We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP148: How to Become Rejection Proof (Business Podcast)

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to TIP. Hey, how's everyone doing this week? So this week we had the opportunity to read an incredible book that might have been one of my favorite books of 2017. And the book was by Jod Jang and it's titled Rejection Proof. So when Stig and I were thinking about a common theme that can be found with all these billionaires that we study, a common discussion point that constantly came up was this idea of being able to overcome rejection. Or in other words, you can maybe say, how can a person stay persistent and continue to press on even after hearing no so many times? For example, here's a couple quotes from some famous billionaires.

Starting point is 00:00:39 So Richard Branson has said, do not be embarrassed by your failures. Learn from them and start again. This one's really funny. Jack Ma says, when KFC came to China, 24 people went for the job. 23 people accepted the job. I was the only guy who didn't get taken. And then there's John Paul DeGiori, and he's the founder of Paul Mitchell. And he said, be prepared for rejection no matter how bad it is.

Starting point is 00:01:04 Don't let it overcome you or influence you. Now, when people hear that kind of stuff, it's very easy to say, oh, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. But then how do you actually put that into application? When you hear that, it just sounds so cliche. But that's where our podcast today is going to come in. And so I've never personally read a book that covers this topic so well. In fact, the author, Jod Jang, was personally selected by billionaire Tony Shea to deliver a keynote speech at Zappos to all the employees about being rejection proof. It's just such a unique book.

Starting point is 00:01:39 And not only does he have a lot of good stories like the time he went up to ask for a burger refill, you know, you would get a refill of your soda. Like, you can also get a burger refill. And he was turned down for that. Not only he had a lot of hilarious rejections, but. But he also gives people a lot of good takeaways that you can actually use in your personal life. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. And the title of the book, again, is rejection proof. And we're ready to do this.

Starting point is 00:02:11 You are listening to The Investors Podcast, where we study the financial markets and read the books that influence self-made billionaires the most. We keep you informed and prepared for the unexpected. All right. So let's go ahead and kick off this episode. Stig, I'm real curious. What did you think of this book? Because I really, really liked this book. I think the book was really funny. And that was not what I expected at all whenever I started reading this book, because after all, this book is about rejections and who thinks that rejections are funny. But the way that he goes about getting rejections and the silly and really inspiring stories he came up with to get the funniest

Starting point is 00:03:06 rejections, if you can put it like that. I really like that. And also, I think it was amazing to see rejections being covered from this perspective. Yeah, I was a little hesitant to even do this as an episode whenever I saw the book. I didn't know if this was something I was going to want to do because I figured it was going to be a little dark and gloomy. And it was literally the exact opposite of that. It was actually one of the funnier books I've read in a long time. What we're going to do for this episode, we're just going to kind of walk you through the story. We're going to tell you from beginning to end, Jod Jang's story that he has here. So the book starts off with his dissatisfaction with where he was at in his life.

Starting point is 00:03:43 And he was a marketing director for a Fortune 500 company. And he just was not happy. He just felt like, you know, I'm just another cog in the wheel of this big machine of this company that I'm working for. and I'm not really changing the world or doing anything that's all that inspiring. And he talks about his background and before he got to this point in his life where he was doing quite well for himself, where he was this young boy and at age 13, I guess Bill Gates, came to his hometown in Beijing, China. And he was so inspired by this visit by Bill Gates that he had made this pledge. He literally wrote this letter to his parents at age 13, basically saying, by the time I'm age 13,

Starting point is 00:04:26 I'm going to buy Microsoft. I'm going to own the biggest company in the world and all this stuff that was going to be very inspiring. Fast forward to where he's at now working as this marketing director. And he was just like, what happened to that boy? Like, what am I doing here? I need to be an entrepreneur. I need to go off and do these inspiring things in my life. And that's kind of how he starts off the book.

