by Jia Jiang
• After narrowly losing the presidency to George W. Bush in the 2000 election, former vice president Al Gore shifted his focus to the issue of climate change. His highly influential documentary on the issue, An Inconvenient Truth, won an Academy Award and altered the discourse on climate issues. Gore has referred to his election loss as a “hard blow” that “brought into clear focus the mission [he] had been pursuing for all these years.”
• While at Disney, executive Jeffrey Katzenberg was rejected by his longtime boss, Michael Eisner, as Eisner’s number two in command. In an interview with the New York Times, Katzenberg explained: “I ran the full gamut of emotions. I was disappointed, sad, angry, scared, philosophical, sad, vengeful, relieved, and sad.” But Katzenberg used the rejection as motivation to start his own film company, DreamWorks, whose animated films grossed even more than films by Disney’s Pixar by 2010. There was speculation that Katzenberg even modeled Lord Farquaad, the chief villain in DreamWorks’s blockbuster animation movie Shrek, after Eisner.
Of course, the sting of rejection is not the only thing driving the work and the ambition of these and other highly successful people. Sooner or later, other intrinsic motivations such as “the love of the game” or the desire to “put a dent in the universe” need to take over to sustain excellence. But it’s interesting to think about what might have happened if any of them had allowed rejection to deflate their sense of self—viewing it as something blocking their path rather than something they were eager and determined to overcome. Each of them saw rejection as “wood on the fire,” as Michael Jordan so eloquently put it. It simply added more flame to the ambition they already had brewing.
SELF-IMPROVEMENT
100 DAYS OF REJECTION: SOLICITING MONEY ON THE STREET
My hardest rejection attempts were the ones that were very public, where I opened myself to the possibility of being rejected not by one person but by dozens, or hundreds, or worse. This was why making an announcement on my Southwest flight to Vegas practically caused me to break out in hives. It’s also why my elementary school rejection left such an impression.
The good thing about thinking up my own rejection attempts was that I knew exactly how to push my own rejection panic buttons. And I could think of no better way to terrify myself than to stand at a busy Austin intersection, holding up a sign asking strangers for money.
I drive by panhandlers almost every day, and I have never been able to even imagine what it would be like to be in their shoes. Does their need for money override their fear of being judged and rejected? Do time and experience erode the fear and shame? Or do they have a different relationship with rejection altogether?
I didn’t want to be dishonest and stand on a corner claiming that I needed money. So I decided instead to ask for donations to a local food bank.
We often hear that real estate is about location, location, and location, and I figured that panhandling must follow the same rule. So I used Google Maps for my location research and picked a busy intersection just off one of Austin’s main highways. Standing there, I saw the world the way a panhandler would view it every day, with cars driving by and stopping at the red light, their drivers seeing me through their windshields, making quick judgments, and usually lowering their heads to avoid eye contact. It was silent rejection by the masses and felt strangely reminiscent of my elementary school roast.
I felt trapped between wanting to draw people’s attention and hoping to avoid their judgment. It felt impossibly painful. I resorted to all types of coping techniques to get through it—talking to myself, trying to hold a big smile, and imagining what the donations I got could do for hungry people, who otherwise might have to do this themselves.
Initially, I held up a sign that read: EVERYTHING GOES TO CHARITY! THANKS. I thought the sign was simple and to the point. But fifteen minutes passed, forty-eight cars came and went, and no one lowered his or her window or showed any interest in what I was doing. As the old adage goes, “When advertising fails, don’t blame the customers. Blame the message.”
I decided the message on my sign was too vague. So I changed it to something more specific, and hopefully more credible.
The new sign read: EVERYTHING GOES TO THE AUSTIN FOOD BANK! THANKS. Immediately, I got some results. A woman named Lisa rolled down her window, flashed a big smile, and said “bless you” while handing me $2. Another driver named Lori gave me $7, the highest amount I would collect from anybody. I held that sign for fifteen minutes. All in all, forty-three drivers saw me with the sign, but just two—Lisa and Lori—offered a donation.
