Most men shudder at the thought of rejection.
They remember asking their cute classmate out in 8th grade — and how they wanted to crawl under a rock when she told her friends, and the rumor spread like wildfire through the entire school.
But I'm on a mission to collect 100 no's.
Here's why this is the hill I've decided to die on.
Let's get into it.
It's math, silly
My father's a big hockey fan.
Growing up in the 1950s, he used to stand in the blistering cold for hours with HIS father to watch the local team Djurgården compete.
(This was when they actually played hockey outside, with no benches and no roof in the dark Scandinavian winter)
He's spent decades trying to make me as passionate about it as he is.
And if there's one thing I've taken from watching hockey, it's this:
The team with the most shots on goal tends to win.
So what does that mean for us?
My mentor Nicolas Cole — who has taught thousands how to become premium email ghostwriters — shared these numbers with students inside his program.
The amount of effort required to land 1 client is, on average:
• 100 quality outreach messages
• 50 quality “Free Consulting” Loom videos
• 10 follow-up messages per lead
That's a good baseline.
Now, most people who aren't interested won't say no outright. They'll ghost you. They'll go quiet mid-thread.
So collecting 100 expressed no's (the kind you can screenshot), is genuinely hard.
But let's say you do it.
Would it be reasonable to expect that you'd also (as a byproduct) get at least ONE yes?
Damn straight.
So then it's just a question of volume.
A matter of getting enough shots on goal.
And the only way to fail is to stop before you get there.
The mistake: most men quit too soon
Most men treat rejection as a signal to stop.
Maybe I'm doing something horribly wrong. Maybe I should pivot.
But most of the time it's not strategy that's missing. It's reps.
There's a story from the book Art & Fear that makes this uncomfortably clear:
On the first morning of class, the ceramics teacher dragged a bathroom scale into the middle of the studio.
"This semester," he said, "half of you will be graded on quantity: fifty pounds of pots earns an A. The other half will be graded on a single pot. One. But it has to be perfect."
The Quantity side got to work immediately. Clay flew, wheels spun, pots collapsed and cracked and got thrown again. Every failure taught their hands something new — walls too thin, glaze that blisters, handles that snap.
The shelves filled.
The Quality side, meanwhile, sketched and debated and theorized. Every mistake felt too costly to make, so most of them barely touched the clay at all. They were saving themselves for the perfect attempt.
At the end of the semester, the teacher laid every pot on the same table and picked out the finest work in the class: the most graceful vase, the most balanced bowl, the mug whose handle fit the hand as if it had grown there.
Every single one came from the Quantity group. While the Quality students had been trying to think their way to perfection, the others had been making their way there — one ugly, cracked, imperfect pot at a time.
Successful businesses are often built the same way.
From the outside they look like they have it together. But from the inside, they're held together with duct tape: imperfect people with messy systems, moving forward regardless.
My rejection story
In 8th grade, I liked this cute brunette girl in my class.
I was a computer geek. Not exactly someone with a reputation for flirting.
But I gathered up the courage to call her on the home phone.
"Yes, it's Emelia."
I hung up the moment she picked up.
(This was before caller ID.)
I just couldn't do it.
This went on a few more times. She must have thought she had a prank caller.
But I finally got myself to say hi.
And it went something like this:
Bjorn: Hi... it's Bjorn from your class.
Emelia: Oh. hi.
Bjorn: How are you?
Emelia: Good, I guess.
Bjorn: Well, you seem to be doing well in school so that's great.
Emelia: Sure
Bjorn: Anyway, I was wondering if maybe we could do something after school?
Emelia: Like what?
Bjorn: I don't know... maybe a movie? Get something to eat?
Emelia: Hmm... I don't think so.
Bjorn: Okay... thought I'd ask anyway... bye
I was terrified she'd tell her friends, who'd then tell EVERYONE else.
In hindsight, it doesn't seem so bad but I felt so embarrassed that I didn't ask anyone out again for over a year.
My emotional takeaway was that I had done something wrong. That it failed because I'd attempted something I had no business attempting. That a relationship "wasn't meant for someone like me."
The 39-year-old me knows better.
What I should have done was simple: become a more attractive guy, and get more shots on goal. A few years of that and I would have been unrecognizable.
The most successful guys with women aren't always the smoothest: they're the ones who aren't afraid to go again after a no.
Every rejection is like water off a ducks back.
And that's what I want to emulate now but with clients.
What each "no" buys you
It's easy to read a no as a waste of time.
Nothing came from it. Move on.
But zoom out, and each no is actually:
• A story worth telling someday
• Confidence and resilience, compounding
• Data you can use to sharpen your approach
Michael Jordan said it better than I can:
"I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed"
Every no is building you. Teaching you. Hammering you into the person you need to become.
Because here's the uncomfortable truth: you don't have what you want yet because you're not yet the person who would have it. You have to chisel yourself into someone for whom getting it would be unreasonable NOT to happen.
A bit like going to the gym.
Uncomfortable and sometimes painful.
But you're always glad you did it when it's done.
The dread is almost always worse than the doing.
How it works in practice
For any goal worth having, you need a plan.
Here's mine:
• 30+ minutes of quality outreach DMs per day (or 3.5+ hours on weekends)
• Loom videos to elaborate on my offer and get prospects on a call
• Follow-ups until they reply or block me
I suspect that last bullet is gonna earn me most of my 100 no's ;)
Making it a mission flips the psychology entirely.
And it almost makes me look forward to each no.
And that's the point.
To flip it from something you can't control to something you can.
You do the reps. The reward takes care of itself.
Now that you've read all this...
Why don't you join me?
Start your own 100 no's.
Every no taking you one step closer to the number that makes a yes inevitable.
P.S. I'm documenting every rejection & what I'm learning in The Ugly Emails Letter.
Take the quiz to follow along and find out what's holding YOU back at:
uglyemails.com
