“Week 2 – Building Decoding Draupadi in public.
The context: I come here every Monday to share a review of what we did at Decoding Draupadi. The idea is to be more accountable and create a space for me to learn from you.
Last week, here’s what I worked on, thought about, and learned:
1/ Campus chapters: Revisiting our proposition for college students –
In December, we emailed a few campus clubs inviting them to contribute content pieces for DD (detailed guidelines in the comments). But, we didn’t hear from any of them.
I was a little surprised. These could be the reasons –
- The engagement isn’t compelling enough
- Students are still wrapping up exam week
- People haven’t checked their emails
When I sat down to solve it, I realised that only the first one matters. I can’t control the other two. And so, I thought hard about it. Discussed it with Riya Senani and Anshika Kushwaha.
Our objective was:
- Interacting with more college students to understand and identify narrative-shifting opportunities
- Creating a system to invite more opinions and content pieces from different age groups
And so, to move ahead, we are going to be floating around a different proposition in the coming week. If you’re a student reading this, keep an eye out!
(Grateful I’ve got the C4E ecosystem to bounce ideas off of.)
2/ The content curation gig:
Last week, we had 10 people write to us for the content curation gig. And we spoke to 4 of them.
Here’s what I observed – for freelancers today, the jump from one stage to another (in terms of quality of projects and revenue both) largely depends on soft skills. Of course, there are things like expanding your services, getting high-ticket clients, and niching down, but soft skills play a super important role.
Most women we spoke to had submitted similar assignments. Thus, when we had to choose who to work with, we looked for articulate people, folks who seemed like they would adapt better, were more flexible, and had an affinity for what we are trying to build. The women who had a powerful online presence were also able to create a better impact.
3/ Validating a new idea
We initiated a new idea and offering this week – a personal branding agency to help women leaders and C-suite executives build their personal brands. The link to the detailed note is in the comments too. If you’re a personal branding expert, I URGE you to read this. Poke holes in the model. Comment on our WHY. And help us build this!
Next week…
1/ We go live with our first campaign focused on Pain is Not Normal which we worked on for a women’s health brand
2/ Put together a proposal deck for the personal branding agency and identify folks to reach out to
3/ Plan an informal meetup for friends, well-wishers and supporters of DD in the third week of January
4/ Chart out the next steps for all our initiatives. I was not able to move the needle on this last week
That was all! I will also be saving these notes (longer versions) on our website!”