It's not that you suck at writing

When quarantine lifted slightly in April and May 2020, I saw a lot of people outdoors who decided now was the time to get in shape. ‘Member that?
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I’m not in great shape myself, but I ride my bike most Saturdays. Around that time, I’d be out riding and I’d see someone running 7 or 8 mph UP A HILL. Keeping up with my bike!
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Then, they’d conk out before they reached the top. And I, at my tortoise pace, would just keep climbing, passing a sweaty face tilted toward the heavens, hands pressing on the small of their back.
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​Why do we approach hard stuff this way?

• Years where we do nothing.
• Then a one-time burst of all the energy we can muster.
• Then, a realization that we have bitten off more than we can chew?

And, finally…

RETREAT!!

By September, I didn’t see those people anymore.

It reminded me of where I see some first-time authors trip up. They’re inspired to start their book. So, they rent an AirBnB and decide they’ll write their book in a week. … Well, maybe not all of it, but certainly A LOT OF IT, right??

No.

I have seen too many people give up on their book before they finish. They don’t quit because they weren’t ready, because their idea is stupid, or because they suck at writing. They quit because they get stuck and don’t know the next step.

So, what is the next step, the one in between enthusiasm and giving up?

It’s to check in with your book idea and test it with 3 simple questions. Want to know what those are? I'll be hosting a live workshop with the answer in Janaury 2022. Click here to join the waitlist.

Three Things that Will Get You Unstuck If You're Staring at a Blank Page Right Now

Presented without comment

Writing for your business can feel daunting, even if you've been doing it for a while. These are my tips for getting started.  

1. Make a swipe file. Are you already doing this? I can't think of a writer who wouldn't (or doesn't!) benefit from looking for inspiration. Keeping a swipe file for the different types of writing you do is a great way to cut down on wasting time perusing the internet every time you need to write something. It's a great way for keeping you from falling down the black hole of Twitter/Facebook, too. 

Here are some swipe files to get you started (or Google them if you don't see one you like on the list!) 

• Headline swipe file

• Opening line

• Facebook ad

• Blog post

• About page

2. Write down every good question. This tip is for bloggers. This is the best way I've found for avoiding that feeling of not knowing exactly what to write about. Either you can't think of anything, or you can't narrow down your topic. 

If you're committed to writing once a week or more, the only way you can stay consistent is if you create a long list of topics in advance. 

So, where do you get these topics? From your conversations with clients and colleagues. Every time they say something that sparks a discussion between you two, every time you give the same very good answer to a question you've answered 8 million times before, every time you tweet about a small moment or experience related to your workday, write down the topic and a brief description. 

3. Start in the middle. Full disclosure, this is the first full sentence of the blog that I actually wrote; this sentence right here.  

I didn't exactly start here. I started by outlining the blog--I know I'm going to write about writing down every good question and about keeping a swipe file (which you already read about, but which I haven't written yet.) The reason I haven't written those sections yet: after I outlined them I got worried and stopped writing. 

I started wondering, "Will anyone care about what I have to say about this topic?" "Do the people reading my blog really care about this topic?" "This is not going to be that good--why am I bothering?"  

I have had this issue my whole writing life. It hasn't mattered what I was writing. It's worse when you're hoping that people will read what you're writing (as opposed to hoping they won't read it, which is a state more common among writers than you might think).

When I start at the beginning, I have this kind of Pavlovian reaction of  paralyzing fear that it won't be good enough for anyone to read. And I have to stop.  

So, I started skipping to the middle. 

I write as though I've already gotten the hard part out of the way and I just have to get this darn thing finished. This mental trick (if you want to call it that) allows my fingers to loosen up--literally--as I start typing out the meat of a single idea.  

I guess starting in the middle is a kind of swipe file. Getting a meaty idea fully formed on the page means you're not staring at a blank page anymore. You just need to go back in and connect the ideas. 

Ok back to the top. 

"I Don't Have Time to Blog." FALSE.

Ironic title since this is my first new post in 5 months. I took a blog hiatus to focus on client work and build my business. I'm back now with info I've gathered running online marketing campaigns for a lot of fantastic entrepreneurs! And I'm ready to share what I've learned and to hear what you think of it!  Do you have trouble blogging consistently? Let me know in the comments!

When I was 22 I interviewed for my first "real" newspaper job, to be a general assignment reporter at a very small paper. After the sit-down interview, I was given a test with the following materials: a computer with no Internet (this was the early 2000s),  a police report, and some typed-up notes of witness interviews. The test: write an article on the crime detailed therein.

