The CEO’s Decision-Making Framework: Aligning Vision, Values, and Strategy

Hey there, CEO, Racheal Cook here, founder of The CEO Collective and host of Promote Yourself to CEO.
Today's conversation I think, is particularly important because as we have been sharing over the last few weeks a lot about how to navigate the uncertainty going on in the world at this time, one of the things that I know I am helping a lot of my clients with is making decisions about how they're going to navigate this and how they're going to move forward.
And I thought this was so important that I wanted to dedicate an entire episode today to creating your own decision making framework. The reason I really feel this is so important is when we are in times of stress, when we are in times of uncertainty and things aren't always going to plan or as we imagined they would go, then it reduces our ability to make smart strategic decisions.
And right now. The entrepreneurs and small business owners who are able to quickly make decisions are the ones who are going to navigate this the best if they're making the right decisions for themselves and their business. And that's the key thing here, because it's really easy to be highly reactive.
We've talked about this in past episodes, to be highly reactive, where we're either jumping into that. Fight or flight response, or we are freezing. The people who jump into fight or flight, they are the ones who are being highly reactive and essentially making decisions really, really quickly without truly thinking through the impact and the consequences of those decisions.
Those are the small business owners and entrepreneurs. Who are most likely to be reacting based on fear, based on panic, and ultimately because they're trying to get to that feeling of safety, security, and more certainty. But if we're highly reactive and we're not really. Thinking through the decisions we're making, we're kind of panicking and making knee jerk reaction based decisions.
Then while in the short term it might make sense, it might alleviate some of that discomfort with the uncertainty in the long term. This is where those decisions can actually. Shoot you in the foot, right? They can kind of cannibalize the future success of your small business. Now, those that are stuck in freeze mode, they aren't making any decisions at all.
And by not making a decision, by deciding to just wait it out, deciding to just kind of put everything on hold for the time being and not changing, they're also shooting themselves on the foot. They're also going to harm the future success of their business because. Not making a decision is also a decision, and in times like these, when there is uncertainty, when there are new things happening every single day, we must be able to.
Lead ourselves and our businesses through those circumstances. And that's where creating a decision making framework can be so incredibly helpful. So this is something I talk about a lot inside of The CEO Collective, and whenever I am working with my clients inside of The CEO Collective, my favorite answer when they're coming to me asking how they should move forward, asking for how to make a decision, asking for support in making decisions.
My first answer is always, it depends, and it depends because there is so much context and nuance that we have to think through in any big decision in our life or business. But again, when we are going through these periods of uncertainty, our decision making ability is compromised. We're usually not thinking as clearly as we would if.
Things were fine if there wasn't anything massive going on in the world around us, and that's why I love having a decision making framework that I can refer back to and I can use to help me really thoughtfully think through the decision I need to make and make sure that it is truly an alignment with what I'm trying to accomplish in my business.
This is where when we talk about the 90 Day CEO Operating System framework, we can actually turn that into a decision making matrix. And I actually have, I'm looking at, on my laptop here in front of me, I'm looking at my decision matrix with the questions I have put down on paper. These are the things that I help my clients do as they are creating their own vision for their business and their life.
We make sure that they're putting in their questions in advance, so this now becomes their filter. This now becomes their process for making bigger decisions about their business. So I want to help you navigate this. If you've never made a bigger picture vision for your business, this is a particularly challenging time to do that because often we can't see three or five years down the road when there's so much uncertainty.
So this might just be based on your vision for how you wanna show up. This year, and that's where I would start. Take a little bit of time and really think through what is your vision for your business in the next 12 months? In the next 12 months? Where do you want to be putting your time and energy in the next 12 months?
Who do you want to be serving in the next 12 months? What types of products, programs, and services do you want to be focused on? Getting really clear about the vision for your business over the next 12 months is going to help you. To make sure that all the next decisions you're gonna make are truly aligned.
So I'm gonna get into a couple of the questions I have on my decision matrix and see if you can follow along. Maybe there's a big decision you have that's weighing on your mind. Maybe you're trying to figure out should you change up an offer, should you change up a marketing strategy? These are the types of questions you might want to ask yourself, and you also wanna be asking yourself.
