Subject: How To Get A Response From Any Stranger

Dear Friend,

I'm Allen. I like to think I'm an above average, mid-twenties guy from Sydney. I like to write things.

One of the mediums I've gotten pretty darn good at is writing emails to strangers. From those emails, I've built some magical relationships that have changed the trajectory of my life. I've gone from a nobody to a nobody with more friends, some powerful ones too.

Which strangers you might ask? Well, I hate to name drop - sorry, that's a lie - it's actually my favourite thing to do when I'm feeling insecure about myself. So it's something you'll have to live with as you get to know me.

These strangers have included heads of state, leaders of the largest companies in the world, designers, creatives, artists, actors and engineers who have changed the fabric of culture and life as we know it.

When I was twenty, I shot off an email to Sir Jonathan Ive, the former Chief Design Officer of Apple, asking for a coffee. He, along with Steve Jobs, for decades lead the team that created the iMac, iPod and iPhone - all you have to do is look down in your hand to know the impact of these inventions on the world. If you happen to be holding a Samsung, may the gods have mercy on your soul.

I think I might have been drunk at the time, I can't quite remember, otherwise I have no explanation for the misplaced confidence and lack of inhibition that day. Surprisingly, he responded and said agreed forwarding my request to his PA Harper who dutifully organised it when I was in California months later. I remember jumping up and down in my room when I got the response.

It became a habit for me, over the years, to write to my heroes whom I admired and wanted to learn from. More often than not, they have responded and not just responded, but showed me mind-blowing generosity and kindness. In fact, I've measured it - 86% of all the cold emails I've ever written have been returned by the recipient - and I've written a lot of them over the last seven years.

People have often asked me how I built these relationships, and they have all begun with that first email, which I view as the modern epistle. I'd like to share with you how I write them.

‍
‍

‍

He continued to explain that there were 100 separate processes in the creation of a pair of high quality handmade glasses. I later discovered that how they count these steps is questionable but technically correct. Over the past century, each major process was separated and perfected by small, usually family owned factories, rather than any one factory or family controlling the entire process. Ultimately, the whole city became a decentralised eyewear making ecosystem. It was a well burnished story from repeated use, made evident by the fervour in which he told it.

We now found ourselves in a bright room, large tables were covered with an ordered sea of small white boxes whilst an array of machinery sat on the back wall. I could hear the gentle whine of machines in the background, a steady high pitched hum of metal drills whirring about. Middle aged women were carefully inspecting frames before placing them into resealable plastic bags, in preparation for going inside these white boxes. Sagami-san explained that his company was in charge of final assembly and quality control. He also noted that they specialised in dealing with international orders, due to their multilingual team.

He walked over to a neat pile of glasses and picked up a pair — it was a German brand and he pointed to the ‘DESIGNED IN GERMANY’ painted on the inside of one of the temples. ‘Temple’ is an industry term for the arms of glasses, given they sit next to your temples.

“Notice how the ‘E’ in Denmark is blemished and has failed quality control, this temple will be disassembled from the frame so it can be repainted and re-polished before being reconstructed again,” he remarked. The accidental metaphor of rebuilding temples and occurence of life imitating art made me chuckle in my mind.

Using both hands, he passed the glasses over to me. The ‘E’ looked fine until you placed your eye a few centimetres away from markings on the temple. In the bottom right corner of the third stroke, there was perhaps a speck where the paint didn’t find its way into the engraved lettering. I was astonished and in.

“This is handmade in Japan,” he beamed.

The sentiment, that spirit of care, the singular focus until you have reached the highest levels of quality possible resonated with me. Maybe it was a stage managed show they put on, but I was surely inspired to follow in this philosophy. This moment I realised later, became the genetic ancestor for the name of Tzukuri.

When arriving back in Sydney after the first trip, the excellent service of Google Translate told me that handmade in Japanese was 手作り. Transliterated into Latin characters, it would be Tedzukuri or potentially Tetzukuri. This struck me as an odd coincidence as the nickname given to me as a child by my father in a mixture of Taiwanese and Japanese, was 德さん (Te-san). In an even stranger stroke of serendipity, Allen happens to be derived from the Celtic Aluinn meaning handsome – which in the original sense was ‘ready at hand’ or ‘good with one’s hands’ rather than the current aesthetic definition, which of course I’m still more than happy to accept.

At first I was delighted and defintely a little tempted to follow in the footsteps of my great friend Matthew, who cleverly snuck his name into his own company title 'Automattic'— however the hard pronunciation due to the sheer number of syllables, as well as silent letters, made me think that it would be best if my name and hand were made absent. Thus, Tzukuri the name was born.

The Chinese characters for Tzukuri: 視酷利, which has an entirely different meaning, were a joint effort between my mother and father. But that’s a story for another day.

‍Beginning and Ending. A To Z.

