#196: Writing Skills for Health Coaches

Well, hello there health coaches. Who knew that health coaching was going to require so much writing so much writing? And you know what? I'm not even talking about writing client notes or the book that you might write one day. Anybody wanna write a book? I'm not even talking about that. I'm talking about copywriting for your marketing. Yes. Now, listen, I'm in a unique position here because you know, way back when, before I became a health coach, I worked in advertising. That was my jam. I worked in the creative departments at some of the biggest ad agencies in Boston. And guess what creative departments do? Well, we did all the visuals for the ads, but we also do all the copywriting for our clients. And we, we had clients like Volkswagen clients, like Royal Caribbean. There's so much writing that needs to be done in marketing, any kind of business, including yours.

So let's talk about the term copywriting. It's funny because when I bring this up with health coaches, a lot of you guys know exactly what I mean. And some get confused between copywriting with the 'W', which is what we're talking about. Copywriting like with a pen versus copyrighting, the legal term. There's no w it's copyrighting, as in copyrighting with a date, you know, you see the copyright at the bottom of a page or something or something is legally copyrighted to a person. We're not talking about that. Although just to be extra confusing, you can copyright your copywriting. Oh well, anyway, we're talking about writing and copywriting specifically is done with the intent to sell something. That's why I said copywriting has to do with writing for your marketing purposes. As a health coach, copywriting is not writing, you know, beautiful words. The way that poetry is copywriting is meant to direct the reader to take an action.

In fact, we have a term for that. You'll hear it. When people are talking about copywriting, we talk about this. When I was working in the agencies, we need a strong call to action call to action. Sometimes it's abbreviated CTA. Copywriting almost always includes a strong call to action, 'cause we are telling the reader what to do, what action to take. And so this comes up in our health coaching businesses all the time. Where are you guys seeing this in your businesses? I know writing emails is a big one for me. I write a lot of emails. That's all copywriting. And why? Because I'm not just writing an email like, Hey, what are you doing this weekend? Not that kind at email. I'm writing emails in my health coaching business at the end of the day, right? We're hoping to convert the readers into clients.

That's why we're doing it. Same thing on social media. Same thing. If you have a blog, right? We're writing even a, even a script. Like if you're gonna be, uh, talking about something on TikTok or dancing to something, but you're gonna have words on the screen on TikTok, even that is copywriting because in all of these cases, we're trying to reach potential clients. Now, if you are here with me live, if you are on Instagram, if you are over here on Facebook with me, tell me what aspect of copywriting do you struggle with the most? Are you sitting there staring at a blank screen? I think we've all been there. We just got that. Does a cursor even blink anymore? Is that sort of a remnant from the old days of computers when you'd actually have a blinking cursor? As I was just about to say that, I thought to myself, you are old I don't think the cursor blinks.

I'm gonna have to check it out after this. Anyway. Tell me what aspects of copywriting you find troublesome difficult, just horrible in your own business, when it comes to writing your marketing copy? So, if writing is just not your thing also, that is okay. You are a health coach, health, wellness, nutrition. That's your thing. I know me too. I just happen to also have this background in writing, but if it's not your thing, it's okay. If you feel like it takes forever, that's okay. I have something new and very fun coming up. I've put together a free three day training. It's called no, exactly know exactly what to write and attract more clients. And that's exactly what it's gonna be about. Using words, knowing what to write so that clients are attracted to you like bees to honey, right? And this free training is happening in just a few weeks.

So I want you to go sign up. Now it's at healthcoachpower.com/writing. Remember, that's writing with a w copy writing, like with the pen. I just announced this event this morning, as a matter of fact, and I think a hundred coaches signed up right away, like in the first minute it was available. So I think this is going to be a very enthusiastic and fun group. All right. Let's say... Let's see what you guys are saying about copywriting. What writing skills do you need? Shannon's uh, mentioning the idea of being persuasive. Doesn't that kind of start to make you like think of infomercials that you would be on at two o'clock in the morning. When we came home from the bars in college, I don't know. There would always be an infomercial on for something and then we'd watch it. I don't know why the, that persuasion thing.