Starting point is 00:04:49 And the reason he wasn't doing that stuff is because he was scared and had all this fear of rejection. I just wanted to piggyback on what you said here at the end that, I mean, that was the reason why he didn't start a company. And it was not like because he was lacking ideas. He had a ton of ideas. He had a ton of drive. He was really well connected. It was not a problem about that at all. It was basically because every time he pitched an idea, whether it was to a family member or perhaps to a future client, and somewhat would typically say no, which is what happens whenever you're entrepreneur, you get to meet a lot of nose. So he had a long chat with his wife, Tracy, about this, and she could see that he was miserable at his job. So even though he was practicing with the first child, she actually asked him to take six months off to start a company and really to follow that dream. He actually came up with an app of how to keep promises. It's not super important to this story, but actually it sounded really funny.

Starting point is 00:05:52 That was kind of like his business idea. and it worked up pretty well. He had a team around him. And after four months, they actually had this really important meeting with this investor. And it was really a make-it-a-break pitch. Like, if they could convince this investor, they would get enough money to like keep doing this for years and really get this app out in the world. And you probably guess what already happened. He was rejected. You know, he was just ready to quit. He spent four months on this. He had no drive less and he was just so discouraged. So what happened was that his wife told him that he only spent four months.

Starting point is 00:06:29 He still have two months to figure out what to do with his life and perhaps to start a new company. And that's really when the book gets exciting. So I got to plot his wife because how many wives would say, okay, you got six months to do this? And then after four months he just totally fails and falls on his face trying to build an app. And most wives would be saying, you need to get back to work and start making some money, dude. And that's not what his wife said. She's like, yeah, well, you got two more months left. What in the world are you doing, man?

Starting point is 00:06:59 Come on. Let's see you make this company. So I love that. So he goes out there and he realizes at this point after this next failure that every time he's confronted with this no decision. Like he just got back from this investor that said, no, I'm not going to invest in your app. And sorry, dude, I don't have anything else for you. So he's getting these rejections and he just doesn't know how to handle this.

Starting point is 00:07:23 the fear is building every one of these scenarios. He does a great job describing how he feels during these scenarios in his life. And so he starts researching online like anyone would do. How do I overcome this fear of rejection? And he reads this post from some random person on the internet that says, sometimes the best medicine for rejection is just to go out and ask people if you can do some crazy things for them where you're just guaranteed to get a know that you're going to get rejected so that you can experience what it's like to be rejected more often and you

Starting point is 00:07:56 basically become desensitized to it. And so not only does he decide to actually action this, this idea that this guy has to go out and get rejected a bunch of times so you're desensitized, but he decides to document it on video and then upload the videos on the YouTube with no audience, no following, no nothing. You know, like he's going to create a blog about being rejected and he's going to do this a bunch of time. So he goes out and do you remember what the first one was? I don't even remember what the first one was. What was it? Yeah, the first one was to ask a random person if he could borrow a hundred dollars. He was pretty sure that he would be rejected if he did that. Yeah. So he's walking out of this office space when he was

Starting point is 00:08:38 building the apps and he passes the janitorial person who's there at the front of the building. And he's like working up all this courage to ask and, you know, he's just hoping that he says no so he can hurry up and get out of there. So he asked him, can I have $100? And the guy says, you know, just looks at him. He was like, no. And then he just like ran away. And like that was it. And so he had this on video, which was really neat because he talks about because I had it on video, I could watch and see like the fear in my face. And like he was studying himself of like, why am I so scared of this? And he's looking at how the other person's reacting and he's like watching the whole experience over again. And the thing that learned after this first scenario was, why did I run away so fast? Why didn't I just stick

Starting point is 00:09:26 around and ask them more questions or try to maybe massage it a different way to maybe get to yes? But he's just like, he just up and ran out the door. Whenever he watched the tape afterwards, he actually discovered that the person he was asking, he was asking why. He actually gave him a chance to alter his opinion. Like, this stranger comes in, you know, asking for a hundred bucks. There might be an emergency or something like that. But he said no, because you typically won't give out $100 to a stranger, but he still, again, gave him a reason to lever in that.

Starting point is 00:10:00 But he didn't hear that. He didn't even hear that because he just wanted to get his no and he just wanted to get out of that there. That was really interesting discovery for him. Yeah. So let's fast forward. So he goes to his third one that he did. And so he's on a journey to do a hundred of these and blog the whole thing.

