Stop Making Emotional Decisions Use The 70 Rule

If you give me 10 minutes, you'll never struggle with indecision again. I've built a portfolio of companies that do over $200 million of revenue annually and spent thousands of hours with other millionaires. And I've noticed that we make decisions in a similar fashion. Instead of being overwhelmed by choice, the 1% build systems that make making decisions effortless. So here are the five millionaire strategies to make decisions that lead to focus and getting exactly what you want. Principle number one might be the hardest one to hear. You've got to decide from principles, not from how you feel. I recently fired an employee for having an affair and cheating on his wife. And it was the best decision I've ever made. The reason it was the best decision is because I made it off of principle. Now, so many people will say that you should never make someone's personal life with their work life. There's this whole idea of work-life balance and you can be this totally different person outside of work than you are inside of work. But here's the deal. One person has a set of principles that they live by and they live by those principles always. That is a 24 seven set of decisions that they make. So whether they're at home, whether they're at the office, whether they're at the club, whether they're at the restaurant, whatever they use as those core principles will follow them. And if you're willing to cheat on your significant other, do you think that that person is gonna cheat at work? I sure do. And I'm unwilling to allow that inside my environment. So of course the person was upset, they were angry, they didn't understand. And in some countries that is completely illegal to fire somebody off of. But in my environment, it's not. In the state that I operate in, it's not. And the most important part of this decision is not just making this decision off of emotion. Wasn't because I was upset, wasn't because I was frustrated, wasn't because I was angry, it was based off of principle. You see, we have a set of principles, we call them core values. And we have six of them that every single person in our organizations, they're held to. These six principles guide our decision-making around who gets promoted, how we compensate people, and even if we're gonna hire them to begin with. So here's what I want you to think about. When you make decisions at your work or in your business, are you using the same criteria every single time? Or are you deciding based off of how you feel that day or how much you like that person? Because most people make decisions emotionally. They like someone, so they hire them. They're tired, so they say yes to something that they know they should have said no to. And that's exactly why their results are all over the place. And honestly, they feel like they've compromised because they are compromising. The millionaires that I work with don't make decisions based off of their emotion. They decide what their standards are ahead of time. They are well-defined. And then they execute on those standards every single day, no matter how uncomfortable it is, no matter how much backlash they could receive. Because here's what's really happening when you decide from emotion. You're teaching yourself that your feelings are more important than your outcomes. You avoid hard conversations because they feel uncomfortable. You keep underperformers because firing feels mean. You say yes to opportunities that dilute your focus because saying no feels rude. The 1% don't have mood-based business strategies. They have principle-based decision frameworks. And that's how they build predictable, scalable success while everyone else is riding this emotional rollercoaster. So if you don't have a set of principles that you use for decisions, especially around the people that you put in your life, right now, define the top six principles that you will use for making decisions in your business and your career. And these will be used as your filters. So for an example, one of mine is inspirational. That is a filter that I use in order to allow people in or out of my environment. If the person isn't inspiring, if they don't have goals, if they're not interested in the future and making a better world, a better environment, they can't hang around me, much less be in my business. And one of the best things that I've ever done in my business is only hire people who demonstrate that they have the same core values as our organization. And I do this through a three-step interview process that has helped me recruit hundreds of people for our organization. And if you want my three-step interview process, you can go to my Instagram, at Natalie Dawson, DM me, interview, and I'll send it your way. So the next time you have a decision to make, regardless of how you feel, run it through your principles first. Now, strategy number two is something that most people will never choose to develop. You have to trust yourself. Your ability to look at any situation and figure out, do I feel certain about this? Or do I feel uncertain? Is what allows you to ultimately be successful. Because if you are always uncertain about situations, you're always uncertain about the outcome. You just make random bets, gamble everything, aren't totally sure. Maybe it's this way, maybe it's that way. You're never going to know that you can create the success and the future that you want. So building a business, making a lot of money, having great relationships is a game of you knowing for yourself what you are creating and where you