Are you writing for everyone but yourself?

Hello Reader,

I have a confession. My business newsletter once went 4 months without a single issue going out. Judge me. I deserved it.

It wasn't that I forgot about it. I thought about it (and stressed about it) almost every day. The same way you think about that text you owe a friend and keep not answering.

I always had an excuse for not writing and sending it. There was a client I needed to follow up with, an invoice to send, or a project I had to get done by Thursday. I fell into the trap of "those make me money," and then I'd tell myself the newsletter could wait. So it waited.

Waiting turned out to be the only thing it was any good at.

What bugs me about that looking back is the irony of it.

I write for a living. Words are the entire job. But the words that bring in the next client, like my newsletter and my posts and the blog I keep meaning to update, were the ones I never seemed to have any energy or time left for.

It's a weirdly specific trap, too. A plumber doesn't get to the end of the day and discover there's no plumbing left over for their own bathroom. If an electrician comes home and the lights don't turn on, they figure out why.

Writers and marketers pour the whole day into other people's businesses, and then when we sit down to write something for our own business we have nothing left.

For me, that cycle meant the marketing only ever happened when I went full-on panic mode. That's not a good thing.

I'm still no role model. (Do as I say, not as I do 😁.) But over the years I've picked up a few tricks that have cut my stress by what feels like several tons. And they all trace back to one idea I resisted for an embarrassingly long time: You have to stop squeezing your marketing into the cracks of your day and develop a system that makes it more efficient and low-effort.

It's not about saving time

Batching my marketing work has saved my sanity. Some of that may be how I think about it though.

I've read a lot of batching advice that tries to sell you on reclaimed hours. Group your similar tasks together so you stop context-switching, and you'll get more done. That's true enough as far as it goes, but it skips right over why the task switching wears you down in the first place.

Gloria Mark's research in her study, The Cost of Interrupted Work goes a bit deeper. After an interruption, it takes you roughly 23 minutes to get all the way back to whatever you were doing.

Now picture your average Tuesday.

You draft something for a client, then stop to answer a prospect's email, then drop into a round of edits.

You remember you meant to post something, so you write half a LinkedIn caption before a client pulls you back again.

By the third round of interruptions, you've paid that 23-minute tax five times.

My answer to that problem is time-blocking and batching my work. Please know that neither of those has anything to do with cramming more work into my week.

I only have so much time, and I want to use it efficiently.

I knew task switching kills my productivity long before I read Gloria's research. I struggled to find a solution for years.

What I discovered is that when I work most efficiently, I get into a flow state. Especially when I'm writing. I'll write until I'm distracted (sometimes for hours). Unfortunately, once that distraction happens, it's almost impossible for me to get back into the flow.

When I can stay in one mental gear long enough, I can write a lot of content in a relatively short amount of time. The same goes with answering emails, doing client calls, researching, or taking care of my social media. If I batch tasks, I'm more focused and efficient.

So I came up with a system when it comes to writing for my business. I focus on three parts of the process: recording, writing, and repurposing.

Two of those parts batch beautifully. The third one fights you every step of the way. But once you sort out which is which, the rest of it becomes a great deal easier.

Record: fill the well

Recording is your input mode, where you catch raw material before it evaporates on you.

Maybe a client says something on a call that sparks an idea for an entire blog post. Maybe a prospect asks you the same question you've gotten from four others this month, which is the universe telling you to write about it. Or you go off on a two-minute rant about something your industry keeps getting wrong (hello AI writing!).

All of that is content, and every bit of it is forgotten unless you grab it while it's fresh.

The trick is to make capturing ridiculously easy on yourself. Here are some of the ways people I know have simplified the process:

Talk into a voice memo while you're walking the dog.
Keep one running doc or Notion page with a name like "writing topics" and toss everything into it.
Use Otter or Descript if you'd rather have the transcript

During this step, your only responsibility is to capture the idea before it floats out of your head for good. I spent 10 minutes today brainstorming content ideas into my computer's notes document. I do that a few times a year, and get enough ideas to keep me going. If something new comes up, I can add it on my computer, my phone, or my iPad and they all stay in the same place.

Do that for a couple of weeks and you'll end up with more raw material than you know what to do with.

Inspiration is greater than scheduling

I'm not going to tell you to drop a time block on your calendar that says "Content Creation, 2 to 4 pm Wednesday." Surprised? To be honest, I'm a little surprised too.

But one thing I know firsthand is that writing doesn't always happen just because you want it to. It's a little different for client work. That's primarily structure and deliverables bound together by your creative brain.

When you're writing for yourself, creativity and inspiration take center stage.

When I try to force myself to do all of my business writing in a two hour slot, I'll sit there staring at the cursor while my brain wanders off to do literally anything else.

Anyone who has done this for more than a year has learned that you cannot brute-force a blank page by appointment.

So I stopped fighting it.

Say you give your own business one day a week (or even half a day). Maybe that's Monday, maybe it's whatever day your client work is slowest. Block it off so nothing else gets book then.

When you sit down that morning, write out everything you want to get done and circle the top three. Your own writing and marketing should probably be one of them.

Then play it by ear. If you're feeling it, start writing before something else distracts you. If you don't feel it, don't force it. Answer your emails and clear the admin off your plate first, then come back to the writing.

Still nothing? Get up. Eat something or take a walk to clear your head. Then sit back down and start with the easy parts. Pull up your research, sketch an outline, jot down a few half-thoughts. Most days that'll probably be enough to get the words moving.

And close your email while you're at it. Shut Slack off too. Facing a blank page is hard enough without a ping reminding you someone wants your attention.

If none of it works and the writing just won't come, you've still got the rest of the week. Block some time the next day to try again.

Once it's done, repurpose it ruthlessly

Let's catch up. You have a document or file with a treasure trove of writing ideas. You've also found your creative flow and wrote the article or newsletter.

Now we move on to repurposing.

Repurposing is slicing that one piece of content into smaller chunks more appropriate for the other spaces your prospects are hanging out.

Your newsletter can turn into a handful of LinkedIn posts.
If you wrote an article, pull out one section and turn it into a short email.
A counterargument you made in the original piece can become a short comment for social media or Reddit.

Repurposing can be batched easily, because you're extracting from something rather than building it from scratch. The hard thinking is already finished. You're just reshaping what you've got.

Getting a full week of visible presence out of a single afternoon of work is no small thing. For me, it's the difference between showing up consistently and only showing up occasionally.

Find your weak link

Do you struggle with getting your marketing out? Before you change anything, figure out where your process breaks down. It's usually one of the parts of the process, not all three.

If you sit down to write and have nothing to say, your problem is capture. You're not recording. Fix that first.

If you've got a pile of ideas but the posts never get written, the writing is your sticking point. Try a low pressure approach to getting it done.

If you write plenty but you put it in one place do nothing else with it, you're skipping the repurposing. That means you're doing the hard part and throwing away the easy reward. Try repurposing for the next few weeks and see how it goes.

Why does this matter?

I'd love to tell you having a system fixed me for good, that I put out the content I need to every week, and that I never stress about marketing. It didn't. I'm a fallible human and I own that.

But that system means I've run clean out of excuses and if I don't use it, that's on me. Some weeks I manage it just fine. Some weeks my newsletter still doesn't get sent. But those weeks are few and far between now. And it helps that Trudy sends me nudges to make sure my issues of FWO go out on time!

So set aside some time to focus on your business, and let us know how it goes!

Treasa (and Trudy)

P.S. We'd love to hear about your systems! What do you do to make sure you get your marketing done on time?