This One Skill Will Set You Apart From Your Peers

It isn’t what you’d expect

I’ve always done things differently, for better or for worse. If one way was the right way, but everyone was doing it, I would proceed to walk in the opposite direction, only because it makes things a little more interesting. This has gotten me in some situations in my life. Mostly good, yet sometimes bad situations.

Throughout my short 23 years on earth, there has been one thing that I’ve always pondered. Why am I achieving the things that I achieve that seem to be much harder for other people?

For example, how did I get to meet Robert Scoble and spend 1 hour in a hotel room with him at Ben Marx at CES 2016? How did I get the gig to be the videographer for the ASU cheerleading team my junior year of college? How did I sell services to three startups without any track record whatsoever?

It’s really simple. I’ll let the king of startups ring it in:

Persistence. It is a skill I possess and I am always on my craft to improve it.

Everyone tries something once. Everyone messages that CEO once and hopes to get a response. Everyone applies for the job once and hopes to get it. Everyone only buys one lottery ticket and hop…..wait, just kidding. But in reality, the amount of people who follow up with anything in life is quite minimal.

Case Study: My message exchange with Robert Scoble.

Guess who ended up meeting him? I did, and it was awesome. I initiated that conversation five times, but because of my persistence, we now have somewhat of a relationship where we FB chat from time to time. I guarantee you if I messaged him once or twice and expected him to message me back, nothing would have happened. It doesn’t always work out though.

I’ve email Gary Vaynerchuk 6 different times and no dice.

But you know what? Because of that, I now have a relationship with his assistant, Andy Krainak. Whenever I have something cool I want to share, I usually send it to Andy because I know he’ll check it out and give me feedback. It’s all baby steps.

I promise you, being persistent…annoyingly persistent is why people win. So next time you apply for that job. Next time you cold email your idol. Next time you decide you want to write for PubLoft; Make sure you follow up. How many times? Follow up more times than any sane person would follow up. If you’re looking for a number, I’d say somewhere in between 5–7. Ideally more.