Pierre

On September 29, 2022, I was a wannabe freelance writer.

At the time, I only had one client — a newsletter called “The Daily Upside.” I wrote sponsorship ad copy for their newsletter, and they paid me enough to cover my Costco bill for a week.

I like $4.99 rotisserie chicken, but I also like being able to pay my rent, so I tried to get more clients. My strategy was this:

Since I had experience writing newsletter ads, I could position myself as a “newsletter ad copywriting expert.” So I pulled together a list of newsletters with sponsored ads, then I went on LinkedIn and found the founder of each newsletter. Then I sent them an email.

Everyone ignored me — except for one person. His name was Pierre.

Pierre responded to me and asked me about my rates and experience. I responded, and he got back to me nine minutes later.

“I’m game to give this a try,” he wrote. “How do you feel about giving this a trial run?”

And just like that, I had my second client.

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It’s hard to explain how impactful this sort of thing is when you’re just starting a business. Anyone who has ever tried to cobble together an income from scratch knows it’s this perpetual yo-yo between “I’m good enough to do this,” and, “Why did I ever think I was good enough to do this?”

Deep down, you know you’ve got it. And you know you could prove it — if someone would just give you an opportunity.

But no one wants to give you an opportunity. After all, why would they risk their time or money on someone new?

I was reminiscing on the early days of my business last week, and I decided to go back and look at these emails. I found the messages between Pierre and me, and was struck by how kind, gracious, and encouraging he was. I hadn’t heard from Pierre in a little while, so I Googled his name.

Pierre Lipton died on February 4, 2023.

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Pierre was a member of Forbes 30 Under 30, he had degrees from Brown University, he had parents, a sister, a girlfriend, friends. If you read a little bit about him online, you know instantly that he was remarkable — in the way that word is actually meant to be used.

And one more thing about Pierre Lipton:

He gave me a shot.

It’s a little strange for me to be writing this. Frankly, I’m not sure I should. It’s reductive to boil down someone’s life into a thesis of a blog post, but I’d like to think that the way Pierre treated me can inspire a few other people to do the same.

In life, we have more opportunities to impact others than we realize. But there’s a subconscious belief most of us carry that — because we may not be in positions of prestige or power — our abilities to positively influence other people’s lives are few and far between.

That subconscious belief should be made conscious, examined, and exterminated.

What Pierre did was give me some money to write some ads for him. But what he really did was make me get a chance to prove something: That maybe I was right. Maybe I was good enough.

Pierre saw someone who needed a shot and decided to take a small risk on them.

How many people around us are just one opportunity away? How many are waiting for someone to believe in them enough to say yes when logic says maybe they should say no?

Most of us walk through life focused on our own opportunities, our own deadlines, our own problems. But every day we interact with people who are quietly trying to prove something to themselves — and to the world.

You probably can't give someone their big break the way Pierre gave me mine. But you can pay attention. And when you notice that someone needs a chance — you can be the person who says yes when others won’t.

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That decision to give me a shot — which probably took Pierre Lipton less than 30 seconds — changed the trajectory of my entire life. Not my career — my life.

And I promise you when he sent that email back, he didn’t think: “Once I hit send, everything will be different for that kid.”

You just never know how you can impact people. And you probably never will know. But that’s OK.

Do it anyway.