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