TEA 254: The 3-Step Decision Framework for When Life Hits the Fan

One of our ecommerce clients climbed from $60k a month to over $300,000 a month in about a year and a half. Then the last three months turned into a slide, with revenue dropping while everything in her personal life hit at the same time. So what do you actually do when it feels like your business is crashing and burning?

In this episode, Josh sits down with Robert Reyes, TEA's director of coaching and community, and walks through the 3-step framework for making good decisions when nothing is going your way.

Inside this episode:

• Why "crashing and burning" is almost never sudden (it's gradual, then sudden, and in business it's usually self-induced)
• Kaizen, and how small incremental moves compound in both directions (the bad direction is the one you don't notice until the pain peaks)
• Fight, flight, or flock: the third stress response most founders have never heard of
• Robert's story of moving across the country at 19 to build his dad's dream restaurant, and the strawberry chicken salad argument that ended it
• The one question to ask before any big decision (it separates the moves you can undo from the ones you can't)
• Why permission-based questions are really a confidence problem, and the decision loop that fixes it
• The coffee bean mindset for facing adversity without crumbling or hardening

Adversity in business isn't a matter of if. It's a matter of when. This is the episode to keep in your back pocket for the day it all hits at once.

⭐ Loved this episode? Drop us a rating because we're going for #1 ecommerce podcast in the world and every single rating moves the needle.

📲 Want to go deeper? Shoot Josh a DM on Instagram @joshcoffy with your biggest takeaway and he'll follow you back.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

► Visit Our Website For Training and Resources

► Leave Us An Honest Rating, Email An Image Of Your Rating To team@theecommercealley.com, We'll Send You A $10 Amazon Gift Card As An Appreciation Gift!

► Learn About Our Mentorship Program For Ecom Brands Making Over $10k/month

► Checkout Our Software, Breezeway - Never Second-Guess Your Meta Ads Again

►  Follow Josh on social media:
YouTube | Instagram | Facebook | TikTok | 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What do you do when you feel like everything is just crashing and burning in your life or maybe in an aspect of your business, which I guess is your life? And and and that's the question that I really want to answer today. And this was kind of this was kind of spawned by one of our clients uh that you know and love and we're very close to. And I ended up on a an impromptu hour and 40 minute one-on-one coaching session yesterday. And she had so much stuff going wrong. It's like she had climbed from the depths of like being stuck in her business for to like of $60,000, $70,000 a month. She climbed to almost three, well, I think she pushed over $300,000 a month in about a year and a half. She's cranking. In the last three months, things have just been going downhill. And I don't know if anyone here has ex listening to this or watching this has experienced that. But what do you do in those moments? And it was a really long, good conversation. And so I have brought Robert Reyes onto the podcast. Rob, I'm so excited you're here, man. Dude, I'm excited to be here. We're we Rob and I actually we we snuck away. We snuck, we snuck away from the whole team is moving right now, the entire building. Uh I mean, like we just finished renovating the second floor of our offices in downtown Ashland, Ohio. Now we bought this building back in 2018, almost two years of renovation uh for the e-commerce alley. We've occupied the first floor forever. We put up two private offices in it. We've we've now outgrown it. We're growing, and we had to renovate the second floor. So we gutted it.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

We have a lot of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

It's so exciting. It's like the dream, it's the dream space, man. It looks amazing up there. It's beautiful. Yeah. I mean, I don't uh yeah, I don't I I had a vision years and years ago for what it would be like. I'm like, we'll have a studio, we'll have a control room, we'll have private offices, we'll have a huge, beautiful conference room with natural light. Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Are you gonna keep the dungeon though? That's what I want to know.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Yeah, where we are right now, by the way, anybody listening, we're in the dungeon. We call it the dungeon. This is this is actually in our building, the basement of it. It's really cool, actually. If you're watching this online, here I'll go to a wide shot here. There's this beautiful brick, or brick, uh stone in the background. This building is technically natural stone. It's natural stone. This is here originally. This is about a 116-year-old building right now. It's really cool. It was built in 1910. So this is built, it's on the National Historic Registry. And behind me, I'm gonna switch to a shot of me. If you're looking on YouTube right now, you'll see this like fireplace back here is actually a that was a tunnel, and this tunnel went to an old bank, and it's how they used to smuggle money. Yeah, we have the 12 historians come tell us the same exact story. They said they used to have a the bank used to trolley money out through this tunnel here, and they would actually go out the back with it because you know how we have that alley right by the restaurant back there that we own? Yeah, so they would literally trolley it out of for security. Because back in the day, back in like 1910, you didn't have cameras. So it was like if the bad guys just weren't on the scene by then, they just got away.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Yeah, right. You didn't have bulletproof vans and all the security personnel share.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Yeah, you just had someone on a horse and buggy or whatever the heck it was, you know. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, we had like 12 historians. But all that to say, we call this the dungeon. We joke, it's really cool down here. And and and you may not see it, but I have vision. This could be like speakeasy vibe, hang area for the the the crew and then clients when they come in. It's a beautiful space. I thought that was one of your dreams. Yeah, which so so right now, just to bring everyone up to speed, and I want to apologize first of all. I have received messages and DMs for the fact that we took a three-week hiatus on releasing podcast episodes. And I had people message me, I had someone message me, I hope she's listening right now. I think her name is Elise. My name is Agnise from Australia. She's like, hey, I don't know when you guys are releasing podcast episodes again, because I've been listening to it. Could you do an episode on AI video? And so Connor's flying up here uh next week for our mastermind we're hosting in person, which we're trying to get construction done and it's done now, and we all had clients flying in. And Connor, who's one of our coaches, he knows he's also an operator of a probably tracking five, six million in the business right now. He's gonna talk about AI video, and that's what was one of the requests. So, Robert, I brought you on here. If anyone doesn't know of Robert, um, I think we've only done one podcast episode in the past. Oh, one or two. Yeah, yeah, that's true. So so I brought Rob on, he is the director of like our coaching and community, which is just incredible. And Rob knows a lot about frameworks and how we think and what we do, and you get to encounter a lot of people that are in tough spots.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

