Ep #2: The Decision Tree
Do you spend a lot of time in your head when you have a big decision to make? Do you weigh the pros and cons, getting so stuck in decision-making instead of action-taking that you become tired of thinking about it, put it away, and don’t do anything? This is a natural result of how we’ve been taught to make decisions, but I’m here today to share another way to make them.
Throughout the life of this podcast, I’ll be teaching you several different ways to become a better decision-maker, but today I’m sharing a favorite. It’s a game-changer, and by the end of this episode you’ll have the answer to that thing you’ve been trying to figure out. It all comes down to The Decision Tree.
This week on the podcast, I’m sharing The Decision Tree and showing you how to intertwine your purpose and mission into your decision-making. Hear some examples of how my clients have used this process in their businesses to instantly illuminate their decisions and how this tool can help change everything for you in yours.
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What You’ll Learn From This Episode:
What I see so many people doing throughout their business journey.
How to stop letting your knowledge get in the way of your knowing.
Why clarity isn’t all about decision-making.
How we’re taught to make decisions.
Why your clarity is always there, you just need to uncover it.
The role of purpose in decision making.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Full Episode Transcript:
Do you spend a lot of time in your head when you have a big decision to make? And honestly, sometimes, even when you have a little decision to make, are you gaming everything out, weighing the pros and cons? And then, you're so tired of thinking about it that you put it away and don't end up doing anything, so you get stuck in the decision-making instead of the action taking?
Or, maybe you're like, “Fuck it,” and you choose something that feels groundless, with no real rhyme or reason. And then, you second-guess yourself later. All of that, is a natural result of how we've been taught to make decisions. But here's the thing, you're letting your knowledge get in the way of your knowing.
So, I want to share another way. It's called the Decision Tree, and it is a game changer. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if, by the end of this episode, you have the answer to that thing you've been trying to figure out.
You're listening to The Uncommon Way Business and Life Coaching Podcast, the only podcast that helps you unlock your next level in business and life by prioritizing your clarity and your own Uncommon Way. You will learn to maximize your mindset, mission, messaging, and strategy in order to create a true legacy. Here's your host, top-ranked business coach, and reformed over analyzer turned queen of clarity, Jenna Harrison.
Welcome to The Uncommon Way Podcast. There's only one way to start with this: Clarity is queen.
There is nothing more important or gratifying than clarity when it comes to your business and life. Think of how much time you save when you're not in brain somersaults. Then you have extra bandwidth to focus on really serving your people, what they need to hear, and how to get them better results. Which, of course, is the cornerstone of any service-based business. So, it produces better income, which gives you greater confidence, and you show up even more unapologetically.
It's this virtuous cycle, and your business grows and grows. And then, throughout it all, nothing beats that feeling, right? That feeling of being a decisive woman, of walking through the world believing that you know what you're doing. That this is happening. That you are a capable CEO making waves.
Now, clarity isn't all about decision-making, although our decisions reflect our clarity. But I know it's a huge pain point for some of you. So, I'm going to teach you several different ways to become a better decision-maker over the life of this podcast. But today, I want to share one of my favorites. It's a crowd favorite, too.
This is one of the things that I've had clients and people from the audience say that this right here instantly illuminated their decision. So, it's tested and true to reduce the time it takes to make decisions and to skyrocket the certainty you feel about the decision you chose. It's called the Decision Tree. And it is a game changer.
When I was creating this episode, I surveyed my email list, and I asked about what kind of difficulties they were having in their business. I just want to give a huge thank you to all of you who responded because it really helps me tune in to exactly where you are.
I know sometimes, when I get an email that says, ‘just reply here,’ I find myself wondering; are they really going to read it? But I really read it. So, keep the questions, the suggestions, and the feedback coming, please. I want to keep creating really helpful episodes for you. Just reply to any email that I send out.
Okay, so some of the things I heard about were: Wanting to call in more ideal clients. Create more downtime. Find your voice. Manage fears, doubts, and disbelief. Or, sell and charge with deeper belief in your offer. Maybe level up to the next big iteration of your business. So, stay tuned because we're going to be addressing all of those, with both tactics and mindset, in future episodes.
And by the way, I am so excited just as I even say that because I have been wanting to produce this podcast. The desire’s been building for some time. And now, I literally feel like a racehorse at the gate. It's going to be so fun, and definitely feeling the nerves, too. But so fun. But I digress.
