 Melanie Perkins was born in Perth, Australia in 1989. She attended Sacred Heart College and studied communications, psychology, and commerce at the University of Western Australia. Melanie had always had a heart for designs and therefore started a business early on in life at age 14, creating and selling handmade scarves. While at the university, she taught fellow students design programs at age 19. The desire to meet the needs of students who struggled with making designs led her to co-find and launch fusion books with Cliff Orbrech, an online design tool that made the process simpler and helped students design their school yearbook with ease. Melanie and Cliff worked from her mom's living room for many years and even moved large printing presses in there. They created ideas for software engineers and paid them from money borrowed from relatives. Their relentless efforts and hard work made fusion books to become the largest yearbook publisher in Australia with coverage in France and New Zealand. Later in her life, Perkins decided to start Canva, her third business which seeks to help ordinary people design better and she secured an appointment with an investor. She waited in the lobby of a big investor's office. Nervous and clinging closely to her presentation, she mentally rehearsed her pitch idea. Soon, she was asked in to meet her investor. The future of her business idea to help people create professional quality designs no matter their level of expertise depended on the outcome of her pitch. Enthusiastic and very sure that her idea would sell, she described her business plan and was optimistic that it will sell. At the end of her very great presentation, the investor looked at the young and naive lady across the table unconvinced. As she heard the rejection phrase, I'm sorry, we are not willing to invest in your idea right now. Her heart sank. It will be the first of over 100 rejections a business idea will face but Melanie Perkins was determined and convinced that her business idea had a big potential to succeed. Instead of throwing in the towel, Perkins went back to the drawing board to take a look at her pitches and business plan, rework and improved on it. Three years later, after the first rejection, Melanie Perkins secured a partnership with Silicon Valley tycoon Bill Tai and got investments to set up Canva. Currently, the Canva platform is funded by 28 investors. It's available in 100 languages and is valued at over $3 billion, with a library of over 3 million images and designs being updated every day. Now, listen, nobody is going to believe in your idea until you believe in it. And how do I know whether you believe in your idea or not? Very simple. If few rejections make you stop trying, if few failures make you feel that you're not good enough, if other people's opinions stop you, then you don't believe in your idea. In life, you're going to be rejected and some of these rejections are going to be your fault. Yes, your fault. Melanie Perkins understood this and that's why she took responsibility to go back to her drawing board. What most young people do is to look for whom to blame but even when other people reject you because they can't see your vision is still your responsibility, at least to stand up and try again. To everyone out there who dreams big dreams, it is part of your cross to be rejected and because of this, I appeal to you kindly accept rejection as part of your life's cross. Robert Gannon said it is necessary to put yourself out and accept that you will be rejected. Then you can smile when you're rejected because you know that rejection doesn't mean that you're not good enough. You can sometimes mean that the other person cannot see what you are seeing. Just as Ash Sweeney said rejection doesn't have to mean you're aren't good enough, it often just means the other person failed to notice what you have to offer. Lastly, the best way to see a rejection is to see it as a challenge. When my family members rejected me because I told them that I wanted to be an entrepreneur, I interpreted their rejection as a challenge. I felt that they invited me into a contest telling me that I cannot do what I wanted to do but I was willing to prove them wrong. Go out today and prove your doubt is wrong. Veronica Parcell said and I quote, rejection is a challenge. Thank you very much for watching our videos. We'll like to give you another interesting video for you to enjoy next but before then, our team will be very happy if you can like this video and share it with your friends on social media. If you're new here, don't forget to subscribe so you won't miss other interesting videos like this. Look at your screen now to see two other videos we handpicked for you to enjoy next. We love you.