Just email people

You should just email people.

Go invite somebody to join your podcast. Ask a famous executive for advice. Offer to buy lunch for a writer you admire.

This sounds like dumb advice. But sometimes, it really is that simple. Just email people and ask for the stuff you want.

Don’t waste people’s time. Don’t be weird about it. Don’t sell or trick or offend. Just politely ask.

When he was a child, Steve Jobs famously called up Bill Hewlett, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, to ask for help – and it worked! Here’s what he said about that experience in a 1994 interview:

“I’ve actually always found something to be very true, which is most people don’t get those experiences because they never ask. I’ve never found anybody that didn’t want to help me if I asked them for help. I always call them up.

I called up, this will date me, but I called up Bill Hewlett when I was 12 years old, and he lived in Palo Alto. His number was in the phone book. And he answered the phone himself and said, ‘Yes?’ And I said, ‘Hi, I’m Steve Jobs. I’m 12 years old. I’m a student in high school, and I want to build a frequency counter. And I was wondering if you had any spare parts I could have.’ And he laughed and he gave me the spare parts to build this frequency counter, and he gave me a job that summer in Hewlett-Packard working on the assembly line putting nuts and bolts together on frequency counters. He got me a job in the place that built them. And I was in heaven.

And I’ve never found anyone who said no or hung up the phone when I called. I just asked. And when people ask me, I try to be as responsive. You know, to pay that debt of gratitude back. Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask. And that’s what separates sometimes people who do things from people who just dream about them. You’ve got to act, and you’ve got to be willing to fail. You’ve got to be willing to crash and burn, you know, with people on the phone, with starting a company, with whatever. If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far.”

That’s the kind of audacity many of us have when we’re kids, but we temper it as we age. Now we’re serious. We have a reputation. We have things to lose. There’s no way we can just email a busy stranger. They’re busy! They’re important!

We like to think that notable person X is so popular and in-demand that they get 100 requests a day to speak somewhere, endorse something, or give their thoughts. But for most people, that’s simply not the case. As Jobs said, “most people never ask.”

If you’re Taylor Swift, Barack Obama, or LeBron James, you’re probably getting more incoming asks than you can conceivably reply to. But if you’re just a couple of levels of notoriety down, you’re not actually getting overwhelmed by the incoming communication. If you’re a celebrated video game developer, a prize-winning academic, or a best-selling author – maybe you’re getting cold outreach a few times a week.

This is not to say you should spam your heroes. But it is to say that distance between you and your heroes isn’t as far as it feels. You shouldn’t let the assumption that they won’t respond be why you don’t try to shoot your shot.

Every time I’ve done this in my career, I wish I did it more often. Getting blurbs for my book mostly came down to just asking. Getting myself on podcasts and writing articles in magazines came from just asking. This month, I’m hosting our seventh Queens Tech Night – and most of the time I get our headlining speakers by just sending a cold email.

There’s an old idiom I think about every time this topic comes to mind: “If you don’t ask, the answer is always no.”

I already didn’t have a blurb, or a podcast spot, or a speaker. There’s no way that by asking for one, I could have had less of those things. Asking at least gives me the chance, however slim, of a yes.

And here’s the thing: People like saying yes. We like to help people, we like to agree with people, and we like to be a part of things. Even the most successful people still appreciate new opportunities.

Now, there are a lot of reasons people say no. Many of us want to eliminate distractions or avoid stretching ourselves too thin. If you’re heads-down on something, then you’re often better served defaulting to no until you get where you want to go. Don’t get discouraged when you catch a no. And certainly don’t feel entitled to a yes.

But I bet you’ll be surprised how often you’ll get one. You don’t know what doors are open until you knock on them.

(And when the time comes that you get that same inquiring email, pay it forward. Notoriously, even Steve Jobs would reply to cold emails.)