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When you’re saying no, you know your value you’re respecting yourself worth, you’re respecting your time. And you know what value you can provide to this world. Because when we say yes to everybody else, when in fact, not realizing our own value, our own creativity, because we can do so much with our time yet, we feel fearful. We are afraid of that. And we end up saying yes to everybody else, but to ourselves.
0:37
And no, no, no, no. The last time? No.
0:56
Everybody, welcome to a brand new episode of the Elevated Entrepreneur Podcast. And today’s episode is about the N word the N word being an O, NO. Why am I talking about the word No? Well, I’ve come to realize that as we’ve gotten older, the word NO becomes even harder to say. Which is funny, because as babies, this is probably the first few words we learned to say, Would you like to go to sleep? No. Would you like to put on diapers? No. And yet, as we get older, we get started with our careers and we get started with our professional lives, the word no becomes so hard to say we don’t say no to our clients. We don’t say no to our family members or friends that ask so much of us. And we start to feel constricted, we start to feel that we have a lot of weight on our shoulders. And a simple word like no can take all of that stress away.
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I’m not suggesting that we go around saying no to the whole world, but used correctly no can be a very powerful tool in our arsenal to manage our personal and professional lives. I’m going to be talking about the two sides of the word no. And you’re going to find out as we get started, what those two sides are. And I’m also going to be talking to you about some of my own lessons about this magical word no and how I’ve come to use this in my business in my professional and personal lives. So grab your headset, grab a cup of coffee, if you’re going for a run, put your headphones in, let’s get started and cue the music.
2:25
You’re listening to the Elevated Entrepreneur Podcast, a podcast designed to help retailers, restaurant owners and entrepreneurs simplify business operations and use modern technology to elevate their business. here’s your host, Dhiren Bhatia,
2:41
Hey everybody, welcome once again, and I’m super excited to get started with you and talking to you about the power of the word no, before we get started, there’s a couple things that I want to shout out to and call out and tell you how grateful I am for these resources. The first one is this amazing book called Start with No by Jim Camp. And also, if you haven’t checked out this other great book called Never Split the Difference, how to negotiate like your life depended on it this is a book by Chris Voss, and finally, The Art of Tao episode with two amazing businessmen, you can find this podcast called 2Bob’s, it’s a phenomenal podcast that I listened to her I love. And these two gentlemen who are amazingly successful in their life, had recently put out an episode called the Tao of No, and it is such a phenomenal episode to listen to. So whatever I’m talking and sharing about a sort of a combination of the things that I’ve learned from these three resources, I hope you will enjoy the episode. But also take a moment to check out the resources because they are just phenomenal. And I hope they will help extend your knowledge or your learning with this particular topic.
3:52
So let’s get started with something that I mentioned in the introduction, which is the two sides of the word no. And that is actually having the ability to hear no and second, having the ability to say no, and one of the things they talked about in the Tao of No episode on 2Bob’s is the fact that most people are not accustomed to saying no, because they don’t have the ability to hear no, and they get upset, they feel rejected, they get angry, they get frustrated, when they hear no. And to be able to learn to hear no is an important skill set. So I’m going to present to you five reasons why you should be able to create this habit of hearing No, and let’s get started with the first one, which is no is the second best answer. And once I heard that, I thought that was really interesting. I rather hear or no than hearing, maybe I’m not sure. Or even worse yet, when I’m left hanging with no response, radio silence, absolutely nothing coming from the other side. No is so much better in that scenario. Obviously, yes would be the best answer in this case.
4:59
I think and I agree that no would be the second best answer. And that makes life so much easier because now I know what I need to do next. No. And that takes me to the second one is the fact that no is not the end but the beginning of what’s next. And as you can imagine, if someone’s already said, no, they’ve created so much more space for you to address those objections, and take the conversation forward. Because no, is merely just not now. Or I’m not sure what you’re talking to me about what you’re selling me, which is why I’m going to say no. And once that’s out of the way, I have complete power to come up together with the person, some suggestions, handle the objections, and maybe even convert that to a yes, or come up with some completely different solution. And which is why I think, no is not the end but the beginning of what’s next.