Starting point is 00:10:19 And so the third one that he did, he was going to go to a crispy cream. And he was going to ask the manager of a crispy cream if they could arrange some donuts in a box in the shape of the Olympic symbol. You know, like the five circles with the various colors. So in his mind, he's like, this is a no-brainer. There's no way they're ever going to do this. So let me go ask them. So he goes up and he's like video in this. and he asked the manager, he said,

Starting point is 00:10:50 hello, can you build me some donuts in the shape of the Olympic symbol? And the manager, I think her name, was there her name, Jackie? I can't remember. Yeah. Jackie.

Starting point is 00:11:00 Okay. So Jackie looks at him and she's like, well, and she's like contemplating it, you know, and I've watched this video since reading the book. And Stig,

Starting point is 00:11:11 did you watch the video? I'm just curious. Yeah, I watched the video. We'll definitely put it in the show notes. Yeah, yeah, we'll find some of these videos

Starting point is 00:11:17 and we'll put them in the show notes. So if you guys want to watch this stuff, go to our show notes. It'll all be in there. So I watched the video and she's just there. You can see she's just like contemplating like, well, yeah, maybe I could do that, you know? She just didn't say no.

Starting point is 00:11:32 And so he's just kind of flabbergasted at this point. Like he just cannot believe that somebody's about to do this and they're actually going to say yes. And so it takes them like 15 minutes or something and they're back there and they make the donuts and they bring up to him. And he's like looking at the donuts and they're literally arranged in this Olympic symbol with all the right colors and everything. And he just is blown away.

Starting point is 00:11:55 Like this moment was totally life altering for him because he realized like sometimes you're going to get a yes, even if it's a crazy request. And like, there's people out there that are good people that are just genuinely trying to help you. And so this was such a game changer for him at this point because he went in there fully expecting it though. And he got exactly the opposite of what he expected. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.

Starting point is 00:12:20 All right. I want you guys to imagine spending three days in Oslo at the height of the summer. You've got long days of daylight, incredible food, floating saunas on the Oslo Fjord, and every conversation you have is with people who are actually shaping the future. That's what the Oslo Freedom Forum is. From June 1st through the 3rd, 2026, the Oslo Freedom Forum is entering its 18th year, bringing together activists, technologists, journalists, investors and builders from all over the world, many of them operating on the front lines of

Starting point is 00:12:52 history. This is where you hear firsthand stories from people using Bitcoin to survive currency collapse, using AI to expose human rights abuses, and building technology under censorship and authoritarian pressures. These aren't abstract ideas. These are tools real people are using right now. You'll be in the room with about 2,000 extraordinary individuals, dissidents, founders, philanthropists, policymakers, the kind of people you don't just listen to but end up having dinner with. Over three days, you'll experience powerful mainstage talks, hands-on workshops on freedom tech, and financial sovereignty, immersive art installations, and conversations that continue long after the sessions end. And it's all happening in Oslo in June. If this sounds like your kind of room, well, you're in luck because you can attend in person.

Starting point is 00:13:40 Standard and patron passes are available at Osloof Freedom Forum.com with patron passes offering deep access, private events, and small group time with the speakers. The Oslo Freedom Forum isn't just a conference, it's a place where ideas meet reality and where the future is being built by people living it. If you run a business, you've probably had the same thought lately. How do we make AI useful in the real world? Because the upside is huge, but guessing your way into it is a risky move. With NetSuite by Oracle, you can put AI to work today.

Starting point is 00:14:15 NetSuite is the number one AI cloud ERP, trusted by over 43,000 businesses. It pulls your financials, inventory, commerce, HR, and CRM into one unified system. And that connected data is what makes your AI smarter. It can automate routine work, surface actionable insights, and help you cut costs while making fast AI power decisions with confidence. And now with the Netsuite AI connector, you can use the AI of your choice to connect directly to your real business data. This isn't some add-on, it's AI built into the system that runs your business. And whether your company does millions or even hundreds of millions, Netsuite helps you stay ahead. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures,

Starting point is 00:14:58 get their free business guide, demystifying AI at Nessuite.com slash study. The guide is free to you at netseweet.com slash study. NetSuite.com slash study. When I started my own side business, it suddenly felt like I had to become 10 different people overnight wearing many different hats. Starting something from scratch can feel exciting, but also incredibly overwhelming and lonely. That's why having the right tools matters. For millions of businesses, that tool is Shopify.

