Good Life Project - Overcoming Rejection: 100-Day Experiment That Changed Everything

Episode Date: April 14, 2015

"Creativity [happens] not necessarily because we have no limits, but because we have found ways to solve problems within limits."Growing up in China, Jia Jiang dreamed of coming to the United States to make his mark as an entrepreneur. But his first attempt found him living with criminals in small-town Louisiana as an exchange student.Jia didn't give up, though. He found a new family who cared, then devoted everything he had to build his career. Until he came face to face with a crippling fear of rejection.If you're human, you're probably not all that different. To overcome this fear, Jia mounted a stunning and very public 100-day rejection adventure that not only "cured" his fear, but also turned him into a viral video phenomenon, speaking and author of the new book, Rejection Proof.This story is both inspiring and vulnerable as Jia Jiang takes us behind the scenes of what it looks like to stare rejection down.Follow Jia:Website | YouTube | TwitterCheck out our offerings & partners: My New Book SparkedMy New Podcast SPARKEDVisit Our Sponsor Page For a Complete List of Vanity URLs & Discount Codes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're all held back by this rejection in some way, our fear of rejection. It's the type of fear that we keep telling ourselves that we shouldn't try this, people wouldn't like it, I would seem silly, but I want the people to not have that fear. So before I dive into the actual introduction for this week's episode, you may hear a little bit of noise in the background. It's funny, I call it noise because I'm from New York City. But what I'm talking about is all sorts of tweets and birds and nature sounds. I'm recording this actually at the crack dawn, sitting on the side of a mountain in Costa Rica, where we're on retreat for our Good Life Project Immersion. And it's very early. The rooster's time clock is a little bit off.

He starts crowing here at about 3.30 in the morning, which is kind of funny. But it's a beautiful, incredible place to be. So if you hear all sorts of nature sounds in the background, that's what's going on. It's not actually horns or things that you might normally see in New York City where I normally do these. So today's conversation, really loved. Jia Jiang is a guy who came to the United States from China at a very young age on his own because he was obsessed with the possibility of entrepreneurship. And when he got here, he discovered not only that he ended up in a den of criminals, but that he was terrified. He was shut down by the idea of

rejection. And rather than running from it, he actually ran into it and launched what he called his rejection project. And every day started challenging himself to be rejected. What came out of that is a pretty incredible adventure. That's also led to a book that we're going to go into. So really excited to be sitting down and sharing this conversation with John Yang. And I hope you guys enjoyed as well. I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him.

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The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. So I want to actually get into your recent adventures over the last few years and your dance with rejection. Dance with rejection, I like it. And where it's brought you. But also you have a really powerful and compelling, let's call it an origin story. And so I want to go way back with you, back to when you were a kid and where you grew

up and what life was like there. And then we'll kind of trace your journey. So I grew up in Beijing, China. Everyone born in China with my generation is probably the only child in their family. So I was, and my family treated me really, really well. They loved me, and they pretty much didn't reject me with anything I was asking. They said yes to everything. That was, by the way, largely because of legal restrictions, right?

Yes, definitely. The government had a law that passed just before I was born because China had too many kids. And then they just said, you know what, no more. Everyone, every family has one kid going forward. It was crazy, but it was what happened. Yeah, that's amazing. So you grew up, I mean, how does that affect just the culture of the way that kids are brought up within families just in general, if most families are sort of one-child families? Yeah, so the only, I think there are advantages.

You know, we got all the love, all the attention from our parents, and they made sure we got good education. But the thing is, the generation that we grew up with had a hard time sharing stuff, just because we didn't have any siblings to share. We didn't feel the need to share, to fight over things. We're just, everything is mine. So it was a little bit tough.

But also, that was the end of the time where, I feel it was the end of time where China was still teaching the kid a lot about being a revolutionary leader, being part of the, I guess, socialist society. Nowadays, I think they still talk about it, but not as much as it was before. So at the time, I grew up learning about it. It was what I thought didn't fit my fancy, you know, didn't something, not something I wanted to do.

But at that time, were you at liberty to feel like you could express the fact that these teachings really strongly didn't resonate with you? No, not really. So when you were a kid, all you wanted was to study well because the teacher were making sure if you are a good student

and then you were treated really well. If you're a bad student, you weren't treated really well. There was not too much free expression going on. But deep down, I just felt this is probably not something I wanted to do. Even though everyone else were really

emphasizing on academic achievement. That's where they measure everything. And the best student goes to a good college and then not so good students don't go to college. They're toast, basically, in society. So, and success in life then, sort of like where you grew up was all about academics and where you went to school and then what that led to? Yeah, yeah. It was actually a weird time because that's when China just kind of opened up its economy because more westernized.

