I Wasn’t Afraid to Hunt. I Was Afraid They Wouldn’t Choose Me.

For years, my husband told me that people are attracted to me. He wasn’t talking about anything sexual. He meant folx like having me around. They invite me places. They include me in conversations. They want me in the room.

Because I’m a homebody, I usually complain about the invitations. Neil will remind me, “People like being around you.” My response is usually some version of, “I don’t like people like that,” or “I don’t like people that much.”

Some of that is true. I’m not trying to be outside every fuck'n day collecting friendships and engagements like reward points. I enjoy my house, my routines, my husband, my work, and my own company. I don’t need to be surrounded by folx to feel alive. But I admit, sometimes those responses came from anxiety.

“I don’t like people that much” gave me a way to dismiss the invitation before I had to admit that being wanted made me uncomfortable. Accepting that folx enjoyed me meant accepting something I hadn’t always believed about myself: I was worthy of being chosen.

That belief didn’t stay tucked inside my personal life. It followed me into business, where waiting to be chosen could masquerade as a marketing strategy.

Fighting Felt Safer Than Friendship

I grew up wanting to be chosen and accepted while being convinced that I wasn’t worthy of either. When you carry that kind of complex, you don’t enter relationships expecting to be welcomed. You enter expecting to be judged, tolerated, ridiculed, or eventually rejected.

I could initiate a physical fight easier than I could initiate a friendship. A fight felt more honest. The threat was visible. I knew where I stood, what I needed to protect, and how to respond. Friendship required me to approach somebody without knowing whether they wanted me back. It required a different kind of vulnerability because I couldn’t control what their answer might reveal.

That’s the tricky shit about fear of rejection. It doesn’t always make you quiet, timid, or visibly afraid. Sometimes it makes you tough. Sometimes it makes you dismissive. Sometimes it tells you that you don’t need anybody before anybody gets the chance to say they don’t need you. You learn how to protect yourself by becoming the one who doesn’t care.

Then you grow the fuck up, start a business, and bring that same protection into your marketing. You don’t call it anxiety anymore. You call it independence, discernment, introversion, patience, relationship-building, or waiting for the right opportunity.

Some of those descriptions can be true. But truth can still be a cover when you use it to avoid examining your behavior.

“I’m Not a Hunter” Sounded Like a Business Preference

In business, I’ve described marketing through three behaviors: hunting, trapping, and farming.

Hunters identify a specific client or opportunity and move directly toward it. Trappers create something attractive (content, an offer, an event, a platform, a body of work) and wait for the right folx to enter. Farmers cultivate what’s already growing around them. They maintain relationships, stay visible within trusted networks, ask for referrals and introductions, encourage repeat business, and create opportunities through folx who already know the value of their work.

Healthy business can do all three. Don't think this is about making hunting superior and telling every Founder to start chasing strangers through LinkedIn with a pitch and a prayer. Trapping can establish authority and give interested prospects a way to identify themselves. Farming can turn established trust into referrals, introductions, recommendations, and access to rooms you couldn’t enter alone. Hunting allows you to pursue a specific prospect without waiting for your content or network to bring them to you.

The problem starts when you choose one behavior primarily because it protects you from another. Hunting took away that protection. Hunting required me to decide who the fuck I wanted before I knew whether they wanted me. It required me to initiate contact, name why I was approaching them, make the invitation, and follow up after silence.

Farming could get me to the same prospect through an introduction or referral, but hunting means approaching folx without reassurance or reputation of somebody else’s recommendation. There's no warm and fuzzy handoff telling me they're expecting my name to cross their email. I had to trust my own judgment enough to choose them and make the first move.

Sweethearts, it wasn’t just adjusting my marketing tactics. It pushed directly against an old belief about worthiness. “I’m not a hunter” sounded like a business preference. Underneath it was a much more personal rule: don’t choose anybody who hasn’t chosen you first.

Waiting to Be Chosen Is Still Brand Behavior

This is where Behavior before branding is more than a nice line on a website. You can have a clear offer, a visible brand, a strong reputation, and enough personality to draw folx toward you. None of that means your marketing behavior is creating the business you actually want.

If you consistently wait for folx to choose you, your client roster will be shaped by whoever approaches. You can attract good clients, but attraction alone doesn’t make them the clients you most want to serve. You can be skilled at getting interest without ever becoming intentional about pursuing fit. That passivity creates Brand Behavior Fallout™.

Audience fallout can be that the right folx know you but never realize you want to work with them. Offer fallout can be that you keep creating entry points for whoever arrives instead of designing around the clients you deliberately want. Operational fallout can show up as an inconsistent pipeline that depends on attention, referrals, algorithms, or somebody remembering your fucking name at the right moment.

Emotional fallout is even harder to recognize. You feel overlooked while refusing to make yourself available for a direct answer. You resent that certain clients aren’t finding you while never approaching them. You tell yourself that marketing isn’t working when the truth is that you’ve limited marketing to the behaviors least likely to expose you to rejection.

The visible problem looks like inconsistent lead generation. The behavior underneath the marketing problem is waiting to be chosen.

