaged, especially on Instagram. And I realized, I'm actually using Instagram for what it was intended for and that was kind of fun.
George Drapeau: That's cool.
Camille Rapacz: If only posting about my business was also so easy and rewarding. Hmm.
All right. So enough about that. Now we have to get back to business.
George Drapeau: So be it. Let's go help people.
Camille Rapacz: I know. Let's go help people. So how should we help people? Hmm.
George Drapeau: I know. How do we decide to do that?
Camille Rapacz: Oh my gosh, we're so dumb with our jokes.
George Drapeau: Should we keep helping people the way we're helping people? Or should we pivot to a different way of helping people?
Camille Rapacz: How would we make such a decision? George? Oh my goodness, we're so dorky.
Welcome to The Belief Shift. The show that explores. What you really need to know about building a successful business.
I'm your host, Camille Rapacz: business coach and consultant who spent too much of her career working in corporate business performance.
George Drapeau: And I'm George Drapeau: your co-host and her brother. I'm a leader in the tech world bringing my corporate perspective, but mostly my curiosity.
Camille Rapacz: Together, we're exploring beliefs about success and how to achieve it. But mostly we're bringing practical solutions so you and your business can thrive.
So today's topic is about making decisions. Do I pivot? Do I stay the course?
Imagine that. This actually came up because, well, in part because you recently made a big decision. Yeah, but this has also been showing up a lot, and I thought, I don't know if this is normal or it just seemed like it was not a normal level of people that I've been talking to who are getting ready to make a big decision in their life, whether it's about leaving their job for another job or to start a business or business owners who are thinking about how they might need to pivot because business is slowing down a bit.
Or their market seems to be changing or shifting in some way, or the, you know, there's, there's so many things going on, and so people are asking, well, I wonder if I should shift to a different market or change my business model, or maybe I should open up this aspect of my business. So there's, these are big questions, right?
These are big decisions to be making. So I thought, oh, it's probably a good time. I've had this on my list for a while. We should probably talk about decision making.
George Drapeau: Absolutely we should, I mean, we'll be talking about reflecting on your business and how you plan for your business, but at some point your plans dictate changes or they actions occur to you that you should probably take.
Yeah, you have to decide, okay, am I really gonna do this? Follow my own advice, or do what the data tell me or not, because sometimes those decisions will cause you to make big leaps. Yeah, it's, we need to talk about it.
Camille Rapacz: So I decided this needed to be a two-parter, because in this conversation I want us to just talk about how decision making can go wrong and what we could do about that.
So this is gonna be kind of that kind of overarching look at decision making and the problems within it. And then in the next episode, we will get into actual decision making frameworks and how people can relate, use some real tangible decisionmaking processes that they can apply and in any decision, but of course focused on business decisions.
So that's what I have decided in all of my great wisdom. Fantastic. Without under or overthinking it I think.
George Drapeau: Let's do it.
Camille Rapacz: All right, so here we go. Decision making gone wrong. I am curious, you probably looked at the list, but do you have, just for yourself, do you have a, like a top two or three things that hinder your ability to make a good decision, George?
Like are there things Yes. That you know to look out for?
George Drapeau: Number one, fear of the unknown. I'm surprised it doesn't show up in this list. Fear of the unknown is my number one hindrance.
That's a big one for me, you know? Yeah. And I think of myself as pretty willing to try just about anything. But it's still, even for a guy like me, willing to try just about anything. That's a big one.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah, I totally get that. I think that is definitely a big reason why you would hesitate to make a decision.
Mm-hmm. Because you are making a choice to go, and it might make you want to stay the course longer than you should because you're like, but I know this path. Yes. I'm familiar with this path and I know what outcome I'm trying to get from it and how it's supposed to happen. Even if it's really not happening, I still wanna stick with it.
Right? Yeah. And it kind of relates to my first one on my list. So yeah, I had a really long list of these and was like, I really gotta pair this down to some of the essentials. So I don't Did
George Drapeau: your list was longer?
Camille Rapacz: Oh yeah, it was longer.
George Drapeau: Awesome.
Camille Rapacz: Yes, so, so I pretty much every time I make notes and I try to bring things down to the top five or six or something.
There's a list of like 12 things and then I have to mush 'em down cuz I don't wanna do a 12 things episode. Who's gonna remember 12 things?
