How to reach busy people

It’s a simple formula: the higher level the person you are trying to reach, the busier they are.

Meaning they will have less time for lunch, coffee, phone calls, and to respond to your email.

Many entrepreneurs I work with get frustrated because they aren’t getting emails back from investors, or upset because I don’t have time to meet with them at their whim.  Don’t let this discourage you, they probably still want to help, but you have to know how to ask.  Here are some tips:

  • Send 3 sentence emails. Not 3 paragraphs, 3 sentences.  If it can’t be read in 15 seconds, it won’t. (ref)
  • Don’t ask for meetings, ask for the one thing you want.  If I can have a conversation over email rather than in person, that’s what I want.  I definitely prefer to meet people at networking events or have them drop in Launch Pad then to schedule lunches or meetings without a clear agenda.
  • If you don’t hear back, ping her again. Try a DM or a quick email.  The reality is most busy people can’t / don’t read all their email, so if you’re off the front page, you’re probably buried.  Don’t get frustrated and send a passive agressive email, just ping her again nicely.  You’ll be surprised how persistence pays off.
  • Don’t send attachments, send links.  I’ll click through to blogs & projects way before I read resumes.  I’d much rather get an actionable eventbrite invitation than a PDF attachment invitation I have to send an email reply to.
  • Make it easy for people to do what you want.  Pre-write a tweet and send it to them and ask them to tweet it.
  • Use good plain text formatting.  HEADERS are great capitalized and phrases are emphasized by bolding them.
  • Write a clear subject.  I like giving context at the beginning with brackets [Invite] or [Response needed].  Assume that the subject is the only thing they will read on their phone and give them enough information to want to open the email.  Subject lines of “hey” or “following up” get deleted.

What tips do you have on reaching out to busy people?

What to do between Jazz Fest weekends? The Work Week.

Are you headed to Jazz Fest this weekend?  Um… YES! It’s my favorite time of year.

And this year, it’s getting even better with the inaugural Work Week Conference Series.  Using the world-class music festival of New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival as a building block, we’re filling up the entire week with incredible speakers and sessions where you can learn to launch a startup, inspire innovation and succeed in the music business.

Our vision for the Work Week is to build a business conference series complement to the great music experience on the scale of what SXSW has become in Austin.  There are 3 great events that you won’t want to miss.

  • Sync Up – 4/29-30 & 5/6-7 @ NOMA – This is the 4th year of Scott Aiges’ music industry conference.  Swing by the conference in the morning before you headout to the fest and learn from musicians, festival bookers and film producers technologists.  Sync Up has a talent packed lineup including Chris Blackwell, founder of Island Records, Mystical sitting down for a chat with Wild Wayne and PJ Bloom, music supervisor for Glee. A special addition this year is a screening of the Arcade Fire film ‘The Wilderness Downtown’ with Thomas Gayno from Google produced by Bryan Bailey.
  • Second Line -  5/2-3 @ XLIV at Champions Square – The inaugural Second Line conference launches this year with a focus on disruptiveinnovation, value creation, and sustainable social impact.  Hot of the success of last year’s TEDxNOLA, Gerard Cox is producing the conference and has lined up an impressive roster of talented speakers.  James Carville & Wendell Pierce headline in addition to Scott Gerber, John Besh Matt Candler and Matt Galligan of SimpleGEO.
  • Launch Fest – 5/4-5 @ NOMA – With two half-day sessions, Launch Fest returns for year two, and takesonnew significance this year as the demo day for New Orleans’ only startup accelerator, Launch Pad Ignition. Day one features programming for entrepreneurs and those who are thinking about starting a company.  Day two features investor focused discussions by Brad Feld and a Startup America panel with Scott Case, CEO of Startup America and Sean Greene of the SBA.  Highlight speakers include Leah Culver of Convore, Stephen Dimarco of Compete.com, Brent McCrossen of Audiosocket, Anne Driscoll from Ning and Bob Dorf a Customer Development guru.

Jazz Fest has grown into more than just a music festival with the arrival of the Work Week. Look forward to feeding the mind during the week and the soul on the weekends.  I highly recommend all these great events and can’t wait to see you at these events and out at the fairgrounds!

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