What does my vision for my business look like in the next year or so, and does this help me get closer to that? So the first question I always ask around vision is, what is your business model at the heart of your business? What is it that you really do here? And as you're looking at this big decision ahead of you, you wanna be asking yourself, does this truly fit in with my core business model?
Does it fit in and align with the type of things my business does really, really well? This is a really important question because I often see people who start trying to throw new things into their business when they're faced with uncertainty and they start trying to add on new things without really thinking about the bigger picture context of their overall business model.
So, for example, my business is a coaching and consulting business. Things that would not fit into my business model right now would be to create maybe a physical product, right? That's not my business model. My business model is a coaching and consulting business. However, maybe taking some of my content that I've created for my clients and turning that into a bite-sized offer.
Could fit within my business model because inside of a coaching and consulting business where we create a lot of frameworks, a lot of content for our clients. That is aligned. So I want you to think through that first if you're thinking of something else. Is this in my business model? Another example I'll give, this comes up often for a lot of my clients, especially those who have been very much a service based business where they have been doing done for you services.
They often will have these things they come to us with thinking that the done for you services aren't selling right now. Maybe I should create an online course. When online course is a dramatically different business model than a done for you service based business, I have a lot of clients who have done for you services and maybe they only need 10 or 20 or 40 clients a year, but to have an online course business, you need to get in front of a lot more people.
You need a whole marketing engine designed to get in front of a much larger volume. Of potential clients. So that's not really aligned with the core business model because the core business model has always been based on higher high touch services that are very much referral based. Very, very different business model.
So I think this is one of the biggest questions to ask yourself, does this fit within your existing business model? And then we wanna drill down a little bit deeper, looking at your offers. Does this align with your current suite of offers? Does this align with the existing things you are already selling in your business?
This is really important because often I see people who, again, when they're in periods of uncertainty or they're seeing things not working the way they used to, then they start thinking of new things they should be creating. But those are new things that their current audience does not know them for.
So if this new idea you have isn't aligned with what you are known for, with what people are already coming to you for, with what your clients already know you for, then it's actually gonna be. A very long transition to reeducate your entire audience to this new thing that you are offering. So for example, if I decided to start offering parenting coaching right now, when what people really know me for is business strategy.
Yes, I talk about having a life first business, but if I were to start offering like. Parenting coaching or a parenting course that would be so out of left field, people would be confused because they don't know me for that type of information. But I see this happen all the time where people start throwing out new offers and it is not aligned with what they're already known for, and it means there's gonna be a longer shift, a bigger pivot that needs to happen in order for all of their community and potential clients to even understand what they're trying to offer.
Other things when you're coming up with new offers or when you're looking at, you know, reexamining your offers, making decisions about your current offers, things that I'm always asking my clients is. Does this create lifetime customer value? Does this create an opportunity for repeat clients? Is this something that your existing clients would pay for because it's aligned for them, it's in their customer journey.
Does this create an opportunity for those people to renew with you? Does this create an opportunity for people to go deeper inside of the work that you currently do? Right now, I can tell you the small businesses that I'm working with that are doing the best are the ones that have a strategy built around bringing in a client and then working with them for a long period of time.
They have a very. Large lifetime customer value. They're not looking to get a sale once they're looking to have that client work with them and then work with them again and again to renew working with them, or to go from purchasing one program, product or service, and then upgrade into the next program, product or service.
That lifetime customer value is really important because if your offers are a one-time purchase. That means you're always going out there to find more clients. So looking for something that your existing clients already want is going to be a smarter business decision than looking for something that is another one-time offer.
Thinking of clients, this is so crucially important. We wanna make sure the decisions that we are making are for the benefit of our clients. A huge conversation we've been having at the last few CEO Retreats that I've been hosting this quarter have been around. Okay, let's. Get into thinking about who our ideal client is and what's coming up for them right now.
