The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Better Decisions Faster: Unshakable Confidence When You Need It Most by Paul Epstein

Episode Date: September 26, 2023

Better Decisions Faster: Unshakable Confidence When You Need It Most by Paul Epstein Paulepsteinspeaks.com “Your ultimate guide to confidence and courage—one decision at a time.” —Mel Robbins, New York Times bestselling author of The Five-Second Rule and The High 5 Habit Foreword by Marshall Goldsmith Make better decisions faster with the Head + Heart = Hands Equation The average adult makes more than 35,000 decisions in a day. Most are mundane, but there are a handful that separate businesses that boom or bust, careers that succeed or fail, relationships that make it or don’t, and lives of happiness or hopelessness. These most valuable decisions (MVDs) represent the gap between a green-light life and a red-light life. In more than fifteen years as an NFL and NBA executive, Paul Epstein saw firsthand how, when faced with such an overwhelming number of decisions, even elite performers can rush to bad judgments or become paralyzed by indecision. In Better Decisions Faster, he draws from the green-light wisdom of Fortune 500 CEOs, Olympians, Shark Tank entrepreneurs, world-record holders, Ivy League professors, and Navy SEALs to reveal a revolutionary new system for maximally efficient and confident decision-making. The solve is the Head + Heart = Hands Equation—Head (mindset) + Heart (authenticity) = Hands (action)—which taps into the three most primal and powerful aspects of our humanity to tackle such MVDs as: » Strategy: A or B? » Job: stay or go? » Deal: do it or don’t? » Team: hire or fire? » Financial: invest or pass? » Time: spend on X or Y? » Relationship: in or out? You’re just moments away from making these decisions better, faster, and with unshakable confidence. The playbook is in your hands.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the the big show my family and friends we certainly appreciate you guys coming by what would we ever do without you the chris voss show family the family that loves

you but doesn't judge you at least not as harshly as that time your mother found you coated the dog in yogurt we actually did that as kids one time me and my brother we coated the whole dog in strawberry yogurt can you believe that and And she was very upset with us. But the dog seemed to like it. So, I don't know. We had a great boxer dog. So, there you go. Don't do that, kids.

The attorneys made a footnote here that I have to say, don't coat your dog in yogurt. It's a bad idea. Although, I don't know. The dog might enjoy the yogurt, licking it off. Because dogs eat just about anything these days. But anyway, guys, we have an amazing gentleman on the show. And of course we have the most brightest authors on the show, the billionaires, the newsmakers, the Pulitzer prize winners, the people who are the CEOs, all the people that are the smartest minds are on the Chris Foss show. We have this filter

that we put up where you just put in the Google, all the smartest minds. And then after that we go all the dumbest minds in google and then we make sure those people never show up on the show the dumb ones and we just keep the smart ones which i'm not sure how i made it on the show somehow i snuck in i was on the dumb list we have an amazing gentleman on the show his book launches tomorrow september 26 2023 it's called better decisions faster unshakableshakable Confidence When You Need It Most. Paul Epstein joins us on the show with us today. He'll be talking about this hot new book that he has out. It's got these great reviews on it so far from a lot of people you may have heard of

and know of. Paul Epstein is a former high-level executive for multiple NFL and NBA teams and the best-selling author of The Power of Playing Offense. In 2022, he was named one of Success Magazine's top thought leaders who get results along with Tony Robbins, Brene Brown, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Mel Robbins, and his work has been featured on ESPN, NBC, Fox Business, and USA Today. In 15 years as a leader in the world of pro sports, he helped take NBA teams from the top, or I'm sorry, from the bottom of the league

in revenue to the top two, broke every premium sales revenue metric in Super Bowl history, while in the NFL League's office. He helped open a billion-dollar stadium and founded the San Francisco 49ers Talent Academy, where he's known as the Y Coach. Welcome to the show, Paul. How are you? helped open a billion-dollar stadium, and founded the San Francisco 49ers Talent Academy, where he's known as the Y Coach.

