The True Cost of Saying Yes: How Overcommitting Kills Your Profit (and Peace of Mind)

Welcome to the Creative Mind Smart Money Podcast where we turn financial confusion into creative confidence. I'm Samantha Ek, the keeper and fractional CFO for creative entrepreneurs. Each week I'm sharing my financial expertise and actionable strategies to help you build a thriving creative business. Plus, you'll hear from industry experts who bring fresh perspectives on growing your business beyond the numbers. As building a successful creative business starts with strong financial foundations, your next chapter starts now. Your listening to the Creative Mind Smart Money Podcast. And if you're listening to this episode today, it is officially December 24th. So Merry Christmas, I hope that you are having a wonderful holiday season and you are spending time with your family and enjoying the reason for the season, which is of course the birth and life of Jesus. So today, I'm going to dive into a topic that is still kind of like a year and wrap up, but is the true cost of saying yes and over committing. This episode is all about how we want to prepare and plan for 2026 by allowing ourselves some grace and the ability to not over commit ourselves or to say yes all the time. There was an episode I did which was kind of like the psychological effects of the cost of saying yes or the cost of not saying no. And that was really touching on the emotional side of things. This time I want to kind of talk about how we're going to use this to kind of prep for next year. Okay. There's been many times where I've over committed where someone has told me something and I've just done it. As an example, accounts payable and receivable are very intensive processes. There's a lot that goes into them. And there have been a couple of clients who have tried to take advantage of that and just kind of like throw it at me. And that has left me a little bit feeling a little bit overwork sometimes because sometimes with those clients with accounts payable and receivable, it can get really heavy and it can get a lot of work. So there's just a lot that needs to be done. This isn't about a time management issue. It's about what over committing will actually cost us. Okay. And again, we've kind of talked about this before. This is a rehash but I want to just get you mentally prepared and mentally caught up for the new year. Okay. Every time you say yes to something, you're quietly saying no to something else. So that no might be, maybe it's your sanity. It might be profit. It might be growth. It might be just peace of mind. So I just want to remind you that saying yes is not always the right thing to do. Okay. So again, this is going to be kind of a rehash on the episode that we had earlier, but I really think this is very important going into 2026 so that we can prepare ourselves for the kind of things that we might be experiencing. There are certain emotional drivers that obviously lead us to say yes. So the fear of missing out because if you say no, someone else will say yes. So we don't want to miss out on this client. This scarcity mindset, you don't want to turn down money because maybe you're really in need of money. You're people pleasing and you don't want to disappoint anyone or, you know, they need help. I can help. So having that guilt that is described disguised as an opportunity saying yes isn't bad. It's very human to say yes to everything, but unchecked. It just becomes a reflex instead of a decision. And that's where we begin to over commit ourselves and really just make ourselves into a point where like I'm doing too much. Okay. And I want to remind you that especially going into 2026, we want to make sure that everything that we're doing has an intention. We've built our cash flow forecast. We've seen the patterns. We want to make sure that what we are doing is setting ourselves up for success and not setting ourselves up for something that causes us to over commit. Okay. So we want to draw a clear line between over committing and profit erosion. So if we have too many projects, we're going to have rushed work because we're trying to get everything done, which can cause errors or revisions, which equals the last time, which reduces our margins because if you're someone who's been tracking your time and tracking everything that you've been doing, it is going to lead to you having those reduced margins. Okay. So feeling your calendar with lower paying or misaligned work leaves no room for those high value opportunities when they come along. So earlier this year and just as someone who's like personal, I did a lot of work on upward. It was low cost or it was low paying. It wasn't anything that was really exciting, which left me very overwhelmed. There was a lot that was going on. So there was a lot of times when higher value opportunities came up that I felt really overwhelmed and I was like, I don't know if I really want to do that because I was already over committed, right? So over commitment is going to lead to those late nights. It's going to lead to burnouts and burnout is always going to cost money because it's going to cause you delays. It's going to cause you to make mistakes and you're going to miss out on that growth because you're feeling that emotional burnout. So we want to make sure that we can sustain what we have. We don't want to break ourselves mentally or financially or emotionally. Constantly saying yes is going to kill our focus. When every opportunity gets a yes, nothing gets the best version of what we can offer right because it's going to deli our brand, it's going to dilute our boundaries, it's going to dilute our bandwidth. So if