can one email change your life?

Everyone wants to connect but no one knows how, or no one wants to make the effort required. As more people automate outreach and inboxes overflow with ignored, generic emails, a carefully crafted message stands out all the more.

Carly Valancy believes in writing cold emails like it could change your life, because it changed hers.

She was living in New York City in her mid-twenties and grinding the musical theater audition life. She was tired of impersonal, packed audition rooms and people saying “this industry is about who you know,” when she found herself on a subway reading the same book (Andrew Lloyd Webber, Unmasked) as a cool looking lady.

The lady joked to Carly that they have great taste in books, and handed Carly her card. Turns out she was the executive director of the Lincoln Center and three months later Carly followed up with an email that landed her a coffee date and an on-the-spot hire that redirected her life and eventually landed her…on Broadway (keep reading to see the email).

This is where she realized that life really is about who you know, and that you have more agency in who you know than you think.

Now, amongst many things, Carly runs Reach Out Party. An 8-week mastermind built on a simple idea taken very seriously: the more you reach out, the luckier you get.

In her Sublime Session, “How to Write an Unignorable Email” Carly broke down the techniques she employs in her connection making, and keeping.

We picked the highlights from this session to help you channel Carly’s messaging genius. And because knowing isn’t the same as doing it, we also built a tool to help you send the email that might change everything. Read until the end to try it.

Before we get into unignorable emailing, Carly is returning for another Sublime Session next month, this time in collaboration with maja on how to enter side doors. Use code SIDEDOORS for free access.

Inspired by Maja’s brilliant eponymous essay, this session is about finding an imaginative way into the jobs, collabs, and creative opportunities that don’t have an obvious front door. Maja and Carly will workshop real audience scenarios and help people figure out what to offer and how to say it. RSVP here and submit your scenario for the chance to have them workshop it during the session.

Now, onto unignorable emailing

THE 4 DO’S

According to Carly, an unignorable cold email needs to be at least 3 of these 4 things:

~ SPECIFIC
~ GENEROUS
~ HONEST
~ RELEVANT

SPECIFIC

Specificity is the thing that separates you from the rest of the world (and from AI).

Start with intention. When you connect with someone, how would you like for them to feel? What is it about you–intangible, magical, whatever–that you would like to communicate?

The goal: no one else in the world could send this email.

For inspiration, take Carly’s motivating force, and the opening line of the “about” page on her Substack, A Good Omen:

“When people meet me, I would like for them to feel like it’s a good omen.”

Try writing your own mission statement sentence to get started!

Then, consider what it would read like to send the message that only you can send and only they can receive.

Asking yourself, “What can only I be curious about in this person?”

Maybe because of a specific background you and the person share, or because of a certain curiosity you followed to find something out about this person.

Specificity in reaching out is less about vague admiration and more about sharing openly why exactly you want to be on their radar.

When you think you’ve been specific enough, get even more specific!

Here’s an example:

HONEST

Whatever is alive for you in the moment as you are writing the email is what you want to include.

This will look different for everyone.

This is Carly’s famous cold email to the director of Lincoln Center after meeting her on the subway:

In her Sublime Session Carly unpacked the ways she would have done the email differently now, after lots of experience in becoming unignorable.

The email had high levels of honesty. i.e. the way she openly addressed her intimidation. The explicit vulnerability and humor around why she put it off, the mention of overthinking the moment, and about her admiration and willingness/interest in learning.

She’s semi specific when she references the book they were both reading, and even less so when she says she is interested in “hearing about her experience.”

Carly’s style of honesty is (of course) not the same as everyone else’s, and that’s the point. The point is to tap into your flavor of honesty by honing what it really is you are thinking and feeling, which = what it is you actually mean to say.

Write what makes you insecure, write what makes you genuinely curious, write what makes you different, write what you would want to read!

GENEROUS

It’s hard to make things and put them out there. Every time we find people that are making things that we love, a mini miracle takes place. A generous message communicates that you admire what they’re doing. That you notice what they’re doing.

Carly offers the guiding compass: “You want it to be a gift to receive an email from you.”

Carly also warns against writing messages that feel like work for the receiver. If someone has to decipher why you should matter to them, or explain who they are to you, that is work, not a gift.

If you are making the effort of reaching out and they are reciprocating with reading and receiving, you want the message to be clear, easy to read, and different.

The email needs to show the ways their work has moved you, and the ways your work can potentially elevate theirs.

RELEVANT

“I’m doing this, you’re doing that, so now let me share the specific and valuable relevance of reaching out to you.”

The more specific you get, the more relevant your message becomes to the person you are reaching out to. The more specific and relevant, the more potential for polarization. Carly says LEAN IN.

Becoming unignorable means you are becoming unlike everyone else. It means being polarizing, risky, dangerous. It means opening up to rejection.

The “likeable” zone is where most emails get ignored. So if you get rejected, you’re doing it right.

The reward is that one of those risky emails could change your life.

PLANTING SEEDS

Don’t be afraid to share what you are not ready for yet. Plant seeds for your future self.

Carly finished this email by writing “Additionally, deep breath I’d love to be a guest on your podcast one day. Given the caliber of your guests, I’m not sure that day is today, but consider this email my attempt to plant a seed for the future.”

And you know what the person replied?

Find your way of saying I’M NOT READY YET BUT ONE DAY I’D LOVE TO. In other words, SEND IT.

Maybe you and the person will collaborate in the future, and look back on that initial email years later, and go, wow.

Don’t wait until you are ready. They were once where you are, too. People, as inaccessible as they may seem, are usually excited to help where they can.

ALWAYS PLANT THE SEED.

YOUR TURN

If you treat email writing like art, your emails will be received like art. We made a tool to make the hardest part, starting, fun: SHOOT YOUR SHOT!

Pick someone who is making something you love, someone who feels out of reach. Write why them and why you. Swipe through curated examples of great cold emails to pick your vibe. We’ll give you five drafts to play with, react to, and shoot your shot.