Full Transcript

Sari 0:04
I'm Sari Kimbell and I've done just about everything in the food industry. I have helped hundreds of packaged food business entrepreneurs. And now I want to help you make your delicious dream a reality. Whether you want to be successful at farmer's markets, online, or wholesale on the store shelves, Food Business Success is your secret ingredient. I will show you how to avoid an expensive hobby and instead run a profitable food business. Now let's jump in.

Sari 0:39
Hey there, welcome back to the podcast. Such a great day! So glad you are here with me. This topic is going to really help you as you move forward. I know it is. I know that so many of you struggle with being decisive, with making quick decisions, decisions where you feel confident, and you have your own back. I know this because we have been coaching on this for this whole last week. It seems like my clients in my business coaching programs and then in our group calls, it seems like decisions are coming up over and over again. And it's that time of year, right. The honeymoon phase of like, I'm gonna create this business or I'm gonna go after this big goal, is over. And now we actually have to get to work. And of course, decisions are going to come up. So I want to help you in this episode to be more decisive. Now one thing I want to just pause and mention is that Food Business Success is open right now and it is only open for a week. So from today, if you're listening to this on Tuesday, you have one week to decide if you're going to join Food Business Success or not, to help you farther your journey on creating a packaged food business to help you go faster and go farther. Now by the end of this episode, I want that decision to be made. I want you to powerfully make this decision. And so I'm going to give you some strategies, and some tactics, and some kind of reframing that I use for myself and with my clients to help us make decisions. And if starting Food Business Success isn't for you already, or you know, you're already working with me, or you're already working with somebody else. That's okay. I want you to think about some other decision that needs to be made. And by the end of this episode, commit to yourself right now that that decision will be made, or that a decision to decide will be made. Sometimes we have to start there. I love this concept. And it's kind of a mind blower that your life right now, wherever you are in this moment, is the sum total of the decisions you have made to this point. It's kind of like, what! But it's so true, it is the truth. That you are at this point because of decisions you did or did not make. And so first, we just need to own that, for better or for worse. This is where we are at. This is the place, this is where all the decisions have led us. And now, we can wake up and we can own our next decisions. The results that we want to create in our life wherever we want to go is just the result of decisions. And some decisions, of course, are bigger than others, right? To move or not to move. To start a business or not. To start a family or not. To get married or not. But most of our life is actually made up of small tiny decisions. Think about it. It's like you don't gain weight overnight, right? You don't get married overnight. Usually. It's usually, you know, many, many dates that lead to marriage. It is many, many days of overeating that lead to being overweight.

Sari 4:34
And a business is no different. It is many, many, many decisions of showing up, of trying new things, of doing hard things, right. Putting yourself out there. Of actually just doing the small, mundane, not so fun work. That's how we create new results in our life. So let's get back to how to be more decisive. Most of you are not very good at making decisions. I know this because I coached many of you on this. I have to say, I'm not gonna say that I'm like amazing at making decisions. But I've actually, this is not an area where I have struggled as much. I've always been one of those people that when people are like, where do you want to eat, I'm like, I want to here, here. Right. I'm not one of those people, like, I don't know, whatever you want. Like I pretty well know what I want. And so, I actually used to be really kind of embarrassed of this, like, I should be more accommodating, or I shouldn't be so opinionated. And now I've just kind of embraced it. But I think it has served me very well as an entrepreneur because the more decisions we can make more quickly, the faster we go. We got to turn that flywheel, right. We got to get the momentum going. And the only way we do that is in action, not in our thoughts. It has to come from action. And we get it going. We create momentum by making decisions. Standing by them, taking action. When we get new information then we make new decisions but we keep going. We don't look back. So why do so many of us struggle to make decisions? It's actually probably not as much what you think. When you think about why you struggle, it's probably because you feel like you are afraid that you will make the wrong decision and that you will feel regret in the future. But here's the thing, the crazy thing about it, what makes something the wrong decision? Just think about it for a minute. How would you even know that it was the wrong decision? It's simply your thought about it that makes it wrong or right. So when we make a decision, let's just take something totally innocuous, like you're graduating high school and you could go to school A or school B. And we like to put all of this consequence on it, right? It's a really big decision. Your whole life is wrapped up in this decision. What if we step back and said there are no wrong decisions? Whichever one I choose is the right decision because I decide that it is . Because I think that it is. It's my thought about it. And how would we even know if it was the right or wrong decision because we have no idea what would have happened in that other school that we did not choose, right? It could have been the wrong decision. But whatever choice we make, we get to decide if it's right or wrong, and you are the only person who decides that. Nobody else gets to decide it. Not that other people don't have their opinions, and then you take them on. But in truth, it's only you that are affected by your thoughts.

