The other day I was driving home from an appointment when I had to pull my car off the road and cry for a while.
Brandi Carlile was singing Closer To Fine from the Barbie soundtrack, my hair was whipping around from the wind streaming in the open window, clumping and sticking to the wet streams running down my face.
I wasn’t sure if I was crying from grief or happiness, probably both. Or maybe because life is beautiful but also so hard, or maybe because people I love were out waving huge homophobic posters at the Million March last week, or maybe because I got my heart broken so bad last year and every day since there’s been a ghost sleeping on the other side of my king-size bed and I don’t know how to tell him to get lost because all I want is for the ghost to stay forever.*
Adapting to all this change since COVID turned the world upside down, well, it hasn’t been easy for anyone. Previously normal-ish people suddenly became transphobes and started questioning reproductive rights, whut?
If, like me, you often want to nestle under the covers where it’s safe and warm, I feel you.
Everywhere I look my online business peers are asking, “What in the hell is happening on the internet and why can’t it be more like 2020?”
Comparatively, 2020 was like being inside the cash machine at Chuck-e-Cheese, the one where the birthday boy gets to grab all the bills he can inside of, like, 60 seconds.
I enjoyed the Chuck-e-Cheesiness of 2020 as much as the next guy.
Thousands of people looking for exciting work-from-home opportunities? Potential customers who suddenly had way more time on their hands?
It was an exciting time to be selling.
The climate of selling on the internet is definitely changing. Everywhere I look business owners are sunsetting offers, scaling back operations and wondering how to revive once-thriving programs they’re not even sure they want to sell anymore.
Sometimes out of necessity.
Sometimes because priorities changed.
Sometimes both.
Either way, there’s no denying that a change is afoot.
As for me, that change has been for the better. I like my business and my life much more in 2023. (Anyone can see that guy in the Chuck-e-Cheese tank is clearly freaking out!)
I’m also asking myself, “What do I really want to create? What would inspire my customers and subscribers? What can I speak so loudly and powerfully about that it shakes people out of the cocoons we’ve all had to build around ourselves just to feel safe?”
I don’t have the answers yet.
(If you do, can I buy your course please?)
But I have something else: my strength, the wisdom of experience, and my huge heart—the same place my singing voice comes from.
The song I want to sing next is a free workshop called Write This Way: How To Write Copy That Shows Your Customers They Belong.
It’s about where bias and assumptions show up in language, and how to avoid unintentionally excluding people in your copy. (And yes! It was formally called “Linguistic Activism”—a title sure to drive away approximately 98% of everyone.)
I’ve edited thousands of emails (literally!) for my students over the years.
I often find myself saying, “What’s up with all these female pronouns? Did you mean to be excluding other genders?” or “Hey, you buried a bunch of text in an image here. Nice design workaround but what about people with low vision?”
This workshop isn’t secretly a webinar, promise
It’s just something special I’d like to share for free, to people who care about inclusion and want to show customers they belong.
I hope people come, because it’s a really important topic.
I have a goal to get 500 registrations, which will require more people to come out from underneath their weighted blankets and explore something new.
It won’t be hard. It’s ME, Tarzan! So you can bet it’ll be fun, digestible and full of heart. You’ll walk away with some easy-to-implement changes to make in your sales copy, your emails, heck, maybe even in your life.
From my giant heart to yours,
Tarzan
*The Hemingway App can just go to hell and take my “hard to read” sentences with it! But seriously, probably you should use it to make your emails more readable.
