Jaredigms Shorts

  • The "f*** it" principle. Why you should try ballroom dance.

    I’ve really enjoyed learning ballroom dance over the past 2.5 years. It’s been an awesome learning experience, especially coming from a background of soccer & weight lifting.

    Ballroom dance was actually recommended to me by a family friend (“Uncle Carl”) about 5 years ago, when I was visiting San Francisco. His words were “If there’s one thing you have to try, it’s ballroom dance.” This planted the seed.

    Flash forward to about halfway through my second year of college: I wanted to try something new. Looking back, I was in the middle of a fairly transformative time, which ballroom fell into.

    The benefits of joining ballroom dance for me were:

    • The opportunity to meet and interact with new people
    • It was very interesting to me
    • It involved physical activity
    • I could figure out what Carl was talking about

    But there was one catch — activation energy. There’s always an obstacle. There’s always a reason to say no. In this case, those obstacles were generally:

    • I didn’t know anyone who did it
    • I wasn’t sure what my friends would think
    • I had to walk all the way from my apartment to the student center

    That leads me to the “f*** it” principle.

    First, I try to understand my upside. I ask “is this interesting/valuable/cool enough for me to want to do it?” If the answer is no, I immediately stop. Next, I try to understand my maximum downside. I ask “what’s the worst downside that could (realistically) happen?”

    As long as the downside isn’t catastrophic (think death, injury, or severe pain-inducing), I go for it and act as quickly as possible. And that’s what I did when I got dressed and walked over to the student center.

    This also helped me talk with and meet new people once I got there. What’s the worst that could happen? They don’t want to talk to me? What’s the best that could happen? I meet an awesome new friend. So I went and spoke with people.

    Learning and practicing this principle has been a huge help in my personal and professional life.

    It has helped me network more effectively since I’m not afraid to start a conversation with or reach out to people I want to talk with. Talking with presenters and pitching at startup events helped me land two of my first roles at startups. The principle also helped me learn to dance (to an extent) and make some awesome friends.

    In The Heart of Life, John Mayer sings “Fear is a friend who’s misunderstood” — fear is a compass. On one pole, it’s showing you what not to do. On the other, it’s showing where you’re making excuses to avoid the things you want or need to be doing.

    When you find your fears, you need to do more than just face them. Go ahead and embrace them. Learn from them. And then say "fuck it" and overcome them. That’s how you grow.

    What’s something you want to do but you’re afraid or making excuses? If you can’t think of anything, I recommend ballroom dance.

    Get out there and try it. You’re allowed to change your mind if you do decide it’s not for you.

    Use your fears to guide your growth.

    ∃

    This article was likely influenced by Tim Ferriss’s Fear Setting talk, Merlin Mann’s Scared Shitless talk, and Mel Robbins’s 5 second rule.

    Also want to give a big thank you to Georgia Tech’s Ballroom Dance Club for being so welcoming and teaching me how to dance.

    Finally, I want to thank Carl for recommending I try ballroom dance!

  • 2021: Year of the Chisel

    Image of a hammer and chisel being used to create a globe from stone.

    2020 = over.

    Time to rethink everything and set new goals.

    New Years' is a bit arbitrary when you really think about it. Is there that much of a difference between December 31st and January 1st? More than between any other consecutive days? Anyway...

    The Cortex podcast by CGPGrey and Myke Hurley introduced me to yearly themes.

    You know SMART goals? Yeah, it's the opposite of that. Not specific, it's a general vision. Not measurable, they're directional. Achievable? It'll guide your actions but you can't "do" your yearly theme. Relevant, sure.  Time-oriented? Well it's a yearly (or quarterly or other-time-denomination-ly) theme!

    I've decided that this year will be the Year of the Chisel.

    So lets talk about the chisel - it's an artisan tool. You hit it with a hammer.  You create beauty from a stone block.

    Cool, we have a chisel, so what? So metaphors.

    Artisan Tools - really good at what they do. They don't do much. The chisel carves stone. It isn't a paintbrush. Electronic devices are amazing. They're too versatile for my own good. Focusing on defining their purpose as tool. Using them to do my work rather than using me to do their work.

    The Hammer - the chisel doesn't do it alone. Needs a driving force to be effective. The systems in my life are my hammer. Exercise and other practices are non-optional. Honing these systems to let me create more.

    The Stone - artisans create. They're skilled at creation. Email, LinkedIn, Facebook – not creation.  This year I want to really prioritize creation over consumption. Already started actually, see this article's images.

    The idea of the chisel combines all of these aspects. This year, I want to use these concepts to guide me. Let's see how it goes.

    Happy (arbitrarily) new year!

    ∃

  • An Engineer's Guide to... cold outreach?!

    “I’ll handle the business side”

    We’ve all heard it before - your friend (or acquaintance or even some random person on the internet you’ve never met before) - wants you to do all of the hard work to bring their ideas to reality.

    Oh, I forgot to mention you’ll get a whopping 10% of the company since they came up with a revolutionary idea.

    I’m also an engineer at heart – I love building and everything that goes into it.

    I love solving problems and cold outreach is a very interesting one. It’s vital to building a business. “Build it and they will come” just doesn’t cut it.

    Let’s start by defining the problem

    • There is someone with knowledge, experience, or status that would really help me
    • Talking with them would give me a huge jump-start on what I’m working on
    • They are busy and have no clue who I am

    Problems involving people are interesting – that’s why I chose biomedical engineering. Cold outreach is just that, we want to get in touch with a person who knows nothing about us.