we say yes to three small random clients, you may just have said no to the one retainer that could have covered all three. So maybe if we have three random clients that don't necessarily fit with our goals and our ideas of what we want to bring into the business. And suddenly a bigger one comes along and you're like, I already have that time committed, you could be saying no to something that could be really powerful. Remember that just every yes is going to cost something. Yes. So I'm not saying say no all the time either, but most successful business owners know exactly what they're trading for. So if something doesn't align saying no is not a bad thing, you know what I mean? There's also an emotional and energy cost. Okay. So if we say yes to everything, we're going to start feeling some sort of resentment towards the clients that we do say yes to that maybe don't align. We're going to feel fatigued because we're overworked. And we're going to avoid our work because we just don't want to deal with it because there's just so much going on. So then what happens is that because we've experienced all of its resentment and the team and avoidance, we start to spiral. We start dreading the work we love because we're stressed to them. And that did happen to me because the clients that I know and love became almost to the wayside because I had all these tiny little clients that I needed to get stuff done for. Like again, emotional burnout will lead to reactionary decisions whether that's discounting, taking any client or skipping on rest because you are trying to take on new clients. So as an example, there was a lot of projects that I could have taken on during this week that I'm filming this video and in the week that I'm filming this video is at the end of October. I have taken this week off specifically because I wanted to give myself a break because I've been doing so much lately and that I wanted to rest because I haven't had a lot of this been a long time since I've actually had a rest because of all the clients that I currently have because I haven't taken on any of these additional tiny projects that have been burning me out. I'm finally able to just rest. Your business doesn't need more hours. It just needs better, better boundaries, okay? There's a lot of power in a strategic no. No can be used as a growth tool, not as a rejection because every no is going to create space for a better yes. Now again, we want to kind of come up with a decision filter to make sure that we're not over committing and the opportunities that we have are aligned with what we want for 2026. So does it align with my current goals? You've already set up yourself for success here. You've gone through your financials, you've cleaned up everything, you've gone through your financials, you've set up your goals, you've set up a cash flow forecast. So does it align with the goals that you're trying to create or is it going to pull you off track? Does it pay what it's worth both financially and energetically? So don't just look at the financial aspect. Does it pay what it's worth? And do you have capacity for what's going to come without resentment? Like is this going to create some sort of resentment into you? Saying no confidently is a mark of maturity in business. It's not arrogance. It's not you being like, well, I don't want to work with you. It's maturity because you know what you want for your business and you're committed to that, right? If you're already over committed, there's ways that you can course correct. Just be honest with your clients and your collaborators and renegotiate any timelines where possible. Just let them know if you can like move things around. Identify what can be delegated, automated or delayed so that you can figure out how to kind of like realign yourself with what's possible and then make rest a non-negotiable appointment similar to what I'm doing right now. This isn't about guilt you want to recover so that you can say yes to things that really matter, right? So we want to build a healthier yes coming into 2026. So I want you to say yes. Only when this decision passes these three important filters. So for 2026, just think about this and only say yes and they pass these three important filters. If it aligns with your financial goals that you've set, which the next step is over going to talk all about strategy, we're going to get into that. If it supports your capacity and your mental health. And the third one is if it moves your business in the direction that you actually want. go. So track how many yeses you say in a month, you know, maybe make like a project trackinger and if you say yes to all of them in a month, I want you to kind of like go back and analyze that and see if that those yeses were good yeses or if they were bad yeses, okay? Because learning to say yes intentionally is what separates those of us who are busy from those of us who have very sustainable businesses, okay? So I want you to go to 22 here with those free filters in mind, okay? You don't need to say yes to every opportunity to build a thriving business, you just need to say yes to the right ones, okay? So as always, if you enjoyed this episode, please like it, comment, subscribe, share it on social media so that others like you can find it. Again, I wish you a very, very, very Merry Christmas. I hope you're getting lots of time with family cozying up, having some hot chocolate, watching some holiday movies and you know, we're almost to the next year. So if you guys are really excited for it like I am, you know, I do wish you a very happy New Year. As always, I wish you the best week ever and we'll see you next week. Farewell, fellow travelers.