How to Get a Yes From Anyone (and Change Your Life)
Stu Hynek shares unconventional outreach tactics that landed major deals: a $28 Facebook ad that generated a $2,000,000 Walmart order, sending $1,000 engraved swords to struggling CEOs, and buying Buc-ee's inventory for $1,500 to go viral. The core strategy is targeting 20 to 100 influential people with personalized, creative contact instead of mass outreach.
Questions this video answers
June 3 (new edition announced)
$28
69,500,000% (claimed)
About $1,000 per sword
18 by 24 inches
Chapters
He spent half hour of his time, $10 in materials to hand deliver that to me for $9,000.
Really smart.
It's a no brainer. So many lives could be changed by just thinking about something a little more creatively. One little unlock.
If you go through usual channels, that is not the way you stand out. I only needed to reach out to about two dozen people. 100% of them responded, 100% of them agreed to meet. All of them became clients, paid $28 for it. That led to $2,000,000 order 69,500,000% ROI. Well, that's interesting. Who else can I reach? I started reaching presidents and prime ministers, almost just about anyone. And when you do that, man, magic happens.
Okay, you're gonna love today's episode. Whether you own a business or you want to start a business, or you never want to start a business, if you'd ever have a need to get an important meeting with an important person, this is the episode for you. If you check out episode 144 entitled how to get whatever you want out of life, that was my episode with Jordan Mix about permissionless marketing, doing really cool things to get the attention of cool people. This one is kind of similar, similar vein. This guy literally wrote the book called how to get a meeting with anyone. He literally wrote the book and it was a bestseller. And he knows all the tricks, all the stories. He's talked to dozens or hundreds of people that have done really unique creative things to get meetings with important people, to make a lot of money, to find a big partnership, whatever. You could also call it a white whale, but it's told in a different way. And it's very, very tactical. For instance, a guy that makes $1000 custom swords or buys them and sends them to companies that are in trouble so he can turn them around and make millions of dollars. He has a 100% response rate. There's several stories about people that have a 100%, not just response rate, but close rate because their outreach methods are so unique and personalized and in the age of AI, this is more accessible than ever. So please enjoy, please share with a friend, anyone you know that would love to get a meeting with anyone on the planet, they could use this episode. It's really hard to grow a podcast and so sharing it is one of the only ways I can spread the good word far and wide. So please do. If you be so kind, please enjoy.
A big feature of contact marketing is it's not mass marketing at all. It's finding the people like you Know, at the most a hundred people. But I'm always talking about a top 100 list. But the people who can change the scale of everything. So who are they? Are. They could be clients or they could be mentors, they could be potential partners. But whoever they are, you need to connect with them and in a unique.
Way or you're not going to stand out.
Nothing's going to happen if you can't connect with them. So because of all that, I thought, well, that campaign hit the 100% response rates across the board. Well, that's interesting. Who else can I reach? I started reaching presidents and prime ministers and really basically almost just about anyone. And then I got really curious about.
What were you using cartoons for all of this outreach, all of that?
Yeah.
Okay.
Then I got curious about what everyone else was doing and discovered there's just the craziest. There was a shadow form of marketing out there and I had to call it something so called the contact campaign in how to get a meeting with anyone. And people have been doing these amazing things to get meetings. So it's just rife with all these really entertaining stories of things people have done. It's just so much fun to see what just kind of how creativity across the race just forms and expresses itself. And just the things that it led people to do and then the results that they got have all been just stunning.
I feel like so many of us become enamored with big numbers and we'll spend five hours like trying to set up a cold email campaign to reach 10,000 people. Whereas what happened if we took five hours trying to reach like the 20 most influential people? That could completely transform our business. We would certainly have a higher percentage response rate, but we could even have a better raw number response rate.
