No means...YES??!!

There is some truth to that (I'll just leave it at that and not crack any jokes....especially about frat boys).

But, in any event, during the course of any successful artist's career the chances are that they will hear the word NO more times from record labels, A&R Reps, Booking Agents and anyone else in the music business than they will ever dream of hearing the word Yes.

Why is that exciting. Well, for the most part it sucks, however, if you are really trying to take your career to the next level, you love hearing No as long as you can follow up with the "Why" questions. (Note: Be sure to remove the desperation and defensiveness from your voice before you ask these questions.)

You see, by the time someone has told you No, they have lost their inhibition to tell you what they really think. These people, unlike your mom and your best friend, are capable of being objective and that's exactly what a budding artist needs. And it is at this precious moment that you can often garner the "little gems" of constructive criticism that you really need to push forward in your career. These gems of advice, when acted upon, can help you make breakthroughs in your career and can potentially allow you to skip years of learning things "the hard way."

You might also note, that more often than not, you will get non-commital answers from people so they don't have to tell you No. There's not much you can do about that, but for what its worth, the people who are really good at what they do are almost always willing to be honest with you and help you learn from your mistakes so that you can get to the next level.

After all, how do you think they got there in the first place? I would guess by hearing the word No.