I am trying to come up with scenarios where a middle class lay person with no connections is able to make contact with a powerful person such as Zuckerberg or Gates. I thought about plane crashes and ship wrecks but they don’t really add up right.
Do these guys have people that might report to them on blogs that got their attention? That is blogs that don’t have all that many hits. It seems like having the character work his way up a chain is the most logical solution but I am not so sure how the chain could or might work.
Grin! By a lovely coincidence, I’m writing a similar scene in an (attempt at a) book of my own.
My thing was having the businessman addressing a marketing conference/convention, and then being available at a banquet later, with $700 seats at nearby tables (and $7000 seats at the actual table with the businessman.) My protagonist can afford $700, so he’ll get at least a few words in with the tycoon.
In real life, a friend of mine got a job by hanging around a marina and being friendly with boat-owners. One guy liked “the cut of his jib” – and I do mean literally! – and told him to come in for a job interview.
Do people at the Bill Gates/Mark Zuckerberg level invariably own (or charter) their own airplanes, or do they sometimes fly commercial? Of course someone at that level would presumably be flying first class, but it’s not wildly improbable for an ordinary guy to be in first class–say he volunteered to be bumped in exchange for a much nicer seat on a slightly later flight, or maybe he just flies a lot (for business and/or pleasure) and has racked up the points for an upgrade to first class. Presto! Mr. Ordinary winds up sitting next to Mr. Bigshot for hours and hours on a nice long trans-oceanic flight.
But I don’t know, maybe at that “billionaire industrialist” level, they never even fly commercial, not even in first class.
Student at a college with a cutting edge program that your protagonist gets into. Business leaders fund these programs and attend retreats for them. The student gets to interact with them directly as they themselves are cultivated to join these companies. I know kids in such programs who have met several billionaire CEOs.
Have the layperson go to the mall and run into the billionaire (who is married to a big SJW) sneaking a chik-fil-a sandwhich. Now’s hes got dirt on him.
Middle class lay person (MCLP) attends a charity event where he runs into powerful billionaire (PB). I’ve been to a bunch of charity banquets simply because my company bought a whole table and needed some employees to fill it.
MCLP wins a raffle where the prize is tickets to a luxury box at a football game, runs into PB in the luxury box concourse rest room.
MCLP’s kid is involved in something PB’s kid is also involved in.
Shared hobby. Maybe they both like to go to the zoo.
Really, all you need is a basic boy-meets-girl setup.
Do your tycoons have kids? People who work as teachers, tutorsor, or babysitters in the right neighborhoods can end up in contact with high-profile parents pretty easily.
Shared interest is the way to go. He’s religious so attends the local church; he likes to play softball so participates in a local league, he’s an alcoholic and attends AA meetings. There just aren’t enough billionaires around for him to participate in these types activities only with other billionaires.
Here’s a mundane true story. In the 90s before the web took off, I was interested in a hard to find book on financial markets by billionaire George Soros. I called up his office and had a brief conversation with his secretary about the availability of the book. However, I never attempted to speak to Soros directly.
So I think a realistic scenario is contact is made through secretaries or personal assistants.
I like to recommend the movie Melvin & Howard in which a man, Melvin, who meets billionaire Howard Hughes when Hughes crashes his motorcycle on the highway and Melvin is the first to find him. He drops Hughes off at a hotel without realizing who Hughes is. I won’t spoil the rest of the movie for you.
How famous is your billionaire (in the sense that he’d be recognized instantly)? Would he be the type who might just like to get away from it all and go get a taco or something without being followed by an entourage? If so, maybe your character could meet him someplace like that. (Is it a romance? If so, maybe he/she gets into some amusing bit of trouble and the billionaire helps him/her out.)
Yeah, Infovore’s post gives me the idea that maybe the billionaire could be intentionally slumming to try to get a slice of normality in his crazy life. In that context, he could meet anyone.
(I am assuming this is a romance, as it’s a common trope in romance novels.)
A guy I used to work with in the 90s was stuck in an airport during a storm. He went to a bar to pass the time and watch the weather reports. He heard a gravelly “this fucking sucks” (or words to that effect) and turned around to see Al Pacino watching the weather too. They had a few beers together. Yeah, Pacino isn’t a billionaire, but I imagine something similar could easily happen with a Zuckerberg or Gates.
I think it depends on who the person is, or rather, their personality and what keeps them motivated. And really, do they keep themselves locked up behind closed doors, shut away from the unwashed masses or do they go out of their way to interact with people? Sure, you might find Bill Gates at a charity event of if you have the right credentials, maybe catch Mark Zuckerburg for a few questions after a lecture at a college, but I feel like if you have a question you’d be more likely to get an answer from someone like Elon Musk or Richard Branson if you bumped into one of them at a store.
IMO, the best place for some random guy to talk to super famous billionaire is going to be social media. Drop a comment on whatever social media platform they use the most and see what happens. Don’t forget youtube, people that have their own youtube channels tend to be good about replying to comments.
Of course, I suppose other people would prefer you sent them a private email, so who knows.
Semi case in point, Anderson Cooper. Not quite a billionaire, but he’s very good about replying to his twitter followers. My sister has sent him a few messages, just simple things along the lines of ‘great show last night’ and he replies with things considerably more well thought out than ‘thanks’. In fact, one of her comments mentioned something about her birthday and he replied with a two minute or so video comment wishing her a happy birthday.
