Founders who love getting punched in the face

Title: Founders Who Love Getting Punched in the Face

Read time: 3 min

There's a kid on the internet who's built an audience of over 20 million people by walking up to strangers in nice neighborhoods, wearing expensive watches, driving nice whips and asking them one question:

How'd you get rich?

The kids name is James Dumoulin, who runs The School of Hard Knocks. I love watching this kid because he gets told no constantly. People wave him off. They say they're busy. Tell him to get the f**k outta here. They say they don't do interviews.

If you keep watching you’ll notice something that is so critical if you want to master the craft of selling: he doesn't flinch, and he doesn't walk away. He’s never shook or thrown off his game, he actually goes harder. Because really what does he have to lose?

He has a response ready for whatever comes back at him, and he keeps the conversation moving instead of letting the first "not interested" end it. He’s a pro. Understands the craft.

In his own words: Every no is a step closer to a yes.

Here's what matters way more than the persistence itself, watch how people react to it.

Over and over, the person who initially blew him off ends up saying some version of "wow, you're good, I respect that," and then does the interview anyway. He's not wearing people down through sheer stubbornness.

He's absorbing the objection, responding to it calmly, and asking again, and that combination reads as confidence, not desperation. People don't resent being asked twice by someone who clearly knows what they're doing. They respect it.

That's the whole game my friends. You have to be prepared.

Why This is The Skill, Not a Skill

You can’t treat an objection like a wall. If the prospect says "this isn't in the budget," and you tell yourself "this is over," or you actually believe it, that’s it, the energy in the room changes, the voice gets a little smaller, the pitch gets apologetic, the confidence drains out of the call. The prospect feels that shift immediately, and it makes them trust you less, not more.

Here's how you wanna think about it: an objection is not a rejection. It's information. A prospect who's telling you "I'm still evaluating other vendors" or "we might just build this ourselves" is not closing the door, they're telling you exactly what needs to be true for them to say yes. They're handing you the map.

Founders who stay calm under objections aren't calm because they're naturally unbothered. They're calm because they've heard the objection before, they know exactly what's underneath it, and they already know what they're going to say back.

That preparation is what produces the confidence, the same way James isn't calm on camera because rejection doesn't bother him, he's calm because he's done this hundreds of times and has a rebuttal ready before the words "I'm busy" finish leaving someone's mouth.

Confidence under pressure isn't a personality trait. It's a rehearsed skill.

A Framework For Actually Doing it: ACERS

I want you to remember this acronym ACERS. It’s five moves, in order, every time:

Acknowledge: Recognize the objection with respect, no defensiveness. Don't argue with it. Don't minimize it.

Clarify: Unpack what's actually underneath it. Most objections are a symptom, not the real concern.

Empathize: Validate their point of view. Build common ground before you try to move them anywhere.

Reframe: Shift the lens. Challenge the assumption underneath the objection, or widen the context they're viewing it through.

Sell: Anchor the value, reduce the perceived risk, and prompt a specific, forward-moving next step.

The order matters. If you skip straight to "sell" and you sound like you're steamrolling them. If you stay stuck in "acknowledge and empathize" forever and you never actually move the deal.

ACERS works because it lets the prospect feel heard before you redirect them, which is precisely why it doesn't feel pushy, even when it is.

Memorize These Four. Everything Else Changes

Here's where I'm handing you the keys to the castle. What follows is four rebuttals to the objections you're going to hear constantly, memorize these, actually know them cold, and it doesn't nudge your sales up a notch. It jumps you four or five levels above where you are right now.

And that's not even the real payoff. The real payoff is what happens underneath it. When you walk into a call already knowing what's coming and exactly how you're going to answer it, that confidence doesn't stay in your head, it leaks into everything. Your tone. Your voice. The conviction behind how you talk. How you carry yourself in the room. It compounds. Prepared reps don't just handle objections better, they close faster and they close bigger, because the prospect can feel the certainty before you've said a word.


Here are the rebuttals in action.

1. This isn't in our budget right now

I totally get it, budget has to make sense, and timing matters. Can I ask you this? Is budget the only thing holding you back right now? Is there anything outside of budget that would prevent you from moving forward? (If No) Ok, so is the concern more about the total cost, or does it feel like the value hasn't fully connected to the spend yet? I ask because a lot of teams are being careful right now, especially on newer initiatives, you want to know it's going to pay off fast and clearly, that's fair. But here's how you want to really unpack it: I think the the real cost isn't the investment, it's what staying stuck in the current state is quietly costing you every day you wait. The right investment doesn't drain budget, it frees it up. That's why teams work with us even when budgets are tight, we move fast, and the results show up quickly.

Would it help if we scoped a phased rollout with clear ROI milestones, so you can de-risk the spend and still move forward?

2. We're still evaluating other vendors

Makes total sense, you want to be sure you're picking the right partner before you lock anything in. Is that more about wanting to be thorough, or is it that nothing's really stood out from what we presented yet? I get it, it's exhausting when everything starts to blur together after enough demos. Can I perhaps reframe this slightly to look at it form a different angle? Here's the risk, staying in evaluation mode too long just creates inertia, and while you're comparing, the teams that move are already implementing and building conviction. It's not about rushing it, it's about testing with purpose. What actually sets us apart isn't the demo, it's how we run outcome driven pilots, we co-design the success metrics with you and make sure the results are unmistakable. So let me ask you this: What would we need to show and prove to you for you to feel comfortable moving forward with us?

And my recommendation is to set up a 30 day proof of concept scoped to your exact use case, so you can test us against everyone else in a way that actually shows the difference? Does that sound fair?

3. I don't really trust AI. I'm skeptical of the outputs

Good, you should be skeptical, this isn't a decision to make on faith. But the question isn't trust versus no trust, it's control. The tools that are actually worth using don't replace your judgment, they sharpen it, faster insight, fewer blind spots, and you're still the one making the final call every time. Ours shows you exactly what it flagged and why, and you can override anything.

That's not a black box, that's a second set of eyes you can check. Let's get in front of a real workflow together, you'll see exactly how it thinks, and exactly where you stay in control the whole time. Does that sound fair?

4. We're thinking about building this in-house

Yeah I totally get. If you've got the team for it, that instinct makes sense. But building it and running it long-term are two different beasts altogether, most in house builds start clean and end up as a permanent maintenance project nobody signed up for. We already hand you about 90% of what you'd end up building yourself, proven, scalable, and still flexible enough to configure to how you actually work, and we're in it with you for integration and onboarding, so it's not a solo lift six months from now. I'll build the actual buy vs build comparison myself, your team's loaded cost, your timeline, against our numbers, and have it in your inbox by Friday.

If building it in-house still wins after that, I'll tell you to go build it. If not, you run a well scoped out POC with us. Is that fair enough?

You won't say these word for word every time, you'll adjust the specifics to your product, your numbers, your deal. But the structure and roughly 95% of the language here can be used verbatim, straight off the page, on your next call.

The Takeaway

Objections aren't roadblocks. They're requests for leadership. The prospect is telling you, directly, what has to be resolved before they can say yes, and the person who can hear that without losing their footing is the one who gets closer to the yes.

That's the actual lesson from watching someone get told "no" on camera fifty times a week and never once look rattled by it.

It's not that the rejection doesn't land. It's that he already knows what he's going to say next.

Do the same thing on your calls, know the objection before it arrives, have your response ready, and keep the conversation moving forward instead of letting the first no end it.

See you all next week!

Darren

P.S. If you’re a venture-backed company interested in coaching, book a call here.

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