You started to see some people are getting rich in the 90s, in the early 90s. But in the 80s, most people weren't rich. But in the 90s, you start seeing this financial success that some people had. And their success wasn't traced back to academic success. That's why there's this weird two-track system where

society entails you, you have to go to school, do well academically to succeed. But then there's other track of a society where it's all westernized, monetized, and the entrepreneurs was,

they were the ones who were becoming very successful. So how did you, I mean, coming up in the really early part of that, how do you kind of

reconcile that? How do you grapple with that? I had a hard time too. Yeah. Because at school, I was like, okay, I got to do well at school,

but I didn't, I wanted to change the world. Just to sound scornful, but I did. I wanted to change the world. I feel there was so much more than just everything was taught in the books. That's when, you know, I mentioned when Bill Gates came to China, that he had such a huge impact on me. It was back in 94, and he was promoting Windows 95. I just heard his story.

That's when I couldn't reconcile the fact that everyone told me I should be a good student, but also there are a lot of people getting rich or being successful. They're actually making an impact in society as entrepreneurs. I couldn't reconcile that. And then you have Gates who dropped out of school.

Yeah. Then when I saw him, I thought, okay, now I kind of know what I want to be. This is the first time in my life where I found there's a direction I want to go, which is technology entrepreneurship. Was there any support for that at that time? Not really. Not really. If parents buy you a computer, it's because they tell you you got to go to school, you got to use the computer for academic things. But we basically just play games mostly.

So where do you go from there? So I came to the US. That's actually a big turning point in my life. That's where when I was 16, I came here as a culture exchange student. So that was your first time. And the intent was just to sort of like stay here for a short window of time.

Yeah, well, the intent was I want to see if i like it here or not if i like the society i will stay here for for college and i loved it here even though i went to some some weird place not like la not um it's a small town somewhere small town like a rural town in louisiana so so you come from beijing yes and you end up in a small town in rural Louisiana. Absolutely. You got to tell me a little bit more about what that was like. It was, okay, it's a very small town. It's 500 people.

Everyone is the same, talk the same way, look the same way. Well, kind of. But there are more cows than people in that town. And there are more churches than stores. It was very different than my vision of the United States. Actually, when I first came to this country, my exchange program did a horrible job matching up against the family. The family I ended up with, they were like criminal family. Oh, my God.

Yeah. The firstborn of their family was convicted of murder. He got locked up for two years. Not two years. For two years before I went. He got locked up for a long, long time. So I went. I was sleeping in his bed, literally.

And I didn't know. So you literally go from being a great student in Beijing to being a student living in a family where you're sleeping in the bed of their son who was in prison for murder. In a 500 person town in Louisiana. Yes, and also the story gets crazier. They also stole all the money I took with me. When you first go to a family

I brought some cash with me just to be with me. The first thing I do is take me to a bank so I can deposit. I don't want to have cash with me all the time thing i do is i take me to a bank so i can deposit i don't want to have cash with me all the time and they took i didn't understand a word of english so they made a joint account without me knowing the second day they withdrew all the money so were they i mean were they just in this to scam exchange students pretty much pretty much there it turned out to be what what they were doing. Wow.

It was, yeah, we told our exchange program, we told our school, and they all freaked out. And they called the police, and the police went with us to that family, and we got all our belongings, and we just left. And then they arrested the host family. My God. So what did you do then? I mean, did you stay in the country? Yeah, I did. I changed to another family.

This time, you know, like I'm a spiritual person. This is a big reason why it was because this new family was just treating me so well. And they are, you know, they're, I mean, they're a churchgoer. You know, they're believers. And I just saw the love they were showing me. You know, I know love. My family gave me plenty of love. When you have friends and relatives,

they have plenty of love. I did not see the type of love that was shown from a stranger to stranger. So that's what drew me to the faith. And that's when I was baptized there in small town Louisiana. And so I can see there's a purpose in what went through my life. That's amazing. So you end up going from living with criminals to finding strangers who showed you love

and introduced you to faith. Yes, absolutely. Wow. He also just showed me there's lives that, you know, it was also my later story about being rejected.

It's all this, there's this curve. There's obstacles, there's adversity. It's something that I could not understand at the time, but it turned out to be a blessing later on. Yeah. So you ended up staying then with this new family, but that was just still for a short run of time, right? Yes. Yes. It was just

a few months after my one year is over. Then I went to college. Right. So then you came back here to go to college when, but you went back home. So when you went back home, did, did like your family know that your intention was now to? No didn't go back home i just stayed i stayed afterward so got it tell me more about um how bill gates is uh how that impacted you also because there's a bigger story there isn't it yeah the the thing is i want to be an entrepreneur and I found there is a his path is something that when I was I said I was a kid I was kind of confused you know going to school but also wanting to make a change in the difference in the world and he showed that a person this pretty smart person can single-handedly using technology making real impact in the world. That's what really drew me to this idea, to the idea of entrepreneurship.

