Every small business decision has the potential to create ripple effects that either accelerate growth or drain energy and resources. Gwen Bortner and Tonya Kubo dive into how business owners can recognize high-leverage choices, avoid decision fatigue, and focus on what truly moves the needle. From delegating with confidence to setting clear boundaries for your team, they break down practical strategies for prioritizing the decisions that matter most. Whether it’s discerning a ten-dollar choice from a ten-thousand-dollar one or knowing when to act versus wait, Gwen and Tonya provide actionable insights to help owners sharpen their decision-making and protect their most valuable asset: their time.
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Small Business Decisions With Big Impact
Small Business Decisions With Big Impact
Every day, you are faced with choices. Some are big, some are small, and some, quite honestly, aren’t what they seem at all. The challenge for you as a business owner, though, is figuring out which is which, so that you can prioritize them accordingly. In this episode, we are going to explore how to recognize high-leverage decisions, how you can separate them from the noise and how you can act before the opportunity passes. Gwen, I want you to kick us off with a big question of why this matters. CEOs are hit with a bazillion and one decisions every single day. Why does it matter that they are able to discern the ones that have the highest leverage points and which ones don’t?
Actually, your question has the answer right in it because they have a bazillion decisions to make every day, and decision fatigue is a real thing. There have been all sorts of studies on it and whatnot that we’re actually only capable of making a certain number of decisions. Those days that you get to the end of the day and someone says, “What do you want to have for dinner?” you’re like, “I do not care,” probably means that you’ve gotten to decision fatigue.
There are other days you’re like, “I want Chinese.” You very quickly able to make a decision. The thing is, decision fatigue is real. I haven’t done enough research to really know the specific answer, but I do know it’s real. I felt it myself. Wasting good decision-making on unimportant decisions is really not a good use of time because there are certain decisions that only we can make.
I’ll say it’s a mythology, but I think it’s actually true, but I can’t prove it about why Steve Jobs wore the same outfit every day. We hear about things stories like that because of the decision fatigue. Now I don’t make the decision. I grab the this, the that, the other, and I put it on. It may not be fancy and it may not be exciting. I know a lot of other people do the same thing with meals or with most of their meals.
I have the exact same breakfast every day. I have the exact same lunch every day, or I have the exact same dinner every day because they aren’t looking for that to give them interest and excitement in their life. They’re just looking at as this is nutrition or this is just so that I’m not running around naked, and because of that, I’m not going to put any decision time into it. The reason we want to be really careful is we want to say when we’re actually using that decision muscle that will get exhausted at some point in time, we want to be using it for the things that, as I said, only we can decide as CEO of our business.
Stop Being A Solopreneur: Delegating High-Leverage Decisions
Let’s dig into that a little bit because I think sometimes, especially if you started off as a solopreneur, because I know not everybody who reads this started off as a solopreneur. Some of them actually started off like full-fledged companies. If you start off as a solopreneur, there’s a time where you’re the only person who makes all the decisions. As you grow a team, I do think there’s some natural friction or there’s a learning curve to figuring out what are the decisions only I can make versus what anybody can make. Maybe talk a little bit about those sorts of decisions in a general way, and then I want to get a little bit more specific to figuring out what the signs are that a decision has more leverage.
This goes back to delegation. We’ve talked about delegation quite a bit. You can’t turn over the decision until you are sure that the person who’s going to be making the decision has enough experience and information to be making a decision that is what I’m going to term the correct decision 90%-plus of the time. None of us make the right decision all the time, including us as owner-CEOs. We want to have people that are able to make mostly the right decision most of the time, given the information and knowledge that they have.
You can't turn over the decision until you're sure the person who's making it has enough experience and information. Share on XThat’s the first piece. You need to have done the delegation properly so that you know that they’ve got that information. Early on, they won’t be able to make as much of the decisions as they will later. It also comes down to, and this leads into the second half, how much is at risk if the decision is made incorrectly.
Decisions around what I’m going to call the checkbook. Financial decisions. You probably don’t want to be delegating many of those unless there’s someone that you’re really confident has the right understanding and attitude and all the rest of the things. One of the conversations we were having recently is it is really easy to spend somebody else’s money.