Then I changed the sign again, this time emphasizing even more that the money I was collecting would go to a good cause—and not into my pocket. The third sign read: THIS IS NOT FOR ME! EVERYTHING GOES TO THE AUSTIN FOOD BANK! THANKS.
Two drivers, Jessica and John, offered me a handful of coins. Another woman handed me some money without stopping, making it hard to catch. A driver named Lindsey advised me to hold my sign horizontally, instead of vertically, so people could see me better. She didn’t donate any money, but she didn’t charge me a consulting fee either, so that was good. Another driver asked me for directions to the food bank, because he needed the help himself. It felt good to help someone in need.
In the end, sixty-six drivers saw the third sign during the fifteen minutes I held it, and three people donated a total of $6.73.
Then I changed the sign one more time, this time hoping to add a bit of humor. The new sign read: GOOGLE SUGGESTED HERE. EVERYTHING GOES TO THE AUSTIN FOOD BANK! THANKS!
The idea was to convey that Google Maps suggested this location for my panhandling excursion. Unfortunately, this last sign was like a bad insider joke, and it only confused people. In my final fifteen minutes, thirty-eight cars saw me, and no one gave me a dime. My poor messaging and bad attempt at humor proved counterproductive.
But in the end, I had a productive hour. I encountered a total of 195 cars and received five donations for a total of $15.73, which I happily gave to the Austin Food Bank online.
I learned a lot from this rejection attempt about the importance of good messaging (including the upside of being specific), the element of surprise, and the hard lesson of not confusing people with bad humor. But the biggest lesson of all was how to use rejection as a tool to learn, adapt, and improve. Instead of sulking, just hanging on, or simply giving up after the first fifteen minutes, I treated the experience as a feedback tool, and quickly changed my tactics without abandoning the cause altogether.
Using customer feedback to quickly build and improve products is standard practice for many businesses. They set up metrics to measure how customers use their product or behave under certain conditions, and the feedback they get can change the direction of a product or even an overall business.
Yet that same nimble mind-set is rarely brought to bear when it comes to rejection. Blinded by their own expectations and emotions, rejectees often fail to take advantage of the feedback given by a rejector. In Chapter 6, I talked about the importance of asking and understanding the why of rejection. If that’s not possible, you can still change a component of a request and use people’s rejections as a way to adjust your approach. The key is to withdraw yourself from the emotion as much as you can and approach your request more like a bold, creative experiment.
For example, in a job search, if you applied one hundred times with the same résumé and were rejected for an interview each time, instead of seeing the rejections as a sign that you are not qualified for the job and should lower your expectations, you could improve your résumé, write a new cover letter, or use other channels such as networking to try again and see if there is any change in the percentage of callbacks.
WORTHINESS
When we think of rejection, we automatically assume it’s a setback, a source of pain, and something we have to overcome. We rarely investigate the possibility that rejection, in some cases, is a result of being ahead of a curve.
Throughout history,
we’ve seen countless examples of people who were rejected or even persecuted for their beliefs but vindicated by time. We’ve seen stories ranging from Galileo’s scientific theories being declared heretical to Vincent van Gogh, whose work now sells for millions but who was deemed a failure during his own lifetime, to the biblical story of Noah, who was mocked for building an ark to prepare for a historic flood. Even in today’s world, good ideas can face an uphill climb in many instances, especially if these ideas are creative in nature.
Companies, organizations, parents, teachers, and our society as a whole universally praise creativity and thinking outside of the box. However, when creativity actually happens, it is often met with rejection, because it frequently disrupts order and rules.
In the classic business book The Innovator’s Dilemma, Harvard professor Clayton Christensen argued that companies often fail to innovate because they focus on currently profitable projects and reject internal innovations. As a result, they fall victim to disruptive innovation by outsiders, who are often small start-ups and don’t have to worry about the status quo.
