A CEO of a start-up once said, “failure is not an option,” then there was a long and awkward pause. Longer than was to be expected which was long enough for the COO to draw a breath as if he were going to speak when the CEO also drew in a speaking breath. He didn’t speak; he just did something subtle enough that most didn’t catch. Seven seconds passed before he drew in another speaking breath to say, “it’s a requirement.”
“Failure is not an option. It’s a requirement if you are going to be successful.” This quote is one that I hold on to like a mantra. If you are getting ahead without failure, are you giving all you can? Are you innovating? Are you doing things in an uncommon way? All of those come with their own innate failures. If you are not failing, you are simply repeating someone else’s success only to be fractionally as successful.
When you fail, you fall, you lose the wind in your sales, and you question if it’s even worth the effort. My mother says, “nothing beats a fail but a try.” What my mother is saying is the complement to the CEO. You must fail to succeed, but you cannot succeed if you do not try again. If your failure destroys you, that version of you was meant to be destroyed to make the better version of you, the successful version. However, knowing that you need failure to be successful and heart to try again aren’t enough, you’ll need one more thing.
As most things in life there needs to be a third perspective to complete to structure. This third perspective is rejection. The rapper Kevin Gates said “rejection is protection” in an interview with Shannon Sharp. Who told Gates this is irrelevant, the fact that Gates said something I had never heard means I will attribute this quote to him. It’s added the third leg to the stool for me, or the eloquence of an explanation at least.
I’ve always known that rejection is simply another form of failure and a part of acceptance. Having a communication handicap means that I will be misunderstood a lot. Those misunderstandings are at times too embarrassing for me to return to that person who rejected me, but they made me better. The next person I approached with the same intention will not have known that I failed before them, they won’t even know the number of times I’ve been rejected.
What they will know is that I am confident, articulate, measured, and welcoming. All of this is because I never took rejection personal. Rejection has been the most difficult thing for me to accept in life. It’s not like loss or failure. When you lose it’s because others agreed to compete against you and it wasn’t your day. When you fail it’s the same. They both sting, but nothing like rejection. Rejection is personal. It’s personal because there was no effort put to beat you. There was nothing that you miscalculated or learned you didn’t have after the failure to correct and have for the next time around.
Rejection is the decision from someone else that your skills, your capability, or your personality are not sufficient for them. That’s it. Just that simple. Rejection is a no that you cannot bargain with. Not today at least. Today’s rejection has protected you. There are and will be many times in life when you want to be a part of something, but being part of that may be worse than being a part of it.
For example. I wanted to be part of this leadership team at a company I worked at. My personality of helping others shine with the skills they have was unpopular. My dyslexic traits impacted my communication in ways I had not discovered, nor would have if not for this rejection. I will not get into excuses, assumptions, or trash-talk because those will take away from what rejection taught me. When I was systematically isolated that was the rejection. Everything that happened after that was the personal attack.
Rejection educated me, being attacked angered me. What I learned from rejection is that rejection says you are not welcome here. It didn’t say anything about everywhere else. The pain that rejection caused forced me to look deep into how I communicate. From that I learned that dyslexia is not just about reading. It impacts how I speak, literally. I may not speak like Yoda, but my concepts and asynchronous thoughts context switch faster than a “normal” mind can.
Neurotypical attention works like exploitation: stick with what’s known to work, filter out the rest, move through concepts in a straight line. Some neurodivergent minds, research suggests, are wired closer to exploration: quicker to abandon the known path for an unknown one, quicker to let unrelated ideas back into the room while working on something else. Studies on ADHD attention patterns have found this show up as a measurable bias toward exploring over exploiting, novelty over certainty, even when it costs efficiency. Separately, researchers studying insight and creativity have found that letting the mind wander, rather than staying locked on one thing, measurably increases the odds of a breakthrough when people return to a hard problem. Unfocused isn’t broken. It’s a different search strategy, one that trades consistency for range.
