What Mormon Missionaries Can Teach Us About Entrepreneurship

Legendary entrepreneur Mark Cuban didn’t grow up with wealth. His mother held a series of low-paying jobs during his childhood. His father, Norton, was an automobile upholsterer.

Cuban made his money from an incredible series of bets—including the big one in which he sold his company—Broadcast.com, to Yahoo! that turned him into an overnight billionaire.

But long before that, when Cuban first moved to Dallas after college, he started out as a bartender. Slinging cocktails was a source of decent cash flow. During the day, he sold computer software on commission.

In the first season of How I Built This, I invited Cuban onto the show to tell his story in the granular, intimate way I try to tease out of my guests. After several hours in conversation (we edit the shows down to about an hour or so) I asked him, “If you were dropped onto an island with no money or contacts and you had to start over, what would you do and do you still think you could become a successful entrepreneur?”

Without missing a beat he said, “yes.” He went on to explain that the first thing he’d do is find a job at a beach bar serving drinks and earning tips at night. During the day, he’d knock on doors as a salesman as he slowly saved his cash to figure out how to take a big swing at something new.

Mark Cuban is not a typical entrepreneur. In his teens, he devoured a book called How to Retire at 35. He blazed through college in three years and headed down to Dallas with a plan for how to get rich as fast as possible. 

But where Cuban is more typical is in his choice of profession. It’s no secret that many of the entrepreneurs I’ve interviewed on How I Built This—from Tope Awotona of Calendly to Sara Blakely of Spanx—started out in sales.

And what does sales have to do with entrepreneurship and success? One word: rejection. Selling something means that most people—at least at the beginning—won’t want it. They will say “no”. If you’re lucky, they’ll say it politely.

Many of us are afraid of it and it is often the main obstacle that holds people back from pursuing an idea.

Mastering the ability to withstand rejection is the key skill to becoming a successful entrepreneur. It is the single link that connects each of the more than 250 world-famous entrepreneurs I’ve interviewed.

When Sara Blakely sold fax machines door to door for three years while working (secretly) on Spanx, hundreds of doors slammed in her face. But those “no’s” she experienced as a fax machine sales rep built a resilience deep within her that when it came time to convince a textile manufacturer to make a prototype of her now famous undergarment, she was steeled to hear “no” again and again knowing she’d eventually land on a “yes.”

Another secret to getting good at rejection? Be a Mormon. Or more specifically, be a Mormon who serves a two-year mission on behalf of the church.

Mormons (officially the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints) make up only about 2.1% of the American population but account for a surprisingly disproportionate number of entrepreneurs including JetBlue founder David Neeleman, JW Marriott, Stephen Covey, Joel Clark of Kodiak Cakes and many others.

But why? Again that word: rejection.

At age 18, most young Mormons embark on a 2-year mission where they are assigned to a country to try and enlist new members to the flock. These young folks are required to be self-sufficient and independent. On any given week, these missionaries may knock on hundreds and hundreds of doors. Most of the time, the door slams in their faces. And yet, these missionaries are trained to be exceptionally polite and gracious without being aggressive.

If ever there were a crash course in rejection exposure therapy, a Mormon mission would be a prime example. Yet once these young people return home, many of them have lost their fear of rejection and are ready to leap into a new venture.

This was the story for Joel Clark who came back from his mission in Australia, determined to kick-start his nascent pancake brand Kodiak Cakes. It would take him nearly 15 years before he was able to get the product into big box retailers like Target and Costco but today, Kodiak Cakes is the best-selling pancake mix on Amazon and the fourth-largest in the nation.

Now to be clear, the Mormon church does not encourage its young people to serve on a mission in pursuit of entrepreneurial glory down the road. That is not the point. But because so many young members of the church voluntarily expose themselves to a 2-year period of hardship and self-sufficiency, the experience inevitably puts them—at age 21 or 22—at a great advantage in comparison with their non-Mormon contemporaries who haven’t experienced a similar level of independence.

The idea here is that rejection is a skill. It’s like shooting free-throws. You stand at the basket and shoot 200,000 over a given period of time, eventually you will sink a lot of them. Becoming an entrepreneur is not a superpower accessible only to those with “natural” charisma or extroversion. In fact, neither of these “traits” are common to all the entrepreneurs I’ve interviewed. Some are shy. Others are introverted. Still others are socially awkward. But to a person, they have all developed the skills necessary to succeed by pushing through rejection, being open to feedback, and constantly iterating and improving the very idea that gets them out of bed each day.

If you'd like more stories and insights on entrepreneurship, resilience, and running a successful business, you can pre-order my book How I Built This at the link HERE!