What are their needs right now? So in times of uncertainty, you know, we're going through this economic uncertainty. We're going through this period of a very contentious government, and this means a lot of our clients. Are going to be looking for safety and security, and this is pretty predictable client behavior.
This is pretty predictable buyer behavior and any sort of economic uncertainty whenever people are dealing with things that make it feel very chaotic and make things feel very stressful to them. We all lean into looking for safety and security. So how do we look for safety and security? Well, things that clients will often do, or buyers will often do is they will look for lower price point options, or they will look for more cash friendly options.
Usually when there's any sort of economic, um, instability, people will stop spending as much and they will start saving. So they will look for opportunities. Maybe previously they would've paid in full and now they're gonna take the payment plan. Maybe previously they would've signed up for your biggest package.
Um, working with you for the longest term, and maybe now they're going to be looking for an easier. More accessible way to get started. So these are the types of things you wanna be thinking about when it comes to your clients right now. The other thing that I brought up with my clients this past week when we were talking about, you know, the shifts happening for them is thinking about risk reversal, especially when it comes to working with people who haven't worked with you previously.
Maybe they've been in your audience for a while. And now they're really needing your support. But again, they're a little bit more nervous. They're a little bit more stressed out in general about making big investment decisions with you, and this is where creating some sort of risk reversal can be helpful.
Maybe there's. Again, the bite-sized offer leading up to your main program, maybe there is a way you can offer some sort of free trial for people to get in and learn more about how you work, to see if it really is a fit for them. Maybe you offer a, um, payment. Or a, uh, price guarantee offer some sort of, um, customer service guarantee, satisfaction guarantee.
All of those things serve as risk reversal, meaning you're basically saying, Hey, I want you to come try this out, and if it's not a fit, no worries. Either I will refund you your money because we have a guarantee around this offer, or you're offering them an easier, more accessible price point that's not as big of a risk if it's.
Not a fit for them. All of these things just provide your potential clients with that feeling of, okay, I'm not taking as big of a risk signing up to work with this person, joining their program, um, buying their service, et cetera. You're giving them a way to have an easy out. That risk reversal can be really, really helpful when you need to get, um, more clients in the door, but they're a little bit skittish right now just because of the world we're living in.
Some other things I want you to think about when it comes to making these bigger decisions for your business. What does a client experience look like right now, and does this fit in with the client experience you are trying to deliver? So what is the promise of this new thing you are considering creating?
What is the promise and the deliverable? So what is the outcome people are looking for? What is the promise you can actually offer them? Because we can't always guarantee results. Most of us can't guarantee results at all. There's too many factors at play, but you can promise that they're going to get this information.
You can promise that you're going to show up and do these specific things. So what is the promise? What is the outcome? And what are the deliverables? What are they actually going to walk away with? Or what are they gonna have access to when they complete this product, program, or service? Let's see some more questions on my decision making framework impact.
What is the impact you are here to make in your business? Whenever I'm looking at a big decision, again, I'm using this in the context of. Changing up offers, changing up the way that I sell things, um, in order to keep going and keep serving my community. Right now, I want to think about one, what is the bigger picture impact that I'm trying to make?
But as I'm looking at this thing, I'm considering this decision I'm trying to make, I'll ask myself questions like, how will this help me create the impact that I have in my vision? How will this help me create the impact I want to create? And then I think this is a really big one. How do we define and measure impact?
I think this is crucially important. This is part of vision that is in my process. I think a lot of people, especially in the small business community, only look at the impact they make and the only tool they have to measure their impact is sales. Like their impact is, I've had this number of clients, or I've made this much money, but.
I don't think those are great measures of impact and actually they lead to some misleading information, um, or a sense of misleading people into making big buying decisions. So we tend to. As humans go after what everyone in the crowd is doing, right, the default is to do what other people are also doing.
So when we start seeing things like income claim marketing, or we start seeing things like, I have this massive follower count, it's really easy to believe that because you've made this much money or because you had this many clients, that must mean your product, program, or service is creating the impact that people are looking for, creating the results, creating the outcomes.
