📍  Your business isn't always suffering because you made the wrong decision. Sometimes it's suffering because you refuse to make one at all. And if that statement makes you uncomfortable, good, because we're getting dangerously close to the end of two thousand and twenty-six, and some of you are about to carry the exact same problems into twenty twenty-seven that you promised yourself you would fix this year.

Welcome back to No Silver Spoons. I'm Sarah Beth Herman, .. for those of you who are new here, let me tell you a little bit about who I am and why I have such strong opinions about running a business.

I currently own seven companies. I've spent years building businesses, hiring employees, developing leadership teams, managing operations, and making the financial decisions that come with keeping companies alive and growing. I'm not somebody who built a company years ago and now spends all of my time talking about what other business owners should be doing.

I'm still very much so in it. In fact, one of my seven companies is a baby, and I mean a baby. I launched it eight weeks ago. So while I'm managing established businesses with hundreds of employees, thousands of clients, departments, and all the responsibilities that come with them, I am also building something brand new.

I'm figuring out what works, watching the numbers, making decisions about inventory and growth, and thinking about how to scale without creating problems that I'll have to spend the next three years fixing. I know what it's like to operate a company that's been around for years. I know what it's like to start something when you're figuring out what your next week is going to look like, and I think that perspective really does matter.

I have seen hundreds of business owners decide that maybe they're just too good for running the business, so they need someone else to run it for them so that they can start making money on coaching other people. But they've really only been in the business-building phase for sixteen months, twenty months, two years, three years, five years.

I think you need to start listening to someone who's in every single phase of business all at once and individually.

Because I can tell you that the decisions don't necessarily get easier as your business grows. They get more expensive. When you're starting a business, a bad decision might cost you a few hundred dollars and a weekend of your time. When you're operating an established company, a decision you keep putting off can affect employees, customers, contracts, payroll, and the financial health of the entire organization.

And sometimes the most expensive decision is the one that you never actually made, and that's what we're getting into today. Last week, we talked about the problems everybody in your company has to learn to live with, the broken processes, the recurring complaints, and the things employees quietly work around because nobody seems particularly interested in fixing them.

But I want to take that conversation a little further today. Because sometimes the problem isn't that leadership doesn't know what's wrong. Sometimes leadership knows exactly what's wrong and just doesn't want to deal with what fixing it will require. And with only weeks left in 2026, I think it's time we had that conversation

 This week I had a leadership meeting with my team at Dentistry Support, and we were talking about collaboration. We've been spending time developing our leaders, and I want them thinking about more than whether their own department is getting its work done. I want them to understand what it means to support the people around them and contribute to the success of the entire company.

During that meeting, we asked a question that I think every leader should consider. If somebody on your team needed help, would they feel comfortable coming to you? Would they consider you an easy approach? Now, I want you to really think about that, because most leaders would probably tell you they are approachable.

They'll tell you they have an open door policy. They'll say their employees know that they can come to them whenever they need something. But I'm not asking what you believe about yourself. I'm asking what your employees would say. If somebody is struggling with a deadline, are you the person they feel comfortable calling?

If they're confused about something, do they feel like they can ask a question without being made to feel incompetent? And if another department needs support, are you somebody who immediately starts looking for a way to help them, or are you somebody who explains why it isn't your responsibility? That last one is particularly important to me because I think we've developed this habit in business where people become so focused on their individual responsibilities that they tend to forget they are part of something bigger.

They manage their department, they complete their assigned tasks, they attend their meetings. But when something starts going wrong outside their immediate area, they assume somebody else will handle it. And that's where I think leadership can become a little too comfortable.

. I don't want managers who only know how to manage their own workload. I want leaders who recognize when the company needs them And I think that's a decision we make every day. Let me give you an example. Imagine you're leading a department, and you know your team is behind.

You know there's a deadline approaching. You know the work isn't going to be completed on time. What do you do? Do you wait until somebody asks why it wasn't finished? Do you explain that your team was short-staffed, or that somebody had an appointment, or the workload was unusually heavy? Those things may all be true, and I want accurate information about why something happened, but I also want to know what you did once you realized there was a problem.

