They want the reader to view what they are doing as important. (This is why people write ridiculously long emails about what they are doing when they request. Unless you have the key to their current problems, you won’t be able to make your request look more important than the other things on their plate. Make the cost of responding to your scheduling request so low that it just makes sense to deal with it now. Make the cost of ignoring your scheduling request lower than that of their other items. Very Busy People always have something urgent and important on their plate and, unless you are the person who can solve those urgent and important items, taking the time to play email volleyball with you is just not worth it to them. People don’t schedule meetings with you because they perceive the cost of doing so as greater than the benefit of whatever else is on their plate at that moment. These may sound like nothing, but to a Very Busy Person whose time is worth more than yours, the cost of sitting down for coffee or hopping on the phone may be considerably more than the mere cost of that half-hour. Doing some kind of follow up from the call. Actually taking the time to be on the call.This is a huge time-suck for Very Busy People. Have you ever played phone tag with somebody? How about email tag? It’s easy to spend more time trying to find a time for when the call will happen than for how long the call will actually be. Finding time that works for both parties.When you send an email asking to meet for coffee or get on the phone, they perceive at least a few costs: you are expected not to waste their time. When you are given an introduction to a Very Busy Person - a founder, an investor, an executive, a professor, etc. They probably won’t get back to it later, since they are Very Busy People. When sending emails to Very Busy People, it’s most important that you keep your emails clear and concise. When they get an email, the question that will run through their mind, just like when you get an email, is “how long will this take to respond to now and do I have the time?” If the answer to the second half of that question is, “no,” then they will say they’ll get back to it later. So what’s the deal? Why People Didn’t Schedule Meetings With You They are not kids trying to get their first job out of McDonald’s and they take what they do very seriously. What caught me off-guard about these situations is that the people for whom I was doing the introduction are all hyper-competent, high-achieving, ambitious founders. This is not the first time I’ve dealt with people who, after being introduced to an important and Very Busy Person, drop the ball because they figure that the Very Busy People just don’t have time to chat with them. “No…we were not able to find a time that works for both of us…” Without fail, the conversations tended towards some version of this: Tapping into the networks of friends and advisors is a way to drastically reduce your work overhead and increase your chances for success. When you’re starting a company (or any new project), everything feels like Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill for eternity. The Problem of Getting Time with Key Players One of the biggest values that I, or any good advisor, bring to a startup is the network I can use to help the teams get traction sooner, figure out how to overcome a major problem, or raise money. Naturally, the conversations with these founders tended towards whether or not they had been able to schedule meetings with some of the people to whom I had introduced them. I was recently at an event with several founders whose startups I advise.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |