Lessons

Lesson Info

Embrace the No

Now we're gonna talk about the No, because we can talk about pitching without talking about the No. And I want you guys not to just deal with the no, but making love to the no, well, you to embrace the no, with passion. It's really all about developing resilience. That's that's the thing is that we want to develop a habit of resilience so that you get knocked down. You get back up and you keep getting knocked down. You keep getting back up again. When I was younger, I used to ride horses when I was, like, 12 and there was a rule around the stable that in order to be a good writer, you had to fall off seven times. Cool. Okay, so I made it to three before I got bored and moved on to something else. But every time I fell off a horse, which literally hurts, um, I was like, All right, here I go. I'm one fall closer to being good. So that's kind of how we think about the rejection to is that you've got to just start sending the pitches. You've got to start really getting the nose before you'...

re going to get good at it. And the only way to get good at it is to get out there and start hitting. Send. So that's what we're really trying to do here with this. It's not about like, making a fool of yourself or anything like that. Nobody has to know about the know unless you're crazy like me and want to tell everybody about it. We're gonna focus on your learning. So this is what to do when the nose come in. What could I have done better? How could it be stronger next time? Even without some of your guesses? Nicole and I have talked a little bit about what we've learned. Through the time's right. It can always be stronger. Don't be afraid of that. You can always be better at your craft. That doesn't mean you're bad at it, right? An artist is always refining. You're always editing. I'm always going back and reading Old log posted. I'm like, that was amazing. And I look at it, I'm like, Oh, I would change this now because we're evolving. So let yourself evolve. It's okay to be sad. You don't have to like be like Yes, Mindy, K links now coming on my podcast. It's okay to be sad, but you got to pick yourself back up. You can't let it ruin You. Gotta ruin your our How do you benchmark when you send out a pitch and you hear nothing and you send out a response here? Nothing. And you, you know, you follow up twice. Nothing. So how do you benchmark, like, what can I do better next time? If you don't know, never hear back twice. Um, I would say give it some space, give it some distance, right? Take away some of the emotional charge and then revisited, like, three months later. And also know that, like, it may just not have been a good fit at the time. So, you know, does this mean Mindy Kaling's never gonna come actually got to know from her publicist Doesn't mean she's never gonna come on my podcast. I'm gonna find out what? I'm gonna keep podcasting, and I'm gonna keep wanting her on my show. And five years, maybe I have 35,000 downloads and upset or 3,350,000. And then maybe I could be like, Okay, right. So you know. I think that like the learning and you may never hear it from somebody else. What could be better? But as you do it more, you'll know what stronger. And as you start getting some yeses, then you can look back and say, like It's not always personal, though a lot of times it's just a timing thing or unavailability thing. So don't this is the whole point out like, Don't let it stop you. It can't be that, like, this is the worst pitch ever because that's what we show you. Like what? Not to dio. So you're you already know what you need to know to craft an effective pitch. Um, discomforts. A good thing being uncomfortable is fine. I know we all think we need to be comfortable all the time, but like if I got paid delay on my couch, any popcorn and watch so you think you can dance. I might be a millionaire for like 10 minutes, but I get bored so we want it. We want to play on our edge. That's that's what innovation is. And that's how we create new and interesting and exciting things. So, you know, you probably have never had a breakthrough in your business. When you're like I'm so comfortable, so comfortable. This is so easy. You push yourself right, you really you say guess and you figure it out. So if you the more comfortable you can get with that light, you know, all the time, e feel like a hot mass. But I'm I'm here, you know? And so I and I know that I'll deliver you get better, and you try again. And maybe you're not sure if you're gonna get better, right? Maybe you look at the thing that got no response. And you say, Minister, in this exact same pitch out to three more people, then maybe if you get no more responses from those three people, then revisit Say, OK, maybe I need to change some of these sentences around. Maybe I need to make the idea more specific. Maybe I need to do four very crafted pitches for these four opportunities instead of it being a template, um, trying. We try to know the answer before we start right? We're like, I just want to know mawr that over research, you're gonna know the answer when you get going It's like like when you're when you're starting to take the steps, you're gonna know if this is the path of this is a path. So give yourself that opportunity because they're always be more information out there for you. You already remember what we taught you earlier. You already know what you need to know to get going. You guys have sat through this class, you got it like you know what you need to know. So trust that. Trust me, trust creativelive. And then you're going to know what you don't know when you need to know it, right? Yeah. And that, like the crazy faith the like. Here you go. Embrace it because it's your It will become your best friend once you get used to it. And once you become more familiar with it, um, how can you celebrate your nose? So, does anyone have an idea for celebrating? Knows anything that comes to mind for how you might want toe celebrate the nose. It's ice cream. Ice cream. I'm a big fan of temporarily eating your feelings. Probably another class. Yeah, preparing for when they say yes, like because he made That may be saying No. Like I said in an email to someone that was known. But they they responded back was I was really proud of. So I celebrated that. And then, um, about their timeline or something, we visit something, Prepare for next time. Yeah. You're ready? Yeah. And and that's a great thing, because somebody is No. Could be someone else's. Yes, Right. Earlier I used that example of the column. My pitch for design, for mankind with the life life designed 101 Right. I wrote for her for six months. I have pitched that to another design blogger before, and I got no response. I didn't kill the idea. The idea was good. I knew the idea was good. And I said, I'm gonna find a home for this. And my second pits that I sent to Herron was so much stronger. The other one, it was just a block comment. She's like, I'm looking for a contributor. That is like, I think I want to do this, pick me here and just hope you see it. Shocker. She didn't pick me, but