4d (edited) • The Weekly Stack
Teach a Tactic Tuesday: Decision Making Framework
Stop spending three weeks on a decision you could undo in an afternoon
Last spring I watched an agency owner take 19 days to decide whether to move from Canva to Figma.
Nineteen days. Threads in three Facebook groups. A spreadsheet. A trial account he never opened. For a tool that cost him about fifteen bucks a month and had a cancel button. That same guy signed a 12 month co-working lease in roughly 40 minutes because the space had good light and free cold brew.
Read that again, because it is the whole problem in one story.
We agonize over the cheap stuff we can undo. Then we sprint through the expensive stuff we cannot.
Today I want to hand you the sorting tool that fixes this. It takes about 90 seconds to run, it works on almost every call you will make this year, and once you see it you cannot unsee it.
𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗴𝘂𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗯𝗮𝗱 𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀
Your brain prices decisions by discomfort, and discomfort has almost nothing to do with cost.
A decision feels big when it is unfamiliar, public, or emotional. It does not feel big based on what it actually costs you if you get it wrong. So the new software choice feels heavy because you have never used the software. And the handshake deal with your buddy's cousin feels light because you like the guy.
Discomfort and cost are two different things. Your gut only reads one of them.
There is real research behind this. Paul Nutt at Ohio State studied hundreds of real organizational decisions and found that roughly half of them failed. One of the biggest drivers was not stupidity or bad luck. It was leaders who narrowed the search too early, locked onto one option, and then pushed it through (Nutt, Academy of Management Executive, 1999).
Half. Coin flip odds. From people with actual budgets and actual teams.
So the fix is not "think harder." Thinking harder on the wrong decision is how you lose 19 days to a Canva subscription.
The fix is sorting first.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸: 𝗢𝗻𝗲-𝗪𝗮𝘆 𝗗𝗼𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗧𝘄𝗼-𝗪𝗮𝘆 𝗗𝗼𝗼𝗿𝘀
Jeff Bezos laid this out in his 2015 letter to Amazon shareholders and came back to it in 2016. He split every decision into two buckets.
Type 2 decisions are two-way doors. You walk through. You look around. You do not like it. You walk back out. Almost nothing is lost.
In his words: "Many decisions are reversible, two-way doors. Those decisions can use a light-weight process."
Type 1 decisions are one-way doors. You walk through and the door locks behind you. Going back is expensive, slow, or flat out impossible.
His warning was about big companies running every decision through the heavyweight process. As he put it in the 2015 letter: "As organizations get larger, there seems to be a tendency to use the heavy-weight Type 1 decision-making process on most decisions, including many Type 2 decisions."
Solo agency owners do the exact same thing, just with worse consequences. When you are the whole company, every hour you spend deliberating is an hour you are not prospecting, not delivering, and not billing.
Here is the part that matters for us.
𝗠𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝘁𝘄𝗼-𝘄𝗮𝘆 𝗱𝗼𝗼𝗿. You are just treating it like a vault.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗧𝘄𝗼-𝗗𝗼𝗼𝗿 𝗧𝗲𝘀𝘁: 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀, 𝟵𝟬 𝘀𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗱𝘀
Before you research anything, before you post in a group, before you "sleep on it," ask these three.
1. Reversal time. If this goes badly, how long until I am back where I started?
Days? Weeks? A full contract term? Never?
2. Reversal cost. What does it cost me to walk it back?
Count all three currencies: money, hours, and relationships. A refund is money. Rebuilding a site is hours. Firing your best friend is a relationship.
3. Blast radius. Who else is stuck with my choice?
Just me? A client? Someone's paycheck? Twelve clients on the same platform?
Now score it.
Two-way door (green light, move today):
- Reversal time under 30 days
- Reversal cost under about $1,000 and under a day of your labor
- Blast radius is you and only you
One-way door (slow down, run the full process):
- Reversal time over 90 days, or a contract term
- Reversal cost over roughly $5,000, or more than a week of rebuild work
- Blast radius touches a client's revenue, someone's income, or your public reputation
Heavy door (anything in between):
- Do not decide the whole thing. Shrink it into a two-way door first. More on this below.