5:50
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. And that very quickly takes us into the third point, which is earlier, no is better than a late No, I’d rather hear a no much earlier in the discussion rather than hearing it much later. Because if both sides have invested time and money and effort in getting this conversation going, we are so much more upset when we hear that late No, because there’s this bias of sunk cost in terms of time, money and effort. And it becomes harder to deal with that know that rejection much later on in the conversation. So having the ability to have customers say no earlier. Super, super important. And oh, and that’s because the next reason is we have to create conditions for our customers, friends and colleagues to say no, if we don’t give them room to say no, they’re never going to say no. And in the book, Start with No by Jim Camp actually says that if you get the other side to say, No, you’re actually getting them to feel that you respect their autonomy, they will relax, and they will be a lot more willing to work with you. Because again, you’ve allowed them to say no, no, no, no. And that takes me into the last point, which is the fact that yes, actually means commitment. And no means safety. No means protection. That’s also something Jim Camp says in his book, if people are forced to say yes, or they’re being pressured into saying yes, their feeling is basically that they’re making a commitment. And most times, they’re not sure what they’re making that commitment to, and which is why most people want to say no, and we need to give them the room to say no, and because no makes them feel safe, no actually takes the pressure off. In fact, Chris was says that if they say no, and they said this earlier in the discussion, they’re going to be a lot more pleasant to deal with. Because now the pressures off now. They’re happy, they’re smiling, you’re happy and you’re smiling. And when you’re both in a positive frame of mind, it helps make the discussion easier, the two sides can come up with a solution that is in fact, much more better than the initial one, or come up with a product or a price that actually works better than the first offer. Because when we are playing from our front, rather than our back foot, we are playing from a place of resourcefulness. And that makes all the difference in negotiating and getting people to buy things from you or getting them to do the things you want them to do. For the last time, no. So those are the five reasons why hearing no is so important. And creating this ability in our lives to be able to hear no can help you in fact, say no. So let me quickly recap what those five reasons are. The first one is no is the second best answer. Better than maybe not sure. Or being left hanging. Second is no is not the end, but the beginning of what’s next. The third one is a earlier no is better than a late No. The fourth one is create conditions for people to say no, give them the room to say no. And finally, the last one, which is yes means commitment. No means protection.
9:07
Okay, so now let’s jump into the five reasons why you should be saying no, and how you can be saying no. And what are some of the reasons that you can consider before you say no? And how you can practice saying no? Well, the first one is saying no, is a sign of respect. I know that’s a tough one to believe. But when you say no to someone, especially if you’re not interested in doing what they’re asking you to do, you’re actually respecting their time, their intelligence, and not forcing yourself into doing something that you’re probably going to be late for or not going to show up. Anyway. So cut the cord, say no, make them happy, make yourself happy. And maybe they don’t see themselves as being happy in the beginning. But at a later point, they’re going to realize that the favor that you’ve done them by saying no is because you respected them. And the second reason along those lines is saying yes to something means you’re saying no to something else and vice versa. And we all do this in our personal and professional lives.
10:00
If I’m saying yes to you to go out for a cup of coffee, I’m probably saying no to going to the gym, I’m saying no to my time with my wife. If I’m saying yes to a lunch meeting, I probably said no, to my team, and so on and so forth. So when you say yes, be cognizant that you’re saying no to something else. And so saying no can actually give you more room and create more space in your calendars, create more space in your personal lives, because you’re consistent Yes, to whatever it is that you want to do, whether it’s Netflix and chill, or, you know, going to the gym and working on something that you’ve been meaning to work off that you’ve been putting off? Because you can’t stop saying, yes. The third thing to keep in mind is, when you’re saying no, you know, your value you’re respecting yourself worth, you’re respecting your time. And you know, what value you can provide to this world. Because when we say yes to everybody else, when in fact, not realizing our own value, our own creativity, because we can do so much with our time. And there’s so many people that want to listen to you. And I talk about the things that you and I want to talk about. But yet, we feel fearful, we are afraid of that. And we end up saying yes to everybody else, but to ourselves. And that could be like in the earlier example about knowing that you need to go to the gym, because you want to look good and knowing that you can go running because it matters to you. And you are a great runner, or, in this particular case, like I’m doing, I’m creating this podcast episode, because I know that you love listening to this podcast. And I’ve said no to something else. So that I can say yes to this. Because I really, really value myself, I really value my opinion. And I also enjoy this particular process. And so when you’re saying no, you’re actually valuing yourself more than anybody else and any other thing. Now, the fourth thing that you want to keep in mind is, when you’re not saying no, you’re actually going to lose credibility. And this is a great example, especially for entrepreneurs, when we run our own businesses, if we say yes to everything that our customer asks us to do, we’re actually losing credibility, because what else can we do? And what else are we going to offer this customer because if I’m giving them everything, and then the moon, I’m actually not able to show them that there is a line, I’m not able to differentiate myself from somebody else. Because if I’m doing everything in terms of say, for example, at cloudscape, we do point of sale systems and inventory management systems. A lot of times the customer asks us, would you do websites? Or would you do marketing? Would you do social media marketing? And if we kept saying yes, we’re actually going to lose a lot of that credibility, and that advantage that we have of playing in that niche. And finally, the last one that I want to leave you with is by saying, No, you’re actually creating room for growth. Because if we are consistently thinking about the things that we won’t do, we are able to think about the things we can and want to do. And so one of the things that I do at the end of every year is I think about the things I’m not going to be doing the next year, so that I can create room for other things, in my personal and professional lives, even at cloudscape we always pay attention to the things that we don’t want to do, and will not do, because we are creating room for other things that we can do and want to do. Okay, so let me quickly recap the five reasons you should be saying no other things you should be thinking about when you’re about to say no. And when you want to create this ability to say no first one is saying no is a sign of respect. The second one is saying yes to something means you’re saying no to something else. And vice versa. The third thing, saying no actually means you know your value and you’re valuing yourself higher than anything else or anybody else. The fourth one I talked about was when there’s no no, you’re losing credibility.
