Thank You For Saving My Life

Hi Sebastian,

So first of all, it was really nice to talk on Hangout yesterday. Watching this young dude flip out during the interview made me realize how much I have changed since we first met, one year ago.

I was going to get an internship at a big audit firm. I was going to wear a suit and work long hours for a small pay with guys who were probably as skeptical as I was at the idea of filling spreadsheets and drawing Powerpoint presentations all day long.

And when I got back to Paris, I was going to work for a consulting firm. But then I saw this guy, my interviewer, at the firm’s offices. He was amazingly bright. He was so sharp that I felt like a total idiot. But he looked bored, he looked dead inside. And I couldn’t do that. I just couldn’t. And I failed the test, obviously. I wasn’t hungry enough.

I wasn’t because I am not the person I was last year. My life has changed so much that I am no longer able to follow the path. I can no longer accept the undisputed evidence that we have to walk in line and wait for our turn because it is safe, because it is what people do. I want my turn to come now.

This is also the reason why I refused the startup job. The one where the CEO wanted to pay me half the minimum wage for doing his work.

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Since I decided not to work in audit, there hasn’t been a single day that I haven’t learned something fantastic.

Right now, I am an unemployed student. I have zero fucking euros on my bank account (jeez, even less than this). I have no title, no official skills, no company to back my unknown name. I have no 5 years plan, definitely no 10 years plan. (How can you plan the next ten years without having a stroke?)

But every day I wake up. I see the sun through the window, I feel this raw morning energy and I feel like I own the world. And nothing can break this feeling. Because I do what I love, and what I love is to live my own life.

Remember when you put me in front of this Chase VP banker to negotiate a line of credit? I had barely stepped foot on the US soil, my English was terrible, and so was his. I wish I had recorded this conversation. It was pure nonsense for fifteen minutes, as none of us understood what the other one was saying.

But that was fun.

You don’t need to be a 40 year old VP to talk to a banker. Nor do you need to be an expert to start a company, write a book, dance or just be good to people.

Since last year, I have learned how a company works. I have learned to know, respect and understand people. I have learned that they can be happy after all, and that the models that I got were not representative of how life can and should be.

I have started a blog, I read two hours and write tens of ideas a day, I am learning how to code and I have workout every single day. I have cleaned the mess in my personal life, to get closer to the person that I want to be. It took time, and pain, but it’s for the best.

I have so many ideas of things that I want to do that I would like to have ten bodies so I could do them all.

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I am no longer afraid of anyone, for no one can take back the fact that I love my life. I fucking love my life.

I started giving to people without keeping score, just like you did with me. And people give back, they do.

I started helping young people to find jobs like the one you gave me. I want my generation to break free from the path they’ve been walking on their whole life. There is no point in waiting for things to come, because timing will always be wrong, and the world is changing.

There is a point, however, in doing whatever we want to do, without regretting the past or worrying about the future. Without time travelling. There is a point in questioning the undisputed evidence and walking away from the expected path.

It’s funny how small decisions can affect your life.

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For all of this, I wanted to say thank you, Sebastian.

For the trust and confidence you put in me when I needed it, for the smile you manage to keep when piles of shit are raining from the sky, and for the genuine help you provide to people. I am sure they will give it back to you in a thousand amazing ways.

You might not be the best at micro-managing, but you are the best macro-manager that I ever met with.

I will be eternally grateful, for you helped change my life forever.

Go Scalr!

If you want more of this stuff, write your email address in the little box at the top-right corner of this page! Also, you can follow me on Twitter!

Stop Playing By the Rules. Start Breaking Them.

Yesterday I met with a good friend of mine. He’s afraid his school is not good enough, and that he will be stuck because of this. He is thinking about entering a $40,000 program in London to catch up on the competition. I think you are wrong, you’re trying to play by the rules. You have to break them.

The game is not in your favor

That’s true, a lot of companies won’t even look at your resume if you’re not from a top school. But are they really the kind of companies you want to work for? They won’t look at you because they don’t need you, just as they don’t need me. In fact, they don’t need anyone. They get a million resumes each year from people competing for the same position. When I got into HEC, I thought: “This is it. Life is going to be easy now.” Truth be told, it became even harder. When you’re competing with the best, you can’t win.

