“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.” -Niels Bohr
Failure is scary. You invest your courage, your time, your energy and come up short. It’s no fun. A fear of failure can be crippling, however, and being a social entrepreneur requires a willingness to take risks and to face a fear of failure. How can you see failure as a badge of honor so you can move past it? Here’s a story that inspired us at The Unreasonable Institute to think of failure as success.
A Tale of Successful Failure. 26-year old Ronald Sands from Philadelphia has never had a very good track record with women. In fact, he’s developed a terrifying fear of asking women out. Why? Because he’s afraid of being rejected, naturally. Poor Ronald starts to feel lonely and like his fear of approaching women was such a problem that he decided to visit a therapist. So he schedules an appointment with a Dr. Marci Holland in town.
At their first session, Ronald describes his problem and Dr. Holland nods understandingly. When he finishes, Dr. Holland says “All right Ronald, I can help you. But before anything else, I want you to promise me that you are going to do exactly what I tell you.” This sort of statement, understandably, makes Ronald a little nervous. “Don’t worry, Ronald,” Dr. Holland says. “I’ll give you all our sessions for free if this doesn’t work.” Ronald finds this offer appealing and he’s really curious about what Dr. Holland will suggest so he agrees. “Excellent! Here’s what you have to do: get rejected by 75 women in a row.”
Ronald is surprised, but slightly excited. He can get rejected! He’s great at getting rejected!
So Ronald wakes up the following Saturday and heads to the city mall. He asks a kind, beautiful waitress at a coffee shop if she’d like to go on a date with him. She smiles, but politely explains that she has a boyfriend. He asks a woman quietly reading A Call to Arms if she’d like to go out with him, but she too has a boyfriend. Ronald eventually asks 23 women on dates that day, all of whom say, “Sorry, not interested,” or “I have a boyfriend,” or “no thank you.” It’s not exactly easy to handle all this rejection, but by and large, Ronald finds that most everyone he asked was flattered and kind. On the way out of the mall, he walks by the flower vendor, someone he’s always taken a liking too. He asks her if she’d like to go on a date and she lights up and says “Oh! I’d love to!”
Whoa. That’s never happened before! Ronald shares the events of the weekend with Dr. Holland who seems uninterested in the date Ronald got with the flower girl. “How many women said no to you?” she asks. “23,” Ronald replies. “Now, Ronald,” she starts, “You promised me you’d do exactly what I said and you agreed to get rejected by 75 women in a row!”
Back to the drawing board…Ronald heads to the city park this time and tries his luck. This time, he asks 9 women on dates, all of whom say no. But the 10th woman he asks out says yes! Ronald is shocked. He’s gotten two dates within the span of a week and his confidence is growing. He tells Dr. Holland how excited he is, but she sends him back out to get rejected by 75 women.
This time the first woman he asks on a date says she’d be delighted to have dinner with Ronald. This is unprecedented. He runs to Dr. Holland’s office, insisting that he’s cured! Dr. Holland smiles and says, “You know what Ronald, you are cured. Congratulations!”
Why did this work? The clever strategy that Dr. Holland devised was to turn what Ronald thought was failure into success. Every rejection he got brought him closer to his goal of 75 total rejections. But in the meanwhile, he was learning that getting rejected wasn’t really that bad. He made the day of every single woman he approached. His confidence in approaching them grew with each attempt. That’s why he was more himself when he asked out the women who did ultimately agree to go out with him.
Approaching investors, partners, the media, and potential mentors is a lot like asking people on dates. It takes a good deal of courage because you’re afraid of rejection. But truth be told, the more attempts you make, the more confident you’ll grow, and the more success you’ll achieve. As Silicon Valley entrepreneur Randy Komisar explains, the major league baseball players who hit the most home runs are also the ones who strike out the most. Achieving consistent success is closely tied with facing consistent failure.
Here’s a challenge for you: Go out and make 10 asks to investors, potential partners, whomever. Share your failure stories with us! The first person to get 10 rejections (starting from today) and to share their story with us in the comments section of this blog wins a free copy of The Power of Unreasonable People by John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan!
Related Posts:
- How to Fail: 25 Secrets Learned Through Failure – Taylor Davidson from Unstructured Ventures shares 25 insights learned from business failure
- Jason Mendelson Talks About Startup Failure - Venture Capitalist Jason Mendelson explains why failure, when done right, is attractive to VCs
- Embrace Losing – Mark Suster, an entrepreneur turned Venture Capitalist, outlines his major takeaways from painful failure in two startups
- Failure! – Paula Goldman explores the benefits of failure on SocialEdge.
- The Biggest Successes are Often Bred from Failure – Randy Komisar explains why failure is key for innovation in this 8-minute YouTube Video.
