0:00:02
There we are. Hello. Welcome. It's lovely to see you today. I am Briar Harvey.
0:00:09
This is the Neurodiversity Media Network, and this is our premier episode of neurodivergent networking, which a lot of people have asked me for. And I called Cheryl because she actually likes networking. So whereas I just tolerate it. So, truly, the theme of this entire series is you're gonna be making this too fucking hard, and we would like for you to stop making it so hard. And you're probably not gonna wanna hear that, but that is the essence of it. Today, we're gonna talk about why? We make it so hard, and then we'll talk at the end about what else we're gonna cover in this series. And Cheryl has fucking pages and pages of notes at this point in time now. So I'm just gonna hand it over and say, let's do this. Well, thank you.
0:01:13
And for the record, I tolerate networking, which to me are the steps required to build relationships. I love making friends though. See, and I don't even really like making friends. I'm autistic. And I would really rather just hang out in my bedroom for the rest of my life and pet cats and color and read books. And if I could do that, I absolutely would. Yes, which is why a lot of us ended up online in the first place. That crowd of us would rather do that. But then it has this whole space evolved. We kind of found out that you can't really do business on the Internet without doing all the stuff that you did offline. You're just now doing it from your bedroom with your cats. So That's mostly correct. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Now there are ways to do it that are leveraged. Can some people find their ways on Amazon and creative market for the most part?
0:02:09
You have to send the damn email, which per your request is the title of the first episode. That's correct. Of this this podcast series. And I'm super excited for this because when you message me, I was actually working on something of a framework for this to to teach it. I mentioned this to you. And I've been studying and studying and studying and I've been studying a lot of neurotypical frameworks and I have some friends who have done a whole lot of networking stuff. And, you know, I've I've absorbed a lot of their materials over the years and Unfortunately, the bulk of their advice just comes down to the one thing that nobody actually wants to hear. Which is send the damn email.
0:02:53
But today, I wanna talk a little bit about how and why it's so hard and why you as a neurodivergent person and us as neurodivergent people might actually be better at sending the damn email. Thank you, Lorraine, for being my guinea pig here, and I know you don't send them. I'm I have actual networks, and I'm terrible about them. So I feel like we don't talk enough about the why we don't send to them and the how to get over it. Because if Thank you. Lauren says I sent amazing email, and thank you.
0:03:37
Every time, there is absolutely this certainty that everyone's gonna hate me for every fucking time. That never goes away. Never goes away. And also just to be clear though here, I'm not talking about your marketing emails. Like, I'm terrible at those. I'm not talking about emailing your list. I'm talking about, like, one on one, hey, this person seems cool and or might be a client and or maybe we could collaborate.
0:04:04
I should introduce myself to them emails myself. Yeah. So I'm using email, use DM, use carrier pigeon. Use lumpy mail. Send a freaking letter. I don't care. Use whatever the the stand in is is appropriate. We're calling that. Send the damn email today.
0:04:21
And it's hard because you send the thing and you do the thing and r s d kicks in.
0:04:29
Majorly before you even send it.
0:04:31
Right? So you're sitting there and you're like, I should email that person because they would be so cool to know. But they already hate me and they don't even know who I am. Right? And if I introduce myself, then that's just gonna confirm for them and me how much they don't like me. Right? I know that's That's that's about the distance. I mean, RST is a real bitch. Right. It's like that nagging voice in your head that says all of the terrible things that you think about yourself. But, like, pretends like they're true and not you saying them in your head. It's like an external, terrible voice in your head.
0:05:11
And so we don't send the email because we're we're afraid that that person doesn't like us and that we're going to hear back from them that they don't like us or worse we're gonna hear nothing. And then the wild assumption fairies get to drop little gifts in our left. Oh, man. What they must why they didn't respond And listen, y'all, this is this is true even with people you know and have relationships with I do this with friends that I know and love. But if I haven't heard from them in two weeks, My immediate assumption is I did something wrong -- Mhmm. -- not they're they're busy. Not that they have a live. Not that they have ADHD and just didn't respond to that email that I sent. Don't things don't come into the equation.
