I interviewed Carol Hess (no relation to me) about writing, the best gateway skill for marketing your coaching business and boosting your income.
Carol is owner of Tame the Writing Monster where she helps coaches become persuasive and powerful writers on behalf of their businesses.
Listen to this interview and read the highlights below.
Rhonda: Tell us about your strong beliefs about writing as it applies to coaches.
Carol: Writing is the most powerful business tool coaches have to build their coaching business.
- And you don’t have to be a professional writer.
- You don’t have to hire an expensive ghostwriter.
- And you don’t even have to have a talent for writing.
Rhonda: Why is writing the most powerful business tool for coaches?
Carol: There isn’t any coaching business goal you have that writing won’t help you accomplish.
For example:
- If you want to build your list? A blog or an ezine is a great way to do that.
- If you want to increase your know-like-trust factor with prospects? Give them valuable information in the form of articles or special reports or newsletters.
- If you want to increase your sales? Write an information product you can sell, such as an e-book.
Rhonda: Where should inexperienced writers begin?
Carol: Begin where even experienced writers begin… by stealing!
Whenever you come across writing you like that’s relevant to your market – whether it’s a blog post or a sales page or copy on a website – take a copy of it and put it into your “swipe” file.
The idea is not to take actual words from someone else and then turn around and use them yourself. The idea is to create a library of writing that inspires you. It’s a great way to prime your writing pump and a wonderful antidote to the dreaded writer’s block.
Rhonda: What’s your favorite writing vehicle for a coach?
Carol: I love the e-book for three reasons:
- It is a very effective marketing tool that establishes expertise while it enhances visibility.
- If you charge for your ebook, you are literally being paid to market your coaching business. You’ve gotta love that – talk about win, win!
- The e-book is a writing vehicle that just keeps going and going, like the Energizer bunny, because it lends itself so well to repurposing.
Rhonda: What do you mean by repurposing?
Carol: Repurposing allows you to write smarter, not harder.
This is when you take something you’ve written, like an e-book, and you use it in many different ways without having to do much more than tweak it slightly. For example:
- Take one chapter from your e-book and turn it into a teleclass.
- From that same chapter create a few articles to post on article directories to begin to build buzz about your teleclass.
- Then break the chapter down into blog posts which can be repurposed themselves as content for your ezine, with both the posts and ezine promoting the teleclass.
- You can even extract tasty tidbits from the e-book chapter to post in social networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Rhonda: What writing resources would you recommend to coaches?
Carol:
- For the coach’s writing library – a dictionary and thesaurus.
- Of course my blog, where you can grab a copy of my ebook – The Coach’s Guide to Writing Monsters: How to Tame Them Once & For All. It’s a light-hearted but useful treatment of the kinds of things that prevent coaches from writing and what to do about them. It also contains a chapter and an appendix on a focus question technique that every coach who’s going to be writing needs to have in their writing toolbox. It will transform your writing and your writing life!
- My 4-part teleclass series coming soon… A very affordable way for coaches who are having a hard time writing to discover what’s holding them back and how to move past it. Get on the standby list now for more information soon.
- Copyblogger.com – tons and tons of free information for anyone who is writing for an internet-based business. Anything and everything Sonia Simone offers – who can be found on remarkablecommunication.com. Her free e-courses are superb.
Rhonda: Any final words for coaches who are still reluctant to write?
Carol: Yes, write anyway. Just do it. The more you do it, the easier it will get. The more you do it, the better you will get at it. Writing is not rocket science. It’s not about having a special talent. It’s about showing up every day, plunking your butt in the chair, and writing.
If you want to create a super successful coaching business, if you want to make more money, then you’ve got to write. It’s not an option. It’s a necessity.
Carol Hess is the owner of Tame the Writing Monster and is known as the coach’s writing partner. She believes passionately in the power of writing to help coaches create successful businesses. And she believes just as strongly in her ability to show coaches how to tame their writing monsters once and for all so they can tap into that power.
Once an unwilling writer herself who ended up becoming first the head copywriter for an ad agency and then the editorial manager for a publishing house, these days Carol helps coaches become persuasive and powerful writers on behalf of their businesses. Taking advantage of her marketing and strategic planning experience, she also shows coaches how to use writing to accomplish their business goals while using repurposing to write smarter, not harder.