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The Vanessa Williams Rule

In the mid-1990s I conducted interviews for a small entertainment newspaper. The editor was a friend who knew my tastes, so he gave me assignments I’d enjoy. I interviewed a pre-Titanic Leonardo DiCaprio, a rapper-turning-actor named “Marky Mark” Wahlberg, the art-house rocker Jim Carroll, and other artists who whose work was at the time considered edgy or who hadn’t yet made it to the top.

One day the editor called me, because he was in a bind. The newspaper had committed to doing an interview, but there was no reporter free on the day it needed to be done . He asked if I could do it.

“Sure,” I said, assuming I’d be meeting some up-and-coming Method actor or a rock ‘n’ roller who shunned the public. “Who do I interview?”

“A star,” he said. “Vanessa Williams.”

I rolled my eyes.

It wasn’t personal. Vanessa Williams is, in fact, a gifted performer. I’m just not a fan of Top 40 dance music and ballads.

I’d grown up listening to The Plasmatics, Sham 69, and Killing Joke. Raw, angry, bracing, countercultural noise. My friends and I would slam-dance to those groups in crumbling, dimly-lit, Manhattan punk clubs which violated every safety code on the books. Slickly orchestrated love songs performed by beauty contest winners and me just didn’t mix.

Still, my friend was in a jam, so I took the CD Vanessa Williams was promoting and got to work.

I had a week to prepare, so I listened to her album a dozen times. I doped out the lyrics, and studied its musical progressions. I also did my scholarly research by searching the Internet, and paging through back issues of People and Us. All told, my Vanessa Williams studies must have added up to twenty-five hours. It was time-consuming, but I drafted my interview questions and was ready. I’d become a Vanessa Williams expert in a week.

The morning of the interview, though, the editor phoned with bad news. Williams’ PR person said a scheduling conflict had arisen. Williams was sorry, but she had to break our meeting. There’d be no interview.

Here I was with a head full of Vanessa Williams knowledge, and nowhere to use it. I felt like the professor of a dead language who had no one to teach.

Of course, I was able to use my newfound expertise to  review her album (I gave it an “A”). Yet I was still disappointed I’d wasted so much time cramming for a subject that’d be of no future use. I vowed never to let that happen again.

In my mind I called it “The Vanessa Williams Rule.” Simply stated, the rule read: “Don’t take on a project unless you’re going to love the process, because the expected endpoint may never come.”

In other words, the journey better be worthwhile, because the destination may vanish before you reach it.

I got the chance to invoke the rule the following week. The editor called me with another star interview. I held my breath and prayed it was with Mitch Hedberg or one of the Coen Brothers. Alas, it was with Shannen Doherty.

Like Williams, Doherty is talented at her craft. But I’m not a 90210 guy, and I didn’t want to study to be one — especially if the objective might unexpectedly pop like a soap bubble.  I passed, and instead interviewed Marshall Crenshaw. Not as glamorous, but more my style.

Since then, I’ve used “The Vanessa Williams Rule” as a business rule. If I’m asked to write a book or work on any type of project, I divide it into “process” and “result.” For me to take the gig, both parts have to be meaningful and fun.

It’s a good rule, I think. Try using it yourself, and tell me how things go.

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Developing a Thought

We’re told attention spans are shrinking, so if we want people to read what we write for the web, we have to be concise.

That’s sound advice . . . up to a point.

Lately, I’ve coached some bloggers who each suffer from the same dilemma: They want to write longer works — more fully realized posts or even a book — but they’re not sure how. They’re so practiced at condensing their thoughts, that they can’t, out of habit, bring themselves to expand them.

If you’re in that situation, consider the following exercise.

Grab a pen and print out your last post (or any piece of your writing). What I’d now like you to do is mark spots where you, or another writer working on the same piece, could have expanded the work in a different direction.

You might, for instance, have described a scene using one or two words when someone else would have described it in five hundred words.

Or, you presented one argument, and neglected mentioning any counterarguments.

Or, you spoke about an idea without giving an example of it in action.

Once you’ve marked all the potential development spots, pick one and write about it.