George Drapeau: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Nobody,
Camille Rapacz: There's always more, so nobody, yeah. So I try to just pick , what do I think are the essential at the top of the list. So I kind of connect your fear of the unknown to the first one on my list around analysis paralysis.
George Drapeau: Yeah. Okay.
Camille Rapacz: So analysis paralysis is that like, I, I need to know all the information before I make this decision. I just need to know what's gonna happen. I need to know what expect, I just keep digging for data. So there's a little bit of a connection there, right? With fear of the unknown makes me just stay here until I feel like I know enough to make a good decision.
But also if you have perfectionist tendencies, you're also trying to pursue a perfect answer. So, So it also could not, not even relate to fear of unknown, but just relate to it's gotta be the right decision. I can't afford to make the wrong decision. It needs to be perfect.
George Drapeau: There's something related to this, the, the paradox of choice.
Yeah. The easiest way to put it is cereals go to the cereal aisle we have 18,000 different kinds of cereals. And because you have so many choices, you get stuck instead of just having two things to choose from. And I think one of the problems with that is, when you have so many choices, you start second guessing yourself and thinking, well, have I really considered everything I should consider?
Maybe you came in with two criteria. Do I want sugar on it or not? Or, you know, whatever. What's the size of the box? But you see all these different kinds of, all these different attributes and features, and it gets you thinking, well, maybe I should really think about all the different features. No. So you get paralyzed by that, by the paradox choice.
You know, too many choices means no choice.
Camille Rapacz: Yes. Yeah, so I'm so glad that you brought that up, cuz I do think that plays right into this idea. If there are too many choices, which gets into that, there is a kind of a better way to think about, I don't wanna say a right and a wrong way to make decisions, because I don't think there's any perfect right way to make decisions.
It's just a very tricky thing to do. But there are better ways to do it, and one of them is what you're connecting to. And I think we'll get to more in our next episode when we talk about actual frameworks. Yeah. And it's that you really do have to have some criteria and understand clearly what problem you're trying to solve.
George Drapeau: Yes.
Camille Rapacz: So how do you know if you're having this analysis paralysis problem? So I do have this problem. I love to have the data and have it all laid out. Part of it is my perfectionist tendency, and part of it's just, I like that process of researching and putting all the stuff together and making sense of things.
So I check myself by asking myself, am I no longer learning anything that actually matters? Like am I just learning for the sake of learning stuff? Because that feels good, but it's also zero risk. I'm not taking any risk by learning new things and putting them in a document.
I just spent time learning, so I put in a document and there it is, and I feel better. But if I'm doing that and I realize the stuff I'm learning, it really isn't any longer related to the decision I'm about to make. Or it might be so minuscule that it doesn't impact anything. It's like, this is kind of neither here nor there.
It was kind of fun to learn, but I didn't really need it. That's one of the ways that I discover, am I in this analysis paralysis phase. Also just losing momentum. I might just be swirling and I might get frustrated with myself thinking, why am I still sitting here?
I've been working on this problem for like a month. Yeah. You know, and also I kind of check myself just from a, how long have I been sitting on this stupid decision that I haven't made. Yeah. So those are ways that I know, I don't know. Do you ever get stuck in this space and have a way to out?
George Drapeau: I do. I do. You got me thinking about it is I am, I like shopping and so for me there's dividing line between indulging my desire to just browse and look at different things and see which is fun. This is a fine line between after a while that becomes like, okay, I needed to decide on something and am I done having fun?
Am I no longer doing it for fun? Am I just kind of doing it on autopilot or I'm not moving toward a decision? At some point, I cross that line where I'm just shopping instead of watching a TV show. Great. Spend an hour doing that versus shopping or choosing or browsing and not really getting anywhere.
When I detect when that's happening, I think, okay, I need to step back and go to one of my techniques for making a decision or something that I hope I had set up beforehand. One thing for me, it was, we can get to, I don't know if it'll be later this episode or the next episode, is if I do well, And I know I'm gonna shop for something.
I'll list criteria that are important to me and not important to me. And so when I get to the point where I'm spending a lot of time and I'm no longer thinking about those criteria, I realize, okay, now I'm just dithering. I need to stop, go back to that list. So, kind of depends, you know, there are different ways that I know I'm just not making a decision.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. I like that. So some things that you can do about this. Yeah. One of them is set a timeline for making the decision or just for when you're gonna be done gathering data. Allow yourself , I'm gonna spend a week on this, or I'm gonna spend what depends on the type of decision we're talking about.
