SEEKING OUT THE NOES
A reflection on business, rejection and resilience
You can achieve virtually anything you want--if you're willing to hear 'no' often enough. - Andrea Waltz
EMOTIONAL RESPONSE
I ran towards the British Airways check-in desk, phone in hand, pushing my four-wheeled suitcases, my purse dangerously perched on top of the small one. It nearly toppled over (from the weight of my laptop and iPad in the front pocket). In a rushed but mild voice, I said to the attendant: ‘“I think it’s too late to leave my luggage with you for Geneva, right? I am booked on the 5pm flight, but missed my train.”
My voice trailed. I was late and looking resigned, despite the question. The youngish chestnut-haired bloke in front of me looked up and said: “Well done for checking in online, because otherwise....” I stopped listening. He requested I hand over the large suitcase, and while he tagged it I melted in relief, quite literally. I thought it would be colder that Sunday, and I was way overdressed, a thick cashmere jumper under my teddy coat, a heat-ball rushing through the airport.
OMG I made it. I’d been preparing myself for the ‘no’ since I had boarded the Heathrow express. “It’s okay, they’ll put me on another flight, I will have time to work at the airport, there is plenty to eat and drink there, I have everything I need.” I had spent the train journey conditioning myself, finding reasons not to freak out when I would hear the dreaded: “No, it’s too late, you can’t make it on this plane.” The goal? Not to fall apart in a pool of sobs, or get overly frustrated when reaching the check-in desk. I’d already felt overwhelmed when things didn’t go quite how I’d hoped the day before (that happens when we travel), and I feared an uncontrollable emotional response.
So I was not just chuffed but genuinely surprised when things went my way.
Things, more often than not, do go my way. Which is good because I don’t love getting a ‘no’.
Rarely, however, I lose it when I hear the word ‘no’. And honestly, my reaction may partially depend on what day of the month it is (I used to say I don’t have PMS — that’s no longer true). Thankfully, I know my baseline (all that meditation comes in handy). As it happens, I’m pretty balanced, even-keeled as we say, but there’s always the exception.
RETAIL, COMMUNITY AND CONDITIONING
As a customer, I hate to hear ‘no’. But, I worked in retail for many years so I came to learn to use the word, too. As a manager, I discovered that those employees who always say ‘yes’ to everyone generally overpromise and under-deliver. Having cleaned up their subsequent messes, I see that ‘no’ is an essential tool to manage customers’ expectations. Of course it matters when we say it, and how it’s delivered.
When you’re late for a flight, or need someone to bend the rules for you to get what you need, some places in the world are better than others. ‘Non!’: a single word, can sum up my experience of living in Paris. I often could feel the ‘non’ coming before I’d even finished expressing a request. ‘Non’ is the default mode in the French capital (I often wonder how they get anything done?)
Rome, and Italy more generally, is a ‘yes’ place. Occasionally, the ‘yes’ comes disguised as a ‘no’, as in: “Sorry, no lady, we don’t do this” but then upon seeing the disappointment on my face it merges into “Tranquilla! Relax, we can sort this out.”
Switzerland is 50/50. Surprisingly, I found government administration staff to be incredibly kind and helpful. I even sent a thank you email to the ‘bureau des autos’, or office of motor vehicles (the DMV or DVLA for you Brits and Americans), after I was speedily offered a spot to take my driving test a week after making my request. My learner’s permit was about to expire, setting me back a lengthy and costly process, but the kind person on the phone, understanding the situation, made my day, saving me a six month waiting list (a COVID-related issue) and the money to start the whole thing over.
REFUSAL, KNOCK-BACKS AND DISCOMFORT
Having a request declined has always felt like an exercise in rejection. Knowing how disappointed I can get, expectations crushed, I’ve learned to practise being okay with ‘no’ in advance. Practice so I don’t fall apart when I hear it. Is it just me, or do you also rehearse conversations before they happen, to manage your emotional response, despite having little or no idea what the other person would say (kind of like my airport example)?
Refusing another person’s request can feel so daunting that some of us can’t say ‘no’ at all. Surprisingly, we learn how to relate to refusals and rejection as communities. We emulate what we see in our environment. One striking example is how the Japanese people have devised a great number of tactics to skirt around the ‘no’ so skillfully that, oftentimes, the person making the request can’t figure out whether they were denied or not. I’ve personally been in conversations with Japanese team members negotiating how to handle a particular project and never heard a direct ‘no’. So often by the end of the call, I had no idea where we stood on said project.
Here’s the deal: ‘No’ is helpful because it cuts to the chase.
But, crucially, ‘no’ often comes down like a ton of bricks. Boom. ‘No’ means ‘that’s it’, the end. C’est fini! Is it the finality that feels so unpleasant?
‘No’ effectively is a boundary — we can use it to put up a wall. We can’t say yes to everything. So while one person feels the weight of the ‘no’, the other sees it as erecting a helpful barrier.
In any case, we (read: me) need to learn to hear the word ‘no’ and let go of the negativity around it.
REFRAMING THE ‘NO’
In order to get what we want in life, there’s a shortcut.
Often it can feel daring to use it. Women especially are known to be less likely to resort to it. And that time-cutting tactic is: asking for what we want.
