Everyday Communication

6 online marketing lessons from smart businesses in my small town

By |2023-04-25T22:08:57+00:00April 25, 2023|Categories: Everyday Communication, Learning, Storytelling, Visual Communication|

About a year ago, I relocated to a small Midwestern farm town called Geneseo, Illinois. It’s a picturesque little community full of Victorian-era homes and tree-lined streets. Straight out of a Hallmark movie, you know? You really should come and visit us sometime. When my husband suggested we ditch the Chicago suburbs and move to Geneseo, [...]

We edited “story” out of our stuff, and I’m sorry about that

By |2023-03-30T14:48:46+00:00March 30, 2023|Categories: Creative Confidence, Creativity, Everyday Communication, Storytelling|

Whenever I tell people what I do for a living—helping people bring storytelling and creativity into the workplace—I’m met with immediate interest. “Wow! Cool! That sounds like so much fun.” It is! And not just fun, but useful. The ability to craft and tell a good story is oh-so-valuable to any business. My livelihood depends on [...]

Don’t Get Mad. Make It Up.

By |2023-02-28T17:12:24+00:00February 28, 2023|Categories: Creative Confidence, Everyday Communication, Learning, Storytelling, Uncategorized|

It started out as a joke, a silly way for us to blow off steam. We invented something out of sheer frustration.Ever since I started teaching creative writing, students have been asking me for the magical elixir: What is the formula for writing a story?I found this exasperating and annoying.After a deep breath to calm myself, [...]

Your quest to be more creative starts here

By |2023-02-28T14:24:20+00:00February 28, 2023|Categories: Creative Confidence, Creativity, Everyday Communication, Learning, Life|

How To Be Creative is a theme that surfaces again and again when I sit down to write. Not because people flock to me asking, “Oh Beth, you creative wizard, will you please publish your wisdom?!” Nope, that’s not the spark that lights my blog-posting flame. Most of the time, my creativity-focused posts begin from a [...]

How Long Is Too Short?

By |2023-02-07T16:38:01+00:00January 30, 2023|Categories: Creative Confidence, Everyday Communication, Learning, Storytelling, Uncategorized|

When it comes to professional development, how long does a training have to be? The answer of course is, it depends. Imagine preparing to teach and standing in front of a roomful of quiet, nervous colleagues who don't know each other and aren't quite sure what to expect from this session. You didn't bring a deck [...]

How to turn “I don’t know” into a conversational advantage

By |2022-12-30T18:44:49+00:00December 30, 2022|Categories: Creative Confidence, Everyday Communication, Learning, Life|

As 2022 drew to a close, several of my friends announced that they were stepping away from social media, at least until January. To detox from the digital noise, they chose to disconnect. Stepping away can be good practice for analog conversations, too. In tense situations, sometimes the best response is no response at all. Step [...]

Eliminate acronyms from your vocabulary (except the ones I invented)

By |2022-11-30T15:47:12+00:00November 29, 2022|Categories: Everyday Communication, Writing|

So much workplace communication is just crap. Big words trying to sound smart and important. Vague words trying to obscure the specifics. Jargon trying to belong with the insiders’ club. And OMG the acronyms. Several years ago, I invented an acronym to illustrate just how senseless and confusing the vocabulary of business can be: C.R.A.P.  = [...]

You’re boring. Stop that.

By |2022-08-31T02:56:37+00:00August 31, 2022|Categories: Creative Confidence, Creativity, Everyday Communication, Learning, Life|

When Jill and I started our Story Mode program, we easily landed on our motto/tagline/hashtag: Refuse To Be Boring. This phrase is our “way.” It’s our constant reminder and also an apt description of how we think, act, talk, create, work, relate. It’s how we live. We spend so much time refusing to be boring, we [...]

We’ve outlawed disclaimers. Here’s why.

By |2022-05-25T20:22:09+00:00May 25, 2022|Categories: Creative Confidence, Creativity, Everyday Communication, Learning|

When it comes to creative communication, I am not fond of rules—unless I’m breaking them. I tweak templates, bust boundaries, and write wrong. Perhaps this is why I’m self-employed; I take serious pleasure in challenging “the way we’ve always done it” and going against the grain. But in our Story Mode workshops, Jill and I enforce [...]

Stop inventing C.R.A.P. business words

By |2022-04-29T16:20:53+00:00April 29, 2022|Categories: Everyday Communication, Writing|

While Jill and I were guestcasting* on the Grounded Content podcast, Jill said: 
“You can take one piece of content and repurpose it in a hundred million different ways, and each of those repurposements ...” Yes, my business partner is fond of both hyperbole (A hundred million ways? Really?) and making sh*t up. She knows how [...]