The cold email that landed me a billionaire mentor

Hey Folks,

This week I’m featuring a cold email that started a mentoring relationship that has changed my life for the better ever since.

For context, he was invited as a guest speaker for an event organized by my university.

I met him at the event, and sent him this cold email after to stand out.

Rian Gauvreau, Founder of Clio (one of Vancouver’s top unicorn companies), ‘24

Even before the event, I was prepared with the questions to ask him.

I had done my research.

I knew he was good friends with Andrew Wilkinson, whose book I’d read. I had prepared to ask him questions specific to my startup and his experiences.

Now you might be thinking what if you don’t have a startup. Well, you have to find a way to talk about something common.

And not just for the sake of “networking”. There needs to be a reason for someone to be in your network and vice versa (so many people don’t understand this). It has to be mutually beneficial.

For someone whose role is a mentor, its for them to be able to pass on their learnings to someone similar to younger them and for you to take those learnings and put them into practice.

Here’s a golden nugget about mentors:

You never ask someone to be your mentor. You ask them for advice. You take action on that advice (which very few do) and get back to them with the results. Then you repeat this process 3 times and they officially become your mentor.

Rian’s mentorship and help was insanely valuable to me when I went to SF to build my startup.

I’m sure you all have someone in mind that you look up to and would love to be your mentor.

If you do, I’m doing an online call this Sunday which you'll like.

I’ll be sharing everything I’ve learned about cold emailing, more stories like the above and people from the community (like you) will actually write cold emails live.

Here’s the link if that excites you - https://lu.ma/1fb8bc7g

P.S - Send this newsletter to a friend and get access to all the cold emails in the hall of fame here