17. Hello Summer of No

Mastering the Art of Saying Both Yes and No: A Summer of Intentional Living

Mel delves into the powerful concept of the 'Year of Yes and No' with guest Jim Hilber. Discover how deciding ahead of time and alternating between a period of saying yes to everything and a period of saying no brings both exploration and focus into your life. Jim shares insights on balancing personal and professional commitments, the importance of deliberate decision-making, and how saying no can be as empowering as saying yes. Whether you're looking to break free from analysis paralysis or simply live more intentionally, this episode offers valuable takeaways for a transformative summer.

00:00 Delighting in Summertime

01:37 Introducing Jim Hilber and His Philosophy

02:35 Jim's Journey with the Year of Yes and No

04:22 Balancing Yes and No in Life and Business

06:27 The Power of Deliberate Decisions

09:01 Gratitude and Growth Through Yes and No

18:21 The Importance of Balance and Intentionality

20:21 Summer Challenge

For more info on Jim https://powercore.net/members/jim-hilber

Transcript

The delight of the day is summer as we roll into Memorial Day weekend. That symbolically starts summer for us, and I love summer. I love the heat. I love the sun. I love triple digits, I love the vibe of summer. There's something playful and whimsical, we let ourselves live a little bigger.

There's a coach I follow that offers a program called Summer of Yes. And I think what if you just said yes all summer long to the things that you really, really want? I'm a yes girl, so it has always sound magical, I was reminded of it when my friend Jim Hilber talked about how he actually has entire years of yes and no.

I thought, oh my gosh, that is the quintessential both and I must interview him. So today I am bringing you the podcast's, very first interview

before I share this conversation, let me introduce you to Jim. He's the owner of Merchant Gladiator and he's been in merchant payment systems for 30 years. As an aside, if you have a business that takes payments, you owe it to yourself to have a conversation with him, and his contact info will be in the show notes.

He believes nothing happens until something gets bought or sold, and I love that because it's not just cash or credit that we buy and sell things with. He says that energy is one of the currencies. So when you quote unquote pay with your attention to something, you are actually buying that experience with your energy.

He believes we must be selective and treat our time with as much care as our finances. It's equally if not more valuable. Listen in to my conversation with Jim.

. I am so super excited. I have been, previewing this to some people. And I've had so much positive feedback.

So Jim, tell us a little bit about your, I call it the year of yes and no, but you have a longer version of it.

So give us the proper title and tell me. When and why did you start it? That's awesome. Thank you, Mel., the year of yes and no. I don't think it has anything fancy than that. I like to be creative. I like to, , put awesome titles and hashtags and pictures to things, but ultimately it's really simple. It's the year of yes and no.

, people think it's one or the other. It's actually not. It's a balance of both. And it actually started four years after I moved to Atlanta, I found myself just doing too much. I like to say yes, I like to do things. I wanna get involved in the business community.

I want be involved in the social community. I wanna be involved in my neighborhood, in my local cities. But the fact is they always say, , you know, you can't have everything. Where would you put, it's what I felt like with my time. I've never heard that.

Tell me again, you can't have everything. Where would you put it? Yeah. You can't have everything. Where would you put it? Yeah. That's kind of an old school dad joke, you know? Okay., but I felt that way about my time. I mean, I only had somewhat time, and so trying to get involved in, , everything that I wanted to, I realized that I was running out of.

That valuable, , commodity called time. So, , I probably, , there's a great book called Still Like an Artist, and I love that because I think sometimes you might believe there's no new ideas, but ultimately it's taking the concepts of a lot of different things. And   I started, like I said, four years ago, doing a year of yes and no.

And how it simply works is. One year I say yes to absolutely everything and it creates opportunity., that's the idea. You know, you wanna be able to, when you say yes, it brings exploration and opportunity, but when you say no with the power of no, you get focus and engagement. I. So all those words are great, powerful words if someone's smarter than me.

Invented. But if you go put those words out to any business owner or any buddy in the world today, they all wanna have, take power over those things. But ultimately, sometimes we find out that, , , we are the victim and it's just ha coming at us at all directions, and we don't always get to be intentional.