A study done by University of Pennsylvania psychologist Jennifer Mueller is called The Bias Against Creativity: Why People Desire but Reject Creative Ideas. Mueller found that no matter how much we say we love creativity on a conscious level, we subconsciously despise and fear it because it presents a level of uncertainty. As human beings, we crave certain and predictable outcomes. And we have tendencies to cling onto traditions and conventional wisdom. That’s why there hasn’t been any world-changing idea in history that was initially met with universal approval.
Looking back at my own journey, very few people gave me a chance to succeed when I quit my job to pursue an entrepreneurial dream. When I was rejected with the funding of my company, I did something unheard of. I spent part of the precious little time left in my six-month period to start a new video blog focused on my rejection. I did it because I felt the need to, and I didn’t consult with anyone else. Later on, one of my best friends told me that I was lucky for not telling him about my video blog before starting it. Otherwise, he would have tried everything to talk me out of the idea because it sounded “incredibly stupid.”
George Bernard Shaw famously said, “All great truths begin as blasphemies.” And Mahatma Gandhi said: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
The next time everyone accepts your idea or proposal without a hint of disagreement, you might want to stop for a moment and ponder if it is the result of conventional and group thinking. And if someone thinks your idea is “incredibly stupid,” consider the possibility that you might be onto something. Perhaps the question we should ask about an idea is not “How do I avoid rejection?” but “Is my idea worthy of rejection?”
CHARACTER BUILDING
100 DAYS OF REJECTION: GIVE A SIDEWALK SPEECH
It is often said that people fear public speaking more than they fear death. During my 100 Days of Rejection, I made plenty of speeches to a diverse set of audiences. As a result, I have come to fear public speaking far less than I did before; in fact, I quickly started enjoying it. I’d given speeches about my story at Tony Hsieh’s conference and at the University of Texas. However, standing onstage, in front of an audience of people who had purposely gathered to sit and listen to what I had to say, was one thing. It was safe, familiar, and predictable. Public speaking outside of that contained environment was another matter.
But I wanted to push myself again, so I devised a rejection challenge guaranteed to tap into this same sense of fear to see whether I could overcome it. The plan was to go to a random city street and start giving a public speech on the sidewalk. My wife, Tracy, would accompany me and film my experience from across the street. I had no idea if people would stop and listen, jeer or boo me, or just think I was crazy.
I wouldn’t say I was scared to death—but I was close. If you asked me which of my rejection attempts was the most frightening of them all, it was this one.
At 7:20 P.M. one evening, I set up a chair on a busy Austin sidewalk and propped up two signs nearby. The first read PUBLIC STORYTELLING @7:30PM. STAY IF INTERESTED. The second said KEEP AUSTIN WEIRD—a slogan that Austinites use to celebrate the city’s dynamic and liberal culture. (The sign was meant to lend me some sort of credibility, suggesting to others that I was trying to be weird, just like them.)
Tracy filmed the episode from the start. During those ten minutes of waiting, I looked like the shiest guy in school about to ask the most beautiful girl to the prom. My face was pale and my lips were shaking. Five minutes passed by, and so did countless people. A cyclist stopped and looked at my signs, cocked her head, then started pedaling again. A chocolate Lab being walked by his owner sniffed the signs, but his owner quickly pulled him away and kept on going.
Ten minutes went by, and not one person stopped. Without an audience, I was ready to pack up and go home. But then I changed my mind. I’ve come this far, I thought. Rejected or not, why not just give the speech anyway and see what happens. I looked at Tracy, who was patiently standing across the street, filming my anguish, and signaled to her to wait. Then I stood up.
I cleared my throat, and these words came out of my mouth: “Hi, everyone. I am going to tell my story now. You are welcome to listen.” Then I started my speech: “It was a Sunday. It was pretty warm. A guy was sitting in his house….” I told the story of me knocking on Scott’s door with a soccer ball.