Raising capital for your business? Better go out and ask investors. Want a raise? Ask for it, don’t expect it. Want new clients? Go find them and ask to pitch your business. Want a hot date? Ask that person out.
I don’t do this much myself. But that’s about to change.
Whether I’m the one declining (not interested, on Bumble for example), or being told ‘no thank you’ in an email (from a prospective client I was really excited about), I have lived with the stigma of ‘no’. ‘No’ is ‘not good enough’, not right, not right now, not today, not you, not you ever! ‘No’ has felt shameful to an extent. Not always, but still shameful.
Recently, several well-synchronised podcasts and a book convinced me to rethink my attitude and change my outlook. It was just about time I heard this advice.
DON’T FEAR THE WORD ‘NO’, SEARCH FOR IT!
I was listening to the audio version of the book ‘You Can’t Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar’ (second edition). The book is geared towards sales people, but it contains a lot of valuable lessons applicable to daily life. It came highly recommended to me from a trusted source. A short piece of the text, boxed and highlighted, caught my attention. The author was suggesting that instead of fearing them, that we seek out the noes.
A friend and I were discussing business shortly after, and we were both reflecting on how much we hated putting ourselves out there — not cold calling (quite) but even pitching. That passage came to mind and I sent her a copy of the book.
Right on the heels of that, I listened to a wonderful interview with Spanx founder Sarah Blakely (who has a delightful speaking voice, I need to note). She was being interviewed on the James Altucher show. Altucher (who has a much less delightful speaking voice, but he’s still very much worth listening to) famously experienced massive failure himself. So he was bemused when the billionaire entrepreneur shared her experiences of seven years of cold calling selling fax machines. She explained that yes, it was occasionally very challenging, and that she, too, was reduced to pools of tears on occasion. Yeay, not just me.
Why would she go on for seven years, you may wonder (I did)? Well, something had prepared her for all the noes she heard, first as a sales person, and later it served her as an entrepreneur:
“All my life I was taught how to deal with failure”, she shared in the interview. “My dad would ask us at the dinner table every night: how did you fail today?”
Blakely learned to deal with failure and rejection from an early age. She also learned to keep her Spanx business idea to herself, not wanting to expose herself to negative feedback from friends, family or peers who weren’t going to have the same vision she did. Having learned to be okay with ‘no’, she could manage the push backs as she developed her idea, growing her incredibly innovative business into the billion dollar company that it is now. Meanwhile shielding herself from another form of negativity. I mean, one can only have so much of it.
With that interview and the aforementioned book in my mind, their two messages kept repeating themselves to me.
Seeking out the noes. And asking oneself: how did I fail today?
Something was starting to build in my subconscious.
Days later, sitting in my kitchen at lunchtime, procrastinating for a moment before getting back to my desk, I randomly started listening to yoga teacher Elena Brower’s podcast, Practice You (btw, she has a good voice but slightly monotone). I was stunned to hear that same advice, reframed by the guest (and Elena’s partner), James Bernard.
Brower explained she’d been inspired by a teaching Bernard gave to a large group regarding collecting ‘noes’ so you can get to one great ‘yes’ as you build your business.
Recalling the moment, he shared:
‘Be out there so much that you get as many noes, as many rejections as you can, because that means you are pushing yourself.
You are out on your edge.
You are exploring new territory, you are expanding.
You can’t get true, good yesses without a lot of noes.’
The penny finally dropped for me. It’s a numbers game — that’s what Sarah Blakely and James Bernard were essentially reminding me of.
Sure, there is an energy that comes with ‘no’. So we need to work through the discomfort. But there is light on the other side, if we learn to work with it, rather than shy away from it.
If we want great yesses, we can practise readying ourselves for the noes, and remind each other that it’s just an inevitable part of the process — especially when we build a business.
THE EXCITEMENT OF LETTING GO
I don't love saying ‘no’, but I understand the value of saving people time, I respect their energy, and I also like to manage expectations. Now I am gearing up to the practise of seeking out no’s, and I am strangely excited about going out to collect them.
‘How did I fail today?’ may just become my favourite question, because every time I have an answer for it, it will mean that I tried, that I put myself out there. And sure, it may be unpleasant on occasion. But I have a choice, or should I say, we have a choice in how we deal with it.
After all, failure and rejection are only important if we choose to attach importance to them. We can choose to lean into the discomfort, listen to our inner critic, the stories of fear and shame and unworthiness; or we can choose to let go, dust ourselves off and try again, excited even at the prospect of the yesses.
Hey, I have failed at least three times (in my business) since the beginning of January. Woo hoo! Check me out (dancing emoji).
I’m grateful for these synchronised sources that reminded me that a ‘no’ is just one stone, one obstacle on our path we can learn to step over.
Let’s not let it break our stride.
JOURNALING PROMPT:
If you’d like to explore your own relationship with ‘no’, here are some questions for you to journal on:
Identify a goal that’s meaningful to you and ask yourself:
When is ‘no’ an emotional trigger for me?
What story am I telling myself about the ‘no’?
How can I push myself today, and put myself out there?
How can I expand myself and be out on my edge?
And, ask yourself with pride daily:
How did I fail today?