Mm-hmm. But give yourself some timeline. Even if you don't follow that strictly, it at least gives you this checkpoint of like, oh, where am I at right now? It makes you stop and think about the data that you've gathered, and do I have enough to make a decision? So that's one is just give yourself a timeline, a deadline for this.
Yeah. And then the other one that I have is, Also make sure that the problem that you set out to solve is clearly defined. Yes. So that your data gathering does support that, that you have clear criteria. Yeah.
George Drapeau: Recently our mom has been looking at heat pumps for the house, and she's done a great job of identifying different vendors and trying to get quotes, but I find that during the process she got kind of stuck because she didn't really know questions she wanted to ask.
She hadn't really thought about all of what's important to her. The good news is that in finding out about this stuff, she ended up learning more things from different vendors. From there, she kind of extracted questions to go back and ask all of them. But she didn't know that upfront. She hadn't really spent the time thinking about the criteria and under her defense, she wasn't sure, didn't know enough to know what questions to ask, if that makes sense, you know?
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. Actually that brings up a really good point, which is sometimes she was in the, stuck in the spot of, I don't know what I don't know. So I remember her being stuck in. I don't even wanna ask a vendor to give me a quote cuz I don't even know what I'm looking for. Yeah, absolutely. And in that case, absolutely her best move was just ask like, there's no risk in asking for a quote.
So just ask for it to start figuring out then what am I actually comparing here and what questions do I ask? So absolutely, it did help her get better. So I think sometimes just recognizing that that is part of the analysis process is sometimes you have to open yourself up to, I just need to take in some information, even though I'm not really sure what I'm looking for yet, knowing that down the road you'll figure it out.
So absolutely. It's a great point.
Good job, mom. Good job for being a good example on our podcast. She'll be so proud. All right, so number two is when you are getting stuck, when you're potentially not making a good decision, you're potentially at risk of making a poor decision, is when it's too emotional for you.
Yeah. So it means that you make a decision based on what you just need in the moment to feel better and not necessarily the best long-term solution. Do you ever remember this happening to you?
George Drapeau: Yeah. Although that's not where I thought you were gonna go with this.
For me, the emotion is usually the sadness of making decision. Like, so I'm, we'll probably talk about this more in detail in a future episode. I'm about to change jobs as we're recording this. By the time this comes out, I will have just changed jobs and it's a good move for me. But man, I'm sad about leaving my fantastic team.
Mm. Huge emotions when they're coming up against that. And it's a really, like this big ink blot sitting on the rational criteria I use to make my decisions big emotional ink blot, you know?
Camille Rapacz: I'm so glad you brought that up because that's, that's part of it, right? The emotions go both ways. Yeah.
Yeah. Sometimes this decision you have to make is, is a really sad one. There's good things about what I'm about to leave behind. Yeah. Yeah. I think that happens a lot when people are changing jobs a lot more than people admit. So I think that, you know, some things to recognize and how do you know if you're about to make maybe an irrational or emotional decision? Usually it's, you can feel that emotion in your body, right? You can feel the tension or the anxiousness or the, you know, something's going on with you physically.
That's how you can tell, the emotion is strong enough that it might be actually influencing how you're thinking. Mm-hmm. That's, at least for me, I know it shows up that way a lot. And for a lot of people they'll say, yeah, I can feel it in my gut. Something's, you know, feels wrong. Or I can feel this tension in my body . So you're trying to stop feeling a certain way can be, you know, part of this emotional thing. Yeah. But it can also go the other way. , I know people who their anxiousness, it's familiar enough that they would rather sit in it than make the decision because they're so, to your point, they're so worried about that fear of the unknown.
They'd rather sit in the familiarity of anxiousness than then go into that step of the unknown. So what do we do about it? Ugh, emotions. This is a tough one. There's no magic wand, but my go-to is always just remember that it is okay for you to feel a little crappy sometimes.
Like sometimes people are trying so hard to just not feel bad anymore. That they just move too quickly to something, right? They do the quick fix thing. Cuz they feel like I shouldn't be, you know, stressed out or anxious or have this uncertainty. But those are all normal parts of life.
