A Founder's Constant State of Rejection

I had started a moderately successful company during dot com 1.0 when I was still in high school, my biggest issue was dealing with the downs, the rejection, the "no" from customers. One thing I found amazingly beneficial was to become a car salesman for a while. It's one of the toughest type of sales there is, everyone just hates you(even your co-workers/managers) and even good car salesmen will only sell a car to about 1 in 5 people they talk to, and on a weekend you might talk with 10-15+ people.

This obviously isn't a solution that'll work for everyone, but if you had just a year early in life to spend on a car dealership selling cars it'd be an amazing experience for learning. Now when I hear a no, or experience failure it just doesn't even phase me, I've already heard no tens of thousands of times. I'm sure there are other types of sales where this could be learned, but if you want to be a founder I sure think there'd be a huge amount of benefit gained from a car sales type experience.

This is incredibly well written and 100% on-point with my own personal experiences. This paragraph stood out the most to me:

"As a techie individual contributor in a larger company, I could go to work everyday and execute 99% predictably. As a founder, I had to find ways to plead your case over and over — to employees, investors, candidates, advertisers, users — and I got rejected a lot. For an introvert, the amount of pleading and subsequent rejection came as quite a shock."

That's probably one of the most difficult adjustments I've had to make moving from 16 years of plain-old-coding into being a founder.

"When you’re a founder, your company defines you. That means that your company’s daily ups and downs become your personal ups and downs; that’s a big adjustment."

Could not agree more with this line - you have to be able to take the mercuric ups and downs.

For me, running helps a lot.

When I run I have a constant inner monologue of "don't stop, don't stop, don't stop" for 45 min.

It never seems to get easier, but I know that I ran successfully yesterday, and the day before, and the day before ... hence, I should be able to do it again today.

Then, there are also the physical / health benefits.

"No" is just a word that I'll frequently hear before I hear "Yes!".

This is probably the best thing I've read which details the emotional state you are in as a founder. Thank you for writing this.

That's a great piece of advice. Puts it across really well the emotional connectedness of a founder with his Startup.

Great article. Thank you.

Rejection Therapy is a great way to get over the fear of rejection. It actually makes getting rejected feel triumphant. Instead of it being something to dread, it becomes an awesome rush.

For those who don't know what I'm talking about: http://rejectiontherapy.com and the hardcore 30 day rejection therapy challenge: http://rejectiontherapy.com/rules/