So it's an idea of being intentional with what you say Yes. And what you say no to every year. I love it. One thing that it, it,, I think one of the reasons I grasped onto it, excited about it and curious about it is, I am like you. I love to say yes, and it feels like yes is quote unquote the good word, right?

Mm-hmm., and, and no is sort of the limiting, hard, bad word and absolutely., and so I love this idea of the power of no, that no is really both, and that no allows focus and engagement. Isn't that what you said? Yeah, absolutely., one other thing that I thought it would help resolve in some form is analysis paralysis or decision fatigue.

It's like I. When we get an opportunity, it's, there's a lot of thinking that has to be done. And so it seems that if you had a go-to a yes or a no go kind of as a go-to, it might make that those decisions easier for you. Also, knowing that you were gonna offset it, you were creating this sort of structure of balance.

Does that have anything to do with why you like it?, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, again,, you know, we'll probably talk about it 'cause I know it was one of your questions that you thought of, but, you know, there are exceptions to the rules and ultimately people think, oh, so one year you're so busy, you do it all and next year you don't do anything.

You know, I just get really good at pickleball, I guess because I said no to everything else. No, but truly the idea is this, is that, , there are exceptions to every rule, but you know what happens is you're busy in the year of No. Of the things you said yes to last year. Mm-hmm. Things aren't like, you make a decision and it stops, it carries on.

So, and in turn things you said no to, sometimes those nos don't, those opportunities don't come up for, you know, four years or two years or every year if you're talking about board service, something of that nature. So, yeah. One of the reasons I like it is it gives me my first direction of what I'm doing to fill my time.

But a lot of times as a business,, leader in the community, what will happen is that I'm making decisions that affect someone else. So you gotta be careful to separate the decisions you're making, yes or no when you're making decisions for other people or for merchants or businesses versus decisions you're making for yourself.

Because I mean, I've obviously said, , no to a very good decision because it was too soon or too much., and that's what happens to people., sometimes just, just 'cause you could, say yes, doesn't mean you should. And so it's just an intentional thinking about,, the balance between deliberate and in and instinctive thinking.

I guess the best way to put it. Tell me more about deliberate. Versus instinctive. , One of the things that comes up, I think, in being deliberate is, , what can I think of as a good example for me?, as I looking out the window at my community, I said yes to being the HOA president.

Um, I think it's one of those things. It's deliberate. I've lived here for, at that point, I think, , I guess six years. And I've not served my community in that manner. And I think deliberately you wanna do your part, you know,, HOAs are a very tough conversation for anybody. You're always, you know, the, the good, the great, the bad, and the ugly, , by all means.

But,, I do think that like jury duty, everybody should do their time and service. That's not just the case. People won't, there'll be people that will always say no from the beginning to the end of time to things like HOA service, but then how would an HOA run? So that's the deliberate,, aspect that I think about that I knew there'd be a time for me to say yes.

It did come up in a year of Yes, when I did that., and this year, , is a year of no, as I may or may not have mentioned, and I am not the H OA president this year because it's fit right into my plan. So,, yeah, I think that's kind of, , the instinctive aspect is that, , instinctively people might say, oh, I would never do that.

I wouldn't wanna do that.

I said yes to things that I wasn't sure I could accomplish. And you find out you can pretty much surprise yourself when you surround yourself with great people so it sounds like that yes. Can actually stretch you because when you're not, when you're like, I'm in the year of yes, I'm gonna figure out how I can say yes.

Is that how Yes. How it works in your brain? Even if you're worried about your own personal skill limitations, then you try things that you may not have tried before. Absolutely, absolutely. It's created lots of opportunities and you know, even with the, , you know, the great Michael Jordan quotes, you know, I've failed more times than people have tried.

But within that, that's why succeed, because, you know, you find out a lot about those, , aspects of the yeses and the nos and the deliberation and the thinking, and to, there's just too much. It's all thrown at us. It comes at. Are these mobile devices that we're on right now, , with, you know, our, our phones and just the way the world works.

You know, my dad used to always say, so you have, , microwave ovens. You cook your dinner in two minutes, but you still have no time to sit on the porch and talk. So it's really true. You think about it, it's like I've gotta find a way to be intentional with how fast information comes at at me and the way I think it comes to the community.