0:06:09
I have words on this because we're all sitting here with, like, ten d m's unanswered in our inboxes. That we want to answer but can't. But if someone else isn't replying to us, it's because we're stupid and they hate us and not because they're just like us and kind of unable to do that. And also, Loreen is watching this. How many times have I messaged her saying, like, I've always felt like you don't like me, but I keep messaging you anyway. I like something to that effect. She's laughing watching this right now. I know this because I've told her that. But it's like our brain tricks us into thinking preemptively that we're not gonna be like, and I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that's not going away. That feeling is there. And it's still gonna be there whether you send the email or not. Mhmm. No amount of mindset work, no amount of therapy, unfortunately. And pretty much no medication is gonna the fact that you are utterly convinced that you might actually die if you send the email. So you kind of might have to do it anyway.
0:07:10
You know, I think there is some research, but not enough. Around the idea that RSD is ancestral and fear based, especially for us that because neurodivergent people were probably the night owls and the night watchers and the other elements of society, because we still are, that in those days, this instinct was actually functional. It it was good for things. It warned us that danger was coming, but now we're just stuck with this legacy of constant danger when there is none. Mhmm. Exactly. And there's there is some evidence that cortisol plays a really strong role in this and cortisol activation. Just kind of carrying through your day plays a really strong role in this.
0:08:15
And I found through some of my research in reading that the things that actually use cortisol for what it was intended to be used for, like to make your body move, to get away from a predator, or things like that can actually reduce those cortisol levels and make it easier to take the actions. Whatever can increase your feelings of safety, increase your ability to do the thing. So one of the things is, like, one of the reasons we don't send the emails because we're we don't know what to say. Right? So that increases the fear of rejection because we're gonna say the wrong thing. Or we don't know who we're gonna send it to. And we're gonna talk in a later episode about figuring out who to send it to you and when and why and all those other things. But building in all those little strategy pieces and not just blindly sending emails to whomever help increase those feelings of safety.
0:09:04
Just think having someone that you can vent to, if someone ever were to do the unthinkable and respond unfavorably to an email, Like, I know if I did that to one of my idols and they hurt my feelings. I could come back and just see prior. I sent this email, this person said this and you would build me back up because you're one of my business besties and that's what we do for each other. We talk each other up and how bad as an awesome we are. And having people like that to help build you back up and knowing who they will be when sending the email goes wrong means that you have a plan and so it's less unknown. The rejection still might happen. But what's going to happen when the rejection happens is less unknown and therefore it's less scary. Right?
0:09:49
So I got a rejection letter this weekend. In fact, that I had really it was a a speaking gig that I had wanted. And I had talked about it with people and talked it up. And when the know came, it didn't even hurt that bad because I had done all the prep work before, but this is this is a habit. These are rituals that you build, and it takes time. Yeah. It takes a ton of time and it takes practice.
0:10:25
Like, people don't realize that dealing with rejection sensitivity is I'm gonna hate using this term and worrying. Please forgive me for saying this out loud. But it's a form of exposure therapy to a certain extent. You do need to expose yourself to it, but not in the unprepared way. You need to have a plan and you need to be able to practice using that plan. So if you never put yourself out there to potentially be rejected, the likelihood of being able to use the systems and things you build to keep yourself safe is very low. Right? But a lot of this then makes us turn in the complete opposite direction and and we start relying on templates and automation.
0:11:05
And I made a note earlier today. I was, like, on with a client, and I wrote down templates and automations or RSD tools. And they are. Because they other the rejection. Right? If the email doesn't work, it's not my fault. It was the script. It was the template. It was the automation.
0:11:23
They're not replying to us and saying, like, yeah. I know I'm Griffin and I hate you. They're like, oh, well, it was a spam bot. So I ignored it. It's not you. It's othering the rejection. They're not they're not saying no because you poured your heart and soul out an email. Right? They're just saying no to this automated thing that they got that they didn't wanna get. So it doesn't feel like it hurts as much.
