Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection (5 page)

I have been a casual viewer of the show
Survivor
for years. I like it for its competition, characters, and good old reality TV drama. But more than anything else, I like its Emmy-winning host, Jeff Probst, and the way he interacts with contestants on a personal and compassionate level. So when the producer of the nationally syndicated
Jeff Probst Show
called and invited me to come on the show, I knew I had to say yes.

Two weeks later, CBS flew me to Hollywood. They also flew in Jackie Braun from Krispy Kreme. I have seen Jackie a few more times since that day, and every time I have been impressed by her humility and grace. In the greenroom before the show, while the makeup artists were getting us TV-ready, Jackie and I chatted about our strange journey—from a Krispy Kreme store in Austin to national television. Since the video had gone viral, hundreds of people had stopped by the Krispy Kreme where Jackie worked to meet her. She thanked me for giving her the chance to be appreciated by the public. But she also insisted that what she had done wasn’t extraordinary, and that many of her coworkers would have done the same thing.

The producers had invited one more person to join us onstage: Jason Comely, the inventor of the Rejection Therapy game that had inspired my 100 Days of Rejection quest. I’d never met him before but liked him instantly, and we have since become good friends. He told me that my blog had brought a lot of traffic to his site and his business. He also
confessed that he’d been going through a tough time of his own and was finding the videos and my story inspiring.

Our segment came after Danica Patrick, the racecar driver. I was surprised, given my outsized fear of rejection, that being on national television didn’t scare me to death. Maybe it’s because the one person in the world whose acceptance and recognition I crave above all others was in the studio audience that day. My uncle—the person who was my role model growing up and whom I named my son after, but whose rejection of my entrepreneurial idea fourteen years earlier had left me stunned and unsure of myself—had driven all the way from San Diego to watch me on the show. Seeing him in the audience, smiling his encouragement and beaming with pride, made me feel like the luckiest man in the world.

It also gave me the courage to launch another rejection attempt—right there on TV. At the end of our segment, I asked Jeff Probst to sing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” to my son. It was Brian’s favorite song. Jeff not only did it, but he got the entire studio audience to sing with him. Afterward, Jeff shook my hand. “Congratulations,” he said. “What you are doing is fabulous. You are onto something big here. Continue to inspire!”

All the attention from the media and from the public was pretty extraordinary. But if I had to pick one event that was the most unexpected, it was an e-mail reply from my personal hero.

I used to be very hesitant about contacting people through “cold calls” or “cold e-mails,” because the chance of being ignored or rejected seemed overwhelming. And the possibility of being rejected by famous, busy people was close to 100 percent, at least in my mind. But the momentum of my videos gave me the courage to send a few e-mails to some of my role models. I desperately wanted to get some advice on running my fledgling start-up.

One of the people I e-mailed was Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos, the popular online shoe retailer. I’d read his book
Delivering Happiness
over and over again for inspiration when I was working at my old job. The book shares his early dreams of becoming an entrepreneur and how he fulfilled those dreams by building LinkExchange and later Zappos, overcoming all kinds of obstacles in the process. As a fellow Asian entrepreneur, I could relate to his struggles and his ambition, and I badly wanted to have the same impact that he has had.

It’s crazy what can happen if you just ask. To my shock, I received a reply from one of Tony’s assistants. It turned out that Tony had heard about my story and liked my videos. He wanted to invite me to fly to Las Vegas, where Zappos is headquartered, to give a talk as part of his Las Vegas Downtown Project.

In 2012, Tony was working on revitalizing downtown Las Vegas, moving it out from the shadows of the Las Vegas strip and transforming it into a cultural and technology hot spot to rival Austin and San Francisco. The Downtown Project was all about inspiring local businesses to think of themselves
as part of a larger vision, and he thought hearing my story might help them think bigger about their aspirations.

Tony Hsieh, an inspiration of mine, wanted to invite me to deliver inspiration?

A week later, I was in Las Vegas, giving my speech. The event was held in a temporary theater made out of construction trailers, designed to symbolize the rebuilding of the city. Las Vegas had been deeply hurt by the great recession. Housing values had plummeted by more than two-thirds. Many people who had come to the city during the boom were devastated by the bust, and some had simply moved away to start over somewhere else. Those who remained felt that their city had been rejected by the world and were struggling to keep their spirits high amid efforts to rebuild and revitalize.

On the stage, I shared my own dreams and struggles and talked about my rejection journey—from my decision to quit my job to pursue my childhood dream, to getting rejected by the investor and the magical experience I’d had so far during my 100 Days. I encouraged the audience not to give up, but to march forward and follow their dreams for the city and for themselves, no matter what anybody thought about them.

After the talk, the audience gave me a standing ovation—the first I had ever experienced in my life. I felt completely overwhelmed. Even more surreal, people surrounded me afterward, shaking my hand and thanking me for sharing my story, as if I was doing them a great favor by trying to tackle my own fear.

When the crowd started to thin, Tony Hsieh tapped my shoulder and invited me to his office for a private meeting.

Tony’s story and achievements have made him a superhero to aspiring entrepreneurs like me, so sitting in his office was a rather dreamlike experience. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d thrown on an Iron Man suit and taken me for a ride. But after some small talk, Tony got down to business. He looked me in the eyes and asked: “How would you like to move to Las Vegas and work for me?”

On the flight from Las Vegas back to Austin, I watched out the window as the lights of the Las Vegas Strip shrank into the distance and then disappeared. The lights were replaced by total darkness; the only sound was the steady humming of the plane engine.

A few hours earlier, Tony Hsieh had offered me a job, or more like a business proposal. If I moved to Las Vegas, he would form a new business and hire me to work for it as a professional speaker. I would travel the country giving inspirational talks at conferences and corporations.

