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What You'll Gain From a Business Writing Practice (Besides Blog Posts)
If you’re only creating content for content’s sake, you’re missing something important.
Yes, every internet savvy creative entrepreneur is supposed to produce regular content for the blog and other online outposts, but there’s more to the writing process than sales pitches and knowledge transmission.
The internet beast is insatiable, and if your only reason for writing a blog post or producing a newsletter is to check another chore off your list, you’ll always be stressed about keeping up.
When your heart isn’t in the words you produce, you’ll never connect to your readers the way you hope. You’ll start to believe that this whole content marketing thing is a racket and that writing on behalf of your business is just a waste of time.
To remain true to your creative business vision and to keep your personal equilibrium, you must get more out of the writing-for-your-business process than “I got it done.”
Expect Your Writing to Give Back to You
Good, consistent content supported by a smart, sustained online sharing strategy will build your business because that’s plain good marketing. But, if you expect more from your writing practice, you’ll receive even more in return.
5 Unexpected Benefits of a Writing-For-Your-Business Practice
- The writing process reconnects you with your “why” and helps you go deeper into the mission of your company and the meaning of your work. There’s no better way to stay true to the entrepreneurial adventure than through the personal exploration and public declarations that are inherent to this new art of online writing.
- If your mission is at the core of your business, writing also helps you explore the outer edges of the work. Drafting into “what if…?” style questions will reveal new possibilities and directions.
You are able to speak more fluently about your work and what you have to offer in any setting - at an in-person networking event or in an online exchange where it’s appropriate to talk about how your company can help solve a problem- For all that you may identify as a “creative” it can be easy to lose track of your creator’s mojo due to the demands of entrepreneurship. Writing is your chance to stoke the fires of your creativity while still remaining engaged in your business.
- When you start telling your business’s stories you’ll find yourself uncovering new aspects of your own story. Even if you don’t reveal everything in the public narrative, this sort of personal insight is invaluable and the essence of true success.
But Sometimes, the Writing is Still a Struggle
This post ended up being a killer to write.
I have a long term business project on my mind, my schedule is thrown off due to the snow, and life just wants my attention to be elsewhere.
Writing about how wonderful it is to write for your business seemed disingenuous as I had just peeled a crying baby from around my neck, thrust her into my husband’s arms, and growled “please, I just have to get these damn ideas on paper and then I will make dinner!”
This post ended up being the greatest test of my authenticity and my alignment to my own mission.
After a few false starts, I scrapped my original idea and wrote into the pain and frustration of having to write in the first place. I railed a bit against the content creation imperative and my own self-imposed editorial calendar. I ranted about how hard all this was and how thankless it all felt.
Most of what I wrote was garbage and only a few phrases will appear here in the final draft, but in that for-my-eyes-only scribbling, I caught a glimpse of why I’m doing all this.
As much as I kept saying I felt guilty for abandoning my teething babe and for admitting that I didn’t want to hear my kindergartener practice whistling any more, I needed the break. Only the “mama just has to get some writing done” announcement would secure me passage to the quiet oasis on the other side of my office door.
The writing practice is a demanding one, but it's all the sweeter for the sweat it occasionally demands. I see the greater worth in the process and only by walking through its fires can I emerge on the other side, honestly able to tell you that you can stand the heat and you will create something important.
Is Your Business Sustainable? Your Writing Practice May Reveal the Truth
I wrote myself out of my fevered angst and ended up feeling better when I took my own medicine, but what if writing for your business never seems to get easier or offers up the fringe benefits I describe above?
You deserve (and need!) a business that you can maintain. It may not all be effortless, but, ideally, your work only requires the smallest degree of push and strain. Content marketing (ie. blog writing, podcast production, YouTubing) is key for anyone who wants to drum up business online and it will take up a portion of your workweek when you’re taking it seriously.
If you feel like writing for your business is a constant “<sigh>, if I must,” something is wrong. This sort of resigned martyrdom will come through what you write and you’ll never get the results you hope for.
I’d love to help you through this struggle. Contact me and we’ll set up a brief chat to clear away some of your writer’s blocks and come up with a few solutions so you get more than just a blog post out of your next writing session.