I mean, most of the what I've observed is most people don't show up to coaching when they're good. The ones that do, I'm so proud because I'm like, yes, you don't just need coaching and help when things are good. You need it all the time.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

I feel like it's happening more frequently where we're actually having e-com owners showing up, being the flies on the wall, and actually providing encouragement in the chat as people are getting. So like I see the community growing in a beautiful way.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

Yes, it is. It's so, it's so special, and and I'm just so grateful for what we get to do um every single day. And so I brought Robert on because like I want to talk about something that is very real and visceral and we feel. And it's not if this is going to happen to you. It's like when this is going to happen to you. And that is stuff's not gonna go your way. You're gonna get the diagnosis in life, you're gonna get the the the deal is gonna fall through with the wholesaler, the sales aren't gonna come, your ad account is gonna get banned, something's gonna crash and burn at some point, at least in my experience. You ever have one of those happen? Oh, absolutely. Life doesn't go your way?

SPEAKER_01 5:31

Just a few times. That's sarcasm, by the way. I know it's hard to tell. It's hard to tell.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

You know, we were just talking, Rob and I were talking this morning. We're like, we're geeking out. We're at our our our lunchroom table, and we're like, we have our iPads open and we're just like geeking out, like drawing frameworks. I'm like, okay, so here's a new way, I'm starting to think about this. And he's like, what if we do this? And so we just like geek out on frameworks and thinking. And one of the things we're talking about this morning was Kaizen. Can you explain Kaizen? Any anybody here?

SPEAKER_01 5:55

Yeah, so I I learned Kaizen, I would probably say about five years ago, truly, and and I heard about it before, but Kaizen, the principle ultimately is that small incremental improvements over time lead to much more success. So most of the the easiest way to explain it is for weight loss journeys. You have, you know, you have two people. One is that saying to themselves, I want to lose 20 pounds by summer so that I could go to the beach and look phenomenal, right? It's it's so common. Everyone thinks I want to lose 20 pounds in the next four months. They spend the next four months really trying to come up with, okay, so what fitness plan do I have to do? What diet do I have to run? Right? And and they inevitably a month goes by, and then another month goes by, and they try the one diet, but they find out that they really just don't like it. And so they end up falling off the diet and and they're chasing these trends, and summer comes along and they're upset, right? In Kaizen, this principle of small improvements, instead, you tell yourself today, I'm going to not drink two cans of coke, I'll only drink one, right? Today, I'm not going to keep buying white bleached wheat like bread, I'm gonna go for the whole grain, right? And then over time, you start making better healthy choices. Inevitably, by the time summer comes along, because you're changing all these little habits, you've actually lost more weight than the person that was two in their head. So I I equate that to e-comm with our clients of don't overthink it, make a change, make a step.

SPEAKER_00 7:45

Rob sharing that this morning, and I come in and I'm like, I actually look at this differently. I look at it as, which I agree with it by the way, the incremental. Like if I was to say, hey, I'm gonna make a 1% growth every single week, 2% growth every week, it'll compound. I understand compounding, and that's great. I looked at it as like a lot of times things feel sudden where everything feels like it's crashing and burning right now, and we believe that it's just because like it's just like a flip of a switch and suddenly everything's happening. And very, very rarely, short of meta outages and things out of our control, which is the absolute minority moments in life, it's actually gradual and then sudden. And so you were talking about Kaizen, and I was like, you know, I think of the conversation I had, it feels like everything's crashing and burning, but a lot of times things happen gradually, but they but there's a moment where the pain peaks. And if you feel this pain at the height, and it just everything hits right. And for this client, truthfully, I I was meeting with her and I said, I'm like, I asked her about, you know, some other aspects of her life. She was really vulnerable about like a surgery thing that went wrong, a diagnosis of someone that she loves that happened, and then her business is going downhill, like the revenue is going downhill at the same time. It's like so everything kind of compounded to this moment. Some people call that the perfect storm. And so I look at it as if you're experiencing a moment in life where it feels feels like everything is crashing and burning, the worst that could happen is literally happening. Uh sometimes it is suddenly, but sometimes it is gradual, most often it's actually gradually. And in business, I am a believer that it's largely self-induced. And so that's why I was telling Rob with I'm like, you know, incremental and good direction, good. Incremental and bad direction, bad, because you don't realize you're doing it because it's so small until it's too late or you feel an extreme amount of pain.

SPEAKER_02 9:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

And so, so in this, regardless of how you get there, some things are sudden, some things are kind of gradual. What I think of is this is like circumstances will change. Sometimes we'll gradually put ourselves in a good spot or gradually put ourselves in a bad spot. But who we are in the moment shouldn't change. And that's ultimately what I think this I want this, I want to talk through a framework of thinking. And I'm inviting Rob into this, by the way. He volunteered and I was like, hey, walk downstairs with me. I want you to sit on this podcast. He has no idea what we're about to walk through. Yeah. Um and I want to take you on this journey of it because I know you've gone through tough stuff in your life. Yeah. And somebody listening right now is in a tough spot right now. They're in the like crap's hitting the fan. I feel like everything is falling apart. I feel like my personal life, my family life, my business life, something is going wrong, or they're in the perfect storm of all of it going wrong.

