How to say no | The Tim Ferriss Show (Podcast)

1. 0:00 – 1:19

   Tim’s direct ask: launching Tribe of Mentors and why to check it out

   1. TFTim Ferriss0:00

      Hey guys, Tim Ferriss here. Before we jump into this episode, I'm gonna do something I very rarely do, and that is to make a direct ask with hat in hand. My brand-new book just came out today. It is called Tribe of Mentors, subtitle Short Life Advice from the Best in the World. If you like the podcast, you will love this book. I reached out to 130 people who are the best at what they do in sports, investing, business, acting, directing. You name it, we got it. Cryptocurrency, done. And it turned out better than I ever could have expected. Many of my friends think, of all my books, it is the easiest to read, the easiest to use. So check it out. Please take a look. I put out so much free material. The podcast is free. The 700-plus blog posts are free. Every once in a while, I put out something like this, and it's not that expensive. So please take a look, tribeofmentors.com. And it does make a great holiday gift or gift for others. There's something for everybody in here. It is really a choose-your-own-adventure guide, a buffet of options for improving your life, both in business and in the personal sphere. So take a look. I appreciate you taking a look, tribeofmentors.com or anywhere that books are sold.

2. 1:19 – 5:47

   Show bumper and sponsor block: ConvertKit and Audible offers

   1. SPSpeaker1:19

      Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start to shake. Can I ask you a personal question? Now would seem an appropriate time. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show.

   2. TFTim Ferriss1:43

      This episode is brought to you by ConvertKit, my go-to email service provider. A lot of you have asked me what I use for email, and I've been hesitant to tell you because I don't want to give them the hug of death and have my own service drop. So after much consideration, I finally said yes to ConvertKit being a sponsor. Email is a huge priority for me, and I trust ConvertKit as my ESP, my email service provider. It's the only platform that I can completely control and customize, and I need a service that ensures the right information is sent to my followers and listeners, and I cannot afford downtime. I have very little patience for it. So I tried all sorts of different platforms and ultimately selected ConvertKit because they deliver on what matters most to me and my team. Easy-to-use systems, split testing, super important, and resending technology, say to unopens, high rates of deliverability, and excellent customer service. When I've needed something from them, when my team has needed something from them, they've always been there. So whether you run a business or just have a professional blog, let's say, ConvertKit offers email automation, which allows you to send well-timed, targeted content to your audience or your customers. The platform has all sorts of integrations with more than 35 services, including, say, hosting sites such as WordPress, e-commerce platforms like Shopify, lead capture technology like Bounce Exchange or Sumo, and many, many more. They offer plans that can adjust to meet the size of your business, and they can scale with you. So ConvertKit can handle you whether you have 1,000 people or 1 million people on your email list. So take a look, convertkit.com forward slash Tim. That's C-O-N-V-E-R-T-K-I-T.com forward slash Tim, and you can get your first month for free. That way you can test the platform, kick the tires, make sure that it works for you and your business. And if you're like me, hopefully, fingers crossed, because I only like to recommend things that scale and do really well for everybody, I hope that you find they get the job done. That's certainly been the case for me. Again, that is convertkit.com forward slash Tim for a free month of email services. Check it out. This episode is brought to you by Audible, which I've used for many, many years now. Travels with me on my smartphone in my pocket at all times. I love audiobooks, and they are one of my favorite ways to make the most of the time or just pass the time when I'm taking walks, cooking, or on the road in airplanes and so on. Audible has allowed me to consume and enjoy many, many more books than I would have otherwise been able to. You can access an unbeatable selection of bestsellers, biographies, mysteries, thrillers, fantasy, sci-fi, for you nerds like me, and much more. So I can recommend a few right off the bat. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, if you want your sci-fi fix. Very, very good stuff. The Tao of Seneca by Seneca. If you want to hear my favorite letters of all time, then that is one option. And I have to add one more. Perhaps my favorite narration ever, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, the version read by Neil himself. Okay. As a listener of The Tim Ferriss Show as well, you can join Audible for just $4.95 per month. That's $4.95 per month for your first three months. It's regularly $14.95, so you save quite a bunch. This offer is available to new Audible members only, and it ends December 31st, 2017. Go to audible.com forward slash Tim. That's audible.com forward slash Tim. Or text Tim, T-I-M, to 500-500 to get started. Now, I wasn't sure what that meant, so I tried it out. It's pretty cool technology, actually. If you just text T-I-M to 500-500 as the phone number, then it delivers the URL and page directly to you, which is pretty cool. I actually might play around with that. So you can't make more time, but you can make the most of it. So check it out, audible.com forward slash Tim, or text the word Tim, lowercase T-I-M, to 500-500 to check it out and get started now. Hello,

