She Thinks Big, Episode 273
What if the reason your business feels stuck has nothing to do with how much time you have?
If there’s a proposal that’s been sitting on your desk for ten days, a hire you keep circling back to without ever pulling the trigger, or a pricing model you already know is broken but haven’t touched, you’re not actually out of time. You’re carrying decision debt, a backlog of choices you haven’t made, and it’s quietly draining your energy and capping what your business can earn. You might be winning on the outside, everyone thinks you’re killing it, while internally you’re paying a high interest tax on your own sanity for every maybe you’re still sitting on.
In this episode of She Thinks Big, Andrea breaks down the three hidden costs decision debt charges you, walks through why more permission or more confidence won’t get you out of it at this stage, and introduces the FLY filter, a repeatable way to make hard calls fast, even when you’re tired, triggered, or overwhelmed.
In this episode
What is decision debt, and why isn’t it a time management problem?
Decision debt is the backlog of choices you haven’t made, the hire you’re circling, the price you know is wrong, the proposal still sitting there. It’s not about needing more hours. It’s a structural gap: you have the information to decide, you just haven’t. Time doesn’t pay down debt. Deciding does.
Andrea’s point in the episode is blunt: you don’t need a better calendar, you need to stop carrying unresolved choices as if they cost nothing while they sit there. Every one of them is quietly compounding.
What does an unmade hiring decision actually cost you?
Every month you delay on a hire you’ve already vetted, you’re not necessarily saving money. You may be losing the capacity that hire would have added. Andrea uses an example of $10,000 a month in lost capacity to illustrate how expensive hesitation can become. Your own cost depends on the role and the business.
That reframe matters because it turns a soft, emotional stall (“I want to be thorough”) into a cost you can examine. Once you calculate what the delay is costing your business, it’s easier to act on.
Why does “let me think about it” quietly cost you your team’s trust?
Every time you tell your team you’ll get back to them, you’re teaching them that nothing moves without your sign-off. That’s not caution, it’s a slow downgrade of your own leadership, one delayed answer at a time.
Andrea calls this the one that stings the most, because it doesn’t feel like a mistake in the moment. It feels responsible. But the pattern it trains into a team is the opposite of what most owners actually want.
What’s the opportunity cost of decision debt, and why can’t you see it?
While your attention is stuck monitoring a weak hire or a shaky service line, you’re too mentally full to notice the real openings in front of you. Andrea calls this the most dangerous tax because it’s invisible. It costs you the future, not just the present.
This is the tax with no line item. You won’t find it on a P&L. It shows up later, as the opportunity someone else took because you were still deciding.
Why doesn’t giving yourself more permission solve this?
Permission was the right tool earlier in your business, when you needed space to be seen or to charge more. At a higher revenue level, permission is too slow and too dependent on how you feel that day. What you need instead is a repeatable way to decide, not another pep talk.
Andrea references two earlier episodes here, episode 65 on giving yourself permission, and episode 152 on decision fatigue, both worth a listen if this stage sounds familiar.
What is the FLY filter, and how does it help you decide faster?
FLY stands for Future, Love the logic, and Yield. Future asks whether the choice serves who you’re becoming, not who’s comfortable today. Love the logic asks whether the math holds up, regardless of how you feel. Yield asks whether the decision closes a loop or opens three more.
Andrea also references episode 271 on the capacity audit here, since Yield is really a capacity question in disguise.
What’s the real choice this episode is asking you to make?
Stay in decision debt, carrying the backlog and the always-on brain that comes with it, or pay it down: run your maybe list through the FLY filter and start making the calls that are already logically clear. Andrea’s case: the cost of staying stuck almost always outweighs the cost of the decision you’re avoiding.
Resources mentioned
Episode 152: How to Combat Decision Fatigue in Everyday Life
Episode 271: You’re Not Stuck, You’re Capped (And It’s Costing You $1M)
About Andrea Liebross
Andrea Liebross is a business coach, speaker, and author of the bestselling book She Thinks Big. She works with women who run established businesses, the ones who look successful from the outside but feel stuck in the day-to-day of managing growth. She’s also the host of the She Thinks Big podcast.