It really is. I’m good at it, by the way. In case you ever need somebody to spend your money, go and call me. I’m good.
That’s an example of they’ve got to have the right attitude, the right understanding, all of the things. No one’s ever going to quite do it like you because if you’re the CEO, if you’re the owner, it’s your money that’s being spent. It also is about how much else is at risk like if this goes wrong, will we lose 50% of our customers? How likely is it to go wrong if this person makes a decision?
There are those pieces that are in this whole equation to say, how important is it? Where does it fall? The other balancing piece of it is are we holding onto the decision just for control or for perfectionism or for any of those other things that aren’t actually as effective for us? That becomes the other piece of the equation because sometimes, we’re holding on to the decision because we want it to be exactly the way we want it to be.
Sometimes we're holding on to the decision because we want it exactly the way we want it to be. Share on XThis is the other half. If it’s not exactly the way you want it to be, does anyone actually care? The discussion, we haven’t had it recently, but we’ve had it before on the show was early on, there were things that you wanted to be just so about how the show was presented and all of these pieces. I appreciated that you cared about the detail. What we also got to was it not being to your quality level, actually didn’t change.
It hasn’t changed anything.
It hasn’t changed anything in any sort of negative way. It’s the other piece of are we holding onto a decision for an inappropriate reason?
I know you have a client who has a team and they have a brick and mortar. One of the things that she had shared, because she was getting nickel and dimed all day long with questions, is that she instituted where every single employee has the power and autonomy to solve a $20 decision. It’s going to cost the company up to $20. They can just solve it and just let the manager know.
Building Delegation Frameworks: Applying The $20 Rule
However, if it’s over $20, then it has to go to the manager and the manager has the autonomy to solve $100 decisions. Cost up to $100, minor repairs on equipment, things like that, he can do 100% on his own, he just needs to report in. Anything over $100 is where the CEO needs to come in and be consulted. It’s nice because in their line of work, everything has a fairly easy dollar amount associated with it. They can draw those lines. That kind of framework, how do you see that being applied to other businesses? Say, like our business, because we don’t really have $20 decisions outside of tech we might get.
In our business, it’s also about having a framework and/or boundaries to say things about this, you are able to solve things about this other thing. We have Sophia as our support person who doesn’t have as much experience as you have. That’s the reality of it. Sophia does a fabulous job, but there are decisions that I will let you make that I will not let her make because of experience. It also is how likely will she make the right choice versus the wrong choice. Part of that is experience. Part of it is setting those boundaries.
For example, one of the things that we do is we gift flowers to all of our clients on their birthdays. That’s a standard thing. I give her complete autonomy to do that. She knows the range that she’s supposed to spend, including delivery. Sometimes that gets a little wonky because we’ve got a couple of clients in Canada, we had a client in Germany. There’s some conversion, but she knows where she’s supposed to land. So long as we don’t accidentally send a $300 bouquet, we’re okay with it, but she also has enough autonomy to know that she looks, because one of our clients is allergic to most flowers.
She has the autonomy to say, “I can’t send flowers. What else can I send that’s equivalent at an equivalent price?” She doesn’t have to come to me. She doesn’t have to come to you. She can just make that decision. Knowing what the boundaries are because the very, very worst thing that would possibly happen is that she’d send flowers to someone who is allergic.
Most people, if they’re allergicto flowers, would say, “I can’t take those.” They wouldn’t take them and have anaphylactic shock. They would know. That would be the very worst. I would probably hear about that and we send an apology. We make a note and like, “Don’t send flowers,” but it’s manageable. Part of it is saying, “We need to know what the outcome is supposed to be and how much leeway we have in the outcome.” It’s a version of how our friend Ashley Bergoff talks about sops. If we know what the outcome is supposed to be, you can actually give people a fair bit of leeway so long as they know what the outcome is and what success looks like.
How does a business owner go about discerning what is, say, a $10 decision from a $10,000 decision?
Not always, but typically, if it’s something you’re avoiding and/or feels hard, it’s probably more like a $10,000 decision than a $10 decision. Not always, though, but often it is. It’s like, “I just don’t want to make the decision here.” That, to me, is always the flag to say, “This might actually be an important decision,” because we’re often avoiding this decision because it has a lot of variables. It has big impact. It’s going to require changes in our process or how we implement things. Those things tend to be the things that are the bigger decisions.