Yeah, well, you know, when I went into direct marketing, the pundits of the genre were saying a lot of things that were interesting that turned out to be interesting. One of them was it's impossible to get 100% response rate. And so, you know, my first Contact campaign did that. And so I didn't talk about it to anyone. I just thought, you know, it'd be like saying, I've been abducted by aliens and you're credibility. So the metrics that I've seen in contact marketing, they easily hit 100% response rates. It doesn't happen all the time. It's not common, but it does happen. And it's actually common enough that it's a feature of contact marketing. The highest response rate that I'm aware of and roi that I'm aware of are, let's say for response rate, it's somewhere north of 300%. So what that means is you produced a campaign, or maybe I should explain what the campaign was, but you produced a campaign and the thing that you used to make contact was so compelling that the recipients shared it. And then so it basically went viral and other people responded to it, I suppose is the best way to put it. But so that's interesting to get beyond 100% response rate of what that means. So this one marketer's case, he ended up reaching somewhere between three and four times his audience because they spread it. The other one, the ROI figure, came from a dental startup. A dentist had invented a new tongue scraper. And so he started a company, hired some young guys to do videos for him on YouTube. And they were selling the tongue scrapers pretty effectively on, on YouTube. And then about a year into that, they just decided they were trying to get into Walmart. They wanted to have it rolled out throughout their 6,500 stores. So they went through the usual channels. I think this is kind of a feature of contact marketing as well, that if you go through usual channels and you do the usual things, that is not the way you stand out. So certainly that wasn't the way they were going to stand out. So at some point the young guys decided, you know what, we're tired of waiting for Walmart to respond. So they put together a little, just a little tiny Facebook ad, static Facebook ad, paid $28 for it. They targeted the Bentonville, Arkansas headquarters and, you know, the right demographics and so forth. They were targeting Walmart headquarters and their spokesperson. That the sort of tongue in cheek or many things. The creeper and cheek.
Tongue scraper in cheek.
Yeah, Their character was sort of a dentist, live action dentist with a giant tongue scraper. So that was what was on the ad. And then it said Walmart employees have bad breath. But if they contact us and feature our product or something like that, I can't remember what it was.
I think that's a key distinction because it's not enough to just target Walmart employees. It still has to stand out and cause someone to say what?
Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah, you have to have people, oh my God, you know, what is it? Well, in this case.
So here's how this works. I make you free videos. I actually know what I'm talking about. I have no greasy sales pitch at the end. And if you implement what I talk about, you'll make a lot more money and have a Better life. And all I ask for in return is, is that you hit the subscribe button and maybe even the notification bell. Just like that. Thank you.
They heard from Walmart's legal department first about 48 hours after the ad went up. And they said, are you the ones behind this ad? Oh, yeah. Would you take it down? Of course, sure. Of course. We'll be happy to do it. Oh my God. Can you. They're still trying to figure out if they're containing damage. So they said, was this run nationally? And they said, no, we targeted your headquarters. How did you do that? This was a while ago, so this was no new still news to them. So how did you do that? Well, we selected this way and that way. And they said, wow, you're actually pretty astute digital marketers. And they said, yeah. Anyway, that led to, I'm going to introduce you to our dental products buyer. They did. And they exited that conversation with a 20. What was it? No $2 million order. So cheese. So that's cool. I interviewed the CEO about this. So when I asked him, I said, well, okay, you went into that conversation in one form. You were a startup, you'd been in business for a year and you left it with a product that's now about to be rolled out in Walmart. What did that do to the valuation? And he said, Well, I think it 10xed us. And he figured that their value was 2 million at that point, 2 million before going into that conversation, and then 10x to 20 million. So if we take all of that into account, it's a 69,500,000% ROI.
From a $28 Facebook ad.
From a $28 Facebook ad? Yeah.
I mean, Stu, I don't know if you know my story, but I have a similar story. Do you know the company Buc ee's, the gas station company?
Yeah, I think so.
