One Little But Big Step

I woke up this morning like this, “ENOUGH. I am having a tough time launching my Gold/Silver/Bronze Sponsorship Program and here’s another day I won’t”.  So I sat down and pounded out a sales-esque letter and started shipping it around.  I requested in-kind things in return for presence on my blog/twitter/episodes to companies I already purchase from.

Start small.  There’s a reason I haven’t been able to pull the trigger on the program I realized, I’m not ready – I don’t feel comfortable taking large sums of money from people, not yet.  I’m a terrible liar so I can’t fake that my traffic is huger than huge, and when I ran my usual test I failed.

My test is, “if I saw the guy on the street could I look him in the eyes?”, no.  It’d be an unbalanced relationship; greedy greedy never gets.  That’s my test for which sponsors to take on too, “if you saw me on the street, could I look you in the eyes and tell you to buy from them?” and “moreover, do I have their products on me right now?”.  I could, I do, and the goal is to keep it as close to 100% Canadian as possible.

Off the emails went, and then tonight I was waiting for the elevator when I got an email back from the owner of one of the companies.

Me: [sharp intake of breath, eyes widen]
Me: [now I have the attention of the guy waiting with me]
Me: I’m about to read the reply to a big email I sent this morning
Me: [reads email, and it’s a YES! And a good yes at that]
Me: Gah, it worked!  This is amazing!
Guy: What worked?
Me: I sent an email this morning, the president himself wrote me back, and he said yes!
Guy: Hey that’s great
Me: I know!  Look! [now I’m holding out my Blackberry with the good news on the screen]
Guy: [high-fives me]
Guy: Hey I always write back personally to my emails, eh
Me: That’s good because look what it does to a human!
Guy: Congratulations again [gets off elevator]
Me: [is standing there vibrating]

This is gonna work, this plan of mine, I know it.  Cross-country exploring has never looked so possible.