 I would love to work with you in person, however, to get things going. I'm willing to do a two-week trial period, unpaid, remote. If things don't work out, no hassles, no problem at all. Make this as much of a no-brainer as you possibly can. And to round things off, a bonus. This can come as the PS to your message. In psychology, there's another idea, there's another principle called the recency effect. The idea that the last impression you leave someone with is the one that will be most memorable. You can think of going along to a terrible film, but if the ending's kind of okay, you leave with a better impression of that film. The bonus here is some sort of tasty tip or information that you can give this person. Some sort of small thing. It doesn't have to be professional, it can be personal, such as my getting O in the book, it could be sending a link to a funny video, something that helps them with a small problem. This will leave the taste in their mouth of you being someone who helps them. That will be the last impression that you leave them with. Some of the mistakes that people make, what are some of the big mistakes? I've said I've received hundreds, if not thousands of these emails. Firstly, spelling. I wish I didn't have to say this, but judging from my inbox, I absolutely do. It astounds me the number of people who still don't know the difference between you and you are. The number of people who will write into Matthew and spell Matthew with one T or Hussie with one S. I will delete an email like that as soon as I see it. The second, do not write LOL, do not write ha ha ha, do not write anything which would suggest that this is a text message to your best friend. While being over the top formal is just as much of a mojo killer, you need to find a subtle balance somewhere in the middle that's warm and friendly, but that's not in any way sloppy, that still maintains its professionalism. One smiley face to get really practical with that, one smiley face. Next, use a neutral font. Now, this sounds as though we're really getting into minutiae here, but I learned this painfully myself. When I was once a number of years ago first contacting a guy called Ryan Holliday, who at the time was director of marketing for American apparel. I decided that I would use Comic Sans. And the reason I did this is because when I first began working with Matthew and the company, there was one person who kept writing to us in Comic Sans and they were memorable. So I thought if I apply the same principle and I write to this person with Comic Sans, it will leave a memorable impression. Now, Ryan, not one to mince his words, responded to my email. He responded to my message, but he added a PS at the end. I would seriously consider changing your font. When I opened this message, I thought it had been sent from a teenage girl, use a neutral font. Do not use the word mental. Do not use the word mental. Doing so is kind of like going to a bar, approaching someone, and in a serious face, in a straight tone, will you be my girlfriend? Or will you be my boyfriend, again, to a female audience? No one wants to be your mental. The thing you're going for is proximity without the label. Do not ask for them to be your mental. Again, you're not asking for anything. You're just saying how you can make this person more successful. Do not sign off or have your message sign off sent from iPad or sent from iPhone. Again, going to the recency effect here, this will leave the impression that you just hammered this out in five minutes in the back of a taxi. Now, if you've gone through all of the steps that we just went through, it might have taken you a week or a fortnight to craft this email. If you have it sign off with that, it kills all of the hard work you put into it. And lastly, do not in any way suggest that you are going to become this person's competition. If you're writing to someone and saying, I'm looking to become you, I'm looking to become your next big competition, why is that person going to want to train you? If you have big plans, that's fantastic. Keep them to yourself at this stage. And really when you're working with them as well, there's no reason that they should know your big plans. With all of this said, you must pull the trigger. You must pull the trigger. Do not let the enemy be the perfect of the good, as the old saying from Voltaigos. You must pull the trigger. And it's going to be scary as hell to do. I remember I was trembling when I phoned Matt. I was shaking when I handed Owen the book. Hitting send on this email is going to be no different. You're going to worry, is there still spelling mistakes in here? Am I doing this? Am I doing that wrong? At the end of the day, the only way this is actually going to pay off is if you take the risk and take action. You must pull the trigger. Now, the last two final steps with this. Who here hates waiting? Whether it's a text message from a girl that you've just sent and you're waiting for a response. Whether it's exam results. Whether it's getting a response back from an email like this. Waiting fucking sucks. I truly believe, and I'm stealing this from a Samsung advert, that impatience is the virtue. Not patience. People got it the wrong way around. The impatience. Impatience leads to innovation. It brought us jets. It brought us phones. It brought us faster cars. Impatience is the virtue of a very impatient person. And so the idea of waiting for a response like this near kills me. The way to overcome this and the way to put yourself back into a position of power is to go and get more options. Matthew's brother, Steven, wrote a fantastic article about this very idea, this idea of fretting, anxiously waiting for things. And in this article, he told the story of the writer-director Kevin Smith. And how Kevin Smith had just turned in a big script to a big Hollywood studio. And he was sitting around on his hands, just trembling as we, fretting as we so often do. But he decided to sit down at his laptop and begin working on his next script. He worked very hard on it for a number of days. And after he did, or just in a matter of a week, he had something he was equally, if not more excited about than the one that he had just turned in. If you go out and you're really anxious and nervous about a girl that you're just texting, go out and meet more people. Get a broader base. This is the way to get over it. So as soon as you have sent this message, as soon as you've sent, begin working on your next. With that said, you must persist. You must be persistent with this person. Now persistence can be your friend. If you take it too far, it can be your enemy. Your mindset has to be that this person has no obligation to respond. Despite all of the work that you put into such a message and all the work you put into understanding this person and really getting inside the head, you have to appreciate that it's still work for them to respond. It's still work for them to bring you on and open a conversation here. With that said, how willing you are to keep putting yourself up to the top of this person's inbox can really be the defining feature of whether or not they respond or whether or not they get back to you. To persist, getting real practical again, you can send something to the effect of, hey, I know you're incredibly busy. I know you have a lot going on, but I'm just bumping this up to the top of your inbox to see if I could possibly get a response. I hope you're doing great. If any other objections have come up since sending this first email, include them. If you have any other bonuses, as ammunition up your sleeve, use them at this point. Again, going back to the idea of having a single line of intent at the top, sending a chaser like this can make it all the more easy for someone to actually digest the email and then respond to it. Again, getting very technical here, do not send a second email. Do not use a new email. Respond to the one that you've already sent so they're not having to look it up in their inbox and go back and find you and creating extra work for them. So it's a recap here, and I'm gonna lay down a challenge. For everyone.