The Power of Saying NO – Small Business Show 169

The Small business show episode 169 for Wednesday, May 2, 2018. Greetings, folks and welcome to the Small Business show here at BusinessShow Co, the show that is by, for and about small business owners. Sponsors for this episode include a new sponsor, Go Designer, go. Or@godesignergo.com SBS you save half off your first month subscription of this awesome service of designers that do the graphic design work you need. We'll talk more about the details of that in a minute. Here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Lafayette, California, I am Shannon Jean.

Did I throw you off there, Shannon? There was a little lag.

Yeah.

Sometimes I think I'm like, okay, how am I going to intro today? We'll just do the same thing. There you go.

That's good.

Yeah, that's. It works. It works. Gotten us here this far anyway. Yeah, that's 100, you know, 169 episodes. So that's cool. We're going to hit 200 this year. Huh? That's good.

That's the plan.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's great.

Will we.

That's fantastic. I'm trying to figure that. So I was just thinking about the calendar maybe, maybe not.

I don't know. That's right.

Well, we'll see. We'll just roll the dice.

Yeah, we'll roll the dice. We'll find out.

Yeah.

This is just simple math, but, you know.

Yeah, you got it. So you got it. That's great. So good. So we were chatting a little bit before the show and coming up with ideas today and both talking about being, you know, kind of crazy busy with business and personal stuff and thought it'd be a good idea to do a show about saying no, the no show and I the no show.

It's almost funny that we're here.

Yeah, that's true. That's right. And so, you know, the way I thought it'd be good to kind of frame this is I think there's really two different types of no. And there's important things about each type. And there's personal. There's the personal no that impacts your personal life and even you in your business. But I think there's also the business no or yes or no in each case that you say to. And I think they're different. And so we can kind of chat about why I think they're different. And some of the, you know, things about.

Yeah.

Good and good and bad things that, you know, saying yes or saying no comes around.

Yeah, I'm. I'm I'm, I'm, I'm with you. So where do you, where do you want to start this thing? Because whatever, wherever you start with wherever you say we'll start, I'm going to say no.

Yeah, there you go. That's right. That's what I said. That was a joke I used when you said let's do a show about saying no. And I said no, let's talk about the personal no. Because I feel like everything in your business, especially folks listening to the show, typically starts with yourself. You started your company or you and a co founder or a group of people or partners, whatever it is. And we talk on this show all the time about saying yes and the importance of saying yes. And it sounds kind of cliche, but opening yourself up to abundance and bringing that yes stuff into your life, because good things typically start to happen. But if, if you say yes too much or you don't know, maybe some limits that you should have, I think it can really cause a lot of problems. And I think one of the fundamental things to understand or to talk about today is that when you say yes to one thing, you're typically saying no to something else.

Well, that's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And what I mean by that is, you know, something else has to give. You know, there's only certain number of hours in the day, you know, much bandwidth that you have personally. So you know, what or who is going to be impacted when you say yes to either a project or, you know, whatever you put description in there. When you say yes, something's going to give. Are you going to get home later at night? Are you going to have less time for working with your employees? Are other projects going to get pushed back because you've said yes to something new? And I just think it's a good way to take a step back and think about that. Okay, if I say yes to this, what happens? You know, maybe great things happen with this new thing or whatever, but is it going to impact these other things or what impact is it going to have? And is that okay? It may be fine.

Well, you need to kind of be aware of it.

Right?

Correct, correct.

And I think that's probably going to be the theme here, at least from my standpoint, is the intention. When something comes up and you, you either agree to do it or don't agree to do it. A lot of times momentum can make that decision for you and that can, can be dangerous on its own.

Right?

You know, sure. Where, you know, for example, on the personal side, you know, your Your kid plays lacrosse or whatever, you know, sport doesn't matter, gymnastics, you know, any of those things. It one of the, we talk about it all the time, you know, the Charmed life lets us say, yeah, yes, I can go to all of my kids lacrosse games.

Right.

