Successful Business Writing

Are you ready to turn your business writing from daunting to daring? I invite you on a captivating journey with Jack Appelman, founder of Successful Business Writing, where we unlock the hidden potential of effective business communication. Jack's fascinating transition from journalist to professor to business writing teacher illuminates the significance of simplicity, clarity, and vulnerability in achieving stellar results. We take a deep dive into the evolution of writing standards, reminding us that the magic happens when we dare to be vulnerable in our quest for growth.

In the second half, Jack inspires us with his revolutionary strategies to transform business writing into an engaging conversation. We explore ways to keep your audience hooked with simple yet effective presentation of complex topics. Jack's unique approach to one-on-one coaching and tailoring programs for employees is a game-changer. We also delve into the art of structuring webinars and Powerpoint presentations that keep your audience on the edge of their seats. This episode is a treasure trove for professionals eager to elevate their writing skills or anyone intrigued by the art of communication. Tune in and soak up these invaluable insights!

https://successfulbusinesswriting.com/bio/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:14

Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of Failing For you. I'm your host, jordan Yates, and today I'm joined by Jack Appelman, and he is here on referral from Mark Levine, somebody that was on one of our first few episodes and we had a lot of positive feedback from Mark. So if you liked Mark, it is pretty high chance you might like Jack too. Jack say hello.

Speaker 2: 0:39

Hello everyone. Pleasure to be here and hopefully I can be half as good as Mark was.

Speaker 1: 0:46

I mean, he did set the standard high, so I mean I am just to be half as good as Mark, and you know that usually turns out alright. Jack is a owner of a company, correct? Successful business writing. That's what you do, yes, yes. So can you just kind of jump into it and tell us a little bit more about what that is and what you're currently doing right now?

Speaker 2: 1:11

Sure, Well, what I do is I teach working professionals to get better results from their writing. That is, whether they write emails, whether you write technical documents, spec sheets, and so wherever it takes to get you to get better results with your writing, because, again, people in business, they want better results, and this involves doing live workshops, involves webinars, also involves a lot of one-on-one coaching.

Speaker 1: 1:46

It's funny that you said emails first, because something I noticed. I have a background in mechanical engineering and I've done some very technical jobs, but now my day job is a marketing engineer and a majority of my team are traditional marketing people and within the first week of my job somebody put a ha ha in the email and I almost I was like what we can do that Because I'm used to. You know, good afternoon. My name is Jordan, sincerely Jordan Yates, and I guess by industry or sort of sector you're in, it can change what's required or what's expected. Is that something that you've seen? Being someone that teaches people how to write emails?

Speaker 2: 2:27

Absolutely yeah, I would, I would have never put an emoji in and I used to teach leave the emojis out, put them in your personal emails, not business emails. But then I found clients were sending the emails with their emojis, so they can do it. I still don't really do too much on my business emails, but certainly the standards have changed. People in business and all types of industries Not all of them, but many of them are now more comfortable with emojis and things like ha, ha and all these acronyms that we've all gotten used to.

Speaker 1: 3:07

I will think like three times and check it three times before I add a smiley face, because someone will say ha ha to me and I'm like I really want to match their energy, but I cannot bring myself to put ha? Ha in an email. So sometimes I'll get a little crazy and throw in a smiley face. But that's, that's my limit for now. We'll see how it evolves over time. Jack, how did you get started in this sector of the industry? What did you do up until this point that led you to want to teach people these skills?

Speaker 2: 3:39

Well, I started my career as a journalist. For the first five years I was a journalist. Then I got into public relations and in the late 90s I was working at an insurance brokerage firm in New Jersey. The VP of marketing and PR and my boy said to me hey, jack, why don't you teach the salespeople, give them some tips on writing? So sure, ok. So I prepared a 45 minute workshop for them. We had a Monday morning salesman who won't speak, that I used to attend. Even I wasn't a salesperson, and I said, well, I really enjoyed doing this and they got a lot out of this and I started doing more of them and I I left my job a couple of years later and decided not to look for another job but to go out of my own, and I did consulting. I did some PR consulting. At the same time I became an adjunct professor and so it became my passion.

