How to Say No

0:00I got another email. This one is very relatable. Actually did not write down who sent it. I already apologized. So this is if this is you just hit me back. I am sick to death of not being able to say no to emails and getting nothing done. I am sucked into so many emails from marketers and and I like 90% of them while getting nothing and I like 90% of them while getting nothing done. I'm enslaved to email. And even though plenty of them talk about solutions to that very problem, the cycle continues. I can hear all kinds of logical advice on how to manage. But I remain tantalized by all of the angles of branding tools, copywriting, note taking, let alone my personal writing goals. So the question is how do I say no in general?

1:06I don't necessarily think I am the perfect person to talk about this, but I do think in the last two years of my life I have gotten pretty good at saying no to pretty much most things and I think the reason that I'm able to do that now is and I've not really thought about this. So, you know, take it for what it is. But for me, when I have a very crystal clear focus, when I have a very crystal clear goal and I have a very crystal clear plan on how to get there, then it is incredibly easy for me to say no to everything that does not involve that plan. Now, I could also make the argument that at the same time, if I do have that goal,

2:10which is what you're saying in this email, right? Your goal is probably to just focus on building a business, right? And you have all these people trying to sell you solutions on how you can build that business and maybe even build it faster. And so you're like, well, I models will take this course, this course sounds great. Maybe it will fix the problem that I have. And I think the reason that you're not, you're unable to say no is because you have, because you're admitting that you have a problem that needs to be fixed. But as soon as you can tell yourself that there is no problem that needs to be fixed, this is just, this is just how to do it. Then I think it's easy to say no. So let me give you some examples of this. And I'll stick to business because this is the one where I completely understand. I, I understand. Well, here, I'll give you a look. I got a phone call

3:14today. And the person was leaving a message and it said, hey, it's John. And I thought, oh, shit, that's my developer. Let me, let me pick up the phone. And then when I picked up the phone, it was a guy named John who was, he was like, hey, hi, my name is John. And I'm from acquisition.com. And I just wanted to thank you for, for buying our book or buying our books or whatever. I said, okay. And then he was like, let me ask you this question. And he was speaking in this like, I was like, he was speaking in this such a robotic way. And he was like, let me ask you this question. A, are you having trouble with, you know, growing your business to, are he goes, so before you even ask that, he goes, he says to me, why did you buy the book? What are you trying to accomplish with buying our business books about growing a business? And I go, well, it's, well, growing a

4:16business. And he's like, I'm sorry. Let me rephrase. Why did you buy the books about growing your business? What are you having a problem with? And I'm like, I'm having a problem with growing a business. That's why I bought the book. And then he goes, oh, oh, I'm sorry. Like, give me, he's like, is it one of these three? By the way, so I basically just stopped him. I said, hold on, bud. Are you a real person? And he was like, yeah, yeah, I don't know how to prove it. But yes. And I'm like, okay, because you're clearly reading from a script. What do you want? Look, I don't need this old fucking song and dance. I've read the books. I know how this works. It comes like, I'm not going to lie. I heard this. And I immediately questioned everything Alex Ramose has ever said. So if he, if somebody knows him, and here's that, dude, I don't know who the hell is calling people through your services, but they're fucking terrible. And your scripts are

5:21very robotic. They're got awful. So I was immediately like, I don't need your help. Here's why I don't need your help. Here's why I was so, it was so easy for me to say no to that. And it's so easy for me. I was just curious like where this was going because I'm just like, what the fuck? This is terrible. I mean, doesn't he like, doesn't he talk about sales and how good his business is at sales and then this is the fucking call that I got? Like, yeah, all right. You know, so and I know it's probably just like, I just might have gotten the first guy on the job whatever. So anyway, I said no because I'm like, I know how to grow my business. I know it's going to take forever. I have a plan. I don't need help in any of this because I already know there's a plan. I have to just do it. The same is true with like weight loss or getting in shape.

