Making Big Decisions

Originally sent exclusively to The Letter subscribers on April 28th. Want to be the first to get my personal newsletter in your inbox every Monday at 7am? Subscribe for free here.

I am off to China on a mega seven-day jaunt across the world’s second-largest economy. I’ll be covering more miles than Eddie Stobart.

These trips are exhausting both physically and mentally, just how I like it.

I can hear your brain cogs whispering, “Get this James Sinclair a doctor!”

My apple health app can’t even compute the steps I’ll do, the travelling to and from hotels, and sleep deprivation are akin to having a newborn.

The brain energy required when ordering millions of dollars’ worth of gear on the fly is quite something!

I morph into a Carol Vorderman tribute act - calculating yen to dollars, then dollars to pounds, fumbling around my brain cells to determine if this new idea or product would work.

Should I buy 10,000 or even 30,000 pieces of this or that?

Where will I store it all? Will it move quickly? How long do the factory take to make said product? Will I have enough storage space in the UK?

What a merry-go-round! I come here twice a year now to find new ideas and products and catch up with the factories we use.

People often think that China is cheap; this was true some decades ago.

Now, they excel because they have the scale, resources, and power to get things done.

We’ve worked with manufacturers all over the globe - from Turkey to India, Europe to America - none can do it like China, they may be cheaper for no one on the planet competes with the worlds factory.

A population of a billion people hopscotches them ahead of everyone else.

Coming to China is a significant decision for me these days.

It’s valuable time that is all-consuming; choosing how to spend my minutes is of crucial importance.

I do it because it saves money, makes money, and fills me with innovative ideas.

I justify my time expenditure when it falls into the category of “very important but not urgent tasks.”

Get yourself going on this stuff, and it’s only a matter of time before you reach the level of being “highly effective.”

Most people do urgent tasks on repeat. Get others to do that. So you can focus on very important but not urgent tasks.

Simply put, you should be growing your business and putting teams together to be operating the business. 

Big decisions seem to be turning up like traffic on the M25 for me at the moment.

I am receiving more opportunities than ever, and I want to pursue them all.

One of these new opportunities is a crossroads that could be life changing for me.

It’s not another business but it will be a considerable time commitment and potential poke around my personal life that is more than usual.

The upside is I could really help people. Like really help. 

1. When these opportunities come across my desk, I use a couple of tricks to know which way to lean:
   
   1. Ask some people you really trust who push you forward and are either ahead of you or on par with you - not family, friends, or small thinkers.

   
   2. Write a list of pros and cons and ensure the pros outweigh the cons. Use pen and paper here; the art of writing acts like a walk in nature, so do that too.

   
   3. Would your older self be disappointed if you passed on this opportunity because you’d rather lean into comfort over the challenges that could be so worth it if you said yes?

   4. What’s the real downside, and can you cope with it?
   
   If there’s an overall net benefit to the above, I say go for it.
   
   I love quotes. You lovely lot send me some real corkers that I share on the podcast.

One that I particularly love when it comes to making decisions is:

“When you’re in your own lane, there is less traffic.”

Lean in and embrace the difficulty. You’ll be stronger for it, and when you’re stronger, you become dependable. When you’re dependable, you’ll be offered opportunities that place you at crossroads.

In other news….

Have you heard about crime in multi-storey car parks? It’s just wrong on so many levels.

To your continued success 

Till next week. 

James

PS. The team have started prepping for our big 2 day event in September, Business Masterclass. If you want to spend 48 hours working ON your business and not IN your business, get your tickets here before July 1st to save!