Just Ask

Today my friend Mohamed Said wrote on his blog about putting fear aside and reaching out to people, and he included the following video from Steve Jobs:

As I watched this what really stuck out to me is how Steve asked. In his example, he called Bill Hewlett and asked for a very specific thing, frequency counters, which made it easy for Bill to say yes and got him a foot in the door for a summer job.

I know many people that are crazy busy but if you reach out and asked something specific they would love to help you. Even if it’s a programming problem, as long as it’s not something vague like, “I get a white screen can you help?”.  Or something generic like can we schedule a phone call or grab a coffee. I archive those emails immediately, but if you said want to meet up and go mountain biking, I’d be all over that and happily drive across the state.

Be specific, respect their time, and you might just make a new lifelong friend.