SPEAKER_02 10:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:30

And I want to walk the journey with them and with you if that's all right.

SPEAKER_02 10:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

I actually totally have something that 100% relates to that. And it surprisingly enough incorporates all three.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

Business, personal, family? Yes. Okay, so I want okay, so tell me about tell me about a moment in your life or an experience that you had. And everybody that's listening or watching right now, I want you to think of this. What is a moment that was so painful that you can remember in the past part of your life that you made it through? What you got?

SPEAKER_01 11:03

So when I was about 20 years old, and actually from 19 to 20, I I went to pursue a dream of building a restaurant with my dad. And that had always been his dream growing up. And so I myself felt very just like energized with the idea of holy cow, I can help impact making his dream a reality. I'm so down. So I left Ohio and moved to Utah in a two weeks' time. Thinking back, it was a completely irrational decision. But but I'm You made the decision in two weeks to just up and move Ohio to Utah? Yes. I was I thought it was like way more plain than that. No, I took everything. Well, and by everything, I mean you're 19, so you know, a guitar, you're old Honda. Yeah, yeah, right. So like I didn't I didn't have a lot, but uh but but yeah, I I uprooted my life at the time, and at the time I was actually going to college for human services, by the way.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

Oh, I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

Did you graduate college? No, I dropped out to Utah. Oh, drop dropouts unite, man. Yeah, absolutely. I think that we're both living our passions. So uh so I end up moving uh across the United States to Utah to start this restaurant. Well, to make a long story short, the restaurant was pretty successful, but it could have been more successful. And so actually, this year marks the 10-year anniversary that the restaurant ended up closing down. So so the the decision to inevitably move back and lead me back here eventually, right, happened just because my my dad and I just were having conflicting business views and and we weren't really in tune with making the same or making decisions that would follow the same path. And so ultimately, the way that I described it to him was two lions can't share the same den. Wow, yeah, you told your dad that? Yeah, because because what I found is that we were both very much leaders, right? We were both that that type of I'm going to lead charge and I'm going to make decisions. Now, of course, me being the son and having much less experience. Looking back, I have a lot of reflection on the fact that rightly so, he had a lot of hesitation to some of my recommendations, right? Because I had less experience than him, 14 years less, as he would remind me at the time. But but one thing that continually has happened since is he constantly says, Man, if I would have just listened to a few of those suggestions that you would have gave me, I think that we would have been able to make it. I just wish that you would have never left. So that's why I I'm starting to think through because when you said making small incremental decisions that are in the wrong way, and then eventually everything crashes down around you. In my mind, I experienced each little misdirection the wrong way in our communication style. And in his view, and we just talked about it not too long ago, in his view, he just never understood why I left over an argument over a plating arrangement of a strawberry chicken salad. In his mind, it was all about the fact that we were fighting about a salad. Yeah, but he thought that was the sudden that was that was that was the sudden catalyst. He could never understand over the years why a chicken salad ended up breaking apart our business arrangement. And for me, it was well, Dad, actually, we had multiple, multiple instances where I would give you recommendations on small incremental improvements, such as changing the hours of operation, changing the wage structures, commission structures, whatever you have, right? Changing the way that we hire people, the interview processes. And mind you, I'm 19 or 20 years old, so I get it. I I was inexperienced, but I've always kind of had this mind of dreaming better ways to make things. And and so like I I have a lot of grace with that. You know, I I probably if my son was coming up to me and telling me how to run my dream business, yeah. It's hard. It would be hard.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

To not think that I know best. Exactly. I know better, I'm wiser. Yeah, but in the heat of the moment, I mean, that was really hard for me.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

I mean, so if you make the decision. So you go through this experience with your dad, you move out to Utah on a whim, you go there. How long did you work there for? A year. Okay. So you worked almost to the date. Almost so one year, it's not like you showed up and then on day 365, suddenly everything went to crap and you're like, all right, see ya, I'm out of here. Is it was probably every little interaction, every disagreement, every thought, negative thing that you ever, every jab that he made at you or slight that he made at you that was like, you know, lighthearted and kind of jokey, but it was sarcastically poking funny. Sarcasm. Yeah. So it's like it probably was like death by thousand cutting you exactly the whole way until finally that like they kind of say, the straw, the boat, the camel's back, right? So that experience. Now, I want to what how old were you? I was 20 when I made the decision to move back. Okay. You're 20 years old. Looking back at that moment, what's something that you would tell that version of yourself going through that moment now? Because you've made it through the other side and you probably feel like a much better spot of life.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

I feel like it empowered me to be the leader that I am, honestly. The the amount of turmoil that that was or the trial that I went through led to the way that I think today, right? So I wouldn't take it back.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Yeah, and and I agree on, I mean, like so many of these experiences can be used for good, or they can be used for turmoil that we turn back and we just constantly reflect on how terrible it was and what was meaningful. Ruminate on the past, right. But you took it and you've used it for good. But I want you to I want you to think of something. So when you're going through that, I want you to picture what it was like in the moment, the strawberry salad, you're with your dad, there's that moment, right? If you were to go look back on the however many years ago, 10-year-old version of you was 16 years ago. Okay, so if you look 16 years, oh, because it was 10 years since the business shut down. So 16-year younger version of you, you if you were literally able to appear, go back in time and tell tell that person, looking at that person going through that version of that moment, what's something you would have told them about that.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