Alright, I come from the best business school in France. But who am I compared to a Stanford, Harvard or Yale graduate? Who am I against a guy that went to Cambridge or Oxford? Who am I against children of famous, rich and successful people? I come from a fucking buddhist camp! I come from nowhere.

There are too many intelligent, incredibly talented people on this planet. Do you really think you can be the greatest at one thing? Do you think that you can keep being the best when even Eminem is starting to look like a joke? Look at how people come and go in every industry. Staying at the top is too hard. I’ve been playing my Playstation for the last eighteen years and I now get my ass kicked by twelve year old kids, is this my reward for working so hard?

Where do you want to go?

Degrees are just a ticket for your first interview at a huge company, but you can’t win the game this way. Smart people know that they have to cheat to get where they want to go. Yes, it means that you need to know where you want to go. It’s really hard. We feel like we’ve been making life-changing decisions in complete uncertainty our whole life. If you’re lucky, you know that you want to become a judge, a pilot, or own a bakery. If you’re like most of us, you’re just afraid of making the wrong move.

Here is a a good way of knowing where you want to go, the only one that works for me: think about who you don’t want to be. It’s a lot easier to know what you don’t like than to know what you really like (remember high school classes?).For instance, I know I don’t want to be stuck. This is something that frightens me for obvious reasons. I don’t want to be another cog in the machine, I can’t accept the fact that I am just another piece of meat, even if I am. I want to be completely free. In order for my body to be free I need money, in order for my mind to be free I need to keep learning all the time.

Believe it or not, it already eliminates a lot of jobs and companies in my mind. Try to figure out where you want to go, set yourself a realistic goal for the next two years and go for it. You won’t fail. You will increase your chances of being the one you want to be. It’s ok to change your mind, but it’s not ok to not give it a shot.

How to play a new game

The game is not in your favor, so create your own set of rules. You’re not from the top business school in France. So what? Nothing stops you from meeting the people who are there. The simple fact that we met demonstrates how easy it is. You don’t feel competent for not having studied X or Y? Grab the fifty best books on the subject, read 5 hours a day. In one month you will know as much as the bad graduates, in one year you’ll be a pro. Everything you need to know is in books, and school is overrated. Don’t pay 40k to spend a few more years learning nothing. If you play differently, you’ll be where you want to be in one year.

Playing a different game is all about the people, it’s about the network. You do have a network, everybody does. It is not only what you acquire through your school, but one of your muscles that you need to work every day. You need to make friends, which means you need to reach out to people and figure out how to help them, without keeping score. The only risk you’re taking is rejection, which means it can’t hurt you. It’s like talking to a pretty girl you don’t know. The reward is worth the risk, isn’t it?

Let’s say you want to work at company X, but you’re afraid that they will not hire you because of the school you went to. Ask yourself these questions before giving up:

• Have you met one-on-one with at least 15 people from this company?
• Did you try to figure out how you could help every one of them?
• Did you ask all your family and friends if they know somebody who works there, or somebody who knows somebody?
• Have you spied on this company? Do you know everything there is to know about it?

When I applied to consulting firms last winter, I sent twelve resumes with cover letters to all of the most prestigious companies. I got eleven negative answers. The only positive answer I got, I got it because I had reached out to one of their employees and made friends with her. She pushed my resume, because this is how the world works.

A lot of people still play by the old rules. This is you luck. When I was 16, with no brain and a music band, I wanted to leave school to try my luck in the music industry. Buy a van, tour, record an EP, all this very dumb stuff. My grandfather advised me that if I wanted to do this, I needed to be serious and go to the conservatory to become at least an excellent musician. He wanted me to compete, but competition was never an option for me.  How many excellent musicians do you know? Maybe one. How many terrible musicians with really successful bands? A lot more. The famous guys understood they couldn’t win by playing the old rules. I’m glad I didn’t leave school, my band was terrible and by know I would be a starving idiot. If you understand that changing the rules of the game you are playing is vital, you will have an unfair advantage over most people.

