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Ten-Minute Method Update and Interview With Marquis Parker

April 20, 2011 by Kenji Leave a Comment

It’s been nearly three months since my last blog post about making time for side-projects. Since then, I’ve mostly been in the process of redesigning goldhat.org and making a few small changes to the app itself before I start to plan a marketing campaign. I’m astonished how much devoting a minimum of ten minutes per day on this project has helped me get things done.

A word of warning to the Type A personalities like myself, however: The ten minutes per day DID help me stay committed to Goldhat, but very often I had tried to push myself to work when I had no energy or willpower to do so–especially on the weekends. After about a month of this, I suffered a minor burnout. When I had recovered, I made sure that I didn’t force myself to work when I knew the quality of my output would suck anyway. Now, I’ll often end my work when I still feel like I can get more done. This helps me build a reserve of energy which carries on to the next day. So far, this seems to work for me, and I’ve managed to keep a reasonable balance between productivity and sanity.

Productivity insights aside, I’m very pleased to share with you a video interview I had done with Marquis Parker of marquisparker.com. Marquis is an MBA and business blogger whom I had met through my outreach for TeachStreet’s Featured Blogger Program. In addition to sharing his own insights about business and careers, he frequently interviews entrepreneurs, bloggers and successful businesspeople and gets them to share their stories. I’ve never shared the complete story about my career path on this blog, so anyone who’s interested can check it out here. Hope you like it!

A note: in order to prevent web scrapers from stealing his content, only the newest post on his site is available to those who don’t have an account with marquisparker.com. If you’ve come to this blog post late, you can still check out the interview after registering (for free).

How To Find The Time And Energy To Work On Your Side Projects

January 18, 2011 by Kenji 8 Comments

Ten Minute Rule — Ten Minutes Is All It Takes

When I had moved to Japan after graduation, it was my plan to make a little money and work on my novel. I’d teach English classes during the day and hammer out a few pages at night. By the year’s end I’d have a finished draft, good to go.

Instead, by the time I got home from work most every day I basically said “Fuck it. I’m tired,” and cracked open a beer.

Sound familiar?

“It’s Hard to Find the Time”

When you have side projects, be they in writing, photography, or an entrepreneurial venture, it can be difficult to put in the time or muster the energy needed to make them cook. The problem was that you used to have all the time in the world. You went to classes, did your homework, and worked on your passion projects afterwards. Sometimes your homework was your passion project, as it was for me as a creative writing major.

Then you graduate, and before you know it your get your first job and eight hours knocked out of your day. If you haven’t developed enough self-discipline, you’ll find yourself going to the bar instead of going home and working on that project of yours.

That was pretty much what I did when I lived in Tokyo. It took me five years to write five chapters of my novel. Most of that writing was done on the weekend when the guilt from not doing anything had pushed me so far that I forced myself to squeeze a few paragraphs out of my brain. My passion project, that thing that was supposed to be “fun,” turned into a form of torture.

But you gotta eat, right? You can’t slack off at your job and be working on your passion project on the side, can you? You’ve already spent eight hours working. There’s no way that you’re going to spend another two or three hours working on your novel (or whatever it may be). You want to blow off steam. Have a drink. Veg in front of the TV. You worked hard. You deserve it. Besides, you’re tired now, how good is your writing (painting, coding, etc.) going to be when you’re as exhausted as you are? You’d best wait for the time for when you feel inspired.

If the above paragraph sounds anything like your internal monologue when you come home from work, I recommend that you read this blog post twice, maybe three times so that you can catch yourself rationalizing as it happens. Inspiration isn’t going to come if you just wait for it. You must make the time for Inspiration to come forth. If you don’t, you might as well resign yourself the fact that you’re never going to work on your project again–that way you’ll at least feel better about not doing it.

My (failed) Attempts to Make the Time

I’ve tried many methods to motivate myself to work on my side projects. One of them was the “break the big goal into mini-goals” method that Stephen Covey often talks about. I tried that, and placed deadlines for each chapter until, one year later, I’d have a finished novel.

