In this 8‑minute instructional video, entrepreneur Evan Carmichael shares a recent personal experience of reaching out to Joanne Gordon, co‑author of Howard Schultz’s book Onward, to request an introduction to Schultz. He walks viewers through his systematic outreach process: first checking personal networks, then engaging via Twitter and YouTube, and finally sending a carefully crafted, authentic cold email when other channels fail. Carmichael emphasizes his “one‑word” branding concept—his word is “believe,” Schultz’s is “love”—and uses it to personalize the email. He outlines the email’s structure, including an authority‑building opening, genuine praise of the recipient’s work, a clear ask, and an offer of reciprocal value. Joanne’s prompt, appreciative reply validates the approach. Carmichael concludes by encouraging viewers to apply the three‑step framework, share their own outreach stories, and engage with his community, while also promoting his newsletter and channel.
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If you need to reach out to complete strangers to have them help you grow your business, I'm going to share with you a quick story today about one recent example that I went through and I think you could model to help you build your business. Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. I believe in entrepreneurs and I've always been a huge Howard Schultz fan. He's the guy behind Starbucks. I love what he stands for. I love his messaging. I love what he talks about in entrepreneurship and dreaming big and encouraging people to follow their dreams and not listen to The Naysayers. He's got a lot of great videos. We've featured some on this channel. And so when he came up with this book, I discovered it not too long ago called Onward, I had to read it. And when I was flipping through, something interesting came up on page 4. You don't have to get through it very long where it says, there's one word that comes to mind when I think about our company and our people. That word is love. Now right away, that blew my mind because I've been an advocate of finding one word that you stand for, that your business stands for, and inject it, right? Stand for something with your company. Mine is believe, and I've been helping other entrepreneurs do it. I'm writing my own book on this process, and I thought, Howard Schultz, you know, one of these guys that I really look up to, Howard Schultz, he is all about one word as well. I have to find a way to get in touch. Now usually when I want to reach out to somebody, my first step is to look at my network. Does anybody know Howard Schultz that I know? And he co-wrote this with Joanne Gordon, and you know, does anybody know Joanne? Does anybody know these people? I need to reach out. I gotta get in touch. And nobody in my network knew either Howard or Joanne. So my first option was out of luck. The next thing I always do is try to reach out on social media. My favorite two channels are Twitter and YouTube. And what I'll often do is find them on Twitter or YouTube, follow them, start to engage with their stuff, comment on it, share it. And my goal is to get them to know me, right? To add value, to give them something in return before I ever ask for anything. And when I do message them, they know who I am. They recognize my face because I've been tweeting and sharing all their stuff. The problem here again though was neither Howard or Joanne were on Twitter or YouTube. So my usual strategy of trying to use my connections and trying to reach out on social media, they weren't working for me this time around. And I really wanted to connect and I just, I sat on it. And it was sitting there in my inbox as a to-do list for weeks and weeks and weeks. And I'm like, you know what, one day it was an evening at like 6 o'clock at night, I just decided I'm gonna write Joanne. She had a website, she had a contact. I'm just gonna write to her and I'm gonna pour my heart out. I'm gonna create an authentic email asking what I was asking. And I was reluctant at the start because I hate being the guy who asks for stuff, right? I hate being the guy who doesn't provide any value and is just writing to somebody asking them for something. And so I wanted to express that in an email and make her realize that I'm a genuine guy, I'd love the help of this anyway, And so I'm gonna read you the email that I sent, and it might be able to use it as a template for you guys who are trying to reach out to people who you need to reach out to. Hi Joanne, this might be one of the stranger emails you receive today. My name is Evan Carmichael. I have a popular website that has over 20 million people visited and a rapidly growing YouTube channel with over 5 million views. I also have a radio show that reaches almost 600 stations across America, and Forbes named me one of the top 40 social marketing talents. So my goal here at the start was to lead with something curious, interesting. This might be one of the stranger emails that you receive today to make her want to read more. And then I also included a little bit about me, that I'm not just some guy off the street, that I have some authority, and, and hopefully I'm somebody worth listening to. Continuing on, I said, I'm doing an interview series and am writing the book with a major publisher called One Word, where I'm discussing finding one word that you believe in to your core and profiling