Speaker 2: 4:43

While I enjoy PR, I enjoy teaching people how to write a lot more. And it's a lot because not because I was so into English literature, because I wasn't, it was because, a big part of it, because I always found that certain things that I read weren't clear, whether they were instruction how to do something or just general things. Wow, clarity is so important and not only clarity, but a lot of it is really based on simplicity. One of the most important principles of good business writing is being simple and clear, so it started to become my passion. I started doing more workshops. I started transitioning my business from PR consulting to giving writing workshops, doing one-on-one writing coaching. At the same time, I taught PR and all kinds of business communication classes in college, and then I decided to write a book 10 Steps to Successful Business Writing. It did very well. That was in 08. And then I wrote a second edition in 2018, exactly 10 years later. So this has become my passion. I like to teach people how to get better results from their writing.

Speaker 1: 6:01

I think it's cool that you're passionate about it and you found a way to make money with it. I feel like it's rare that we can both like what we do and profit from it, so I'm happy for you for that. I guess part of the theme of failing for you is being vulnerable about the parts of the process that weren't so successful. So I have to ask was it difficult when you decided to step out and kind of be your own boss and put yourself out there? Was there any hesitation? How long did it take you to get comfortable, to think this can be a full-time thing? How did that go?

Speaker 2: 6:36

Well, there are always challenges when you have your own business.

Speaker 2: 6:41

My business is really a specialty business, and so I had to do a lot of networking and one of my best sources was joining the Association for Talent Development, also known as ATD, which has a national chapter, and I became active in the North and New Jersey chapter, even though I live in New York State, both by and, eventually, the New York City chapter, and there I met a lot of people and just talking to people and a lot of the people. Most of my business in the beginning was through referrals through ATD, and still to a large degree now. So challenges were networking and also is really explaining to people what I do. One of the things I did is when I first started my business, my company name was SG Communications. S&g is my daughter's, with Sarah and Gail, and my official company, llc, is still SG Communications. But I used to go to networking meetings. I used to give out a business card. Then I had to explain to people what I do. It says wait a minute, what if the name of my company started the conversation for me? So I rebranded to successful business writing so people would get my card and I would be able to start a conversation about it. So that helped a lot and also really explaining to people the value.

Speaker 2: 8:15

There are some organizations that immediately have a need. We really need this. Other organizations don't necessarily see the need right away. They are more apt to spend money on sales development or time management things that they believe can bring them more revenues, but a lot of the research lately shows that poor writing impacts the bottom line. I've had to explain to people why this is so important. So that's one of the challenges, and I meet people in network meetings and they talk about all the things they're doing leadership, development, sales development but this is something that really can help all those fields All no matter what you write people. I work with people who write, whether they write client emails or they write technical documents or new business proposals. It's all about being able to say something in the clearest, most concise way. Ace of sales and marketing, as you all know, jordan, you have to be persuasive.

Speaker 1: 9:33

Yeah, it's so funny your anecdote about your LLC name versus what you do business as, because I actually had the same exact thing happen to me. This year was the first year I became profitable in my side business, which is kind of content marketing, content creation, and my boyfriend and I had coined the name text media. We live in Texas, it's media, so it was text media LLC, but my brand is kind of me and so it just didn't have any correlation to me and I'd built my personal brand, but I didn't want to have to build that company's brand and so now I just do business as Jordan Yates marketing, and so I totally understand that, because I was trying to have to explain it. And so now I'm just like, yep, getting a DBA filing that for $25, make your life a lot easier. And it's your example is such a good example of, like you said, simplifying things and an example of your technical writing, because it is simplifying it by not having to explain it.

Speaker 1: 10:38

Now that we're kind of transitioning into this new day and age of AI, chat, gpt, I would love to hear your opinions on this, because a lot of people like to talk about chat GPT but it doesn't directly affect them as much. You're a technical writer. A lot of people are using chat GPT to help them or trying to use it to replace it. What is your opinion on it that you've seen so far?

