Why brand unity is important for your business
Everything we publish — our website content, blog posts, emails, articles, information products, and so on — everything represents our business and our brand. Writers and newly-minted entrepreneurs often don’t think about brand unity, but we need to rise above everyone else to become known, and brand unity helps us achieve this. Even those of us in business for a while reach a time when we need to dust off our brand and bring both look and messaging current to where our business is today.
We often think of the “look” when branding is mentioned, and while we need…
Never let them stop you
No one enjoys having their work rejected, yet as a professional freelancer, it’s part of the job. Rejections come in many forms — an outright message that “it’s not right for us,” an encouraging note to “try again,” reader criticism and excoriation, and, possibly the worst rejection, being ignored.
Early in my freelance career, I garnered hundreds of rejections before I made my first sale. I earned a whopping $15, and this is still the sale I am most proud of. Did the flow of rejections stop? No, but I did get fewer as I got better at targeting publications…
“You’re human. Get over it.”
I beat myself up — a lot. The other day, I was berating myself for something. Maybe I had made a mistake, or I might have forgotten something important. It doesn’t matter what I had done, the self-judgement was in: I was a dumb-ass. A moron. So stuuuu-pid….On and on. Each critical word sent my mood into a nosedive.
Then that voice we all have in our heads said, “You’re human. Get over it.”
I burst out laughing at myself, and “You’re human. Get over it” has become my mantra.
Why do we find it so hard to give ourselves…
Easy Access to My Writing Articles on Medium
Having been a professional writer, editor, and instructor for more than 20 years, I share my writing expertise and experiences in my articles to help others on the path. Some of my pieces are targeted to more experienced professionals; other are written to help newcomers and freshmen writers achieve long- term success. I focus on strategies and tips to make the writing process easier, to boost our creativity and motivation, and to help my followers and readers level-up their game.
Rejections suck
If you write for publication, you will receive rejection. It goes with the territory. Early in my writing career, I…
Letters of denial and decline don’t have to be hard to write
In business, we are often called upon to write “bad news” letters when we are declining or denying something. We could be denying a request for a refund, waiver of a penalty, an application, a proposal, or anything else that requires us to apply policies or procedures that result in a decline or denial.
Before starting my business, I worked in financial services and specialized in insurance and employee benefit plans, which often require us to write these types of letters. No matter how we write it, the recipient will not be happy. No one enjoys receiving this type of…
How to handle the human side of changes that impact your business
It’s no longer business as usual. Big businesses, small businesses, established businesses, and those just starting up have had to make untold number of adjustments in the past year. the world of work as we knew it is gone; what it will become is still uncertain for many of us, especially those in business for ourselves. It’s hard enough to cope with there’s just us, but if we have staff, we have an additional challenge: We need to help them handle the ups and downs of changes that are affecting our business. …
Expert advice to avoid the focus trap and boost our brain power.
We all spend a lot of time on focusing. If we’re not actually doing it, we’re reading about it and striving to get into flow states to boost our productivity and effectiveness. It is the magic wand for getting things done — or is it?
Could too much focus be bad for the very thing we need to accomplish: getting results? Can we become so focused on being focused that we exhaust our brains and our ability to pay attention? If so, how do we refill the focus tank?
Cultivating our focus is vital if we want to be productive.
According to the brilliant James Clear:
50 claps from me! This is so on point. The other day I was berating myself for something when I heard that voice in all our heads say, "You're human. Get over it!" I burst out laughing. Now I keep reminding myself to get over myself.
Contrats on the book coming out. Please give me a headsup with it hits Amazon. P
How to find balance and create boundaries for overall well-being
Most of us only think about our brains when we have a headache, it gets bopped on when playing ball, or we bang it into something hard. Sometimes, we cuss it out when the solution to a problem just won’t come, or we forget something important. Mostly, it just sits in our skull doing its thing without our thinking about it.
“You would be dead without your brain, which is why ‘brain dead’ is usually the legal definition of death. Someone is brain dead when there is a lack of reflexive responses controlled by the brain stem, the most fundamental…
Some of them might surprise you
You know the feeling. You need a content idea and nothing interests you. You’ve stockpiled all kinds of ideas and prompts for times like this, but none of them are working. It’s as if the creative part of your brain has signed off, and nothing is stirring it back to life. You sit in front of your laptop trying to squeeze out something, anything, but zilch.
We’ve all been here. It’s a fact of freelancing life that some days nothing intrigues us enough to write about — we’re bored with our ideas and everyone else’s. …
Patricia Haddock
Curious entrepreneur, teacher, coach. Writes for The Startup, Curious, Mind Cafe, Writing Cooperative, Better Marketing and more. Find her at www.phaddock.com.
