One thing that I’ve noticed my clients avoiding so frequently, like every forking week, is the idea of writing consistently for their readers.

They fear they don’t have anything NEW to say.

Or innovative.

Or mind-blowing.

Or…

The list goes on and on.

But that list is all based around fear.

The fear of not being enough.

Of not being perfect.

Of being rejected.

Of being misunderstood.

We call this fear writer’s block.

And since it has a very well-known name, it gives us permission to not do the hard work.

To not put our butt in the chair and get behind the keyboard like the badass professionals that we are.

I get it.

We could bust through the fear.

Examine the unsupportive thinking back there.

Write anyway, even though it feels SO. HARD.

And there wouldn’t be anything wrong with this approach.

It’s what I’d usually recommend to clients.

But, what about trickery?

What if we tricked our brains into approaching our writing in a new way. In a fun way.

Yes, I’m encouraging you to have FUN in your business!

How I get over that pesky writer’s block and have fun is to… talk out my blog posts.

Yep, just me and the handy voice memo app on my phone.

And what I found is your own distinct voice comes out. No, not your vocal qualities, but the personality behind your words. What makes you, spectacular YOU.

Talking it out allows the writing to be so much more conversational and engaging for your reader.

But then, a problem comes up when you record a gloriously, raucous 3, 5, 8-minute audio for your next blog post, and… you have to transcribe it.

This is always a laborious process.

That’s where my latest favorite business tool comes to your rescue – Otter.ai.

It’s a new technology that will automatically transcribe your audio for you.

Better yet, it’s free service for the first 600 minutes you submit for transcription each month. 

Do you know how many blog posts that would be? 

That would probably be enough minutes even for Seth Godin!

Like any transcription software, it isn’t 100% all of the time (recently, in a note for a friend, it kept writing “Marie” as “Murray”), but it’s pretty darn close.

Otter is now a key piece of tech in my business.

Otter does so much of the work for you that it’s actually changed the way that I write blog posts.

What used to take 60-90 minutes of my time – to write a post, edit it, add it to my website and schedule it to go out to you each week in my newsletter.

Now, the entire process can be completed in 30-45 minutes, depending on the length of the blog post.

That’s a 50% time savings!

And not only do I use it to transcribe almost all my blog posts (yep, this post was recorded and transcribed using Otter), I also use the software with my teams.

Sometimes we exchange fairly long voice messages – 8-10 minutes – on Voxer.

Even with Voxer allowing for double and triple speed playback of messages, sometimes, it’s helpful to read the words on the page.

So, I download the message and import it into Otter for transcription.

My challenge to you:

• Give this writing technique + Otter a whirl.
• Talk out your next blog post.
• Import the recording into Otter.
• Do a little editing and finessing of the transcription so that it fits for your readers.
• Come back here and let me know how you found it and how much time it saved you.

You’re going to love it – can’t wait to hear from you!

Photo by RawPixel on Unsplash