They have about 50 massive gas stations across mostly the Southeast. Anyway, my audience has heard this, so I won't go into it, but they didn't sell online, they don't sell online and they have this huge billion dollar brand. And so I bought one of everything from their stores. It cost $1,500. And I launched a business and I cold emailed 20 reporters. It went viral. The legal department reached out to me, much like in your story. And I've since learned that's usually a good sign you have the attention of the higher ups. And it's been five years since that business. And we do millions of dollars a year and we sell all of Bucky's products online. Unofficially, they're not an official partner of ours, but we are the industry leader by far. And it all started from a 2000 or 1500 dollar order and a few cold emails.
Oh my God. Well, your audience already knows the story. Sometime we'll have to get together offline or to hear the whole thing.
Yeah, but I just think it's so interesting that so many problems could be solved or lives could be changed by just thinking about something a little more creatively. One little unlock. And I think back to the time I was like 23, 24, I owned an iPhone repair shop and I just opened a new location in Huntsville, Alabama. And I was sitting in there and it was a small business, so I was still manning the store. We had four locations at this time. A commercial realtor walked in and he had seen in the tax records or somewhere that I had just signed a lease on this store. And because of the fact that I had opened a location, the local news, like the Huntsville Times or whatever wrote an article about me that was like buried somewhere in the business section, a few paragraphs. And he had taken that paper and laminated it and like framed it and it was a picture of me fixing a phone. And then he put a note in there and it's like, next time you open a store, talk to me and I'll find you at your next location. And you know what I did? I took a picture of it, I texted it to my wife, I texted it to my friend. And that 100% response rate became a 400 response rate because I shared it, because it was so meaningful. Now to him, the value of me as a conversion is, let's say $3,000 a month on a five year lease. That's 36,000, that's $180,000. He's going to get about 5% of that. So $9,000. He spent half hour of his time, $10 in materials to hand deliver that to me for $9,000 in my next lease.
Really smart.
No brainer.
Yeah, really smart. So look at the ROI on that. Yeah, it's a pretty good roi. Dan. Walt Schmidt is a turnaround specialist and he is also a big blogger, sales blogger. He writes a blog called Edgy Conversations. He's an extreme athlete, runs 100 mile races and wins. You should have him on your show actually. But he's amazing. But he has this really interesting process for reaching out to CEOs of companies that are in trouble. And I would say that earlier, AI probably now picks that up but before that, there was no way to buy a list of companies that were in trouble. And so the way that he went about, first of all finding them and then contacting the CEOs was he scanned the business news every morning looking for stories of missed earnings estimates. Kind of like your realtor. Not the same triggers, but he was doing the same thing. And then he has this sword made up, this beautiful sword made by the prop maker for the movie Gladiator. So these are beautiful swords. Wow. Unfortunately, they're not sharpened. That's a good, good thing.
Do you know what they cost to make?
About a thousand dollars.
Wow. Okay. Well, yeah, I'm waiting to hear the cost of his conversion or the value of his conversion.
Well, you'll hear it in a second because I was going to say that it has that sword made up. It's inscribed with the CEO's name and one of Dan's favorite inscriptions, if you're not all in, you're not in at all. That goes into this beautiful wooden box felt line. So that's part of the thousand dollars, but it all goes into a box with a handwritten note. And handwritten notes show up all the time. An element of some of the best performing versions of these campaigns. So anyway, the handwritten note says, dear Chris, business is war. And I noticed you lost the battle recently. I just wanted to let you know if you ever need a few extra hands in battle, we've got your back. He said, the battle with you, side by side with you, we'll swing a sword with you, we'll help you win this battle. He gets 100% response rate to this campaign. So far, not every one of them engages him. So that's not 100%. But still, when he does engage that, the engagements are worth a million and up. And I don't know, actually. So what I don't know is I need to ask him this now that I'm thinking about it and we're talking about it. But what has he then generated from the swords he sent out? I'll bet it's just enormous.
Does he charge like a flat fee, a million dollars to come in and fix the company, or does he like buy equity stakes or.
I think it's a stake in what he's able to produce as results.
Okay, I don't know. Wow.
Actually, I don't know.