6:27If somebody were to call me right now and say like, hey, or somebody email me like, hey, I have this like 90 fitness program. Do you want to take it? I'd be like, no. Why? Don't aren't you trying to like lose weight? Are you trying to get fit? Yes. Okay. Then why don't you want this program? Because I already have a program. I already know what I'm doing. I already, I already have a plan. Why do I need your plan? And so point is, you don't have a plan. You don't know what you're doing. So everything is enticing to you. You everything can solve your problem. So it's so easy to say yes. I know this is true because when I started building my business, I didn't know anything. And so I said yes to fucking everything. I'm not saying in this in this podcast that saying

7:29yes to everything is a problem and you're not getting anything done. You might be thinking that but it sounds like you're new at this. And the reason I suspect that is, and maybe I'm wrong, but the reason I suspect it is because newbies, because when I was a newbie, I said yes to everything because I didn't know anything. I didn't, how could I have a plan? I don't even know what the plan should be. I haven't done business enough. I haven't, you know, absorbed, I mean, I used to go on freaking coffee dates. Anybody who wanted to go on a coffee date to pick my brain or for me to pick their brain. Like I would just take it. Oh my god. A hundred percent of them were a goddamn waste of time. Let's be on a hundred percent. But a waste of time for the thing I was hoping to accomplish.

8:30But I learned, I learned that by saying yes to all these things, I was what you're sending me here wasting time. So I stopped going on coffee dates. I stopped hiring consultants. I just, you know, but how do you know? How do you know until you do it? So I think it's okay to say yes. I think it's okay to say yes in the effort to learn. But then once, you know, here's a, I'll give you like an analogy that I'm trying to incorporate into my life outside of work. Because I feel like I've already done this at work. And now I'm just trying to apply these principles and other aspects of my life. So here's something I did. I built a, I took a chest freezer and I converted it into a

9:35teaser or, you know, a keger reader, basically. And I had no idea how to do that. I, and I knew nobody who knew how to do that. I mean, technically, yes, my friend Doug has done it. I didn't actually consult him at all, which was stupid. I could have done that. But I just was like, hey, I don't know what I don't know. Okay? So instead of rushing into just building the damn thing and fumbling my way through it, right? Which is what most people do, right? They're just like, I'm just getting started. It's like, okay. Well, do you have a drill? Like, do you even need a drill? Like, there's all these things. And you start, like, if you start a project like that, which I have many times, you find yourself constantly running to the hardware store because you have no plan. You are just

10:38barreling toward this completion. And yet you have no idea how wood works, how to drill, or see, screw two pieces of wood together. You have no idea how many taps you want. You have no idea what what refrigerator to get. Like, you know, nothing. And so you have to go on what I call a reconnaissance mission, which is basically, you know the end result you want, which is in my case, I wanted a keyser. I've seen what one looks like. So I just spent probably a few weeks to maybe a month researching. Looking at, okay, what color freezer do I want? What's the best freezer to get? Let's start there, right? Okay. Do they make black keysers? Yeah, but they're really hard to find.

11:40And they're more expensive than white ones. And how many kegs do I want to fit? How many taps do I want? And I just learned. I just, in a way, said yes. And I was like, what does this have? What does that have? What does this have? What about this? How do I feel? And then I married it and started to take notes and wrote it all down in one single apple note. And just I would come up with a plan. I'd watch a YouTube video of somebody going, oh, okay, here's how I painted a refrigerator. And I'm like, oh, maybe I could paint the refrigerator. And I watched six different videos of people painting refrigerators until I found one that I was like, oh, that makes the most sense to me. That feels doable. All right, I'm saving that and I'm writing that one down. So I spent, let's just call it a month, planning out my path toward building a keyser. I created my own plan. And again, I knew nothing when I started. I had no tools.

