When you’re starting out on your entrepreneurial or growth journey, you’ll want to say yes to as many opportunities as you possibly can. This will expose you to new inputs, people, ideas and create endless potential for growth and learning.
At least this has certainly been the case for me.
Thinking back on my journey, I’ve benefited in the most unpredictable ways from the most random or unexpected things I somehow got involved with.
Openness and new stimuli can be an excellent way to break you out of your current circumstances, social circles generate new inspiration and ideas that can get you closer to a new breakthrough path.
As much as that is the case, however - this is also counterbalanced by the importance of saying no and becoming ruthless with how you guard your time. As you get further along on your path, gain some momentum and glimpses of success, you’ll inevitably start getting pulled from an ever increasing amount of different directions.
- Requests to jump on a call
- When can we grab coffee?
- We should hang out
- Can I pick your brain on X
- There is an exciting opportunity you can’t miss
- You should come to this once in a lifetime event
At first, it’s easy to say no. A long time acquaintance from school you haven’t spoken with in 20 years who has gotten intrigued by seeing you all over the internet. A friend of a friend who has a genius app idea yet has worked the same job for 10 years. Your mother’s neighbour whose printer has mysteriously stopped working.
But over time, the requests and propositions get increasingly more appetising.
- A buddy inviting you to go skiing in Japan and then hit Bali for some surfing
- A CTO friend has a groundbreaking AI SaaS that they’d like to launch with your GTM expertise
- A real estate investor in your network with overflowing capital on hand who’d like to launch a new venture and partner up
- Fellow entrepreneurs and friends telling you that there is an incredible untapped market you’re missing out on, or a killer feature or service you should add to your business
- Youtubers, podcasters and influencers talking about revolutionary opportunities you’d be crazy not to make a move on
- … as well as most importantly, your own endless appetite for shiny objects
While all these things seem like great ideas at first - if you let them - they will distract you just as badly. While you can say yes to some, the opportunity cost in doing so increases with every step of the ladder you climb.
Eventually, if you go down the path that you feel like you “should” by pursuing all these unmissable “opportunities”, you’ll find that your calendar ends up being filled back to back. With any free time that you have barely being enough to recover your mental bandwidth until the next thing comes up.
Until even that isn’t stretching far enough and you start cutting corners. Waking up at 3AM to catch a flight. Staying up late. Skipping your workout. Ordering takeout instead of making your own healthy meals. Cancelling your therapist session. Delaying a doctor’s appointment for that strange mole that probably isn’t a big deal.
This is itself isn’t good. But most importantly:
- The killer feature you really want to implement
- The new process that would take your business to the next level