Does he do any follow up? Like if he gets 50% response rate the first week, does he then reach out again and say, hey, did you get my sword? Or is there no follow up? He only sends the sword and then waits.
Well, I don't think he waits. I think he reaches out. But he's just saying that he gets. And I don't know how many times he may have to call. People are 50, so I would imagine you don't just reach out and they're ready to go. But yeah, he's getting through literally all of them.
I think the follow up is such an important distinction because people might go and try this and they're like, I only got a 30% response rate which is probably a hundred times higher than a cold email campaign. But if you call them and email them and it's not a normal call or an email, you gotta reference the thing that you did. I'm remembering a story that happened just recently and I. This gentleman might be listening right now. I don't want to offend him, but I've talked about sending people Venmo transactions or PayPal transactions of A$10 just to get their attention with a note attached. And so someone used my medicine on me and they sent me $50 on Venmo. They've just found me randomly. And then in the Venmo comments, because you can only leave so many characters in the transaction in the comments in the name of the transaction he said read the comments. Which no one reads Venmo comments unless you point to it. And in the comments it's like, hey, my name is so and so. I love what you're doing. I want to come help you film content. I live nearby, I want to film a video with you. I can hold the camera, whatever you need and super cool, thanks for the $50. But like I, I don't need that right now. I'm not looking for someone to hold a camera. I will eventually. It's relevant to me. It just wasn't an immediate need. And so he followed up by sending a dollar with more comments and. And I still didn't respond just cause I was busy. He never followed up again. This was about a month ago and then just yesterday he came to mind. Yeah, I just thought of him and I'm like, you know what? I need someone to go into my Instagram reels and look at like my swipe away rates and find the reels that have the best swipe away rates and then watch the reel and see what the hook is like, how can I replicate that? I need someone to just kind of be a data analyst that knows how to read the trends. Like someone who has a mind for it. Which he was. He had a lot of experience with content and someone who can make recommendations. Hey, just so you know, this video didn't do very well, but the swipe array rate was your best ever. So I think if you made X, Y and Z changes, the retention boost would make this go massively viral and it would only take you 3 minutes to refilm it. So I was looking for him to do that. So I reached out to him and I'm like, hey, thank you for the $51. It's been a month, I'm sorry for not getting back. I don't need anyone to hold the camera, but I need this. And I explained to him, no response. And then a day goes by and he says, okay, well like what is your long term plan for me? And I'm like, dude, I don't know, like I just, I have a need filled. You seem like you were really motivated, like you gave me money and so like, I don't know, are you going to be a long term employee equity holder business? I have no idea. But you know, got to buy a guy a drink first. Like let's do this for 30 days. I'll pay you above market for 30 days. Like let's do 30 videos or something and then let's just see how it goes. And he never responded.
Oh my gosh.
And so wow. I think that's another important distinction of like the response might not be what you're expecting, but like if you liked that person or that opportunity enough to send them a thousand dollar sword or $51, then you gotta be flexible. Right?
Yeah. I would say he really blew it on the back end. He did fine on the front end. That's interesting. I've never even heard of anyone. That's cool too. I've never heard of anyone using a Venmo account and sending a payment. And that is a great way to get home to someone's attention.
It is.
You know, and also I was gonna say, I think that when we reach out to people, hopefully there's a good reason to do it. So if there's a compelling reason to do it, great, that helps. But then we have to realize he's auditioning to you. The first part of his audition was stellar. Sending the 50 bucks, he got your attention and he got top of mind awareness as well. So that when you had something else, you reached out to him. So that's amazing. But it's not just that we're selling something, we're auditioning for relationship and for doing business together. Just what will it be or if it's business or maybe it's job related. But what would it be like to work with this person? He made seems like I don't know where he. Maybe someone else told him the idea. I don't know. Maybe it's not his idea. But he made it interesting in the very beginning and he had a great start going there that didn't. They really missed it afterward. That's terrible.
I know. Maybe he'll hear this and have a change of heart. But I'm curious about the cartoons that you originally spoke about. What was different about them? Was it personalized? What was the follow up sequence on that like?