That didn’t work. For some reason all the mini-goals just made me think more about all those chapters that I had to write. Also, the arbitrary deadlines that I imposed upon myself for how much I should have gotten done by what date had no power on me. The moment I fell behind in my schedule I was too demotivated to continue.

I also tried the “one page a day” method. There was a problem here too. Some days I came home so tired that I collapsed on to the bed. I couldn’t write a page to save my life. When two or three days passed with nothing written, I abandoned this resolution altogether.

When I started working full-time last September, I had another side project, goldhat.org, that I had spent the better part of 7 months putting together. I wasn’t writing a novel any more, but I was (and am) just as passionate about the web app as I was the the novel I was writing.

When I was self-employed with no fixed income (a term which I believe should replace the term “unemployed”), I could spend every waking hour of the day coding for the app. When working for TeachStreet, I found that, like before, I was spending no time at all on my side project.

I justified the 2-3 months not working on Goldhat based on the fact that I was getting used to the new job and I had a three hour commute to Seattle twice a week. When I finally found an apartment and and was getting into a smooth workflow, however, I realized that I had no more excuses. I had to make time for Goldhat right away or it would fizzle and die.

The Ten Minute Rule

I reflected upon my failures to make time for my novel in the past and realized what I had lacked: momentum. I would whip myself up in a motivational frenzy and then sputter out a week later. What I needed was a commitment, even a small one, that I would make every day for my project.

This was my resolution: No matter what happened or how exhausted I was, I would devote ten minutes a day to one of my side projects, be it this blog, goldhat, or both. If I felt like continuing after the ten minutes that was fine, but I had to spend 10 minutes minimum.

This took away all my excuses because no matter how busy or tired I got, there was no way that I couldn’t spend at least ten minutes. Most days I ended up spending much more then the minimum ten minutes and often worked for two hours or more. There was one day where I had come back from the gym ready to collapse, but I forced myself to spend at least ten minutes staring at the code for Goldhat’s WordPress plugin. I don’t think I wrote a single line of code in those ten minutes, but the next day I was bursting with ideas on how to make the plugin work. Because I was anxious to try those ideas out, I went straight to coding that day and probably spent more than three hours on the project. This was on a weekday, mind you!

In the two weeks or so since I’ve imposed this 10 minute rule I’ve completed a stable version of the Goldhat WordPress Plugin, wrote an announcement for it on the Goldhat Blog, and also wrote the blog post preceding this one about writing out of your niche. I probably could have done more If I committed myself to these projects full-time, but I’m still very happy with my progress.

This blog post itself is a product of the 10 minute rule. At 6:00PM yesterday I felt mentally exhausted. All I wanted to do was have a slice a pizza and a nice big glass of wine. I remembered, however, that I hadn’t yet put in my 10 minutes and got to typing. I started writing at 6:00, and found myself at the end of this 1300+ word blog post at 8:09PM. All I needed was those first ten minutes to get over a bit of inertia, and then I was good to go.

Writing Outside Your Niche

January 12, 2011 by Kenji 9 Comments

As you may have noticed, this blog has been pretty quiet as of late. If you’ve been following me on twitter, however, you’ll notice that I’ve been writing quite a bit. I’ve been doing blog outreach for the hundreds of categories on TeachStreet, from Fitness Classes to Algebra Classes. Oftentimes this outreach takes the form of guest blogging. Each week we’ve tackled different categories, and though I do get a lot of support from the team, I’ve been doing most of the writing for the guest posts.

I’d be lying if I said this didn’t push me out of my comfort zone as a writer, especially when writing about subjects that I had no knowledge about. It forced me to be imaginative about ways that I could provide value when writing guest posts outside of my niche. I’ll admit that I floundered at first but I eventually did come up with a good system.

