I absolutely believe you should make time to meet with folks, even if they won’t directly generate business for you. That’s putting goodness into the world, and it pays off.

As I’ve also written, you should be generous with yourself, taking time off when you need it. But that generosity should extend beyond giving yourself the ability to take sick days. You should also give yourself the gift of saying no sometimes.

If I schedule an initial consultation for Lex Friedman Consulting, I book it for 15 minutes. I don’t know if we’re a good fit for each other yet or if I can help you yet. Fifteen minutes is enough to figure that out, but not so much that one or both of us will resent the time if it turns out there’s no path together. And — assuming neither one of us is booked at a weird 15-minute interval — we can always go long if there’s something there.

Sometimes, though, the other party sends the invite. When I’m expecting a half-hour meeting and you send an hour block — or when it’s an initial consult for which I’d like to limit my obligation to 15 minutes, and you send a 30-minute invite — it’s on me to take care of myself and my time.

That can take several forms, practically speaking. In some cases, I might email you back right away: I’m looking forward to speaking on Tuesday. Just wanted to flag, I’ll only have 30 minutes, but I’m confident we can cover a lot of ground in that time!

In other cases, I’ll simply update you on my required departure time at the start of the call. “Hey, I know you booked this for 30 minutes, but I’m actually limited to 15 today. That should be enough to kick things off, and then we can book a follow-up as needed. Sorry about that!”

Whether I email or simply announce my time limitation at the start of the call is mostly whim-based; I have no specific rule determining which means I use. But I consider this time protection a form of saying “no.” No, I didn’t commit to 60 minutes; no, you can’t have this much time.

Most of us hate saying no. It can feel awkward or mean or unkind. It’s none of those things, done politely. If anything, saying “no” shows confidence — and kindness, at least to yourself. And it’s certainly honest.

And there are, of course, other times where you have to say no. I’ve had potential clients do the initial meeting, request a proposal, and then want to schedule more time with follow-up questions, or they’ll email me some questions hoping, essentially, for free advice. These aren’t questions about how we’ll work together — they’re questions seeking insights from my areas of expertise.

I don’t work for free.

“I have all sorts of thoughts on this topic, actually! Once we get our agreement signed, I absolutely think we should dedicate some of our hours to discussing precisely this.” I didn’t copy and paste this from my outbox, but I could have.

Don’t write on spec. Don’t make designs for free. In my case, I don’t offer unpaid consulting. Your work has value. Saying no to those who would take advantage of your time or talents is an act of generosity — to yourself.

It won’t cost you business. And in the very rare cases where it could, that’s okay too — you don’t want freeloaders as customers anyway.

I’ve been wrestling with my starting sentence for this piece. Because what I want to say is “Everyone has an opinion on how to start a negotiation,” but I’m willing to acknowledge that maybe not everyone has such an opinion. But opening with “Most people have an opinion on how to start a negotiation” feels unnecessarily wishy-washy.

A lot of folks advise you never to throw out a number first. Let the other side do so. That can work — sometimes! But if you’re thinking the thing is worth $10,000 and the other side offers $100 to start things off, you’ve let them set the tone in a way that doesn’t serve you well in this negotiation.

The risk, some might say, is this: What if they’re willing to pay $30,000?! If you open the negotiation at $10k, you forfeit that $20k upside!

That’s true. And I understand how capitalism works, and I understand you want to extract the maximum value you deserve for what you’re selling. But I’d also note that if you were willing to sell the thing for $10k, and you think that’s a fair and good price, you’re not forfeiting anything if you successfully charge them $10k. And while I wouldn’t fault you for saying yes to $30k if that’s where they started, you’re also charging them 3x what you pegged the value at, which isn’t necessarily the best long-term path to building a great relationship with them.

And you’ve no doubt heard — and likely internalized! — advice that if you want to charge $10k for the thing, you need to come in higher, so that you can land on $10k. I get that advice, and it’s absolutely valid… If you intend to make your negotiation a game.

To be clear, I’m not saying that dismissively. Sometimes you can tell that you’re dealing with someone who wants to negotiate. Or if you’re doing a deal with someone you’ve done other deals with before, sure, you know how they handle these conversations, and you can plan accordingly.

But many, many people dread negotiations. They fear they’re going to “lose” or get taken advantage of or fare poorly. If I offer a price and the other person doesn’t counter, I’ve absolutely worried that I priced too low. If, as a buyer, I counter and a person says yes, I wonder whether I could’ve paid even less. That’s human nature. Negotiating can be stressful and frustrating and scary on a good day.

I try really hard to circumvent the things that make negotiation scary — both for me and the other party. My approach is (sorry, the headline was a spoiler) to make each negotiation a conversation, and to approach it with transparency and honesty.

I often use an approach just like my opening paragraph for this piece: I plainly explain the exact situation from my perspective. “I want to get paid $10k. My instinct is to come in at $12k, you’ll counter at $8k, and we’ll land at $10k. I can get this deal done at $10k. If this is worth $10k to you, let’s do this.”

