Eliminate Your Fear Of No with Andrea Waltz

What would your life be like if you were no longer scared of rejection, of getting a no? Whether it was in a personal situation, asking someone out to hang out as a friend, as a date or a sales conversation, or an interview, or even a request in your company, no matter what it was. What if you were no longer scared of no? What if it didn't bother you? What if it actually excited you to get a no? Seem far fetched? You're gonna find out exactly how to do that in this episode in my interview with renowned author Andrea Waltz.

Coming to you from the center for Social Confidence in Portland, Oregon. Welcome to Shrink for the Shy guy, helping men everywhere go from social anxiety to social domination with your host, Dr. Aziz.

Welcome to today's episode. Today we're gonn looking at the two letters that most people try to spend their entire lives avoiding, which is no.

No.

I don't want to hear a no. I don't want to get a no. No means I failed. No means I got rejected. No means I'm not going to get what I want and I'm not going to get that money, that promotion, that job, that relationship, that opportunity. No sucks. And most of us say no thank you to no. But what if we change that? Could changing that be valuable to us in some way? And this can be life changing when you really start to take this in and realize this. And you're going to find out way more about this in an interview I have with expert Andrea Waltz, who's an incredible author. She's written a book called Go for no, which I actually referenced in an earlier podcast way back when last year. And she's got some tremendous ideas about how we can generate this sense of freedom in ourselves. So if you'd like to jump into the conversation, you can go to facebook.com shrinkforthshyguy or call the studio hotline, 206-338-3176. But I want to leave plenty of time for my interview with Andrea today, so let's jump into that right now. Expert interview My guest expert today is renowned author Andrea Waltz. She is the co author of the famous book Go for no which teaches people how to overcome their fear of rejection, particularly in the area of sales and business development. She has a personal history of doing outlandish things, of going for no. Even as a young kid. At the age of eight, she called George Lucas to see if she could work with him on future movies. She went on to become the youngest general manager in LensCrafters history, the eyeglass retailer, and she Launched her own training company at the age of 24. Now she goes around and teaches with her partner, Richard Fenton, the co author of Go4No. They have a company called Courage Crafters, Inc. And they have hundreds of thousands of sales of their book. And they're really impacting the business world and people's thinking around this concept of going for no. So thank you so much for joining me, Andrea. And we're going to just jump into the interview. As I was recording it, I ended up kind of missing the first part. So we're just going to jump right into that interview now.

It really has to do with being willing and wanting to fail so that you can learn from those things, you can grow as a person. But also when you do hear no, when you do experience a failure, oftentimes those are when the biggest breakthroughs, the biggest opportunities happen because you've pushed yourself usually outside your comfort zone and done something that that's usually kind of extraordinary.

Absolutely. And you mentioned something in there which I think is really interesting. As you said, most people think of no as a failure. And can you say a little more about what you've seen or what are sort of the kind of the default stories that people have about. No.

Yeah. Well, I mean, but to back up, too, and everyone does kind of play, I think, the same record in their mind, which is, I don't want to look foolish in front of other people. What will other people think? And it's so ironic because when we're children, we have no problem with failure. We have no problem falling on our face, looking foolish, trying to tie our shoes, ride a bike, climb a tree. You know, all the things that we try as kids. But then when we get into teenage years, adulthood, whatever, we do everything within our power to avoid that. That, you know, that failure, that rejection from someone else, from someone else, whether we're trying to raise money to start a business, ask for the sale, get a date, whatever, doesn't matter. That rejection is seen as a failure. And so what we really do to protect ourselves from that rejection is really avoid it. So in order to avoid that failure, avoid that rejection, we. We only do things where we assume that we're almost guaranteed success. You know, it's like looking around at five potential dates and saying, okay, well, of all of these five potential dates, I think that four of these people will say no to me, almost assuredly, this one might say yes, probably a good chance. So I'll just ask this one person out. And so in essence, really limiting your opportunities, limiting the possibilities in your life because you're just so concerned about avoiding that rejection.

Absolutely. I have a good friend who calls that going for the low hanging fruit, reaching the thing that's the easiest that you can surely get, but not being willing to climb the tree to try to go for the stuff that you really want that you're really going after.

Exactly, yes.

What I'm curious about is I really have seen what you said. I have a little nine and a half month old baby and he's trying to stand up right now and he will just fall flat on his face if we don't catch him. And then like two minutes later after he, you know, cries from shock, he'll get back up and he'll do it again. And you know, we all know that. We all seen, you know, kids master things through repetition and you mentioned that as well as we, we're young, we'll just fearlessly do something again and again. What do you think happens that makes us as teenagers or adults start to really make it so bad or wrong to get a failure or get a.