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If you are currently staring at a half written job description, a proposal that's been sitting on the desk for 10 days, a pricing model you know is broken but you're too tired to fix, and my favorite, a half done business plan, you aren't stuck. You're in what I call decision debt. If you're listening to this while you're staring at a to-do list that hasn't moved in three weeks, or if you woke up at 2 a.m. Re-litigating a conversation you thought you finished at 2 p.m. I have a diagnostic truth for you You don't have a time problem You have decision debt You have so many unmade decisions that it is sucking the energy out of you. You are in energy debt and Yes, you may currently be winning On the outside, externally, everyone thinks you're killing it, but you are frying internally because you're carrying a backlog of maybes that have become a high interest tax on your sanity. Think about that high potential client who asked for a proposal 10 days ago. You told them, I just need another week to finalize the details. You told yourself you were being thorough or diligent. How noble. But let's be honest. you would be expensive. That hesitation didn't just cost you a five-figure deal, it cost you the authority you spent years building. So while you're perfecting the PDF, your competitor, who decided in 60 seconds and already sent over the proposal, is already onboarding your prospective client. So no, you aren't being careful. You are ghosting your own growth. Most gurus will tell you to manage your calendar or buy a better planner. I'm telling you to manage your liabilities. Every unmade choice sitting on your desk is a high interest payday loan you've taken out against your future self. So you are essentially paying a premium to stay an operator when you're already qualified to be that architect of your business. Today, we aren't learning how to decide. We've done that. Check out episode 60, 61, 62. Today, we are performing surgery on the backlog that is capping your revenue and keeping your brain always on. I'm Andrea Liebross, and this is She Thinks Big. Today, we liquidate the debt. So in episode 152, I talked about decision fatigue. Yes, we will link all of these episodes in the show notes. That decision fatigue, it's the feeling of being wiped out by the end of the day. But let's be real. At your level, fatigue is just the check engine light. The actual engine failure is decision debt. You aren't tired. You're carrying an unlisted liability on your balance sheet. You're essentially trying to build a $5 million skyscraper on a 200,000 foundation that is cracking under the weight of everything you haven't decided yet. So I want to share with you a couple taxes that you might be paying. There is the common tax that we all know about, the financial tax. So let's look at the numbers. What is this decision debt costing you? Well, that hire that you've been vetting for three months or thinking about or trying to decide if you can afford, you think you're saving money by not paying their salary yet, by not bringing them on board yet, but you're actually losing $10,000 a month in lost capacity. And that is a 100 % interest rate on your hesitation. And every month you wait to pull the trigger on a needle mover is a month of revenue you can never recoup. So you aren't being frugal or smart. You are paying a premium for the status quo. So there is that financial tax. Now the second tax, I want to call the identity tax. And it's kind of like a self-imposed downgrade on your own identity. And I think this is the one that stings the most. So every time you tell your team, I'll get back to you, or let me think about that, you are training them that you are the bottleneck. You are reinforcing a culture where nothing moves without your permission. You are essentially paying a premium to feel small to stay stuck in the 200,000 level operator role when you already qualified for the $5 million architect seat. So when you don't decide or when you tell them you'll get back to them or you'll look into it and then you actually do and you spend a lot of time on that, you are actually choosing a self-imposed downgrade of your own leadership. You're not acting like a leader any. anymore, or maybe you never did. You're still acting like the operator. So that's what I call the identity tax. Now the third tax is really the opportunity tax. And that's kind of where your blind spot is. And I think this is the most dangerous cost because it's the one you can't see. So while you're monitoring a failing service line or this mediocre team member, you're keeping them on probation in your head. Your brain is too full of maybe to see the yeses. There is a $100,000 gap in your market right now that only you can fill, but you can't see it because your mental bandwidth is occupied by the ghosts of decisions you should have made in March. So decision debt doesn't just cost you money, it costs you the future of your business. So this is where I think all of this leads to. It leads to the self-help plateau, I'm gonna call it. Okay? I see this all the time. I know exactly where you are. You've read the business books, you've filled the journals, you've probably listened to a million podcasts, and I love podcasts. You have had the vibe checks in the morning. You have done morning meditation. You've done the five, four, three, two, one rule. And you know intellectually that you should fire that toxic client who's eating your team's morale. You know you need to make that high level hire. But when you actually sit down at your desk to pull the trigger, your internal system just fails. You freeze. You decide to monitor it for another week. And what's happening is that you are waiting for a surge of confidence. I just need to know more. I just need to have more experience. I just need to feel more confident. It's never coming. That surge is never coming because you're looking for a psychological solution to what really is a structural problem. So way back in episode 65, we talked about giving yourself permission. And honestly, that probably was the right tool for you then. When you're starting out, you need to give yourself permission to be seen, to charge more, to take up space. But now most of my listeners, and this is probably you, you're in that mid six, seven figure level in revenue and permission is too slow. It's too heavy. It relies too much on how you feel on a Tuesday morning. So I would argue that you don't need permission to fire a client who's draining your energy. You need a system. that proves mathematically and strategically that they are a drain on your yield. You don't need to feel ready to hire. You need a spine of your business that shows you exactly where your capacity is capped. So this is exactly why your growth has stalled. You're trying to use, I'll call it like stage two feelings, stage two of your business feelings to solve this stage four structural problem. You know, at 200,000 K, you could manage the