Hi friend!
📻 radio silence on my end for the past 6 weeks, since Day 59/100.
I am alive (thank you for everyone who got concerned 🫶 )!
But I feel I owe you a recap and some closure regarding this 100 Day Challenge.
⁉️ So what’s has happened??
Starting my third month of this challenge, I just ran out of steam and I started wondering WTF am I actually doing here. 3 conflicting feelings emerged:
1. Hoping some of your friends will agree to bring you into their office for a Lunch&Learn on some fluffy “connecting with people” you feel yourself it’s too soft skill-y to your taste - basically you are becoming a soft skill coach you never aspired to be?!
2. Almost agreeing to do the TV show with the local SF station that doesn’t even track how many people watch them - knock knock - who’s there? The memory of when you thought you are building a piece of software people want - but you haven’t had a proper go-to-market plan in place! Oh no, please let’s not pour our heart into something no one cares!
3. Meanwhile anytime I talk to a friend discussing business, like winning customers, building a business case, expanding to a new market - I get energized and excited - so why again I am doing what I am doing?
On top of that, I started realizing one can do a lot “jobs“ that require bunch of “public speaking“ without ever labelling themselves as one.
Speaking for the sake of speaking just started to feel too …futile and self-centered.
In the meantime, I made peace mentally with my startup founding experience (TL,DR: I tried, it didn’t work out/ not the right path for me right now) and I kinda started itching to do some real work.
“And it all felt confusing and exhausting and I just didn’t know how to “talk“ about it in the moment.”
☔ 💁♀️ Make It Rain
And another breakthrough here:
I finally gave in to an idea which has been hovering over me for years - I should go into sales.
I use the word “sales“ very generously here as a catch-all for all those biz dev/ partnerships/ pitching & relationship building jobs where you meet a lot of people and you form meaningful connections.
But not just for the sake of it, again.
Meaningful connections because you solve problems, create value and claim a part of that value for yourself.
Boom. Look friends, I have no formal sales experience. I have worked as consultant, yes in many cases for the revenue-generating functions and as a product manager, building tools so that our sales people could sell better. I’ve always been the sales enabler, never the money bringer.
But I’ve been toying with that idea for a long time - I’ve been recruited into sales-y roles a few times, I’ve been told I am a great “consulting partner material” (partner in consulting = sales person) from colleagues over and over… heck, every “skills assessment“ test I can think of was gently pointing in that way.
It’s like that compliment I’ve been getting and it took me such a long time to appreciate it too and not get defensive.
“Katka, you have great energy!”
And I would get all defensive that, hey - I put no effort into having great energy, but look I work really hard to show you how smart I am.
Oh well.
I am not saying I am becoming real estate agent, used car sales man or Sephora Retail Beauty Advisor tomorrow.
But I feel free to admit that my favorite part of my startup founder experience were those days of back-to-back calls and meetings, with old acquaintances & new introductions, where I was figuring out how I could help them. The chase to get a meeting with someone who I believed would be the right person to talk to. “Building” (the revered term by many startup founders and gurus = geeking out over the nitty-gritty feature requests and UI choices) - less so.
Do I have a job lined up? Nope.
Am I pretty clear on what intentions I am sending out to the Universe? Oh yeah.
💰Speaking of selling…
A picture of me, superimposed over the venue where I am speaking in January - I use it to hype myself up (the jury is still out if I like the red pant suit..or not)
Oh and by the way, I booked a speaking gig.
A 45 minute keynote opening an all-staff offsite day for ~80-100 people on January 14.
For a (low but still) 4 digits, with half of that fee already in my back account.
They found me on Thumbtack (shoutout to Elena whose idea it was!), we had a discovery call … and I guess they liked what I pitched them 😅!
Now I am “building“, writing, rewriting and practicing my speech “Beyond Just Nice: Why Forging Real Connections Is More In Demand in 2025 Than Ever Before”.
There we go. (🙏 Let me know if you’d be game to give me some feedback on my speech).
🏁 Final Challenge Outcome Evaluation
As you might recall, I kept repeating this in all my previous updates:
The purpose of this 100-day challenge 🚀 is to get me to say “I speak for a living, I am a professional speaker” by Dec 20, 2024.
The verdict?
My work email ([email protected]) signature
✅ I guess I indeed am a professional speaker now.
☐ It does not make enough - yet - to say I speak for living…
🔮..but I kinda sense I will do a lot of selling - myself, my speaking and who knows what else in 2025 😀.
💡And I learned a lot about myself and grew through this experience ☺️!
♚ Your move now my friend.
What’s your shot for the coming weeks and months?
Please respond to me - I always loved that my newsletter has been such a great conversation igniter!
Maybe I should get this tattooed somewhere? Or maybe just a tiny star somewhere discrete? 😬
Happy holidays everyone 🎄! - and maybe hear from me in the new year?
xoxo, Katka
PS: THANK YOU!! For being with me til THE END - of my challenge and my final email, too ❤ !
If you want to refer back to any of my previous updates, they are all online here 👇
