Shiny Object Syndrome - The Long Game - Ep. #91

The most expensive decisions aren't the ones you got wrong. They're the ones you made too fast.

In this episode of The Long Game Podcast, Ryan breaks down how he thinks about decision-making as a leader, why the speed of a decision matters as much as the decision itself, and what he's been actively teaching his team as his business grows.

Ryan walks through the two failure modes he sees most often: moving too quickly on tasks that deserve a pause, and letting attention scatter across too many priorities at once. He's direct about the fact that neither comes from bad intentions. The person who rushes through a document review isn't cutting corners on purpose. But slow is fast, and the cost of catching a problem at the wrong stage is almost always higher than the cost of taking an extra ten minutes upfront.

He also gets into the decisions people don't realize they're making, specifically where they place their attention. Shiny object syndrome isn't just a distraction. It's a choice, and most of the time it's a subconscious one.

What You'll Learn:

• Why making a decision quickly and making it well are not the same thing, and how to know which one a situation calls for
• The specific moment in a workflow where slowing down saves more time than any shortcut ever could
• Why "slow is fast" is one of the most practical frameworks for a growing team to internalize
• How shiny object syndrome operates as a subconscious decision, and what it quietly costs your business
• Why Ryan pulled back from real estate investing for the better part of a year, and what that focus produced
• How to identify the highest ROI use of your attention when multiple opportunities are competing for it
• What it looks like to correct your direction intentionally rather than drift toward wherever your habits point

If you're running a growing business and finding that things are falling through the cracks despite everyone working hard, this episode gives you a clear framework for why that happens and what to do about it.

Interested in connecting?

HOST
Ryan Richards | Branch Manager, Northpoint Mortgage | NMLS 1987735
rrichards@trynorthpoint.com | www.financewithteamrichards.com 
204 Turnpike Rd, Westborough, MA 01581
Licensed in CT, FL, MA, ME, NH, RI, NC, SC, PA, TN

Follow us on Instagram @financewithteamrichards @the.longgamepodcast

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Chapters:
00:00 Decisions Fast or Slow
00:51 Too Much on Your Plate
01:46 Slow Is Fast Example
03:45 Low Stakes Quick Calls
04:13 Attention and Focus Choice
04:48 Doubling Down to Grow
05:44 ROI and Recalibration
06:37 Final Takeaways

Transcript

0:00

If you're the type of person who struggles with how to make a decision, whether you make a decision quickly or do you slow down and really weigh out your options and analyze, a lot of times people get stuck in that, not necessarily analysis paralysis, but not understanding the best way to approach a decision. Not saying I have all the answers, but I've really started to think more about my decision-making process as a leader and how I can reflect that and teach my team to do the same thing. There are sometimes decisions have to be made quickly, and sometimes you have to slow down. So we're gonna dive into this topic and hopefully share some insights that'll help you out. So as an entrepreneur, a sales professional, or an employee in an organization that's growing rapidly, there's probably a pretty good chance that there are a lot of things being thrown at your plate at once. You might have different tasks covering different sectors of the business, different responsibilities, and your day-to-day may look different from one to the next. But it's important as you go through this process that you understand how to change your frame of mind to make the best possible decision as quickly as possible. Because I understand it, right? As an entrepreneur who does multiple different businesses, multiple different things going on all the time, there are probably thousands of decisions that I make in a single day. But there are some decisions that take me longer than others, and this is a process that I'm really trying to hone in for myself to help teach my team, because I've noticed some shortfalls from myself, my team, and even surrounding businesses and entrepreneurs that I think with the right frame of mind can be fixed. What I've noticed recently is sometimes decisions get made too quickly that ultimately create a longer process than the task should be as a function of just not taking enough time to do it thoroughly one time. And it's not from bad intentions. Like, usually someone who makes quick decisions that ultimately have repercussions later, it's not a function of them not wanting to complete the task well, it's just a function of them wanting to do things fast. And fast is a level of service, fast is a component of work ethic and employee relations. Like, that's a good skill to have, but you have to be able to slow down a little bit when certain tasks come up. One specifically that I've been working on in my team is when it comes to processing loan applications and loan requests, sometimes you have to slow down to do the task thoroughly If someone sends you documents and you say,"Great, received," and you, you just take those and don't look at them, yes, you move the files along very quickly. I would say pause there, take an extra 30 seconds, extra minute, to go through the documents thoroughly to make sure there's nothing in there that's going to come up later. It's not going to change the fact that the issue's going to come up, but let's catch it now. And while this is going on, I know these, this particular person, these types of people, they're doing other things at the same time. Like, they're answering other emails while the documents load. They might be answering texts or phone calls while trying to do this task. And that's all well and good. I appreciate the effort to make fast decisions, move things along quickly, but at that point in time, slow is fast. I'd rather you bookmark 10 minutes to look through those documents thoroughly, complete the task all the way, avoid any potential issues later, and make sure that that gets done properly versus trying to do 15 things at once and none of them are really done properly and we end up having to either do them again later or actually do more work because of when the issue was found out later down the process. So those types of decisions that can lead to subsequent repercussion, that's a moment of pause. You need to be able to take a second, direct your attention, and make the decision thoroughly while weighing all the options. There are some decisions that don't matter, right? If you say, "What time today can you pop on a phone call?"

