169 | The Cost of Indecision: Why Waiting Is the Most Expensive Call You’ll Ever Make

There's a decision sitting on your desk right now. You know exactly which one I'm talking about. Maybe it's the tech you already know isn't going to make it. Maybe it's the truck you keep saying you'll buy next quarter. Maybe it's the price increase you've written four times and never sent. And every morning you look at it and you think the same thing: let me get a little more information first. Here's what nobody tells you about that: not making a decision is a decision. And most of the time, it's the most expensive one you'll ever make. Because while you're waiting, the problem is growing, your team is watching, and your momentum is bleeding out a little at a time — so slowly that you never even notice the day it died.

Today, I'm going to show you what indecision is actually costing you, why you keep doing it even though you already know the answer, and four moves to break the loop before you leave your shop tonight.

Welcome back to the Freedom Blueprint Podcast. On the show, we're focused on helping leaders in the home service industries grow their business, lead stronger, and build something they're proud of. Today, we're talking about something that quietly holds more leaders back than any strategy problem ever will: indecision. Not a bad decision, not a wrong decision — no decision at all.

Here's what I've watched happen over and over again. Leaders don't get stuck because they're incapable. They get stuck because they wait too long. So let's get into it.

You think you're being careful. But you're not being careful — you're being expensive. Waiting doesn't remove the risk of a bad call. It just moves the cost somewhere you don't have to look at for a while.

And before I turn this mirror on you, I needed to turn it on myself first, because I've done this. I had a tech named Jimmy. Good guy — everybody liked him. And in month two, I knew. I knew he wasn't going to make it. I saw it in the callbacks. I heard it in how the other guys talked around him. And I felt it every single time his name came up on the board.

I let it go 11 more months. Eleven months. I told myself I was being patient. I told myself I was being fair to him. But I want to be honest with you about what it actually was: I didn't want to have the conversation. That's it. That was the whole deal holding me back.

And the day I finally did it, do you know what I said out loud in my truck? "I should have done that a year ago." Every single leader I've ever coached through this says the exact same sentence. Nobody ever walked out of that type of conversation and said, "Man, I sure do wish I'd have waited longer."

So let's talk about what this is actually costing you — and I don't mean in theory. I mean what it's doing to your business and your people right now.

The first thing indecision kills is momentum. And momentum is the whole game in this industry. When things are moving, energy is high, your team is engaged, and progress just happens on its own. Indecision stops that cold. Projects stall. Conversations get pushed. Opportunities walk right past you.

And here's the part that makes it so dangerous: it never feels like a big decision in the moment. A week turns into a month. A month turns into a quarter. And then one day you're sitting there wondering why everything feels stuck. It didn't get stuck — you parked it.

But the second cost is one that actually keeps me up at night: your team. Because your team doesn't expect you to be perfect. They really don't. But they do expect direction. And when you delay, they start asking questions you never hear: What's the plan here? Are we actually moving forward? Does any of this even matter?

And when nobody answers those questions, they don't quit — they just stop bringing you their best. They stop bringing ideas. They stop taking initiative, because people don't do their best work when they're unsure.

I want you to sit with this one: your team already knows about the decisions you're avoiding. They knew before you did. They're not waiting to find out what you're going to do — they're waiting to find out if you're going to do anything. And every day you don't, they learn a little more about the kind of leader you are.

That's the hidden cost. It doesn't show up on your P&L. It shows up in your culture — which ultimately does end up showing up on your P&L, just not as a line item.

So if we all know this, why do we keep doing it? Because indecision isn't a logic problem — it's a fear problem. And it shows up in a few different ways.

The first one is fear of the wrong call. You've convinced yourself that this decision is permanent — that if you get it wrong, you're stuck with it forever. So you'd rather make no call than the wrong call. But here's the truth: almost nothing you decide this week is permanent. You can hire again, you can adjust a price, you can change a schedule. Most decisions are a door, not a wall.

The second one is waiting for certainty. This one is sneaky because it looks so responsible from the outside. You want more data. You want one more month of the numbers. You want to see how it all plays out. And you will never get to a hundred percent — that number doesn't exist in business. If you're waiting for certainty, you're not gathering information, you're hiding behind it.

The third one is the one I fell into with Jimmy: delays feel like kindness. You tell yourself you're giving somebody a chance, that you're being patient, that you're being the good guy. But you're not being kind — you're just moving the pain off of you onto your team. Because while you're being patient with one person, the other 12, 14, 20 are carrying it. And they know exactly what you're doing.

So how do we actually fix this? There's a couple of ways to do it.

Here's the first move: put a date on it. Every open decision in your business gets a deadline, and you write it down where you can see it. Not a "someday" — a date. And you decide that date with whatever information you have in front of you. The deadline is what turns a decision into an action item instead of a feeling you're carrying around.

The second move: sort them. Because you agonize over everything, ask yourself one question — can I undo this? If the answer is yes, decide today. Reversible decisions do not deserve two weeks of your life. If the answer is no, then get counsel, take your time, collect more data — but you still have to put a date on it. Most owners have this exactly backwards: they agonize over the reversible stuff and rush the permanent ones.

Here's the third move: say it out loud. You don't have to have the answer to give your team clarity. You can walk out right now and say, "I haven't made a call on this yet, and here's when I will." That one sentence does more for your team than three more weeks of silence ever will. Because silence doesn't read as thinking — silence reads as nobody is driving this thing.

And here's the fourth move — probably the simplest one, and the one that'll change your week: make the call you've already made. Because here's what I've learned — most of the decisions you're carrying around aren't actual undecisions. They're just unspoken. You already know about Jimmy. You already know about the price. You already know who needs to be promoted, and you already know who needs to go. You're not deciding — you're just delaying the part where you have to say it out loud. So say it out loud.

Here's the double win when you start living this way: your business stops moving at the speed of your hesitation and starts moving at the speed of your decisions. That's the business win. But the team win is even bigger, because your people stop guessing. They stop managing around you. And they start trusting you — not because you're always right, but because you're always moving. That's what confidence in a leader actually is. It isn't certainty, it's consistency.

Remember Jimmy — 11 months I sat on that. And when I finally made the call, the one thing that shocked me wasn't how hard it was, it was how fast my team excelled. They'd been waiting on me the whole time. They were just too loyal to say it.

So here's my challenge to you: one decision — the one that came into your head in the first thirty seconds of this episode — make it today. Not this quarter, not after the busy season. Today.

Before you leave the shop today, pick that decision and make the call. If you can't make the whole call today, then do move number three — go tell your team when it will happen. Leadership requires action, not hesitation. Not hoping it fixes itself. Progress comes from decisions, and decisions create momentum.

So listen — thank you for joining me on today's episode. Make sure you subscribe so you're notified when new episodes drop, and share this with a fellow leader who needs to hear it. Until next time, keep making the calls, and as always — keep crushing it.