I think at the immediate moment when we had the argument, we both had this way of kind of shutting down. And so we ended on a bad note, a sour note, and we both shut down. And he basically said, Let's talk about it tonight after work, but take the day off. And I didn't have a car on my own, so I was left to wander to Park City, which is a beautiful city. But when you've lived there for a year, you've seen every store. So there wasn't a lot of sightseeing that I was gonna do for the whole work day. So I was just very frustrated. But in the moment, I remember just thinking, what do I do? I'm stranded, I'm lost. I there's not a taxi in sight that's going to drive me an hour and a half home. I'm not gonna stay outside this entire time. And so what I would have probably told myself is, hey, just breathe. Everything's gonna be fine, and try and talk it through. You know. But I was 20.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

So But that'd be good advice to the 20-year-old version of you. Yeah. And if that 20-year-old version of you listened to that and said, Robert, future version of me, that's great advice. You know what? I'm gonna take this, I'm gonna chill out, I'm gonna calm, I'm gonna calm, I'm gonna breathe, yeah, and I'm gonna figure it out. And you you you survived, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:21

Oh, I problem solved either way. Yeah. I ended up finding a way back to the house. I actually packed up, and I was on a flight at 5 a.m. that next morning. So I I'm a problem solver for sure, but I I definitely made a another impulse decision. I made the impulse decision to move out there, and I made the impulse decision to move back in an a few hours.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

So your response to stuff hitting the fan and really strong adversity in the moment, maybe it's I'm sure it's sure it's changed now. But it was leave, run, get rid of it, solve. And usually the solve, it sounds like was just impulse decision making and and and just doing the first thing that you can think of. I'm sure you've heard of fight or flight, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:08

Yeah, there's actually a third one now that's come out, and it's called Fight, Flight, or Flock. And so you either fight against what you're going against, you either run away, you flight, or you flock to usually a community, whether that's like a family member, trusted friend, right? But like you actually kind of migrate together with safe people. And so in that instance, it was definitely flight. I was tired of fighting, I was ready to fly, and I literally flew back to Ohio.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

So literally flew back, and then you flocked because you're back with all of us in the family. Yeah, absolutely. And so, okay, so your response was that, but now looking back, you would tell the 20-year-old version of you, dude, it's gonna work out. It's gonna work out, breathe, take a beat, yeah, be calm, yeah, then make decisions.

SPEAKER_01 21:04

Try to talk it through, you know. Try and try and like, well, and I feel like I have a much more logical mind now, and I'm sure that just comes with maturity. I mean, at 20 years old, I'm a nerd, guys. I'm so sorry, but I love brain science. At 20 years old, your frontal lobe isn't even fully developed, right? So, like, you don't have rationale like you have when you're 30, let's say, right? So, like at the time, I was very much like, take action, take action, and then solve the inevitable recourse that might happen if you take the wrong one. But now I'm kind of more of a more calculator person, and so I still feel like it was the right decision because what happened, Josh? I moved back, okay, and within less than seven days, I got my job at Wendy's. And where did we work together?

SPEAKER_00 21:55

That's where we worked and met together, yeah. Heck yeah, right. So that's he laid it down, guys. I was a burger flipper. Became a manager. We go to Denny's at 2 30 a.m.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

Oh man.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

It was so much fun. But it was a totally, you know, it it changed my lifestyle because I only became a manager in fast food because I learned how to be a manager at the restaurant. And over time, I moved out of the restaurant field and I became a leader in multiple different industries. Right. And then now I'm the head of the coaching community, right? So I think that everything has a part to play. And that's the important thing is when you zoom out, you can see it. But in the moment, everything looks like it's about a crash and burn. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:35

Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

And that's what people experience.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

Well, thank you for sharing this. The reason I wanted to, I wanted to see your story because I always love to learn more about you, is you handle this really well. In fact, you coach most days of the week and we talk to a lot of people in a lot of different scenarios. In someone listening right now is experiencing something that is painful, or they are going to. There's a saying, and I forget what the saying is. Someone could either say, like, you're either leaving a leaving a problem, experiencing a problem, or headed toward a problem, adversity. It's one of those things. It's like you just left adversity, you're in and out, or you're headed toward it. Everybody experiences it no matter what. So it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. And the reason I wanted to hear that is because I want to bring this back for anybody who's who's still listening, that's like following this track, and maybe you're relating there's something in your life that you've gone through that is so visceral and real that you will never ever forget it. And you either think about it in a positive light, like Robert does, like I learned that, that that was a catalyst to like, okay, I moved back, became a manager, acquired all the skills there that allowed me to be the manager, and has led you down the path, and now you're here, which I'm very grateful. So I'm actually glad that strawberry chicken salad happened. I'm glad I'm grateful for that. So so we're we're headed toward it. And what I what I think about is if we face every moment of adversity based on how we're feeling in the moment, if our response is how we feel, it's going to be a very uh painful, anxious-filled life. Right. It's always gonna be based on your emotions in that moment. So if the circumstance drives you to a state of frustration or anxiety of is this even gonna work out, and your response is always tied to how you feel in that moment, then it's gonna be it's gonna be very, very stressful. And your decision making is probably gonna be pretty hazy. Or impulsive, right? So bring me to a moment for you that bring me to a moment that when you make your best decisions, like best decisions in life, what's one of the best decisions in life you made?