Starting point is 00:15:30 Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. from brands just getting started to household names. It gives you everything you need in one place, from inventory to payments to analytics. So you're not juggling a bunch of different platforms. You can build a beautiful online store with hundreds of ready-to-use templates, and Shopify is packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions and even enhance your product photography. Plus, if you ever get stuck, they've got award-winning 24-7 customer support.

Starting point is 00:16:03 Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify, and start hearing sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash WSB. Go to Shopify.com slash WSB. That's Shopify. com slash WSB. All right. Back to the show. It was even better than that, Preston.

Starting point is 00:16:30 As far as I remember it, she actually gave it to him for free. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're right. Because it was just a good experience for her. Whenever you watch the video, it's just like an emotional video because you're like, you just become so happy of like seeing these two people that don't know each other, helping each other out. And like, he's just so relieved that he's actually getting yes.

Starting point is 00:16:49 And she's just so happy that she can, you know, meet his somewhat odd request. And the best thing, I guess, is that this video went viral. I mean, the following days, like millions and millions of views. And I think he was even interviewed for TV. She was too. Yeah. So let's rewind real fast. So he quits his job, which was a high paying job. So I don't know what lifestyle they had, but I'm sure that they were living decently working for a Fortune 500 companies. So he quits that. He then takes whatever savings he has and builds this team. He had office space. He's building this team around making an app on iTunes, you know. For four months, he's spending through all those dollars. And he gets denied in that falls flat on a face. Now he's going to start a blog about rejection. He has zero followers. And on the third video, he uploads.

Starting point is 00:17:39 This thing goes viral, and he's getting on all sorts of TV shows, and everyone wants to find out what in the world is this. And why did this lady make these out of just pure human kindness make these things? And that was his start. And that's what gave him this whole platform. And now that's his entire job is talking about being rejection proof. He's got this book, which is, you know, top selling business book, bestseller on Amazon. So, man, what a change.

Starting point is 00:18:10 One little thing can make. And he did it by trying to discover his fear and understand what it was that was driving him to have this fear. And what an amazing journey. So now, as we go through the rest of the book, he provides many more stories. So let me give you an example of another story in the book. He goes up to some random guy's house. in Texas and the Dallas Cowboys are playing. And literally the gentleman comes to the door and he rings some random person's door,

Starting point is 00:18:40 fully expecting to get a know. And he has his soccer cleats with him in a soccer ball. He says, excuse me, can I play soccer in your backyard and can you videotape me doing it? You know, no, I know what I would say if somebody came to my house and said that.

Starting point is 00:18:54 I'd take it the hell out of here. But that's not the response he actually got from this gentleman. And he has this stuff on video. So the guy said, uh, yeah, and he brings them in and he literally let him go in his backyard, kick a soccer ball around, and he videotaped them, had no clue who this guy was. And so he's going back to Stig's point after that very first encounter where the guy was asking why. Whenever he started getting rejected, he came up with this approach of trying to understand why he was rejected. And this was a very liberating part of becoming rejection proof is because when you ask that why,

Starting point is 00:19:31 it puts to bed all of those thoughts that are running around in your head of why you thought the person's rejected you and why they said no. Because what he found was that most of the time, whatever he thought the reason was, he was wrong. And whenever he understood why people were saying no, then he could adjust his approach and try the same experiment over again. Like if he was told no, well, the perfect example is, let me give you this other one. So he goes and says that he's going to plant, was it a flower or like a bush or something, he's going to plant a flower in a person's yard.

Starting point is 00:20:07 He's just going to go up, ring the doorbell and say, can I please plant this flower in your yard? And so he goes up to the first person and he asks this person, can I plant a flower in New York? And the person says, no, you can't? And he says, well, sir, can I ask you why? Because I'm not charging anything. I'm doing this for free. It's just a nice kind act. And the gentleman says, my dog will come up and eat the flowers often.

