Fired to Hired...
A story about how I went from getting fired to starting my own business in 3 months.
Hi everyone,
I’m two weeks late in your inbox but I have a good reason. I landed 3 new clients in a matter of 3 days. With the whole onboarding process and the work that I have, writing this newsletter posed a challenge.
Honestly, I’m not sure whether I can keep up with this weekly cadence. Writing such information-dense essays takes up a lot of time and energy and I’m certain the quality of my essays will go down if I keep up with this weekly cadence.
So here’s what I will do.
I will keep writing my essays but not on a weekly cadence. It will be flexible. I’m aware I’m going against the grain here with “consistency” being the magic mantra behind all content. But I like to do things my way. The theme of this newsletter is proof of that.
I hope you’ll stick around with me but if you’re not a fan of suprises, then feel free to unsubscribe - no hard feelings :)
With that out of the way, this essay is not related to marketing or consumer psychology in any way. In this essay, I would like to share with you my journey of how I landed three clients in three days.
I hope you enjoy it.
The day is October 6th - one month after my 26th birthday. It was also the day I got fired from my job. I had lasted a mere 2 months there. My career after University wasn't off to the best of starts.
I was spiralling into anxiety and depression - I was feeling lost. I didn't know what to do. What if I couldn't land a job ever? What if I never succeed? These were recurring thoughts and I struggled with them each day.
I remember sitting down on the night I got fired and writing a note in my journal:
" It's October 6th, 2020 - the day I got fired from my first ever job. How long did I last? Exactly 50 days. At least, I made a half-century on debut. Not bad.
But you know what's weird? It's not the getting out that's made me feel bad. Hell, if it was my cricket match debut, I'd be celebrating like a madman.
Of course, I'd just been glad to have made my debut. But to score a fifty? That's insane! But I don't feel elated at all here. Why?
Probably because it's not a game I wanted to debut in. So I don't really care if I got a fifty or even a double hundred. It's weird, isn't it?
The same result. Yet such different feelings. All because the game is different. I'm playing a game I don't care if I win or lose.
All I got to do is change the game "
This change in perspective is what I needed - I just had to change the game. I spent a month figuring out what game is it that I wanted to play and I made a decision on the 3rd week of October 2020. I was going to be a businessman.
I mapped out a strategy of what I needed to do to reach my goal. I had to define my goal first. Here's what I defined my goal as: Sign at least one client before the end of January.
I had about 12 weeks of runway money left so I had a fixed timeframe as well. I had to make hay while the sun shone. So I started right away.
I divided my journey into the 3 months I had.
Month 1 would be for building a body of work and learning, reading and writing on marketing and copywriting. I would read one piece of copywriting, marketing each day and share it on my website. Except I didn't have a website. So I did the next best thing. I put it all on Notion.
I decided I would build my website on top of Notion + fruition ( Thanks Rishi!) and I would only have to spend on the domain. But before I could spend on the website, I had to prove to myself that I was dedicated enough to warrant that investment. I had to write everyday for 3 weeks without fail and in the 4th week, I would buy a domain and build out my website.
Week 1 was rough. I woke up each day and spent each day writing, reading and studying marketing and copywriting. I read books, articles, essays, videos - whatever I could get my hands on.
At the end I finished my 3-week challenge. I had earned my right to buy a domain. I bought my domain ( not this one I know :P) and built up my Notion website over the weekend and published my learnings.
Enter Month 2.
It is December, and I have a website and 30 essays on my website. I had a body of work but it was not enough. I needed to practice and apply my learnings to show clients that I was the real deal.
I wrote 1 case study each week while I continued writing my essays. I reached out to freelancers, copywriters and businesses owners for their feedback. I got tons of help ( A special thanks to Daniel Zarick!)
PS: Daniel is also the reason I'm writing this post right now.
Anyways, during this time, I started writing out sales letters and landing pages out by hand and analysing them and once again, I documentted them all. I started maintaining a swipe file and started posting on Twitter and tweetingmy personal notes and observations.
In the 3rd week of December, I took care of two very important things:
1. Automating the cold email outreach through YAMM
2. Writing the cold email templates for the intro, first and second follow ups.
3. Creating a free giveaway ( A 5-page headline PDF) to give clients value and get them to respond in my 2nd follow up.
By the start of Christmas, I was exhausted and took a week's break. I had to go all guns blazing in January - my last week. I had to reach out to client and sign at least one client.
At the start of the New Year, I was ready - I had all my ammunition ready. It was game time.
I opened up my Excel and started the cold outreach process. My goal was to reach the 150 mark. I did one better. I reached 175. During those 4 weeks, I sent out emails each day and the corresponding follow ups. I maintained a CRM in Notion for tracking the emails.
I started getting responses but most were not interested. There was cause for optimism though.
My open rate for my emails was an average of ~95%. I had to make them respond. Enter the PDF I prepared. I used them to increase responses by 6%.
During those 4 weeks, I also started Market Curve - this newsletter you’re reading right now. I wanted to show my clients that I was writing regularly and that I thought deeply about the subject and I had opinions on the subject. In each of my emails, I shared my latest essay with the prospects.
This worked - I began to see responses. But not as much as I expected. I also began reaching out to one new person each day through cold email to grow my network. I met many cool people that way who I got lots of help from along the way ( Thanks Fernando and Mizan).
I also started posting more regularly on Twitter in order to get more inbound leads. But it didn't matter.
I ended January without a client. My time was up.
So far, I had sent out 175 emails. I had gotten responses from 36 people out of whom 16 said they were interested in working with me. I got on call with 5 leads. Zero clients.
In the last 2 days of January, I began to consider what my next step should be. Should I quit it or should I continue?
Then on 31st January, I came across a letter written by Tej Dosa where he shared that he used to write out the story of the year that passed at the end of each year. I found it fascinating. I gave it a shot.
I finished writing my 2020 story in a couple hours time. By the end I realised that I was gaining momentum and it would be suicide to stop now. I had gotten perspective. I decided to carry on. I'll give it one more month, I said.
So I gave it one more month.
I started off where I left off and picked up the intensity - I now wanted to send out 200 emails by the end of February. I changed the cadence of market curve to a weekly one and decided to post everyday on Twitter, LinkedIn and reach out to one new person each day.
On February 3rd, I got a confirmation from a client ( out of the 5 I got on call with ) that he was interested in working with me. On February 4th, I got another confirmation from a client who wanted to work with me. Same thing on February 5th.
I signed all three of them on February 12th.
It's funny to think that had I not written my 2020 story, I would have probably quit and I wouldnt have experienced how good it feels to see your labour pay off. What's even more funny is that had I quit, I wouldn't have even known how close I was to the "treasure".
Luck definitely played its part. A slightly different sleight of hand and a different outcome would greet me. Instead, here I am.
I'm Shounak and this is my story.