Photo credit: Tilemahos Efthimiadis
There isn’t much Jia Jiang won’t do on a dare. The Austin-based entrepreneur is weeks into a challenge he calls 100 Days of Rejection Therapy. If that sounds familiar, you may have seen the viral video - five million hits and counting - in which Jiang requests that a Krispy Kreme employee fuse five donuts together into the shape of the Olympic rings. His concept is simple - tackle one task or make one request a day with the expectation of being rejected. He’s requested to deliver the weather forecast on his local FOX affiliate, asked to be a live mannequin in the front window of an Abercrombie store and tried to cut in line at Best Buy on Black Friday – all in the name of becoming better at handling failure and the fear that accompanies it.
“The fear of rejection was terrifying.The nos themselves could be bad, the fear of it was much worse. I felt it prohibited me from taking the necessary chances sometimes. I am a risk taker, but I'm not sure how natural. For example, I gave up my very comfortable income at Dell to start my own technology company without big seed money or a proven concept,” he says.
It was trying to raise money for this company that provided the ultimate impetus for the 100 Days of Rejection Therapy. After being turned down by a prominent investor, Jiang decided he needed to toughen up his entrepreneurial skin. What better way to do it than to make outlandish requests of strangers and document the results on his blog? The ability to confidently handle risk is a skill he believes is an entrepreneurial essential.
“By exposing ourselves to rejection, we can desensitize ourselves to it and help conquer the fear. We can make bold decisions without letting the fear cripple us. Courage is essential in entrepreneurship and a corporate career, both of which I’ve done.”
He has a point. Only 10% of first-time start-up founders launch successful businesses, but that number jumps to 20% for those who have a previous failed business under their belts. Learning from crashing and burning the first time helps you to make better decisions the next time around. And even for those entrepreneurs who are currently helming thriving businesses, there are aspects of their operations they’ll likely screw up at some point.
Jiang calls the public reaction to his project “overwhelming” and says that he has received thousands of emails so far, many of which offer up suggestions for exercises in rejection he could undertake. He draws the line at anything related to picking up women – he’s a happily married father of one – but everything else is fair game. And no matter how many times he gets turned down, Jiang knows all that rejection will ultimately pay off. “I will be a much better communicator and negotiator. It’s already successful because I have improved so much,” he says.
