Episode 62: The Legacy You Write: How To Improve Your Relationship With Writing With Sarah Sypniewski
Sarah Sypniewski
Sarah Sypniewski is a ghostwriter, editor, writing coach, and Empire Expander with twenty-five years of experience working with storytellers, visionaries, and outside-the-box-thinkers across various fields and industries.
Her clients include publishing giant John Wiley and Sons, for whom she writes and edits books in the "For Dummies" brand. She also works with clients like hedge fund managers to craft investor pitch materials that seal the deal, celebrity hair stylists who want to help heal their communities, and undercover storytellers who haven’t yet embraced their own powerful voice.
She is also an actor, writer, and producer. In her most recent feature film put out by Milepost 42 Films, “Clown Car: A Love Story”, she is both the executive producer and plays the neurotic but lovable lead, Pocket, who goes on a journey of love and self-discovery after being kicked out of clown society by the Clown High Council. This indie film has captured the hearts and tickled the funny bones of its audiences across the globe.
Sarah brings her true love of collaborative creativity to her work and that translates to how she supports her clients. She specializes in working with fellow solopreneurs, big thinkers, and relentless dreamers who might consider themselves the square pegs in the round holes.
Sarah works side-by-side (and heart-to-heart) with her clients to validate and activate their authentic voices so their ideas, products, and services find the people who need them most. With expertise and warmth, Sarah removes obstacles and blocks in the writing process to allow her clients to touch hearts and change minds, engage their communities, and Expand their Empires in wild ways that challenge the status quo.
Sarah believes everyone has a story, and her mission is to help them tell it. And she’s not the only one--Sarah's work has secured her clients over $30 million in deals and opportunities!
Your legacy is written in every word you share. In this episode, Sarah Sypniewski, a writing coach extraordinaire from The Empire Expander, discusses all about how to improve your relationship with writing. She talks about the secrets behind effective writing, dealing with writer's block, and embracing the power of AI in the writing process. Throughout the episode, Sarah guides us toward a world where writing flows effortlessly and ideas flourish. Tune in now and tap into your creative genius!
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The Legacy You Write: How To Improve Your Relationship With Writing With Sarah Sypniewski
Sarah Sypniewski is a ghostwriter, editor, writing coach, and empire expander with many years of experience working with storytellers, visionaries, and outside-the-box thinkers across various fields and industries. Her clients include publishing giant, John Wiley & Sons, for whom she writes and edits books in the For Dummies brand. She also works with clients like hedge fund managers to craft investor pitch materials that seal the deal for celebrity hairstyles who want to help their communities and undercover storytellers who haven't yet embraced their own powerful voice.
Sarah brings her true love of collaboration and creativity to her work and that translates in how she supports her clients. She works by side and heart-to-heart with her clients to validate and activate their authentic voices so their ideas, products, and services find the people who need them most. Sarah believes that everyone has a story and her mission is to help them tell it and she's not the only one. Sarah's work has secured her clients over $30 million in deals and opportunities. Sarah, I am so grateful and happy to welcome you to the show.
Thanks. It is a joy to be here.
Your bio was super impressive. I know we had to cut some stuff out to make sure it all fit. One of the things that shines through for me is that while you're offering is very diverse. It all clearly centers around writing. I want to open our interview with what is the best piece of writing advice you've ever received.
I've received a lot over the course of my life and career. When I thought about this, what it came down to for me was a quote by William Faulkner, which is, “If there's a story in you, it has to come out.” That's what I believe and that's what informs my entire work because writing can be an art, but it's also a skill and sometimes that skill trips people up. At the end of the day, if you have something to say, even if you don't know how to say it, you have to get it out. That's what I'm here to help people do, to support that journey wherever they are.
I already feel like that resonated with me for something so silly. I don't know if I shared this with you, but I have an idea for a Christmas movie. It's such a departure from the business, but it's such a clever idea and I think I can do it. When I tell people, they're like, “What?” I'm like, “I don't know how to explain it. I want to do it.” I have a story wanting to come out.