Starting point is 00:20:31 I don't want him to do that. So that's the reason why I said no. And he said, not only that, but the girl right across the street, she really likes flowers. Why don't you go over and ask her? I guarantee you she'll let you plant this in your yard. And so what's he do? He walks across the street. He rings the doorbell.

Starting point is 00:20:45 He asks the girl, can I plant flowers in your yard? And she says, absolutely, I would love that. And so by him asking the question, why at the end of the rejection, turned out to be just a monumental change in the way that he understood what was happening because now he would have walked away from that gentleman's house and been like, you know, it must have been the way I looked or the clothes I was wearing or I'm just weird or any of those things is what a common person would think. I know myself personally, that would have been one of the last reasons I would have thought that a person would say, no, I don't want a flower plant in my yard, it's because the dog would come out and eat the pedals. You know, I would have never thought that. But you don't know that until you ask the question. And that was a major learning point, a big turning point for him.

Starting point is 00:21:30 I really like that you bring that up. He actually experienced that somewhat later with Southwest Airlines. Because one thing was to get a rejection from, you know, one person, sales clerk or knocking on some people's door. As unpleasant as it might be, he had this idea that it's probably a lot more unpleasant to be rejected in front of hundreds of people. So actually what he did was he asked the steward at Southwest Airlines if he could read the safety announcement.

Starting point is 00:21:58 And he was told, no. And then as president just mentioned, he immediately asked, I don't want to be disrespectful in any way, but sir, can I please ask why I can't read the safety announcement? And so the steward says, it's actually required by law that it's someone who is trained, that will do that. But what I can't do for you is to give you the chance to say, welcome to the passengers, because that's not required by law for a trained person to do so. So he actually did that.

Starting point is 00:22:24 and he just needed to come up with something fast and really thinking on his feet. And he just said, you know, welcome to Southwest Airlines. I really like flying with airline because the staff is always so friendly and always get good food when I'm traveling to this company. So why don't we just all applaud the staff? And it actually turned out to be a really, really good experience, not just for him and for the staff, but also for the passengers. And none of that would have happened if he didn't ask why. The thing is that rejection that we're talking about now should not be confused with failure. And it seems like, especially if you're an entrepreneur, it seems like a lot of failures,

Starting point is 00:23:07 it's almost like a batch of honor for a lot of people like, oh, I feel a lot. And like you hear all these inspirational quotes from these billionaires about you should just fail and you should just fail upwards, meaning you should just improve yourself whenever time you make a mistake. And I think all of that is definitely true. and I think there's a lot of good things to say about that. But it's sort of like rejection is somewhat different. If it's a rejection, it's tied to your personality, one way or your culture, your looks, basically everything.

Starting point is 00:23:40 And that really also relates back to what you said before, Preston, about if he just had taken your no and face value, he'll be like, is it the way you look? Is it the way I talk? Like, it's probably why I was rejected, but not at all. It was because of a doc. So there's a bunch of examples that he talks about. And what we're going to do is at the end, we're going to cover what we think are some of the real big points that were learned from these hundred scenarios where he was rejected and where he was actually given the things that he had asked for. Something that was interesting as you kind of go through these hundred rejections that he kind of talks about. He doesn't talk about every one of them in the book, if you're wondering.

Starting point is 00:24:17 He talks about kind of the more entertaining ones. But he talks about this journey that he has and the things that he's learned. learning along the way. And one of the key things that I kind of picked apart from this was the mindset, the way that he kind of approached things. He started to actually have fun with some of this stuff, even though he fully knew that he was going to be rejected. He started having a positive mindset in the way that he was approaching this. He'd go up. He'd asked the question. Early on, it was like this big emotional thing. And then it kind of shifted to let me ask the question and then let me see how I can kind of maneuver from that point. How can I take advantage

Starting point is 00:24:51 of whatever the opportunities present itself after the question is asked, that really became quite interesting. He gave this amazing scenario, this amazing encounter in his life. And when he was at Duke University, he talks about an individual that he had met there, that he was very inspired by. And the individual's name is Scott Smiley. And Scott Smiley went to school with him there, but Scott was on a hiatus from the Army. He was a military officer. He still is a military officer. And Scott Smiley, in 2005,

