Day 9: Kerstin Martin (Part 2)

Community Project

Oct 11

It’s been an interesting week, filled with conversations, connections and a whole lot of resistance and procrastination!

On Monday I had my monthly Squarespace Mastermind meeting and when I shared with them about my Leuchtturm dream one of the guys mentioned that he knows a bookstore owner who might have a contact at Leuchtturm. Wonderful, I thought, maybe I don’t have to cold call them after all! Well, that didn’t go anywhere, the bookstore owner did not know anyone. But at least I could procrastinate on my call to Leuchtturm because, you know, I had to wait for the bookstore owner’s reply.

Eventually I decided to make the call on Wednesday, which meant getting up early because of the 9-hour time difference to Germany. This wasn’t going to be a ‘big’ call, just an initial fact finding mission, but I was still oddly nervous.

I set my alarm for six a.m. and took some time and steps to prepare:

Fresh Air. It was a gorgous sunny morning so I went for a walk around the neighborhood, allowing the cool air to blow out any cobwebs and photographing and collecting autumn leaves which always makes me happy.
Pep Talk. For this I tuned into Sas Petherick’s Courage & Spice podcast and re-listened to one of my all-time favorite episodes: “Confidence is a Consequence.” Sas is pretty brilliant when it comes to all things self-doubt and this is a particularly good episode that helped me accept my less-than-confident feelings regarding that blooming call.
Ambience. I made myself a nice cup of herbal tea with honey, and lit a couple of candles in my office, thus setting the scene nicely.
Perspective. I reminded myself that I wasn’t calling for a sales pitch, I was calling for an opening.
Research. I spent some time on the Leuchtturm website, learning more about them but also looking for a good phone number, ideally someone’s direct line rather than the switchboard. I finally found an extension number for a guy in planner customizations which I figured was close enough to what I needed.

I made the call at 7:30 a.m. and had a nice chat with Herr Hansen! Even though he did initially try and fob me off. After I explained to him that I was looking for a contact to talk to about my planner and a possible collaboration he said outright that he had no idea who that would be, he was still quite new at Leuchtturm and didn’t know all the people there. When I persisted he put me on hold to check with a colleague but that colleague didn’t have a clue, either. He suggested that I either call the switchboard or send an email to the general email address. Sigh. I said to him: “Mr Hansen. This is a BIG dream of mine and you are the first person I’m talking to at Leuchtturm and you already want to strand me! There must be something you can do?” He finally agreed that I could send him an email with my proposal and he would try and find someone to forward it to. Bingo! Still no contact name for a decision maker and not even a foot in the door, but I’ll take a toe in the door! (Just don’t slam it on me!)

It still took me another 36 hours to actually sit down and write that email but tonight I did it. Boy. I did not expect to be writing a proposal in my rusty business German this week! I thought I’d get a name of someone to talk to on the phone about the process and then I’d submit my proposal. Alas, I don’t have the name of that person, I have Herr Hansen. And so I emailed him my proposal which he will hopefully forward to someone who will know what to do with it.

Phew. I still have all sorts of doubts and misgivings about this impossible ask but you know what? I took the first step and that feels good.

Kerstin Martin is a Squarespace designer and educator with a proven track record of helping more than 1,000 entrepreneurs thrive in their online businesses. She is also the creator of the Eule Planner, an analog business planner specifically designed for digital entrepreneurs.

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