0:11:45
The problem is that it also doesn't fucking work. Like, it's such a fine line because there's so many spammers out there now. Yep. Yeah. It just there's so many spammers out there now. You're blending into a sea of noise. You know, it attracts the wrong clients.
0:12:11
When it when it does work, it's still not working because the only people that you're going to get doing that type of templated automated cold outreach are the low hanging fruit people who are actively looking for what you want and don't have any other way to get it. If they're not if they're not GPT, it's so much more There's a word I'm looking prolific. Now, like -- No. -- it's and and it's good enough to get through spam filters. A lot of the time. So it's everywhere. Yeah. Well, and if you can get it through the spam filter, you're using a templated email and it looks like a templated email and you're automating these things and you're sending them out and somebody ends up working with you.
0:12:55
Chances are they don't have anyone else they can rely on to do the thing that you're offering to do for them, which probably means they've burned six seven, eight, ten other service providers trying to do this thing. They're a bad client, and you don't how many of those clients have come to you prior in your your work with businesses and said, I have tried working with x amount of service providers to do this thing and none of them have been good enough. None of them have done this. None of them have done that. They've all you know, using the the all or nothing terms. They have all done x y z, and those clients have turned out to be a hot mess express handful. Yeah, I don't actually work with those people and haven't for many years. And operations in particular is such a small community that especially if you've named somebody that I know who does good work and they didn't work for you, weird. Definitely not working together. Yeah. Now that being said, that's not to shame anyone who's currently on this call and has worked with a lot of neurotypical coaches or consultants or courses and tried to implement their stuff and it didn't work. That's a reason that it didn't work that's not about you. It's about them.
0:14:11
We're talking about clients who have tried things that reasonably should have worked, that didn't, and were, like, their seventeenth option. Because they keep burning service providers. Those are the people that say yes to template in cold emails. Those are the people that's because they have no other option. And they're desperately seeking someone to abuse into doing what they wanna do. Don't let it be you. Right? Don't wanna be you. This is not how we network. This is these are the spam tools that worked ten years ago to a certain extent. That's all they are. Right?
0:14:45
I heard I was watching this workshop from a LinkedIn guy. Right? And he talked about the post spam era. I was like, yes. That's where we are now. We are in the post spam era. Right? Like, you can't you can't just spray and pray anymore, that does not work.
0:15:04
Even with even the best template and copy written email sent out a hundred thousand times, is not going to work anymore. Think about how much them you get in your DMs every day. Like mine's gone down a lot because I unfriended and blocked a ton of people. Oh, I'm really I have I have good personal filters, so I get very little spam overall, but I will say even without that, there's an abundance of marketing all the time, constantly. Right? I mean, we're getting the emails that we want. We're getting the emails that we don't want. We're getting the d m's we want and the d m's we don't want.
0:15:49
Right now, there's three people giving me notifications in my ear because I forgot to silence that tab. Right? When I go upstairs, I'm gonna be asked for goldfish crackers and some other snack from the the three neurodivergent kids waiting for me that are jumping on the tramp My husband's gonna ask me what's for dinner. My sister's gonna ask me if I can watch her kids next. My friend is gonna say, hey, when are we going to that concert? And my brain is going to explode. And if you send me a cold email at that exact moment and it's templated and not relevant to me at all, I might actually respond with animosity if I respond at all. Right? Like, there's just so much information and so many demands on our time and our brain space.
0:16:27
At this point, people don't talk to strangers anymore unless there's a damn good reason. And most people don't give a good reason, frankly. Which is coming back to why we don't send the fucking email in the first place. Because when I am bombarded by all of this bad stuff, my immediate response is to go and and I say this is someone who is today. This week, I have a bunch of advertising emails that I wanna send out. This is cold email. Y'all. I have a template. I still have to customize it, and there's just this wait about it. Yeah. But the good thing is the volume of email that actually gets read now is so much lower because the bar for actually paying attention is so much higher. Right? And You can't you can't just send genuine connections without putting in a ton of effort.
