Saying Yes To Everything Comes With Costs

Opportunity costs being the most expensive.

Opportunity costs being the most expensive.

“Saying ‘yes’ to one thing, is saying ‘no’ to everything else that could be taking place during that time.

We look at yes’s from the perspective of profit.

I’ve learned to look at yes’s from the perspective of expense.

Is this yes preventing me from saying yes to a better yes?”

-Ray Zingler on Twitter

The most beneficial aspect of experience is that it allows you to upgrade your way of thinking and decision making.

You can upgrade your way of thinking because you have proof from prior experiences in regards to which practices work best and which don’t.

You can maintain/upgrade the good and phase out the bad and then continually evolve the process.

That is personal development in a nutshell.

As an entrepreneur in my early day’s, trying to make a name for myself (aren’t we all, all the time?) I would say yes to everything under the sun.

I would take on every client, I would work every camp, I would take on teams, I would volunteer at the high school, I would train individuals and teams virtually as well. I would do this at discounted rates because at the time I didn’t know my value.

And if I didn’t know my value how could I have ever expected the consumers’ in the marketplace to know/respect my value?

While I am thankful for the “Yes’s” I said yes to because they provided a lot of opportunity for my family and developed a hellacious work ethic, looking back on my experiences from afar, I often ask myself, what did those yes’s cost me?

While hindsight is always 20/20, I think a major part of growth is leveraging lessons from past mistakes that may have seemed like gold nuggets back in the day.

Could I have charged more for my services?

Could I have better organized my business infrastructure?

Could I have built better general systems?

Could I have invested more in professional development?

To sum it up bluntly, could I have said “No” more often so that I could have the bandwidth to say “Yes” to better yes’s?

I believe failing to account for opportunity cost with every decision we make is a major contributor to stagnation for most, especially young people in the business world.

I’m not implying the idea of earning your stripes is a bad thing, however I think it’s important as you grow professionally to “protect your yes’s”.

A simple way I’ve done this is made my default answer “no”.

However, if the value is there, I will happily upgrade my answer to yes.

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