Clear your mind

Figuring out where you want to go is still the hardest part. It’s the major decision one can make in his life, and it’s stressful. But don’t worry, if you’re a good player, you will never get stuck. James Altucher, whose posts I read a lot on Quora, often tells the story of how he switched careers a thousand times. He founded a company, sold it, became rich, went broke, founded another company in a totally different industry, sold it, became an author, created a show on the radio, etc. You can go wherever you want to, as long as you keep breaking the rules and knowing where you’re going.

If someday you reach a decision, if you find a company that amazes you and people you want to be with, get inside! Don’t hesitate, and don’t negotiate too much. As we’re all starting to realize, embark on a good trip is an uncommon luck. So when you’ll be given the possibility to take place in a spaceship, don’t ask which seat.

This thinking process requires you to have a clear mind. Every bad decision I made in my life, every negative action that impacted people I care about was made under the influence of stress, or alcohol, or both. A run in the park is perfect to process your thoughts. Don’t worry, we’re all 23. We’re all stressed, and I never sleep at night. Don’t feel like you are stuck, you’re the only one in charge of who you will become. Spin the wheel yourself. It’s all about showing up.

Right now you are trying to win by playing the old rules, start trying some new ones. Good luck!

Why Working Alone Sucks

For the past year, I’ve been so obsessed by the idea of founding a startup that I rushed into it as soon as I got back to France. I didn’t take the time to find a team because I thought it wouldn’t matter. It did. Working alone sucks.

It sucks on the technical side

When working alone, you can only rely on your own ideas. If you’re lucky, you are a genius and pure gold is coming out of your brain every time you gather your thoughts. If you’re like me, you are jotting random shit on a piece of paper and changing your mind every five minutes about what needs to be done and why. Working alone means that you can’t play ping-pong with other people’s ideas. You can’t challenge your own thoughts (that’s a limited process) and you can’t benefit from other people’s skills and knowledge. You can’t delegate. You’re a hundred times less intelligent, less effective, less motivated.

Founding a startup is a lot about convincing others. It’s a very hard thing to do when you are the only believer. Potential customers would be more likely to trust you if you had other customers. Potential employees would be more likely to join you if you already had employees. It’s Catch 22. Convincing someone takes much more effort than it would if you had a team. You quickly reach a point where it doesn’t make any sense.

It sucks on the personal side

Have you ever tried to kick yourself in the butt all week long? When you don’t answer to anyone except yourself, it’s easy to be a very nice boss. I’ve been amazingly creative at implementing loose management methods and I can proudly say that my company has the best office hours in the country. Seriously, there are days when you are on fire and days when you feel like shit, but it’s tough to be productive all week long. When you’re part of a team (two people is a team!) you can’t let the other ones down. You need to prove that you’re worth working with and that you’re worth leading.

In the end,  there’s no fun in carrying a project alone. I learnt that the people matter way more than the project, the company name, the prestige or the money. I would probably be eager to join a paper company in Scranton if its employees were as amazing as they are in The Office. There’s no joy in succeeding when you can’t high-five anyone after a success, be it small or big. Trust me, high-fives matter.

So if you had the foolish idea of starting a business on your own because you still haven’t found the right team, please don’t! Good things come to those who wait. Summer is here, and sitting in a park with a nice book is a good way of waiting for them.

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OpenStack Summit and why Geeky Things Matter

I might be the youngest attendee of the OpenStack summit this year. I am probably the only one who never used Linux. I actually didn’t pay attention to technologies until August of 2014. That’s when I did an internship atScalr, in San Francisco.

While I had been studying law, political science and business, it had never occurred to me that software was important. I now realize that I was missing something. For the past 8 months, I have been discovering a whole new world, which now passionates me.

Software Land

You never know what is going to happen in software land. Companies start and fail every five minutes, people get hired then fired and you will probably get outdated by a 16 years old boy who invented something totally new.

