How I Got Here: Cold outreach leads to hot results
Tod's weekend of outreach and a pitch to bars for spiritless booze
Every other Wednesday, we’ll send you honest career stories paired with some top-notch articles and research on navigating your own career
When we first started How I Got Here, we ran into an issue immediately: how could we convince a highly successful business person to chat with us without having had any guests on before?
The answer was to make a very targeted pitch to someone who we thought would be a great interview, but also shared some common background with us. Enter: John Harthorne, Founder and CEO of MassChallenge, but also, importantly, a former Bainie and Sloanie. Bingo — at least two commonalities!
The shared background didn’t make the cold out reach any less intimidating. We sat on the email for days, fearing that we’d be rejected or ignored after hitting send. Thankfully John was kind enough to take a risk on us and we’ve been cold outreach aficionados ever since.
Reaching out to someone you don’t know can be extremely intimidating, but the results of making a real connection are profound. Our latest podcast guest shows this to be true: a weekend of cold outreach fundamentally altered his career.
After a bad Friday at work, Tod had had enough. Instead of lamenting his sorrows, he decided to take fate into his own hands. Tod dedicated his weekend to writing hundreds of *personalized* LinkedIn messages to people he had never met, pitching his fledging agency. Most of them never responded, but the few who did became some of Green Buzz Agency’s first clients. If Tod had focused on all the rejections, he might have never been able to create what was possible: an Emmy award winning agency.
Listen to the rest of Tod’s career story to hear more stories of his grit and what happened when he wore shorts to one of his first professional interviews
Here’s a quick run-down of the episode:
Our guest: Tod Plotkin, founder and CEO of Green Buzz Agency
Career highlights: Media Specialist at Apple Tree Institute; Associate Producer RHED Pixel; Morning Producer at the Washington Post; Producer for the Washington Wizards; CEO of Green Buzz Agency
What this episode has got us thinking about: Will my dream job really live up to all the hype? Tod was a huge DC sports fan and so when he got the chance to work for the Washington Wizards, it seemed like a no brainer. After a few years in the role though, Tod found out that there was much more he needed to be happy and feel fulfilled.
Pitching someone you don’t know is a challenge under most circumstances. Now imagine pitching a new product to bars and restaurants during the COVID-imposed shut down. That’s about as cold as outreach gets, but that’s exactly what the cofounders of Spiritless are doing to make their company a success.
Check out our Q&A with two of the cofounders to learn more about their journey of launching an alcohol free bourbon. I’m struck with how they continue to hustle and stay positive despite some seemingly insurmountable challenges.
Read the the full Q&A with Lexie and Lauren on our blog.
Lexie Lancaster Larsen is a Fifth-generation entrepreneur whose roots run deep within both manufacturing and production and bourbon. Passionate about building businesses from the ground up, Spiritless is the third female-founded company Lexie has had the opportunity to grow.
Lauren Chitwood is an entrepreneur and award-winning brand evangelist. Not content to rest on her laurels — or to rest, period — her combination of head-in-the-clouds creativity and boots-on-the-ground guts have earned Lauren a reputation for being nimble, innovative and, above all else, a problem-solver.
If you’re curious for more, check out these pieces on related topics:
We usually think of strategy as the only way to get outsized business returns, but this HBR article gives us a different view. Perhaps we should spend less time on pie in the sky strategy and instead focus on hustling to execute well.
The Muse gives some great tips for cold outreach novices. I’ll echo their last tip: don’t be afraid to follow up if you don’t hear a response. Given how inundated we all are with notifications these days, it’s likely someone meant to respond, but lost track.
Never sent a cold email? We’ll warm you up — send us one in reply to this email! We promise no rejections or non-responses here.
- Eric
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