How to meet famous people

Alright, a question for you, Tim. This is something that a lot of people ask and it's one of my pet peeves because a lot of times people wonder, oh my God, like, how do I do this? I don't know how to do this at all. And in my opinion, you can't just.

Learn it from sitting in your room.

You have to go out and talk to other people. So my question for you is, if you wanted to meet someone famous, say Oprah or a politician or somebody up here, how would you do it? And have you done it before?

Okay, that's a good question. So, yes, I've done it before if I wanted to meet, let's say, Oprah or someone of that level. And this is something, as you know, I teach my Princeton students to do with this challenge that I've had for the last few years that entails getting in touch with impossible to reach people like the CEO of Comcast or CEO of hp, or George Bush Sr. Or Eric Schmidt at Google and Tommy Hilfiger. Those are all real examples, by the way. Warren Buffet, another example. There are a couple of different approaches that you can use. The first is recognizing that you should never contact someone for the first time if they are exceptionally busy, which all these people will be with a request for a favor. That is just not the right way to initiate contact. And so there are a number of different contacts that allow you to make that contact without seeming like you have an ulterior motive. The first is this is what I did very early on when I had absolutely no background, no credibility, no credentials, was volunteering for nonprofits that routinely had speakers and panels who were of that level. So I volunteered at the Silicon Valley association of Startup Entrepreneurs, very long name, which is Essbase. But I ended up doing more than my fair share, taking on additional responsibilities as a volunteer. And then because of my track record, over a few events, was invited to provide more feedback. And then I asked if I could be the chair for one of the main events and actually get the speakers.

Now, did you charge anybody for all this?

Did I charge anyone?

Yeah.

No. This was all volunteer. And that's how I met Jack Canfield, who many years later ended up introducing me to my agent, which led to selling the Four Hour Workweek. And I really didn't ask him for any favors during that, that period of time between when we first met. I did keep in touch. Every once in a while I would have some type of philosophical or life sort of broader picture type of question that I would imagine fairly few people had asked him and it was always very specific. Guys, a bad question is, what should I do? I remember very early on when I first moved to Silicon Valley, I met this amazing entrepreneur who's actually, since we reconnected and become friends and. But I met him and I was so excited to have met somebody at such a high level that we engaged in this dialogue. And then I sent him this email at one point and it was like something along the lines of, what should I do with my life? It was a little better than that, but not much. And he wrote back and it's just like, how the hell am I supposed to answer that question? And I took it really personally. I was like, God, how could he not take five minutes to help?

And it's a terrible question.

You need to be specific. So volunteering would be one second. Is the best way to meet somebody who's extremely hard to meet is to meet someone who's good friends with them. Don't go directly after them. That could mean their personal trainer, their dietitian, their cardiologist, their pastor, someone who is one degree of separation away with whom you can establish trust. Because the messenger in this case is more important than the message. The biggest fear that high profile people.

Have is that.

You are going to be associated with them and you're going to do something bad or embarrassing and then they're going to have to pay for that. So it's very important to become trustworthy first. And it's all the same guys showing that vulnerability, being honest, being transparent, recognizing when you're wrong or don't know anything. Once you do that, you'll find that very often that person who's one degree away, hey, you know what? Yeah, you should really meet Oprah. I think you guys would like, enjoy having tequila shots or something. And don't make it a business engagement. It doesn't have to be. That's another thing I try to do. If I want to meet somebody who is very high profile, I'll try to find common ground with them and something that we have in common. It's like if they wrestled in high school and college. Well, guess what, we're going to have some cool conversations. It does not have to be about business. And then once they're like, Tim Ferriss is somebody who's fun to have drinks with, then sometime later, if I want or need their advice on something, we'll get there. But don't be in a rush. You need to try to establish your network before you need it.

Yeah, I noticed you didn't Say you asked someone for money or you ask someone to write a blurb on your book or something like that. If you were to do that the first time you meet, boy, how do.

You think that person feels? Yeah, and I get. And I'm sure this happens to you, too. I get probably 20 requests a week from people I haven't heard from in.

A year or never.

And they're like, hey, sorry for the short notice, but this is who I am, and my book's coming out next week. I'd really appreciate a blurb and maybe you can put it on your blog.

Yeah, I just got that this week.

I feel like a whore. Thank you. No, no, that's the wrong way to go about it.

Yeah.

And it closes the door for the future.

So I want to spend a couple minutes talking about this as well, because here's what. In my opinion, when you want to meet someone, the first question is, why do you want to meet them? A lot of times we get intoxicated by the idea of, I want to meet Oprah. Well, why? What's the point of that? Sometimes you just know, though. You know, like, this person's interesting, and I bet we have stuff to talk about. The first thing I would say is, put yourself in their mind. If you're trying to meet Oprah or Tim Ferriss or something like that, you.

Got to do your homework.

What is it that somebody really busy wants? Stop thinking about what you want and think about what they want. And I'll give you an example. This is a great case study, applying pretty much what Tim just said. So a friend of mine wanted to meet Tim, and what did he do? He went through me because I wasn't as busy as Tim, and he asked me what I wanted. He did his research, he looked up all my delicious stuff, and he realized, oh, Ramit needs help editing video Rath. And so he said, I'll help you do video, and I'll help you do it for free. He offered to help me for free, which was a huge incentive for me. What is it that I'm concerned with in terms of mitigating risk? It's like paying some dude who's not going to deliver. Just wasting my time for three months. This guy said, I'll help you. I'll do it for free. In fact, here's a video that I've already done. What better way could you use to meet someone and impress them? So after I qualified him to be pretty good, then I introduced him to Tim, and I'll just say that he didn't ask for anything upfront. He certainly didn't ask for anything that would require a lot of time. But he spent time researching what I needed. And then he showed himself to be a cool guy. He showed a couple people he had in common. And then it turned out that Tim.

And I were in common too.

So I would just reiterate what you said. Don't go to someone when you need something. Do it a year or ideally two.

Or three years before.

And the other thing is, make sure you're interesting, too. There's a lot of people who want to meet and they're just like, oh, yeah, we should grab coffee. There's like 50 people who want to do that a week. So hopefully you have something in your portfolio, whether it's a blog or anything that will get people to be interested in chatting with you, because I bet there is something interesting. You just have to figure out how to represent it. The other thing that I like to.

Point out, I'm not going to mention by name, but the same guy has been very specific.

Yes.

Okay, so it wasn't, hey, let's meet up.

I'll do anything to help.

I just need you to give me direction in my life. That is a scary email to get because it's like, can you please be my free consultant for life? Or therapist for life, even worse. Instead, it's like, hey, you seemed like you could have needed this and this. Or I saw in your comments on this post and in Delicious that people were asking for this. I just went ahead and did it. Here's a link. No hard feelings if you don't use.

It, but I just went ahead and did it is the sweetest words that I can hear. They're the best things ever. And if someone emails me, for example, and says, like, I have 10k sitting in my bank account, what should I do to me, if I write back, which I probably won't, it is, have you read my blog? From beginning to end. If you haven't done that basic homework, then you're pretty much just raising your hand and saying, it's not worth the time to spend. So do the homework before you meet somebody, know everything about them, and then you'll have a much more specific questionnaire.