That is, write it as if you were going to insert it into the post, or use it as a way of writing a new standalone post.

Remember, for the most part, writing is an unnatural act. Whatever writing style you have is learned. If you want to take your writing in a new direction, you have to force yourself in that direction so you can learn as you go.

To expand your writing, practice expanding it.

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A Book Written for You Alone

I’d like to tell you about a daydream I had that may be relevant to you and your business. First, though, a story.

A few days ago, my wife and I rescued a dog: Ginger, a seven-year-old Shiba Inu.

We hadn’t planned on rescuing her or any dog for that matter. My wife had been surfing the internet, saw Ginger’s sad-eyed photograph, and asked me to make a call. Nothing serious, mind you. A toe-in-the-water call.

When the shelter told me Ginger was a day away from being euthanized, we jumped in my Jeep, took a day-long roundtrip drive from New Jersey to Virginia and, with the help of several dedicated local rescuers, snagged her.

Once we got her home, we realized we had our work cut out for us.

When we introduced Ginger to our two elderly Shibas, she snarled and lunged at them.

While walking her in the yard, she backed up, dropped to the grass, and jerked her head — maneuvers that seemed designed to free herself from the lead, so she could bolt. (Her owner, in fact, had turned her over to the shelter because she was “an escape artist,” and Ginger had managed to escape from one of her rescuers, who only caught her after the dog had dashed across city roadways and found herself trapped under a parked car.)

We also discovered that, although Ginger can climb stairs, she doesn’t enjoy walking down them. Or, more accurately, she doesn’t enjoy walking down our home’s long staircases.

Since we hadn’t prepared for Ginger’s arrival – it was an emergency thing — we weren’t sure how to handle these problems. While at the pet supply store, I decided to scrutinize the book section. I’m a lifelong book lover, and was sure I could find answers there.

When I saw the section, though, I winced. Staring me in the face were hundreds of dog training books espousing dissimilar philosophies and methods.

I thumbed through training books by monks, celebrities, and associations. I glanced at ones involving food rewards, handheld clickers, unconditional love, tough love, and the principles of wolf pack behavior as applied to humans and dogs. I studied books on high-energy and low-energy dogs. Then there were training books broken down by breed; each lecturing me on how one breed didn’t respond to the same things as the next, and that choosing the wrong training technique could prove disastrous.

Looking through these books was overwhelming. I didn’t want to learn a complicated system. I didn’t want theory or opinion. I didn’t want to pretend I was a wolf.

I just wanted to buy a book that directly dealt with the problems disrupting my household. I wanted to know only what I needed to know.

Standing there, flipping through book after book, reminded me of that daydream I’d mentioned. It came to me last year.

On my kitchen counter sat a pile of mail. In it was a brown padded shipping envelope. It wasn’t clear who’d sent the envelope. I ripped it open and found a slender business book.

Unlike the other business books in my library, this volume wasn’t written for a general audience.It was tightly targeted. Eerily so. Although my name was nowhere in the book, every chapter seemed written for me.

The book was created for positioning consultants, born in Flushing, New York, who were also book-writing coaches and ideation facilitators. This tiny readership, the author said,  considered themselves writers first, and businesspeople second.

I perused the Table of Contents, and saw that the chapter titles were clear-cut questions ripped straight from my life, including “How can I get clients to complete their writing assignments when they’re busy running companies?” and “What are the best ways to stay in contact with prospects without being pushy?”

The content, then, covered a diverse array of mini-subjects, all of keen interest to me. There was material about sales, marketing, content development, project management, people management, self-management, IT, finance, billing, travel, and the like.

Of course, none of the material was comprehensive. It focused only on what most concerned me.

I remember snapping out of my dream, and thinking, “Imagine if a book like that really existed? One that almost read my mind. One that I’d tear through in minutes, because every time I’d turn the page I’d see an issue that mattered dearly to me.”

I hadn’t thought of that daydream again until, as I say, I was standing in the pet supply store combing through a stack of material I didn’t want to read. I decided to act.

Now I’m putting together that dreamed-of business book written just for me. No one else need see it, and it will likely remain a work in progress, since my needs continually change.