So first of all, my entry to cartooning was interesting. I wanted to use cartoons in those mailings. That's where it started. But okay, I don't want to just offer my cartoons to my clients. I want to get my heroes of cartooning. So from Playboy and the New Yorker. I wanted to get some of the greatest cartoonists out there in my group and I did. I got them in my group. It became this amazing mentorship opportunity was. It was amazing. So first of all it's the style, the look of it. I would say cartoons is not popular today as they were before. But anyway. So these styles, the art styles were highly recognizable. Maybe even the signatures are what they look like. I don't know if you could read some of them. But part of it was top notch cartooning that was happening. It wasn't just somebody that from the background that draws goofy pictures and then yes, their mind were always imbued with personalization. So the cartoon always going to be about the recipient. And because of what cartoons do in magazines and newspapers anyway, we talked about that a little earlier that they're the best read and remembered parts of the publications. It made the mailing stand out. We used to get a lot more mail than we do now. So it made it stand out in the stack of mail that people would get. And they'd engage with it, they'd open it. So it was a combination of recognizable styles and of cartoons or. And. Or sore cartoons and then personalization. And that all kind of super simplifies something that's not very simple to do because you're going to come up with something that's funny and if the recipient is so let's say disparaged because of the humor, don't send that out.
Yeah, yeah.
Big waste of time on a giant scale. It's always people talking about them. I mean in the cartoon it's always someone talking about the recipient of the Mailing or whatever it is, but it's of the cartoon. So the recipient's out of frame always. Otherwise people are going to look at it and say, well, that's not the color of my hair. I'm male, I'm cheap, whatever it is, everything will be wrong for most of the audience. And so, yeah, so you don't want that. So always out of frame. And then they just have to come out on top. And the humor, whatever it is that's happening in the humor, has to be something that pays them a compliment, I think. I like that that's what's worked best for us.
I mean, you would know better than anyone, I think.
Lots of test history behind it, for sure.
Yeah. I think on one hand you could say, you know, how relevant are cartoons today? Because newspapers aren't as relevant. But then, like, I love looking at the first principles, like the base reasons for things. Right. And if I were to think about the first principles about what makes cartoons memorable, I would think. And you kind of said this, it stands out in the mail. It's like a pattern disruption. It's just something different. It stands out from the other ads of like, drink this refreshing Coca Cola. Like, okay, we've seen that. Also there's like a. There's a nostalgia factor because we're thinking back to our childhood days. Maybe we looked at Marvel comic books. Like, we just kind of feel affinity to it. And also it's like, it's kind of like the same protection that stand up comedians have. Like, you can go up on stage with a mic and say things that might normally be offensive, but because of your role and in the room at the moment of being a stand up comedian, you're not canceled. Right? Like, to an extent, like, you can. You have more freedom and flexibility in what you say because you have that safety buffer of being a comedian. I think that cartoons are similar in that, like, you can be a little more. They are, you get more leeway.
They definitely are.
So what are you showing us here? You got a FedEx envelope with like a window cut out of it.
This is the Heineck window, patent pending design. But really it's a method for using cartoons to get people to pay attention. Whatever it is that you sent a mail piece or an FedEx envelope, for example, we know that this much is going to get their attention. It's a cartoonist, but it's only part of the cartoon. And for you to get the full payoff, you have to get inside the piece now. And, you know, then you get the Whole cartoon, you get the final full payoff. But that's great because that gets their attention just like it had been in earlier. Yeah, generations. But now you have to get inside the piece. And so it's a. It carries it a little bit further.
Well, it's like first principles of any good copywriting or video, anything. You got to have a hook, you got to have a payoff. The hook is the window. You can see part of a cartoon. The payoff is pulling out and seeing the whole thing. Right.
And then it continues on. It's a cartoon about you. It's there. There's all kinds of things that are happening there. But that is cool. That's the Heineck window.
