All it takes is just one pitch

I sat in the backseat of my parent’s car and scrolled through my email inbox while my father pumped gas. It was August 2012 and I was less than one month out from leaving to Italy for a semester abroad.

At 3:15pm, an email from Natalie Sisson to her list about her $100 Change initiative, whose list I had just signed up for the week before, popped into my inbox. After quickly reading through it, I knew I had something useful to offer her.

I was on the tail-end of my very first internship and had built some preliminary PR skills (and even more confidence), which spurred me to write a response to her exactly 8 minutes later that would change the course of my career.

Within two days, I became Natalie’s outreach coordinator for her initiative and in six months time, I became her 2IC (second in command) - a position I would hold for the next year - where I learned what it truly took to build a business online, to ask (for money, referrals, business), and to create something out of nothing.

And none of it would have been possible if I hadn’t sent that one initial pitch.

Because, at the end of the day, that’s what my first email to Natalie was. It was me offering her help because I thought she could use it.

It’s you suggesting an idea for a story because you think the writer might be interested in it.

It’s writing an introduction to someone you keep bumping into online because you’d like to meet her.

All it takes is just one pitch.

Who are you going to send one to today?