Where It All Started

The Art of Getting What You Want: Hacking Fear and Creating Your Own Luck

Last summer, I did something really scary. I had just created my startup. And, I was proposing a partnership with a highly successful serial entrepreneur who intimidated the heck out of me. I got so sweaty during our painful negotiation, I secretly slid off my shoes under the conference table so I could air my feet out. I figured the body-cooling would make me look less freaked out. And I’m not even a sweaty person.

This summer, I did lots of things that would normally freak me out. I tried standup comedy and was subsequently kicked off stage. I hustled my way into convincing Manhattanites to let me babysit their animals while they vacationed, in exchange for free rent. I created a lemonade stand on the streets of New York (and later learned that was completely illegal). I then tried to sell customized poetry (which is not illegal) to picnic goers, displaying a ‘for sale’ sign blanket-to-blanket, and earned exactly $0 for a day’s work. I purposely shared apartments with Airbnb hosts to understand the lives of complete strangers. I became a TV extra. I asked people who I really admired (and was slightly intimidated by) about their lives and learned about their intimate pains, struggles, and aspirations. I stood on the corner of Wall Street trying to sell my published book to busy businessmen in suites by telling jokes; I sold a copy to a Fortune 500 C-suite executive by promising a date. And, one day, while completely sober, I walked up to the hottest guy at a bar and asked that he buy me a drink (for the record, a date did not ensue). Above all else, I learned this summer how to create a game for myself: a tally of all the ways I could hack fear.

As of 2 days ago, I took on a bigger challenge that quite honestly freaks the heck out of me: starting a business on helping others hack fear. I already knew I could talk intelligently about the science of fear. Working in healthcare my entire career has taught me, at the very least, how to do decent clinical Google searches. I definitely had enough personal experience material to talk authoritatively about pushing your boundaries of fear. I knew people needed a ‘personal coach’ or ‘wingwoman’ to actually push them to do things they feared; I myself needed cheerleading from friends on my very first fear-inducing experiment. And I had so much fun — and gained so much personal satisfaction and confidence — out of 5 months of fear-inducing awfulness that I was personally driven to spread that magic to everyone around me.

But starting a fear-hacking business wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I decided, maybe 2 decades ago, one day I would try my hand in entrepreneurship. I built my entire career on one day creating a company that was ‘serious.’ My original business idea aspired to disrupt one of the richest industries in the world. This led me down a path of exploring all the sexy tools of virtual reality and telemedicine. I figured, once you get into the coveted spaces of Silicon Valley ‘it’ technologies, even if my company eventually failed, I knew I could at least get funding.

Instead, I wondered if what I really needed to create was a way to break fear down to a science, create a step-wise process to overcome it, and then push people to take action. I mean, fear stops all of us from doing all sorts of things: asking that hot person out, demanding a raise, moving to the other side of the world, or quitting your job to pursue your life dream.

I used to think I was fearless in leaving my last job to pursue my life dream of starting a company. That’s how all my ex-coworkers described me when they divulged they secretly wished they had the balls to do the same. The irony of pursuing my life goal was that fear just became a bigger part of my life. By leaving a cushy corporate career to jump into the dark abyss of entrepreneurship, I soon realized starting a startup was, above all else, a complete mental game. And the overpowering psychological game you are constantly playing with yourself is taming fear.

It’s not just walking away from a great paycheck or even better job title to live like a college kid. It’s also wondering, every single day and probably every single hour, how good your business idea really is. It’s wondering how invested your team and partner really are, how sincere customers who ‘love your product’ will be when sales time happens, and whether you really can create the great business you hope. And, above else, it’s the constant ‘No’s’ that every single entrepreneur hears over and over again until they want to crawl inside a dark hole and die. Or, for me, after a long series of objections, breaking down into tears in a public bathroom. Which, given it was in San Francisco, may or may not have had some homeless person sleeping in the next stall.

An ex-boss who once told me, shortly after I moved to the other side of the world to China on an expat package to capture the world’s second largest market (that I incidentally knew nothing about), “You’re like a boxer. Very mentally tough.” Yet after only a few months of entrepreneurship, I summarized to a friend about my black hole of self-doubt, “I often wonder if I am legitimately going insane.”

When I say entrepreneurship is a mental game, the biggest determinant of ‘grit,’ or ‘optimism,’ or even ‘tenacity,’ is your ability to control fear. Fear is what stopped me from wanting to cold call strangers. Fear is what stopped me from paying for the absolute best team members because I worried I would run out of runway. Fear is what stopped me from testing, again, over and over, on potential users until I got the product just right. And while the world’s best entrepreneurs are described as ‘highly confident,’ what they really have is an ability to control fear better than the rest of us.

This summer, I invested 5 months into controlling fear. I packed one large suitcase from my San Francisco apartment, showed up in New York City, and hoped for the best. I was working on my startup, but I was also working on wiping cat puke (or diarrhea, I’m still not sure) off people’s living room floors as I babysat their pets for free rent. While I mentally knew this was all an experiment to see if I had the entrepreneurial hustle to live a summer in NYC for free, believe me, I also asked myself multiple times what I was doing with my life.

And 5 months, and many fear-inducing adventures later, I came back to San Francisco wondering if I should test the concept of a fear-hacking business. I decided to create a Meetup group. I wrote a confident event description about hacking fear. Meanwhile asking myself if this was silly, and if anyone would actually join. But, I was determined to hack fear and set up the Meetup group anyway. Because I quite liked the beauty of pushing past my own fears in starting a business that helped others push through their own fears.

One day later, I opened my meetup inbox and had 88 new members. I was relieved there was at least a market interest. And then I set up an SF-based Eventbrite event, charging $9 to test if people would be willing to pay for this:

“We all want to confidently ask for a raise, ask out that super hot person, negotiate a great deal, or chase our biggest life dream. We also want to overcome rejection and defiantly ignore each “no” in life versus feeling crappy inside afterward. So what’s stopping us? Ah yes, that little thing called FEAR.

Learn how to get what you want in love, wealth, and health. Join us on a fun, enlightening, and inspiring event on hacking fear. We start with a lecture on the science of fear and the steps to overcome it. Then, we put all the steps into ACTION so you don’t simply understand fearlessness, you become it. We build your confidence through live activities that scare the heck out of you: doing standup comedy, selling things to strangers, or asking someone out while completely sober. By the end of the conference, you will have accomplished something that pushed past your own fears and helped you build new confidence. Come alone or with friends to this unique experience as we build new accountability bonds so your newfound fearlessness becomes everlasting.”

I purposely scheduled the San Francisco event in one week, Nov 6, so I would have no choice but to take action. Immediately. And then I went nuts and planned one for NYC just 10 days later. I figured nothing screams ‘get out of your head and take action’ like launching a business that now technically spanned across the United States. And then I launched a website for complete strangers around the world to sign up for future events. I needed the accountability. Because if I could get people around the globe to get excited about the Hack Fear movement, not only could I no longer wuss out, doing so would be just embarrassing.

How will this fear-hacking business end up? We will see. I’m happy to report one person has bought a ticket already.

November, 2017

Find me at Rachel@HackingFears.com.