Sari 8:20
And really what's crazy is that we're just really projecting that feeling of regret into the future. Like, we're sitting here now thinking, but what if I have regrets and feelings of regret in the future, that's going to feel terrible. Right. And so we're projecting on what we think might happen in the future. But really, all you're doing is feeling negative emotion right now. And your brain doesn't actually know the difference between present now and future you feeling that emotion. It just feels it no matter what. You again get to decide and I'm going to give you some strategies about how to kind of step back from that and not feel so terrible about making decisions and being so paralyzed by indecision. Because here's what happens is that indecision is a decision. Think about it, all you're doing is delaying the decision. Or you're letting something outside of you like a clock running out, right, like Food Business Success closes in a week. If you just don't do anything, something else makes the decision for you. And is that really how you want to live your life, right, when I said in the beginning your life is a reflection. It is the sum total of decisions that you have made or not made. Do you want to be living your life on purpose based on your decisions? You taking ownership over your life. Or do you want to live a life that is made sort of by accident? And letting other people and other circumstances make those decisions for you? I know for me, I want to own my decisions. I want to make decisions powerfully. I want my yes to be my yes. And my no to be my no. And I'm going to stand behind myself, I'm going to have my own back, that this was absolutely the right decision. And when I get new information then I can change my mind, I can make a new decision. So it's really important to spend a little bit of time just reframing decisions. They are actually less consequential than we think that they are, right? Take the example of the two schools. I'm sure in the moment, especially at that age that you're at, it's a really big deal. You think it is like the end of the world if you don't make the right decision. But again, there are no right decisions. There's only decisions that we make and we get to decide if they're right or wrong. When you look back on the scheme of things, you can just redecide. You choose one school and it's going to lead you down one path, right. It's like the Choose Your Own Adventure. And at some point, you may decide something different. But really, most of our decisions are pretty inconsequential. We like to put a lot more importance on them than they really are. And so if we can kind of let ourselves off the hook a little bit and say I always figure it out. Even if this isn't the perfect decision, even if I don't love it as much as I thought I would which is still just a thought.

