Episode Transcript

Hey what’s up? What’s up? What’s up everybody? Welcome back to THE a.m guys, welcome back to five minute rants. I’m your host, Michael Abernathy. And welcome to the show predicated on the journey of life and business. Well, guys, today, I wanted to talk about the art of saying no. And before I get into this, let me preface the episode with this. This is one of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned in my entire life.

My business partner and I, we listened to an interview of Mark Cuban forever ago, I’m talking about five, six years ago. And one of the things that Mark Cuban said was that opportunity kills. And why does it kill? Because the things that you say no to in life, are What actually propel and drive you forward to where you want to go. So all momentum all forward momentum comes from saying no. And Here’s a simple analogy. If you are running long distance, the only way you continue to run is by saying no to stopping. You have to say no to I’m going to stop running. And this is how it works in all of life. Right?

If you think about, hey, I want to live a healthier and longer life, then I have to say no to the donut, no to the coke. No to the sugar. No to all the bad things I don’t need to eat right? I got to say no to sleeping in and skipping working out and going to the gym. I have to say no, to going to bed late. There’s more things in life that I have to say no to than yes to. And it seems to be in business and in life in general. And as people, we say yes. And want to say yes, more than we say no, we think no is negative. We think no is just a bad word. In general, honestly, we take no personally as rejection when people tell us no, and different things like that. And it’s really actually one of the most positive words. And one of the most positive decisions we can make as individuals and as companies is saying, No.

And if you think about it like this as well, it is actually What I would consider is a lost art. Because our focus is on how do we get Yes, more often on making sales. I want to Yes, how do I get to yes? How do I get the Yes? How do I get to yes, and all these things. But What we forget, and What we don’t see is, I need to be better at saying no than Yes, yes, it’s very easy. But I say no. More than I say yes. And whatever I’m doing more of I should be better at. And it doesn’t seem to be that way in a lot of lives. It was not mine until we, my partner and I we had a lot of conversations around this. We really started talking more about these things like Man, we need to put an emphasis on this.

And so let me say this all momentum and creation in your life comes from saying no. Right? You only say yes once I want to be a professional salesman. Okay. You just said yes once. Oh, now I gotta say no to being an engineer. Now I got to say no to being a scientist. Now I got to say no to being a physical therapist, whatever it is. I’m saying no, hundreds of times more than that one. Yes. The same thing in life. If I don’t say no to the donut, it is going to create an unhealthy life and an unhealthy body in me. Right? If I just continue to say yes and yes and yes to the donut, I don’t say no. Right? I say no to healthiness. I say no to the spinach. I say no, to getting up early. I start saying no, to the gym and all these things, then before you know it, I’ve got a shorter lifespan because I am hurting myself with food. I’m hurting myself with a sedentary lifestyle, all these things

So Here’s What I’m saying the moment you say yes, you’re saying no to hundreds of other things. And What we should be better at is saying no, it’s the same problem in business. We don’t say no enough. And then as a result, we lose focus because we are just trying to collect more money, or say yes to more money, versus saying no to the opportunities in front of us. And as a result, we don’t actually build the companies we want. As a result, a lot of people don’t get out of being self employed. There’s a big difference between owning a company and being self employed. There’s a massive difference. My business partner Andrew and I, when we first started, one of the things that really clicked on us is like, man, we’re just freelancers. We’re self employed, we don’t own a company. Cool. We have an LLC, we got a name, we got all this other stuff, blah, blah, blah. We’re self employed. This thing cannot exist without us. Oh my gosh, I literally just opened up myself a job. And so as a result, we started saying no to a lot of things because we want to build something different. But it’s the same thing that keeps a lot of people in self employment is saying yes to wait too much stuff, or Yes to the wrong stuff, and no to the right stuff, versus yes to the right stuff and no to all the wrong stuff. So again, this is the art of saying No, and it’s one of the best things that I’ve ever learned in my life.

So I’m out of time, and I’ll catch y’all later. Peace.