 If there's one thing I want you to take from today's video, it is do not be a yes, man. Don't be a yes, man. Now, I'm going to show you how much your business is losing every single month when you say yes. And I'm going to walk through some different scenarios here in this video. And I know if you're watching this video, these are common problems that you're struggling with because I know most of the coaches that I deal with on a daily basis, they ask me about stuff like this. And I don't want you to run these problems anymore. And one of the best words you can say to clients, prospects, anyone that's in your ecosystem, whether it be personal friends, it is the word no. When you say no, you guard your time, you can set up clear boundaries in your business and your personal life and check out some of these examples that I'm about to give you. All right. One of the popular common problems that I get that I see coaches struggle with is they will tell me that their clients will tell them something like this, they'll say, hey, can you train tomorrow at 4pm? Most coaches will always respond with yes, or, oh, I have something going on at that time. Can we do it at this time? And they never say no. Now, here's the deal. Every time you say yes, when a client gives you some sort of order, it puts you always beneath them where they can boss you around with your time. And I'm going to say that again. They're going to be bossing you around with you around with your time when you always say yes. Now, I'm going to give you a really good example. This happened, I believe, in 2012. There was one parent in particular. He would always message me on Saturday nights, and he would say, hey, Ben, can you train tomorrow at this time? And for a couple months, I would always say yes. And even if I didn't have anything on Sunday, I would always agree to whatever time he said, just because I thought, okay, well, you know, they're going to pay me this much for the session. So it's worth it for me to do it. All right. I always justified it in my mind. It was worth it for me to do the session. The problem with that was he knew he could text me whenever he wanted to schedule in a time that didn't work for me, even though I would make it work for me, but it worked for him. And I conditioned this parent so he could just tell me whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it, and I would be there like that. Now it wasn't just in our sessions. He would do that too. On Fridays, he would text me, hey, can you come to our game? My son's playing at this time. And I would always say yes. So he knew, no matter what he asked me, I would say yes. He could have texted me on Tuesday night, hey, Ben, can you come wash my card tomorrow morning at four in the morning? I probably would have said yes. So it took me a while to figure this out and I realized, wait a second. I don't want to work on Sundays anymore. And no, I don't want to just submit and say yes, I'm free all the time. So I had to then define some boundaries and say no. And once I started saying no, we were on my schedule at that point. We weren't on his schedule. So that's one of the examples, though, it's, hey, can you train tomorrow at this time? Or can you train at this time? If you look at any normal business setup, it is not like that. It is not like that. People can't just define when they want to come see you. It's not set up that way. So you can't set it up that way in the future and so you have to learn how to say no and draw a boundary next. This is a very common one as parents will say, hey, can we move our payment to this date? Or can we pay you this way instead of the way that you want to get paid? And again, I used to say yes all the time and I didn't realize it. But when I started pushing payments back, I got paid way less that year than the amount that I should have gotten paid. Whose fault is that? Is that my client's fault? That's my fault. All right, I'm the business owner. So I should define when people are paying and stick to that, right? So when parents are bossing around with your finances, well, guess what? They now are in immediate control of your financial future. If you have a business, it should not be like the finances should be controlled by you and the terms should be set by you. It should not be set by the clients that are paying you, right? That's something that you have to take ownership for. So anytime someone says, hey, can we move our payment to this day? No, all right? No, you don't have to defend it, it's your business, okay? Next, and this is kind of ties in the first one, when someone asks you to come to their game, all right? If you really protect your time and you value your time, you should turn that into a service. The parents are willing to pay you to come watch their kid play. And if you don't believe me, go look at some of the clients that I work with. They have that as a service. Some of them are charging $100, $200 per game that they come to. And parents will gladly pay that so they can have outside eyes on how their kid is doing, right? These coaches now are not saying yes to everything. They're saying yes when parents pay for it, okay? So don't just give into it and say yes with that type of example. The next one here, this is very common for a lot of businesses, a lot of coaches that I've talked to. There's gonna be someone locally in your area that maybe doesn't have a business and they know that you have one and they think it's a good idea to pick your brain. And this is something I started doing in my business and you might laugh when I say this, but I'll try to give you this example. Someone says, hey, can you meet me for coffee tomorrow? I want to pick your brain about your business. If you say yes, then that person knows they can text you whenever they want. And go grab an hour or two hours of your time and steal it away from you, all right? Now, if you want to do that, that's cool. But I don't think you'll realize how much time you actually spend with that person over the course of the year if they know they can text you whenever they want to ask you business questions, okay? And I didn't realize this until I figured out with someone who took advantage of a lot of my time many years ago. They would always text me, hey, can you meet tomorrow at this time? I'd be like, yeah, sure, like I'm not doing anything. But the thing is, I was doing something. I just wasn't prioritizing how I spend my time. Now, when someone texts me that, I'll say, great, fill out this link here. And if you fill that link out, I'll go grab lunch with you tomorrow. Or I'll go grab lunch with you this week. And they're gonna have to pay for it, all right? They're gonna have to pay for my time the same way they should have to pay for your time, all right? And it's either that or you just say, no, I'm not free, all right? That's why not for me. Personally, I'm not gonna go have these like business talks with people that wanna pick my brain every other Thursday. I'm gonna protect my time. And if I want to invest my time to do that, well, I'm gonna charge someone for that time the same way you should, all right? So it's either you're charging for your time or you say no. And when you say no, all right, you stay firm with that. And if someone asks you why, just be like, well, it's not on my schedule. I have other things that are a bigger priority, all right? You're just being honest, all right? Last one here, this is a very common one I see. Parents will say, hey, instead of paying you online, can we pay you cash? Or can we pay you on Venmo, or can we pay you on PayPal, or can we pay you on Cash App, or can we write you a check? They try to find alternative ways to pay you. And when you say yes, your business is no longer uniform. And your business will be broken into, well, I got paid this way from this person, this way from this person. It's impossible to track all the money in your business when you have it set up that way. And when parents ask you, hey, can we pay you this way? You say, no, this is how we get paid. Because every time you say yes, your standards get lower and lower and lower and they can dictate how things happen, when things happen. And again, your finances are now in their hands. And they're gonna decide to pay you however they want because you're not stepping up and leading your organization, all right? So moral of the story here, start saying no and be firm. When you do that, you run a cleaner business and you attract higher committed clients. And you run into way less problems, all right? And the cool thing is when you tell someone no the first time, they started to get educated on not bullying you with your time. And that's a great feeling to have because then you know people respect your time more and they're not going to try to do things the old way. They're gonna do things the way you want them to do it. That's it for today's video, I hope this helps. Stop saying yes, start saying no. And if you have any questions for me about how to grow your business, shoot me a text at the number that's below this video, it's in the description. Text me anytime you want, I'd be happy to help you, catch you later.