It starts to feel very infomercially like, I'm gonna say, Hey, do you need to lose weight? Are you low on energy? Do you wish you knew exactly what foods to eat? You know, join me now for my health coaching program. Like that's persuasion. So we have to be careful. Yes, of course we wanna be persuasive, but no, we don't wanna be smarmy. Right? There's like that fine line right there. what else here? Deidra just says being more succinct. Yes. Why is that important, Deirdra? Deirdra knows 'cause we've worked together. Why is it important to be succinct in our writing? Because you get like a, a minute. No, not a minute. Like a second of somebody's attention. So if they glance at it, you want them to understand it. And if you write four paragraphs, instead of just three words, they're never gonna get what you're talking about.

So being succinct is a very important part of copywriting because all advertising, I promise you for the biggest brands on the planet, to your, you know, individual health coaching practice, all of us people, aren't trying to read what we write. They don't go to the library to take out the book and see what Michelle has to say about health and wellness. No, I'm sending a piece of marketing copy to them. So if I want them to read it, yes, it has to be succinct. One thing that I can tell you that should be a gigantic relief is that copywriting does not require you to be like an English major. In fact, it might be better if you're not, because that kind of thing can really backfire. When I was in high school, I went to a Catholic high school uniforms at all. And in 12th grade sister, Michelle taught AP English and sister Michelle was about a thousand years old and every year she made the senior class read Beowolf. Has anybody read Beowolf? Anyone well, from what I remember, and this was a long time ago now, of course, but in Beowolf, the, the monster, the gremlin, the bad guy, whatever the, that character's name was Grendall. And so everybody called sister Michelle, sister Grendall because not only was she not just, she was a very strict nun, you know, very old school. But in addition to that, all the papers that we wrote for her, they had to be perfect. They had to be perfect. She specified everything. The margins had to be one inch and she would measure it with a ruler and mark where it was more or less than one inch and give us points off for it. She measured the space between the lines.

Ah, I mean, everything had to be perfect. Here's the good news with the copywriting. You don't have to be perfect. Your grammar doesn't really matter. So that should be a gigantic load off. Especially sometimes I hear from health coaches that say English is my second language. It's very hard for me to write. You know, you probably thinking again, you have to get it exactly right. And you don't so whew. I'm not saying you want typos all over the place and misspelled words, but it does not to be, it doesn't have to be up to sister Michelle English standards. That's what I'm saying. Oh, and Shannon has read Beowolf and agrees with me that it was a horrible book. I mean, I don't know. It may have been a wonderful book, but it was just the setting that made it so horrible. good. I'm glad at least somebody else has read this book.

Good, effective copywriting. Like how we know copywriting is quote good is not because it's clever. It doesn't rhyme. It doesn't use alliteration or any of that other stuff you learn about in English class. We know copywriting is good when it's effective. When it, in fact helps people take the action, we want them to take it's like, did it work? If it worked? Even if it was the most boring sentence in the world, that's good copywriting. But the truth is it's unlikely that people are going to read much of what you write unless it's engaging. Right. So we need it to be engaging and effective. People actually wanna read it. And then they do what you tell them to do. At least some of them do. All right. So let's see what you guys are saying. Deidra just said exactly. I was in, oh, Deidra was an English major and said she can write long essays with ease, but it's boiling it down and keeping it more entertaining.