Did you ask another department for help? Did you review the workload and determine what absolutely had to be completed first? Did you communicate with the people who would be affected? Did you bring the issue to leadership while there was still time to do something about it? Because if the first time I'm hearing about a problem is after the deadline has passed, I'm gonna have questions, and one of them is going to be why nobody made a decision sooner.

I think some leaders have gotten very comfortable explaining problems instead of solving them. They can give you a detailed explanation of everything that went wrong. They can tell you who was unavailable, what the circumstances were, and why the work couldn't be completed. And sometimes those explanations are completely legitimate.

But leadership doesn't end with an explanation. I need to know what happens next. I need to know who is responsible for getting things back on track. And I need to know that the next time something similar happens, we're gonna realize it a whole lot earlier. That's what collaboration should look like inside of a company.

It doesn't mean everybody has to work around the clock. It doesn't mean employees don't deserve time off or that their personal commitments don't matter. It means leaders take responsibility for communicating, coordinating, and finding solutions rather than simply allowing a problem to become somebody else's emergency.

And if you're in a leadership position, I think that's a reasonable expectation  Now for a moment, let's bring this back to the decisions you're avoiding. Maybe you have a manager who's been struggling for months. They're a good person. Everybody likes them.

They've been with the company for years, but their department consistently falls behind. Employees aren't receiving clear direction, other managers keep stepping in to help, and every time you address it, things improve temporarily before returning to exactly where they were before.

You see, I believe in coaching people. I believe in giving employees opportunities to improve, and I think leadership has a responsibility to provide clear expectations, appropriate training, and the resources people need to succeed. But at some point, I have to ask myself whether I am genuinely helping that manager develop or whether I am avoiding a decision because I don't wanna deal with what happens afterward.

Because while I'm giving that person another thirty days, everybody else is still working around the problem, and that isn't fair either. Sometimes we become so concerned about being fair to one employee that we forget our decisions affect an entire team. If a manager isn't leading effectively, their employees feel it.

If accountability is inconsistent, other leaders feel it, and if customers are being affected, the business feels it. So yes, give people a fair opportunity to improve, but establish expectations, measure progress, actually follow through, and when the information tells you something needs to change, make the decision.

You can't spend the rest of the year having the same conversation and expecting a different result. I also think business owners struggle with decisions because we're personally connected to the people and the companies that we've built Guys, I understand loyalty. I remember the people who helped me when my businesses were smaller.

I remember the customers who trusted us early on, and I remember the employees who stayed through difficult seasons. Those relationships are really important to me. But being grateful for what somebody contributed five years ago doesn't automatically mean the arrangement you have today is still the right one.

You can appreciate somebody and recognize that their role needs to change. You can respect a customer and still acknowledge that the relationship is no longer financially sustainable. You can care about an employee while holding them accountable. I think we make those decisions harder when we assume that changing something means we're somehow being disloyal.. Sometimes it means you're taking responsibility for the company that exists today instead of continuing to operate as though it's the company you had five years ago. And when you're responsible for employees, customers, contracts, and payroll, you have to consider the bigger picture. Let's actually talk about money for a minute, because we're in the final quarter of 2026, and I want you looking very carefully at what you're spending.

Imagine you're paying twelve hundred dollars a month for a software that your employees have complained about all year long. It doesn't integrate properly. People are duplicating work. You've actually researched alternatives, and you know there is probably a better option. But switching platforms sounds exhausting.

You have to move information, train employees, and deal with the disruption, so you decide to wait. At twelve hundred dollars a month, that's fourteen thousand four hundred dollars a year. Now, I'm not suggesting you cancel a system without reviewing contracts, security requirements, implementation costs, and the actual financial implications.

That would be irresponsible. But if you've already done that work, and the only reason you're still paying for something that doesn't serve your company is that you don't feel like dealing with the transition, I want you to recognize what you're doing. You are paying to avoid making a decision. And it isn't just software.

Maybe you're continuing to offer a service that hasn't been profitable in months. Maybe you're spending money on marketing that isn't producing measurable results. Maybe you've been putting off reviewing a vendor agreement because you know the conversation's going to be really difficult. Or maybe you've been telling yourself that you'll finally address payroll efficiencies in January.

