My biological dad left my family when I was 5 years old.
Bear with me here….I promise I’m not sending you down my personal Lifetime Movie path.

It’s something I don’t think about often and if I’m being honest, probably have not fully come to a complete peace with.

But you could say rejection is something I learned was an inevitable part of life in a huge way early on.

After I graduated college and was beyond lost in life, I opted to sell books door-to-door around the country on a 100% commission job. They say autopilot grad school application is the symptom of “feeling lost” but I match that and give you SELLING BOOKS DOOR-TO-DOOR as an ante.

I didn’t go to college to do this, but there I was at 22 walking around a Jacksonville, FL neighborhood selling books out of a bag. And would do that for the next few years.

Rejection was the name of that game and I excelled at selling books.  

Fast  forward to a podcast I did a few weeks ago and I am CRINGING at listening back to a lot of it. My initial reaction internally was, “UGH, Patrice… why can’t you just STOP. TALKING. And not overshare!!?”  There were a lot of rejection themes in my march to entrepreneurship and the lightbulb suddenly hit as I was speaking to her.

Once I got over my own self and pushed the ego to the side (not easy) I realized I had connected some free floating dots to my own founder story. My rejection theme (which I was aware of before I recorded this podcast) usually would start at “book selling” and not at “dad leaving.”

Yet, the story really started there.  That foundational event set the tone for how I dealt with rejection my entire life (which is I let it roll off my back.)

What could be deemed as survival mechanisms at the age of 5 morphed into a superpower that would serve me well as a future entrepreneur. 

What are some tough life blows you’ve experienced? What is a time in your past that when you look back makes you viscerally react with either shame, embarrassment or sadness?

THAT moment is part of your founder story and I’m willing to bet if you dig deep into it, that may be the defining moment of the beautiful life you’ve now created for yourself.

The more of these powerful transformative moments you can recognize, the more powerful your founder backstory will become.

If you are struggling with getting to the heart of what your founder story is or where you should even start or how you even get it down to a small paragraph or 60-second video script, please book time with me HERE to chat about how I can help you!  

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