4 Simple Steps
To Creating a Voice that Connects with Readers

In this world of anonymous crowds overflowing with written chatter until we can hardly pick out a single voice, let alone remember it, people respond to your writing only when they feel a connection with you. To earn their attention, your written voice must show real personality, so they feel another human voice speaking to them – one they want to hear. If you actually sit down and think about what you want your voice to convey and how to convey it, the process is simple and the benefit huge – people will listen.

When Business Development = Self-Development

When I became an entrepreneur, I had no idea what it would take. I didn’t realize it would be all that different from salary, except that I would find my own clients, make my own schedule, earn a varying income without benefits, and do most of my work at home with a cat in my lap.

At the moment, the cat is adorable, gray and white Sparrow, radiating happiness even while napping… but the real differences between salary and freelance are much more profound. I’ve discovered that entrepreneurship requires far greater depth and utilization of self-knowledge. My own psychology has become my primary piece of office equipment; to succeed, I must understand and use it to its best advantage. Adapting to the structure of a salaried job never required this. The process is deeply challenging, exhilaratingly creative, and profoundly rewarding. I must unabashedly own up to all of my strengths, weaknesses, and foibles, and use them in creative tinkering to figure out what really makes me tick or jam up and how to graft a business onto my own natural patterns. Thus, business development = self-development.

Persuasive Verses:
How Outreach & Marketing Copy Are Like Poetry

This title might seem just about as strange to you as “How Polar Bears are Like Toucans,” since we tend to see poetry and marketing/outreach writing as utterly different creatures living in different environments. Indeed, I never expected that studying poetry back in college would be the slightest bit useful commercially; I enrolled in poetry classes simply for the pleasure of playing with the written word. Yet, years later when I started professionally writing outreach and sales materials for nonprofits and mission-based businesses, I immediately found myself applying many of the lessons I learned in my college studies of poetry.

The 8 crucial lessons poetry teaches to outreach and copy writers: