It’s hard to believe that four years ago I release my first book Listful Thinking. The book tour that followed was the first time I got to meet many of the regular followers of this blog ListProducer.com.
One of my favorite parts of meeting list makers in person was getting to see your lists! That was always so fun. And being able to debate the pros and cons of using technology with lists or keeping it old school. So much fun!
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We are all writers in some form.
Writing is such a brilliant creative outlet – whether you’re a journalist, blog writer, advertiser or just writing sassy emails to your office co-workers – writing is a core part of our lives.
People like to talk about writing as though its this magical process filled with moments of genius and innovation – which it can be.
But most of our time spent writing is spent sitting in front of a laptop, thinking about what to write.
So when you do decide to finally write a novel you’ve always dreamed off, or start up your own blog you tend to hit a roadblock.
Am I right?
Writing certainly isn’t as glamorous as it seems.
I’ve written before about how to break free from writers block, but today I want to share with you a powerful tool that can help expand your creativity and stop writer’s block before it even hits.
It’s called Speare and it’s designed to help you write in small bits to help pull together an entire project more quickly.
Rather than list all the benefits here I thought I would ask the app, Kent Sisco, to chat with me about them on my YouTube Channel.
In the video Kent and I chat all things writing and how in many ways, it all comes back to classic productivity methods.
Kent is actually a reader of this blog and read my book Listful Thinking too!
We met because he signed up for my online course Lights Camera Expert, which is designed to help experts, authors and entrepreneurs get and keep media attention.
He did the work and showed up to our live group calls and that’s how I got to know about the amazing productivity tool he created.
Plus he got himself some great media attention too! Being productive can come in handy for so many tasks 🙂
Writers from all backgrounds use Speare.
It’s not just for books or blogs but it’s even used by pastors!
Speare is designed for anyone with a passion for the written word – it’s name comes from Shakespeare after all!
In just a few days my bud and business partner Terri Trespicio and I will be headed to the Speak to Sell conference with Lisa Sasevich in Florida. Whoo hoo – can’t wait for some sun! It’s been a long winter.
After the conference my husband and I are heading to Miami for a few days of vacation and a chance for us to check out for a little bit! (Plus to celebrate our wedding anniversary – 9 years!)
As exciting as this all is, it means I’ve got several lists going all at once.
I feel a bit like I’m drowning in lists.
It’s times like these that I have to step away from my usual tactic of just getting things done and zoom out a bit. – Otherwise I get too wrapped up in the small stuff and lose sight of the bigger picture.
A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to do a workshop training with Ali Brown. She’s an amazing coach for entrepreneurs and she interviewed me for her podcast “Glambition Radio” about my book “Listful Thinking” a while back.
One of the things she taught in this creativity workshop was how to shift your focus. And it involved buying magazines! (My guilty pleasure!)
The idea is to go to a store and get yourself a magazine you would never normally read, which for me could be on something like golf or surfing or the National Geographic. But for you it could be anything that you wouldn’t consider yourself to be interested in.
Now when you read that magazine you have to be a completely objective outsider. The actual content is not that important to you so you can focus on the way they get their message across. How do they engage with their readers.
So how does this help your list making efforts?
It can give you loads of idea for your own creative output and how you actually get things done. Can you be more creative about the way that you outsource? But also – stepping outside of our usual routine (it’s scary, I know) can actually spark great ideas and allow you to get more done. It will actually make you more productive and help utilize parts of your brain that might have been a bit sleepy til now.
They say you can travel all around world, but you can never escape yourself. Well that’s not strictly true. The magazine exercise allows you to take a break from your own mind and usual way of thinking and take a vacation in someone else’s hobby for a bit – and who knows what you might take away!
Try it out and let me know what you think in the comments below.
There isn’t an expert, an author, or entrepreneur I know who wouldn’t love to give a TEDx talk. Or to do more speaking in general.
The problem isn’t opportunity (events alone are more popular than ever–and there are tons of TEDx events happening all over the world, year round).
The problem certainly isn’t passion or desire. You’ve got that in spades.
The problem, for most people, is they aren’t sure what it takes to create or land a TED-worthy talk. And they aren’t sure what to do theirs on.
But I know someone who does know—and she’s going to be sharing it in her first-ever live event.
Terri Trespicio is a brand advisor, award-winning writer and top-rated speaker with two TEDx talks under her belt—one of which has 3.6 million views to date. I met Terri when she worked as a magazine editor and since then we’ve become good friends and business partners! We created Lights Camera Expert together, which helps experts get media attention. Read more
“How do I get on TV”
As a senior TV news producer for nearly 20 years that is a question I’m asked a lot.
Honestly it’s not as difficult as you would think.
You don’t have to have special credentials, you don’t have to have a PR person or have a huge social media following — but what you do need to know is what the media is looking for.
If you are trying to get on TV, in magazines, on radio, etc. sometimes it’s more about what not to do!
OMG – in my career I can’t even tell you how many bad pitches I’ve been sent through the years!!
Well actually – I probably could because I’ve kept them all in my “bad pitches” folder. 🙂
Sometimes you can tell that the core idea isn’t bad, but the expert or publicist just don’t know how to present it correctly.
So what are these pitches faux pas and pitfalls? Well that is something I can teach you.
I’m co-hosting it with Terri Trespicio who served as a senior editor for Martha Stewart for many years, hosted her own radio show and has appeared on all kinds of top-tier media like, “The Today Show,” “The Early Show,” “The Dr. Oz Show,” and many more!
I actually booked her as guest when I was at Fox News Channel. That’s how we met!
During this live webinar, we’ll show you:
You’ll leave this webinar with ideas and actions you can take right away to start upping your media game!