That's tough. Yes. So it's a totally different skill set. So that might be working against you a little bit. Dear drifter, everybody else, all the rest of us that were not English majors. It's like, whew. I also hear, um, from people who maybe your first career was in technical writing of some kind or if you were, oh gosh, I don't know. In law or in you were selling medical devices. I don't know. But you know, when you're used to doing very technical writing, copywriting is the opposite of that. copywriting is meant to be interesting, engaging often funny because when something's humorous that that's very engaging. I asked this question in our Facebook group and got a lot of feedback around where you guys are struggling. Dana said her biggest issue is knowing what to say. So Dana, I mean, my girl, I made this for you. The, the training we're doing is called Know Exactly What to Write, because I know that's a problem. You sit down and it's like, I got nothing. So again, guys, go sign up. Now this is going to be so much fun to do together. It is free three days. We're gonna be meeting on zoom and helping you actually create a piece of writing that you'll be able to use in your business in just three days. So sign up for that again, it's at healthcoachpower.com/writing.

Um, here's another one Kristen said, I feel like whatever I'm writing, just isn't connecting with people. I had been pretty active on Instagram for the past year, but was surprised that I didn't make more progress. I have an email list. And that seems to miss the mark too. After spending two years trying to grow my coaching business. Full-time I've basically gotten nowhere. Well, I'm not gonna lie to you guys. Copywriting is important. It's not the whole story when it comes to building your business. But what Kirsten's mentioning here, her social media posts and her emails. Yeah. These are two really important aspects of our marketing. And if what you're saying does not resonate, you might as well not be doing it at all. Okay, good. Chris, I'm glad, glad that you, uh, shared that with us because it's easy to just fall into this trap of like, well, I put stuff out there and it's crickets.

Anyone feel that way? That it's crickets. Whenever you, you know, you share a message, you write something, you post something. It's just crickets. It's not working. That's how, you know, your copywriting is not working. Okay. Jackie said, uh, she struggles with making the wording sound authentic to me and not someone else. Yes. Jackie like a thousand times. Yes. That's so very important, right? That's the opposite of technical writing. Cause when we write something very technical, it pretty much anybody who wrote it, it would come out the same, come out, sounding very similar, but copywriting has a voice and your voice is so important in this business because you know what? People are going to hire you to be their coach. So they need to get to know you and like you and trust you. And one of the best ways for them to do that is for them to hear your voice in your writing.

If it's just like, you know, eat this many calories, eat this many grams of protein or whatever you would be writing, you know about health and nutrition. They're not getting any of that. So how do we infuse ourselves into our writing? Now you might not think that doing this podcast like I'm doing right now involves any writing, but it does. I mean, I prepare an outline ahead of time. I decide what the content's going to be. I have something in front of me that I'm referring to, you know, I don't just do everything off top of my head. It would be a bunch of rambling. However, one of the reasons I bet you're listening right now is because this podcast sounds like a real person talking to you, right? Cause I'm a real person talking to you. I'm not reading like a word for word script.

I'm, I'm messing up my words. Sometimes I stumble. Sometimes I say the wrong thing, right? Sometimes I crack jokes, right? So, you know, this is real. I mean, we don't edit this podcast at all. All we do is put like a little intro in the beginning and a little thing at the end when we publish it to, to apple podcast. But this whole piece right here, like this is as authentic as it gets. And that's the feedback that I'm always hearing from people like you're. So you're so real. Michelle is if other people are, an enigma, you know, we're all real, but it helps if you can come across that way. So one of the things we can do with our writing is speak it, say it like you would to a friend say it like you would in front of people that you were not scared of.

You know, sometimes if you think of yourself being on stage in front of a bunch of potential clients, that can be scary. But how would you say it to your best friend? Now? I'm very comfortable with you guys. I've been doing this for years and years and years. I know so many of you personally. I mean like we, it feels very comfortable for me to be here, but so whether you're doing a podcast or you're writing in your blog or sending out in emails, can you write the way you speak? Can you deliver content just like you normally would in life? ' Cause most people don't speak in a very stilted, grammatically correct way. You know, we use slang, we shorten words, we have sentence fragments or whatever the things are that an English teacher would get mad about. Okay. So would anybody else feel this way?