3. 5:47 – 8:18

   Why this episode exists: rejection, saying no, and needing real phrases

   1. TFTim Ferriss5:47

      my lovelies. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of the Tribe of Mentors podcast, which is likely also being cross-posted on the Tim Ferriss Show podcast. This episode is going to cover rejection, or more specifically, rejecting other people, saying no. Many of the questions that I get are about how to parse the noise from the signal, how to separate out the trivial many, say no to obligations and fear of missing out so that you can say yes to the critical few. This is an ongoing challenge for a lot of people, and the tools and strategies and tactics that help can almost overnight make an enormous impact in different areas of your life. And you have various guidelines that guests I've interviewed, for instance, on The Tim Ferriss Show have shared, such as Derek Sivers, who is not only a very, very accomplished entrepreneur who built and sold CD Baby, also a musician and philosopher king of programming in some respects, would use the hell yes or no heuristic. In other words, if he doesn't say or can't say, "Hell yes, I wanna do that," to something, the answer is a no. It is binary. And there are many, many other guidelines like that that you might use. But when the rubber hits the road, you need specific words, you need specific phrases that you can use to decline and say no. And as it turns out, when I was writing the Tribe of Mentors book, so Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World, which ended up including 130 of the most incredible world-class performers from around the world in every discipline imaginable, many people I reached out to said no. I was rejected. I was declined. I was mostly polite declined. And it turned out that some of those rejection letters were so good, they were so expertly crafted, that I turned right around and I asked the people who rejected me if I could include their letters in Tribe of Mentors, the book itself. So I thought what might be fun is to read, not just fun, but practical, the three rejection letters that come to mind right off the bat. And these are in little side featurettes, I suppose, called How to Say No in Tribe of Mentors, which you should check out, please. I don't, uh, sell much podcast and,

4. 8:18 – 10:50

   How the ‘rejection letters’ feature came about (and why personality matters)

   1. TFTim Ferriss8:18

      uh, the blog posts, all 700-plus of them are for free, but tribementors.com. Thanks. Okay, back to our regularly scheduled programming. So the first rejection letter is from Wendy MacNaughton. Very, very impressive gal. MacNaughton is spelled M-A-C-N-A-U-G-H-T-O-N. You can say hello to her on Twitter and Instagram, @wendymac, M-A-C, or you can see her work and life and much more at wendymacnaughton.com. All right. Here is Wendy. Wendy MacNaughton is a New York Times bestselling illustrator and graphic journalist based in San Francisco. Her books include many, many, many, many, many books. I will just read a few of them. First, Meanwhile in San Francisco, comma, The City in its Own Words, Lost Cat: A True Love Story, Desperation and GPS Technology, Pen and Ink, subtitled Tattoos and the Stories Behind Them, and we go on and on and on. She's really prolific. To the newly released Leave Me Alone With the Recipes. Wendy is also the back-page columnist for California Sunday Magazine and co-founder of Women Who Draw. Now, some of you who have been tracking perhaps not just this podcast, but some of the writing, will notice that one of the questions I like to ask oftentimes is some variation of the following: "In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to, such as distractions, invitations, and so on? What new realizations and/or approaches have helped?" You may note that what's fantastic about this question is that it's hard to avoid answering. This is true even if, actually especially if, someone refuses to answer. So when I asked Wendy if she'd participate in this book, she sent a very thoughtful and perfect "I have to pass" response after much consideration. That was, in fact, an answer to the question in a sense. I loved it so much that I said, "Here's perhaps a very odd question. Might you be okay with me printing this very polite decline email in the book?" To which she agreed. So here is the email she sent me to decline being in Tribe of Mentors, which ended up in Tribe of Mentors and now on the podcast. Just do double duty. So here we go. [laughs] And this is very, very, very Wendy, so you don't have to sacrifice your personality or be coldly