Sari 11:48
We can change our mind. We can take new action down the road, we can pivot, right. We can make adjustments. So if we don't put so much consequence, so much weight on it, that is really helpful to help you stand back. And maybe not take things quite so seriously. Also think about it that we are making decisions all the time, from the minute you wake up. I mean, you made a decision last night to set your alarm for a certain time or to not set your alarm, right. And that decision has then created the day that you're having and then all those decisions about your morning routine or how you start your day. And then every decision after that, like we make so many decisions about. Do I work out or do I not? Do I hit snooze or do I not? Do I have coffee or do I not? Do I breakfast or do I not? When do I get started on my day? Do I send that email or do I not? Since we all have so many decisions to make, knowing that ahead of time, I think we can set ourselves up for better results in a couple different ways. We can do things automatically and plan for them ahead of time in a good way. So we can put some boundaries and constraint on our time. So as an example, let's just say that in the mornings, you hit snooze, and then you start, you pick up your phone and you start scrolling through social media just out of habit. It's just like something to do. And then time kind of gets away from you and you realize like 30 minutes later, that you're still on social media. And now you don't have enough time to go workout. And now you don't have enough time to do some other things, right. And so your whole day kind of spirals. But what we can do is set ourselves up ahead of time to say, we're going to make some decisions and say my alarm goes off at this time. That means I get out of bed by this time, I can hit snooze once. That's my rule. I can hit snooze once. And then I do this and then I do that and I don't even ever check my phone. Because I know when I get on my phone, I'm going to lose track of time and then I'm going to have outside world influence make decisions for me that I don't want, right? That's that time constraint there. And we can also set ourselves up ahead of time to, you know, buy healthier food or not buy junk food, right. Like make it easier to make good decisions for yourself. Have the workout gear right next to your bed, right. Get it ready the night before. Like how can you set yourself up so that it's easy to make good decisions that benefit your future self? So on the little things, that's one thing because we know that willpower fades over the day. We can start out really strong and then it will slowly start to fade especially if we're hungry or tired. And it really goes downhill, right? And so how can we set ourselves up at the beginning of the day so we don't have so much decision fatigue. Also, indecision creates what I call decision death. If you think about it kind of in the opposite way that compound interest works, it's the negative of compound interest. So every time we put off making decisions, they're sort of just weighing us down. They're compounding on our shoulders of like, I got to make that decision, I got to make that decision. I'm putting things off and off and off. Instead of making decisions so that we can keep moving forward and keep taking action because indecision is a decision in and of itself. It's just not one that you're making powerfully. So you do lose. You lose energy, you lose effectiveness. It just wastes time when you sit in indecision. You waste a lot of time. Think about something, now, I know some of you guys, I've talked to many of you, I talked to a woman this week, who she's like, I have been wanting to do this business for 10 years. She kept saying over and over again. It's now or never, it's now or never. And I wonder like, what is the cost of all those years of wanting to do this, right? That indecision?

Sari 16:30
I mean, it's one thing if you make a decision, if you're like, no, this is absolutely not the right time for me to start my business and in a year, I'm going to revisit it. And you're purposely making this decision versus just sort of letting time happen and you spinning out in I don't know and indecision. Think about, like, just energetically how that feels when you have a lot of decisions to make just weighing you down. Now we're going to talk about how to become more decisive. How to make stronger, more powerful, more confident decisions. So the first thing is to practice making more decisions, you guys, we have to be really bad at something before we can get really good at it. We were talking about this on a group call last week, and I said, I read this pair, this kind of section out of a book I've been reading where it said, you know, think about like fill in the sentence: to be a really great musician, I have to play really badly for a while. To be a great comedian, I have to bomb over and over again. So to be good at making decisions, we have to be bad at it at first. And we have to keep practicing. So now I want you to purposely start making small decisions. What are we going to have for dinner? I'm going to set a timer for five minutes and I'm going to decide. And that's a huge piece, that's like tactic that I use a lot is setting urgency, creating constraint of time and urgency. So I'll say, okay, I have five minutes to make a decision, or I have 30 seconds to make a decision, right? Like let's get out of decision death. And like over the silliest things, do I take this outfit back? Or do I not? Do I buy this? Or do I not? You know, do I like lemon flavored or lime flavored? Like who cares? There's so many things that we don't need to spend any additional time on. So set a timer and say in five minutes or 30 minutes or two hours, whatever it is, I'm going to decide. Because I can, like let's say for dinner, right? Like, okay, I have a chicken or I have a pork shoulder. I could do either one and both would be great. Which one do I want? Which one do I choose? I can always choose the other one a different night, right? And my decisions pretty inconsequential. But a lot of us get really hung up on this. I actually worked with a client on her Badass 30 and one of her things was to make a powerful decision every day to help build up that muscle of making decisions. And some of her decisions were really small. It was like, do I keep this outfit? Or do I return it? Instead of it just sitting there on your dresser, I know I have something sitting on my dresser that I will make a decision on this at the end of this podcast. Whether we take it back or not. So you know, these are things that weigh on us and take up our energy so making small decisions. I have another client that she needs to, on our Slack channel, send me three decisions every day that she makes. And it's so funny because she gets really caught up in like, deciding which decisions to send me. It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. Just decide, right? So can you do something similar on the smallest things, right, I'm going to go to the coffee shop and I'm going to take 30 seconds and I'm going to decide.

