Yesterday, a young university student reached out to me on LinkedIn with a:

“Hey, I am XXX. Your career looks interesting, I too want to be a founder. Can we chat?”

Delete.

Not because I’m a jerk. I reply to most young folks seeking help; a large part of my career was guided by mentors throughout.

But this is a poorly crafted DM; it’s a dead fish. Zero effort or intrigue. This DM would be ignored by the vast majority of people.

This happens to me a thousand times a year. And every time, I think about how I used to do this in high school/university when I was broke and unknown and what made my reach-outs work.

I am writing this so that a young person reading this can have better success in finding mentors and seeking help. Read below.

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The core message is simple: Every relationship is a give-and-take relationship

No, for real.

EVERY relationship, including your spouse/bf/gf, your philanthropic mentor, your brother/sister, your closest friends & randoms on the internet, is transactional.

Even the “altruistic” ones.

EVERY relationship is a give/take relationship.

The only question is: what are you giving?

Here is the secret: what you give doesn’t have to be tangible goods.

Here’s where young people screw up. They think “giving” means:

• Money
• Connections
• Business opportunities
• Insider information

If you’re 22 and broke, you have none of that. So you think you have nothing to offer.

Wrong.

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You are time & energy rich. But you are wealth/network/knowledge poor.

Giving can be “giving” warmth, giving the other person the ability to feel charitable, giving the feeling of being respected, giving the other person a new insight/ idea etc about your world.

You can always give these things

• Warmth: making someone feel warm or joyful e.g. a genuine compliment about their life/work
• *The gift of feeling respected
• The feeling of being charitable: sounds odd, but many successful people would love the opportunity to help someone in other ways besides money. Because many realize that teaching a man to fish has an exponential impact on the world.
• Window into your world: give them an insight into your world that they are dissociated from.
• The chance to talk about their passions: gives them the ability for them to talk about their passions at length to someone who will listen
• The feeling of being useful

So next time you are sending out a DM as a young person, think “how can I make this person feel charitable with their time? How can I give them the feeling of helping someone out?”

Here is a tangible example from a DM I sent years back:
“Hey XXX, it’s incredible to see people who look like me as a Muslim build out a unicorn publicly. My goal is to get to where you are and have a similar impact on the world. I’m stuck on [specific challenge]. If you have 5 mins for a quick phone call, I’d be happy to call you anytime, anyday. It would help me a lot! 🙂 “

If you do end up getting on that call, you can 10x this relationship by sending them a follow-up and informing them how their advice made a tangible impact on what you were doing.

Good luck.