5. 10:50 – 12:21

   Example #1: Wendy MacNaughton’s thoughtful ‘I gotta pass’ email

   1. TFTim Ferriss10:50

      impersonal to say no. And a lot of this can serve as a template and help you to determine how you can establish perhaps, uh, set language for declining. Here we go. "Hi, Tim. Gah. Okay. I've been battling with this, and here's the deal. After five intense years of creative output and promotion, interviews about personal journeys and where ideas come from, after years of wrapping up one project one day and jumping right into promoting another the next... I'm taking a step back. I recently maxed out pretty hard, and for the benefit of my work, I gotta take a break. Over the past month, I've canceled contracts and said no to new projects and interviews. I've started creating more space to explore and doodle again, to sit and do nothing, to wander and waste a day. And for the first time in five years, I'm finally in a place where there's no due date tied to every drawing, no deadline for ideas, and it feels really right. So while I really want to do this with you, I respect you and your work, and I'm honored that you'd ask me to participate. And as capital S stupid as it is for me professionally not to do it, I'm going to have to say thank you, but... I gotta pass. I'm simply not in a place to talk about myself or my work right now. Crazy for a highly verbal only child to say Hopefully, we will get a chance to talk somewhere down the line. I promise any thoughts I'll have for you then will be far more insightful than anything I could share with you right now. I hope the space created by my absence is filled

6. 12:21 – 15:24

   Example #2: Danny Meyer’s brief decline that still lands warmly

   1. TFTim Ferriss12:21

      by one of the brilliant people I suggested in my previous email, which in fact ended up being the case. This is Tim talking. Several of them are in Tribe of Mentors. And really thank you so much for your interest. I'll be kicking myself when the book comes out. Wendy. So that's number one. The next rejection letter has a different feel to it, but is nonetheless very, very effective, and it is from Danny Meyer. Who is Danny Meyer? Well, you can see him on Twitter at DHMeyer, M-E-Y-E-R, or at USHGNYC.com, and you'll learn what that stands for just momentarily. Danny Meyer is the founder and CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group, that's the USHG of the USHGNYC.com, which comprises some of New York's most beloved and acclaimed restaurants, including Gramercy Tavern, The Modern, Maialino, and more. Danny and USHG founded Shake Shack, the modern-day roadside burger restaurant, which became a public company in 2015. Danny's book, Setting the Table, subtitle The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business, a New York Times bestseller, articulates a set of signature business and life principles that translate to a wide range of industries. Danny was included in the 2015 Time magazine 100 Most Influential People list. All right. So for your reading pleasure, or listening pleasure in this case, and to scratch your Schadenfreude itch, here's another polite decline email, this one from famed restaurateur Danny Meyer. Now, he sent this email to a friend of mine, Jeffrey, who asked on my behalf. So he was rejecting me, but using Jeffrey as a go-between because Jeffrey, as a good friend to both of us, wanted to protect contact information on either side until Danny said, "Yes, please connect us. Would love to chat." That ended up not being the case. So here is the email that Danny sent. And these are all published with permission. Jeffrey, comma, greetings and thanks for writing. I'm grateful for the invitation to participate in Tim's next book project, but I'm struggling at this moment to make time ends meet for all we're doing at USHG, including my ongoing procrastination with my own writing projects. I thought carefully about this. That's a very important line. I thought carefully about this as it's clearly a wonderful opportunity, but I'm going to decline with gratitude. Know the book will be a big success! Thanks again, Danny. And there are different variations of that closing line. And you'll notice in both cases it was, in effect, I'm sure the book or I know the book will be a big success. I'll be kicking myself when it comes out. In this case, know the book will be a big success. I've heard other variations and received other variations such as I'll be cheering from the sidelines. I wish I could be part of it. And

