Turning Rejection Into Opportunity

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed on the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not those of W four WN Radio It's employees or affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsement for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability, explicit or implied shall be extended to W four WN Radio It's employees or affiliates. Any questions or common should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W four WN Radio. This is Beyond Confidence with your host ZVA Park. Do you want to live a more fulfilling life? Do you want to live your legacy and achieve your personal, professional, and financial goals? Well? Coming up on zva Parks Beyond Confidence, you will hear real stories of leaders, entrepreneurs, and achievers who have steps into discomfort, shattered their status quo, and are living the life they want. You will learn how relationships are the key to achieving your aspirations and financial goals.

0:52 Moving your career business forward does not have to happen at the expense of your personal or family life or vice versa. Learn more at www dot Divpork dot com and you can connect with TV ads contact eds Gvpark dot com. This is beyond confidence and now here's your host, div Park. Good morning, listeners. It's a little cloudy day, but you know, it's always nice to have rain. So many times we complain about rains, but it's really important because rain is what gets our plans going and drinking water and all of that. So good morning to everyone. And we are in the holiday season and the final stretch, so to all of my listeners, a wonderful holiday season.

1:41 Just kind of want to share that with you. And for those of you who did get our books, we are very thankful to you, and if you have not, we invite you to get our books because it helps three ways. It helps our. Keewa entrepreneurs who we are helping out partially from the proceeds then come in excuse me, and it helps you, and it helps us because we are sharing the message and improving lives all around. So let's bring in our guest. Hi, Di vieh, Hi Andrea, how are you good.

2:25 It's great to be with you. Oh, great to have you. So tell us do you recall a moment or a person from you? You the childhood that left a positive mark on you. Oh my gosh. Yeah, so many. But I think probably the person who stands out the most is a friend of mine named Nicole. She was a gymnast and she we spent many weekends together. She was one of my very good friends and we just hung out and did crazy things and played together. But she was a almost turned professional, almost went to the Olympics, and she just worked really really hard, and it was just very inspiring to watch her at such a young age. I had nothing like that, Like, I wasn't gifted in any way, So it was really really cool watching her excel. And it's left a mark on me because I always wanted to have that and I finally found that in the business that I'm in now.

3:43 Didn't have it back when I was a kid growing up. So you said it almost and yet it impressed you so because you don't want to touch a point over there, because so many times people just see the results and don't see the process. So what was it about her that left an impression on you? She practiced all the time. They brought I remember they brought her parents bought a actual balance beam, like a real life like Olympic style full length. I don't know, it was probably a couple feet high balance beam and she just she practiced relentlessly. They lived on the beach, so we would go to the beach a lot, and she would do her routines on the sand, backhand springs and all the flips and everything. It was just really cool.

4:43 She was very, very driven. Definitely, have you stayed in touch with her? I have. We're friends all these years later. Yep. That's amazing. So tell us about your life, you know, how did your life, Johnny move? You know, you definitely were impressed by her, and what for your interest as you were growing up? Well, I had kind of a I think everybody finds their childhood interesting because of course it's about them, and some people have like the typical idyllic childhood and some people have more chaotic, you know, moved around a lot. I was more in that category. In fact, Nicole's family was kind of a stabilizing force in my life. Actually, my father was in the military, in the Air Force, and so he moved around and I would visit him on holidays and in the summer, but most of the time I lived with my mom and we had a very chaotic environment because my stepfather was let's just say he was a little bit antisocial in a way of to say that he didn't like playing by the rules and following the law. So we were evicted a lot, moved a lot. He was always coming up with crazy schemes and never held down a normal job. So my growing up was very uncertain and unstable. And at one point,

6:14 finally it all came to a head and he he did the wrong things with the wrong people and was thrown into prison. So my mom and I were basically on the street. And if it weren't for the fact that she was in a recovery program and she got help from somebody and we were able to move in with that person, did we just literally not end up on the street. And Yeah, So that I guess certainly shaped me. And but all that said, I grew all of that happened in a very affluent community and a very privileged part of the world. I grew up in southern California. So even with all of that going on, still I was not I wasn't living in the dirt like these are not these are like still first world problems.

