MBA934 How to Start Saying NO. Practical Strategies

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Hey O. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA Show. Straight to the good stuff with our daily ten minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar MBA, a complete business training and community online over at 100mba.net in today's episode you will learn how to start saying no. I want to share with you some practical strategies to start saying no. As entrepreneurs, as business builders, we tend to be go getters. We like to say yes to every opportunity. The problem is when you say yes to everything you spread yourself way too thin and you're not able to focus on the right things. Plus you get stressed out and sometimes you end up not doing the things you committed to, which is a huge huge mistake. So in today's episode I'm gonna give you some strategies. The strategies I use myself to say no to things that I just can't do so I can be able to do the right things. Some of these are really non confrontational and in fact will build rapport with those Just saying no to if you have a problem with overwhelm and just saying yes to every single thing, this episode is gonna be a lifesaver. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business the recording of this episode is impeccable because I just said no to a very dear friend of mine and I wanna share with you how I went about that. It was really hard to say no cause I really wanted to say but I knew it was the right thing and I'll share with you that example in a second. I do want to mention though, I did touch on this topic about two years ago when I reviewed the book essentialism by Greg McKeown. This is a fantastic book to show you how to focus on the right things and not get overwhelmed. Don't say yes to everything because if it's yes to everything, it's not yes to anything. I know that sounds kind of confusing, but it's so true. If you just say yes, yes, yes, yes to everything then nothing gets special attention. Nothing really gets really your focus attention. And often a lot of those yeses just never happen. I know you're nodding your head right now, listening yes. Sometimes you said yes to things and you just couldn't pull it off. So I want to start off with the example I just said I was going to mention with my friend and it's the first strategy. How to say no through love. That's what I call it. I know it sounds cheesy but it really works and it's non confrontational. So let me give you the example. My good friend Iz, who's also a fellow entrepreneur, gather. Check him out@gathercustomers.com he calls me up, he says he's in my neighborhood and why don't we grab a cup of coffee or grab some lunch. I look at my calendar and it's jam packed. I got a ton of things on my to do list and I possibly can squeeze it in and I might be able to pull it off, but to be honest, it would be a huge stretch and I would be really stressing myself all throughout the day to try to get everything done. If I push this into the calendar now, I love his. I want to hang with him, I love spending time with him. He's a good friend of mine, he's my Egyptian brother from another mother, all that stuff, right? But my CEO self of the company was like, no, you got lots to do today, you're gonna have to say no. So I called him back, I said hey Iz, I really, really want to hang out with you. I really want to grab that coffee but I just can't pull it off. My schedule is incredible today. My to do list is an absolute jerk. Right? That to do list is really demanding a lot from me today, but please tell me the next time you're around. I'd love to have that coffee or lunch. And of course he was like so cool with it. And he was just like, hey man, no problem. I completely get it. He's an entrepreneur himself. But the reason why I felt like it was easy for me to deliver this is I was just being forthright about my feelings about wanting to hang out with him. Yes, I want to do this. I simply can't. So I like to show love first. That makes it easier to say no right now. Most of the time it's just hard for you to say no. Not for them to hear the no. So just to get the know out, it's good to start off with just saying, hey man, I love hanging out with you, or I would love this opportunity or I'd love to say yes, this sounds amazing, but my schedule this month or this year or whatever is so busy and I have other commitments and I want to be a person of my word. So please let me know the next time there is another opportunity. I just can't do this one. So start with love and transparency. And it's often easier whether you're on the phone or you're running an email or whatever. All right, what's the next way to say no? Now, this works especially if you're working on a very intensive project and you need no distractions. So for example, if you're launching a new product in a few weeks and you need to really buckle down and you just can't say yes to any other opportunity, so set up an autoresponder or a vacation mode on your email. You can easily do this on Gmail, where you can have all emails that get sent to you reply with a message that says, hey, I'm away in Bermuda. Instead you're going to say, hey, hey, I'm really working on something important. I'm working on a launch, I'm writing a book, whatever it is, and I'm unable to respond to emails quickly or make any commitments. So they get this response automatically when they email you and therefore they don't expect an answer. It's all about expectations. So if you can pull it off or this is an opportunity that you can put in your schedule, then you can reply to them. But if you don't reply, it's understood that you just can't do anything right now. Because if in this intensive period you're really focused on your project and you can be as specific as you like, you can Say for the next three weeks or until April 1st, whatever it is. So having an automatic email responder saying that, hey, I'm just in a busy time in my life right now in my business, and I can't say yes, it's a very non confrontational and easy way to just set up expectations. Number three, use a calendar app. We use Acuity Scheduling. They've been a sponsor on the show. But any calendar app that allows people to book your time on on your calendar. With these calendar apps like Acuity, they can just choose a time that you allot. You say, hey, I will take appointments from 8am to 12pm on Mondays and the calendar app will check your calendar, whether it's a Google Calendar or ical or whatever, and you can sync it automatically and see if there's any appointments during those times. If not, when