10:00
The last one is demonstrate growth by saying no. Right? So I hope that you’ve enjoyed listening to me talk about the two sides of hearing and saying no. And I want to leave you with the three ways where I have created room from me and myself to say no, both professionally and personally. And the first way that I’ve done that is I’ve created a routine for myself, and I’ve slotted all the things that I want to do in a week, and also on the weekends. So that I actually have that calendar to stick to and I can say no to everything else that doesn’t fit into those calendar slots. And I think that’s a really powerful way. In fact, I actually had done an episode just before this one, elevatedentrepreneur.fm/27 that talks about my productivity routine and my productivity hacks. If you want to check that out. Please, I’d love for you to listen in. But that for me is a really powerful way of being able to say no, because if it doesn’t fit into my calendar, or if I’ve already slotted things that I can’t make that commitment because I have something else, then it’s a very easy way for me to say no. The second way that I’ve created room for me to say no is actually sit down and do this exercise. that I learned from my business coach worship, she talks about a one page personal plan, which consists of the five F’s. And it stands for friends, family, faith, finance, and fitness. And these are pretty much the dimensions in all of our personal lives. And I’ve sat down and done that exercise. I do that, in fact, every year, and I talk to myself, and I tell myself about things that I need to do in these five areas, five disciplines of life, and then make time for that. So if these are the things that I hold near and dear, everything else can be put on the backburner. And the last way that I’ve made room for this is really be protective of my weekends, I typically find myself saying yes to a lot of things on the weekends, whether it’s hanging out with friends, or meeting someone for work, even doing a business meeting. And overtime, I’ve seen that I’ve been very, very good at actually saying no, because I protect my weekends, as if they’re gold. So typically, here in the region, Fridays, and Saturdays are weekends. And I used to find that I would say be very protective of Friday, and play with Saturday, I used to say yes to a lot of things on Saturdays. But I realized that those days are precious, they’re sacred, and saying no, for that. And I find it so liberating. I find that so happy when I don’t do anything on Fridays, and Saturdays. And by protecting those two days, I’ve in fact created more room for myself for the things that I love to do. And I want to do so. For me, those two days are my sanctuary. And I’ve come to realize the importance of protecting those two days, so that I don’t make commitments. So I hope that you’ve enjoyed this episode, this has been a phenomenal episode for me to talk to you about, because these are things that I’ve come to learn so much about in the last few years. And I hope that you will take something from this to learn, and also practice in your daily lives. And the last thing I want to do is give you a quote, which is in the space between yes and no, there’s a lifetime. It’s the difference between the path you work, and the one you leave behind. It’s the gap between who you thought you could be and who you really are. It’s the leg room for the lies you tell yourself in the future. This amazing quote is by a lady named Jodi picoult. And I just love this because there is so much wisdom in these lines. And I hope that you will give this a listen and make time to say no, in your life rather than saying yes, in your lives.
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All right, that brings us to the end of this phenomenal episode. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed recording this. And I will see you in the next episode. Have a fantastic day ahead.
17:48
Thank you so much for staying with me till the very end of the episode, you’ve done it. I’ve got three specific asks for you only if you think that this podcast is worthy of your support. And if you’ve enjoyed the content, my first request is for you to hit the subscribe button. Actually smash that subscribe button so that you can get notified when new episodes come your way. Or if you haven’t already, head on over to elevatedentrepreneur.fm and subscribe to the podcast on the website so that new episodes are emailed to you right away. My second request is for you to help me spread the word with your friends and families and business owners that would enjoy this podcast and help elevate them too. You can do that either by leaving a review on your Apple device or just telling your friends how cool this podcast is. And finally, if there’s a question that you’ve been dying to ask me, or this pieces of feedback that you’d like to give me, head on over to elevatedentrepreneur.fm/speak where you will be able to record a voice message that I can listen to and also maybe feature here on the podcast together with my answer. I’d love to hear from you. Thank you much love and I’ll see you in the next one.
