Surprising Lessons From 100 Days of Rejection: Jia Jiang at TEDxAustin

So how many of you believe in the purpose of life that you put on this earth for a reason? I see some hands getting personal thank you and how many of you changed your lives for a box of donuts raise your hand I see one two, let's have dinner together later I want to hear your story it's incredible but my life also changed for a box of donuts here it is, it changed my life so much that it can be divided into before donuts and after donuts bd and add growing up in Beijing, China, he didn't want to be a revolutionary leader or a model worker, he wanted to be Bill Gates, he came.

I went to my hometown to speak when I was 14 years old. I loved his story. I love the fact that he followed his own path and made the world a better place for those of you who are Mac users. You may argue, but I love his story. He said I actually like him so much that I said I would go where he lives so I came to the United States when I was 16 dreaming of becoming a world class businessman then I did all the wrong things I fulfilled my American dream I got it I got it a degree a job a house cars and dogs whatever I had a lot life was comfortable but deep down I was not happy because I did not pursue my original dream and when I was 30 years old and my wife was pregnant and I felt old and I felt like I missed the boat and This is over if I couldn't become an entrepreneur once, single or husband, how can I be an entrepreneur when I am a father, but then when you marry someone brave?

Amazing things happen so my wife came to see me and saw how unhappy I was so she came to tell me we can have another house another car not a promotion but we can't regret it so why don't you go out and build your business? for six months and if at the end you have no investment or traction, go back to looking for a job, so it's a great idea, this is the day my son was born last year and four

days

before I left my job to I became an entrepreneur a full time and was excited.

I didn't pursue my dream. I started working and started building a team. I found a business idea we liked and built a prototype. Then I started looking for an investment. So four months after starting I was presented with the biggest investment opportunity, I thought I would take the company to the next level and I really wanted it, I thought I was sure I was going to get it, how can I not get it? in destiny, dream and purpose, and I know I wanted it so much. I dreamed about it five different times each time I woke up thinking I had made it, but reality hit me.

I received an email saying no. He didn't tell me why I didn't do it. Get it, I wasn't saying how can you get a yes, just no, that

rejection

felt incredibly impersonal and personal at the same time, I was devastated because I wanted something so badly when you get rejected it really hurts and secondly, I was running out of time I felt like maybe this wasn't meant to be maybe I should get a job now and wait and instead of losing him to a partner more and more when you marry someone wonderful and wonderful things happen my wife came to me she's like a marshal field grabbing my face. max from an offensive lineman linebacker who gave up a sack saying I give you six months I didn't give you four you have two months left do your best and leave no regrets I want to do it but

rejection

really hurts and I didn't do it I want to go through the same process and be rejected again.

It really paralyzed me. Then what do I do? I googled, looked for help, and found something called rejection therapy. It's a game developed by this Canadian gentleman named Jason Conley. We are friends. Now when you actually go out and look for rejection, I love that idea. I love it so much. I said I'll do this for 100

days

, film the process and blog about it so the world can hold me accountable. I finished all these rejections so I started going out and asking around, asking for some crazy things to get rejected, for example I went to a burger place after eating, I said can I get a burger refill instead of a drink refill and then one day I went to petsmart? and I said, "Hey, can I cut my hair like a German Shepherd?" and last weekend I went to a random Super Bowl party saying, "I can join you." I brought fries and of course I was turned away, but amazing things happened.

I started getting “yes.” much more than I thought and these are some of the uses I had one day. I tried. I knocked on the stranger's door and said, can I play soccer in your backyard? He said, "Come in, I'm fine" and when they pull each other in the A police officer was driving his car and said, Hey, can I pretend to be you and drive your car and sit there and he says, do it right? And then one day I was flying before my flight took off. I asked the flight attendant and I said can I give the safety announcement instead of you, they're going to pay a lot more attention to me, trust me and he said go ahead and of course not everyone was happy, a couple of passengers is now a terrorist.

Know? Should I address it now? But I was impressed. away because of how nice the society was to me I didn't know that before and then there's the donut and this is what happened uh I'm driving to Krispy Kreme I'm going to ask them to make me some specialized donuts and we'll see What happens what kind of specialized are we talking? I would like to have a uh, you put the five domes together to make them look like Olympic symbols and when are you looking for these, uh, when, the next 15 minutes, okay, but what do you think? wow, that's really good, that's really good, yeah, okay, so do I pay there?

Don't even worry about that, it's on me. hug ok thanks see you that was before donuts and now it's after donuts and by the way her name is jackie and I was impressed by the customer service but also by the human kindness she showed me, a lot of people shared my Feeling video got 5 million views in the span of 2 weeks but the story didn't stop at one viral video, people started following my blog and sending me email after email thanking me for doing this because They would share this fear of rejection and for example, there is an actress in New York and she told me that her life is miserable because for her every audition is almost like rejection therapy.

She is so afraid that someone else will be better than her. Her life is not happy. And then there's this young Frenchman and he told me. I see the same girl at the gym for months and I think she likes me too but I'm too afraid to ask her out because I don't want to be rejected and of course there are people who send me emails asking me to ask things. for them to fulfill their lifelong dreams I know six degrees of separation I'm not too much of a rejection I'm not sure that works but this made me think I saw rejection face to face I started to think what is rejection what is this monster that paralyzes us, we all have this irrational fear, so I started researching, I started reading, I started talking to successful people about their rejection stories and I want to share these two things, one of them is that rejection is actually constant, I have people who write an email. saying uh, I want to have a certain place in life so that I won't be rejected anymore, that's not true, the higher you go, the more you will be rejected in the last presidential election.

President Obama got 51 of the popular vote that he won, but we forget that. he was rejected by half the country, this leader of the free world was rejected 61 million times and besides rejection is just a number and once you reach that number, a grade will turn into a yes and you will be all the better for it. story of c.s lewis he was rejected 800 times before he could sell his first manuscript and in the meantime he improved, if he had given up there would be no chronicle of narnia and then there is lincoln, we all heard the story of lincoln he was rejected many times before becoming president , but I'm talking about the movie Lincoln.

Director Stephen Spielberg was rejected by Daniel Day Lewis three times before he could persuade him to become the lead actor, and each time. He completely rewrote this, revealed the script and improved it. Now it became the masterpiece. He has a good chance of winning the Oscars. I don't want to start a group and then, you know, start betting on it, but let me leave it. So just thinking a little we're not we're not talking about an up-and-comer who's trying to be known steven spielberg the name in hollywood going back to my story it's not over yet it's actually just begun I'm only 60 Throughout my journey, there are many more rejections to come but the most important thing is that I am an entrepreneur and being an entrepreneur is about finding a problem and developing a solution for it and I found this problem, this universal problem of people's fear of rejection and now it will stop and Until I find a solution, whether through traditional means or through some new technology, I need your help too.

You can let me know if you have any ideas, but ultimately, if I didn't, I wouldn't have put in the effort. there constantly I wouldn't have learned these two things, one if I open myself to the world, the hope that the world opens up to me, I didn't have to do this alone and secondly, the rejection, it could be constant, it could be painful. It could be very, very feared but it could also be delicious and very useful, it is nothing more than a number and for that I want to thank Bill Gates and my brave wife and also of course Jackie and her box of donuts, thank you.