Welcome to the show, Paul. How are you? Hey, Chris. Fired up to be here. I'm fired up to have you. Give us your.com, sir, so we can find you on the interwebs. 100%. paulepsteinspeaks.com. We kept it nice and easy.

paulepsteinspeaks.com. There you go. First topic of the day, why do my Raiders suck? No, I'm just kidding. Well, yeah. And when we're recording this, they were on last night. And you know those spotlight games where it's a Sunday night or a Monday night or a Thursday night, and when you win, you're so happy that the whole country saw you.

But when the opposite happens, eh, well, we'll just leave it at that well at least i mean at least uh garoppolo our quarterback is going for you know a record in inceptions so interceptions so he'll have that going for him and also fun fact especially because he used to be with the niners when i was there my wife has a total crush on him as do a lot of folks in the world so he's i mean jimmy gq nothing wrong with that well he's got that going for him uh meanwhile i still have to hide all the sharp objects in my house every sunday uh it's tough being a raiders fan lifelong but it is what it is so uh thank you very much for coming on the show congratulations on the new book uh give us a 30 000 overview of what's in this new book yeah well

really coming out of the power of playing offense, I was always asked the question, what do people, teams, and organizations that play offense do differently than those that play defense? And so you go back to the lab, you do the research, and you dive into the coaching, the training, the consulting, the speaking, all the ways that you pick up the intel. And my team and I, we really landed on a couple of key things. One, people that play offense, highly decisive too, because they're decisive, they embrace imperfect action. And

then lastly, they don't fall victim to the silent killer, which is the worst decision of them all in decision. And so this book was really written to solve for the problem of paralysis, which we've all at one point suffered. Many of us still do. We've all been indecisive, especially at some high stakes, critical forts in the road. And if you're leading teams, things like decision fatigue and decision overwhelm, they're just real. And so fear is there. Judgment is there. Stress is there. Anxiety is there like decision-making. If you really think about it, Chris, you audit your history, you audit your past and show me a person that makes high quality decisions. I'll show you a person that has a high quality life.

And then the opposite is also true. And so when I realized like, man, there's got to be a better way to make these decisions, but there's no process. There's no system. Like some people are logical. Some people are emotional. Some people risk versus reward, but nobody has a consistent go-to process. And so when I realized that life is very simply a game of decisions, I can nail these things called decisions and be better at them. Then I'm going to thrive and have a better life. Well, I didn't find a solution, so I decided to write it. There you go. Well, I need to read your book because I can't decide whether you're right or wrong.

So I'll have to read it to find out. But help me along with that decision as I procrastinate it. What motivated you to write this book? Why did you find this is important to you and sharing with the world? Well, it goes back to everybody that I know, self-included, we all want a higher quality life and we all want greater confidence. And for me, I mean, you mentioned the whole 15 years in the NFL and NBA and yeah, I was the business guy, but rising from an entry to executive level, you know, you you're around a lot of high performers. You're around a lot of high achievers. And I solely was measuring success based on these external things, these accolades,

these trophies, these awards, this recognition. And I found myself pretty near the top of the mountain in the sports industry. But then once I went to this retreat that changed my life, it was all about finding my why and my core values and connecting them to my decisions and actions. And really it was this first opportunity of self-discovery that I had. And I was still in sports at the time. And once I found myself, I just had massive tension. I realized like I'm winning the outside game. My LinkedIn profile looks sexier by the day, week and month. The whole world is saying bravo. Then why didn't I feel so great on the inside?

