Category Archives for Entrepreneurship
How Good Writing Can Build a Great Business
Can I be honest with you? Maybe share a little work frustration with you in confidence?
I hate it when people who are super smart and really good at their jobs say, “Oh, it’s just communications. Anyone can do that. How hard can it be?”
Unless your job is being a communications expert, chances are it’s going to be really hard for you to do it well.
Or to corrupt a Star Trek quote: “Dammit, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a social media expert.”
I’m Tired of Being Nice: One Crotchety Soul’s Wish for a Whole New Email World
Anyone who knows me personally knows how much I appreciate direct, no-BS people.
In my ideal world, we would all be honest, perhaps to a fault (see: The Invention of Lying). We would, from a young age, learn to communicate and be communicated to in earnest, and accept the hard facts without always having them couched in a compliment sandwich.*
This preference toward straight-shooting Ron Swanson types is why I don’t play well with gaggles of catty people or fit into highly politicized workplaces. I like to know where I stand.
That isn’t the world we live in, though, so we all have to adapt to some degree, myself included.
Being a Digital Home-ad — Pros and Cons of the Quiet Life
The joys of being a digital nomad aren’t always all they’re cracked up to be.
Just as many people post pictures on Facebook that try and project an ideal life (no one really stops to take photos during horrible arguments, despairing money moments, or bedridden existential crises, do they?), so too do we often hold an ideal image of what working life outside of the nine-to-five will look like.
The Importance of Word Choice When Discussing Your Writing Career
As writers, we understand the impact of language. We pour over each syllable, agonize over a “but” versus a “yet,” and spend hours deciding the best way to communicate a specific idea or narrative.
We know that a single word can alter how an audience feels, create moods, encourage action, or inspire people to change their minds.
Yet when it comes to discussing our writing career — even to ourselves — we often don’t put the same consideration into our word choices. Even more problematically, we may unknowingly be self-sabotaging our careers with our language.