are going. And the more certain you are, the more willing you're going to be to place bigger bets. I like to use this analogy. If you knew for certain, 100% chance that a stock was going to go up by 10X, how much would you invest in that stock? My guess is you would invest everything that you have because you knew for certain that it was going to go up 10X. But most people miss those opportunities because they think that they can never actually be certain about something. Oh, I don't know what this is going to do. Maybe it's going to do that because they don't define that they need to have certainty. So even when they do come across a great thing and they feel like it could be a great thing, they put $100 on the thing that they feel certain about because they don't trust themselves to know that they can actually know something. This has been the biggest change in my life, which is understanding that I can learn anything that I choose to learn. I can actually know things and make the right decision based off of real information. I'm not an uncertain person any longer. I don't look to other people and guess and ask questions and figure out their opinions because I realize that it's my responsibility to know. So if you aren't making the amount of money that you want to make, look at your field. I don't care if you work in finance, if you work in real estate, if you work in marketing or a health-related business, look at your field and identify for yourself, what are you uncertain about? What do you not know? If you're in a dental business, what do you not know about the dental industry that would make you uncertain about expanding your dental business? If you're in social media, what do you not know about X or TikTok or YouTube that makes you uncertain about what strategies work? When you can start to identify the thing that you are doing and the part of it that you are uncertain about, you can get certain so that the thing that you are doing creates the vehicle for you to be successful. That brings us to principle number three, millionaires make fewer decisions on purpose. Jeff Bezos once said, if I make three good decisions a day, that's enough. And then Warren Buffett went even further by saying, he's good if he makes three good decisions a year. I took this mindset very seriously and it completely changed everything for me. You see, when you start a business and you're growing it, what you think matters is you doing more, making more decisions, wearing more hats, learning more about all of the different areas of business until your revenue grows. And you realize that making fewer, better decisions is actually where your value is at as a leader. So today I try to make one good decision for our business every week. One thing that is going to move the needle for our year, not 45 decisions by the time 10 o'clock rolls around. I also apply this with the decisions that I make every day regarding what I wear. I wear black, maybe a little bit of white every day, black pants, black jacket, maybe a touch of white with my top. And my food is ready for me in the morning, for lunch and for dinner. Whatever I drink is already available to me and I've automated all of the small decisions in my life because the more successful I become, the fewer decisions I'm making. This is intentional because I have to move out of daily operations and into strategy. And strategy isn't multiple decisions all in the same handful of minutes. To be honest with you, it's hard for me to make fewer decisions. And many successful people who have gone through starting a business to scaling a business experience and share the same thing. When you're small, it feels good to just jump in and be able to solve problems yourself because you know that you can add value. But what's really happening is you're servicing your ego because you think that you can do things better. And then you don't let your team make the right decisions in order for them to take on new responsibilities that allow you to focus on how to grow your business, how to grow your revenue. The 1% protect their capacity like it is their most valuable asset. Because it is. They batch, they delegate, they eliminate, they automate decisions wherever possible. So what's left? It's only the high leverage choices that actually create growth. So this week, audit your daily decisions like a surgeon. Write down every decision you make from the moment you wake up until noon. What to wear, what to eat, when to check your email or messages. And then ask yourself, which of these could I automate, delegate, or entirely eliminate? Next, number four. Millionaires don't make perfect decisions. They just commit to the ones that they make. I still today feel the pressure of making a perfect decision. And this was recently highlighted to me when there was a proposal for me to relaunch my podcast and to do it in a new way. And many of my team members were excited about it. There was so much enthusiasm about this new direction that we're taking. And I realized that I had put off making this decision for two weeks. Like, oh, let me think about it. I'm not sure. I don't really know. And I realized that it was wasting my team's time because they were continuing to research it, to invest time and energy, looking at different ways we could relaunch, looking at different studio setups, guests, positioning. And as soon as I realized that I was the one because of my indecision wasting everyone's time, I made an immediate decision. No, we're not doing the podcast. And I shut off all of the potentially wasted work that