All the ways to say no (or pay me)

When a LinkedIn comment turns into a whole 'stack

If you’re new here:

Hi, I’m Meg and this is my little corner of the internet where I share tales and observations across the tech and parenting “industries.”

I advise and consult with startups as a fractional product marketing leader, primarily for B2B SaaS companies. Want to discuss a startup idea, get go-to-market help, or launch your own fractional consultancy? I won’t say “NO” if you book an chat with me :)

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This is my priority and I will not be sorry about it

One of the best parts about being fractional and disrupting the status bro is observing and celebrating how others are creating opportunities in non-traditional ways.

I’ve been following Jeanine Suah’s career for a while. She was a total closer at Brex when we were there together, and now I avidly follow her newsletter “Dear XIR” where she encourages the tech industry to value cross-functional collaborators as growth engines.

One of her latest posts inspired me to write this Stack:

Setting boundaries isn’t a negotiation starter

This post is brilliant for so many reasons:

• She shares what her clearly defined priority is for her time (and PS she’s been sharing this priority very publicly for months)

• It subverts “rise and grind” culture - only grind on your priorities

• It reinforces that it’s reasonable to ask people to pay you for your time (especially if it’s taking away from your priorities)

• Instead of a typical LinkedIn founder boast post posturing about “I worked 14 hours a day to build my startup and if you don’t, you won’t succeed,” she is honest about how she is working at flexing the NO muscle very judiciously

• She recognizes the inherent guilt associated with saying no (especially as a woman)

• Her personal writing style is straightforward, crisp, and personable

As I read, I thought: “This is me, and every hard-working, ambitious woman I know!” I’ve spent 20+ years being helpful, almost always saying yes to chats, advising folks, or an opportunity to connect people for productive overlap. I queried my CRM and found over 450 (!) entries with tags like #intro, #connections, #networking -- and almost all of this was done on top of my regular full-time job.

This type of connecting comes naturally to me as I love meeting people and being helpful. It’s a large reason why I wasn’t as scared about launching my own consultancy: I had created quite a backlog of favors over the years.

However, becoming a fractional also created a shift in how I value my time. You could argue that working part-time (ish) affords me more time to help people but… that cannibalizes the whole point of creating more time for my priorities (family, health, writing). It’s simply impossible to help everyone who asks, if I want to honor the priorities I set for myself.

I replied to Jeanine’s post that I have a template of ways to say no (or pay me) to help me in this area. Jeanine, being the hype house we always need, encouraged me to share the resource or - even better - “templatize it so we pay you.”

Now I have to write this shit down

This encouraged me to review my very messy “how to say no / pay me b*tch” google doc that I once shared with

Kira Klaas

(who is another mage at monetizing her expertise).

It was a joy to read through these non-emotional and direct ways to insist my time is valuable, and I was especially proud that I generated these long before ChatGPT could have done it for me. Flex!

Preparing yourself to get to No

Write this down on a post-it note and stick it somewhere you’ll see all the time:

“‘No’ is a complete sentence” - Annie Lamott

If you are one of the many people (especially women) who find it hard to say no, prep yourself by figuring out how to value the amazing free time, effort, and expertise you’re gifting, and what you’re losing by gifting it:

• Think of other ways you could use this time (calling an old friend while you take a walk, taking your dog for a walk, taking a walk with no other agenda except that it’s a walk)

• Challenge if this time will take away from your clearly defined priorities

• Calculate how much money you could be earning in cold hard cash

• It matters even if it’s “just 15 minutes” because 15 X 4 adds up to an hour of your time

• Ask yourself “what’s the worst thing that could happen as a result of me saying no?” and unless it’s “I’ll lose my job” or “I’ll piss off a potentially important connection,” continue to say no

Find your flavor of “NO” below — I’ve grouped them by common scenarios and how to respond.

You can’t pick my brain

Not only do I hate the weird “Operation!” image that comes to mind when I hear this term, but this is the worst approach to asking someone to give you their time / expertise / connections for free.

If you ask to “pick my brain” (especially without any other bullet points on what that means) you are telling me:

• You have done little research on me

• You have no plan for what you are going to ask me, so the conversation is going to be ambling and unproductive

• This is going to be a one-way street where I help you

Essentially, you are telling me you don’t value my time at all, and are signaling to me that you may not have any value to exchange (I know, harsh!).

Still - I usually reserve 1-2 calls a month for these “one-way street” cold calls because I firmly believe in helping less experienced folks (particularly women), similar to how other women have done this for me in my career.

Here are 3 ways you can respond to this:

—> Fine, yes, but don’t waste my time

I’m happy to do a quick 15-30 minute call to chat. Please send me an agenda of what you’d like to discuss ahead of time so that we can both make the meeting productive. If you have specific networking requests (like an introduction to someone in my network), please share those too with a note on why you’d like to connect and a 2-3 sentence “blurb” on you, your experience, and what you’re looking for.

—> I can help but I’m not doing a call

I am generally an open networker, but I also guard my network as it’s a direct reflection on my reputation and the work I’ve put in to be helpful to so many people. So when folks ask to have a call so they can just ask for connections to people/companies, I avoid actually doing a phone call because this could have just been an email.

