Diversity Woman Magazine

WIN 2016

Leadership and Executive Development for women of all races, cultures and backgrounds

Issue link: https://diversitywoman.epubxp.com/i/632328

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d i v e r s i t y w o m a n . c o m W i n t e r 2 0 1 6 D I V E R S I T Y W O M A N 9 S ince the days of Dale Carnegie, a staple of the message targeted at any- one in sales is that a thick skin is mandatory. You're going to hear a lot more nos than yeses. Everyone knows that, of course, but the rejections still hurt. "No" Is the New "Yes" Today, Silicon Valley has made an art form out of rejection—not of rejecting someone else's pitch but of being rejected. Counterintuitively, it seems that if you don't have a handful of failed businesses under your belt, no one's going to take your meeting or fund your next idea. Te Silicon Valley motto of "Fail Fast, Fail Often" has migrated into the main- stream. Diversity Woman explores this thinking and what it means in this issue's "Failure to Launch" (page 29). Troughout my long career in sales and marketing and now business ownership, I'm relieved that, whether because of my personality, my upbringing, or plain old stubbornness, I've never been afraid of the word no. I've always been able to fgure out that either I am talking to the wrong person, the timing isn't right, or I need to go back and design a better product or a better pitch. And as much as 99 percent of the time, I've been success- ful the second time around—okay, well, sometimes the third or fourth. I buy into this Silicon Valley motto because I've grown so much from hear- ing the word no. It's helped me be more creative, try something diferent. I never took no to mean that I was a failure or not good enough. For example, when the economy crashed in 2008, absolutely no one was answering my phone calls. Everyone I knew in the small-business world was scrambling to try to sell his or her busi- ness and fnd a "secure" position in an established organization. People were telling me that print was dead, that I needed to go digital. I watched help- lessly as some of my favorite titles shut down their print editions and went 100 percent digital. Eight years later, many publications that sacrifced print in favor of digital are no longer in business. Meanwhile, Diversity Woman magazine is not only alive but fourishing. When everyone was telling me to stop producing a print publication, I went with my heart, my vision, my passion. Yes, we innovated and launched a digital platform, but we also kept printing this magazine. I be- lieved that we had a business model that worked, and time has proven me correct. Te challenges I faced in 2008 and the subsequent soul-searching gave me a chance to turn adversity into oppor- tunity. It forced me to reevaluate and change—and I and my business are bet- ter of for it today. Silicon Valley champions failure be- cause failure forces you to reassess your product or business model so you can improve it. It takes a couple of failures to get it right. Believe me, I know. Sheila Robinson Publisher, Diversity Woman Publisher's Page > I've grown so much from hearing the word no. It's helped me be more creative.

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