So, the number one issue that my newsletter readers brought up had to do with some decision they were trying to make in their business. That could be about a niche, maybe a pivot, offers, what should I be working on next? What's the right way to create this new result? A or B? Etc.
If there's one thing that I want you to take away from this episode before I get into the how-tos, it's the mindset piece. I always try to focus on the mindset first because it drives everything else. And, tell you that in these moments, all that's happening is you're letting knowledge, whether that's too much knowledge or a lack of knowledge, get in the way of your knowing.
I'll say that again; you're letting your knowledge get in the way of your knowing. And credit here to Geeta Nadkarni, the first person I ever heard say it in this very concise way. So, what do I mean by that?
Have you ever noticed that you somehow know the answer in times of heightened duress or urgency? Like when the pandemic first hit, and you had that ‘oh, shit moment,’ wasn't it like, after that, the noise quieted, and you knew what was most important? Your loved ones, for instance.
Or, maybe you're in some sort of pressure situation like you're being hotseat coached in front of your peers, or you're being interviewed on a podcast. And the person opposite you asks some question, and you just blurt out the answer. And afterward, you're like, “Damn, that was good. How did I phrase that again?”
That's happened so often to me. When things got serious, I suddenly knew what had to be done; I knew who I was. Now, in full transparency, I am a person who spent a full two decades of my life spinning in confusion over what my next steps were. I did not figure everything out that I'm telling you until much later.
But I've come to see that our clarity is always there. And I love helping my clients surface that clarity. Because having it, it just transforms everything about how you show up; as a coach, as a CEO, but also as a woman. It's your relationship with yourself and how you hold your head when you walk down the street. It just changes everything.
So, let's just start from there, with just that little seed of possibility planted, that maybe you already know your answer. Okay? Okay. Here's how we're taught to make decisions, and it really can mess us up: We get two opinions. We make a nice list of pros and cons for each one, right? And then, we compare and contrast; super simple. But what happens when you have ten or fifteen different options, and your brain can come up with thousands of pros and cons for each.
We're very creative in this way. It just leads to gridlock and complete overwhelm. And that's where so many of us spend our time. That's where I spent my time for those decades. And then, of course, there's another group of us that's more like, “We'll just choose something. Fill forward.”, Which, I've got to say, is more helpful for entrepreneurship than the former. But it still doesn't help develop your belief and your knowingness, and it doesn't give you any cohesive strategy behind your decision-making.
I have a better way that I want to share with you, the Decision Tree. I want you to imagine that you're looking for the best leaf on a tree. One way you could find it is to go leaf by leaf, looking at every single option. That's how I felt when I was trying to figure out what kind of business I wanted to start.
There was just an infinity of different choices. And, it was impossible to compare and contrast each one. It's also what I see so many people doing throughout their business journey. “Well, I could target this niche or that one. I could launch this type of offer, or this one.” There's so much complexity that our brain just stops, and it doesn't make the decision that needs to be made. Understandably.
But what if you did it in a different way, I want you to think about if you were able to look at the trunk of this tree, and then when the tree branched off, you just went with the thickest, most solid branch. And then, when that branch split, you just follow the most likely logical, the strongest part of the branch, and you kept going all the way to your leaf.
How different would that make things for you? All right, let me bring this back to real life; the trunk of your tree is purpose. Now, purpose can be the big capital-P purpose; you know your life's purpose or the mission that your business is here to accomplish. But it can also be the purpose of what you're learning in your business right now.
If you allow purpose to guide you to your leaf, you're going to have a completely different experience because you'll make decisions a lot more quickly. But you'll feel more grounded in the decision. And that way, you're not going to be course correcting later on and losing so much momentum. And, you won't be stalled at the gate either, making sure that you're making the right decision.
All of these things, frankly, are what your brain wants you to do so that you don't go do the scary thing. There's nothing better for yourself, like I said, as a woman and as a CEO, than cultivating knowingness, the knowing who you are and what you're about, and then taking decisive action from that place.
So, let me give you some real-time examples of this in business because if you're like me, you want to see it all laid out. First, we'll talk about how to use the tree through the frame of the little P; the purpose of what you need to learn in your business at this moment. And then, we'll pull back, and I'll show you an example of using it for the big P, the purpose of your life.