So Tony Hsieh wants to hire me for a talent I never knew I had until today—in public speaking
.

The urge to say yes to whatever this man asked of me was so strong that I had almost agreed on the spot. But moving to Vegas and abandoning the company I had just formed was a decision that involved many more people than myself. So I’d asked for some time to consider the offer.

Now, sitting inside the plane, I had to ask myself:
What just happened?
Within a month, I’d gone from getting rejected by an investor, to asking for bizarre customized donuts, to
being featured in newspapers, magazines, and national talk shows, to staring across a desk at Tony Hsieh, who was trying to convince
me
to come work for
him
on a national platform.

Was this another dream, like the ones I’d had before that investor turned me down? If so, I didn’t know if I wanted it to keep going or to wake up.

But it wasn’t a dream. And I had choices to make. Should I become the “Rejection Whisperer” on my own reality show? Play the depressed guy who finds true love through rejection therapy in a Hollywood movie? Work for my idol Tony Hsieh? Or go back to doing what I was doing—running a struggling tech start-up while video-blogging about rejection?

As much as I loved my start-up team and the app we were building, totally disregarding what had just opened up and going back to my routine seemed a little unwise if not crazy. Not everyone gets their fifteen minutes of fame, and mine had been pretty spectacular. If I wanted to capitalize on the new opportunities my “flash fame” had opened, then I needed to figure out which one of these new career paths would be the most meaningful in the long term. Maybe it was a combination of all of them.

As for Hsieh’s invite, something about going back to working for someone else in his or her company didn’t feel right. My goal in life has always been to make a positive impact in the world. Fame and celebrity had never been my main motive. So the idea of chasing after these flashy routes made me uneasy.

Also, I didn’t feel ready for it. Basically, I was a guy with a cool story, and I had just learned that I could tell it pretty well. My rejection journey had just started yet I was already
being seen as some sort of expert. It was as if I’d set out to climb Mount Everest and had only just set up my base camp, yet the world was already trying to helicopter me out and crown me a great adventurer. I still yearned to discover the rest of the mountain.

On the other hand, if I didn’t jump on these opportunities now, would they still be there when I was ready for them?

I was getting a headache thinking about all this. To distract myself, I turned on my laptop and opened my e-mail box. There were more than one thousand unread messages waiting for me. Ever since the donut video had gone viral, my in-box had been brimming with “fan e-mails” from people all over the world. Some of them were light and funny, written by people who found my videos pretty amusing. Many of them—most, actually—were from people who had been taking the videos very seriously, using them as a way to gain courage to face their own rejection fears.

Like this e-mail from Mike:

I have been following your 100 Days of Rejection Therapy almost from the beginning when my daughter sent me a link. Your journey has brought me many smiles, laughs, and strength. It is the strength that I have gained in my day to day activities that I want to thank you most for. Through my life, I have always found it difficult to approach people and ask the simplest questions, even of people whose job it is to help, like store clerks, wait staff, etc. At times I have even sent my children to ask for ketchup at McDonald’s because the thought made my stomach knot up….

This newfound strength has come at a very crucial time in my life. In May of last year, my wife was diagnosed with cancer and it has taken eight months of doctor and hospital visits to arrive at a final cancer type diagnosis. We have learned much about the inner workings of the healthcare system, both the good and the bad, and it all requires talking to many people and asking many questions. Every time I felt the fear of asking questions on our cancer journey, I thought of you and found the strength to step up and do what had to be done. Thanks so much for taking your journey and letting us all share and gain strength from your actions.

And this one from Regina:

I am an actress working both out of NYC and Philadelphia and I really find this project fascinating because as an actor, we see more rejection in our work than most people. Every audition is like another job interview and the biggest fear is not booking that job or being rejected because someone else is “better.” It is very easy to get discouraged and take it to heart. And in simple day to day scenarios, asking for simple things can make me break out in a sweat. I find while watching some of your videos on YouTube that I am squirming along with you, having to approach people and make a simple request.

In everyday situations for myself, the consequences conjured up by my imagination are far worse than what I think most outcomes will realistically be. Will someone
yell at me, or ridicule me, call me stupid, or throw me out of their establishment? At an audition, will the casting director stop me mid-performance and tell me I have no talent and that the school that gave me my MFA in Acting should not have given me a diploma? My mind has some of the craziest ideas of potential outcomes. And it is this fear of being rejected that can paralyze people and keep them from really living…. I cannot wait to see what other adventures you have. I think you are learning a lot about rejection but even more importantly, about how generous people can be and the beauty of the human spirit. I know I am learning so much by watching your project and about staying positive. Good luck!

It’s one thing to receive a few letters like this. But I’d been getting hundreds of them—all from people who seemed just as invested in my rejection journey as I was. I felt humbled by their stories and honored to be helping them in some way to face down their fears. But I was also amazed: Was I really impacting the lives of people I didn’t know just by doing what I was doing?

The media had come after me because of the entertainment value I could provide for them. “Guy seeks out rejection but receives Olympic donuts instead” was perfect story-of-the-day material. But the e-mails I was receiving from regular people—people just like me—were different. They didn’t see my journey as entertainment. It was almost as if they saw me as representing them in some sort of struggle and had a personal stake in seeing me succeed.

I’d always viewed my fear of rejection as some sort of rare disease, like guinea worm, that inflicts terrible pain but affects only a tiny segment of the overall population. I figured that I was simply unlucky, or that my innate shyness, my upbringing in a superprotective family, or the fact that I came from a foreign country with a reserved culture were somehow responsible for my fear. Before the e-mails and comments started pouring in, I’d never really thought about
other people’s
fear of rejection. But the more people told me how much they could relate to my experience, the more I realized that fear of rejection wasn’t a rare disease at all. It was a normal human condition.