Latest news with #businessdecisions
Bloomberg
3 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Trump Takes Victory Lap on EU Trade Deal as Tariff Deadline Looms
Michelle Shulz, founder and managing partner of Schulz Trade Law, breaks down how the back and forth on tariffs is impacting the decisions businesses are making and why a trade agreement with the EU may not be a fully done deal quite yet. (Source: Bloomberg)
Forbes
21-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
5 ChatGPT Prompts For Absolute Clarity On Your Key Business Decisions
5 ChatGPT prompts for absolute clarity on your key business decisions Clarity is ruthless subtraction. Most founders give themselves too many options, advisors, and what-ifs while their real opportunity slips away. They collect perspectives from everyone but never commit to the one path that matters. What if you could strip away everything except the single outcome that would make your entire venture worthwhile? When you do this right, that north star becomes your filter for every partnership, project, and piece of advice that comes your way. ChatGPT can help. Copy, paste and edit the square brackets in ChatGPT, and keep the same chat window open so the context carries through. Get crystal clear on business decisions with ChatGPT prompts Complexity looks impressive but burns time, money and morale. You need one clear outcome that makes everything else irrelevant. Pull every option apart until only one result remains. That single condition for victory becomes your automatic yes or no for every opportunity. Clarity on your non-negotiables keeps every decision simple and saves your energy for doing the actual work. Start defending your focus. "Using everything you know about my vision and goals from our previous conversations, state in one sentence the (work-related) victory condition that makes every future decision an automatic yes, because it's in full alignment with my ultimate measure of success. Be specific about metrics, timeline, and the transformation it creates. Ask for more detail if required." Smart founders seek multiple viewpoints but most ask the wrong people. Stop conducting random straw polls. You need your harshest critic, your biggest supporter, and the version of you who's already succeeded. Each brings a lens you can't see through alone. Let them grade your decision for alignment, joy, and compounding upside. Stop crowdsourcing confusion and start getting targeted insight. "Role play three distinct perspectives on my current decision: [describe a decision you're making]. My smartest critic who spots every flaw, my most loyal fan who sees the best possibilities, and my successful future self five years from now. Have each one grade this decision on three factors: alignment with my values (1-10), potential for sustained joy (1-10), and compounding upside over time (1-10). Give specific reasoning for each score from each perspective." Enthusiasm blinds you to sacrifice. Every yes means saying no to something else. Convert the opportunity cost of every decision into lost revenue, relationships, and reputation so you can weigh it consciously. Understand those hidden costs before you commit. Most founders only see what they gain, never what they lose. Make the invisible visible. "Calculate the true opportunity cost of saying yes to this decision. Convert it into three specific losses: lost revenue from other opportunities I'd have to decline (give a number), relationships that would receive less attention (name them), and reputation risks if this doesn't work out (be specific). Present this as a simple cost-benefit table I can review in ten seconds." Sometimes you can make decisions before they even show up. As you build your business, more problems come up. Success brings options and options kill focus. Don't fall for the trap. Name the seductive distractions that will surface before they show up. Write the exact sentence you'll use to decline each one. A prepared refusal is required. Your future self will thank you for drawing these boundaries now. Get surgical about what you won't do. "Based on my current trajectory and the decision I'm considering, name three seductive distractions that will definitely surface in the next year. For each one, explain why it will seem attractive at the time, then write the exact sentence I will use to decline it. Make each refusal clear, professional, and aligned with my bigger vision." Motivation needs visible proof of progress to keep showing up. Never lose momentum. Design a 90-day scoreboard with one metric to measure, and a weekly ten-minute review ritual. Make it so simple you can track it on your phone. When measurement becomes effortless, improvement becomes inevitable. Numbers never lie, so let them guide your path. "Design a 90-day success scoreboard for any given decision with exactly one metric that proves I'm winning or drifting. Create a weekly ten-minute review ritual that happens at the same time each week. Include three specific questions I ask myself during each review and the exact action I take if the metric is trending down. Keep it simple enough to track on my phone." Make better business moves with AI-powered decision making Execution feels inevitable when you know which way to go. You've found your victory condition and collected the only three perspectives that matter. You've named future distractions and calculated real costs. Your scoreboard is ready to track progress from day one. Stop adding complexity and start subtracting until clarity remains. The best decision is the one you actually make and commit to fully. Pick your north star and take intentional action. Access all my best ChatGPT content prompts.
