How to Say No

This is a special episode of the podcast. When I wrote Tribe of Mentors https://tribeofmentors.com/, I reached out to many different experts, leaders, athletes, and entrepreneurs who are the best in the world at what they do. More than 130 people said yes — but many others said no. This episode covers rejection, and — more specifically — how to turn down seemingly good options. How to say no to seemingly burdensome "obligations," and say yes to the critical few opportunities. Understanding the difference — and how to do it — can make a significant impact on your life and your happiness. Enjoy! This podcast is brought to you by ConvertKit https://convertkit.com/Tim/. This is my go-to email service provider and the only email tool that has made email marketing intuitive for my team without sacrificing any of the features and benefits I need to run a profitable business. It's got easy-to-use systems, split testing, resending technology, automation, targeted content, high rates of deliverability, integration with more than 35 services — like WordPress, Shopify, and Sumo — and excellent customer service. Whether you have a thousand subscribers or a million, whether you run a simple blog or a whole company, ConvertKit https://convertkit.com/Tim/ has a plan that's scaled to fit your budget and requirements. Go to ConvertKit.com/Tim https://convertkit.com/Tim/ to try it out and get your first month for free! Test the platform, kick the tires, and make sure it works for you and your business. This podcast is also brought to you by Audible http://audible.com/tim. I have used Audible http://audible.com/tim for years, and I love audiobooks. I have two to recommend: Ready Player One https://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/Ready-Player-One-Audiobook/B005FRGT44/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20 by Ernest Cline The Tao of Seneca https://www.audible.com/pd/Nonfiction/The-Tao-of-Seneca-Audiobook/B01AIXEJKU/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20 by Seneca As a listener of The Tim Ferriss Show, you can join Audible for just $4.95 per month http://audible.com/tim for your first 3 months (it's regularly $14.95). This offer is available to new Audible members only and it ends December 31, 2017. Go to Audible.com/tim or text "tim" to 500-500 to get started. Choose one of the above books, or choose any of the endless options they offer. That could be a book, a newspaper, a magazine, or even a class. It's that easy. Go to Audible.com/Tim http://audible.com/tim and get started today.

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• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 01

  No, we're just in an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 00

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:03Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:24Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, 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 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

• 2:07Tim Ferriss?

  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 want to 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.

• 2:47Tim Ferriss?

  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, it's a 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

• 3:31Tim Ferriss?

  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 sell much podcasts and the blog posts, all 700-plus of them are for free. But tribeofmentors.com, thanks. Okay, back to our regularly scheduled programming. So the first rejection letter is from Wendy McNauton. Very, very impressive gal.

• 4:13Tim Ferriss?

  McNauton is spelled M-A-C-N-A-U-G-H-T-O-N. You can say hello to her on Twitter and Instagram, @wendymac, or you can see her work and life and much more at wendymcnaughton.com. All right, here is Wendy. Wendy McNauton 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.

• 4:42Tim Ferriss?

  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, subtitle 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.

• 5:24Tim Ferriss?

  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?"

• 6:07Tim Ferriss?

  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. And this is very, very, very Wendy, so you don't have to sacrifice your personality or be coldly impersonal to say no, and a lot of this can serve as a template and help you to determine how you can establish, perhaps, a set language for declining. Here we go.

• 6:43Tim Ferriss?

  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 to the next... dot, dot, dot, 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,

• 7:28Tim Ferriss?

  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..." dot, dot, dot, "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 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.

• 8:13Tim Ferriss?

  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, @DHMeyer, or at USHGNYC.com.

• 8:41Tim Ferriss?

  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, Mayolino, 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.

• 9:26Tim Ferriss?

  All right. So for your reading pleasure, or listening pleasure in this case, and to scratch your schadenfreude, 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, greetings and thanks for writing.

• 10:10Tim Ferriss?

  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.

• 10:39Tim Ferriss?

  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 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.

• 11:23Tim Ferriss?

  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. Neil Stephenson. N-E-A-L. Stephenson. S-T-E-P-H-E-N-S-O-N. On Twitter, at Neil Stephenson. Facebook is The Neil Stephenson, and you can learn more about him at NeilStephenson.com. One of the most fascinating human beings I have ever encountered, and I've had the

• 12:02Tim Ferriss?

  good fortune of meeting Neil then and again, in Seattle through my friend, Chris Young, scientist and incredible writer himself, at Chef Steps and beyond. But back to Neil. Neil 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. Neil also writes nonfiction articles about technology and publications such as Wired

• 12:43Tim Ferriss?

  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, Neil is one of those people who will reach out to astrophysicists and mechanical engineers and so on to interview them, dig into the details in 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.

• 13:25Tim Ferriss?

  And he does this in many, many, many, many, many different domains. It's, 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 próxima, until next time, from one of my idols, writer Neil 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.

• 14:06Tim Ferriss?

  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." It's the most Neil thing to say ever, alright? "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 like this just as a blanket policy. Again, thanks for thinking of me and good luck with the project." Exclamation point. Neil. All right. There are a few commonalities I want to highlight here and that I've certainly translated into my own language in a lot of the declines that I send out.

• 14:50Tim Ferriss?

  And 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 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? There are a few commonalities. Number one is explaining the predicament that you are in. And you don't have to go along 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.

• 15:33Tim Ferriss?

  You can keep it short and to the point. But in a sense, you're explaining the context. And then the second word that I'd like to highlight in Niels 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, in one case, a billionaire investor who I actually met before. He said, I would love to meet, but unfortunately I'm following a no meeting policy for the next quarter. I'm not meeting with anyone as a policy. Right? So it makes it a blanket response. And I know that I, along with many others, are getting rejected.

• 16:14Tim Ferriss?

  Another way I've heard this phrase is, I'm going on and across the board, for instance, coffee, no coffee diet or no conference call diet for the next month, for the next quarter, for the next year, whatever it might be. 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 overcommitted 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 how to say no.

• 16:54Tim Ferriss?

  In such a way that is perfectly clear, you're not saying ping 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. 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 is a Nobel Prize recipient,

• 17:36Tim Ferriss?

  has said, "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 Moskowitz, 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

• 18:21Tim Ferriss?

  all over the place. That is it for now. So until next time, thank you for listening.