I watched Sam Parr’s “Cold Emailing 101” lecture the other day. The lesson was so good; But it was hard for me to stomach the embarrassment I felt for things I’ve been doing wrong. But before I start descending into the negative spiral, here’s the one sentence takeaway of the lecture.

“Create values and follow up because people don’t care about you.”

The steps he laid out in the lecture were straightforward and his explanations were just as crystal clear. Everything seemed absolutely doable. Yet, I felt something disquiet inside for a couple of days. Took me a while to pinpoint the source of anxiety I was feeling, but yep, it was my ego again.

I was comparing myself to unknown others and doubting myself. 

My design is not good enough. My writing sucks even more. I don’t have millions of daily subscribers. You gotta give first before you can even ask for anything in return. There is no free lunch in this world. What can I give when I have nothing of value in the first place? My inner voices kept twirling in my mind.

Luckily, Sam already provided the answer for me: People don’t care about you. To put it more candidly, he also said, “You just gotta f***ing do it.” 

It kind of sounds cold and inhumane on the surface but the flip side of the coin says you are also free to explore and make mistakes. It’s true that people don’t care about you, but now I can see it as a blessing in disguise. If I make a mistake in the process of creating value, people don’t care because all they care about is themselves. 

To prove his point, Sam shared his screen with audience. He had hundreds of unread emails and thousands of unread notifications. In this situation, nobody can possibly care very much about what an each message says. All anyone can care about is a message that brings most value to him/her and the rest of them will be either ignored or forgotten. 

Still, creating values and delivering them from right angle is tough. You have to go through the process of trial and error to figure out what your true value is. Luck certainly plays a role. Timing may not be right. You could be asking a wrong person. But you’d never know until you ask. It’s just a process you have to go though. Spamming everyone is not cool, but not taking calculated risk by being afraid of accidentally annoying someone is just as uncool. 

Again to illustrate his point, he showed audience his real examples of what the success looks like.

“Look at this kid. He’s been hounding me for weeks! And I love it!” 

He was talking about a guy who has been sending Sam a river of unsolicited messages basically saying Sam’s social media sucks and how he could make it better. He also shared an episode about how he followed up and got a deal with a media industry mogul who once told him no. 

Value is vague. It changes all the time. Masks had no value outside of clinics in the pre-Covid 19, for example. And everyone values something different. I guess this is where the confusion about value comes from. Everyone in the business world says deliver value. But, myself at least, have hard time saying what truely is valuable. 

There seems to exist a confusion about value creation. And that is why there lies an opportunity. 

My priority should be given to keeping my creative flow going. Will it be valuable? Who knows. Who values what, is hard to know. You never know until you ask. That’s when the technical skill and mental strength of cold emailing comes handy. 

Remember: People don’t care. Keep going. Be at the right place, at the right time, with the right people. Maybe the sales process is the act of seeking the right combination of these.