Still, taking the time to list and articulate all my pressing concerns, and then doing the thinking, research, and writing needed to compile and experiment with the answers should be of substantial benefit.

You, too, might try creating an advice book written especially for you. How should you begin? Since I’ve never written one, I can’t be sure. Some ideas:

  • Create the book’s title.
  • Spend a couple of days making a list of every business question you’re wrestling with. The more unique the question is to you, the better. For example: “How do I get more clients?” is too general. “How do I get fifteen new clients in two months?” is better.
  • Pick the question that you have the most energy for, and answer it. How? Through any number of means: freewriting, interviewing experts, speaking with clients, and field-testing approaches, among other things.
  • When you’re finished doping out the first question, go to the next one you seem drawn to.

Just making the list of questions and putting all your thinking in one place is bound to help. You’ll get clearer about your problems, and will undoubtedly see options that had eluded you.

As you create your own book, please let me know how things go.

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Kuma's Table

In my previous post, “Telling an Appreciative Story,” I wrote about how my wife and I stumbled upon the rotting Bethlehem Steel factory and dismissed it as a monstrosity — only to later discover that it had contributed much to society and was still loved by some.

At the end of the post, I asked readers to attempt an exercise: They were to find objects that frightened or confused them, or that they’d normally pass by, and they were to ask themselves: “Who loves that object?” and “Why do they love it?” The answers, I figured, might trigger some surprising stories.

I myself tried the exercise, and it did spark stories. I thought I’d share one.

In 1995 my wife and I went to an antiques show and bought a pedestal table. The thing that struck us about it was a primitive-looking carving that ran along the table’s circumference. We’d never seen anything like it, so we brought it home and displayed it in the hall by the front door. It instantly become the best piece we owned.

A few days later, while I was at work, my wife phoned and said, “You won’t believe it. Kuma ate the table.” When I got home, I saw it was true.

Our black-and-tan Shiba Inu puppy, Kuma, had been left alone and had gnawed on one of the table’s legs.

Neither my wife nor I truly blamed the puppy. After all, we should have used baby gates to confine her to the kitchen. Still, we were irritated. “The table is ruined,” I said. “Let’s hide it in a corner.” I probably pointed a finger at Kuma, too, and called her a bad girl.

As I said, that was fifteen years ago. Yesterday, because of the exercise, I was in our living room studying the table. In particular, I was running my fingers along Kuma’s bite marks.

You know what’s funny? Those gashes, which were the very things I thought had ruined the table, now make it irreplaceable to me.

In 2007, Kuma, who at that time was nearly thirteen, died. The table, then, gives me a direct experience of her. I rub those grooves she chewed into the wood and smile.

Objects may be inanimate, but they have a history – same as us. Writing about where they’ve been and what they’ve done might lead you into a place you couldn’t expect.

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Telling an Appreciative Story

Bethlehem Steel Factory“I’ve got to take a photo of this.”

That was me talking to my wife when we unexpectedly stumbled upon a frightening structure: the corroding Bethlehem Steel factory.

Earlier that day, we’d driven forty miles from our New Jersey home to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, because a casino had opened there, and blowing sixty dollars in nickels and pennies at the slots seemed like a fun day trip – which it was.

Now we were heading back, when I took a wrong turn. In the distance, I saw the vacant factory: black and gray and vast, with blast-furnace stacks the size of skyscrapers.

We drove closer. My wife said, “Be careful.” How many structures do you know that could inspire that reaction?

We got near enough to park and take an iPhone picture. My photography skills couldn’t do the place justice. Standing there made me jumpy. I felt like I was staring at something out of a Tim Burton film. I expected it to rear up on legs and wail.

The next day I phoned a dozen friends about that grim factory. “Head out there,” I said. “You won’t believe it. That thing is a nightmare.”

When my wife got home, I asked her if she’d told anyone at her office what we’d seen. She had told one person. In fact, the man she told had grown up in Bethlehem, and had lived across the street from the factory. “Oh my gosh! What was that like?” I asked.

I didn’t get the answer I expected.

