When I first started doing stand-up comedy over 20 years ago, I never said no. I took whatever jobs I could find, and I never questioned the conditions of the deal; I showed up when and where people wanted me, and I accepted whatever amount of money they were offering. The same thing was true even before that when I was doing freelance writing for Nashville music publications. Whatever they wanted me to write about, I wrote about. Whatever they wanted to pay me, I took it.
I think that’s how most of us are when we’re just getting started with something. Be available, say yes, take what you’re given – that’s how you’ll get your foot in the door, and for a long time that seemed to be the only path to take. It may actually be the only way many of us ever get a chance to make a name for ourselves. And there’s nothing wrong with it.
Unless that’s where you stay forever.
I remember the first time I decided to push back on saying yes to everything. Somebody was interested in hiring me as an entertainer for a holiday party in New York City, and I really didn’t want to go. It was going to cost more to get there than I was used to paying for travel, and it was going to require me to cancel plans I wasn’t excited to cancel. The job had come in through a website where you had to bid on the work, and typically the lower you bid the more likely you were to get the job. At that time I was accustomed to bidding something around $1,000, but in this case I decided to bid $2,500. I was positive I wouldn’t get the job – but again, I didn’t want to.
They hired me that same day.
It was a shock to me; I didn’t think it was possible to get that much money to do what I was doing, and the fact that they hired me that same day made me wonder if perhaps I’d somehow underbid myself. Was I making more than I’d ever made before and still a bargain for the people hiring me?
That was the beginning of me saying no to certain types of work, in particular clients who were asking me to do things that I either didn’t think I could do well or didn’t think were good ideas. Sometimes I ended up not getting work that I know I could have gotten. But sometimes it happened that people changed their requests to something I knew I could deliver. Sometimes they agreed to pay more than they’d initially offered.
By learning to say no, I was slowly but steadily learning how to improve my business.
All of us have said yes to things we haven’t wanted to say yes to, and there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. Sometimes we do it to help others, or because we’re feeling generous, or to pay someone back for a favor they did for us. But if we always say yes and never push back, then we’ll always be at the mercy of what other people want to provide us. We’ll get work on their terms; we’ll get a raise when they decide we deserve it.
When we learn to say no, however, it actually opens up possibilities, rather than simply closing doors. Saying “no” doesn’t have to mean “never, under any circumstances, for the rest of all time.” Sometimes it does, but just as often it means “not right now” or “not on these terms.” Done right, saying no allows for conversation, discussion, and compromise just as often as it leads to a rupture or a cancelled deal. People who say yes to everything will eventually become overcommitted and overstressed; people who sometimes say no are better positioned to concentrate their time and energy on whatever they consider to be their most important priorities.
If I’d never learned to say no, I’d still be doing the same work that I was doing 25 years ago. I’d probably be making close to the same amount of money as well. Instead, my career is in a better position now than it was back then. There are a lot of reasons for that, but one of them is certainly that I learned how to say no.
So this month I hope you do too – not always, of course, but when it makes sense. Who knows? You might find out like I did that saying no is just the thing you need to get where you want to be.
