Decision-Making in Business to Grow Online Sales with Amy Traugh
- Apr 10, 2024
- 8 min read
Updated: Jun 19
TL;DR
How do I make faster decisions in my business without overthinking or second-guessing myself?
Effective decision-making in business comes from building self-trust, taking action with available information, and using results as feedback to improve. Instead of waiting for certainty, you move forward, evaluate outcomes, and adjust as needed. This creates momentum, confidence, and more consistent progress over time.
Decision-Making in Business: How to Move Faster and Grow with Confidence
Decision-making is one of the most important skills an entrepreneur can develop, yet it is also one of the most common areas of struggle. Many business owners find themselves stuck in cycles of overthinking, waiting for the “right” time, or searching for more information before taking action. While this may feel responsible, it often leads to delays, missed opportunities, and stalled growth.
Strong decision-making in business is not about having all the answers—it is about building the ability to act, evaluate, and adjust with confidence.
Why Faster Decisions Lead to Better Results
Speed in decision-making is often misunderstood as impulsiveness, but in reality, it is about reducing unnecessary hesitation. Waiting for perfect clarity can keep you in a constant state of inaction, where ideas never turn into outcomes.
Making decisions more quickly allows you to create momentum. Each decision leads to action, and each action produces data. This data then informs your next move, creating a continuous cycle of progress. Without this cycle, growth becomes limited because there is no feedback to guide improvement. For example, launching a new offer without overanalyzing every detail allows you to gather real-world insights that are far more valuable than theoretical planning.
Building Self-Trust Through Action
At the core of effective decision-making in business is self-trust. When you consistently second-guess yourself, it becomes difficult to move forward with confidence. This hesitation often stems from fear of making the wrong choice or facing an unfavorable outcome.
However, confidence is not built by avoiding mistakes—it is built by making decisions and learning from them. Each time you take action, you reinforce your ability to handle the results, whether they meet your expectations or not.
Over time, this process strengthens your decision-making skills and reduces the need for external validation.
Using Action as a Learning Tool
One of the most valuable shifts you can make is viewing decisions as experiments rather than permanent commitments. This perspective reduces pressure and allows you to focus on learning rather than perfection.
Once a decision is made, the next step is to observe the results. What worked well? What could be improved? This analysis provides insights that help you refine your approach moving forward.
Instead of seeing adjustments as starting over, they should be viewed as optimization. Each iteration brings you closer to a more effective strategy.
The Role of Reflection in Growth
While action is critical, reflection is what makes that action valuable. Taking time to review your decisions and their outcomes allows you to identify patterns and make more informed choices in the future.
This process does not need to be complicated. Regular check-ins where you assess your performance, evaluate results, and identify areas for improvement can significantly enhance your decision-making ability.
By combining action with reflection, you create a system that supports continuous improvement.
Rewiring Your Approach to Decisions
Decision-making is a skill that improves with practice. The more you engage in it, the more comfortable and confident you become. This is because your brain begins to recognize that taking action leads to progress, not failure.
Over time, this shifts your mindset from avoidance to engagement. Instead of fearing decisions, you begin to see them as opportunities to move forward.
This shift is essential for long-term success, as it allows you to navigate uncertainty with greater ease.
Creating Momentum Through the Decision-Action Cycle
The most effective approach to decision-making in business is to view it as part of a cycle: decide, act, evaluate, and adjust. Each step builds on the last, creating a continuous loop of progress.
When you consistently move through this cycle, your business becomes more dynamic and responsive. Instead of waiting for perfect conditions, you create progress through action and refinement.
Turning Decisions into Growth
Ultimately, the quality of your business results is directly tied to the quality and speed of your decisions. By focusing on self-trust, taking action with the information you have, and using outcomes as feedback, you create a more efficient and effective path forward.
Decision-making is not about getting it right every time—it is about moving forward consistently and learning along the way.
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Transcript for Episode 301. I Doubled My Sales By Doing This One Thing
I am such a big believer in taking action. Action creates momentum, and momentum creates results. Right? Easier said than done, though. So how do you go about taking action when you feel stuck? When life's happening all around you, when you're overwhelmed, when you're frustrated, when everything seems heavy around you? How do you push through that fear and take action? This is something I discussed in part four of my book, the CEO method. And I really encourage you to dive in to those fears and limiting beliefs in the book. But today, I want to focus on a strategy that I have started using. And this strategy is so simple, yet so powerful that I wanted to take the time and dedicate a whole entire episode to this process because it's literally helped me double my sales.
