Business Built With Strategy
Business Built Strategy is for business owners who are ready to lead with clarity and confidence. Hosted by Victoria E Strange, it’s direct, strategic, and built for people who want to grow a business that actually works.
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Business Built With Strategy
The Power of Decisive Action in Business and Life
Decision-making is the foundation of both business success and a fulfilling life. Yet we rarely acknowledge how these choices, both conscious and unconscious, shape our entrepreneurial journey. When we avoid making decisions, we drift—and drifting rarely leads to the business or life we truly want.
Throughout my entrepreneurial journey, I've learned that thoughtful decision-making transformed my small pamper events business into a thriving events company handling everything from children's birthdays to adult celebrations. Did I make perfect choices every time? Absolutely not! But consistently making decisions, rather than avoiding them, propelled my business forward.
Finding balance is crucial. A business consuming 99% of your energy while leaving only 1% for personal life might grow initially, but such growth isn't sustainable. My father would remind me, "You're putting yourself last," emphasizing that business success loses its meaning if you never actually enjoy life. Many entrepreneurs face decision paralysis—sometimes from uncertainty, sometimes from fear of outcomes (both positive and negative). But avoiding decisions leads to stagnation, wasted time, and countless missed opportunities.
What makes a good decision? Simply put, it aligns with YOUR desired outcome, not someone else's. This explains why blindly copying another entrepreneur's path often fails; their choices match their unique circumstances, not yours. When mistakes happen (and they will), avoid spiraling into self-doubt. Instead, ask: "How can I rectify this? What's my next step?" Every misstep contains valuable lessons if you're willing to learn rather than dwell on failure.
This week, identify one area of your business where you've been drifting and make a decision—even a tiny one. That's how you begin creating the business and life you truly want. Sign up for my email list in the show notes to receive our new freebie that will help guide your decision-making process!
Hello everyone, it's Victoria here and welcome back to another episode of Business Built with Strategy. So your business and your life are built on decisions. I don't think we always consciously think that though, do we? I know I don't. I don't actually think, oh well, now I'm gonna make a decision. It's just a very natural flow. And without conscious decisions or unconscious decisions, sometimes we can drift. And drifting rarely leads to the life or business that we want. Now, if we want something in our life, maybe we want a holiday, we make a conscious decision. Okay, I want to go there or wherever, and we go forward with that, and we make that decision to do that. And if we didn't, well, we're not going to be going anywhere. And it's exactly the same in business, exactly the same. We have to make decisions so that we can flourish, so that we can make our plans work. And you know, if with if you've got a strategy, which I hope you have, or a plan or however you want to put it, that plan strategy will be filled with decisions that you have made. If you feel like things it maybe now or sometimes aren't working right, I want you to ask yourself, what decisions have you been avoiding? We all do it, I have 1 million percent done it. Sometimes because I don't know what the decision is to be made, or sometimes it can be where we're a little fearful and thinking, oh god, if I make that decision, that might happen. And it could be that we're fearful of something good happening because that means we're moving forward and things are happening, or it could be something where oh I don't know if I should make that decision because I don't want that to happen. So it can be either or, can't it? For me, life and business needs to be about balance, a full life, doing nice things, living well, a business with structure and organization. It's really, really important to take yourself also into account and not disappear or putting yourself last. Now, I've definitely done this myself. I've been in situations where, in fact, I didn't even come bottom and bottom of the pile, I just I just didn't feature at all, and maybe for a while, you know, that's okay because you're focusing on everything that you need to do in other areas of your life, you know, actual life, business, family, but you have to feature because you're here, you matter, you're important too, and that's why it's so important to take yourself into account. A business uh say 99% and life at 1%, it will probably grow, you know. Don't get me wrong, it probably will grow at first, but it's not sustainable. You can't say that word, what am I like? Yeah, it's not sustainable at all. And have I done it? Yep, totally, and then I learned, I learned the hard way, really, but I learned that you know, my dad used to say to me, You or you're putting yourself last, you have to you you have to have a life too, you know. It's all well and good having a good business, and but it you matter too, because you don't want to get to the end of your life and go, Oh, well, you know, I had a really good business, but I didn't really enjoy anything, it's no good, is it? So I remember back years and years ago when I had my first business, and I had an event business, and we did full well, actually, we started off with pamper