Sari 20:26
And even better if you just know what you want. And then it makes the decision making so much easier, right? Something that I think really has helped me and served me well in making decisions is knowing my values ahead of time. So this may not be something that you've spent very much time on or you've thought about much. But I've encouraged you, you know, at least annually, if not more frequently to really identify what are the values in your life right now, because they do change sometimes, depending on kind of the phase of your life and where you're at in your business or your family. You know, for me, values like fun, and adventuresome, and growth is a really big value of mine. Contribution is a big value of mine. Those things getting rooted in whatever yours is, or you should probably have like, maybe choose your top three. It could be family, it could be kindness, love, contribution, growth, adventure, fun, joy, gratitude, right? The list goes on and on. You can, I know you can identify your own, your own values. But whatever is important to you, this is a decision you get to make, you alone. Nobody else gets to make it for you. But I liken this to when I was looking for a place to live. I did my top three things that I knew I wanted in my home, right. And so it was very clear to me, I was solid on those. And everything else would be a bonus, right? I had some other ones like oh, this would be nice to have. And it was the day before I had to renew my current lease, I went and this place popped up and I was like, call my realtor said we have to go look at this place. And I looked at a number of other places and just nothing was checking those value boxes, right? And I walked into this place and I took, didn't take long, it's not that big to look at and said, within five minutes, I was like, yep, let's do it, put an offer in, here's what I want, right. And that was it. And I was sold. Because I had identified my values ahead of time. So that is a really great strategy for how to make decisions quickly especially bigger decisions, right? When we have options of, do this thing or do that thing? And they both are good, potentially. But which one do we choose? Knowing your values, where you are at in your life right now will really help you. So if one of your values, a very strong value of yours is security and safety, I don't know that becoming an entrepreneur is exactly, I mean it could be I'm not saying it's not, but you may want to question whether starting a food business is really the right thing for you. Because I want you to make decisions, remember we're coming back, we're getting close to the end of this podcast. I want you to make a powerful decision about something and if it is about joining me inside Food Business Success, I want you to do it because you're like yes, it aligns with my values to, you know, be a little adventuresome, to grow myself as a human, to try something new outside of my comfort zone, to see if I can, right, that adventuresome piece, to have fun, community, learning, knowledge, giving back. I mean, so many of you guys are starting a business because it feels like your purpose, right? And that's the next thing really is about your gut, like, checking in so many of us. My coach likes to use this kind of visualization when we're making decisions is like, when there's a decision to be made, we first know it in our gut, and then it goes to our heart, and then it goes to our head and that's where all the problems happen.

Sari 24:53
And if we can, kind of identify, and it happens very quickly, right? It's not like, you know, most of us can't really identify when it goes to which place. So he actually says we have five seconds between our gut, our heart, and our head. And so when you have a decision to make, you know in your gut, what is the right decision for you. And then your heart will help back that up and then your head will tell you all the reasons why it's a terrible idea. And so the way to get out of this is to take action in the first five seconds before your head starts giving you all the reasons why this is terrible, because bless it, it's just trying to protect you and keep you safe, keep you comfortable. But that's not what we do as entrepreneurs, we don't sit in comfort. Because we know discomfort is the currency to our dreams. So it's not always that we're gonna take huge action. But it might be like, say, I said, okay, I'm going to give you this trip to come with me to Hawaii, are you in? You're going to be like, you're going to have a gut response of like, ooh, yes, or no, that's actually not aligned, I don't want to go to Hawaii. But let's just say it's a yes in your gut. And then your hearts gonna be like, yeah, it feels really good. And then your heads gonna be like, oh, no, you can't get the time off work, or it's gonna be too expensive, you don't like flying, it's COVID. So you're gonna have all these things. So the trick is to take action in the first five seconds. And that, it might not be that you actually booked the flight right then but it's, I am actually very interested. Tell me more, right, is an action, or let me look into flights, or I'm gonna set a timer like when do I need to decide. So checking your gut, your heart, and then if you really want to move forward, getting out of your head and just taking some small action, and then asking yourself these questions. This has been really powerful this week when I've been coaching people on making decisions. So I had a gal she was trying to decide, do she keep her business under one business umbrella with these two different products or do they split them out? And she was going back and forth. And we talked about pros and cons. I mean, we don't want to just make decisions, you know, impulsively. Let's get the information that we need. But I said, okay, here's the pros and cons for each one. Now, if both of them worked out, amazing. If both worked out, awesome. They both were great decisions. Which one would you make? And it was like, I watched her, it was like so much peace. And she knew exactly what to do. She was like, oh, yeah, this one feels more joyful. This one feels easier and lighter. Perfect. They're both going to work out great so which one feels better? Which one do you want to spend your time on? It's just, you're just choosing your adventure, right? And so yeah, we want to get information, but most of us spent out in over information, right? I'm just going to keep researching. I'm going to keep talking to people. I'm going to keep asking people. I've a different client this week who was like, she asked too many people, right. She's asked, okay, what about this person? It's like, they didn't have any business. They didn't know her business. They were offering all these other opinions and they were really confusing her. And they just said that same thing. And she said, I don't know. You know, I said, what if either one worked out great, what would you do? I don't know. I said, and this is the other key is that you got to remove "I don't know" from your vocabulary. So she said, okay, but what if you didn't know? I really don't know. So she pushed back once. And usually by the second time is when we can, usually it only takes twice. I said, okay, but let's just play for a minute. What if you actually really did know, just just play with me, and she was like, oh, well, then I would do this.

Sari 29:26
Great, perfect, decision made. And she felt so good about it. It was so clear. We have like that's the gut piece, right? Our inner wisdom, you know! And sometimes we do need a coach. That's why I love coaching because all I'm doing is helping you discover your own wisdom. It's not about what I think is best. Because in most cases, most things, there isn't a right decision. It's just what feels good to you. I have another client, he wanted to introduce like, launched his product, was feeling really great about it. And then it got hard, of course, because that's what happens when we start a business, things get hard. We have to try a million different things and not everything is gonna work right away. And he was like, well, maybe I will switch products, maybe I'll do something different. I was like, nope, nope, you don't get to do that. We made a decision, you're gonna commit, I want you to see this through. This is what we do as an entrepreneur, we try a whole bunch of different things, and we fail, and fail, and fail until we figure it out, and failing's just learning. So right now you're learning. And it's messy, and it doesn't feel great. But we're committed and we're going to go all in on this. So we're going to remove "I don't know" from our vocabulary, we're going to really try to get into our gut and our heart and then take action in the next five seconds before our brain tells us all the reasons why it's going to kill us. Wants to keep us safe in the cave, that's it, it's fine. You can say your opinion is noted but we're going to take some action. We're gonna set timers, we're gonna create urgency, and sometimes we just have to make a decision to decide. So if you think about sometimes we have something that's further off in the future, and we spent a lot of time worrying about it, about that future thing. And so sometimes I'll just put things on my calendar, like, decide on this on this date, right? And so I can like get it off of my shoulders. And I can focus on other things. But it's like written down, it's on paper, I know that I will come back to it, I'm not going to forget about it. So set timers. Create urgency. Which is another reason why I decided to go with this model of closing Food Business Success in a week. So you guys, time is ticking down here on your decision making. Whatever it is, if it's Food Business Success or if it's a different decision; are you ready to make that decision because we are almost done with this podcast. I hope so. This will be really powerful if you follow through on this. We're going to make tiny decisions every day, we're going to set ourselves up for success. So that we don't have decision fatigue as much. We're going to set us up to make positive decisions ahead of time. And we're going to just make small decisions, and we're going to decide to have our own back. Because I actually wanted to say this earlier and then I forgot about it but I want to make sure I say it. Part of the main thing that we have to do when we make decisions, remember the beginning I said it's like the fear of you feeling regret? Instead of that, what if we make a decision and then the work we do is selling ourselves on the decision of being excited. And committing to ourselves that we are going to have our own back, no matter what. That we made the right decision with the information we had at that time. That is what all great leaders do, is they have their own back. And so as we make more and more decisions, trust yourself, trust your knowing. Small decisions, big decisions, I have my own back. I will not entertain or indulge in regret. Because it doesn't serve you. You cannot, literally, it is impossible for you to go back in time and do anything different. So it does not serve you to sit in regret. Instead, how can we cultivate excitement? We make a decision. So we're going to ask ourselves all of those things that I just went through, right? Your gut, your what if both options worked out amazing. We're going to sell ourselves on feeling excitement. We're going to do all of that then we're going to make a decision. And then we are going to commit and you do not change that no matter what.