No?

Well, I think a couple things go on. One, we do well. One, we are kind of biologically wired to avoid getting really thrown out of the tribe, rejected being on our own. I think it's, I think it's a deep rooted wiring biologically. But number two, I think there are some interesting personality traits that we develop along the way. Some of them are deep rooted, some of them are kind of surfacing. I think we all have a certain part of us that wants, that cares about what other people think, that wants to look good in front of other people. And so we develop this idea where, okay, we don't want our projects to go awry, we don't want people to be talking bad about us, all of those things. And then some of the deeper personality traits that form that I've started to see over the years is it could be anxiety and fear. Sometimes it's somebody who had a really bad experience from a sales standpoint where they, someone maybe yelled at them or really got upset with them for quote, being pushy, you know, kind of like a pushy salesperson. And so their goal now is to never, ever upset a customer or a prospect from a sales standpoint. And sometimes, and this is the trickiest one is just really a sense of perfectionism. Just this idea that I can't go out and try this. Failure is not an option. Where we say actually it is an option. Nothing's going to be absolutely perfect. You can't plan for every Contingency that perfectionism trait in some people really causes them to have a lot of fear anxiety around these things. And then to avoid that failure at.

All costs, we're going to pause for just one moment and then we're going to jump back into our interview with Andrea.

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I love that failure is an option. I mean, I think that's a relieving idea because that as you said, as long as we're avoiding it at all costs, we're really not going. We're inhibiting what we're going to go after in our lives.

Exactly. And it's a shame that that's where people come to. And that's one of the fun things I think just about sharing go for no is and how I've noticed this over the years is only because people tell me these things and tell us these things and say, this is where this is the kind of person I've become. And I just became this person that hated failure and I abhorred it and I didn't want to look bad in front of people and on and on and on. So I've kind of learned about the quirks and the personality traits of people because they reported back to us after reading it. All of their challenges that the book kind of helped them overcome and help make them aware of.

Yeah. And I think there is a great value in becoming more aware of what the challenges are, what the stories that we tell ourselves about the know. And you mentioned an example about the sales fear. I'm going to come across as pushy. They're not going to like me. What would you say? And I know you've done a lot of work to help people overcome their fears in sales. What would you say some of the biggest fears that you've seen come up for people who want to be selling something, their services, their company's programs or products? What fears get in the way?

Yeah, I think there's a few different fears. I mean, for one, just kind of a fundamental social fear sometimes of prospecting. Literally, people have said, I literally can't pick up the phone. Don't want to call someone, don't want to say the wrong thing. Again, this kind of comes back to the perfectionism thing. If I can't figure out the exact right thing to say, if I flub my words kind of sound like a dork on the phone, you know, I can't do it. I just. They can't go through that. And so really, it's some social anxiety that way, Some fear of talking to strangers, and then also just the fear of. Fear of looking like a salesy salesperson. And that, I think, is a big one for people that sell. You know, they know they have to sell their product, service, opportunity, whatever it happens to be, but they just hate the idea of looking like that salesy, sleazy salesperson. And the thing that I tell people all the time is that it's actually by going for no and being a person who accepts no and says no is a perfectly acceptable answer and handles it with grace and becomes somebody who can handle it kind of on an emotional even keel, if you will, you actually avoid becoming that salesy, sleazy salesperson that you don't want to be. It's the people that go for yes and have kind of that I'm going to win at all costs. This person is going to say yes to me today no matter what. That's where you adopt that, you know, that sales Persona that nobody wants to be. So actually, when you go for no, you can adopt the perfect sales Persona, if you will, which is somebody who makes their offer, does it in an upbeat, positive way, understanding that ultimately their job is to be an advocate for the customer, help them make a decision, and that whatever they decide is cool and they're okay with. But they're going to stay positively persistent if that person does say no. But. But it's never about badgering, and it's never about being someone who forces a yes on somebody who doesn't want or need something.

That's a really interesting idea. That. That overly pushy kind of.

That.

That fear that we coming across that way actually comes from an attachment to I gotta get yes. And really an aversion or inability to just relax and say yeah. They might say no eventually at the end of it, and that's okay. And that's a really relaxing place to be coming from as a salesperson.