Adjust those dollar thresholds to your own numbers. If you are doing $2,000 a month, a $1,000 mistake is not a two-way door for you. If you are at $30,000 a month, it barely registers. The thresholds are yours. The three questions are universal.
𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗿𝘂𝗻 𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝗼𝗻𝗲
Two-way doors: the 30 minute rule
Give it 30 minutes total. Set a timer, and I mean an actual timer.
Pick the option that looks best with the information you have right now. Write down one sentence on why you picked it and one number that tells you it worked. Set a check-in date. Move on with your life.
You do not need consensus. You do not need a group poll. You need a decision and a review date.
Bezos again, from the 2016 letter: "Most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70% of the information you wish you had. If you wait for 90%, in most cases, you're probably being slow."
Speed is the whole point of a two-way door. If you are wrong, the door swings back. Being wrong fast is cheaper than being right slow.
𝗢𝗻𝗲-𝘄𝗮𝘆 𝗱𝗼𝗼𝗿𝘀: 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀
Earn the extra time here, because this is where the real money lives.
Step 1. Write the decision as one sentence. If you cannot write it in one sentence, you do not know what you are deciding yet. "Should I hire?" is not a decision. "Should I bring on a $1,200 a month part time VA to take over reporting and client email?" is a decision.
Step 2. List three real options. Not yes or no. Yes-or-no questions are where decisions go to die, because you end up building a case for one side instead of comparing anything. Force a third option. It is almost always the good one.
Step 3. Name the failure out loud. Ask: what would have to be true for this to blow up in six months? Write the top three. If you cannot name a single failure mode, you have not looked hard enough.
Step 4. Price the exit. Before you walk through, figure out what it costs to walk back. Contract term, transfer fees, rebuild hours, the awkward conversation. Write the number down. This one step kills more bad decisions than everything else combined.
Step 5. Cool down 24 hours, then decide at 70%. One night. Not one week. Then commit.
𝗛𝗲𝗮𝘃𝘆 𝗱𝗼𝗼𝗿𝘀: 𝘀𝗵𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗸 𝗶𝘁
This is the move most people miss.
A lot of one-way doors are only one-way because of how you framed them. Shrink the scope and the door starts swinging both ways again.
Cannot decide on a full rebrand? Test the new positioning on one landing page for 30 days.
Cannot decide on the $8,000 coaching program? Buy the $500 mini course from the same person and see if their brain works like yours.
Cannot decide whether to niche into dental? Take three dental clients before you rip up your website.
Turn the big permanent bet into a small reversible test. Then let the test decide for you.
𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗮𝗯𝗹𝘆 𝗳𝗮𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗻𝗼𝘄
Case 1: The client you should have fired in March
You know the one. Pays late, texts on Sunday, rewrites your copy, and takes up 40% of your week for 8% of your revenue.
Run the test. Reversal time: you could replace that revenue in 30 to 60 days with focused outreach. Reversal cost: one uncomfortable 15 minute call and a 30 day notice. Blast radius: you and one client who does not like you anyway.
Verdict: two-way door. Wide open. You can literally go get another client.
The reason this feels like a one-way door is fear, not cost. Fear reads as weight. It is not weight.
The move: Give 30 days notice in writing, offer a clean handoff, and put those 12 weekly hours into prospecting. Most owners who do this replace the revenue in under 45 days and get their weekends back permanently.
Case 2: Raising your prices or killing a service
Your $500 a month SEO retainer is eating 14 hours. You want to go to $1,500 or drop the service entirely.
Two different doors here, and this is the important part.
Raising prices on new prospects is a two-way door. Quote $1,500 for two weeks. If nobody bites, quote $1,200 next week. The market gives you feedback in days and nobody who said no is going to remember. Test it.
Killing a service you currently deliver to nine clients is a one-way door. Reversal cost includes nine cancellation conversations, the referrals you lose, and the fact that you cannot un-ring that bell. Run the five steps.
The move: Raise prices on new business this week without asking permission from anyone. Put existing clients on a 90 day notice plan if you are sunsetting something. Never do both in the same month.