Or whatever that turns out to be. And I mean, that's a wonderful thing to be able to do. Like, that's a huge win, even if it means that I've got to work later or, you know, work more afterwards. I don't want to say work later, you know, but you got to be careful because if you go to four of the games, well now you might as well go to all 12 or all 26 or whatever it is. And so there's the implied yes there. And I've caught myself saying, oh, I can't take that meeting at 4 o' clock today because I have to go to my kids lacrosse game or whatever. And that might be a really important meeting, you know, but that convincing yourself of the implied yes, or in this case the implied no with the meeting, but very, very dangerous thing to just get in the habit of. And so, yeah, yeah, you just gotta.

Be conscious of it.

You gotta be conscious of it.

Be aware.

There needs to be intention. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I think with that, along that lines, with intention is, you know, we also talk about on the show the difference between setting goals and developing a system that helps you achieve things along the way, which is Scott Adams methodology that we've mentioned here a number of times. And I really believe in that process. And I think that one of the ways you can ask yourself whether you should say yes or no to something in your personal life, whether it's something related to your business, another business, a nonprofit that you want to help out something with your church or school, Lexio, whatever it is, is saying yes going to help achieve or move along the system that you're trying to develop for your own life. And if that system or part of the system is, oh, I want to be free to go to my kids events, okay, that's part of it, or I want to do so much for this nonprofit or my church or school, great, then, you know, your yes is moving the ball down the field, if you will, to achieve things towards that system. And if it's not, then I think it's easier to say no. If you stop and think about it and if it slows down achieving things or accomplishing things as part of your system that you're developing, it's again part of that being cognizant of it. And before you answer yes or no, looking at how it impacts that.

That. Yeah, that's actually a really good. I like. I like that. That perspective on it because it's so easy to want to say yes to all of these. These opportunities that show up.

Absolutely, they are. And often they are opportunities. You're right.

Yeah. Personal opportunity. Not necessarily business opportunities, but personal opportunities, you know, and. And for me, like, I have to be really careful when I get offers to. To go, you know, play my drums for somebody or theater show or whatever it is, I want to say yes. I mean, it's flattering that they've asked me. I make a little bit of money from it, but not enough that it really moves the needle most of the time. So I can't really say, oh, this is a business decision. In a sense it is, because it's furthering that along. But that's not ever going to pay my mortgage. The way I have organized my life, it could, but I would have to do things very, very differently. And I've chosen not to do that because I travel and all. Stuff is not fun for me. Yeah, yeah.

Being away from home, it makes sense.

Yeah. But. But it's. It's. Yeah, it's really easy not to. Not to think about the bigger picture when it's like, oh, am I available on that day?

Yes.

Right.

You know, whereas you don't have to. I guess maybe that's. That's the. That's the next part of this is you don't have to fill up all if you are open on, like, for me, you know, if I'm open on a Friday night and somebody says, hey, can you play a gig on this night? Just because I'm open doesn't automatically mean that I have to say yes to that.

Right.

I need to think about, okay, what's the gig gonna be? What. You know, because I know it's gonna take me away from my family that night. So that. Does that then mean, you know, the night before, the night after, I will choose not to do something because I want to have dinner with my family or, you know, like, there will be ripple effects and simply being aware, like you said, having that. That system of what's my goal and who's.

Yeah. When you decide, yes, I'm going to go play. Your family is getting less of your time, so that's where the slack gets up to take, you know, in this example.

Yeah, in this example.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah.

And your system is different for everybody. Everybody has their own unique, you know, thing that they're developing and that kind of stuff. And. And I would also say that there's, you know, an argument to be had that all of us at one time of our life have filled up our time so we wouldn't have to think about maybe something a little more important that we're having trouble with.

Oh, yeah, for sure.

And it's easy to be. I'm so busy, so busy, so busy. And that's what I'm accomplishing. I'm busy, busy, busy. But is it, again, is it really helping you accomplish things or is it, you know, masking that? You should be sitting down and focusing on the accounting for your small business or whatever, you know, insert the topic, you know, but it. Because you're so busy and, And I'm speaking for myself. I love being busy. And I like, you know, in the, you know, to be transparent here and authentic. I like people thinking I'm busy and I've got all this stuff going on and I love talking about, oh, I got this business here and this business there, and I got this podcast here and I own this piece of real estate. It's fun when you get with the right person and you have those discussions. And so I have to be careful myself that I don't want to run out and start something new so I can humble brag of how darn complicated my life is. And I'm so busy. But at the same time, I need to sit down today and work on stuff that I really don't want to do. So I think that happens, too.