And when I realized like, man, I think there's an opportunity for me to be happier, more fulfilled, inject more purpose in my day to day, drive more impact. So all these things that I knew I wanted, but it was really kind of this wound that got opened up that once I found myself, I realized I have to dive into this head first. And I was struggling to make the decision, which was about identity. And here's what I'll share with you, Chris, when you work in a sexy space, like sports, a lot of folks and look, former athletes deal with this folks that get out of the military might deal with this, like you kind of form your identity based on this space

that you've been, especially when it's a really big, sexy place. But then you leave it or you consider leaving it and you question like, who would I be without this? Like, am I forever just going to be the sports guy? And that kind of makes you freeze. And so I had paralysis with one of the bigger decisions in my life, which is when I realized that sports may not be my forever ladder to climb, but I, I was hesitant to make the decision. And when I eventually took the Jerry McGuire leap, I unpacked the process that I went through to take that Jerry McGuire leap. And as I started to coach a very similar process for more than just career leaps, but I took the process and I shared it with others

and it was working and it was working and it was scaling and it was being shared. And then it was being proven. And so years after you kind of find the proof in the pudding, you're like, I think I've cracked the code on how to make better decisions faster. That's what ultimately leads to the book. But it started with a place of tension for me when I had to decide, should I leave sports or not? There you go. That whole thing of making a new turn and going someplace different. So the book is built as making better decisions, or I'm sorry, better decisions faster. I should get that accurate. Why is it important to make decisions fast?

And I think it's probably obvious, but feel free to throw in why it's good to make the best decisions or better decisions faster. Yeah. So I'll go in order there. Let's unpack faster. And here's an important distinction. Faster does not mean fast. It means faster than you would have without this playbook. So as an example, I didn't take my massive career pivot and leap overnight. It took me nine months, but it could have taken me five years or I could have never done it. So nine months is a hell of a lot faster than five years or never. And also, you know, you think about, Hey, family, and I've got responsibilities and financial. I'm not suggesting that we should be taking these massive swings of

the bat always overnight. Sometimes that could make sense, but often it doesn't. But here's kind of how I think about it is we typically, for different reasons, we freeze and then we get stuck when we think that there's some higher consequences or higher stakes, or it's a more valuable decision. And the bigger the decision, the bigger we think the downside of making the wrong decision is, that's how we fall into this vicious trap of indecision. So for me, faster is just a byproduct of moving through decisions and being decisive. And that comes back to the better part. So better two ways that I would unpack this. One is the decision has to be authentically you. So the process inside of the book, I call it the head, heart, hands equation. So head is how you think heart is how you feel hands are.

What do you do? And the equation is head plus heart equals hands. And when they're both on board, it's a green light to take action. It's a green light. It's like an intersection when neither no head, no heart red light. We want to stop running those. And then the playbook was really written to transform the right yellows, which is when either head or heart or on board into greens, like that's the big promise. That's the big payoff. But to me, the better part is I think a lot of us self-included, I used to just

bypass the heart time and time again. And then I realized some of the best decisions I ever made were when I truly, truly did tap into what is the truth? What am I authentically feeling right now? I don't give a damn what other people think. This is about me. This is my terms. This is my life. And what should I be doing? And that's how I unfroze myself is often I truly just had to dig into the heart. But maybe the last point I'll make on this with the better is Chris, you and I, we're, we have a default setting, right? Some of us are very heavy, logical.

Some of us are very emotional. Like I came from the sales world. No, no trivia question here. What do most sales folks over index in? We are very emotional creatures. Okay. Like that's just kind of how we're born and bred and wired. Okay.

You go into a room full of engineers, very different situation, a lot of logic going on, a lot of analysis going on. This is not head or heart equals hands. This is head plus heart equals hand. So it basically forces you to unexpose your blind spot. So for an emotional guy like me, I got to do the logic check. For a logical person, it forces them to do the emotion, the heart check. So those are just a few unique ways on how I feel there's a better way to make decisions because now we don't have those blind spots. And when we don't have blind spots, we're more confident at the most critical forks in the road. There you go. And so does that lead to the unshakable confidence that you pitch in the book? 100%. Yeah, I think confidence, the formula I have for that is, it goes back to the retreat that changed my life. When I put my values in action, that's what took me from a life of inconsistent confidence