The other question to ask is how big of a problem is it solving? One of the questions that Joe Polish uses all the time at Genius Network is what problem, if you solve today, would solve 100 other problems? It doesn’t actually have to be legitimately 100 other problems, but if we fixed this, what other things that we’re trying to fix would also get fixed? That’s probably a more important decision than fixing all of the ten other things.
Solve ONE Problem, Eliminate 100: The Highest Leverage Question
Walk me through a use case for that.
I’ll just use one of our use cases that we’re continuing to talk about that we have not yet solved, by the way, which is our messaging about what I do, how I do it, the new offer that we have around accountability and systems training. There’s a way that we could approach the problem, which is let’s do a different email. Let’s do a different this. Let’s try a different that, let’s update the way we’re doing social media. There are all of these things.
We’ve lived this just so I know you know what you’re talking about. The bigger question is how do we solve the problem, which probably is the words we’re using as opposed to the places that we’re putting the words. That’s a way harder problem to solve. You and I both know it because we’ve been working at it, literally, for years, but it doesn’t mean that it’s still not something that we should be addressing. You and I both get caught from time to time into saying, “This one’s too hard. We haven’t figured out. Let’s go work on some of those other ten that would probably get solved if we actually solved this one,” because the others are easier. The reality is, it doesn’t necessarily solve it. It Band-Aids it.
To be super explicit for those who maybe don’t think strategically or their brains don’t naturally go there, what you’re really saying is, so the messaging problem, by solving the messaging problem, suddenly, it becomes very clear whether to have a newsletter, and if so, how often to have that newsletter.
Which social media platforms to be on, if any, and how often to be on them? Which in-person speaking events to say yes to and which ones not? Maybe even which opportunities online or in person that are worth showing up to for free, versus which ones you would need to have a speaker fee of some sort to make them worthwhile. Those are all little decisions.
Which networking rooms to show up in, what to talk about on our show. The list actually goes on and on.
One factor in determining a $10 decision from a $10,000 decision is what is the decision that by making that makes a whole bunch of other decisions for you, or makes a whole bunch of other decisions easier? Let’s use a personal example just for the person who’s still struggling. Hiring a personal chef automatically eliminates the decision of what to eat and when to eat it each week. It also eliminates the decisions of what to buy at the grocery store, how often to go to the grocery store, and what your grocery budget should be this week. All of that gets eliminated if you say, “We are hiring a personal a personal chef to feed our family five nights a week.”
One way to distinguish a $10 decision from a $10,000 decision is to ask: which choice will simplify or determine a whole bunch of other decisions for you? Share on XFocus On What Matters: Identifying Revenue- & Capacity-Impact Decisions
Now that we understand that idea of what one decision can we make that will then make all the others or make all the others easier, what can I do or how can I figure out which decisions have leverage? Here’s what I mean. I know that you have been really good about protecting your inbox for years, and as a result, you don’t get a ton of email.
I really don’t. When people talk about, “I get 100 emails a day,” it’s like, yeah, that does not happen.
I, on the other hand, average 100 to 150 a day. Now many of those are automated and can be immediately archived, unsubscribed or whatever, but part of it is when there are 100 to 150, it’s harder to find the 5 good ones. Let’s just say in the dozen good ones a week, there’s always an invitation for me to be speaking somewhere for free. “We’ve got this great opportunity for you.”
Whether it’s a podcast or something else, there’s always a visibility opportunity I’m being offered. It could be a summit, a bundle, or paying to sponsor something. Oftentimes, there are client questions that are in the mix, there are team member questions in the mix. There are people within my referral network who are sharing things that they have for promotion that they want me to share out.
All of those are important decisions to make to some degree. It’s a good citizen to say yes to say no to people easily. Some of those, however, have more weight than others. They’re easy to prioritize in my head. Some, not so much. For me, I’m just going to tell you my process and then I’m curious to hear your process.
