🌐 The "Decision Velocity Gap" (and why it's killing your momentum)

Last week, I hosted my private client mastermind group here in Naples, Florida—a 24-hour intensive that started with a full-day mastermind for 2025, followed by a five-star dinner in downtown Naples, then 18 holes of golf the next morning.

I've been running these full-day private masterminds with multimillion-dollar business owners for 17 years now. 2026 will be my 18th consecutive year. And in all that time, I've never seen the pattern I saw last week more clearly...

Great group. Sharp operators. All doing well. But as we worked through their 2025 plans, a pattern emerged...

Almost everyone had major decisions they'd been sitting on for months. New pricing models. Platform migrations. Service repositioning. Hiring choices. Marketing pivots.

Different businesses. Different industries. Different challenges.

But the same bottleneck: analysis paralysis.

And while they've been deliberating, their competitors have been moving.

Here's what I keep seeing: AI gave us unprecedented access to information. More data. Faster insights. Better tools for modeling scenarios. The promise was that all of this would make decisions easier.

But it did the opposite.

The more information we can access, the more we feel obligated to analyze. The more scenarios we can model, the more we feel we should model. What was supposed to be a decision accelerator became a decision decelerator.

And it's creating a massive, widening gap...

On one side: operators who've learned to move fast with incomplete information. They make framework-driven decisions, execute quickly, and iterate based on real market feedback.

On the other side: operators drowning in research mode. Still planning. Still analyzing. Still waiting for that elusive "perfect information" that never arrives.

I call it The Decision Velocity Gap. And it's quietly becoming the most important competitive advantage in business today...

In this week's Main Event, I break down why AI made decisions harder for most people, what speed actually looks like in practice, and why the cost of hesitation is now higher than the cost of being wrong.

Then in your Implementation Blueprint, I'm walking you through a simple 15-minute exercise to clear your "decision debt" and start moving faster—no complex frameworks, just immediate action that frees up your mental bandwidth.

I think you'll love this as you begin planning for 2026!

The Top Reads this week complement the momentum theme perfectly: we've got 15 practical strategies for building competitive advantages that can't be easily replicated, wealth-building guidance for turning business income into lasting assets outside your operations, and an Entrepreneur piece on why energy management (not just time management) drives peak performance.

The companies winning right now aren't the ones with the best plans. They're the ones who've learned to move faster than everyone else.

So the real question isn't whether you have enough information to decide...

It's: how much opportunity are you losing while you wait for more?

Let's go!

Every week, we break down the big-picture strategy behind the shifts happening in business—so you can see around corners while others are still catching up.

Seven years ago, I published Sales Velocity on Amazon, where it became a bestseller…

The book was about one thing: how speed creates competitive advantage in sales cycles.

The operators who moved fastest—who could qualify leads quickly, respond immediately, and close without endless back-and-forth—those were the ones winning deals. Not necessarily the ones with the best solution. Not the ones with the most features. The fastest ones.

Speed was the differentiator.

But lately, I've been seeing something bigger. Something more fundamental.

The velocity advantage I wrote about in sales? It's now showing up everywhere in business. And it's being driven by something most people aren't paying attention to: decision speed.

Because here's what's happening right now: AI was supposed to make decisions easier. More data. Faster insights. Better predictions. The entire promise was clarity at speed.

But something strange happened instead…

The average time-to-decision for most business owners has actually increased over the past two years. Not decreased. Increased.

We have more information than ever... and we're slower than ever to act on it.

That's the paradox.

And it's creating a massive, widening gap between two types of operators: those who've learned to move fast in the age of infinite data, and those who are drowning in analysis paralysis.

I call it, The Decision Velocity Gap.

And it's quietly becoming the most important competitive advantage in business today.

The More-Data-Slower-Decisions Trap

Let's be honest about what's happening…

AI gives you access to everything. Market research that used to take weeks now takes minutes. Competitive analysis. Customer sentiment. Predictive models. Financial projections. All of it, instantly, at your fingertips.

So logically, you should be making faster, better decisions, right?

Wrong.

Here's the trap: the more data you have access to, the more you feel obligated to analyze it all before making a move. The more scenarios you can model, the more scenarios you feel you should model.

What was supposed to be a decision accelerator became a decision decelerator.

I see this pattern constantly. Founders spending three weeks comparing CRM platforms. Agencies running endless "tests" before committing to a positioning strategy. Consultants building financial models with 47 variables before pricing a new offer.

The research never ends. Because it never has to end. There's always one more data point. One more case study. One more expert opinion to consider.

Meanwhile, the fast operators aren't smarter. They're not more reckless. They're not even more confident.

They've just built a different relationship with information.

They understand something the slow movers don't…

In the new “AI Economy”, perfect information is a myth, and waiting for it is a strategy for losing.

What Speed Actually Looks Like

Here's what people get wrong about decision velocity…

They think it means being impulsive. Reckless. Shooting from the hip.

It doesn't.

Speed isn't about making careless decisions. It's about making decisive decisions with incomplete information.

The fast operators I know aren't winging it. They have systems. Frameworks. Decision rules that let them move quickly without sacrificing judgment.

Let me show you what this actually looks like in practice…

Fast Operator #1 runs a consulting firm. When evaluating whether to pursue a new client opportunity, she has a three-question filter:

If all three are yes, she moves. If any are no, she passes. No endless "strategic considerations." No week-long team debates. The decision takes 20 minutes, not 20 days.

Fast Operator #2 runs a productized service. He rebuilt his entire pricing model in a weekend. Not because he was reckless—because he had clarity on his value drivers and his ideal client economics. When the market shifted, he didn't schedule a Q2 planning session. He modeled three scenarios Friday night, picked one Saturday morning, and rolled it out Monday.