I had a client who had this goal she wanted to accomplish within a certain timeframe. But she got to a point where she knew she wasn't going to complete the project. So, she was stuck between all these different options she could take from there.
She could decide to throw something out anyway, even though it was just going to be a fragment of what she'd really wanted to do. Or, she could just extend her timeline, meaning the next project she was planning would have to wait. Or, she could scrap the project and move forward with something else to reach her bigger overall goal of bringing in a certain number of clients.
So, she found herself in gridlock, with her brain reverting to that old decision-making method of pros and cons: Well, if I did this, then this, this, and this, right? But if I did that, then that, that and that. And that's exactly how we're used to thinking. We revert to practicing habituated thoughts.
But when we switched into the Decision Tree and got very clear on, what is the purpose of all of this right now, in your business? What are you trying to learn? What are the skills that you need for the long run? What's important for your future self to learn, and to have experienced, and to have moved through? Because that's what's going to build the muscle you need to get to the next level.
I really want to credit my coach, Elizabeth Salazar, for the inspiration here because she helped me become very fluent with this form of thinking. And then, I realized it fit perfectly into the Decision Tree, which previously I'd only used in its other application. So yeah.
What is it that you need to teach yourself when you didn't meet your time goals? Is it that you just need to do B- work? You need to learn to be okay with imperfection? And, to not meet your super sky-high standards? And, that is really going to allow you to get out there and serve? If so, you probably need to just put the funnel out there and then deal with the discomfort afterward. To learn to be okay with that, sit with that, and completely transform your life.
Or, maybe you need to learn that you accomplish your goals, no matter what. In that case, you'd push the timeline back, so you can reinforce to your brain that you always do what you say you're going to do.
So then, you need to sit with the discomfort of, “I didn't make my goal. And, that sucks. But I have my back. I've learned so much and can improve next time. No more of this starting and stopping. I decide what I'm going to do. And then I follow through. I know I can count on myself for that.” That's a huge lesson. So good. These are all so good.
Or, maybe you need to learn that you can pivot really quickly. It doesn't matter if a wall comes down because you are a very agile solopreneur. You can quickly pivot and then know that you can come back to something later, and you have no drama about that. So, that's where the lesson comes in. Right?
When you look back on your business from your future, you'll be thinking, “Oh, that's when I was learning to X. That's when I was working on building this belief, this skill. That's when I had to understand this about myself. And it has now taken me so far; I've used it so much. I'm so grateful for that obstacle, back then. And, the past version of myself that really rolled up her sleeves for me.”
Usually, my clients are pretty self-aware. So, when I press them, they know where their growth needs to happen. And I have a feeling you do, too. So, my friends, get clear on what the purpose is for you now in your business, as clear as you can. True, sometimes you don't get the full clarity until an opportunity like this is presented to you, to go a little deeper. But it is an opportunity. It's like, “Thank you, and may I have another?” Growth is uncomfortable, and that's okay; you can do this.
It definitely makes things easier if you can get there beforehand, “You know, this is what I'm working on right now.” And then, you can filter your decisions through that lens. When this situation had come up for my client, she would have been like, “Boom. Done. Decision made. I know exactly what to do.”
But if that hasn't been thought out or predetermined, because you haven't known what you didn't know, right? Then as soon as it happens, just start thinking, “Okay, this is my opportunity to more fully understand what the purpose of this time in my business is all about and what I really need to be working on right now. So, pure gratitude. Now, I know what I'm doing.”
And then, just ground into that beautiful feeling. Reward yourself for that decision and that decisiveness so that you can continue to make higher quality decisions that feel completely empowered, and like you are absolutely in the driver's seat. That you will learn from, grow from, and go on to absolutely kick ass with. Good? Good.
Okay, now let's talk about the big P ‘purpose.’ So, I had a client who wanted help bringing in clients more easily. She had been in business for a few years. By this point, she knew she was a great coach. And, by this point, she thought it just shouldn't be so difficult.
When I looked at her website, I sensed a disconnect between her and the people she was calling in. I had a gut feeling that this really wasn't just a problem with her messaging or her funnel. Here's what I saw. She was like a shining light. First of all, so grounded and calm and thoughtful. And she just chose her words carefully, like someone who does her frickin’ meditation.