Twenty minutes later, I was done. A couple of hours after that, I was offered the job. 

Working for a daily newspaper is the quickest way I know to internalize the motto, "done is better than perfect." A whopping 13 years later (!), a lot has changed about the newspaper industry, but I have come to realize that the most important skill I honed during my newspaper time was to write on deadline. And I've realized that writing on deadline doesn't come so easily to other people. 

It's a motto a lot of my clients take issue with. But if you're going to share content, life gets a lot easier if you can give this motto some thought. 

So tip 1 for making the tip to blog: Start; don't wait for perfect. 

Other tips for writing quickly: 

1. Don't try to say EVERYTHING there is to say on the topic; as we discussed you will revisit these topics over and over, using different formats (checklists, Q&A style, video). 

2. Pick a point you'd like to make, write an outline, write the blog. 

**If there are two points you want to make, create a title for point no. 2 and add it to your content calendar to write about another time. 

3. Be patient with yourself. You will get faster with practice. 

4. (This is a suggestion I heard from Tim Ferriss that I love) open up Outlook or Gmail and click "new." Write your post draft in a new email. Our habit is to get organized and write emails quickly; using an email draft might signal your brain to apply the same discipline to your blog writing.

Bonus! Try video: write the outline and then talk about the topic in one take. Compare how long that takes vs. how long writing takes. 

This is Your No. 1 Productivity Killer

I was listening to Amy Porterfield's podcast episode 102, "How to Create Content Rituals to Get More Done."  Amy focused on sharing about how hard of a time she was having carving out the significant chunks of time she needed in order to create: blog posts, interview questions, presentations, course content. 

She pointed out something that struck a chord with me: don't check your e-mail. During "Tiger Time," Amy says that she doesn't check e-mail. She doesn't touch e-mail until 4 hours in to her work day, at 12 pm. 

Not only does she not respond, but she doesn't CHECK.

Ideally, if you're trying to create a cocoon of time in which you can focus on a single project, you don't check e-mail during that time, of course. But here's why I love the idea of not checking at the outset of your day, period:

E-mail is the number 1 de-railer of my day, and it definitely ranks above phone, social media, or texting. Why? 

Because I find that e-mails require me to take at least one action before I can respond. Maybe I have to research a fact or a question, contact someone else to get an answer, or put together a plan of action. 

But whatever it is, I often automatically let it take precedence over what I had been planning to do before I opened the email. And that completely knocks me off the track I set for myself when I started my task.

Texting usually only requires a reply (not a bunch of research). Social media is admittedly a rabbit hole but doesn't require a constant reshuffling of work priorities.  Phone calls don't happen much and when they do, they are largely self-contained (Dr. appointment reminders, for example.) 

E-mail is the de-railer. 

Amy's system reminded me of another tactic to approach getting focused, intensive work completed first thing in the morning. It's called the 90-90-1 rule.

"For the next 90 days, devote the first 90 minutes of your work day to the one best opportunity in your life. Nothing else. Zero distractions. Just get that project done. Period."

I used the 90-90-1 rule to create and publish my website. (It was more like 60-30-1, but it still worked.) 

If I'm wrong, e-mail me (don't expect a response until after 12 pm though, LOL) or leave a comment!

Get It Done.

I read a lot of advice on the internet about building your business. And apparently, according to the internet, the first rule of accomplishing a big goal is to break it down into manageable chunks.

But what if you don't know how to do that? How big a "chunk" is a " manageable chunk"? And what if the chunk you thought was manageable doesn't turn out to be so manageable once you get down to brass tacks?  

Well, I got a great roadmap on how to move forward from Felena Hanson, the founder and CEO of Hera Hub, the coworking space where I'm a member.

I took a workshop from Felena where, after talking about exactly what we do and whom we serve, she asked us to write out our goals for the next 12 months.

Step 1: Write your top goals for the next 12 months on a sheet of paper. (If you're already a big consumer of business-building advice, you'll know these goals should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound.)

I wrote down my SMART goals during the workshop. I looked at them.

They looked back at me.

In any goal-setting, goal-achieving program, this is usually as far as I get. I write my goals down, fold up the paper and tuck it somewhere. Then I put my head down, work hard, and in 12 months I may or may not have accomplished them. 

But Felena showed me a way to transform this from a daunting list to a manageable, daily to-do list.