Like it's hard to put your voice into your writing. I want you to literally think about putting your voice the way you speak into your writing. Here's one from Caroline, Caroline says she struggles with the lack of confidence that do I know enough to write about a topic? Constantly second guessing if what I've written is good enough, so I don't post it or send it to my list. I know done is better than perfect, but I can't get over the mental block. I suppose I need some help in taking action. You know what? There's so much information on the internet. If you wanna learn about something, you can probably find an article from like some doctor or hospital or, you know, a, a source like with a capital S like a source when people are listening to what we are writing as health coaches, they may or may not be looking for information, but they're definitely looking for a way to relate to it.

So I know when I started my first blog, Carolyn, I would write about things that I was just learning. And I encourage you to try this because when you're just learning something, you know, for the first time in a book you read about whatever, you know, I remember reading a book. It's my favorite book. You may have heard me mention it before. It's by Jessica Porter. It's a very old book and it's called the hip chicks guide to macrobiotics guys. Literally go get it out of the library. You will find it. I have, I, I got it out of the library the first time that I read it and what I love the most about this book, it's about macrobiotics every Macrobiotic book is so boring and Jessica Porter makes it funny. I was giggling reading about macrobiotics. So this was a huge inspiration to me.

We can take information, but we can make it accessible. When we just talk about it, like normal people, you don't have to be a standup comedian, but you know, you just talk about it in everyday language. Anyway. So I read that book and I sh uh, this is for Caroline saying, she feels like she doesn't know enough to write about a topic. I didn't know anything about macro Biotics, except for what I was learning in that book. And I remember writing on my blog about it. Hey, I'm learning this stuff about macro Biotics. And I think if you're in a mindset of like, this is something I'm just learning about, you don't feel pressured to be like the preeminent source or expert onset topic. You can just write about like, how you're feeling about it, what it reminds you of, what you like, what maybe you don't like what you have questions about.

And that's accessible to people. People are be like, huh? No, I've never heard of that. Oh, that's a really interesting take. Maybe I'll go do some research and that's great. Or maybe they're like, oh, I've never heard of it. And I'm not gonna go do any research, but now I've learned something. And that was interesting. Thank you. So you do not have to write like an encyclopedia. You are not the, what was it called? Britanica? World book encyclopedia? You're not that you don't have to be. You're never gonna be. Don't try to be the encyclopedia. You don't need to know enough about a topic. All you need to know is what you think about the topic, what you felt about it, what it reminded you of something that it applied to in your life. Nicole says, I find it difficult to put my thoughts on, into words and connect with my audience.

So same thing, Nicole, putting your thoughts into words happens all day long. I'm positive that you don't go through your whole day mute. So speak it. Sometimes you can record yourself, not in a formal way, just very informally. You can just record something and, and just speak it out loud. Then you can just write on paper, write on the screen what you said. And oftentimes that comes out so much more smoothly than trying to craft the perfect sentence. Cause I know you have thoughts. I could say anything right now. Okay? Okay. I'm gonna think of something. Okay. Um, juice plus health coaches. I bet you all have something in your brain about juice, plus. You've heard about it. Maybe you sell it. Maybe you don't sell it. Whatever. Maybe you think it's great. Maybe you think it's horrible. I don't care. But I just said that and your brain made an association, right?

If you're here with me live, tell me what it is. What's your association with juice. Plus I have no affiliation with juice. Plus I just pulled that out of the air here and I'll do another one. Let's see with something that I know you guys all know about. Um, what if I say insulin, insulin? Oh, what does that remind me of? Maybe you're diabetic and you have a strong association with that. You know, maybe you're not diabetic and you actually have never seen anybody inject insulin before, but you've been hearing about it. Maybe you want one of those continuous glucose monitors installed on your arm. Like I've been seeing all over the place, right? So you... No matter what the topic is, it's very likely that you have a thought about it and, and that's all you need. That's it again, you don't have to be the, uh, the preeminent source.