Yeah, it's so true. And so, Aziz, what we notice is that when you can relax, like you say perfect word, what you find is that, you know, the people that you're talking to don't feel as pressured by you. And the whole process can be a lot more relaxed and a lot easier. And that I think ultimately increases one's confidence. And of course we all know that, you know, when you just get old, sometimes you just need that little extra boost of confidence and that can really power you through for the day or the week and get. And of course, the more confident you get, the more confident you become. And it's a self fulfilling prophecy. You just need that one little boost sometimes.

Yeah. And that's a great transition into. So we have a good sense of what some of the default stories is and some of the ways that we are held back by this fear of no. What does from having studied this and coached so many people through it. What does no really mean?

What does no. I'm sorry, can you repeat that question?

We have kind of a default story like if someone says no to me, it means I'm rejected, I'm a failure, I'm not good enough, I'm never going to get this. But what does it really, when someone starts going for no, what do they start to realize that it really means when they hear a no?

Yes. Okay, thank you. Thank you. I completely get where you're coming from now. Yeah. So. Well, it's kind of funny because there's like that pre realization and then that post realization. So before I think people kind of understand go for no and they can use the philosophy. I think it all comes down to the interpretation. Right. Kind of what you're alluding to with the question. And so it means, you know, I'm not going to be successful. It means you just said no. The next person's probably going to say no, everyone's going to say no. And I'm going to be living under the freeway overpass. I mean that's where someone can take this, you know, they can completely blow it out of proportion and have kind of a doomsday scenario with just one rejection, you know, with go for no. And once you can kind of absorb that, then what the interpretation and what it can mean really is, oh, I see. No doesn't mean never. No means not yet. It's not about me. And I think that's another thing that you would really appreciate. And I'm sure this dovetails a lot into what you teach. And that is not taking that no or that rejection personally. And, and being able to say, you know, this person's background, beliefs, desires, dislikes have everything to do with them. How they were raised, where they live, everything about them as a person. And so it has nothing to do with me. It just has everything to do with them. And so that's okay. And I think when you start to learn to handle those no's with grace and respect, even if you're disappointed and you are maybe initially bothered, if you can just respect that person's choice and feel okay about it, then that's a really empowering place to come from.

Yeah.

And how do you guide people in those early stages before they've really gotten. They're just shifting out of. I've avoided this horrible failure for much of my adult life. And now you've started to work with them on this idea of building up that tolerance for no. And they're just starting to move towards it. And they get their first few nos, and because of their old programming and their old stories, it feels kind of bad. And now they know they're not going to stop because they bought into the idea that, well, this is how I'm going to overcome this. How do you help people get through those first couple of no's, first 5, 10 nos that really stick with them, Right?

Yeah. And that's an interesting place to be. And I have to tell you, we don't do any personal coaching. So I get messages like this a lot and kind of do what I can to help people through that. And that's a common thing. And we see several different groups of people. Some people hear us talk, see us speak, whatever, and they say like, oh, I get this. Just go out and hear no more often. I get this. And they're off and running. A majority of the people are somewhere in the middle where they do kind of fall into that category. You know, they do it a couple times and then they do start having the negative feelings. They feel bad. Really. A couple things that we teach to help people through that, you know, some of those obstacles, we're going to pause.

For just one more moment and then we're going to get right back into that. Interview with expert Andrea Waltz.

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One is they have to be prepared for it. And you know, when you start going for no and collecting a lot of No's, you're going to get a lot of no's. So you have to be aware that that's the goal and that's part of the process. And the key thing that we always teach people is, you know, celebrate it. We all celebrate the yeses. We also are very good at celebrating our successes. But when we try and fail at something or we get a no or a series of no's, that's again, where we kind of fall back on that old interpretation, oh, I'm horrible, I don't know what I'm doing, blah, blah, blah. Well, that's actually where you should celebrate the fact that you made those attempts, you got those nos, set another goal for another to get, you know, to try something else to get another no the next day, set another goal. And then if you get those nos, celebrate those as well. That oftentimes can move people over that initial feeling, you know, feeling bad. But if you take enough action, inevitably what happens is that people will get a yes, because the yeses are just out there. It is a numbers game, ultimately. And so if they can stick with it long enough, they do get those yeses. They do get more confident and they see, oh, the yeses are out there. I just need to hang in long enough to make those things pay off. So our job really is to also have a message of stay persistent, don't quit. That's a huge part of it. Because we need people to keep doing it so they don't give up.