I think of, okay, what decisions here impact revenue? It’s like what impacts revenue? What impacts my team’s capacity or my capacity and what impacts our strategic positioning in the market? I find, oftentimes, I am most likely to lag on decisions that impact revenue or my own capacity, because for some reason I think those decisions need more time, more energy to make, and therefore, I want to put them off until this eventual time when I have all the time in the world and no interruptions.
The scientists out there who have studied this would say that is exactly the wrong thing to do. Back to decision fatigue. You actually have better capability and can make the decision faster earlier in the process of a day than later in the process of a day. Although it may take more energy than knowing whether or not you’re going to promote this event that a friend of yours has said, “We’d really love for you to put it on into your newsletter,” that may be a much quicker decision.
We’ve used up some of our good decision-making capacity in making that decision. The revenue-generating decision, I’ll call it that, may take you 10 minutes where the other one would take you 30 seconds. The problem is, when you wait until you have time to think about it, that same decision now is going to take you 15, 20, 30 minutes to make.
The prioritization really is the trick. Now, sometimes, you don’t have important decisions to make until late in the day. It then becomes a question of, is this a decision that actually needs to be made now or can it wait until our reset, assuming that we get some decent sleep and all of the normal things that happen as part of being a biological human being. I’ll actually address it first thing tomorrow morning. I think is also part of our decision fatigue issue is, as we get to the end of the day, we start worrying that we’ve got to make all of these decisions. Sometimes, the right decision is to not make a decision right now.
Urgent Vs. Important: When To Wait And When To ACT
How do you know that?
Back to how much impact does this have on the business? Back to, is there an urgency? Around here, we talk about fire, flood, or blood. Is there an actual urgency to it? Probably not for most of the businesses that are reading this. Very few businesses really have the level of urgency that we try and put on it. Back in the day, when I was a professional knitting instructor, there was actually no such thing as a yarn emergency. There were people who made it feel like there was a yarn emergency. It’s like, no, that doesn’t actually work that way.
“Must have my yarn.”
“Must have it right now. I’m out.” It’s like, “It’s okay. It really will be fine.” Part of it is being aware of are these things are actually urgent or not. The other is having a predefined set of levels, boundaries, whatever. That is like having your uniform in your closet to say anything that is A, B or C is a no right off the bat. You have to think about it because you have to read for a second. It’s not a big decision. We just say, “No, we’re not doing that.”
Yes, there could be exceptions to it, but instead of worrying about how many exceptions, just know when it feels like there’s an exception, it’s probably an exception. Move it into another list and wait until you have some good decision energy around making that decision. Anything that is impacting the business in a significant way, which typically is going to be revenue, clients, customers or expenses in any significant way. Any of those things probably are big decisions.
They probably need to wait until you’ve got good decision energy. That means you actually probably need to make those decisions earlier the day and not wait until you have time. You probably need to take time earlier in the day to have those. I got a request to speak at one of the events. It’s one of their supplemental events, but it’s an event that I spoke at before, and it was one of those that I looked at.
It was like, “I’m going to let this sit for a little bit because I need to get some additional information. I’m not sure if this supplemental event makes sense and I know other people who I can talk to about it.” I let it sit for a week and a half and the whole event got canceled before, before we made any application or anything else. By delaying the decision, we actually saved ourselves a ton of time. It’s not always about making a fast decision. Sometimes it’s about saying, “No, I need more information. Let’s see about getting more information before I make the decision.”
Small Business Decisions With Big Impact Share on XHow common do you think it is, though, that delaying is actually beneficial?
I think it’s beneficial when you really, truly don’t have an instinct or you feel like you don’t have enough data. Truly feel like it. We can talk ourselves into, “If I just knew a little bit more,” because there’s always board to learn. I know we’ve referenced this quite a bit recently, but the book by Annie Duke’s Thinking in Bets. We can’t know all of the elements. We just can’t, but there’s a point where we usually have an instinct. When we have an instinct, usually, that’s what we should act on. Quite honestly, that decision to not make a decision was also an instinct.
It was like, “I feel like there’s something else I need to know based on what I do know.” That was my instinct to not choose. At the same point, if you’ve got an instinct that you should invest in this thing or you should hire this person, or you should let this person go, you probably already know everything that you need to know.
Most of the time, if we’re delaying, it’s because we know the process of implementing that decision is going to be hard. If we know that it’s going to be hard, it’s not ever going to get easier. It’s a phrase that I’ve used with clients multiple times. You can choose short hard or you can choose long hard. It’s not short hard or long easy. It’s short hard or long hard.
Hard is, “I know what I need to do and I’m going to go ahead and do the hard thing and start it now,” because long hard is, “I know what I’m going to do. It’s going to be hard, and I’m going to keep thinking about how hard it’s going to be and/or dealing with the hard part of not making the decision for an extended period of time. It doesn’t ever make it easier. What we’re often hoping in the hard decisions is that something else will happen so that we don’t have to take action. That almost never happens.
Short Hard Or Long Hard? Why You Can’t Delay Tough Choices
I think that’s really the key. Let’s take the case of a team member. Somebody you need to let go.
This is the place I see it most with my clients, where they know there’s a team member that’s not working out for whatever reason. I’ve seen 1,000 reasons.
I’ve seen this in higher ed, I’ve seen this in tech as well, where if the person’s a certain age, management just says, “We can wait until they retire.” It’s like, okay, but is retirement 5 years away, 10 years away, and what’s the cost of working around an individual for that amount of time? It’s like, “We know they’re not successful in their role. They know they’re not successful in their role.”
“Let’s give it some time and they’ll find another job. We’ll just wait until they quit because they can’t be happy here any more than we’re happy with them.” Back to some people have a high level of tenacity and won’t quit something that they know they’re bad at because they think if they stick it out, they’ll get better eventually or they don’t want to leave on a low note. There are all these reasons why people don’t quit bad situations.
It’s like, “I’ll show you. You can’t make me quit. You have to fire me.”
It’s like positive, negative.
It doesn’t matter. There are 1,000 ways.
I always default to somebody I knew early in my career who was miserable and they just kept messing up. At one point, I was just like, “You’re miserable. Either you’re not good at this or you’re so miserable, you can’t be good. Why not quit?” Genuinely, they wanted to quit on a high note. They were like, “I can’t quit after a screw up because then that’s the reference. That’s all anybody’s ever going to remember me by. I need a win before I can move on.” I just remember thinking it was really painful to watch.
That’s an example of long hard. The physical example I’ve given to people is if your choice, now we don’t actually get to choose these things, but if your choice was a broken leg or arthritis from the age that you’re 40 on, which would you choose?
Most people choose the broken leg.
If you’re smart, you choose the broken leg because it’ll be very painful, exceedingly painful, more probably than the arthritis for a very short period of time and then it’ll get better, and then it’ll be a non-issue, except that often that’ll cause arthritis, but we’re not talking about that.
Do not mess up a perfectly good hypothetical example with facts. That’s not what we do around here.
The arthritis will probably not hurt as much, but it’ll hurt every day, day after day, ongoing, forever. That really is the choice. Short hard or long hard. Both of those are hard. I’m not saying either of those are something that someone votes for. What the actual choice is I want neither. That’s what I want.
I want to have my cake and eat it too.
I don’t want a broken leg or arthritis is what I actually want. At the point that you know you’ve got one of those two things is going to happen, then you got to make the choice. What most people will do with the big choices like that is they’ll say, “I’m going to wait until neither is a choice.” That could happen. We could have some miracle cure for arthritis but I don’t think that’s going to happen so we probably just need to deal with it.
I think that that’s one of the biggest things, when you realize that you what you need to do is then to take action on it. Often, what I think the issue is not about the decision. It’s about taking action on the decision. I think we often make the decision, and we don’t acknowledge it by taking action on it. We know what the decision is. I think that’s the place where we’re actually at the biggest risk. It’s when we have actually made the decision, but we’re not taking action on it. Those usually are big decisions.
Final Takeaways: Stop Wasting Time On Low-Value Tasks
To sum everything up, the first thing you have to look at is what are the decisions that you keep procrastinating, you keep putting off? A lot of times, those are the important ones. They may not be urgent, but they are important. The fact that you put them off indicates that they need some concentration, some level of focus.
Maybe to some extent, we think they’re going to be easier than, “I just have to make the decision and do it, but I’m not ready to do it yet, so I’ll put off the decision.” I think what you’re really saying is that as a business owner, regardless of size of team, we all have to take responsibility for training ourselves to identify the high-leverage decisions in our businesses and to stop wasting our time either in procrastinating those or making a bunch of low-value decisions that feel really good to check boxes off. They make us feel productive but they aren’t actually moving the business forward.
I think that is the piece. When we really start focusing, it’s back to root cause. Are we actually solving root cause issues or are we solving surface issues? Surface issues generally are easier to deal with. The cut, just as a cut, is way easier to deal with a Band-Aid, but the cut that we don’t actually disinfect and make sure it doesn’t get infected and all of the rest of the things, it’s like, is it a cut or is it an infected cut? Do we actually need to do a bigger, harder thing that that’s not going to be fun for the short-term, but we aren’t going to have to keep dealing with this cut.
It’s something that once we solve it, it’ll be mostly solved, at least for a long time. That’s the other delusion that we get caught in. It’s like, “Once I solve this, then I’ll never have to deal with it again.” That’s probably not true. It may not be exactly like this again. Are we dealing with things that we’re having to continue to deal with again and again? It’s probably a surface issue. We probably haven’t gone into the hard issue because the surface does feel easier. It does feel faster and often, it feels more satisfying because we feel like we’ve actually done something.
It can be back to what we were talking about just a bit before. We know what to do for that. We know the action to do for that. It’s not scary and it’s not emotionally draining and it’s not list all of the things that we, as humans, just human condition, tend to avoid. If we know that there’s a different decision we could make that might be harder, that maybe we don’t know exactly how to implement yet, that it may be emotionally draining, not always, but probably, that’s actually that strategic, more important decision we need to be putting energy into.
I think, for me at least, this is helpful. It’s really helpful to have some criteria to consider decisions by, but also to have the signs in myself to be looking out for to determine how I should approach a decision.
We haven’t talked about it, but it’s actually an important piece of this is where someone who can really hold you accountable is super useful because they can see your avoidant behavior almost always easier than you can see your avoidant behavior. I’m talking about this, like, I’ve got all of this nailed. You’ve been around me enough to know I do not have this nailed.
Having someone who can really hold you accountable is super useful because they can see your avoidant behavior. Share on XThat’s why you have me and other people.
It is why I have you, but I think that’s an important piece to know that it’s not like that there are people who have this nailed. I think there are very few people who have this nailed. When they do, they usually have someone in their world, on their team, in their support system, however you want to define it, that helps hold them accountable to being aware of when they’re avoiding the big decision.
With that, I will say, if you’re reading and you’re like, “That’s me 100%,” and you want help cutting through decision fatigue and learning to recognize which choices matter most for you, a clarity call with Gwen is the best place to start because an outside perspective is really valuable. In just one session, you and Gwen can sift through the criteria you need to use to determine the best use of your time based on what you want and where you’re at.
The best use of your time is not necessarily the best use of my time or the best use of Gwen’s time. It really is a situation where your mileage may vary. You can go to EverydayEffectiveness.com/clarity to book your clarity call now. I promise it’s super easy, super painless. Probably not going to have availability for the next couple of weeks, but if you have a little bit of time, a little bit of flexibility, I’m sure you can find time on the calendar. With that, we’ll see you next time.
Mentioned in This Episode
About Your Hosts
Gwen Bortner has spent four decades advising executives and entrepreneurs in 45+ industries. She helps women succeed in business without sacrificing happiness by identifying their true desires and aligning their business functions. She spots overlooked bottlenecks and crafts efficient plans toward sustainable success that center your values and priorities. Known for her unique approach to problem-solving and accountability through the G.E.A.R.S. framework, Gwen empowers clients to achieve their definition of success without sacrificing what matters most.
Tonya Kubo is a marketing strategist and community builder who helps entrepreneurs build thriving online communities. As co-host of The Business You Really Want and Chief Marketing and Operations Officer (CMOO) at Everyday Effectiveness, she keeps conversations on track and ensures complex business concepts are accessible to everyone. A master facilitator with 18+ years of experience in online community building, Tonya takes a people-first approach to marketing and centers the human experience in all she does.
