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I.  The writing of American  social worker and researcher Brene Brown has influenced business people for some time. Seth Godin prominently praised Brown’s study, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead (NY: Penguin, 2012). Most recently, in her latest study, All In: You, Your Business, Your Life (2013), (which I recently discussed, in this blog), Arlene Dickinson cites Brown and the importance of freeing oneself from shame in order to live courageously. Brown is a social worker (and former TED lecturer), who describes herself as a shame researcher. What has she brought to the conversation about the psychology of marketing, so that entrepreneurs/marketers like Godin and Dickinson take notice?

First, I think that everyone (whatever their field) has at some point felt shame. I recall a personal memory, fifteen years ago, when I attended a professional symposium, as a young guest and observer. Professionals from around the world were present and I thought the opportunity to hear the particular keynote speaker was a valuable one. But when I arrived, I had hastily written my (required) name tag and placed it on the blazer of my suit. In doing so, I had (unnoticed by me, due to the throngs of folk around) smudged the writing of my name and then not put the badge on straight.  For the next few minutes, unaware of my faux pas, I moved around cliques of professionals—people standing in tightly maintained circles, who were unwilling to acknowledge a newcomer’s presence in the reception room, much less to have the empathy to point out to me my botched name tag. When I realized my gaff, I cringed with shame. Still no one spoke to me. When I entered the auditorium, I did so alone. The irony that the meeting was to discuss psychological issues was not lost on me, and I knew that the politics I was witnessing were many years in the making, and had little to do with me. The tone of the audience was caustic and defensive.  Based the behaviour that I’d witnessed, I considered leaving, but figured that I had already paid and was entitled at least to hear the keynote.

Fast forward four years and I was sitting in an archive and reading room of a small university in Europe, where laptops groaned under the high summer heat (and lack of an air conditioner). After a morning’s work, my computer failed and I panicked as I suddenly was unable to retrieve pages (hours of transcriptions) of my observations, based on viewing archival documents that I had only temporary access to, and by travel and appointment. The loss was terrible and I felt ashamed about my technology malfunction, stung by disappointment and loss. I was considering giving up the whole project I was preparing. Unlike in the previous scenario, however, an acquaintance at the next table in this archive had witnessed my panic  and reached out to assist me, by salvaging memory onto a portable disk (prior to memory sticks and the “cloud”). That moment of empathy and grace has stayed with me, ever since. The surge of relief I felt with this friend’s support calmed me and helped me to cope and strategize. (With her help, by the way, I recovered most of the lost data.)

One memory recalls shame in all its isolating power and the other, release from it, by a good and kind friend.  Empathy acknowledges that no one is alone, when shame is isolating from others. Continue reading “Brene Brown’s Writing on Shame Influences Business, too”

March 8th was International Women’s Day and the topic of women entrepreneurs became top of mind, as I was offered free drinks and brochures on the topic at my local Staples’ store! In a much more sustained way, however, in my blog, I have always been interested in the role of gender in entrepreneurship.

In my blog, I observe and discuss issues pertaining to communications and marketing clients and not to service providers (writers, like me, designers, social media specialists, etc.) But recently, I began reading and blogging on contemporary books that argue that improving the careers and lives of women entrepreneurs simultaneously improves the way that business is done. So although I have not directly addressed my past, current or future prospects in these postings, the implications of these arguments affect us all.

Similarly, these arguments cross gender lines to affect men and the issues men face as entrepreneurs and prospects. I’m grateful to the men in the “marcom” world who have always treated me with the respect of an equal, both in Canada and the US: AWAI and marketing and copywriting experts Steve Slaunwhite and Ed Gandia; LinkedIn guru and trainer, Wayne Breitbarth; and, most recently, Saskatoon-based marketer, Harley Rivet.

Drawing from blog postings that I made between 2013 and this year, in this “special report” I want to revisit some of the challenges and complexities of entrepreneurship for women, featuring the writing of Sheryl Sandberg (Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead [2013]), Debora Spar (Wonder Women: Sex, Power and the Quest for Perfection[2013]), Dianna Huff (“Why Low Self-Worth Drives Lower Wages for Women Freelancers – and What You Can Do About It” [2012]) and Arlene Dickinson (All In: You, Your Business, Your life [2013]). 