Right, yeah, there's that. And they kind of have to persist until they reach that breakthrough where they really start to see that the no is not sort of a detrimental or problematic outcome. It's just an outcome that's on the path towards the desired outcome of yes. And I love the idea of celebrating that. Really getting it into your body and your nervous system that this is not something that crushes me or that is toxic to me. This is actually something that's an indicator of me moving forward in the world. Me taking action in the world.

Exactly. Yep.

So that leads to the next question I had, which is how. How does someone get the courage to go for no?

Let's say they're on board.

Like, that's okay, I get it. That sounds good. Any tips on just really, like, raw courage? Is it a mindset? Is it something that you focus on or something you do with your ritual beforehand? Or what are some things you can guide people towards to be able to create that courage when they need it?

Yeah, well, that is a great question of Course, there's a couple of your typical cliche answers. I hate to say this, but it is true. And I know that you know this as well. And that is most of the time, in order to overcome our obstacles in life, you have to take action. And unfortunately, courage doesn't usually show up without the action. It kind of shows up right when you're doing it and after the fact. So it's one of these things where in part, you know, we teach people, hey, the fear of what you're doing and the fear of hearing no is not going to dissipate or go away before you get that first no or even that tenth or hundredth no. You're going to have to act despite the fear. And then, of course, and this is the cliche part, of course, we all hear this. Well, the more you act, the more you get into action, the less fearful you become. And then before you know it, it's kind of like you think, wow, I can't believe I was scared of this at one time. Like learning anything, learning to swim, whatever it happens to be. So there's that whole action thing. And I think that's just the facts. There's no way around that. You can't give someone or gift someone courage. We, we like to say, you know, we help craft people's courage. And really it is convincing people sometimes dragging them, kicking and screaming, if you will, to the edge and pushing them off and saying, hey, you've got to do this. We want you to fail. And that's, I guess, kind of the final thing. And this is really is a mindset thing, is in part, we, I feel like we give people permission to fail. We tell them to go fail. We encourage them and want them to go accept, experience, failure to see that, yes, they survived, they didn't die. It builds their confidence. Maybe it doesn't feel completely fabulous, but eventually it just won't feel so weird once you start doing it. So it's getting people into action and showing them that the courage is there when they take the action. It's just the fear is there before. It's something that people have to work through. But the interesting thing, and this kind of goes back to what we talked about a few minutes ago, and that is, again, children, we encourage kids to try things and fail. We did it ourselves. And yet somehow, as adults, especially in business, when we're doing things that maybe we haven't done before, we're launching a new website, we're writing a book or selling a new service, and we allow ourselves no Room for error. Like, we somehow are all in the know and so we shouldn't make mistakes, we shouldn't fail. And yet we did as kids. So really, this permission to fail and kind of re parenting yourself and saying, hey, it's okay if I make a mistake. I'm learning at this. I think that's really key.

That brings us to the end of today's show. But we gotta end with.

Time for action.

Your action step and your action step is to set a no goal. That's right. Set a no goal set. There's some area of your life that you want to progress in, and instead of saying, I'm gonna get X, say, I'm going to get blank no's. So let's say you are wanting to getting a certain number of sales conversations. Instead of saying, I'm gonna get three sales this week, say, I'm gonna get seven no's this week. If you're interested in dating and relationships, instead of saying, I'm gonna ask a woman out this week, say, I'm gonna ask. I'm gonna get three no's from women this week when I ask for their phone number. So how many women will you have to ask to get three no's? Interesting. If that stuff's too high level for you, then say, I'm gonna walk down the street, I'm gonna say hi to people and be friendly and warm and. And I'm gonna see if I can get three no's there. And a no there is just being ignored. And you know that they heard you. Not that they didn't hear you, but knowing that seeing that they heard you saying it loud enough, friendly enough, warm enough, and seeing if you can get someone to just ignore you, that counts as a no as well. So whatever level you want to play at, the game is go for no and set a number. Whether it's 1 or 3 or 10, whatever it is for you, go no for no. So I look forward to speaking with you in the next episode. We're going to jump back in that interview with Andrea and she's going to talk about how to fail bigger, fail faster, how to accelerate this progress in your life with this philosophy of going for no. And the more you do this, the faster you do this, the bigger you do this, the better you get. The more confident you get, the more successful you become. So it's fantastic stuff. I'm excited to share that with you in next week's episode. Until we speak, then may you have the courage to be who you are and to know that you're awesome.

Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Azeez. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free vlogs, ebooks, and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com.