to unshakable confidence. When I started to connect who I am to how I showed up, that's confidence because you think about a formula here for all of our listeners to remember confidence equals values times action. And the multiplication is how consistently you do it. So it's this compounding effect, right? So confidence equals values times action. Show me a person that takes consistent action on their values. I will show you a confident person, period, point blank. And I know this to be true because it's the process I went through. And prior my old life, when I wasn't always confident, it's because I didn't even know what my core values were. So I was just very inconsistent with my decisions and my actions. But once I had that

clarity, which to me, better decisions faster is as much a masterclass on clarity, clarity on who you are, how you want to show up, where you're going, how to get there. And once you dial in that clarity, well, consistent clarity will lead to get there. And once you dial in that clarity, well, consistent clarity will lead to consistent confidence. And that's one of the promises of the book. There you go. And you talk about several different things in the book, pretty much with any sort of decision you make in your life, strategy decisions, job deals, teams, financial time spent relationship, pretty much any decision you want to make in your life, you can utilize this book to help you achieve the best decision faster.

Yeah. Think about in a financial space, we often hear the term portfolio. So what's my investment portfolio? And usually you say, all right, spread out your eggs in different baskets. And that's how we think of the word portfolio. I think we also have a decision portfolio, which is all the different areas of life, especially those of higher value where we make decisions. So you just named a handful. I could go through a gauntlet. You could say some are business related, like a strategy in the entrepreneurial space. You could say, what product or service are we going to bring to the market? If you lead a team of people, who do I hire? Who do I fire? Who do I promote? Massive decisions. When it comes to health, the stuff you're putting in your body, your exercise plan, your habits, your rituals,

your routines, all decisions, financial. Do I invest or do I pass? In my career, is this the right ladder or not? Relationship, right person, wrong person. Right company, wrong company. Right boss, wrong boss. I mean, these are decisions. I never thought of decisions as they are the foundation of almost any single aspect of the portfolio of our life. And so again, you ask why write a book, better decisions faster. I genuinely feel that if decision-making can become your competitive advantage, then you can't lose. Definitely.

I mean, if I like the aspect of having your heart and mind involved, there's a lot of things that I've done or made decisions on that. I'm just i just really don't care about this i'm not i'm not emotionally uh into this i don't i don't really care and i like uh making sure there's that balance there just using the heart plus you use the equation head plus heart equals hands equation um does does combining those two just give you double validation on the decision you're making basically by using your head and your heart? Yeah, it makes sure that you're aligned, right? Especially if it's a green light. I mean, that's the beauty of the two checkpoints. So again, you want to decide whether to use your hands,

whether to take action. So there's two checkpoints, head and heart. The questions are head. Do I think it's a good idea? Heart. Do I feel it's a good idea? And when they're both on board or when neither is on board, that's a pretty obvious thing. Like for me, after you read the book, you're going to be able to identify greens and reds pretty easily. Like I think they kind of jump off the page. This is kind of a hell yes or a hell no. But that in between that yellow, I call that the messy middle. And that really is why folks need the playbook. Greens and reds, you could hear this interview and say, all right, Paul, I got it.

I can run with greens. I can run with reds. Cool. But yellows, ton of depth, ton of details, ton of examples that you're almost going to have to get out of your own life and study the decisions of others in these yellow light areas and then say, okay, like, how does this now apply to me? Cause yellows kind of freak people out. And I get that me too. So you want to study how other folks navigate yellows and then eventually conquer yellows.

And then, so here's a good example, because there's a good yellow and a bad yellow. All right. So the good yellow, actually, let's go in reverse order. Let's start with the bad news first, right? That's what everybody always asks. Here's the bad yellow. The bad is when only your head is on board. Here's why.

And then I'll give an example. Unlike your head that I think can change over time. You can think differently next week, next month, next year. Like your mindset can evolve. It can shift. When's the last time your heart changed? Your heart kind of knows what it knows. There's a truth or there's not. It's authentic to you or it's not. So if I know my heart's not going to be any different in a week, a month, a year, then I'm lying to myself if I think that it is. So this yellow is never going to become a green. Here's a good example. I used to lead massive sales organizations. And just like in any performance-based industry, sometimes your highest producers can be a little tough to manage.

You know, like they got a thing. And part of that is why they're so good and talented. And in my case, they sell a lot of widgets. But man, like sometimes in the locker room, they don't always play nice in the sandbox. So using that as an example, your head says, keep them because you want to keep the production, but your heart knows they're not a keeper. And then you keep them. And one year, two years, three years now toxic to teammates.

You're losing good people. Other people on the recruiting trails are like, I don't know if I want to work there because we're incentivizing and rewarding the bad behavior. And now you have engagement problems. So a lot of team and cultural issues stem from hanging onto the wrong yellow lights. There you go. The wrong yellow lights, but the opposite, you know, when your head is in and your heart is not, I should say, sorry, when your heart is in and your head is not, that to me is one that you want to stay in the fight. And I've got some very personal examples that have transformed my life there, but

that's the good yellow when your heart is in. There you go. And being able to determine those, the difference between those two is important. Because like I say, I've had some great sales people, but they're so toxic and so competitive. I mean, they're just really highly competitive people, but sometimes they can be so toxic. They don't really support your team. They try and destroy other people on the team rather than build them out. In fact, I'm thinking of a quarterback the Raiders

got a long time ago. It was supposed to be a number one draft pick, and he just walked around the sidelines telling people how rich he was and how he'd got a Rolls Royce. Do you have a Rolls Royce? No, I do. And literally, it was Rolls Royce. Do you have a Rolls Royce? No? I do. And literally was a complete bad decision.

Yeah, a good example of someone who's not a good team player. In the book, you cite that the average adult makes 35,000 decisions in a day. I'm going to have to go take a nap thinking about that. Oh, yeah, a nap and a cocktail. Yeah, a nap and a cocktail. That's 35,000 decisions. I'm tired already, man. i'm only halfway through the day so uh that's a whole lot of decisions i imagine a lot of those are subconscious subconscious and or autopilot yeah so good way of thinking about this and and this

is kind of a mind trip when i first started with going down the research rabbit hole of decisions, and I saw that the average US adult makes 35,000 decisions in a day. Wow. 35,000. Like that was a total mind blow. And now the deeper you go into it, you realize, okay, so many of these are on autopilot, pull left into the driveway, brush my teeth. Like, trust me, you don't need the head heart hands equation for those decisions. Just keep those. Your mental capacity will thank me. Don't use the head heart hands equation for that. But here's a sports metaphor and here's how it connects in sports. We have MVPs most valuable players. I suggest we use the head heart hands equation for our mvds our most valuable decisions

that's where we want to use it decisions that are of higher value higher importance they mean something to you they matter to you and you don't want to screw them up and so as a result take the extra time but here's the beauty if, heart, hands equation leads to a green light, a yellow light, or a red light, you'll know within seconds which light it is. So part of better decisions faster. I don't get you always to the finish line because if somebody says, oh, am I with the right person? Please, like we're not trying to make decisions in five seconds there.

But what we are trying to identify is, is it a green relationship, a yellow relationship, or a red relationship? And if you could know that within a matter of seconds or minutes, that's powerful. And that gives you more confidence to just process it and eventually make decisions and take actions. But the green, yellow, red just gives you a nice, healthy framework to process it through. So it sounds like, you know, if you're making good decisions with your heart and head, according to your equation and the stuff in your book, as you begin to make better, you know, decisions and you're not spending as much time flailing around going, I don't know what to do, procrastinating, et cetera, et cetera. You can, you feel confident in your decisions and you're not constantly going, I don't know,