Fast Operator #3 had to choose between two major software platforms for her agency. Instead of spending six weeks comparing feature matrices, she ran a 48-hour trial on both, picked the one that felt right, and moved forward. Her reasoning, "I can switch later if I'm wrong. But I can't get six weeks of momentum back."

Notice the pattern?

These aren't gamblers. They're strategic operators who've learned to make time-boxed decisions with clear frameworks.

They've accepted that 80% certainty executed today beats 95% certainty executed next quarter.

Because while you're gaining that extra 15% certainty, the market is moving. Your competitors are shipping. Opportunities are closing.

The cost of perfect information is speed. And in today's economy, speed is everything.

The Compound Effect Of Decision Speed

Here's where this gets really interesting…

Decision velocity doesn't just help you move faster on individual choices. It creates a compounding advantage that accelerates over time.

Think about it like this:

Slow Operator: Spends three months analyzing, makes one decision, implements over two months, learns what works. That's one learning cycle every five months. Over two years, they complete about 5 major iterations.

Fast Operator: Spends one week deciding, makes the call, implements over two weeks, learns what works. That's one learning cycle every three weeks. Over two years, they complete about 35 major iterations.

Same time period. Seven times more learning loops.

Now multiply that advantage across every decision in your business: positioning, pricing, offers, marketing channels, hiring, tools, partnerships, content strategy.

The fast operator isn't just moving faster. They're learning faster. Adapting faster. Improving faster.

While the slow operator is still on version 1.0 of their strategy, the fast operator is on version 7.0—and each version is informed by real market feedback, not theoretical analysis.

This is what people miss about decision velocity. It's not just about speed. It's about iteration rate.

The companies dominating their markets right now aren't the ones with the perfect strategies. They're the ones who've run more experiments, gathered more data, and evolved faster than everyone else.

They built their advantage through velocity, not vision.

The Hidden Cost of Hesitation

Let's talk about what waiting actually costs you…

Most entrepreneurs think about decision risk like this: "If I wait, I gather more information, which reduces my risk of being wrong."

But that equation is incomplete.

Here's the full equation: Risk of Wrong Decision vs. Risk of Slow Decision.

And in today's market, the risk of slow is almost always higher than the risk of wrong.

Why?

Because wrong decisions are correctable. You make a bad hire? You can fix it in 90 days. You pick the wrong pricing model? You can adjust in a quarter. You invest in the wrong platform? You can switch or write it off.

Wrong decisions hurt, but they're rarely fatal. And they teach you something.

Slow decisions, on the other hand, create a different kind of damage:

I've seen businesses hemorrhage six figures in opportunity cost while trying to avoid a $10K mistake.

I've watched founders spend so long "getting it right" that by the time they launched, the market had moved on.

The dangerous truth? Hesitation feels safe, but it's often the riskiest position you can take.

The Bottom Line

The AI revolution gave us an incredible gift: near-infinite access to information, insights, and intelligence.

But that gift came with a trap…

The trap is believing that more analysis = better decisions.

It doesn't.

Better decisions come from clarity, speed, and iteration. They come from moving fast, learning quickly, and adapting based on real market feedback—not theoretical projections.

The Decision Velocity Gap is real, and it's widening.

On one side: operators who've learned to make fast, framework-driven decisions with incomplete information. They're executing, learning, and compounding their advantage every week.

On the other side: operators still waiting for perfect clarity. Still analyzing. Still "strategizing." Still slow.

The market doesn't reward the best plan anymore.

It rewards the fastest learner.

So the question isn't whether you have enough information to decide.

The question is: how much opportunity are you losing while you wait for more?

In your Implementation Blueprint below, I'm showing you exactly how to clear your decision debt and start moving faster—a simple exercise you can complete in the next 15 minutes that will immediately free up your mental bandwidth and get you back in motion.

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Here's where strategy meets action. Each week, we give you the tactical steps to implement what you just learned—so you can capitalize on the insight immediately.

The 15-Minute Decision Debt Purge

You've been sitting on decisions. Let's clear them out right now.

This exercise takes 15 minutes and will immediately free up mental bandwidth while getting you back in motion.

The Exercise

Step 1: The Brain Dump (5 minutes)

Open a document and write down every decision you've been putting off. Everything.

No filtering. Just get them all out of your head and onto the page.

Step 2: The Type 2 Filter (3 minutes)

Go through your list and mark which decisions are Type 2 - reversible and relatively low-cost to undo.

Most will be Type 2. These are decisions like:

Circle or highlight every Type 2 decision on your list.

Step 3: The Speed Decision (7 minutes)

Pick the three easiest Type 2 decisions from your list - the ones where you already have 70-80% clarity.

For each one, set a deadline this week to make the call. Write the actual date and time.

Then ask yourself: "What's the worst that happens if I'm wrong?"

If the answer is "I can undo it" or "I lose a small amount of money/time" - make the decision right now.

Close the loop. Move on.

What Just Happened

In 15 minutes, you just:

The momentum you just created will compound. You'll feel lighter immediately. And you'll start seeing opportunities instead of obstacles.

That's decision velocity in action.

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Every week, we deliver 3 high-leverage insights on Business Growth, Wealth Building, and Peak Performance — with direct links to the smartest ideas, tools, and strategies we’ve uncovered. Backed by what our team is studying, analyzing, and testing behind the scenes — so you don’t have to. These are the 3 core disciplines every modern entrepreneur must master to win. Curated. Actionable. No BS.

🔹 Business Growth
"15 Ways To Build and Sustain A Competitive Advantage" – Cuppa
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