7:09 Even at this point I decided that I was going to get a Bachelor of Science in criminal justice. I wanted to catch bad guys, probably some little thing that happened growing up. And when I graduated from college there were no jobs in criminal justice. There was I wanted to be a crime scene investigator before the TV show became popular. There were no jobs that paid. I could be an intern and work for free, and I was not interested in that. So in the meantime, I was working in the corporate world. I was a salesperson for Lens Crafters, and they promoted me into management and I got into training people, which I loved, and I met my now husband there and we got to know each other.

7:54 We had all of the same business philosophies, philosophies about sales and leadership and customer service. And eventually he says to me, do you want to write a book with me? Which I thought was such a ridiculous thing to ask because I figured that would never happen, and so I thought, well, there's no harm in saying yes. So I said sure, let's write a book, thinking he was a lunatic, and we did work on this book. We ended up self publishing it. We eventually quit our jobs we eventually launched a company doing speaking and training, and fundamentally we have been doing that thing ever since. So that's been the last twenty five years. So i'll just fast forward to today.

8:41 Twenty five years. So you had a pretty rough life and doesn't matter what the surroundings are for a child, love and stability and security or paramount. Did it leave any scars on you? Yeah, I am completely open to talking about it, and I think more than more it probably did. Let's just put it this way. I really really value I've got a particular trigger when it comes to being able to flee.

9:21 Let's put it that way, Like it's really important to me to have a car. Like at one point we also we didn't have a house, and we really didn't have a car, and so I determined, like, no matter what happens to me, I'm always going to have a car that I can like live in. I don't know it's it's I guess there's like some underlying trauma. But the other thing that it gave me, though, is I'm really good with chaos and uncertainty. Like I just grew up with that for so long that as an entrepreneur, you really have to embrace uncertainty and the fact that every morning you get up and you don't know are you going to get a yesterday, are you going to get a know today? Will business be good? Will it be bad? And you learn to kind of deal with it, like airplane turbulence. I give the analogy of when you get on an airplane and it's turbulent. At some point you just kind of have to relax and settle in knowing that that turbulence is kind of going to be there, even just a little bit, even just underlying things, and you just get used to it. That's how it is.

10:28 And so I feel like, although there is probably some lasting negativity from those experiences when I was young, I think I got just as much, if not more, positives out of it. That's fantastic. It sounds like you're a positive person and you turned it around and basically you took it as a learning lesson and moved beyond it as long. As you hit your car. That's right. So tell me a little. Bit more about like your journey into the sales, Like what were some of the lessons that you learned in sales, Because as an entrepreneur, you know you hear a lot of notes, and as a sales rep, you have to be in that like Okay, got to go for no, Go for no, go for no.

11:27 So tell us a little bit about that piece of your life. So what made me fall in love with the idea of hearing no was a story that Richard told me when we first met, and it's kind of the central story and I've learned to apply this lesson in my own life. And the story goes that he was working for a menswear company selling suits for a living. He was failing miserably. He thought that maybe if the district man, Harold was gonna he was scheduled to come visit the store, and if Harold could see him sell that maybe they would give him time to improve his sales and he wouldn't get fired. So Harold shows up one day, Richard is there. He ends up having this great sale in front of Harold. A customer walks in and announces he wants to buy an entire wardrobe of clothing. Richard shows him all of this clothing. The man says yes to everything that he lays in front of him. The customer walks out after buying, and Richard is waiting for Harold to congratulate him on this fabulous sale, and finally Harold asks him a question and says, Richard, out of curiosity, what did that customer say no to? And Richard is like, Harold, what are you talking about? What do you mean? What did that customer say no to? I had a great sale.

12:54 That customer bought everything I laid in front of him. And then Harold asked him the really important question, which was, then, how did you know he was done? Because he never said no to anything? And the truth, the truth was that Richard was selling from his own wallet. He made the decision of when that customer was done. That customer hit about eleven hundred dollars. That was a big sale back in the day, probably the equivalent of spending like five thousand in today's dollars drunk right exactly exactly, and even further, even further than that, because that was this had happened to Richard even way before we had met.