could come from people thinking that maybe it's a yes or maybe it's a no. Because the faster you can make decisions and give people clarity, the faster you're going to move to the ultimate direction that you're trying to go. And here's what most people miss. It is okay for you to go from a yes to a no very quickly. Millionaires value the clarity over perfection because they understand that a clear decision allows everyone to take action immediately. There's no gray area in a successful person's decisions. It's either a yes or no. And if new information comes that changes the equation, they can update that decision very quickly and communicate it clearly. No lingering, no maybe, no confusion. And here's why clarity matters more than perfection. Perfection is an illusion. You will never have all of the information. A market change could occur. A competitor could move in. A new opportunity could appear. Meanwhile, your competitors who made a clear decision three months ago are already collecting data and adjusting. The 1% understand this because clear decisions create momentum. Even if the decision changes later, at least you weren't stuck in limbo, burning resources while you quote unquote figured it out. Clear decisions create momentum. Momentum creates results. Results create data. And data makes the next decision even clearer. So right now, identify one decision you've been sitting on, whether it's a new hire, a partnership, maybe a career move. Give yourself the next 24 hours to gather any of the remaining information that you genuinely need and then make the decision. It's either a yes or no. Communicate it clearly to everyone it affects. No hedging, no we'll see. Just a clear, confident choice that will create momentum. Finally, strategy number five, millionaires optimize for the 10-year game. I once had a client who made a terrible decision and paid the price for it. He sold a product that honestly was not great, but he made a ton of money doing it. In the short term, sure, he appeared incredibly successful. He drove a nice car, he posted all the lifestyle content, and he made it seem like he figured everything out. But here's what ultimately happened. He torched all of his relationships, including the one with me, to make that money. He over-promised, he under-delivered, he burned bridges with partners, team members, customers, and lost the trust of just about everyone around him. And now, years later, he still struggles to be successful because everybody who could have trusted him no longer trusts him. You see, most people decide based on what's easiest or most comfortable in the moment. But successful people decide on what compounds over time, even when it's uncomfortable, even when people don't understand it. They're really looking at a 10-year picture of how it's going to impact their reputation, impact what they're building, and ultimately impact where they're going. And here's what's really at stake. Every decision that you make is either a deposit into your long-term reputation, or it's a withdrawal from it. Research from Harvard Business Review shows that trust is a multiplier. When a team trusts their leader, they're more productive, they're less stressed, and they reach goals faster. But Harvard research also points out that trust is asymmetric. It takes years of consistent reliability to build it, but it can be destroyed in a single afternoon. Every time you need to make a decision, ask yourself, if I make this choice, will I be proud of it in 10 years? Will it strengthen my reputation, or will it damage it? Will it build long-term relationships, or will it burn them? Then make your decision based on that 10-year answer, not the 10-day answer, not the 10-hour answer, not the 10-minute answer. Whether you're tired, stressed, or making a big decision. One of my favorite images that I still today use on my vision board is this amazing photo of Helen Myron, and she has this very poised look on her face. She's stern, she's confident, and she has this nutcracker with a nut in it, and all of these nutshells around her. And the title of this article was Playing the Long Game. And it's this visual that this woman has been in this game for decades, and she is still coming out on top. She's better now than she was early in her career, which is not traditional for a female actor because her perspective has always been that she's playing a long game. She's not taking some short-term gig that's going to reduce her credibility and her reputation today. This is why, hot take, I am so not a fan of OnlyFans. Now, I get that people need to make money. Cool, there's lots of ways to make money. But in 20 years from now, in 30 years from now, in 50 years from now, are you gonna be happy with the way that you made that money? I can tell you that you will not be happy. That's not something that you're gonna be super proud about when you're talking to your kids, or when you're talking to your parents, or when you're talking to people in a place of influence in years from now. But the mentality is, it's making me money today. Never sacrifice your long-term goals for what short-term gain you can get today. And when you change your thinking around this, it's called playing the long game, and this is the game that successful people play. Now that you know how successful people make decisions without emotion, here's one more thing that you need, because without discipline, confidence collapses under pressure. So watch this video to learn the six disciplined systems that build unshakable confidence and stop second-guessing forever.