The system had three elements:

1. Deep Research — The first real challenge for me was to write for an animal law blog, something I knew very little about. How could I provide value to an audience who knew much more about the subject than I did? The answer was simple: research! I dove deep into the Internet and gathered information on peculiar laws regarding animal treatment around the world. By the time I was done, I was able to provide some interesting examples of laws the blog’s readers probably weren’t familiar with. I may not have had the legal background that most of the blogs writers did, but because I put in the time to find something interesting I was able to provide value.

2. Providing a Personal Perspective – There’s nothing more engaging than a personal story. Perhaps you want to write for a programming blog but you know you have nowhere near the level of programming expertise that you think a blog post would require. As a beginner, however, you can always provide personal reflections about what starting out as a programmer is like. Everybody was a beginner at everything once, and it can be refreshing for experts to remember what it was like to be a beginner again. I used this angle when writing about Zumba (A latin dance cardio exercise) on the TeachStreet Blog.

3. Using your expertise as an angle – I’ve only tried Yoga once (and it hurt) so I know that I’m not very qualified to give any advice on that topic. As an SEO for TeachStreet, however, I know many SEO techniques that would be useful to a yoga teacher who might be interested in promoting their lessons online. It doesn’t end at SEO skills, however. Maybe you are (or were) an accountant by trade. You could easily write an excellent blog post about the costs involved to set up and run a yoga studio. Just because you’re not an expert in Yoga doesn’t mean you don’t know something that yoga enthusiasts would find useful.

One lesson that I’ve learned from all this guest posting is that you should never believe that you aren’t qualified to provide value in any situation. Doing so will limit the number of new things that you try and thus hamper your growth as a writer. Give it a shot, and if you don’t hit the target, shoot somewhere else:

If you wanted to have a look at what I’ve been writing here are the links. Most of these blog posts were published in December:

If you want to start with the best ones, it seemed that the posts on Urban Muse Writer, The Omniglot Blog and the Amateur Traveler were to most commented on/retweeted.

Don’t Know the First Step? Start Learning. (The Entrepreneur on Campus)

Why You Should Master The Art of Downloading People (Oddpodz.com)

Disappointment: The Key to Creative Freedom (The Urban Muse Writer)

Zumba: Adding Spice to Your Workout Routine (Hive Health Media)

7 Ways to Effortlessly Thread a Needle (Sketchee.com)

Why I Still Go To Libraries (hhibner.blogspot.com)

Whatever You Do, Don’t Tell Kids They’re Smart! (SimpleLeap Blog)

Travel as a Spiritual Experience (The Travel Word)

Odd Animal Laws, Odd Culture (The Animal Blawg)

3 Things I Learned About Americans By Not Living With Them (Amateur Traveler)

Learning a Foreign Language While Living Overseas (The Omniglot Blog)

How to Make Money From the Grave (Wills, Trusts and Estates Prof Blog)

The Top 3 Education Trends of 2010 (EduInReview.com)

How To Deal With Difficult Reading Assignments (Psych Futures)

Zumba: A Beginner’s Experience (The TeachStreet Blog)

Bargains to Look For In January (Bargainmoose)

How to Make Your College Application Stand Out (My College Calendar Blog)

My Love Affair With Rotten Soybeans (Swanky Dietitian)

The 121-year-old Nintendo Game (Yehuda Games Blog)

How Making More Money Can Drive You Into Debt and How To Avoid It (Finance Wand)

Mount Nokogiri – Home To Japan’s Largest Sitting Buddha (Travelogue of an Armchair Traveller)

The Power of Self-Forgiveness

November 9, 2010 by Kenji 5 Comments

If I were to sum up 95% of what personal development gurus preach it would be this:

“You have the potential to do, have, and be anything you want. All you have to do is adopt a positive mindset and take 100% responsibility for what happens in your life.”

I’m not saying that there isn’t any truth to the above statement, much of what I’ve written myself could be described as a deeper exploration of the ideas contained in the above two sentences. Recently, however, I felt that something vital was missing.

