When my oldest son was born, I remember looking down at his tiny, perfect face and having a terrifying thought:

"Somehow, at some point, I'm going to do something that screws him up."

It wasn't the thought itself that scared me. It was the realization that I had no way of knowing which parenting decisions would turn out to be objectively right.

So I opted for the next best thing: trying to avoid obviously bad decisions. I've found that the same principle applies to building a business.

Some may call this strategy too cautious, but in my experience, avoiding bad decisions can get you further than chasing perfect ones.

In practice, that might mean investing heavily before validating your market. Or launching Google Ads before you've given people a compelling reason to choose you.

The biggest business mistakes happen when we commit resources before we've earned the right to make that decision.

In other words, you can avoid a great deal of wasted time, money, and heartache by making decisions in the right order and in line with your current reality.

That's why I spend much more time identifying the problem than rushing to prescribe the solution.

Choosing a niche, redesigning a website, investing in SEO, launching Google Ads, or changing your fee structure, the order of those decisions matters just as much as the decisions themselves.

You don't have to make perfect decisions, but you can avoid many expensive ones.

See you next week,

Avivit

P.S. If you know another therapist building a private-pay practice, feel free to forward them this email. They can subscribe here.