0:17:34
You can't just personalize the first line of an email anymore. You have to write the whole thing every time now. That's how it works. It's your only option. But because the only option is to put in that much effort, like, nobody else is putting in that much effort. The barrier to entry is so high, like humans were all wired to avoid effort. We will try and find the easiest path to do absolutely anything, so there's a lot less competition. In terms of emails that are actually tailored to the person written directly to that person, not templated, not automated. And you're more likely to develop those genuine connections and collaborations and real friendships and succeed faster. If you do those things and put in that effort, that very few other people are putting in because they're still convinced that they can scale faster and avoid rejection by using all these automated tools and templates. Right?
0:18:24
So what's it actually look like, Cheryl? So What it actually looks like is understanding that you as a neurodivergent person have a bit of a superpower in this game. That other people don't have. And that is We normally hate that comparison around here. The neurodivergent superpowers But in this one instance, I'm going to allow it because it is actually true.
0:18:55
In this one instance, it is actually true. And it's not because we're trying to find a silver lining or because we're trying to flip something negative into a positive. It's because in this case, The thing that usually screws us in social situations is going to benefit us immensely when it comes to cold outreach. And networking and building relationships. Tell them why, baby. Our ability to not put up with nuance and bullshit and beating around the bush and our ability to just speak directly and to the point. The fact that we do not like those multiple layers of communication sorting through and having to suss out what someone actually means means that we really want to communicate direct and to the point. And we don't like it when other people beat around the bush. Right? So And remember, y'all.
0:19:51
The numbers currently indicate that over seventy percent of entrepreneurs and small business owners are neurodivergent. We can unpack why that is, but mostly we all know. It's because we suck at traditional employment. We can't keep a job. So entrepreneurship and business ownership is our only option. And if that's the case, If seventy percent of us are likely to be neurodivergent, then what it actually means is that if you stop beating around the bush, Chances are seventy percent good that you're the person you're sending that email to is going to appreciate it. Yep. All of those social protection mechanisms that we have, that we put together, and all the masking things that we do, and all the stuff, all the front that we put up to try and look neurotypical and not rock the boat that we usually suck at can be completely pushed aside because they're not needed here. As many as seventy percent of the people receiving our emails, receiving our outreach, receiving our DMs, that we wanna connect with, that we wanna collaborate with, and build relationships with, don't wanna figure out what the fuck we're asking them for. They just want us to ask So what we're saying is don't slide into somebody's DMs and be like, hi, I've seen you around You're cool.
0:21:19
I definitely don't wanna get that DM myself. So I'm not sending it. Right? Okay. Because, like, think about it. When someone sends you an email, right? So, like, you're gonna assume the person is neurotypical. Because we don't know any better. And in spite of the fact that seventy percent of us aren't for safety reasons, we have to assume they are. Right? So your brain starts the masking and the standing process.
0:21:44
You're like, noop noop noop noop noop noop noop noop noop noop noop noop noop noop noop noop noop noop noop noop noop noop noop noop noop noop noop noop noop noop noop n' because it they never just straight up say it. They're always trying to hide what they're doing because being direct is scary to neurotypical people. That's why we have tried to avoid doing it in our outreach. We don't want to reach out to someone and be like, hey, I would love to collaborate with you. I think we have some referrals we get passed back and forth. Let's have a coffee and talk about it. We don't wanna say that because if the person's neurotypical, they're not gonna take that well. We gotta we gotta say, hey, how is the kids? The weather is good. Figure out, navigate, what's small to have bullshit they wanna hear from us. I will just make your way on there. Right? So we're scanning and we're trying to figure out what exactly they mean. And if you can't figure it out, what do you do? You either delete the email or you leave the mailing your inbox with the intention of replying to it and never actually fucking new. Right? They're doing the same thing. The people you're trying to reach out to are doing the same thing. They're trying to decipher from your email what you actually want.
0:22:51
And I've been playing with this. I've been doing a ton of experiments with this on social. So apologies to all my followers who may be watching this hour later. You've been part of a massive social experiment. But I've been playing with, I don't know, what we wanna call it, the era of directness. Okay? So we'll we'll bring in a nerd reference. We'll call it radical candor if you want. Too. But this is like era of just saying what you fucking mean, spelling out, you know, who this is for, what you want from them, what you want them to do and how they can get it. And you know what, it's been converting in a rate that I really cannot quite explain using traditional methods or standards or strategies.