Instead I write:

I am open to helping you [find companies you should apply to / connect to someone in my network], and the best way I can do that is for you to share with me:

• What you’re looking for (please be very specific - industry, size of company, examples of companies already on your hit list]

• What type of roles you’re a match for

• A short one-paragraph summary on your expertise that I can easily forward

• [If they’re asking to speak to a specific person or company] What specifically interests you about this person or company

Once I have this, I’ll share it with relevant folks in my network and hopefully there will be a match!

But you have to value your own time to get here

—> I can help but I’m not doing a call (no, really, I’m not doing a call about this)

If someone insists they have a call with you, a diplomatic way to say “you didn’t read between the lines last time, so I’m going to break it down for you” is:

My capacity for coffee chats [or virtual meet ups or networking calls or whatever you’d like to call them] is maxed out right now. Share what you’re hoping I can help with specifically over email, and I’ll let you know if this is something I’m open to. Thanks!

Optional PS if you’re feeling really generous: Feel free to check back in a few months and perhaps we can hop on a call then.

We can chat if you pay me

You may have noticed that in several places in my substack and low-fi website I mention that if you’re interested in speaking with me, you can book an Intro with me. → I’ve now moved to a simple calendly booking page due to too many technical issues with Intro :/

I learned about Intro almost a year ago via a former colleague’s LinkedIn post announcing he was joining the platform to allow people to gain access to his expertise. He had about 5 years’ less experience than me but was a pro at self-promotion and was brimming with the over confidence of a MWD (I’ll be writing about MWDs in a future post).

This lit a fire under my butt — “if this guy is monetizing his expertise, why the heck aren’t I?!” So I began to set the stage to my network (and then my substack readers) that I valued my time and I hope they would, too. Here is how I explained it on LinkedIn:

Normalize paying people for their time and expertise

There are folks who still ping me asking to chat, and as my mother always says “If you don’t ask, you won’t get.” Good on them - and now it’s on me to say no. Here are several ways to do so:

—> I’d love to help, and I charge…

You don’t have to have an Intro page or even an integration with Calendly/Stripe to tell someone you expect to be paid for your time. If they say “sure I’ll pay,” you can ask them to pre-pay for the consult via Venmo (etc).

Thanks for asking for my expertise - it means a lot!

Discussing career options and connections [insert whatever they are asking for here] is an area I advise clients on, so I’m happy you thought of me. I’d love to help, and I charge $X/hour for a consulting session. If that’s of interest, please let me know, and we can set up a time.

Another option, especially for when folks flatter you but you still don’t have the capacity for networking:

I love the enthusiasm, and I'm so excited for you! One of the key things that helped me start out was nurturing my network, so kudos to you!

That being said my schedule is extremely tight at the moment and I'm currently only fitting in paid consultations. I'd love to discuss my process and insights with you. If that’s of interest to you, here is the booking link.

Thanks again for reaching out - it means a lot.

—> I’d love to help, and I charge… (another option)

I use this one for folks who I want to stay in touch with / may actually know / could be a potential client or referring partner in the future:

Thanks for asking for my expertise - it means a lot!

I'm currently in "build mode" - launching my substack, adding new services to my offering, and planning my consulting capacity. Let's keep in touch - perhaps you could share a quick blurb on your experience and your ideal consulting customers, so I can refer you in the future.

If you'd like to have a more in-depth discussion on how to become a consultant, I've joined the Intro platform to coach folks on how to launch and/or expand their consulting practices, and to advise founders on PMF and market validation. Here is my booking link.

—> I don’t really want to do a call with you but if you pay me enough…

This is a variation of the above, but replace “I charge $X/hour” with “I charge $3X/hour” for call you really don’t want to do.

Think of $3X/hour as your “no” price, aka

Dan Mall

’s “go away price,” aka as I colloquially put it, my “f*ck off price.”

If they still want to chat, you have unlocked a new insight into your pricing.

When it’s a hard no

When you don’t even want to list a “f*ck off price,” when you’re so burnt out at being a giver, when you have too much going on: don’t be afraid to use a simple and direct “No.” The more details you share, the more opportunities the other person has to pick apart your priorities. The only person you’re hurting in this scenario is you.

Some of my go-tos:

• I can't commit to networking calls as I have other priorities at the moment

• Now's not a good time as I'm in the middle of some demanding projects. How about we reconnect at X time? [and let them remember to reconnect]

• This doesn't meet my priorities now but I'll be sure to keep you in mind if things change

• I'm not the best person to help on this. Why don't you try X?

The word that’s missing in each of these?

Sorry.

You may notice that in NONE OF THESE RESPONSES DO I EVER USE THE WORD SORRY.

Do not apologize for valuing your time and asking others to do so.

A few ways you can value my time!

🙊 Book a strategy (or vent) session

Want to discuss how to launch or expand your consultancy? Need help getting unstuck and back on the right track? Book a strategy session with me.. Share an agenda, and we problem-solve for the most helpful and actionable next steps per minute.

☕️ Buy me a chai latte

Not ready for a virtual coffee chat but still want to support me? Strategic Pivotery is free (and I’d like to keep it that way, at least for now!). If you find it helpful, it made you smile, or I got a belly laugh — buy me a coffee (well, chai latte - I don’t drink coffee). I prefer monetary validation to another mediocre white dude telling me “you’re actually really good at this.” Thanks, bro!

I love the ❤️ too - like, comment, share, restack this post so it gets discovered by the dark internet.

☎️ Tell me!

Where are you struggling with “no”? Is it:

• Underpricing yourself

• Scope creep from a client

• Too many free asks