How do you deal with rejection?
Back when I was a first year graphic arts student, my class entered a design competition for the Canadian branch of an international organization.

I can’t recall exactly what the design was for. Something commemorative, and I think it was something round. A coin, maybe. It was a long time ago. Most of the details have faded into the mist of Things That Don’t Matter Much.

What I do remember is the outrage I felt at receiving a warm and fuzzy rejection letter, thanking me for entering the competition, and telling me how much my hard work was appreciated.

Why outrage?

Here’s how the letter began:

“Dear Stanley…”

What’s in a name?
Being 18 years old, no battle was too small, so I fired off what was likely a terse (and I’m sure suitably adolescent) response about the egregious error in my name. I said something about not appreciating the sex change, and how it undermined the sincerity of their communication.

Someone replied.

Defensively.

In my memory, the tone was very much how dare you.

Which was exactly the wrong way to go.

Communication is not a contest
I was probably out of line, taking someone to task over a simple mistake. We all make them from time to time.

But pushing back wasn’t the smartest thing to do, either.

Communication isn’t a contest. It’s not about who wins in a conflict, no matter how small.

How you treat people is about who you are and what you believe in.

How you treat people shapes your reputation. It becomes your brand.

Rejection is an intimate thing
I wasn’t angry because I didn’t win the competition. I didn’t expect to. It was a nation-wide call for entry, and not only was I not a senior student, I wasn’t even the best of the first year group.

I wasn’t angry because of the mixed message I got from the organization.

I wasn’t angry because someone couldn’t be bothered to get my name right.

I wasn’t angry. I was hurt.

The message I received was we don’t really respect you.

A little dramatic?

Not in the mind a teenager.

Repair the injury, no insult, please
If it happened today I’d just snort and give my inner cynic a handful of jelly beans. Someone’s asleep at the switch. Them’s the breaks.

But back then I was trying to figure out where I fit in the world, fresh out of high school and in community college, living on my own, but still expected to have my parents sign my report card.

Let’s not even go into how bad the training course was.

The person on the other end of my letter had no way of knowing any of that.

And there’s the problem.

The customer may not always be right, but the customer is always human.

It’s sometimes hard to remember that.

You muck it up, you fix it
The simple fact is this: they made a mistake. The circumstances didn’t matter. There should have been a simple apology.

A little empathy would have gone a long way to restoring their brand, no matter what the person writing the reply might really think.

She was the voice of the organization.

And she blew it.

It’s the little things that get you
I have one of those names that gets routinely misspelled, or even morphed into something else entirely. It’s no big deal (at least, now that I’m no longer a teenager).

Years after the Stanley incident, I went to art school. During my foundation semester, I answered to the name of Stephanie, and Stephanie answered to mine. We had no idea why people mixed us up, but we rolled with it, even had fun with it.

But I still find it baffling when someone replies to an email and manages to misspell my name, because it’s sitting right there on the screen, big as life.

Is the person too busy to notice?

Is it out of habit, because the sender is used to seeing it spelled differently?

Does it even matter?

No.

And yes.

It’s not the spelling that matters.

It’s the mindset.

The beauty of small
We’ve come to expect less from big business. Faceless, heartless, you know the drill: we’re just numbers to them.

That’s why what we do as small, agile, independent business people sets us apart. We know how it feels to be treated like consumers instead of people.

We know how to do better.

We know how to do it right.

Make excellence a habit
Taking a few seconds to make sure you spell someone’s name correctly might not strike you as professional excellence. It might feel like one more item on an endless list of rules you have to follow. Boring, even petty, details. Why bother?

You bother because small things become big things.

Check that spelling a few times and it becomes a habit.

Add a few more of those little professional habits and it starts to feel pretty damn good.

Make a mistake? No problem. You’re a pro. You know how to handle it.

Make it right, treat your customer like she matters, and she’ll love you for it.

Excellent is simple. But it must be practiced.

About the author: Stacey Cornelius is a writer and artist, and mighty fond of empowering creative people to show their best work to the world. To get more tips and insights on making a great professional creative practice, subscribe for free updates. Want high speed inspiration? Follow Stacey on Twitter.

Do you know what happens to your work when you send it into the world? You might want to give that some thought before you end up with an unfortunate chapter in your memoirs.

Cautionary tale #1: keep track of your clients
Back in the 20th Century I did freelance Web design work. One of my clients was a non-profit arts organization. I heard from them occasionally, when they had a new batch of photographs to add to their gallery pages.

One day I happened by their site and was horrified to discover someone else was maintaining it—and doing a sloppy job. I wasn’t upset because I’d been dumped—I charged them half my usual rate as a goodwill gesture because they were strapped for cash, and strongly suspected the new person was a volunteer.

I was not impressed about having my work mangled, but there wasn’t much I could do. The client had moved on, they owned the site, so what they did with it was their business.

The problem was no one bothered to tell me. I had the organization listed as a client on my website. The awkward additions could have hurt my reputation as a designer, and I could have looked like an idiot in the eyes of existing or potential clients—if I wasn’t keeping track of my own work, could they trust me to look after theirs?

