The Lead Domino — How to Know Which Decision to Make First When Everything Feels Urgent | Ep 4

If you have more than five unresolved decisions right now — you don't have a
decision problem. You have a prioritization problem. In this episode, Meagan
introduces the Decision Priority Matrix — a two-question, five-minute tool that
identifies your lead domino — the one decision that, if made, makes
everything else easier or irrelevant.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome back to Amplify and Act. I'm Megan Van Wort. Today we are solving one of the most common problems established business owners bring to me. They are faced with too many decisions. They all feel equally urgent and none of them are moving. If your brain has a running list of pending decisions right now and you keep circling back to them and you can't get traction, then this episode is for you. Today's tool is called the lead domino and it changes everything. By the end of today's episode, you'll know exactly which decision to work on first and why working on anything else before that one is costing you more than you think. We'll be going through the really simple steps together, so let's go ahead and get into it. Here's the thing: most people get wrong about a list of pending decisions. They treat it like a cue. First in, first out. Whatever I write down at the top of the list, I'm gonna scan and I'm just gonna pick one I feel comfortable with and I'm gonna get started. Sometimes we pick low-hanging fruit, sometimes we just we pick the easy ones, right? Not necessarily the most important ones. Um sometimes you may bounce in between what feels most urgent that day. Um and neither of these approaches really work. And here's why we shouldn't treat decisions like they're all created equal. That's a myth. Uh the reality is that one decision on your list, maybe just one, if made, makes everything else a little easier or irrelevant. So imagine picking the right decision and the right task to take first, and that will help you build momentum and to complete the other tasks more effectively, and they'll add more value to your business by doing the right one first. Isn't that fascinating? I call that the lead domino. And we're gonna go through that example together. Now, in physics, the single domino can actually knock over another domino that is 50% larger than itself. If you chain dominoes enough of them together in the right order, you can move something enormous. It's the same principles when you apply that to your decision list. Now, most owners are trying to knock all the dominoes over together at once. And that is not strategy. It's really exhaustion. You're just throwing yourself out there. The better move is to find one that starts the chain. Find your lead domino and work with that one, and then just let everything else flow. So, how do we find that lead domino? That's where our priority matrix comes in around which decisions to do first and why, based on priorities. Now, there's two questions tied to this matrix. The first one is around urgency, and the second one is around impact. So, what we're gonna do in this example is we're gonna go over a list of examples that are very common to many of you as business owners, and we're gonna score them based on the urgency score one to ten, and then the impact score. So we're gonna look at each of your decisions and assign an urgency score and then an impact score for your business. So the urgency at a high level is around thinking about how much does waiting one more week on this decision actually cost you? Not how anxious it makes you feel, but what does it actually cost? In time, in money, momentum, opportunity. So we'll be scoring your decisions based on urgency. The second thing we're scoring on is around impact. If you made this decision today, not perfectly, you just made the decision, how much would it unlock everything else on your list? And the formula is you take your urgency score, you multiply it towards your impact score, and that is your priority number. And we're gonna assign a priority number to each of your decisions. And it's very simple. If you have a pen and paper, we can go through this together. Otherwise, you can listen along and we'll do some really relevant examples together on how this works out. But whatever your highest number score is for those decisions, that is your lead domino. And then you rank order based on high score to low score and you work through those there. Now let me walk you through exactly how this works. Because the matrix only makes sense when you see it in action. I want you to think about these four decisions that show up in almost every established business that I've worked with. And as I walk through each one, I want you to score your own version in your head. Because I promise at least one of these is sitting on your desk right now. So the first decision we're going to talk about is if I should raise my prices. Now you know your prices, an example may be this. You know your prices are too low for a while now, maybe six months, maybe longer. Every time you send an invoice, you feel it. And that quiet discomfort says this doesn't reflect on what I actually deliver anymore. So let's score this together using this matrix. My urgency score. I score this an eight as a business owner. What does it wait? What does waiting one more week cost you? Every week you don't raise your prices, you're leaving real money on the table. You're having sales conversations anchored