Category Archives for Entrepreneurship
Maintaining Consistency While You Evolve Your Content
Freelancers become what our jobs need us to be. We must be adaptable and flexible, but still maintain consistency in the quality of the work we produce.
I’ve learned a lot about consistency during my time as a content producer. Besides maturing as a person, I’ve also matured as a writer and entrepreneur. You have to when you’re producing the majority of several clients’ content.
I’ve also learned that entrepreneurs don’t always know what’s best for their company when it comes to content.
That’s not to talk poorly about any of the people I’ve worked for. I have great respect for people who can start a business from nothing and grow it into something sustainable.
The problem has to do with human nature and our aversion to long-term commitment.
AKA we tend to get bored of things after a while.
Take a Risk and Do the Project that Scares You
Doing the thing that scared me most career-wise — taking on a project that I wasn’t 100 percent sure about — led me to where I am today: writing, editing, and working with awesome people.
When you’re a professional writer, people assume that if words are involved with their project, you can handle it. I had previously done copywriting for two issues of a literary magazine and taught and tutored writing for over four years. Between all of my previous experience, I felt confident enough with the fundamentals of copywriting to start working full-time with clients.
My very first “gig” was revising copy for a company that needed help with editing customer-facing product descriptions to make them sound snappier, more alive. Easy-peasy. But that same day, the project manager handed me another project: I had to come up with a brilliant tagline for a business-to-business (B2B) advertisement, with a deadline of that same day. My first thought: What the hell is a B2B ad?
Well, that was something I had to learn — and fast.
Ditch Resolutions Based on Vanity Metrics — Set Entrepreneurial Goals Instead
Ahhh, the promise of a new year. I’m one of those people who enjoys thinking about my New Year’s resolutions, though believe me, I’m fully aware that lots of people think setting resolutions will just give them a headache and cause anguish when they aren’t able to achieve them.
I’m not one of those “New year, new me!” people; I just like to capitalize on the fact that a new year is starting, and it’s time to review what I’ve been doing for the last 12 months. Thinking about resolutions helps me figure out what I could do differently or better in the future, or goals that I didn’t achieve last year that I want to work on more this year.
Coming up with New Year’s resolutions — at least for me — is mostly a practice of reflection. I think about what I’ve done the past year, what I wish I had been able to achieve or do, and what I’m most proud of in terms of my accomplishments.
Maybe you had a goal last year to publish a certain number of articles, or guest post on a certain number of sites. Perhaps you achieved your goals, or maybe you met only half of them.
How to Choose Your Entrepreneurial Influencers and Harness the Impressionable Brain
If you’re a human being (which, if you’re reading this, I assume you are), I’m sure you’re well aware that we as human beings are social and impressionable creatures. No matter who you are — introverted and extroverted alike — we all need human connection to learn, grow, and excel in life, as well as in our chosen fields.
Granted, there will always be lone wolves who prefer to opt for solitude, believing that people only distract them from achieving their goals and their other pursuits in life.
All the same, our ability to communicate through language, gestures, and facial expressions, our simple ability to navigate the world — going to the loo, doing push-ups, using money to buy things — is reliant on the impressionable nature of the human brain, and our social interactions to date. Even someone who is self-taught likely became so not only through tinkering on their lonesome, but perhaps also through observing someone else, reading books, watching instructional videos, or — my personal favorite — asking Google.
These are all learning platforms — resources for the inquiring mind to plumb — and they are all products of humankind. I want to talk about the often untapped resource of influencers or, more romantically, heroes, in the entrepreneurial realm.