somebody actually looks to book you for your time, they can book you during those allotted times or 8 through 12 on Monday in this example. So by having a calendar app, you allot some time for saying yes to certain commitments. Now this is perfect if these yeses are for podcast interviews, interviews for blog posts, people want to chat with you, demos, sales calls, whatever, instead of just having a completely open calendar and they can book at any time, make it really tight. I do this. I have a certain amount of hours in every week that I allot to this. And what happens is that when people check my calendar like, oh man, the only available time was last week. I need to book for next week. So it makes them plan a little bit ahead. But it doesn't make me feel overwhelmed because I know there's a block of hours that I will have to be available for those appointments. And if there's no appointments during that block, great, I can do something else. But it sets up my expectations as well as I let people know. This is what I'm willing to do. These, these are the hours I'm willing to say yes to. Appointments. This was a super lifesaver when I started doing this about four or five years ago. It just clears your mind and you know that you don't have any appointments that you didn't set up that just surprise you. Okay. We've gone through three strategies and I want to just remind you why we're doing this. Your time is extremely valuable. It's something that you'll never get back. I was thinking about this the other day. I was frustrated about some issue that we were working through and I was kind of in a bad mood for about a good 20 minutes and I thought to myself, man, I can't get those 20 minutes back. It's over. All you have is time. That's all you got. You can't just give it away to everybody. Like it doesn't cost anything. It's priceless. So you gotta be really selective about where you give your time. And that's what I mean by saying yes to things. Having said that, let's get into the fourth strategy. And I call this strategy. I can't give you the whole pie, but I can give you a couple slices. Sometimes I get asked to do something, to participate in some event, let's say, for example, and it's a large commitment. Let's say, for example, they want me to travel to another country and be a part of a four day event. That's a great opportunity. But maybe I can't commit to those four days. Maybe there's a conflict in my schedule. Maybe that's a huge commitment of time for me, especially if I'm asked to speak for one hour. Now, this is not always the case. Most of the time I like to spend the whole conference there, but maybe I just can't do it for that time. I can easily say, hey, I'd love to participate in your event. Unfortunately, I can't stay for the whole time. I'd love to give as much value as possible. How about I stay for the day I'm speaking and the day after or the day before, Would that be cool? Sometimes you don't have to have this black or white yes or no answer. You can kind of negotiate and try to meet them halfway. So that way you can actually not over commit yourself. Of course, if you can spend the four days in this example, great. But if you can't, then you have to make sure you tell them you can. And maybe they're happy to do that instead of just having a flat out no. But what if I couldn't travel at all to this conference? Let's say I'd like to give options, say, hey, I would be happy to, you know, via Skype or via whatever. I like to offer, you know, some alternatives, like hey, why don't I give my talk via a webinar or via Skype or whatever. I can't travel or I can't do those dates, but I want to add value. And I've done this before, I've actually done this with other conferences and they were cool with it. So sometimes it's good to kind of say, hey, I can't give you everything you want, but maybe I can give you something so it's like a yes with caveats, and it makes things a lot easier for you and your commitments.

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Alright, one more strategy before we wrap up on how to say no. And this is more of a technique to make sure that you say no the right way. When somebody approaches you with opportunity, it's really an honor. It really is hard for me to say no because I feel so honored that somebody's reaching out to me. So even if you have a VA or a secretary or a customer service desk that looks at your emails and answers on your behalf, let them know when you get something like that to forward it to you and you should reply yourself. You want to maintain that relationship. You want to say, hey, my team brought to my attention this email and I wanted to reply personally and say I really wish I could but I can't. My schedule's jam packed. I have other commitments. Please. Keeping in mind for the future, it's important that you do this, even if it takes you a couple days to reply. And I try to do this as much as I can because these are all relationships and in business, it's a small world and you want to make sure that you're respectful and you recognize the fact that, hey, I appreciate the fact you're reaching out to me with an opportunity. All right, that wraps up today's lesson. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. If you love our podcast, let us know in an ITUN rating and review. It takes two minutes and everybody who leaves us an iTunes rating and review enters our weekly random draw. We call it Free Ride Friday. Every Friday we give away a lifetime membership to one of our programs. This week we're giving away easy course, our $500 online course on how to launch an online course in 30 days. All you gotta do is leave us a rating and a review and you can win a free ride. Alright, that's it for me today guys. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. I want to say something that is not said enough. Your reputation in business is like gold. You really need to covet it. You need to make sure that you handle your nose properly. Now, having said that, it's worse to say yes and you actually do something that is not a priority and it affects your business and therefore you're not as successful as you should be. So this is a balancing game. You got to make sure that you say no as much as possible, but in the right way and you do it in a personal way. I hope that helps. And I hope to see you in tomorrow's episode Q and A Wednesday where we answer a listener's question. And the question is, I have a lot of firings recently. Am I a horrible boss? I'll be answering that in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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