Start With A Win - Overcoming Fear of Rejection Creates a More Fulfilling Life with Jia Jiang

Episode Date: September 22, 2021

In this episode of Start With A Win, Adam welcomes Jia Jiang, CEO of Rejection Therapy and CEO and Founder of Wuju Learning. Jia discusses how he transitioned from the corporate world into a career dedicated to rejection. Jia initially experienced failure in the early stages of his entrepreneurial endeavors after leaving the corporate world. Instead of giving up, he decided to document his failed experiences via blogging, which led to the concept of rejection therapy. Jia discusses how innovation and entrepreneurship require taking risks, which can lead to rejection. He explains that people must learn to convert rejection into personal fuel to stay motivated and persevere after rejection. This technique requires practice, which entails intentionally pursuing rejection. For example, Jia committed 100 days to experience daily rejection. This exercise trained his mind to become accustomed to rejection, removing the fears associated with it. He performed unusual tasks such as asking for burger refills at restaurants and requesting a haircut at a pet store. He advises to start small and focus on daily habits—if you are not comfortable with solely asking for things in return, approach by asking to give acts of service. The more you face rejection from “silly” things, the more you can overcome any rejection, no matter the significance. Fear of rejection creates internal conflict, causing regrets and missed opportunities. He explains people often experience the most remorse when they prioritize living up to other people’s expectations instead of their own. Once you incorporate rejection into daily interactions, you will feel more prepared and confident in business endeavors. He explains how the fear of rejection can cause people to prefer a path with the least resistance in hopes of remaining in their comfort zones to achieve success. Jia emphasizes that the most successful people have experienced challenging decisions and situations, ultimately shaping who they are and contributing to their success because they chose to take risks.Links:TED Talk - What I Learned From 100 Days of Rejectionhttps://www.ted.com/talks/jia_jiang_what_i_learned_from_100_days_of_rejectionConnect with Jia:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jiajiang/https://twitter.com/jiajianghttps://www.rejectiontherapy.com/https://www.loveinvestor.com/Connect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/https://www.facebook.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/ Leave us a voicemail:888-581-4430

Every day is filled with choices. You're here because you're choosing to start with a win. Get ready to be inspired, learn something new, and connect with the win nation. Coming to you from Denver, Colorado, home of Remax World Headquarters, Adam Conto, CEO here with Start With A Win. That was some pretty fierce dancing there, Mark. Well, I was inspired by our guest who was getting into it as well. Yeah, this is going to be a great show. I'll tell you, the guest we have on today is truly amazing. So Jia Jing is the owner and CEO of Rejection Therapy.

I think that's some therapy we all need in life. It's a website that provides inspiration, knowledge, and products for others to overcome their fear of rejection. He's also the CEO of Wuju Learning, a company that teaches people and trains organizations to become fearless through rejection training. So everybody listen to this. Have you been through rejection training? Because you're about to get some, this is awesome. So, uh, Ja authored a 2015 Amazon bestselling book, rejection proof, how I beat fear and became invincible through

100 days of rejection. And one was one of the most viewed Ted talks of 2017. We've had Ja at our REMAX convention, and I'll tell you what, it was so much fun listening to him. So it's great to have you back here, Ja. Welcome to Start With A Win. All right. So good to be here. Yeah. I mean, have you been rejected from a podcast before? Yes, absolutely. When I was writing my book, I was trying to promote it. I did reach out to a lot of podcasts, you know, hosts. Got rejected a lot, but also got a lot of yeses, you know.

So, and those yeses actually helped me quite a bit. I love it. So, I mean, what is rejection therapy? I mean, what is this? Tell us, how did you come up with this idea and what does it mean? So, basically, rejection therapy is just a game, right? Most of us are afraid of rejection. And there's a biological reaction within us that when you get rejected, you know, it's not just mental, but it's biological.

You know, our brain, our body is reacting in a certain way. And because of it's so natural and biological, we tend to do things that are safe. We tend to do things that are, you know, get approval from others and not just acceptance, but also approval. That's why we naturally don't take too many risks. However, rejection therapy is this game where you just go look for rejection you know just go out and if you're afraid of rejection go out and look for it and do it on purpose and try to make it fun you know try to do something like really wacky like you know when i was doing it and i would be like you know asking people for

like a like a burger refill i would try to go to a pet smart and get a haircut at a pet smart. And I would do all these kinds of things that are just wacky and fun and try to get rejected. But in this way, though, you get used to rejection. And by the end, I felt I could ask anything from anyone anywhere. So it's really one of the most fundamental fear we have, but this is like a fun therapy to overcome that fear. That's a great way of looking at it. Before you did this, you were in the corporate world for like seven years or something like that. I mean, how did you go from sitting at a desk in the corporate world to going out and becoming an entrepreneur and trying to find people to reject you for things? I mean, that's, that's kind of an interesting way of, you know, transitioning life. Usually people go from