It was what drew me to America, frankly. I love this land where you can have, use an idea, use technology to build all that. That's what I've always wanted. And that's what kind of led me to the rest of my life, you know, my desire to be an entrepreneur and my desire to be who I am. Right. So where did you end up going to college?

I went to college. I started at University of Utah, and I transferred to Brigham Young University a few miles down south. It was a Mormon school. Yeah. So, and it was very awesome. I was a minority more ways than one.

Yeah, I would imagine. Yeah. It's so interesting that you kind of like, where you came from, and then you end up in a small town in Louisiana, and then you choose Utah, and then Brigham Young also. Yeah.

What's the experience like for you there? And also, I'm curious, at that point, because you said when you first came here, you essentially had almost no English. Yeah. So by the time you went to Brigham Young, I'm curious what it's like to be sort of experiencing all this while you're at the same time really just developing

a learning understanding of the language. Yeah, it was a crazy time. But also one of the times I remember really well and fondly because I felt I progressed so much. I came here at age 16. And before that in China, I was just an old social student. Again, it was an environment where everyone was measuring you about what your grade was.

Right, so hyper-competitive from an academic standpoint. Yeah, then when i got here i found myself i found i was progressing with my english um just uh it was like because i was young because i really wanted to learn the language i had to force myself to talk to people and it was just maybe a weeks ago i couldn't speak anything then a week later i started using some words the month later i started using started doing some very rudimentary conversation. I just like that. I felt that progress gave me confidence.

And I felt I could do anything if I could learn a new language that fast, if I could learn new things that fast. And also, it made me adapt, right? I felt rural Louisiana was pretty tough, but I adapted. I'm sure Utah was different from the rest of America, but I adapted. I was in the middle of all my roommates, all my friends. They were all Mormons, but I wasn't. But I adapted.

So that kind of adapting gave me a lot of confidence in whatever I was doing. I could feel that I could succeed in whatever I do. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch,

getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet-black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later require, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised.

The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him.

Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. What is it about you that you feel, and maybe it's an impossible question, I don't know, but I'll offer it up and tell me what you think. What is it that you feel that allows you to have this lens that just lets you continue to adapt so fluidly to just such a string of just massively changing, I mean,

it's radical change in culture, in country, and then within the country, from one to the next to the next. What is it that allows you to sort of be so fluid? It's a great question. Like very few people, no one has asked me that question. I think it was because of my, I feel I have a dream to become an entrepreneur. I just, I was drawn to the idea.

So when you have a goal like that, it seems like the journey itself becomes more interesting, becomes more, you can handle almost anything when you have a journey, when you feel on the right path, when you're just making little small progress. As long as you feel you're making progress, the road wasn't that tough. Even though it's pretty thorny,

even though I have to dodge a lot of differences or even danger in the case of my host family. But the road itself always felt positive. And I was going toward a goal, and I knew what I wanted. So I was just, this idea about, I hate to equip myself to Victor Franco's teaching, you know, but if he could, in that type of environment,

the worst environment he could fathom, he could find meaning. It's because he found meaning and what he was doing, he felt he could handle. So what I went through was actually like heaven on earth compared to some of the worst environments out there in the world. But because I had that meaning, I had that goal, I could adapt, I could change and everything felt okay to me. Yeah, I love that. Because you had like this bigger sense of purpose to frame every experience around it made it more, you know, there was a reason for it. And I get, you know, and I certainly get the comparison to franklin i get the fact that you're not in any way comparing what you went through to what he went through but just sort of the analogy of having that

overarching sense of deeper sense of meaning and purpose and working towards something allows you to reframe almost anything that comes your way. Yeah, that's fascinating. So you end up in college. What did you actually study in college? I studied computer science. Okay, but this is interesting too, right? Because you came here saying, okay, maybe the way to get what I want to do is not academia,

it's entrepreneurship, but you still stayed for an advanced degree. Yeah, I did. And then that's where it got me, I think from the second part, half of college, then all the way to when I was 30, basically. That's when I felt I lost that sense of purpose. I felt I was starting measuring up to other people. I felt I was worrying about looking for a job.

I felt there was a pressure from my family to be financially independent, but also not only that, to make a lot of money. So, and then when there is that conflict, the pressure went from inside where I want to be this entrepreneur, I want to change the world. But then there's this family pressure and also social pressure from friends to actually measuring up to do well in society.

And I felt I chose this route, this route of trying to be someone I wasn't. So can you pinpoint a time where you kind of felt yourself starting to lose that vision, starting to lose it? Yeah, it was probably in sophomore, maybe junior in college. And I felt computer science was not my thing.

