Leveraging Experts

What if you have a vision but have no idea where to start?

Find folks who have answers. People who’ve done what you want to do.

• Go on Amazon and find the 3 highest rated books on the topic you’re interested in. Purchase and read them. (That will likely get you 80% of the way there.) Take notes. Adjust your plan.
• Find podcast interviews from highly rated podcasts. Take notes. Adjust your plan.
• Go on YouTube and find video interviews or guides that have a lot of views. Take notes. Adjust your plan.
• Track down these folk’s contact information. Often they have a website for speaking or consulting. Or they’ll be on LinkedIn or Twitter.
• Most people mess up here by getting greedy. They ask to meet in person, or have an hour Zoom call to “pick their brain.” These folks are busy. You need to make it super easy for them.
• Thank them for writing the book (or doing the podcast, or whatever). Ask for 15 minutes over Zoom. Honor it.
• Even better, acknowledge how busy they are, and ask if they can answer 3 very specific questions over email. Or send them your draft vision plan and ask them if they see any major problems with it. (Don’t get discouraged if they don’t reply. Your hit rate will likely be 10-20% - although I bet the specificity of the questions, and the detail of the plan will help.)

Some examples from my own life:

Personal Trainer:

I have a torn labrum in my hip. I had to stop working out entirely and did physical therapy for a year.

I listened to a podcast interview with Peter Attia, and he mentioned a flexibility and longevity-based approach to working out. Peter Attia is very famous and was unlikely to reply to me. But I went on his Instagram account and found some posts with his personal trainer. She had considerably fewer followers.

I sent her a DM and asked her if she had any online resources to recommend, and/or if she knew of any trainers in Chicagoland who specialized in her approach. She replied and suggested I check out a website that had a directory of them. Found my guy there.

Being a good VC:

Once we decided to get into venture, I knew I needed to learn a ton. My partner bore the brunt of fundraising, and I was expected to be more of an operating partner.

Once we started getting firm commitments in the door, I reached out to ~50 VCs on Twitter. I didn’t reach out prior because I knew they probably get bombarded with people who vaguely want to get into VC. Figured my hit rate would be much higher with “We’ve raised $3M so far, and I’m thinking ahead.”

Learned a ton about how they think about diligence, how they negotiate term sheets, how they manage the portfolio post-investment, how they try to add value, how they think about the “platform” aspect of their business, how they manage LP relationships and more. Was incredibly helpful.

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