How I Learned to Eat Rejection for Breakfast

The defining stories that shaped my identity, decisions, and journey.I eat rejection for breakfast.
 
At least that’s what we used to say.
 
When you’re standing on the streets of Waikiki trying to stop strangers on vacation and convince them to hand you cash, you learn pretty quickly that rejection is most of the job.
 
Back then we joked about it all the time.
 
We eat rejection for breakfast.
 
Because if you were going to survive out there, you had to.
 
When I got out of the Navy, I knew one thing for sure.
 
I wanted to stay in Hawaii.
 
At the time I owned a condo in Makiki, but Waikiki was where everything happened. When I was in the Navy it had mostly been my playground.
 
Now it needed to become my workplace.
 
My first real day working down there was coming up on a Monday morning, so the night before I stayed at my friend Craig’s place near the corner of Ala Wai Boulevard and Seaside Avenue. Craig and his roommates were already doing the job I was about to start.
 
One of them was a guy named Mike.
 
They worked something called OPC.
 
If you’ve ever been to Waikiki you’ve seen it. People on the streets stopping tourists offering luaus, dinner cruises, and island tours.
 
But we weren’t just selling activities.
 
We were inviting people to a travel club presentation.
 
To make sure they actually showed up, we had to collect a deposit right there on the street.
 
Usually about twenty dollars per person.
 
Think about that for a second.
 
You’re walking down the streets of Waikiki on vacation, and a stranger starts talking to you about a luau.
 
Then, a few minutes later, that same stranger asks you to hand them cash.
 
Not exactly the easiest sale in the world.
 
The guy who first showed me how to do it was Sam Issac.
 
Sam took me down to Waikiki Shopping Plaza at Kūhiō and Seaside and handed me two brochures.
 
One for the Ali‘i Kai dinner cruise.
One for Germaine’s Luau.
 
Then he said one word.
 
Watch.
 
Sam had this incredible energy.
 
From across the street he was already smiling at people.
 
When he approached them, he would open his arms wide like he already knew them.
 
Sometimes he would say something like,
 
“Let me guess… You guys are from California.”
 
People would laugh.
 
They would stop.
 
They would talk to him.
 
It looked effortless.
 
Then he handed the brochures to me.
 
Your turn.
 
So I walked up to someone.
 
Hey guys.
 
They didn’t even look at me.
 
Just kept walking.
 
The next group did the same thing.
 
And the next.
 
And the next.
 
If you’ve ever been approached in a tourist area, you know the move.
 
People pretend you don’t exist.
 
They stare straight ahead.
 
They avoid eye contact.
 
They keep walking like you’re invisible.
 
After five or ten people ignore you in a row, it starts to feel awkward.
 
But then something clicked.
 
I started paying attention to the math.
 
In a typical shift, I might talk to about 250 people.
 
Maybe 40 or 50 would actually acknowledge me.
 
Out of those, maybe 20 would stop long enough to hear the pitch.
 
And if I did a decent job, maybe four of them would say yes.
 
Those four people were enough to make $400 or $500 in a few hours.
 
Once I realized that, everything changed.
 
It wasn’t about the 230 people who ignored me.
 
It was about the four who didn’t.
 
Rejection wasn’t personal.
 
It was math.
 
And once you understand the math, rejection stops hurting.
 
When someone actually stopped, that’s when the real game started.
 
The base offer was simple.
 
A luau or dinner cruise for about twenty dollars each.
 
If they hesitated, I adjusted.
 
What if I do both for twenty dollars total?
 
Still unsure.
 
Then I started adding value.
 
Maybe a dinner certificate to Duke’s or the Cheesecake Factory.
 
Then I would pull out something called a Value Entertainment book.
 
The cover said it had $10,000 in savings inside.
 
The company bought them in bulk, and they cost me about seven dollars out of my commission.
 
To a tourist, though, it looked like an incredible bonus.
 
And if they still said no, I had one more move.
 
Alright.
 
I’ll also throw in a case of chocolate macadamia nuts.
 
People would laugh almost every time.
 
And a lot of times, they would finally say yes.
 
Every one of those extras came out of my commission.
 
But I learned something important.
 
It was better to make a smaller deal than no deal at all.
 
So I worked harder than everyone else.
 
Most people worked one shift.
 
I worked two.
 
Eight in the morning until noon.
 
Then again, until five.
 
Hundreds of conversations every day.
 
Most people said no.
 
Some ignored me completely.
 
But a few said yes.
 
Those few months on the streets of Waikiki taught me some of the most important lessons of my life.
 
I learned how to deal with rejection.
 
I learned how to build rapport quickly.
 
And I learned how to add value.
 
One of the first things I had to learn was how to get people to like and trust me very quickly.
 
When you are stopping strangers on the streets, you only have a few seconds to build rapport.
 
That skill became one of the most valuable things I have ever learned in sales, whether I was working the streets of Waikiki or closing deals in the suites.
 
Years later, while studying psychology and human behavior to perfect my craft, I read Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink about the power of thinking without thinking.
 
It reminded m,e of those days on the streets of Waikiki.
 
After a while I could look at someone from half a block away and guess where they were from before they even opened their mouth.
 
Those instincts would serve me well later when I started Nugget Style Productions, promoting nightclub events in Waikiki.
 
And later still in high commission sales, where the stakes were much higher.
 
The environment changed.
 
The principles didn’t.
 
Everything I learned about sales started there.
 
On the streets of Waikiki.
 
Learning how to eat rejection for breakfast