famous entrepreneurs who've built businesses around their one word. After reading Onward, amazing, amazing, amazing book, did I say amazing? I noticed these lines. There's one word that comes to mind when I think about our company and our people. That word is love. I love Starbucks because everything we do is steeped in humanity. Howard Schultz is one of my favorite entrepreneurs of all time because he has an important mission and he really stands for something powerful. It's inspiring, and I wish every entrepreneur knew about his story so they could model him and learn from him. So here now I'm trying to show that I've read your book, I really value it, I love it, it has great content. I'm sending something really personal, something from the heart, not just some boilerplate, you know, template content that I'm asking for something, right? I really want to show that I really care about what she's created and I really value her opinion. Then I wrote, my question for you is if there is any way you'd be able to set up an introduction to him to see if I could interview him for my series and my book. I know it's a huge ask, especially coming from a complete stranger, and it's totally outside my usual style of doing things, but I don't have any other connections at the moment. I don't know that I have much to offer you in return apart from a heartfelt thank you and lifelong gratitude. I'd be happy to help promote projects that you're working on to my audience. I don't know if that's important to you, and I really hate the idea of just trading favors. I guess the bottom line is I would really appreciate introduction, and I would be in lifelong debt to you. Happy to help whenever I can, whenever you need, because you did something lovely for a complete stranger who's trying to do something important and powerful for the world. I'm happy to provide you with more information on me, the series, the book. Thank you so much for your consideration and your time. I sincerely appreciate it. Cheers, Evan. Belief. So I got to my ask. What I really wanted was a potential introduction to Howard Schultz. Obviously she knew him because she co-wrote the book with him, and I really wanted her to feel like this was something that was important to me. You know, it's something that, um, I really valued her help with. It's not just, "Hey, hook me up to Howard Schultz, please." And I really wanted her to feel like if there was anything I could do to help her, just let me know, you know? I didn't want it to feel like, "Hey, I'll help you so you help me." I really wanted to help her if there was any way I could do it, and I would be in lifelong gratitude to her, and she's helping a complete stranger out. And so I felt like this is everything I got, you know? This is me pouring it into an email. Putting my heart out there, and hopefully I'd get a positive response. Now, she wrote back that same evening with this message. Hi Evan, thank you for such a heartfelt and sincere email. I'm touched that the book resonated with you the way it did, and no, you can never say amazing enough to an author. Happy face. I've shared your email with the powers that be at Starbucks who handle requests such as yours for Howard. Someone will reach out to you and hopefully we'll get your meeting. Thanks again for emailing, and congratulations on your success. "Best, Joanne." Now that email made my night. You know, that came in just before midnight. I opened it up and I showed my wife like, "Wow! She saw the email! She responded! She's gonna send it off to Howard! So amazing!" And regardless of if it happens or not, regardless of if the PR people reach out to me, it hasn't happened yet, but even if it never happens, the fact that Joanne was willing to do that speaks a lot to her character and her heart and what a what a wonderful person she is, even though I've never met her, just had this brief email discussion with her. But for those of you who are trying to reach out to somebody who you feel like you really need to make this connection to grow your business, you know, you could start with your personal connections, you can start with the social media, and if it doesn't work, then just be passionate. That's the difference, right? Be heartfelt, be passionate, do your research, let the person know that you really value this time and you really You really want to make that connection, and if you are putting your heart on your sleeve like that, you're making it really, really, really difficult for somebody to say no to you. And when you are genuine, people will want to work with you. So that's my story. Hopefully that helped you, and I'll share the contents of my email in the description so you can have a template if you want to kind of look at and model and follow. And that's it for today. Thank you guys so much for watching. A special thank you to Joanne for responding and being such an amazing human being. And for those of you watching, I'd love to know who you've reached out to or how you've reached out to complete strangers, or if you have a fear of reaching out to complete strangers. Leave a comment below. I'd love to see the discussion get going. I'm going to join in that conversation as well. Thank you everybody so much for watching. If you like this video, you want to see more, don't forget to subscribe to the newsletter and to the channel. And what do you think about my new artwork up on the wall? Believe.