Where people stop themselves in this creative process is they judge it right out the door or they edit it right out the door and it never sees the light of day. That's unfortunate. Take that advice to heart because it will change your entire way of operating with writing but also business.
I appreciate that. I think of it as a skill and an art. We're going to get into both of those. First, let's dive a little bit deeper into an overview of your business, who you support, and how people find you and hire you because that's going to help us set the tone for the rest of the interview.
I am a writer, editor, and a writing coach, which means that people who are struggling with any part of their writing can come to me and I'll work with them one-on-one wherever they're starting. Some people come to me with an idea but they don't know how to get it out, so I'll coach them. We'll have a lot of sessions like this where we're talking through the emotions, the ideas, and the concepts. We formulate the entire project from square one.
They do most of the writing and I do most of the talking and the idea-supporting stuff. I also write directly for my clients. There are some clients who don't have the time to write especially solopreneurs or entrepreneurs, who are hustling at all hours. They don't have time to write marketing copy. They don't have time to write emails or formal business letters.
I have clients who will keep me in their back pocket on a monthly basis and they throw me stuff as they need it done. Finally, I work with people who have a block emotionally or mentally. Sometimes it's not that they can't write or don't have time to write. It's that there's something blocking them. I can work with them in that regard. Whether it's fully writing something for them, editing it, or coaching them through the process, people come to me when they need to get it done and need to get it done well.
Execution and execution with quality. As you're talking, I'm like, "I could use you in all three of those buckets.” I wrote a lot when I was growing up. I was on the newspaper staff in high school and editor of the yearbook. I was into all of this. I went through some old boxes that my parents wanted to toss. I went through it all and I found all these poems, stories, and stuff I forgot about. I'll draw also them because they are comical.
It was a little bit of a trip reading through it because it's something I used to do all the time then I didn't. Now that I've been building my business, I find myself writing all the time and I have been surprised how difficult it's been. Even though it's something I know I'm capable of, it's very challenging. I'd be curious. Is that part of the reason people seek you out or seek someone like you out to support them?
Let's talk more about that. What did you struggle with exactly?
Part of it is probably a time balance. I'd rather spend my time having conversations, building relationships, and bringing income into my business, but I know that the writing element is a big part of it. Time maybe is part of the blockage. Also, it's uncomfortable to figure yourself out there. It’s like the nutshell of it.
That's common especially with solopreneurs because we are used to doing everything by ourselves. We're also used to controlling everything. We want our brand and our reputation to be intact at all times. We don't want to look stupid. We want to look smart. We don't want to say something that causes people to doubt us in any way.
What ends up happening is you second guess yourself then it never happens. What I try to tell people and what my mission is is that it's okay to struggle. If it's a pain point and if this is something that is taking up time and sucking energy from your brain, get rid of it. Take it off your plate. Give it to somebody like me entirely or partially. That alone not only releases some of your time and your day, but that mental energy. That alone is worth its weight and gold.
The mental energy is an interesting part of it, too, because you have to get in a brain or a mindset of like, “I'm writing,” but if you get a phone call, you have to answer an email, or jump from meeting the meeting, it's challenging to focus and narrow down that.
It is. With writing, I know we're not right there now, but to battle this right here, break it into chunks knowing that you only have maybe 30 minutes or 20 minutes to work on your writing at this time. What can you get done in those 15 or 20 minutes? Set your expectations low so that you're not judging yourself for not meeting some goal.
That's helpful. One of the things that I wanted to ask you that I find very interesting is the $30 million in deals and opportunities that you supported with your clients. I'm a money-talks type of person and I like the idea of the writing honestly converting to revenue. I'd be interested to hear from you. What are some of the strategies or your North Star when you're writing with the goal of converting business for your clients or yourself?
I write for clients across many genres. That means I have to be able to understand the client's voice immediately. Sometimes that's challenging because they maybe don't even understand their voice. It's taking a beat to assess the situation and talk with them. Any writing project I take on, especially when they're new, this is the first step, a meeting like this where I can hear their voice and I can see how they are in the world.
I ask for materials that they've already written. I ask for things that they see out in the world that they love and inspire them. We start there, then we talk about who their client is and who are they targeting. We talk specifics because the problem sometimes is in business, we want to talk to everyone because we want all the clients all the time.
If we're talking to everyone, we're talking to no one. That's the risk we take. I know that fits along with your own business philosophy too. You have to understand who you're a fit for because you're not a fit for everyone. Working with my clients to say, “Let's dial it in. Who are you going after? Let's target those people. What do you have to say to them? What do you have to offer to them? What do you want to leave them feeling after they've read your material?”
When we can create copy that taps into that specificity, and also when we can create copy that taps into emotion, that's the winning combination because people do not buy or purchase something from a cognitive place. They're not thinking with their brains when they purchase. What causes someone to hit that buy now button is pure emotions. You have to tap into that place. You have to take someone into the story of how they feel and how you can be their solution. That's what I work with my clients on every day.
I understand the niche down and who you're talking to, but let's pull the thread more on the concept of tapping into what they're feeling and making decisions based on emotion. Can you expand on that a little bit more?
We're all humans, and at the end of the day, we might do our research. It sounds counterintuitive because when we want to buy a product, where do we go? We go Google and we start spreadsheeting. We compare the prices and all the features, but we are looking for a solution to a very specific problem. We are looking for relief when we buy anything. To understand that, you have to dive deep into what your client is feeling and what any of us are feeling at any given moment.
In order to do that, you yourself have to have a way to tap into your own awareness, authenticity, and understanding of how that process works and this is getting into the woo a little bit. If you don't have a little bit of understanding of the psychology behind the buying, then you can't write copy that places your client or your potential client as the protagonist in their own story and control of their own outcome. That outcome includes you.
That's wonderful because I feel like a lot of the research that I've done and what I've packaged in my workshops is we have a couple of different modules. One of the modules is about storytelling. With sales professionals in particular, you think you're crushing your sales call because you're able to answer a bunch of product facts, but then if you are only speaking in facts and figures, the brain only lights up in two areas.
If you are in storytelling, it lights up in seven areas. You become more memorable. Especially in B2B, they have to turn around and basically sell on your behalf. They're going to let all those facts and figures roll off of it. If you can tie a story into it, I'd never put together that the storytelling is evoking the emotion whereas the facts and figures are just logic.
It's true. More than that, what it does is it retrains your brain. It creates new neural pathways. It is this idea of visualizing yourself doing something. Like Michael Phelps, his routine, his Olympic-winning routine included huge visualization exercises. Every time he could see himself in the pool, he could feel himself in the pool. He saw every movement that he did to win every single race and he did.
What that does is it makes your mind believe that you've done it. It makes your heart believe that you've done it. If you can write copy that makes your client believe they've already done it and feel that they've already found the solution to their pain point, they're in. That's authentic. It's not about swindling someone. It's about being in service to someone. The writing that you do is very important because it has to reflect the power that you have to help this person.
B2B in particular is a little bit more of an offender to this, but maybe I am biased because I see a lot of it. There's a reason B2B marketing and B2B are so messy just because people haven't tapped into this. I see a lot of logic arguments or facts and figures. What can people do if they have those like logic lenses? You already put yourself in your ideal client's shoes, but what are other ways to tap into that emotion that you're talking about?
When you're dealing with a lot of math and figures, you have to understand the why behind it, like the why behind these measurements, the graphs, and the charts and what that translates to in real life. Graphs and stuff are boring. They don't have anything to offer us when we look at them. It's impressive and it tells us you have a good product, but there are other good products out there as well.
Even if you can find one thing about your company, product, or service that speaks to your culture, your philosophy, or even your vision, put one sentence in there that gives us a little bit of your personality or a little bit of your company voice. You can start small. It may not be for you. Not everybody has to do this woo-woo emotional thing.
