Gearing up for the first post early next month
Hey team, I’m excited to be a month away from the launch of this newsletter.
Ahead of it, I’m in the lab preparing ideas for posts to make sure there’s value to come with your subscription. So I’m sharing, below, some of the ideas I’ve jotted down, in hopes to get some feedback from you about which ones sound especially juicy and which ones might be less intriguing to you. I’d be especially interested in hearing from the 20 or so people who’ve made free accounts without becoming paid subscribers: Which topics would it take to get you to come over to the other side?
Have a scan at summaries of what’s been on my mind of late and where I intend to drive attention in Q1:
-Why social media manager jobs stink. This will be an exploration of how modern jobs work at small businesses, hoping to demystify the methods and mechanics of your marketing team. And to confirm for you that social media-specific people are set up to fail. And how it can be approached better for both employee and company.
-Recommending people of color for freelance assignments. I have a few recent examples of where I was asked to help recommend someone and I defaulted in every case to choose Black people I’ve worked with or have started to get to know. And why I’m dedicating myself to this initiative in 2022 more so than ever before now that I’m in a position of influence.
-People who don't want promotions. The more I speak to people, the less interested they seem to be in dreaming about moving up in their existing organizations. If they’re staying, they’re staying where they are. If they’re moving, they’re going elsewhere. On the face of it, this has always been true. But the motivation behind it is different, and I’d like to outline why that’s happening.
-Living a life of deprivation. From the ages of 17 to 27, I didn’t take advantage of my skills in the way I should have. And I regret that as a whole, not any one moment in particular. I believe I was entitled to more good years than I awarded myself, and I have myself to blame and nobody else for being stubborn about depriving myself of all the good I could have come across and have contributed then. And I want to acknowledge what and why it occurred so I can make peace and have the good years to define me going forward. This ties into a recent conversation I had with coffee with a friend who knew me first in those years and he was surprised to hear I feel this way, in hindsight, about the first decade of our friendship when I held myself back.
-Why it's not good to backfill roles. This is an old talking point of mine, but not something you come across every day. It will probably overlap a bit with the ‘People not wanting promotions’ post, or it can work in tandem with it as a two-part series. Just depends on what the first newsletter yields so I won’t be repetitive in the second. But if there’s more interest in this being the thrust of it first, I can fold the other into this one, with ease.
-How meetings should operate going forward. People are obsessed with this topic. My meetings calendar has never been better in terms of not having a lot of them and also using that time wisely. I can definitely list five tips from what’s been working better this year than ever in my camp. If there isn’t momentum here for this post, I can easily throw this one up in a smaller post on LinkedIn publicly. It’s 101 stuff unlike most of the other topics above that feel more meaty and/or contrarian.
-Seeing between the cracks. I gave charity to a woman who didn’t ask for it. It was expensive, but she appreciated it. I found myself wondering ahead of it, “How bad must it be if this is what she’s posting about?” I can go into greater detail with this as the case study about reading between the line and spotting when people have fallen on hard(er) times than they’re willing to admit. It’s about recognizing that other people have enough in common with you to take note, however they also may experience life differently than you have or ever will.
-I told on myself to my manager. Recently, I said the wrong thing to a professional contact. And I was called out for it. And I apologized. And I felt bad about it afterward. So I told my manager about it. And he was wonderful about the whole thing. And I felt a lot better. And it confirmed for me yet again why it’s good to work on behalf of people who really know you.
-Growth PR. What I do and how I see angles others don’t. I can walk you through how I approach conversations with people in organic ways to get them to tell me what they didn’t know they were supposed to tell me. Never secrets I don’t really care to know. Always insights I can build off of. Note: This is probably the closest I’ll ever get to talking about my day-to-day work in this newsletter.
-How to find your people. A ton has been written about how adult men in particular have trouble connecting with others. Happy to share how I approach this and more importantly how I find people and surround myself with them on a regular basis to make my life feel more full.
-How to ask better followup questions to make more of an impression on strangers. This is most likely a second part to the one above about finding your people, but it can naturally stand on its own or I can roll both together. This advice would be practical toward networking, informational sessions, and job interviews. How to take control of the session before the other person realizes it has happened. I had an 18-minute call this week with someone I’d just met from Pittsburgh who at the close of the call recommended a company I should look at for investment. It went well. (We’re not interested in investing, though.)
-How you present yourself vs. how you carry yourself. This is a nugget of an idea I haven’t expanded on just yet, but I think society emphasizes too much the first and not enough the second. I don’t wear the right clothes, but I can mingle with the right people. It took me a long time to figure out how. I can go into greater detail here, if there’s interest.
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That’s the list for now. It’ll surely grow over the coming weeks. But I wanted to share it with you pronto to get this month’s momentum to roll into the inaugural newsletter month. If you can take the time to reply to me with a few of these topics you think should be more priority and perhaps one also that should get less priority in your eyes, I’d appreciate it. You don’t need to give me a reason with it, but I’m always open to explanation. I want to meet you where you are - and to push you further.
Next. Up.
Danny