I realized that all of my motivation for bettering myself came from one chasing one great big carrot: “You can have anything you want” (You mean I can be rich and famous too?) and running away from one great big stick: “It’s all up to you” (Oh shit! I better start hustling! Don’t want to end up in a van down by the river!)

When I looked deeper into these motivations all I could sense was a feeling of incompleteness, a feeling that I needed to be able to wake up at 5:00AM every morning, go to a dojo before sunrise and break slabs of concrete with my kung-fu. That I needed every thought that ever passed through my mind to be a positive one, and that I needed every person I met to think that I was the most likeable person ever. Until I had reached that level of excellence I was nothing but a work-in-progress, strung along by the idea that in the future I would be a better me.

With the incompleteness came the guilt and the fear. I felt guilty because I wasn’t able to tap into this “limitless potential” that all the gurus said I should be able to. I felt fearful and worried about what would happen to me should I not be able to do so. Whenever I didn’t accomplish what I had set out to do, I blamed myself for not trying hard enough or not thinking positively enough. If I only had the power to get rid of all my “negative thought patterns”, I would have been able to perform at my peak. Because I hadn’t. I had failed.

And I know that the self-help gurus also preach that we must, as the cliche goes, “treat every failure as a stepping stone to success.” Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. When you’ve failed (or more rightly, labled your situation as a “failure”), it can be very difficult to see the big picture, to know that failure is not failure but simply the first step on a new path. When I had found myself wallowing in the depths of what I had labled failure, I knew that I should be more positive and “see the bigger picture.” The fact that I couldn’t do so only made me blame myself more.

At some point, however, I realized that all the negativity, the worry, the apathy, the fear, and the anger that I might have felt was not really my fault. How could it be my fault? It was my genetics, my upbringing and my education up to this point that was largely responsible for my behavior, and not due to any conscious decision that I may have made. I then realized just how silly it was for me to feel ashamed at something that I had done or had failed to do. Why should I feel ashamed? The negative action or inaction that came from me was not “me” but rather the result of what some spiritual teachers would call my “conditioning.”

It became clear to me that what I had been doing was fighting my conditioning. I had been fighting the most futile fight of all: fighting what is.

I’m sure all of you have had this experience before. Let’s say you’re addicted to television. You know that watching too much TV is self-destructive, so you make a resolution to quit. One week later you find that you’ve downloaded every season of LOST and you’ve spent the whole weekend in bed watching one episode after the other, all the while shoveling pizza, ice cream, and doughnuts into your mouth.

Because you’ve resisted your conditioning, something that you have no control over, you are essentially pressing your body against a wall. Although you may be able to trick yourself into thinking that the wall is giving way, this is only temporary. Eventually you’ll collapse due to wasted effort and surrender completely to your “negative” impulse. You fall into a state of apathy, a state where you’d like to resist what you are doing, but you no longer have the energy to do so.

Remember this: the wall is not “you.” You did not build it, and it’s not your fault that it’s there. It was built by the years of conditioning that you have grown to identify with as “You” or at least a part of “You.”

Even with the knowledge that your bad habits are not a part of who you really are, it can sometimes be difficult to dis-identify from them. Don’t blame yourself for this either. The tendency to blame ourselves for our negative thinking is also our conditioning. If you get wrapped up in self-blame, you press yourself deeper into the wall. There will be no way to see where the conditioning ends and You begin.

The only way to escape self-blame is, of course, self-forgiveness. Self-forgiveness is easier than you may think, even though some may perceive it as extremely difficult. After all, if your bad habits are not “you”, then you should have no difficulty forgiving yourself for them, right? When you forgive yourself for a negative emotion, impulse, or thought, you will have taken your first step away from the wall. With this new perspective, you’ll notice that the wall you had been pressing yourself against all this time is only ten feet long. Why throw your weight against it when you can walk around the sides?

