How To Start A Startup
How we built ContactOut to 8 figures in revenue. Video series with screen shares.
Here’s how I got a mentorship sessions with James Clear, New York Times bestselling author of Atomic Habits.
My co-founder Ari sent James an email via his website contact form saying:
Hey, I’m Ari, co founder of ConsciousEd.
We’re a not for profit learning portal teaching life skills like mindfulness, happiness, and purpose.
I’m a long time reader of your site and reaching out to ask for your mentorship on how we can grow our community.
Happy to send you $500 for a quick chat.
And James responded saying:
Hey great, his consulting rate happens to be $500, send a PayPal to here, and we booked in a time with James.
So the takeaway is here:
Offer money.
You’d be surprised at how many millionaires as would be happy to talk to you for $500-$1000 per hour.
And the value that I received from call James is worth like much, much more than that.
Half the people I offer this to don’t even accept the money.
But offering money legitimizes your requests. It shows that you value their time.
Second takeaway is to ask something very specific.
For James, it was knowledge around how to build a community and audience around his blog.
The second mentor is Santosh Sharan.
Santosh was the COO at Apollo and VP Product at ZoomInfo our biggest competitor.
How I found Santosh was I was reaching out to ex employees of every single one of my competitors, because I wanted to learn what my competitors do so I didn’t have to reinvent the wheel.
Past employees are more open to chatting because they’re not under any confidentiality agreement.
You can find people’s email addresses by using ContactOut or any other contact finder.
So I’d write an email like:
Hi Santosh,
I am Rob, an Australian tech entrepreneur (here’s my Linkedin).
We’re building contactout.io a sourcing tool similar to Zoominfo but targeting the Australian and UK markets.
I would greatly appreciate your mentorship and advice on growth and how to do sales for data tools, and any insights you’ve gained from your experience at Zoominfo.
Would you be free for a brief chat?
Happy to send you $500 for your time.