That's interesting. Yeah, that's right. The Fill my schedule trap.

Right.

Is what we just described. But it's interesting because you can use other. You can use that trap to procrastinate. I mean, very easily.

That's exactly.

Very easily. Just because. And you can convince everyone around you how productive you are because you're always including yourself. Well, yeah, but. But if you're not, you know, sitting down and. And like you said, doing the accounting or whatever it is that you don't want to do. Well, it doesn't, you know, at some point, if these are crucial to your, you know, success or, or moving forward or whatever it is, then that will hamstring you at some point. It may.

It does.

Like, stop him.

And I always usually. Yeah, and I always use the accounting example because I can't stand accounting. And I'm a top guy, sales. Oh, I just sold this and did this and flip that. I know I'm making money. But you know what? Sometimes when you really dig deep into. You're like, wow, I didn't really make that much money. And like, I listen to Dave Ramsey, you know, and talks about money all the time on the radio, and he's got a comment I love. It's like, you know, you can't earn your way out of being, he says, being stupid, you know, with money. But, you know, I've done that a lot of my life where like, well, I just have to figure out how to go make. How to go make some more cash because I, you know, I'm not doing good here or whatever. And sometimes that's worked for me. But saying yes too often can off. Can frequently mask the things in your life that you really to focus on.

It's true, especially for guys like you and me, because we've proven to ourselves whether it is correct or not, we've proven to ourselves that we are able to be our most successful when doing multiple things right now. And I don't mean, I don't mean multitasking. I mean having multiple revenue streams happening simultaneously. And you, you know, I mean, you can see examples of people that do exactly the opposite. Total deep dive on one thing and, and completely crater. And you can also, of course, see examples of people that do that. And, you know, their, their success is astronomical. But, but I've certainly convinced myself that I'm better when I have multiple things to manage multiple revenue streams and that. And the problem is, like you said, you can just say, okay, well, I'm just kind of screwing this one up because I'm not paying attention to that one thing. So if I pull more in over here, I can account for that. It's all good. When in fact, no, sometimes it is better to stop and look and deal with the stuff you gotta deal with.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's true.

Yeah.

And you know, I think that the really. I read a really good article about saying no in Harvard Business Review and we'll link to it in the show notes. And one of the things that really struck me is the way they phrase this. It said say no to the request, not to the person. And I think that's often for me, what, you know, what hinders my ability to say no is I don't want to disappoint the person. So if, if I go back and say, wow, you know, I really respect you and this and I'd love to work with you, but I'm not able to do that right now, you know, so, you know, really focusing on the. It's a request that I can't do. But I'm not saying no to you or our friendship, business relationship, whatever it is, whatever.

Yeah, I like that. That's. Yeah. And there's an art to that.

Right.

That you've gotta, you know, you, you gotta figure out how to. Yeah, you're gonna get that wrong and people will be offended or feel slighted or whatever word you want to insert there that. Because you're not. You said no. You know, they wanted you. That they. Yeah, then. And when you do, when you ask somebody, hey, you know, will you do this for me? I want to hire you to do this certain thing, like, you know, that especially some level of respect.

Yeah, yeah, with respect. And, and often, you know, I get it with folks that would like me to invest with them, and that's really sticky, you know, And I had it happen twice this weekend at different events that I was at, and I was like, oh, no, no, no, no, let's not go here, let's not go here. And, you know, it was really kind of. It was fine. And I kind of extricated. But, you know, it makes it challenging, especially when money gets involved in the personal side of it. I think you have to really, really go out of your way to stress to them that you're not saying no to them, you're just saying no to the request.

Yeah, yeah. It's true.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I mean, in the case of somebody asking you for investment money or whatever, you can say, you know, I have a policy where you got to be careful when you say, I have a policy, because if you ever do anything that would go against this fictitious policy that you invented in the moment, then. Then you've insulted the person.

Right.

Yeah.

And they'll call you to the mat on it.

Totally.

And I, I would also sit.

