Get Unruly

Turning Rejection into Rocket Fuel: How Rule-Breaking & Resilience Made Alice Draper Unstoppable

• Kim Bolourtchi • Season 5 • Episode 16

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🔥 What if rejection could be your greatest advantage? In this powerful episode, host Kim Bolourtchi sits down with publicity powerhouse and “My Rejection Story” founder Alice Draper, who reveals how re-framing failure and daring to break the rules transformed her life. Discover the hidden stories behind big successes, why rule-breakers might just change the world, and practical strategies for turning adversity into unstoppable momentum. If you’ve ever felt like you just don’t fit the mold—or wondered if your toughest moments could lead to your biggest breakthroughs—don’t miss this honest, inspiring conversation!

🎧 Tune in for authentic stories, laugh-out-loud moments, and actionable wisdom that will have you viewing rejection in a whole new light. Want to learn how embracing your uniqueness can be your superpower? Hit play now!

To connect with Alice:
website: https://hustlingwriters.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alice-m-draper/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alicedraper/
Podcast: https://hustlingwriters.com/podcast/

Curious what unwelcome rule is running your leadership? Take the 90 second quiz

Save the date: Kim's upcoming book, Strategic Unruliness™ , launches October 21st!!! Get on the launch list

Connect with Kim:
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Kim Bolourtchi:

Welcome to get unruly. Today I have an amazing guest I'm so excited to have a conversation with. I've got Alice Draper. Alice is the founder of the podcast, guesting company, hustling writers and the host of the podcast my rejection story. She's on a mission to make publicity accessible by reframing rejection, Alice has secured her clients on countless podcasts, including most of the top point 5% shows on her newly launched podcast, my rejection story, you can listen to best selling authors like Whitney Goodman, Jason Van ruler, or guy winch share how they navigated the toughest periods of their personal and professional lives, and how this shaped the success they now experience today. Her words can be found in Huff Post Business Insider vice and refinery. 29 Alice loves strong coffee. We share that by the way, affordable travel hacks and deep connections. She detests small talk, waking up early and unnecessary jargon. Welcome Alice.

Alice Draper:

Thank you so much, Kim. I'm so excited for our conversation today, and thanks for the wonderful introduction.

Kim Bolourtchi:

Absolutely so I want to start by talking a little bit about your podcast, the rejection story, my rejection story, sorry, I've listened. It's awesome. It's real. It's amazing. What inspired you to start this podcast?

Unknown:

I love this question, and thank you for listening. It's like the ultimate passion project of the past year. And a bit, what inspired me would be a collection of things. It was, it felt like it came to me like a calling in a walk. It sounds so dramatic, and it felt very dramatic, where I just realized the concept, and I was like, it's going to be called. The name came to me the concept, the types of conversations we'd be having. But it was sparked by a series of events, some were noticing that every time I posted a personal rejection story in my mailing list or to my audience, that engagement was far, far higher than any other post I ever put out there. And so I kind of got the sense that people are starved for these like, you know, behind the scenes, like, yeah, there is a success story, but this is also everything that went behind the scenes. So I would also, like, it was often, like, I would talk about how many times I got rejected before I landed the byline. Because people would be like, Wow, you're writing the Business Insider. You're writing for Huff Post. You're doing these great things. I'd be like, there's a lot else happening that you're not seeing and you're just seeing the success stories. So I Yeah, it was one kind of a response to seeing what was happening. And then other things were recognizing, I just think, like, the nature of online media right now is that we, we see, you know, it's, it's only natural to share the successful parts of things. So, yeah, I don't know. It was like a bunch of things. It was the conversations I had with clients as a publicist over the years, I realized that the best stories and the stories that really connected were the sort of trials and tribulations they went through in order to get to where they came like arrived, and that those trials and tribulations actually informed the meaning behind their work. So I really wanted to showcase that, and I felt there was a gap, and people weren't doing it, and bunch of different things, and they all came together in the podcast.