Even though I want to be a technology entrepreneur, what I was interested in junior in college. And I felt computer science was not my thing. Even though I want to be a technology entrepreneur, what I was interested in was in business. I want to learn about business. I want to come up with product ideas and execute. But programming was not my thing. However, my family was really heavily encouraging me to stay in computer science because that's how you make money,

how you find a job, right? It's the safe option. It's the safe option. to stay in computer science because that's how you make money, how you find a job, right? So, and then... It's the safe option. It's the safe option. And then when, because I was not built to be a computer programmer in the junior and senior years,

it just got really, really, I struggled hard. It become harder and harder. It was hard for me to graduate. And then when I, after I graduated, it was, you got to find a job. You know, during school, you got to find an internship,

go get an internship. After graduation, go find a job. And you got to find a job right now. And I found a job. I found like a software engineering job because I went to a pretty good school because I've had this degree. A lot of people wanted me, my service.

But then I just found that just wasn't me. That's when I felt I started losing my purpose. I'm going down the track where I was progressing career-wise, but wasn't going toward my ultimate goal of being an entrepreneur. And how is that affecting you? I was depressed. I was depressed for a few years. Were you aware of the fact that you were depressed?

Not at the beginning, but then later on, people start telling me that you don't look right. You look sad. Like when I see them, they see me. Some friends haven't seen me for a couple months. They saw me. I was like, oh, John, you look really sad. And so I saw a doctor and was like, what's wrong with me? And then it turned out to be I had a depression issue for about a year, a couple years, starting in junior in college.

And that's really just because I kind of lost myself. Yeah. So what was the approach to starting to refine yourself? One of the big thing is, um, I want to find, I wanted to be, become entrepreneur again, like wanted to become entrepreneur again. So it's tough for me to be in that environment to do it. You know,

Utah, you know, and, and also is, um, um, I want to have a career change basically, and use that jump,

use that springboard to become entrepreneur. So I wouldn't, I applied for business school and I got into a pretty good one. And that kind of took me out of that sense because now I feel like, all right, I'm on track again. Even though it was a little bit self-deceiving in the end because going to business school is not necessarily the prerequisite for being an entrepreneur. Right, exactly. And that was what the first thing that popped into my mind. It's like, okay, so you came here because you knew you wanted to be an entrepreneur.

Then you went to school. Yeah. And when you're in school, then there's pressures within school, within your classmates and your family to then finish your degree and then to follow the prescribed path. And you start to lose that connection with the reason that you came to the country in the first place. Right. prescribed path and you start to lose that connection with the reason that you came to the country in the first place right and then you get depressed and then you realize that you know a big part of it is because you've walked away from this like the big overarching thing that was driving you right and then but instead of just saying let me go work for startups let me go find

you went back to school i couldn't i i couldn't do that because i would doing that would would i would feel like it would be too much of a shock to me and my family. Like my family would not accept that. How much did that mean? I mean, how much did that sense of doing right by your family tell me about that? It meant way too much to me. Because I had a great relationship. I still have a great relationship with my family, my parents, especially my uncle,

who he kind of, without him, I would not be able to come to America. He was the one who connected me. It was an exchange student program. And so I feel, even today, I feel I owe the world to him. Everything he said to me was feeling like it was gold. It was like almost a word from God. I have to follow. So, and even though he asked, later on I felt, man, I don't want to be a computer programmer. He told me to stay on this track. And I did. He told me to find a job.

And I did. I kept telling him that I want to be an entrepreneur somehow. But he's like, well, if you can be in a company, a small company, you can learn how to be in a company, a small company, you can learn how to be entrepreneurial being a small company. Or if you go to a big company,

which is even better, you can learn how to be, how the business operates. So there's always a way to persuade me to actually go down this route.

Just a different way of saying you can be entrepreneur later on. Yeah. So, and even business school is the same,

same thing. I couldn't quit my job to become job to start a company because that would not be accepted by my family. But I feel going to business school is a great way to actually somehow feel like I'm going toward that goal, but also getting accepted by my family. My family was like, business school, graduate school, sounds good. You should go. Right. Because it's like, okay, now you're furthering your education.

Yes. Yeah. So what did you study in business school? I didn't have a major. It was just general management. Right. And what was your goal when you were there? I should have read it in my application letter.

It was, I want to be this entrepreneur. I want to change the world. But when I got into business school, I just felt, wow, there's, again, I succumbed to social pressure. Everyone there, they were not entrepreneurs. They were trying to work for someone. They're trying to make a bigger paycheck. It was a career change. Investment banking, consulting, marketing, corporate finance.