7. 15:24 – 18:57

   Example #3: Neal Stephenson’s ‘blanket policy’ and the Hydra to-do list

   1. TFTim Ferriss15:24

      the sentiment in these is very important if you want to have the effect these people had on me, which is they decline, they refuse my invitation very politely, and I actually respect them and admire them more after the rejection than before. There is a craft to this, and you can borrow a lot of this language. All right, the last one that I'm going to read is from one of my favorite writers of all time, and he is a contemporary. I shouldn't say he's a contemporary of mine. That makes it seem like I'm in the same league, which I am certainly not. But he's an iconic science fiction writer, Neal Stephenson, N-E-A-L Stephenson, S-T-E-P-H-E-N-S-O-N on Twitter, at Neal Stephenson. Facebook is The Neal Stephenson, and you can learn more about him at NealStephenson.com. One of the most fascinating human beings I have ever encountered, and I've had the good fortune of meeting Neal then and again in Seattle through my friend Chris Young, scientist and incredible writer himself at ChefSteps and beyond. But back to Neal. Neal Stephenson is an author known for his speculative fiction works, variously categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, maximalism, and cyberpunk. His bestsellers include, among others, The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, The Baroque Cycle, and Snow Crash, which was named one of Time magazine's top 100 all-time best English language novels. That's a hell of a thing. Neal also writes nonfiction articles about technology in publications such as Wired magazine and has worked part-time as an advisor for Blue Origin, a company developing a manned suborbital launch system. And going off script here a little bit, just to add color, Neal is one of those people who will reach out to astrophysicists and mechanical engineers and so on to interview them, dig into the details and textbooks related to, say, rocket design, just to get a few paragraphs in one of his books technically correct, to such an extent that then people who are on the cutting edge will go back to his book just to refer to what the future might hold. It's that good. And he does this in many, many, many, many, many different domains. It's pretty mind-boggling. Okay, so by now you know what I'm about to read you. This is the type of email that makes me cry and smile at the same time. So here with a lovely hasta la proxima, till next time, from one of my idols, writer Neal Stephenson. Here we go. Hey there, Tim. Sorry for the slow response, and thanks for thinking of me in this context. It has become pretty obvious of late that I'm trying to do too much, and so I started an experiment of not adding anything whatsoever to my to-do list so that it wouldn't get any longer. The result is that the items that were already on my to-do list only spawned more items as I crossed them off, and so it's a little like fighting a Hydra. [laughs] It's the most Neil thing to say ever, right? So it's a little like fighting a Hydra. I am hoping that if I am ruthlessly efficient, I can one day get to the point where the list actually gets shorter instead of longer. In the meantime, unfortunately, the ruthlessly efficient part of this plan means that I'm turning down things

