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How do you deal with rejection?

I think this is the single thing that prevents many founders from succeeding.

No one likes it, but some folks are better at dealing with it.

Over the years I have gathered courage to plow through moments facing rejection, and ultimately through persistence I’ve gotten good jobs, cool girlfriends, and an occasional sale.

Ive found I try to avoid it as much as possible, I prefer inbound leads — which I assume most people would.

I’m always looking for excuses to avoid dealing with this sort of pain — I also think this is a topic not discussed enough.

With sales and messaging folks online it’s much more different than talking to a girl or getting a job. A girlfriend is a one time thing like a job. You get rejected a few times then it’s over.

With sales it’s getting rejected 10-20 times per day everyday. I’d assume you get numb at a certain point. But how do you get it going again when you’re at the beginning.

What are some tools you use to deal with rejection?

For me what helps is talking about it and having some people I can relate with.

  1. 1

    The best tip I could give it to not be too emotionally invested into it.

    Especially if you are working on a new idea or a new business, there will be a lot of rejection. That's normal. It's not possible to please everyone. Have you ever seen a popular youtube video without dislikes?

  2. 1

    Just try not taking it too seriously, and move on. What helps me personally is that I dedicate some time when I can react emotionally, ask why not, re-think everything, adjust the strategy, etc. But when I'm in a "maker" mode - there's no space for emotions and nothing can stop me from moving forward.
    It's like Scrum: you plan, hesitate and define tactics before the sprint and during the sprint planning, but once the sprint starts - there's no room for doubts. Keep your "sprints" short, so you can pivot and change direction.

  3. 1

    There's this guy
    https://www.rejectiontherapy.com/100-days-of-rejection-therapy

    And Tim Pheris, in his book 4 hour work week has particular exercises for rejectioand also a video about a fear list

    Maybe one of these would help a little
    But I don't it's like solvable, maybe a bit trainable like a musle which can also laps back easily when left alone

    Gary V also has some things related I think

  4. 1

    Hey Michael, I was the main business person in my previous startup, doing a lot of sales/marketing/exposure/customer success. In the beginning, we had a B2B software so I had to knock on virtual door after door, and it was horrible. So many video calls I hopped on and nothing happened.

    Then we pivoted to become a B2B SaaS platform and shifted the strategy to focus on marketing (instead of sales), and I found that once the leads had seen "a little bit of your brand" somewhere, the convo became much easier. This doesn't mean inbound, it can be they see your brand somewhere, and then you reach out to them.

    So what I want to say is, with a tool like yours, work on marketing/branding/community building as early as possible, I don't really see sales-led to work. Of course, I only started following your story and I saw a lot of progress/comments from others already, so do forgive me if you already thought about this.

    As for the sales part, I'm not the super-sales type but read some books and keep learning. I just kept telling myself that sales is a numbers game, there will be people who don't need your offering, it is just part of the game. And getting "No" is not the worst, getting no reply is the worst.

    Also, "No" in sales is very good in early days because you can then ask them "Why not?" and learn a lot more about your audience. Some people even say "No" is more valuable than "Yes", so that's another way to comfort myself haha!

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