Validating A New Direction & Combating Decision Fatigue In Your Business
As entrepreneurs we’re making a million decisions for our business every day and sometimes those decisions can be overwhelming, leading to procrastination, idea overload and doubting your next steps.
Have you been staring at that blinking cursor on your screen for 5 minutes (actually 10 if you count the number of times you pulled up your Instagram feed just to see if there’s anything you’ve missed) trying to figure out what blog post to write today?
Do you know the email you’re going to write and send to your list this week? Have you decided to be strategic or spontaneous when it comes to your IG Stories today?
You have a to-do list a mile long and know you should get started, but your mind is flip-flopping on priorities and trying to spend quality time figuring out the next steps of your bigger picture business and where it’s headed.
One of the “pros” of being a business owner is that you get to make all the decisions. One of the “cons” is you actually have to make all of the decisions! You have a million and one ideas about how you’d like to expand and scale your business, but aren’t sure where to invest your time and energy. Only you can make the final decision, but below are 5 strategies to help give you the clarity you need.
HOW TO VALIDATE A NEW BUSINESS DIRECTION
Whether you’re adding to your offerings, simplifying and automating or deciding how to stop trading your time for money, there are ways to evaluate your options to make an aligned decision.
1 – Clarify Your Purpose
Why are you currently weighing decisions to take your business in a new or expanded direction? What do you want out of it and what’s your end goal?
Are you feeling the pressure to create success the way everyone else is doing it in your industry? Or are you crystal clear on the why behind your desire to up-level and add something new?
Start by clarifying your purpose. The objective of expanding your business is to:
Increase sales
Grow your audience
Gain more brand awareness
Increase client retention (sell more to current clients)
Fill in the blank: __________________
2 – Revisit Your Brand Strategy
Once you know the purpose behind your goal to expand your business with something new, go back to your brand strategy and remind yourself of both your mission and your vision.
Your mission expresses:
What you do
Who you specifically help
The benefit you aim to provide
You want to ensure that whatever decisions you’re weighing in terms of new offerings will support your mission. You don’t want to add something to your business that takes you off on a tangent or doesn’t serve your current audience.
Your vision tells you:
That big lofty, aspirational goal you’re aiming for
It’s important to revisit your vision because everything you do in your business is to get you one step closer to making your vision a reality. This can be a great way to start crossing ideas OFF your list that don’t serve the bigger vision (let’s get that list of a million and one things pared down a bit!).
3 – Cue The Magic Wand
When you have some white space in your calendar, take 10-20 minutes and do a free write exercise to imagine your next level business.
Here’s the journal prompt you can use:
If you could wave a magic wand and transform your current business into your absolute IDEAL business, what does that look like?
Imagine everything from how many hours you work in a day to how you interact with clients, the kinds of deliverables you’re committed to and the amount of money you bring in. Include hobbies, family time, travel goals and more that you want to prioritize.
4 – Audience & Energy Alignment
Making a decision about how to shift, refresh, add or subtract from your business can be easier when you align your audience and your personal energy. In fact, your answer lives at the intersection between what your audience needs and what feels energetically aligned with how you want to work in and on your business.
Write down all the choices you have in terms of the direction you can take your business: 1:1, group coaching, digital courses, masterminds, certification programs, hiring new team members, workshops, retreats, done for you services, aligned products and merchandise, etc.
Which are you most drawn to? Why?
Are you crossing any off your list because you have a limiting belief around whether your audience will buy it or not? What is that belief & how can you move beyond it?
If all of these approaches had a built-in guarantee for success, which would you choose to add to your business?
Ask your audience how they prefer to learn & which of your ideas they’d buy from you today if it were available.
Which of these options are in alignment with your magic wand ideal business vision?
5 – Talk To Peers & Mentors
The final strategy to make a more informed decision is to seek the advice of peers and mentors who’ve done what you want to do - successfully. Ask them questions to understand the pros and cons they’ve experienced and what they’d do differently if they had to do it all again.
It can immediately give you further insight that will give you an instant No, or a hearty Yes. And when you talk to others who’ve gone before you, it may give you a brand new idea in how to approach this YOUR way.
COMBATING DECISION FATIGUE
When you’re making 101 decisions per day, you can find yourself getting overwhelmed and experiencing brain fog. Here are 5 ways to combat decision fatigue so you can continue your forward momentum in your business:
1 – Step Away
Step away from your screens and get perspective. Don’t be in the weeds of your business when you’re seeking clarity to make a bigger picture business decision. Being in nature and getting grounded can really help.
2 – Make Sure You Feel Good
Don’t make any decisions when you don’t feel good. If you’re having big feelings or a bad day and may react emotionally, you want to clear your head first.
Try remembering back to a time when it felt easy to make a big decision. What were the circumstances that led you to confidently make that decision? Talking it out with a trusted fellow entrepreneur? Waking up with clarity because you got a solid 8 hour night of sleep? Whatever it was, work to recreate those circumstances to help you make this next big decision.
3 - Decide For A Friend
Because it’s often hard to see clearly for ourselves, you can try this exercise:
Pretend a friend is asking your advice on the same questions you’re grappling with - - - what would you tell your friend to do?
4 - Simplify
If you’ve got a cluttered mind trying to juggle too many to-dos, clients, projects and big picture questions, it’s time to simplify. Where can you declutter your business, automate more, or take some things off your plate?
When you can simplify and create more space in your business, you’re making a conscious decision to do that, which will lead to attracting more conscious decision-making and ease.
5 - Block Out Decision-Making Time
Schedule time in your calendar for making big decisions and be sure you’re choosing a time where you feel rested and never rushed. Use this time for researching options, asking your audience, or journaling.