SPEAKER_01 24:44

Well, my wife might argue against me, but it's actually buying the house that we ended up buying.

SPEAKER_00 24:49

Oh, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

So Alyssa, if you're listening, I'm sure I'm not taking sides, I'm just sitting on the fence. So my house, for context, sits on the basically the pathway that leads into a park here in Ashland, and it's called Freer Field. And so the field is beautiful. And growing up, and and I say growing up because my kids are now 12 and 10 years old, but growing up having young kids, they loved going there and playing there. And we lived in not the best part of town beforehand, and we didn't have a front yard or a backyard, so they really didn't have a lot of room to play because they were like, you know, about six years old and four years old. So you're not gonna be like, oh yeah, go ride outside on the bike, you know. You can't do that when they're that age. So we used to take them to the park, and and it was a beautiful experience. And growing up, I actually used to tell myself, I want to live on Morgan someday.

SPEAKER_00 25:49

Yeah, I used to say Morgan Ave is what he's talking about. It's a nice, it's my nice road. I used to always want to live there, right? Same here, that's kind of funny.

SPEAKER_01 25:57

So, what happened was I I we were really trying to find a house. We were actually up against a wall. There was at the time I had in a rental agreement that had gone past the lease, but we were doing month to month, and we were going to do month to month until we found a house. Well, the uh the landlord, his son, ended up needing a house to move into within three weeks. And so technically, because it was more of a verbal, I agreed that hey, you don't have to give me a 30-day notice, I'll do everything I can to give you three weeks. And so my house hunting journey all of a sudden became very boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, right? So, like, I originally really wanted to move out into the country, have a lot of land, and and I found a place that I ended up offering twenty thousand dollars above asking. This is right before COVID, guys. So we're talking like house market was a seller's market, yeah, and rates were low, thank the lordy. So, like, so we lost out on the house, and I remember just feeling like, oh, so defeated, so defeated. And I was like, man, this this could have been the dream home, and and then, you know, the way that I view it now, of course, is hey, that was a potential bullet dodge. Who knows if the sewage would have needed refresh, or you know, if I needed to order a new propane tank, whatever, who cares? So then this house opens up, and before it even hit the market, we got a private viewing, a private showing. And I remember thinking to myself, this was one of the houses I always used to pass by that the kids would always say, I wish we lived there. Hmm. And and I got it at a great price. I got it at a great rate, and everything worked out.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

So when you made the decision to do that, what was this your your your state? Talk about like maybe your mental state. How did you feel when you made it? Like when you make good decisions, what's the state of your mind or body, would you say?

SPEAKER_01 27:54

It's it's let me reflect on the experiences that I've had that are in relation that I've overcome, and then let me try to make I I I am a person that tries to make two or three moves ahead. I I kind of equate myself to like a chess player mind. So I'm I am looking ahead, but I don't do so with anxiety because anxiety is crippling, and so I do it with an open mind that I might fail, I might make the wrong decision, but no decision is the wrong decision, right? So I I just kind of told myself, you know what? Maybe I lost out on that house because this one was the one that was supposed to open up. And what would it look like if I buy this house? Is it financially reasonable for reasonable for me and my family? Would it fulfill certain aspects? And would it be a safe place for the children? And it checked the boxes and I made the move.

SPEAKER_00 28:52

So you weren't in a state of desperation, no, like maybe the first house almost felt. Well you did, right? But I had options. But it's like you had options, you're probably you you felt like you're making good decisions. You're it sounds like calm is a is a component of making good decisions for you. It is. And I think that the reason I bring this up is because in business, storms are coming, fires will happen. A lot of the joke that we run around is like as entrepreneurs, you're literally the fireman, right? You just go out putting out fires all over the place, right? Terrible headspace to put yourself in if you you view life as like my job is to put fires out. It's like, no, your job is literally to solve problems, cast vision, and rise to a level of leadership that you're calling people to. You have to demonstrate that. Yeah, model it. You have to model that. And so I I have a framework I want to share with you. I want your feedback on this. Because everybody's gonna, they're either coming out of a adversity, going through adversity, or they're going to adversity. Sure. And in that, I believe step number one is you have to rise above the situation with your emotion. So zoom out. Yeah. So you have to look at like, okay, what's the 16-year future version of me saying to me right now? Probably breathe. Probably be calm, chill, chill, baby brother. Yeah. Things are gonna work out. Like you're going to survive the thing. Now, it may not be how you think it's gonna pan out, and it often isn't, right? But a lot of times in life we go through these crazy moments, like us with traumatic entry of William coming into the world, Kelsey getting life lighted. I mean, it was like infectious disease department because something's happening, and it's just like emergency surgery. Like it was just a it was a terrible experience. And it's hard to be in the moment and be like, oh, good's gonna come of this. Oh, the 16-year future version of Josh is talking back and saying, hey, you have a 16-year-old is gonna be saying this. It's hard to, it's really hard to do. Yeah. So I I don't believe it's something that you just flip a switch and you can do this all the time. I believe it's it is a choice, though. Like you can choose to be calm and breathe, or you can choose to be anxious, stressed out, and complaining and blaming anything you possibly can sink your teeth into because you don't want to take ownership of the thing or you don't want to deal with the thing. And so I believe step number one is actually to just rise above the situation, go talk to a future version of yourself. And you have to put yourself in a state of calm. Like, I don't think I've ever made a good decision that's like, oh, I'm highly anxious, wildly desperate, and I feel like I'm angry.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

