Shownotes:

Favors are an important part of our lives. It gives us a good feeling when we know we have helped someone and that we lessen their workload. However, not all favors deserve to be said yes to. We still have to weigh every “yes” that we will give because if not, we will be the ones to suffer the frustration. How do you decide whether someone is worth helping?

Hello, and welcome to the Traveling Introvert. Today I want to talk about how many favors is enough. This has come up a lot for me recently because I am very much the type of person that likes to support other people and give people a chance.

Recently, I've found it's bit in the butt and I've had to go and take a look and think how much is too much and what is good and what isn't. So part of that knowing when to say no, which I'm still obviously a little terrible at, and knowing when accepting something is good for you and your business and what you may or may not get out of it and what it benefits the other person.

So a couple of things have happened. One is where I agreed to support a particular business and they were going to send me something and I was going to go ahead and promote it with whatever I was doing at the time. This did not happen.

Even from the get-go when I was asking for contracts, when I was asking for information, I kept on having to follow up. But I was nice about it. I'd say, "Oh, maybe they're busy or and it's their first time trying this. Maybe they don't know what they're doing. They don't have a system in place." So I was asking questions and getting told, "Trust me, I got this." So I was like, "Okay, I'm going to trust you."

Fast forward a few months, I'm still the one chasing out, I'm still the one sending emails and only getting information if I follow up. Then it turns out, long story short, it didn't happen. They tried to give me some kind of monetary payment. Instead, I agreed that maybe it should be used to sponsor different event.

They liked the idea, wanted to talk about it. I sent them my calendar. They then were upset that I sent them a calendar and wanted me to just call randomly. I explained that I don't do that. This is how I work and we want to be able to give each other the full attention that is deserved. And so setting up a time in each other's calendars is the best way forward.

Fast forward a month, didn't hear a thing. And then they get upset about the money that they said they gifted and they made a request for the money back. Gave the money back, but sent them an email saying, "This entire process has been frustrating. I've been the one following up and the fact you asked me for the money back after saying it was a gift, after you didn't do what you said you were going to do, et cetera."

Turned into that person being very angry and very upset and saying that they were swindled and that they didn't agree to anything and there's a whole to-do. That was one thing.

Then another time when I've given someone the benefit of the doubt and tried to support their business was that I was going to do a mini-speaking thing for them, but it was on video. They gave instructions on how they wanted the video done and they wanted good lighting and a microphone and all of that stuff.

I got the best lighting I had. Not everyone's house has amazing lighting. I don't have lamps. I wasn't actually at home for maybe 24 hours before I did the recording. It needed to be done in a short timeframe because even though they'd announced that they were doing this particular thing three or four months ago, they waited until two weeks before the event to start actually going ahead and doing the video.

Apparently, I didn't have the video quality that they wanted, the lighting quality that they wanted. I ended up going round my house trying to find the lighting that was good for them.

I wasn't dressed appropriately, because they wanted it to look a certain way. I said, "Well, that wasn't my brand, but okay, fine." And also the weather. Wasn't looking to wear a bunch of clothing in the weather that I currently had. Their response was, "Well, it's hot here too." And ended up doing video.

What was frustrating at that time was I almost broke my computer. My computer and I ended up on the floor with me trying to figure stuff out. Also ended up breaking up my fan. I have an external fan for my computer and that broke, due to all the kerfuffle and everything that was trying to be done to get this thing done because they were in a time crunch.

At one point they kind of said, "Oh, are you okay," and that, but that was it. And I was like, "Well, yeah, my computer ended up on a tile floor because of all that. That could we just does not record this. And yeah. And I offered to reschedule a couple times, but ideally it wouldn't work for them because they were running on a short time crunch because they had not planned.

So think about when you say yes to something, what that means to you. How much time it might take, what the responsibilities might be, and if it works for you. Does it work for your goals for that month, that week, that year? How does it help them? Is there a contract in place?

Think about all of these things when you say yes to something, because just having a little tick chart of things that should be, is this good for my business, does this go towards [inaudible 00:05:12] goal, is there a contract in place, will help you in the long run.

Thank you. This is Janice from the Career Introvert helping you launch your podcast and do so much more.