rejection to the corporate world, not the other way around. What, why did you do that? And what, what was the, the reason for that whole thing? Yeah. So I've been wanting to be an entrepreneur, a tech entrepreneur, you know, the, the Bill Gates and all the, the Steve Jobs, the thing that you grew up reading about, I had that dream. I always had that dream. I want to do something that's that make a difference in the world um but that said i spent a long time in the corporate world because

you know i want approval from my peers from my family for sure um you know and also for myself it's something that everyone else is doing and just feels it felt safe it felt right thing to do you know a good need i i was always the guy who was it felt right thing to do you know you go to me i i was always the guy who was like i always wanted something but you know being told that hey this is the right way to go go to school uh get education found a job you know get you know get my graduate degree then find another job and get paid well you know get married bought a dog bought a house you know that that was my my life um but I always want something more I want to want to be entrepreneur so that's why you know after a while in the corporate world I have to just take

a chance I have to be like if I don't take a chance right now you know I don't know when I'll be taking a chance I turned 30 I turned 30 and uh and I had a kid on the way you know I want to do something um but you know there's a kid so just had a talk with my wife and my wife said hey if you want to do this you gotta do it now you know and and uh you know otherwise you're gonna start blaming your kids i felt the same way so i took a chance to become entrepreneur and that got rejected was an investment uh after you know was my company i just felt it sucked and it just made me want to quit right away right away and I felt like this is not good this is this is

something that I can build a company a better product but I gotta be I gotta overcome that fear I gotta solve the me problem so that's why I started blogging I started doing rejection therapy I started blogging and started putting myself on YouTube and sharing this with the world. And then the whole thing took off. Now, this is all I do now. Let's get rejected. Wow. I know so many people don't do something because of FOPO, fear of other people's opinions. Did you find that that was one of the key reasons for this? Or was there like this actual fear or actual risk of somebody killing you or doing, I mean, what's the risk beyond other people's opinions generally that

people face in life when it comes to trying something new? I mean, what did you find in this? So the two part of this, right? So that fear of people's opinion and and yearning for approval has been with us for a long time has been with us for a long time because our ancestors they they they collaborated to survive right they they were like doing really i mean they were hunters not not hunted because we collaborate better than everyone else however if you back then in the society we were in before if you don't collaborate if you are like you're ostracized you're not a you don't get the approval from from the from the elders or the peer group you're dead you're by yourself right you're you're not going to do anything else but nowadays though we still want collaboration we still want to prove

which is fine however a lot of innovation a lot of things or entrepreneurship you have to take risks and risks comes with you know people's rejection you know a lot of a lot of times people just you know don't people don't like that that risk and so people have opinions about you that being said what i learned is people don't care about you as like they don't nearly don't care they don't care about you nearly as much as you think they do in fact no one cares about you you know i tell people no one cares about you um i'm not saying they don't care about you as a person like but you taking risks you're trying to make something happen people have they have their time they're

way too busy thinking about their own insecurities and their own dreams and fears and failures and no one cares about your your failure so we have that in our head that you know everyone cares about us if we fail well you know a lot of people are gonna laugh at us or stuff like that however that's really not the case you know so there's a big discrepancy between how we perceive ourselves and how our relationship with others versus what really is happening in the world so you you recognize this and you decided you were going to go out and get rejected 100 times yes yes see yeah so i uh the the classic rejection therapy card i mean i didn't come up with it you know i don't but it was came up with a canadian entrepreneur uh which i learned and i acquired his his company but he came up with 30 cards each each each card just you could ask you

to get uh go get rejected or something and i was like i don I don't want to do 30 days. Let me do 100 days. Let me overdose on rejection. You know, honestly, I really want to become this badass. You know, I'm going to do this. And so, yeah, I did this for 100 days. And I recorded every encounter and put that on YouTube, just sharing this with the world. So what's your YouTube channel called, if people want to go look this up?

If you just search for 100 days of rejection, you'll find it. Okay. And I'll tell you, you know, for anybody listening to this, go look it up. This is absolutely some of the most interesting stuff I've ever seen. So Jack, can you give us some examples here? I mean, what's the, what do you think is the funniest rejection you've ever been through? Yeah. So I'll give you a couple ones. And one day I tried to get a burger refill. And just went to, yeah, I just had a burger for lunch, and I wanted a refill. The guy was like, well, you need a refill.