    I did this at scale with as many as 300 people at a time each week and got over 2x the industry standard response rate. How did I get this to work?

    Much like physics or programming, let’s dig into our key principles:

    • Provide value in everything you do
    • Make it personal (and personable)
    • Keep it short, sweet, and to the point

    Using these principles (and one unifying theory), we can talk to anyone.

    Here’s an example from my sales work:

    Hey {first name},

    Saw you’ve worked in talent at {company1}, {company2}, and now {current company}, and wanted to reach out :)

    My name’s Jared. My team and I build tech for high growth recruiting teams.

    We’ve built a fully autonomous AI recruiting assistant. Twice a week, you get 10-15 candidates to your inbox for one of your open roles – each candidate has context of why they were chosen, and a full set of customized email templates & follow up messages (both emails & text messages) based on their resume and the role. Just click a button to start sending.

    Right now, we’re working with {list of 3 current clients}, and hitting 40% reply rates on outgoing messages.

    Most teams set interviews in their first week. Would love to do a free pilot with {your company} to see if this might be a fit.
    We fully integrate with {company’s applicant system}. Quick link to our site: {link to our site}

    Have time this week to jump on a call and discuss?

    Best,
    Jared

    P.S. Pretty cool that you studied marketing – how’d you get into recruiting?

    And here’s the response I got:

    Thanks for reaching out Jared!

    I’m not interested but I do love your email! It’s great!

    Have an awesome day and a great holiday :)

    This works because I satisfied the problem:

    • Provide value - in this case, I demonstrate how helpful our product is for other teams and that it could help them as well.
    • Make it personal - I used LinkedIn to do my research. I knew the companies they had worked for and also what they chose to study in college.
    • Keep it short, sweet, and to the point - I didn’t write a doctoral thesis. Each paragraph is 1-2 sentences which makes it easy to read on mobile phones.

    An added bonus here is that I ended with a call-to-action: “have time for a call?“

    This makes sure they know exactly what I’m asking for and makes the communication super clear.

    Let’s go with another example, an investor I wanted to get in touch with for advice. This is a LinkedIn connection message:

    Hi {investor name},

    Congrats on opening {fund} for business!

    I’m Jared, I’m a biomedical engineering undergrad at Georgia Tech and I co-founded Augment Health (augmenthealth.org).

    Do you have 15 mins to hop on a call? I’d love to hear how your time as a Marine translated to business :)

    Best,
    Jared

    I sent this message after seeing a post that he had just opened his new fund.

    Email me {his email}

    Success! My advice meeting actually turned into us pitching their fund, which was really cool.

    Take a moment to think about how the 3 principles are working in this context.

    Once again:

    • Provide value - In this case, I’m looking for advice so the value I’m providing isn’t as clear. For the startup community in general, people are open to helping and I’m giving someone an opportunity to help and expand their network. I also have my own startup, so it could create an investment opportunity for them.
    • Make it personal - Here I focused on his work history (Marine -> business) and investment fund.
    • Keep it short, sweet, and to the point - LinkedIn limits you which makes this perfect. 3-4 sentences is plenty.

    Again, include your call-to-action to make it super easy for someone to say yes.

    This information is great, but you need to apply it

    Think about who you want to reach out to. Is it:

    • A potential mentor or advisor
    • Someone who can show you a problem that needs to be solved
    • Your future co-founder
    • A potential friend!

    Find their email, LinkedIn profile, other social media, or any contact info you can!

    Next, write your message. Follow the principles:

    • Provide value - show the person something that will interest them
    • Make it personal - show that you’re reaching out to them and not to everyone
    • Keep it short, sweet, and to the point - make sure it’s quick to read and say yes. If it’s too long and convoluted, they won’t read it.

    Now there’s one step left, use our unifying theory to solve!

    TOP SECRET UNIFYING THEORY

    Shia LaBeouf just do it meme.

    Source: i.giphy.com/media/GcS…

    Send the message! Get on out there, find the people you want to talk to and talk to them!

    ∃

    Big thanks to Murtaza Bambot for introducing me to the world of sales and Keith Ferrazzi (even though we haven’t met, yet) for writing Never Eat Alone, the book that totally changed how I view networking.

    Also huge thanks to my team at Augment Health that has helped so much with both the tech & business side.

    If you’re interested in hearing more from me, I’m experimenting with an email list – I promise I won’t spam you and you’ll only receive the best content from me :)

  • Rangr Podcast Appearance!

    Cover art for the Rangr podcast, featuring the author's headshot.

    I was recently featured on the 6th episode of the Rangr podcast!

    I really enjoyed the opportunity to catch up with Richard and share my story so far and the lessons I've learned along the way.

    Check out the newsletter here: https://rangr.substack.com/p/who-writes-your-story

    And here's a direct link to the podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3jQ3lqUnYcF33ciagARWmK?si=hECfwHbQSLOzpNXDJV1bGQ

  • COVIDx - Startup Weekend 2020

    Excited to announce that my team, COVIDx finished top 3 in the USA at TechStars Startup Weekend 2020: Unite to Fight Covid-19!

    This weekend, we worked on an app to track COVID-19 based on symptom self-assessment and wearable data.

    More specifically, we worked to bring the business case to life and improve the UX of the open-sourced project. I focused on the frontend UX development.

    I converted the previously page-based app to a dashboard-style layout where all of the app's parts are located on the same page. My experience with React (thanks jaredigms.com!) served me well.

    Really excited to continue working on the project!

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