Send the SCARY EMAIL! How I Talked Myself Into Shooting My Shot

A very unexpected invitation pulled me across the country, so here I am, popping in from my hotel room in San Francisco.

This episode will feel like a spontaneous, casual voice note, but we’re also talking about opportunities… and how you can create more of them if you just send the damn email!

In This Episode:

• The email draft I sat on for WEEKS and what happened when I finally hit send
• Carly Valancy’s reach out experiment and her overall success rate 
• What exactly led to me getting a mysterious invite to San Francisco
• The deeper fear that hides underneath the possibility of rejection

Resources & Links:

Follow Carly Valancy on LinkedIn and check out her Substack article where she shares more about her Reach Out experiment.

Let's Connect:

Follow me on Instagram: @alisonkinsey or send me an email: alison@alisonkinsey.com. 

Connect with Alison on LinkedIn.

I also help entrepreneurs and thought leaders launch and grow their podcasts through my boutique podcast editing agency, Podcasting for Creatives. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I sat on the draft of that email for weeks. Do I actually belong in this room? Like if I get rejected, if this person responds and tells me no, you can't come to this event, it's gotta be proof in some way that I don't belong. I am dropping in from my very cozy hotel room. No mic, no fancy recording setup. I literally feel so funny right now. I'm holding up my iPhone and just talking into my voice notes. So today's episode will have that slightly more casual feel. It has been a long day, and I am tired, fried, all the things. I woke up at 2:45 in the morning to catch a 620 a.m. flight out of Boston. So I'm running on very little sleep. And the whole reason I'm out on the West Coast for the next few days is for something I truly never could have expected. And I want to give you a peek behind the curtain because I have barely told anybody about this. Most people in my life have no clue that I'm here, that I'm in California, and they don't know why. So over a month ago, I got an email from a brand, just completely out of the blue. You know, when brands reach out with surveys, like, how are we doing? Give us all the feedback. It was kind of like that. Only they had requested a 15-minute Zoom call. And within a week of taking this meeting and offering my feedback, I received an incredible invitation that I could not say no to. So here I am. I flew cross country for this TBD invitation that hopefully I can share more about with you next week. But getting this invitation really cracked open my confidence in a way. And it reminded me that opportunities are everywhere, and we have the ability to create those opportunities for ourselves. So over the past couple of weeks, I've started thinking about initiating more. So rather than just kind of letting life happen to me, opportunities, things like that, I sent a few cold emails to people and brands that I don't know personally, and doors are opening. It's really been so cool to see. Carly Valancy is originally the amazing human who inspired and brought to life this concept for me. So definitely go and follow Carly Valancy on her Substack or on LinkedIn. She's a great follow. Her passion is inspiring people to send scary, unignorable emails, shooting your shot. And recently she completed a 100-day reach out challenge where she reached out to one person a day for 100 days. And of those 100 emails, she got 67 responses. 52 of them were positive. So that's not too bad considering these were all like big deal emails that she was putting out there. And at the end of it, she got a bunch of brands to sponsor her son's birthday party. She got to teach a workshop at Harvard Business School. She got yeses to guesting on a few podcasts. It's just so inspiring. And I kind of had this what the heck moment of why not? Why not send a few emails? And I feel like it's one of those things where, similar to podcasting, which was new for me four months ago, you start to exercise the muscle and then you build more resilience around doing it. And also it's kind of silly. Like I'm even like kind of pep talking myself right now in this moment because it's like, what's the worst that could happen? Like they don't respond and you move on. And of the three emails that I sent so far this month, I'm three for three in replies. One of those emails actually landed me a seat at a two-day in-person mastermind event next month that I normally would not have qualified for. And I remember, I kid you not, I sat on the draft of that email for weeks. I was just staring at this draft, refusing to hit send. I was so nervous to send it. And I think the big question underneath the ask for me was do I actually belong in this room? There was definitely an underlying feeling. Like if I get rejected, if this person responds and tells me, no, you can't come to this event, it's got to be proof in some way that I don't belong. And it's like wild that I got that email back. I now have a seat at that event. It's so crazy. I'm just like, wow, I need to start really stretching this muscle even more. And I think it's easy to see things happening to other people. Like they're getting the brand deal, they're getting the success, they're getting invited to these dreamy events. I mean, in my industry, kind of like the whole creator economy, coach entrepreneur world, there are all of these private events happening where it's kind of like invite-only. How do you get into those rooms, you know? But sometimes you just have to put yourself out there. The other two emails that I sent, I 1000% thought I would get ghosted because these were even bigger brands, bigger titles at these specific companies. And I ended up getting replies. And let's just say the doors are open. And me making that introduction is planting little seeds. So if you're listening to this and thinking, yeah, I'm gonna send a crazy email, I guess this is sort of my pep talk slash encouragement to go do it. And if I can offer any tips, like why do I think, you know, that I got responses to these emails, I would say lead with your story and what makes you unique. Because I think no matter what you're asking for, no matter what you're pitching for, no matter what you're making any kind of an email connection about, it's your story that's going to make you more memorable. It's something for that person to latch on to. And it doesn't even have to be a pitch. It could literally be just someone you admire. Maybe you've listened to their podcast for a while, or you love their content, or just whatever, like an author whose book you love. I feel like anything like that is worth sending an email about. So that's my really quick update. I feel like this episode totally feels like I'm just dropping you a spontaneous, casual voice note, a little less formal, a little shorter, but I didn't want to leave you all hanging. So I hope you enjoyed it. I'm about to order some delicious Burmese food. It's my go-to cuisine. Every time I fly to San Francisco, I make a beeline for the Burmese cuisine because I just love it. I love the chicken, the sauces, the coconut rice. It's so, so good. So I will see you next week, hopefully, with a little more tea to spill on this experience that I'm about to go on. So I will catch you then and I hope you have a great week. Bye.