Yeah, I got lucky with the with the immediate decision of flying back to Ohio that it worked out to my favor, but it wasn't easy. I was broke. So, like, you know, it could have been handled better, but yeah, I totally agree. And that's where I like to use my past experiences. And so, you know, just like you said, everyone goes through different things, different levels of adversity, but everyone does it. So, what might seem small or trivial to you might be big in comparison to someone else that hasn't really experienced something big, and that shouldn't discredit that. But those people, everyone should be able to find something in their past, situations of adversity that they've been able to make it through, right? And so what I like to do is I like to think back in those moments, especially ones that may relate, think back in the moment and and be like, okay, how did I make it through that? And how does this one equate to that one? You know, if I can make it through that, I can make it through this. Yeah, you know, so let me take a moment. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:30

So, like for you, calm and breathe. Like, first rise step number one of the framework, I believe. You're rising above the situation because if you let the anxiety get the best of you, you let the moment take advantage of you, it will take advantage of you. There's something I was uh this is a little side rabbit trail here, but this morning I had our cousins up from Nashville, Tennessee. They're up, they swung by our house before they went back, and I made them breakfast. I'm sitting there with Callan is his name, and his son Jace was there with us. And Jace is 13 years old. And I'm talking to Jace about school and how school is going and all of this. And what do you think every statement he said about school was?

SPEAKER_01 33:10

I hate it.

SPEAKER_00 33:11

It's prison. He literally said, school is torment. I feel like I'm living in hell. That's what he told me. And I was like, Oh my gosh. Hey Jace, if you think that hell is literally just going to school and learning, man, you got to change your perspective on what hell is like. Because I'm telling you, it's probably a little bit warmer than that. So uh so anyway, we're there, we're talking, and and I end up, I just go into straight coaching mode with him. And I go in and I'm talking about all these things, I'm like, I'm talking about the vision of what he wants, and he's like, I want to be a you YouTuber. I want to be a YouTuber and make videos and all this. I said, I was like, great. That's the hype. And I'm like, Jay, so what are you gonna do when you're on video 100 and not a single video has gone over 10 views and half the views of your family? Are you gonna keep going? And he said, Yeah, I'm gonna keep going. And so I I get into and I said, Why is that? He's like, Because I know that it's possible. I was like, Okay, school is a video game, and you're on you're on uh school is your YouTube channel and you're on you're on YouTube video number 42 right now. You're not getting a lot of views. How old is he? 13. 13. He's halfway through school. He's like seventh grade or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 34:13

I like the Moxie.

SPEAKER_00 34:15

So so anyway, so I'm talking to him about this, and I said, before he left, I I leave him with this. I said, Jace, here's how I'm gonna encourage you to think about it. Either you experience life, everything that happens around you influences your response. Your response is based on what you're experiencing of life. I'm like, or Jace, life experiences you. I'm like, what does that look like? That looks like your smile, man. That looks like when you're going through classes you hate and means that you're making the best of it. When your friends aren't pitching in for the group, the group homework that you're supposed to do, you're still leading the way despite the exp what everybody else is doing and what you're experiencing. You don't change who you are because you're the person that pushes through video 100 even when you get less than 10 views. And it clicked for him. And it was like awesome. It was so satisfying. He's like, that makes a lot of sense. I said, Yes. And here's the thing, because he said at some point in the conversation, he said, Well, I can't. He's like, I I just I can never be happy as cool. I said, and after all that, I ended up telling him, I said, Jace, happiness is a choice. I said, I know someone there was about a year or two ago, there's somebody local. This guy was going through an intersection, a guy blows the intersection, hits his car. This guy's in the driver's seat, his pregnant wife is next to him, his two kids under five are in the backseat, all of them die. I remember that. Yeah. And I'm like, he forgave the man that did that, and he said, I believe that God is good, and I believe that I still have a life and a calling on my life to do good in other people's lives, despite the circumstances. And of course, it's not that he's not sad, he's not mourning that. But he went through all that in his perspective was he chose joy over hatred. He actually worked for us, by the way. No way, dealership. No way, sir.

SPEAKER_01 36:03

I remember that entire experience.

SPEAKER_00 36:05

No way. I I think that was a story. Did I get her? It was something wrong those lines. He lost his entire family and his brand new. I mean, I mean two.

SPEAKER_01 36:13

I couldn't imagine and then still ended up passing away in about a week at the hospital.

SPEAKER_00 36:18

Oh my goodness. I just, my when I saw that dude, I literally teared up reading that article. I'm like, I couldn't not grieve. Dude, like I I grieve with you and I don't know you because I feel that pain. I imagine my son William and Kelsey in the car. No way, like he chose joy over all that. So I I tell Jace that story and I was like, he chose chose joy when he could have chosen hatred. Yeah. And I was like, every single moment that you have an angry thought or a hatred thought, you have the ability, Jace, to think love, to think joy, to think peace. And I was like, and every moment in your in your day that you feel that frustration coming on, man, I was like, is another video with less than 10 views for you. I just tied it back for him. And it so it started to make sense. So I say that because you have to kind of rise above the situation and you have to realize that like I can experience life or life can experience me. And me being calm and me breathing and me talking to a future version of me that's been through freaking hell and war, talking back and saying you've got this is actually what I want to first do. Because if I don't do that, then I'm experiencing life and all my reaction is based on what I'm experiencing.

