TL;DR: Sometimes you get a yes. In August of 2019 I went looking for the highest person I could find at Burton Snowboards, and on the eighth I sent a cold email asking for help with equipment. It turned out I had emailed Jake Burton’s assistant. I picked a pretty good person.
I needed equipment to keep riding and I could not afford it. So I sat down and did the thing I hate more than almost anything on this earth, which is ask for help. I went online, found the highest person at Burton Snowboards I could identify, and on August 8, 2019, I sent an email to somebody who had never heard of me.
I had no idea I was emailing Jake Burton’s assistant.
In the email I explained what I was asking for and why. I told them snowboarding had given me back independence and freedom I had not felt since my stroke. I told them about the schools I was speaking in across the U.S. and Canada, and what I thought we could do together on a mountain and in a gym full of teenagers. Then I hit send and went and did something else, because there is nothing worse than watching an inbox.
The answer came back yes.
Asking has never gotten easier for me, and I do not want to stand up as a corporate keynote speaker and pretend otherwise. What changed is the math I run first. If I do not ask, the answer is already no. The worst thing that can actually happen is that somebody does not write back, or writes back to say no — and I have survived both a great many times.
Everybody has ideas. Most people don’t act on them.
— I’m Not Limping. That’s Swagger!, Chapter 9
Somebody at Burton opened an email from a Kelsey Tainsh they had never heard of. Everything since has come from that.
How to send the email you are scared of
- Aim high. Assistants route things; nobody at the bottom can.
- Say what you want and what they get, in plain sentences.
- Send it and close the tab. Watching does not speed anything.
There is a lot more of this in my book, including the four years before anybody said yes to me at all. If your team has a room full of good ideas nobody has acted on, that is the talk I most want to give as a corporate keynote speaker.
Book: https://kelseytainsh.com/kelseys-book/ · Speaking: https://kelseytainsh.com/corporate-keynotes/
Questions I get about cold outreach
Why email the top of the company instead of the department that handles it?
Because a request travels downhill much better than it travels up. When I emailed Burton I aimed at the highest person I could find, and it landed with Jake Burton’s assistant, who could actually put it in front of somebody. A note sent to a general inbox has to be championed by a stranger. A note sent down arrives with weight already on it.
Isn’t it pushy to ask a company you have no relationship with?
I worried about that for weeks, which is weeks I will never get back. Here is what I know now. Busy people are not fragile, and a clear, short, respectful ask is very easy to decline. If somebody says no or never answers, you are exactly where you were before you hit send, minus the wondering.
What do you do when there is no answer at all?
Wait a couple of weeks, follow up once, and then let it go and ask somebody else. Silence is not a verdict on your idea. Most of the time it is a full inbox on a bad week. The people I know who eventually get a yes are almost never the most talented ones. They are the ones still sending emails in month nine.
Quote Q35 pulled from Chapter 9. Confirm against print edition before publishing.
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