A few random thoughts

I have posted before on the panic, fear and manic mood swings that I have experienced in launching my solo career. I haven’t posted on that recently, but the thoughts definitely continue, in fact it is the hardest part of going solo and sometimes I wonder whether I have just substituted one kind of hell (a job I did not like . . umm that’s a big understatement) for a slightly lesser form of hell (say purgatory). The spend down of money is particularly unnerving even though it was all something I charted out before taking the leap. I don’t want this blog to be all about mental stress but that is definitely the hardest part to deal with. The way I try and get through those periods and keep going are (1) fall back on that year time table, now for me about 7 more months; (2) think about people I know and respect who have told me with absolute certainty that they know I can do this; and (3) look to other people that seem to have successful solo careers and know that if they can do it why can’t I?

A few more random tips:

Reverse engineer email address. Basquette asked how to reverse engineer an email address. I start by doing a Google search using “@ABCcompany.com” and see what comes up (e.g. “@IBM.com”). If you scroll down through the search results you will invariable find someone who has posted either in a press release, seminar directory or other publication their email, eventually if you see enough formats like john.smith@ABCcompany.com; jsmith@ABCcompany.com etc. You can assume that the person you are trying to contact has the email address with the same naming convention you.contact@ABCcompany.com. Before you send the email try sending a nonsense email like gjao123@ABCcompany.com and see if it gets bounced back to you; that way you will at least know if you had the wrong guess you will get the email back (I believe some corporate email systems do not bounce the bad email back). All that being said, there is still no guaranty as to whether the person got your email which is what I struggle with, particularly if a company uses multiple email formats. All of this also begs the question as to whether it may be better just to pick up the phone and cold call the person you are contacting. That may be, however, in my case I prefer to hit them up with an introductory email and then you always have the option of trying to get through on the phone.

Law school classmates. If you are sending out announcements, definitely contact your law school alum office and have them send or fax you a current list of your classmates’ addresses. This probably makes sense even for people that just graduated. My school had no problem doing that. Now, I wonder if I should have asked for addresses of people who graduated in the years around me. A question for you that are sending out announcements, did you also include a cover letter?

Email lists of former associates. I am part of three different email lists of people that I either went to school with or worked with. This is obviously a good forum to announce your practice but what I suggest is that you first contact the people who you know directly via individual emails (e.g. “Hi John, its been a while but I wanted to give you an update. . . . . how are things with you?”), this can be a little time consuming but this forces a response and allows you to connect on some level. After you have contacted the people you feel comfortable contacting then send out an email to the whole list making the announcements.