When you forgive yourself, you’ll be able to observe negative emotions and thoughts from a distance. If the impulse springs up to want to fight a negative emotion, forgive yourself for that impulse and observe that too. As you observe you own thoughts, you’ll begin to see them in a much clearer light, to exercise “observation without evaluation” which J. Krishnamurti said was the “highest form of intelligence.” When you forgive and observe, most of the time you won’t have to actually “DO” anything for the negative feeling, thought or impulse to dissolve, it simply dissolves on its own, and all that is left, is you.

And what if you can’t forgive yourself? Then forgive yourself for the inability to forgive. Start from there.

Incredible Photo By: Laura Chifiriuc

Five Hard Truths You Need To Accept

October 17, 2010 by Kenji 11 Comments

Ignoring the hard truths of life is a dangerous thing to do. Unfortunately, because the truth is so damn scary, it’s something we all do from time to time. In order to ignore them we tell ourselves lies–lies that warp our view of reality to the point where we’re incapable of knowing the actions we can take in order to make real changes for the better.

Coming face to face with realities that we may have been denying for years is by no means an easy thing to do. We pretend we’re not overweight by wearing bulkier clothes so that we don’t have to do anything about it. We fantasize that things will go well for us in the future so that we can feel better about watching TV and playing video games. We blame our problems on other people so that we don’t have to take responsibility for them. By not accepting the truth, we take the easy way out.

But there comes a point when these lies are no longer satisfactory, when you take a look at your life and realize that reality is far removed from the delusions you’ve created for yourself. You get fed up, and finally you decide to stop telling yourself lies and face reality head-on.

I came to this point about a year and a half ago, and of all the hard truths in life that I’ve avoided, I have found the following five to be the hardest to accept. Upon accepting them, however, I’ve found them to be the most liberating. It’s important to understand these truths and the lies we use to avoid them so that we can get back to leading our lives the way we really want to.

Hard Truth #1: Your problems are your own, no one else’s

The lie we create to avoid this truth
“It’s (My parent’s/the economy’s/my disability’s/my colleague’s/the government’s) fault that I’m experiencing all the misfortune I’m having now.”

Why this lie is dangerous
When you blame external factors for your problems you effectively place them out of your scope of control. When you think your problems are other people’s fault and not your own it’s easy to believe you can’t do anything about them. This gives you an easy excuse to not do anything at all to improve your situation.

What we should tell ourselves instead
“There are some aspects to my life that I’m not happy with, but I’m not going to make excuses just to make myself feel better. My problems are my responsibility and no one else’s. It’s up to me to solve them.”

Hard Truth #2: No One Owes You Anything

The lie we create to avoid this truth
“People are naturally going to want to (help me/hire me/support me/choose me) because of how smart and special I am.”

Why this lie is dangerous
When you feel entitled to something that you want without really earning it, you set yourself up for a lot of disappointments. When you don’t get what you want you’ll probably tell yourself it’s someone else’s fault (see hard truth #1), and blaming other people is not a good way to win friends.

What we should tell ourselves instead
“People will only help me out when I prove my worth through my actions, not just talk.”

Hard Truth #3: There are No Shortcuts

The lie we create to avoid this truth
“There must be some way to (get rich/become famous/ be successful) that’s easy and won’t take much time. I just haven’t found my angle yet.”

Why this lie is dangerous
When you tell yourself that there must be an easy way to succeed, you’ll be chasing the quick buck instead of investing your time and efforts into honest, hard work. You’ll eat up the words of the hucksters who promise “surefire systems” that’ll get you rich in under six months. In most cases, all you’ll be left with is a $500 hole in your pocket and a set of 12 worthless DVDs. Even worse, you could lose your life-savings on some “safe bet” stock that went *poof*. Looking for shortcuts is a surefire path to frustration.

What we should tell ourselves instead
“The only surefire path to success is hard work. There may be some shortcuts out there, but they are so few and far between that it’s much easier to do something simple, honest and valuable than to look for them.”