People love it because it is a land of unlimited challenges and opportunities. A good idea executed by a good team can lead to extreme success. I love it too. It doesn’t seem to know where it’s going, kind of like me.

Software is exciting, it carries the future in it. It is NASA, space missions powered by cloud infrastructures. It contrasts with the industries that have always scared me, the old and prestigious ones. Software makes me enthusiastic because it is going forward, and fast.

Software feels like pure opportunity, with high risks and high rewards. It carries all the promises of an interesting life, the possibility to finally do something fun. If work is fun, aren’t you already on the right track?

An Interesting Species

The people from Silicon Valley are different from what I am used to in Europe. The tech community has its own culture. These guys are total geeks, and most of them don’t care about the day-to-day money, they would do what they do for free.

It is hard to spot the millionaires, even though a fair amount of them are. A lot of them wear absurd clothes that really don’t fit at all. It doesn’t interest them, it seems. They are frugal people.

Technology is the only thing that matters. These men and women pay ridiculous premiums to live close to people like them, as in the Bay Area. This is a very homogenous environment, but not a hermetic one, I believe. Anybody with a laptop can get in.

Of course, this is not a place for everybody. It is easy for regular people to feel out of place. I often do. Indeed, I’m interested in software and technology, but these people are obsessed.

They will talk all night long about the capacities of a computer, or the way cloud allows you to scale your web infrastructure. Such a level of interest can look a little weird to people like me, that also enjoy talking about sports, about cinema, about « futile » things of the day-to-day life.

It is however this level of obsession that makes these guys capable of everything, because it makes them the best at what they do, and they will never stop.

Something is Happening

Although each new project is described as a world-changing breakthrough, it’s easy to forget that their world is much different from the normal one. Software hasn’t eaten the small village in which I grew up, not yet. People there won’t see self-driving cars until long.

In fact, everything doesn’t lead to software and normal people are still the fuel of the day-to-day life. Try to explain to your Grandma how BitTorrent works and you’ll know what I am talking about.

Still, something is happening here. It has been happening for a long time but I wasn’t paying attention. Now, it’s hard not to think about how many of these weird geniuses it took to build the laptop that I’m using to write this. It’s crazy to see executives from huge companies talking with the first intern that wants to learn something (me in this case), to see this will of transmitting knowledge and experience to the younger generation and to help people when they ask for it.

I still don’t understand 50% of the discussions here, but I would spend a whole month at the OpenStack summit if I could. These guys are onto something, something that matters. I feel stupid for waking up so late. Guys from the tech industry, you now have my whole attention.

Avancer ou Mourir

S’il est difficile d’entreprendre quelque chose de nouveau, il est encore bien plus compliqué d’aller au bout de ce que l’on entreprend. Voici quelques principes que j’essaie de me remémorer lorsque les choses coincent :

Définir un Cap

Pour éviter de me noyer dans les questions existentielles, j’essaye tant que possible d’intégrer mes actions dans une vision globale. Pour cela, il s’agit de modifier quelque peu la question préférée des DRH : “où voulez-vous être dans trois ans?” Elle devient “qui voulez-vous être?” La vraie question ici porte sur la personne que vous voulez devenir. Elle se définira par les choses que vous aurez accomplies, par vos succès et vos échecs. Tout le monde en a une vague idée. Se la remémorer régulièrement et se donner des objectifs à six mois, un an ou trois ans doit permettre de rester sur les rails.

Suis-je sur le bon chemin, ou en train de sortir du sentier? Introduire un élément planificateur aide à donner un sens à ses actions. Le but final n’est il pas la poursuite du bonheur? J’ai entendu dire qu’il y avait deux manières d’être heureux :  être heureux dans la vie, et être heureux de sa vie. La différence tient à la présence ou non d’un sentiment d’accomplissement, lié à la capacité de chacun à substituer des objectifs de long terme à la satisfaction de plaisirs immédiats. En anglais : “no pain, no gain”.