8. 18:57 – 26:50

   What these great ‘no’s have in common—and why your default may need to be no

   1. TFTim Ferriss18:57

      like this just as a blanket policy. Again, thanks for thinking of me and good luck with the project! Neil. All right. There are a few commonalities I want to highlight here and that I've certainly, uh, translated into my own language in a lot of the declines that I send out, and I, I have to, and you have to for that matter. If you've had any modicum of success, even a toehold in something that might be a success, your default answer to almost everything should be no. And this is a pattern that comes up over and over and over again in Tribe of Mentors, both in this podcast and also in the book itself. When I ask people, "How do you say no? What are the tips, tactics, and strategies?" and so on, uh, there are a few commonalities. Number one is explaining the predicament that you are in. And you don't have to go long with it, but simply saying, "My own to-do list," in this case, "is spawning more and more items and getting longer instead of shorter," and there you have it. You can keep it short and to the point. Uh, but in, in a sense, you're explaining the context. And then the second word that I'd like to highlight in Neil's is policy. So it's not personal. It's not that I'm saying no to your idea. It's not that I think you're a terrible person. But in fact, I am, as I've been turned down before by, uh, in one case, a billionaire investor who I actually met before. He said, "I would love to meet, but unfortunately, I'm, I'm following a no meeting policy for the next quarter. I'm not meeting with anyone as a policy." Right? All right, so it makes it a blanket response, and I know that I, along with many others, are getting rejected. Another way I've heard this phrased is, "I'm going on an across the board," for instance, uh, "coffee," uh, "no coffee diet or no conference call diet for the next month, for the next quarter, for the next year," whatever it might be. Uh, that is a rejection format that I received when I invited someone to speak at a conference, for instance. "I'm going on a no conference diet for the next year because last year I realized that I'd overcommitted to so much, and by over calendaring, ultimately the things that most excited me had no room to fit into my life," et cetera. Right? So those are a few examples of s- how to say no in such a way that is perfectly clear. You're not saying, "Pay me in three months and we'll see what happens." It's very clear that the answer is no. But hopefully, if it's delivered well, that people will respect you more. They might not like it. They might be upset, but they will respect you. And then over time, typically the wounds heal, if there are any, and they realize that you did exactly the right thing, and then they may even borrow the language that you send them. And I should highlight also, this isn't a panacea. It's just a better tool. In the, at the end of the day, you cannot control how people respond to the decisions you make. But as I think it's Herbert Swope, who was a Nobel Prize recipient, has said, uh, "There is no one path to success, but I can give you the recipe for failure, and that is trying to please everyone all of the time." That's a paraphrase, but you get the point. All right, guys. Thank you for listening to this short episode. I hope you enjoyed it. I certainly have found a way to enjoy getting rejection letters, which makes me happy. And if you'd like to learn more about how to say no, dozens of different approaches, dozens of different techniques from people ranging from Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook, to everybody imaginable, check out Tribe of Mentors, the book. There are 130 plus people profiled. I asked them all this question. And you can check it out at tribeofmentors.com or find it on bn.com, Amazon, any bookseller anywhere, bookstores all over the place. That is it for now. So until next time. Thank you for listening. This episode is brought to you by ConvertKit, my go-to email service provider. A lot of you have asked me what I use for email, and I've been hesitant to tell you because I don't want to give them the hug of death and have my own service drop. So after much consideration, I finally said yes to ConvertKit being a sponsor. Email is a huge priority for me, and I trust ConvertKit as my ESP, my email service provider. It's the only platform that I can completely control and customize. And I need a service that ensures the right information is sent to my followers and listeners, and I cannot afford downtime. I have very little patience for it. So I tried all sorts of different platforms and ultimately selected ConvertKit because they deliver on what matters most to me and my team: easy-to-use systems, split testing, super important, and resending technology, say, to unopens, high rates of deliverability, and excellent customer service. When I've needed something from them and when my team has needed something from them, they've always been there. So whether you run a business or just have a professional blog, let's say, ConvertKit offers email automation, which allows you to send well-timed, targeted content to your audience or your customers. The platform has all sorts of integrations with more than 35 services, including, say, hosting sites such as WordPress, e-commerce platforms like Shopify, lead capture technology like Bounce Exchange or Sumo, and many, many more. They offer plans that can adjust to meet the size of your business, and they can scale with you. So ConvertKit can handle you whether you have 1,000 people or 1 million people on your email list. So take a look, convertkit.com/tim. That's C-O-N-V-E-R-T-K-I-T.com/tim, and you can get your first month for free. That way you can test the platform, kick the tires, make sure that it works for you and your business. And if you're like me, hopefully, fingers crossed, because I only like to recommend things that scale and do really well for everybody, I hope that you find they get the job done. That's certainly been the case for me. Again, that is convertkit.com/tim for a free month of email services. Check it out. This episode is brought to you by Audible, which I've used for many, many years now. Travels with me on my smartphone in my pocket at all times. I love audiobooks, and they are one of my favorite ways to make the most of the time or just pass the time when I'm taking walks, cooking, or on the road in airplanes and so on. Audible has allowed me to consume and enjoy many, many more books than I would have otherwise been able to. You can access an unbeatable selection of bestsellers, biographies, mysteries, thrillers, fantasy, sci-fi, for you nerds like me, and much more. So I can recommend a few right off the bat. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, if you want your sci-fi fix. Very, very good stuff. The Tao of Seneca by Seneca. If you want to hear my favorite letters of all time, then that is one option. And I have to add one more. Perhaps my favorite narration ever, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, the version read by Neil himself. Okay. As a listener of The Tim Ferriss Show as well, you can join Audible for just $4.95 per month. That's $4.95 per month for your first three months. It's regularly $14.95, so you save quite a bunch. This offer is available to new Audible members only, and it ends December 31st, 2017. Go to audible.com forward slash Tim. That's audible.com forward slash Tim. Or text Tim, T-I-M, to 500-500 to get started. Now, I wasn't sure what that meant, so I tried it out. It's pretty cool technology, actually. If you just text T-I-M to 500-500 as the phone number, then it delivers the URL and page directly to you, which is pretty cool. I actually might play around with that. So you can't make more time, but you can make the most of it. So check it out, audible.com forward slash Tim. Or text the word Tim, lowercase T-I-M, to 500-500 to check it out and get started now.

Episode duration: 27:02