So I always wanna encourage people to just accept like, this is a normal part of life. Don't ignore it, you know, also don't just sit in it and wallow in it, but find a way to address those by, talking it out with people. Talk it out with a professional, with a friend.
Try another way to address the emotional thing that's going on rather than just making this rash decision. What are your thoughts about that emotional piece?
George Drapeau: I have a thing that I do when I get in this situation sometimes, and it is basically to fight fire with fire.
So for me, the emotion that's preventing from me from making a decision usually means that I'm getting some emotional benefit from staying in place from the status quo. So I'll make a two by two pros and cons list. What are the pros?
What feels good about staying? What are the cons about staying? So try to generate the emotions on the opposite side of that and what are the pros of making the decision changing and what are the cons of making the decision? So I've, instead of one emotion, One emotional context, I've got four of them, and then I can look at all of them.
I can feel all of them, and that helps me kind of balance things out and make a better decision that way. You know, as opposed to just one set of emotions for one of those four things, it's blocking me. This helps me kinda rationalize the emotions in a way.
Camille Rapacz: Hmm, I like that. All right. So that's emotions number three is sense of urgency.
I need to do it right now. I need to, this decision should have been made last week and it could be caused by what I was just saying in this, in the emotions. One, it could be caused by, cuz I hate feeling like this so I wanna get out of it. Could be, it could be caused by all sorts of things.
There's a sense of urgency cuz I think I might miss an opportune moment or somebody's expecting me to and pressuring me to, or there's lots of reasons why you could have this sense of urgency. You could just be one of those people that just doesn't like to live in a state of indecision.
I'm not okay sitting in this either or kind of nebulous world right now. Yeah. If you have this sense of urgency, it means you aren't taking any time to reflect or assess or research, or if you are, you're maybe just grabbing at the first solution that looks good. Yeah. Without really assessing it.
Yeah. Do you ever have this sense of urgency thing?
George Drapeau: I work with people who are like that. I'm the opposite. I don't have enough urgency at times actually, when actually I do notice I really need to get on it.
Yeah. But I, I run into people who have the sense of urgency thing and, they value action more than a solid decision. And actually you've talked about making fast small motions work before when you have a decision loop, and that's great, but when people don't have like the evaluation loop and they just, I gotta decide and keep moving and go, and go and go, and then everything's urgent to them.
I've seen that. I don't have that particular problem, but it bugs me. I have a hard time with people who do.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah, same for me. I don't often have this sense of urgency for decisions. But I watch people do it a lot and I watch them put pressure on other people. So it might not be that you personally are the one who's creating this sense of urgency.
It could be coming from somewhere else. Someone else is putting this pressure on you to have this sense of urgency around something that for sure you wanna take a different, more methodical approach to. Right. Yeah. So yeah, I do like the idea of rapid cycles of improvement, which basically means rapid cycles of decision making.
Yeah. Because every time you're making an improvement, you're making a decision. Am I not gonna stay the course or am I gonna pivot?
So yeah, that sense of urgency. So how do you know it? So it's pretty obvious when it's happening to you. We all are pretty aware and we're like, oh, this person's pressuring me to get a move on and that's a whole other podcast about what do you do.
George Drapeau: What do I need to do to get you in that Buick today?
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. But if it's yourself, like doing it to yourself mm-hmm. So check yourself if you're feeling really proud and excited about just how quickly you're moving.
Huh. And if you're like, ah, look at me. I made this decision faster than anybody thought that I could. It's worth stopping and just asking yourself , am I really moving at the right pace or not? You might be, but you also might benefit from a little bit of a slowdown in just assessing things. So this is if you think you might be the person who brings about the sense of urgency for yourself.
Yeah, so that's one way you can check. Also, if you are getting subtle comments, you gotta pay attention to what people are saying. People will make subtle, maybe passive aggressive comments about how fast you're going. And if you hear those, it's worth stopping and asking yourself, well, somebody else is seeing me do something here that maybe I should check myself and ask if I could afford to slow down just a bit.
That's interesting. And that's what I'm doing. Yeah, I see those get ignored a lot. Hmm. And mostly cuz people who have this fast, fast move, move, get it all done. That's just their mode, that's how they operate and they think it's just the only way to get it all done.
So yeah, you might be up against that. Yeah, absolutely. So. So things that you can do, you know, I do like people having a nice quick timeline, but really ask yourself if you truly understand the problem to be solved and you're doing the right things to solve it. Okay. Like it always comes back to that. Check that you have considered ideas that you would not normally consider.
