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I Write Letters to CEOs

johnwdefeo.com

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Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#51

Post by fjsolwmv »

losteric wrote: post #16
wgerard wrote: post #4

> the compound annual return of the respondent group is 8.97% greater than the non-respondent companies. That's actually interesting, because I could easily explain away the opposite result: CEOs who waste their time responding to personal letters aren't focused on improving company performance. For example, there's some potential negative correlation between time spent playing golf and company performance [1]. Grant…

My theory is CEOs that pay attention to smaller things miss fewer opportunities, and build a culture of doing so across the company. Look up Bezos' infamous "?" emails.

"?" isn't paying attention to things; it's telling other people to pay attention to things. It's building a culture, I guess.

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#52

Post by [deleted] »

xster wrote: post #44
vortico wrote: post #37

Because of this post, CEOs around the world are receiving 3x emails today. Haha, just kidding. It's actually the opposite. The reason CEOs respond is because they get much fewer emails from customers than you'd imagine. They get their typical solicitations, internal meeting emails, external business discussions, but the customer emails can be interesting and more insightful than any internal letter could be. If you p…

How does one even discover the email addresses of CEOs (or board members)? It's not like they're searchable online and guessing common formats only gets you so far.

[deleted]

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#53

Post by joering2 »

make3 wrote: post #31
xavdid wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a startup that was acquired by Salesforce. Pretty soon after it was all official, they sent over 200 signed copies of his book. This is especially notable because they weren't signed by him - just by random other SFDC employees. It was a nice gesture, I guess.

I that's pretty weird tbh

I don't know if you sensed it, but both hajrice and Xavdidtheshadow were sarcastic in their posting :)

At least what I take from it, good CEO would answer you with "thank you" or whatever, as Benioff is know to be more of a Ellison / Jobs type of asshole CEO, rather than let's say polite Elon Musk, so hajrice made fun that instead, Benioff asked him to buy his book in order to just squeeze few extra bucks from someone that admires him :)

Xavdidtheshadow was pointing how creepy it is to get forced to receive someones book with their signature that actually is being signed by someone else.

Both their responses made me laugh, thanks guys :)

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#54

Post by wallflower »

ChristianBundy wrote: post #41
wallflower wrote: post #28

I got my first job in the tech industry by writing a thank you letter. Many years ago I met the CEO of a tech company at a networking event for recent college grads that they hosted. Like a job fair but with a twist. Having read Brian D. Krueger's excellent "College Grad Job Hunter" [1], I had business cards prepared. This was long before Moo.com so they were printed out on my Deskjet on Avery pre-perforated card sto…

Why didn't you excuse yourself?

It was a "deer in the headlights" moment. What happened, happened and I am not proud of it. When I heard "The CEO wants a photo with you", I was completely pattern interrupted with the current thread of what I was doing talking to whoever it was (keyword: CEO and keyword: you) and just System.exit(1)'d (e.g. left with the PR person). I didn't realize that I'd not excused myself properly until after the photo op was done.

As a tangent, on the topic of social niceties and navigating a party situation: If you ever need to get out of the awkward "I've been talking with this one person and I really want to exit the conversation", you never want to say "It was nice meeting you.". What you want to say is this: "I'd like to go meet those people over there. Come with me." This is genius (and I learned this from a social genius) because it gives the person a choice. If they don't want to go with you, you are golden. If they go with you, you've developed your own little temporary group of 2.

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#55

Post by icelancer »

addflip wrote: post #11
baxtr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work a lot for these guys. The larger companies have whole teams responding to these kind of emails. They triage incoming emails and then the team can send the emails on their own on behalf of the C-level exec.

Exactly this. Tim Ferriss had Frank Blake, the old CEO of Home Depot, on his show where he discussed this. Super interesting. https://tim.blog/2018/03/15/frank-blake/

I am listening to this podcast literally as I type this, and it frustrates me to no end to hear Frank's story and how much he cares about customers, and how shitty Home Depot is now. Their customer service is atrocious and their reps are poorly-trained to help with technical tasks.

I fear Frank's decrees were not carried over after he left office (2014).

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#56

Post by aantix »

xster wrote: post #44
vortico wrote: post #37

Because of this post, CEOs around the world are receiving 3x emails today. Haha, just kidding. It's actually the opposite. The reason CEOs respond is because they get much fewer emails from customers than you'd imagine. They get their typical solicitations, internal meeting emails, external business discussions, but the customer emails can be interesting and more insightful than any internal letter could be. If you p…

How does one even discover the email addresses of CEOs (or board members)? It's not like they're searchable online and guessing common formats only gets you so far.

Is it even legal anymore to cold contact a CEO in Europe?

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#57

Post by acou_nPlusOne_t »

baxtr wrote: post #9
winter_blue wrote: post #7

How do some of these CEOs have the time to respond so throughly to random letters? Is it possible that someone is ghostwriting for them?

I work a lot for these guys. The larger companies have whole teams responding to these kind of emails. They triage incoming emails and then the team can send the emails on their own on behalf of the C-level exec.

Anything i get in CC - i automatically delete- some CEO i heard about. Sorry, but personal emails from a CEOs perspective are noise. And just that noise.

Even if you want to know about interesting things in the noise, you use dedicated people to filter out.

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#58

Post by elygre »

aantix wrote: post #56
xster wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does one even discover the email addresses of CEOs (or board members)? It's not like they're searchable online and guessing common formats only gets you so far.

Is it even legal anymore to cold contact a CEO in Europe?

Why wouldn’t it be?

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#60

Post by canoebuilder »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #43
medecau wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you mean the parenthesis?

I am guessing it was a snarky comment on the lack of capitalization, which I would not have noticed otherwise.

Call it snark if you will, but it is intelligent, perceptive, witty snark, a rare combination.

(check out that username) vouched

I think it's perfectly reasonable to have people socially pressure others to keep to the agreed upon conventions of communication. (It's kind of what this place is known for.)

If someone wants to do it in a funny way, all the better. Humor wins hearts and minds.

I don't understand the ignoring of basic writing conventions thing. If you think that's going to make your writing stand out, or be more expressive or whatever, you're wrong.

It is less expressive, and it only stands out for being disorienting and unpleasant to look at and read.

Seeing people write like this brings to mind this quote.

Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

Write with the standard conventions, so that what stands out are your ideas, not the reader's effort to piece together your loose ends.

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