A Sneaky Hustle Move to Reinforce Your Street Cred

by Scott - 3 Comments

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I’ve tried this 4 times and I know it’s worked twice…

hustle

Having an understanding of how people behave puts you in a unique position to engineer situations so you achieve ideal outcomes…

Today I want to talk about a [theoretical] strategy you can use to further enhance positive feelings people have about you.

Have you ever been introduced to someone and totally rocked the in-person meeting? Feels good right…

In an ideal world, the person you just met reports back to your mutual contact that they got a lot out of the connection (and that you’re cool a badass). You want this to happen because it further supports your street cred and gives the connector a sense of gratification from the value they just created.

Unfortunately, most people aren’t that diligent. I’d guess 10% of people actually do a postgame report to the person after an email introduction.

Here’s where you overcome this and capitalize after crushing a meeting…

But first you need to understand these dynamics:

  • When you send an email that says nice things about the recipient’s friend, they often forward it to them.
  • When someone is given a compliment they’ll likely reciprocate (considering its warranted).

Okay now to the playbook on how to maximize the warm and fuzzies about you in this scenario.

  1. Meet with person you were introduced to and drop mad knowledge
  2. Follow up with the person who introduced you intentionally letting them know how [insert positive adjective] the person they introduced you to was (assuming they were actually cool/awesome)
  3. There’s at least 50% chance the introducer will forward that email
  4. When the person you met with receives it, they will:
    1. feel better about you
    2. probably say something nice back about you if you added a ton of value
  5. Your connection now has a 3rd party validating how awesome/cool/knowledgeable etc you are. This is good for you.
  6. They forward back to you the kind reciprocal email and immediately start drinking wine aggressively to celebrate the fact that they just made two people’s lives a little bit better.

Okay, I’m not so sure about the 2nd half of numero 6, but I know the rest actually happens. Again, since noticing this pattern and experimenting with intentionally practicing this it’s happened to me 50% of the time (2/4). To reiterate the flow:

Send nice followup -> gets forwarded -> reply with reciprocal kind words -> gets forwarded back to you

Is this callous?

I don’t think so. After all, all you did was pay someone a compliment after you were introduced. But what about motive Scott? I don’t know…I certainly don’t do 8am coffees, after work meetings and other hustling activities for my health.

People hustle to create value for their companies and themselves.

I’m not ashamed of that motive.

What are some of your favorite hustle moves? Let me know in the comments.

P.S. If you or anyone you know is trying to hustle their way into the startup scene, you should take my new free “Break Into Biz Dev” email course

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