do I make good decisions? You know, I met people that I'm like, you make the worst decisions like 100% of the time, like whatever decision you decide to do, you should just always do the opposite of whatever it is because you're the opposite person like every every good idea you have like the opposite of that idea is the good idea so you should just kind of operate from that basis that 100 of your ideas are bullshit well yeah hey and i'll take your word for it and in that case it sounds like there's an equation that they need so whoever these people are you need to introduce them to the equation give them a copy of the book. Give them a copy. Give them a copy. Chris, here's the neat thing too. And kind of a cliche,

but you always hear, okay, there's not success and failure. There's success and learning, right? Failures are nothing more than learning moments and development moments and growth moments. And we beat that message down a little bit, but I do believe it to be true. I do believe it to be true. And here is why, because with the head, heart, hands equation, it gets you to be more decisive and embrace imperfect action. So even me, I don't claim that I make a hundred percent of the best decisions. What I do claim is I am highly decisive and I'm not concerned about the outcome. I just focus on taking action and making decisions because I am confident enough to trust myself that if it didn't work out, then I'll get better and I'll learn from it and I'll make the better

decision the next time. But I needed to have that one fall on the face in order to make a better decision in my future. So I'm not going to stay stuck because the person that stays paralyzed and is frozen, they're not going to learn anything from that. It's only going to, you just bleed out over time versus in this case, I succeed or I learn, I succeed or I grow, I succeed. I evolve. I iterate. I adapt.

I'm agile. Like I'm just moving. I don't, nobody. I succeed. I evolve. I iterate. I adapt. I'm agile. I'm just moving. Nobody can promise you a win after every decision, but what they can promise is success or learning, success or growth, and better decisions faster, the head, heart, hands equation. That's what it puts you in a position to do. Actions will beat outcomes. There you go. And not every decision, even if you use, you know, utilize the tools that you espouse in your book may, may work out. You know, if you're dealing with people, you can't control other people, right? But at least you can say,

Hey, I made the best decision I could, uh, with the tools that I had. And if that person doesn't want to, you know, deceive me or doesn't want to comply or whatever the case may be, or sometimes things change, you know, I've had a business partner for 13 years and one day you wake up and find out you're, you're, you're in a, in a, in a whole different situation. They've changed their mind. I've had the Yoko Ono effect with partners where a girlfriend gets in their head and, you know, Oh,'t need to be, you know, you can go do your own thing and that doesn't work out for them. Um, you know, and so things can change and you can't control the people. I think that's the one reason I like businesses because business there's, there's some aspects of control in there because they're very

technical. Um, but you can't control people and what they're going to do. And so, but at least you can say, Hey, I made the best decision I could at the time. And, uh, I made it right. And you know, if the, if the things would have followed through on, on decisions, the way that what I made, sometimes timing happens to you too. Sometimes things are cyclical in business. Sometimes there's, you know, I mean, I had a lot of companies in 2008 came along with the housing crisis. Yeah. And, uh, and so, you know, not everything you control, but at least you, you made the best decision you could to get there. And a lot of times if you make the best decisions and you make them fast, you have a better opportunity to, uh, be agile and get those things done.

Like I have a lot of people I've talked about on the show where I'll meet them and I'll be like, Hey, Chris, I'm going to be like you. I'm going to start my own company. I'm like, great, do it. Well, you know, I'm waiting for the time to be perfect. Well, what is that going to be? You know, I'm just as soon as I get all this stuff right. Meet me a year later.

Hey, just start that business. No, I'm waiting for a time to be perfect. And you're like, you really have to, you know, I'll tell them, I'll be like, you really have to just start and get going. And you've, you know, there's going to be problems you're going to have to solve. It's never going to be perfect. There's no such thing as perfect, I don't think. They meet them years later and they're still waffling. They probably need your book as well.

Being able to jump into business or make a decision on something gives you more time to be agile, to change things. I started companies and within 30 days, we were changing the name or changing the business model and going, this is stupid what we did. Let's do this other thing. And, you know, but we had to start down that road and get it done. Yeah. And, you know, here's the cool thing, Chris, is not every decision to your point is going to lead to a green light.

