the art of reaching out

reaching out is a skill. if you send the same message to a creator, a founder, and a recruiter, you’re asking for silence. different people want different things. the first rule of good outreach is to understand who you’re talking to, and talk like that person would want to be talked to.

why personalization works?

the template that worked for your friend's outreach to a vp of engineering is going to crash and burn when you send it to a fashion creator. it's not that your message was bad. it's that you were speaking the wrong language to the wrong person.

when you reach out, you're entering someone's world and their world has specific rhythms, expectations, and unspoken rules. the creator with 300k followers operates differently than the founder grinding through a seed round, who operates completely differently than a hiring manager drowning in applications. and if you show up with the same template, you're basically saying: "i didn't spend five minutes learning about you."​ and people feel that.

people think personalization means putting someone's name in the subject line.

"hey [firstname]! i love your work!"

that's not personalization. that's mail merge.

real personalization means you understand the person well enough to know how they think, what they care about, and what language they actually speak. and that requires something almost no one does: research. actual, deliberate research.

creators, founders, and recruiters are different people

• a creator cares about creative freedom, authentic partnerships, and transparency about what you want from them. they're already drowning in brand pitches that treat them like content machines. so when you send them a generic "let's collaborate" message, they ignore it because it signals you don't see them as an artist but as a distribution channel.​

• a founder, on the other hand, is thinking about revenue, traction, timing, and whether you have access to resources that could actually help them. they don't care that you love their work. they care about whether you're about to waste their time or if you actually have something valuable to say. so a long, fluffy email about how inspired you are by their vision? they're gone.​

• and a hiring manager is dealing with resume screening software, dozens of candidates, and maybe five minutes per person. they need you to make their job easier, not harder. they need specificity, not enthusiasm. when you write "i'm really passionate about your company," you're saying the same thing as 100 other candidates. but when you say "i saw you led the pivot to b2b in 2023, which directly connects to xyz skill i have," now they're listening because you've done your homework.

  
  

read their profiles

if you're reaching out on twitter, spend 10 minutes reading their recent tweets. how do they respond to people? what's their tone? do they use jargon or do they speak plainly? are they direct or do they tell stories? do they engage with criticism or do they ignore it? are they funny or serious? this matters because it tells you how to speak to them.​​

if they're a creator on instagram, go deeper than just looking at their feed. check their stories, look at the comments they're leaving on other people's posts, see what they're actually engaging with beyond their own content. a creator posting beautiful photos of sustainable fashion but only engaging with comments about manufacturing processes? that's telling you something. they care about the craft and the ethics.

on linkedin, you check their current role, yes, but you also look at their previous roles and the pattern of them. did they jump around or did they stay and grow? their about section, is it polished or authentic? look at the recommendations they wrote to others. that tells you a lot about how they see people, what they value, and how they think.​

look at who they follow. look at what groups they're in. look at their recent activity. if they've posted two times in six months, they're not particularly active. if they're posting multiple times a week and getting engagement, they're using the platform seriously. some people treat linkedin like a resume, others like a community. you need to know which type you're talking to.

cold emails and cold dms, by default, have a terrible response rate. but the moment you add real personalization: one specific detail about their work, one recent post, one concrete reason you chose them, your chances change a lot. open rates go up, replies go up, and your call‑to‑action becomes 2x more likely to work.​

you’re not “hacking” the algorithm. you’re just respecting the human.

if you want help with the “how”

this article is just about step one: learning to look at the person before you reach out.

cold emails and dms usually have a tiny response rate, but when you add real personalization, replies can literally double or more. if you read till here, you’re already going to play a very different game from most people.

take care