If you've ever struggled with decision paralysis in your creative business, you're not alone. In this episode of The Thriving Maker I talk all about the power of being able to make decisions and I promise you’ll gain practical strategies to sharpen your decision-making skills. How being able to make confident decisions and embracing imperfection can liberate your creative potential, drive your business forward, and bring a sense of calm. 

This episode sheds light on the art of embracing decisions, even the imperfect ones, and how they can lead to growth in your business and can free you from the overwhelm. Your creative journey deserves momentum, and every choice you make is a valuable part of it. Thank you for tuning into The Thriving Maker;  keep creating and dreaming big.

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Transcript:

Sarah: 0:00

Hello, welcome to today's episode of the Thriving Maker podcast. Today I want to talk all about making decisions and being decisive in your business. So wherever you're listening and however you're listening, I hope you enjoy. Welcome to the Thriving Maker podcast. My name is Sarah Kavanagh, your host, and I started the Thriving Maker to support makers, crafters and artists just like you to grow your creative passions into flourishing businesses on your terms and give you the life that you want. I'm a jewellery designer maker and started my own handmade, fine jewellery business over 15 years ago. I now also help other artisans and makers build their own craft and handmade businesses through marketing and branding and techniques and strategies I've studied, learned and put into practice along my journey. Right now, I want to help you to establish and grow your own designer business so it can help support the lifestyle that you want. Think of this as your go-to resource and check in for all things strategy and marketing for your business, along with stories and anecdotes from my life as a handmade entrepreneur. Thank you for tuning in and welcome to the Thriving Maker podcast. Hello, today's episode is all about making decisions and how being decisive in your business can be the most powerful action that you can take for yourself and for your business to move it forward. If you've ever found yourself agonizing over which material to use for your next project, or which design you're going to go with as the banner for your Etsy shop, or whether you're going to create your own website or not, you're not alone if you've been stuck in this space of indecision. As crafters and makers, we often pride ourselves in our attention to detail. That's one of our superpowers the way we look at something and our attention to detail. But sometimes this can actually hold us back, and especially when we're trying to run our business and move it forward. And this attention to detail can, when it comes to business side, it can be debilitating. So it's important to practice the skill of making decisions and being more decisive, and today I want to explore this and explore why being decisive is not just good for you, but good for your business as well, and how it can really help with your mental well-being as you're trying to grow your business. So we're going to discuss how being able to make quick and confident decisions can free up headspace and time and allow you to focus on what truly matters and allow you to have that freedom in your brains to develop ideas and to move your business forward.

Sarah: 2:57

So let's start by looking at the elephant in the room. This decision paralysis, and it's that feeling when you have so many options, you just don't know which one to choose, and you roll all of them around in your head and never make any decisions. As I'm saying this, this sounds really familiar to me, and I'm sure it does to some of you as well. So maybe you've spent many hours looking at all the different packaging options for your handmade pieces, and all the options that are available to you can leave you feeling paralysed as to knowing which way to turn, and so you need to be able to make this decision so that you can move forward and move past all the the different packaging options. Maybe you just can't decide on which social media platform you want to focus on whether it's Instagram or TikTok or Pinterest, and you're just going round and round, not doing any of them well enough, because you're spreading yourself too thin. Or maybe you know which platform you're going to be on. Maybe you're on Instagram, but you just can't make the decision to press publish and to send that post out into the world and put it on your feed. You just can't decide whether it's quite good enough or whether it represents your work in the best way. And these decisions, whilst they are important, can lead you to just not moving forward at all.

Sarah: 4:23

And it's important to make informed decisions and to do some research and to consider your actions. However, each, however, all that time that you spend deliberating is a moment when you're not moving your business forward. So it's important to be able to make a decision and be comfortable with that decision, and I think being comfortable with the decision is a key point here. It's very easy to say we've got to make the right decision, but you don't know necessarily if it's going to be the right decision until you've made that decision and started moving forward. And so you have to be comfortable with the idea, and it might not be the right decision, it may turn out not to have been the best decision, but that's okay, because you're learning from your experiences, and if you only ever make the right decision, you're never really learning what else could happen. So I also want to. So I want to go through how start, to learn to become more decisive and to practice being decisive.

Sarah: 5:31

So, if we break it down into three steps, the first step is to look at what your goals are. If you've set clear goals, you know what you need to do to achieve that goal and to move your business forward. So if you have clear goals, you will be able to see if the decision is relevant to that goal that you're going to, that you've set yourself, or if it's something that is maybe needed in the future and so it's not necessarily relevant at the moment, in which case don't worry too much about it. If you're working just towards these smaller goals, these yearly goals or quarterly goals, you can make a decision that will move you closer to achieving that goal. So the first step is to set clear goals, so you know what you're making a decision for, and if it's relevant. The second step is to really to use your intuition, to use your instincts, and I think as makers and crafters and artists, we do have a sense of what looks good and what works and what doesn't work, and you can use this same intuition into your business decisions as well. So if something feels right, it probably is right.

Sarah: 6:46

If you're unsure about something, maybe spend a little bit of time doing some research on it, and if it just really doesn't feel right to you, then the decision is is a no, but if it just feels uncomfortable, it may be that you just need to get used to that decision. Get used to that next step. For example, if the idea of creating your own website and launching your work on your own website feels uncomfortable to you because of all the steps that will be that that will incorporate, then the decision might not. Even though it's uncomfortable to think about what you then need to do, the decision may be that it is the best thing for you because it will mean that your business can grow. So, although it may seem daunting to launch your own website and you may be thinking, well, no, not just yet, it may actually be the decision is yes, you need to start doing this and then take small actions towards that goal.

Sarah: 7:43

And then the next step is really to embrace imperfection, and I know it can be really hard. As designer makers and crafters, we want everything to be perfect and we want to put out only the very best. But when you're making a decision about something, sometimes you have to make a decision which isn't necessarily perfect, the perfect decision. Maybe it's not going to be the perfect show setup for you, but you make the decision to do the show anyway, because it will take you on that next step. It will move your business forward. Maybe it's not the perfect timing for you, but you're going to make the decision based on how it's going to move your business forward and you can always adjust your actions and your course as you go along, as you move forward in the process.

Sarah: 8:37

So being decisive is really powerful for not only your business but also your mind. Being decisive can help bring breed confidence in yourself and in the the way you're moving your business forward, in the confidence that you're getting from achieving the goals that you're setting yourself, deciding which goals you want to to work towards to start with, and that small decision of saying, right, I am now going to work. In the next few months, I'm going to work on building my own website. So being decisive means that you're moving your business forward and it can free up space in your brain to do other things and give you confidence in other areas of your business and your life. So, whether that's being decisive about the pricing of your products, or negotiating with suppliers that you might have, or making contact with a wholesaler, a shop that you might want to have your work in. So practicing making decisions is really powerful.

Sarah: 9:39

When you're able to make a quick decision on something, it frees up so much mental energy and time. You're not second-guessing yourself or putting decisions off and you're not creating that extra burden. You're not going to sleep and thinking oh, I've still got to make that decision tomorrow about x, y and z I have. I still haven't made that decision whether I'm going to book on to that show or not. Make the decision and then move forward and then wake up knowing that, okay, the next step is this. The next step is getting my stock together. The next step is taking the photographs of my products. You can move forward once you've made a decision, and it can be liberating for your mind to know that you're going forward.

Sarah: 10:24

There have been many times in my own journey as a designer maker, as a jewellery designer maker, where I've been too indecisive, I've not taken action when I should have done and I've missed out on things, and also in my life as well, where I've had opportunities and I've not seized them, and so my motto now is it is always better to take the action, to make the decision and learn from your experiences, rather than regret not taking action at all. Take the plunge, be decisive. You might be scared, it might be nerve-wracking, but take that action and move forward with it. Don't regret a year from now, five years from now, not taking the action at all when you have the opportunity. So how can you apply this decision making into your craft business? And there's some practical tips that I want to share that will really help with this.

Sarah: 11:21

So, when you have a decision to make, set a deadline for it, whether that's by the end of the day, by the end of the week. If it's a small decision, make it a really small, short deadline. Don't ponder too long over it. Give yourself a time frame to make the choice this or that, this material or that material so make that decision in a specific time frame. You can use a timing block to do this and I talk about timing blocks a lot with your time management but you can also use the same principles. So set yourself a 30-minute timer or a 10-minute timer and say, ok, I've got 10 minutes to make a decision on this, and do that immediately, so it's not playing on you for the rest of the day or the rest of the week or overnight, even If you have decisions that need to be made before the end of the day.

Sarah: 12:11

Make them before the end of the day. Don't go to sleep with all the ifs and buts and the this or that thoughts going through your head. Limit your options. If you're faced with too many choices, this in itself can be debilitating. So narrow them down to just two or three, and this will make the decision process more manageable. And then practice making decisions in your day-to-day life, in your craft, business, wherever it is. Just practice making decisions quickly. So for simple decisions are you going to, what are you going to have for dinner? These quick decisions just build your confidence. So start practicing making simple decisions with small choices every day, and always remember to learn from the experiences that your decisions, from your decisions.

Sarah: 12:58

Instead of worrying what might go wrong or that it's a wrong choice, look at it as a learning opportunity. There is never really a right or wrong. There is just the opportunity to learn from what you've done in the past. Sometimes it will be the best decision you made, and so you will learn from that and take that forward to any new decisions you might have to make. Sometimes it may not be the best decision. Maybe it didn't end up how you wanted it to be. But learn from this opportunity. Don't look at it as a wrong decision. Look at it as a learning opportunity. And remember being decisive isn't about being reckless and just making any old decision.

Sarah: 13:38

Be informed so that you can make quick, confident choices and quick, confident decisions with your actions, and this will free up that mental energy and the time so you have space in your life to be creative, to have peace in your head, so you can move forward with confidence and a sense of calm as you grow your business, rather than the frenetic am I going to do this or am I going to do that? So I want you to move forward and enjoy the process of growing your business, and you will enjoy it more by being able to make decisions confidently. So I hope that's given you food for thought about the decisions you make day to day in your craft and you have a bit more understanding about the power of decisions and why it's so important to start practicing being decisive. As a crafter, as a designer, maker or an artist, a creative, you're going to be making countless decisions in every aspect of your work and your life.

Sarah: 14:42

Sometimes you won't make the perfect choice, but learn from that experience. Sometimes you will make a brilliant decision and embrace that and move forward confidently from that. Don't let indecision hold you back and slow you down from sharing your work with your audience. So I really want you to go away today and make a decision on something that you've been thinking about for a while. That's it for today. Thank you for tuning in to the thriving maker podcast and listening to me talk today. Um, until next time, keep creating and moving your business forward and I will speak to you soon. Take care bye for now.