1. Sheryl Sandberg: Lean In: Women Work and the Will to Lead (2013):

Every few years a book is released in the business world that is insightful enough to transcend the boundaries between the worlds of business and society (business/government, business/academia, business/the arts, etc.) or (in my case) between such divisions as copywriter and client or editor and writer. As I earlier discussed in my blog, Seth Godin’s Linchpin: Are You Indispensable (2010) was one such book. In the next couple of postings, I’ll discuss why Sheryl Sandberg’s bestseller, Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead, is another (New York: Knopf, 2013). It warrants a close reading from me and from the people with whom I work.  Freelancers may be negotiating an alternative pathway from the mainstream business world (on that see Michelle Goodman’s excellent book, My So-Called Freelance Life [Seal, 2008]). But that pathway isn’t any less subject to what women and men often experience as ongoing gender inequalities. These issues are what Sandberg, COO of Facebook, exposes and discusses.

Of course, as she readily says in her “acknowledgments,” such a discussion cannot reasonably be produced quickly by one person–particularly one as busy as she is, at Facebook. And, she openly states that she is “not a scholar, journalist or sociologist.” But a team of minds, including co-author, journalist Nell Scovell; and the sociologist and researcher, Marianne Cooper (and with the input of numerous others) has produced a manifesto for rethinking gender issues for the 21st century. Sandberg addresses women in the West; and  people (men as much as women) in every field, be they single, partnered, married, divorced, childless, parents or grandparents. (The research is US-based, but Sandberg’s insights are wide-reaching enough to transcend many cultural differences, without denying that those differences exist.)

40 years after the work of Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, whereby women became 50 percent of the college graduates in the United States, Sandberg takes as launching point the reality that the women’s revolution has stalled and true equality has not been reached.  Men still hold, she says, the majority of leadership positions in government, industry and academia, so that women’s voices are “still not heard in the decisions that most affect our lives.” She says that she, like most children of the 1960’s and 70’s expected the glass ceiling to shatter after she started working in the early 1990’s. Instead, she found “with each passing year, fewer and fewer of my colleagues were women. More and more, I was the only woman in the [board]room” (6). Continue reading “Special Report on Women In Business: Revisiting Blog Postings from 2013-14”

She is a venture capitalist on CBC television’s celebrated programs “Dragons’ Den” and “The Big Decision.” And she’s the owner and CEO of Venture Communications (one of the nation’s largest independent agencies with offices in Calgary and Toronto): Arlene Dickinson knows a thing or two about entrepreneurship! Months ago, I read and discussed (for this blog) her first book, Persuasion: A New Approach to Changing Minds. Today, I’m interested in her discussion of failure in business, in her new study, All In: You, Your Business, Your Life (Toronto: Harper Collins, 2013).

But first to provide the context of that discussion, Dickinson argues that for entrepreneurs like her, work often veers toward workaholism, which undermines the division between “work/life balance.” She says that “work is life” for many business people (57), that the two areas are not distinct. That means, as a result, muddling through “the mess” of daily living, sometimes dedicating your life to business; later putting that business “on hold” to nurture a marriage, etc. She says that “Balance is the enemy of excellence” for herself, and for others like her: “There’s no such thing as a part-time entrepreneur, in my opinion,” she writes. “You’re all in, or you might as well go home” (83 my emphasis).

Yet she recognizes that differences separate one entrepreneur from another, saying that “We all have to do what we have to do to survive and put food on the table.”  Those survival strategies will vary. But she also warns that perfectionism can undermine all early entrepreneurs’ efforts to build their businesses: “. . . it’s also true that there is no ideal time to leave the safety net, and it’s willingness to take the safety net-free leap that is the sign of a true entrepreneur.”

Even if you disagree with her “work is life” philosophy, Dickinson advocates reasonableness, in other ways, as being necessary for entrepreneurship. In particular, she says that “the idea of being good enough” is healthier than being “perfect or excellent or irreproachable” (64). She says that the struggle to “be a good enough mother and a good enough entrepreneur at the same time” isn’t easy for women who are both, but is an essential one to fight (84).