And then talk to a trusted advisor or an expert if you think you have a sense of urgency problem, find out how fast should I be going?
What should I be doing? Like get some external input into that.
Let's go into number four. This one I hope everybody knows about, but it has to be stated anyhow, which is confirmation bias.
George Drapeau: Ooh.
Camille Rapacz: I know. So this is when we're seeking out, or we're just seeing information that only confirms our own thinking and beliefs. Yeah. And we pretty much reject stuff that's in conflict with how we think. This never happens to you. Right?
George Drapeau: Cause I'm not human.
Camille Rapacz: George is a Borg. Yeah, this happens to everybody. I think this is the one that I would say we all have to recognize that we have some level of confirmation bias, and it's very hard to really suss that out in ourselves. But we all do this. This is part of being human.
Absolutely. So that's how you know, how you know is the answer is yes. You have confirmation bias.
So it's pretty easy to know. Yeah, but what do you do? So step one is just to know that everything that you go into, you are bringing some level of confirmation bias. Now it's not always a level that's gonna be like completely debilitating to your ability to make a good decision, but it exists at some level.
So there's all sorts of gradations and levels and ways that this shows up. So just know that it exists for you. And then try to assess in any given situation, where does my confirmation bias live in this? What are my strong beliefs that I'm not willing to have challenged?
And then you can kind of make it a game to figure it out every time. Like, can I find it here? Can I find it here? And in the beginning, if you're really new to this, you don't have to do anything about it. Just know it. Just knowing it is a huge benefit in the way that you will see the conversations you have and the decisions you make.
That's cool. And then if you're willing to then go out and seek information that feels uncomfortable. So there are people who specifically try to talk to people who don't share my, you see this a lot in political beliefs, right? Yeah. That don't share my political beliefs to try and better understand and open up my thinking.
For sure you can do that in your decision making around your business or your professional life. Just talk to somebody who has a very different approach to how they do things. Yeah. And it's not necessarily because I want you to walk away from your beliefs. I like people to be firm and have their positions on things and their beliefs, but we should still always be open to everything else that's out there so that we can improve on our own, on our own beliefs.
Yeah. Thus shifting beliefs maybe. Mm-hmm. How about that?
George Drapeau: That's right. Yeah. Checks and balances. You know, it reminds me of the book Team of Rivals and mm-hmm. I mean, it seems like President Lincoln did this when he constructed his cabinet.
He had people who all were different than him, and I mean, such a variety of points of view. Most of them antagonistic to him helped him make fantastic decisions, tough decisions. Finding some way to get outside your confirmation biases. Great. And I, I agree with you the first step, just recognizing that's a great first start.
I think that's, I love that advice.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. Cuz it will make you think about then, oh, who am I talking to about this? Oh yeah. Mm-hmm. I'm only talking to the safe people. Right. The people who I know are just going to affirm that I'm doing the right thing. Yeah. What if I talk to somebody who isn't so safe, who might actually challenge my way of thinking?
Not easy to do, but so important, especially for really big decisions that are gonna have a big impact on your life and your business. Yeah. All right, so let's talk about number five. This is one of my favorites, sunk Cost Fallacy. Mm. So this is where I have invested so much on this path that I'm going down and despite the diminishing returns or changes that have been going on that completely make this decision pointless , I'm sticking to it. I've gotta see it through because I'm too invested now. Mm-hmm. And so it's the sunk cost, I am not willing to walk away from this investment no matter how horrible, how, how badly the returns have been diminishing over time.
You've probably seen this in business a lot.
George Drapeau: Yeah. And experience it all the time. I, for me, I don't know if I'll ever completely be free of this. This is something that I feel I'm always gonna have to think about the rest of my career, the rest of my life. I think I'm pretty good at dealing with it, but not great. It's hard, hard for me.
Camille Rapacz: It's a tough one. It's easier to see other people doing it than yourself, by the way. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Bought it and other people all the time. You're like me. No, I, mm-hmm. I don't have this problem. So that's probably thing number one is to just think about that.
You know what, I probably do this too. We are all susceptible to this. Yeah. It's probably, you know, as common as confirmation bias. I do see businesses do this a lot when they're so an example I had was you know, a company that invested in this consulting, big consulting firm to come and do this big assessment and how do we turn our business around?
