This week's idea
From Alan Weiss' best-selling book, Million Dollar Consulting:
"You must be able to accept rejection and reject acceptance."
Most people get the first part. Learning to handle "no" is hard but necessary.
The second part is where careers stall - saying no when someone says yes.
Useful takeaways
Not all opportunities are good opportunities. Some will derail you.
Saying yes to the wrong thing means saying no to the right thing.
Your positioning is defined as much by what you turn down as what you take on.
Where people get this wrong
Most people read "reject acceptance" and think it means being picky or playing hard to get. So they turn down work to seem exclusive, or they overcomplicate simple decisions.
That's not the lesson.
The principle isn't scarcity posturing. It's strategic focus.
There's a difference between rejecting work because it doesn't fit your positioning and rejecting work because you want to seem important.
One protects your value. The other is just ego.
Every yes costs you something. Time. Attention. Reputation. Positioning clarity.
If you say yes to everything that wants you, you end up standing for nothing.
How I’ve applied it
I've become much more ruthless about what I take on.
Not because I'm trying to be selective for the sake of it, but because I've learned that the wrong work, even well-intentioned work, dilutes everything else. Now when an opportunity presents itself, I ask:
Does this strengthen my positioning or confuse it?
Will I be proud to have this in my body of work in two years?
Does this move me toward where I want to be, or just keep me busy?
If the answer to any of those is no, I turn it down. Even when it's flattering.
Storytime
When I was finishing uni, I had an opportunity to become a bug man.
Not joking. It was the graduate marketing scheme for Rentokil, the pest control company.
On paper, it seemed solid. Multinational Company. Proper corporate ladder. Solid pay.
I attacked it hard. Two-day assessment centre down south. Psychometric tests. Panel interviews. I prepped as if my life depended on it.
Sadly, I didn't get it.
I went home defeated, wondering what I was going to do with my career and life as a whole.
Then I thought:
"Fuck it. I'll work in an ad agency instead. Seems like more fun than a corporate ladder anyway."
A week later, I saw a job posting for Grey London. It was a junior role and a bit of a long shot.
I decided I needed to be different. So I asked my brother to film me doing an elevator pitch, in an actual elevator. After a few outtakes, I sent it off.
They loved it and offered me a job after a couple of interviews.
Then Rentokil called back.
Someone had dropped out. They wanted me to start the same week.
I was torn for about 30 seconds.
Then I called Grey London and accepted their offer.
Looking back, that rejection from Rentokil redirected my entire career (and life to a degree).
If they'd said yes the first time, I would have taken it. No hesitation. I'd probably still be in corporate marketing somewhere.
But because they rejected me, I found advertising. And when they came back, I had the clarity to turn them down.
Acceptance feels like validation in the moment. But sometimes the best thing that can happen is being forced to find a different path.
And once you're on the right path, you have to protect it, even when the old option comes back around.
Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
Murph