If you don't ask, you don't get!

I’m sure there’s a theme running along here – anyone who gives up easily need not apply!

They say it’s good for you to get out of your comfort zone once in a while. And I so had to do that today. Dealing with the media is not something I’ve ever had to do, and to be honest, I was pretty overawed by all those journalists and editors in London. So I think I’ve done pretty well today overall.

I had 2 courses booked on Thursday 20 October, but there was a chance that one of them would be cancelled. Bad news in one way, because it meant I wouldn’t get paid, but good news in another, because it would give us a perfect opportunity to spend half a day in London on our project that we’ve entitled ‘Ask the Experts!’ It’s a type of focus group/market research, but on a one-to-one basis.

So when the course got cancelled last week, I thought I’d better get on with planning what we are going to do on our afternoon fact-finding mission! Once I’d checked the train times and booked them, there was no looking back really. Ross had already booked the time off work. And so I woke up this morning thinking I’d run out of time to delay any more, and I really had to start trying to book the meetings with some potentially very influential people for our cause.

So after taking a deep breath (quietly, Luke was asleep next to me!), I drew up my shortlist, found out their email addresses and drafted an email to them. Then redrafted it and redrafted it, then just pressed ‘send’. Oh well, I thought, it either will happen or it won’t! And it has!

Almost immediately I got a couple of very encouraging replies back and we have scheduled in one definite meeting already, and have one that just needs firming up. Still got a few replies to wait for – or not! If they don’t reply I’ll pick some more that I want to speak to, and try them aswell. It’s a shame that we’ll have quite limited time and most of that will probably be spent travelling around London, as they appear to be based in all corners of the city. But we want to make the best use of the time we have.

It’s timed pretty well for them I think. Unfortunately it’s half term week, so some key people will be on holiday. But the monthly publications have sorted their bumper December issues by now, and the weeklies/newspapers are well into an active time for them. And we will still have time to amend the site or our product based on the opinions we get from them, before we finalise the site.

Now I need to sit down and carefully plan what we’ll be asking them and what our presentation will look like. Eek! This is a really important time for us and I don’t want to mess it up. Another deep breath…..

And I’m still chasing the primary schools to try and get some market research – just have to try again tomorrow!