to a number that no longer represents your value. And every new client you bring in holds on to that old rate is a client that you'll eventually have to have that uncomfortable uncomfortable conversation with that your prices are increasing. Now let's rank your impact score. I rank my impact of should I raise my prices at a nine, nine out of ten. If I changed my prices, it would impact my business quite a bit in a good way, theoretically, right? If you're if your price is aligned with your market, etc. If you made this decision today, what does it unlock? Your revenue projection will shift. Your ideal client conversation changes. The mental weight of knowing you're undercharging the stops, taking up space in your head because you're doing the right thing. And you stop attracting clients who are shopping on a price. So if I take my numbers, eight times nine, my pricing decision score for this is 72. So keep that in mind, 72. I'm going to think about a second decision that is common for many business owners. Should I hire someone, even part-time, to help me? No, we all think about this, right? There's a lot. Maybe we're at capacity to say, if I could hire someone to help me five to 10 hours a week do this thing, gosh, that would it would help me in so many ways. Efficiency, productivity, give me a little bit of a weight to shift my capacity to do more things. Really powerful stuff. Most of us need help, and you've known that for a while, but you keep telling yourself that you're almost ready. You need just one more month, uh, and one more client and a little more breathing room. And sometimes you've known this for many, many months. So let's score this. Urgency. I would say the urgency, um, what is one more week waiting costing you if you don't make this hiring decision? You're doing the work and it still isn't the best use of your time and you're tired, but the business is still functioning, but it's been functioning on fumes. So I'd say the urgency is about a five. Because you can still do what you need to do, but it's not, it's not too urgent, but you still really could use the help, right? And let's talk about the impact. If you made this decision today to hire someone, even part-time, what does it unlock for you? You get real time back, you're building capacity to reflect, to grow, to explore. But here's the honest part: even if you hire someone tomorrow, you wouldn't feel the full impact for the four to six weeks while you onboard them. And until you've defined exactly what you're handing off, the hire won't fix the problem. So I I would score the impact a seven out of ten. So now let's do the math. Five times seven, your higher decision score is 35. Now let's notice something here. Your higher decision probably feels more urgent than your pricing decision now. You think about it constantly, but when you score it honestly, it's not even close. That's the matrix doing its job. It cuts through the feeling and gives you the actual calculation. See how the weight is different there? Now let's talk through our third example, and this is a good one. Should I drop a service or a client that isn't working anymore? So you have a service, maybe a type of client that isn't going the way that you've hoped, and it drains you. It underperforms, and every week you keep it on the menu and it pulls your attention away from the work that actually moves your business forward. But you haven't let it go because you've put time into it, and it still brings in some revenue because letting it go feels like you're admitting something. Now, I have a client that does a custom product option, and it's such a good example of this. She loves doing these custom products, but it is something that is taking so much more of her time, but she's still doing it anyways, but she knows she should let it go. But it's this decision of letting it go is really hard for her. So it's a perfect example of this. So let's score this. Our urgency score. Now, this one's been festering for a while, and it's not an emergency, but it's a slow leak that's happening, and every week it stays, and it's quietly costing you energy and focus. So the urgency to eliminate this is about a six out of ten. Now, I want you to keep in mind your own scoring as we're going through this. The second thing we'll score is the impact. If you made this decision today, what does it unlock? Well, your service often gets tighter. Uh, your marketing will get clearer, you'll stop spending time and energy on the work that doesn't represent you at your best, and you feel you are becoming a little more free and you have more capacity to do the work that represents your best work or maybe the future. So let's talk about the math. Six times eight is 48. No, I have one more decision I wanted to share with you because this is a really good one. Should I get clear on who I'm actually serving? So that's your customer base. Are you marketing and selling products to a very wide audience? Or should you feel like you should be dialing in it a little bit more to get to know your customers a little bit better? Who am I? Who am I uh selling to and why? And I know a lot of people, there's a lot here. So you know that your messaging is doing too much. You're trying to speak to everyone. And as a result, you're really connecting with no one. You're getting inquiries that don't quite fit. Your referrals are inconsistent because the people sending them aren't exactly sure who to send. Now you've thought about getting more