The man had told my wife he loved the factory. As a boy, he’d curl up in bed and would look out the window at its lights until he fell asleep. Watching the factory, he said, was comforting. Much of the city worked there, and the glow reminded him of all the people whose lives revolved around it.

I was stunned. I thought of the factory as a menacing carcass. My wife’s coworker, on the other hand, knew it as a place where people from the community went to earn a living, so they could raise a family. To him, the place was a calming childhood memory.

I googled Bethlehem Steel, and saw countless stories behind the factory: it employed twenty thousand people; produced parts of the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, Rockefeller Center, Madison Square Garden, Hoover Dam, and the Golden Gate Bridge; helped build the World War II American fleet; and boasted an executive headquarters designed by the famed firm, McKim, Mead & White.

Hearing this man’s reaction and seeing the factory’s history got me thinking about how knee-jerk reactions can blind us to interesting people, places, and ideas.

Such reactions can also blind us to worthy stories. If we write or produce any kind of content, we can’t let that happen. We’ve got to stay alert. Good stories – oftentimes hidden — surround us.

Consider, then, trying this exercise for the next 24 hours: Look at things that you’d normally pass by, or that scare or confuse you, and ask yourself, “Who loves that?” Once you’ve come up with an answer, ask yourself why they love it.

By looking at things through appreciative eyes, you’ll likely come up with unanticipated ideas and untold stories that deserve a spot in your work.

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Freewriting and the Internal Editor

Fast Company Expert Blogger, Tom Clifford, posted the second of a two-part interview he conducted with me. In this last part, I talk about freewriting: how and why it works, and when to use it.

If you’ve tried freewriting, you’ve likely experienced the technique’s considerable value.

I’ve seen people use it to create a strategic direction for their company, brainstorm ideas for a personal branding campaign, plan a product launch, think through employee engagement problems, rehearse ways of handling a negotiation, write books and blog posts, and more.

What’s behind freewriting’s effectiveness? It temporarily rids us of our internal editor. As I describe it in the interview:

“Inside each of us is an internal editor that does an important job. It edits what we think, say, and write — as we think, say, and write it — so we sound smart, confident, and consistent.

“ . . . There is a time, though, when our internal editor gets in our way.

“ . . . Since the editor wants us to always look good to others, it’s going to tell us we’re being stupid or impractical if we try thinking thoughts that are radically different for us. It’s going to order us to push aside the new and go with the familiar. It’s going to anchor us to what’s not working.”

Freewriting, then, gives us mechanical leverage over our editor because, as we use the technique, our editor can’t keep up with the deluge of words that hit the page. While  the editor is backing off, we can reason with vigor and abandon.

During any given freewriting session, much of what we write will, out of necessity, be boring or confused.

A portion of what we produce, though, will likely stand among our best work.

Through my book, “Accidental Genius,” as well as through my consulting and workshops, I’ve taught freewriting to thousands. I’ve seen people take to the technique instantly, and I’ve seen others try it and struggle. When they struggle, it’s almost always for one of three reasons:

1. They wrote without timing their session. In doing freewriting, use a timer set for five, ten, twenty, or thirty minutes. When the timer starts, you start. When it finishes, you finish. By using a timer, you can forget about logistics, and spend your attention and energy on flat-out writing.

2. They stopped writing throughout the session. While freewriting, it’s important to keep writing no matter what’s happening in your mind. That means, if you’re stumped, write about being stumped. If you’re feeling sluggish, write about your lethargy. If your thoughts are choppy, put them down choppily. Stopping for more than a second or two gives your internal editor a chance to reengage and disrupt the process.

3. They wrote at a leisurely pace. If you freewrite too slowly, you’re writing, not freewriting. Again, you want to write fast enough so that your editor slackens its grip. That means, if your editor is running at five miles an hour, write at six miles an hour. Your fingers needn’t fly over the keyboard. They just need to move at a clip slightly quicker than your norm.

If you’ve tried freewriting before, I’d love to hear about your experiences:

  • How has the process helped or hindered you?
  • Do you have any interesting freewriting stories to share?
  • What’s your best freewriting tip?

