Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection (11 page)

To quit or not to quit? That’s a question that lingers in the mind of almost everyone who has failed at something. On one side, self-help gurus and motivational speakers preach Winston Churchill’s quote “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in” or Vince Lombardi’s quote “Winners never quit and quitters never win.” On the other side, modern entrepreneurs preach quick pivoting on unattainable ideas. Their motto is “fail fast, fail often.” Bestselling authors and economists Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner even dedicated an entire chapter to the “Upside of Quitting” in their book
Think Like a Freak
.

When it comes to rejection, there is also merit for both arguments. In my 100 Days of Rejection, sometimes no matter what approaches or tactics I tried, a no remained a no. In these cases, continuing to make the same request over and over again under the same conditions, with the same person, in the hope that my persistence would somehow change the outcome almost always proved counterproductive and impractical.

But instead of quitting, I found that stepping back and trying again under different circumstances could yield a different result. I call it “switch up.” In my efforts to find a one-day job, it took three different companies to get to yes. When I tried to plant flowers in someone’s yard, the second person, Lauren, gave me the green light. Approaching a different person, rather than continuously trying to convince the same
person again and again, regardless of his needs and preferences, was much more productive.

Another way to “switch up” is to change environments.

Stephon Marbury has been a big-time sports star ever since he was little. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he quickly earned the nickname “Starbury” due to his basketball talent and was widely viewed as the next great NBA point guard. In high school, he received the “Mr. New York Basketball” award and was named a McDonald’s All-American—two very prestigious titles. He was also featured in a book and on the cover of a video game. After one year at Georgia Tech, he was picked fourth overall in the 1996 NBA Draft. In the NBA, he was selected as an All-Star in 2001 and 2003 and led his team to the playoffs five different times.

Marbury’s résumé looked to be that of a great basketball star. But in reality, his story was one of controversy and rejection, at least in the NBA. As soon he entered the professional league, people started to notice his flashy me-first playing style and his frequent run-ins with coaches, and he quickly developed a reputation for being selfish. He was traded to four different teams before landing with the New York Knicks—a team he’d dreamed of playing for while growing up. Quickly, he came to blows with two different head coaches and was labeled “toxic,” a “coach-killer,” a “bonehead,” and a “loser.” He was regularly suspended and frequently booed by fans.

Despite putting up decent numbers, Marbury’s reputation forced the New York Knicks to cut him. After spending a forgettable year with the Boston Celtics, he was essentially
forced out of the league. Despite his immense talent, he was rejected by both the NBA and its fans after a tumultuous five-team, thirteen-year career. It looked as though his career was over for good.

Stephon Marbury could have simply lived off all the money he’d earned. Or he could have tried to latch onto another NBA team in an effort to extend his fading career. But he didn’t do either of these things. Instead, he chose to step back and take his career to the other side of the globe—to China.

In the Chinese culture, which is much more reserved, Marbury’s brassy manner and playing style were seen as much needed leadership for a basketball team. After two seasons in the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA), Marbury signed with the Beijing Ducks, a team that had never won a championship in the league’s seventeen-year history, despite being one of the league’s richest teams.

In Beijing, Marbury transformed from an NBA reject to a local legend. As the starting point guard, he averaged more than 30 points per game and led the Ducks to their first-ever championship in 2012. Before accepting the trophy, he was tossed in the air by his teammates. He then broke down in tears for more than fifteen minutes in the locker room. “This has been incredible,” he kept repeating to the reporters.

Two years later, he led the Ducks to their second championship. At age thirty-seven, Marbury became a hero to Beijing’s twenty million residents and received the “Beijing Honorary Citizen” award from its mayor. They even built a bronze statue in his likeness outside the stadium where the Ducks play. In every sense, Marbury went from fame to rejection, then back to fame again.

Say what you will about Marbury’s personality, but his “switch up” illustrates that there is possibility after rejection—and that rejection is not always the end of the story. Hanging on for dear life and giving up by quitting are not the only two options left after a no. Instead, sometimes you need to step back and reevaluate your talents and dreams, as well as the conditions and the environment in which you have been trying to get an acceptance. By taking a look at all of the factors, you might be able to find a new approach that will allow you to see an idea in a new light—and get the yes you’ve always wanted.

T
he story of Jiro Ono, an eighty-five-year-old Japanese man who spent his entire life mastering and perfecting the art of making sushi, was brought to fame by the 2011 documentary
Jiro Dreams of Sushi
. His small restaurant in Tokyo had become the most famous sushi shop in the world and a national treasure for Japan, so much so that President Obama made a stop on his visit to the country and claimed it was the “best sushi I’ve ever had in my life.”

One thing about Jiro’s restaurant that amazed many viewers was the grueling and detailed basic skills training that Jiro’s apprentices have to go through in order to work at the restaurant. They must first learn to properly hand-squeeze the hot towels the restaurant offers to patrons. The towels are so hot that they burn the apprentices’ hands. After they
master that, they spend ten years learning to cut and prepare fish. After a decade of dealing with fish, they earn the right to cook eggs. One apprentice explained that he had to prepare more than two hundred batches of egg sushi over several months before he was allowed to prepare it for customers.

Jiro’s story shows the importance of learning the fundamentals before elevating to more complicated skills and eventually mastering the whole art.

If my entire art was to handle rejection, then not giving up after a no was like towel squeezing. I’d learned a lot, but there was much more to come. The next step was to learn different ways to position myself to receive more yeses in the first place.

