Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection (19 page)

When you are not afraid anymore, that attitude will start to manifest in your personal relationships. Remember my uncle, the one whose dismissal of my idea to invent a shoe-skate hybrid back in college paralyzed my entrepreneurial drive? I haven’t always agreed with him, but I know my uncle has always loved and cared for me like his own son. And he has always wanted the best for me, in terms of both achieving financial success and pursuing my dreams. But he has a different perspective on how I should get there. More than anything, our differences are generational.

My uncle is a baby boomer who grew up in China. He later migrated to the United States with very little money. He worked very hard, step by step, to achieve his goals. Eventually, he fulfilled his dream of going to law school and established a very successful legal practice. To him, becoming a lawyer was like achieving the American dream. It also made him financially independent, which he to this day believes should be the number one goal of any young person.

I, on the other hand, a quintessential millennial, didn’t grow up wanting to be rich; I grew up wanting to be the next Bill Gates, and there was a clear distinction. While Bill Gates was rich for sure, he also changed the world and helped launch the computer revolution that made much of today’s information technology possible. It was the changing-the-world-and-making-it-better part that attracted me deeply.
That’s why I dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur and loathed being just another cog in a corporate machine, no matter how much I was paid.

Over the course of the past decade, I came to believe that this difference between us was probably the reason my uncle flat out rejected my wheels-on-shoes start-up idea. He thought entrepreneurship and start-ups were dreamy fantasies and that instead I should be climbing a corporate ladder or getting a professional degree so that I could make tons of money.

But was his rejection really due to our generational value differences? My 100 Days of Rejection taught me how dangerous it is to make assumptions about another person’s thoughts and motives (remember the hairdresser!). My uncle’s rejection had happened more than a decade earlier, but I had never asked him to explain to me what had been going through his mind. I had just assumed it was because uncle thought I was daydreaming.

So I called him. Believe me, making that phone call wasn’t easy. In fact, it was very uncomfortable. However, I told myself that if I could ask an auditorium filled with people to listen to me speak, then surely I could ask my uncle why he’d rejected my idea. I mustered all the swagger and calm I’ve learned through rejection therapy just to dial his number.

I could tell he was a little surprised by my question. “Well,” he said after a short pause, “I didn’t like the idea. I thought it wouldn’t work.”

“Wait…hold on,” I said. “It wasn’t because you thought being an entrepreneur was dreamy and dumb?”

“No,” he replied in a matter-of-fact tone. “I have always liked the fact that you think big. Sometimes it’s unrealistic, but you dared to dream and that was good. But the idea was just not good, in my opinion.”

Hearing this from him, I felt both relieved and a little stupid. For the longest time, I thought my uncle rejected me out of principle—that he thought I had my head in the clouds, that I didn’t have what it took to run a successful start-up, that I was being irresponsible and unrealistic. I had carried those fears with me for a long time. But I was wrong. He rejected me because he wasn’t sold on the specific idea that I had brought to him. Had the idea been something he liked or even understood, he would have gladly said yes.

At that moment, I wished I could have done my 100 Days of Rejection as a young man rather than as an adult. Maybe if there had been a course called Rejection Training or Rejection 101 in college, I would have learned all the principles by now. I would not have misunderstood this rejection and let it affect me so deeply. It might have even put my life on another route. Maybe, instead of Roger Adams inventing Heelys, I would have been the first to realize the idea.

Had I known then what I know now, I would have dealt with this rejection very differently. In fact, I made a list of the most important lessons I’ve learned about rejection so that I can keep myself from ever falling into bad habits.

Rejection is human
. Neither rejection nor acceptance is the objective truth about the merit of an idea or even a product. In my case, I mistook my uncle’s word for truth and thus gave up way too early.

Rejection is an opinion
. It reflects the rejector more than the rejectee. In my uncle’s opinion, I was a good ideas person, but this particular idea wouldn’t work. As a lawyer, he was no guru of consumer products—he wasn’t well versed in the world of the potential customer for the shoes. But his opinion was far from definitively right. Even if he had been a product genius like Steve Jobs, he still could have been wrong about the idea, like Steve Jobs was wrong plenty of times in his career.