These were the things people really look into. And then I succumbed to the pressure of finding a job. And that's what you did after. I did's what i did afterward right so um all right so what happens okay i know it's like you know what now what right it was until i was 30 um i got married uh i married my wife she was really really that she's the best thing that ever happened in my life um and she when i was 30 i I got news that she's pregnant, and we're about to have our kid. Now this comes to Jesus moment for me, because now I know I'm 30.

First of all, I'm 30. I can no longer say it's family pressure, because now I'm going to be a parent. And where's that kid who wanted to be Bill Gates? Where's that kid? Where's the kid who just wanted to change the world? And just, he had excuses. He had family pressures.

But also, everything was, he made all the choices eventually. He can't blame on everyone. And eventually he ended up at 30 years old guy in a corporate in a company a fortune 500 company collecting really good income climbing a corporate ladder that's not what he wanted so i did not want to tell my kid that because you were born i want to be responsible dad and i want to and that's why I had to stay and have a job and provide for my family. I wanted to say to my kid that

because you were born and you become the catalyst for me to actually eventually really looking going after my dreams so I can be an inspiration example for you and you can look for your, go after your dreams as well. So that was a turning moment in my life.

Wasn't much earlier. It was when I turned 30. I said, I have to quit my job and really make my own choice here. Yeah. So what did you do? I quit my job and I started building my company. In a few months, I found a team and I started building these apps that I felt had a great future. I was interviewing customers. I was looking for doing marketing, and I was looking for investment.

So this is where this crazy thing happened. Four months into my venture. By the way, my wife gave me six months to do this job. I'm glad you went there because that was my next question. It's like, okay, so you're married, you've got a newborn kid, you know, like she marries this rock star on a great corporate trajectory and then you're like, hey,

I'm quitting. She's actually very supportive. You know, I mean, it took a little bit of back and forth trying to figure it out because to her that was a big change as well. I'm sure. Your husband wants to quit his job but eventually

she said, you got to do it. And not only you got to do it, but let's have a goal. Let's have a deadline. She gave me six months to see if we can make any traction. She said, six months, do whatever you want. Make it happen. But by She said, six months, do whatever you want. Okay, make it happen.

But by the end of six months, let's really evaluate and I'm going to set certain goals for you, certain metrics for you. If you reach those metrics, let's keep going. Otherwise, you can look for a job again. And that's actually very liberating to have an end goal like that

because it's really hard to just step out of the world saying, I'm an entrepreneur. You know, my life has changed forever. There's no end in sight. That's when I feel I would get in trouble. But if I have a short-term goal and I feel there is an end in sight and there's a goal, and that felt actually liberating. Yeah.

No, I love that example, actually. It's something that's funny. You sharing that with me reminds me it was something that actually I had had been asked about many times and actually wrote about in my first book. And, but I haven't really revisited much since then, is the idea of when you're a little bit further into life and you decide to enter the world of entrepreneurship, that very often it's not, you're not so much looking for, you know, and, and, and there are people who are really close to you and you're not going to just walk away from them if they don't totally buy into your like crazy vision. You're like, they matter to you. You know, that very often the conversation is really much more about, Hey, listen, this is, let me explain why this is so important to me. Let me explain what not doing it is doing to me and to us.

And, and then I'm not going to ask you to just give me unlimited bandwidth forever and just trust me forever. But can we come to just an agreement where we both feel like this is an amount of time where I should be able to – I need to make something happen and we're both okay. And like you said, we'll reexamine. It's not a matter of like everything ends and shuts down at the end of their time. But let's look at what can happen in that window of time and then reassess whether it makes sense for for the family yeah for you to continue on this path um or not and i think that's such an important conversation and i love that frame that you brought to it that a lot of people

don't have because it's sensitive and they don't know how to handle it. And so they just don't want to have the conversation. And they don't want to also be somehow confined by the time frame. Yeah. By a runway. But the constraint can actually really create a lot of energy behind it. Yeah, it could. It's the creativity actually is not necessary because we have no limits, but we found ways to overcome, to solve problems within a certain limits. Absolutely.

Yeah. And there's great research around that. I mean, solve problems within a certain limit. Absolutely. Yeah. And there's great research around that. I mean, constraint really increases innovation and creativity. Absolutely. And also, it's a great tool to convince people. In our family, she's very close to her parents. I'm very close to my parents. And my wife has a lot of pressure with her parents because they're they were not happy was the fact that the

provider of family was quitting his job but the conversation goes from this guy's gonna quit his job he's gonna be entrepreneur going forward it's like he's gonna take we are together gonna have a six months period we're gonna try this and make it really big and if it doesn't work we're we're gonna be back to the trajectory we were on before don Don't worry about it. So that is a lot easier to swallow for people who are close to you. Yeah, no, absolutely. So what happens? Yeah, so four months into my venture, I was rejected. It was an investment, which I felt I had a really good chance of getting.