business with your gut, but when you're getting close to a million, your gut is way too loud and way too tired. And if you are waiting to feel like a CEO before you act like one, You're going to stay in that operator mode forever. So you don't need a mindset shift. You need really this decision architecture that makes the hard choices the only logical choices. So really what this means is you need to stop asking if you have permission and start asking if you have the infrastructure to hold the growth you say you want. This is where you stop being the voice in her head and you start being the architect in her business. So how do we stop the spin? How do we stop you asking yourself for permission? How do we stop paying that high interest tax on your energy? How do we get out of decision debt? So you don't do it with more willpower. You do it with this infrastructure and... You really need at this place in your business, you need this repeatable decision-making logic that works even when you're tired, even when you're triggered, and especially for when you're overwhelmed. And for my clients, that repeatable decision-making logic, it starts with what I call the fly filter. Now you might've heard me talk about this before, but I'm gonna share it with you again. So let's dig into this fly filter. The F, it stands for future. And this first kind of F question here is simple, but brutal. Does the choice you need to make or does the choice that's lying in front of you. serve future you? Does it serve the woman running a $5 million company? Or are you just protecting the woman who is exhausted today? Most of your current decision debt is a result of you trying to keep your current self comfortable. But your current self is the one who is stuck. The $5 million version of you doesn't monitor bad hires for six months. She decides in six minutes because she knows her time is the most expensive asset in the building. And if the decision doesn't align with your future self, your future identity, it's a no, even if it feels really safe right now. So that brings me to L in the fly filter. L stands for love. And I'm gonna say something that might surprise you coming from a coach. With this love L, I don't really care how you feel about the move. I care if you love the logic. And usually if you love the logic, you're going to grow in to loving how it feels. When we look at a pivot or a high stakes investment, I'm asking, is this a sound choice on paper? Does the math work? Does the strategy hold water even if your gut is screaming in terror, which it probably is? So, because high level leadership is about being able to say, I feel terrified, I am so scared, but I love the logic in this, so we're gonna move forward. If you can't love the logic, then you're just gambling with your overhead. Because loving the logic usually does lead to loving the decision. So that's what L stands for. Now Y in the fly filter stands for yield. And this is where this capacity audit comes in. We talked a little bit about capacity in episode 271. So if you haven't listened to that one, go back. But if we look at this yield, I'm not just talking about the ROI on the dollar. That is one kind of yield. I'm talking about the ROI also on your mental margin. So does this decision. close an open loop, or does it create three new ones? If you launch that new project, does it give you freedom, or does it just yield more activity? A stage four CEO only says yes to things that have a high yield of traction, a high yield of strategic traction. So if it's just gonna add more weight to your backpack without moving the needle on your vision, it's a distraction. disguised as an opportunity. So when I talk about this backpack, I always picture like a big Santa sack. So if this decision is just going to make that Santa sack heavy, heavier, then I'm not sure it's right for you. All right. So what I'm asking you to do is run your maybe list through this fly filter. And when you do that, I'm going to guarantee that this mental clutter or fog finally lifts. And suddenly that $30,000 investment or that difficult termination isn't a hard choice anymore. It's the only logical choice. And you kind of can then stop maybe-ing your growth and you really start architecting it. You start moving into being that architect of your business. All right, so you've got a choice. You're standing at the fork of the road. And I want to be very clear about what the fork, the two paths that come off the fork, what they look like. Choice A. Choice A is the status quo. It's keeping the debt. It's keeping the always on brain that won't let you sleep because you're too busy being the engine for everyone else. It's probably continuing to be the smartest and the most exhaustive person in the business. and you're gonna just look back a year from now and realize your revenue and your life look exactly as they do today. So choice A is essentially a decision to stay a high paid operator with lots of decision debt who is just waiting for the burnout. And like, again, you could stay there. I'm not judging. Go for it, stay. But choice B is to really liquidate this decision debt or liquidate the backlog of maybes. and it's deciding that your mental margin is worth more than the maybe that you've been clinging to. It's really choosing this architect path. And that my friends, I think is really, if I could give you my opinion, is really the choice to make. Because here's the truth. The cost of all of this indecision is probably way more than any investment is that you are going to make. So sometimes people ask me, I don't know if this coaching investment is really worth it. And I always say, well, what is the cost of staying where you are? And the cost of staying where you are is usually a whole lot more than the cost of whatever investment is that you are considering. Because you're already paying through lost revenue and lost sleep. and you don't have the results to show for it. So I really want you to consider the investments you're making. inside coaching, for example, we don't just chat, we don't brainstorm. We are performing this strategic triage and we really take every single open loop draining your bank account and we close it. We take every single loop that's draining your energy and we close it. And then we build this map. So you never have to relitigate a decision at 2 a.m. on a Tuesday ever again. And I think that is one of the best investments you can make. If you can get your sleep back and your sanity back and have your revenue go up, I think it's a win-win. So we're trying to really align your energy with where you want to go so that you can finally move with that velocity. And it's a little bit like performing surgery in a sense, because if you are done being the bottleneck, we need to go in and kind of clean up the bottlenecks and get you ready to build the business that actually holds, that actually does what you want it to do. So I want you right now to think about this. Are you ready to get rid of the bottlenecks?