Kim Bolourtchi:

I love that so much. You know? I think especially today, there's so much emphasis on showing the shiny, sparkly end result, right? If you look online, you see so many people who are like I did this. I've arrived here. Here's what I've accomplished. And while that's great, most people don't share the messy, ugly, icky stuff that all of us go through on the way to getting there. And I think it can give an impression to people who don't have a lot of experience talking about their own failures, or people they can talk about them to that they're the only one experiencing it. And so I really love that you've created this platform of like, hey, really successful people have failed in order to get where they are. My question is, you probably have a rejection story that stands out. I'm guessing right that that is one that is really prominent for you and in your life. Would you be willing to share what that

Alice Draper:

one is? Yeah? Yeah, of course. I don't know if it's like a but I feel like there's something I went through that really reframed my relationship with rejection. So my my answer may not be as specific as you asked, but I'm trying to think of like the big the big rejection. Yeah, so I was very rejection avoidant for a big portion of my life, up until the pandemic 2020 and so I did everything in my power to avoid rejection. And something shifted in 2020 which is that I moved home to look after my father with dementia. And it it. Wasn't exactly a rejection, but in some cases like it sort of accumulated a lot of things. I felt like at the time I was not going to have the career that I was working towards, because I didn't know when this would end. I was isolated from friends, so I no longer, like, you know, always was so scared of being rejected by friends, but now I was kind of forced into isolation. I a lot, I guess the world that I thought that I was building came crumbling down, and then I was also processing all that grief. I also lost all my freelance clients all at once. I had been working so hard for some big projects, and they were killed because of the pandemic. So like many people's pandemic stories, like a lot went wrong professionally, and then my personal life was kind of falling apart as well. And the interesting thing that happened after, you know, I processed all of that and things settled down, and were able to I was able to my family, and I were able to hire some care, and my I sort of went out and live my life in 2021 is that my, I had a much thicker skin. I was so I wasn't as rejection sensitive as I had been before, and so I was like, fearless. I was fearlessly building my business. I was fearlessly making new friends and dating and just everything. Was not as scary as it had been before, because I realized I could survive hard things. And so, yeah, that kind of was, like, my kind of informer of like, wow, life is really, really great when you're not so scared of getting rejected. Like, amazing things can happen. And that, I guess that was, like, a big story that made me like formed part of that mission of why I wanted to share that with the world.

Kim Bolourtchi:

I love that, I mean, I don't love that you went through that, but I love that you had so much adversity and were able to come out of it knowing like, Hey, this is what I'm made of. And I also appreciate sort of your, you know, your awareness and admission that you avoided rejection for a really long time. Because I think all of us do, like, nobody wants to be rejected, like, let's be honest, right? We really don't and so, and I think, you know, a lot of us are taught growing up that it's dangerous to be rejected because it goes to our sense of self. We feel bad about ourselves. But if you don't put yourself out there, and you don't do things that are hard and that are scary, you never have the opportunity to experience kind of what happens on the other side of the things that are hard and scary. And I always say the best things are on the other side of that, but you have to be willing to walk through it. And it sounds to me like, you know, like you did that and you came out really thriving,

Alice Draper:

yes, yes, no one wants to go through that. And I think there's that like, like you said, you know, we we would do, and it's also biologically within us to avoid rejection at all costs. But I think that we don't understand that there are different types of rejections that are more risky than others, and that we should actually be getting rejected for low risk things quite regularly. So So yeah, so I think that knowing that they're that, that going through some hard things can come out, like, you can come out on the other side, and it can turn out, I guess, turn out well, is, is? Is something that I want more people to know. And I it's a tricky one, because I also don't want to say, like, you know, you have to go through something really hard, but I do think that we're just going to go through hard things like, that's just a part of the human experience. And I'm very curious about what makes someone one person's adversity, like, what turns out into a period of growth, and that they come out of the other side a better version of themselves, and for other people, it may not look that way. And that's really the heart of what I want to get to and get curious about, because I think it can go one of two ways, and I would rather move in the direction of growth than then be paid just pure pain and suffering.

