"Doing Your Work In Public" Will Attract A Network.

Sherrell Dorsey is a tech entrepreneur who founded The Plug, a daily tech newsletter, and then sold it to ImpactAlpha. Since her successful exit, she has been a host and writer for the TED Tech Podcast. Before launching The Plug, she was a contributing writer for Fast Company, Essence, Next City, Black Enterprise, and others. She was also a marketing and sales executive at Google, Uber, and Build The Good. (This is Part 1 of our interview.)

You were a tech journalist who ended up launching a popular tech newsletter, which you then sold. That’s every founder's dream. What role did business relationships play in your career trajectory??

I accidentally launched my publication because I started off with just a newsletter. I was still working full time, maybe at Uber at the time, and this newsletter was a hobby. I just wanted to talk about the tech space, particularly as it pertained to folks of color in the space.

Quite honestly, that really started to draw people's attention to me. And I started building relationships within the community through my tech newsletter. One such relationship, with Emily Rose of Capital One, resulted in my first check. Capital One ended up becoming a long-term sponsorship partner. That was what really enabled me to say, “Hey, I can monetize this and create a full business.” It helped me lay the groundwork for ongoing relationships. And it was how we were able to get access to additional clients, because once you have a big name, it really generates other opportunities.

We were also the first Black tech news platform. And I think we were the first Black media publisher on the Bloomberg terminal as well. For those who don't know, the Bloomberg terminal is a fixture on Wall Street. I had spent maybe a few years prior building relationships with some of the journalists and product managers on the Bloomberg team, for example Sean Waters and Adam Lanum (sp?).

You never know how relationships will evolve. They had been readers of my newsletter and that led to them inviting me into the Bloomberg offices to talk about what I was building or speak to some of their employees. And then years later, as Bloomberg began expanding their licensing, the people at Bloomberg who knew me, brought my name up in that room.

Those business relationships started because of the work I was doing and because of my reputation. They really bought into what I was doing.? So, I continued to stay in touch with them and say yes to every opportunity they provided. Those opportunities really created other monumental opportunities.

Maybe 70% of the sales that we got in those first couple of years were really as a result of those relationships…people getting our names into rooms where there were opportunities that we didn't even know existed. So, yes, relationships have played a monumental role in the success of my business and in my career overall.

How did you develop the relationship with Capital One? What made them seek you out?

I tell a lot of my mentees who are early in their careers, doing your work in public will bring a network to you.

Doing your work in public is so important, especially when you don't have those ready-built networks. I leverage tools like LinkedIn, like my social media platforms.

Of course I had this newsletter that was spreading like wildfire. That's how people discovered me and my work. They appreciated the hard-hitting, long form data journalism that I was producing. As I mentioned, Emily Rose at Capital One was one of my first supporters. She was a subscriber to my newsletter. So that relationship was the result of me doing my work in public.

I would go to conferences. I would speak at conferences. I would talk about what I was doing. As an entrepreneur, you're the face of your business. Doing all that really helped introduce me to different audiences, but particularly those who were in the journalism space.

By doing my work in public, I was building a reputation. I got invitations to attend and speak at conferences. People were like, “Hey, you don't know us; but we know you. We know what you're building. Can you come in and have a conversation?” And then over time, I continued to cultivate those relationships. But had I not been doing my work in public, it would have been a much harder, longer, steeper climb.

I'm very fortunate. I've been able to meet really great people and, as a result of where they work or who they know, opportunities have been extended to me and to my business. All because people knew my name, they knew what I was building, and so they were able to walk us into rooms.