We do drink refill, but not burger. I was like, I'm going to get a burger refill. So that was fun. And I tried to get my uh like uh like uh like a haircut at the at the at the pet smart uh that was a lot of fun uh and uh during thanksgiving i tried to uh talk to the first person and talk him into letting me have his spot you know that was uh he didn't think that was fun but that was a lot of fun to me. So I got rejected left and right. But the funny thing is I also got accepted by a lot of funky requests.

And that really just opened my eyes. Because in my mind, I'm not getting rejected with all of these. Who's going to say yes to that? This crazy guy coming over for us, just asking for things. But in reality, though, people actually said yes. A lot of them did. So like, for example, I play soccer in someone's backyard. I was able to talk to a police officer into riding his car, you know, just driving his car. Hang on, tell us about that one right there. You know, I used to be a police officer, and I've never had anybody walk up to me going,

hey, can I drive your police car? Did you actually do that? I mean, what I learned is you can ask anything if you do it the right way. All right, don't come to me aggressively. Don't come to me and say, hey, give me your car. Well, then you're going to be in trouble. You know, you're in the back of the car car not in front um but if you want to drive the car you ask nicely you know most police if you ask nicely they don't feel threatened and then you give them a reason like we ask for something give them a reason my reason is hey i always

wonder what is a police officer look like you know or or feels like right writing a car listen to the to a radio and stuff. I'm not going to get you a gun, but hey, let me try your car. So that's my approach. And if you give a right reason, that's a reasonable request, right? I have this curiosity. And if you can't do it, that's okay, right? I'm not mad, but I just come in and just want to ask and see what happens.

So it's a friendly conversation. In the end, he let me in. I love that. All right, let's talk about sales here for a second. Because a lot of the people that are on this, listen to this program, this podcast, or watch the YouTube videos, are in sales, real estate or anything else. They're typically entrepreneurial-based, 100% commission, things of that nature. What experience do you have or what advice do you have for somebody in sales when it comes to rejection? Yeah. So first of all, you know, a lot of people just don't ask, you know, a lot of people,

especially when you start, I mean, when you become a seasoned salesperson, sure, you know, you're used to this, but most people actually get out of this business because of a fear or the they don't like it to get didn't like to get rejected so and it take people from from you know i i coach people now you know i have a you know i have a coaching program where i work with people and especially people in sales how do you overcome that initial fear and then but more importantly we'll get rejected how do you overcome that initial fear? But more importantly, we'll get rejected. How do you keep yourself up? How do you actually keep yourself motivated and keep going?

In fact, how do you use rejection as a fuel? That's easy to say in theory, but in reality, most people, again, you have that physical reaction. You get rejected. You just feel down. But how do you turn that around and use that as a fuel? So when you get more, the sort of more rejection you get, the more fired up you are. So that's what I, so that's how I help people.

And I tell people that's the number one thing I see is the confidence issue, right? So when they start their business, and especially when they try to succeed, that's what's holding them back. Now, when you take that step, when you turn that mentality around, when you start just looking for rejection, and that's I guess that would be your inoculation or something like that to, uh, to rejection where, you know, the more you face it, the more you understand it's not going to, you know, these people are not going to eat you. I mean, it's, you know, the reality is it's just, they don't know what you don't know. And I mean, do you recommend people go out and seek rejection then in order to overcome this? Is that the best way to challenge your feelings?

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You don't have to start with business. You got to start with something small. You got to start with something every day, right? When you go to, say, a Starbucks or something, ask for a little bit more. Ask for a discount. You'll probably get rejected, but it's okay.

Do it nicely, right? Do it like like you know and try to but use that interaction as a way to train yourself as a way to actually get you know inoculated with a fear and if you don't like to ask for a lot of things ask to give things you know and go to a uh i don't know grocery store ask to say hey can i pay can i pay your coffee or can i help you with your card? Right? So when you do that, actually asking. So in that way, you're helping, trying to help other people.

And of course, some people are suspicious. They're like, what do you want? Right? But how do you overcome that fear? Right? You're genuinely trying to help people. And then how do you do it in a way that, you know, people, you can get over your own, like saying, oh, the other person might reject me. And then when you have that conversation, how do you overcome that objection? How do you make them trust you?

Because, again, you are not trying to get anything from them in that case. So use these everyday interactions and try to ask for things or give things. And so in this way, you're basically like a trainee, right? You're shooting basketball in a hoop by yourself, right? So when you're actually playing a game, when you're trying to close a sale or pitch to a client or whatnot, you're more comfortable. Otherwise, we're always in this discomfort. I mean, that's an interesting way of looking at it.