So video is cool. But you know what's better? Long form audio via podcast and my newsletter, tkopod.com go there to subscribe for free to my newsletter. It's one email a week. Very tactical. And then go to my audio podcast, three episodes a week. Stuff like this. You're gonna love it. All free. No sleazy sales pitch. Tkopod.com just quote a couple of examples.
So there's one. One of my cartoons. There are two women having coffee in a coffee shop, and one of them is telling her friend, well, let's see. I'm gonna personalize it because won't make sense without it. It's written so that it's personalized. So in this case, I sent one of these to Mark Cuban. The. So the woman is telling her friend, Mark Cuban says you can tell a lot about a person just by looking at their Mavs tickets. I tend to agree. She's got a reaction from her friend and like, what are you talking. I guess, what are you talking about? So I sent that to Mark Cuban on a big. Well, I call it a big board. It's a big foam core board.
How big are we talking?
I'll show you. It's 18 by 24 inches. Here it is.
Wow. Okay.
And message on the back. That's frame. That's up on his wall in his office.
Oh, wow. The quote is, you can tell a lot about a person by their ticket.
Just by looking at their MAV tickets.
I think with the age of AI, I could really see cartoons or stuff like this. Personalized marketing making a comeback. Because with one prompt, I could say, what are some really insightful things that Mark Cuban has said that might be off the radar? Like, not. And then if you were to make some sort of thing out of that quote that he remembers, but no one else would. Yeah, you could really stand out also with the cartoon generation. I'm going to share my screen for those watching. I did something interesting here. Let's see. I gave it a prompt and I said, make a cartoon image that's funny about a sales pitch offering unique marketing outreach methods to the Rolling stone. And in 30 seconds I had this image for those listening. It's a picture of a stone sitting and there's a guy pitching him in like an old school setting. And we can do unique outreach marketing. Like it's not very funny, but with one more prompt, we can make it funny, we can make it ironic. And it's a lot faster than hand making a cartoon. Right.
Here's the interesting thing, and I should mention I wrote the book how to Get a Meeting with Anyone. Right?
Yeah, Literally wrote the book.
So that came out in 2016, did really well. Last year was named the number one sales book ever written on prospecting by Sales Daily. So it's done really well. And now for those who can see, here it is. It's coming out June 3rd. And so here's what prompted. Because what you just showed me is exactly what part of what prompted the new edition. I mean, obviously things have changed since 2016. That's the long run for the book. We're either meeting virtually or in person. People are either working in the office or not, or they might be returning to the office. There's all kinds of trends back and forth there. The real driver was AI. I just want to say, for just my own personal view on it, is that AI is miraculous. It's just amazing what it's allowing us to do. And I see people either reacting to it with fear or with great excitement. I think the ones with great excitement, even the ones, and particularly the ones that say I'm excited now, I want to get behind it and I want to start something in it really taking the right approach. But I do think that when we're reaching out to create human to human connection with people, as AI just becomes more and more pervasive in our lives, I think there's going to be an equal and opposite reaction. I think that people are going to be saying the things that I think are amazing. I don't know if they're even going to say it consciously, but I think there will be a clamoring for things that are uniquely human. I think that particularly if we're trying to make contact with other humans. So what you just showed me was a great example of how AI does it versus what it looks like when a human does let's say when a talented human with a very practiced human does it, it's totally different. And I've watched this, particularly with cartoons, to see, well, how does AI do? If you ask it to produce a cartoon, it comes up with something that's sort of like, you know, and it looks like.
Yeah.
I mean, you wouldn't look at it and say, oh, gosh, that's done by my favorite cartoonist.
Yeah, yeah.
There's none of that. So.
Yeah.
So I think cartoons and cartooning might be one of those things that stands out in the age of AI as something uniquely human. Pool of those things is shrinking. AI will write music for you and perform it, you know. Yeah. Really well. They'll even do it, I know, with your voice, perfectly tune it and so on. So those things then become more artificial and not so special.