And because I wanted it so bad and got rejected it I was hurt really bad there I felt somehow I felt that rejection was the probably the hardest of all the rejections I've gotten in life I got a lot of rejections but but because that was the closest to me achieving my ultimate dream in life of being entrepreneur it was really close it was it was I felt it was almost do or die, you know, otherwise I wouldn't meet my goal in six months, so four and a half months into my venture, I got rejected with that investment, and then I just felt maybe this is God telling me that I should quit a couple months, a month and a half earlier, maybe this is a sign from above for me to look for another job, and that is where I

had another conversation with my wife, my wife said, no matter what, you know, you can't, you can't quit. I give you six months. I didn't give you a four. You have time left. Why don't you keep going and, and, and, and just, just leave nothing out. But the thing is I wanted to do, but then I found, wow, it was so hard for me to get myself up again. It's just because I was so afraid to be rejected again. I was so afraid. And then that's where I started looking for this thing online to see how I can overcome my fear of rejection. That's where I found this game called rejection therapy. I'm sure some of you listeners would know this.

On NPR a couple months ago, there was a big talk about rejection therapy. I'm sure some of you listeners will know this. On NPR a couple months ago, there was a big talk about rejection therapy. It was invented by this guy named Jason Comley. We're still friends nowadays. I love that idea and I took that approach. I'm like, I'm going to start a video blog about me getting

rejected. I want to invent my own rejection attempts. Basically, the idea is going out there to get rejected one day at a time, looking for rejection instead of running away. So by the end, you can become more fearless. So it's like exposure therapy. Exposure therapy,

yeah. I'm like, I'm not going to do this for three days. I'll do this for a hundred days. I will film myself with the iPhone of me getting rejected, and I will start a video blog. So that's what I did. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever.

It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required.

Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg.

You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. So you go from working on your app company really close and then getting a big painful no from an investor saying, okay, the thing that's really stopping me, this is hurting me on a level that is just shutting me down. So how do I deal with that?

But then instead of just saying, let me make this a personal process yeah let me figure out how to get through my my approach to rejection you decide let me make this a big public thing yeah just to blow it up you know and that in your mind was were you thinking well maybe this is the entrepreneurial venture maybe this is the future or was this more just like public accountability like what was it yeah there are two parts. One is, as you mentioned, public accountability. It was, I wrote a blog post before this all happened when I was doing, building my app. And that blog post, I posted it on Hacker News. It got a lot of responses. It got me thinking on a lot of things.

And I'm like, okay, if you... For those who don't know, by the way, Hacker News is sort of a and i'm like okay if you for the for those who don't know by the way hacker news is sort of a it's like a front page in the this the tech startup community where if if an article gets popular there it can it will blow up and send a huge amount of traffic to it yeah so i got a lot of feedback and people telling me about the topic i was talking about and i i didn't know blogging before at all and I thought that was some sort of public journaling that does you no good. But that moment I thought,

oh, I could connect with all these strangers. So with this whole rejection thing, maybe I should blog about it as well. One, I want to ask the world to hold me accountable. And second part, there's a small part of me is thinking if this thinking thing can become big, it might bring traffic to my business as well.

So there's also part of me was incentivized to do it. Right. So you start to go into this whole exploration and what happens? Well, the first day, I went to a stranger

in my office and asked to borrow $100 from that guy. And he just, i said can i borrow a hundred dollars but can i borrow a hundred dollars from you sir and he he raised up he saw me he was like no why and and i just started running i just ran away right after i'm like oh no i'm sorry i just run because i was so scared and i i just i saw myself how nervous were you walking oh my gosh i couldn't believe how scared that was.

So I filmed myself with my iPhone before I walk in. I did the monologue saying, okay, this is my first day. I'm going to borrow $100 from you and see what happens. And then that night, I saw myself watching myself on a video. And I thought, wow, you're really scared. You look like this kid from Sixth Sense. You know, I see dead people. I was seeing dead people.

But I thought that was a microcosm of my life. I was so scared of rejection. As soon as I hear someone says no to me, I just run away as fast as I could and never go back again. But the guy wasn't menacing. The guy wasn't, you know, whipping out tasers and calling police. He was just asking me why. He was kind of intrigued of why I would ask him for $100. But because I was so scared, I ran away. So I said to myself, the second day, no matter what happens,

I'm not going to run away. So the second day I went to a five guys burger. Um, I'm sure it's very popular in this area of the country too. Um, and I asked, I, after getting a burger, I asked the cashier, can I get a burger refill? Um, he's like, what? He didn't, he wouldn't believe I was saying, he was like, what's burger refill. I said, it's just a drink refill, but what's a burger. And, um, and he was like, I'm sorry,? I said, it's just a drink refill, but what's a burger? And he was like, I'm sorry, we don't do that, man. I'm like, I love your burger. If you do drink burger refill, I would love you guys a lot more.

