All Posts Tagged: Business Skills
When You’re Not Getting Things Done, You Are Doing *Something*–What Is It?
When I first started coaching, running events, corralling writers for a website, and interviewing a lot of people for positions in a short period of time, I felt like a high school teacher.
I was receiving excuses right and left, insignificant and grave, for all sorts of things.
Event space managers delay getting me contracts because they’re sick (and apparently have no one else in the office of the major hotel they work at?), sponsorship chairs for conferences aren’t available to get me a sponsorship contract for months, and writers get me overdue in two weeks rather than two days because… well, I don’t think they actually even bother to explain themselves (and correspondingly aren’t due to be receiving any new assignments).
As Sherlock Holmes Says: When Inconvenient, Do It Anyway
There’s a Sherlock Holmes line that gets repeated in nearly every adaptation verbatim. It’s a note from Sherlock to Watson:
Come at once if convenient. If inconvenient, come all the same.
They always find comical ways to make the letter arrive at the most inconvenient times. And Watson does always come right away, out of loyalty and curiosity (though often tempered with a fair amount of annoyance ;)).
Never Write the Story First (In Case You Didn’t Know)
When I go to conferences and talk to people who would like to publish travel articles, online or in print, one of the most frequent questions I get is:
But I should write the article before I pitch, right?
Or something like that. Some variation on the crazy, horrifying spread of misinformation out there that makes people think they should work many hours for peanuts to be published on some random travel website.
Vegemite. Waste. And How Real Companies Think
Have you heard of Vegemite?
It’s the descendent of Marmite, if that rings more bells.
Both are classed by most people as disgusting, but something you need to try at least once when visiting Australia (Vegemite) or the U.K. (Marmite) for the first time.
But aside from being a seriously acquired taste (or mouth-puckering, depending who you ask), most visitors don’t really know what they’re putting in their mouth–or why it’s the perfect example of the gap between successful and struggling freelance businesses.
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Is Your Freelance Writing Career Closing Its Eyes and Hoping for the Best?
A while ago, my husband finally got his cholesterol checked out. Every since I’ve know him, he’s said that he needs to get it checked, because Indians always have high cholesterol.
Sure enough, the numbers came high. Rather excessively so.
And the first thing the doctor did was ask him to keep a food diary for two weeks and scheduled a follow-up appointment to review and see if anything in his diet was contributing to the condition.
This is the first step doctors take to diagnose so, so many ailments–gather concrete, detailed, real data. They don’t rely on the patient’s description of their habits.
What Is Your *One* Thing Right Now?
When I speak with my coaching clients, I’m always struck by how much more impact we achieve when we focus on things that seem small or narrow or insignificant as “issues” in terms of “becoming a travel writer.”
I’ll never forget one unexpected conversation I had with someone who has what others would no doubt consider a very cool and interesting life. She lives in Europe (she’s not from there). In the mountains, where there are opportunities for her to indulge in day-long climbing adventures with partner (that’s what brought them together). And her partner typically works in a different country, where he guides tours, so she gets built-in regular travel to popular travel destinations automatically.
This might sound way more interesting than whatever the circumstances of your life are right now, but she actually had an issue gunking up her enjoyment of this situation in a big way.
Do You Thrive on Riding the Waves in Style? (Danny Meyer-style)
For what I do, helping writers understand, come to terms with, and make the most of, the marketplace for travel writing today, it’s very important that I not only spend time with a diverse company of writers, to understand the issues in the industry today from many different viewpoints in terms of both background and experience, but also that I spend time with those on the other side of the desk—the editors and companies that hire writers.
An Important Public Service Announcement About Following Up on Your Freelance Pitches
This week, I wanted to take a minute for an important travel-writing public service announcement on following up with editors after a pitch!
But this topic is not only near and dear to my heart because it is a such a big deal for writers, but as it seems like we are reaching a certain tipping point here that doesn’t have a good solution.
Redefining (Walter) Mittyesque – Let’s See Your New Resume
The Ben Stiller-directed “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” came out in 2013. Instagram hit the scene in late 2010.
Watching the film today, the cinematography oozes shots that we now think of as Instagram tropes: packing flat-lays, travelers in profile walking in front of brilliantly painted walls, a lone traveler in a long shot on an otherwise empty road. Just cue the overlaid text of the Robert Frost poem.
One Sunday night, however, we knew that “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” was just what we needed.
We had an intensive Saturday of soul-searching and Sunday of planning our first Detox + Reset retreat and Walter Mitty came up as a frequent touchpoint throughout the weekend. On the one hand, for the gorgeous visuals (we didn’t see the Instagram-style until re-watching it now!), but, more importantly for the character and journey of Walter Mitty.
You Only Get One First Impression–How Not to Botch It
Do you struggle with how to tell people what you do or how to introduce yourself at networking events (in a travel writing context that is)?
It is an unfortunate paradox for travel writers. On the one hand, we have a job so “cool” that it often seems like everyone wants to do it. But at the same time, a lot of people—often even the same people that say they would love to be travel writers—act like this profession is not really a job…it’s a hobby.