I agree. I think that AI is going to make in person interaction that much more relevant and effective. I think in person, in person, sales is going to boom. It's going to have a heyday because there are so many AI agents out there doing emailing. Agents, like cold calling agents. That's all AI agent, none of it. It's all just going to be noise and fluff. Response rates will go from the 1% that they're currently at. 2.1%. Right. Which still. At a large number, it could still work. But showing up in person is going to be more effective than it's ever been.
Imagine. I don't know if you're married or not, but I am.
Yeah.
Finding your significant other, using AI and using AI to pitch them and, you know, get the first date. I mean, how silly would that be? There are certain things that are just going to remain human.
Yeah, agreed.
Anyway, I know the cartoons so far have really withstood that challenge quite well. When you showed me that drawing, that image. Here's one of mine. It's one of my favorites of mine.
But describe what you're showing.
There's a little child at the kitchen table facing the viewer, facing us. And he's filled his cereal bowl and his milk glass, and he's just rolling his arms back and forth, making a big mess on the table. And behind him is his mom, who is a little, you know, harried. Let's say she's going, oh, no, not this. No. And so she's turning around and she's scolding little Roland and she's saying, roland, you're acting like. And then I can fill in almost anything. And some of the things that he gets, he's been called or told. He is acting like are pretty crazy. I mean with the first did this. The caption was not personalized, but she's. She was telling him, roland, you're acting like a Democrat or Roland, you're acting like a Republican or a member of Congress.
Insert anything. Yeah, anything.
Yeah, yeah.
That's a good example of how the same cartoon could be customized to a larger audience.
Like, you know, millions all at once.
Yeah. That is one thing that AI could do very well is you hand make a cartoon and. But you have AI plug in thousands or hundreds or dozens of different variables that make it custom to each person you're sending it to.
You could. I mean this sounds silly because it's like one great grain of sand on the beach that you describe it. But one of the uses that would be interesting is to just have dossiers produced on people really quickly find some handle something that they love to do that they're always talking about. Something like that they're just posting about. Now that would be very cool.
One thing that you can do with Deep Research is you can go take someone's. Let's say you have their Twitter handle. Let's say it's Mark Cuban, but. And his. Let's pretend that his Twitter handle is basketweaving42 and it's like basket weaving42. Interesting. And then you go to Deep Research or just Google, but for a more surface level approach, you just search in quotations. Basket Weaver 42. And then you can see, oh, he had a Tumblr account from 2008 where he wrote a thousand words a day about his love of basket weaving. But like he's never talked about it in decades. But you know, that's not him. Now you could use that angle to approach him in a way that you can guarantee no one else is using because surely he's getting hit up by all kinds of people.
Don't you find things like someone is coaching. This is actually a real story. But someone spouse. So the target person's spouse was coaching their Little League team. And so the person that was to reach out decided to become a sponsor of the Little League team. And so those are things that you couldn't do. Yeah, I mean you just wouldn't know about what's going on to say, okay, that's something we could. We can sink our teeth into and do something. Actually it's kind of a nice thing to do. The sponsoring of a Little League team. Anyway, it's great. It's a great purpose. Yeah.
I mean, what if you had a physical product like the tongue brusher and you found out that one of the buyers in the dental category in Bentonville who had a son on Little League and you paid $300 for, like, you. That guy's relationship might be worth $3 million. You pay $300 for a logo for the tongue, that you will never sell any through that ad alone. And he may. That guy might not even ever know that you sponsored it. He might not ever even notice the sign on the outfield. But if you reach out to him and you reference it, that's the key. And then he can reference it. He can fact check you like, whoa, this guy's committed. Holy cow. Oh, okay. I'll take your call. I'll take your call.
Right. I think, you know, when people see that, if that goes back to that auditioning again, when people see that kind of, well, let's say audacity, but also just, I don't know, just gumption. Yeah.
Bias for action.
Yeah, they are. They're very proactive. They get things done. I mean, just how they get things done. People want to act. I'd rather they want to work with people like that. Yeah.