But we need to have a better measure of impact. So what does that impact actually mean for you and your business? In my business, we have a lot of different ways we define impact for our clients. So one of the things we're trying to do here at The CEO Collective is help more women entrepreneurs create life first businesses.
So I know we're creating the right impact, not only when we help women entrepreneurs meet their financial goals, like that's one. Way we can measure impact, but another way we can measure impact is when my clients tell me they were able to take time off. They were able to reduce the number of hours that they are working a week.
They were able to go on vacation and leave their laptop at home. They were able to feel more cool, calm and collected in control in their business. That's a huge one for me actually. Um, that is what I am looking for for my clients, and I hear from my clients often that after they complete a year of working with us inside of The CEO Collective, they'll come to me and say things like.
Racheal, you know, the difference between where I am today and where I was a year ago is a year ago. I wasn't sure why certain things weren't working in my business. I wasn't sure why my marketing wasn't working, or I wasn't sure why I wasn't retaining my clients as long and they weren't renewing with me, or I wasn't sure why I wasn't getting the sales.
And now because I've applied the 90 Day CEO Operating System into my business and I'm tracking each part of it. I know exactly what I need to fix. Now, to me, that is an impact I want to look for. I want my clients to now be able to dial into their business and understand what the actual problem is instead of.
Throwing the baby out with the bath water. So to me that is an impact. I'm looking for their ability to understand how their business truly works and understand where they need to dial things in or where they need to fix something when they have an issue. So I want you to be thinking about that, like what does impact look like for your clients?
How are you measuring and defining that? And this decision you're trying to make, is it aligned with the impact you are trying to make? Okay, we're getting into some other pieces. You know, inside of the 90 day CE operating system, when we're creating our vision, we're looking at big picture of the business as a whole, a holistic picture of the business.
We looked at all of the different elements of, you know, what are your business model, your offers, your clients, your client experience, your impact. I also wanna talk about your overall marketing sales. Operations, and then I wanna talk that we call that our client growth engine. Then I wanna talk about your team growth engine.
So when we're looking at the client growth engine of your business. When we look at attract, engage, nurture, invite, delight, so that is attract, engage, nurture, that's your marketing system. Invite is your sales system, and delight is your delivery system. We wanna make sure that whatever decision you're making actually aligns with we what we know works in your client growth engine.
So I want you to ask yourself, does this fit. This new thing I'm thinking of for my business, does this fit for my current marketing strategy? Does this align with what we know works currently in this business? Does this fit within our current and sales strategy? Is this aligned with how we know we've been able to get sales for this business?
And what else is required in order to get the results that we're looking for? I think this is really important because. It's so easy to overcomplicate your client growth engine. So I wanna give some examples here. Um, to help you see what I mean. In my business here at The CEO Collective, I know that my marketing system attract engaged, nurture is all about creating long form content.
That is the way that I know I really am able to connect with people. Uh, get to the heart of what they're looking for and help them see if I'm a great fit for them. If you listen to the podcast pretty religiously, then chances are you're gonna love jumping into our calls and actually being able to have these types of conversations with me, right?
It's highly aligned with the way that I work. So if I'm looking at a new marketing strategy that I might wanna add in right now, I'm gonna be asking myself, does this make sense in the context of what I'm trying to do? For example, I know that because my podcast is the best core part of my marketing system, if I were to go on other people's podcasts where I can now share my experience and expertise, I'm able to have deeper, more nuanced conversations.
I'm able to have more long form conversations. I know that is super aligned with my business. But there might be marketing that doesn't make sense for me to try to throw out there. So for me to try to do something like let's say, advertising in a local newspaper, I. Like that's not aligned and likely isn't going to get me in front of the right people.
It's not the right strategy. I know my con, my long form content, getting in front of the right people where they're ready and looking for this type of information is the key. So I wanna make sure any marketing I'm doing is aligned with that. I don't wanna create more work for myself doing something that's not going to ultimately help me achieve my goals.
