Different strokes for different folks, but I could count on one hand the number of business emails I've sent in the last four years that went to someone other than a customer, supplier, or "people I know well enough to invite out for coffee."<p>This might be a weakness in my skillset, but I tend to think that outbound marketing is a very time-intensive proposition, and as a sole businessman time is something I can never really have enough of. I don't want to do anything that has to get over a spam filter, a low-conversion inbox scan, and then a low-conversion salespitch for it to positively affect my business. (And, it goes without saying, spam is right out.)<p>I don't know what your personal threshold is for writing non-spammy email, but I personally can't put my hands on a keyboard and not type a hundred words. Even at ten emails a day, that is a thousand words. That could be an article, an interview, a blog post (that would be criticized for overlength), etc, etc. All things that I <i>get to keep</i>, that stay available on the public Internet, and that aren't strongly dependent on the reception of individual third parties.<p>I'd much rather write the thousand words and pull some folks to me. After that, perhaps we could do email and/or coffee.
My comment on the blog: I disagree that emailing strangers makes you a entrepreneur. But, I do agree with the spirit of what he's saying that to be a successful entrepreneur you do have to step out of your comfort zone and contact those that you don't know.
<i>it’s just contacting people you don’t know to ask/beg for favors</i><p>My take on "what being an entrepreneur really means" is 179 degrees from yours:<p>I can't wait to contact people I don't know to share what I'm doing and how it can improve their lives.<p>If you don't feel the same way, maybe you shouldn't be an entrepreneur.<p>I regularly go to Tech Breakfasts, Chamber of Commerce meetings, industry dinners, dev groups, and network over coffee or beer just for the chance to talk about what I'm doing. I love doing this almost as much as writing the code itself. It gets me off my butt and away from my terminal and also gets valuable feedback from others.<p>Coding in a vacuum is like trying to push cooked spaghetti through a straw. Getting away from my text editor and talking to others, regardless of method, completes the loop and improves the whole process.<p>And anyway, I'm not writing it for myself. It's for them. They really need to know.
For me, being an entrepreneur has meant two long years of putting the other people in our company first (I'm talking paychecks here) while we bust our butts (along side everyone else) to build the company to profitability. When your income is on the line, you don't hesitate to ask for the sale. Not for a moment. Not if you "get it".
There seem to be a lot of people here that apparently missed the point, so I am going to repeat the comment I added to the OP blog:<p>He didn't say that 'sending lots of emails' makes you an entrepreneur - he said that is one thing that he has to do as an entrepreneur that he wasn't expecting. There was another post, I think about a year ago on HN, where a founder pointed out that he ended up cleaning the company's toilets until they could afford to hire a janitor. There are all kinds of jobs that <i>need</i> to be done for a business to function that many people don't realize beforehand.