Make a word cloud in 2 minutes
I begin each workday with an hour of reading and research, mostly via social media. Scanning headlines, posts and images on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and my favorite blogs, I allow myself...
View ArticleQuit wasting time and money on newsletters
Newsletters are junk mail. Newsletters are items we are quick to pitch or delete. Their greatest value may be that fleeting sense of satisfaction we feel as the trash hits the bin. We’ve eliminated a...
View Article10 Commandments for Business Writers
1. Thou shalt not express your interests without first considering what matters to your reader. 2. Thou shalt not mindlessly copy and paste from previous communications, but instead choose the right...
View ArticleFour writing strategies to help you get a little action
“This is just FYI.” Next time you draft that sentence into a business message, stop. Admit that you are either: 1. Wasting your recipient’s time. or 2. Lying. You wouldn’t really bother your busy...
View ArticleEverybody needs a little space. White space.
Here’s a little story from my life as a parent. A business lesson follows. I promise. When my youngest was in first grade, during parent-teacher conferences, her teacher handed me a manila folder of...
View ArticleYes you CAN create image-rich presentations
The rusty-haired man from the third row was next in line to talk with me, scrolling Instagram while he waited. When it was finally his turn, he moved his phone to his left hand and shook mine with his...
View Article3 actions I’ll take to be a more creative communicator in 2018
“Priority is a singular noun. Stop making it plural.” At first, the speaker’s words rubbed me the wrong way. My inner thoughts became a tantrum: “I can so have multiple priorities. I am strong, smart,...
View ArticleIt’s just play. Life-changing play.
On New Year’s Day, I sketched a carrot. I didn’t think much about it. I just wanted to play. So I opened a drawing app on my iPad and started making orange and green smudges. As they began to resemble...
View ArticleHow to actually be amazing when you’re virtually presenting
Face-to-face meetings have become a luxury. Thanks to the pressures of time, budget, distance, and over-scheduling, the “location” field in so many meeting invitations is populated not with a...
View ArticleWhy zero is a perfectly reasonable wordcount goal
To the delight or (more accurately) dismay of participants, when Jill Pollack and I are leading Story Mode workshops, we routinely challenge students to compress their messages down to micro length....
View ArticleIf your message were empty, would anyone notice?
While I was stewing about what to write for this month’s post, “Every TED Talk Ever” entered my line of sight. Care to watch it without spoilers? Go ahead. You can meet me in the next paragraph in...
View ArticleWant to be a more creative communicator? Contain yourself!
I call myself The Corporate Poet and Cutter of Crap. I have tattoos and a nose ring. And I wear Wonder Woman high tops to work. Some days, I swap the high tops for more formal footwear. But the tats...
View ArticleThe life-changing magic of reading creative books
“What are you reading?” It’s the question I love to ask when I meet others who value great stories, good writing, and creative thinking. When the answer strikes a chord, I add the title to my Goodreads...
View ArticleHow my small business is doing in 2020: a story in words and pictures
(inspired by Laura Numeroff, one of my favorite children’s book authors; illustrations by yours truly) If you give a creative entrepreneur a moment—say, a few months of no travel and reduced client...
View ArticleHow a teeter-totter can help you craft a persuasive message
As a kid on the playground, one of my favorite attractions was the teeter-totter. Maybe you called it a seesaw. A teeter-totter is a dangerous apparatus, not to be shared with anyone but a friend you...
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