events for children. I loved it, it was so much fun, and then I branched out and opened up, and then I provided more themed events, and then I started to provide extras for the events, and that's how I grew my business, and it was it was a really good way of doing it, to be honest, because that decision really transformed my business going from you know, a little party business. I I knew business, I'd grown up in it, you know, I'd worked in my dad's company. I knew you know, I knew I knew business, but I knew that I had to start from the bottom, and so I I I started with these little pamper events, and they were they were just like little birthday parties, really. And then once I started to really open it up and make each decision going forward, it landed up as being a very, very popular events company, and we didn't just obviously do pamper events, we did christenings, we did bar mipsas, we did birthdays for adults for children, it was absolutely fantastic, and it only grew because I made the decisions. Did I make the right ones all the time? Of course I didn't, no, hell no, god no, but the majority of them were good decisions, and therefore that grew the business in a positive way. So, what happens when you don't decide? You know, what what happens when you don't make decisions when you know really you should be? Like I the best analogy I can think of is you come home and you know that you've got to do dinner, and if you don't decide, like maybe early on, you drift, and the result is often poor, ordering out, not eating properly, eating unhealthy, because it's you you didn't make a decision. Same in business, avoid decisions, stagnation, wasted time, missed opportunities 100% missed opportunities because you're not making those decisions, you're not putting yourself out there, so therefore there are opportunities just passing you by, which is a shame, isn't it? I mean, it really, really is drifting is still a decision, but usually it is it's the worst one. So, how do you approach decision making? Now I'm very methodical. Lists, plans, step by step. I find that works for me absolutely perfectly. My my level of perfect because you have to remember everyone's level of perfect is different. Decisions made with thought are usually stronger than you know the usual rushed ones, and good versus bad decision. A good decision aligns with the outcome that you want, not someone else wants, but you want, and a bad decision doesn't move you towards that outcome, does it? It it just doesn't, but what's good for one person may not be good for the other. This context really, really matters, and I suppose you know, we're not actually talking about this today, but it does make a lot of sense where we have covered in the pod before, and we've spoken about when entrepreneurs copy each other, and it does come into this because you might get one entrepreneur and they make a decision for themselves, which is actually a really positive decision for them, it aligns with the outcome that they want, and then you get another entrepreneur, they come along and they copy the other entrepreneur. But that could be a bad decision for them because that does that decision, what one entrepreneur has made, it doesn't align with this entrepreneur, it's it's probably not got anything to do with with their business, one little bit, and this is you know, you can see, can't you? You can see a pattern here. Decisions aren't universal, and decisions on the outcomes of them are not universal either. That's really important. So dealing with wrong decisions, wrong decisions happen, it's part of life, part of business. Instead of spiraling, ask, how can I rectify this? What is the next step? If I do something wrong, like if I've made a decision, I think, oh crikey, I've I've I've really mucked this up. After I've had a probably had a little bit of a meltdown, I then think, okay, right. How can I rectify it? What can I do to make this better? Will it rectify it completely? Might not do, it might not, but can I rectify it slightly to a point? Probably, probably most of the time. Every wrong decision decision still teaches you something, and that goes back to what we were speaking in the pod um about a few weeks ago, actually. That when you make a wrong decision, or if something doesn't go right in life, even and in business, you learn by it, don't spiral. Honestly, I the thing is, we do, don't we? But it don't get us nowhere. So I now try my best to take a learning from everything. If it's gone wrong, it's gone wrong. But I then look at it and go, okay, well, at least now I know not what to do, you know. Um, so I take I take something from it. And if you can take something from it, everything is not lost, all is not lost. So don't avoid decisions, don't make rash ones. Sometimes it's about pulling yourself back, isn't it? And going, okay, before I make this decision, just have a little think, is this the right one? Thoughtful decisions don't guarantee perfection. I mean, look, you know what I think about perfection, there's no such thing. But there is your own level of perfect. I do believe in that, but they get you much closer to your goals. This week, look at one area of your business where maybe you've been drifting, make a decision, even if it's really tiny, minuscule even, because that's how you create the life and the business that you want. So, do you want me to now turn this into something where I can help you? If you do, have a look at the show notes, sign up for my email list, and I will send you our new freebie through. Take care, everyone, have a fantastic week, and I will speak to you soon.