Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
The Art of Saying No: How to Say “No” to Invitations 2-18-25
Tue, 18 Feb 2025
In this episode, Scott Becker shares six key strategies for managing invitations, speaking engagements, and networking requests.
Chapter 1: What is the art of saying no about?
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Today's discussion is the art of saying no, how to judge invitations. One of the things that happens is when you're early on in your career, you try and say yes to a lot to fill up your plate, to make sure you're thriving and sprawling.
Chapter 2: Why is setting boundaries important?
As you get more senior, you get to the spot where if you don't set some boundaries, your life will be completely out of control and overwhelming. So what I've had to do due to that is to try and set some boundaries on how I say yes and no to speaking in other invitations. This is a quick wrap up on six thoughts on that.
Chapter 3: When should you say yes to virtual speaking?
First, virtual speaking or podcast guest, I almost always say yes, particularly if there's some kind of synergy or educational effort and the host makes it easy to execute or we love the host or appreciative of the host or the invitation. Second, in-person speaking out of town.
Chapter 4: How do you decide on out-of-town speaking engagements?
Here, I try and limit this to six to eight a year out-of-town talks and generally leave them to there's some kind of synergy. It's someone who I'm indebted to or very appreciative of. It's right in my sweet spot. It's someone that's done so much for us where I feel hard to say no or it's a great customer or client or somebody I'm just honored to speak at. You also look at is it easy to travel to?
Chapter 5: What factors influence in-town speaking invitations?
Are there other synergies? Is it close to family or close friends that I'd love to see? I do talk about, is there payment? Is somebody paying me to speak or not? Generally, most of my talks are not paid talks. Some are. It's more of a nice thing than an absolute. Third, in-town speaking, a much lower barrier to say yes. If it's educational or charity, it's almost always yes.
If it's right in my sweet spot, almost always yes. Fourth, Someone business-focused wants to be on our podcast or webinar for no charge. Generally, no, but perhaps yes, if I'm genuinely interested in the person, generally love talking to them, or I'm super appreciative of them, but generally we use the concept, nobody writes for free. It's an old song, it's an old statement from a song or movie.
Nobody writes for free. Fifth, business, lunch, dinner, or coffee. I try and say no to this all the time. I can't stand the business lunches or the coffees unless they're close friends or people I really want to talk about. I just can only handle so much stress in my life and schedule's too tight and I don't have the patience for it.
So the business lunches, dinners, coffees, we really try and avoid. Sixth, the short advice or intro call. I try and say yes, sometimes overwhelmed, and there are periods of time we'll go through just way too many invitations for these kinds of things. But we'll generally try and say yes if we at all can.
But sometimes it's just too hard to block out the time and the energy for it and the energy suck of it. In any event, that's sort of the art and arc of saying no, how we judge invitations. Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity Business Podcast. We hope that this resonates with some people. I constantly have to struggle with
what we can do and can't do and still remain energetic and effective. Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast.
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