Dr. Wayne Pernell explains the "love + specific" formula for digital outreach: research someone's actual work, find one concrete detail you genuinely appreciate, then mention it before asking for anything. Any message you could copy-paste to someone else won't work.
Chapters
It's the same thing when we're reaching out to people. It's like you forget how to actually behave like a human. So the first thing you want to do is you want to set yourself apart from all those other people that have sent those crappy messages and actually take the time to get to know the person, like, research them. Do they have a podcast? Have they written a blog? Like, were they featured on another podcast? Like, what's something they did? And, like, always go for a very specific thing that you can genuinely appreciate about them. So I call this, like, the love plus specific formula underneath the appreciate. But, like, if you can cut. If you can copy and paste this message to someone else, it's not specific enough, right? So, like, so, like, go and find us something that they're doing, something that's really cool and say loved. You know this LinkedIn article that you found out, I specifically liked when you talked about this component. Thank you so much for sharing that. So you took the time to actually care about this human that you're reaching out to. So that's the first thing. The second thing is where you should transition to the value that you can add to them. So many people are trying to get or close you to come on a call or something like that. Think about it from their perspective.