Hail to the Cold Call

“What the hell is a cold call?” the digital natives among us may ask.

It's hard to imagine: People used to just pick up the phone and call people they had never even met. I know what you’re thinking: Why would anybody CALL someone, regardless of whether or not they’ve met? 

Back in the Middle Ages (like, the 1990s) some folks thought it was perfectly normal and okay to actually call people that we not only did not know but...wait for it...to make that call completely unannounced. No advance warning whatsoever. I know, it sounds so improper.

Well, I’m that guy.

Here are two of my cold-calling war stories.

About ten years ago I read a story in the local newspaper about a guy named Jesse Lunsford who had helped transform a ramshackle neighborhood near downtown Austin into the most successful entertainment district in town: Rainey St. I was impressed that Jesse could envision real estate in ways that others could not. So I cold-called him. To my surprise, he not only picked up the phone—we proceeded to have quite a nice conversation. This began a very successful and enjoyable business partnership in which we have developed numerous properties for the restaurant and hospitality industry around central Texas.

My second war story is similar, in that I picked up the phone to call somebody I had read about in a book, in an industry I knew nothing about, but was interested to explore. Chad Anderson, an early venture capitalist in the space commercialization industry, was heavily quoted in Ashlee Vance’s 2015 book about Elon Musk and SpaceX. I called Chad, he picked up the phone. This started my investment program in space-related companies.

Because of my naïve cold-calling, I am now involved in two new, exciting and profitable commercial endeavours, which I never would have been able to enter on my own.

A big part of me thinks that those guys would never take my call today. That makes me so sad. Cold-calling was once an utterly indispensable tool for the successful entrepreneur, a major part of the fine art of random exploration; an art that led to the kinds of surprising and welcome successes that structured strategies all too often miss. These days, I even reach out to my own kids in advance to make sure that they have time to talk on the phone. Communications and interaction are pre-planned with almost no exceptions. Sorry—but that kind of communication does not reflect the real world. The real world just IS more improv. Are we losing our ability to improvise?

The universe just spoke to me on this issue. 

As I was writing the paragraph above, my computer decided to reboot. You know, that signal you get about 11 times a week? That the computer needs to reconfigure and wants to know if you are ready? We are never friggin’ ready, okay, computer? But I accidently hit the "ready" button, because the system is rigged to make that button easier to press. So, we rebooted for a while and now here we are. Again.

You think that’s a diversion from what I was trying to say? No. It's exactly what I am trying to say. Cold calls are all about diversion. They require you to call someone you don’t know, and they don't know you. Make a connection. Explain why you are calling. None of this is scheduled. Daunting, perhaps. Annoying, maybe. Yet when it works, it's magical.

Do we need cold calls these days? Absolutely. More than ever! Put in cosmic terms, we should strive to pierce the directional and intersectional realm. Wait, what does that even mean? It means that precisely because you think you know how it's going to go, and that you already know everyone will ever know or need to know; you actually probably need some kind of cosmic-force-strength intervention to pierce what I will now and forevermore define as the “opportunistic veil.”

So: All hail the cold call! The cosmic force opportunistic veil piercing light laser. Who knew?

The Cold Call. It might be calling somebody you don't know, like Jesse, or Chad. Or maybe even better, it might be like cold-calling your own danged self (somebody you might no longer know) and asking, "Hey Dude, is there something we can do together?" Hail to the cold call.

The cold call light saber can cut a path through what you know into the world of what you don’t know, using the powerful energy of spontaneity. May that force be with you, always. Where has all of the spontaneity gone? Why are we all on some kind of metaphorical railroad tracks like those laid down by some robber baron in the 19th century, that somehow dictate that we must go in that one direction, through that one town; while each and every other direction, through each and every other town, is no longer on The Path?

We say we have all of this directional freedom these days, what with AI, global trade, reaching for the stars. Bullshit! If we don't feel comfortable just picking up the proverbial phone and making that cold call, even if it’s to our own damn selves, then are we not truly trapped, imprisoned by our own design?

So, I am asking you, and mostly myself, the question. What stops us?

Why must we delay or defeat what I believe to be an innate human urge to reach out, in any and every kind of circumstance? To just friggin’ make the cold call? To override inhibition and spontaneously say hello to our curiosity, humanity?

Photo by Alex Andrews

It worked out for me. But I wonder, is it still possible, or have we as a society become so structured that I would now never make those calls? Perhaps, even if I did, Jesse and Chad would never pick up the phone. Probably so, and maybe not. Are there other, newer forms of the cold call? Perhaps we’ve all just lost that magic touch, the capacity to surprise, to be surprised; the urge toward disorderly communication has atrophied, like a muscle we’ve quit using. That's what we need to recultivate. Think of the urge as curiosity and the anti-urge as inhibition. Get over it! Reach out again, with naive delight and genuine human openness. I cannot believe we, as humans, have lost this, lost the culture of trying. Please. Draw your light saber…pick up the phone.

Hail to the cold call.

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Feature photo by Andrea Piacquadio