Since getting a yes involves persuasion, I vowed to not tune down the craziness of my request to make it easy. I didn’t want to get a yes by making a cheap, obvious request; I was already so much more confident than I had been at the beginning of this journey that I didn’t need to boost my pride with easy yeses. Instead, I wanted to see if I could uncover some principles that would make a yes more likely, no matter what kind of request it was attached to.

100 DAYS OF REJECTION: GIVING $5 TO RANDOM PEOPLE IN AUSTIN, AND TAKING PICTURES WITH STRANGERS IN NEW YORK CITY

“The best things in life are free, but you can keep them for the birds and bees. Now give me money, that’s what I want.”

—B
ARRETT
S
TRONG IN THE SONG
“M
ONEY
”

Is money what people really want over anything else, as suggested in Barrett Strong’s classic song? If so, I figured that giving people money—with no strings attached—would be greeted with overwhelming acceptance. At least, that’s what I was thinking when I positioned myself on a busy street corner in downtown Austin and offered $5 bills to random strangers walking by. I didn’t tell them what I was doing. Instead, I just stood there with my hand out and asked them if they’d like five bucks, without giving them any reason.

In the interests of not draining my bank account, I offered the money to only five people. Here are the results:

Person #1: She was very happy and kept saying, “That was very sweet of you!” She also offered to “give it to somebody, too,” when she saw a person in need.

Person #2: She eyed me with some suspicion and asked me if there was a catch to my offer. After hearing that there was no catch, she smiled and took the money—but told me to come back and pick it up if I needed it.

Person #3: He flatly refused the offer, saying, “I don’t need $5.” Before walking away, he pointed toward a nearby
homeless shelter. “There are plenty of guys on the street who would die to have $5. Why don’t you give it to them?”

Person #4: He asked me what the $5 was for. “Nothing,” I said. He walked away quickly.

Person #5: She also asked me what it was for. Again, I said, “Nothing.” She laughed uncomfortably and walked away.

In the end, two said yes, and three said no.

Soon after that, I took my visiting aunt on a trip to New York City—a city always bustling with people. Everywhere we went—Times Square, Central Park, the Empire State Building—we saw people posing for pictures. Many times, the person taking the photo would politely ask strangers to step out of the frame or simply wait until they’d passed by. It was as if everyone was striving to show they were the only people visiting these landmarks at that moment. Seeing this happen again and again, an idea came to mind. Since New Yorkers are as much a part of the fabric of New York as its buildings, why not ask random New Yorkers if I could pose with them on the street, with my aunt acting as the photographer?

Over the next few hours, I asked dozens of random people to pose with me. They varied widely by ethnicity, gender, and age. Some of them didn’t speak English very well. The only common factor was how I approached them. I told them that I wanted to take a photo with them because I believed that people are an integral part of a city.

Some of them initially thought I asked them to take a picture
for
me and were surprised to find out I wanted them in the picture
with
me. Others showed a little hesitation at the beginning and paused to process my unusual request.

But the most surprised person of all was me, because every single one of them said yes.

Plenty of people think the reason I got so many yeses during my rejection journey is because I lived in Austin, Texas, a place with a reputation for outgoing, quirky residents. They figure it’s a function of southern hospitality, and that if I made the same requests in place like New York or pretty much anywhere in Europe, I’d be sternly rejected.

In some cases, they might be right. But I had been rejected many times in Austin—sometimes when it was least expected, like when I’d tried handing out the $5 bills. But now here I was in New York, making a request that offered no benefit to anyone, and everyone I’d approached had agreed to pose for a picture.

At first glance, this made no sense. But after revisiting the videos, I saw one glaring difference between the New York photo request and the Austin money giveaway. In New York, I’d told each of those strangers on the sidewalk
why
I was asking them to pose with me in a photo—I wanted to include people, not just landmarks, in my photo. I hadn’t left it to them to fill in the blanks when it came to my motivation. As a result, they responded positively, even though the request was outside the normal social behavior they were used to seeing every day.

I had begun to realize that asking people why after receiving a rejection helped me understand their reasoning and sometimes turn a no into a yes—or into an even more
interesting offer. Now I was finding that explaining
my
why up front had a similar effect. I wasn’t the first one to notice this.

In 1978, Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer conducted an experiment that revealed this very point. In the experiment, she approached people waiting to use a copy machine, asking them if she could cut in front of them to make copies herself. She wanted to see if the way that she worded the request had an effect on their response. When she said, “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?,” 60 percent of people allowed her to go ahead of them. When she added her reason, asking, “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I’m in a rush?,” her yes rate increased to 94 percent. In her third variation, she also gave a reason, but purposely designed it to be ridiculous: “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies?” Shockingly, the number of people who accepted her request stayed about the same at 93 percent.

Langer’s experiment—dubbed “The Copy Machine”—became a landmark study in psychology. It demonstrates that people’s responses to a request are deeply influenced by knowing there is a reason behind it, no matter what that reason is. Everything I experienced during my rejection journey reinforced this. When I gave people a reason for my request, however far-fetched, I was far more likely to get a yes.

But lots of people miss this step—including me. Looking back, I’m amazed at how often I didn’t offer a reason for my request, usually because I assumed the other person already
knew it or wouldn’t want to know it. Sometimes, I was so deeply embedded in what I was requesting that it didn’t even occur to me that I needed to walk someone through my enthusiasm. Other times, revealing my rationale made me feel too vulnerable. And sometimes I wasn’t sure about the reason or couldn’t articulate it to myself.