Twitter DMs & 7 Figure Deals

I’d love to start somewhere that seemed more succinct and made overall sense, but why not dive into the middle of a bear pit and hang on tightly? Well, maybe not quite that, but something along those lines.

I was attending a conference and my boss had called me over and said, “I want you to meet someone.” Stuck in a conversation, I kept talking to the person I was speaking with, and after a minute, I felt a tug on my arm from behind me. He had resorted to dragging me to the contact. After saying my goodbyes during a backward walk, I turned around and saw a woman. I said the typical hello and moved quickly through the conversation. I never like to wait for someone else to control where the conversation is going because, more often than not, people have no idea how to start and end a conversation. You need to get past the hellos and whatever’s and get into the details, where interest lies.

Quick Tip - Never sit in the hello and goodbye period for too long.

So I said, “My name’s Charles, what’s yours?… Ah, well, pleasure to meet you. Can you tell me a bit about what you do?” She gave me a synopsis of what she and another company were trying to achieve and the pain points her industry was facing. Afterward, I shared what our business’s focus was, how I understood her pain points, and what we had pivoted to as a business to solve those issues. After speaking, she said, “Wow… mic drop! I want you to meet someone,” and introduced me to a business partner she was working with.

Walking up to a gentleman who was meek and quiet, this new contact introduced me and mentioned that we were solving some major issues in their field. He shook my hand and said, “What is your vision for our company?” The straightforwardness honestly took me by surprise as I stood in a circle with my boss to my immediate right, the new woman I had just met to my left with her husband, and the contact of a contact waiting for a game plan on how I was going to fix their business’s current issue. I nervously began to iterate on the issues their business was facing, what they were trying to achieve, and how, if I were them, I would fix those problems. It couldn’t have been more than 2-3 minutes of dialogue.

He looked at me and said, “Deal,” putting out his hand and saying, “Let’s do it.” I shook his hand, and after two months of deliberation, that deal materialized into our business’s first 7-figure deal.

What is the lesson?

Eleven months before that, I was DM’ing people on Twitter/X to do banners and branding for their personal brands while driving Uber to support my wife and me. How did 11 months change me from doing banners and stationery to closing 7-figure deals? Well, stick around the newsletter for that, but the key takeaway is this: Effort will breed opportunity for yourself. When I took a leap to get paid $200 a week to work for this company, I found what I was naturally good at and loved doing—and I did that, over and over again until I found myself, a year later, closing a 7-figure deal. You are 11 months away from being a brand new designer, owner, manager, leader, husband, wife, father—whatever title you want to place on it. You are so much closer than you think.

From another person who failed their way to the top, keep going.