And the experience was horrible. The recommendations were basically, they knew all, they already knew all of them. They just got well packaged. And this is, I've seen this happen a couple times, actually. Couple different companies and they just happened to, you've probably seen it too, and they just happened to package it all and this nice consultanty way that looks good.
But then everybody you talk to, they're like, there's nothing in there we didn't know or we haven't talked about for years. We just haven't had the guts to do anything about it. Yeah. And then the consulting firm is like, and here's now how you can spend more money and we'll help you make all these changes.
Well, so I see companies who, they get into that point and they're like, well, we've already invested so much in this consulting firm helping us, but all we have is a report. If we want change, we should give them more money to keep helping us, even though we don't really like them. And I've seen businesses stick with it, and I've seen businesses say, Nope, thank you for the report.
We're gonna go do this on our own. Because yeah, we're, even though we've invested so much, we really realize that the payoff should be in you sticking around, but it's not gonna be great for us. It's gonna take down the morale of our people the way that you're approaching it, all this kind of stuff.
So I see it happen sort of from that perspective, a big investment. But I also see it in really small ways too. Like we started this little project and we just, we need to finish it even though it's kind of pointless. But we just wanna be done and we don't wanna be quitters.
And same with setting strategic goals. Is this goal really helping the organization anymore? Well, we gotta finish it. Like, do you, so it shows up in all sorts of different ways. Or I just wanna, I wanna say I'm done and I'm finished and I don't wanna be called a quitter, so I gotta see it through. But you know, also literally the money that you invest, I invested in this program and even though it's not great, now I feel like I'm stuck with it and I can't possibly get away.
George Drapeau: So, okay. So how, how'd you get out of that?
Camille Rapacz: Oh, how do you get out of that? I mean, I, again, the first one is to recognize, that's why I'm stuck here. I am not willing to walk away from this decision because of the financial or the time that I've invested in it. Yeah. And recognize that that's probably because it means, you have to admit it was a bad decision.
And it might not have been a bad decision, by the way. It might have been the best decision at the moment, and it's just that things have changed and now it no longer serves you. Yes, yes, they changed, but we frame it as I made a bad decision and I have to admit it. Mm. Because we're humans and we're always like Debbie Downers on ourselves.
So framing up the decision is the best thing to do, and remembering that when you're doing this for your business, You really do have to separate yourself from your business at this point. What does my business actually need me to do? It doesn't need you to cling to an idea that is no longer serving it.
So I think a couple things you can do, one is like do the math. What did I actually gain out of this? And what will I really lose? And if I could cut my losses now and pivot what would be my long-term benefit? So some of it is really just actually doing the math, cuz a lot of times I have people do it and they're like, oh, it doesn't look as bad as I thought it would.
Ah, I've made it out to be much worse than it actually was. But if we do the math, I'm like, oh, well how much do you have to do? Oh, okay. Maybe that's not such a bad deal.
George Drapeau: That's super cool.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah, and then you do have to check your ego, right?
Again, you gotta separate yourself. Your personal identity is so tied up in your business and your professional work that sometimes just this idea that, oh gosh, I'm so embarrassed to admit that this was a loss that I, that's why I keep pushing it and saying it's gonna work. But that's gonna have really bad, long-term implications.
So really thinking about, am I letting my ego get in the way or am I just letting my emotions about not wanting to say that this was a wrong decision, especially if you were really invested in it. If you were really invested in making this thing work. And it's just not, it's really hard to let go of.
So just know that you gotta check your ego and at the end of the day, business needs what the business needs and you just have to make that decision. Like that's the hardest part about business is being able to separate your personal wants from what the business needs. Yeah. And then I think the last one is just to know that every single business experiences this.
Yeah. Every single business has made an investment or a choice that did not pan out. And this just might be yours. This isn't a uniquely, oh, you are just bad at running business scenario. That's not what this is about. Yeah.
We're all taking risks and making decisions every day in our business and not all of them pan out. There's no way they could pan out. There's no way to perfectly run a business and make all the right decisions. What you can do right is know when to cut your losses and move forward. No, that's some of my advice.
What do you think?
George Drapeau: You know, something that occurs to me as you're telling me this, is when I get into this problem myself I'm in a zero error mode, meaning, right now I've invested something. I've invested money and time and effort into my current course and I somehow think that making one error, like if this is an error, that's a big problem.