I've seen a lot of my clients. Struggle with this, especially for those service-based businesses. I have a lot of clients who, when I ask them where are their clients coming from, where do they get buyers from? The answer is usually referrals. This is really common for service-based businesses and a lot of my clients run service-based businesses.
So if we know that referrals are how 80% of their new clients are finding them, but we are adding in marketing strategies, let's say we're gonna run some Facebook ads for them that is not aligned with what we know works. In their specific business, it would be a much better use of their time, energy, money, resources to figure out how to generate more referrals, to create more referral opportunities.
I hope that makes sense and you're following along here. We want to make sure you are aligning your marketing system and strategy with what actually works for you and your business and not throwing in new tactics because you're in that fear reactive mode. This is also true for your sales process. So a lot of my clients know that if they can just get the person on a call with them on that first discovery call or consultation call that most of the time.
I mean, I have some of my clients who are converting 80 to a hundred percent of those calls. So it would make more sense to focus on getting more people to those calls than to try to create a whole new sales system where perhaps they just buy off a sales page instead of talking to someone. We want to make sure everything is aligned with what we know works best for you.
Now, in my business, not everybody needs to jump on a call with me because people spend so much time with me listening on the podcast. I find that a. Huge number of my new incoming CEOs for The CEO Collective or people who are attending the CEO retreat, they already feel like they know me really well because of the way my marketing system works.
So I don't necessarily have to get on the phone with every single person. If I completely shifted my entire sales process to where everybody had to get on a call with me, that actually might create more friction than necessary. So this is why asking more of these questions, getting a little more.
Nuanced is so crucially important because everybody's business is a little bit different. What works for one person isn't necessarily gonna work for you. So we wanna make sure that any decisions related to changing up your marketing system, your sales system, or your delivery system, we're asking. What actually works best for me?
What has generated the best results for me in the past? Can I double down on that in some way versus trying to add on something else or change the strategy completely? Usually doubling down on what works is gonna get you much better results than trying to implement a whole new strategy. This is the same for anything related to.
Your brand and marketing overall, I think about this quite a bit. Um, and this is, again, I'm looking down at my decision making matrix. I ask myself, you know, looking at my brand, I think about the vision of my brand, The CEO Collective, and my personal brand, right? What is my brand and what do people know me for?
So any decision I'm asking myself right now, I'm gonna ask myself, does this fit within our brand? Is this aligned with our brand? Do people already know me for this thing? Or is this, you know, again, out, out in left field where it doesn't really make sense because they don't know me for that specific thing.
Does this align with our brand identity that people know us for? So one tool I really love is How To Fascinate by Sally Hogshead. Um, you can go out there, there's a great book. There's a quiz out there, and one of the things she talks about is there are. Different archetypes of brands, and my archetype is called the Victor, which is a combination of power.
Leadership and prestige. So I'm always thinking to myself, is this aligned with my brand of power and prestige? That is the way that people perceive me and my brand. If it's not aligned with power and prestige, then it's probably actually gonna feel really awkward. For me and not as natural. It's not gonna feel as me.
It's gonna feel like I am, you know, trying to be something I'm not. It's not gonna feel authentic to me. So I wanna make sure that if I'm making any big decisions in my business, that it's aligned with what is truly authentic for me and how people perceive my business and my brand. I'm also gonna ask, does this align with my strengths?
Does this align with the strengths of. Myself, my business and my team, I love StrengthsFinder. If you haven't ever done StrengthsFinder, highly recommend it. But we actually did StrengthsFinder, not just for me, but for my entire team, and I can tell you that all of the strengths related to strategy. My team is very, very heavily weighted in strategy thinking.
These are where we stand out from so many other individuals out there. When we looked at our team as a whole. The vast majority of our strengths were in the strategy bucket. Then we had a lot of strengths in the relationship building bucket, but where we didn't always have as many strengths were in the influencing type of strengths.
So the strengths were you think of like a charismatic leader out there who's got a lot of followers. These are people who tend to build massive audiences and followings because they have that kind of personality and strengths. That's not us. We lead with strategy. We're a little nerdy. We like learning.
