Rejection is the common thread in founder and creator stories
Guy Raz finds rejection in nearly every How I Built This story, Jamie Kern Lima used it as fuel for IT Cosmetics, Jo Koy built a career on bombing, Zach King was rejected by film school, and John Grisham's rejections feature in Mel Robbins' book episode. Treating rejection as a normal career stage keeps people going long enough to break through.
The people who broke through were rejected over and over, and kept going. What separates their stories is not the absence of rejection but how each person treated it: as information, fuel or a detour, not a verdict. That kept them in the game long enough for a yes to arrive.
Guy Raz, after thousands of founder interviews on How I Built This, names the ability to withstand rejection as the number one trait founders share. He insists it is trainable, not innate, and points to door-to-door sellers and Mormon missionaries who build it through repeated asks. His own rejection was missing the top NPR news anchor job, which pushed him into podcasting.
Jamie Kern Lima was turned down for three years by every major retailer, beauty buyer and investor. One investor told her women would not buy makeup from someone with her body and weight. She made that her mission, featuring real women of every age, skin tone and size, and later sold IT Cosmetics for $1.2 billion.
Comedian Jo Koy's philosophy is "You win when you fail". For him the real failure is passing on a chance out of fear. He bombed about 25 times before stand-up clicked and never said no to a gig. When Netflix passed on him, he shot his special himself, and Netflix then bought it.
Zach King was rejected by film school twice, sat in the back of classes anyway and built his career on YouTube. Mel Robbins tells John Grisham's story: cut from baseball teams, rejected by 28 publishers, and still writing on the side after his first novel did not sell. He has now sold 300 million books. Her message: "It's not the end of your story. It's just part of the story".
They differ on the explanation. Raz describes a learnable skill observed across many founders. Robbins offers a belief she chooses, that every no is preparing you for something. Koy sits between, refusing to hope and relying on his own talent. They also show that rejections mean different things. King thinks he never finished his application essay, a fixable flaw. The comment about Kern Lima's body and the club lineups that kept comics of color off weekends were bias. Raz's lost job signalled a change of route. The skill is reading a rejection correctly, not ignoring it.
Persistence is not always right. Kern Lima left the company after the sale because her gut said it was time, and she says knowing when to exit can be the real victory. The hurt does not stop either. She still doubts herself, and King still feels the sting of being called irrelevant.
The article adds cautions. These are success stories told in hindsight, and the sources do not hear from people who persisted and never broke through. Persistence has a price, such as the birthday Koy missed and years of financial strain for Kern Lima.
What to do with it: expect rejection as a stage. Practice with low-stakes asks. Read each no for information. Build a route that does not need permission. Keep the day job if you need to, and know when to stop.