The people you most want to work with already have a full inbox. They get pitched by strangers every day, most of whom want something while pretending they’re giving a compliment. Reach out the wrong way and you end up in the same pile, and the pile gets cleared without response.

I started a social media agency at 22 and sold it ten years later. Along the way I ran accounts for brands like Deliveroo, Nando’s and Subaru, got approached by founders I had read about for years, and worked out that access goes beyond luck. The people at the top are people. They have wants, fears and a finite amount of attention, same as you, and they open the door for anyone who treats them that way.

Connection is a skill you can practise. Here is how to reach the people you would love to have in your corner, without the cringe and without waiting to be picked.

Connecting with the people you want in your corner

Understand what they want

Successful people can smell a transaction from the first line. The moment your message is about you, your goals and your ask, they switch off and move on. Find out what they care about before you say a word about yourself. Read what they post, listen to how they talk on podcasts, notice the problems they keep circling back to and the wins they talk about. People give their attention to anyone who understands their world without being asked to explain it.

Offer something useful before you request anything in return. Make an introduction, send a resource, solve a small problem they mentioned in passing. Give them an easy win so that saying yes becomes the obvious move rather than a favour. When you want to land sales or simply build a rapport with the people you admire, start from their goals and build everything else around those. Your message will read like a gift instead of an invoice.

Go where they spend their time

Your dream collaborators are already out in the world. They sit in certain coffee shops, take certain trains, join certain running clubs and show up at the same handful of events every year. Find out where your people gather and spend more of your time there. Do it for long enough and you stop being a stranger in a message and start being a familiar face who belongs in the room.

A friend wanted to work with people who run family offices, so he took up golf, because that is where people who do that spend their time. It made complete sense. Pick the rooms your people occupy and occupy them too. The same logic works online. A steady commenting strategy on the posts you respect puts you in someone's feed long before you ever pitch.

Find the people on your mission

Work out the change you want to make in the world, then go and find the others already making it. Conferences exist for almost every cause worth caring about. The UN runs events constantly. Get aligned with one of their global goals. Industry bodies gather the people who write the rules into one room for two days at a time, and most of those rooms are open to anyone willing to buy a ticket and turn up with something to say.

Go straight to the top. The people who inform policy and make global decisions are far more reachable than you think, because so few people are brave enough to approach them directly. Show up with a point of view and a question worth answering, and you will stand out from everyone hovering at the edge of the conversation. Arrive as a peer with something to add.

Drop the imposter act and be yourself

Imposter syndrome does you no favours here. It tells you these people are a different species, that you have to be a polished version of yourself to be taken seriously, and that one wrong word will expose you. All wrong. The founder you admire still gets nervous before big calls, still wants to be liked, still lights up at a question nobody else thought to ask.

Ask questions. Be interested. Understand someone's world and keep an open mind about where the relationship might go. People who play big treat everyone as an equal from the first hello, which is how they get extreme results . Send the message you have been sitting on for weeks. A confident, human DM strategy . Write like one person talking to another.

How to reach the people you want to work with: 5 simple steps

Stop treating the people you admire as untouchable. They are humans with wants, fears and a finite amount of attention, and they respond to anyone who understands that and acts on it.

Understand what they want. Show up where they are. Lead with value and lead with yourself. The connection you keep hoping someone will hand you is one you can go and build yourself.