We like taking in a lot of information and helping people figure out the how in order to get where they wanna go. So I wanna make sure any decision I'm making for the business is aligned with that. I want it to be aligned with our strengths if it requires us. To be something that we're not or to try to like square peg, round hole it, it's going to feel really stressful for us.
It's not gonna work for us long term. So that was thinking about marketing, sales, brand. Um, I, I think culture kind of overlaps here between the client growth engine and then the team growth engine. The client growth engine is very much about marketing, sales, um, brand, how we interact with our clients, and there's a culture there with our clients and there's also a culture within our team.
So culture bridges, everything here. It's kind of overlaying everything in the business. So one of the things that we ask ourselves is, does this feel. Like a CEO collective way to do things. Does this feel like a CEO collective way to do things? Does it fit the vibes? Does it fit the way that we like to show up?
Does it fit the way we like to serve? Answering this in the context of culture, whether it's changing up your marketing, your sales, what you're offering, way you're offering it, or the way you're interacting with your team. It's all about alignment. Right? And that brings us to team. So when we're thinking about any big decision in our business, we wanna ask ourselves, do we have the time, energy, and capacity to deliver this new thing or to create this new thing?
Do we have the time, energy, and capacity to do it? Do we have the resources? Do we have the manpower, the woman power in order to do it? Who's gonna take on this new thing? Is it required for me to take it on, or is there someone else in the team who can handle all of it or most of it? This is crucially important because when we're making bigger decisions for our business, we all have a limited amount of capacity, and we've talked about capacity a lot in the last few weeks on the podcast.
So if we're adding something new or we're dramatically changing something in our business and we're trying to make a decision around that, we've got to ask ourself about the capacity for yourself and the team, because it doesn't make sense to add more to an already overflowing plate, right? You're either going to have to take something off the plate.
So you saying yes to this decision means something else you have to say no to. You're going to have to delegate something off of your plate, or you're gonna have to put a pin in it and wait until you actually have the time, energy, resources, team and capacity. So those are some big questions that you have to think about that you know, do we have the capacity for this?
Do we have the systems for this? Do we have the tools and technology for this? Do we have to go out there and find a whole nother way to deliver this? I'm a big fan of when you're making decisions for your business, making sure you're using the resources you already have. So for example, when I made the big decision to go video first on the podcast, I decided I wanted to use the tools I already have.
And yes, I have worked with amazing videographers in the past and I could definitely hire them, but I also knew in this particular season, it didn't make sense to. S invest a lot of extra resources into outsourcing, into hiring other people. So here I am doing video first on the podcast, using mics I already have, using the phone to record this, and using all the software we've already used to produce the podcast in the past.
I'm using what we have versus feeling like I've gotta go out there and overinvest in. A new camera or invest in new microphones or invest in new whatever. I know I can always invest in those things later, but right now it makes more sense to keep it simple and leverage the tools, the tech, the hardware, the systems that we already have instead of overcomplicating it.
Then I want you to ask, um, yourself, what is the revenue I'm actually gonna make from this thing? And I think this is really important because when I'm talking to a lot of people who are trying to make decisions right now, again, usually the decisions that they're coming to me with is I, I think I should do this new thing.
I think I should do this different thing. And the challenge with that is. The first time you launch something new or create something new or do something new is usually the hardest time. It's the biggest learning curve. It is the most expensive it's going to be because you have no infrastructure, you have no processes, you have no systems dialed in yet.
So if you're launching something new, you really wanna think about, okay, how much revenue is realistic for me to make off of this? And is it worth the. ROI for me to invest time, energy, and resources into it? Or is there a simpler, easier way for me to do that? Thinking about the revenue you might make off of this, you also wanna think about what does it actually cost for you to create that thing, and is there a way for you to minimize those expenses?
So I'll give you an example from my own business earlier this year in February. Um, I was hearing a lot of conversation from my community that they were getting really frustrated with social media. They didn't want to put so much time, energy, and attention on meta, on X, on anything owned by the oligarchy.
