Christian Osgood and a speaker discuss why saying no well requires deep self-knowledge. If you don't understand your strengths and direction, you'll say yes to wrong opportunities and no to the right ones, like misallocating capital in an investment portfolio.
How do you get good at saying no?
I think it comes down to knowing yourself, knowing what you want, and being not non-influencable. I don't know if that's a word, but I'm not easily influenced. Like, I know myself, I know what I want, I know who I am. So that maybe sounds like a cheesy answer, but I know— know yourself.
That's a huge piece of investing. You are a member of your team. And if you don't know how you are, if you don't know where you're going or what your strengths and weaknesses are, you're gonna put yourself in the wrong positions in your company and it's gonna be miserable. And you're gonna say yes to things you shouldn't say yes to and no to things that you probably shouldn't have said no to.
And if you're not good at that, maybe writing out a vision statement and revisiting it when you're trying to figure out to say no or yes and saying, does this get me to that vision?