It's not a fit for everybody, but sprinkle a little bit in here and there and see how it does. You can even pull in a focus group of a few of your repeat clients and trusted clients that come back and you don't have to worry about losing their business and ask them what they think about this. Ask them what they think your true voice is and workshop a few things with them.
I like that idea, feedback. One of the things that I've been doing with my clients is I'll get feedback and they'll tell me a story of what they used and what the results were. That's helping me sharpen my marketing skills. If we're not getting feedback from people, it's a great opportunity to capture some of that storytelling and ways to weave in the emotion to it.
Writing is connecting to human minds and hearts. You have to get good at listening to your clients and also yourself.
If people want to work on this on their own, I'm thinking about people who don't want to write LinkedIn posts or people who want to work on their eBooks. I write the solo podcast episodes and they take a lot of time. I have to get into it and get to that piece. Can you share some ways that people can start working? First, the emotional piece. I know we've talked about it quite a bit, but I also want to look at more tangible takeaways on how to start being a more effective writer.
Let's say you want to put up a LinkedIn post on Tuesday and you have no idea what to write about. The first step, I would take a moment. Maybe five minutes. Set a timer for five minutes and type out on your computer all the things that have stood out to you so far. What are the remarkable things that have stuck in your brain? You may not know why and maybe it doesn't make sense to your business. Put it on the paper and do that for five minutes.
After five minutes, go through your list. See if there's anything you could write about. See if there's anything that's crazy and get rid of that. See what you're left with after you start eliminating things that maybe aren't relevant, and then what you can do is choose one. This is where something like an AI platform could come in handy.
As a writer, I know that's like, “I'm suggesting AI,” but it's a great starting point. What you can do is you can jump into a platform. You can say, “Write a LinkedIn post about how I had a reflection on the beach about great customer service,” and then see what happens. It'll spit out trash. I can almost guarantee you, but that's not a point. What the point is it will overcome that writer's block for you.
You already have words on the page and maybe there's even one sentence or one paragraph you can take and you can start crafting your own post from that. The other thing is you can collaborate. Don't feel like you have to exist in this silos. If it's time to write a LinkedIn post and you're coming up blank, go out for coffee with your favorite colleague. If you're a solopreneur, call your favorite accountability buddy and be like, “Can we do a ten-minute brain dump? Can we shoot ideas back and forth? Can you tell me about your day was like? What's standing out to you?”
Ideas are not sacred. Ideas are meant to be shared and they generate on top of each other. If you find yourself in this vacuum, the antidote is to seek connection. Have that connection to another person, somebody who is supportive, somebody who loves your work, and somebody who is your cheerleader. Once you're working with them a little bit, it'll seem less scary. You can also work with someone like me but you don't have to hire out.
Ideas are not sacred. Ideas are meant to be shared and they generate on top of each other.
You could go to somebody you know who's a marketing person. Marketing people are great writers usually, so ask them what they think about it. Also, what you can do on your own social media if you're not doing this already is you should start saving everything that you like that does something to you emotionally. You should screenshot it or you should click that little save to collections button on Instagram or wherever you're getting your social. The more you cultivate your feed into what you like, the more you'll begin to understand more about your own voice. As you tap into your own voice and validate it, it will become easier to write.
I want to recap some of those tips because I have a question about what you said. Understanding your own voice is going to be my question. I wrote about how we can do that, but I want to recap. Those were all great tips. I love the idea of writing out your day because I think about it like I'm cat-sitting. The cat is so needy, but she's also so cute. That could be a whole thing. I had a great call with someone who energized me. I've meetings all day and I feel so energized talking to people. I need to make sure my days are filled.
That gave me a lot of good ideas to reflect on the day, so five minutes to jot down what happened in the day. Brainstorm with a buddy. Brain dump your day. I love that if you're in a vacuum, the antidote is to see a connection. That was brilliant. Also, saving what you like, that's going to start to give you a routine, a recipe, or an idea of resonates with you. That's very cool. I did that when I was building on my branding. I would take pictures of colors that I liked because I knew I wanted to be a colorful brand. Let's talk about understanding our own voice through that lens. What are other ways that people can do to identify what their writing voice is?