SPEAKER_02 37:25

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 37:25

All right. You buying that so far? I'm I'm buying what you're putting down. All right, go on. That's step one. I think rise above. Step number two, and you've actually said you did this, is kind of evaluate your options. So if I'm going through the burning moment of everything's crashing and burning, I'm gonna say, okay, first I gotta be calm. I don't make good decisions when I'm in fight, flight, or flock mode. I have to actually pause and say, none of those are options for me, actually. I'm not trying to fight or flight or flock. You know, I have to fight for my family, sure. But like most of the time, the language of fight or flight is like, is usually a bad thing that you're doing or it's a very aggressive thing you're doing. So I would look at it as like, actually, maybe I don't have to fight. Maybe I don't have to maybe fight for what I love and fight for those things for sure. But I don't need to flight, I don't need to flock. I actually just need to say, what are the options that I have that can be done in a state of good moment? Yeah, I gotta like calm the nervous system. I gotta put myself in a good headspace so I can make good decisions. So number two is I need to value my options. And in business, by the way, in business, this is identifying the constraint. And we're not doing an episode on this. You and I were gonna do this episode, but I'm like, uh, we're gonna save this for for for another month from now. Yeah. We're gonna do an episode on the four constraints inside your business. There are four constraints, um, acquisition, fulfillment, opt, product dev, or ops. Those are the four constraints. You have a constraint in one of those areas. That's where your constraint lies. But to evaluate your options, you need to identify the true constraint based on the goal that you have. And then when I when it comes to actually evaluating your options, I believe that you need to ask one question uh before you make the decision. And that question is, is this a reversible or an irreversible decision? I think that's a very important thing to factor. Because if you're like, I'm about I'm evaluating options, yeah. Before I move to step three, which is decide, before I move to step three, is this going to be reversible or irreversible? Some things are irreversible. You fire somebody, pretty irreversible. Yeah. You know, you burn that bridge with whoever, pretty irreversible. Largely irreversible, but then you can always reconcile, but it's very, very hard. And so I say, is this reversible or irreversible? If I go knock down walls upstairs in the building, you could say it's reversible, but that's really hard to reverse. And so that's what I would, I'm gonna evaluate the options. Then step three, once I've kind of evaluated everything, I'm in a good headspace, I've identified what I believe the true constraint is. I have asked myself, is this reversible or irreversible? Then I'm in the step three, and that is just to decide and take the action. Regardless in not over, and this is the key, like I think that we often overthink stuff. You just took the action. You were like, dad, chicken salad, walk the park, peace. Yeah. Like 12 hours, 25 years.

SPEAKER_01 39:59

I did walk for probably about four or five hours trying to strategize what's you're evaluating every yeah. And I I made the plan. I made the plan of action. I executed it. I don't know how Do you think that was irreversible or irreversible decision? It was irreversible in the moment. I thought that it could have been reversible, but it actually it we had a falling out for I want to say about four four or five years that we did not talk. And almost confirms how irreversible that decision was. And thank God that we have a good relationship now, you know, because like I said, I I feel like it led to some great things. But I do want to shout out with your first mind frame, right? Like how how how adversity shapes your decision. I think if anyone has a moment, Dr. Mark Matthews, has he talked to you about the coffee bean by John Gordon? It's a short story, short story. You could get it like on Audible or something, but it's all about how, for instance, when you throw a carrot into a boiling pot of water, it'll eventually become mush. But then if you throw a coffee bean into boiling water, it transforms into coffee. So it's like you want to be like a coffee bean, you don't want to become mush, you don't want to become like solid, like what's what's the I I forget what the analogies are, but it's such a great short story that's only like 13 minutes. It's like, wow, what a way to face adversity in a mind state of you know what, let me not crumble, let me not harden, but let me instead transform this into a good experience. Yeah. So I think that that pairs really with what you have.

SPEAKER_00 41:42

I love that. I need to go read that short story now.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

Yeah, talk to Mark about it. You know what?

SPEAKER_00 41:45

And it honestly resonates with me because I don't like carrots and I love coffee. So I think that I'm not I'm not going to be a little bit more. What about carrot cake? Well, I love carrot cake. Yeah, you throw sugar and cream cheese on stuff, and I'm here for it. Dude, I hate zucchini, but I like zucchini. Zugini bread. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, dude, I I'm on the same page. So final step, step three is like you actually when you make a decision, I look at it as the making the decision. And by the way, you can go, you can evaluate options and evaluate options and evaluate options and evaluate options, and then like go make a decision completely with no confidence, and then always always second guess yourself. And I believe when you make a decision, it is the act of making the decision, whether it ends up being the actual right move, the thing that works or not, matters less than making the actual decision because that's what grows us. Like I look at life and business as this infinite game that is never ending until you're dead. Yeah. And if it's never ending, then it's about progress, not this perfect decision destination. It's like, no, I'm making the decision. Maybe it's the right decision, maybe it's the wrong. But the faster I make the decision, the more decisions I make, the more confidence I have. And so I look at this. I look at like, when it comes to decision making, just another little sub-framework here, is when I'm making decisions, most people are waiting for permission to do things. And in the beginning, when we're learning something, we ask for permission for everything. We see this all the time. We coach a lot of clients that are brand new to ads, right? So when you're going to say, it's not how should I think about creative, it's like what creative should I make? They want permission to go make the creative. They want you to tell them. And then it says, is it okay if I launch this? They want permission to launch the thing. Usually from lack of confidence. Yeah, it's lack of confidence. So it's like, well, why do people ask for permission-based questions? It's because they're just not confident in their decisions or they've made bad decisions in the past. So they're they they fear decision making. But decision making and solving problems is literally the job of any leader in any business owner. You have to make decisions. You have to solve problems. How do you get good at doing it? There's no other way than just freaking doing it.

