The power of no, why it pays to be unpopular and what beats experience.
What a week this was. Last Monday I posted about the smoke from the wildfires in the west and where Portland enjoyed the world's worst air quality. The Carbon Monoxide outdoors was 35. Your indoor monitor goes off when it hits 50. And this was outdoors where it should dissipate. By the weekend we were near the green zone once again and what a relief. Felt good to be outside again.
To add to the wildfires, the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg has left many of us numb. Understandably so. She was a trailblazer and true icon. She didn't except the status quo and bucked the trends to hold true to her convictions. For what she believed was right for women and the world. We need a lot more RBGs.
It's in reflecting on RBG, that I want to focus this letter on the power of no, being unpopular and what's better than experience.
Make no your friend
At no stage of life do we want to be told no. We always want what we want when we want it. Especially as kids. Yet if kids always got their way, they'd be ill-equipped hellions as adults.
As adults, no is an opportunity to grow. Our fear of rejection rises and falls with how much is at stake. If you're dating, rejection feels like a personal attack. That 'I'm not good enough'. As job hunter seeking a new role, it can feel like a make or break moment for economic survival. For many it is. In sales, it makes or breaks your paycheck.
No teaches us more than yes. If we let it. After the requisite pity party, no shows you what didn't work. It's not that you failed or are a failure. It's that you're not the right match, the right fit, or didn't have the right offering. Or maybe you had the right product but you didn't articulate the 'why' well enough. You didn't connect what you offered effectively with the pain of the person you're trying to sell. That goes for job hunting too. As a job seeker, you have to show why you can ease the pain better than anyone else. And it only takes one yes to succeed. In that moment.
In dating, you might get rejected because you only talk about yourself. Or you listen to the person you're trying to woo. You're not seeing their point of view. Or because their corn flakes were soggy that morning. You also have the same power they do to say no.
It's the same in business. You might decide that you don't want the job you worked hard to get an offer for. Or maybe you don't want that client after learning more about them. Because the job and the client may suck the life out of you. And keep you from achieving your goals.
Too often we settle. Sometimes out of necessity. Sometimes out of desperation. Even then, we don't have to settle. We can use the job or client to buy time to get where we want to go. As long as we don't get lazy. I would argue that one should never settle when it comes to relationships. But this isn't a dating newsletter so I'll leave it at that.
Think of no as an iterative step towards the right yes. It's kind of like developing and testing a new product. In software, you work out the bugs. What if you thought of each no as a bug you needed to work out?
In sales, it's a proven numbers game in which so many nos lead you to a yes. Especially if you learn from why someone said no. Perhaps it was your technique. Or maybe a lack of true need. Or another product won. All this is informative.
If you look at no as a step towards yes then it doesn’t feel so bad. It doesn't feel like such a big risk reaching out and asking for what you want. The fear of no is all in our heads. I speak for myself as I used to fear rejection. I still don’t like it, but I learn much from a no. And can pick up and move on faster.
In fact, I'm now keeping a spreadsheet for each of my campaign initiatives that tracks how many nos I need to get to the number of yes's I need. For a metric I estimate potential response rates. For example, if I need three people to say yes, assuming a 10% response rate, then I need to reach out to 30 prospects. Or at a 2% response rate I need to reach 150 people.
There will always be the outlier who gets a yes on their first try. Listening to Guy Raz talk with Tope Awotona, founder of booking app Calendly, he equates his time selling ADT security systems door-to-door as key to his resilience. He was lucky in that he sold two his first week, but then had a string of nos. Had it been flipped he might not have continued. Also instructive is that he started two businesses that failed before Calendly. All while working his day job selling enterprise software.
When they say, don't take no for an answer, it doesn't mean berating the same person over and over until they say yes to get rid of you. It means reflecting on why they said no and moving on to the next, changing up your approach in the process. Here's to no.
This brings me to why it's good to be unpopular.
When you are popular, it means you're with the herd. The crowd. You don't become a better thinker by going with the crowd, You simply receive validation that you're doing what others expect. Those that create something transformative are willing to go against the crowd. To be vulnerable and risk ridicule. Most of us are not willing to be unpopular. In business meetings we don't want to dissent when higher paid people are speaking up. They're highly paid for a reason, right? Not always.
The best leaders want people to question them. They don't want a bunch of yes people that say yes because they're the highest paid in the room. Yes people don't add much value. Yet how many business meeting have you sat through where it was easier to just say yes? How much time and value lost in the process?
If you want to be a better thinker than you need to surround yourself with people who challenge your ideas. Your way of thinking. This isn't about surrounding yourself with right-wing thinkers when you lean left. It's about people who’s thinking you respect. Who you believe think better than you. Or make decisions better than you. And who aren't not afraid to call you out on your crap. They also respect you and what you offer. They challenge you to help you grow. And even test their assumptions. You might call it healthy debate.
These are the kinds of people willing to go against the crowd. To be unpopular. And to be unpopular means being willing to hear no. It's how you grow as a person. It's a source of creativity.
In Journalism School I had to read a book called 'When Words Collide' by two of my professors. It's still available many editions later. This is about when ideas collide. Imagine what that can spark when you let go of being right. When you let go of seeking only validation from others who think only like you. Often your idea colliding with another can be the difference between one that sizzles and one that fizzles.
As a job seeker, being different means you stand out from the dearth of resumes that all say the same thing. It means you offer something that others don't. It's pretty hard to show how remarkable you are with a stock resume and Linkedin profile.
I am lucky to have two peer groups of people who think differently, and often better than me. They push me. I have respect for their ideas and ways of thinking. And love that they're not afraid to share what they think. It's rich and powerful. And so rare.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a shining example of one willing to be unpopular. And we are so much better off for it. Imagine if more leaders in government and politics were willing to do the same.
What's better than experience?
Before anyone gets their knickers in a wad, this isn't a knock on experience. I know that experience matters. Especially when it comes to effectively managing others. When I was a new manager I quickly realized how much I had to learn. It took time in the chair to find my management style. I am grateful for all who’ve been with me through the process.
What's better is someone with passion, curiosity and commitment. Because they're going to show up day after day to work through the hard stuff. They're the ones who won't give up. If you only consider experience, you'll likely end up with people who only want it to be easy. They're experienced after all and shouldn't need to work so hard. You can train for experience. I'm not sure you can train for curiosity and passion.
PS: This week I'm launching a new podcast called 'Unvarnished Business'
Episode One features Graeme Harrison, now Vice President and GM of Bluesound Professional, who was my boss and mentor at Biamp. He's an example of one who thinks differently than most other leaders.
The podcast premise is: Looking back at successes, they always seemed inevitable. But that's rarely the case when it's happening. Hear from business leaders, marketers and creatives on how they've adapted to survive and thrive. Come behind the scenes for personal conversations on struggles and opportunities with these hidden leaders in business.
You can find it here. As well as on Apple Podcasts and soon Google. I plan to release a new episode every week or so.