Amy [00:01:09]:
It's helped me transform my business and.
Amy [00:01:13]:
Grow it even more.
Amy [00:01:15]:
And it doesn't cost you any time. It doesn't cost you any money. It doesn't cost you any energy.
Amy [00:01:21]:
In fact, it's actually going to give you back time and energy. So what is this? It's fast decision making. It's learning to trust yourself and get into action by making a decision. Now, true story. I am the world's. I used to be the world's most indecisive person.
Amy [00:01:49]:
I am the Enneagram nine.
Amy [00:01:51]:
I'm the people pleaser. I like to just go with the flow. I want everyone to be happy, even.
Amy [00:01:56]:
If that means sacrificing my own happiness.
Amy [00:01:59]:
I don't like to rock the boat. So for me, I would sit in indecision as a way to stay safe. Because at the end of the day, that's our brain's job. Our brain is designed to keep us safe. So by sitting in indecision, I was keeping myself safe. And you may be experiencing this, too. So I committed over this past year to making decisions. And it sounds so simple, right? Just make a decision.
Amy [00:02:36]:
Oh, my gosh. It was life changing. Take, for example, the book on November 12, 2023. I was like, you know what? I keep getting these signs over and over and over. So I made a decision to write a book, and I did it. I've really gotten out of sitting in indecision. It felt like a great decision at the time. And what it did is it got me into action, which created momentum, and then momentum created the result, which, on March 26, my book was released into the universe.
Amy [00:03:13]:
Action creates momentum, momentum creates results. But sitting in indecision, that is making a decision. And this was something that my life coach taught me and called me out on, to be quite honest with you years ago that not making a decision is making a decision. Sitting in that state of indecision was my choice because I felt safe there, because these, the unknown, the future. With that decision, I didn't know what was going to happen. That wasn't a certain thing.
Amy [00:03:52]:
I was staying stuck. I was playing small, but I decided.
Amy [00:04:03]:
I made the choice. I made a decision to stretch outside of my comfort zone. So often we spend so much time stuck in our heads analyzing all of the possible scenarios that our brain gets physically tired. It gets so tired because we're constantly running these scenarios through our mind over and over and over, when we could have used that energy to get into action, to create those results. And it really comes down to trusting yourself. Trusting yourself is so, so absolutely powerful, but it's hard. But by taking these micro actions, by making these small decisions over and over and over, you're telling your brain that, okay, I trust myself. I have enough faith and belief in.
Amy [00:05:06]:
Myself that I know no matter what the outcome, that I took action.
Amy [00:05:17]:
This starts to build confidence in yourself. You're starting to present, I can't talk today. You're starting to provide your brain with proof that it's possible. Those things are so important to you that they are possible outcomes. And a lot of times I think it's because we're afraid of being beginners again. We don't want to make mistakes. But when you take the time to get honest with yourself of what's working, what's not working, you don't need to do anything that you think you should be doing. What you should be doing is what feels good to you, what feels aligned for you.
Amy [00:06:05]:
That's the beauty of running a business. There's no one right way or wrong way to do it. If you listen to any of the gurus out there, they're going to tell you that their way is the right way. The right way is the way that feels good for you. So in creating this habit of making fast decisions, what I really started to do is change my process. I'm starting by making that decision to get into action. And then after I have taken action, I'm taking the time to assess and analyze. How did that go? How did that feel? What could I have done differently? And then I adjust.
Amy [00:06:59]:
I make those minor little tweaks rather than pivoting, rather than starting from scratch. Every single time, I take the data that I have gained, because we can only gain data through taking action. And I use that data to adapt and to adjust and to tweak my actions moving forward.
Amy [00:07:27]:
The data is giving us so much.
Amy [00:07:30]:
Information, it's allowing us to change course, make those small little adjustments so that we're still making that forward progress. But it all comes back to making a decision. Making a decision is the key to getting into action. And when you get into action, when you learn to trust yourself and make those decisions quickly, that's what leads to progress. And you can adjust along the way. I hope this episode was valuable to you. We're now streaming over on YouTube, so make sure to check out our video feed.
Amy [00:08:19]:
And until next time, cheers to making the money you want so you can create the impact you desire.
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