Lenny's Newsletter - On saying no
👋 Hey, I’m Lenny and welcome to a 🔒 subscriber-only edition 🔒 of my weekly newsletter. Each week I tackle reader questions about building product, driving growth, and accelerating your career. For more help, check out my PM recruiting service (helping you hire Sr. PMs and VPs of Product), Lennybot (an AI chatbot trained on my newsletter posts, podcast interviews, and more), and my swag store (great gifts for your favorite PM, or yourself!).
I’ve had to learn to say no out of self-preservation. Each day I get more than 100 emails, a dozen DMs on Twitter and LinkedIn, and at least twenty Slack messages and social media pings. All with asks, offers, and requests that are mostly easy individually but add up to an avalanche of work. Just replying with a polite “no thanks” to every one of them would take up my entire day. And if I messed up and accidentally said something that came across poorly in one of my replies, a world of pain could follow. Saying no doesn’t come naturally to me (I really like helping people), but to consistently produce a high-caliber newsletter and 1-2 podcast episodes a week, I’ve had to build this skill. Below is everything I’ve learned about how to say no, including a bunch of templates that I use to (kindly) let people down. Important: This advice is meant for a solopreneur with too many good opportunities and too little time—a privileged place to be. If you’re just starting out and looking for opportunities, or have a day job with less flexibility in what you can say yes and no to, this advice will be less relevant. Though probably still helpful. For advice for saying no during your day job, check out this post. Why you should say no more oftenSomeone (probably Naval) once tweeted this advice that, for the life of me, I can’t find, so I’ll paraphrase: You become successful by doing something really well. Once you’re successful, you get offers to do cool things, like go to fancy fun events, do new projects, and meet interesting people. But when you start spending your time on these other things, you don’t have as much time to do the thing that made you successful in the first place. That work suffers. And so your success fades. This is why so many people who come out of nowhere and become really successful also quickly disappear. It’s hard to resist the distraction. But it’s essential.
Deciding when and why to say yesAs you’ve heard many times, saying yes to something means you’re saying no to something else. So how do you know what to say yes to? Here’s my guide:
General strategies for saying no
Templates for saying noFinally, here are actual templates I’ve set up for myself for asks I regularly have to decline. I’ve tried a few different tools to make these easy, and currently I’m happy with TextExpander as my tool of choice... Subscribe to Lenny's Newsletter to read the rest.Become a paying subscriber of Lenny's Newsletter to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content. A subscription gets you:
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Older messages
Why not asking for what you want is holding you back | Kenneth Berger (exec coach, first PM at Slack)
Sunday, May 19, 2024
Kenneth coaches startup leaders on how to prevent burnout, advocate for their desired lifestyle, and make a meaningful impact on the world. ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
Be fundamentally different, not incrementally better | Jag Duggal (Nubank, Facebook, Google, Quantcast)
Friday, May 17, 2024
Jag is chief product officer at Nubank, which is valued at over $30 billion and is bigger than Coinbase, Robinhood, Affirm, and SoFi combined. ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
The art of the pivot, part 2: How, why, and when to pivot
Tuesday, May 14, 2024
Help for your “pivotal” decision ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
A framework for PM skill development | Vikrama Dhiman (Gojek)
Sunday, May 12, 2024
Vikrama heads all things product at Gojek, including product management, design, program management, and research, across Indonesia, Singapore and India. ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
The art of the pivot, part 1: The definitive list of successful pivots
Tuesday, May 7, 2024
Details behind 30+ pivots, including how they knew it was time to pivot, how long it took them to pivot, and much more ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
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