SPEAKER_01 43:48

Every time it's empowering. Yeah. Because it empowers you to make the decisions. It's like a cascade. It's a beautiful cascade.

SPEAKER_00 43:54

It is. It's just this never ending loop. So, like I would look at it like this. Look like this. If you want to make confident decisions, you can't make confident decisions unless you have competence. Competence leads to confidence. Competence is I understand the thing. And so when I make a decision, I'm pretty confident in in most decisions in my life. I'm confident if I've done the thing over and over and over and over again. So what does that mean? Well, number one, make decision. Step two, decision leads to competence or it leads to experience, which then leads to competence because you know what works, what doesn't. And then competence and experience leads to confidence. And so it's like you have to make the decision to get the experience to gain the confidence in that order. So we often think we need to have the competence and the confidence before we make the decision, but in reality, it's the act of making the decision that gains the competence that makes you confident. Yeah. And it's a never-ending loop. So every decision that you make, you get better and better and better if you allow yourself to first make the decision. Most people don't want to make the decision. Yeah, absolutely. I love it. I just love thinking about this stuff, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 45:02

And I love the the is this a uh permanent action or is this a reversible temporary, yeah? Whatever a temporary, right? Because that that's how my mind works in a chess way. It's like, let me think two steps ahead. The first step is what decision am I going to make? The second step is what will that impact? And the third is okay, so if it does go wrong, then what can I do to reverse the decision or to expand on it? And man, I mean, don't don't go that deep, obviously, if you struggle with anxiety, but uh, you know, uh just make the decision, just take the step. It's like that's the positive part of Kaizen is if you make an action, that's better than no action, right? The Michael Jordan adage, right? You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. That's Wayne Gretzky and Michael, Michael Scott.

SPEAKER_00 45:52

Oh no. Dude, I love it. No, that's good. That's good though. But yeah, it's so true, right? You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. Most people don't want to take a whole lot of shots or any shots, or they want someone else to make the shot for them. And if it's good, they own it, and if it's not, they blame it. So that's the that's the other thing that I think about too.

SPEAKER_01 46:07

So escape.

SPEAKER_00 46:08

Yeah, so so permission-based questions. If I am asking for permission to do something, why is that? First of all, I lack confidence. Second of all, there's a dangerous territory that happens when I don't make the actual decision. Number one, I don't learn as much. Number two, it gives me an out. It gives me the scapegoat. You know why? Because I didn't make the decision. You told me I could do the thing. Exactly. So we see that, you know, obviously, by the way, if you're a client listening, just know like we understand. We understand why you do it. We understand why you ask permission-based questions. You don't have the confidence yet. You want help with that. By the way, we're here to help. And I'm not going to not help a client who wants permission. Sometimes I'm like, yeah, here, here's the permission. Our objective is to say, we want to train you on how to think about the thing so that the next time you have more competence and confidence in making that decision. But you could start to see language in the thousands of sessions we've held. Yeah. You can see language around lack of ownership of the decision.

SPEAKER_02 47:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:01

And it usually starts with, I did exactly as you told me. Sure. And outcome happened. And if the outcome isn't good, it's your fault. But if it's no one says, I did exactly as you told me, and everything went great, and it's amazing. Thank you so much for that.

SPEAKER_01 47:13

Actually, I would battle you on that. People are starting to say that in the community and I love it.

SPEAKER_00 47:18

Yeah, you know, yeah, but it's because we model it. It's because we model and we teach people, we're teaching people how to think. Equip, entertain, and empower, right? Three words that that's our every anyone doesn't know. Our mission is to equip, entertain, and empower every e-commerce business on the planet with unparalleled excellence. That's our mission. And so I hope that anybody here listening today got value. I hope we entertain you a little bit. I hope we equipped you a little bit better to make decisions as a founder in your business. And I hope that honestly you feel empowered to go make decisions using the framework. I just want to recap it. Number one, when you're hitting an issue in life, you need to rise above the noise, rise above the situation that you're in within now, the the thing that you're experiencing, and say, I'm not experiencing life. I'm gonna, life is about to experience me. And then you need to evaluate your options. Is this reversible or irreversible decision? And then step number three, you just have to decide. You need to make go make a thousand decisions around advertising. And do you think that you'll know you'll be confident by the time you make a thousandth decision? Oh, yeah. Pretty confident, right? Because if you kaizen your way through it and you at least feedback loop it, you make a thousand incremental kaizen decisions and you evaluate it and know if it's right or wrong, along the way you'll become really freaking good at it. Love it. Rob Thanks for joining. This was a ton of fun. This was an off the cuff. I'm like, let's just go down there and we're 50 minutes in, and I hope somebody got value. If you got value and you're even listening right now, do me a huge, huge favor. Two huge favors, actually. Number one, please rate this podcast. Whatever you're listening to, if you're on YouTube, please go leave a review, not leave a review, give us a thumbs up, drop a comment of like what really stuck out to you. I really do want to know. And if you are, if you want to go, the second thing I want to ask you, and you want to go above and beyond, shoot me a DM on Instagram at JoshCoffee, C O F F Y. Go find me on Instagram, follow me. If you DM me that you listen to this, tell me a takeaway and something you liked about it. I will follow you back and we'll have a good conversation about it. But thank you for listening. We appreciate you. We love you guys. See you in the next episode.