What Your Creative Entrepreneur's Autobiography Reveals
The Prologue to Your Creative Entrepreneur's Story
It’s not enough to dedicate your working hours to support someone else’s commercial dream.
Following the rules as they’ve been set out, and even doing the work you’ve been trained to do won't always sustain you. Not if it’s not yours. Not if it doesn’t have meaning.
You need to make things - a sculpture that will endure; a dinner that will linger, even if only in memory; a poem that describes a perfect moment in time. This creative process is usually more fulfilling than thankless, so you keep on reaching to find the true expression of your vision.
Soon, your private creative process resists being confined to the edges of your day. You feel restless, empty of purpose even as you're full of inspiration, and you're unable to conform to that workaday reality you tried to accept as "normal."
Like the creative imperative, once “I am an entrepreneur” lodges in your heart, you never quite escape it.
And so, you leap. Or you tiptoe. Or you stretch until you realize you’re prepared to open a business based on your passions, your art, and your calling to make something that matters.
Become Sovereign In Your Own Reality
Long before I had the courage to say “I quit!” and declare I had to design and control my own work life, I had my brushes with sovereignty.
I’d found myself in a rather un-magical world - newly married, working, spinning my wheels on a spiritual quest when I really wanted to fly to some other dimension. As I tried sort out how I was going to lead a meaningful life, I made my way to a place where I could dance with the unknown.
When my teacher and mentor declared the point of everything was to “become sovereign in your own reality,” I knew I’d found it.
The seed was planted, but then I kind of forgot about the epiphany. Since it didn't offer an immediate escape from the day job, I kept searching.
Though starved for attention, that seed survived. It nourished me through the start of motherhood, the death of my own mother, and the sudden freefall into entrepreneurship. It rooted me through the subsequent years of self-discovery as I dealt with all three of those events occurring in the span of a few months.
Your Creative Entrepreneur's Autobiography is Your Sovereignty Story
It just may reveal the heart of your work - your sovereign story - in a way you've never understood it before.
It's going to be a story of hopeful meandering and dead ends, of running full speed in the wrong direction. You'll likely describe collecting blossoms of inspiration and losing sight of your creative dreams when immersed in busywork. There will be breathless successes, long pauses, and soul shaking defeats. You'll talk a lot about seeking, finding, and planting the seeds that you pray will deliver a good harvest.
Wandering is actually the most direct route to Sovereignty.
Whatever truths are illuminated in your creative entrepreneur's autobiography, recognize that there is a story to be explored and told, an historical map that needs to be drawn. This indispensable map will guide your next steps.
In looking to your own past, collecting the experiences and lessons and "ah ha!" moments, you gain perspective on where you truly stand today. With such an understanding you'll be ready to articulate the vision and craft the message that will take your work into a future that glows brighter thanks to your contributions.
It's possible to build a nice business without diving this deep into your history, your vision, and your reason for braving entrepreneurship. But didn't you leave that secure, "normal" world because you hated the way personal, creative expression and earning a livelihood were always held at arm's length?
Isn't it worth going deeper and going further?
beyond unique. beyond engaging.
Be Sovereign.
As a creative entrepreneur, you do more than just run a business…
You dare to make a livelihood in service to your passions.
You speak your truth to a select tribe that yearns for a life more beautiful or bearable or bold.
You’re confident that your work has both value and magic... both describing it and getting it out there is a sacred mission.
So, how do you move from being a business owner who makes a nice living to standing sovereign - in your life and in the marketplace of ideas and products?
You find your stories. You write your stories.
You share the stories that generate a special, signature energy that sustains both you and the community that invests in your work.
Is there a specific formula for sovereignty?
The fullness of what it means for a creative entrepreneur to "be sovereign" is still revealing itself.
I discover something new every time I write into “what is sovereignty and what does it mean to me and the people I am meant to serve?” (I'm taking option #1 when it comes to deciding what to publish when I'm writing the bigger story and sharing what I can as the bigger ideas coalesce.)
If you have any stories about how sovereignty shows up in your life, please share in the comments. sovereignty is about consciously standing in your own story, but that's only possible when you're connected to other trees in your shared forest.
Meanwhile, follow along with my #365StrongStories project. Get the weekly digest full of inspiration for storytellers, entrepreneurs, and seekers of sovereignty.