Arianna Huffington faced 40 publisher rejections before success. The hosts distinguish rejection (adjust strategy) from failure (execution breakdown), and share a 100-day rejection challenge where someone asked strangers for favors daily. Deliberately seeking rejection builds resilience and uncovers hidden opportunities.
I was reading about Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post. So before founding the Huffington Post, she faced numerous rejections. Almost 40 publishers turned down her second book, and her run for governor of California ended with less than 1% of the vote. However, she used those setbacks to propel herself forward, applying lessons learned from her political campaign to create one of the internet's most successful media platforms. But I'm thinking about 40 publishers. You get that like 38th, 39th, 40th no. How do you know that you're— I don't know. I guess it's really feeling integral, but you know what your message is and you know what you need to get out there.
It's a great story because we have to distinguish rejection and failure. Those are 2 different things. That's true. So you have to be staunch when facing rejection. You have to learn and be flexible when you face failure. So you got to categorize the 2. I think what you can do, I think in Arianna's case, when it came to publishing, You look at the content you're producing, say it's a book, and one thing you can ask yourself is, have others gone before me successfully with books? And if the answer is yes, that is a historically proven path. Other people have published books. Have other people published books through the publishing outlets she was considering? Yes. Okay, these things work and I can see it in observation that it works. Maybe there's even data behind it. I just need to be rejection-proof. By the way, there's a book called Rejection Proof.
Hmm.
You've got to freaking read it. It's one of my favorite books.
Really?
Yeah. It's a kid, an Asian kid, and that's significant because he moved into the US out of Asia. So he was uncomfortable with the US culture, kind of our maverick style here. And he had a very diminutive personality. And he realized, I'm not going to get ahead in the US acting this way. And he's like, I'm so afraid of rejection because that's the way I've been raised culturally. So what What he decides to do is intentionally get rejected, and I think it was 100 days of rejection. So day one, he knocks on a stranger's door and says, "May I play soccer in your backyard?" And so he starts going through this experiment, and some people are like, "Are you weird or crazy?" Yeah, yeah.
Are you well?
And he's like, cha-ching! Got rejected. Some people, and the majority of people, said no. But what was so interesting, often with rejection, and one of Arianna's experiences, I'm sorry we won't do it. But have you considered this? And they started opening other pathways.
Right.
So no, you can't play in my backyard, but here's a soccer ball and you can play in the front yard. There was like this compromise or negotiation people had there giving the rejection. In other cases, he was shocked that people said, yeah, go play in the backyard. And he went through these rejections. So first of all, qualify rejection versus failure. You have to see through rejection and you can leverage it. Failure is a learning experience.