0:23:34
Nobody buys you know, four figure stuff directly off of a Facebook post. So they say, unless seventy percent of entrepreneurs are neurodivergent, and you're explicit and direct in your messaging, and you sell three or four of them of the single Facebook post. Mhmm. Always rankings. It's clarity -- Mhmm. -- that is missing. Right now. When it comes to outreach, when it comes to networking, and if we assume that what people are actually missing is that clarity, then we haven't immediate automatic advantage because -- Yep. -- we're so good at it. We are bad at deciphering other people beating around the bush and we are bad at doing it ourselves.
0:24:31
You can ask me a question, I don't care how inappropriate it is of me to answer that question direct I'm going to do it and probably tell you something that you might not even wanna know about me. That's the beauty of me being me and oversharing as a pathological trait. But in doing so, we have this ability to communicate with the rest of the entrepreneurs who are like us, that the neurotypicals cannot touch. Right? And so I wanna talk for a second about, like, what's sending the email can do? Because I know there's a lot of people out there that are not they're used to the cold emails that are just like, hey, we can get your search engine site ranked for, like, a business you don't even own in a category, you don't have that kind of spam or, hey, can we put an article on your site when you're even a blog. Like, that kind of templated stuff. And that's not what we're talking about here. Not even close. That's gross.
0:25:24
I once sent an email to a rather large startup. I was actually a customer up. We're talking what is that? Nine figures in funding secured in a series b valuation. Like, they were they were doing great things. I emailed them. I was like, hey, guys. I love what you're doing. I also do things. I'd love to do them for you. Let's talk. And he booked the call and it turned into a forty thousand dollar project. K? I'm I wish I was joking about how direct that email was, but it literally couldn't have been much longer than that. And, yes, there were a couple of calls in between that email and the contract. But that's actually a thing that happened. Like, last year, it wasn't even like a decade or anything ago. This is recent history.
0:26:10
I have interviewed New York Times best selling authors because I had the cozones to just up and email them out of nowhere and say, hey, I'm doing this thing. Mhmm. I don't know. Wanna participate? But I would like to have you on it. Let's talk and they did. Right? I have talked to every single tourism board in the province of British Columbia that operates in a town of more than a million people. And all the regional operators and tourism, BC.
0:26:35
I have gotten book recommendations from people like Guy Kawasaki. He actually recommends persuasion. By the way, by Robert Cieldini. That's the book he recommends to people who wanna get better in sales. I have So you split it. It's a good book. It's an amazing book. It's probably a bit of a boilerplate recommendation, but that's the book you recommend. So let's go for it.
0:26:58
You know, I get referrals from clients when I email them because I just email them and ask, and I'm direct. I have an opening at this time for this service, for this type of client. Do you know anyone? When I used to send emails that were, hey, how are you doing? How has it been since our service? I got ghosted.
0:27:18
Nobody responds to that shit. Like, what are they even supposed to say? When I started saying, hi, John, I have an opening in April for someone for social media management for three months in the wine and spirits industry. Would you happen to know of anyone? He gave me phone numbers. Email us exactly. Contact information because, again, seventy percent of the people we're talking to are neurodivergent. And the other thirty percent probably don't have a lot of free time to figure out all of that bullshit.
0:27:49
And when we are direct like this, Sheryl, what is the worst that happens? Well, a lot of people would say that the worst thing that happens is that they say no and they're really mean to us But the worst thing that actually happens is they don't respond. And then we spiral into doom. Right? And we assume that it's us. But you just you gotta remember again seventy percent of us. They are not ignoring you because they don't like you. They're ignoring you because they can't respond or because it's not relevant to them right now or for any reason other than the fact that you suck. Like, I promise you there are people probably watching this right now who have emailed me or damned me and I haven't responded to them yet and I still love you very much. I just have executive dysfunction and so do the a lot of the people you're emailing. K? It's really it's hard. But it's not fully gonna kill you.
