What do people think that you do for work? How do people think that you help others? What do they understand about the services that you provide, or the skills that you have to offer? It’s an interesting question, and one that professionals and business owners don’t think about nearly enough. The truth is that we (usually) know what we do for work. We understand how we help people. We get our business, and then we wonder why people aren’t bursting down our door. The reason is simple: they’re not in our heads! A real world example In my past life I was an employment lawye…

This is my first blog in far, far too long. More months than I am proud of for sure. I make no excuses for it, but it’s always interesting to look back and ask why. Why would I, a professional blogger, have allowed my own blog to lapse? The truth is that I fell into the same trap that so many of my clients fall into as well. I got busy. At the start of the year, I set goals for the Write Stuff that seemed lofty even to me, but I dutifully wrote them on the whiteboard in my office and stare at them daily. It’s September, and I’m on track to meet them if not exceed them th…

How many times have you seen a website and felt nothing? What made that website fail to stand out? You’re searching for information, and your search engine sends you somewhere that it thinks might be helpful. You browse through the site, and the information is there, but it’s a completely unmemorable experience. There’s absolutely nothing to stand out. You may walk away with what you need, but unless you saved or even printed specific pages, you’ll be hard-pressed to remember where you found the information. That’s the challenge of having a mediocre website. It may be serviceabl…

Have you read anything online recently that you’ve found yourself having to reread a few times over? At a surface glance everything appears normal, but when you dig a little deeper you realize that it doesn’t flow well, and isn’t quite making sense? Congratulations. You’ve most likely stumbled upon AI-generated copy. If you’re reading through things quickly, and not really paying attention, you may not notice that you’re reading something created by ChatGPT, Bard, or another-AI based software. The trouble, though, is that a lot of people actually do read closely when they’re se…