That’s not going to work 100% of the time, of course, but it’s my open aim to eliminate the mystery from negotiation. Everyone involved is wondering what the other person is really willing to do. I’m trying to pre-negotiate and explain my thinking. If I can build a rapport and prove I’m an honest negotiator and build up a reputation as that kind of person, this works far more often than it doesn’t.

Negotiate by talking normally — by having a conversation. Don’t worry about gamesmanship. Just talk.

I’ve joked that a successful negotiation is like a successful compromise: everyone feels comparably annoyed about the outcome. The truth, though, is that the best negotiations are the ones where everyone feels like they won — because they feel fair.

I’ve written before about making great decisions, and shared some thoughts on the Amazon mentality of “one-way door” and “two-way door” decision making. It’s important to recognize and remember the importance of actually making decisions.

There’s a not-uncommon problem in meetings — which I think comes from a good place, even though ugh it’s awful — where you encounter a slow, overwrought exchange where no one wants to make the decision. You’ve heard some version of these exchanges:

“We could go with A or B. I could argue for either one. Does anyone have an opinion?”

“I don’t know. I like B, but I also like A. You know?”

Oh, how these make my blood boil. It’s important for someone — and how I urge you to let that someone be you — to say “Let’s do A.”

There’s an increasingly-debunked philosophy about dogs and dog training that emphasizes the idea that your dog is looking for the alpha, the pack leader, and that if no one takes that mantle, the dog will. Even if the dog theory was wrong, it’s absolutely true that all of us crave progress. Hemming and hawing and prevaricating wastes time and energy. It doesn’t move us forward at all. It saps motivation and focus. It prevents better use of the time and people gathered.

If it’s not clear, I hate it.

We need decisions. If we’re down to a coin flip, flip the damn coin. If we’re down to a die roll, roll the die. Essentially, if we’re at a point where a decision can be made and there’s no clearly best decision, it’s an absolute waste of everyone’s time to keep the debate — or the mumbly-mouthed anti-debate of indecisive verbal shrugging — going. Make a call.

Endlessly debating decisions when there’s no new information and no wrong answer… that just blocks you from devoting attention to those topics where deeper analysis and thought can actually provide benefit. So the smart move, and the one best benefits you, the team, and the company — is quickly making a call when there’s no plus side to continuing the discussion.

I’m self-employed. As a full-time consultant, I have to price access to myself, which sometimes feels crazy, but is in fact totally reasonable: Employers pay employees for their time, in exchange for their work product. In my case, I turn my consulting clients into mini-employers who pay me for mine; it makes sense.

Figuring out how to price your product — whether it’s a subscription service, a tangible item, ads, consulting time, or anything else — isn’t easy. A lot of pricing, as both the buyer and the seller, is based on gut. We know when things feel pricey, or when they feel cheap. Neither’s good.

It’s painfully common for people to price themselves too low. A realtor who wants a house to move might recommend pricing under market. A panicking CEO who wants more ads sold on his microblogging service might suggest offering everything at half price. A SaaS business owner eager to undercut her competition might price things at cost, in hopes of making things up on volume.

Ugh.

The problem with pricing too low is that at best you devalue what you’re selling. And if you start high because you’re willing to end low, that’s bad, too. From the buyer’s perspective, if you’re willing to sell the thing for 50% of what you told them the price was, you’ve now established yourself as a dishonest negotiator at best, and you’ve potentially again devalued what you’re selling, too.

I get that you want to close deals. I want that for you, too. And I’m certainly not suggesting that you be opposed to the act of negotiation. I am, however, suggesting that if you’re willing to significantly cut rates from what you initially offered, there should be more reason than simply desperation to get a deal. There should be compromise or trade.

That means understanding what your levers are: I’ll cut your rate on this SaaS deal if you’ll agree to a press release and a longer time commitment. I’ll sell you these ads at half-off, but they must run in the next 45 days.

If you need to offer steep discounts to every customer to close deals, you’re priced too high.

And if no one ever bumps on your pricing at all, you’re probably priced too low. Or you’re perfect at setting prices. But let’s be honest — it’s probably the first thing!

Note: I’ll be publishing an article for all subscribers later today!

As you know, most content on Your Intermittent Lex is free. Occasional posts are limited to paid subscribers. Here’s a quick audio episode specifically for those subscribers, about how you shouldn’t only potentially price more, should be valued and treated better, too.

I recorded this on my iPhone and post-processed it to make it sound shockingly good, but with occasional weirdness from AIs cleaning things. Enjoy!

Most posts to Your Intermittent Lex are free. A couple each month are for paying subscribers only. This is one of those posts.

We’re humans. We like gossip. We like to know about the secrets, about the juicy news from behind the scenes. But here’s an important warning on spilling — or lapping up — the tea.

The whole post is really the video above. Substack formats these posts oddly.