You need: 

• That daunting list of your one-year goals

• two additional sheets of paper

• Your daily calendar 

• something to write with

• about 30-60 minutes and

• these two additional steps. 

Step 2: Draw a 12-month calendar on a piece of paper, and mark each month with the due date for each goal you wanted to accomplish. So, for example, in 12 months time I want to have at least 4 clients who provide me with monthly, recurring business.

That means, theoretically, in three months, I need to have client 1. In three more months, I need to have client 2. And three months from that, client 3. And in the final three months, client 4. That's four repeat-business clients in 12 months. 

That's already clarifying, even if I don't necessarily book each recurring client in exactly that order. At least I know what I'm looking at.

Step 3: Take a second piece of paper, lay it horizontally, and write the next three months at the top. As in:

Now, week by week, what do you need to do each month to make that first-quarter goal happen? 

Now that you've got the weeks of the month planned, go to your daily calendar. (I use Google calendar.)

Plunk some time on there for each of the things you said you needed to do for each week. 

For example, in week 2 I said I would write my opt-in offer. So here's how that might look, broken down day by day on my calendar for the week. 

(If you want to know why most of those boxes are gray but one is blue, you can find out here about the color-coding system I use for tracking my tasks and how much time it's saving me.)

So, that's how you can take a great big 1-year goal and break it down far enough so that it is an actual to-do list that you can schedule on your calendar. What do you think? 

Re-Committing to Your Goals and "The Fresh Start Effect"

It's almost March, which means this year is officially no longer new. Remember all of those inspiring Instagram posts on Jan. 1 about how this was page 1 of a 365-page book, like this one? 

Today is Day 54 of 2016. Now is the time when we start to feel less like the photo above, and more like the photo below. 

Getting punched in the mouth happens to me almost every day that I try. I flail around every time it happens, but that doesn't make it hurt any less. In fact, flailing around just makes it take longer for me to regain my balance. 

The "Fresh Start Effect" allows us to reset and re-commit to our goals. Hear more about how to replicate the "fresh start" without needing to wait for another new year or milestone.

Here's a tool I'm using every day to deal with getting punched in the mouth (also inspired by James Altucher, the podcaster you heard if you clicked the link above).

Writing 10 ideas every day. I like to do this early in my workday. Here's a method for practicing.  

What I get out of this: A safe space to spout as many bad ideas as I can think of. Not just an outlet for creativity, but a kickstart for it.

Ten minutes of absolute freedom from self-criticism. Room to be creative. Room to sound like an idiot. 

3 Ways to Build Business Using Facebook Groups

I was listening to a really funny podcast this week on Howl about "Social Media Spirals." The hosts were talking about how they can't even look through their Facebook newsfeeds anymore—it's overwhelming.

I liked this episode because it was funny and poignant. But of course, I also listened as a person whose job it is to find ways to connect on Facebook. The newsfeed is getting increasingly crowded. How can entrepreneurs and small businesses avoid piling on to people who might really love them or care about them?

That led me to think about how my personal newsfeed over the past 18 months or so has fewer and fewer profile and brand page updates, and more and more updates from Facebook Groups I belong to. In addition, Facebook has created a Groups app that you can download separately so you only see group updates. 

(If you need a tutorial on what a Facebook Group is, and how it's different from a brand page or a profile, get that info from the horse's mouth.)

I've seen Facebook Group features benefiting entrepreneurs in three key ways: 

1. Create your own. People are experimenting with all kinds of ways to use Facebook groups as part of a membership model. Some entrepreneurs have multiple groups: one that prospective clients can join after they've joined your e-mail list, another group for paying customers. This can be a great strategy if you sell a service that you can offer online. Group members can have regular access to you. (You should specify how often you'll be available to answer questions.) And they have access to each other for support and to find out 

Even if you have a brick-and-mortar business, creating a private Facebook group can be a great way to stay in touch with the clients who are the most 

2. Join 'em. Get into those groups! They are all over Facebook. Start with keyword searches in Facebook itself. See what groups your colleagues and contacts have joined. And, as always, get into your audience's shoes. Search for groups using the keywords they might use. Depending on your industry, you'll find many groups whose members post contract opportunities, as this post from The Muse points out. 

3. Post to the most relevant ones. Reach out when executing something big. If you're doing a giveaway, launching a new product or service that people have been asking for, or doing something else significant, search for groups that are relevant to the product or service you sell. 

