“How you handle rejection will define your career.” The old agent who taught me the business told me that on my first day, after we had heard “no” a dozen times. I was reminded of that lesson when I embarked on my publishing journey and discovered that whether the new world of your dreams is writing an inspirational novel or making a sales quota, the lessons are the same. I chose to publish my book independently.

It was a business decision, plain and simple. The traditional route is slow and laborious, with multiple gatekeepers. I regularly speak to large groups of people and didn’t want to wait three to five years to get a story in their hands that I believe will make a difference for them. I’ve been selling benefits my entire adult life, so if I have a story to tell and an audience to hear it, my first priority is to find a way around the gatekeeper and directly to that audience. In the beginning, though, I tried the traditional route because I was new to publishing.

Over the course of two years, I got an agent, waited impatiently as he pitched it to publishers and then listened carefully to their reasons for rejecting it. That feedback caused me to rethink and rewrite, which made The Tinderbox Tapes a better novel in the end. I like to think that if an editor picked up my book today, they would say, “How come he didn’t send me this story?” In our sales workshops, we teach that practice is just as valuable as a sale. Read that again.