We’ve written extensively in this humble Three Point Four Media newsletter about our business development strategy: Follow up, try advertising, inbound business is the best business, tell them what you want. Our newest installment? Personalize it.
A bit of background. When I first started regular outreach to folks outside my existing network I sent emails. This is what I did as a reporter and it worked. This time? Crickets! Then I tried hilariously long LinkedIn messages with a bunch of links to relevant Three Point Four Media work and our capabilities deck. Deafening silence. At this point, friend of the newsletter James Yu took a look through my LinkedIn messages and, after a good hearty laugh, told me “Bro, your messages are so long—no one is going to read them. Also you are trying to sell people stuff immediately, so they are just going to ignore it. Try keeping it super short and telling them you want to talk about their cool work. You just want to talk to them!”
This approach was much more effective and expanded our network. But in the last two months I have implemented something that I should have years ago: researching someone like I’m going to write a profile about them. Spending time digging into someone’s background—work history, recent podcast appearances, how they feel about the new Zach Bryan record, etc.—helps your cold call stand out. Instead of sounding like a robot with five sentences about what Three Point Four Media does, I start with one sentence that is personalized and makes it clear an AI lead generation company didn’t write it. Then simply ask them to talk shop. Reader, it works (sometimes).
Onto the links.
An article
Josh Greenberg’s Fishing Reports
Every Wednesday, Josh Greenberg, owner of the beloved Michigan fly fishing mecca Gates Lodge and author of Trout Water, publishes a fishing report about the Au Sable River in Northern Michigan. I’m very bad at fishing, so a lot of his hyper-specific tips are lost on me—but he writes with both precision and humor about the outdoors that is hard to find these days. Josh details Michigan’s outdoors with reverence (it’s beautiful!) and frustration (it started snowing and I got my line caught in a tree). Very relatable. His fishing reports are about fishing but also a snapshot into how rivers and their surroundings are constantly changing. Read an archival fishing report and you can catch a glimpse of a season long gone—and dredge up an old memory of the person you were back then.
Anyway, the way he described Michigan trout in April does a good job of illustrating how my fishing journey is going: “They were heartbreakingly confident in what they were doing.”
Bonus: If you don’t like fishing or the outdoors and you are still reading, I thought this GQ piece about The Great American Bar Scene was very good.
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A book
I really enjoyed Ben Lerner’s last two novels (The Topeka School and 10:04), but for whatever reason did not read his debut, Leaving the Atocha Station. Very good book about a young writer on a Fulbright in Madrid.
Read if you like: Stories about white guys writing stories about white guys; auto fiction; studying abroad; descriptions of Spanish people smoking cigarettes; self doubt; writers.
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A project
We continue to work with the lovely team at Acumen America. Lots in store in the coming months, including some new editorial output we’ll share in a couple weeks. In the meantime give their LinkedIn a follow to keep tabs.
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A recommendation
Procure a big bucket of fried chicken and take it to the beach.
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A run
When I ran marathons, this part of the summer was hell. Miserably hot and humid, and I have to meet Noah at 5:45 in the morning on 4th Avenue to run 20 miles—what were we thinking? Why? These days I just run hard for an hour, lift some weights, then sit in the river to cool off. Ideal situation; all you need for a good time.
Thanks for listening.