Beth Anne of Brilliant Business Moms recently used this strategy to publicize a giveaway that resulted in 5,000 new e-mail subscribers for the BBM list. Read the full post here. Here's the part about groups: 

“We intentionally had our amazing VA, Ellen, do the sharing for us, since she could say something like “Hey everyone, the ladies at Brilliant Business Moms are hosting a great planner giveaway, here’s the link!” versus me saying, “Hey, I’m hosting a giveaway, please go enter….pretty please…. I’m just crossing my fingers that you’ll all take pity on me…..”

On Day 1, Ellen was able to find two [relevant] Facebook groups that allowed link sharing, and post our giveaway there.”

— http://www.brilliantbusinessmoms.com

This strategy allowed the Brilliant Business Moms to get the word out about themselves to a relevant audience, and added the motivation of a giveaway to get people clicking. 

Two keys here: one is to make sure that the group moderators allow promotional posts. Check the group guidelines after you join. Many groups allow a promotional post on a specific day or in the comments of a specific moderator post. The other key is to make sure your post doesn't sound like you're begging, as the Brilliant Business Moms pointed out above. You can do like the BBM did and ask someone to post on your behalf. Or... 

I think this strategy can also work if you've already been spending some time in this relevant group posting useful, helpful information and answering questions without the expectation of anything in return. Then, when you do post something promotional, the other group members will recognize you from the previous interactions they've had with you. If you've spent a lot of time in a group sharing knowledge and supporting other group members, and your promotion feels relevant to the group members, it is less likely to fall through the cracks.  

3 Time-Management Apps I Will Try (Again) in 2016

The fact that I have a little problem with procrastination becomes painfully obvious when I scroll through my Google search history. I will spare you the full list, but it includes, "procrastination good for you?" (Maybe. But that's not the point!)  

Today is Jan. 5, which means we are two or three days away from abandoning our New Year's resolutions. And yet! I would like to get just a shade better at reducing the amount of time I spend taking care of phone calls and errands that can wait, and generally putting off tasks I've identified as top priorities for growing my business. 

Can technology help me? Here are 4 apps I'm trying in 2016. I've tried a couple of these before, but in order to hold myself accountable to giving each of these methods a fair shake, this time I have a plan. 

• I’ll measure my productivity on a day without using one of these apps, and then again on a day when I have used one.

• I’ll report the data here on the site once a quarter, so we can determine which of these apps have helped me the most. 

1. Time Management: Pomodoro

Like many of my favorite time-saving tips and tricks, I heard about this one from a work-at-home parent. What I like about the Pomodoro Technique is it allows you to build breaks in between short, intense periods of focus. This is built-in procrastination time, which theoretically alows for uninterrupted focus during non-break time. The timer reminds you to return to task. 

2. Task Management: Trello

I love Trello for its flexibility as a to-do list. And I like that I can build in accountability. When you're working for yourself, you spend a lot of time accountable only to the voices in your own head. Trello allows you to externalize those random snippets and transform them into discrete, tangible objects. You can set up lanes like "To Do," "Doing," and "Done," and move these cards across the lanes, giving you a sense of accomplishment. 

3. Goal-Setting: GoalsOnTrack

GoalsOnTrack is the one I haven't yet used. But I decided to add it to the list after reading on its website:  "The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your long, complex, overwhelming goals into small, manageable chunks." 

Sounds like the antidote to one of my recurring reasons for procrastinating—not knowing where to start. 

Have you tried any of these apps, or about another way to beat procrastination? Leave it in the comments. 

"I Couldn't Post Consistently to My Blog, So I Stopped Updating It." Is This You? What to Do About It.

Writing when you don't wanna write: it's a bit of an obsession with me. 

When I was growing up, I always envied the stories I heard about people like Ursula LeGuin, who submitted her first story for publication at age 11, or Isaac Asimov, who famously wrote so many books that even superfans have lost count. I always thought that if you weren't prolific, you shouldn't bother. Maybe you've heard something along those lines, too.  

But for many writers, that product doesn’t come so easily. 

About eight years ago, I worked as a fact-checker for Gourmet magazine. At the time, the copy chief was working on a memoir. He didn't chat much, and anyway I found him intimidating, so I rarely spoke to him. 

Maybe that’s why one exchange stands out in my memory. One of us was delivering a proof to the other’s desk. I asked him how he was progressing with the book. I remember him scrunching up his face in what looked like literal, physical pain. 

He said something like, “Writing is a torture." 

Yes! Even for writers who have book contracts with Random House, writing is a torture. What hope, then, is there for the rest of us? 

