I once spent about $15,000 on an offer I killed a few months later.
Equipment. Website hosting. The whole buildout. I made a fast call, went all in, and then realized it was the wrong direction.
Most people would tell that story as a cautionary tale. See what happens when you move too fast?
I tell it as the best money I ever spent on clarity. Because that “mistake” cut months off figuring out what I actually wanted to build. Here’s the part no one says out loud: a wrong decision hands you data. Indecision hands you nothing. And nothing is the more expensive option, every single time.
The decision I sat on cost me a year
Before I’ll let you off the hook for moving too fast, let me tell you what slow actually cost me.
I sat on starting my coaching business for about a year. A full year of maybe, of researching, of waiting to feel ready, of telling myself I’d start once the timing was better.
That year is gone. I don’t get it back. The clients I could have served, the income I could have earned, the version of this business that could already exist — all of it pushed back twelve months because I was scared of choosing wrong.
That’s the math nobody runs. We obsess over the cost of a bad decision and completely ignore the cost of no decision. The bad decision has a price tag. The non-decision has a meter running the whole time you stall.
Overcoming indecision in business starts with naming the actual fear
When you say you’re “still thinking about it,” be honest about what’s underneath.
It’s not that you don’t have enough information. You almost never have enough information. It’s that you’re afraid of being wrong, and being wrong feels like proof you weren’t cut out for this.
So you wait. You gather more opinions. You make a spreadsheet. You ask three more people who don’t run your business what they’d do.
Analysis paralysis is the real enemy, not the wrong choice
Here’s the truth: the wrong choice is recoverable. Almost all of them are. You adjust, you pivot, you pay it off, you keep going.
What’s not recoverable is the time. Analysis paralysis doesn’t feel like a decision, which is exactly why it’s so dangerous. It feels responsible. It feels like you’re being careful.
You’re not being careful. You’re being stuck, and dressing it up as diligence.
My rule for deciding fast versus slow
People always want my framework for this. When should you deliberate, when should you just move?
Honestly? I don’t really have one. I think you should basically just go for it.
I know that’s not the tidy four-quadrant matrix you were hoping for. But almost everything I’ve gained in this business came from a bias toward action, and almost everything I lost came from waiting.
Most decisions are not the irreversible, bet-the-house kind we imagine them to be. You’re not defusing a bomb. You’re choosing a price, an offer, a direction, a yes or a no. You can change your mind next quarter with more information than you have right now — information you only get by moving.
So go. Decide. Course-correct from inside the action instead of from the sidelines.
How I handled the $15K when it went sideways
Let me close the loop on the money, because this is the part that matters.
When I realized that offer was wrong, I didn’t spiral. I didn’t decide I was bad at business. I didn’t swear off ever making a big call again.
I took the lesson. I paid it off. And I kept trucking in a direction that actually fit.
That’s it. That’s the whole recovery. The $15K bought me a hard, specific piece of knowledge about what I did not want — and that knowledge would have taken me months to find by overthinking it. The wrong decision was a shortcut. An expensive one, sure. But a shortcut.
Compare that to the year I lost waiting to start coaching, where I learned nothing, earned nothing, and built nothing. Tell me which one was the real mistake.
A wrong decision gives you something to work with
This is the reframe I want you to walk away with.
When you decide and you’re wrong, you now have data. You know one path doesn’t work, which narrows the map. You know something true about your business that you didn’t know yesterday.
When you don’t decide, you stay exactly where you are. Same questions, same fog, same meter running. You’ve protected yourself from being wrong by guaranteeing you stay stuck.
You’re allowed to make a call before you’re certain. Certainty is something you earn on the other side of action, not a permission slip you get before it.
Stop guessing about whether it’s the perfect move. There isn’t one. There’s the move you make and the lessons you collect from it.
The decisive version of you isn’t waiting on more information
You don’t need to construct a braver, faster decision-maker. She’s already in there. She’s just been overruled by the part of you that thinks one wrong call will end everything.
It won’t. I’ve made the wrong call. I’ve made the no-call. The no-call cost me more, every time.
Pick the thing you’ve been circling. Set a date. Make the call before you feel ready, because ready isn’t coming. And if you’d rather not make it alone, tell me what you’re stuck on.
The wrong decision will teach you something by Friday. Indecision will still have you exactly here next year.
Let’s make the move together.
There’s probably one decision you’ve been avoiding for weeks — the price, the offer, the pivot, the hire. Let’s make it together so you stop bleeding time. Book a 1:1 coaching consult and we’ll make the call you keep putting off.