Speaker 2: 11:06

Well it's. Things are happening so fast and I see all these webinars learn how to deal with chat, gpt I'm a professor at NYU and all of these emails attend this workshop but how to use chat, gpt or AI in the classroom. So things that happen so fast and what we learn now is gonna be so different a year or two years from now. That said, ai really has a place in writing. Developing ideas. I wrote an article that is on the ATD website about a practical on how to use AI and I gave a scenario where you're trying to send an email to persuade somebody to do something and AI is a great tool for generating ideas to get you going generating ideas.

Speaker 2: 12:03

But in my opinion, you have to use your own expertise, your own instincts for the finishing touches, Because there are certain subtleties that AI misses. Now people say, well, you have to keep asking AI questions, go back and forth this and that. Yeah, you could do that. But that comes to the point where you use AI as a drafting tool, so to speak, and you get ideas and maybe you go back and forth with a few questions. Could you make this version short or could you change the tone to this? But there comes a point you have to look at and say, okay, there's certain things that AI is missing, about the audience who I'm writing to, about them, or maybe they misinterpreted what I told them about them. So you have to take the time to put your own finishing touches on it, using your own instincts to make it, to really give it the high quality.

Speaker 1: 13:06

It also uses a lot of fun big words and sometimes they're just a little overused for the purpose you're trying to get it to write for Like. Sometimes I'll test it out and say write an email to answer this, and it'll do like five pages and I'm like let's tone it down to two to three sentences or let's change the tone. I play with it a lot because I used to love writing in high school and then after four and a half years of engineering I think I forgot how to write. So I very much so understand the need for your services. I guess a question I'd have is with engineers in particular, or the more technical minded people, what is a common thing that you notice that they struggle with and that you've been able to help them overcome with technical writing?

Speaker 2: 13:57

Well, a lot of engineers overwrite. They know the subject very well, they have a lot of technical expertise, but they don't know how to explain it in a way that's easily understandable. They'll start using a lot of details or they'll spend maybe three or four paragraphs on the background. Readers don't want that. Readers want you to get to the point right away. So what I advise them to do is again this all depends on the company protocol and what the standard for writing that particular type of document is start with the bottom line, the big picture overview of what's going, of what you feel that we need to do. This because of this. This procedure is gonna work better because of this and this and this, and then build it with some details in a logical sequence. It's about thinking about how the reader's going to perceive it and again, it could be a technical audience, it could be a non-technical audience. Particularly with a non-technical audience, you have to take them through it. You have to use simpler language. You have to be more conversational.

Speaker 2: 15:13

I advise people and some people say you really advise them to do this. Yeah, I advise people to write like you speak, because we tend to speak much more naturally than we write. Now it doesn't mean you don't edit, you can't have broken. English has to be professional. But it's amazing. When I am coaching somebody, very often I say to them I don't understand what you're trying to say in this paragraph. They say to me Jack, I'm trying to say this, this and this, so you know what I tell them. All right, well, write this, this and this. Oh, okay, yeah, I'll do that. So it's amazing. So it's really about business. Writing should be conversational. Now, I understand that certain companies have certain protocols for language, but I found even in the engineering firms, they still want things to be written simpler so they're easier to understand. And that's the key is really thinking about the rear. Even if it's somebody who's also an engineer, you want to get them to understand it as quickly as possible.

Speaker 1: 16:31

Yeah, I get that because in my day job I am kind of the in-between person from the super technical engineers to the marketing people and then everybody else. So I often in taking their really technical you know jargon and then I have to process it and I have to, like you said, make it more conversational and then spit it out into something that's understandable. And a lot of times I have to go through over and over and think if I wasn't an engineer who studied this all day, would I know what this is? And then it's like okay, no, so like I don't need to go that deep, because something my boss told me once is you don't always have to explain yourself. Just assume that people believe you when you're saying what you're saying, and if they want you to explain yourself, then you can go further to back up what you stated because I noticed that I do that myself, and especially oh my goodness in like PowerPoints.

