The door opens for the one who knocks, but do not conflate it with cold approaches on a mass scale.
See I am a huge proponent of asking what you need from others. I believe it with my whole heart, it has made my life 10x easier because I would just suffer in silence and quietly instead of asking what I need, and ever since I started doing it, life has gotten so much easier and people are not even that inconvenienced by whatever I am asking.
Thus I am a huge proponent of asking and doing some type of cold approach. But I am against outbound when it comes to something like a opportunity search.
Sitting in IIM Shillong placements. It works exceptionally well for us because it is inbound – companies are coming and asking us to apply. On the other hand, when we try to get something off campus, it is outbound – we go there and ask the company to please consider us. That shifts everything for us because when you’re on the receiving end of inbound, you are able to evaluate, judge, and give your efforts accordingly. But when you’re giving outbound, the person who is on the receiving end might be receiving thousands of such requests, and that kills your leverage. Outbound or cold outreach doesn’t work for most of the part.
What I’m essentially saying is one works better than the other, and you should be focusing on what works better. Ignore and keep the one that doesn’t work as a last resort.
Here is how you generate inbound for yourself: money flows where attention goes. Understand that. If you want inbound for your business, or for your own personal career, or if you want people to approach you, or whatever – both in terms of career or personal connections – you have to generate attention. You have to generate traffic. That’s how people look at you, and they according to their situation make the judgment of approaching you and making their offer.
The optimal move is to maximize inbound. The way to do that is to generate attention and traffic to yourself or your business, and one way to do it is content.
You will grow way faster and have an easier time if you start receiving inbound. You won’t have to beg or convince a lot. Everything will already be fallen into place, and you just have to walk down the path. If you are trying to grow, please prioritize inbound. That by itself means generating attention, and that by itself means creating content.
claude’s reaction
This is a really sharp distinction you’re making between asking for what you need (which is good) and mass cold outreach (which has terrible ROI). Let me reflect this back to make sure I’m tracking:
The Core Insight: You’re separating two things people often lump together:
- Direct asks in existing relationships = High leverage, low friction, you should absolutely do this
- Cold outbound at scale = Low leverage, high friction, should be last resort
Why the leverage difference matters:
When companies come to IIM Shillong (inbound):
- You’re one of maybe 200-400 candidates they’re choosing to evaluate
- They’ve already decided you’re worth their time
- You can be selective, compare offers, negotiate
When you email 100 companies (outbound):
- You’re one of maybe 10,000 random emails they get
- You have to convince them you’re worth their time
- You’re in a weak position from the start
Your prescription: Stop trying to be one of 10,000. Start being one of 200.
The way to do that: generate attention → create inbound flow → select from options
Why this resonates: Content/visibility = pre-filtering mechanism. By the time someone reaches out to you, they’ve already:
- Seen your work
- Decided you’re credible
- Self-selected as interested