12:47So I watched videos and I read blog posts and I consulted my father. And you know, I go, you know, and I found out like, oh, you can't screw two pieces of wood together this way. You have to do it this way. And I'm like, do I, do I want to buy a pocket hole drill or is there a different way I could do it? And so I made this plan. And then once I got started, well, first, I bought everything. So I made sure that like, I had a plan, I bought all the tools I need it, all the supplies that I need it, made sure all of them were in house. And then for one week, that's all I did was build this thing. And I was successful. There was literally no, I mean, thankfully I had one mistake, but there were pretty much no mistakes. And I, and I, the reason I am that was such a successful

13:47build is because I had the entire thing mapped out. I had the entire plan. I knew how to get from point A to point B. And then all I did was follow my plan blindly until it was finished. That's it. Now that is a small project. But most people don't look at their businesses that way. Most people don't look at anything that way. And I'm trying to look at everything that way. So take a business, for example, like we just did an episode where I'm like, I'm overthinking product development. Well, okay. So what did you do? Right? What do most people do? We just start doing one thing. And we have no plan. And we kind of hope that the plan will reveal itself in time. Right? Hey, let's just start building an audience. We'll figure out how to make money later. Right?

14:48Now that is fine. There's a completely normal way to build a business. But yes, you will have this problem of constantly saying yes to things that don't pan out. And you'll be constantly spinning your wheels and wasting your time and saying no to every single, sorry, saying yes to every single opportunity. Because the thing that you're working on, you have no idea what the end is. You have no idea where you're going. And that was true for me for so many years. I switched. It's the shiny object syndrome. You can't stick to it because you have no trust in the process of sticking to it. You have no guaranteed outcome. That's normal. By the way, but even though it's like, of course, there's no guaranteed outcome. But you do at some point have

15:51to trust the process. Like, there was no guaranteed outcome that I was going to be able to build this teaser. But I had a pretty solid plan. And I had thought through every single thing that I wanted to do. And I was able to achieve it with relatively low friction. Because I was prepared. And I had a plan. And I knew when the end was, I knew what my goal was. So here's the thing. For seven or eight years of my, the beginning of my career, I had no idea what swimming university was ultimately going to be. But there was one year where I said, okay, I have a goal. And my goal is to make $100,000 this year as a, as a person who owns their own business. And I just, and I wrote it on a, on a whiteboard. And I said, okay, let's just reverse

16:57engineer this. How am I getting to that number? What's the path? What, what are the steps? And it's like, look, I'm just going to research every goddamn angle. And I'm just going to pick the ones that make the most sense to me. And it's going to take time to figure all of that out. But I, I'm telling you that there is no course that's going to, because I've taken thousands of them, there's no course that's going to get you there, right? Now there are courses where you're like, look, I think like if you have a plan, right? It's like, oh, let's say your plan is, and this is, I'm not saying this is a good plan or a bad plan. I'm just saying it's a plan. You're like, for traffic, I'm going to run Facebook ads. And I'm going to sell this product, right? And I need to sell this many products in order to hit this number and blah, blah, blah. And that's the plan, right? So the plan is Facebook ads. And you know, how much you're going to spend and you know, you

17:58know, you have all your numbers, you've planned it all out. Well, now you need to know how to run Facebook ads. So you have a few options. One is you can do what I did, which is just search for free on YouTube University, right? Just, whoops, it's going to shed at me. Something fell on my sink. No one heard that. Anyway, you could go to YouTube University, go to a bunch of blog posts and kind of like choose your own adventure. Or you can say, hey, this guy's got a course for a thousand bucks. Maybe he'll tell me something I don't know. And maybe I'll learn a bunch and maybe I'll have to go searching around to a bunch of YouTube videos. I can just watch one course. Okay, but here's the thing. You're not getting pitched. You're going out and seeking it because you know that that's the plan already. So don't let anybody sell you. You sell yourself. This is what I like, the thing is when I, I know it's easier said than done. But that's what stops

