What to Do When the Gatekeepers Say "No"

By James Altucher

Everyone around the dinner table had been brutally rejected hundreds of times. I was at a dinner with a bunch of people who had gone the self-publishing route via Amazon. All of them except for me were fiction writers and all had sold over 100,000 copies or more of their various novels.  The guy sitting across from me had just sold the movie rights to his latest science fiction series. Another woman was working on the sequel to her “young adult paranormal” series. Another guy had sold over 500,000 copies of his various thrilers. The guy sitting next to me had been very successful at his “childrens’ chapter books” series, “Sweet Farts”.


All of them had one thing in common. While pursuing the career of their dreams they had all been rejected. Some of them 100s of times. All of them were either on the verge of writing fulltime for a living or had already made the leap. Every one of them was smiling.

How many would’ve been smiling if they had given up after the 39th rejection and didn’t go for that 40th. Or didn’t go for that moment when they decided: I’m going to take control of the creative process and not stop where the gate keepers tell me to stop.

So many times I’ve been stopped by the gatekeepers. At a job, for instance, where my boss said, “stop working on this and focus on your main job.” Or when I was trying to sell a TV show and there were only one or two decision makers and they all blocked my path for political reasons. Or I wanted to sell a company and there were only a few decision makers who could make or break what I thought then was my entire life. The stark fear I had whenever I spoke to them, knowing they had this enormous power over me and thinking, foolishly, that I had nothing to offer them.

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