Hard Truth #4 Superman Won’t Swoop Down to Save You

The lie we create to avoid this truth
“Everything’s going to be okay when (The economy gets better/I get a big promotion/I win the lottery/I become a reality TV star)”

Why this lie is dangerous
Just as it’s easy to blame the bad economy for your misfortunes, it’s also easy to expect that the government will pass some magic law that will make them all go away. The solutions to your problems will come from you, not anyone or anything else. When you wait for someone or something else to solve them, they will most definitely persist.

What we should tell ourselves instead
“I must rely on myself first to solve my problems. No one’s going to do it for me. I make my own luck through persistence and hard work. I don’t need to wait to win the lottery. I can take steps today to make the money and do some good while I’m at it.”

Hard Truth #5: Dreams Don’t Come True Just by Thinking About Them

The lie we create to avoid this truth
“Someday I’ll be a successful(actor/writer/singer/CEO/President of the United States)”

Why this lie is dangerous
Oftentimes fantasies like this are but short lived escapes from reality. When you avoid reality, you limit yourself from seeing the necessary steps that you can take to change your it.

What we should tell ourselves instead
“What actions can I take today to accomplish my goals?”

Facing these truths can be frightening at first. But once you begin to accept them instead of avoiding them, you can be surprised how many paths open up for you. The more accurate your view of reality is, the more power you have to change it. Accepting these hard truths is the first step in claiming that power.

Three Guerrilla Tactics for Your Job Hunt

October 5, 2010 by Kenji 7 Comments

Guerilla Job Hunter — This guy does not use Craigslist.

When contending with a superior force, the worst possible strategy is to face your enemy head-on. Unfortunately, this is what most people do on the job hunt. They scan the listings on Monster.com and Craigslist, shoot off resumes and sit and hope. If you do this, know that hundreds if not thousands of applicants are doing the exact same thing as you. Responding to job postings through online forms is only really effective if your profile matches a job spec by 80% or more. Any resume that doesn’t will be deleted and sent to the void.

Although some people get lucky with the head-on approach, it’s much more effective to use guerrilla tactics, to make quick strikes and snipes, to target presidents and line-managers rather than the HR foot soldiers on the front lines, and to gather as much intelligence as you can to know when to make the right move.

If you have a generalist resume like mine, adopting guerrilla tactics for your job hunt becomes a necessity.

Here are some guerrilla tactics helped me get a job at a Seattle startup in just one week:

Guerrilla Tactic #1: Determine your most valuable targets

Look online for a list of companies in an industry that you’re interested in. Google makes finding this kind of information pretty easy. For me, it didn’t take long before I found a list of the top 100 tech startups in Seattle. When contacting people at these companies, an Excel file can be very handy to keep track of your activity.

Something like this should do nicely:

Company Name	Contact Name	Contact Email	Contact Phone	Notes
Spaceley’s Sprockets	George	[email protected]	N/A	We’ll schedule a meeting later
Shinra Electric Power Company	Sephiroth (HR Guy?)	[email protected]	N/A	Got response. Meeting at Starbucks in front of Jenova Park. 9/15 3:00PM. I’m supposed to come unarmed.
Tyrell Corporation	J.F.	[email protected]	555-555-5678	Got automated response…I think. Can’t be sure if the person I talked to was a robot or not.

If you don’t have Excel, Google Docs has a spreadsheet program that works just as well and has the added advantage of being accessible online.

Guerrilla Tactic #2: Avoid Frontal Assaults

When you send an introductory email, try not to send it to HR if you can help it. It’s best to send your email to a president or the head of the department you want to work for. Gunning for HR would be silly and futile. They’re ready for you, and won’t hesitate to shoot you down.

If you’re applying to a startup with less than 25 employees, you can send an email to [email protected] and chances are your email will be read by someone in charge. Most bigger companies have naming conventions for emails, so if a few email addresses have the format [email protected], it’s a good bet that the president’s (let’s say his name is Mike Mcgillicuddy) email will be [email protected] It’s worth a try.