13:34 So he has this great sale. He gets asked this question, and then Harold tells Richard he said, I watched you sell. You're not half bad, but your fear of the word no is going to kill you. I think if you could just learn to get over that you could be one of the great ones. And Richard is he when he tells the story, he always says that he went home that night two letters from greatness and the letters were no O, so divyo. When he told me this story, and it was we were just standing on the sales floor at the company that we worked in, and I had this total epiphany because I actually thought I was really good in sales. I was really good with customers.

14:16 I'm a pretty good communicator. And I had to get honest with myself because I realized in that moment that I was a people pleaser and that I didn't like to hear the word no. That I wanted. I wanted to sell, but I wanted to do it in such a way where I got yes and I wouldn't have to hear no. So I avoided asking people any question where I thought maybe there was a chance that they would say no, because I didn't want to hear it. And so I learned to in that moment that that was the moment I learned to gopher no, which was just you need to have the courage to ask, and so I applied it there at my job and eventually when we quit our corporate jobs and launched our own business, I had to get really good at asking. I had no idea what I was doing, and I was calling on large companies because that's who we decided we wanted to work with. We wanted to do speak speaking and workshops and training for large companies. So I would call these companies and I would try to find out who the decision maker was. I would get a note of that I would try to I would get their mailing and information so I could send a package. I would follow up with a phone call. And so I really learned that you have to you have to be willing to hear no, you have to put yourself in a position to hear no, and that you have to do

15:49 it scared. You can't wait for the fear to go away. I had so many phone calls where my hands were sweaty, my voice was shaking. I felt so uncomfortable. But this was the only way to do it. And back then we didn't even have social media, so there was no like I think, I'll just you know, maybe email them. Finding email addresses was impossible and there was no LinkedIn. So this was how it had to happen, and I fought my way through it, scared, but still did it. And that was I think the big lesson for me is you can't wait out fear. Mm hmm, definitely, and that's really the way to go on.

16:34 Actually, if you kind of think about it, when the social media wasn't there, it was easier, Yes you had you could mail it and people would open up. Now people are skeptical, oh gosh, like you know what is in this package and all that, and it's still a good way to go about it. So there's so many people, especially people who may be wanting to transition out of the corporate world, people wanting to look for new jobs, or even entrepreneur's trying to get in touch with the decision makers. What are some of the ways that they could go about to not only connect with people and creating those possibilities from the stories, how do you know what did they say no to?

17:21 Yeah? So well, I think first off, it's really important that you have clarity on the problem that you're solving and who you solve it for. And we've written a lot of books as well, and one of the things that we teach people when you're writing a book is same thing. It's the same thing whenever you're creating something, whenever you're selling a product, you always have to know, like, who are you writing the book for? Right who's your ideal reader You've got to write you have to write the book for that person. So if you're reaching out to somebody on social media, you've got to have the right message, or if you're if you're making a telephone call, you want to make sure that you're talking to the right person. In fact, I was I coached a person, a young guy, a couple of weeks ago, and he was making calls and he would get them on the phone and he would just start in with his pitch, and I said, you first need to determine are you talking to the right person. You don't even know if you're talking to the buyer. You might be talking to somebody who has nothing to do with anything. And so the first go for no question you need to ask is like are you the person that handles this thing this?

18:44 Do you do you make the decisions for the company on this issue? Or are you the right person? And that's a really great point. And here's the thing. There's so many gatekeepers that you can get in touch with the decision makers that easily, So what's your solution for that? Yeah? And sometimes you can't, and so you need to again go for no to get help from the person you're talking to and be willing to ask them, how can I get this offer, how can I get in touch with or what value can I provide this person where I could get to the decision maker. So in that case, you start offering value and start building rapport with that gatekeeper.