Une fois que l’on a une idée du sens à donner à ses actions, il est temps de s’attaquer au gaspillage. Réduire le nombre d’activités pour ne pas s’éparpiller et garder celles qui se mettent directement au service de ce but. Eviter la procrastination qui à la longue nous coutera nos rêves et, enfin, s’employer aux bonnes choses. Ce qui laisse des regrets, ce n’est pas de travailler dur, c’est de travailler dur quand cela n’a pas de sens.

Avancer à petits pas

Pour ne pas rester bloqué, il faut donc foncer dans la bonne direction. Cela implique de sortir de sa zone de confort, de faire face à des nouveaux défis, à l’inconnu. Avancer comporte des risques, celui de s’exposer au monde, celui d’échouer. Pourtant, il y a bien plus de risque à ne rien faire qu’à commencer de nouvelles choses tous les jours. Combien de fois nous décourageons-nous avant même d’avoir vraiment essayé? Se lancer est effrayant mais rester assis finira par couter très cher.

Le monde récompense moins la perfection que la productivité. Il n’est pas nécessaire d’être un ingénieur de génie pour créer une entreprise, un téléphone et un carnet suffisent souvent au départ. La recherche de la perfection dès le commencement ne mène à rien sinon au doute, à la peur et à l’abandon. La répétition d’actes imparfaits est la seule façon viable de toujours avancer. Un petit pas quotidien vaut mieux qu’un grand bond tous les ans. En se retournant, on se rendra compte que l’on a fait beaucoup, beaucoup de petits pas.

La répétition permet d’acquérir cette fameuse “expérience” tant convoitée, celle qui ne s’achète pas. L’expérience est faite de temps, un bien rare dont on ne dispose qu’en quantité finie. Pas de life-hack pour devenir la personne que l’on veut devenir, ni pour acquérir la confiance nécessaire à l’accomplissement de grandes choses. Tous les débutants sont mauvais au départ, mais ceux qui ne commencent pas le resteront.

Pour conclure

Le bonheur et l’épanouissement sont des problématiques personnelles, il ne s’agit pas d’être en avance sur les autres, mais d’avancer pour soi. La course se fait en solo, la victoire s’obtient par étapes. Ne pas rester bloqué implique de toujours avancer. Pour cela, il faut d’abord choisir une direction. Ensuite, il faudra garder le cap.

N’hésitez pas à partager et à commenter 🙂

Why Startups Are The Only Way

I never wanted to work. I remember a seven years old version of me asking my father which jobs would make me rich without working too hard. “It’s not a job, he said, if you don’t work hard.” He didn’t like to work either. Work wasn’t fun.

 

Is work fun?

Ten years later I was the lead member of a music band and determined to never work “like a slave”, to never be a fool. Of course, I was a complete fool. I was wrong at all levels, the first being that I thought I wasn’t working. I was, actually working very hard to get this band going. I was spending hours writing, recording and editing music. I was organizing gigs, finding rehearsal sites, performing, going in the studio and I still had to go to class. I didn’t know I was working at the time. Was it because it was fun?

It took me some time to realize that life doesn’t have to be split between work and fun. When I think about it, this music band was actually my first startup. Startups are defined by the level of risk and uncertainty that clouds their future. We all spend our lives at our job. If work isn’t fun, life won’t probably be either. People who work in startups have understood something very important: if we want people to give their best, we need to create a place where it’s good to live A place that feels like home. Startups create their own work environment and set the tone. You can choose the people, the job, the culture. They want life to be fun, and they make work seem like life.

Startups don’t have time

“Move fast and break things”. I have always been scared of waiting. Wait too long and doubt invites himself. Startups don’t care about the rules.  They don’t have time to respect “how things are”, which creates problems with the established order. They don’t care about how the world is or used to be, only about the next step. They are those reckless young people who finally made it because of their recklessness.

Startups make dreams come true because they don’t mind the risks and value uncertainty. They think it’s worth it. The downside is that these companies don’t have time to babysit. They won’t keep you if you’re not as hungry as they are, if you don’t want to break things. Startups are a place of informality where you might not have to wait three years to get promoted, but they will fire you if your fire no longer burns. Startups don’t have time.