And I a thousand percent understood that. So there's a lot of people right now who are deeply questioning is social media part of their business? Is it essential for them to be successful as small business owners? So I decided I was gonna throw out a small training. And I asked myself the same types of questions I'm asking right now.
I asked myself, was this an alignment with the work that I do? Is this gonna take a lot of resources? Is this gonna be expensive for me to launch? And is it gonna get revenue that makes sense for the time and energy it takes me to put this training together? So with that test, with that decision I made in little experiment.
I ended up with like 30 people saying yes to that. I offered it for $97. I used things I already had. I didn't even write a sales page for this. I literally put a calendar link where people could purchase directly off the calendar link and get the workshop plugged right into their calendar. I used Calendarly.
If you have the paid version or Calendly Pro, you're able to connect your Stripe account or your PayPal account. So I set it up as quick and easy as I could. I did not overinvest time, energy, or resources to put that together. It was just literally a Calendly page with a little description. They could sign up, pay $97, and then I used resources I already had.
I already own Zoom. I already have a Zoom subscription. I already have Canva. I already had. The material because it really was just a little ing of my existing content. It was taking our client growth engine strategy and then saying, okay, if social media is no longer in here, what are the other options for you to continue marketing your business?
So that's where we need to get everyone to when it comes to making decisions about your business. We want to make sure if you're making decisions, you're not overinvesting in things, you're not overcomplicating things, you're able to try things out. But without putting your business at risk, we don't wanna be just making decisions that are going to take resources away from your business.
Um, and especially away from doubling down on what we already know works. So I ran through a lot of questions that are related to the big picture vision and ultimately, if you can't tell right now. The biggest thing when it comes to making your own decision making matrix for your business is thinking through all of the elements of your business vision, and I'll just run through them again.
High level your business model, is it aligned your offers? Is it aligned with your existing offers, your clients and community? Is it aligned with your existing clients and community? Your client experience? Is it aligned with what you wanna be known for? Can you actually deliver this? Do you have the resources?
Is this aligned with impact? And how are you defining and measuring impact? When you think about your bigger picture vision for your business, how are you defining and measuring impact when it comes to your client growth engine? All the elements of that, your marketing, your sales, and your client delivery.
Is it aligned? Is it in your sweet spot? Is this aligned with your brand? Is it authentic to you and your business when it comes to your team? Is it aligned with our team? Do we have the capacity? Do we have the skillset? Do we have the tools? Who's gonna take this on? Who's gonna be responsible for this?
And ultimately asking ourselves, you know, is making this decision, especially if you are trying to think if you should add something new. Is this going to add revenue, meaningful revenue? Does it make sense to spend a lot of time, energy, and resources to create something new that's only gonna make you a few hundred dollars?
Right? In my mind, if it's not gonna make me at least $10,000, it's a no. And I have that cutoff for myself because I know that is what my time, energy, and attention is worth. That's what my team's time, energy, and attention is worth. And each time we're making a decision for the business, if we aren't actually.
Getting that level of return, then we're wasting our resources. We could be putting them somewhere else where it is gonna make us at least 10 grand, at least a hundred grand. So you wanna think about that? Is this making us at least fill in the blank? And if not, it might not be a good move. The final thing I will say when you're looking through, um, your decision making matrix, and again, I'm looking down at my notes here because this is a full document that I keep and that I encourage all of my clients to make as they are building out their vision.
And the next part here is their values. And your values are one of the most important filters for your business. Your values really are the how you want to show up in your business. So here's some of our core values and the questions I will ask myself. Literally, when I'm looking at my decision making matrix, I have my value life before business.
It's one of our leading values here, and the questions I'll ask myself is, will this require me to work more hours? Will it require me to work outside of my model calendar? So outside of the time I've already designated as time that I'm dedicated to work. Is this gonna take time away from my family? Is this gonna take time away from my personal, like me time?
Is this gonna take time away from anything else I care about? Is this manageable? In my current capacity, my physical capacity is so important because I do have chronic health challenges. So I am gonna ask myself, does this fit within my current capacity? Do I have the emotional and energetic capacity to handle this right now?