19:32 I mean, that gatekeeper becomes really important, right, They're not just this person that you're trying to blow through and push past. So I'm glad that you asked that question. I think in my situation, I was kind of lucky because the gatekeepers really weren't working that hard to gatekeep way back way back then. Now today they certainly do. And so so kind of going back, you've got to make sure that you're talking to the right person, and then you want to make sure that you're that you have the right message. Sometimes, Divya, a lot of times the truth is it's timing. Timing is is everything I think in the market. I mean, look at anything that's sold or advertised. You drive down the street, you see it.

20:26 You see an ad for weight loss, or you see an ad for some kind of surgical procedure, and you see it every day over and over, and then finally one day you decide, you know, I really want to go to one of these clinics where I can lose weight, or I want to have this procedure done. Or if somebody in your family passes away, there was an ad for a funeral home. You you drove past it a million times, and now suddenly it's on your radar screen because it's something that you're dealing with than something that you're thinking about. So a lot of sales comes down to timing and that comes down to luck. And so from the standpoint of Gopher, No, it's be in the place that the person when they're ready to buy. You're there occupying real estate in their mind. So that requires that you not only have a presence out in the marketplace, So that's more marketing. Be there when they're ready, But did you reach out and are you doing that outbound outreach to say hey, I'm here and to let people know you exist. So it's really a two way street sales and marketing.

21:45 Absolutely. So basically what I'm hearing is what you're sharing is that create a market presence where you have your social proof and credibility in authority, where people are looking at like, yep, you are the prefer and you have the preferred choice for your potential customer. Not only that, but be on the radar of your potential customer. So there's something that they talk about the touch points. So tell us a little about you mentioned that it's important to be there at the right time. How can someone know what's the right time? And that's the tricky part. You don't, but you can ask. And this is the heart of the gopher No philosophy, which is which really comes down to just communication, and it's having the courage to ask sometimes the tough questions.

22:36 Sometimes we don't want to hear no from somebody, right, so we kind of dance around the tough questions and would rather not know the answer and just pretend like this is a good prospect or this is a good person for our product or service. So I highly recommend that people ask the tough question. But if it's just a timing issue, then you've got to be You've got to dig, you've got to discover, you've got to find out like, are they in the market for this product? If they were in the market for it, when, when might they be making a decision, When might they be doing research? When is a good time to follow up?

23:18 All of these are our simple questions, but give you a lot of data so that you can approach your sales and marketing in more more of a scientific way rather than just ad hoc. But a lot of it is trial and error. A lot of it is like for me, a lot of what we do is marketing to companies who have an annual conference. Well, in many cases I don't know when that annual conference is. So part of the research is just to find out when is that annual conference? Do they have an annual conference? And then that will set me up for success going forward. So one of the things that all people have to have, that our entrepreneurs are in sales is you have to have a tremendous amount of patience things all. If you asked me the one thing I have learned above all, it's things always take longer than you think. We released our book we wrote Gopherno in the year two thousand, which, of course today seems like ancient history and kind of is.

24:23 We finally hit the Amazon sales and selling list, number one in the sales category in December of twenty ten. It took ten years. Now, part of that was that Amazon really didn't hardly exist in the first few years. I mean kind of sort of, but not really, And we didn't even get the book on Amazon until two thousand and seven. We changed the cover in two thousand and five because it was horrendous and we got some good advice from a guy who was really willing to be honest with us that we needed to improve it. So it's a whine spaghetti like journey oftentimes that requires an immense amount of patients as you figure it out.

25:09 Yeah, now, that's definitely a great point patients with and today's microwave culture filled with TikTok, Instagram and quick foods and says, oh yeah, success happens. Right, and I get it. I mean, sometimes you don't have the runway. Sometimes you can't be patient. I mean you hear about actors and actresses who go to Hollywood and they will give themselves two years to be discovered, two years of going on auditions day after day, which is which is classic go for no, be persistent, here no, over and over and over again until hopefully you get a yes. And so those people will will work incredibly hard and they have to decide how long they're willing to put in that effort and energy and keep going and keep hearing those nos before they decide they are going to give up. And oftentimes they don't have the runway.

