Being “nice” doesn’t win you clients and other truths

Before I wrote copy, I wrote short plays.

I was facing my thirtieth birthday. I’d just moved. And I was looking for some new projects.

So, I decided to do some of the things I loved as a kid.

One goal was to enter a piece in the short play festival at the local theater.

Now, I never studied playwriting.

But when I was 13, I did put on a full season of theater – romantic comedy, farce, western, whodunit – in my basement with my neighbor Sarah. (Our parents were season ticket holders).

So, I had that.

Anyway, the challenge was: how do you actually write a short play?

I knew how to write academic essays.

I didn’t know how to write for the stage.

I threw myself into the world of theater.

I took creative writing classes.

I hung out at the Drama Book Shop whenever I was in NYC.

I bought and read a lot of playwriting books.

And most important of all, I wrote.

Every morning, come hell or high water. I made coffee, marched out through the back yard, walked into our greenhouse, sat down at my makeshift desk (a plank on two empty oil drums) and wrote, from 8 to 10.

Then I went to work at my job.

There were things I discovered in my pursuit of writing plays that transfer over to the work I do now, writing copy and helping business owners find their voice and their message. Including:

1)   “No one wants to watch nice people being nice to each other” This, I got from one of my writing teachers, Paul Selig at Tisch. Paul was adamant about the fact that nice is boring. As a teacher of writing copy, I now see this crop up in business owners’ projects. They don’t want to be manipulative or mean or negative. But because of this, their copy is flat. No one connects with it. No one cares. Nice backfires on us because it’s not real. It’s nice.

2)   Kurt Vonnegut taught his students to “make their characters want something right away – even if it’s only a glass of water” If you want to move people with your writing, there needs to be desire in it.  Who’s desire? Your audience. They need to WANT something so bad, they’ll walk through their fears and self doubts to get it. Until you know what that desire is, your copy won’t move people.

3)   There’s a fine line between “expressing yourself” and writing stuff that other people don’t get. I wrote a play that made me weep to create, and then when it got produced, I heard people leave the theater unmoved, and wondering what it was about. I was crushed. And as much as I wanted to hide out in the idea “it’s art” – part of me knew I’d missed the mark. I see this ALL THE TIME with business owners I write with – they are so passionate about their work, it makes them tone deaf to what other people need to hear from them. In art, it may be okay. But in business, it’s not. It will kill your ability to attract clients. 

Here’s a recent example of this last lesson, from a recent writing review session in one of my programs: 

The business owner wrote this, as an opening for an email:

Do you find yourself longing for a new way to relate with the people in your life? Does it feel like something is missing in the way you are connecting, and in the way people are connecting with you? Our longing for deep connection, for intimacy, is an essential part of being human. We may try to hide it, or find other ways to fulfill this yearning, but it doesn’t go away. We need this intimacy with ourselves, with others and with the universe. We experience great joy and freedom when we can dissolve the obstacles that prevent us from being real, open and undefended with others. When we find out how to be ourselves, without hiding or holding back, a natural vitality and brilliance start to shine in us.

Now, that’s really nice.

I’m all for intimacy, joy, and freedom.

But nice doesn’t make my clients money. So I said, “huh, I don’t really get it. Can you tell me more about what you actually do with people?”

She, being awesome and totally clear about how she works with clients, told me – she works with people of a spiritual bent, who are having issues in their marriages and relationships.

“Oh! That I get,” I said.

So we came up with this:

SUBJECT: They are driving you bananas – now what?

Dear NAME,

Is someone you love driving you nuts?

Or maybe your relationship is “okay”… but there is a juiciness… a depth… that is missing.

Or perhaps there may be a “deadness” there — a lack of real, deep contact.

And it really bothers you.

Now, if you’re reading this, I am also willing to bet that you have some kind of spiritual practice. (Even if you don’t like the word “spiritual.”) And you don’t

But that spiritual practice isn’t really helping here. It’s like something else is needed here, but you don’t know what it is.

This copy literally came out of her mouth, by the way.

(Last we talked, she’d gotten 40 initial sessions on the books from this copy. If you had 40 leads to talk to, what could that do for your business?)

This is why I’m such a fan of talking things out.

One, because most of us are spending way too much time alone, making stuff up in our heads. We could use a little sparkling conversation.

And two, for many of you, the hot copy just falls out of your mouth with a few choice questions and a witness who says “cut the B.S. and tell me what you really do.”

Back when I was writing short plays, my friends and I would gather regularly to read each other’s work and talk about it. This is what I love (and miss) about hanging out with artists. The camaraderie. The getting notes from other people who are actively working on their own projects. And yes, the daytime drinking.

Why aren’t more business owners doing this?

That’s why I run my business the way I do – with room for business owners to hear (and in the Writing Brigade, see) each other.

Because now is not the time to be nice in our writing.

But sure beats trying to figure it out on your own.