NorCal Community Spotlight: Jia Jiang
Jia Jiang, Bestselling Author, Rejection Proof & Easy Discipline (Photo courtesy of Jia Jiang)
Stop Forcing. Start Designing.
When Ascend NorCal met with Jia Jiang, bestselling author of Rejection Proof and Easy Discipline: An Unconventional Way to Achieve Ambitious Things, we asked him to complete this sentence:
“Ambitious professionals should stop forcing ______ and start designing ______.”
His response was immediate: “Ambitious professionals should stop forcing things they hate onto themselves. They should be designing their work based on things they love.”
Jia’s perspective aligns closely with this year’s Ascend theme, Forward with Purpose. Purpose clarifies what is worth pursuing, but it doesn’t obligate us to follow approaches that drain us, limit us, or box us in. It invites us to examine where our methods may be creating unnecessary friction that doesn’t need to be there.
For AAPI professionals and allies striving for greater influence, leadership, and impact, that becomes a practical challenge:
What do you do when you’re great at your job, but it isn’t enough for others to see your potential?
When networking, how can you authentically engage and sustain relationships?
And when something important keeps feeling harder than it should, is the barrier the goal or the system you’re using to reach it?
Jia will join Ascend NorCal’s Inspiring Across Generations (IAG)/Ascend Executive Network (AEN) Conference on September 18 at Santa Clara University as the opening plenary speaker.
His conversation will help set the foundation for an afternoon designed to move from insight to practice through interactive Career Labs and dedicated Ascend Executive Network experiences.
To get us grounded for the event ahead, we kicked off the discussion on topics ranging from strategic visibility, networking, and the pursuit of audacious goals.
What do you do when you’re great at your job, but it isn’t enough for others to see your potential?
“You have to go beyond to actually break the other person's comfort zone of you,” says Jia. For AAPI professionals, he believes we need to challenge both our own comfort zone and the image others have formed of us.
“Make a habit of speaking,” he adds. At some point, people need to experience how you think about the business, how you make decisions, what questions you ask, and what you see coming next. That is also why Jia believes speaking should become a habit rather than something we do only after confidence arrives.
And when you do not know, ask. Jia sees curiosity as a contribution. A thoughtful question can help a group see something differently or surface what others may also be wondering but are unwilling to ask.
For professionals who wait until they have the perfectly formed answer, consider this reframe: Consistently contribute, learn, and confidence will follow.
When networking, how can you authentically engage and sustain relationships?
Jia admits that conventional networking didn’t come easily. According to his business and life partner, Tracy Xia, he builds relationships when he isn’t trying to “network,” but simply shows up as himself.
Jia likes solving problems and asks people what they are working through, leaning into his curiosity as a natural connection point. The objective to networking hasn’t changed, simply how he approaches it. Jia described bringing an artist mindset to conversations, influenced in part by the Japanese concept of ichigo ichie, which recognizes each encounter as a unique moment. Instead of entering a room thinking about how many people he needs to meet, he focuses on making a particular conversation worthwhile.
He says,“Get uncomfortable through the things you like,”which is different than avoiding discomfort.
During Jia’s 100 Days of Rejection, he deliberately put himself in uncomfortable situations. But he brought things he genuinely enjoyed into the experience, including curiosity, humor, and creativity to continue engaging with the difficult.
If you know relationships matter but continually resist “networking,” perhaps the answer is not simply forcing yourself to attend more networking events. The better question may be: What form of relationship-building will I actually continue doing? For one person that may be a large reception. For someone else it may be a deeper one-on-one conversation. The design does not have to look the same for everyone.
When something important keeps feeling harder than it should, is the barrier the goal or the system you’re using to reach it?
Earlier this year, Jia publicly set an audacious goal for Easy Discipline: 10,000 preorders in 100 days.
The experiment forced him to change how he approached the goal, which included testing new approaches, making asks, learning from what was not working, and adjusting along the way. Though he didn’t achieve his 10,000 preorders, he’s proud of his performance and to have earned 4,126 preorders.
Continue the Conversation
Jia looks forward to continuing the conversation at our Ascend NorCal September 2026 IAG/AEN Conference.