19:04you from saying yes to so many things because saying yes is really just an insecurity. It's because you're like, I don't fucking know. Like give a shot. You know, like, ah, you know, my business isn't doing well. I don't know how to fucking make money. And I don't know what the hell I'm doing. So like, I don't know. Maybe this person's got a good idea. And maybe I can learn something and maybe it'll change me. The problem is it's like, yeah, no. No, it would do what it does is it creates a distraction because you never had a plan. So like, yeah, it's like, if you're, I got so many analogies for this, but it's stupid. It's like, if you were like, okay, I have to go from my house to my friend's house, right? And I just have to like, there's a, I could research how to get there. And then I just follow the road, right? That's pretty simple.

20:04Right? Or I could just walk out the front door of my house and go like, I don't know. And then just start walking in some direction. And then somebody, and then you get, you start walking and you're like, man, I'm not, I don't know where this guy's house is. I don't even know what this house looks like. And then what do you do? Now you're just like, well, fuck, I'm desperate. Like, ah, somebody drives by and they, and they like, hey, do you want to buy a bag of oranges? I'm like, what the hell is that going to help me? Like, oh, well, you know, you're kind of starving, right? Like, you need, you need something to eat? I'm like, yeah, fuck, I need something to eat. And then you're like, off on that path. And then you start walking. It's like, point is, I don't have to go down this analogy to stupid. Point is, you don't know where you're going. And so literally, you're susceptible to anyone who give you any lifeline. So you say yes to every opportunity because you're like, well, fuck, I don't know. But if somebody right now were to come to me and say,

21:08and this has happened recently, like, I hear people out. Trust me, I'm all ears. But at the end of the day, I'm like, yeah, I mean, sure, I could do that. That is, that is a direction I could take. But I'm already on this path. I already know that this path is likely to get me to where I want to be. And it's the path that I've researched. And it's the, it's the path that feels the right path for me. And so yes, you're selling me what you're telling me is a quicker way. But I don't know that way. I haven't studied that way. I'm not familiar with that way. So I have to kind of trust you. And if I'm so desperate because I don't know where I'm going, then fuck, I'm going to take every opportunity when someone tries to sell me a shortcut, I'm going to take it. Because ultimately, I don't know the end result. I don't know how to get there. But if I know how to get there,

22:12and I have my plan, then whatever you're trying to, whatever shortcut you're trying to sell me, I'm not interested. I don't need it. I have mine. I hope that makes some kind of sense. And maybe there's a hole there somewhere. But I just, I'm thinking a lot about my, so in 2026, my personal goal this year is to lose more weight, specifically 40 more pounds, which sounds like a lot. And it is. And people have told me, my parents, people have told me, I might be too much weight. I might be losing too much. And I'm like, well, I don't know, according to the doctors, that's kind of like where I should be. And maybe they're wrong. Who knows? Like maybe the doctors are wrong. I don't know. But I'm like, that's my goal.

23:14Now, there's a bunch of ways to get there. In fact, I've researched every goddamn way to get there. Right? I know that I could get surgery to get there. I know that I could take a pill now to get there. Right? I know that I could fast half of the day. I know that I could fucking run until my heart explodes. Like there's a million ways to get there. And they're all available for free to know that the information's free. So I have to absorb all of it. And eventually it takes a while. But it took me a long, long time to do this, especially if you're not focused on it. If you have like 10 other things you're doing, then like, yeah, it's going to take a way longer. If you're a hundred percent focused on it, like the month where I was working on the keyser, that's all I did that month was work

24:17on that damn thing. I mean, I literally took an entire week off of work and did nothing but build the keyser. So in this case, it's like, my whole year is dedicated to this one very specific goal in my personal life. Now my business life, I have a very different goal, which obviously I can talk more about, which I have. But with weight loss, it's like, all right, I picked my plan. It's the one that I've tried all of them. Right? I've taken no courses. I've bought some products here and there. I've tested things. But ultimately, like, I got my plan. I wrote it all down in an apple note. And now I know, I just have to do it. Plain and simple. And yes, are there faster ways? Sure. Are there easier ways? Yes. Are there harder ways? You damn right, there is. And I know every single way. And I picked the one that worked for me.