Being “all in” (in the title of her book) does not mean that you have to be perfect, then, but instead that you accept and learn from your whatever your failures are. And her writing on failure is some of the best in the book. These are some highlights:

1. One reason that failure can sit so hard for entrepreneurs, Dickinson says, is that the worst “nay-saying” comes from yourself, not from your critics: when you criticize yourself negatively for whatever failure you make, the pain and agony that arise are far more detrimental than the original failure itself.

Self-criticism surrounding failure can inhibit your progress in business. Negative internal fear is called “resistance” (as Seth Godin has written, cf my earlier blog on his book, Linchpin).  Dickinson shares Godin’s argument that you must act against resistance, however uncomfortable that may feel, if you want to succeed as an entrepreneur. You may need to act before it feels comfortable to do so. But you also paradoxically have to be comfortable enough with failure, itself,  in order to learn from it and to work beyond it (217).

2. Mistakes are the form that failure takes: Dickinson writes that “It’s not the mistakes themselves that hone your entrepreneurial skill – rather, it’s what you learn from your mistakes and the degree to which you’re willing to grow from them” (215).

Mistakes make people better entrepreneurs, and improvement “is honed with losses . . . not honed with profits” (217). One of the book’s best lines is this: “Profits spur you to do more of the same thing; losses and mismatches push you to do things better” (217). She cites an early entrepreneur, Thomas Edison, who said “the fastest way to succeed is to double your failure rate” (215).

3.As an entrepreneur, Dickinson says that you need to look at your failures tolerantly and unemotionally:

“[You] don’t just need faith in yourself and your creation to develop the kind of invisible shield that protects you from taking rejection personally or taking your own mistakes to heart. You also have to develop an almost forensic ability to view your misteps and outright failures objectively” (218).

Dickinson points here to a critical concept here for everyone (and not only for entrepreneurs)–dealing with loss and negative emotions. She argues for the need first to deflect rejection or loss and then to bracket off or suspend your emotions, in which I part company from her, finding that unhealthy and impossible to do. I’d argue that emotions (including loss from failures) must be acknowledged, felt and worked through (in your own time and space), before you can learn and grow from them. Experiencing loss and pain, when you know the source and reason, can become the opportunity for insight, self-understanding and for respect toward, and cooperation with, others (who may be the source of the criticism). SO this is an alternate way in which the work/life dichotomy collapses. Life can be “messy,” and there may be tears or venting in the boardroom and not only in one’s own office.

I’d also argue that recognizing that criticism or loss hurts because it resonates with whatever previously-existing issues you may have (and we all have some “buttons” that get pushed ), but is not that cruel “other” person (i.e. that abusive relative or teacher from your past), frees you to experience the loss and simultaneously to learn from.  For instance, an entrepreneur, Helen can recognize that the memo that she wrote to her employees was, in their perspective, too long-winded and rambling, when she recognizes that those employees actually like her and usually respond positively to her efforts to communicate. When she recognizes that they are not her abusive Uncle J (from childhood), and works through the distress and upset that reminds her of him, she can find an opportunity to grow: she can learn ways (that Dickinson says are “objective”) to write more concise memos that her employees better appreciate. She also learns implicitly that employees’ criticism is not necessarily abusive. Continue reading “Arlene Dickinson Weighs is on Failure in Business: Reading _All In: You, Your Business, Your Life_”

In my last posting, I introduced, through Nick Usborne’s classic study, Net Words:Creating High Impact Online Copy, four ways that a good online copywriter can improve the marcom collateral of your organization or company. Today I’ll conclude with five more reasons.

(5)   This is an outgrowth of #4: your customer service department is not only cash-strapped, but is also struggling because it isn’t earning your prospects’ trust. While automated text is sometimes necessary, so is a copywriter’s warmth:

To meet the reality of high costs, everyone knows that customer service is usually outsourced to call centres in remote locations (e.g. Bangalore).  But online, with text or chat, staff use scripts (and should view callers’ histories on screen before them), so that company replies tend to sound “controlled, pre-determined and repetitive” (165). But as a result, customer service online rarely sounds as fluent in print as it does when spoken in an email or chat. Therefore, when automated copy (e.g customer service emails) must be used, it should always be balanced with some personal additions:

An example of the problem is this website autoresponder:

“Thank you for your e-mail. At CircuitCity.com we are committed to providing excellent customer service. One of our Customer Service Representatives will respond by the end of the next business day” (168).

