No

Welcome to all of you who have joined in the past few weeks. If you’re opening this for the first time, or your head is spinning from the barely-averted US government shutdown that you forgot what this is about - I write weekly on insights and tactics around building an incredible network of clients, collaborators, and community.

Have you said no this week?

One of the best ways to cultivate trusted connections is to facilitate introductions. Whenever I’m meeting with someone, I’m half-consciously thinking about who in my network they should meet. I’ll follow up with an introduction. I almost always do a double-opt-in introduction, where I ask each person permission to make the introduction.

I’ll be honest - even though I ask if they’re cool with me introducing them, I expect them to say yes. I expect them to trust me, and be excited about whomever I think they should connect with.

Which is why it stings when someone says no.

Last week, I was at one of my favorite conferences in Ojai, CA. It was the kind of conference that, despite being a week of 3-4 hours of sleep a night, has you boarding the airplane home fully energized with dozens of pages of notes and insights.

One thing that stuck with me was Ryan Holiday talking about doing timeless work. One necessary ingredient is being relentless about saying no.

A line later in the week permanently lodged itself in my head…

“Never trust a yes from someone who never tells you no.”

(By the way, if you love making introductions amongst people, you have to try the introduction tool in Relatable)

Taking Action

Say no to someone this week.

Decline that upcoming calendar invite, and explain why. Say no to someone requesting to meet with you. Remove someone from your list of contacts.

It sounds harsh, I know.

But the more we say no, the more we value and can help the people we say “yes” to.