You could say, hey, you know, I've. I've. I've had a string of. Of investments that I'm, I'm currently involved in right now. And that's more, you know, I'm at my limit currently. But. So I can't do this right now. Like, let's talk. Right. You know, but don't. But feel free next year to bring me something like. That's fine. Yeah, sure. Yeah.

And I would, I would also suggest. I try not to say, oh, I don't have the capital right now. I don't have the money.

Right.

I don't have the money to do this, do that right now. Because. And then I also think they kind of look at your lifestyle or then if you do Invest in something else or you buy a new car or whatever it is, you know, you get this person going, huh. You know, he didn't have the money to do that, but they had the money to this, you know, so.

Yeah, well, you can just be honest. The money's earmarked for other things.

That's correct.

And you don't have to go into detail, right? I mean, at some point.

No, you don't.

If they start asking, you can say, hey, well, you know, well, this is like, you know, most people are going to cross that line. Yeah, exactly.

No, they're not. Not good. So that's a personal side. So let's talk about business in a minute. Talk about go designer, go.

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Right.

If it's like, oh, there's too much friction between idea in your head and result. And most of the time that friction isn't money. It's just, well, you know, I don't have somebody good. I don't, you know, I don't have somebody I can call, so I gotta look. Do you know anybody? That whole conversation? No. Go designergo.com SBS that's where you go to sign up for this service. And it is designers that will work with you. Unlimited revisions.

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Awesome. I want to start by telling a little story about saying no. Saying yes. So I done a lot of business in Asia and China over the years and when I first got started, I was like, man, this is so great. All these people just constantly say yes to me and yes, I'll do this. Yes, yes, I can take care of this. And yes. And I would say, well, I need to meet this price point. It needs to be here. And they'd go, oh, okay, yes. Yeah, fine. But it didn't take long to learn that when things buy products. And I'd say, look, I need to get them for X, you know, per. Per unit. And they would say yes. But then they'd show up and the quality would be, you know, I may get the first article. They call it the sample okay, it looks pretty good. Yeah, great, great. But I need to pay, you know, two bucks less than they'd say, okay, yes. And then I'd get the actual product and the quality would be really bad. Often just garbage. And I, I, again, when I was a younger businessman, I call and say, what, what's going on, guys? This is crazy. And they say, well, we, we met your price and this is basically, you get what you pay for. You know, you, you said so you, you have to be aware in some cultures, saying no is just not going to be part of the equation. So you know, that, that yes may be very conditional. And like I was mentioning, on the personal side, something is going to give. And especially if you push on price or deliver three times or whatever it is, you need to know your, you know, know your supplier. And especially if it's a cultural thing where they, they're just not going to tell you no. You know, they're not going to do what you want, but they're not gonna say it, you know.

Yeah. And I would. It's interesting because you've, I mean, you tell the story about China. We had a guest on the show, and I can't remember who it was that told almost exactly the same story, and he learned that he actually wanted to pay more. I think it was the guy making. Was it the duck calls and things like that, right?

Yeah, I think so.

And he told the same story where it was like, oh, I'll just go with the cheapest one I can beat him up on price. And they moved. Whoa, that's great. And then the stuff turned out to not be great and he fixed that. But I would say that if it is a cultural thing, one of the cultures of people that are susceptible to this are entrepreneurs in general.

That's a good point.

Right?

Because I mean, we just finished talking about how hard. And we're gonna talk more about how hard it is to say no. And so instead of saying no, you take on too much work and now quality time, whatever it is, something has to give. So be very careful when hiring someone, you know, that you understand what the conditions are of the yes. That you're thing. Because that, that can, that can be, you know, it can bite you and not just overseas. It can happen.

No, no.

Right next door. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I say that from experience.

Yeah, right. Oh, yeah. And you know, the, the thing with your business, what I found from, from an owner's perspective, and this is where I'm totally going to come from on this conversation, it'd Be great to have an employee's perspective too. But one of the things I've thought about is when I say yes to something with my business, is someone else going to have to do the work that I'm saying yes to or take the trip that I'm saying yes to, Go to the conference, man, the trade show booth, whatever it is. And often that answer is yes. So you have to think about that downstream impact that. How is it going to impact your business? Is it going to be disruptive? Is it going to be productive? Whatever it is? You need to ask yourself that. That question if someone else is going to have to do it.

