Scan time: 2-3 minutes / Read time: 3-5 minutes
Hello rebel ideapreneurs 🦸♂️🦸♀️
Ethan writes a weekly newsletter about training your dog at home.
He started it for owners who love their dog but can't get it to sit, stay, or stop pulling.
He's sure most dog problems are fixable, with a few calm, consistent habits.
That's his readers, exactly — a sweet dog, and a leash that turns every walk into a wrestling match.
⛳️ Problem:
Ethan keeps saying yes to every opportunity that lands in his inbox.
A guest post here, a collab there, a podcast invite, a friend's side project — all "sure, why not."
Now his week is packed with other people's stuff, and his own newsletter keeps slipping. That one hurts.
His struggle:
He says yes to every decent opportunity, so he's spread too thin to do any of it well.
🔥 The recipe
➡️ Hell Yeah or No
Most of us say yes far too easily.
A decent chance comes along, it's not bad, so we say "sure, why not" — and our plate overflows.
Soon every hour is spoken for, and none of it is the thing we actually care about.
That's what Derek Sivers figured out.
He built CD Baby, an online store that helped musicians sell their music, and sold it for $22 million.
Get this — he'd already promised most of that money to a charity for music education, and that's where it went.
With his time finally his own, he made one strict rule for every request.
If his honest reaction wasn't "Hell yeah! That would be amazing!" — then the answer was simply no.
No maybes, no "I guess I could." Just a clear hell yeah, or a clear no.
It sounds harsh, but it's freeing.
Saying no to all the "pretty good" stuff is what leaves room for the rare "hell yeah" that's actually worth it.
You can't say a big yes to the right thing when your calendar is stuffed with lukewarm ones.
🚗 So Ethan tried it his way.
We're back with Ethan and his newsletter about training your dog at home.
He'd been saying yes to everything, and drowning in half-done favors.
So he ran every request through Sivers's one question.
Before, he said "sure" to anything that sounded vaguely useful, and none of it got his best.
Now he asked one thing: does this actually make me go "hell yeah"?
A random podcast about marketing? Not a hell yeah. He said no, politely, and let it go.
Spoiler: nothing bad happened.
The one he kept was a collab with a trainer he genuinely admired — that one was a real hell yeah.
He poured his freed-up hours back into his own newsletter, the thing he cared about most.
Turns out — for the first time in months, he wasn't buried in lukewarm commitments.
And the work he did keep, he did really well, because it was the only stuff that lit him up.
Done.
🧸 If it's not a "hell yeah," it's a no. That's how you keep room for what actually matters.
The prompt below runs everything on your plate through the "hell yeah or no" test.
You just tell it what you've said yes to and what you actually want to focus on.
🏄♀️ The prompt
Save this prompt as a Skill or add to Project in your favorite AI tool — build once, use often.
Update your input values in the prompt, or just run it as is. Your AI sidekick will use the example values and give you an output.
CONTEXT:
- (use what's available, fall back to the inline values)
- If my Voice Profile exists, write in that voice. Otherwise, write in a clear, warm, no-jargon voice — first-person, plain words, no startup-speak.
- If my ICP / Audience doc exists, target that reader. Otherwise, use the audience below.
- If you can see my calendar, inbox, or task list directly, pull what I've already committed to from there. Otherwise, use what I paste below.
Inputs:
Everything I've currently said yes to (projects, collabs, favors, calls, commitments — list them here if you can't see my calendar and inbox):
{e.g. a guest post, a podcast invite, a friend's side project, two collabs, a weekly group call}
The ONE thing I actually want to protect and focus on:
{e.g. writing and growing my own newsletter about training dogs at home}
How I usually feel when a new "opportunity" shows up (the honest reaction):
{e.g. flattered, a little guilty saying no, so I say "sure" and regret it later}
For Audience: {e.g. dog owners who love their pet but can't get it to behave}
For Outcome: {e.g. a clear keep/drop list, and the guilt-free words to say no}
Outputs:
1. The hell-yeah list — which items on my plate are a true "Hell yeah! That would be amazing!" — the rare ones worth my full effort. Keep these.
2. The polite-no list — everything that's only "pretty good" / "sure, I guess." For each, a short, kind, guilt-free line I can send to say no.
3. What the no's buy me — the hours and focus I get back, and exactly where to reinvest them in my one thing.
4. My filter going forward — one sentence I can read before saying yes to anything new, so I stop overcommitting.
Then name the ONE "pretty good" commitment I'm most afraid to drop — and why saying no to it is the highest-value move I can make this week.
That's it, my fellow outliers!
Yours 'showing you that building a business is fun, not a drain' Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️