Jon Sully

Contact Jon

First and foremost, I believe that sharing knowledge in a public manner is super helpful for others looking to learn. So if you wanted to reach out to clarify a question or concern around an article I’ve written, please comment on it instead! I built a custom comment system into this site just for that!

Beyond that, if you’d like to reach me privately, email will be the best (and only) way to do that. But I’m going to steal some prose from Patrick McKenzie and leave some tips for ensuring I reply. Send an interesting email!

  • Specific questions are better than vague requests. Here’s a vague request: “I was wondering if you could mentor me.” What does that mean? It sounds like an unbounded time commitment on my part, and I have no clue how I could provide value to you. Here’s a specific question: “I have a new SaaS in the $FILL_IN_THE_BLANK space. We’re investigating customer acquisition methods, and having read your posts on SEO, I see that I need more links to rank for competitive queries. I’ve got three ideas for linkbait: $IDEA1, $IDEA2, and $IDEA3. Can you give me any suggestions on how I can get the maximum bang for my effort-based buck on these? Do you have any other suggestions for linkbait pieces in this space? Thanks!”
  • If I don’t respond, that is probably because of me, not because of you.Trust me, I don’t hate your guts. Do the math: your email, 5 minutes, my life, 1,440 minutes a day. If I don’t write back, the overwhelmingly likely reason is that something in the other 1,435 minutes caused it rather than anything you said or didn’t say, or anything about you personally. Maybe I’m crunching on a project, maybe I’m out at the park with my children, maybe I’m buried deep in a book.
  • Restrained, professional confidence is a good skill to master. Don’t apologize for contacting me or wasting my time — avoiding that is the whole purpose of giving you an engraved invitation to contact me. Don’t minimize your own experience, competence, success, or chances. I give people advice on selling things for a living — you will not offend me with restrained salesmanship about why I should care about your email. “We’re revolutionizing the ability of people to connect with data” doesn’t mean anything to me and will not predispose me to doing things for you. “Our new A/B testing software is easier to use than the one you wrote because $REASON1, $REASON2, and $REASON3″ will certainly get my attention if those reasons are credible.
  • People love to back underdogs but they hate backing losers. This is closely related to the above point about confidence. No matter what stage you’re at, your business is already bigger and more successful than I was at one point in my life. (And many folks who I talk with could lose my business in the petty cash drawer, even today. See above regarding not-an-unapproachable-celebrity.) Do not minimize that: concentrate on what you can do to get to the next rung. Not from the US? Trust me, I won’t hold it against you. English your third language? Spiffy, I speak three myself, and your English is probably superior to my Spanish if you got this far. Is your product a little niche? I sell bingo cards to elementary schoolteachers for a living. I appreciate folks with a can-do attitude who look like they are going places and will benefit from specific suggestions that I can give them. Conversely, “Woe is me, I am not in Silicon Valley and cannot get funding and do not know anyone and am not a programmer and I am unemployed and I have no prospects and I did not graduate from a good school.” is not likely to endear you to me.
  • Concision is a virtue. I’m terrible at it, obviously, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate it. The optimum length for a first email is probably about a paragraph, and the optimum number of decisions you ask me to make in an email is one.

So, with all that said, I love hearing from strangers and getting interesting emails. If you’re nailing that, I’ll likely reply quickly. If you’re not (or if I’m just away / on vacation / reading a book) it may take a day. Or even two!

Alas. You can email me at: YOUR_NAME @ jonsully.net. Or really any name/handle. As long as the address ends in @jonsully.net, I’ll get the email. Go wild! But don’t tell the bots. I get enough spam as is 🙂.