5 Negative Business Situations and How to Turn Them Around

1. You got rejected

If you’re in any part of the world of business, rejection is just something you are going to run into. It’s inevitable. People will want to challenge you and question your ideas, and you should welcome that. It is absolutely necessary in helping you to figure out exactly how much you want something and why. But what do you do with all that negativity?

How to turn it around:

Turn it into positivity. Rise to the challenge. Accept that the climb might be the best part of this whole thing. Make it a point to prove people wrong. Get excited about showing people how right you are. Dealing with rejection means facing it head on, proving it’s not true, then on to the next one.

2. Your competition is pissing you off

They’re doing better. It seems like they are winning. You can’t stop thinking about it and it’s driving you crazy.

How to turn it around:

Ignore them.

The biggest mistake companies and entrepreneurs can make is looking around to see who else is in the running for number one. Who cares? I just don’t do those things. You should be full steam ahead on your track, regardless of what other people are doing. If I take care of my domain, I win. Not paying attention to your competitors is a competitive advantage.

3. Your idea isn’t working out

I completely understand how unbearable that pain is when you start to wonder if it’s time to jump off of an idea. When do you leave it behind? How do you know if you’re just two days or one week away from all your problems being solved?

How to turn it around:

When someone says to me “I’m having a lot of trouble with my start-up”, the first thing I do is ask them how long they’ve been at it. Very often they reply somewhere between four and six months. When that’s the reply, I need to try not to laugh. Four months, when you’re trying to build a business around your passion, your lifeblood, is an insanely short amount of time. Compare it to the upside of living the happiest life that you possibly can. Doesn’t seem so long now, does it?

But maybe their answer is two or three years. Two to three years, and still no traction. In that case, when your days are filled with more anxiety than collectedness, I do have a bit of a more somber answer. It might be time to audit what you’re doing; ask yourself if you need to find a different version of it, or a new passion altogether.

4. Your boss is old fashioned

We’ve all been there. You have big ideas for a project or a client, and your boss can’t seem to wrap his head around it. This is particularly relevant right now with the changing landscape of digital advertising. Some people really don’t want to hear about social media. It’s their loss, really. But when it’s your company, you want to make sure you’re doing things right.

How to turn it around:

Don’t waste time trying to keep people happy. For your business to stay relevant, you have to change. You don’t have a choice. I truly believe that the way to get old minds to accept and consume your new ways is to be extremely rogue and aggressive. Old minds are tough to move. If you’re going to play within the lines that they draw, you’re not going to be able to do what you want. There’s no need to be rude about it. You don’t have to yell or fight. You might debate. You might argue. But you have to be tough in your beliefs and stand your ground.

5. Your meetings are unproductive

When a meeting is unproductive, it’s not only shitty for business, it’s also shitty for morale and company culture. No one wants to feel like their time is being wasted.

How to turn it around:

Cut all meetings in half. And yes, I mean time. Make your meeting half the amount of time that you originally thought it should be, and things will go much better for you. Heck, even cut the meeting in half after you set it up. The amount of bull crap that goes on in a meeting, the set up, the agenda, is insane to me. If you give people a ten pound bag, they are going to fill it with ten pounds of crap. If you give them a fifteen pound bag, it’s the same. Fifteen pounds of crap. They will never overfill the bag. So cut what they have in half. You’ll still get everything done. You’ll just eliminate all the unnecessary banter, anecdotes, etc. Create a mandate. Set standards. Be an example. Let your leadership learn by osmosis by having shorter meetings with them.