Hacking Free Uber Rides and Reaching Out to Anyone with Kevin Miller
“If you don’t ask, you’ll never know. If you err on the side of asking, more opportunities will come your way.” – Kevin Miller
In this episode of Nat Chat I’m joined by Kevin Miller. Kevin was the director of marketing for Spire when we had this conversation, and I wanted to bring him on for the interesting series of jobs and experiences that led him there.
Kevin attended Georgetown University, and while everyone else there was focusing on the big typical careers, he was much more interested in getting into tech. He became a master at cold emailing people to try to learn from them and work with them, which led to conversations with Evan Spiegel, Mark Cuban, and getting the opportunity to sit in and shadow people doing marketing and other jobs in order to learn from them.
He eventually ended up working at Google on their ads team, and after mastering how the ads system works, left to apply it to his own projects, including, among other things, getting thousands of dollars in free Uber rides and food.
If you need someone to light a fire under your ass for the benefits of cold outreach and direct mentorship… Kevin is the guy. He’s relentless, and it’s opened every major door in his life.
We covered a lot, including:
- Mastering cold emailing and outreach and making it a consistent habit
- The importance of investing in one mentor at a time and being genuine with people
- Improving your public speaking skills to aid you in various areas of life
- Recognizing skills you lack and improving them through a variety of techniques
- Spending your time around people with desirable traits
And a ton more. Please enjoy, and reach out to Kevin on Twitter!
If you want more advice for further improving your cold emailing and outreach, be sure to check out my interview with Charlie Hoehn. You may also like my interview with Taylor Pearson for learning more about volunteering and direct mentorship, and my interview with Scott Britton for continuously improving your skills and charisma.
Links from the Episode
Find Kevin Online:
Mentioned in the show:
- Spire
- Georgetown University
- WordPress
- Adwords
- Living Social
- True Ventures
- Sweetgreen
- Carnegie Mellon
- Lyft
- AirBnB
- Doorman
- Hotel Tonight
- Munchery
- UberEats
- PostMates
- Fiverr
- Patreon
- Meltwater
- Arena Ventures
Books mentioned:
People mentioned:
- Adil Majid (Natchat Episode with Adil)
- Evan Spiegel
- Mark Cuban
- Max Friedman (Natchat Episode with Max)
- Kobe Bryant
Show Topics
1:26 – Intro to Kevin and how he received thousands of dollars worth of free Uber rides using clever ad tactics.
3:26 – How Kevin got involved in the tech industry and what sparked his interest in tech related work.
6:37 – Kevin’s cold outreach tactic he used to successfully land an internship at True Ventures, a venture capital firm, where he worked at various portfolio companies.
8:33 – Kevin’s experience with learning business and content development from True Ventures’ portfolio companies and learning from skilled entrepreneurs on entrepreneurial success.
10:15 – What Kevin did after graduation and his learning experiences.
12:15 – How Kevin got into the habit of continuously reaching out to people and some useful principles you can apply to your own outreach methods.
15:54 – What Kevin studied in college and his first experiences in entrepreneurship.
19:01 – How Kevin received a job working for Google, what he did there, and how he prepared for the job.
22:34 – Kevin leaving Google to pursue his own interests, learning more with different marketing acquisition channels, and finding a mentor that was crucial for his growth.
25:45 – Some of the other projects Kevin was working on and him eventually becoming a director of marketing for Spire.
31:01 – Some things Kevin had to learn while working at Spire and him detailing his process for recognizing lacking skills and efficiently improving them.
37:36 – Kevin speaking on majoring in business, what he learned, and how important improving your public speaking can be for success.
42:19 – Kevin’s experience with reaching out to Mark Cuban.
44:37 – How Kevin learned to perfect his cold email techniques, his experience with contacting Evan Spiegel, and some important career advice from Evan.
48:26 – One of Kevin’s favorite experiences with failure and some perspective on learning things based on analyzing failure and identifying the negatives.
52:36 – Kevin’s favorite books and experiences that had the most impact on his life.
56:37 – Some last pieces of advice from Kevin to everyone looking for better opportunities.
If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe at https://nateliason.com/podcast