Hey, welcome back to another bonus episode of Cubicle to CEO, the podcast where we ask

successful entrepreneurs, the business questions you can't Google.

I'm your host, Ellen Yin, and today I wanted to riff on something that I've been both

experiencing from a consumer side,

as well as participating in from a business side.

So it's this concept of cold pitching.

And when I say cold pitching, I'm particularly talking about cold pitching via emails.

So pitching an idea or a service or an offer to a stranger in

their inbox. Now, I will say on my side of things, I typically am not pitching complete strangers

if I choose to send email pitches. Usually when I'm sending email pitches, they are individualized offers to brands or to

people that are already in our existing network. Some I know better than others, but there have been

a few times in the past year where I have sent a completely cold pitch. So I'll talk about that

a little bit, but most of this is kind of just

on my observations of what catches my attention and what doesn't work well when I'm on the

receiving end of a cold pitch. This has been top of mind for me because I've been receiving a ton

of cold pitches in my inbox lately more so than usual. And so I kind of

just wanted to share a couple common things that I've observed among these pitches in case they help

you, in case you deploy this method. So first things first, our cold pitch is dead, right? Like,

do people even do this? Like I said, obviously yes, people still do,

because I receive dozens of them in my inbox every month. But I guess the bigger question is,

do they actually ever work? And this may be surprising to some of you, but I think the answer is

a resounding yes, if done well. Keep in mind, pitching just like selling, just like any

...