This is your sign. 🔮

Consider it a gentle reminder to do the damn thing! 👇

Yesterday, I was reminded of the power of simply sending the email, and seeing what happens.

Yep, that’s right. I sent an email, and it could quite literally change the trajectory of my career if it comes to fruition. I’m manifesting HARD, people.

Before we begin this now massively hyped up but probably quite underwhelming story, lemme give you some context. I have never been very good at putting myself out there and pitching for freelance work in any kind of professional way - almost all of my gigs over the years have come about through introductions or recommendations from very generous former clients, or a casual email or Instagram DM, rather than a formal pitch process.

I’m not a seasoned pitcher, if you will…until I got talking to a literary agent at an event a few months ago, and she asked me for my credentials deck (“what the bloody hell is a credentials deck,” I thought) to share with her colleagues. With some guidance from James, I fashioned a snazzy looking presentation with a few client testimonials and sent it on its way.

Turns out, having a document on hand that illustrates exactly what you do and why you are good at it is actually quite useful, especially when you’re a freelancer who might need to dive into self promotion territory every once in a while. Not only did it make pitching for work much easier, but it also gave me a newfound confidence to actually make stuff happen for myself.

I felt much more comfortable emailing potential clients who I had never met before with a presentation to back up my offering, opening up a whole new world of opportunity that I hadn’t ever allowed myself to explore.

Anyway, I digress. Let’s fast forward to today, or more specifically, one week ago, when I was doing some research for a project and came across the website of a freelance literary publicist who has worked with some seriously incredible authors. Past me would have probably thought, “wow, her work is so impressive, I would love to chat to her,” and then moved on with her day. Present me? Well, she whipped out her credentials deck, she wrote an email to the aforementioned impressive woman, and then she sat back and hoped for the best.

And you know what happened? She emailed me back. Not only that, but she complimented me on the work I do, told me that she would recommend me to her clients who need social media support, AND forwarded my email over to her network of other freelance publicists.

The kindness? The support? The going out of her way to help a fellow freelancer, just because? As you can imagine, my jaw quite literally dropped to the floor.

Within five minutes, another extraordinary email dropped into my inbox from another publicist, telling me that my pitch was fantastic and my details were being forwarded on to X, Y and Z for a potential speaking opportunity. It was so overwhelming that I had to go downstairs and make a cup of tea to calm my extremely frazzled nerves.

The takeaway? Send the bloody email. Make the call, go to the event, pursue what is in your heart. What’s the worst that could happen? The murky waters of rejection and failure can be very tricky to navigate, but it’s also where all the learning happens. Be open to someone saying a big fat yes, and it might just happen. And then? Well, you’ll probably be wandering around with a humungous silly grin on your face, wondering why you spent so much time worrying and procrastinating and not doing the thing.

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Oh, hi there, and thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed this piece as much as I enjoyed writing it 🥰