But why January? If the problem exists in October, why are you waiting another two months to begin understanding it? You don't have to make a reckless decision. I'm not asking you to do that. But you do need to stop confusing postponement with financial responsibility Sometimes waiting is the most expensive choice available, and I think this becomes especially important when you're trying to scale a business.

I mentioned earlier that one of my companies is only eight weeks old. When you're building something new, you have to pay attention to what you're creating because the decisions you make early can become the systems you're operating with years later

if I establish a bad process now and then grow the company around it, I haven't eliminated the problem, I've just made it bigger. And the same thing happens with established businesses. You have a department that's struggling, but instead of fixing the underlying issue, you hire another employee. You have a manager who isn't making decisions, so you create another approval process.

You have a customer service problem, so you add another person to monitor complaints. And eventually, you're spending more money to manage the consequences of decisions that you actually never made. And that's not the kind of scaling that I want, and I'm sure it's not the kind of scaling you want. I actually want growth that makes financial sense.

I want employees who have the tools and leadership they need to do their jobs, and I want systems that can support the company as it gets bigger. That requires making decisions before the business forces you to make them under much worse circumstances. There's a concept in behavioral economics, and I've talked about this on previous episodes.

It's called loss aversion. It's associated with the work of psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. The idea is that people often feel the possibility of losing something more strongly than they feel the possibility of gaining something of equal value. And I think that's really relevant to business owners because sometimes we're not choosing between a good situation and a bad situation.

We're choosing between a familiar problem and an uncertain solution. You know the current software doesn't work, but at least you understand its problems, right? We can deal with that for a little while longer. You know a customer relationship is difficult, but you're familiar with the revenue. You know a manager isn't performing, but replacing or restructuring the role introduces uncertainty.

And uncertainty can be uncomfortable, so we stay where we are. But here's what I want you to remember. The current situation isn't free. It has consequences too. And while you're spending time worrying about what might happen if you make a decision, your employees may already be dealing with what is happening because you  haven't.

That's the part I want you to pay attention to. I also think it's important that we talk about a decision that business owners don't always recognize that they're avoiding

Maybe the decision you need to make is to stop being the person everybody has to ask. You've hired managers, right? You've built departments. You have people with leadership titles. But somehow every important question still ends up on your desk. I do understand how that happens. When you've built something yourself, you know how you want it done.

You know the standards, you know what the customers expect, and sometimes you know you could make the decision faster than explaining it to someone else. But if every manager has to ask me before they can solve a problem, what exactly am I developing? Am I building leaders, or am I building a very expensive approval system?

And that brings me right back to our collaboration meeting. If employees don't feel comfortable approaching their managers and managers don't feel empowered to make decisions, the entire company starts waiting. Every question becomes a delay, every problem needs another approval, and eventually the CEO is wondering why nobody takes initiative.

Well, have we actually given them the authority to do that? Have we made it clear which decisions belong to them? Have we taught them how to evaluate a situation and take responsibility for the outcome? And when they make a reasonable decision that isn't exactly what we would have done, do we coach them, or do we immediately take control again?

 Those are questions I think every business owner needs to consider. Because if you want a leadership team, you have to allow people to lead. And if you have managers who have been given that authority but consistently refuse to use it, that's another decision you may need to address.  This episode of No Silver Spoons is sponsored by Dentistry Support.

And I wanna connect this conversation to something I see in dental practices. There are dental practices that know their accounts receivable needs attention. They know that eligibility needs to be better. They know the phones are not where they need to be. So what are you doing? How are you making the choice to change today?

Dentistry support helps dental practices with eligibility verification, billing, accounts receivable, and phones, so the responsibilities have consistent support and clearer ownership. Visit dentistrysupport.com/freetraining if you're not ready for that support but still want guidance on how your practice could be better

I wanna take the rest of this podcast episode, and I wanna spend some time talking about something that happens when you continue that postponement of making those difficult decisions. They start to follow you around. You know the conversation is waiting. You know the financial issue hasn't been resolved.

You can feel it at the base of your neck. You can feel the stress welling up right now just as I'm saying it. You know a department is struggling, and even when you're working on something completely unrelated, that issue is still sitting in the back of your mind. I've experienced that,

there have been many times when I finally address something and realize that thinking about the decision took more energy than actually making it. Not every decision works that way. Some are genuinely difficult and have consequences you can't neatly resolve.

