On Rejection

2025.06.15

CIV

[Rejection Resume, You Want ALL of It, Following Orders, Bad ‘Fit’, Acceptance]

Thesis: It doesn’t matter if they reject you. It matters if you reject you.

[Rejection Resume]

I’ve been rejected hundreds of times. I’ve also rejected others hundreds of times.

Some of the times I’ve been rejected:

• In HS, my date bailed on me two weeks before prom

• The girl who actually went with me to prom uninvited me to hers after we went to mine

• I applied to a dozen colleges and got rejected by 75% of them

• I was rejected from the same professional frat 3 times, along with a number of other clubs and orgs

• I was told by the former President of Equinox that I would lose my scholarships if I took a gap year that I requested

• I've been romantically rejected by countless women, including at least one who I wrote a poem for

• I've been rejected by dozens of investors (both in the context of my hedge fund and prior saas venture)

• I was more or less rejected from a company I started

• I've been reject by people who used to be friends

• I've been rejected by people who used to be advisors and mentors

• I was rejected from a number of entrepreneurship programs, some very recently, some long ago

• I've had tens or maybe hundreds of no shows for initial sales calls

• From those who did show up, I've gotten hundreds of rejections

Some of the times I’ve rejected others:

• I rejected two of the colleges I got into

• I rejected other colleges that invited me to attend

• I rejected clubs I got into in college

• I rejected hundreds of people from the club I started in college

• I've romantically rejected people (yes, not just women)

• I rejected over a hundred job applications for a position at my last company

• I've bought software and then cancelled my subscription

• I've rejected people who use to be friends

• I've rejected sales people, some selling things I didn’t need, others where I bought the same thing from someone else

• I haven't finished book recommendations from years ago (sorry, Mitch)

• I delete spam emails every day (a sort of micro rejection)

• I've rejected people who want to "try" BirdDog for free

• I've rejected people who want to buy a license to BirdDog but don't need it

Just like me, I'm sure you've both given & taken your fair share of rejection.

When we’re rejected, we crave this neat narrative structure that nicely explains cause and effect. It creates all of these seemingly diametrically opposed ideas that really boil down to one burning question:

"Was it my fault, or theirs?"

The truth is, this isn't a very good question.

What really matters is whether or not you rejected yourself along the way.

[You Want ALL of It]

Early in college, I received an incredibly formative rejection.

There were these consulting clubs at Ross. More or less, 'everyone' wanted to get into them. And, for once, I was part of ‘everyone’.

To prepare, I spent a lot of time drilling case studies and mock interviewing and doing mental math.

Impressively, my first semester, I got into two of the top 5 clubs. But, I didn't get into the best one.

At first, I was neither rejected nor accepted--everyone I knew had either gotten in or not gotten in.

So, I texted one of the leaders at the club, and he called me. I was on their unofficial waitlist. Of 500 applicants, I had made it to number 13. But there, were only 12 spots.*

No one rejected their offer. So, ultimately, I was rejected.

I spoke candidly to the leader who I had gotten to know. What should I do? Join one of the other clubs that let me in?

He said I certainly could and would have a great outcome. Then, he paused, and said that he didn't think I wanted a great outcome--he thought I wanted the best outcome.** To boot, if I applied again next semester to his club, my application would be at the top of the pile.

So, I rejected the two opportunities that I actually had, and spent more of the next semester than I'd like to admit prepping for my second shot at the club.

When the next semester did come around, I only applied to this single consulting club... can you guess what happened?

I didn't even get a first round interview.

I tell this story now, because the first time I was rejected, I blamed myself, and the second time I was rejected, I blamed them.

*Yes, at a university with a sub 20% acceptance rate, where a club had to accept 2/3rds of its students from the business school which itself had a sub 10% acceptance rate, a club had an 2.4% acceptance rate.

**Makes me think of Don Draper's pitch to Dow Chemical - 'I won’t settle for 50% of anything, I want 100%… you don’t want most of it, you want ALL of it.’