Lemme explain this a different way.
I'll tell you a story. This is the best better way of doing it. So I have a guy who was trying to figure out how to give money to charitable organizations. Now, what I probably would've done was I would've just sort of picked one and put money in there, and if it hadn't turned out well, I would've been really bummed about it.
And then, the problem would be, I'm giving money every year. Every year, every year I'm sinking more money into this bad decision. What he did instead, he let himself make a bunch of small errors upfront, and so he wrote small checks to 20 different places, and he had criteria for helping to decide how well it was gonna go.
He didn't worry about making one decision and seeing if it was wrong. He let himself make a bunch of small bad decisions early on and then evaluate them and change. My point being. Part of the sunk cost fallacy for me is once I get into it, I've got this big bad decision that I made. If I think about criteria upfront, I can do experiments and make smaller bad decisions.
You know, rather than once I get into it, it's $50,000 worth of one big mistake. Money. I does that. You know, am I being clear? Do you know what I mean?
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. I do know what you mean. I think it helps you in making those next decisions if you can experiment with a few decisions as part of the decision making process.
Yeah. As opposed to thinking, I have to get that one major decision. Right. Yeah. Now, I don't think every decision lends itself to that. No. Mm-hmm. But there are variations on that that you can do. I love the idea that , run some experiments first, or even run through some scenarios.
And I don't see people do this enough, I don't see people do enough of this experimentation, like, oh, are there ways that we could kind of mock up what we think, how we think this decision's gonna go? Mm-hmm. And see what would happen. Yeah, and if you get creative you can really come up with some cool ways to test out decisions before you actually make them.
So our last one is something that we have talked about quite a bit before and it's just a lack of a growth mindset. So this is the last example I have.
Again, there's many more that I had on my list, but I sort of stopped here because this kind of encapsulates a lot of what can get in the way, which is just not reflecting or learning or being open to new ideas. It's the bigger picture of all of these things kind of brings a lot of them together.
But I think this is the one to really look out for is am I really applying my growth mindset to yeah, the way that I'm about to approach this decision.
That's awesome.
Yeah, and you know, I was thinking about this and I'm like, yeah, George is probably pretty good at this and, you know, growth mindset.
But even as we were talking, I was recognizing how even as much as you're really good with the growth mindset, these other things still get in your way. Right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it's not a, you know, magical solution for everything. There's no silver bullet. You really have to look out for all these things.
But I think starting at growth mindset is really helpful. I know that when I am not applying a growth mindset, it's usually cuz I'm just freaking tired.
George Drapeau: Oh, really?
Camille Rapacz: Mm-hmm. Huh. I will get sort of decision fatigue and learning. Like I'll just get fatigued from, I'm just like, I'm out. I gotta check out.
I can't, I can't right now. So, Do you ever have that? Like is there something where you realize, oh, I, I don't even have the energy because growth mindset requires some energy. It's some work.
George Drapeau: For sure. Now that you mention it. Yeah. I had not thought of that before, but absolutely.
I now want to hear you talk more about that. Yes, that does happen to me too. Like, what is it recently? Sure, I could think about the possibilities, but it's just, I'm, I have no bandwidth right now. Is that what you're saying?
Yeah, it's that. Yeah. Once every week. Once a week? Yeah. Just, just once a week.
Camille Rapacz: I remember in my in my old job when I had a day job and I went to work, I felt like my whole day was just about making micro decisions all day long. Oh, right. Yeah. Wow. Because I was, I was the boss and so that's all I'm doing all day long. And I would get home and I'd be like, I'm not making, I don't even care what we have for dinner.
No more decisions. I'm all out like I can't do anymore. Yeah. So it could be that I have decision fatigue or it could just be I am just physically tired, like I have not slept well and I have not, you know, I've been go, go, go.
So this is one where I do want people to, to realize, you have to set yourself up for this mentally and physically to be in this growth mindset , you have to get ready for it. There is some energy required and a state of mind required, and we're not always in a state of mind for it.
I mean, I'm sure there are times where you're like, please don't ask me to make a decision about X. I just, I'm, I can't do it. Or if you do make me do it, it's gonna be so random. It'll probably be horrible.
George Drapeau: Okay, so what do you do about that? Like, we get tired, we get exhausted. What, what am I supposed to do about that? Stimulants? That can't be the answer.