Speaker 1: 17:29

If you, I can't speak. If you watch an engineer give a PowerPoint so many times, it is just long paragraphs with tiny, tiny words and it's just way too much. Is that something you help with? Is that considered technical writing like presentations?

Speaker 2: 17:45

Yes, you got me, so don't get me started on PowerPoint. I work with people and PowerPoint is when people write PowerPoint slides. It's not a handout If it's something that's meant to be used in a presentation. Most people use way too much information. I've worked with people who are corporate communication professionals and they're writing PowerPoints for their executives and they still are putting way too much information on the slides. See what happens when you have too much information on a slide. If it's again, if it's for background material, that's one thing, but somebody's using it to present what happens. Whether it's a live presentation, even a Zoom presentation, people start reading what's on the PowerPoint and they lose focus on the speaker and you never want to have that happen. Powerpoint should be just an outline of your speech and there are companies that say but Jack, this is the way we do it, this is what people like. That's fine. It's just not my approach to PowerPoint. I think it takes away from the how engaging the presenter is.

Speaker 1: 19:05

No, absolutely, especially when everyone's just squinting and they're trying to figure out what it's saying. Then you have an engineer up there who's a bit monotone and they're just reading through their slides. It's funny because I think that's what one of the episodes Mark came on and talked about is soft skills with engineers. I've had a lot of guys come on here and talk about soft skills just because in the engineering community we don't always naturally have them and so we need a little extra fluffing there. But I would say what you're doing is kind of a combo of soft and hard skills, because technical writing feels like a technical skill to me and then the soft skills kind of like adding the personality to it. Did you say that? Where do you think it sits on, the skill between the two being a soft skill and a technical skill?

Speaker 2: 19:56

I think it's more of a soft skill. The technical skill. I mean most of the engineers I work with. They're brilliant people, they're really smart. The technical part they know it's the communicator that they sometimes struggle with the order. What sequence should I use? Where should I start? How much background should I give? One of the things you just mentioned is very relevant in that a lot of times what you could do is, I believe, in giving the big picture first and then give more details, and you could even say if you want to further analyze it, see the attachment or see below. I love giving people choices, because some people are more detailed than others. If you start with the high level big picture, they can decide to stop if they're busy, back to it later or never or not at all, and they will appreciate when you give them a choice. So Answer your question. It's more of a soft skill, even the, the organization of the material, the being conversational, the Putting it in a way that it's easily understandable. Yeah, that's to me that's also a soft skill.

Speaker 1: 21:25

Yeah, and you know I didn't even mean to get on this topic of presentations, but now that I'm thinking of it I'd love to ask. So with today's day and age, post COVID, there are so many presentations given virtually. And I don't know about you, but I've been on the receiving end of many where I just kind of, you know, turn the volume down and then I do my work while I'm doing it. But I've also been on the other end where I'm giving them and trying to make sure people stay engaged. How I normally do that is, I make them turn their camera on and if I see they're not looking at me I'm like, hey, look up here, because for me I feel like a good presentation is a consistently engaged one. Yeah, do you have any tips with having to give virtual presentations and how to keep people engaged? Because I mean, I'd like to know for one, and I'm sure everyone listening would too.

Speaker 2: 22:14

Yeah, sure, give them activities. When I, when I give a writing webinar, I have slides. I say count, tell me what, tell me quickly, what word would you use instead of this? Or I also give them exercises. Take five minutes, so keep the people engaged, ask continually, ask the questions I give. I give a grammar contest. If the company wants me to cover grammar. I put people in teams, even virtually, who can answer this first.

Speaker 2: 22:42

The other thing that I tend a lot of webinars and I think what people miss the point with webinars sometimes I've it, sometimes the first 10 minutes they're giving ground rules. Or they give the ground rules and Thank you to this person and they introduce somebody in the bio. This person's three minutes long and this three minutes long is what we're going to do if you want more information. So by the time they've talked about a topic, it's like minute nine or ten and it's maybe a 45 minute webinar or that way too much. I believe in what I call the jeopardy method.

