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Good morning Launch Key 🚀 community!

Cool mornings, azalea colors and warm sunny days are in heavy rotation at the coast right now. It’s the calm before the summer tourist storm and it’s just about perfect here near the beach.

This week, I’m redoing a key entrepreneurial topic: the need to say ‘No.’

It just might be the most important word business owners use.

Let's get into it.

Comment below and let me know if we’re on the right track.

Table of Contents

• Pull to Eject

  • Your Don’t Do List

• Old School Wisdom

• Free Knowledge

• Recommendations

• Visual Crapshoot

Pull to Eject

I’m rehashing a topic from a year ago not because of running out of topics, but because its a critical one for success. Saying yes to everything is a surefire way to hinder your startup.

When I last wrote about the Power of No, Launch Key had about 1500 subscribers. Today we have more than 10 times that number so here’s a fresh look at saying ‘No’ to help your business.

All good entrepreneurs say ‘Yes.’

It’s the way to get your first client.

Or sell a new service you never planned. You can figure out how to deliver later.

Entrepreneurs have rightly earned the short-sighted reputation of chasing new things.

Look - a squirrel! 🐿️

But there is far more power in saying ‘No.’

• No, that isn’t what we do well

• No, we’re not so busy that we need to hire

• No, that client isn’t a strategic fit for us

• No, we don’t need larger office space

• No, we’re not raising outside money

Especially when things are going well - ‘No’ is easy to put on the back burner.

Experience taught me the hard lesson that once you have employees, you can’t say no as often as you should.

• Yes, we’ll take on crappy jobs, because we need the billable hours.

• Yes to clients that are clearly not the long-term partner type

• Yes to hiring another employee just because you’ve had a busy month.

• Yes, we’ll do the project that isn’t exactly what we do, because we need to make payroll next month.

‘Yes’ can lead to many painful business lessons.

Walmart is big enough to have loss leaders. Your business isn’t.

Your Don’t Do List

It might be counterintuitive, but what don’t you want to do?

A ‘Don’t Do List’ starts to make your focus much more clear. This truly helps you to niche down.

• What are the things that only you can do well?

• Where are the places that your product or service adds the most value?

• What brings you joy?

Only do work that makes sense. As a bonus, many times you’ll find those jobs are also the most profitable.

Or as Jim Collins defined the hedgehog concept in Good to Great – the Venn overlap of your passion, talent and market.

It takes hard knocks to develop your nose to filter which ideas are great (but not for you) and which Ideas are worth pursuing and investing time.

This ultimately helps define your authentic brand. And I don’t mean logos, colors and font choices.

Your authentic brand impacts every single decision you make.

Not just how you communicate, but also which clients you do work with, who you hire and fire, what products and services you develop, the partnerships you form.

Its your differentiation. It’s your product (or service) market fit.

In fact – your brand is your super power.

And when you only deliver your authentic brand … it’s easy to say ‘no.’

Now go launch something 🚀 

Is 2025 The Year You Thrive?

Join Tony Robbins, Dean Graziosi, and a lineup of top personal growth and entrepreneurship experts for three powerful days at the Thrive in 2025 Virtual Live Event.

This free event will show you how to thrive in today’s rapidly changing world - by turning economic shifts into opportunity. Learn how to build something of your own, create predictable income, reignite your purpose, and define success on your own terms.

May 15-17. Be there.

Old School Wisdom

Focus is about saying ‘No.’

Listen to Steve Jobs Q&A at the 1997 World Wide Developers Conference. Telling his best customers - we’re not going to do that anymore - even though it was cool.

What are the fundamental directions we are going in? And things that aren’t in that direction, no matter how cool they might be, need to be jettisoned.

In February 2024, Apple discarded a decade - and billions of dollars of investment - into electric and self-driving cars. More than 600 people were let go as the company instead shifted its focus to the company’s generative artificial intelligence efforts.

‘No’ does take intestinal fortitude.

Free Knowledge

Matt Wolfe has his own AI tool directory and a free YouTube channel to help you learn. Here’s the type of content you’ll find:

1. AI news

2. Tools

3. Trends

4. Tutorials

5. ChatGPT technique

6. Midjourney techniques

Learn AI in 5 minutes a day

What’s the secret to staying ahead of the curve in the world of AI? Information. Luckily, you can join 1,000,000+ early adopters reading The Rundown AI — the free newsletter that makes you smarter on AI with just a 5-minute read per day.

Sign up to start learning.

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Visual Crapshoot