Writing is a lot of listening. I alluded to it earlier. If we're talking about the craft or the art of it and where you get writing that's effective, you have to create space and time for it. It might mean dedicating some time to it each day. Once you have that time, you need to get real quiet and still. I personally suggest a little bit of mindset work here, a little bit of, “I'm going to ground myself. I'm going to become present. I'm going to breathe a little bit. I'm just going to let my mind open and see what's there.”
Writing is a lot of listening.
As ideas come up, you can start to listen. You might not be able to hear anything at first. You're mind might be ping-ponging back and forth with all the things you have to do, but the more you practice just sitting, closing your eyes, and breathing, it's meditating essentially. It's not for everyone, but it does impact your writing and your creative process of any kind. You have to get quiet and listen first.
Once your authentic voice feels safe to come out, it will. As weird as that may sound to some people, it truly works. This is what I do with my clients all the time. I'm like, “Trust me. We're going to sit. We're not going to say anything.” They’re like, “Whatever.” I give them ten minutes to just sit there and write and things start coming out that they didn't even know was there. It doesn't always happen the first time. Stick with it and don't edit. It. Don't judge it. Your job is not to critique your own work. Your job is to honor it and to just record it. You're almost an observer of your voice.
I was going to ask you when you do that with your clients. What's the feedback? Is their resistance to get?
Sometimes there is resistance, but usually, they trust me wholeheartedly. They're like, “This is a little weird.” The people who seek out me as a coach or work with me individually for a book or a passion project are more open to this. This type of work, I probably would not do with a hedge fund manager who needs an investor pitch deck. That's not a fit for that.
I dare you. Come back and tell us how it goes.
In 2024, anything could happen. It's going to get wild. There's a little resistance at first, but usually, they do it. It is magical. It's a magical moment and people who want that will seek it out. They know what I'm saying. They hear what I'm saying. It's not for everyone, but it does work.
Do you recommend your phones in the other room or a drawer? Are you removing distractions? What other things can people do to get into writing mode?
It's whatever you need. It's funny, when I write, I’m multitasking usually. I write a little bit, and I look at my phone. I write a little bit, and I look at the web. I'm all over the place. For me, that's my process and it's a process I've honed over the years and I know that it works for me. If you like to multitask, don't take that away from yourself. The idea is to create an environment where you feel welcome to be who you are. Do that if it feels good, but if you need to shut it all down, put your laptop on focus mode. Put your phone in the other room. Put it on Do Not Disturb if you need to so that people know you're doing something. Shut your office door.
The idea is to create an environment where you feel totally welcome to be who you really are.
I have signs on the door all the time, “Do not disturb.” Also, as a writer myself, I have a lot of ideas that come to me when I'm not even trying to find them. At first, I would be like, “I'll remember that,” but I'm not going to remember it. I immediately take out my phone. I put it in my Notes app. I have 500 notes that are this poem or this half-baked idea.
You then go back to them and you're like, “There's something there.” Once you tell your brain that you will be doing this, it gets in line. It starts giving you ideas to record. I recommend keeping something at hand that you can keep those ideas written down on, whether that's your phone, your computer, or dictating. Dictating is a great thing too. Take a voice memo.
I feel like once I started the business, it opened a portal in my brain. It's weird to say it that way. I have ideas dropping in. It's like there's not enough time to do all these things, build all these businesses, and write all these books yet, but it doesn't mean that they can't happen. I've started to experience that with writing work consistently. It is becoming easier.
That's where the practice comes in. That's because you're validating the whole process and you're not judging yourself. It's coming from a flow state. This is what they talk about when they talk about flow state. It's easy and accessible. You're honoring it by always acknowledging it. It's important.
I wrote that outline for my Christmas movie. We're recording it in December. It’s like Sunday morning, I built a fire, I had my laptop, and I wrote the whole outline for the movie in an hour. It came out so easy. Now that the outline is there, I'm changing it as we go. The same thing I've been putting things in my notes. I was looking at something and it was like, “The antagonist is going to.” I was like, “What? That's for the Christmas movie.” It is funny to see. I liked your comment about just writing it all first and don't edit it.
The other thought I had while we were talking was to find a creative partner. I write screenplays myself. Not a lot, but when I do write screenplays, I always have a creative partner. We write it together. We have Zoom sessions all the time, but if that's not your thing to truly co-author something with somebody, at least you could have perhaps a mastermind group where there are a few of you who are working on your own projects and have a little power hour of writing then maybe sharing some things back and forth. If you get stuck, you guys can get each other out. You can have shared editing responsibilities. It's the connection. Creation thrives on connection.
Creation thrives on connection.
I like that a lot. I’m going to post to anything. It could be a LinkedIn post. It could be an email. Now that I'm self-employed, I have other people call me and say, “Can I read this email to you before I send it to my client?” I'm like, “Sure.” It's almost like we've built our own little co-worker posse. I don't know the right word for that, but it's been helpful because you're not creating in a vacuum.
I see it a lot where people have this intense self-reliance, but we're not going to get there alone at all. When you struggle with something, reach out. People love to be reached out to. Think about how you feel when somebody calls you and considers you a good enough friend or a great enough expert in the field to seek your advice and wisdom on something that will have a great impact on their business. That's huge for them to do. To give that to someone else to say, “I have this thing. Could you look it over?” is not a burden at all. It's the gift to allow them into your world and your process and to have a bit of a piece of what you're offering to the world.
That's so interesting you say it that way. I had a meeting with someone and it was supposed to be a 30-minute call. It turned into an hour and 30. Luckily, we both had the time. This guy is a digital marketer. He's going to be on the show coming up. He was giving me so many interesting ideas and feedback points that finally I said, “Can I pull up my 2024 business plan to you?” I gave him all the behind-the-scenes stuff of numbers and what I wanted to do for the new year.
I asked him his opinion on some of the things I want to create and he gave me some different feedback. I felt so grateful that he gave me so much of his time because I know it's valuable, but I know he got a lot out of it too. That is like momentum or symbiosis. Maybe I won't help him in the same way, but I can help somebody else.
It's this cool momentum cycle that keeps building. Especially with writing, the action of sitting down and doing it is important, but the actual execution of it is just as important. Do you find that there are either people who take action and execute or try to execute without taking the proper action? What's the blend there?
That's interesting. What I tend to see most is the clients have a problem executing. That's a lot of what happens. That's why they contact me because, a lot of times, they have the ideas. They have the desire, but they don't know where to start or they're feeling overwhelmed. That's what we were saying to break it down into manageable chunks. All of this is delegation and management and looking at your writing as another thing to accomplish. You can take the weight right off of it, but sometimes people can't. That goes way back.
A lot of people have stuff. You got to think about when we were kids, learning to write and read in school. Some of us did not have the most supportive environments. Some of us didn't have the best teachers or support from others. Sometimes, we didn't get the best messaging and support around our own work. That remains to this day even if we're not aware of it.
That's interesting because I told you I found all of my old high school newspapers that I wrote. We wrote a lot of poems in middle school, elementary school, and high school. I found all my poetry notebooks. I tossed them all, but I took pictures of them. One of the things that was interesting was this. I don't remember this at all, but it must have been ninth grade. We had a classmate who would have to write, read, and review like a peer review.
It was so interesting to see these people that I haven't seen in many years, but they're writing like, “I can hear your voice. It's like I'm there.” It was a positive environment. Maybe that's why I don't have a bad relationship with writing. It's like I'm revisiting an old friend and we're getting to know each other after a long time and still flushing each other out.