In the Demo-2-win concept you need to tell your audience something, show them how it works, then tell them again. For minds like mine when you do that second “tell” you have introduced a new concept. We’ve already understood it from the first time and if we didn’t we’d stop you to dig deeper. By the time you’ve shown it we’ve already seen it inside of our heads. Seeing you show it just solidified our understanding and could have also slightly confused us because what you’re showing may not match the words exactly.
As a result of my mind not processing like the minds of those who were repeating what books told them sales leaders should do when I did what those books actually said to do there was a disconnect. I’d bet you’re a little disconnected right now. Let me explain. Books tell stories. They give you examples of when, where, how, and what success looked like or may look like. The stories are not literal scripts for success, but the “moral of the story” is.
They Brother’s Grim explicitly state that when you hear one of their stories it’s required that when you retell the story you do so in your own voice. Use your life experience, your culture, and your audience to convey the moral of the story more than the regurgitation of the words.
My mind saw and sees the concept not the instructions. I modify concepts to adapt to the situation. If others lack that capacity rejection is unavoidable. In this case rejection protected me from compromising my commitment to my customers, my team, and my employer. After leaving due to the pressures I was enduring I was more successful in selling that product as a consultant than an employee. Why? Because I was accepted by a different group who was more agile and forward thinking.
Having dyslexia is not the key to this resilience, it may not even be an influence. How and where I grew up are not replicable aspects of coping with rejection, I cannot offer you that, but I can offer you a way to get to where I am. The way you build a callous against failure, the strength to get back up, and the heart to endure rejection is through repeated exposure. The best way I have to express this process is through a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (jits) equation.
In jits there is a 70-20-10 formula for success.
- 70% of the time spar with people you can wipe the mats with.
- 20% of the time spar with a peer.
- 10% of the time spar with someone that will wipe the mates with you.
With the 70%, when you know you can win, experiment. You will find that you will fail and will get beat by people you should never lose to. You’ve lost to them because you have put yourself in a position you would not willingly allow yourself to be in. Even if you do not see the loss coming you will be able to quickly understand where it happened then adjust. In business these are the “fail fast” losses. In competitive martial arts these are the tournaments that do not impact your ranking where you do live blind tests.
With the 20% you do not allow yourself to be put into bad spots while you test what you’ve been practicing. You can refine the technique and tighten up movements, grips, or special control. Hitting techniques against a peer means that you have a solid understanding of the concepts. It’s in this understanding that you work on fluid concepts not step-by-step execution. This is where I hit the rejection professionally, but understanding the concepts allowed me to execute the technique, albeit with a different training partner.
When you are fighting against that 10% group or person you start attacking your new technique in hopes of establishing small wins. This is where you may lose and learn the most. This 10% gets you ready for the live fight where money, health, and prestige are at risk. Losing to the 10% allows you to see the counterattack in real-time. This is where you take the notes and adjust at the 70%, then test at the 20% to retry with the 10% later.
Using this formula in life and business doesn’t have to be about argument, debate, winning, or promotion. Much like when it is applied on the mats this formula is about exploring in a way you determine and control. In the professional area it may be mentoring a junior, sharing ideas with a peer, and presenting to senior leaders. Like getting tapped out hearing rejection will have an impact. First negative, then frustrating, and finally an initiation of curiosity. The most successful people in the world and their specialty are the ones who are always curious.
Rejection never gets easier. If anything, rejection gets more efficient. Rejection will always hurt, but you control how long it hurts and what comes after hurt.
References
- Farashi, S., et al. “Attention deficits linked with proclivity to explore while foraging.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2024. royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article/291/2017/20222584
- “Lower Attentional Skills predict increased exploratory foraging patterns.” Scientific Reports, 2019. nature.com/articles/s41598-019-46761-0
- “Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and the explore/exploit trade-off.” PMC, 2021. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8027173
- “A review on exploration-exploitation trade-off in psychiatric disorders.” BMC Psychiatry, 2025. bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-025-06837-w
- Baird, B., et al. Incubation-effect research summarized in “Creativity: the unconscious foundations of the incubation period.” PMC. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3990058
- “Mind Wandering and the Incubation Effect in Insight Problem Solving.” Creativity Research Journal, 2015. tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10400419.2015.1088290
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