You're wrong about who'll say yes

There's a door you've stopped knocking on. This is about the other way in.

One of the best business strategies I know came out of a moment where I had nothing left to protect.

You've heard the line. When you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose. What people don't tell you is that nothing includes your pride. That's the good part. Pride is expensive and I couldn't afford mine anymore.

Late 2015. I'd just been fired from Facebook. I had a newborn daughter at home and a consulting business that wasn't working.

When I wasn't up at night worrying about money, I was up with the baby, which made me worry about money.

I'd tried the obvious things. Cold calling. Networking events. Standing in rooms handing out cards to people who were also handing out cards. Nothing was landing.

So I flipped the question. Instead of chasing people, what if they came to me? And what if I got paid while that happened?

Teaching workshops does both at once. Steady money, and you're standing in front of a room of the exact people who might hire you later. Somebody mentioned General Assembly to me, and that was the whole idea.

I applied. They taught digital marketing. I'd just spent years at Facebook running ads, so I was applying to teach Facebook classes months after leaving Facebook.

Autoresponse. Applied again. Autoresponse.

Anything worth having has a line in front of it. If a door is obvious and valuable, everyone can see it, which means you're one of hundreds and your resume is a rounding error. That's not unfair. That's what a front door is.

So the silence wasn't the problem. The problem was what I did next, which was nothing, for weeks.

You're wrong about who would say yes

Here's what I didn't know then, and it would have saved me those weeks.

Two Stanford researchers, Flynn and Lake, had people predict how many strangers they'd need to approach before someone agreed to a small favor. Then they sent them out to actually ask.

Everyone was wrong in the same direction. People underestimated how many would say yes by about half. Follow-up work has now run this on more than 14,000 strangers and the number holds.

Here's why. You're doing math on how hard it is for them to say yes. They're feeling how hard it is to say no.

There's a second finding I think about constantly. People believe they'll get more help by hinting, softening it, hoping someone offers. The people being asked report the opposite. A direct ask gets a yes far more often, because a clear request is harder to sidestep than a vague one.

So the help you assume isn't there is mostly there. You just haven't asked for it out loud.

Warm bodies

I was on a bike ride with my friend Janine, complaining, and she said the thing that fixed it.

There are a lot of warm bodies in New York City. You have to do something to stand out.

She wasn't telling me to try harder. She was telling me the application would never be the thing, because every qualified person in the city was already in that pile with me.

I still had no idea what the something else was. But the question changed. Not how do I write a better application. Who could get me in.

The lunch thief board

My coworking space had a communal message board. I want to be accurate about what that board was for. It was for who took my stapler. It was for somebody ate my lunch out of the fridge, again, and I think we all know who.

I posted asking if anyone knew somebody at General Assembly.

Sit with that. My business was failing, I had a newborn, and I was asking strangers for a job referral on the same board where a guy was running an active investigation into a missing sandwich. There is no dignified way to describe it.

That's what I mean about nothing to lose. If I'd had more to protect I'd have protected it, kept refreshing my inbox, and told myself the market was tough.

One woman replied. I sent my resume, told her exactly what I wanted, and she forwarded it to a friend who worked there.

That was it. One person. One forward.

I got the interview. I got the job. Within a month I was leading a workshop at Colgate, and a few years later I was representing General Assembly on Good Morning America. I still work with them.

All of it downstream of a post sitting next to a note about a stolen lunch.

Daymond John had the same problem

Bigger version. FUBU needed hip-hop's attention, and there was no money for marketing or publicity. The front door was the industry, and it was shut.

What Daymond had was a deep understanding of how his audience spent their time. They were at the hottest hip-hop clubs in New York.

So he gave free FUBU clothing to the bouncers working those clubs.

Three things made it work.

Big guys couldn't find fashionable clothes in their size, so the gift was wanted rather than tolerated.

They wore it every weekend instead of once for a photo, because it was the best thing in their closet.

And standing at the door, they were seen by every single person walking into the room he needed.

The bouncers were never the customers. They stood next to them.

That seeding built the credibility that pulled the rap community in, and helped open the door to LL Cool J. Which set up the greatest side door I know of. LL wore a FUBU hat in a 1997 Gap commercial and slipped "for us, by us, on the low" into his verse. Gap reportedly spent $30 million on that campaign, and a chunk of it advertised a competitor they'd never heard of.

Thirty years later, that's the outline of a modern influencer campaign.

Two problems, not one

Most people think the problem is not trying. It isn't. You tried. You applied. You did the thing.

The problem is stopping there, because the front door was the only door you looked for.

There's a second problem, and it's the one that actually keeps people stuck. A side door costs something the front door doesn't. Applying is anonymous. Rejection from a form is painless. Asking a room full of near-strangers for help is not anonymous, and somebody sees that you want it.

That's the real price. It's why most people would rather refresh their inbox.

How to find one this week

Two motions, in this order.

Widen. Every possible way in, including the stupid ones. Who else could get me in? What if I changed the timing, the size, the person I'm asking? What if I came in through somebody else's door? Nothing gets judged yet, and don't stop at three, because the first three are always the obvious ones.

Then pick. Which one can I run this week? Not which is best. Which one moves.

Keep the ask small enough that a stranger can say yes without effort. That woman didn't advocate for me. She forwarded an email. That's why it worked.

Sometimes the door really is closed. Side doors get locked too. But you find that out in a week instead of never.

Your turn

Do this before Friday.

Name the door that's closed. Write down three people standing near it. Ask one of them, directly, in a sentence a stranger could act on.

You're wrong about who would say yes. You're wrong by about half.

A locked front door is not a closed building.

Run the test on your own decision.