One of the things we hear all the time from CEOs is that they’re afraid to hand off their content writing to an outside source. Why? Because they’re afraid of losing their voice.
If that makes you think of Disney’s The Little Mermaid, where Ariel gives her voice to the sea witch, you’re not alone. For those of you who don’t know the movie, let’s just say it’s not exactly a gentle process. In fact, it’s more like some kind of violent tooth extraction. {Or maybe voice box extraction, complete with creepy singing, tentacles, and sea worms. Ick.}
However, we’re here to tell you that outsourcing your voice doesn’t have to be so… painful. You don’t have to be the next voice victim in the content game.
As messaging strategists and copywriters who help CEOs outsource their content, we are telling you that there is a way for your writers to capture your voice accurately. It all comes down to a simple, tested process we’ve been developing since 2010. {You know we’re against promises of a “magic pill,” so no, that’s not what we’re offering. But what we are saying is that we have a process that is tried and true, and we’d love to see it work for you, too.}
Even better: this systematic method for capturing your voice and handing it off to your writers or to an outsourcing agency doesn’t just free you up from content creation. It also saves you from having to review every piece of content that comes across your desk, so you can devote more time and energy to the things that only you, the CEO, can do. {Like be the visionary for your business}
Does this sound like you?
- You’ve tried to outsource your content in the past, but no one seems to be able to quite get “you” right
- You feel the need to review every piece of content created by your team
- You’ve never outsourced before, so you want to make sure you do it right
- Your business is making 6, 7, or 8 figures, but you’re still stuck in the weeds of content creation instead of handling bigger responsibilities
- You’re willing to do the hard work up front to save yourself time later on
Here’s the deal: It sounds like us, too. WE GET IT! We are practicing what we preach, because after years of helping other business owners outsource their content we recently hired a copywriter to handle OUR internal content. It’s scary. For realz.
But we also know with complete confidence that, regardless of how subject-specific your content is or how unique your voice sounds, it’s possible to be outsourced. No more spending hours poring over social media posts, web content, and email blasts! {Happy dance!}
We’ve seen it happen over and over again with our clients, we’ve successfully done it with our own business. And now we want to show you how.
Let’s Go Back in Time
If you’d have met us right out of college, you would have met two very different people from the CEOs we are today. But those early days planted the seeds for our current process.
I {Jessi} was a high school English teacher, hosting nerdy book club parties and geeking out over parallelism with 11th graders. Pretty expected for the role. However, what I never expected about teaching teenagers was that my job filled a much more important role than instruction in rhetorical devices and creative writing. My students didn’t need to know how to write a thesis. They needed to feel heard. They needed a shoulder and a support.
As for Marie, she was a recently graduated English major working for a non-profit hospital {with no medical background}. Her job was to leverage her writing chops to craft grant proposals for programs and physicians. This meant a lot of interviewing, and a lot of learning terminology and concepts that were completely foreign to her in hopes of securing funding. That’s a lot of pressure!
What This Has to Do with Outsourcing Content
Those early years were crazy and stretching and rewarding, all at the same time. But both initial career choices taught us something that has served us ever since: How to listen.
High schoolers want someone to listen to them without judging. Hospitals need you to understand the heart and passion behind their medical terminology and research.
And that’s our formula, right there. Listening. It takes asking questions, receiving their responses without judgment, and reflecting back to your audience so they know you really understand.
You don’t have to be the next voice victim in the content game.
Now, as a messaging-strategy firm for successful entrepreneurs, we use the listening skills we developed years ago to help our clients get clear on their message. From there, we guide them {using the system we’re going to talk about in Part 2. Stay tuned for that.} in how to take that message and outsource it {whether to us, to their writing team, or another outside source} without losing their voice.
We are passionate about helping our clients find their “North Star” and then pointing them back to that every time their message starts to drift. We wouldn’t be able to do this if we weren’t good at listening.
The Good News
You can get good at listening, too. In fact, our methodical system of branding your voice requires several listening pieces, and we’ll go into that in our Part 2. But for now, just know that finding your guiding North Star starts with listening to yourself. {More on that here.}
Once you get your starting point {based on your vision and values}, then you can begin the process of defining and refining your message, which frees you up to then outsource your content and hand your message over to a VA, marketing specialist, or copywriter without fear of compromising who you are and what you sound like.
Dying to know this mysterious process that we call our “Secret Sauce”? We’d love to share it with you! Basically, we’ve cracked the “voice code,” and we’re all about helping you do the same.
The truth about how to successfully outsource your content
While we’d like to think the reason we’ve had such success with content outsourcing is that we’re simply magical unicorn copywriters, it’s just not true. {Although we have other unicorn qualities, for sure.}
The real reason is due to this process that we’ve perfected after years of helping CEOs and clients who were struggling, overwhelmed, and less-than-motivated to stay on top of the constant content creation that is required in today’s world. After all, “content is king”, right?
If that statement makes you feel tired just reading it, we’re here to tell you that there’s hope. If you follow our process and do the work on the front end, it will save you time, energy, and free you up to serve your bigger purpose. {Which means you’ll have a greater impact!}
Make sure you read our Part 2 for more details on how to use our process to outsource your voice without fear. As for us, we’ve got some sparkly rainbows to slide down. Be back soon…
Serve your bigger purpose; have greater impact.
Don’t want to wait to read our Part 2? If you want help STAT(!) with professional content creation, or if you’ve got questions about our trainings or services, drop us a line!