My Rejection Therapy Project

Rejection Therapy is a concept that was first introduced to me reading Jia Jiang’s book, “Rejection Proof”.

It’s a great story and an interesting read and is all about what he learned as he went out to get rejections once a day for 100 days. He did a vlog posting for each attempt. To be honest, he was EXTREEMLY lucky and one of his early videos went viral, so he became a LITERAL overnight success. He shut down his startup company and focused on rejection therapy full time. He now does many things but is an expert speaker on rejection.

“Making the ask”

I don’t think I’m alone when I say that asking for money (and donations) is awkward and not something I enjoy. I usually let someone else make the ask or tell the stories and let people decide for themselves. However, I run a non-profit. It’s part of the job! I need to get over it and start being comfortable asking for support. This project is more about my getting comfortable with asking then it is about rejection therapy.

I’ll learn how to take a ‘no’. That is certain. But unlike Jia’s efforts, I’m not seeking out the ‘no’. I really want to get the ‘yes’, but my hope is that each ‘no’ will help me refine my asks.

So, this will be a vlog but I’m not going to record the people I ask for 3 reasons:

  1. The asks won’t be crazy like his were. It’s a legitimate ask for a non-profit. Being captured on video saying ‘no’ to a non-profit could result in negative outcomes for the company and, ultimately, for the non-profit.
  2. The videos he shot were not great. I never really liked the semi-hidden camera approach he used and don’t think it was right putting these people on the web.
  3. This is about documenting my journey, not creating viral videos. That’s not where I think I want to go with this.

I do hope that this is a journey of training for me. If you can benefit from it as well, that would be amazing!

  • Rejection Therapy 1

    I just finished Jia Jiang’s book “Rejection Proof” about 100 days of rejection as a…

  • Rejection Therapy: Ask #1

    My first ask. This ask was not a high bar. Yes, it was out of…

  • Rejection Therapy: Ask #2

    My second ask This was a much higher bar. I walked in off the street,…

  • Rejection Therapy Ask #3

    You can see that, even after 3 attempts, I’m starting to show fatigue. I don’t…

  • Rejection Therapy Ask #4

    I’ll be honest, I edited a fairly big sigh out of the beginning of this…

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