That's the other side of the coin. It is the same idea, just the opposite. We live in many lifetimes. All of us live so many lifetimes. Sometimes, these lifetimes come through. We hold parts of each of our experiences and we bring them forward. Sometimes we let them go and we forget all about it, and then that part gets reawakened at some point. You're like, “This is deeply rooted.”
For example, when I got out of college, I went into nonprofit management for 6 to 10 years. I wasn't going to be a writer. I love writing, but I wasn't going to do it. The voice inside me kept prompting me to do it and I finally did it. As I have run this business, submitted bios, and thought about my journey, I think back to sixth grade when I won the young authors contest for my poem about my paper route. It comes full circle. It does. If you can honor who you were as a little kid, you never know.
I found a poem that I did post on LinkedIn and I made a joke that I was going to make it my new LinkedIn bio. The poem was four lines so I remember. I said, “Sarah is smart and willing to play. Ready to rumble and likes beanie babies.” I got an A. It was funny, then I found another poem. I don't remember this one off the dump of my head, but it was about like, “Utah's beautiful. The weather is nice. Not as nice as California. Utah works for me.”
As soon as I could, I moved to California from Utah. It's almost like your little fifth-grade self-manifested your future. I feel grateful that I had a nice supportive environment around writing, but what can people do if they feel they maybe had a negative experience or a less supportive environment?
I've worked with friends and clients who come with serious trauma around that. What I do with them is we don't even start with writing. We don't touch writing for a few sessions. We just talk because I want to create a safe space for them to get comfortable expressing themselves. It's that voice thing. I come with a few questions or a few prompts and we talk through them.
Usually, in a writing process, you write your answers out to a prompt, but in this case, what we do is talk about it. Usually, I will record the session then I will transcribe it for them so that they can see how they speak, which is typically easier for someone who struggles with writing, and then they see their beautiful language written out and they begin to see themselves as they truly are.
It is a transformation. It doesn't happen immediately because there's a lot of fear. Truthfully, people haven't been able to learn how to spell, do grammar, or any of that, but that doesn't matter because we have machines for all of that. We've editors for all of that. What matters is what they want to say. What's their story? I come from a heart space like in my bio. That's why I say heart because it takes a lot of time to work through that with people. My goal with a session like that is to validate, create safety, and give them a positive experience so that they can come back and say, “That was great. Let's do it again.”
I would have made the tie between our history from an emotional standpoint and how that impacts positively or negatively our experience with writing.
Sometimes in business, it's cut and dry. There's no room for this type of discussion, so I get it. There's going to be a moment where you're in front of your computer and you're under a deadline. You're like, “Why can't I write this? What is happening? Why am I blocked?” It could be a million reasons, but it's okay if this is the reason.
I could see it being very validating. We have emotional blocks and then we have writer's block. Are they one in the same or different things?
Writer’s block happens to us all. In fact, I have a cool little creepy download all about how to overcome writer's block. Writer's block is a thing that happens to everybody where you simply cannot write. There are technical and logistical ways to overcome it. There are a lot of tips in that little download, but I'll give you one little thing I do. If I'm struggling with how to write something, maybe I have a work in progress, but it sounds terrible and it doesn't look at all like I intended, I'll get up and I walk away from it. I'm like, “Peace. I cannot deal with you.”
This is true for anything. Do not struggle for longer than ten minutes with any task, especially as a solopreneur or entrepreneur. Our time and our mental space are too valuable. If it's not working, it's not working. Even if you're under a deadline, put it down. Go do something else and come back to it. If it's still causing you trouble, then you might need to call in some reinforcements and have somebody else look at it and suggest a different starting point, or what I like to do is also start at a different spot. If I'm trying to work on the beginning of something, even a LinkedIn post, for example, like we've been talking about, if I can't start it but I know where I want to end it, I'll work on the ending.
That's a great tip, start at a different spot. You alluded to it earlier, but I feel like I would be remiss if we didn't talk a little bit about AI and ChatGPT. I would share that one of my 2024 resolutions is to embrace AI more. I feel like I've been a little resistant. Mainly it's like, “I don't want to learn another thing,” but I also don't want to get left behind. ChatGPT sometimes comes up with like, “It's icky.” It's like, “This sounds like a computer wrote this,” and I end up redoing the whole thing. How can we start to embrace AI in our relationship to writing?
