How to talk about your work Archives

Marketing Burnout: How to avoid it and deal with it.

Launching stuff, talking about your product for a sustained period of time, is hard. It can be draining to talk about your work, especially when it feels like you're talking about yourself all the time.

The result is Marketing Burnout. You're sick of talking about your work. You feel like you're repeating yourself. You worry you're annoying people.

In this episode I share three ways to avoid Marketing Burnout and one way to handle it when you experience it.

Resources

Market Yourself: Develop a plan and learn how to talk about your work
How to talk about your work (without feeling gross)
How to launch anything (episode 28)
Permission to Take Time Off, (episode 33)
Join me in San Diego in January!

How to listen

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Your brain on words

I know it's hard to talk about your work.
But I also know (and I bet you do too) that the thing that makes it hardest is…you.
You worry about how you sound. You worry that you're talking too much.
You worry that you're awkward or aggressive or too quiet.

Part of the reason it's so hard is because it's all so verbal. And the minute you start picking words or stringing them together, The Monitor shows up. This isn't just your emotions or self-esteem, there's an actual part of your brain that judges what you say and do. This is super helpful when you need to make a decision, but troublesome when you have to speak extemporaneously or write freely.

But there is good news. You can turn the Monitor off. The best jazz players and comedians have learned to do just that. You can circumvent words + judgement all together and work with another part of your brain.

That's what Diane and I had in mind when we started talking about a visual process that could make it easier for makers to talk about their work. Instead of judging and thinking and arguing with yourself, we want you to skip right into the images that stir you. We jump past the thinking and go right to the seeing. (You can join us in Monitor-silencing this Monday right here.)

For a visual-thinking person, using images to spark words make perfect sense. But it's not the only one. When I started thinking about it, I have all kinds of tricks for turning off the Monitor…

Working in the same place with the same little rituals.
Zooming way out of the screen I'm writing on, so that I can't read as I write.
Writing to just one person.

How do you do it? What are your tricks for turning off The Monitor?

PS. The last chance to join the class is this Monday. If you'd like a reminder, sign up here.

I don’t know what to say!

If I hear one sentiment more than any other, from makers, artists and writers, when we talk about marketing, it is this:

I can't stand to talk about myself!

I just don't know what to say!

Oh, honey, I hear you.
This is the hardest part about taking your art into the world – being brave enough to talk about, doing the work to find the words to communicate all that it means to you.

But here's the hard truth – makers who take the time to figure out how to talk about their work do the best. They make sales, get press, get accepted into that show.

Being able to talk clearly and passionately talk about your work and why you do it is a gift to the world.

It gives your work handles, so that anyone can pick it up and carry it along. It empowers your fans to tell their friends. It gives editors the words to write about you. It becomes retweetable.

The easier your work is to talk about (because you've found the words and communicated them) the more your work will be talked about. I've seen this happen again and again with my students. As soon as they settle down on one description of their work, people take notice.

This is so important and yet so hard to do on our own (we're just too close to it!), so Diane and I created a class where we'll walk you through a process of finding the words and crafting a description. Even better, we're providing you with a community to talk it over with peers, so you can get feedback and ideas on what you're too close to see.

Class begins June 10th (no, we're not holding it again) and you can read more and join here.