A few weeks ago, I handed my ‘Writing for Councils’ business card to someone at a networking event. The project they had in mind wasn’t for the local government sector, and I awkwardly explained that I do more than it says on a card.
And when I’m writing proposals for non-council work I consciously join the dots to show how the things I’ve done for councils will carry across.
I’m comfortable doing this but there’s a growing gap between what I’m currently doing and ‘what it says on the tin’.
The thing I do for other people, done for me
Over the past month I’ve been working with Lisa Mullis of Paraphrase Communications on a strategic growth plan for my business.
Here’s what we did:
- Lisa took in all the mess of what I do, and how I write and think about it … my website, my newsletters, my LinkedIn, my current projects, and my half-formed sense of where I’d like to go next, and presented that as a report for me to review.
- She also sent me some reflection questions to help me fill in some of the gaps.
- We met for an hour to brainstorm some remaining questions.
- Lisa brought it all together into a strategic growth plan for the year ahead, as well as detailed lists of actions for the next 12 weeks.
The funny thing is this is the kind of work I do for my clients. I take a complicated tangle of information, listen carefully to the people involved, make sense of it, and reflect it back to them in a format they can act on.
It feels amazing to have someone else look at what I’m doing, ask the hard questions, and giving me a pathway to meet my goals. It’s hard to do myself because when you’re the beans, you can’t read the label on the tin.
What I couldn’t see on my own
The biggest thing that shifted was something I’ve been circling for a while without landing on.
I’ve traded as Writing for Councils for 12 years. That specificity has served me well but at the moment, when a lot of my work isn’t for councils (and isn’t always writing), my brand has started to feel a bit out of step with what I’m doing.
The shift isn’t deciding to walk away from councils. It’s about giving myself the flexibility to talk about the extra things I’m doing. ‘Writing for Councils’ will continue to be central to what I do. This is like adding a sunroom to my existing house, rather than demolishing what’s there.
The thread that ties it together
The other thing that became much clearer was how my existing and emerging services are connected. There’s a single thread running through everything I do, including the done-for-you strategic planning and writing, the AI workshops, and even workshops that have nothing to do with AI.
It’s that same process Lisa ran for me. Start with a complex array of stuff. Make sense of it. Listen to the people who have insights and ideas about that topic. Then reflect those views back in a strategy or a plan they can own and implement.
My training is closely tied to this process, as it’s directly related to the different ways I’ve figured out how to use AI within my strategic planning work.
Once I could see that thread, the separate strands started to weave together as something that’s easier for me to talk about.
Now it gets tricky
I don’t want to make this sound tidier than it is. A plan is not the same as a done thing. There’s a big year of work ahead to deliver on the direction it provides. And as someone said to me the other day, the easy part is coming up with good ideas – the hard part is putting them into practice!