Do you feel that a lot of people try to avoid rejection every single day? I mean, do people just go through life seeking mediocrity or seeking calm and quiet and not get rejected? I mean, do you have a goal of getting rejected every day or is there anything that you do to, to try and make yourself even better at this regularly? Cause you know, it's gotta be a habit to try and get better. How do you, how do you build that into your life? Exactly. Exactly. And so people don't, um, just go out and look rejection on per, I mean, okay. People don't go out and look for mediocrity in life.

That's not what people want. People naturally want to succeed. But there is that tendency of trying to find the path of least resistance, trying to comfort your way to success. And that usually doesn't happen. The most successful people, if you look at their stories and their histories they've all they have gone through numerous decisions where it's uncomfortable they made numerous requests and in situations that's uncomfortable for them and then they're then navigating through those decisions and those situations and those requests

made who they are not trying to stay in the path of least resistance. So, you know, on one hand, we won't succeed. On the other hand, we're afraid of rejection. And that creates a conflict. That creates a conflict of a lot of us that going through lives where, you know, for a long time trying to avoid rejection. Then afterward, you're like, you start having regret. You're like, wow, I should have tried it. I should have asked. I should have made an effort when I was, when I had the chance when I was younger. So when they, when they, um, um, when they were like, um, pulling, so there was like a, there was like Australian nurse who was interviewing people in hospice, um, and in their lives and in their lives, they're asking them,

what's your biggest regret? The number one answer is they try to live up to other people's expectations, not their own. And so we go through life like that. We try to get accepted. We try to look up to or get the approval

instead of something that we want, instead of something that we're meant to do. Wow. Very powerful. A couple of things I got from that. You can't comfort your way through life. I mean, that is so strong right there. You have to hit those challenges. And it's interesting, you know, that regret. There's so much regret that people live with simply because they don't ask and nothing bad's going to happen to them by asking. In fact, it's, it's like a weight off your shoulders when you do ask whether or not the answer is yes or no, but you know, so, I mean, it's, I guess it's the unknown is what people are afraid of, right? Yes, exactly. Exactly. We're

also good at rationalization. You know what I'm saying? Like we are really good at, hey, we have this pain avoiding. So our pain avoidance mechanism works us in a way for us to not look for rejection, try to do something safe, try to avoid. But also when we have this type of regret, we try to forget about it and we try to kind of distract ourselves from this regret so we try not to feel it and we're really good at it but in reality we missed out on opportunities that that we could have had on lives we could have had on businesses we could have had so um so uh yeah so uh that pain avoiding mechanism, it keeps us safe, right? We're not going out there and touching the burning stove, but that also keeps us from seeking risks. And when we

just went through life in mediocrity, we rationalized to say it's meant to be, it's okay. But it's not. You could have had so much more if you asked, if you tried, if you took that risk of failure and rejection. Wow. Such powerful statements here. Thank you, Ja. Really, really good information. I encourage everybody to pick up your book, Rejection Proof. And also check out your YouTube channel, your TED Talks and all your videos.

It's truly amazing. And do you have a website also that people can look you up at? Yes. Um, so my main website is called rejection therapy.com. That's what I've, uh, that's what I've been doing for the, for, uh, for really the past almost 10 years. That said, I'm starting a new website is called a love investor.com. So love investor is the cross of personal development and personal finance. And I believe if you invest in your love, whether that's the work you love or the companies you love,

and your return for that investment will be extremely fruitful. It's going to make you wealthy and fulfilled. So it's loveinvestor.com. That's the website I blog at now. Awesome. All right. Thank you, everybody. Make sure you check out Jia Zhang at those websites. Jia, I have a question that I ask everybody that's on the show, and I get some really interesting answers. You're a really fascinating human being by the the risks that you take the things that you do um but i want to know john how do you start your day with a win okay uh two things first thing i hug my wife and that's a win that's really just a win like knowing that she's with me every day that's uh that's the biggest blessing it just just trumps everything, all the failures, all the rejections, all the things I have.

And also, I try to go get rejected. I try to just go on and try to ask for something, do something silly. I don't take myself too seriously if you haven't noticed. So I try to do something silly and get rejected. And hey, that's okay. Awesome. I should have expected that second one. The first one,

fantastic. Zha Zhang, thank you so much for being on Start With A Win. We appreciate all you do and thanks for being rejected. Okay. Thank you for having me, Adam. Awesome. Hey, and thank you so much for listening to Start With A Win. Don't forget to go onto iTunes and subscribe, write a review and rate the show. It helps us get the word out and reach more people. Also the start with a wind book is coming out soon. And so you can preorder that book at start with a wind.com. Head over there and get your copy today. Maybe buy a few for your friends and get started with a win. You can subscribe on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, all those places,

as well as YouTube. We have a video version of this, a little bit more condensed and very entertaining. So until next time, remember, start with a win.