Rejection Isn’t the Same as Confirmation

When you already question your worthiness, rejection doesn’t feel like one business outcome. It feels like confirmation.

A prospect doesn’t respond, and your mind doesn’t stop at, “They didn’t respond.” It starts building a case. Maybe you misread the relationship. Maybe your work isn’t relevant enough. Maybe you reached too fuck'n high. Maybe you made yourself look thirsty. Maybe, just maybe, you should’ve stayed where you were and waited for somebody more interested to come along.

Now one unanswered message has turned into evidence for a belief that existed before you ever sent it. That’s why calling bullshit matters. It interrupts your interpretation before your anxiety turns an outcome into an identity.

A nonresponse can mean the message got buried. A “no” can mean the timing is wrong, the budget isn’t there, the need isn’t urgent, the offer doesn’t fit, or the person simply isn’t interested. It can also mean your approach needs work. All of that is usable information.

What it can’t tell you is whether you were worthy of making the approach. Your worthiness wasn’t being voted on. You made a business move and got or didn't get a business response. That response can inform your next behavior without being a fucking verdict on who you are.

Rejection is dangerous as hell when you use it to revive old bullshit so you can call it today's evidence.

Hunting Doesn’t Require a New Personality

Calling bullshit on “I can’t be a hunter” doesn’t mean I suddenly enjoy cold outreach, stop being a homebody, or turn into somebody who wants to spend every damn day working a room.

I don’t need hunter energy. I need hunter behavior.

Behavior gives you something observable to practice. You can identify a qualified prospect. You can learn enough about their business to know why your work could be relevant. You can send a specific message, ask for an introduction or follow up. You can even record the result without exaggerating what it means.

None of that shit needs you to be aggressive, pushy, fake-friendly, or salesy. Hunting isn’t hounding. It's not treating everybody with a pulse and a payment method like prey. It’s making an intentional choice about where you want your work to go and accepting responsibility for moving it in that direction. That means the most because too many Founders turn a missing practice into a permanent identity.

You say you’re not good at sales when you haven’t consistently practiced making an ask. You say you’re not a networker when you’ve only experienced networking in rooms that drained you. You say you’re not a hunter when you’ve allowed fear to define hunting as a personality you don’t possess.

Brand Behavior is not good or bad, and it isn’t destiny. It’s repeated conduct with consequences. If the consequences of trapping alone no longer support the business you’re building, you don’t need to condemn yourself for relying on it. You need to practice another behavior.

Choosing the Client Changes the Business

Hunting changes more than the pipeline. It changes your relationship to your own judgment. When choosing a prospect, you have to decide what makes them desirable beyond their ability to pay. You check to see if the business, Founder, problem, timing, and opportunity fit your work. You stop treating every interested person as equally qualified just because they made the first move.

That makes hunting a form of discernment. Instead of just asking, “Who wants what I sell?” you start asking, “Who do I want to use my thinking, time, proximity, and capacity to serve?” That kinda question puts the Founder back into client acquisition.

It also a gut check on whether or not you trust your own authority. You have to believe you can recognize where your work belongs before somebody gives you permission to belong there. You approach folx with enough clarity to call out what you see without shrinking, overselling, or pretending you can guarantee a fucking result.

Stop standing in the doorway hoping the right client sees the light on. Flip the script because you decided which doors are worth your opening.

Some doors won’t open but that's how hunting works. Some folx say no. Some won’t answer. Some conversations won’t become clients, and some relationships will need farming before they produce an opportunity. The presence of rejection doesn’t mean the behavior failed. It means you finally participated in client selection instead of outsourcing the entire decision to whoever found you first.

So What Happens When You Start Hunting?

First, you get uncomfortable. Let’s not dress this shit up and call a thing a thing. You notice how fast your mind tries to protect you with reasons not to send a message. You decide you need more research, better wording, a warmer introduction, another credential, or a clever sign that they’re already interested.

Then you begin collecting fucking evidence. You learn which prospects respond, which messages open conversations, which assumptions were wrong, and which rooms actually value what you bring. You learn that some of the folx you thought were inaccessible are willing to talk to you. You learn that a direct approach doesn’t make you intrusive. You might even accept what your own "Neil" has been telling you for years: folx like having you around.

But besides all that, you stop making the market responsible for choosing your future and your finances. You still trap. You still farm. You still allow writing, speaking, books, relationships, and reputation to attract folx. But no more using that shit to hide from the part of marketing that needs you to risk a direct answer.

A detox isn’t done because you called the belief bullshit once. It gets real when you replace the protective behavior with a practice.

Choose one qualified client, partner, room, or referral source you genuinely want. Make one informed, specific move toward them. Stop waiting until you feel fearless or develop some imaginary hunter personality.

Send the fucking message while your anxiety is still talking shit. Then let the response be information, not a verdict on whether or not you deserved to ask.

You still trap. You still farm by tending relationships, asking for introductions, and giving trusted folx a clear reason to refer you. But you stopped using either one to avoid directly pursuing the clients and opportunities you’ve already said you want.