Starting point is 00:25:28 he lost his vision when a suicide car bomber blew himself up 30 meters from where Scott's striker vehicle was at. So Scott is blind. And what he found was that although Scott was blind and could have taken this very negative vantage point on life, actually the exact opposite has happened. So Scott, since that event, has surfed in Hawaii, he's skied veil, he's skydived, he's climbed Mount Rainier, he completed a triathlon, he's graduated from Duke University with his MBA. He has won an S.B Award for Best Outdoor Athlete. And this is what I'm so excited to say here on the podcast. I am really good friends with Scott Smiley. In fact, Scott Smiley and myself, we both went to West Point together. We're classmates. And when I first showed up at West Point, they put you through

Starting point is 00:26:23 this thing called Beast Barracks. And it's your first summer there where it's just miserable and horrible. And what they do is they put everyone that shows up into a squad. And the squads are usually about eight to nine people. And for that first summer, I was in the same squad with seven other people with Scott Smiley. And so I knew Scott before any of this happened. And I can tell you, Scott Smiley is such an incredible person and he was such an incredible person before this event ever happened. And I can honestly say, I am so humbled and honored to know him. And whenever I was reading this book and he was mentioned, I was just so deeply honored. Just to quickly help promote Scott's stuff. And so Scott has a book. The name of the book is Hope Unseen. And it talks about this entire journey.

Starting point is 00:27:11 And most importantly, it talks about how you can take a positive spin and accomplish just enormous things in your life, even after it might feel like, you know, the whole world has just flipped against you. And so just a classic example of what he's talking about by going through all this rejection and all these examples. And I'm so happy that he brought up Scott Smiley because his story and his book is so phenomenal. I can't help promote that enough. And we'll have some pictures of Scott and some things about that also in our show notes if people are interested in checking that out. But huge shout out for Jod Jang to mention Scott in the book. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. No, it's not your imagination. Risk and regulation are ramping up

Starting point is 00:27:58 and customers now expect proof of security just to do business. That's why VANTA is a game changer. VANTA automates your compliance process and brings compliance, risk, and customer trust together on one AI powered platform. So whether you're prepping for a SOC two or running an enterprise GRC program, VANTA keeps you secure and keeps your deals moving. Instead of chasing spreadsheets and screenshots, VANTA gives you continuous automation across more than 35 security and privacy frameworks. Companies like Ramp and Riter spend 82% less time on audits with VANTA. That's not just faster compliance, it's more time for growth. If I were running a startup or scaling a team today, this is exactly the type of platform I'd want in place. Get started at Vanta.com.

Starting point is 00:28:46 slash billionaires. That's vanta.com slash billionaires. Ever wanted to explore the world of online trading but haven't dared try? The futures market is more active now than ever before and plus 500 futures is the perfect place to start. Plus 500 gives you access to a wide range of instruments, the S&P 500, NASDAQ, Bitcoin, gas, and much more. Explore equity indices, energy, metals, 4X, crypto, and beyond. With a simple and intuitive platform, you can trade from anywhere, right from your phone.

Starting point is 00:29:22 Deposit with a minimum of $100 and experience the fast, accessible futures trading you've been waiting for. See a trading opportunity, you'll be able to trade it in just two clicks once your account is open. Not sure if you're ready, not a problem. Plus 500 gives you an unlimited, risk-free demo account with charts, and analytic tools for you to practice on. With over 20 years of experience, Plus 500 is your gateway to the markets. Visit Plus500.com to learn more. Trading in futures involves risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. Not all applicants will qualify. Plus 500, it's trading with a plus. Billion dollar investors don't typically park their cash in high yield savings accounts.

Starting point is 00:30:07 Instead, they often use one of the premier passive income strategies for institutional investors, private credit. Now, the same passive income strategy is available to investors of all sizes thanks to the Fundrise Income Fund, which has more than $600 million invested in a 7.97% distribution rate. With traditional savings yields falling, it's no wonder private credit has grown to be a trillion-dollar asset class in the last few years. Visit fundrise.com slash WSB to invest in the Fundrise Income Fund in just minutes. The fund's total return in 2025 was 8%, and the average annual total return since inception is 7.8%. Past performance does not guarantee future results, current distribution rate as of 1231, 2025.