Rejection has a number
. I could have asked a lot more people about the idea than just my uncle. Judging by Heelys’s success, odds are that someone I talked to would have liked the idea, which would have given me the encouragement I’d needed to pursue my idea to the next step.

Ask “why” before good-bye
. If we had had this “why” conversation in the moment rather than years later, who knows what could have happened? Instead, I let pain dictate my response and went into an emotional shell. I didn’t find out the true reason for my uncle’s rejection until now.

Retreat, don’t run
. I could have retreated and pitched my idea to him in a different way, such as building a model by inserting wheels into real shoes and seeing what he thought of that. Instead, I ran senselessly like a scared soldier after a bloody rout.

Collaborate, don’t contend
. I could have turned my uncle into a collaborator by asking him to imagine how he, or his kids, might use an invention like the one I was proposing. Getting him to envision my idea in a real-world setting might have shown him that I was onto something, after all.

Switch up, don’t give up
. My goal was to become an
entrepreneur, not a one-idea man. I could have “switched it up” by coming back to him with an entirely different invention idea instead of giving it up altogether.

Motivation
. I could have used the rejection as a motivation tool, pursuing the idea anyway and demonstrating to my uncle that I was up to the task, and that his rejection was wrong. I know that he, just like a loving father, would have been happy to be proven wrong by my success.

Self-improvement
. I could have used his rejection to keep improving on my original blueprint, drawing a better and more practical model and sending it to him for further opinion.

Worthiness
. I could have drawn the conclusion that the rejection possibly signaled the unconventional and creative nature of my idea.

Character building
. Last, I could have used the no to strengthen instead of weaken myself mentally. A rejection from a family member is great preparation for rejection from future customers and investors. I could have said to myself:
If I didn’t give up when my uncle said no, why would I give up when anyone else said no?

Most important, I would have realized that rejection is nothing to be afraid of.

When it came to my shoes-with-wheels, I had gone with the worst option—letting a single rejection stop me from pursuing an idea simply because someone I loved and respected thought it didn’t stack up.

Why did I have to ask my uncle for his approval in the first place? At the time, I sought acceptance, approval, and confirmation for seemingly everything, whether it was as big
as a career choice or as small as what to eat. The sounds of “yes,” “go ahead,” “I agree,” and “great idea” were like a drug to me, even in situations where I could easily make the decision myself.

The thousands of letters I received during my rejection journey tell me that approval-seeking isn’t just my problem—it’s more like an epidemic. Maybe it’s the ways we’re brought up as children, where conforming to our parents’ wishes brings approval and praise and deviating from them means scolding and rejection. Or maybe it’s the way we feel pressured to get others to like and accept us in our social circles or in the professional world. Or maybe it’s the hardwired genetic tendencies to crave approval and fear rejection passed down from our ancestors. Whatever the source, constant approval-seeking causes us to bend ourselves in ways that are not authentic. We feel compelled to put on a façade to appear happy, competent, sophisticated, and worthy so we might be accepted by other people. Then, as we act and conform in different ways, over the long haul, we become someone very different from whom we were meant to be. We lose the inner child that grew up wanting to be the president, the rocket scientist, the artist, the musician, or the next Bill Gates.

In the end, what we really need is not acceptance from others but acceptance from ourselves. In fact, being comfortable with who we are should be a prerequisite—not the result—of seeking others’ approval. We should all have the knowledge that who we are is good enough to get a yes from ourselves.

D
iscovering a new inner freedom from rejection was a big part of my 100 Days of Rejection. But I had to do more than that—I also needed action. After all, I dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur, not a philosopher or self-improvement guru. And not just an entrepreneur, but one whose work makes the world a better place in some way. So what was also amazing to me was how the principles I learned could help me to achieve my outer world goals as well.

The South By Southwest Conference is a massive music, film, and technology event that takes over downtown Austin for
more than a week every year. Thousands of technology start-ups converge to promote their websites, their inventions, and their apps. Everyone brings out their best sales techniques, drenching you with their enthusiasm, persuasion, and bags of goodies.

