What Should You Do Next? (The Framework for Deciding Your Right Next Move in 15 Minutes or Less)

One quick announcement before today's issue…

This Tuesday, June 23rd, we're running a live, 90-minute workshop called The Right Hire™: the exact system we use to put the right person in the right seat, every time.

The fact is, every wrong hire costs you twice: Once in your bank account (one cost a client of ours $340,000) and again in your calendar (because the role lands back on your plate).

The right hire is how you stop paying both. And when you join us for the workshop, you'll build the system live, around your own open role.

Click here for workshop and registration details.

Ok, on to this week's issue…

I just got back from speaking to a room full of $10M+ business owners.

These weren't beginners, so I expected the questions to be advanced: scaling sales, squeezing margin, hiring executives, maybe an AI rabbit hole or two.

That's not what happened.

The #1 question that kept coming up was:

"With everything I could be doing… all the fires I could put out and all the opportunities I could chase… how do I know what to actually focus on NEXT?"

This is the trap of scale nobody warns you about…

The bigger you get, the more legitimate things compete for your attention and the harder it gets to tell the difference between what's urgent and what's important.

So here's the exact process I gave them for finding their company’s "Right Next Thing" (RNT) when everything feels urgent and important…

…including my favorite AI prompt for pinpointing yours in about five minutes.

I call it The 90-Day Look-Back…

Start in the past. Look back over the last 90 days and make two lists:

You probably don't remember what you did last week, let alone 90 days ago, so pull up your calendar, sent emails, and Slack messages and reconstruct it. The reminders are all sitting right there.

Pride shows you what's working and worth protecting.

Regret shows you what you already know is broken and keep avoiding. (And as you’ll soon see, the money is in the regret list… not the pride list.)

Now come back to the present and ask:

And be specific. Ask “why?”

For example, don’t say, “I lack sales.” Dig in! Ask why.

I had a client whose sales stalled out at the end of every month because their best closers were all buried in CRM cleanup and data entry.

He didn’t lack sales, he lacked sales admin support. See the difference?

Lacks don't always show up as fires. They show up as that nagging sense that something's running hotter than it should. Write those down.

Finally, look forward 90 days and ask:

Excitement points you toward the opportunities worth chasing.

Worry points you toward the pitfalls worth heading off before they become next quarter's fire.

Both matter.

Founders tend to be great at the excitement list and terrible at the worry list, which is exactly why the worry list is where the gold hides.

Now it's all on paper: pride and regret, confidence and lack, excitement and worry.

Here's the question that turns six messy lists into one clear “should” list:

"What single thing, if completed in the next 90 days, would increase my pride, confidence, and excitement…while reducing my regret, lack, and worry?"

The answer almost never sits inside one list. It lives in the tension between the pairs. Your job is to find the moves that pull items from the regret, lack, and worry lists into the pride, confidence, excitement lists.

So brainstorm 5 to 7 things you think you should do.

Don't sequence them and don't judge them. Just get them all out of your head and onto one list.

Here's where most people go wrong…

They look at that list and ask, "What should we do?"…then pick the biggest, most exciting item on it. But you're not hunting for the biggest thing. You're hunting for the next thing.

So ask a different question: "What must we do next?"

That one word changes the answer, because the right next thing is rarely the flashy one.

It's usually something hidden you didn't realize had to happen first, or something so annoying you've been quietly avoiding it for months. For example:

In all three, the "should" is bigger, louder, and more fun to talk about, whereas the "next" is smaller, quieter, and sometimes a bit annoying (which is sometimes why we’re avoiding it).

So use your “should” to inform the “next.”

If you want help untangling the sequence, hand your "should" list to Claude or ChatGPT with this prompt:

Whatever it surfaces, remember this: your job as CEO is to determine the right next thing, then point your team at it.

Determining it is your work. Doing it is theirs.

⚡ Action Step: Block 90 minutes this week with your leadership team and walk through the three pairs (Pride and Regret, Confidence and Lack, Excitement and Worry). Then, build your "should" list and ask, "What must we do next?" …and you'll walk out with your RNT and the clarity to ignore everything else until it's done.

Give it a shot and let me know how it works…

-Ryan

Ryan Deiss
Co-Founder and CEO, The Scalable Company

P.S. I'm looking for 5 business owners who want to work 1-on-1 with my team and me to install a custom "operating system"…so your business can scale and so you can finally exit the day-to-day.

We don't just teach you to build assets. We build the operating system with you.

Click here for the details.