Starting point is 00:30:57 Carefully consider the investment material before investing, including objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. This and other information can be found in the income fund's perspective. at Fundrise.com. This is a paid advertisement. All right. Back to the show. Wow. Thank you so much, Preston,

Starting point is 00:31:15 for telling that personal story about Scott. That's definitely very inspiring. So at this part of time in the show, let's jump to the very end of the book where there's this really touching story about what you would like to do for his final and epic rejection. So please go ahead, Preston.

Starting point is 00:31:34 All right. So at this point, he had a pretty big blog platform. He had a lot of people following him, and people were trying to make his hundredth thing very huge. And so they wanted him to try to interview Obama, you know, all these different things that are probably pretty easy to ask and get rejected on. But where it came back to was he wanted to do something that wasn't necessarily a crowd pleaser or something that was for everyone else. He wanted to do something that was really personal to him. and it was all about his wife who gave him the opportunity to keep going on and discovering this hidden talent that he had with blogging and capturing an audience.

Starting point is 00:32:13 And so he asked his wife a simple question. He said, if you could work anywhere, where would it be? So his wife responded, and she says, well, that's pretty easy. I would like to work for Google. And so he's like, oh, okay, well, then let's make that our last rejection challenge. And we can try to get you a job at Google. And if it's successful, then you just won your dream job. And so he set aside six months to pull this off and that they were going to be persistent.

Starting point is 00:32:41 They were going to continue to try to pull this off to get her hired at Google. And, you know, this is such a great story. So they start off and they start networking. And what they did is they said, what are the things that we control? What is in our control in order to make this happen? And they started listening to things out. They're saying, well, we can network. We can shine up your resume.

Starting point is 00:33:03 We can do all these things. And they listed out the things that they control. Then they said, well, what is it that we don't control? And they said, well, we can't control whether somebody says yes or no. We can't control how many people are willing to take an interview. And they listed out all those things. And then as they went down this journey and they were trying to achieve this thing of getting hired at Google. And just so you guys know, in the book he says, getting hired at Google is 200 times,

Starting point is 00:33:30 harder than getting into Harvard, just to kind of give people an idea of like how difficult this is to get hired at Google. Extremely difficult. So they started going down this path. They started getting a lot of rejections. They did start meeting a lot of people that got her interviews and they went through all of this. And every time that they came upon yet another rejection, they said, okay, was this one of

Starting point is 00:33:56 the things that we could control? Is this one of the things that we can improve upon? or is this something that's completely out of our control? And when it was something that they can improve, they did. They worked towards fine-tuning that, and they asked the questions, why, how can I fix this? What is in control here? So they continued to optimize is really what they were doing. And they didn't let any rejection get in their way.

Starting point is 00:34:21 At the end, she sat down, she actually got flown out to Silicon Valley. This is probably like, I don't know, five rejections later. She finally got somebody that says, well, we're interested in interviewing you. They flew her out to Silicon Valley. She sat down. She had the interview. She came back. She said, I think that went really well.

Starting point is 00:34:39 And as people might suspect, she got the call and the call said, we're sorry, we're not going to take you. And so her response back to that was, you know, she was disappointed. But you know what? Hey, no problem. I really appreciate the time that you guys offered. I really appreciate the interview. And I'm humbled to be here and just took it really. really well. Well, lo and behold, a couple weeks later, she gets another call back and it's Google.

