It’s an area of my business I kept putting off, but I won’t reach my goals without it. Today I’m talking about outreach. I’m sharing why I put it off so long, what I’ve started doing recently to make starting easier, and the work that still needs to be done, including a bigger question I eventually need to answer.

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I can still picture the scene. It was a beautiful

Saturday morning just outside the city, and it was a day that

was perfect for a bike ride. That is until I started

going up a hill and while switching gears, the

chain fell off. Luckily, I was able to clip out of my pedals

just in time to avoid falling into the roadside ditch.

Um, and it didn't take long to actually get the pedal back on the

bike, but— Then I made a rookie mistake.

You see, I tried to start from where I was stopped, which is facing

uphill. In fact, I actually tried it a couple of

times, but there was just so much resistance. It was really, really difficult to

get started. And then it struck me, oh, just turn

the bike around, face downhill, and once you get started, just

turn around and then you can go uphill once you are actually in

motion. As you can probably guess, it worked.

And the same principle applies in other areas of your

life. Instead of starting while facing uphill with lots of

resistance, turn around, start downhill, and

then once you get going, you can tackle that hill with momentum.

Now, I've been thinking a lot about this actual incident I

experienced lately as I tackle an area of my business that I

have been avoiding. Mm-hmm. And that is outreach.

Now today I'm sharing why I've been putting it off for so long,

how I've gotten started, which involves going downhill first.

And there is actually a big question that I know I still need to

answer because I know once I do, it actually will make

a significant difference. In fact, maybe that is going

downhill. So in case you are new here,

I do wanna say hi, welcome. I am Kat, and on this

podcast I am sharing behind the scenes as I try real-time

experiments to help me follow through on what matters and find

momentum as a speaker and a writer.

Now, let's get into it. Outreach. So first, I just want to clarify

what I mean when I say this. I mean reaching out

to people about speaking opportunities. Now, this doesn't

always mean reaching out just to pitch. It could be reaching out, asking questions,

recommendations for opportunities that might be a good

fit for me, and just really having conversations about

possible speaking opportunities. To date,

most of my speaking opportunities have been

inbound, so they are through people that I already know or

they know me, and they've actually reached out and said, hey, are you good

to do a talk? Sometimes this is in person, but more often it is

virtual. Just given the nature of my background and my

ability to run a virtual session. This has been great

because I've had really cool opportunities to speak at different

events or as part of webinars or summits.

And I, I love that. I so appreciate it.

And it's inconsistent. You can't just only rely on inbound,

especially when you're at a point in your career where I am, where I am

just kind of starting something still relatively new. Uh, I

haven't been at this very long and it's not that

I haven't done any outbound research, uh, reachouts at all.

The outreach has happened. It's just that it's a bit sporadic. And when it

comes to speaking, I have applied for some conferences.

I've had some success. I spoke at a conference in Toronto last year with my

new topic, uh, but I've also experienced rejections in the past, definitely.

And you know, it doesn't feel good. And I, I

mentioned in the sort of description and the title

of this podcast around this fear of

rejection, or at least alluded to a big fear, and that is rejection. But

it's not just that. It's not the only reason I'm putting it off.

And this lack of consistent outreach is a prime

example of where I'm actually tackling multiple roadblocks.

On a logical roadblock level, I have

trouble knowing exactly who I'm reaching out to and what exactly I'm pitching.

And I'm gonna come back to that one because that is still a big deal.

The second type of roadblock, biological, is that there's no real deadline

for outreach. You can reach out to someone at any time, and

even if there is an event with a deadline to apply,

I would have to already know about the event, and I'm actually not even

doing a good job of finding events I could apply for, so I don't even

know those deadlines. But finally, the, the one I already alluded

to, the psychological roadblock is this fear of rejection.

Putting yourself out there, putting yourself forward with an idea and

just not wanting to feel that fear of rejection.

That I think can be something that is really difficult for me. I mean,

it's not just me. This is difficult for everyone, but it's one of

those things where I definitely have this, this

caution that I have where if I get told

no, maybe this means that I

am not putting forward a good proposal. My proposal's not good enough.

It could be that my topic actually isn't good enough. Maybe no one wants to

hear this, or maybe just I'm not good enough. And now, as I say

these out loud, I know they're not 100% valid, but remember, fear

is emotional, not logical. And the way

that we start to push back against these fears is we

start to ask, why do I assume this is going to happen,

and how can you challenge these and challenge these safely,

which is one of the things that I'm doing now.

So let's talk about what I'm doing now in order to try and get over

this. So first, I just want to comment on the fact that putting out

a public commitment to reach a million people through

speaking and writing has been a really good thing for me in

that I have just publicly declared it and I'm not going to take it back.

Because it's true. And are there times where I kind of wish I

was secretly doing this so that if I'm not making progress, then nobody knows?

Yeah, kind of, but that's the whole reason that accountability works for me.

So this is one of the ways I'm applying this biological— I'm kind of

creating pressure and a deadline, which I respond well to.

The other thing is that I decided to join a community

specifically that offers coworking calls that are structured

and they are for outreach. Because just saying I'm going

to do it and having a public tracker, that's really helpful, but I still

need to structure it into my week. And in the past, whenever I have put

a placeholder in my week and maybe it said business development or

outreach or whatever it said, it was an internal

expectation. It was not a real thing on the calendar. It could be easily

pushed. And so I pushed it. And this by joining a

community that specifically has outreach calls. So this

community is run by my friend and colleague, Jessica Lackey.

And she not only has resources for, okay, how do you do

outreach? Who are your different circles, your network? So she has that

educational piece, but then there's the implementation.

And actually on the first call that I attended, which was this week,

it was amazing to see how many people were showing up. And it sounds like

there's actually been a real groundswell of people who are saying, I need to show

up. up every week and I need to commit to doing this. So doing this

with other people who are also doing the same thing also makes it feel

like it's more attainable and more reasonable. So that's been a really, I think,

beneficial thing. It's early, but I am walking the

walk. I'm doing the thing that I know works for me. It is a really

good strategy for me to do coworking, but also that structure

of having that call set out that way. And when I say that, it means.

There, it's broken into different blocks so that everyone is

guided through that call. Now, the other thing

that I'm doing, and this is related to my story about the bike, when it

comes to starting downhill, I started this

Monday with just not overthinking and

reaching out to people who maybe I'd already started

conversations with, or at least we had had enough of

a, an initial conversation where I felt like it was the next natural

step for me to reach out. So to say, hey,

does your community or membership have guest expert

talks? And if so, could I come in and talk? I

purposely chose people where it felt like a, either a low

risk of rejection because maybe they actually expressed an interest already,

or there's someone who I trust, even if they say no,

It would be gentle and that it would not be any kind of statement on

who I am as a person. I know that they have respect for me and

my work. And so I started there. And honestly,

it was so beneficial for me. I did

actually receive a rejection, but it was so kind that

I felt good about it. And this is the example of, of

how do you overcome your fears, your hesitations,

And one of the things is by taking action and also noticing

when a bad thing happens, how do you feel?

Now, in this case, I purposely went to someone where

maybe rejection wouldn't feel so bad, and that was true. But now that I've done

this and taken that action, I can kind of store that as evidence

that even getting rejection does not have to be bad, and you can

keep on getting up and talking to other people. The other

piece that I mentioned around going downhill and just not overthinking is that

for a very long time, I had it in my head and even in

my project database that I really wanted to

have a fully built out strategy and outreach plan

and CRM all put in place before I even start my

first outreach. And that I realized was a

big drawback. I would stall because I was waiting for this whole

vision of my outreach to be perfect before I even start.

And that's what I had to kind of erase and just say, this whole starting

downhill thing, just get into motion. You don't have to have anything

perfect. Just say, hey, remember we had that conversation?

Is this something that might work? Just not overthinking it has been

really, really helpful because I'm just reaching out to people and

people that I trust. I do eventually

want to have a strategy in place, and that actually does

lead to the question I alluded to earlier, this. Big question that I need to

answer, which is I am a person

who has chosen to talk about a topic, follow

through, finding your momentum, that could technically help anyone.

And if you are an entrepreneur or in business, you

probably know that all of the advice says you need

to pick an audience, you need to have a niche, you need to talk to

one type of person. And One of the challenges I have faced

is I actually do not have any kind of strategy as far as

who am I pitching now in the future? I

absolutely would like to have clarity on who am I

approaching? Is this more larger events, associations?

Is this more corporate intact teams, et cetera? What

industry? And yes, I can talk to different industries,

but I think really just knowing And then that way I can start to

form contacts, form relationships, and really just focus my

attention and energy instead of spreading it out and having my attention and

energy go in a lot of different directions. The reason I

actually feel okay about the fact that I haven't answered that question just

yet is because I am still in an early, I would say,

experimental phase where I don't have to have it

all figured out. I do want to start with this downhill

approach of just who's already in my network, who can I start talking

to so that I can at least get in the reps of doing

presentations, talking to people, answering questions, hearing questions that

people have for me, what language is landing the best,

and then I can start to formulate, okay, who seems to

be responding and what direction should I take? And

Here's the other thing that's good news for me when it comes to outreach,

is that outreach is not just pitching talks. It's also

doing research of asking people, who

are some industries or companies or associations,

events that might be a good match for what I teach?

So that allows me to not only have conversations with people in my network, but

it also helps me learn and do research About what my options are

so that when it comes time, I can actually start to make

those decisions around who am I talking to? What is

sort of that value proposition? Really, what am I pitching? Who am I

talking to and why? Now that brings me to the

tracker. So I do have the tracker. It has been updated

and I am going to share this, but I'll also walk through it for

anyone who is listening audio only. Not gonna lie, it's a

little humbling. I think I might've said that last week to you, but I've got,

I have, uh, it's as I record this, we're

almost halfway through the month and my posting progress

is not great. It's 20%. So I had aimed for 20 posts

in the month of August. I have posted 4. There will be

more by the end of this week, but I gotta, I gotta get my butt

into gear. No pun intended. The outreach

progress. So I know I started with my downhill approach,

people that I trust, and that is true. My outreach though is at

15%. I had targeted 40, which

is ambitious for 40 individual outreach. Um,

but I'm at 6. However, that 6 felt good

and I think I want to embrace a little bit more of that

research bent, what I just shared with you. is starting to ask people, are

there events or associations or groups or companies, like

just really starting to get a feel and put out some feelers for what might

be a good match. Also, if you're listening right now and you've got an idea,

please don't hesitate to tell me. I would love to hear from you. Now, I

actually did have a couple of really amazing conversations last week, but I didn't

reach out to them. They actually had reached out.

One was an outreach to me, and then the other was a connection

request or between to a friend of mine, basically mutual friend.

We had amazing conversations and I, and actually I ended

up booking a talk through one of those conversations, but I'm not counting it here

because I did not initiate the outreach. And that's the practice I

have to get better at. It's not responding to calls and inbound requests.

It's that I need to get over my hesitation and actually reach

out to other people. Now the results. So I have

this month booked 3 speaking engagements. For the

future, a couple of them are happening in the next few weeks, and another one

is a bit later in the fall. But I'm counting anything that I book in

this month, even if it happens in the future. And then for

appearances, so I had the appearance last week. I'm actually recording another

podcast later this week. I don't know when it'll be released. For

appearances, I will put those. I'll track

those in the month they actually are released. So a little bit different

appearance. Is it out there in the public? And for booked speaking gigs, it's

actually just what is the result of my outreach? And then

down at the bottom, we've got the outcome, which is audience members

and subscribers. And for subscribers since

in the last 12 days, I have 25 new subscribers.

And for audience members, that will change this week. I am doing

a talk to a private community. So I will reflect how many

people actually attended that talk, but I don't know the number yet.

And. For subscribers, I do

want to, when I see that number, I mean,

it's not a bad thing. It's going in the right direction, but I do want

to make that higher. And as I mentioned last week,

that is something that I, I'm working on a

quiz and I do think the quiz will be helpful.

It's just that that has not been made yet. And I did see in the

comments someone had shared like, I'd like to be a tester. So it's nice to

know that I have people who are eager and willing to

test out the quiz, but I know that that could be something that could really

help. Also doing these appearances, having these talks that can help

with subscriber numbers. They tend to be smaller groups because I'm going

into existing communities. So it depends on how many people show up,

but I actually really, I think the quality of person who

joins my list after hearing a talk is higher than say,

A, you know, a recommendation from another newsletter where

someone just kind of clicks yes as they're signing up, they really don't

know anything about me versus someone who actually sees me talk. That can make a

real difference. And so I'm looking forward to that. Now,

just knowing that I have this tracker, that I'm sharing

these numbers, and that you right now as

a listener are hearing real numbers like this.

It is, it's working. It's humbling, but it's working.

So it doesn't just keep me honest. It's also a regular reminder each

week as I go before I record this podcast to update it.

I can see exactly what I have to do. I am facing those

numbers and it's making me say, okay, what do you have

to do? Like, stay on this goal. This goal matters to you.

And this means even facing my fear of rejection

of someone telling me no. Because that's what I have to do in order to

take action and follow through on what really matters.