The more I spoke, the more an odd sense of calm engulfed me, washing away the gut-wrenching jitters. I tried to focus exclusively on my speech, my movement, and the next word that came out of my mouth. It was like a light switch had flipped on.
A few people looked at me and slowed their steps. Others stopped and stood there. Soon, I had an audience of six people—and none of them left once they started listening.
Over the next fifteen minutes, I told my story—from quitting my job and building a company to being rejected by the investor and embarking on my rejection journey, and all the things I had learned along the way. I ended with what would later become, during other speeches, my signature line: “Rejection is like chicken. It’s yummy or yucky depending on how you cook it. We cannot let the fear of rejection cripple us.”
When I was done, my audience of six gave me a cheer.
“Thank you for telling your story, that was nice!” a person said.
“That was fantastic! How do we find you?” another woman asked.
A sense of pride and satisfaction filled my heart. I had fought through my fear, stuck with my goal despite being rejected by countless passersby, and gone on with my speech anyway.
And it was good that I did, because a few weeks later I had a much bigger audience to speak in front of. Three thousand entrepreneurs, bloggers, and writers filled the beautifully built double-decker Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland, Oregon. The occasion was the third annual World Domination Summit, a dynamic event billed as “a gathering of creative, interesting people from all over the world.” The summit’s founder and chief organizer, Chris Guillebeau, is an entrepreneur, blogger, and New York Times bestselling author of The $100 Startup. His goal is to inspire people to follow their passions and pursue their dreams—a cause I strongly believe in. After learning about my Krispy Kreme donut experience, he’d asked me to come to Oregon to share my story at his conference.
Before the event started, I looked at the speaker list and shook my head. It was filled with bestselling authors, including Gretchen Rubin (The Happiness Project), Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz), and Danielle LaPorte (The Desire Map). There were also well-known entrepreneurs like Andrew Warner (Mixergy) and Jonathan Fields (Good Life Project). And then there was Nancy Duarte, who made a career of teaching public speaking and even designed the presentation that Al Gore gives in his movie An Inconvenient Truth.
And then there was me, a failed entrepreneur turned video blogger who spent his days seeking out rejection. I couldn’t h
elp but be nervous.
Before my speech, I paced back and forth backstage, breathing heavily. The pressure to measure up to the other speakers was overwhelming. Moreover, I had never even seen an audience that large, let alone spoken in front of one.
An event volunteer saw how nervous I was and offered to teach me some stretching techniques to calm myself down. Then the director told me there were five minutes to go. I gulped. After checking my microphone, the guy in charge of equipment patted me on the back and said, “You’ll be fine. You are the rejection guy.”
His comment cut through my nervousness and grabbed my attention. Hmm…that’s right! I am the freaking rejection guy! While other people run away from rejection, I looked for it 100 times! If I’d managed to give my speech to an empty audience on a busy Austin street, then why should I be scared by a supportive audience that had paid to be here?
“One minute!” the director shouted.
My breathing started to slow down. I even managed a small smile—the kind you might get right before checkmating your opponent, which in this case was my own fear. I realized I had a weapon that no one else had—a wealth of experience in overcoming rejection.
Then it was time. “Go, go, go!” the director shouted, like a squad leader pushing his soldiers to advance toward a hail of bullets.
I walked onto the stage and into the spotlight. Three thousand people waited for me to begin. I took a full five seconds, surveying the beautiful theater from left to right. But I didn’t see people. Instead I visualized that busy street in Austin, before anyone had stopped to hear my speech. In that moment, I knew I would be fine.
“It was a warm, November afternoon…” I began.
Twenty-three and half minutes later, I walked off the stage to a standing ovation. I was over the moon. I started hugging and high-fiving the backstage volunteers. But the standing ovation didn’t stop, so Chris Guillebeau called me back to the stage to say a few final words. Standing there, I felt overwhelmed by joy and gratitude. I thanked the audience for their support and encouragement, and Chris for his invitation. But in my mind, I also thanked all those people who had passed me by on the street in Austin. That experience had made me strong and fearless.