Starting point is 00:35:05 And they said, you know, we would like to offer you that position that we originally declined you for. And she asked the question, why? And they said, well, you know, we all just really liked you a lot. Everyone in the room that was interviewing, you really liked you. And we just didn't necessarily feel like you were a fit and had the credentials or whatever to fill this specific role. But then as we started looking at other applicants, and we started looking more, we realized that we hadn't found anyone and we still were thinking about you. So the job's yours if you still want it. And of course, she took it and they moved to Silicon Valley. So I loved the end of this book because it was his wife that gave him this opportunity. It was his wife that basically said,

Starting point is 00:35:54 hey, I want you to quit your job and to jump out there and to go after this dream that you have and really gave him that gift. And in the end, he was able to give the gift back to his own spouse through everything that he had learned through this entire journey. And so what I love about this is because often in life, the gift that we give to other people is the gift that we're actually given ourselves in the long run. And it might not play out tomorrow. It might not play out a week later. But for Jha Jang, that's exactly what played out in his life.

Starting point is 00:36:28 His wife gave him this amazing gift to go after it. And in the end, his wife ended up receiving the gift that she gave through a job. In that whole process, Jha learned just tremendous things. And now he's sharing it with the world. I'm telling you, folks, this book is so flipping good. We definitely did it. no justice with our discussion today. When you read this, it is so well written. The stories are hilarious. You're going to learn a ton. I'm just, I was very happy with this book. He also gives

Starting point is 00:37:01 people a lot of good takeaways that you can actually use in your personal life. I'll just take the opportunity to mention a few of them briefly here at this part of time in the show. So one of the things that he learned was that you can ask the same question and come up with very different answers. And it's not only a question of how you position yourself and like how you appear and like the tone you're asking it in. It's also acknowledging that a rejection is merely just an opinion. And it's not so much you as asking another person for a favor or request or what it might be. It's on the receiving end. The rejection that you get is really just an opinion because it might be the mood that they're in just today.

Starting point is 00:37:51 It might be the upbringing. It might be their own experiences. Another thing that he talks about, and this is actually a learning outcome that he has from Robert Chaldini. We also interviewed on this podcast is that whenever you get a no, ask for a smaller favor. And the reason why that works is that people actually don't like to reject you. I mean, it's not in human nature just to keep rejecting people. I mean, very few people are unpleasant people. Very, very often, there's a good reason why people would say no.

Starting point is 00:38:22 So always have two requests in mind. Like you might have the big one, you might be rejected. But very often when you ask for a second favor, you'll get a yes. The example he came up with was that he went into a luxury hotel and asked if he could stay in one of the penthouse suites for free for a night. Well, no surprise he got to know. But using this technique, he actually was permitted to take a nap in one of the beds, which was a hilarious story in itself. But it's just putting the Chaldini psychology into practice.

Starting point is 00:38:53 So there's two in particular that I want to talk about. We might have hit a little bit on this during the episode, but he talks about how rejection is human and how most people, when they're rejected, they immediately start looking internally, opposed to a more balanced overview of what just happened. In order to assess it correctly, you've got to look at what is the other person's position and why did they feel that way? And then why do I feel the way that I feel? And when you balance out those two sides, you're going to come to a much more credible idea of what actually happened and why the rejection actually took place. So you've got to try to understand the other person's vantage point because you obviously understand yours. So that really goes back to that why question and that's really important for people to focus on. Stig talked about it being a numbers game. I think that's really important. And then the other part that I kind of talked about there at the end with his wife is this idea of focusing on what you can actually control versus what you can't control. And I think so many people get caught up in the emotional and the way that they feel and they get into, you know, I can't do anything about this.

Starting point is 00:40:00 And that's the end of their opinion. I'm never going to be able to do this. And these are all the reasons why I can't ever do it. instead of really kind of looking at it very analytically and saying, okay, that just happened. But now let me list out all the things that I can actually control to ask this question again that will actually get me to a yes in the future. And then profiling that and listing that in trying to improve that and trying to optimize it, that's how people are going to be able to get over this fear of rejection is by doing it

Starting point is 00:40:32 and going after what they can actually control in life. Right, guys, that was all that Preston and I had for this week's episode of The Investors podcast. We see each other again next week. Thanks for listening to TIP. To access the show notes, courses or forums, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. To get your questions played on the show, go to Ask theInvesters.com and win a free subscription to any of our courses on TIP Academy. This show is for entertainment purposes only.

Starting point is 00:41:02 Before making investment decisions, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by the TIP network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.

We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP148: How to Become Rejection Proof (Business Podcast)

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.