Focusing Outward

If you allow this line of thought to take care over as you're writing, self-doubt will defeat you. You'll defeat yourself.

One way to combat this line of thought is to answer these questions with your writing: 

• Who are you helping?

• What are you helping them do? 

These questions shift the focus from you. (Are you a good writer? Who do you think you are? You don’t how to do this. etc. etc. etc.). 

Now you can focus on the impact you’re making on THEM: you audience. 

Your frame of mind goes from self-defeating to problem-solving: What info are they looking for? What do they need to know? How will you write to get that information to them? 

Here are 3 things you need to do in order to answer the questions about who you're helping and what you're helping them do. 

1. What do you know all about and can't wait to tell others about? You can break this down in a few different ways. Jeff Goins has a great exercise  that I recommend for explicitly naming your topic.

2. Who is your ideal reader? If you sell a product or service, are you writing to your ideal customer? Who is that? Write down a list of his or her traits and keep it somewhere handy. Refer to it when you're wondering what you should write about. What does that person want to know that you have the answer to? 

3. Connect what you know with what they want to know.  Go through your e-mail, files, notes, memories to find frequently asked questions. What do clients and potential clients always end up asking you? Match those FAQs to the topics you can't shut up about. 

Voila: A blog post idea. 

As you're fleshing out your new idea into a blog post, you may get stuck. When you do, you can come back to this thought: “How can I write about this topic in a way that answers my ideal client's question on this topic?”

Starting in The Middle

Most weekday mornings, while walking my dog and my toddler to daycare, I listen to news and social media marketing podcasts because I'm a nerd.

So it was this morning, when an interview with Danny Strong, the creator of Empire, was the next podcast queued up. Here's how the interview started: 

"When I sat down to write the pilot, I remember staring at the blank screen thinking, 'I have no idea what I'm doing.' There's this moment of fear before I ever write anything."

Sound familiar? 

View fullsize

A photo from our morning walk.

The blank screen intimidated me so much in college, that rather than tackling a 20-page paper by writing an outline first, or even beginning with the thesis paragraph, I would begin by fleshing out an essential idea that I knew needed to end up somewhere in the middle of the essay. Starting this way helped me get over the intimidating feeling of starting on Page 1, Sentence 1 of a 20-page paper. 

Here's what I realized years later: not only did starting in the middle intimidate me less, but starting this way also helped me form my thesis statement.

Fleshing out a single aspect of the thesis allowed me to identify how that supporting idea fit into the overall structure of the essay. Which forced me to decide on an overall structure for the essay. 

So, starting in the middle helped me clarify the objective of my essay and the structure for how I would get there. 

As I've worked to build the online and social media presences of several online and brick-and-mortar companies, I've seen that same knee-jerk tendency to "start in the middle" when it comes to PR and marketing campaigns. 

"We need to be on Twitter!" "Everyone's on SnapChat!" "Why aren't we blogging? "Why aren't we blogging more????"

This is the marketing campaign equivalent of writing out a random idea before coming up with your thesis statement.

And just like with essay writing, it can work, but only if you, as a marketing strategist, take the time to create a structure around it. 

Blogging, creating a contest on Facebook, joining a group board on Pinterest and the like are tactics.*

Just like the body of a 20-page paper, tactics are essential. But they don't mean anything without an objective and the structure that an objective provides. In essay-writing, a thesis states the objective and provides the structure. 

When it comes to social media marketing, deciding on the objective(s) provides a guide for everything you do next. What do you want to accomplish?

Having a website, moderating a Facebook group, gaining 1,000 e-mail subscribers--those are not accomplishments. Those are a means to an accomplishment. 

Deciding on an objective (or 2 or 3) allows you to  give a purpose to every tactic you employ.

So, if your objective is, say, to establish your authority as a social media strategist by helping people learn more about how to use social media effectively, then a blog where you share ideas, tips and tricks about how to use social media might be a very effective tactic. Sharing that content on social media, so that people see it is another effective tactic. 

So the next time you feel pressure to start a new marketing campaign, or a new social media profile, or to develop a new product for your business, understand that if you start there, you are starting in the middle. When you recognize that, the next step is to ask, "What do I want to accomplish with this new venture?"

Allow the answer to guide your work and motivate you as you build out your campaign and your business. 

*— Thanks to Eric Chandler for sharing his social media campaign steps, which inform my explanation of the difference between objectives, strategy, tactics and results.