The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 204 - 137 Reach Outs

Transcript:

Jen: Hello, Peter Shepherd.

Pete: Hello, Jennifer Waldman.

Jen: Before we started recording, you said something that made my jaw hit the floor..and I'm about to turn it into a podcast episode, surprise!

Pete: Oh dear, I think I know what you're about to say...alright.

Jen: Yes, because you saw my jaw hit the floor when you told me that since returning from your wedding/honeymoon (and that was only a couple of weeks ago), you have sent 137 reach outs.

Pete: Indeed, I have. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: Now, Pete, 137 reach outs in a couple of weeks time is quite a lot. Now, I knew that you had a reach out practice. I have a reach out practice. But this number is so astronomical. I want to know more about how you got there, and how you've motivated yourself to keep going at that rate.

Pete: Hmm. I appreciate the question. So I guess, going back a step, I, like you have mentioned because I know you have one as well, have always had to reach out practice. And what I mean by that is, I think we got this from the book Reach Out by Molly Beck, who talks about this idea of sending one reach out a day. And by that, she means it could be a cold reach out to someone you've always wanted to connect to, it could be someone you heard on a podcast and were like, "I really love that episode where you recorded this podcast," or it could be to someone you haven't spoken to for a while who's already in your network. And so, in reading that book, I thought, "Oh, that's a really good practice I would like to develop," because it overlaps with this idea that Seth Godin talks about, you and I have spoken about, which is, you know, for a business owner, there is kind of two buckets of work. One is the work itself, which we love doing, because that's why we do the work. So for me, that's like coaching and running workshops and doing keynotes. And I love that. And then there's the working on the business part, which is the bit that a lot of people like to avoid. And that often looks like reaching out, connecting, finding new collaborators. And so, in reading that book and hearing Seth talk about that, I thought, "Oh, okay, one needs a pretty consistent reach out practice." Which I've done for, I would say, a few years now, like, "Try and do 1 a day." In the past, I've thought of mine as 5 a week because the work week is 5 days, at least for some people. And so, I've always done that pretty consistently. Cut to Pete in Italy drinking an aperitif and soaking in the sun, and for some reason, I remembered this idea. And this...ah, it was either a book or a podcast that shared this story of a particular salesperson working in an organization, who had been tasked with doing five sales calls a day. So that was him working on the business, "You've got to do five sales calls a day." And that's what all of his colleagues did. And he thought, for whatever reason, "What if I did a hundred?" It was something absurd. Like he completely blew the target out of the water as a way to, I guess, fast track what he thought his progress would be. And of course, he became the number one sales director, he won a bunch of awards, got a bunch of credit as a result, and created a bunch of really great opportunities for his company, more importantly. So in sitting in Italy in the sun drinking an aperitif, for some reason, I was reminded of that episode. For some reason, I thought about my reach out practice. And I guess I started to wonder, "What if you created an even more absurd number, an even more absurd target, an even more absurd stretch? What might that create for you?" Because I was coming off what was the most amazing year, really, of great opportunities and projects and work that I'd done. And so, I was kind of like, "What does it look like to level up? Where does that come from?" And where I landed was, "What if I leveled up and created an absurd reach out practice?" I'm going stop talking. That's the context.

Jen: And so, your 5 a week...in order to hit 137 in a couple of weeks, you have to be doing far more than 5.

Pete: Yeah. I recall landing on 25, was my number. Because I was like, "Oh, that's 5 times as many. Which in theory, you know, could create 5 times as many opportunities. Which is not necessarily true, but like, that's the rough calculation I did. And so that would be like 5 times the amount of great collaborations, 5 times the amount of great opportunities to deliver keynotes. Like, I was trying to just generate 5 times was the amount of fun conversations and connections that I'd built on in the previous year. And I think what ended up happening...like you mentioned, it's been only a few weeks. In most of the cases, I ended up doing like 40 a week instead of 25 a week, because, well, I got into a groove...we mentioned finding a groove recently. I found it kind of fun. Shocker. And the other shocker is, I didn't receive any pushback from those I was reaching out to, which I feel like is perhaps something you'll want to double-click on.

Jen: Yeah, I'm definitely going to want to double-click on that. First, I want to dig in a little bit into the emotional labor required to send 137 reach outs. You know, in a way, that sounds like so much. But I can imagine that it's actually easier to send 137 reach outs than to send 1. And I think this is why we have practices, because you get better and better at figuring out...I mean, not to put words in your mouth. But I'm guessing you get better and better in figuring out what you want to say, how you want to say it, and then hitting send. And this fear of like, "This 1 reach out is going to destroy my life, if this person who I haven't spoken to in 5 years is like, 'Why in the world would you want to get coffee with me?'" You know? So, 137 of those in a couple of weeks almost requires emotional detachment...or at least that's my hypothesis. Talk to me about that.

Pete: Yeah. No, I think you're right. There's an unattachment to the outcome that has to come when you have such an absurd target, because you kind of don't have time to think about what might happen as a result. There's still a little bit of like, "Ooh," nervousness, and, "Agh, like, what if they tell me to go away?" Which didn't happen once, by the way. And so, that's still a little bit present. It actually reminds me of...so when I was coaching the altMBA, which is where you and I met,-

Jen: Mmm-hmm.

Pete: -in the early days, I was responsible for coaching 1 cohort of 20 people, and you had a co-coach. So usually, at any one time, you would split the cohort and look after kind of 10 students a week. And so, that meant commenting, that meant one-on-ones, that meant looking after those particular 10. At one point, I was asked if I would double-coach. So I had 2 cohorts, which then doubled the requirement of my week, in that I had to connect with twice as many people, I had to write twice as many comments. And what that whole practice helped me cultivate or practice is, I think what you're saying, emotional detachment. But not in a like negative way, in a really positive way. Which is, "I don't have time to agonize over whether this is the perfect comment. I don't have time to agonize over whether this next one-on-one coaching call is going to be the greatest coaching call they've ever been a part of. I have to let go of those outcomes, and I have to trust that if I show up and I listen, or if I show up and I read their work, the comment that I write, the question that I ask will be enough. And I just have to trust that, and let go, and then move on to the next one." And I think the same is true in this reach out example. You have to trust that the offer that you have, or the question you have, or just the ask to get a coffee that you make is enough and is going to be received with the generous intent that you intend.

Jen: Yeah. I'm also recognizing, I remember you saying to me at one point that when you got back from your trip, you were going to have a little more free time. So I can't imagine in your busiest season, you're going to be doing 137 reach outs in a couple of weeks. But it is nice to know that you could sprint like this.

Pete: Right. Well, I actually think you taught me this around seasons.

Jen: That's right.

Pete: In our life, we have seasons. But in our work, we have seasons. And as any business owner knows or, I mean, any employee of a company knows, there are really busy times and then there are times when you're a little less busy, in that you might have less demands because a bunch of people are on holiday, or maybe it's around Christmas time if you're in Australia and everyone takes holidays, or in North America and Europe, it's like summertime, a bunch of people take holidays. So things are less intense, less busy. So for me, yeah, coming back from a holiday where I'd wrapped up a bunch of things, went away for three weeks, I came back to a quieter time because a lot of North American clients, in particular, were also on holidays. And so, I had more space to even create this challenge.

Jen: Mmm-hmm.

Pete: Which I think is a really important call out. It was like, "Okay, so now is my season of reaching out."

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: "Why don't I challenge myself to do an absurd number?" And that's what happened.

Jen: I just have so many questions. This is a Jen interviews Pete episode. So I'm very curious to know...we'll, I'll use myself as an example here. I have a reach out ethos, which has turned into a practice. If I see something that makes me think of someone I already know, I reach out to them and say, "I saw this thing, and it made me think of you." And then, you know, I might say, "Let's grab coffee," or I might just say, "I hope you're well. I wanted you to know."

Pete: Yes.

Jen: And when I see something that moves me, I reach out to the people who made it. You know, in the art world, in the theater world, I reach out to the people who made it and I tell them that their work moved me and why. And if I'm listening to a podcast, and the person who's maybe a guest on the podcast starts talking about their work, and I see the possibility of some overlap between what they're doing and what I'm doing, I reach out to them and I say, "I see some overlap here. You want to hear more about it?" So like, there are reasons I reach out. Is there a particular motivation behind who you are selecting? Because 137 people...I mean, the possibilities are endless.

Pete: Yeah. I guess there's some different buckets, now that you mention that. I don't know if I intentionally thought about this, until now. Of the 137, sometimes it was what you described, I would reach out to someone who'd been on a podcast. And because I challenged myself to come up with 25, I was like, "Uhh, podcasts, okay. Who have I listened to recently? And which ones did I really value? I'm going to send some of those today." And then other days, it was, "Who have I worked with in the past that I haven't spoken with for ages? And I just want to know, 'What are you up to? Like, I haven't spoken you since we worked together in January last year. So, what are you up to?'" So that was another, I guess, bucket. There were cold reach outs as well, so I've looked for, "What are some organizations that sort of rhyme with organizations I've worked with in the past? And how might I be able to support them? You know, if you've worked with this particular industry before, then what other companies are within that industry that you think you could potentially add some value?" So there was some of those, that were more or less cold. And then there was plenty in between, which was like, "Maybe you haven't worked with them, maybe they're not cold, but they're somewhere in your network and you know each other somehow." And they were probably the most, I would say, delightful interactions.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Because what I realized, one of the learnings of this whole process is like, "Wow, I have such an amazing group of people in my community/extended network."

Jen: Mmm-hmmm.

Pete: That, at times, I was kind of like, "Huh. I really haven't been connecting with as many amazing people as I should have been. Because like, these people are so inspiring, and there's so many cool opportunities to just talk to them and explore possibilities." And they were often the ones that...and Molly Beck talks about this in her book...that were sort of just on the outer reaches, perhaps, of your network.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Yeah. So, that was probably the bucket I've spent most of the time in.

Jen: Yeah. This is making me think of, in the pre-pandemic days when I was traveling so much for keynotes and workshops, and when we still had access to the altMBA Slack channel,-

Pete: Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm.

Jen: -I would, you know, book a gig, let's say in Hong Kong, and I would go to the Slack channel and say, "Who here lives in Hong Kong?"

Pete: Right.

Jen: "Would love to grab a coffee." The only thing we had in common was that we both did this program. And inevitably, someone would say, "I live in Hong Kong. I live in Ontario. I live in Mexico City. I live in Copenhagen," whatever it was, and I would see these people who I had never met but we had some connection point in common. And every single one of those interactions was completely delightful. And the only purpose behind it was connection.

Pete: Mmm-hmm.

Jen: And all of it because of having the guts to reach out and say, "Will you grab a coffee with me?"

Pete: Yeah. I think that "what's it for" of connection is really interesting and important. I think it's easy to think of...in the wrong context, you could think of reaching out as like gross outreach or sales.

Jen: Mmm-hmm.

Pete: Or, "I have to get this person to answer this series of 25 questions that I've always wanted to ask them," the guest on the podcast. And I think neither of those approaches is an appropriate one, certainly from the context that I was coming from, which was all about connection. Like I think I, you're reminding me, I think I subconsciously revisited a book without realizing it, the book by Derek Sivers called Your Music and People. And he describes this friend of his who's a musician and that tracks how many new people she meets and connects with each week. And the assertion that Derek makes off the back of that is, assuming your music, your products, your services, your offering is good, your success in whatever field you're in is determined by the amount of new people you connect with.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And this lady had taken that to the point of like tracking, in a spreadsheet, "What new person have I connected with this week, for the purpose of connection?" Sometimes it leads somewhere, sometimes it doesn't.

Jen: Right.

Pete: And so, I think that's ultimately what I was doing, maybe without even realizing that's specifically what I was doing.

Jen: Well, I am thinking right now of some really fun dominoes that you actually knocked over. You were listening to the Tim Ferriss show, and you heard someone talking on the Tim Ferriss show, you reached out to that person, you then introduced that person to me, that person introduced me to some people, and now like all these dominoes later, I'm working with one of the people I was introduced to, which only happened because you liked something she said on someone's podcast. It's just crazy how that all happens.

Pete: Isn't that wild? But I think that's a good example of being unattached to the outcome. That wasn't my intended outcome when I reached out. I also didn't expect a reply, or have a specific pitch or ask of her. It was what you mentioned, it was for the purposes of connecting and saying, "Hey, I heard what you said on this podcast. And I just want you to know, it resonated with me in these ways." And like you mentioned, it then created a bunch of all these other connections, which we never could have predicted.

Jen: No, it's just the power of reaching out, it really has infinite potential. Okay, now's the moment of double-clicking on something you said earlier. So Pete, you sent 137 reach outs in just a couple weeks. How many of those 137 said, "How dare you contact me?"

Pete: 0.

Jen: How many of them said, "Do not ever contact me again?"

Pete: 0.

Jen: How many of them said, "Who do you think you are? Don't you know who I am?"

Pete: 0.

Jen: Okay, so that's interesting data. Did you receive any positive responses to your reach outs?

Pete: Yes, many, many, many, many positive responses. Many great conversations have come from them. Many amazing opportunities in the future are looking like coming from them. Many connections with people when I'm in Chicago, in New York that are coming up. So yes, there were a lot of positive responses.

Jen: I think it's just so important to hear that, so we can all imagine ourselves in your shoes for a minute. Like when we're hearing that voice of dread saying, "Don't you dare hit send on that email. Someone is going to really hate this," that we can just remember Pete sent 137 in a matter of weeks and only good things came out of it.

Pete: Yeah. And some people just didn't reply, and that's okay.

Jen: That always happens.

Pete: Right.

Jen: You know, a certain percentage, you're just going to never hear back from.

Pete: Exactly.

Jen: But nobody came after you.

Pete: No. There's no bounty to get Pete.

Jen: Right. Because at the end of the day, reaching out to make a connection with someone, sharing something meaningful, it's effective.

Pete: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.