When I arrived in Mexico I knew absolutely no one. What I did have was a very clear goal: I wanted to work with the best trademark lawyers in the country.
I had no contacts, no network, nobody to introduce me. What followed was predictable: a lot of unanswered emails.
What I did instead of waiting
The head of my degree program gave me simple advice: write to the professors who teach the subject. I took it, and decided to go one step further.
I went online, found the listings of the leading trademark registration lawyers across Mexico, visited their websites one by one, tracked down their email addresses and wrote to them directly asking for work. Cold, with no connections and no intermediaries.
Most did not reply. Some did. That was enough.
What I learned, and still use
Rejection is not a diagnosis. An unanswered email almost never means you are not good enough; it means that person was busy that day. The difference is made by continuing to send them.
Being specific worked better than being impressive. I did not send a generic CV: I wrote about their work, about that particular subject, about what I wanted to learn.
You do not need permission to start. It is easy to think you first have to know someone. In practice, you can almost always just write.
Why I am telling this
Because the same logic applies to anyone building a business. Plenty of people wait for the perfect structure, the right moment or the right contact before taking the first step. And while they wait, they do not register their trademark, do not sign their contracts, do not put their own house in order.
I arrived knowing nobody and today I run a firm that helps companies protect what they build. It was not down to having the right network. It was down to sending the email nobody promised would be answered.
If you are at that point with your project, write to us. Here we do reply.