He said, I'll tell my manager about it. I don't think they made the change. But then I left and I saw, okay, I did not run away. I put some humor into this. I didn't feel too bad. I wasn't too scared. So that was like, uh-huh, okay, I can learn things this quickly. It's not just about exposure.

It's really about learning as well. So it was like you tried something different. Yeah. You're like, let me bring some humor into it. Let me of like approach it and see if it changes the dynamic yeah so and then the third day was like my life would change again on that day forever i i think and i hope that i that day i was driving down to my office and i got stuck in traffic i saw there was this was this Krispy Kreme sign on the street. Krispy Kreme, for those of you who don't know, is a donut shop. And I thought, what if I ask for them to interlink five donuts into an Olympic ring shape?

And there's no way they would say yes, right? But that's my rejection attempt of the day. So I went there and asked them to make me Olympic donuts. The thing is, her name's Jackie. She was a shift leader, and she took my request so seriously. She was writing down colors. She was trying to see how she could make it. She was collaborating with me.

And 15 minutes later, she brought out a box of donuts that looked like Olympic rings. That's fantastic. Yeah, and I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe how the type of customer service and just human kindness that was in that episode. So I uploaded that video online, and it blew up. It became like a viral video with over 5 million people viewed it. It got on the front page of Yahoo. It was on Huff viewed it. It got on the front page of Yahoo.

It was on Huffington Post. It was on the front page of Reddit. It was everywhere. It was in the UK. It was the Daily Mail. People started just, because of that, random people started emailing me, asking me, you know, that was really cool, but why were you doing this? Somehow they thought what I was doing was somehow inspiring. The idea of looking for rejection was inspiring.

And that kind of got me thinking because I thought maybe I was the only person who was afraid of rejection. But it turned out to be a lot of people are afraid of rejection. They started sharing their life stories with me. And then it got me a chance to actually see rejection even more. So you start to gain this national exposure and national audience. And in your mind at this point, are you still thinking, I only have a couple weeks left in my six months, or are you kind of shifting gears? Oh, absolutely. I'm shifting gears? Oh, absolutely. I was shifting gears because part of our metrics is about how

many people you can touch, how many customers you have. And just from that alone, because of that exposure, thousands of people signed up to my service to my app without even me asking them to. What was the app, by the way? The app was called Hooplus.

Basically, it was about gamifying promises. So basically, if I make a promise to you, Jonathan, I will show up here at your studio, and then I will send you that promise.

Then if I fulfill it, you check it out, give me a score. So I made this gamification thing. So now we fulfill promises to each other, but also we receive some sort of reward virtually. So the rejection thing, which you were just doing as a personal experiment, starts to build a huge amount of public attention, and then it starts to actually serve the other side of things. Yeah, absolutely. And to a point that I felt I'm getting so much attention

or so much request from this rejection thing instead of this app I was building. So maybe I should make a shift. Because, you know, Paul Graham, who is the founder of Y Combinator, he talked about the best startup ideas are not the cool ideas in your head that you just try to make something happen.

It was for you to solve a problem. And there's a lot, it seems like there's a lot bigger problem here with people being afraid of rejection than this promise app that you were doing. Right. So then how do you respond to that? Well, I said, I'm going to focus on my entrepreneur venture to this rejection thing. I'm going to start on my entrepreneur venture to this rejection thing. I'm going to start focus, keep my blogging going, but I'm going to focus on using technology and in different ways to build an app where you're not afraid of rejection, to help people overcome their fear of rejection.

And did you? Actually, I took a rain check on it because I started getting invites to speak at different conferences. And I think that's where we met at World Ombudsman Summit in Chris Gillibald's conference in Portland, Oregon. It was about a couple years ago.

And then I gave a talk there. It was very successful. Like there were 3,000 people there giving me standing ovations. And afterward, Chris, a publisher, actually reached out to me and saying, that talk was great. The story was great. If you can actually turn that into a book, it can help a lot of people. Then I thought, give me another shift. I'm like, book is another product, right?

The blog is another product. It's not like there's different ways you can touch people. It doesn't have to be technology, at least not right now. If there's this opportunity to write a book about this story to inspire people, to help people, so they're not afraid of the rejections anymore. Maybe it's the way to go. So I spent a whole year writing my book. And I found, you know, not everyone was presented with this type of opportunity. I had this opportunity because there's a problem.