But I think we make leadership harder on ourselves when we allow unresolved situations to occupy our attention indefinitely. And with the holidays approaching, I want you to think about how many of those situations you're planning to carry into even December. How many things are you gonna spend the holidays worrying about that you could begin addressing this week?

How many more meetings are you going to have about the same problem? How many times are you gonna tell yourself you'll handle it after the new year? At some point, you have to decide that enough is enough. You are responsible for a business. People depend on you to make decisions, and that responsibility doesn't disappear because the conversation is uncomfortable.

So here's what I want you to do before the end of this week. I want you to identify three decisions you've been avoiding, one financial decision, one operational decision, and one leadership decision. Maybe the financial decision is finally reviewing the expense that hasn't been producing results.

Maybe the operational decision is fixing a process that your employees have been complaining about for months And maybe the leadership decision is having a conversation you've been postponing or giving a manager the authority they need to actually do their job. Write them down, then put a date next to each one.

If you need information, identify exactly what information is missing and who's responsible for getting it. If you need legal or financial advice, schedule it. If you need to have a conversation, get it on the calendar. But I want you to stop treating these things like ideas that you're gonna revisit someday.

You have the rest of October, November, and December, and realistically, some of that time is going to disappear into the holidays, year-end financial responsibilities, and everything else that comes with running a business. You don't have as much time as you think. If something requires action before the end of the year, start right now.

Stop waiting. And if a decision genuinely needs to wait until twenty twenty-seven, I want that to be intentional. I want you to know why you're waiting. What is that gonna cost you to wait? And when are you going to revisit it? I don't want you arriving in January with the same unresolved problem simply because you never got around to actually making a decision And I wanna give you one more assignment that connects directly to what I discussed with my leadership team this week.

Ask the people you lead whether they feel comfortable coming to you when they need help, and then listen to the answer. Don't ask the question if you're only interested in hearing yes. If somebody tells you they hesitate to approach you because you're always busy, because they don't wanna bother you, or because they don't feel supported when they ask for help, I want you to take it seriously, not personally.

Because if your employees don't feel comfortable telling you when something is wrong, you may be making decisions without information you desperately need. And if they do come to you but nothing ever happens, eventually they're gonna stop asking. I don't want that for your company. I want leaders who are approachable and accountable.

I want managers who recognize when their department needs support and communicate before things become emergencies. I want employees who understand that collaboration is part of how a successful company operates. I don't wanna hear, "Not my circus, not my monkeys." And I really want business owners who understand that being approachable doesn't mean avoiding accountability.

You can be supportive and still have high expectations. You can listen to somebody's concerns and still expect them to take responsibility for their work, and you can care about your employees while making decisions that protect the future of the company.  That is the kind of leadership I want us building.

So I'll leave you with this. I think people sometimes look at successful business owners and assume we have some extraordinary ability to make the right decision every time, and I can assure you that's not how it works. I have made decisions that turned out incredibly well, and I've made decisions I would absolutely handle differently today I've had to change direction.

I've had to admit something wasn't working. I've had to make decisions that weren't particularly popular. But I don't believe success comes from getting every decision right. I think a significant part of it comes from being willing to confront what's happening inside your business and take responsibility for what needs to happen next.

And that's what I want from you during these final weeks of 2026. I want you to stop carrying problems into another year simply because you've become accustomed to them. Have the conversation you've been avoiding. Review the numbers, address the process. Give your leaders the authority to lead, and hold them accountable for what they do with it.

And when somebody comes to you asking for help, be the kind of leader who actually helps them move toward a solution. You still have time to make meaningful changes before the year ends, but you have to get moving because the calendar isn't going to fix what leadership keeps postponing. Next week, we're gonna talk about something that happens as companies grow.

You hire managers, create departments, and put people in leadership positions, but somehow everybody's still waiting on you. And if you're the CEO who has to approve everything, answer every question, and solve every problem, we need to talk about whether you've actually built a leadership team or simply given people titles.

I'm Sarah Beth Herman, and this is No Silver  📍 Spoons. I'll catch you on the next episode