Cold Email Series: “How did you make it?”

Paula Jackler
Sep 9, 2018 · 5 min read

I’m one of those people who believe in cold emails. I mean, I’m not exactly thrilled about getting pesky cold business emails on a daily basis. But there’s something special about reaching out to people you admire and asking them for their perspective on things.

I do it all the time. Since the beginning of the year, I’ve emailed ten women that I highly admire and asked them out for a quick chat, coffee, lunch, drinks, Central Park walks… In full disclosure, only two of them replied. But these two women were valuable mentors and trustworthy sounding boards who encouraged me to take a quantum leap (Looking at you, tatiana grace 😘.)

And that’s why I get thrilled when younger women reach out to get my perspective on things. More often than not, they just want advice on how to be successful. So, I always accept their invitations for a quick chat, coffee, lunch, drinks, Central Park walks…

A few months ago, a young woman reached out to me via LinkedIn saying “I’m curious to learn more about the steps you took in order to get into your current position. I’m looking to get away from the sales life and dive more into a leadership role like yourself one day.” Here’s my answer:

“My first step was to get more clarity about what I wanted. I’m not talking about the specific job I wanted or the type of company I wanted to work for, but about my life goals. I thought long and hard about what I wanted out of life and the type of life I wanted to live. Here’s what I came up with:

1) Being originally from Brazil, I don’t want to live there again unless I choose to do so.

2) I want to be a millionaire.

3) I want a good life-partner, someone ambitious who will encourage me to achieve my goals.

Obtaining clarity about what I wanted was essential to figure out the first steps. If I wanted to live in the US, I had to master the English language. So, I took English classes every single day for 2 years.

If I ever wanted a career here, I had to stay here legally. Being illegal would drastically reduce any chances of my getting a high-paying job. So, I enrolled in a community college to extend my student visa. This decision alone made my friends and family think that I was crazy since I already had a Master’s degree from Brazil.

The magical thing about first steps is that the more you take action, the more clarity you gain into what to do next. After one year in community college, I knew that an Associate’s degree alone wouldn’t enable me to have a high-earning career. Although many people have become affluent with Associate’s degrees or even with a high school diploma, the likelihood of that happening to a Black Latina immigrant was nearly zero. So, I applied to an MBA program.

Here’s an important note: I applied to MBA programs that I could afford not the ones that I had the potential to be accepted to. Dreams are important, but so is being realistic. As an international student, I didn’t qualify for student loans and had to pay for my degree out-of-pocket. Would I love to have a degree from Wharton or Standford? Absolutely. Would have I been able to pay for it, even with a scholarship? Not in a thousand years.

After I got accepted to Business School, it became clear that my then boyfriend was controlling, jealous, and abusive. He always got in my way and made me believe that I wasn’t able to achieve my dreams. So, I got out of that relationship.

During the MBA program, I realized that just the degree wouldn’t cut it. I needed experience and connections. So, I launched a company with my best friend, accepted unpaid internships, and started going to several networking events every month.

This is an utterly simplified account of the steps I took to get to this point in my career. You can’t really tell from it how many times I got lost, afraid, in pain, or stuck. Or how many times I didn’t know where to go and what do to next. Or how many times I changed my mind about what I wanted to do for a living.

What I hope you learn from my story is:

1. Have a life goal, something bigger than just a job or a career. Something that will prompt you into action, that will act as a compass every time you make a decision. That thing that is so powerful that will unstuck you when you get stuck. That makes you wonder if it’s possible achieving it.

2. Don’t get hung up on the specifics. More frequently than not, you won’t have a clearly defined plan to get where you want to. More often than not, your perfect plan won’t work. You’ll have to adjust it, work around obstacles, change parts of the plan because the circumstances have changed. Don’t worry about knowing exactly how you will get where you want to go. Start by taking consistent tiny steps and the rest will unfold.

3. Have people who “get it”. In other words, find people who are on the same wavelength. Chances are that there will be plenty of people around you who won’t support your dreams — either because they think it’s impossible or because they’re jealous of you. Find people who are “doers”, who are actively working towards their dreams, and who believe in you — even when they have no clue what you’re talking about(Looking at you, mom and dad 😘).

4. Work hard, be patient. WHBP became my mantra. Nothing worth achieving will come easy. Dreams don’t come true overnight. You’ll have to work hard/smart and trust the journey. You will get what you want, but it might not happen when you want it. It will happen when you’re ready. It took me more than 7 years to go from being a Brazilian Au Pair who barely spoke English to running marketing for 2 departments in a startup in NYC.”

I’m publishing this answer so that other girls who have similar questions but don’t have the courage to send a cold email can also find the answers they’re looking for.

Onwards!

Paula Jackler

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