Cautionary tale #2: keep track of your unsold work
I once had a conversation with a woman who makes handbound books. She wanted to expand her customer base, but when I suggested craft galleries or high-end gift shops, she balked. She’d had work out on consignment, and swore she’d never do it again. Some of her books came back with the covers bleached from being in a window, and some had residue from price stickers.

She didn’t have a letter of agreement to protect her pieces from inexperienced shop owners, or information on how to care for them properly, which would have given her recourse if there was damage.

A cautionary tale that’s technically hearsay
A ceramic artist had a piece broken by gallery staff, who tried to nail it to the wall. The story came from a mostly reliable source, but I’m not 100% certain of the details. I could probably confirm it, but I really don’t want to reopen that wound.

Simple advice: look after your creative work
If you have unsold work anywhere, keep track of it. It could end up in a storeroom for weeks on end, where it will never earn you money.

Don’t depend on the long-term goodwill, or even competence, of the people handling it. That work belongs to you, so don’t be afraid to drop in or call to see what’s happening with it.

Don’t take anything for granted
You may have had a good experience in the past, but that’s no guarantee. Circumstances change.

That crackerjack gallery assistant might go off to dental school. The client who throws work your way once or twice a year might decide to retire and hand the business over to his penny-pinching brother-in-law, who doesn’t see the need for professional design services.

You might not find out until something goes awry.

Be proactive about your work and your reputation
This isn’t about being a control freak. It’s about being fully aware of how and where your work is shown.

Make sure your consignment or exhibited pieces are in good condition and displayed properly. Your work speaks for you when you’re not there. If it tells the wrong story, it won’t do your reputation any good.

If you need to intervene, be professional. The way you handle difficult situations affects your good name, too.

If you’re a designer, keep an eye on clients who may not understand that tinkering with an existing project can be disastrous, for them as well as you. Sometimes people are too uncomfortable to tell you they want to work with someone else, or can’t afford your services anymore.

When all else fails, build some confidence—and some character
I think it’s the Zen masters who say the only thing you can truly master is yourself. So even though you can’t always get the best results from clients, you still have options.

Don’t be afraid to pull work out of a venue that doesn’t bring good results—your livelihood comes first. Find a better one.

You can’t stop someone from having their way with work you’ve sold them, but you can disassociate your name from a project if it no longer represents you well. That’s not the happiest ending, but if you’re doing your job as a creative, you’re already onto new work and new ideas.

And there are always those memoirs. Bad experience can make for good reading.

How about you? Any horror stories to share about work gone way wrong? Any sage advice from your own experience?

When you run your own professional creative practice, you sometimes find yourself overwhelmed. There seems to be a thousand things to do, and only a few people to do it. Maybe you are the people.

The obvious way to set priorities is to take care of the most time-sensitive things first so you don’t miss any deadlines. But what happens after that?

If you’re someone who enjoys being organized, you’re reading this with your finger already poised over your mouse, while your mental To Do list is writing itself. No need to read further.

If you’re an intuitive type, you’re probably praying for an easy, magic solution.

Yeah, well.

Weave your way through the priorities list
Sometimes you just have to go with what your bones tell you is right. You could put on some music, get busy with the bookkeeping, and relax into the groove. Nine times out of ten that will work. But the tenth time, if you’re just can’t get into it, it’s not going to happen.

Don’t beat yourself up about it.

Something in that pile of stuff will be a logical starting place. Maybe it’s the smallest thing. Maybe it’s the most enjoyable thing. Some productivity coaches will tell you to leave the fun until the end, as a reward, but that means the rest feels like punishment.

You might get more momentum out of the energy you generate by doing something you enjoy.

From setting priorities to sorting ideas
You won’t feel any less overwhelmed if you’re working on new ideas and can’t decide which one to tackle first. You can do a careful, cost/benefit analysis, or you can kick it old school—way old school.

Let’s say you have five potential projects. Write down each idea on a slip of paper and draw one out of a hat. If you pick #4 and immediately think, “No! I wanted to do #2!” that’s the idea to follow.

It’s an easy, low tech method, and it’s very telling. Your bones know things your brain hasn’t figured out yet.

You could be less literal and ask yourself which idea you would pick if you only had enough time to implement one of them. A sense of urgency does wonders for one’s decision making process.

The pile of ideas might be hiding something
You may come to the uncomfortable realization that you have a head full of ideas because you’re nervous the one you’re most committed to won’t work.

Circle back around. You’ve gone into protector mode to keep your best ideas from getting damaged. The stakes just went up, so now you’re uneasy. But if the idea wasn’t good, you could throw it away without a second thought. That’s the one you feel in your bones. That’s the one you pick. No hats are necessary, no lists required.

Priorities and ideas—the bottom line
One way or another, the work has to be done. You get to choose the approach. You can make a list and stick to it with laser-like precision, or back off a little, stop overthinking it, and let the ideas pick you.

What’s your favourite way to set priorities or sort through ideas?

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