Paige Finn DohertyFounding Partner, Behind Genius · Founding Partner at Behind Genius Ventures

overcoming nerves when outreaching

29 Apr 2023 · 1 min

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In this brief monologue, the speaker recounts a personal experience of cold‑emailing Anne‑Marie Ko, a founding partner at Floodgate and a Midas List member, to request a foreword for the speaker’s upcoming book, Seed to Harvest. Despite extensive preparation—identifying resonant points, crafting questions, and clarifying the purpose—the speaker felt “scared shitless” and physically shaking during the call. The preparation paid off: Anne‑Marie responded positively, agreeing to write the foreword. The anecdote serves as a concrete illustration of how thorough prep can mitigate anxiety in high‑stakes outreach and turn a nervous encounter into a successful, “magical” outcome.

Chapters

doing that prep for the call can make it less intimidating to talk to them. But I've definitely been— I think like my— I, I did this for Anne-Marie Ko, who is the founding partner at Floodgate, and she's also on the Midas List. I wrote her a cold email because I wanted her to write the foreword to my book Seed to Harvest. And I just remember being on that call and just being like, pardon my French, but like scared shitless. I was like, Oh my gosh. And so, but I had had like my prep work done and so I had like different things that I resonated with her on and I had some questions to ask her and I had like my main purpose was to ask her about the foreword for my book. And I just remember like, I was like shaking. And then she was like, yeah, I would love to do that. So I think that was a really cool example of a time where I was nervous about doing cold outreach and then it ended up kind of magical.