MBA1731 The More You Grow, The More You Need To Say No

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Hey welcome. Welcome to the $100 MBA show. Golden Business Nuggets delivered every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company that I started back in 2014 with my partner. And in today's episode, you'll learn. The more you grow, the more you need to say no. This is one of the biggest challenges many entrepreneurs face, learning to say no. When you're on the beginning of your entrepreneurial journey, when you are in the first few years, you are hungry for opportunities. You are saying left and right to anything that comes your way. And that's a good thing. But as you grow, as your business grows, as you have more on your plate and you become a little bit more well known in your market, those opportunities start to explode. And if you continue with your old habits and say yes to everything, your business will suffer. So how do you know when it's time to start saying no? And of course, how do you say no? No to opportunities? Which ones do you say no to? How do you do it without feeling bad and looking like an ungrateful, obnoxious person? Well, I'll break it down. I'll share my own experiences with this and how you can navigate your way through this so that you only say yes to the opportunities you absolutely need to. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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I want to start by just stating a fact. It's so much easier to say yes to something than to say no. Saying yes has no friction, right? If somebody says, hey, I would love to have you on my podcast, you saying yes requires zero effort. You're like, sure, yeah, no problem. A big part of that reason is because you're not actually saying yes to doing something immediately. Right now. You're saying yes to something that's going to happen in the future. And the future is foggy for most of us. We don't really fully internalize that commitment. Or like, that's my future self's problem, right? That's future Omar's problem. My problem right now. On the other hand, saying no to anything is hard. Even if it's just a friend asking you, hey, do you want to grab some lunch? And you just can't make it because you have obligations. Having to say no is just hard because you don't disappoint people. And that's natural. That's just you being a good person. But having said that, saying no doesn't make you a bad person. Saying no actually protects you so that you can continue to do the good things in your life so you can be of value to not only your customers and your employees, but also to your friends and family. And saying no is not really something we're taught, even how to deliver that no. So in today's lesson, I want to explore this concept and walk you through this journey. When to start saying no, how to do it, and which opportunities you should say yes to. Here's the reality. As you start growing your business, as you become a more established entrepreneur, the more valuable your time. When you're first getting started, I'm just speaking about myself. When I first got started and I was just trying to kick up dust, I was trying to make a name for myself. I was trying to build A business that matters, that has customers, that has revenue, that sustained myself, I was willing to do pretty much anything to bring in customers that was legal and ethical, of course. And therefore my time really didn't have much value because all I had is time. I didn't have money and I didn't have customers, but I had time. But that equation changes as you get more customers, as you get more revenue. And now your biggest asset is time. You only have a limited amount of it. So anytime you say yes to something, you are going to say no to something else, because that is going to take you some time on your calendar, right? And once that time is taken, you can't do anything else. And there are only a certain number of hours in the day, right? There's only 24 hours a day. You can't do more than that. You know, and the thing about this is that it's gradual, right? In the beginning, you have nothing but time. Then your time becomes a little bit more limited. And then as you grow as an entrepreneur, your time is incredibly limited. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that you just have more on your plate, you have more opportunities presented to you because of the successes you've been having. A good way to look at this is just to look at the extremes. If you want to have lunch with a local entrepreneur that you met in your co working space, they might be in the start of their entrepreneurial journey. Maybe they've been doing this for a few years. But getting a lunch with that entrepreneur that you've met at your co working space is not impossible. You can schedule it, you can make it happen. Versus like trying to have lunch with Mark Cuban, right? You know Mark Cuban from Shark Tank and you know, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, billionaire entrepreneur. This guy's got incredible amounts of opportunity. His schedule is jam packed. His time is incredibly limited. So it's not impossible if you'd have lunch with them, but the chances of you having lunch with them are a whole lot thinner than you having with somebody who's not as busy, all right, not as senior in their entrepreneurial journey. And that's because he has a lot on display, a lot of opportunity, and he says no a lot. He had to train himself to do that because when he says no, it allows him to say yes to other things, things that he really, really wants to do or things that will have a greater impact on his life and his business. Now, a lot of people have a hard time saying no because they don't want to feel bad they don't want to feel like they're being a jerk or not helping other or just respecting the journey and understanding, hey, I was once there. I want to help somebody out. I'm one of those people. But you can always turn an opportunity in your favor to make sure it works for you. So I sometimes get emails that say, hey, Omar, I would love to jump on a call and discuss this with you. I have a question. I have something I want to work out. I want maybe an opportunity we can collaborate. And I totally respect that. And that's really kind of them to reach out to me. But a call is very time consuming for me. Anything that's synchronous, where I have to be at the same time, same place, is very, very hard to do because I have a schedule, I have obligations to my team, to my customers, things I have to do. So I always counter and say, thank you so much. I'd love to do this over email. This is the best way, given my schedule, for me to be able to help in any way I can. And what I like to do is I ask them, hey, can you shoot me a quick video explaining how I can help or what your question is, or whatever the matter is. This is a whole lot easier for me and I'm able to help them out without jumping on a call. It's a little bit more convenient. And that way it's not a total no. I'll definitely handle things this way if it's an introduction, like somebody I know is introducing me to somebody and I respect that relationship. So I will like to respond, but by watching a quick video and then I can quickly respond either with a voice memo or with a video for myself, I can probably help that person out or respond in a way that at least 80 to 90% fulfills the needs. And I save myself a little bit of time. But often more times than not, I will just flat out have to say no to certain opportunities. And one of the ways you can gauge which ones to say no, I personally will try to say yes to the ones I feel I can make the biggest impact. Whether it's being on a virtual summit with thousands of people, I can impact thousands of people. If I'm going to guest on a podcast and they have thousands of listeners, I definitely would want to be on that podcast because I know that I'll help thousands of people and not just one person. So it's worth my time. If it's a collaboration with a company or a business, and this is going to help us bring in tens of thousands of dollars in revenue. That's worth my time. So efforts that scale are things I say yes to. Efforts that don't scale, I just can't say yes to because I just don't have the time for that. Now you might be asking, well, how do I know when I'm there? How do I know to say no to those opportunities? Maybe those are the only opportunities I get. The ones that don't scale. Well, you'll know once you start getting those larger scale opportunities. Speaking engagements, webinars, summits, podcast interviews. Once those start rolling in, you know that you qualify for those types of high scale, types of opportunities. Business partnerships, things like that, joint venture type of deals. And you know they're going to be coming down the line. So when you do get the ones that don't scale, you're going to have to say no because you have to free yourself up so you can be able to do this. It's not just time also, it's also mind space. It's also attention. So those are the markers. When you start getting those opportunities, understand they will be coming. Now, how do I say no? What do I recommend when you have to say no? I always thank them for reaching out. I always appreciate the fact that they considered me or are asking for help or whatever it is. I show my gratitude. But an assurance, sweet message via email is usually the form. I just say, unfortunately I'm unable to commit to this. Sometimes I'll offer some alternatives that are less time sensitive, like I mentioned before. But many times I just say, unfortunately, I'm able to do this. I really do appreciate you reaching out to me. I wanted to respond personally and say, I'm sorry I'm not going to be able to commit. Most people will respect that. Most people will appreciate the fact that you actually replied personally. This is something I like to do myself. And most people will circle back maybe later on and that's fine. But you will have some people that won't like this response. They're going to feel like, hey, that's not fair. They're going to feel entitled to your time and you just cannot get upset about that. You don't owe anybody anything, right? In fact, let me correct that. You actually do owe somebody something and that's your customers. You serve your customers, you serve your team. Those people come first. You need to make sure those people are taken care of because all the success in the world won't matter if it doesn't remain successful. You have to keep your business going. You have to keep your business happy and your customers happy so that you can continue to grow.