Tell me more about how you chose Year as the,. Structure for it. Like why does a year work really well for you?, I don't know if there was really any real intention in the year aspect except for the fact that seems things that I do in my business tend to be a year, you know, a year contract, a year obligation, a year of this, you know, , taxes reset every year.

, board service, which I've served my community for. Pretty much 30 years I've been in business, always seemed to be a one year sort of obligation., interesting.

Tell me things that you're grateful you said yes to,, that maybe stretched you, that you might have instinctively said. No.., I, I, it's funny that H OA presence sticks in my mind. Maybe 'cause I'm staring out at my community because that's one that, , I definitely was, was grateful and I said yes to 'cause it was,, you know, , in line with what I was doing.

But ultimately, back to that, you know, desire to serve,, a lot of other things in business, you know, there's all these opportunities where I always pitch something. You know, we always pick something and there's things that, , you know, I've been in mentor for 30 years. Yay. That's great experience. But you know what, it also brings kind of that old school, old thinking mentality.

So ultimately, some of the things that I've been, , very happy to say yes to last year were getting into new technologies, new ideas, new thinking, , particularly around business. And as part of the conversation, because without expanding into other great ideas,, I was able to break the mold of if it's not broke, don't fix it.

Like my dad taught me and the things that I brought up with. So now I like break things all the time intentionally and it's helps make them better. Can you think of something specific,, in your business that you were grateful you said yes to, or?, I, I would think just like I said, just the, the newest, the newest technologies that would be boring for this podcast, but some of the things, the way,, credit cards work, I mean, it used to be the kind of thing in my industry with payments, merchant payments, transaction.

You'd be at a, , a grocery store and you'd have a credit card back when I started, and we'd have to call the manager and go call a bank and get a 1816 digit credit card number written on a piece of paper with a napkin and a crayon and, you know, get an approval code and then, you know, six minutes later getting carry out for those groceries.

Whereas now, , business moving at the speed of light,, you say yes to the technologies that do the exact same thing. Do it so much faster. And when you say faster faster's not always better, but in many cases it's just required to work at the speed of business today. So I would think some of the, , more technical aspects of gateways and the way things communicate, and don't assume that just if it's the way it's always been, that it can't, , be better.

, and I would say. Faster. , things are really had my attention, , last year and the year of, yes, the things that work faster, but confirming, you know, the old saying, it's like, you know,, trust but verify mm-hmm. In the world today, I'm more in a place handling people's money where I have to verify first, then trust.

So you still have to, you know, vet these things out, , before you can just throw 'em out because they're fast. Okay. So it takes resources to say yes, even when something is going to save you time or money later., absolutely. Absolutely. Education. So how do you, oh, how do you get yourself as a yes person?

How do get yourself excited about the year of No. Did you start with Yes. Or did you start with No. As your first year? Do you remember? Oh my gosh, that's a great question. I'd have to kind of do the math backwards. No, yes, no. Yeah. It started with no, , and I remember that now that you, you kind of reminded me.

And it had to do with that again. After four years after coming to a new city, I knew zero people. I had zero clients. And I knew I wanted to not just test the waters, I wanted to go make waves. And when you go with that mentality, you said yes to everything, and you went everywhere. My calendar was. I double booked all the time and probably even missed things that I didn't wanna, you know, miss.

But that first year of no is what brought me that control and we talked about is I was saying,, you know, yes to everything, and I needed more time on my calendar. It had to be deliberate., I think one of the things that, , I think about, . When you mention that is that that first year of No, , also told me, you know, the mistakes you're gonna make in this plan, you just can't say no to everything is a blanket because those exceptions do come up.

But it's more about, you know, your, I I think the purpose shows you when to say yes. Your priority reveals when to say no, and that helps kind of fine tune the decisions., what do you find is the benefit of saying no? Like, do you, do you like the year of No as much as the year of, yes. Now, , I

Absolutely., , I've learned from people smarter than me and I do a lot of homework research. I love quotes. I love, , people that keep things short and simple that come at me because it reminds me that,, you know, the caveat from yes and no in saying no is that we as humans, we only have a finite amount of time and attention.

Um, I, you know, I, I have probably OCDA, DD, all the letters you can put together, and my attention is always being, demanded a different direction all the time, even in my own brain, but only having that fine amount of attention at some point. Even if you were a yes person, the person that, oh yeah.