Case 3: Your first hire
This is the one people get backwards more than any other, so pay attention.
A contractor on a project basis is a two-way door. Give them one defined project for two weeks. If it goes badly, you do not renew. Reversal cost is the project fee. Blast radius is one deliverable.
A full time hire with a salary is a one-way door. That person is going to arrange their life around your ability to pay them. That is a real obligation, and unwinding it costs money, morale, and sleep.
The move for most of you: Stop deciding "should I hire." Start deciding "what is the smallest paid test project that tells me if this person is good." Hire the two-way door version first. Three or four successful projects later, the full time question answers itself, and you will not be guessing.
Also, and this is free: hire for the task you hate that has a clear right answer. Reporting, data entry, review requests, invoicing. Do not make your first hire a strategist. You cannot manage what you have not systematized.
Case 4: The software stack and the $2,000 course
Here is the one that got the 19 days.
Monthly software with a cancel button is a two-way door. Every time. Give it 30 minutes. Pick one. Set a 60 day review.
Annual contracts, agency plans, and anything with a migration are one-way doors, and companies design them that way on purpose. Moving 14 clients off a platform is a project, not a decision.
Courses and coaching programs depend entirely on the refund window. A 30 day money back guarantee makes it a two-way door, so buy it and actually do the work in week one instead of week five. No refund window and four figures means it is a one-way door, so run the five steps and go talk to two people who finished it.
The move: Open your bank statement right now and highlight every recurring charge. For each one ask, "is this a two-way door?" Every yes that you are not using gets cancelled today, in the next ten minutes. Most owners I coach find $200 to $600 a month sitting there. That is your first contractor, funded, from a decision that takes one afternoon.
𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗸 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗳𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸
1. They run the heavyweight process on lightweight decisions.
This is the 19 day Canva guy. It feels like diligence. It is procrastination wearing a nice shirt. If reversal is cheap, deliberation is the expensive part.
2. They run the lightweight process on one-way doors.
The handshake partnership with no operating agreement. The three year lease. The "we will figure out the equity split later." These get decided on vibes because they happen in a moment of excitement, and excitement feels like clarity. It is not.
3. They call something reversible when it is not.
"I will just try it and see." Try what, exactly? If the contract is 12 months, you are not trying anything. You are committing and calling it a trial so you can skip the hard thinking.
Before you say "let's just test it," check whether an actual exit exists. If you cannot name the exit, there is not one.
𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝗽𝘆-𝗽𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗲 𝘁𝗲𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲
Steal this. Put it in a note on your phone. Run it on the next thing that keeps you up.
DECISION (one sentence):
1. Reversal time: how long to get back to today?
2. Reversal cost: $____ , ____ hours, ____ relationships
3. Blast radius: who else is stuck with this?
DOOR TYPE: [ ] Two-way [ ] One-way [ ] Heavy, shrink it
IF TWO-WAY:
Choice: ____________
Why: one sentence ____________
Review date: ____________
Timer: 30 minutes. Go.
IF ONE-WAY:
Option A: ____________
Option B: ____________
Option C (the one you have not considered): ____________
Top 3 failure modes: ____________
Cost to exit in 6 months: $____________
Decide after 24 hours at 70% info. Date: __________
𝗗𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗼𝗱𝗮𝘆
Pick the decision that has been sitting in the back of your head for more than a week. You already know which one.
Run the three questions on it. Right now, before you close this tab.
If it comes back two-way, decide it in the next 30 minutes. Do not research. Do not poll the group. Decide, set a review date, and go do billable work.
If it comes back one-way, block 45 minutes tomorrow morning and run the five steps properly. It deserves that. Nothing else on your list does.
Comment below
Drop the decision you have been stuck on, plus what the test said: two-way, one-way, or heavy.
I will read every one and tell you if I think you sorted it correctly. And I will be honest, because about half the ones I see labeled "one-way" are people who are just scared of a phone call.
Speed on the reversible stuff. Patience on the permanent stuff. That gap is where most of the profit hides.
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Teach a Tactic Tuesday: Decision Making Framework
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