tl;dr: Inform your recipient if you’re asking multiple people the same thing
FWIW I also got the same email (I think the person might have been going through a list of practicing coaches and messaging some or all of them) and I considered it rude not to be informed this is a copy-paste message they are reaching out to several people with. This would perhaps be a lesser problem for people who are following the rest of the advice, but in any case I would recommend being transparent when you’re reaching out to multiple people who are quite busy, so they can make an informed decision and perhaps coordinate who responds to you. As it is, it feels like they are thoughtlessly maximising the amount of responses they get at the expense of the recipients’ time, with an end result where most of the messages have overlapping content and are therefore wasted effort. I don’t think they did this on purpose, which is why OP and I considered it a good idea to post this PSA for other people to learn from.
Additionally, I have paying clients with similar issues, so perhaps consider offering to pay me for a session rather than asking for free coaching, or explain why that’s not an option.
It’s not just that they’re thoughtlessly maximizing responses at the expense of recipients’ time: recipients are liable to notice this, be annoyed by it, and therefore be less likely to respond as a result. So maybe they’re (in some sense) trying to maximize responses and not caring about recipients’ time, but in practice they aren’t even doing that; they could probably get more responses by being a bit more thoughtful and polite.
tl;dr: Inform your recipient if you’re asking multiple people the same thing
FWIW I also got the same email (I think the person might have been going through a list of practicing coaches and messaging some or all of them) and I considered it rude not to be informed this is a copy-paste message they are reaching out to several people with. This would perhaps be a lesser problem for people who are following the rest of the advice, but in any case I would recommend being transparent when you’re reaching out to multiple people who are quite busy, so they can make an informed decision and perhaps coordinate who responds to you. As it is, it feels like they are thoughtlessly maximising the amount of responses they get at the expense of the recipients’ time, with an end result where most of the messages have overlapping content and are therefore wasted effort. I don’t think they did this on purpose, which is why OP and I considered it a good idea to post this PSA for other people to learn from.
Additionally, I have paying clients with similar issues, so perhaps consider offering to pay me for a session rather than asking for free coaching, or explain why that’s not an option.
It’s not just that they’re thoughtlessly maximizing responses at the expense of recipients’ time: recipients are liable to notice this, be annoyed by it, and therefore be less likely to respond as a result. So maybe they’re (in some sense) trying to maximize responses and not caring about recipients’ time, but in practice they aren’t even doing that; they could probably get more responses by being a bit more thoughtful and polite.
Wouldn’t this lead to some bystander effect?