Yeah, that's true. Because you're committing. I mean, it's a very similar question. Right? You're committing resources that are yours to assign.

Right.

So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's really interesting. Yeah, for sure.

And one of the things I've always tried to, you know, think about is does your business model have, and maybe I'm not saying this right, but does your business model have the confidence built into it to say no? Often when you need to say no, you know, you can look at, you know, Apple, they always talk about, oh, we say no to, you know, hundred products and decide on one kind of thing. And you know, I think you have to be confident in what you're doing to have no built into your business model so you don't get kind of dragged around or dragged into situations that, that can a. Undermine the workflow of your business, which can be really disruptive. If you're constantly introducing like, you know, special situations or exemptions to policies over and over and over, then I would say maybe you should sit down and reevaluate those policies. If you're always, you know, let's say, for example, putting someone else ahead of the line, you know, fix. Because in my case, you've been in the service business forever. Are you constantly moving people to the front of the line for one reason or another for repairs? Well, maybe there's something wrong with the way things are being handled that makes it happen because that's incredibly disruptive to your service tax.

I used to say, being in the consulting business, that we were prioritizing other people's emergencies.

Right.

But I don't think that's unique to just that business generally even take our sponsor here, Go Designer, go. Like when you show up, you submit your request and you want a design, and preferably it'd be great to have the person drop everything they're doing and work on it right away. That would be awesome. But they are going to prioritize your emergency in that unless you say, sorry to say this, but if there's any way you can get it done by 6pm today, I have a thing. And they need to factor that in. I don't even know if they would do that.

Right.

But. But like, otherwise they're just going to put you in the queue where you're supposed to be. And that's how that goes.

That's right.

And you have to. It takes some confidence. I mean, and that was something I always worked on with our text was like, whoa, I know you want to say yes because the reason we do this is we like to be the ones to fix things for people.

Right.

We like to be the savior. So you want to, like that just naturally predisposes you to saying yes to everything because it's going to make the customer happy. But, you know, it's not just the one customer, you know, doesn't.

Yeah, yeah. And ultimately it does not make the customer happy.

No.

And you have to. When you say no in your business to a customer, it's really important to politely, you or your employee or whoever, it's going to be politely explain why we don't do that or why we are not able to help and possibly refer them to someone else. It may be the best thing you ever did for the customer and for your business and employees because of that disruption it can cause. And same thing with your business having confidence to say no. Do your employees have the confidence to say no? Especially without having to check with you all the time? It'll drive you nuts. It's that superhero complex. And if, if your employees aren't confident that they can say no. And I can tell you one of the ways that they lose that confidence. If you step in and say yes when they've already said no.

Yeah, yeah.

And sometimes, you know, you.

Sometimes that happens, but you, Yep, it.

Does happen, but you have to be ready to defend it after the fact and say, well, let me explain why I said yes and, and critique it, you know, and I think it's really important though, that you don't undermine them. And I would always ask, somebody would come in and, you know, again, explain a situation that's going on with a business or school. And the look, they're asking about this. And I would always say, have you already told them? Did you already give them, you know, an answer? And if the answer was, oh yeah, I told them no because it's against or we don't have that in place or da da, da, that that gives you the kind of the baseline to work from. And you either go in and defend that because you may have to explain it or a supervisor manage, have to explain why you're saying no versus just going in and saying yes to get the problem out of your hair. Which can happen too.

Yeah, it's not a good thing. I had a thing just the other day where I found myself in a scenario where I was now the sales rep for this brand new client that showed up.

Right.

And once I knew what type of client this was, I realized I should have passed this person along to one of my other guys like much earlier in the process. But now they're engaged with me so you can't pass somebody along.

Right.

And I also, in that moment I really didn't, I didn't think this, this company was actually interested in, in doing advertising. I thought it was going to go a different way. I just, I misread it, you know, and, and so now, okay, I'm the salesperson, but, oh, I've sent them materials in a way that is going to make it nearly impossible for me to sell to them the way that we normally sell.

Right.

You know, we rarely sell like one offs. We always do, you know, things in bundles because we know that a single ad drop doesn't generally doesn't happy results. Like you need some repetition in order to do this.

Sure.