And sometimes it is timing. I actually just went through a really tough decision recently, uh, having to do with my consultancy. And this was a good yellow, by the way, my heart loves every person in the consultancy. The business model after a while didn't make as much sense. I think to both sides, it was kind of like, oh man, like, does this work? Does this not work? And so like, I I'm open-minded that maybe in five years or 10 years, maybe we do reunite. Maybe it does become a formal thing, but right now the timing was off, but it was a good yellow. And like me being able, they're not bad people. And there's no personal

judgment. I'm just like, guys, like the timing is not working. And I think we mutually agreed on that, but also let me share another quick example too, of just making a decision and here's the power of green lights. If you can land on it. All right. So a little thing happened in March of 2020. We all know what I'm talking about. And, uh, not too far before that, I bet on myself to go full-time as a keynote speaker before that I had been speaking for a long time as a keynote speaker. Before that, I had been speaking for a long time as a part of the sports industry, but now chips in the middle of the table. I'm all in. It was a green freaking light, head and heart. Hell yes. And then after the not so distant future, bang, March of 20 hits the events business, the human gathering business, gone, gone. And so because I was a hell yes,

green light into becoming a speaker and pursuing my passion and calling, and I felt great purpose in the work. And I believe in the impact there. It made me more resilient. It gave me more perseverance and more grit to say like, Paul, this sucks, but you're going to battle through because I did it for the right reasons. Like it was a green light and some market condition drastically changed. Maybe I hope it's a once in a lifetime type of market condition, but we don't know. But then the pivot also was, all right, Paul, well, you can't speak in spring of 2021, but that's when I started to write my first book, the power of playing offense. And so the whole point is my innovation was stronger. My resilience

was stronger. Like this tenacity was stronger. I just got hungrier financially. It sucked. I like, let's not sugar coat this, but that's the power of attacking green lights is it's going to make you a stronger person at versus like, oh my gosh, if I would have been a yellow light or, you know, been forced into speaking or whatever, like, you know how quickly I would have crumbled when COVID hit, like it, that would have been game over. That's it. Yeah. It, it killed a lot of events. I mean, it just, it just wiped shit off. For over a year. Yeah. Well, unless you were in florida yeah yeah there there you go i mean it even now i mean there's a lot of events are still trying to fully come back

and for sure and all that good stuff so uh brilliant stuff in here and helping people make better decisions especially people that are procrastinators is there a part of the book where you talk about people who are avid procrastinators habitual procrastinators people who are you know constantly uh you know they they kind of have a procrastination problem yes and i think every person listening to this self-included we have procrastinated at something something over the course of our lives now again maybe it's more isolated for a lot of people. I would certainly put myself in that category. And then other people, there's almost this addiction to procrastination. And I don't know if we get it from college where it's like, oh, I study best the night before the big final exam. And then you just do that the rest of your life. And you're like, yeah, that might not be great strategy for other things. But anyways, so, um, yes, I do talk about procrastination in a couple of ways. I think we have to examine why are you procrastinating? Like what's the root cause? Because you're not just procrastinating because you feel like it. You're not procrastinating because it feels good. You're procrastinating for some other reason.

And so let's evaluate. Is it a time? Are you truly like maybe you're over capacity? And as a result, you're just putting things off and, or maybe you haven't built the right team around you, the right engine, maybe your business, you're, you're a bottleneck and like all decisions have to run through you. And as a result, now you have decision fatigue and overwhelmed, but your company is procrastinating because of a process issue or on a more personal level, maybe there's this fear of judgment from other people. And I'm paralyzed of making the wrong call. I'm paralyzed of, I'm scared.

