There is something FAR worse than rejection

I'm building a SaaS in public, posting progress every day.

Recap:

• I started a company almost 2 years ago. It failed. I made tons of mistakes and I learned A LOT. Now I'm live-building my next thing sharing everything about the process.

• This time I'm doing things the right way. I'm starting with a problem: create high-converting landing pages

• I have a hypothesis. People are willing to pay for a product that makes it easy to create high-converting landing pages.

• I booked in 4 customer interviews yesterday. I had 3 more idea validation sessions and it looks like I'm ready to jump into the MVP-building phase

Today's TL;DR;

- Ghosting and how to deal with it

- The story about that time a customer broke me

- CELEBRATIONS: I've got 11 subscribers to the newsletter https://welldoitlive.beehiiv.com/ I cannot thank you enough!

I was ready to handle rejection. I wasn't ready for ghosting.

When you speak with mentors or learn about starting a company, they prepare you to handle rejection. They teach you about developing strong character. They tell you to not let negative feedback get you down.

What they don't prepare you is being ghosted.

Being ignored is fine. People don't engage with you or don't care about what you have to say. That's ok

Being rejected is fine too. People engage with you but don't like what you have to say or what you have to offer.

Being ghosted is a completely different story. You get some initial engagement, and then... Nothing! Not a reply, not a reason for not getting back to you, not some closure. Absolutely nothing.

How to deal with it?

Ghosting is one of the worst things that can happen to you. Unless you are one of those people that not bothered by anything in the world it will hurt.

From my experience, there is only one way to learn how to deal with it:

Be ghosted enough times that you'd no longer be bothered by it.

It will suck the first time.

It will suck even more the second.

The third time you will wonder if is you.

The fourth time you think you are ready for it.

I wish I could tell you it will stop sucking, but it doesn't. You just learn how to live with it.

Is not rare, it happened to me this morning. Here's what happened:

I reached out to a guy on Reddit last night. He posted his landing page for the community to roast. I messaged him, providing genuine interest in his work, and asked if would jump on a call with me.

To my surprise, he replied and said that he would. We exchanged some more messages and talked about a few things.

I sent him a Calendly link and booked the call for 8 am the day after.

8 am is my workout time but I was willing to push it by 30 mins to get valuable insight from this person.

8 am came and I joined the call.

Nothing.

3 minutes later I got a request to join from "Otter meeting note taker". I thought it was a really good idea, to let AI take notes, so I let the bot in.

Then a few minutes passed and no human joined the call.

I messaged him on Reddit. Sent him an email.

Nothing.

After 10 minutes I left the call and had my first no-show user interview

Honestly, it wasn't too bad. Annoying at most.

a year ago that would've been infuriating but not anymore.

I have a thick skin now, I've been through MUCH worse.

Let me tell you the most heartbreaking moment I had.

In January, I started offering a 1:1 consulting service for weight loss as part of my app offering.

I had a landing page with a decent enough story and CTA that people were booking a free consultation.

This guy booked a meeting at 1 am, he was on the west-most coast of the USA. I'm in London.

I needed clients so I armed myself with coffee, more coffee, and extra coffee I waited till 1 am.

He joins the call. We started introducing ourselves. I tell him about me and my journey and struggle with my weight. He tells me his side of the story and we hit it off quite quickly. Friendly, positive guy, and super smiling too.

We get to the core part of my process, figure out how I can help and what's the reason why they want to lose weight.

He told me the most heartbreaking story I heard in a while:

4 months prior he had a massive fight with 2 of his 5 children. They told him to never pick them up in a public place ever again because they were ashamed of his size.

That was the same day he had to reschedule an appointment for a scan. The hospital didn't have a big enough machine for him.

He told me that after that he vowed to change his life. He started walking down the road in the middle of the night so the neighbors would not see him. He cleaned up his diet, started intermittent fasting, and found a workout buddy.

He wanted to work with somebody who could provide the right guidance and I was the perfect fit for the role.

I was so invested in this guy that I was ready to jump on a plane and work with him in person. All I wanted was to help him hit his goals.

We concluded the call after 2 hours and I promised him I'd recap everything in an email and send over a payment link to get the ball rolling.

It was 3 am. I was so pumped to work with this guy that I stayed up till 4 to recap everything in the email. Added recommendations, advice, and a full roadmap for us to work on together.

I sent the email and then went to bed.

A day passed. Nothing. After a day or so I sent a follow-up email "He's probably busy or doesn't have time to reply right now" I thought.

You know where this is going. I never heard from him ever again.

Some of you might react to this by telling me to grow up, through luck, etc. You're not wrong.

I was so emotionally invested in this guy, I saw myself in him, and I knew exactly what he needed. I would've worked for free for him.

That was a big blow to my self-esteem. I let my emotional investment in the situation take control. Silly mistake.

I'm better and stronger now but just writing about it brings back unpleasant memories.

Key takeaway from my mistake:

If you're just starting, this is the kind of stuff that you'll have to deal with on this journey. Be ready for it.

Hopefully reading about it will make it a bit easier for you to deal with.

It will still suck every time that happens.

Over to you now:

Has anything similar happened to you?

How did you deal with it?

Let me know in the comments!