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To wrap up today's lesson, it's not easy to say no. I know that. But one of the books I highly recommend that really has helped me in this process is a book called essentialism by Greg McKeown. I highly recommend you pick up and read this book. It's an easy read. It's really life. I know that sounds pretty dramatic, but it is a really good book to just get really real about your time and just your focus and to get out of that guilt cycle of saying no to people. That guilt is going to hold you down and it's going to really take your time hostage. I also want to mention that you do not want to fill your calendar 100%. You need to have at least 20% time of your calendar just absolutely free. Nothing scheduled. You need time to think as the leader of your business, as an entrepreneur, as the CEO or one of the founders or leadership. You need a moment to just reflect and think and ponder and come up with innovative ideas. You can't do that if you're chalk block busy. You go from one thing to another. You need a moment of peace, a moment of deep thought so you can be in the right mind space to lead your team. So before you go 100% maximum, make sure you have a little bit of buffer for yourself. Thanks so much for listening. Make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss a beat. Smash that subscribe button on whatever you use to listen to podcasts, whether it's Apple Podcasts or Stitcher Radio, Himalaya, Spotify, or on them all. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Business is about relationships and when you say no to people, you want to make sure you're respectful. And that's what I like to do as much as possible because you want to maintain relationships regardless if you're able to work with each other or not. I'm mindful of this because I know that I might be a little bit ahead of certain entrepreneurs in my journey, but they could be ahead of me in a moment's time, you know, and I might need their assistance. Right? I know how it feels to want to connect with other entrepreneurs, whether it was in the past or in the current day, and that's okay if you're in that state, in that stage, I should say. But my advice to you is that if you are going to reach out to work with somebody, collaborate, get them on your podcast. Make sure you make it very clear to them what you actually need them to do, what's the time commitment and what they're going to get in return. What's in it for them? I know that sounds kind of transactional, but they need to make quick decisions if this is worth their time. And if you can make that easy for them by laying it out nice and clearly, it's going to be easy to get a yes. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode of Freeride Friday. I'll see you then. Take care.

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