MBA1864 How To Know Which Opportunities to Say ‘No’ To

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Whether it's a podcast interview, whether it's a collaboration, whether it's somebody cold calling or cold emailing you with an opportunity to work together. As your business starts growing, these opportunities start to become more and more commonplace. I know after being in business for over a decade, my inbox is filled with these types of requests on a daily basis. So how do you know which ones to say yes to and which ones to say no to? And it's actually easier to know which ones to say no to because you're going to have to exercise this more often than yes. Because remember when you say yes to something, you're saying no to any other opportunity that you can do at that given time. So we want to make sure that we are selective. I want to Share with you my criteria, my framework. This works amazingly well. It's going to take a little bit for you to trust it at the beginning because some of us have a hard time saying no. And I'll talk about some strategies to get over that as well. We got a lot to cover, so let's get into it. Let's get down to business. We interrupt this program to bring you an important Wayfair message. Wayfair's got style tips for every home. This is Stiles Mackenzie helping you make those rooms sing. Today's style tip when it comes to making a statement, treat bold patterns like neutrals. Go wild like an untamed animal. Print area rug under a rustic farmhouse table. From wayfair.com fierce this has been your Wayfair style tip to keep those interiors superior. Wayfair Every style, every home. One of the big reasons why it's important for you to know how to say no to opportunities, or what opportunities to say no to is if you don't, you are asking for trouble. You are asking to be overwhelmed. A lot of us say yes to everything, and then when it shows up on our calendar, we say yes. But then that's yes for something that's coming up in two weeks or a month. And then when it shows up on our calendar, it's time to actually do it. That day, we feel overwhelmed. My gosh, I got so much to do. Where did this thing come from? Why did I say yes to this? And the cycle goes on and on and on. My own experiences in life, in business has told me that this is a symptom of me not knowing when to say no. And by the way, I have adopted this philosophy, this framework in my personal life, too. I don't say yes to every opportunity that my friends tell me or every invite to every party or outing or any kind of get together. And it's because I really value my time. And this is something that's become more and more important to me as I got older because I realized, hey, I don't have so much time to waste, right? I don't have infinite amount of time. So let's get down to how do we know which opportunities do we say no to so we can have room with no overwhelm to say yes to the right opportunities? Well, this strategy, this whole framework, starts with a piece of advice that I got from my buddy, Noah Kagan. Noah Kagan is the CEO of AppSumo, huge, huge business. They're on track to make over $100 million in revenue. This Year. That's pretty incredible. A lot of respect and love to Noah and his team. I got a lot of love for Noah. He's been one of my favorite people that I've gotten to know in the last decade because he's so generous with his advice, his friendship, and this gem I'm gonna share with you that he shared with me. It's absolutely priceless. And he actually learned this from Mark Zuckerberg because Noah was employee 30 at Facebook, and this is the biggest takeaway he got from learning from Mark or working from Mark. And Mark lived by this policy, by this rule. So, you know, no one should come up to Mark and say, hey, Mark, I got this idea for this or that, the other thing. And Mark or Zuckerberg would remind Noah, hey, what is our number one goal? And he would point to the whiteboard and it would say, growth. Facebook had one goal, but Noah's like, hey, I want to make money. How about we make money? Let's be more profitable. Here's some ideas of how we can make money. At the time when he was employee 30, you know, they were not really interested in making money. At that time, their number one goal was getting as many users as possible on the platform. They wanted viral growth. And the takeaway here is, is that your business and your life actually becomes so much easier when you have a singular goal. You need to decide what is your business's singular goal? Okay, now, so that there isn't so much pressure on you. This doesn't have to be one goal forever. It could be just a goal for this year. Okay? This year might be growth. Next year, it might be profitability. The next year, your singular goal might be churn or maybe even employee satisfaction, things like that. Okay, so the point here is that you need to set a singular goal, one goal, right? Why? Because everything you do in your business is going to go back to that goal. You're going to ask yourself, hey, should I do this? Should I do that? And you're going to say, well, does doing that contribute to me achieving my singular goal or the business's singular goal? If not, it's a no. So going back to my framework, anytime I get an opportunity, I look at our singular goal. And we've had singular goals every year. Each year is different. So I look at what's this year's singular goal. If it contributes to that goal, I say yes. If it doesn't, it's a no. Now, what's interesting about this framework about using this to decide what to say no to Most of the things should be no, because when you have a singular goal, things are simple. Let me give you an example. Let's say your goal is to get your churn at 5%. You want your product churn. You have a reoccurring business. You want to make sure your churn is at 5% or lower. So Churn is all about customer satisfaction, having an exceptional experience and product, making sure the product is sticky, onboarding, all that kind of stuff. Okay, that's going to contribute to getting 5% or lower churn. If that's the singular goal you have for that year, I want to do everything I can to get there. All my efforts are going to be to achieve that singular goal. Then you're going to be laser