 

Stories to Tell

I often ask myself: “What’s my life goal”? Be happy? Sure, but how can you define happiness? I know what I am afraid of: regrets. I want to have stories to tell. In order to get these I think I need to take risks. I have never met a risk-taker who regretted his choices. All in all, we try and that’s the most important thing in life: trying. I want to create memories, to leave a mark if I can. Who’s not afraid of disappearing in a complete indifference?  What are children if not the desire to build a legacy, to give a purpose to our lives and actions?

Startups are like children. That’s no coincidence if founders call them “their babies”. They are an opportunity to take risks and to build memories that will last, like children are. It’s incredibly uncertain and risky, but I think it’s worth it. Stories are worth more than fortune and fame.

Eighteen years after talking with my dad, I still don’t want to work, but I am ready to have fun.

Life at the Buddhist Camp

In 1995, my mother decided to leave Paris and brought me with her to a Buddhist camp, in the Alps. I was three years old. My parents had already broken up so my dad remained in Paris.

Let me take you on a trip down memory lane!

Welcome to Disney Land

Have you seen the movie “The Beach”? Do you remember how Leonardo DiCaprio is living the dream as he steps foot on this wonderful secret island? That’s what we got, at first. The place was beautiful. It smelled like freedom, it felt quiet and good. People thought of themselves as different. They had developed a unique relationship with time. No capitalism there! You worked for the community, and the community helped you. My mom was employed there as a designer for their monthly magazine.

We had a small wooden house, so small that we slept in the same bed. My mother loved the place and she was involved in various activities. I remember that once, I woke up alone in the house, in the morning. I ran around the the entire camp in panic, shouting and sobbing. She was at the temple, meditating. They used to do this a lot, meditate. Meditate. How does it sound?

A True Fairy Tale

It sounds weird. Weird like Asian people working in the kitchens, without knowledge of French, without passports. Weird like a spiritual guide who likes to pop drugs and have sex with the newcomers. Bitter, like this question that still haunts my thoughts, 15 years after: “what about mom?” It sounds weird like a hundred happy faces, wandering in the camp, shaking hands and talking spirituality, when almost half of them had done some time in a mental facility. Everybody carries baggage, but theirs were of the heavy type.

At some point my mother had a boyfriend who looked like Billy Corgan from the Smashing Pumpkins. He was really nice and talked in a smooth, almost creepy voice. However, he didn’t want to drive a car, which used to annoy my mom. Why didn’t he want to drive? A few years before this he was in another car with his fiancee, the love of his life, when they got into a car accident. He made it, she didn’t. Of course, he was driving. This guy meditated a lot, too.

I remember this nice couple who had just had a son. He must be around fifteen now. His family collapsed when he was still a baby. Was it because the spiritual guide had sex with his mom in front of his father? The father was a fragile guy. I heard later that while performing, the guide was telling him: “elevate your mind”. They all meditated a lot, too.

I grew up surrounded by people who talked about how bad the outside world was. A whole society of men and women who had created their fantasy world and wanted to stick with it, no matter the cost.

Don’t Get Stuck in your Buddhist Camp

The world is full of Buddhist Camps, of people living in closed environments who don’t want to pay attention to what’s outside. They don’t see the dark side of their fantasy. They’re fine with it as long as it enables their dream to live longer. It took my mom ten years, multiple lawsuits and a few crazy moments to get out of this trap.

I have come a long way since then. Now that I think about it, I realize how much I owe these people. They changed my life. They made me understand early that I had to move fast and never stop. They showed me the damage that getting stuck in one world can do to your life.

We all have our comfort zones, it’s hard to break away from them. Those things seem obvious to us, so we don’t question them, we get blinded. Sometimes, breaking free is the only way to see things the way they truly are. If I could give one single piece of advice to the people I care about, it would be this: “don’t get stuck in your buddhist camp.”

I hope I won’t.

Nobody cares about you!

