No One Prepares You For The Rejection

I feel like everyone always jokes about how you need to have “thick skin” and be used to rejection when building a startup but I don’t think you FULLY understand what that means until you’re deep into it putting you’re blood sweat and tears into something you love just to get rejected day, after day, after day.

The reality is no one can prepare you for the level of rejection will you experience when building a startup. Whether its from investors, employees, friends/family, the community, or even customers. The true reality is you’re daily routine will be filled with 10x the amount of rejection then “wins” and to some extent we as founders need to be a little “fucked up” to be able to deal with this.

So the goal of this article is to talk about rejection, the different types of rejections, and how to deal with it

Good vs Bad Rejection:

Not all rejection is bad; for example while writing this article I called a sales prospect who scheduled a call with me and he picked up and goes “Listen man, I don’t know who the fuck you are and why you’re calling me but I really don’t have time for you right now so just don’t call me ever again.” The first thought is “you scheduled this call with ME” and that’s the truth- but then you pause for a second and laugh because that is “Good Rejection” because I know at RestauRent we are building a product that people LOVE but clients like that will be nothing but a pain in the ass. They will complain, not “invest” in understanding or using our system, and then riddle us with charge backs, disputes, and customer service tickets.

Good Rejection is built on the foundation of keeping you focused. Not everyone will be your customer, not everyone will be your investor, not everyone will be a supporter- so it’s better to get rejected off the bat, move on, and know exactly who you should focus your time on rather then those who silently reject you without rejecting you. A common example of silent rejection could be this email I also just got from an investment fund:

This form of rejection is not exactly “Bad” rejection but it’s in the middle- it doesn’t cripple your spirits or stir up emotions like a prospect telling you to “fuck off” but at the same time if you don’t read between the lines you will end up wasting time sending them updates hoping that in a couple months they may reconsider. Reality is 99% of the time they won’t.

So thats where we get to Bad Rejection: Bad rejection is the ones that really knock your your growth back

• It’s the ‘perfect’ investor who you have spent hundreds of hours with and at the 1 yard line they decide to pass

• It’s the partnership deal that will exponentially scale you’re company that they say “now is not a good time” or completely ghost you

• It’s the massive sales deal you have been working on for months on end that at the finish line goes quiet or says “they’ve decided to move in a different direction”

• It’s the friends/family/supporters/community that support you when it first starts but when you really need them they become crickets or secret critics

These rejections are bad rejections because usually you have invested a significant amount of time into these deals that you can never get back AND with everything you know now, you believe you did every single step correctly and the decision was truly 150% out of your control.

So what do you do at this point?

Dealing with Rejection

At the end of the day the only way to deal with rejection is to understand that it’s apart of the job and to be completely comfortable with the prospect that its going to be a rollercoaster of emotions the entire time. But whenever I encounter with ‘Bad’ rejection I usually have a spectrum of ways to deal with the rejection and re-establish where to go from here.

The first step of dealing with rejection starts way before even getting rejected. It starts with your mindset going into all of these important interactions that you should always assume it’s NOT going to happen. We currently have 3 major deals at RestauRent right now that investors, employees, supporters, etc are all so excited about and they will usually ask me where my heads at and my answer is always the same - My head is focused on tomorrow, I’m focused on what needs to be done today to survive tomorrow while not letting this important deal slip- but still not letting it distract me & not celebrating or even emotionally getting invested until it’s signed. Because even if it doesn’t end in rejection it can end in time delays, distractions, changes, etc that if you get too emotionally attached from the start can cause you to lose focus of whats important OR have an unintended emotional response that sets you back mentally or professionally.

But now you’re at the point of go-no-go with the important interaction & you get rejected. Hopefully you followed step one and are mentally prepared but if you are not what do you do at this point? For me it’s a scale:

• Lowest level: This is deals/interactions that knock you back but you’re still going to survive- they sting, they hurt, but its not mission critical. When handling these I usually find stepping away for 30 mins-an hour is critical. Go to the gym, walk to get a coffee, vent to your co-founders, etc.

• Mid Level: These are deals that usually are not a “bomb” but they cause you to change your direction. I usually deal with these by taking a little bit longer of a step away but not to distract like the lowest level but rather to plan. What happened, why did it happen, what can we fix next time, and how do we adapt to the new circumstances we are phasing. Usually I start with getting some air from a lowest level activity and then follow that up with an in person coffee chat with my team/trusted advisors to chat through the situation, get feedback, and assess where to go.

• Highest Level: These are the rejections that change everything- the ones that stop you in your tracks and lose all motivation, direction, understanding of next steps. You will probably face a couple of these per year and I hate to say it, overtime they will only get bigger and bigger so what was a Highest Level when you started by year two is a lower level because your year 2 highest level pails in comparison to a just starting highest level- so prepare because it gets worse. Dealing with these are the ones you cannot do yourself. First you need to ground yourself mentally- go touch some grass- but genuinely. Shut off, unplug, visit family, and take a day- the world will not crash if you take one day because it’ll be better to take a day and then come back clear then panic and go right into fixing it. Once you take a day I usually clear all other things on my plate for 2-3 days and call all hands. Every trusted advisor, investor, partner, etc. We break down the issue, why, whats next, options, and have a clear “where do we go from here”.

The reality is Good Rejections throw you off slightly but they are for the betterment of your business - where as Bad Rejections are losing a piece of something that could’ve helped you’re business scale; those hurt. But it comes back to what you as a founder need to be an expert at- pivoting. Every rejection is one door closing and just like your Mike Wazowski, you need to breath & find another door. Doors are passing you by everyday and just because the one you thought was perfect closed on you- there may be another door that’s way better coming down the line.

I took the time to write this today because this is one of those topics that no one truly talks enough about besides at presentations when they laugh about how much its going to suck and blah blah blah- but this is real. Everyday you will wake up with the goal of building a better ___________ & every day someone out there is going to “punch” it. Going to say no, going to say its not a right fit, its not the right time, you can’t do it, etc. As a founder you don’t need to be “okay” with that but to be successful you have to have the right process in place to identify how to handle it, and know that it’s okay to address it, internalize it, use it to motivate you, and go to bed knowing you get to wake up the next day and do it all over again.

……. like I said- we as founders have to be a little crazy but would we really choose anything else?