25:19Based on trial and error. And then I wrote it down and I had to stick to it. And so now, if anyone tries to sell me GLP ones or what I'm like, pass easy, easy, no, it's an easy no. And that's it. I think it's really just knowing your goal and having a plan. And if you have a goal and you have a plan and you believe in it, then it's easy to say no to everything else. Like pretty, pretty simple to say no to stuff, actually. So when it comes to business and I'll just end on this, I said this. I've been saying this all, I mean, I don't know, I'll keep repeating it. My goal is to get to a million dollars in revenue for the year of 2026. Right. I'm currently last year in 2025. I was around 600,000.

26:26So it means like, I need another 400,000 dollars on top of what I'm already doing. Okay. Now, I have a goal. Am I going to reach that goal? Yes. Is it going to be this year? I don't know. So time wise, I don't really know. Of course, I am trying to do it this year. But if it takes me two years, fine, the goal is still the goal. It's not, it's not, it's not based. There's no deadline. Right. So now I have to go. All right. How are we going to do that? How are we going to get to a million in revenue? Well, there's a million different ways that we could do that. Right. There's a million different ways we could do that. In fact, I've already done it. We did hit a million when I was selling chemicals. But I don't want to do it with chemicals this time. So I go, all right, take inventory of what we have,

27:31study a bunch of different ways. But, you know, just, and then, you know, you come up with the plan. Okay. Here is the plan. The plan is we are going to send, you know, we are going to, we're going to continue to, we're going to start publishing blog posts on our website twice a week. Okay. Check. We're going to publish a weekly YouTube video. Check. We're going to publish on social media, like we're currently doing. Check. We're going to send an email every day. Check. All right. We're going to update this product, increase the price, promote it more in our emails, check, update this other product, promote it more in our emails, because cool. Check. Okay. Now, let's reverse engineer it. How many units do we have to sell? Like, just for the year, like, how do you, you can do the math now? It's easy. All right. This is how

28:32many we have to do. Cool. Well, how are we going to get that? Again, we can run Facebook ads. Right. But Facebook ads cost money. I don't want just a million dollars in revenue because that you can do with Facebook ads. If you had money to spend, so it's like, it really should be a profit number. I know I realize that, but profit number is not nearly as sexy as the revenue number for me because it's revenue number is bigger. But yeah, I would like to make a lot of profit off of that million. All right. So if that's the case, then like, we're not spending money on ads. Everything's got to be organic. So you create these guardrails. All right. All the, all the, we don't pay for advertising. Cool. Okay. Fine. So everything's organic. All of its content marketing, the products. All right. We have to raise the price of the products. We have to sell the products more. We have to improve the products so that they sell more. We had to improve the sales pages

29:32so that they sell more. We got to get more eyeballs on the products. Okay. And you know, you know how this works. Like even if you haven't been in business, it's kind of obvious. And so you then design a plan that works for you and your situation. And if you don't know and you don't have a plan, like when I started no fucking plan, I just barreled through it and I kept changing directions because of desperation and kept saying yes to opportunities because I thought, well, this isn't going fast enough. Also, I don't know if this is going to work. So yeah, I'll help you start a podcast. Yeah, I'll start this other brand. Yeah, I'll start selling this other thing. Yeah, we'll try that. Oh, yeah, I'll take this copywriting course. Yeah, I'll take this Facebook ads course. It's like, yeah, because you don't know because you don't have a plan.