I mean, sometimes it can be as simple. I did this with the late John McAfee. I cold emailed him to pitch him something, which is a very generic, low effort way of pitching someone. But how I differentiated was by saying, I want to pitch this in person. I will be at your house. You name the date and time. And he said, okay. And I showed up his house and I spent all day there. Right. And I meant it. I had no plane ticket to. Yeah, I had no ticket to Lexington, Tennessee, but I bought one after he said, come to my house. So.
Well, kudos.
You can also like.
Great stuff.
Thank you. Yeah, you can find hybrid approaches. You can use, like, the generic low effort methods to, you know, to lead into the higher effort methods.
This whole notion of getting meetings that change your life. I was just on a Mastermind earlier today and someone had asked, well, you.
Know, I work with people who you can also like.
Great stuff.
Thank you. Yeah, you can find hybrid approaches. You can use, like the generic low effort methods to, you know, to lead into the higher effort methods.
This whole notion of getting meetings that change your life. I was just on a Mastermind earlier today and someone had asked, well, you know, I work with people who are silly or I don't know what it is, just like, they don't want to be embarrassed, I suppose, because then maybe they wouldn't get the job. And I'm thinking, well, what you're describing is someone who's saying, I don't want to stand out so that I stand out for the job. How's that supposed to make sense? It doesn't make any sense.
It's kind of like the principle of, like, bringing donuts with your resume to the office. Right. Instead of just emailing it in.
Yes.
They don't want to look dumb.
And we actually talked about the donut part. Well, two donut. Two donut boxes. So one. One was the donuts full of. I mean, the box full of donuts with a resume taped to it, perhaps. But then another is one that Dale Dupree does that is an empty box. So it still has. It has the standard donuts were in it. So you can see that there are oil stains and so on and little sprinkles and so on. And then there's a note inside that said, you know, I. I bought the box for us to celebrate, I don't know, let's say, our new deal together. But I was waiting. I kept. I was waiting for so long, I ended up eating all the donuts and.
Oh, my gosh.
So he's giving.
That is so genius.
You know, Experience.
Oh, that is so genius. Because here's the thing. Like, a box of donuts at an office is ubiquitous. It's not special. Right. It's not really going to get around that they're still.
Still. No. No idea. You know?
No, hear me out. I'm saying, like, a box of actual donuts is like, okay, cool. He's unique. But we've seen it before. A box with no donuts is like, hold up, wait, there's a guy that brought. Are you sure that someone, like, people just start talking and that's the whole idea, right?
Oh, yeah, absolutely. It is. Yeah.
I like that a lot.
I could share with you. There's so many cool stories. I mean, Leonardo da Vinci was the earliest example. Rather, he was involved with something. That was the earliest example I've heard. And I'm sure it goes much further back than that. But that was pretty cool. Again, it's a. We're auditioning, and that's how you show up to people.
That's amazing.
Like, wow, who is this? I have to. Instead of going. Because we're interrupting. If we're doing this, if we're asking someone for a meeting, asking, basically. I mean, what we're doing is we're interrupting their day. So if we're doing that, we want it to go from, I guess their questions, their impression to go from who's this? To oh, my God, who is this? And when you do that, man, magic happens.
That's amazing. Oh, Stu, this has been amazing. There's a lot of gold in this. I'm excited to share it. So tell us the name of your book again so we can go out and buy it.
It's called how to Get a Meeting with Anyone. And I'll hold it up if you're watching. There it is. How to Get a Meeting with Anyone.
Okay.
By Stu Hynek. June 3rd comes out June 3rd and. Oh, it's already out. It's been out for a long time, but the new edition comes out June 3rd.
Thank you for joining us, Stu. This was amazing. Where can we get in touch with you?
If stories or questions either go to my author site. That's stuhynek.com and then the other way to do it is to just connect with me on LinkedIn and mention that.
Okay.
Listening on our conversation.
All right. What you think should I have Stu on again? Tell more stories, more examples. Let me know in the comments. See you next time on the Kerner Office.