Sari 34:25
Like if you were to go into getting married and you were going in like, I don't know, we'll see, that same people don't do that. But for me, getting married, like I'm in. I'm going all in! I'm going to look for all the reasons why this was the most amazing decision until it's not. And maybe there will come a time and maybe there won't but it doesn't serve anybody for you to be spending time wondering if you made the right decision, right. You're going to get the worst outcome possible if you spend time in that, I can guarantee you that. So I look at just, you know, a personal example, I look at my own marriage as like that was the most amazing decision I made. I'm so glad I did it. And I was all in. And 10 years later, I had changed and evolved and moved on. And I chose a different decision. And that was the most amazing decision. I don't regret the marriage. I'm super proud of that marriage. And now, I made a decision and I totally have my own back on it. And it was the best decision for me at this time. So I want you to commit and go all in. That is why I set up Food Business Success in this time period right now to give you an amazing six month offer because I know it takes six months for most people to really get their sea legs underneath them with their food business. And so I want you to go all in to commit for six months and don't look back. Don't look back and regret. Don't wonder if or what would have been. We're just going to go in and we're going to keep taking action. We got to get into action as quickly as possible and start getting those small wins under our belt when we're starting something new like this. So that's how I design this. Alright, I'm so curious, I would love for you to go over to the private Facebook Group. And there will be a post about this podcast, I would love for you to share what decision you made, and what you're committing to, what you're going all in on. And it could be business related or not, any decision. I hope this was helpful for you. I'm just gonna decide that this was the most amazing podcast and it's going to help one person. I know it will. And if that person is you, I'm so glad. And I'm so grateful for all of you listening, I would love for you to take a moment and go over to Apple iTunes and leave a review or go to the Facebook Page and leave a review there if you're enjoying this. And I really hope if this is aligned with your values, I hope you say yes to come in and join me inside Food Business Success. And if it's not, that's okay too. But make the decision. Powerfully own your "yes" or own your "no", but don't let the clock decide. Alright, until next time have an amazing week!

Sari 37:49
Are you ready to start that delicious idea that you make in your home kitchen or grow your existing packaged food business and take it to the next level? The most successful food business entrepreneurs have support, guidance, focus and accountability to help them make it happen quickly without wasting time or money. Plus, I think starting your packaged food business should actually be fun. Food Business Success is your secret ingredient to creating your food business dream. Please don't go this alone. Check out the private free Food Business Success Facebook Group to connect with other foodpreneurs. Get your questions answered quickly. Share your wins and receive special training and tools I only share inside the private community. Just search for Food Business Success on Facebook or get the link in the show notes. Curious about how Food Business Success can help you? Head over to foodbizsuccess.com and fill out the application to see if you're a great fit for the program. Together let's make your food business dream a reality.