26:10 So the question is will you continue to suffer for your art and to do what it takes and if you don't have the runway, continue to do what it takes and figure it out. Some people do, some people don't. It's everybody's decision as to when they're going to quit. But patience is absolutely a requirement. Absolutely. So you mentioned about, like you know, figuring out how to find out companies and all conferences, so, like, you know, do you have any tangible tips for our listeners that. They can walk away with then implement. Yeah, I think, well, I don't know how many of your listeners are exactly in my position where they're marketing where they need to write their selling an annual conference.

27:01 So my general advice is is just do be willing to ask questions and to find out and if you are scrappy enough, these days. Luckily you can find out anything. I mean, even in the past it would just require it would just require a phone call and diva. I think the thing is here is that without without knowing everybody's individual situation, because everybody's selling different things and their endeavors are so different. I think what I would come back to on this is having a mindset that says I'm gonna figure it out. One of the things I teach in our go for No Challenge. I do this go for No challenge. I challenge people to hear no as much as they can over twenty one days, which is really hard for people. It's hard to get know sometimes because it's hard to actually get in touch with buyers.

28:06 It's also hard to do it emotionally. And so one of our mantras is I can do hard things. So when it comes to so to your point about you know the tactics and how do you go about it, I think you have to have the mindset of I'm going to figure it out. It may not be obvious to me at this point, I'm going to do the research and and have that mindset of I'll do it. It may be hard, but I'm going to do it anyway, and that's that's a hard thing to wrap your brain around. It's it's kind of like, uh, there's this really funny meme.

28:47 I hope I don't screw it up. I read it, I see it. I actually saved it to my desktop computer because it was so funny. It was like, we we didn't do this because it was easy. We did this because we thought it would be easy. I think sometimes people like they'll hear, for example, Richard and I my husband, we've written a lot of books, and they think, like, oh, writing a book, Like some people think that sounds very hard. Some people think that sounds like, oh, sounds kind of easy. And so they'll start a project because they think that it's going to be easy, and then they realize, wow, it's really not. They hit that wall and then they give up. So from the tactic standpoint, it doesn't matter so much the tactic. I think it really matters that you come at it with a mindset of I'm gonna figure it out, even if it takes me longer than I thought it would.

29:42 H So you talk about no, let's kind of go towards the sales or it can be even negotiating a promotion or negotiating a deal regardless. So what are the mindsets in there? Because one of the key things is, you know, everybody is trying to influence each other. What are the key takeaways that people can keep in mind during those conversations. Yeah, it's such a great question. Well, I think while I am definitely not an expert negotiation, and there are some people that I've read their work and they are really good at it. One excellent book is by a woman named Alexandra Carter. It's called Ask for More. She's a Columbia trained lawyer, I believe, Columbia's school lawyer and a professor at the law school. She's quite amazing. And you know, but some of the things I just I remember from things that I've read hers and others is you've got to know your value, and so you've got to walk into these conversations kind of owning that value and being able to articulate why you want that job, want that raise, and be able to share that with the person. And then if you do get a know at being willing to ask for help and ask them.

31:10 So it's a no, what would it take in the future to get to yes and that's the real value of no is that, of course it's not the result that we want. But if you utilize that no to get information instead of just taking the no and walking away, and you ask in that moment, hey, could I how do I turn this no into a yes in the future, that could be invaluable because it really saves you a lot of time and maybe wasted effort doing things that maybe aren't the right things. So that's a big part of it. I think the other thing, too, is when you ask for things, it's calling out when you make that ask, if it seems overly ambitious, then say state that, say hey, I want to ask you something. I may seem this may be too soon, This may be me being overly ambitious. I hope it doesn't come across overly aggressive, but I want to ask you know, when when could I maybe expect that we have a conversation about a promotion?

