Dickish

Hey Reader! 🤓 How’ve you been?

(Feel free to respond. Writing a predominantly one-way newsletter gets lonely.)

I’ve been… well, busy getting my ass kicked, thanks for asking.

This week,

1. My friend lost his mum.

2. KPLC totally spat in the face of my plans for the cohort, so I need to do some damage control.

3. I came down with my first cold of the year (literally 12+ months have passed since I last had one), fever, chills, voice loss, the whole nine.

When it rains, it pours, amirite?

This deluge of bad tidings began on Monday when I was fighting for my life against a big, immature bully.

Lemme just forward the message I sent to my mentor (yes, mentors have mentors, too.) because I don’t feel like rewriting all that.

“When I come across copy that’s either wrong or bland, I’m almost always peeved enough to want to fix it, esp when it has a message I think should be read by a wider audience (but isn’t because of its jerky structure).

My toxic trait haha

Anyway, so there’s this guy in the creator space, let’s call him Jim, whose list I’m on. Lately, his long emails have been getting harder and harder to get through because of the lexical errors and misfires they contain.

I wanted to do something about it, and expand the number of clients to whom I offer this very service during my “day job,” so I sent Jim what I think was quite an elegant email outlining some of the ways his longer-form writing could read better. (You can be the judge of that, if you wish.)

The lack of response wasn’t surprising. He’s busy, and he gets many emails to his primary address. I followed up, but still, crickets.

Not to worry!

I knew a guy who knew a guy who works with/for Jim. Let’s call him Dick. Dick slid in to fill some of Jim’s sales deficiencies. (So he’d relate to my itch to slide in to fill this other deficiency, right? Tune in to find out. 😂)

Dick and I (used to) follow each other on X, so I DMed him asking for Jim’s alternative email -- I’m almost sure if Jim sees the email, he’ll respond, even if not positively. I know he’s open to constructive feedback because he said it himself: He wouldn’t have scaled the heights he’s scaled without being willing to constantly refine his systems.

Shock on me: Dick rudely dismissed me and my process, not even wanting to review the email before gauging whether it merits Jim’s attention.

Which sucked, but I get it. He must get numerous requests from every Tom, Dick 😆, and Harry asking to have some kind of audience with Jim. And admittedly, I did an inelegant job of condensing the elegant email into two sentences. (nerves)

Still, I don’t think I’m fully in the wrong as he so confidently proclaimed before blocking me: ‘Sending someone an email about how their syntax sucks and you can do better is not how you get clients.’

Some of my most lucrative leads have been receptive to constructive criticism and happy to outsource that banal editing work to me because they weren’t good at it and couldn’t care less about learning to DIY.

(Thanks for getting through these ramblings, BTW.)

What I’d love to hear from you, someone who, thankfully, responds to messages 😂, is:

1. What your thoughts are on my preDICKament, and

2. How you’d proceed if you were me.”

Our subsequent conversation not only revealed that my approach wasn’t as deplorable as Dick asserted but that I had, in fact, been dealing with a baby.

It started looking comical how quickly Dick rushed for the “Block” buttons to prevent this harmless Kenyan girl from…

(It’s still unclear why he perceived me as such an annoying monkey on his back.)

If anything, venye alikuwa ananiongelesha ka I haven’t been doing this for upwards of 6 years, I’m the one who should’ve blocked him.

It almost seemed like he was personally offended that I hadn’t come bearing anything but praise for his hard-fought plant parenting skills.

His hostility and disparaging attitude were evident from the start, which knocked me off kilter because this wasn’t even a cold DM.

And this wasn’t the Dick I knew. (Don’t go there.)

We know each other from our conversations about Jim and his programs, and my praise of a sales strategy Dick shared that I was an audience for.

The latter led to him following me.

So, when suddenly, this guy I’d thought of as the friendly neighborhood teddy bear morphed into the star of Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, I didn’t know what to make of it.

I didn’t have a script, but even if I had, I’d have bumbled through it and fucked the whole thing up further.

That’s my fault.

To enter these hitherto unexplored spaces, whose gates are manned by older white men, I’ll have to grow a thicker skin.

As I told y’all last week, Ls are instructive, and best believe I practice what I preach.

My mentor advised me to find alternative ways to reach Jim directly and reintroduce myself and my UVP.

I’m writing this as I draft another follow-up email.

Typically, such negative experiences with clients and their reps put me off them completely, but:

1. If I hear a no, I need it to come from Jim.

2. I KNOW this working relationship will be revolutionary for us both. (Believe it or not, I’m in this for him more than I am for me.)

3. The pettier me hopes he one day tells Dick off for nearly ruining this unique opportunity to unlock a new facet of his business’ success. (A girl can dream.)

Hopefully, no mean, insecure?, bigoted henchmen stand in my way this time, but even if they do, I’m better prepared to defend myself against them.

Reader, I try to make these emails as explicitly relevant to you as possible.

However, as you’ve read, Israel-Hamas, Putin-Ukraine, Sudan, DRC, etc. aren’t the only wars on my mind.

You’re smart, though.

You’ve gleaned something new that applies to you today or will in the future.

Even if it’s just the far-reaching manifestations of Murphy’s law.

Wish me 🍀.

Hope. ☆