I'm fearful of what people are going to think of me and how they're going to judge me. If I don't make the, if this thing doesn't succeed, then, oh my gosh, that's a scarlet letter for me. So I could keep going, but until we understand the root cause, which that's one thing that the, the book covers. And one example would be, there's an entire section of a chapter on overcoming self-limiting beliefs. We all suffer from self-limiting beliefs. And if you have them, you're going to procrastinate a hundred percent. You're going to procrastinate because we're not clear. We're not confident. We don't have conviction. We don't have courage. Like

there's a bunch of, you know, there's self-confidence and there's self-worth. And I separate those two things. This book helps you do both. It helps you build and elevate both. And if you're lacking in either area, then procrastination, that's just going to be embedded into every day of life. So we for sure do tackle that. More importantly, we share some practical, realistic, and tactical solutions on how you can rise above it. One of which, of course, is the way you make decisions and a head-hard-hands equation.

But there's other insights inside of the book as well. There you go. And that's probably one thing that pushes people towards procrastination is, you know, their fear of making bad decisions and stuff, right? There you go. So as we go out, any final thoughts on the book? Give us your final pitch and whatever we didn't cover in the inside of it. Well, we all want a green light life. Every single person listening to this wants that life of more happiness, more fulfillment, more purpose, a healthier home, a great family, all these things that is successful career, like chocked full with green lights. We all want that. And so my pitch here, which to me, it's not even a pitch.

It's just to say, if that is the life that we want, we're only going to get there by mastering our decisions. Because if you do audit your past, and if you made the right call or the wrong call with your health, with your relationships, with your career, that's going to lead to the quality of your life. So if we want a green light life, then we've got to study other folks that have built a green light life, understand the process, the system. And that's one thing that the book can deliver. The other thing is we got to stop running reds because myself included subconsciously, how many reds, no head, no heart,

are we just running? And here's the deal. There's a lot of problems around us in the world and sometimes in our friends, in our families, in our communities. And so things like burnout, I'm stuck, I'm fatigued, I'm lost, I'm lacking hope or optimism. I'm not happy. I'm not fulfilled. And folks, those are not byproducts of running one red light. That's the compounding effect of what happens when we've been running lights for months or years. And often we didn't even know it. It's all subconscious.

And we end up in this dark place and we ask ourselves, how the hell did I get here? And so the book is equal parts, seize and attack and build and attract more green lights into your life. Now that you're aware, stop running red. And finally, we have a playbook for how to conquer and navigate the messy middle of yellow. Because if you can identify the right yellow lights and turn those into greens, it can absolutely transform your life. For me, it's made me a better dad. It's made me a better husband. It's made me a better business leader, entrepreneur, friend, you name it. I have become a better person because of adopting this playbook. And I believe that the same is possible for everybody that installs it. There you go. Well, it's been very insightful to have you on the show.

Thank you very much, Paul, for coming on. We really appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you so much, Chris. There you go. And now I have so much more confidence. I'm going to read the book tomorrow when it comes out. Give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs, please. PaulEpsteinSpeaks.com. Of course, you can find the book everywhere major books are sold. There's a little website called Amazon. So you'll find it there. And last but not least, when you're on PaulEpsteinSpeaks.com, just a free gift from me, from my heart to all of your listeners, Chris, a confidence quiz is there.

Five minutes gives you a confidence score of one to a hundred and then a resource for how to build and sustain unshakable confidence so it's all at paulepsteinspeaks.com and that is my free gift to every single one of your listeners there you go i'm gonna go take it see how i how i fair 100 there you go uh well thank you very much for coming the show paul we really appreciate it thank you chris there you go and thanks to monis tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Voss. Order up the book wherever fine books are sold. You can order it there or you can go to Amazon. Better

Decisions Faster, Unshakable Confidence When You Need It Most by Paul Epstein comes out September 26, 2023. Also go to youtube.com, Fortress Chris Voss, linkedin.com, Fortress Chris Voss. Subscribe to the LinkedIn newsletter and also go to, what is it,ris foss one on tiktok thanks for tuning in be good to each other stay safe and we'll see you guys next time and that should have