Jordan Knight, the 376th person I’ve met on my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers, has a cool business with a cool name.

Spicy Pineapple Marketing specialises in using LinkedIn outreach to help businesses attract clients and referrers.

Jordan’s clients lack either the time or the nerve to contact strangers on LinkedIn. So Spicy Pineapple does it for them.

How do you succeed with cold outreach? To begin with, Jordan says, you send the prospect a message with a short, simple question that is related to their business. Next, you find ways to continue the conversation over another two or three exchanges. From there, you invite them to an online meeting. If they say yes, there’s a good chance they’ll be interested in whatever you’re pitching, because by this stage they understand what service you offer.

Jordan says it’s important to be systematic: you need to follow up with prospects based on a schedule. It’s also important to like and comment on their posts, so they remember you – that way, they’re more likely to respond to your outreach messages.

Jordan is an absolutely lovely person. One of her motivations for founding Spicy Pineapple – besides her background in digital marketing and sales – was that she wanted to help people. Running an agency that solves a big problem for clients allows her to do just that.

This has been a big week for Jordan: in the past few days, she’s gone skydiving to celebrate her 31st birthday and become an Australian citizen. Jordan was born in England and spent a significant part of her childhood in Thailand – the home of spicy pineapples.