- I was 20 years old.
I just started my own one man copywriting agency.
I was struggling to get clients.
One day, I was on the phone with a prospect
and about five and 10 minutes into the conversation,
he said "Stop!"
I said "what?"
He said "Stop!"
He said "Five minute into the conversation,
"you've made multiple grammatical errors
"and you speak with an accent.
"I don't think I trust you to write my copy."
And he said "I think you're full of shit."
And he hung up.
At the time, I was already feeling very insecure
about English as my second language.
That's the first time in my life that I felt rejected.
I felt embarrassed, humiliated,
and I was so mad, and so pissed off.
First, at the prospect.
How dare he talks to me like that.
Why does he have to attack me like that?
What did I do?
All I'm trying to do is to make living
and provide for my mom.
Why does he call me names?
Why does he personally attack me like that?
And then, I made a decision.
A decision that would forever change my life.
I said to myself, you know what?
From now on, I don't want to feel that again.
I'm gonna work on my English.
I'm going to work on myself.
So that some day, one day,
not only that will be able to speak with clarity
and conviction and confidence.
Someday, as a Chinese, as an Asian, as an immigrant.
Someday, I will have these guys pay to hear me talk.
They will pay to hear me speak, hear what I have to say,
and I did that.
See, how many times in your life sometimes you feel rejected
Why do people reject you like this
for no good reason whatsoever.
Maybe it's a job interview,
maybe it's a business deal,
maybe it's in relationship,
your loved one, your girlfriend, your boyfriend,
that they break up with you and you feel so rejected.
One thing I've learned about rejection is
it all depends on perspective.
Sometimes, let's say in business, in sales, in closing,
you have to deal with a lot of rejection
in order to be successful.
You have to talk to a lot of strangers,
a lot of people saying no to you,
if you wanna make any significant amount of money
but you see, if you look at it that way,
you will feel defeated, you'll feel rejected.
But if during any closing call for example,
if you look at that,
there are three things you will get out of it.
Number one, you will get a yes,
which means you get a sale.
That's good.
Number two, you get a no, which is perfectly fine.
It simply means you don't have to waste more time
with this prospect.
Or number three, for sales that you don't close,
you will get a lesson, you'll learn, you'll grow from it.
I want you to think back all those moments.
In your life, where you felt rejected,
I want you to think back.
Doesn't that shape who you are today?
If you think about it, those moments,
those instance, those times where you felt so bad,
but aren't those also some of the greatest times?
Without that incident, I wouldn't be where I am today.
There will be no Dan Lok.
There will be no mentor, teacher, global educator
simply because that prospect rejected me,
ignited something within me
that I had this desire ad hunger to be better.
At first just to prove him wrong.
That's okay.
The initial feel was to prove him wrong.
And later shift to impacting others.
You see, if you trade your rejection with appreciation,
you'll look at things, you'll look at life very differently.
Appreciate the rejection.
It only makes you better.
Instead of asking why does this always happen to me?
A more powerful question to ask is
what can I learn from this?
Who do I have to be so this doesn't happen ever to me again.