Speaker 2: 23:18

If you watch jeopardy, they don't start with the introduction, with the introduction of players. They start with playing the game. Then they take the first commercial to introduce the players. They start with content, just say hello, I'm welcome, I'm proud to be here. Start with content. Give some introduction right away, then you can work in A little bit about me or all that. Yeah, true, the ground rules. You have to say, maybe spend 30 seconds, but get right into some content and don't wait 10 minutes Before you're giving something valuable. People want your webinars, they want value, and if they're on it for 10 minutes, they're not, they're getting ground rules. They're gonna be, they're gonna start doing their own work. We all do it, I do it, I do it.

Speaker 1: 24:07

I always feel so guilty too, because I'm like, oh, I know that sometimes I'm the presenter, but I I once heard um In a podcast that this person that was a professional presenter said your presentation should be the best part of their day, and every presentation I go into with that like mindset. But unfortunately I work for a company that sells ceramic capacitors, so sometimes it's hard to make a ceramic capacitor the best part of someone's day. So I do the best I can, you know, but, um, it's, it can be difficult when you're doing really technical stuff to keep people engaged. Um, okay, so another question for you, I guess, would be what is a typical client like for you now? Are you more streamlined and you have, like, other people on your team helping, or is it that you are one on one, like what is your business structure and clientele like?

Speaker 2: 25:03

Yeah, Most of the work I do myself. I, for example, somebody, a company, hires me to do a, a live workshop, although they haven't been that many the past two years, though they're coming back now or or a webinar.

Speaker 2: 25:20

So I will talk to the person at the organization, say what are your, what are your people struggling with? What do you think they do? Well, look at, they do better. What would it mean to them the company if they wrote better, if I find out everything about them. I give them each a survey to fill out, each of the participants, I design a program for them and and I present the, the webinar again. I'm shortening it, yeah, and that often suggests well, why don't we have the group webinar? Let's do some follow-up coaching, let's have three 60-minute coaching sessions for each participant over the next few weeks.

Speaker 2: 26:04

In that case, I often hire coaches to help me out because I can't Mm-hmm. 40-50 sessions over a couple of months. Yeah, so I hire writing coaches to work with me. In other cases, somebody contacted to say Jack, we have this person at this organization and he's Need to be promoted, but he can't. His writing is holding them back. So then I would do a dedicated coaching program, say anywhere from 10 to 12 weeks. In that case I do a discovery session with a person. I talk to the supervisor, design a program that we meet, usually once a week. We do slides. I have that person bring in what they're working on and we do a coaching program and I give them a report at the end on how they've improved some other areas of improvement.

Speaker 1: 27:02

That's a give you a flavor of what I do has there ever been somebody that a Companies asked you to help, that was just unwilling to learn and you had to be like they Can't be helped because they don't want to be? Has that ever been something that you've had to deal with?

Speaker 2: 27:22

Not to that extreme there at. One of the things I always ask before I'm giving a group webinar or a group workshop is what are these people's attitudes? Is it the attitude I don't want? Is, well, I'm forced to attend, so I have to sit through this thing, or, wow, what a great opportunity this is. And I always tell the person that's the way you want to position. It's not that, oh, you're a better out you got you need to take this workshop. It's that this is an opportunity.

Speaker 2: 27:54

We all are continually improving our writing, trying to get better results. Better outcomes is good for you. Maybe you'll help you get promotions in the future, help you get better results. So Want to position it as a great opportunity to learn and get better. Yeah, I've had times where where people yeah, I can tell people in the room were Didn't want to be there. I've had times when they said to me wow, I thought this when this was going to be boring, but but it was engaging and that makes me happy with. So yeah, it is. It is a challenge to to make to have a Workshop or whether on, to continually engage people. You have to think of new ways to do it. You look at what happened at a particular Webinar. You get the evaluations and you and you continually improve it, like anything else.

