Blake Masters sat through a startup course that Peter Theil, venture capitalist and the first outside investor in Facebook, was teaching at Stanford.
He just didn’t sit there, he took copious notes.
He posted those notes on his website, and it got him over 350,000 readers, more than a million page views, and coverage in the New York Times and Forbes,
But that’s nothing when you realize that thanks to those notes, Blake Masters became the co-author with Peter Thiel of Zero to One, which became a NY Times Bestseller.
Not only that he is now COO at Thiel Capital and President at The Thiel Foundation.
The good news is that what Blake Masters did is repeatable.
And it matters, because who you know matters a lot.
The best way to know someone is to be introduced by a trusted mutual connection.
But that may not always be possible.
The next best way is to add value and let the person, to whose work you are adding value, know of the value you are adding.
Blake masters did that by taking high-quality notes.
Anyone can do that, by distilling a podcast, webinar, or a book, featuring or by the person with whom you want to connect. Make it easy to consume for a lot of people.
You can do graphic notes, write a short blog post, or do a tweetstorm. Once you do that tag the person whose work you are distilling.
If your work is good, they’ll take note.
And if you do it consistently, then many will feature you – resulting in visibility for you, among the network of your target’s connections. When that starts happening it is only a matter of time, you win with this approach.
My friend used this approach with his book summary site. He used to write book summaries and tag the author. This resulted in added visibility and turned his site into a self-sustaining business where he now employs someone to write book summaries and he counts the moolah.
Your goal may not be to create a business but that too may happen, as a result of your efforts.
Good luck as you roll with it.