[WWC #8] - It's The First Day of Spring
It turns out that the first day of spring is a day earlier on leap years.
I said I'd be done with the book by the first day of spring.
Well.
I didn't say which spring.
Jk jk. I jest. But, well, no, the book still is not finished.
I'm going to keep writing this newsletter, but if you don't wanna keep on the journey no hard feelings the unsubscribe link is here.
Can I be honest with you? I'll be honest with you. There's not been a ton of work around for the last 18 months. Indies have been having a rough time.
So, with a big project winding down at the beginning of the year (and tax season looming) I've been moving back into "let's find work mode".
Also my reMarkable tablet bricked itself. Also I threw my back out taking the kids to school. So it feels a bit like everything is going the wrong way...
So the book hasn't been a daily focus in the same way it was. It's still going to happen soon but I could use a little client work to give me the safety to get heads down on the manuscript...
Here's a quick diversion then - all the things I've been doing to drum up consulting work:
- LinkedIn beefs
- Blog posts
- Updating my website
- 1-5 alive.
What's 1-5 alive?
1-5 Alive
This is a framework I stole from my buddy Brian Dell. It's a simple way to sustain an ongoing always-on outreach to nurture your network. This is the lifeblood of generating consulting work.
Peter Kang believes in it too, he just wrote about it in his newsletter:
I mentioned previously how the Barrel partners upped our weekly outreach activity from 2 contacts per week to 10. This has been the norm since November. We target and send personalized messages to former and existing clients, other agency leaders, investors, founders, and tech solutions partners. We hold each other accountable by reviewing our outreach efforts together every Wednesday.
I decided to see if the outreach and conversations were yielding any opportunities. We reviewed every single lead so far in Q1 (58 as of last week) and found that:
- 10 of those leads (17%) were a result of our outreach activity
- 9 of those 10 leads were qualified opportunities (90%), meaning we went into proposal stage
- We lost 1 but the other 8 are still on the table
- 1 of them gave us verbal green light, which is likely to be a win
So. That's what I'm up to.
The GOOD news is I feel like I've got a way to re-write the intro. I think I'm really figuring out the thrust of the book and have a strong personal story to anchor the introduction. Now it's time to sit down and write it!
🌱 onwards