It's just a joy and uplifting to be in her presence, really. But she was calling in this very heavy personality of super stressed-out corporate high-achievers, who were even having pain manifest in their bodies. And, there's just all this pressure. Even reading her website, I felt it. Now, there's nothing wrong with that niche. But I do know to listen to these nudges that I get.
So, I asked her why she’d chosen that group. And if she'd said, “Look, this is my work in the world. I am so lit up taking them through this transformation, there's nothing more fulfilling,” then I would have been like, “Great, let's do it.”
But that wasn't her answer. The answer was that she thought they were the ones that most needed her help. She felt a little sorry for them. And truthfully, she was thinking they'd be likely to pay for her services. She definitely found clients. But then she admitted that working with them and even thinking about them and their problems when she was creating content, for instance, really took her energy rather than enlivening her energy.
Obviously, her reasons were very business savvy; there's no denying it. We could have continued to work on her mind to change her thoughts about her niche and how she felt about her niche. But you know, that's just not how we do things here at The Uncommon Way; we don't lead with that.
We always start with the premise that you can create a business around whatever you want; if you're willing to do the work, go out and find the people aligned with your mission and who want to pay for your offer. So, we decided to ground her more fully into her purpose. You know, what she really wants to bring forth into the world while she's here.
In an upcoming episode, I promised to walk you through my connect-the-dots method for figuring that out. Because I mean, let's just go deep, right? This life is so precious. It's way too precious to spend it doing just any old thing. Now you're free, obviously, to take that opinion or leave it. I grew up in a test pilot community where you just never knew what would happen when you went off to work. I grew up thinking about making your days count from an early age.
So, what we uncovered for my client, was that she really wanted to help people who felt silenced and were holding themselves back from speaking up. Because ironically, those are the people she thought the world needed most to hear from.
Go back to this Decision Tree. If you think of that, that purpose as the trunk of the tree, then it's kind of obvious that working with the stressed-out overachievers probably isn't the group that will best fulfill her mission. They don't have an issue with voicing their opinions. So, who's the group that does want to work with my client? What's the strongest branch off of that purpose?
There are a couple of other steps involved here in terms of how you apply this to a niche. But I'll just fast-forward to the part where she decided to work with coaches who were holding themselves back from putting themselves out there. Or, they're holding themselves back from getting visible and really saying what they have to say.
And then, from there, you can go even further than the niche; you can start going into, “Okay, which offer will best serve them and therefore serve my mission?” What's the strongest branch from there. For her people, they wanted to know they weren't alone.
They were served by seeing themselves as part of a community of people who were precisely the ones whose opinions needed to get out there. And they would love that group support while they were inching forward on that path. So, she launched a group program. Which is similar, frankly, to a lot of my clarity people and why I formed my mastermind group; it's called the Clarity Collective.
Same thing. When you're really committing to furthering this calling of yours, and you're in this noisy online space; you're being bombarded with advice to ‘just crush it’ and ‘maximize your revenue, no matter what,’ and you're dipping into comparison-itis with all the lovely Instagram businesses that seem to be doing so well, that's when a group of like-minded people is so helpful. So, you can reinforce, “No, wait; this is what I'm creating. This matters.”
I had a client; it's the same one who didn't meet her time goal. And she was talking to me once; it was so good, she was like, “And I think to myself, yeah, I could just sell this other thing. It might be easier in the short run. But that's not the business that's going to get me on to Oprah.” Boom, right? That says it all. Really, do we need to go any further with this episode than that? No, I don't think so.
So, remember, your knowingness is there. We just need to keep our overthinking from getting in the way of it. One of the best tools you can use to access it is the Decision Tree. Whether you're thinking about the overall purpose of your business or you're thinking about the purpose of what you're learning in your business at the moment, this tool works. Try it out.
Tell me what changed for you. The best way to do that is in the podcast review section. It'll just take a few seconds, and I'll be so grateful. I will probably want to share it here on the show, because those are always the best stories when you have those light bulb moments. I can't wait to hear what you have to tell me.
Thanks for joining me here at The Uncommon Way Podcast. If you want more tips and resources for developing clarity in your business and life, including my Clarity for Strategy for Growing and Scaling Your Business, visit TheUncommonWay.com.
And remember, deep down, you know who you are. And, each day, you're stepping further into what you are here to create. See you next time.
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