32:23 And so you've kind of de escalated the situation by calling out your concerns. That way, you don't feel like you're being aggressive or being pushy and Divya, that's the thing I hear so much from people above all else when it comes to hearing know when it comes to asking for things, everyone is so concerned and rightfully so I get it, we're hardwired this way, but they're very concerned with how does this come across and how do I look right? How will this make me perceived? And so you have to ask in ways that make you perceive get perceived in the way that you want to be perceived. So you ask respectfully, You ask politely, of course, you and you you communicate and try to articulate what it is that's going on for you so that you have that vulnerability. Takes a lot of courage, don't get me wrong, but you have that vulnerability so that you get the answers that you want.

33:32 Mm hmm. And it kind of brings us back to the no go for no. And you have mentioned about those questions and like, go for it and ask respectfully. Do you have a couple of example stories where you have seen like you know, you give an example of Richard stories. Yeah, the questions and it worked out. For you, oh at a time where it worked out. Yeah, that's a that's a great question. Well, I think you know, go for no pops up for me all the time in situations, and I think one of the things is to just have like a no awareness to look for opportunities where you ordinarily wouldn't ask for something, and then you just think like, well, wait a minute, I'll just I'll just ask and just see what happens. I remember, not too long ago, Richard and I got to a hotel.

34:42 I'm trying to remember why we were there so early. We must have just maybe it was a red eye. We got to a hotel at like, uh oh, I think it was in Phoenix. Yeah, we just had a super early flight from Orlando to Phoenix. We got to the hotel at like eight thirty in the morning, and we're standing in the lobby with all of our luggage thinking about how we're just going to have to hang out in the lobby for the next three or four hours. And I just figured, well, you go for no, walk up to the counter and talk to the person behind the counter. So I just walked up and I said, and I did exactly what I advised people to do.

35:24 I just said, Hey, I know this is like a big ask, and this is unusual and a little crazy, but I'm going to ask it anyway because we're here. We just landed. Our flight was super early, from Orlando. And I know it's something that you all don't normally do, but is there any chance that we could check in and get our room now? And with all of that prefacing, I was like boom, she started typing on the keyboard and gave us our room, no questions asked. And so doing it in that way to where you let the person know that you understand what you're asking for is a little bove above and beyond right, I think that goes a long way.

36:09 Yeah, that's a beautiful example. So if people wanted to connect with you, where could they connect with you? And Yeah, so I really encourage everybody listening to go to our website gophnow dot com. We've got a fun no quotient assessment so you can test your mindset when it comes to fear of rejection, how you handle failure. At the website, the little quiz you can take, you can find out if you have a high note quotient, a moderate no quotient, or a low no quotient. And I give you some tools and some suggestions based on all that, how you answer those the questions and the assessment of how you can start to shift the way you look at things in order to improve your no quotient.

36:55 Mm hmm, that's fantastic. Any last minute thoughts you'd like to share the Palistins. Yeah. My last piece of advice is always, you know, don't make assumptions about what you think people will do or say, or spend or decide whatever it is. To have the courage to ask. Ask in a way that we have people willing to answer you. Even if it's a no, just accept it, but don't assume it's going to be a no, because when you do that, you give yourself the no, and that's really the worst one to get. It's okay if you get a no from somebody else, don't give yourself the know that's a bad one.

37:39 M hm. Definitely. Well, thank you for joining us, Andria. It was good to have you, and thank you listeners and our audience. We appreciate you being part of our family because without you, this year would not be possible. Reach out to us, let us know how can we serve and support you the life you deserve, and thank you one for making this ship possible. Take care, Thank you for being part of Beyond Confidence. With your host Dvpark, we hope you have learned more about how to start living the life you want. Each week on Beyond Confidence, you hear stories of real people who have experienced growth by overcoming their fears and building meaningful relationships. During Beyond Confidence, Vpark shares what happened to her when she stepped out of her comfort zone to work directly with people across the globe. She not only coaches people how to form hard connections, but also transform relationships to mutually beneficial partnerships as they strive to live the life they want. If you are ready to live the life you want and leverage your strengths, learn more at www dot dvpark dot com and you can connect with dvat contact at dvpark dot com. We look forward to you're joining us next week.