If this is the first time you are landing here, hello! This year, I plan on sharing a public review of what we do at Decoding Draupadi each week. The idea is to be more accountable and create a space for me to learn from you.
Here’s the first note from 2024 – “What did you get done this week?”
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. Here’s the detailed guideline we shared with them. But, we didn’t hear from any of them.
We were a little surprised. These could be the reasons –
- The engagement isn’t compelling enough
- Students are still wrapping up exam week and are yet to start thinking about clubs and the activities planned
- People haven’t checked their emails
When I sat down to solve it, I realised that (2) and (3) don’t matter because I cannot control that. And so, I thought hard about (1). Discussed it with Riya Senani and Anshika Kushwaha.
Our objectives:
- Interact with more college students to understand and identify narrative-shifting opportunities
- Create a system to invite more opinions and content pieces from different age groups
P.S. I graduated just two years ago and I almost feel like I live in a different world. Thank god I’ve got the C4E ecosystem to bounce ideas off of.
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!
2/ The content curation gig:
Last week, we put out the following post in our Female Freelancers WhatsApp community –
💄 Content Curation (Freelance)
Hi! We’re looking to work with folks to curate content for Decoding Draupadi’s WhatsApp groups.
For instance, this would include things like finding women-focused news or curating relevant resources and guides – all with the idea of providing value and scaling the groups.
This is best for you if you’ve curated / created content in the past, and have an hour or two to kill every day.
Budget – INR 10K / month
We had around 10 folks write to us and we spoke to 4 of them.
And 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. And thus, when we had to choose who to work with, we looked for articulate people, folks who seemed like they would adapt better, are more flexible, and have an affinity for what we’re trying to build. The women who had a powerful online presence also made a better impact on us.
And so, for our freelance community, I want to host a session for the focused on building a presence on the internet that increases odds at getting projects and closing deals. If you are that someone, say hi? Here are more details about our community.
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 here. 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.
If you made it till here, I have an invitation and a request:
- If you’ve got friends who are personal branding experts, share this with them.
- If you’re a college student who resonates with any of our projects, let’s talk?