0:28:48
I wanna follow that up with follow-up because camera said that their issue is with following up with the people that we connect with. And I agree. I've talked about this before. I have this set up in my CRM that when I add someone new, I will often add, like, a follow-up date so that it pops up in my contacts And I know, oh, hey. I haven't talked to this person in two months or two years because I didn't remember to check-in. Yep. And Like, that works for a lot of people. For me, that's a reminder or a task or a notification and we all know what exactly what Cheryl's gonna do with the task, a reminder notification, fuck all. That's -- Yeah. -- dismiss, come back to it later, and then I end up with a giant overwhelming, dismissed list of reminders to follow-up with people that I never follow-up with. So this is Now we're getting into part of this series and some of the stuff I wanna teach in this series because the way that I use social media combined with networking is different from the way most people use social media and networking.
0:29:57
I don't tend to do a lot of follow ups in email in a structured way because I won't. Not because I can't. You know, I probably could set up some automated template y bullshit that nobody's gonna read or listen to. But I just I won't. I know that I won't. So when I start forming a relationship with someone, I make sure I get them on social media. And I make sure I get them in the DMs, because if we're having a DM conversation, their content's gonna show up on my timeline, and my content's gonna show up on their timeline. And if we start interacting with each other's content, I don't need to worry about sending a reminder to follow-up with this person. They're gonna be on my feed, and that's gonna remind me to follow-up with this person when I'm doom scrolling in the bathroom, trying to avoid getting ready for work every morning.
0:30:40
And let's be clear, y'all. This is a technique that you can use on any social media network. If -- Completely problematic. DM communication, then you wanna be having a DM conversation with the people who you want to buy from you. And it doesn't have to be for example, I send a lot of names. Right? And that's just what I do. And it takes me very little effort and is often very organic. That I'll see something and go, oh, Shell would like this one, or oh, Grace needs to see this one. So it's really about figuring out the ways that follow-up work for you and optimizing it. Yeah.
0:31:32
And, like, I have strategies to add on to this. For example, I'll use Friend Filter every once in a while to create a list of like my most engaged people on social media. And I'll just go on a campaign where I'll go stop by their profiles and engage with some of their content and say, hey, and see what they're up to. Right? Or if it's appropriate? If I'll go and check our messages. Do you know how many messages I have found from people who have messaged me that I just did not notice or I ghosted or I did not respond or whatever happened going through like that. And I was just able to re reply, like, a month later, three months later, and keep the conversation going.
0:32:08
That can't just follow-up, dude. And it's about how you process your feelings about it -- Yeah. -- because I could get into a never ending doomed spiral of guilt and shame around the people that I unintentionally ghost. It's a real thing. And sometimes it's just a matter of going back through and being like, who haven't I talked to in a long time? Oh, I'd like to have a conversation with this person.
0:32:40
Howard Bauchner: Yeah, and like sometimes if there's a really warm lead in my pipeline, they'll be they'll respond to an email. They'll say they want something. We'll be having some back and forth and some follow-up. I I'm really bad for this. I don't set reminders. I fall I leave their email in my inbox, and when I feel like it, when I think of them, when I'm reminded of them, I drop them an email. I'll just say, hey, I was thinking of you today. How are you doing? Did you have questions? Did you still want to do that? Right? And they'll get back to me a couple days, couple weeks later. Who knows?
0:33:15
I try not to assign meaning to their response as much as possible. Which is hard because I'm wired to assign meaning to their response or a lack of response. Right? But I try not to make the decision for them. As much as I can. I wait for them to actively reject me, I guess. That's what I'm saying. And I think that's really important.
0:33:38
I have especially in business come to a place where nothing or not right now is not no. It's nothing or not right. Now. And until you actually say no to me, I'm just assuming that you forgot. Yeah. It's just, like, many years to get there. You can scream internally the whole time, and you can let that little voice just keep going. And nope, they hate you. And you can be like, you know what? They're probably just like me. And this takes a level of self acceptance that I think needs to go hand in hand.
