Why It's Crucial to Get Out There and Try

Get out there and make decisions and then evaluate those decisions and add to your experience bucket. When you go into making future decisions, look back at your current experience bucket. If you have no experience, you will have to look back, it’s just time to get out there and start trying. It’s just time to do things and not worry about failure. That is a good rule of thumb, but the more experience you have, the more you’re able to look back and make better decisions. But, if you have no experience or very little experience, then you’re able to say, “I don’t care, I’m just doing this for the experience”. And then if it works, that’s a great thing.

I’m tempted to tell you a story. I’m even going to say that I do not know how true it is, although I assume it is true. I heard the story once of someone who took a website class and they were going to build a website and they had to make it about something and they thought, “Well, I want to be a little creative here and I can’t sink my teeth into something fake and I live on a farm in Texas and there’s always tumbleweeds outside. I’m just going to take a picture of these tumbleweeds and put them for sale on my website.” Totally bogus website. But, after a few weeks, she finds that she is shipping Texas tumbleweeds all over the country. Sometimes, when you just try it out, you will start selling. This is a lot how I started my business, I had no idea what I was going to sell. Absolutely no idea. But I just started writing articles and putting squeeze pages out there and getting subscribers and then I started asking the subscribers, “What do you need?” and they told me what they needed. So, I started creating what they needed. It almost happened by accident. Now, it did not happen by accident from the perspective that I sat on my couch and did nothing. It happened by accident from the perspective that I did an awful lot of work not knowing even what I was going to sell. I think that’s another thing that holds people back. Maybe that’s where you’re at, you don’t know what you’re going to sell, so you’re not willing to make those decisions. Whatever it is, lay it all aside, be willing to take more risk, be willing to make decisions for the sake of making decisions.

I want to give you something else about decision-making. Some people have a hard time making decisions. You go to the restaurant, there are 25 items on the menu, and it takes you 20 minutes to figure out what to order and then after you order it, your second-guessing saying, “Did I order the right thing?”. If that’s you, I encourage you to give yourself freedom to make decisions faster. The next time that you go to the restaurant and there are 25 things to order, give yourself 10 seconds. Scan it, and after 10 seconds, go, “What do I feel like eating?”, If you don’t know, close your eyes, point to item number seven and say, “Ma’am, I’ll have item number seven please”. You don’t even know what item number seven is, but order it. Then when you get it, evaluate your decision. Was it a better or worse decision than if you pontificated for 25 minutes? Learn to make fast decisions. Learn to make faster decisions. If it takes you 10 minutes to decide what to wear in the morning, make a new rule in your life that says, “I’m going to decide what I’m going to wear in 10 seconds. If it doesn’t match, it doesn’t matter, I will live with it for the day. I can tell a good story all day long.”

Trying to decide where to eat breakfast? Have a rule in your life that says, “I have to decide in 10 seconds. Right or wrong, I have to decide in 10 seconds”. I believe that entrepreneurs get very good at making quick decisions. Does that mean that they rush all of the important decisions? Does it really matter what you eat out of the 25 items on the menu? Does it matter what you wear out of what’s in your closet? If it does, you should probably throw away the clothing that it really matters whether you wear it or not. These are the type of things that just do not matter. It doesn’t matter if you eat at Jack’s breakfast joint or Joni’s breakfast joint. We’re not talking about life-changing, life altering decisions. When you’re in the middle of building your business, if you look at it as a life-changing, life altering decision every time you make a decision, of course you are afraid of failure. But remember, we talked about these decisions don’t matter. They don’t matter. They are just for the idea of gaining experience.

So let’s have you making better decisions and faster decisions. Let’s sum this up. Make more decisions, right or wrong, so that experience can lead to better decisions. Folks, I enjoy this topic because it is something that I use as I’m going through the day. Some of the things that we have talked about today are enjoyable to me. They’re difficult to put into words and I want to plant that inside of you. There is a part of me that says, “I just want to continue to coming up with examples to give you.” But, at this point, I have given you a lot to work with. Now, the ball’s in your court. Start making decisions and start making decisions today.