Don’t bother sending a cover letter because it won’t be read. Just make sure you put everything you want to say in the body of your email. Your email, just like any sales pitch, should make a potential employer understand exactly what you offer them and how you can affect their bottom line.

This was the email I used:

Subject line: Ahoy! [No reason to be stiff and formal. The subject line is sometimes the only thing read.]

Hey [First name. Else just say ‘Hey guys’ if you’re sending to [email protected]],

I’m looking to get a job with a great startup company in Seattle. So, naturally, when I came across your site I thought I’d send you an email. [People are busy. Get to the point]

I’m young, cheap, and have a lot of useful skills (business development, web development) that would be useful for a web startup. Also, I’m a fast learner and a self starter. Just seven months ago I had the idea for goldhat.org and I didn’t know HTML. I taught myself everything from HTML to CSS to Ruby to Javascript. I still have a lot to learn, but give me a year and you won’t be able to tell the difference between me and one of your star performers.

[This part above is the ‘sales pitch’. I gave a link to what I felt was one of the best examples of my work. Also, I stressed the potential future value I’d offer them and their company.]

I’d love to meet sometime to see if there is something we could do together. If not, perhaps you know of some other companies that might be looking for someone like me.

[Don’t ask for an interview. Just ask to meet. It’s lot easier to have an informal cup of coffee with a hiring manager or CEO than to schedule a formal interview.]

(Resume is attached)

Cheers,

Kenji

Kenji Crosland

Goldhat.org
T: 360.390.8828
E: [email protected]
Contact:

Lastest Blog Post Four Reasons why Cold-Calling is more Effective than Social Media

[Finally, I used an email signature that had links to my website, LinkedIn and Twitter Account as well as a link my latest blog post. The signature is a great way to take advantage of showing a different side of yourself than the bullet points in your resume might. As for formatting your signature, I recommend WiseStamp, an excellent email app that makes your signatures (and you by association) look professional and web savvy.]

Guerilla Tactic #3: Always Gather Intelligence

A good intelligence gatherer knows to look beyond the obvious. They don’t search the job boards because that’s old news. That would be like a spy getting all their info from yesterday’s newspaper. Instead of looking for companies that have announced that they’re hiring, look for companies that have just received funding or have reported better than expected earnings results. If you introduce yourself to a company president or manager right after the cash starts flowing in, they’ll be much more open-minded to creating a role for you. When a company’s gravy train starts rolling in, hijack it.

One good way to gather intelligence is to do a follow-up call to a company after you send an email. The great thing about the follow-up call is that you already have an excuse for calling (did you get that email I sent you?). After you get the hiring manager or president on the line don’t just ask to meet, download them for as much information as you can.

Here are some general guidelines (also good for networking events):

1. Give the president your elevator pitch (doesn’t have to be much different from the email). Just make sure you have it written down and in front of you.

2. Ask to meet for coffee, NOT an interview.

3. If they refuse coffee, start downloading the person on the other line for information. Some possible questions include:

I understand that you’re not hiring now. Might you be hiring someone like me in the future? When would that be? (mark your calendar for a follow-up call!)
What kind of skills/experience would I need to work for your company? What would be the best way to get that kind of experience?
What would be the best position in (The industry you’re applying to) for someone like me? Do you know of another company that might be hiring that kind of person?
Are there any good networking events that you recommend I go to?

When you make follow up calls, you’ll probably get more nos than yeses, so your main goal should be to ask as many questions as you can so that your leads don’t run dry.

Remember, even if a hiring manager isn’t interested in you as an employee, they’re often very happy to give you valuable information free of charge. Take advantage of that. Gather intelligence first and analyze it later. When you’re on the job hunt don’t focus on just getting a job. Widen your perspective a bit; focus on getting the information that leads to a job. Not only will the search be much easier, but you’ll probably also get much a better job.