“The worst thing they can do is say no.” Many of us have received this advice, and yet the sting of rejection still burns! How can you master the art of pitching while building rejection resilience? We spoke with PR Strategist Alice Draper to find out.
Watch this interview to learn how to normalize rejection
Alice is on a mission to make publicity easy and accessible for underrepresented women entrepreneurs at all stages of their businesses.
When Alice started building her business, she knew that publicity, in the right places, would garner her the authority she needed to position herself as a high-end copywriter. She started pitching magazines like VICE, Refinery29, HuffPost, and Business Insider.
This came with an unplanned skill — the art of the pitch — which is how she ended up pivoting her business towards publicity. Alice has secured her clients in over 500 podcasts including countless top 1% and top 0.5% podcasts.
A big part of Alice’s work looks into normalizing rejection, and how rejection resilience ties into success.
Her weekly newsletter, The Rejection Chronicles, explores topics like living with rejection sensitivity, building sustainable outreach habits, and normalizing the “rejection sting.”
How many Nos can you collect?
The conversation begins with Alice explaining how she got into pitch writing. She states that she became “obsessed” with this task. Alice found she enjoyed writing pitches and that her clients loved her and the results she garnered. She was able to pivot her career to something she enjoyed and profited the most from.
Fear of rejection is a major obstacle to pitching for many people. Luckily, Alice has a 3-step process for overcoming this fear: 1) Understand rejection; 2) Find a community of other people actively being rejected; and 3) Set a rejection goal. This will all help to normalize rejection and make it less painful and scary.
Another challenge many face in pitching is knowing where to start. No one will ever give you permission to pitch yourself – you have to seize the opportunity! Start with a spreadsheet of where you want to be seen – websites for your writing, podcasts to guest on, etc. – and add the email addresses of who you would need to contact. Then jump right in!
If you want to get started today on perfecting your pitch, set a rejection goal. Start submitting your pitches and applications, expect to get rejected, and start racking up points! Eventually, your pitch will be accepted, and you will have developed rejection resilience in the meantime.
Listen to master the art of pitching
To learn more, check out Alice’s official website here. You can also connect with her on LinkedIn and Instagram.
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