How to Unfreeze Your Business Writing

I’m so grateful for last week. The U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, plus parent-teacher conferences, provided our family with a LOT of unscheduled time. Which. Was. Fantastic.

I find that my life has high and low tides of scheduling. Sometimes my life feels very tightly scheduled with client sessions, teaching and team meetings, not to mention family obligations. Other times it feels light.

I try to be as conscious as possible in protecting my free, unscheduled time, both within my “work” time, and my family time. The need for socializing, as well as the need to get things done, means that my calendar can fill up with pre-scheduled appointments.

So instead of just scheduling clients and other appointments willy-nilly, I pre-plan my rhythm.

This first week in December I’m planning out my schedule for 2015. Not individual appointments, but what I call my weekly and monthly templates.

For instance, I plan for a certain number of clients as my ideal, and that translates into a certain number of sessions a month. I also know I have teaching commitments, and other meeting commitments. Around those commitments, my open client slots are placed.

I more heavily-load the first and third weeks of the month with client appointments, and keep the second and fourth weeks lighter for creative work. If there’s a fifth week in a month, no appointments, aside from minimal team meetings.

Those fifth weeks, which happen about 3 times a year, are wonderful opportunities for either vacation, or dive-deep creative work, or… who knows what’s being yearned for? It’s wonderful to have the space there, instead of having to cancel things to “make room.”

Before we get to the article, I want to mention a couple of things, now that it’s December.

1. We’ve been talking a lot about Small Group Coaching lately – and you should know that Yollana and Jason have each added a new group that is friendly time-zone-wise for Europe! Click that link and take a look at the new group. If that’s not your style, and you want hands-on, individual, personal help, most of our practitioners only have one or two spots open. Take a look at the five of us, and see which one resonates for your business and who you are:

Organic Business Development Program

2. If both of those options are beyond both your budget and your stage in business, why not jump into a program just for you? It includes coaching support and every question answered! And it’s for those in start-up, or who might as well be in start-up. Read and enroll:

Foundations1: Clients and Money

I just wanted you to know you can get the help you need. Now, let’s get into a surprisingly pain-free way to write a bio that worked wonders, the same day, for one of our clients.

Article: How to Unfreeze Your Business Writing

You may have a wonderful modality, tremendous skill, or magical product. But when it’s a micro-business, when you’re self-employed or just have a very tiny team, the client is really in buying -you.-

This means the bio you write can be critical. In our Heart-Centered Websites approach (which we teach in Foundations2: Expand Your Reach) we emphasize a lot of talking about the client, their needs, their challenges, their desires, their experience. This empathy can create a lot of trust.

However, eventually you do need to speak about yourself. Freeze-time!

For many heart-centered entrepreneurs, who naturally avoid the limelight, maybe are a bit introverted, and really are more caring than self-aggrandizing, the bio can be so painful.

There’s also another dynamic going on. Whenever I ask roomfuls of entrepreneurs who they see in their mind’s eye when they picture a prospective client, someone who hasn’t hired them yet, they invariably picture an intimidating, skeptical person, with a frown on their face and their arms crossed.

Painful! Why would you ever want to make yourself vulnerable to someone like that? Which is exactly what a good bio does.

One of our clients recently said, “I’m stuck on writing this bio. I totally get what is supposed to go into it, but I can’t shake this feeling of being in an intimidating job interview.”

I gave her three questions, and she answered them all the same day, writing a stellar bio, and drafting her About page for her website.

Here are the three questions:

Question 1: “I love what you do- my friend got so much help from you. I’m definitely coming in for some work, because I know you can help me. I’m just curious, can you tell me what kind of training is involved to do the work you do?”

Your Answer:

Question 2: “That’s awesome- sounds amazing! And how long have you been doing this? How many people have you worked with? I can tell you’re masterful just by how you are- I’m curious how long it takes to have the confidence you have.”

Your Answer:

Question 3: “I can tell this is really a passion of yours- I don’t mean to pry- but can you tell me why you love this work and you’re so committed to it?”

Your Answer:

What did you notice?

It was less about the content of the questions, although I covered the three elements I consider essential to a bio, which answers the question, “Why are you so good at helping people?” It was much more about who was doing the asking.

I’m convinced by long experience with many clients, that what freezes people most in creating content, whether for a website, a blog, a newsletter, or some other purpose, is less about ideas, and more about who is being pictured as the audience.

Now, the questions I listed above might not match your situation exactly. Our client, in this instance, was someone who was masterful, with many years of experience, and so I phrased the questions to match something that felt true to her.

Here’s what I want you to do. If you’re writing a bio, rewrite those questions to match your situation, with the same positive outlook from the reader who is asking.

And if you have another piece of content to write, what question is the writing answering? And, more importantly, what is the attitude of the person asking the question?

Are you willing to share the questions you come up with in the comments? Think of how inspiring that will be!

Writing for your business has more to do with who you’re imagining you’re
speaking to, than the content of what you’re writing. (click to Tweet)