Kim Bolourtchi:

Yeah, I also, you know, what's funny is, I'm kicking myself because the way that I asked you that question was like, what's the one thing? And I hate when people ask me that, what's the one thing, because, like you I don't have just one thing. It's a series of experiences. And I think it's important to point that out that, you know, sometimes people think if I haven't gone through a really big thing, I'm not able to have the really big growth. Like the people with the really, you know, big stories are the ones who have the biggest lives. And the truth is that it's just, I think, by facing the hard things that can crop up, just even in our daily lives, that still give us the resilience to be rejected, to reframe our reality, to do the hard things. And I really, I love that, that that's exactly how you answered that question. Thank you for that. That was really good.

Alice Draper:

Well, well, to your point, Kim, I think there can be a catalyst. So like, I would say, like, for me, my dad, my dad's dimension, was a catalyst, in some shape or form. There were a lot of different things leading up to it, but that was the catalyst. And so I don't mind the question, because I think there can often be, you know. Like, and you write about in your book, The time when your husband shared that your dance, you're a dancer. Like, I feel like that was a catalyst of some form that sort of opened up things, even though there probably were a lot of other things happening in the background or leading up to us. Yeah,

Kim Bolourtchi:

absolutely. So I'd love to shift a little bit and talk about your relationship with the rules. Because one of the things my listeners really, really love hearing about is how people who are successful and who are doing really cool things in the world have navigated the rules or or broken them. And one of the things you've shared with me is your relationship with the rules from early on, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, so let's, let's talk about this a little bit.

Alice Draper:

Yeah, yeah. So for those listening when, when Kim and I connected before, I spoke about how I unintentionally was a rule breaker from a very young age. And so it's interesting. Now I'm framing like I was very rejection avoidant. I feel like I wasn't breaking rules on purpose. I just couldn't I just wasn't very good at following the rules of school systems and like a university system. So I was always in trouble for being late. I was in trouble for being messy. I was in trouble for not like, writing between the lines and not following the instructions exactly as they're meant to be followed. And so I was this natural rule break. And then I do kind of wonder if, like being being told that there were a lot of things wrong with me, which is a very common experience for people with ADHD. I think, like William Dodson said that people ADHD experience something like 20 or something 1000 more negative comments by the time they're 12 than other children. I wonder if that made me less like, like, open to getting rejected in other areas of my life, because I was like, I don't want more negative comments. I don't know the answer to that, but yeah, I naturally was a bit of a rule breaker, and I always thought that this was like a thorn in my side, something that was gonna really hold me back and stop me from doing well in life. I feel like that was the message that I was getting told from institutions, schools and stuff and then,

Kim Bolourtchi:

and this was because you did not follow the rules in school, like you had a hard time doing what they wanted you to do in the traditional school setting. I just want to be really clear for everybody about this, because there's so many people out there, and obviously the kids aren't listening to this podcast, but there are a lot of parents out there, right who still have kids in systems. They're saying you're, you know, your kids too spirited, your kid doesn't follow the rules, your kid doesn't write between the lines. Your kid is too energetic, too creative, not following the rules. So I really, really want to identify. This is the thing you were criticized for, right?

Alice Draper:

Yes, daydreaming, daydreaming a lot. You know, there was the word potential was used a lot with me. So it was like, you know, Alice has such great potential. I can remember my grade six teacher discussing my results and my results were okay. I luckily just did. I always did, like, kind of above average in school. But she was, like, discussing my results with my mom, and she was and I was there, and she was like, you know, these results are fine, but Alice has the potential to be one of the top students. She could be the top students in this class. Like, she could be getting 90% across the grade. And so I had this idea, like, I'm just like, I have all this potential, and I just can't seem to get it together to listen in class, and I can't seem to get together to do what all the other top students are doing. And I would like set these resolutions and be like, this is the year I'm going to do it. I've got all my notebooks for every subject, and this year I'm going to really sit and listen to the teacher. And then it just never happened. So, yeah, it was, it was not intentional, but very much being told I was kind of not a rule follower in the school system. And I thought that this was going to be my greatest weakness in life, I guess. And it, I think, like when I look back at it, is that it ultimately was my competitive advantage. So I was, I guess I'm not following the rules. In university, I was engaging in a lot of other things. I was freelancing, and I was doing editorial fellowships for us publications, and I, just like you know, was busy with everything that piqued my interest. And when I graduated, I was able to, like, have, you know, I already had a roster of freelance clients, and I was able to build my business, and I was able to not follow the rules which was the traditional path, and I found that I was in a much better position than the cohort of people I had graduated with, and many of them were coming to me for advice, and that was a very trippy experience for me, because I used to always look at them and be like, How are you so studious? How are you so good at this? And suddenly it was like, oh, maybe like me being distracted actually kind of opened up a lot of doors for me that I didn't recognize the value of at the time.

Kim Bolourtchi:

Yeah. Hmm, I could not love this more. I could not love this more so you being you and being creative and innovative and not following the rules, even by the time you graduated from university, led you to being more successful. And you know, just doing things your own way gave you your competitive advantage

Alice Draper:

absolutely, yeah, yeah. And I'm like, I feel like I'm so unemployable. And like, thank goodness, thank goodness I created those options for myself at the time by not following the rules. Yeah,

Kim Bolourtchi:

I love that. What advice would you give to people who you know, who are similarly situated? Because I think there are a lot of people out there who feel like either they can't follow the rules, they don't want to follow the rules, and yet they're constantly being told they're supposed to, yeah, yeah, really. Well, of like, it's almost like a feeling of failure, right? Like, I know I'm supposed to be doing this thing, but I can't do it, or I don't want to do it, something in my body is just like, No, this isn't who I am. What would you tell them based on the life you're living and how it's going for you?

Alice Draper:

This is a great question. It's when I was thinking about in a different context, because it's a tricky one, because I think it all depends on, like, the situation, you know. So for example, let's say you're in a job, a corporate job, and it's paying, I don't know where someone is in their career, but if you're, like, kind of high up in the ranks, and you, like, have a six figure salary, and you're in golden handcuffs because you have a whole bunch of expenses, it's not easy to say, Okay, I'm going to stop following the rules. I'm going to quit, and I'm just going to, like, do my own venture. So what I have found, and this is from my limited life experience as being helpful as a rule breaker. When I'm in situations where I kind of have to follow the rule is I figure out my hacks that make it easier for me. So, like school systems, I would figure out what instead of, you know, okay, I didn't listen in class. So how can I do, like, pretty well. I would learn this sort of throughout high school and university. How can I do pretty well knowing my brain, and so my brain is like, Okay, we need to, like, look at the past essays, and we need to, like, notice trends and see what do they normally assess on and, like, figure out our strengths. So within the system you're in figuring out how you can make it work for you and do the best you can. And then if you want to get out of the system, be strategic about how you're going to do that. So does that mean that you're starting your side hustle on the side? Do you have the safety net to leave and try something? There's always risk involved to getting out of a system, unless you're like fortunate like me and you started in university, but I know not everyone is in that situation, but leaning into your curiosities, leaning into your strengths, spending as much time as possible there, like if it's the stuff that really lights you up and makes you excited, try and carve as much time into building that whatever that is, whether it's a business or a book you want to write, try, try and create the time and space to work on that so that you can eventually make that your thing. I don't know if, I don't know if I answered that well, being strategic with it.