Mikey likes it. He'll eat it. Say yes, he'll say yes to everything. And we know those people., at some point you have to switch from saying yes to saying no a lot if you're engaged in a lot of things that a lot of us wanna be involved in. Now, some people have more of a very straight and narrow lane. You know, people that you know, oh, he'll always say no.

I've been surprised and I love breaking the mold of so many people that I put in, , in my thoughts, oh, this guy's always gonna say no. Don't even ask them anymore where they surprise you and say yes and say, Hey, why? You know, I thought you'd say no. Why'd you say yes? And they'll give you their version of yes.

No, everybody has one. You know, everybody thinks they're right. You know, it's, I do the joke a lot about George Carlin. He talks about driving down the street. Imagine going down I 75. Why is everybody driving faster than you a maniac? Look at this maniac. But everybody drives driving slower than you is an idiot.

Why is this guy going so slow? What's he doing? You know? And because nobody drives perfect like us. So I think that translates in a little humor to the yes and nos is that it's not wrong or right to say yes or no for anyone, but it's about, I love to ask them why. And that's the question that so much of the teachings you would do that so many smart people do is that you get down to that why.

And so that helps you. That's what kind of started this conversation the year of yes no is a great conversation starter. People ask me about it all the time, more than, Hey, how can get a good deal in my merchant payment services? You wanna say, tell me about this year of yes and no.

And it still translates to great energy,, , and great conversations. Do you have to psych yourself up about No. Being a, it's funny, I used to notice like my husband is a no person. His first reaction is typically no. And my first reactions, and we can be convinced out of that., but it's sort of just the way we lean.

Do you have to psych yourself up or No. Or saying no?, or is it just natural now? I think it's somewhat natural. I mean, it's kinda like,, you know, how does an employer get good at firing people? You know, sometimes it just gets natural after a while. It's not a fun thing to do and I don't like saying no.

you know, part of that stems from the fact that if you've had success in your life, I think it's important to give back to the community, the people around you. So of course you want to say yes. So I do get psyched. That,, saying no has actually helped others. I've got a great business partner that I met here in Atlanta.

He since moved to Florida and he says yes to everything and he's a great guy and he is smart and he's balanced with the calendar, but he calls me every other year to remind me. To share

this is why and how you need to say no, and I'll remind them, get, they'll be in a meeting somewhere and somebody will say, Hey. Can you do this? And I'm already telling him the answer is no. And then I'll text him on the side. Remember, this is the, this is the time of no for you, but only because he's doing so many great things that he said yes to.

Right? It seems like it, it balances itself out. Knowing you will have a yes later can allow you the freedom essentially, to say no. It's not a final decision about the rest of your life. But,, that's what I love about the,. Yin and the yang of the, of the different years. Can you tell us some more things that help us say no?

What's funny is that in the year of yes or no, you were saying, is it easy or hard?

At the beginning of every year, we all have what resolutions. We have these great little Facebook and Instagram quotes about this is gonna be the greatest year of your life, go do it, and all that. But mine are really kind of tailored to this thing that I do. It's like the hashtag of the year of the year.

Can be tied to that. I started hashtagging,, years back starting at the pandemic because when that happened, think about. The world just lost its mind for whatever reason or whatever thoughts that you had.

It got crazy for everyone, no matter who you were. And I didn't know anything. I didn't know what to do, but I knew one thing we had to just keep going. And the irony is I was not on Twitter, but I hashtag just keep going and it got a lot of traction. Oh, and so just keep going. Became the thing is that's a yes, right?

Just keep going. But yeah, just keep going Could also mean no, keep going with, no, so that's where it kind of went back and forth, but every year has to have this empowerment of success and let's be honest, , if I have a great year of, no, those things aren't gonna be stuck with just because I said no to everything.

You know, but they center around controlling my, my decisions. And then as years go on the year after that was, make it work. . And then you go 20 22, 20 22 together. See what I did there together because we were all now coming together again in a new way, back in person, back through, , different formats. , you and me in 23, self health, let's do more in 24.

You know, I like to rhyme. It's great, but at the end of the day now, here we're, let's thrive in 25. You know, not a lot of things arrive to 25 12, but thrive is a great word can you think of some things you're grateful that you said no to?, yeah, there's a lot of things that come up that tempt our time.

