Weekly Partner Update: Week 1
I just finished the first proper week of my Partnership with Pearl Lemon!
I’m very happy to be able to say that. After my trial week, it seemed as though I might not be able to continue working with Pearl Lemon due to my other commitments, but Deepak and I managed to figure out a way to make it happen!
I’m hugely grateful to Deepak and the whole team for their willingness and support.
My other commitments include work, roles at the Green Party, and musical projects. It has been tough balancing all of this, but I’m very aware of the rarity of such amazing opportunities and I will continue with them for as long as I can! It has been a great learning experience and I want to keep learning from all these activities!
I have spent a good bit of time getting used to the methods of internal communication, timekeeping, and scheduling used by Pearl Lemon. These include Trello, Clockify, Google Sheets and Docs, Whatsapp, email, and more.
Pearl Lemon is a remote-based company and so is digitally organised and efficient. This was a good prompt for me to step up my digital game! I have historically been less good with this side of things, but that has changed a lot recently for a variety of reasons. I came to work with Pearl Lemon at the perfect time to continue my digital upheaval, although I have a lot of work to do until I am fully up to scratch!
As a content creator… well, my job is fairly self-explanatory – writing content is my main responsibility. This week I wrote two guest posts (I did one of them just before starting this update). The first was about how to find the right property sourcing company for you (hint: two good questions to ask are does it suit your business and the stage you’re at, and what kind of service can you afford right now?); the second was about citizenship by investment.
I really love the process of writing guest posts (I mean it!). A guest post is a piece of content written for a third party to put up that advertises a specified website or page.
That process to me is hugely enjoyable because I get to research, and therefore learn about, things I have never thought about deeply before.
In my trial week alone (the week before the one I am reviewing now), I wrote on a very wide range of topics, spanning 2020’s top furniture trends and ways to close sales over the phone.
As a result of the last two weeks, I can now tell you that blue is hugely fashionable right now (at least in the furniture world), you shouldn’t talk too much on the phone (at least at first) if you’re trying to persuade someone to buy what you’re selling, and the passport of Cyprus gives you visa-free entry to 164 different countries. That’s quite a large (random?) pool of knowledge!
It has been really amazing learning about different parts of business through these posts and the pieces I wrote as part of my application process for the Pearl Lemon partnership.
I’ve written about property sourcing, lead generation agencies, closing sales over the phone, e-commerce, and SEO. E-commerce and SEO are things I would like to go deeper into at some point in the future, but for now I’m happy to at least be able to use those words correctly in a sentence.
Pearl Lemon is also the perfect place to continue learning about different things, given their involvement with so many different stages of business! There is now even a plant-based food offshoot (no pun intended) that is hugely promising and that I am sure will make its name known far and wide in no time.
Another thing I have been involved with at Pearl Lemon is PR outreach. For this I have been using the platform HARO to submit responses, or pitches, to journalists’ queries. This is something I have struggled to get off the ground over the last week.
It’s not difficult, just a little fiddly, but I’m very sure that I’ll be comfortable with it soon. I think what I have struggled with is having the confidence to submit queries to questions that I think I am unqualified to answer.
The thing I need to remember is that it’s not technically me answering the questions, it’s Deepak! So, I have a buffer – if I write a bad pitch, it’s essentially Deepak’s fault! (Joking!!!)
What I actually need to remember is that writing a good pitch is a matter of doing the necessary research, answering the precise question, and getting back to the journalists in good time. Oh, and formatting. I’ve had some issues there.
There is quite a unique layout that needs to be adhered to with HARO pitches. I sent in my first HARO pitch on Friday – I think it was alright, but there a couple of things I need to change for next time:
- I need to submit pitch’s from Heather’s account, and;
- I need to include Deepak’s headshot.
Hopefully I get the process completely corrected soon!
I would like to finish by saying a massive thank you to everyone at Pearl Lemon. What a brilliant group of people! All so talented, hard-working, kind, and fun. It makes working there (even in the small capacity I do) a real pleasure.
As much as I am grateful for each individual that makes the team what it is, I would like to give particular thanks to Federica, Noah, Heather, and Deepak, who are the people I have had the most contact with so far.
Federica has made sure that I feel comfortable in the team and worked very hard to integrate me with the company culture. I’m sure Federica does this for a lot (if not all?) the new people, so I find it difficult to imagine how busy she must be. Despite that, she is infectiously energetic and a great role model.
Noah helped me get settled in during my trial week and took a lot of time and effort reading over all of my material. He made sure I was on track with the style and other requirements of writing content at Pearl Lemon. He even gave me my first official Pearl Lemon bollocking! (Again, joking!!!) Noah is a great guy – anyone who works with him will find that out pretty soon.
Heather has helped me more over this first proper week. She has been eternally patient and helpful with me in my slow journey to understanding the HARO process! Hopefully soon (maybe starting from next week) I will be able to repay Heather the favour by taking some HARO-related stress off her hands.
Deepak is the all-seeing bossman that somehow manages to strike up a strong rapport with each person at Pearl Lemon – it’s pretty incredible that he can do that, given everything he does. He runs several businesses, and consults, and… is writing a novel (which I’d love to read)?? And… And… It’s truly inspirational, although I can’t help but also be annoyed – I now have no right to say “I’m busy”. Cheers for that, Deepak…
Thank you all for a great first week, I cannot wait for the second!