People never follow up

If you’re someone “not limited by the resources directly under your control,” then you might resonate with this.

How many times have you been rate-limited by somebody emailing you back?

How many times have you had to ping somebody just for them to take 5 minutes or 5 seconds out of their day, to reply a few words back?

How many times did you just need somebody to really, really just go out of their way for you?

Doing something on your own, I think also called entrepreneurship, is hard because you’re trying to bend the arc of a “business-as-usual world” into the version that you imagine. This is fundamentally difficult because the universe and entropy are pushing everything in a direction that’s not in your specific direction.

I think this is the inherent difficulty in starting anything. If it was easy, someone else would’ve added up the pieces and done it by now.

Sounds corny, but I think you need to think of yourself as the conduit for change.

It’s a distinction from being the actual “inventor” or “genius” that comes up with the idea per se. There’s lots of those people in the world, but also evidently there’s a lot of bad ideas that get too much money and hype. So what makes a truly good idea, and how do you know that what you're doing is really worth it?

Well, I don’t think you do, at least, not in the purest sense. I think doing something bold and ambitious looks like “conviction that just came to you” from the outside, while really feeling like you’re fighting against every impulse to go back on your steps. The “conviction” you put out into the world isn’t as much of a signal as it is a self-affirming activity to make sure you’re not completely going off the rails. Because over time that all shapes into the amorphous thing of “resolve” and grit that brings you to those heights.

When people don’t follow up quickly, a part of you should know you’re doing the right thing, and it’s completely natural and human to doubt yourself.

If someone else could do it, they would’ve done it by now.

I now comfortably send 3-4x follow up emails to people every 4-7 days if people don’t respond. More, if it’s truly urgent. Make things as easy as possible for the other person. Blurb away, keep them in the loop, be honest and ask for help. To be kinded, you must be ready. You must accept that you cannot do it alone. Ask for help, because almost no one is actively wishing for you fail.

I hope this gave you motivation to follow up on that thing you’ve been dreading. Keep going. Most of all, I hope you replied to that message someone else was following up with you about. I had to stop writing this a few times to follow up on some things myself.