focused. So if you get an email that says, hey, do you want to do a cross marketing opportunity? Is that going to help Churn? No, it won't. So that's where the rubber meets the road, where you have to say, hey, I got to commit to this. I'm going to say no, because I got to say yes to only things that contributes to the goal so I can actually achieve the goal that all my attention, all my effort, all my energy goes to that. So I give it a fair shake. And what happens is that you actually not only achieve the goal, but you supersede it because you're so focused on it and you're sacrificing other things to hit it. That's what makes that work. That's what makes you hit the goal. So it's going to be tough for you to say no. But then you're going to get an opportunity one day where somebody says, I can come into your company and help your customer service team improve your retention rate, help customers feel like they're being served and feel like they're being taken care of and be encouraged to stay on your platform. If I get that opportunity, I'm going to say, hell, yeah, this aligns with my number one goal. It's going to help me lower Churn in some way. Of course I'm going to ask questions and try to get some numbers from them and some data. But the point here is that that aligns with my goal. I'm going to do it. And by the way, this is actually real. We had this goal for our annual goal and so many decisions got made by that one was even higher, which is a QA engineer, somebody who's just dedicated to quality assurance on the software, testing it left and right, up and down in staging, in production, in the Branches everywhere in the world, every browser, making sure the quality of our product is incredible because we knew that was going to move the needle. That's an investment. That's a decision. That's a hell yeah. Now what you'll find is that you're going to have to get in the habit of saying no to people politely. And what I like to say, because a lot of people have a hard time communicating a no, is I just, I'm honest with them. I say, hey, right now, this does not align with our number one goal for the year. Having said that, this sounds interesting and I might be interested in this opportunity in the future. I don't say next year because I don't know what my next year goal is going to be, maybe at that time. But I say in the future, I like to stay in touch with people because there could be some value in there. Especially if my goal next year is aligned with it. In the year that we're focused on lowering Churn. I got asked so many times to speak on stage, to speak at conferences, virtual conferences. It was really hard for me to say no because I love speaking on stage, I love doing these things. But I had to because it's not aligned with goal number one for the year. I needed to spend my time only on that goal if I wanted to see meaningful results. Hey, y'. All. As a growing family, my husband and I love game night. Especially when it's Wayfair edition. Let's do it. You gotta name as many Wayfair furniture and decor categories as you can. Ready, Go. Sofas, bar stools, beds, ottomans, outdoor seating, bookshelves, kitchen tables, garden sheds, mid century modern lamps. Time. Nice. You got nine out of a lot. Not too bad. Keep practicing by visiting Wayfair.com where you can shop every style for every home. Wayfair, Every style, every home. To wrap up today's lesson by having a singular annual goal, this filters out so many things. It's not going to be easy, but now you know how to say no and when to say no. Now a quick nuance here. If you are new to business or just started your business and don't have, you know, tons of opportunities in your inbox, then maybe this is not something you need to practice so much. As someone who is established and does have a lot of opportunities, too many opportunities and they're feeling overwhelmed, this is a good problem to have. But the problem with being well known and people heard of your brand and are reaching out to you is they get a lot of spam and you get a lot of people just wanting to work with you or just grabbing your time. And you have a limited amount of time. So I just wanted to throw in there, hey, if you're new, I know when I got started I said yes to everything because everything was not many things. So if you're there, don't worry. You can say yes to things until your plate is full. When you start feeling overwhelmed, feeling like there's just too many opportunities or too many things to decide, use the framework I shared. You'll find it super helpful. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 NBA show hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. Also, leave us an Apple Podcast rating review or leave us a review on any podcast app. I want to hear from you. We read every single review. Would love to hear what you think of the show. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. When I got started in business, I thought if I said no to something, it meant I was being ungrateful. That was just something that was in my head and that's just not true. Even in your personal life, if you say yes to everything, you're not really giving the attention your most dearest friends, your loved ones deserve. You're basically saying, hey, I have a limited amount of time and energy. How do I want to spend that limited time and energy? Where is it going to serve me and others most or best? So I had to flip the script to myself. I said, you know, this is not about gratitude. You can be grateful of the opportunities you say no to, which I am. I'm very grateful. I am so incredibly grateful that people would even take the time to email me and ask me a question or ask me for a collaboration or be on their podcasts. It's incredibly humbling. It's just I can't tell you how much I value that. That means so much to me because I know how hard it is when you don't have that. Because I've been there. But I have a responsibility as a business owner to my customers, to my team to do what's right for the company. It's not about me anymore. It's about them. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Q and A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take care.

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