We're chatting with Chris Taylor about how emotions drive decision biases, including appropriate confidence, risk appraisal, decision rules, and resisting framing. Chris reflects on early anger, pride, and overconfidence leading to unnecessary risk (including spending nearly $3M on scrapped software when revenue was about $400K), and shares improved practices: making small experimental bets, using a trusted brain trust of advisors / investors / lenders for alternative perspectives, deciding which decisions to delegate, reducing decision fatigue through preloading routines, joining high-level peer groups, and sustaining purpose through setbacks.

Topics:
00:00 Welcome
01:19 Introducing Chris Taylor
04:24 Emotions and Biases Model
09:48 Small Bets for Data
12:04 Brain Trust Feedback Loops
15:20 Delegating the Decisions
20:02 Routine Sets You Free
21:55 Actionable Finds Its Niche
23:23 Launching Catalyst as Experiment
26:46 Why Keep the 17 Year Old Business?
33:01 Advice to Younger Self

Decision Intelligence Zone is a podcast that unpacks how real decisions get made—exploring the emotions, strategies, blind spots, and patterns we don’t often talk about, so you can sharpen your thinking and make better choices in leadership and life.

Hosted by Dr. Magda Du Preez, a decision intelligence researcher at the intersection of business and psychology, and Christi Mertens, a leadership team coach specializing in team decision-making and collaboration, the show blends science with real-world insight.

Through honest conversations with leaders who’ve built, broken, and reimagined things, we explore the decisions that shaped them—and the lessons that matter most when it’s time to choose.