Um. I think about how you balance personal and social right. Things that we say no to, like,, I'm very social. , my wife, she's very, , we call her an introverted extrovert. If you met her in a crowd, she would never, , you'd never know She was introverted. I. But the reality is what happens is,, if I did everything that I wanted to do socially, it would not be in line with the importance of my family and being a good husband.

So when you say no to things, that even if I would like to do that, if it doesn't fit your business life, your personal life, then you have to learn what to say no to. So a lot of things that I've been distracted, I'm, I'm, I'm grateful for her

and that's why I don't make these decisions alone. This sounds great. Jim's empowered. Yes and no. I don't make these decisions alone. I make these decisions with your family.

So all these things that,, I say no to, sometimes somebody reminds. Me, somebody smarter than me, someone who cares about me, someone that I care about will remind me that no is probably a good decision for you on this one, because I'm easily, , addicted to things. I'm easily distracted. I'm easily, , you know, drawn to the shiny, fast, fun thing, whatever it may be.

, you know, pickleball is a great example. I mean, the whole world knows pickleball. That is my life. , pickleball is definitely getting in my, , business, , calendar's way for sure. If I said yes to as much pickleball as I wanted to play, I wouldn't have a job and I probably would not have a family. But in the same regard, if I didn't play pickleball, I wouldn't have.

Find and balance like that really can help you things like that, that I wanna go do, doesn't mean you should go do 'em.

So I'm thankful for the power of no, whether it was intentional, accidental, or guided. If you think about what balance actually is, it's not standing still. It's, I've heard it described as intentional imbalance. It's like you like lean and then you adjust and you lean and you adjust, and that's what keeps you really balanced.

And so that's what I really love about this structure is that it gives a structure to. Help with that analysis paralysis and decision fatigue. And it's not such a, it's not a jail of a structure. You can definitely make exceptions, but it helps that, , intentional rockings to, to a place where, where you can be balanced and you can find the things.

Especially for, I'm a, I'm a distracted type, , just like you, I love the shiny objects and the squirrels. I'm all in. So, , we, we get along great that way. We get along great that way. I love it. But when you say balance, think about it. Yes and no is not about succeeding with the scale all the way shift to No. And the scale all the way shifted to Yes. It's about yes and no is truly bringing ballots.

You're intentional on one side or another. So I, I like that. I'm gonna integrate the word balance into what that's really accomplishing.

And a day of no. How, what advice would you give somebody,, about starting this up?, it's, it starts with intention. Way before you ever decide to say yes or no. Is that, what are your thoughts on, on when and why you say it? So if you pay attention to the,, the things you say yes and no to at every given time, just think about that.

Why did you say yes? Why did you say no?

So many conversations I have with people, , when I'm out in the community talk about, it's like, , I said yes. You know when they said, oh, I said yes.

They're kinda like regretted already Not like I said yes. 

and they already said it or like, yeah, I said no to that, but why do you say it that way? I said no to that. 

so thinking about the decisions, are they in alignment with your focus?

You know, it's about, don't tell people you're busy. Tell people what you're focused on. So say yes and say no,   and do it with intention .

You know, it starts with a day, then a week, then a month is just really think about what you're saying yes and no to.

I love thinking more about, and really I love where we ended really owning those yeses and nos and not being a victim.

Um, of, of what comes our way thank you, Jim. Yeah, absolutely., 

So my jaw was dropping by the end of this conversation. I just love this idea and I'm excited to play with it this summer. And my challenge is for you to play with it this summer.

I'm choosing, no, I . wanna improve my relationship with no, and I wanna see what's inside of Mel Selcho that she really wants this summer. One of the things that I am looking forward to saying no to is the ads that I have been like clicking on of things to buy.

These are things that are suggested to me by others. What is it that I actually want to consume? What is it that I actually want to add to my life? Yours might be both, and maybe you are an all or nothing person and you wanna explore both and, and so every opportunity that comes your way, you'll look at it with both and perspective.

I love that too. What lens are you gonna use to make decisions this summer? The lens of yes. The lens of no, the lens of both.

And, always with an asterisk available. I invite you to have a summer by design and not by default, I'll see ya.