I wondered what would happen if I tried to be the worst salesman, sounding confident but making absolutely no effort to persuade anyone to buy what I was pitching. How would people perceive a guy who was totally neutral if not clueless about what he was selling?

Wandering around the Austin Convention Center, I spotted two college-age women sitting in a corner of the room, holding a bunch of pamphlets and looking bored and hesitant. Their slumped demeanor suggested they had little confidence or interest in what they were selling. They were students at the University of Texas, they told me. They’d been hired by a start-up to hand out the pamphlets, explain the company’s technology, and urge everyone to sign up for it on its website. When I asked if they had extra pamphlets so I could help hand them out, their faces lit up. They couldn’t have been happier with my offer.

With a bunch of pamphlets in hand, I started my “terrible salesman” experiment. I approached random strangers who were either waiting to attend their next event or resting from a day of event hopping. I started each conversation by saying, “Can I promote something to you?” Then I told them I’d just picked up the pamphlets from other promoters and had no idea how good the product was. I also told them I had no vested interest in them taking a pamphlet or visiting the
company’s website. Still, I made sure I sounded very confident, stood up straight, maintained eye contact, and gave a big smile. I was friendly, relaxed, and not pushy.

People’s responses were all over the board. One guy laughed me off without taking a pamphlet, and another woman gave me an “uh, sure”—a fake yes uttered probably just to get rid of me. Someone else asked me how to use the product, and I had to figure out an answer along with him since I had no clue. One woman, an entrepreneur promoting a similar technology, said that what I was promoting basically did the same thing as her own product. She immediately started to examine the company’s website and compare it to hers, strategizing on how to beat it. Incredibly, another woman grabbed hold of the pamphlet and told me what I was offering was exactly what she needed and had been looking for. She typed the address into her laptop, quickly scanned through the website, and gave an excited “Right on!” It was as if I just delivered hot pizza to a person who had been starving for days.

All in all, I offered pamphlets to ten strangers. Five people took them, two started to sign up in front of me, and the other three rejected my offer.

Two things about this rejection attempt fascinated me.

First, I experienced a side of sales I hadn’t known before. I used to view sales strictly as a skill of persuasion. Getting a yes or a no depended heavily on my communication skills. But here I was, trying to be the worst salesperson, not knowing anything about the product and not caring about making the sale. Some couldn’t walk away quick enough, but others engaged with me anyway because they had a need for or an
interest in the product. It reinforced that acceptance and rejection depend primarily on the other person’s situation.

It also changed my perspective on marketing and sales. The egotistical notion that sales success is based purely on the strength of the salesperson—instead of the strength of the fit between the customer and what’s being offered—now made no sense. In that way, rejection in sales is a
good
thing because it weeds out people who don’t need or want my service. There is a saying that a good salesperson can sell ice cubes to Eskimos. But why not focus on finding the people stuck in one-hundred-degree heat dying for some relief? Or if we had to sell ice to Eskimos, why not find the ones who are vacationing on the streets of Las Vegas? They would appreciate it a lot more than those living in Canada and Alaska.

The second thing I observed was about myself. Because I was detached from the outcome and didn’t feel the pressure to persuade or please, I could be 100 percent honest and say whatever I wanted. I was full of confidence. Most important, I had fun. And I actually think that some people picked up on the good spirits I was in and responded to that.

The people I approached had most likely been bombarded by many promoters throughout the day, each offering a rehearsed pitch or uninvited small talk. By just telling them that I was promoting something, I didn’t beat around the bush and made my intention clear as the day. I bet no other salespeople started their conversation that way. That honesty felt refreshing to me, and I think to the people I approached as well. It even felt refreshing to people who watched the video of my sales attempt on my blog:

“ ‘Can I promote something to you?’ Just made my day. Pure honesty. Awesome.”—TheReinmira

“This could be a whole new marketing strategy :D”—Irrational Action

Of course I am not some sort of sales guru who is discovering a new principle. Though I do believe that instead of focusing on learning sales techniques, if I can conquer fear first and start having fun, then everything, including using other sales techniques, would become much easier.