Master Class: How to become rejection-proof – with Jia Jiang
Jia Jiang is the author of Rejection Proof: How I beat fear and became invincible through 100 days of rejection.
If you avoid rejection, you’re human. But you’re also holding yourself back.
That’s what Jia Jiang discovered the first time he pitched an investor.
“I wanted this investment so bad,” says Jia, author of Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection. “I felt it was an answer to my prayers…and because [the investor] said he liked it, I thought he was going to give the investment, but he didn’t. He sent me an email later telling me he wasn’t going to move forward.”
But the bigger problem was what happened next…
“Popular culture or popular psychology teaches us to get over rejection,” says Jia. “But rejections can haunt us…these moments linger in my mind and tell me ‘I shouldn’t do this, I shouldn’t speak up, I shouldn’t be more innovative because if I do, people will reject me.’”
That’s when Jia realized that one rejection was going to cost him his dream of being an entrepreneur…unless he could overcome his fear of rejection once and for all.
So Jia spent 100 days seeking out rejection–from asking a flight attendant if he could make the safety announcement on the plane (no, but he did get some loudspeaker time) to walking into offices looking for a one-day job (yes, after two rejections).
“What I learned is there’s no universally rejected idea and no universally accepted idea,” he says. “If you really want to get a yes, sometimes you just have talk to enough people.”
In his Mixergy course, Jia shows you how to become rejection-proof and how to turn a no into a yes. Here are three highlights from the course.
1. Stop Running
Rejection stings. It stings so bad that it makes many people want to retreat with their tails between their legs.
And during his experiments, that’s often what Jia wanted to do, too.
For instance, in one experiment, he asked a man if he could plant a flower in his backyard. The guy said no.
“I [previously] would’ve thought, ‘Okay, of course, he was going to say no,’” says Jia. “This is a strange request. Maybe I didn’t look that trustworthy…maybe he didn’t like my…I don’t know.”
So what should you do when your instincts tell you to run?
Always ask why
Ask them why they’re saying no.
“Sometimes if you attack the why, meaning if you solved that why, you can actually turn a no into a yes,” he says.
For instance, when he asked the man why he couldn’t plant a flower in his backyard, the guy explained that his dog digs up anything he plants in his yard. Then he suggested that Jia ask the lady who lived across the street. “She loves flowers,” the man said.
And when Jia asked her, she said yes.
“Because I asked why, I found out it’s not because of me,” said Jia. “It’s because what I offered did not fit him and did not fit his needs. And he trusted me enough to even give me a referral, using sales terms, and asked me to go across the street.”
2. That’s Just Like, Your Opinion, Man
When Jia was 16 years old, he came up with an idea for a shoe with a wheel in the heel: almost exactly the same as the now-well-known Heely.
“I wanted to be an inventor,” he said. “I was ready to apply for a patent for this idea.”
So he made a drawing of the shoe, and went to his uncle for advice.
“I admired the heck out of him, he means the world to me, even today,” says Jia. “But he told me, ‘That’s not a good idea. Why would you spend time on this? Instead, you should spend some time on improving your English.’”
Jia was crushed. He respected his uncle so much that “a rejection from him, to me, it was like the truth,” he says.
A year or two later, the Heely was taking off, and it became a multi-million-dollar company. “I see kids skating around in the malls and on the street and I think about what could have been,” says Jia.
So what should you do when someone you really respect rejects your idea?
Channel El Duderino
Put their rejection into perspective.
“What I learned later on is, no matter how much I respect my uncle, no matter how smart he is, what he’s saying is not the universal truth,” says Jia. “If I asked 10 different people, I might get 10 different answers.”
In other words, rejection is just an opinion, man.
“Opinion is based on his background, his education, maybe his mood or his upbringing, his prejudices,” he says. “There are a lot of things that would lead to a rejection…but rejection is nothing more than a person’s opinion.”
3. Acknowledge the Penguin in the Room
Sometimes you ask for something unusual, and people look at you like you’re a weirdo.
Maybe you’re trying to better understand your customer with a survey. Or maybe, like Jia, you’re trying to become a Starbucks greeter for a day as part of a 100-day rejection experiment.
“Basically, you’re standing there at door and greeting customers,” he says. “It was the holiday season, I wanted to give them holiday cheers.”
But when Jia asked the guy in charge if he could do it, “his face was full of doubt,” says Jia. “And don’t think those doubts will just go away on their own.”
So how do you get someone to say yes to an unusual request?
Bring it up first
Acknowledge the weirdness right away.
“In many cases, when we’re trying to make a sale or trying to ask people for things or make an entrepreneurial request, we try to hide our weakness,” says Jia. “We just try to sound as if everything was great.”
Yet Jia discovered that if he brings up the weakness first, his chances of getting a yes increase.
“You actually put them at ease, because now they know you’re not crazy,” he says. “You’re showing empathy, that you’re thinking the same way they do.”
So to get a yes from the Starbucks guy, Jia asked if he could be a greeter and then said, “Is that weird?”
The guy said, “Yes, this is really weird.”
“But because I acknowledged that what I’m asking is weird, he felt much better about it afterwards,” says Jia. And he agreed to let Jia be a greeter for a day.
Written by April Dykman.