Forbes
20-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
How The Best Entrepreneurs Know When To Go All In And When To Let Go
BlueFlower Founder Gazelle Hashemian Testing Her Essential Oils Entrepreneurship lessons often emphasize passion, planning, execution, and persistence. One lesson rarely covered in MBA textbooks is the art of timing—knowing when to pivot, take a risk, or gracefully exit. But how do you know? It's not just about spreadsheets or strategy. Sometimes, it comes down to something less tangible: intuition informed by experience. Entrepreneurial intuition isn't luck—it's pattern recognition, accumulated lessons, and instinct about timing. For Gazelle Hashemian, this has been a guiding principle throughout her 25-year career. After moving from corporate leadership into small business ownership, she's founded or co-founded four ventures, each with its own path. Three came full circle—launch, growth, and a consciously timed transition. Gazelle Hashemian Delivers the Commencement Address to the George Washington University School of ... More Engineering Trusting Intuition in Business Decisions Entrepreneurs are often told to follow the data, stick to the business plan, and stay disciplined. But some of the most important decisions don't come from spreadsheets—they come from something harder to quantify: intuition. Gazelle spent the last 25 years starting, scaling, and transitioning multiple ventures. Each business had its own trajectory. And in each case, the toughest calls—when to keep going, when to pivot, when to sell, and when to step away—weren't decisions she could outsource to financial models or advisers. They required a deep sense of timing that blended logic with instinct. Paragon Technology Group, an IT government contracting firm, was her first company, co-founded with her husband, Sassan Kimiavi. They bootstrapped the business from the ground up, scaling it to $42 million in annual revenue over 11 years. There were challenging early moments, including risking personal savings to make payroll. But through hard work and a clear plan, the company grew consistently. BlueFlower Founder Gazelle Hashemian Surrounded By Colleagues Holding Her Essential Oils Eventually, they sold Paragon to a private equity group—not just because of profit margins, but because of a mix of business goals, personal life considerations, and a gut-level awareness that it was the right time. No model or MBA course could have predicted that moment—it required an intuitive sense of timing sharpened by lived experience. She then co-founded Project Turquoise with four close friends in response to the global refugee crisis. After reaching their fundraising target, they decided to merge with another nonprofit—not because they hit operational walls, but because it aligned better with the evolution of their mission, time, and capacity. BlueFlower grew out of a personal health journey. After struggling with GI issues for years, she found relief through essential oils and was struck by the lack of high-quality options in the market. She set a three-year timeline to fill that gap, selling through spas, pharmacies, and boutiques. Despite receiving offers to invest or acquire, when the company didn't meet the internal benchmarks she had set, she made the difficult but empowered decision to wind down production. That too was intuition-based, informed by experience. BlueFlower didn't scale as she had hoped, but it served its purpose—as both a personal journey and a professional learning experience. Her latest venture, BluJuniper, was launched in 2021 when she felt drawn back to professional services. Unlike product-based businesses, government contracting has a much longer sales cycle. But she's committed to the long game. When BluJuniper reaches its next inflection point, she'll trust her instincts again. Each chapter of her entrepreneurial life has been deeply personal. These ventures weren't just businesses—they were reflections of different stages of her life, values, and the risks she was willing to take. Some chapters closed earlier than expected, and others continue to evolve. Her message to other entrepreneurs: Success isn't just about revenue, EBITDA, or headline-making exits. Sometimes success is knowing when to let go, pivot, or evolve. Sara Blakely throws the first pitch before the Atlanta Braves and Washington Nationals baseball ... More game, Aug. 24, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart) These kinds of calls aren't unusual—and they aren't limited to small businesses. Some of the most iconic leaders in business history have relied on the same blend of instinct and timing. From startups to billion-dollar brands, entrepreneurs often face moments when no amount of data can provide the answer. In my book Raising an Entrepreneur, I show how people who succeed are often willing to take risks because they're not afraid to fail. They understand that failure is part of learning and growing. They extract lessons, apply them forward, and keep building. Sara Blakely and Howard Schultz are two powerful examples of what it looks like when intuition drives risky game-changing business decisions. When Sara Blakely launched Spanx, she trusted her gut that women wanted more comfortable underwear. That intuition built a billion-dollar brand. She faced countless barriers—no retail experience, no investors backing her, and rejection from dozens of manufacturers. But she persisted because of a gut feeling that women needed this. She famously started Spanx with $5,000 in savings and kept the idea secret for over a year, because she was worried that if she told people, they would discourage her. WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 20: Sara Blakely speaks during National Women's History Museum's Women Making ... More History Awards Gala at The Anthem on March 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo byfor National Women's History Museum) She says, 'Your inner voice is your most powerful tool. A lot of people ask me how I'm able to rely on that feeling so strongly, and I think it comes from confidence and practice. It's a muscle that everyone has and has to be exercised to get stronger. Recognize when people are telling you to do one thing but your inner voice is telling you something else. Take a leap of faith and do what your gut tells you. It won't steer you wrong." NEW YORK - APRIL 08: Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz Unveils a replica of the original Seattle ... More Starbucks in Manhattan's Bryant Park. (Photo by) Howard Schultz faced similar skepticism when he pushed Starbucks beyond selling coffee beans into the cafe experience. Many investors and even the original Starbucks owners resisted the idea. But Schultz followed his gut, believing Americans were ready for a European-style coffeehouse culture. That instinct came after a visit to Milan, where he saw how Italians gathered daily in cafes and it created community. No market research supported the idea at the time. His intuition transformed Starbucks from a regional retailer into a global brand. He explained, 'I was sent to Italy on a trip for Starbucks and came back with this feeling that the business Starbucks was in was the wrong business. What I wanted to bring back was the daily ritual and the sense of community and the idea that we could build this third place between home and work in America. It was an epiphany.' Jake Karls, Benito Skinner, and Kirstin Stoller speak during the 2022 Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit in ... More Detroit, Michigan. (Photo by) From the local entrepreneur to the household-name founder, the lesson is the same: Business success is about more than persistence and strategy. It's about knowing when to evolve, when to pause, and when to move in a new direction. That's not luck—it's the art of timing combined with a great sense of intuition honed over years of observation and deep thought. In a world where markets shift overnight and data can't always predict human behavior, intuition becomes a survival skill. It's not about guessing—it's about learning from experience, recognizing patterns, and having the courage to make decisions that don't yet have a data trail. No matter what the data show, if it doesn't feel right, don't do it. And if it does, go for it.
Yahoo
16-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Alberta inflation rate holds steady as lower gas prices offset higher food, shelter costs
Inflation in the province remained at 1.7 per cent for the month of June. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business reports that rising costs are forcing some of its Alberta members to make difficult decisions, including reducing staff.
CBC
16-07-2025
- Business
- CBC
Alberta inflation rate holds steady as lower gas prices offset higher food, shelter costs
Inflation in the province remained at 1.7 per cent for the month of June. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business reports that rising costs are forcing some of its Alberta members to make difficult decisions, including reducing staff.
