Stanford Cold Email Challenge

Shaan Puri shares a story about Tim Ferriss challenging Stanford business students to reach high-profile people through cold emails.

"Tim has this great story where he went to a Stanford business school course and offered a challenge. He said, 'I will give a round-the-world ticket, an all-expense paid round-the-world plane ticket, to anybody here who can get in touch with the highest kind of most hard-to-reach person.'

So the whole class was told to reach out to whoever they wanted. Whoever gets the person highest on the food chain gets a round-the-world ticket. By the end of the class, I think one person got like Bill Clinton or something like that. But most people - like only four or five people in the class got anybody.

When Tim asked what the difference was, it wasn't about the cold email script. It was basically that 85-90% of the class didn't even try. They just perceived it to be too hard. Anybody that tried reached somebody, and within that group, some people literally reached like a former sitting president.

The lesson is that most people just won't even try. This sounds hard but it's actually not that hard. You'll be surprised how much easier it is than you think."