Today, a good friend of mine came to me, asking for my help. She had just applied to an internship, her dream position at a fast growing startup in New-York. After sending a very lengthy and cautiously written email detailing her brilliant education, her personality and her motivation, she got the following answer:

This is really interesting, but we don’t do less than a year.

Translate: “I couldn’t care less.”

The Common Trap

How rude! At least that’s what I would think if I received such an answer. Let’s take a quick glance at the email she sent him (small tip: you don’t have to read everything to see where I’m coming from):

Hello XXXX! I am writing to you now because I would really (really) love to do a brand & business development internship at XXXX this fall. I am available to intern full-time from August 2015 to January 2016, according to your needs.

I am a French student, a year and a half away from receiving my double degree in business and public affairs from School1 and School2 and I would love to enter the start up world through a very fast-growing start up, both tech and fashion oriented. Being a woman in a world where the brand name accounts for more than half the price and where the industry seems endlessly lead by few retailers, I feel strongly about this “revolution” you are launching. Your success is impressive and I would focus all my energy and my knowledge in marketing, communications, partnership management and business development on helping you achieve your ambitious goals.

Even if it would be my first experience in the start-up industry, I have a dynamic and entrepreneurial mind, I’m very curious and I have energy and initiative to get things done. Working at XXXX, a small but influential consulting company, I learned to understand the overall business model and market landscape, and had real responsibilities on projects of importance (Project1 and Project2). My marketing internship at XXXX enabled me to get acquainted with social media and web marketing, and taught me the importance of detail and of being well-organized in everything I’m doing. And after two internships in the public sector, where I really improved my analytical skills, I discovered that I could only see myself working in the dynamic and exciting start-up world, the only one really planning to change how things work (at least in my opinion).

Working with you would really be my dream internship and I feel that I could learn a lot from a successful and driven entrepreneur like you. Please find my résumé attached and please let me know if there is anything else I could do! Thank you so much for your time and I look forward to hearing back from you soon,

Best, 

XXXX

This is a pretty common email, you see a lot of these when you screen resumes and cover letters. The thing here is that my friend fell into a trap. She made one of the most common mistakes we make when trying to convince other people. She only talked about herself. She didn’t put herself in the other person’s shoes.

As Henry Ford said: ‘If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own’. I know, it sounds obvious. So why do we keep forgetting about it? The truth is that we’re only interested in us, and that it makes us blind to other people’s problems.

Let’s Trade Shoes

Let’s do our homework and put ourselves in this guy’s shoes. He is the CEO of a fast-growing business, he probably has a thousand problems. He needs to increase his company’s revenue, to avoid running out of cash, he has to deal with angry customers, his advisors are pressuring him, his employees are being poached, and he probably doesn’t have enough time to see with his family so tell me, why would he care about you?

My friend wants to get hired. She wants to go to New-York and experience the life of a startup in a fast-paced environment. She wants to be part of something that matters. But you know what? No one cares, except her. 

Nobody Cares About You

The only way to interest people is to tell them about what they want, not what you want. If you’ve done your homework, you know all there is to know about his business. Why not tell him about this new venture he’s launching and how you coud be useful to it? Why not show him how your specific skills could solve his specific issues?

You need to focus on his wants and needs, not yours. Don’t waste anyone’s time talking about yourself. As Dale Carnegie puts it in his best-selling book ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’:

“First, arouse in the other person an eager want “.

And then go get them.

PS: miracles happen, or so it seems. After hearing my advice, here’s what my friend sent back to the guy:

Dear XXXX, Thank you very much for your quick reply ! I realize my previous email might have missed the point : I know you’re busy and I am sorry if I wasted your time with all this information about me. I have a lot of admiration for what you’re currently trying to achieve with your company. I know that high-growth businesses face a lot of issues, including scaling their infrastructure and business model. You are close to launching your second venture and I would love to have an opportunity to talk about how I could contribute to this project. Could we schedule a call with you or anyone inside your team when there is some time? Thank you so much for your time and have a great day!

XXXX

I told her that she shouldn’t expect anything back, but a few minutes later, look at what she received:

 Now we’re talking 🙂

 Let’s schedule a call soon.

 M

Game on.