0:34:18
With developing this skill and developing this practice and developing this patience for responses because you really have to accept that part of yourself that goes messages before you can have the patients to assume that the other person just did it accidentally too. Right? If you're still mad at yourself for not responding to emails on time, you're going to be mad at that other person for not responding to emails on time as well because you're thinking to yourself, why can't I do this? I should just be able to do it. Why can't I just respond to the email like a normal person? And then the person is going to not respond and you're gonna be sitting there like, why can't they just respond to this email like a normal person? It must be my fault. It must be because of me. Right?
0:34:59
But if you can get to the point where you just kind of, you know what, this is a thing that I do, the best time to respond to their messages when they sent it, the second best time is now. Right? Planting trees, baby. And, generally, that's what networking and sales is. It's really about framing. If you believe that these are opportunities that you just haven't gotten to fruit yet, then you treat them much differently than if they were obligations. Yeah. Exactly. And if you send your emails to build their obligations, they'll be received as obligations. If you send them as opportunities, they'll be received as opportunities. And deciphering your message is an obligation. It's it's a demand on our time. To figure out what you're trying to say. Right?
0:35:54
If you if you go in with someone in mind and there's something that you wanna say to You wanna partner with them. You wanna collaborate with them. You want them on a summit. I got a message like that today. I was like, hell yeah, I wanna be on your summit. Let's go. Let's do it. I feel like they weren't expecting that response. But they were direct and clear so why would I not respond directly and clearly in kind. Right?
0:36:16
If you find a person you want a message, you figure out what is that person's value? Like, what is it not just that they have to offer to me, but like, why is them? Why do I wanna email this person? There's gonna be a reason. And if there's not a reason beyond, well, they fit the demographics and target audience size that some coach told me that I should be prospecting for on LinkedIn, then you probably shouldn't be emailing them until you do a little more research. Right? Because you're not gonna even know if they're remotely a fit to work with you, nor are you gonna have anything to talk to them about. He's actually here.
0:36:51
So let's talk about that process. Let's talk about writing the email or DM what should we be doing as free work? So that is actually my number one thing is understanding, even if I don't do that much research, because it's someone I already, like, know of, understanding what is their value. Like, what is the value to me in this situation? What am I trying to get and why them? Because if I can understand that, I can explain it in the first sentence. Right? Nothing reads worse than an email that goes, hey, I found you on Google. Right? But if you're, hey, you know, I read your entire book end to end. I got the workbook. It gave me these specific points of value and I know it's a long shot, but I wanted to reach out. Who's not going to read the next line of that email? Right? Right. So if you can understand the value that that person has, even if it's just the value to you, and then explain what you're doing. Right? And we don't need the elevator pitch version, but we need to understand what it is that that you're trying to get from this email. Right? So if you see this person, you've read their book, you've done their workbook, you got immense value.
0:38:10
Let's say you want them to host a small training for your audience or something. I'd love for you to come and host a little class. I know that's a big ask. Here's what my audience is like. Would you be interested in talking about it? Maybe we could try something smaller like podcast first. We're being super direct in explaining how they can help. Right? And now we wanna say my audience size, right, is this? These are the people that I can put you in front of. We're explaining what we're offering in return. And then we just send it. Explain their value. Explain what we're doing. Three things. Wait. It's four. Explain their value. Explain what you're doing. Explain how they can help and what you'll offer in return. That's it. And then hit send and be surprised because you're gonna get a lot more replies to that, then they're like, hey, I found you on Google and thought you might be interested. Sort of cold email templates. And, yes, you're still more time, Cheryl, for the people at home with no memories. Four things. Explain their value. Explain what you're doing. Explain how they can help. And explain what you'll offer in return. Okay? And I beg if you Do not edit the life out of your emails.
0:39:32
Oh, jeez. Oh, guilty. You are gonna second guess every third word and the more you edit it, the more creative and convoluted it's going to get. Just state the thing. Do the fan girling. No one cares everyone likes feeling appreciated. Listen, flattery will get you everywhere with almost everyone I know. Yep. Especially if it's honest, flattery. Right? Mhmm. Like, someone's sitting here through this live stream right now. I'll tell you right now, if you message me after this and say that you watched this whole livestream.