Kim Bolourtchi:

Answered it beautifully. And you know, one of the things I agree with you so much, I think sometimes people get this idea where they think, like, if I'm not going to do the thing I'm doing, I have to completely let go and go do something else. Right? Because we live in this world where a lot of times our options are you do either this or this, and we think in polarities. And I always like to think about the power of and right, where it's like, well, you don't have to just do this, or do this, as you're suggesting, you can keep the thing that's keeping you safe while you are also, you know, starting to think about what this other thing you really, really want to do looks like, and start cultivating it so you've got an and happening, until you get this where you're like, Okay, now I'm actually going to go all the way in. I will say, though sometimes, you know, depending on your situation, like a little bit of leaping before you know how it's going to go can be the best thing you can do, and again, not putting yourself at risk, or, you know, so that you're like, going to be unable to pay your bills. But some of the best moments in my life have happened when I was willing to say like this just doesn't work for me. I don't really know what's on the other side, but I know I need to go do that thing because it really, really excites me, and I'm just going to go do that thing and know that it's going to work out, and it always

Alice Draper:

does. Yeah, yeah. Well, to your point, Kim, I completely agree with you. I think that because when I was giving advice, like, kind of early in my career, I was always trying to eliminate risk, and something I've realized, what learned is that my theory now is that a lot of the successful people, that people we really look at to a big chunk of that is because they were prepared to take risks. They were prepared to leap into that unknown. And so it's very hard to mitigate that. There's going to be risk involved. I think there's a lot of quotes, you know, Fortune favors the bold and you. Yeah, you know, there's a reason why not everyone does these things. Because, yes, it is risky. It isn't as safe. So I think you can be smart and strategic, and you should really, like, have a strategy behind the risks you're taking, and do your research and know that there are good risks, but there there is some, yeah, risk involved. And I think, like it would be a disservice to pretend like there's no risk in like, starting your own thing or working on your book or whatever it is, because, yeah, it's it's harder to jump into our passion. But that doesn't mean it's not worth doing.

Kim Bolourtchi:

I agree so much, and I think there's beauty and just saying like, rejection is hard, failure is hard. Risk is hard. We're going to do it anyway though.

Unknown:

Yeah, we can do hard things. Words.

Alice Draper:

Can end oil like, there's, there's a reason it's hard. And you know, if you, if you're prepared to do the hard work, I think that's, that's, that can be your competitive advantage. I had an interview with an author on my podcast called Geraldine de royder, and she she talks about how she spent two like, so she's a pretty well known and pretty successful author now, but it took her a long time to get there. And she spent two years writing a blog every single day, and with it getting no traction. And I remember, like, when she was describing, like, her differentiator, she was like, I'm just gonna do this longer and harder than anyone else, until someone eventually notices me. And like, sometimes it's that, you know, there's a lot of fancy, shiny things, but many, many people are just not consistent with the thing that they really want to be known for. And the ones who stand out are often the ones who stick with it the longest.

Kim Bolourtchi:

I love that so much. If people want to know more about you or your work, where's the best place where they can reach you?

Alice Draper:

Yeah, I think the podcast, which is called my rejection story, that would that's where I would direct you. You can find me on all the platforms if you search my name. But I would say the podcast is a great place to start, perfect.

Kim Bolourtchi:

And I will just encourage everybody to take a listen. The podcast is really, really good, and I went down a rabbit hole listening to the episodes. So I know, I know my listeners will enjoy it as well. Alice, I have loved having you on the show. It has been such a pleasure having this conversation. Thank you for taking the time to chat with me today. Thank

Alice Draper:

you for creating the space. Kim, I think that we all need to get a little bit more Unruly I am a firm believer the world is a better place when we're willing to step outside the lines and confines that have been set for us. So thank you so much for having me

Kim Bolourtchi:

absolutely and thank you so much for sharing your story. This is Kim bolourchi, and you've been listening to get unruly until next time. Stay brave, stay bold, and by all means, stay unruly. Thanks for listening, friends. I'll see you next week.