Subject: How To Get A Response From Any Stranger

Dear Friend,

I'm Allen. I like to think I'm an above average, mid-twenties guy from Sydney. I like to write things.

One of the mediums I've gotten pretty darn good at is writing emails to strangers. From those emails, I've built some magical relationships that have changed the trajectory of my life. I've gone from a nobody to a nobody with more friends, some powerful ones too.

Which strangers you might ask? Well, I hate to name drop - sorry, that's a lie - it's actually my favourite thing to do when I'm feeling insecure about myself. So it's something you'll have to live with as you get to know me.

These strangers have included heads of state, leaders of the largest companies in the world, designers, creatives, artists, actors and engineers who have changed the fabric of culture and life as we know it.

When I was twenty, I shot off an email to Sir Jonathan Ive, the former Chief Design Officer of Apple, asking for a coffee. He, along with Steve Jobs, for decades lead the team that created the iMac, iPod and iPhone - all you have to do is look down in your hand to know the impact of these inventions on the world. If you happen to be holding a Samsung, may the gods have mercy on your soul.

I think I might have been drunk at the time, I can't quite remember, otherwise I have no explanation for the misplaced confidence and lack of inhibition that day. Surprisingly, he responded and said agreed forwarding my request to his PA Harper who dutifully organised it when I was in California months later. I remember jumping up and down in my room when I got the response.

It became a habit for me, over the years, to write to my heroes whom I admired and wanted to learn from. More often than not, they have responded and not just responded, but showed me mind-blowing generosity and kindness. In fact, I've measured it - 86% of all the cold emails I've ever written have been returned by the recipient - and I've written a lot of them over the last seven years.

People have often asked me how I built these relationships, and they have all begun with that first email, which I view as the modern epistle. I'd like to share with you how I write them.

‍
‍

‍

He continued to explain that there were 100 separate processes in the creation of a pair of high quality handmade glasses. I later discovered that how they count these steps is questionable but technically correct. Over the past century, each major process was separated and perfected by small, usually family owned factories, rather than any one factory or family controlling the entire process. Ultimately, the whole city became a decentralised eyewear making ecosystem. It was a well burnished story from repeated use, made evident by the fervour in which he told it.

We now found ourselves in a bright room, large tables were covered with an ordered sea of small white boxes whilst an array of machinery sat on the back wall. I could hear the gentle whine of machines in the background, a steady high pitched hum of metal drills whirring about. Middle aged women were carefully inspecting frames before placing them into resealable plastic bags, in preparation for going inside these white boxes. Sagami-san explained that his company was in charge of final assembly and quality control. He also noted that they specialised in dealing with international orders, due to their multilingual team.

He walked over to a neat pile of glasses and picked up a pair — it was a German brand and he pointed to the ‘DESIGNED IN GERMANY’ painted on the inside of one of the temples. ‘Temple’ is an industry term for the arms of glasses, given they sit next to your temples.

“Notice how the ‘E’ in Denmark is blemished and has failed quality control, this temple will be disassembled from the frame so it can be repainted and re-polished before being reconstructed again,” he remarked. The accidental metaphor of rebuilding temples and occurence of life imitating art made me chuckle in my mind.

Using both hands, he passed the glasses over to me. The ‘E’ looked fine until you placed your eye a few centimetres away from markings on the temple. In the bottom right corner of the third stroke, there was perhaps a speck where the paint didn’t find its way into the engraved lettering. I was astonished and in.

“This is handmade in Japan,” he beamed.

The sentiment, that spirit of care, the singular focus until you have reached the highest levels of quality possible resonated with me. Maybe it was a stage managed show they put on, but I was surely inspired to follow in this philosophy. This moment I realised later, became the genetic ancestor for the name of Tzukuri.

When arriving back in Sydney after the first trip, the excellent service of Google Translate told me that handmade in Japanese was 手作り. Transliterated into Latin characters, it would be Tedzukuri or potentially Tetzukuri. This struck me as an odd coincidence as the nickname given to me as a child by my father in a mixture of Taiwanese and Japanese, was 德さん (Te-san). In an even stranger stroke of serendipity, Allen happens to be derived from the Celtic Aluinn meaning handsome – which in the original sense was ‘ready at hand’ or ‘good with one’s hands’ rather than the current aesthetic definition, which of course I’m still more than happy to accept.

At first I was delighted and defintely a little tempted to follow in the footsteps of my great friend Matthew, who cleverly snuck his name into his own company title 'Automattic'— however the hard pronunciation due to the sheer number of syllables, as well as silent letters, made me think that it would be best if my name and hand were made absent. Thus, Tzukuri the name was born.

The Chinese characters for Tzukuri: 視酷利, which has an entirely different meaning, were a joint effort between my mother and father. But that’s a story for another day.

‍Beginning and Ending. A To Z.