0:40:10
And this was a takeaway that you got that really changed things for you and you asked me for something, I'm a listen. I'm a hundred percent getting listed. One hundred percent. This it's this isn't some sort of secret code or secret formula. This is just us neurodivergent people doing what we do best. We picked up on something. We made a connection. We wanna connect with that person. We directly tell them what we got from them. Explain what we're doing, explain how they can help, and explain what they'll get. And then we just send it and just let it be. I promise it works a lot better than any of the other stuff you've been trying. And if they don't respond, try and follow them on social media and start engaging with their content because then your DMs might actually showing up in their inbox, and then we can start the whole cycle a little bit further. Right? Yeah.
0:41:04
And I'll be honest, for me, there is often a period of pre stocking, and I literally call it stocking because that is what it is. If I wanna connect with someone, I follow them for a while, and I engage with them on social media. And when I show up in their inbox. They know who I am already. So when I ask very directly, hey, this is a thing I think maybe once or twice, I have had someone be offended by a direct message and truly those are really low numbers -- Yeah. -- at this point in time. Yeah? Oh, I'm not gonna pretend that doesn't happen because It does. People are having bad days. People project their own meaning onto what you're doing and what you're saying. People might be neurotypical and just not like that kind of thing. We don't know what's going on for them. We know that it does happen.
0:42:03
And it's such an a a teeny, like, micro amount of the replies that I get. It's almost laughable. Like, the amount of dollars I've generated per cold outreach I've sent versus the amount of negative replies I've gotten. Like, you would probably have to give me pretty close to a hundred grand for every negative reply I've gotten for that to even out monetarily. Now can I tell you who those negative responses were from? Absolutely, I can because my brain stores that information to remind me about it at later dates. But did those conversations mean anything? And the grand scheme of this is strategy. No. No. They did not. No. I I once had someone know where to go live, like, berate me on a long phone call and tell me that the only reason they responded to my outreach was to see who would have the nerve to send something like that. That is literally word for word burned in my brain twelve years later what they said. And yet, here I am, still doing it. Mhmm. Also fuck that guy. Correct. One hundred percent fuck that guy. Like, who would have the nerve to do that. What don't you have a business to run? Why are you wasting your time doing shit like that? Anyway, I digress.
0:43:26
The rest of this series we're gonna get a lot more practical. I wanna talk about -- Mhmm. -- all of the things. Right? Today, we're talking about just send the damn email because, yes, it's scary. And, yes, bad things might happen. But, yes, it's also totally worth it, and you could be really good at it if you try.
0:43:40
But I wanna talk about things like establishing your category. Right? Because, like, we don't want a box. We don't want a niche. We don't wanna pin ourselves into something. But if we're developing a network and that network has no idea what we do and can't name it. If they're asked, that network is useless. Absolutely one hundred percent useless.
0:43:59
If you rely on referrals, or even if it's just a part of your marketing strategy, people need to be able to say Brier over here has the neurodiversity media network. Yep. Even if they're like, Cheryl is a marketing person. I don't give a shit how narrow the label is for them. I care that they have one. Mhmm. Right? And it should be more narrow then, oh, that's my nephew. He does things on computers. Like, we don't that's too broad. Okay? We all know people like that that refer to us them, like, we end up tech troubleshooting their siblings, and it's all freaking weird. We're not we don't want those labels. We gotta figure out our category. So I'm gonna help you figure out your category. So that it can be helpful. K?
0:44:47
Then we're gonna talk about your point of view and why it matters because having a point of view helps you stand out from all the other noise You need to be contradictory. You need to be contrarian. You need to be opinionated. And this is another area. We've freaking harsh maybe slide. At the same time that we're out there saying shit that no one else will say. And it's -- Yeah. -- a lot, but we'll talk about it. Yep. We got we got the swear test coming in here. We're, like, if you can slip a swear word into the middle of a statement about what you wanna talk about and it just feels natural, that's probably something you should talk about more. So we're gonna talk about that.
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