I got a request for technical support from a person I never met before

Hi Aaron,

I just stumbled upon your blog post regarding image uploading in Ionic. I would really like to ask you a few questions about some challenges I’m facing with Ionic. Can I have 15–30min of your time one day this week?

Then I responded to what looked to me like a technical support question from someone I have never met in my life.

I give away a lot of free support through my blog post and open source github repos… so you can first off like/star the repo that you are using and then post your issue there so I can try and help you.

If you want more personalize support/training/QA on Ionic, I can set up a session and we can agree on a rate. You are an entrepreneur and your time is worth something just like mine is.

So I have offered to help the person out, who I have never met before, explaining that if it is more specific technical support that I believe my time is valuable… and this is the response I get

Yes definitely. I was more so looking for some type of mentorship. But if that comes at a cost, then in my opinion, it’s not as genuine as if hope. Thanks anyway.

So first thing… this is the first mention of “mentorship” and then I am “not genuine” So this is my response to the individual.

Let me give you some mentorship advice you can choose to take or leave.

I have never met you before in my life, if I have I apologize because I don’t remember you… you email me on a weekend asking me to help you with a technical problem, I then suggest you post it as an issue OR set up sometime to get paid support and THEN you mention mentorship?

You need to take a second look at how you ask for help and approach someone for mentorship, nowhere in the original email did you ask for a mentor, you asked for technical help on Ionic, that sounds like tech support.

Do you have any idea how many unsolicited emails I get asking for technical help? How else was I supposed to respond to your email?

I am certain you are a great person but my advice to you is that you take another approach when requesting something from someone you have never met. I have provided support, mentorship and advice to quite a few people but I can honestly say that this is the most interesting exchange I have ever had with someone who says they wanted mentorship

BTW I think I am a pretty genuine person and there are quite a few people who would agree.