And I want to solve that problem. So book was the starting point. So and the story in the book then, it's really it's your journey. It's, you know, it's and you did, in fact, continue this project. Yeah, and the story in the book then is it's really, it's your journey. It's, you know, it's, and, and you did in fact continue this project. Yeah, absolutely. As I did a hundred, a whole 100 rejection attempts, I got a lot of yeses, got a lot more no's. But the thing is, the interesting part is, it's not just about that story. I discovered a lot about life, about business, about negotiation, about human nature. You know, I went to a pretty good school, and I was in corporate America for a long time, and I thought I learned a lot about business.

But in those 100 days, I learned more about business. I learned more about life and courage than I ever did being at business school and being in corporate America. It's like a quick super fast almost like an MBA life course then and not only expanding my comfort zone I feel I'm a lot more courageous afterward but I learned how to get people to say yes to me I learned how to after here no I know I learned how to turn that no into a yes and none of that involved me saying something that's not true trying to sell something that's into a yes. And none of that involved me saying something that's not true,

trying to sell something that's like a second-hand car salesperson. I learned all that being authentic and confident. And then I put a lot of research into this. That's how the book came about. What an amazing, you know, it's funny you use the word pivot in technology startups. It's an interesting pivot because for you it's pivoted away from a focus on how can I build a company around technology to solve a problem. It's more just like, okay, I was trying to solve my own personal problem. I did it in a public way for a variety of reasons and discovered the fact that there is probably a global community of people who, who experience the same pain on a regular basis.

And they're in some way resonating with my approach to moving into it rather than avoiding it and suffering from it. And how can I, how can I share my message? And, um, and it's interesting that you sort of, you were open to the book as sort of this interesting, it's almost like it's, it's an alternative path to entrepreneurship for you. It is. It is. I mean, being an entrepreneur is about solving a problem. It doesn't have to be like being in technology.

It doesn't have to be about writing code. It doesn't have to be about making sales. It could be if you can sell the problem but also make it profitable, that's entrepreneurship. And I found a new approach. It's probably one of the oldest approaches, not a new approach. But I found a different approach to a different problem than I originally intended. But it all happened because I'd make that step to win from not going after my dream and feeling the regret every day about I should have been chasing my dream

to when I went on this journey to start my own company. So as we're speaking, it's kind of on the eve of the book's launch. It's a couple of weeks before that, so the book is done, I'm assuming. Yeah, it's done, thankfully. And you're about to launch this to the world and I guess probably travel around a whole bunch and share the message and go into it. How did – because I know that your family's and your wife's and her family's input and lens on the way that you were choosing to invest your energy is really important to you. How have they viewed this latest evolution? Basically, amazement.

My wife was amazed. I feel the success or the traction I'm getting, if there's one person I feel deserves this the most. It's my wife. She put up a lot, especially from her family's side, about me doing this. And it brings her a sense of pride and kind of justification for what she was advocating. Because she was advocating for me. And she believed in me. And we had a lot of prayers together, and just trying to make this happen.

And this, I feel the best for her, more than anyone. And also our family members, they're all very proud. They turn doubts and turn, like, suspicion into this sense of pride. So I'm in a pretty good place just because I took a chance and it turned out to be something completely different than I was looking for, but much better.

So a few weeks from the launch of this next big manifestation, you have launched the book, and I'm guessing there's probably a lot of other stuff spinning in your mind about how you're going to leverage that to help people. What's your greatest hope for what you're about to do?

My greatest hope is I just want to have this thing impact as many people as possible. I really don't care about how much money this will generate, but I want to, because I know we all have, no matter who you are, how successful you are. People have different dreams. People have different aspirations. It doesn't have to be entrepreneurship.

It could be a career. It could be just taking on more responsibilities. It could be just being an artist. A lot, but we're all held back by this rejection in some way, our fear of rejection. It's the type of fear that we keep telling ourselves that we shouldn't try this. People wouldn't like it. I would seem silly, but I want the people to not have that fear. I hope it's through this book or that's not through a book, through me speaking or through whatever, through me, my video, or some other people through their example. I want people to get rid of that fear and just try

things and don't really care about what other people think of you. Don't be enslaved to people's opinions. That's really the ultimate thing I want it to happen. I want many people to know about this as possible. Very cool.

Name of this is Good Life Project. So if I offer that term out to you, to live a good life, what does it mean to you? If you don't have meaning in life, find that meaning in life. Once you find the meaning, go after your meaning.

I really think this is a good life. Beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, I really enjoyed that conversation. If you found it valuable as well, I would so appreciate if you would just head on over to iTunes, take a couple of seconds, and let us know.

Share a review or rating. Always honest. And if you found this episode, the conversation, valuable, and you think other people, maybe friends or family, would enjoy it and benefit from it, go ahead and share it with them as well. And as always, if you want to know what's going on with us at Good Life Project, then head over to goodlifeproject.com. And that's it for this week. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life project. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun.

On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk.

The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X,

available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary.