Sales, Newsletters, and a Tool That Actually Helped
Everywhere I turned I heard the term lead generation and I constantly got asked how I was collecting email addresses. When I questioned this, the answer was always, “So you can send out newsletters, email campaigns…”
And then last week, I heard someone say drip campaign.
What the heck is a drip campaign?
Truth be told, that just pushed me further into confusion and a sense of being out of my depth. What would I actually even put in a newsletter? What do I have to say, and who would even subscribe?
I really didn’t think I had enough authority to confidently say, here’s what I have to say and here’s why you should subscribe to my newsletter…let alone sell through it. And I definitely didn’t want to come across as pushy. That, to me, was extremely inauthentic.
Last week, it all fell into place and I finally learned what a drip campaign was. The more I shared my story, the more I asked questions, the more learned from others. I started getting feedback on what resonated and it was the lessons I was learning. My confusion has been resonating with those around me, so I hope this resonates with you too!
I Didn’t Want to Be Pushy
The more I dipped into the world of sales, the more it felt like I had to become someone else and that kept driving me away from actually just doing it! Cold outreach felt impersonal. Scheduling aggressive follow-ups felt unnatural. I didn’t want to be the person who sent five emails in two days or DMs someone out of nowhere to just say please work with me. Why would they want to do that when they didn’t know me or know what I was capable of?
That wasn’t me. I’m not trying to sell to someone just for the sake of it. My entire (and I hate to use this word) brand has been about helping people, about authenticity and about building genuine connections. I’m doing this so I help build people first systems and processes keeping inclusivity and accessibility at the forefront. If I carried through with those sales tactics, I wasn’t being authentic to myself. If I’m not being authentic to myself, how can I expect my clients to show up authentically, connect with me and actually transform if they can’t open up.
But I was stuck in this cycle:
- I didn’t know what to write
- I didn’t know how to sell
- I didn’t want to do it the way I’d seen it done
Everything changed at Thrive.
When It Finally Clicked
Thrive is a community for entrepreneurs like me who are bootstrapping their way through building. Last week at one of the sessions after attending proabably 8-10 of them, I had a lightbulb moment: I’m not just offering coaching or HR consulting, I’m offering Growth. Transformation. Change. It’s a different kind of product and I had to find a way to sell a knowledge based service. I had to wrap my head around it being slightly different than other types of services. It’s about connecting with people to help them get unstuck.
Once I internalized that shift, everything just made sense. I just needed a way to start putting it out there without being overwhelmed by all the tools that “do it all” when I barely knew what I was doing.
Enter Parakeet.
I attended a session that was hosted through Thrive and found myself quoting them constantly. I had no idea I had even understood the content, let alone absorb and apply it! It was one of those “aha” moments that I didn’t fully recognize until after the fact.
I even tried working with other tools, but they were clunky, overly technical, complex and just hard to use. Parakeet strived to be different. Parakeet is different.
Learning One Step at a Time
Parakeet didn’t make me build everything all at once. It just asked me to start with my ICP (Ideal Customer Profile – another thing I had to Google a couple weeks ago). I was able to learn and build from there.
- No auto-clearing my work every time I edited something
- No forced email uploads before I was ready
- No pressure to figure everything out upfront
It gave me room to experiment. To test. To learn. I was still just trying to understand the term campaign at this point and ended up changing my target audience multiple times while writing my first one. It provided the structure I needed with the room to change without the cold, impersonal interface where everything reloaded everytime you changed something.
The templates were flexible enough to mold to my voice. This tool wasn’t trying to replace my intuition, it was supporting it. I went from not really knowing what I wanted to creating a full drip campaign in the most accessible, no fluff way in less than 24 hours. I was blown away.
It allowed for me to open up my thinking and gave me room to pause, tweak, adjust and understand exactly how to use the tool through my own learning process. I didn’t have to have everything figured out and the team behind Parakeet understand this. This is why they are different.
When It Finally Clicked
I promise you I am not an ambassador for Parakeet (as much as I’d love to be), but I speak so highly of it because it gave me a way in.
But this isn’t just about the tool. It’s about giving yourself permission to:
- Start messy
- Change your mind
- Build in public
- Ask for help
- Find your own rhythm
I wouldn’t be where I am without my community. The sessions at Thrive, friends, and experts who shared what worked (and didn’t) for them. These are the people who let me be real and gave me honest feedback!
So if you’re reading this and feel overwhelmed by sales, newsletters, campaigns, or just LinkedIn in general, know that you’re not alone.
This version of me—the one who starting to understand sales and newsletters and even drip campaigns, she only exists because I stayed curious, stayed honest, and let other people help. I trusted that staying open to learning and building in public was better than pretending I had it all figured out. I am still figuring it out, but I’ve learned more in the past couple months than I thought possible. If you asked me 6 months ago if I could launch a business, I would have laughed.
As the saying goes, “It takes a village”. The truth is, no one does this alone, and neither should you.
Start small. Test, get feedback, reflect and adjust.
Let that guide the rest.
P.S. If you’re stuck on something and wondering how I’ve approached it, send me a message. Your question might even spark a future edition.
P.P.S. If you’d rather talk it through, you can book some time with me here.