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Strengthen Your Business Through Journaling

When I started doing positioning a decade ago, I didn’t have a defined methodology. I worked intuitively.

I’d hang out with a client, talk to their customers, study their marketing materials, and scan their field. A few weeks, and dozens of phone calls later, we’d have their marketplace position, competitive advantages, elevator speech, talking points, and case studies.

My informal approach worked well. The client got what they wanted, and I was able to conduct business in a way that felt natural.

One day a colleague asked me how I got my results, and I told him about my loose approach. A heavy-duty structure guy, he assured me that clients would be more at ease if they knew I had a codified process with predictable steps.

Since I was relatively new to consulting, I decided to take his advice. What I didn’t want to do, though, was create a process that was phony, mundane, or that got in my way.

That’s when I turned to my old freewriting files.

Freewriting is a way of thinking onto paper that helps you get to your best problem-solving ideas. Whenever I had a client positioning project, I’d open an empty document and would use freewriting to clarify my thoughts and create ideas. It was scratchpad thinking done for my eyes only.

Fortunately, I’d saved much of this exploratory freewriting. It sat in my computer throughout dozens of throwaway documents. I sifted through them.

Not only did I discover that I, indeed, had methods I’d called upon again and again and, therefore, had a kind of rough process; I also found I’d used tactics and had insights I’d completely forgotten about. For me, reading through my rough writing was revelatory. By studying it, I created a process and steps that were based on who I was and what I actually did.

What I stumbled on, you might want to do on purpose.

That is, keep a project journal that you can write in daily or at least a few times a week. The journal can be a physical book, or a file in your computer. Whatever format you choose, use it to talk to yourself about what’s happening in a particular project.

You can, for instance, write about a session you held, a question you were asked, a piece of advice you gave, a discovery you made, an insight your client had, a road block you experienced, a process you created, a list of things to stay away from, a list of things to do again, big successes, small successes, bits of dialogue, or an image that flashed into your mind.

The act of keeping a project journal can help you immediately, as you’re doing the writing. It can also help you long after the fact – as you review it days, months, or even years later.

Consider, too, asking a client to keep a project journal. Doing so will help them work out problems, remind them of strategies and ideas that they can use over and over, and get them focused on how things are changing due to the work you’re doing together.

Each week, you could schedule time to review their journal with them. They don’t have to read the actually writing, unless they’d like to. Instead, ask them to summarize interesting findings.

By the way, make no bones about asking them to look for changes and results in their writing. Say things like, “What problems have you had? What solutions have you tried? And what results have you seen?”

If you do this enough, people start focusing on results. They start looking for progress.

Without a results-oriented focus, some people forget how far they’ve come. When you point it out to them, or when they discover it for themselves, it inspires them to do more.

Make sure you point out all the ways they’re progressing personally, their company is progressing, and their own customers are progressing.

If you or your clients have kept a project journal, I’d love to hear about it. What insights did you gain? What snags did you encounter? What might we learn from your experience?

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When Writing a Proposal, Don't Be Constrained By Form

I was listening to a consultant who was trying to write a book proposal. One of the most attention-grabbing things she said concerned her network.

Not only did her newsletter have tens of thousands of subscribers, but her colleagues had subscriber lists just as large. We figured out that, all told, she had access to 1.3 million people.

“Publishers want to know exactly what you’re going to do to support the sales of your proposed book,” I said. “That you’re able to reach 1.3 million interested people is key. They’ll love that. When you write the proposal, make sure you put that figure right up front.”

A few weeks later, the consultant sent me a draft. Her ideas and prose were good, but after reading ten or so pages, I still hadn’t seen anything about her giant subscriber list. I phoned her.

“I thought you were going to feature that 1.3 million person list up front,” I said.

“I did,” she said. “Turn to page 36. That’s where the ‘Marketing’ section begins. The million person list is a marketing idea, right? So that’s where I feature it: in ‘Marketing. It’s the very first thing in that section.”

I explained to her that, yes, a subscriber list is a marketing idea and it belongs in the marketing section. The trouble is that if that’s the only section it appears in, the reader may never get to it. Perhaps a project will unexpectedly rear up and they’ll ditch the proposal before reaching it. You never know.

