71–80 of 97 posts
Good piece. However "can I pick your brain?" isn't great unless you lay out the boundaries. About what? Be clear. OTOH, > make it easy to say no is the best piece of advice amongst many other pieces of good advice
> asking for a resource to start with is better than “can I pick your brain?”
The problem here is that most points are about how to formulate your ask. I think the biggest thing is that you're much more likely to get help if you show you're doing the best to solve it yourself. There's a big difference between: "Hey, I saw this job at [company you work at], could you refer me please? I'm [lists skills and experience]" and "Hey I'm thinking of applying to [company you work at] for the product de…
One thing that always bugs me at work is when I get a slack message from someone I don't know along the lines of: "Hello John, are you available to chat later today about Foo Product?" Or sometimes just: "Hello John" I know they want something from me, but I have no idea what, how much effort it will require, how urgent it is, or whether I am even capable of helping. A much better approach is more like this article o…
sending nohello website [1] back to people who just say hello without additional context is a classic solution [1] https://nohello.net/en/
This was an excellently written, salient post with some good tidbits. I've learned some of these lessons the hard way. I'll add a few. Proof of work is important, but it's not about the magnitude of energy you spend. I went through two iterations of reaching out to my college network. The first time I put so much time into handwriting notes and trying to provide my relatable background. 100 notes, not a single respon…
My number one tip therefore is to try to put yourself into the perspective of the other side. Did you give them all the information they need to know? Of course you will know a lot of things about your project that are really obvious to you, but that you would need to mention to others so they understand what you are talking about. On the other hand if you want to hire a plumber, you don't need to tell them a long story about the roof of the house. Conceptually the plumbing and the roof may both be house-related issues in your mind, but you're wasting the plumbers time. So that means the time/patience of the person on the other side is a valuable resource.
Show Respect, Be Polite, Be Specific and finally; always follow-up with a Thank You whether you got help or not.
The problem here is that most points are about how to formulate your ask. I think the biggest thing is that you're much more likely to get help if you show you're doing the best to solve it yourself. There's a big difference between: "Hey, I saw this job at [company you work at], could you refer me please? I'm [lists skills and experience]" and "Hey I'm thinking of applying to [company you work at] for the product de…
I refer a lot of people and I would be more likely to respond to the first one. Provided they supply a job link, their resume, and they were well qualified and polite. In the second one it’s really obvious to me that they just want a referral. It would annoy me that they are making me read extraneous information.
It's incredibly difficult for me to ask for help because I was raised to always pull myself up by the bootstraps. This attitude has seeped into my moral framework. If I get help, it's special treatment; it's an unfair advantage that I'm getting which will harm other people who have to compete against me. I wish people would just stop 'helping' each other (as it is currently). Help should only be given to people who a…
Success is impossible without receiving help. I have someone that I’ve never met who helps by ensuring that reliable power arrives via overhead wires to my house. Someone else’s help ensures that my garbage is carted away, clean water arrives under pressure, and 100s of other things that would be incredible drains on my time before I could do the first thing that was valuable to me or my family.
Take the help when you need it.
Give the help when you can.
I've been DM'ing randos on LinkedIn for lightweight consults and found that offering to pay up front and asking strangers to price their own time can help to show seriousness and often results in free interactions or buy-me-a-coffee pricing. e.g. "Hey I love your work on X, I've been thinking about / working on related thing Y and would love your feedback on aspect Z. How much $$ to rent your brain for 20 minutes? I'…
This is what Jason Cohen did when he was getting WPEngine off the ground. He messaged 40 WordPress consultants on LinkedIn and offered to pay them higher than their hourly rate since it was a one-off task.[0] Out of 40 messages, 38 replied and agreed to a phone call, and none of them actually asked for the money. [0] https://mtlynch.io/notes/designing-the-ideal-bootstrapped-bu...
I have run cold outbound to senior buyers for about twenty-five years, people who owe me nothing and get pitched daily.
Two things that I find move the reply rate more than anything else:
- First, a specific, bounded ask that names the twenty minutes and the exact question, so they can price the interaction in their head in one read. The article's "so short as to be unsummarizable" line is the same concept.
- Second, and this is the one people skip, evidence that you already know the answer to the easy version of your question, so the only thing left to ask them is the part that needs their judgement.
Offering to pay is a cruder version of both. It says the cost is real to you and you have thought about theirs.
The ones that land make the money almost incidental, the way Cohen's did. Make the ask cheap enough that saying yes costs them less than saying no.
Give them your answer to the easy version first, so the only thing left to ask is their judgement on the hard part. People will spend that on a problem they already feel daily, far sooner than they will do your thinking for you.