[Following Orders]

Personally, I bias towards thinking things are my fault. This was certainly the case the first time I was rejected from the club.

I still believed that this club was almighty and all powerful - to protect that notion, I had no choice but to further reject and denigrate myself.

Sometimes, thinking you’re not good enough can end up as a net positive in that it can drive you to improve. However, you don’t actually need to denigrate yourself to get better. And really, it’s very dangerous to play by someone else’s definition of ‘better.’

The truth is, you were rejected for any number of reasons--that doesn't mean that you were rejected for a reason that you should fix.

I was later told that the first time I was rejected by the club was because I didn't take the interviewer's direction fast enough as they were trying to help me solve the case study in question.

If I would have known this reason that I got rejected at the time, and I would have tried to do more of what they wanted (following orders), I would have shot myself in the foot in relation to what I’m actually doing now. It turns out that when you’re starting a company, not defaulting to following what other people say you should do can actually be an incredibly good thing.

In other words, if you are rejected for a specific reason, and you know that reason, trying to improve on that dimension is not inherently what you should be optimizing for.

Rather, it’s what someone else thinks you should optimize for.

But, what do you think you should be optimizing for?

Luckily for me, I didn’t hear why I was rejected until later. So, I ended up investing in what I knew would be useful skills regardless of what I did—more mental math & strategic problem solving. No harm, no foul.

[Bad ‘Fit’]

The second time I was rejected from this club, I was almost immediately told that it was because one of the new leaders didn’t like me.

I was filled with righteous indignation and anger and confusion. It was particularly bitter because my competence had already been validated by the fact that I had made it so far last time. It was very obvious that it was not a skill issue.

You see, the problem here is that I was even in a position where I had to realize that they were just people, too. I had been holding them to an unfair, superhuman standard. The truth is, putting the members and their club on a pedestal was not only a disservice to them, it was a disservice to myself.

It was a disservice to them, in my mind, I took away their right to be human and do human things, like simply not like me, and make decisions on that.

Beyond that, the reason I cared so deeply is because in elevating them, I had debased myself. For whatever reason, I bought into an illusion that this club was my only and best path forward.

But why? Because it had worked for it’s current members? Because it’s what they wanted me to believe? Because I admired the people who were in it? Well, I also admired people who were not in it.

In all honesty, it wasn’t even particularly what I had wanted until I arrived on campus to begin with.

Very likely, I believed in them so much because I didn’t yet trust myself enough to believe that I could go forward and build my own tribe and do it on my own. So, I needed something or someone to believe in. Again, it was a rejection of myself more than anything.

[Acceptance]

Listen, I'd be lying if I didn't say that I've had absolutely animalistic sprints of productivity after being rejected, regardless of who I blamed.

And beyond that, even after the emotions wore off, I continued down a path that was emboldened by that second rejection—it had prompted me to focus on the options club some friends and I had started, which, in a lot of ways, led to starting a hedge fund in college, which really led to what I do now.

While the emotions can be put to good use, regardless of whether or not you blame your rejector or yourself, you’re still playing the game that someone else defined… your emotional state is still a reaction to what someone else thinks is important.

This is true regardless of whether the rejection is romantic, academic, in business, or just among friends.

This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t learn from rejection, or use particularly bad ones to push yourself forwards… it’s a warning on the limits of it.

If someone you respect rejects you, having no choice but to belittle them or belittle yourself is not a good position to be in. If you can’t get passed either of those feelings, then you might want to reflect on whether or not you put them on too high of a pedestal.

More broadly, when you are rejected, were you rejected for a reason that you actually believe you should remedy to become the person you want to be?

Or would altering that just make you more of who you think someone else wants to be? Do you really want them to accept you, or do you want you to accept you?

The leader of the club that didn’t let me in was right -

I don’t want great, I want the best.

But, I don’t want the best by someone else’s definition.

I want the best by the definition that I believe in.

Not rejecting yourself is the first step to accepting yourself.

Live Deeply,