If I just say 1: 3:51

00, I mean, what's the worst thing that happens? Like, I have another task assigned, I'll just move it around. Like, those types of decisions don't necessarily matter as much. You know, "What do you want for lunch? What do you want to drink?" I don't really care. Give me a water, give me a sandwich, I'm fine. Those types of decisions don't really matter as much, and that, for that reason, you can make them fast. And there's a lot of business decisions that you can make quickly, but some decisions you have to take that pause. Another one I, I noticed recently that I've been, I've been talking a lot about, it's a decision that's subconscious, and it's where you place your attention. So a lot of times, especially entrepreneurs, their serial golden crutch is they have shiny object syndrome. And we've talked about this a lot in the podcast for those of you who listen. But you get so obsessed with continual improvement and growth that you start to look at four different things at once And that's a decision you actually subconsciously make, is to explore more and wider rather than looking at just one thing more closely. And I've really honed in on this in my personal business as of recent. And for those of you who know me, I'm very, you know, big into real estate investing, um, you know, fix and flips and multifamily. But for the past 8 to 12 months, I've really taken my foot off the gas to just focus on my loan business, and I can tell you we've grown exponentially since then. I've hired two more people. Our business is, you know, much busier than we were last year, and our numbers this year are hopefully up over 50%. But that was an intentional decision that I made, and it's a hard one because why would you want to do less, right? Like, nobody inherently wants to do less at anything, but you have to be able to make that decision to move the needle forward sometimes. So don't always let your subconscious control, you know, your life, especially when it comes to your business. If you can focus on one thing all in, you're going to be way more successful or have a way higher chance than if you tried to do 15 things at once. Once you get the systems down, then you can expand. You can't make that decision early on, and especially don't allow yourself to do it subconsciously. So if you can take away anything from this episode, take a moment to think about how you make decisions. Are there times where you made decisions too quickly that you really should have slowed down? Do you find your attention scattered and tasks getting half complete or incorrectly complete because you're not focusing on one thing? And when it comes to your business, really ask yourself, "What's the highest ROI of my task?" If you're looking at potentially a fix and flip and you're like, "Okay, great, I could make 50 grand", well, sure, that's a big number in and of itself. But if you double down on your business and hire two more sales reps, how much more could you make? The sky's the limit, right? They could go make you $2 million. Who knows, right? They could be all-stars. But you need to be able to understand that you're making that decision by where you put your attention. Don't think that your attention is always just aligned with where you wanna go. Sometimes you have to re-correct. Just like a car on the highway, sometimes you gotta change lanes. And don't let yourself just fall victim asleep at the wheel. Hope you enjoyed today's episode, and we'll see you on the next one.