How to Handle Rejection (or it’s not me, it’s you)

I received the following note from a new client the other day. We were one week away from doing the first visits for them. “Eliza, I wanted to let you know of a change as soon as possible. One of my son’s friends will be staying with the dogs while we are gone so I need to cancel our appointments with your sitters. Nothing against your service at all! This just came up today.  Thanks so much!”

Have you had this happen? If you haven’t, you will at some point. You’ve been broken up with, or more accurately, dumped. The note sounds friendly enough, I mean he said it wasn’t my service, he simply made other plans, right? Well, what I heard him say quite clearly was, “I’m breaking up with you, it’s not me, it’s you.”. If you’re like me, and as professional caregivers many of us tend to be this way, you’re left wondering “What did I do wrong?”. I obsess for days or even weeks that I could have done this differently or that differently. Despite what the client says, I immediately assume that I did something that caused them to lose confidence in our service or our sitters or, let’s be frank, in me. We take things personally, it’s in our nature, as caregivers we tend to look at things in terms of how do I make things better for people and if I fail to do so, what did I do wrong?

STOP IT! RIGHT NOW! I want you to do two things for me; first, think about your interactions with this client. Is there anything you would have done, said or approached differently? If there is, great, make a mental note and the next time you’re interacting with a client and the situation comes up, modify your approach. Second, I want you to go to your file cabinet or your computer or your social media sites, wherever you store your client reviews. I’m talking about the ones that say, you are AWESOME, I love you and my pets love you! If you’ve been in business a while and you are still in business and you care about what you do, you’ll have them. Go get them, take them out and read them.

Now hit reset in your brain and realize that it’s not you, it’s them. People are fickle and unpredictable and sometimes irrational, especially when it comes to their pets. Sometimes you’ll make mistakes and you’ll learn from them, but more often, you’ll do everything right and still get the break up message. Don’t let these define you, they’re not who you are or who your business is and you’ll waste valuable time obsessing over how to fix something that isn’t broken. The truth is, you ARE awesome, choose to believe it!