Ever since I moved to San Francisco, people have been using me as their free resource for basically anything. I blogged about people sucking up free advice a while ago, and little has changed. While receiving and giving back is what defines Silicon Valley mentality, there’s definitely been times when people tried to rip me off or tried to steal ideas – mostly people outside San Francisco trying to get in, but also fellow journalists.
I definitely made a change in that when someone asks “a quick question”, I make it very clear that this isn’t going to be for free. Sometimes people won’t even respond to that anymore. So that definitely is a good filter and reveals who wouldn’t have been worthy of my time anyways. (Edit: see my comment for further explanation)
My biggest problem is that I do enjoy helping others out. In times of frustration and shockingly low account balance, my firm belief in Karma kept me going. I knew my helping others would somehow pay off in the future. The tricky thing with Karma is: It comes unexpected and in most cases not from where you put your effort in. I’m happy to say that after a rough year, Karma kicked in twice in a short period of time.
Investing Karma Money
I met fellow media reporter Nils through Twitter probably five years ago and we hung out together at industry events in Germany. We loosely discussed working together a long time ago, but never did. In December, he contacted me regarding a project that he was working on. Knowing I live in San Francisco now, he asked me if I wanted to do a daily column for them. On my 30th birthday, the first email I got was Nils confirming our deal. So since last week I’m officially a contributor to the new German tech siteCurved. In my column, I’m covering Silicon Valley news from my meta point of view. This was something I had been pitching to Austrian and German publications for a while, but either they weren’t interested or they didn’t want to pay (ugh). I’m so grateful for this opportunity, as I finally get the chance to share my stories to a broader audience. Not to dismiss all the other contributions I’m doing, but this is the first one where I can make use of my perspective – which is very different from the tech people I’m interviewing for other stories.
The second case of Karma happened even more unexpectedly last weekend. And I can honestly say I’ll remember this gesture for the rest of my life. I mentioned randomly that I didn’t get a press accreditation for the Crunchies (an award show hosted by TechCrunch). A couple of hours later, Glenn Fleishman messaged me that he scored me an invite. I’ve been following Glenn for a while and admire what he’s been doing with The Magazine and also backed his Kickstarter campaign. He explained, “I was a young freelancer myself! Paying back all the amazing help I got when I was your age.” I totally know where Glenn is coming from and that makes me appreciate it even more.
I do this thing I call investing “Karma money”. I have a soft spot for writers, freelancers and female entrepreneurs and whenever I have the opportunity to reach out and help, I will do so. I love supporting small businesses and people starting out, and if I have to spend money, I’d rather spend it on them than somewhere else.
What goes around comes around. If you’re open to giving and helping people out, you’ll be rewarded with precious gifts. If you only suck up the help of others without giving back, you’ll probably miss out on great opportunities.