I'm gonna ask myself, does this get me closer to future me? Future me is another exercise we do, um, in the visioning section of the 90 Day CEO Operating System. But future me is literally like the older, wiser version of myself, and I wanna make sure that I am moving closer to her every single day. And does this align with my personal definition of success?
Is this aligned? I'm gonna give you another example here. Um, in women we trust. This is another key value that we have for the business. Clearly, if you're listening, you are likely a woman. Though I do have some, some amazing guys out there who listen to the podcast, hi.
You're welcome here. But we do exclusively work with women and the reason we exclusively work with women is because this is my. Personal mission and my business is how I'm doing my advocacy work. So my business, The CEO Collective, is how I am advocating for women and in women we trust is asking all the time, is this going to serve all women, including LGBTQIA plus women, including um, black, indigenous people of color?
Is this going to serve Asian American Pacific Islanders? Is this gonna serve indigenous women? Is this gonna serve disabled women? Is this gonna serve any person who identifies as a woman the entire beautiful, you know, entire diverse world of women? Is this going to be there for them and create a space for them?
Is this going to amplify women's voices and their messages? Is this going to help more women get their work out in the world? Is this gonna help more women to make a bigger impact in the world? Is this creating more opportunities for women to get paid? And that is a huge one for me because clearly I'm here as a business strategist, and if I'm not helping you get paid, if I'm not making your business simpler, easier to run, more manageable and more profitable and make more money, then I'm not doing a very great job as a business strategist.
Um, I'm asking myself, is this accessible? Is this going to be accessible to women who have different needs? So I'm always thinking about this, especially as someone who has a fully disabled mother. I'm always thinking about, is this going to be accessible to women who maybe have different learning styles accessible to women who don't speak English as a first language?
Is this going to be accessible to women who have a disability? Is this going to be accessible to neurodivergent women? Is this going to be accessible to anyone who their brain works differently than mine? Am I going to be able to provide accommodations for people if they need additional support? That's really, really important to me.
That's just, again, this is all part of my value system. And is this supporting women's issues? Is this helping women to make the impact that we all want to make? So I have a lot more on my decision decision making matrix than I, I really just scratched the surface here, but I think the reason that having this type of document in your SOPs, this is literally in our team folder, in our Google Drive, and it is so crucially important because anytime I'm thinking about changing something in the business or adding something to the business, making sure that I'm making that decision.
And deploying our resources, our time, energy, attention, money. I wanna make sure that it makes sense. I wanna make sure that I'm making smart, strategic decisions. I wanna make sure that I'm not making a short term decision at the expense of our long term vision. And that's one of the most important things I want everyone to keep in mind right now.
Yes, we might have to make some short term decisions that maybe aren't long term, but we don't want to be using up all of the resources in our business for something that's not really gonna pay off, or that is really out of alignment, out of your zone of genius, out of the alignment for what your business is known for.
Okay? So I wanna hear from you. I know this was a really. Big conversation. We're gonna make sure in the show notes that you get a list of these types of questions and things you want to be thinking about for yourself and your business. But I, again, when we are in times of uncertainty, when we are feeling a lot of stress.
It is so helpful to have a process that you go through to make decisions, to make sure you're really being thoughtful and intentional and you're not just throwing new things out there out of fear or out of a feeling of like, I've gotta control something right now. We want to make sure that you are making smart strategic decisions.
For your business so we can navigate the world ahead. Okay, so please let me know your thoughts about this episode. I have a lot more coming up related to how we apply the 90 Day CEO Operating System, but I just felt like this was such a timely conversation, especially as I am in the midst of hosting the CEO Retreats and having coaching calls with my clients where we are making big decisions and we are having to decide.
Do we pivot? Do we rebrand? Do we shift? Do we change up our offers? Like these are big decisions that are outside of kind of normal, everyday business. And when we have tools like this that allow us to be more fully supported, we can really be smarter, more confident CEOs. Okay? Let me know what you think about this episode.
I can't wait to hear from you, and I will see you next week.