By contrast, Usborne suggests the following email, which has more warmth, because it reflects the challenges, needs and interests of the customer:

“Thank you for your email. This is an automated response – just to confirm that we have received your message. One of us will get back to you in person as soon as we can. In fact, you can be sure of an answer by the end of the next business day.

Best wishes,

Jane Smith

Your Customer Service Representative” (168).

Many organizations and companies deal with the demands of customer service by mixing prepared blocks of text with a new or direct reply. An agent can say that while they don’t have all of the consumer’s answers personally, they are sending out information that has helped others with similar problems, in the past. A good online copywriter would close such a message to consumers by saying: “If you need more assistance, let us know,” and leave a name and contact information for you. Compare that with the original, lifeless  autoresponder, above!

(6)   You need an e-newsletter (and who couldn’t benefit from one?):

Usborne says that similar to email, online newsletters grew out of the imagination of individuals, not the marketing divisions of large companies.

There are now millions of e-newsletters online, of which many are written with the “passionate voice of . . . people who have something exciting they want to say and are delighted to be able to do so via the Internet” (174). E-newsletters can reflect prospects’ challenges, needs and interests very well, and should include sales copy only secondarily (later in the copy). Newsy newsletters are interesting. And interesting sells. Continue reading “9 Ways in Which You Need a Good Online Copywriter: Revisiting Nick Usborne’s _Net Words: Creating High Impact Online Copy_ (Part Two)”

Business readers often dismiss books as being stale-dated within a year or two of their release. But lately, I’ve returned to Nick Usborne’s classic study, Net Words, to reconsider how you, as a prospective client, can use a good online copywriter for your organization or business. The nine tips to follow (in parts one and two) don’t comprise an exhaustive list, but should assist clients like you in identifying the value of the work I do.

You need to hire an online copywriter because . . .

(1)   . . . The language on your website is not personal:

In this hyper-technological age, there’s been an explosion of knowledge about and for customers, online.  But that explosion hasn’t amounted to a personal experience, when prospects use the web. Personalization software and technology knows prospects only by data, not as people. Usborne notes that technology itself cannot deliver a personal message—only a person can do that (e.g. such as in social media). So, as he writes, “personalization will never feel personal, unless there is some element . . . that touches you . . . [at] a human level” (152). And that element can be good copywriting.

But the trouble is that marketing and IT departments within companies or organizations tend to be disconnected, or to use the technology produced by others, where there are such divisions, within themselves. When marcom specialists like copywriters aren’t respected enough, technology will run rampant and deliver messages that do not connect with customers.

One example (adapted from Usborne) is a marketing email sent from a mail-order company, which reads as follows:

“Dear Preferred Customer,

Welcome to XY’s exclusive email news!

Now that you’re signed up to receive our special fashion mailings, you’ll be the first to hear about exciting new media events, special online promotions and more. These updates will be sent to you (about twice a month).”

This copy fails on virtually every level. It fails even to address the prospect by name (the generic addressee fails badly), and the effort to create spontaneity is undermined by the reference to technology (“sent . . .  twice a month”) and since the claim to “exclusivity” (“first to hear,” etc.) is negated by the reality that the email is mass-disseminated to millions (which the reader knows full well). For a revised version, read on . . .

(2)   . . . Technology has overtaken marketing:

The previous example shows that the company has (in Usborne’s words) “invested in the technology of message delivery, but not in the messages that are being delivered” (155).

Once you have a prospect’s email address, you have an opportunity to become personal with them and to cater to the challenges, needs and interests that they have.  If the personalization technology is “used to deliver personalized messages, then it must accommodate the act of writing these messages in a personal, human way” (Usborne 162). So here’s a revision that does just that: Continue reading “9 Ways in Which You Need a Good Online Copywriter: Revisiting Nick Usborne’s _Net Words: Creating High Impact Online Copy_ (Part One)”