When writing a book proposal, then, don’t feel constrained by the form. A proposal is a communication tool: use it that way. Don’t make yourself say the wrong thing just because you think people expect certain kinds of information staged in certain ways.

If you have something important to say — a marketing fact, a counterintuitive idea, a story, a detail from your life – say it up front. Get it onto the first page or two. Be creative and somehow make it fit — even if you have to repeat it later on.

If you want a busy reader to notice you, lead with your strengths.

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Exercising Your Writing Muscles

One of my favorite books on writing is Beth Baruch Joselow’s “Writing Without the Muse.” You don’t read it as much as write your way through it. It’s a slim volume of sixty creative exercises that help you more closely see the world, stretch your imagination, and experiment with voice.

I’d like to share two of my favorite exercises from the book as a means of giving you a taste.

By the way, if you’ve never done writing exercises before, you’re in for a treat. The key is to approach them in the spirit of fun. As Joselow says: “Play is an important part of creativity. It’s a mistake to approach the task of writing even a serious piece without some playfulness. Wonderful things can happen when you take the risk of just fooling around.” p. 14

Exercise #1: “The Door in the Wall”

Narrow your eyes and stare across to the far end of the room. There, imagine you see a door.

What does that door look like? Is it plain or ornate? Is it constructed  from wood, metal, or another material? Does it have anything written on it?

Write about that door in detail, including the feeling you have as you approach it.

Now that you know what the door looks like, grasp its handle, open it, and step inside. What do you see?

Again, write about the experience in detail. Take ten minutes and tell us everything.

Exercise #2: “Every Day for a Week”

Every day we repeat certain activities, like brushing our teeth, drinking morning coffee, walking the dog, and the like. Your assignment: Pick one of these repeated activities, and write about it for ten minutes each day for a week.

When you’ve completed the assignment, you’ll have a seven-day log that describes a single, small aspect of your life. Look over your work:

How does your writing differ from day to day? How does it stay the same?

Look, too, at the activity you’ve been writing about. How have you  changed the way you’ve approached the activity itself, because of the scrutiny you’ve given it?

Try these two exercises on your own, or consider doing them with friends. They get the blood in your brain pumping, and can trigger some excellent conversations.

If you’d like to share the results with me, I’d be pleased to hear about them.

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Freeing Yourself From Gurus

A consultant named Tim was telling me about the field he worked in. He, in fact, wanted to write a book about it. Tim admitted, though, that he was intimidated by a famed guru who has spent years speaking and writing in that same field as he.

What, Tim wondered, could he possibly say that hadn’t already been said by the guru?

I’ve heard that lament before. What it comes down to is this:

Tim was confusing the guru’s contribution to the field with the totality of that field. He was looking at the guru’s opinions, excellent though they might be, as the only ones  possible. It was as if the guru’s smarts, charisma, and accomplishments were blinding him to all the alternate ways of approaching the subject.

“Let the work of this guru inspire you.” I said. “Be grateful that such a vivid thinker has shared so much. Celebrate him and parade his work to others. But don’t let the strength of his voice stop you from using your voice.”

Each of us has something distinctive and interesting to contribute if we give ourselves the freedom to do so. We have experiences, stories, and ideas that can add texture to a subject, or take it in new directions.

At times, though, we must free ourselves from the magnetic pull that we’ve let others have on our thinking.

One way of giving yourself distance is by studying the subject you want to write about more comprehensively. You may, in fact, be unduly influenced by a guru’s work, because you’re focused too narrowly on their thinking to the exclusion of others.

Another way of giving yourself distance is by examining your career, not at first for abstract ideas, but for concrete success stories. Once you’ve jotted down a few stories, study them and see if any insights appear organically. You may be sitting on an unusual approach or helpful anecdote, and you don’t even realize it. Let the facts lead you.

Remember, each of us can contribute. We have knowledge and perspective that could help others if only they knew about it. Don’t let others’ outstanding work blind you to the value of your own gifts and experiences.

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