1. There’s no perfect decision. There’s just life.
It’s just the truth – you don’t know the alternative and you never will. There’s no time machine, there’s no future machine, there’s just no way to really know whether you made the right move or not. Whichever decision you make, you won’t know how the other one would’ve played out.
Let me give you an example…
Let’s say you start your business (instead of doing something else like staying at your job), and it becomes huge and you turn out to be right in your hypothesis. And let’s say that led to a big meeting in a different country and you had to fly there – and in the process, your plane crashed and you died.
That would’ve turned out to be a bad idea.
There’s no way of truly knowing. If you follow my content, you know that I famously passed on investing in Uber in the angel round twice, which means currently, I missed out on $600 million. You could think that’s a mistake, but maybe if I did invest in Uber I’d be somewhere else right now picking up a disease that would end up killing me a year later!
Everybody thinks they can have the perfect decision. There is no perfect decision. There’s just life.
So pick one and be happy with it!
2. Instead of trying to make the perfect decision, create more opportunities.
Create more 10-15 minute meetings to open the gateway to new relationships. Run more marketing tests to give you the opportunity to find a strategy that works.
Some of the best decisions I’ve made were things that didn’t look that good on paper in the beginning. Plenty of serendipitous meetings have led to incredible partnerships and investments that were completely unexpected in the beginning.
Be more efficient with what you do so you can do more things, and so you don’t have to worry about the subjective and uncontrollable factors like “knowing” what’s good or great. In other words… create the volume you need to give you a better shot at finding those opportunities that will lead to success and happiness instead of debating what’s going to work.
3. 9 out of 10 times, the right decision is the fastest decision.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be thoughtful, it means you spend your days becoming a practitioner and becoming great at what you do without overthinking every move.
In a world where everyone tries to make the perfect decision all the time I go the other way – I think every decision I make is a mistake, and if something works out, it’s a happy upside.
I just value the speed of the decisions I make over perfection because I can always fix the wrong decision. I assume everything is a mistake, I’m thrilled when it works out, and when it actually turns out to be a mistake, I make a change.
It’s a big reason why I’ve been able to build big businesses fast.
4. Stop caring what other people think about your losses.
My losses are my losses. I don’t care what you think about my loss because you’re losing plenty on your own.
Once you really get to a place where you don’t care what other people think, you get to a place where you can move much faster. When you’re not spending time worrying, you’re spending time executing. Speed matters more than ever in the world of business today and when you’re not spending time worrying about what people think, you’re in execution mode.
This ties into how I think about building culture in businesses – when you feel safe in your work environment and feel safe to have conversations, you’re not spending time scared of whether someone is trying to “ruin” you or undermine your success. It allows employees to move faster and execute on their actual work instead of trying to navigate politics.
I do everything I can to put myself in a position where I’m in constant execution mode at all times.
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