30:39That's it. At least to me. And so now I can say this many years later of lots of failure and lots of saying yes to shit that I shouldn't have said yes to. Now it's crazy easy for me to say no because I have a plan. And if it's not one of those things, then no, we're not doing that. Pass. Sorry. Hey, hey, do you want to come to this pie eating contest this year? I know you're trying to lose weight. You want to come eat 16,000 pies? No, I don't want to do that. Well, but they're delicious pies. Don't you like pie? No, I don't want to do that. That's that goes against my whole plan. That ruins the whole thing. Why would I do that? Dumb, right? So like,

31:43you have to make the nose easy to say, you have to make it easy for you to say. If it's, if you're desperate and you say yes to everything, you take every opportunity, any quick, get rich quick screen that comes across your desk, any promise of a better future that comes across your desk. You're like, well, fuck, I don't know what I'm doing. So sure, let's try your way. Okay. How much is it? $2,500. Oh, I got to fly to Vegas. Oh, it's $4,550,000. Well, fuck. Yeah, I, I, I, you're the only one. You must be the guy. Let's go. And then it's like, he's going to give you a different plan. That's it. That's all he's going to do. He's going to give you a different plan. And because you didn't have one to begin with. And now it's like, cool. Well, you better believe in it and you better follow it. Or else, you're just going to seek the next guy. And again, I'm not saying that these are bad ideas. I'm not sitting there

32:50saying you shouldn't say yes to these things. You need to learn. Like you, you know, you have to spend that month, whatever, or however long, planning out your goal planning and your plan to get to that goal, you have to do that work. That work takes a long time. And yes, in the meantime, you can start, you can start barreling your way through it. But like, yeah, that's going to happen to you. Because it happened to me. It took me years to get clear on it. But it's because I, I wasn't focused. I didn't have the plan. I didn't have the goal. I just thought, I just want to be, I just want to have money. How does it want to be rich? You know, that's all I care about. Well, then God, anybody that comes your way with a magical offer, you're going to say yes, because you're like, well, why the hell not? I mean, the goal is money, right? But now I'm,

33:51older and wiser to believe like the goal is not, for me, it's not, it is money, sure. But it's like, this, it's money this way. And it's like, yeah, the goal is weight loss. It's weight loss this way. Because again, there's a lot of ways I can right now. Hey, 2026, I can take a pill. Fuck, how easy is that? I didn't have that option 10 years ago. But I don't want to go that way. And it's an easy no, because it's like, no, thank you. I have my way. And I have my plan and nothing's going to deter me because I know it's all bullshit now. Because I researched it all, right? I saw everything. I tried all the different methods. And I go, oh, no, this is the one for me. And I'm trying to approach everything with that angle. In fact, and this is going to, I've said this before, I'm working on a, a model train layout, a small model train layout for my brewery.

34:58And I don't know shit. And so what am I doing right now? Am I barreling towards building something? No, I am collecting. I'm doing reconnaissance. I have a Google doc or an Apple note in this case, where I am, I go, oh, I like this video. It's the way that I did this thing. Oh, okay, I like this method because I've seen 10 different methods of making mountain sculptures. I just like this guy's method. I don't know if it's the right one, but I know I can do that one. So that's the one I'm going with. And I'm just collecting all the parts, all the tools, all the, all the supplies. And then I'm putting my plan together. And then I'm going to execute it and it will be done in within a week. Because I will have it all come, I will just develop my own step-by-step

36:00instructions for the thing I want to do. Because I have, I've figured out every single possible angle. And it does take learning a lot of learning and a lot of like, you know, I'm buying little things, I'm trying little things. And you know, I'm not going full boat into anything. I'm not committing to anything. It's just reconnaissance anyway. All of that is to say, it makes it really easy when someone's like, oh, you should try it this way. I'm like, no, I already got my way. I don't know, hope that makes sense. This is a tough subject. I know that I know Tim Ferriss is writing a whole book on this subject. So there's certainly more to it than that, but that's kind of my take. And took me a while to get there, but I'm there now. So I hope that's helpful. Shoot me an email, madadjavinesi.com, g-i-o-v-a-n-i-s-c-i.com. And I will talk to you next time.