It has been said that ‘Every NO brings you closer to a YES’. While you may not be able to stop rejection messages being sent, how you react is very much in your hands. You can choose to react negatively or decide to move forward positively and with impact. Using 15 one-liners, Your Small Business Coach shares tips to help business owners move beyond initial discomfort or anger to seeing opportunities, not threats.

1. 15 one-liners to help business owners deal with rejection
Your Small Business Coach
Most people, if not almost everyone, can on reflection recall at least one occasion when they felt, rejected
initially, but learnt life-changing lessons from the experience. When this happens in business, owners and
directors need to focus on the message not the messenger, difficult as it seems, that is the time when
business owners need to avoid taking the feedback as ‘personal’. Instead, they have to be brave and ask
the question ‘What would have made the service/product more suitable for you?’ Indeed, it could be that
as a business owner you misread the situation or may even be outside the market where you find your
ideal customers. Easier said than done I hear you say.
It has been said that ‘Every NO brings you closer to a YES’. Receiving messages of rejection is out of
your control, but how you deal with rejection is very much in your hands. You can choose to react
negatively or decide to move forward positively and with impact.
Difficult as it is to deal with rejection, here are a few one-liners you can ask yourself to focus and both the
analytical and emotive aspects of rejection.
Ask yourself:
1. Was there any merit in the feedback given, or was it just an excuse?
2. What have you learnt about yourself through the feedback you received?
3. How can you handle feedback to convert it into actions you can take forward?
4. Who else do you know has been rejected in a similar situation?
( Yes, I know it’s okay to sympathise or even empathise with them, but it should not happen to you.
You should not be at the receiving end of rejection.)
5. What is your attitude when you feel rejected?
6. How much time should you allow yourself to feel rejected?
7. How long should your feeling of being rejected last?
(Minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, a lifetime?)
8. What can you do to take your focus away from your feelings of rejection?
9. Which part of the rejection message was within your control? What was outside?
10. What lessons can you learn from the most recent experience of rejection?
11. What are the similarities between your latest situation of rejection and previous ones?
12. What is different about this situation of rejection, compared with previous ones?
13. What can you do/to manage your how you deal with rejection on this occasion?
14. What would you tell a fellow director or employee who has just received a letter of rejection?
15. Which part of that advice (refer to question 14) can you apply to your situation?
© Your Small Business Coach All rights reserved. Tel: 0845 054 2870
www.yoursmallbusinesscoach.co.uk

2. People who faced rejection, sometimes publicly, and went on to succeed include:
Albert Einstein, Alexander Graham Bell, Wright Brothers, Thomas Edison,
Malcolm Forbes, Woody Allen, JK Rollings (author of the Harry Potter books).
Food for Thought on how others deal with rejection
I use to joke –and it wasn’t much of an exaggeration –that a story I would mail to the New Yorker in
the morning would be back with its concise, slighting rejection slip in the afternoon mail that same
day. Joseph Heller (author of Catch-22)
When access to a better life has been denied often enough, and successfully enough, one can use
the rejection as an excuse to cease all efforts. Maya Angelou
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. Thomas A Edison
I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times I've been
trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life
and that is why I succeed. Michael Jordan
Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.
E M Cioran
We keep going back, stronger, not weaker, because we will not allow rejection to beat us down. It will
only strengthen our resolve. To be successful there is no other way. Earl G Graves
Oh, great reviews are the worst. They mislead you more than the bad ones, because they only fuel
your ego. Then you only want another one, like potato chips or something, and the best thing you get
is fat and bloated. I'd rather just refuse, thanks. Chazz Palminteri
Achievement can be all the more satisfying because of obstacles surmounted. William Hastie
Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. And today? Today is a gift. That's why we call it the
present. Babatunde Olatunji
Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the
closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us. Alexander Graham Bell
About the author
Veronica is a qualified and experienced Small Business Coach. She has developed small business
coaching initiatives to help business owners and directors during the start-up and growth for profitability
stages of their business.
http://www.yoursmallbusinesscoach.co.uk
T: 0845 054 2870
Email: bizcoachuk@gmail.com
Skype: bizcoachuk
© Your Small Business Coach All rights reserved. Tel: 0845 054 2870
www.yoursmallbusinesscoach.co.uk