It’s a matter of understanding what it's good at and what it's not good at. It is not good at writing, but it's good at generating ideas for you like starting something to respond to. Sometimes when I'm writing something and I don't know how to start it, I type in what we've already talked about which is like, “Write such and such in this voice.” It comes out like crap, but it at least gets my wheels turning. That's one way to use it.
Another way to use it is for research. It's a little bit similar to Google, but you can use a simpler language with it. You can talk to it as a real person and hone what you're looking for so you can easily pull in research and data. You can also reformat stuff easily. Let's say you told it to write a two-page paper on the value of connecting to your client and wrote it in a narrative paragraph way.
You can tell it to insert some bullets, then you can tell it to insert some lists. From there, you can start to see how information is broken down. You can start to think, “Maybe this isn't an article at all. Maybe this is a list. Maybe this is a different format.” Writer's block, getting stuck, and all that stuff, the idea to get out of it is to create forward momentum, to do something different, and to keep moving and not just keep doing the same thing over and over again. Even if it sounds crazy or looks weird, do it.
I like that and I'm going to have a better relationship with ChatGPT moving forward.
It is a robot. Whatever you produce with ChatGPT, you need a human to edit and write it eventually. You can tell books like lead generator books. It's very popular for people to write lead generator books fully in AI but you can tell that an AI wrote it. If that's what you want, that's cool. It's all good. Chill. Use it efficiently, and if it works for you, great. I'm all about efficiency to save time. If you want a little bit more of a human voice, then you can't rely totally on ChatGPT.
I feel like one of the things that has been impressive to me in this conversation is how many different tools you gave us. I like the brainstorming session with other people. I like the just start writing, get grounded for a few minutes, breathe, and connect with yourself then write uninterrupted and edit as you go. Before we wrap up, are there any other thoughts or takeaways you want to leave our audience with? What are our final thoughts here on our relationship to our writing?
The final thought here is if you're here reading this episode, there's a reason for it. You may not know what reason that is or you may. Your task now is not to go out and create the great American novel or the great investor pitch deck. Your job now is to honor yourself, your brand, and your story. Give yourself space to be who you are. When I say you, I mean you individually, but I do mean your team.
Give yourself space to be who you really are.
Give your team all the space they need to create wonderful innovative ideas for you. Give your whole company the space that they need. Be willing to risk looking like a fool to get to the heart of what you're doing in the world. At the end of the day, your writing, your company, and your service are an offering to the world. We've said this and it is the way that we stay connected. It is the way we make a difference. It's the way that we're going to go into the future even with robots.
I see that very much. A lot of people who are successful with that heart-to-heart human relationship, not B2B or B2C but the human-to-human path forward is where we're all heading into the future. I appreciate you wrapping that up so beautifully. You could tell you're a writer.
The other thing I would say is don't wait. Life changes so fast. To have a piece of writing that somebody you admire or somebody you love has written is their legacy. It is what you hold in your hand after they have gone. Couldn't you be or wouldn't you be someone like that for someone else? You have a legacy to leave. It is not too late. You can start it now. The question is what do you want your legacy to be?
That's a heavy question, but I like that's where we're going to end our interview. What do we want our legacies to be? That's very cool. Thank you, Sarah. You have a freebie. What is the freebie again?
It's an emergency writing intervention, overcoming writer's block fast. There are five tips and there are five bonus tips on how to get over it quickly so you can get that document out the door before the deadline.
I like that. That'll help us kick in the pants to take action. Where can people find you if they want to learn more, hire you, or connect to see if you'll be a fit?
At www.TheEmpireExpander.com. I'm on LinkedIn as well as Instagram.
Sarah, thank you so much for your time. I'm excited to get writing.
Thanks so much, Sarah. This was great.