Speaker 1: 28:50

Well, I'm glad that You're able to keep them engaged. I I sometimes so I feel like you and I would have a similar clientele of like the people we work for, but we offer very different services. So sometimes I'm going into a room full of engineers and I'm like, hey guys, your boss is paying me to make videos with you. And they're like no, come on, it'll be fun. Like, let's just try it out. You know, and pushing engineers out of their comfort zones can be very difficult sometimes. But I also have had the reaction of you know, you finally get them to do it and go through it, and they're like oh, it actually wasn't that bad. I'm like you don't have to edit it, you just have to say a few things that you know about and I'll make you look good. I promise you know, I'll get your lighting right, I'll, I'll walk you through it and all that.

Speaker 1: 29:34

But I've had people who are like I do not want my face on the internet and I'm like, okay, then you won't be in a video, like that's okay, because I agree that attitude like really comes through in somebody's work, whether it's on video or when they're writing it down.

Speaker 1: 29:49

But when you do have the willing participants, man, it can like really be awesome, and that is what gets me so excited is showing people what they can achieve. When you know you take their good attitude, you throw in a little guidance and hard work and I think it can be incredibly fun. So I like that you understand as well the the types of people that we work with. Kind of overlap, but, um, we're getting we're getting close to our time here, so I guess I would ask if you have any remaining advice. If there's companies who are Having people that they want to train, or individuals who you know realize like this is a skill set that they could improve on, like how would they Go about it regularly? And then, if they were to, you know, get in contact with you, how would they go about that?

Speaker 2: 30:36

Well, first of all, you want to take a look at if you believe that there's you have a sense that the writing in a certain department, for example, isn't as good as it should be. Try to figure out what the problems are and what the what outcomes are you not getting that you want to get? For example, a lot of times, the case of well, the supervisor has to review the work because the the mid-level person Isn't writing well has to be revised a lot. So maybe what you desired outcome is to have fewer revisions and that's going to be more efficient by identify what, the what, the persons, or maybe a group of people, what are their key issues? What better outcomes you're looking for? What would that mean to them? What would it mean to the company?

Speaker 2: 31:29

Through, you have a sense of wow, this, how, how much better could this be? And then contact Company like mine, and then make sure you take some time to talk about and what is the? What are the people good at? What do they need to improve at? What would it mean if they wrote better? What particular skills are they lacking? What's their attitude? What's their confidence level? Make sure you discuss with whoever you're working with, make sure you discuss all of these issues and that's gonna be able to put together a program that'll yield the best results.

Speaker 1: 32:13

Yeah, that sounds incredibly helpful If they are wanting to reach out to you. Is there availability in your upcoming schedule over the next few months? Can you fit anybody in?

Speaker 2: 32:24

Sure, yeah, yeah, awesome, happy to work things out. I mean I'm not gonna be available every day over the next few months, but always a way to work out the schedules.

Speaker 1: 32:38

Wonderful just to know if you were booked out years in advance. Or we gotta get on the wait list now. So that's good to know. We will link your website in the episode description so they have access there and they don't have to remember everything while they're driving and then go write it down. So I always like to get everything linked. But yeah, I guess, gosh, these 30 minutes flew by so fast. Sometimes I'm at the 15 minute mark and I'm like I don't know what else to say. Like what else should I ask? But it flew by so quickly and you were just very enjoyable to talk with Jack. So I hope you all enjoyed Jack as much as I did Jack. Any remaining thoughts?

Speaker 2: 33:17

No, this was great and again, it's something anybody wants to take the time to improve their writing. I have people coming to me who are individuals and they pay for it on their own because they realize how important it is. But again, remember, get simple. Get simple and write like you speak. Really unleash your natural communication instincts. That's where it all starts, but I'm happy to talk to anyone who wants to chat about it.

Speaker 1: 33:47

Awesome. Thank you so much, jack and guys. Thank you so much for listening to another episode. As always, I'm your host, jordan Yates, and in the meantime I'll be failing for you. See you next time.