The belief shift stimulant product!
Camille Rapacz: Oh no, we are not going down that path. Yeah. Good. Yeah. That made me think of really bad personal development, self-help stuff online that also sells stimulant products.
Right. We will never do that to you everybody. Maybe a dog calendar, but we're not gonna sell you stimulants. Okay? So what do we do about this? When you're lacking a growth mindset, if you're noticing you don't have the ability to be curious.
Yeah. and you're just kind of stuck in that, like, I just don't have the energy. You don't have the time and, and usually we call it, I don't have time by the way, that's our standard, words to say when we actually mean other stuff. Like I just don't want to, yeah. We say I don't have time, but just know that there's probably something in there of, oh, maybe I just, I don't have the right mindset for it. I don't have the right energy around it.
So if you're stuck in that my first recommendation is very self-serving, which is go listen to episode 33 on growth mindset. Awesome. Like we already talked about this, right? But in all seriousness, yes, go listen to that. Cause we talk about growth mindset and what you can do to really engage in that.
But also, don't force it. I hear people all the time like, oh, just do all these things.
No, you don't need to force it. Give yourself the time to recharge and then make a plan to come back to it and do all the stuff we always tell you, which is first micro move your way in. Start small. Start with just learning a few things. Start with jotting a few notes down. Start with maybe a little bit of journaling or researching one topic.
Momentum will build over time. If you're really trying to make a big decision, then just carve out just minutes. Not hours, but minutes a day to just work on it a little bit and then let that build the momentum up to doing more. And what you'll find is one day you'll have a bunch of energy to do it .
And the next day you'll be like, I don't have the energy for it cuz it's gonna, it's gonna go back and forth. One day you'll be great. One another day you won't be. Cuz this is how life works, right? Some days are energizing, some days are not. So just kind of be open to that and work within it though. And.
Definitely don't tell yourself, I'm never going to have the time or the energy for this. Please don't tell yourself that. Yeah. Because then it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy, and you probably never will. So you can just, yeah, do small things to get in there. But really, I do think in that episode we talk a lot about what is it and how do you actually apply it so you can learn a lot about, you know, what you should do there.
So that's my last one. Shall we wrap it up? Let's wrap it up. Let's wrap it up. So , my number one takeaway for this whole conversation is really to just have an awareness about what can trip you up in making important decisions.
I gave this list as a way to help you create some awareness for yourself. Am I doing this? Am I doing that? Am I being too emotional? Am I, where's my confirmation bias showing up? Just some things to check yourself as you're about to make these big decisions about your business, your professional direction, whatever you're focusing on.
And I do really apply this to big decisions. Your decision about where to go for dinner you don't need to worry about your confirmation bias just sayin' go where you like to go. We're talking about big decisions that are gonna be really affecting your life going forward and how your business is running and how your professional life is going.
And there's no perfect decision making process. So if you're seeking that out, there are some great tools and frameworks we will talk about in the next episode that you can use. I don't think any of them are perfect. I don't think there's any such thing because this is hard. You're always gonna be taking a risk when you make a decision.
We're trying to mitigate it as much as we can and how we do it, and that's what we'll talk about next time. But there's no way to just eliminate all risk in a decision.
That's my big advice. What about you?
George Drapeau: I can't add to that. I like these a lot. I, you know, you said, I hadn't really thought about this as a checklist, but again, I'm gonna point out once again, Camille, you're giving us tools for reflecting on stuff.
So like, if I have this list and I think I'm having a hard time making a decision, I can look at this list and think, am I maybe one of these things happening to me? I love that idea because yeah, probably it is, and that might be enough to nudge me out of paralysis. That's really cool.
I had not thought about that before. Great checklist people print this great checklist.
Camille Rapacz: So yeah, I'll put these, I'll list these in the show notes too. And of course if you have questions, you know, you can always leave us a voicemail.
Just go to the belief shift.com cuz we would love to hear what you think or if you're applying any of these things, that would be awesome. But yeah, I think just having a little checklist that you can go through is really helpful yes. And you don't have to do all the things. Just check the list and see how it might improve your decision making just a little bit. I mean, you just make a little improvement in decision making. Could make a big difference down the road.
Well that's all I have for this week. Thank you everybody for listening, and we'll be back in your ears next week.
See you, everybody.
