Painstakingly Human | Episode 3 (of 3)
Greetings. This is part three, of three.
I told you earlier this week that I’d been doing lots of painstakingly human outreach to people who don’t even know me. I also cautioned you that I won’t be packing this series with all kinds of bluster about “mastery of this-and-that”, or “insider tricks”.
What I’m doing is yet to be “proven”, because I’m still in the middle of it.
But I want you to know that I’ve done this before. Most recently in the autumn:
- I found the names of people who are busy and get tons of stuff sent to them by people like me
- I got in touch with them (“painstakingly human outreach”)
I don’t know what the average response rate is for what I’m doing. Approximately 10 of the 15 never replied to anything. But I was pleased that three out of 15 people got back to me and one of the three has already asked me to do the work I hoped to do.
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You might wonder what kind of outreach this is – for what kind of work, or sales, or whatever.
It’s about running a live, interactive workshop, loosely based on the contents of A Modest Book About How To Make An Adequate Speech (author: me). For reasons I don’t need to go into, because you probably wouldn’t be very interested, I often do those sessions for law firms1.
Whether I’m doing them for lawyers or anyone else, the sessions are great fun, and not only for me (apparently).
“To tell you the truth, I only went to see this guy to spend the afternoon off work… So I was really surprised that I enjoyed it” – Attendee, in-person event
Sessions vary from one occasion to the next, but always include some combination of two things:
- insights from my background as a writer (rhetoric, storytelling etc etc)
- games (aka “management training exercises”) from my work in theatrical improvisation with the late, great Keith Johnstone.
Now, the thing about law firms is: they pay well. And therefore they get tons of people lobbying them to do this kind of work.
I mention this because the managing partner who asked me to come and deliver a workshop at his firm said he gets oodles of approaches (I paraphrase) from all kinds of people but that (he said) my own outreach really got his attention.
So that’s nice.
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I can tell you exactly what I did this week because I took notes: I didn’t want to have to reinvent the (inefficient) process from scratch next time.
I’m sharing those notes with you just as they are, as three linked pages on this website. You’ll see at the bottom of the first page that there’s a link to the second, and at the bottom of the second page there’s a link to the third.
But before you look at those notes I made for myself, I should add that I’ve ALSO created a Kind of Guide, specifically for you to try something broadly like this yourself.
Entirely inefficiently, I spent this morning drawing little pictures to illustrate the Kind of Guide. I also recorded an audio version for your delectation, because, hey, why not.
So, you have a choice. You can see either or both of these things:
- My Notes to Self (three linked pages)
- The Kind of Guide for you to try the same thing yourself.
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I hope you found this series interesting and / or entertaining and preferably a bit of both. I can’t tell you how nice it was to know that you wanted to hear all this stuff, gave me a terrific feeling of being accompanied in something.
Please tell me if you have any questions. I’d be delighted to know how I can make it more useful / entertaining for others who may, one day, stumble upon it.
And don’t forget that you would be extremely welcome to sign up for one of my Unoffice Hours, and we can have a chat for 30 mins – about anything.
1 Law firms. My mum worked as a lawyer, so it’s a world I know. I used to sit under her desk in school holidays. Also: my first job in journalism was on a magazine about commercial law, so there’s that. Plus, when I came out of psychiatric hospital a woman in a law firm wanted me to deliver a talk about it in her law firm. So there we are: that’s why I often do this with law firms.
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