clear on your niche. You've started the conversation with yourself more than once, but narrowing down feels like it's closing doors. It may be making you feel really uncomfortable to narrow it down. So it stays wide open as a question instead of becoming a decision. So let's score this. The urgency. Every week you stay broad. Your marketing works harder than it needs to and converts less than it should. That's the real cost, but it's not bleeding. So I would say the urgency score here is a six out of ten. Let's measure the impact. If you made this decision today, what does it unlock? Your marketing tightens, your referral conversations get easier, the right clients recognize themselves in what you're saying, and self-select in, the wrong ones will self-select out, which saves you the time you didn't know that you were losing. So I would rank impact as an eight out of 10. There's a pretty high impact here. So six times eight is 48 on that one as well. Now we're gonna go through the reveal of our lead domino matrix. So what we did again is we refute we reflected on the decision priority scoring of urgency and impact for four decisions. And now we're gonna review the scoreboard and talk through what our lead domino is, aka which decision we should start with making, just making decisions. That's all we're talking about here, friends. And then which one we go to next? Just making decisions. Isn't it funny to think about it that way? But you can do it. I know you can. So your lead domino here is raising your prices at a score of 72. That is where you're gonna start. The additional decisions that came in is getting clear on who you serve at 48 points, dropping what is not working at 48 points, and making the higher at 35 points. So let's talk through this together. Your lead domino is pricing, raising your pricing, and it's not even close to the other decisions. So this is the decision you work on this week. The others are real and they matter, but they can wait. Because until you've dealt with the pricing decision, everything else is really harder than it needs to be. One decision that is the highest score, and that is your week's work. Urgency without impact is just noise. Impact without urgency means you have time. You want both together. A prioritized list is one thing moving beats ten things on that are stuck every single time. So let's go through and name the resistance that comes up when I talk owners through this. So this is kind of the real talk of how you can use the lead domino for your own decisions. And you can do it. So prioritizing feels like you're giving up on everything else. Like something doesn't make it off the top of the list, then it doesn't matter. And that's not what this is. Everything on your list still matters, but not everything on your list has the same amount of attention right now. A cue of 10 things, they're all gonna feel stuck and they don't help anyone. One thing is just moving, and it's the right one. You've put the time and the energy to figure out which one is the right to do and why, and it changes the shape of everything behind it, and that's the benefit of the lead domino matrix and the scoring effort. The other resistance that I hear from my clients is, but everything all feels equally urgent, and I hear it all the time, and I won't say this directly to you. If it all feels equally urgent, that feeling is lying to you. Urgency is a feeling, priority is a calculation. The matrix cuts through the feeling and gives you the calculation. Now, everyone is a different type of business owner. Sometimes people make decisions based on feelings and emotions, first on the numbers and analysis. This is a little bit of analysis that will slow you down to speed up to make those right decisions. And that's where the lead domino, this very simple model, can help you. And no, you don't need to be a math whiz. You can even grab a calculator if you don't like doing multiplication. So a prioritized list with one thing moving beats 10 things that are stuck every single time. And that's not a pep talk, that is physics. You can do it and find that lead domino that works for you. Now, here's what I want you to do before the end of the week, before this week is over. Take a minute to pause and sit down. Maybe write yourself a vote voice note. But I want you to write down every pending decision, all of them. What are the decisions you need to make? I want you to get them out of your head. Sometimes taking a pen and paper or sitting in front of a word doc on your computer really helps. And I want you to score each one on urgency and impact. Score them from one to ten. Then multiply those scores. And then I want you to identify your lead domino. So again, if you have five decisions that are top of mind, identify the impact and urgency score, score one to ten. Multiply those numbers, and then resort your list by the highest domino. That is the only decision you work on this week. Try that. Everything else waits. Genuinely. You will get to it. But do this exercise. Write down every pending decision. All of them. Work the highest numbers first, and everything else can wait. Until next time, continue to amplify your thinking and act on it. I'm Megan Van Wert, and next week we're going to be talking about the difference between growing and scaling and why confusing the two is one of the most expensive mistakes that established business owners make. It is a distinction that changes how you see your whole business. See you then.