I also didn't ditch the idea. So developing your your your content developing? Really? Your plan like the more that you can get your hands into the work that you are here to be doing and get off the computer. That's gonna be the thing, too. That helps you develop that resilience because you're going to get stronger and better at that. And you're gonna fall in love even more with your ideas and you're gonna be like I'm finding the right home for this. J. K. Rowling had quit after her first rejection. My life would be much bleaker than it is because I love me some Harry Potter. Okay, that's the rejection. Write it so that no is OK. Success requires hard work in patients. This is not about the easy answer. This is not about the overnight. This is about looking at the long road and committing to your business can because you're committing to your life, right since about your business. But it's about really what you want for your life. Get comfortable, right? Because it's gonna It takes a while to build up these relationships. I pitched Nicole to speak at her conference nearly a year after I had met her. Does take time. They're things you can start doing now. But also just relax into it because that's gonna be what where the learning comes in. So what? I'd love to hear like one person tell me what their biggest learning is so far. Bridget, Um, my biggest learning so far. It's just really learning to cut through the noise in my head and do it Stop. Stop making making up excuses and just do it. Mission accomplished. So I want to talk about support and why support is critical. And we talked about this a little bit. You don't exist in a vacuum and you're a real life peeps may not understand. They may not get it. My friends are always like your life is so different for my name. I never leave the house uhm you know and so they may not be able to help me solve my problems. We're all learning and we can help each other. This is a great reason to come join us in the raise your hand CS Facebook group because people posting their and everyone's like me too. Me too. I think that to like so let's share that. And also this is a really vulnerable process. The feels delicate right here. Like remember earlier. You're saying it's a scary and I'll know I don't know what to say. You know, having a place to get support for that is critical. So I want you guys to think about your A team. And this is a way that I think about getting the right kind of support from the right people. I like to think about because not everyone. Like I said, my husband doesn't give me business feedback. Right? So not everyone is gonna give you the right what you need. So here are the types of support that I look for her advice, accountability and amusement. My husband totally gives me the abuse mad because he's funny and awesome. Hi, baby. Um, he also gives me the accountability. You know, I say, like, I'm going on creativelive. And he's like, Are you working on your class? Did you do your podcast? What do you doing? Come on, get to work, right? Sometimes he gives me advice. My friends, my like non Internet friends. They give me a lot of amusement. They don't really give me the advice or accountability. There's some people that I do like monthly. You know, we kind of talked about our businesses together. Monthly calls. There's a little bit of amusement there, but we're more like the advice and accountability were like getting down the business here. So I want you guys to think about what support do you need and where can you find it? Who Who's your A team and really recognizing that somebody who's an amusement person it's okay if that's all they cause Amusement is important. Having fun with people is important, right? So if someone is an accountability person, maybe that's all they are. And maybe it doesn't matter that you guys don't have the same sense of humor, because when you know they're getting on a call with your coach, you get your stuff done and you can go out to Gossip Girl with your friends. You don't need to pay someone a lot of money to talk about that because we don't have time for that. So you guys have permission, right? Make those choices about how you're getting the support. Yeah, any questions because you pumped, like, go pitch? Yeah, back a ways. So you guys mentioned, I think you'd rather if there's a form on a website rather get the information that way. I always feel like when I'm filling out a form I'm like This is going nowhere like I know it's going into a hole. But is that not the extent, not the case? And I'll even do that little thing where you can, like, view the source of a website and I tried to go to the back end of a website to actually find the email address rather than use a form until I put a form on our website. And yeah, we told I mean everybody. I get just as many responses from a form as I dio from just sending it directly to an email. But all the same rules still apply. You know, just because it's a form doesn't mean you don't address them by name and all those things, but it does feel like it's going nowhere. I know what you mean. Yeah, I actually get all of the emails from our form. They either go to me or my business partner or our vendor coordinator for patchwork show. Yeah, they all and they all go to the good thing about a former. They go specifically to the person who can help with that problem instead of just like a general thing. So we have, like the one person who answers all these kinds of questions and knows everything about that. It just saves it being passed around. I think it there's a form and an email available in your you would be more comfortable sending the email, make sure that you've addressed all the things that are on the form, right. And I also think that, um, you know, if you send the for men that you can still follow up via email, so that's a totally allowed. This is also a really good point for reaching out on social media, which we're gonna talk about tomorrow, and social media sanity. But if you if you want, if you want to send a picture, you want to connect with something and you don't want to just getting the black hole of forms start commenting on their Twitter right start retweeting them. Reply to something in a thoughtful way, right? Like start making facilitating that connection, even if it's after you fill out the form because two weeks later, don't be like creepy right? Like don't be that person who retweets every single thing but thinking about building relationships. And so that way, when you follow up email two weeks later, they're like, Oh, yeah, wait, I remember him. He's like, you know, drain on Twitter or whatever. So people and remember because it's a human being, we pay it. Every form from my website comes into my in box just like an email. You know, for me, like my form is just contact form. So I don't care if you email me or do the contact. But if I'm about to do one for people who want to be on my podcast and those air the questions I want answered. So people set that up, they tend to do it very thoughtfully. So even if you're emailing, just make sure you hit all the points include