And so I tried my vet, my best to backpedal and it started totally backfiring. So I wound up having to take this deal, you know, as this essentially a one off. I mean I explained to this person and I think they understand they're a little bit different, which is what threw me off in the first place without getting into the particulars. But you know, and once I got the deal and the contract came in and the first thing I did, I thought, okay, so I've spent, you know, the last 20 years talking about how we don't do deals this way. And I literally just did it, you know, and it was like, okay, yeah, right. We've all been, right, it happens. And it, you know, there, we have done deals this way, but for the most part we really don't for a lot of reasons. And so the first thing I did was I just took the entire email trail and I sent it off to my sales guys and said, okay, we're going to talk about this, we're going to dissect it, we're going to talk about where I went wrong on this, like what I could have Done differently. And we're going to make this, you know, you're going to make me a better salesperson because. No, it's great, you know, like, because I screwed up.

Use an example.

Yeah. Or maybe I didn't. Like, well, you know, time will tell to see how this.

You don't know yet. That's correct. You may have.

Yeah, I may have done exactly the right thing. But if it is exactly the right thing, let's figure out why. Because, you know, like, maybe there is the right time to sort of make this exception or whatever it was. But it was like, oh, crap, like I can't hide. I could easily have hidden this deal.

Right?

Like, no problem. Nobody else would have known about it. I could have, you know, it just would have been done. But it's like, well, wait a minute, you know, these people trust me. I trust, I need to be able to trust them. Like it's a two way street. Like that's just. I can't hide this. There's no way in the world that this is the smart moment.

Yeah, it's a teachable moment. You can all discuss it. Because I say that sometimes exceptions actually become policy.

Totally.

If they expose a different way of doing things or oh, we've missed out. Boy, look how interested they are if we offer it this way. Why don't we just make that our business model and change things and answer.

We've had that discussion about this type of thing before and there's a really good answer. It's because people that we let sign up for one. Sign up for exactly one.

Yes, of course.

People that, people that we, we hold to this, you know, three minimum thing are often with us for years. So I mean, there's, there's evidence to support why we absolutely shouldn't do what I just did. But you know, right, you go, yeah, but you're right. Sometimes exceptions become policy. At the very worst of it, I know that we're going to identify some, you know, I like to call them magic phrases, like the things that you can say that when I explain this, it always comes across as we're trying to trick people. No, what we're trying to do is mind meld with people so that they can see things our way.

Right.

So that they can see what we're seeing and understand why there's a benefit to doing things this way, you know, and so we have these lists of what we call magic phrases. And it's not just this business I've done it with, it's every single one, especially customer facing Right. Where you just got to come up with exactly the right thing to say. And so I know that some magic phrases will come out of it or some forbidden phrases, and those are equally as valuable.

That's great. So, yeah, I mean, there's so many different examples of this in your personal business. Saying yes, saying no. And I think it's good for us as we've started to reevaluate what we talk about on the show because, like, you know, we did the episode on our charmed life and how everything. This is great, and this is why we do it. But then, you know, we try to look at it and go, well, let's talk about the daily grind that, you know, can be just miserable. And now we're saying, you know, we always talk about the yes. The yes, say yes, and, you know, open yourself up this, that, and thing. And so being able to talk about saying no is equally important, I think, is a great way, you know, spend this time on the show. And we'd love to hear from you guys if you're using different tactics or you think we're right or wrong. Feedbackusinessshow co. Or just, you know, if you're up on Facebook, businessshow Co. Facebook will take you to the small business support group where you can share your stories and get some advice and feedback. We've got a ton of people joining, and maybe next episode we'll talk about that.

Yeah, yeah.

See what people want out of that group.

I like it. It's good stuff, folks. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks for your feedback that you send in. Thanks for everything. It really, it's. It's fantastic. And of course, thanks to. Hey, there's the old song. Look at that, huh? Oh, yeah, I hit the wrong button. There it is. Yeah, that's right. You know what?

It's a classic, folks. You won't hear it that often.

We'll go old school with the outro today.

That's right.

But I also want to thank the folks at Go Designer Go for sponsoring this episode. Visit them godesignergo.com SBS Keep living that charmed life, folks. Doesn't matter which song you're playing.

There you go.

Yeah, that's it.