Um, when I said Juice Plus Shannon said MLM scam, okay. Somebody's gonna get mad about that. Great. See, 'cause then if you got mad, when Shannon said MLM scam, now you have a thought, we have so many thoughts. There are like endless thoughts. Okay, here's one from Cybil. Cybil says, I feel like I can't always come up with interesting ways to say what is essentially the same thing when selling programs. I also want guidance on how to make things sound more compelling so that more clients want to buy. Okay, great. Here's a tip. If you say my product is great, or my coaching package is great and you put like extra exclamation points after that, it it's not doing it. There's very little that you can say that is persuasive. What is compelling to someone is when you reflect back at them, what they're already experiencing, I just saw something funny on Instagram.

I don't know if you guys follow me on Instagram, but I shared it 'cause it was one of these things where somebody posted something and I was like, oh my God, I've had that experience too. And it made me love her. And then I immediately like, re-shared the post. She was talking about. Okay. Now any of you do this, you're unloading the dishwasher. And on that top rack, you have all your cups and your mugs and they're upside down. And you know how that pool of water kind of settles at the top of everything and you take them out. And I dry them right here on my boobs. I almost always do. It's just a little bit of water and I just go, Ooh, like this to dry 'em off. And I put them away. I do it without thinking. I, I really isn't that weird?

That's super weird. I can't believe I even just admitted that, but that's what this woman had created a little video about. And I laugh 'cause I'm like, I do that too. So Cybil, the reason I'm telling everybody this and outing myself with my dishwasher technique is that it is compelling. When you can show someone repeat back to someone, mirror to someone, almost like you're in their head. That is good copywriting. That's why we do market research. And we need the words and the thoughts that our clients are thinking more than we need our own. When we want to be compelling. There's a lot more that I can say about that. But that's what I'm gonna say for now. Um, it's not about like more exclamation points and, and saying sale or 50% off. Like, no, that's not, it it's about people going. She gets me, right?

Like this person understands me. Oh my gosh, you're all gonna try that now with the cups on the top of the dishwasher, right? Like, don't just leave me hanging. Okay. Susie says, I find it difficult to put my thoughts into words... Oh, did I already read this one? Oh gosh, I don't even know. So many people said the same thing. I'm gonna go to the next one. Uh, this one says I have no problem with talking about things to individuals and groups, but when it comes to capturing it in written form, it doesn't come across as me talking. I think that when I'm speaking, I read the audience and I adjust how the message is communicated. And when I'm writing, I can't do that. Ah, I love this 'cause it's true. I mean, once you write something, you know, you can't change it depending on somebody's facial expression or whatever.

You gotta just write the thing, which is why it's so important to know who we are writing for. And even in the one piece of writing that we're gonna do together during the training that I mentioned earlier, and again, you gotta sign up for that. It's at healthcoachpower.com/writing in three days, you'll have a finished piece of writing that you're able to use in your business. Even in just that one piece, it's gonna be really important to know who you're writing it for because yes, if you are writing for, you know, my stepdad who's 65 years old, a retired cop from the New York city police department or you're writing for my boyfriend's son who is 11 years old and likes mystery novels, right? Like that's two very different audiences, just, just like as an example. So it's so important that we know our audience.

Again, it goes back to what are they thinking, doing research about them? How are they thinking about this topic so that you can write to them? Like we're always writing to a specific type of person and going back to my ad agency days, this is true across the board with all copywriting. This is not just about coaching. This is not just about, you know what Michelle is saying to you right here. Now, any good copywriting starts with really knowing who you're writing to. One of the clients that I used to have when I worked in the ad agencies was CVS. Do you guys have CVS where you live? It's a drug store chain. I realized we have people from all over the world. So not everybody has a CVS, but it's a big drugstore chain. And CVS has three very specific avatars. They know, I mean, it's a huge brand and they sell to so many different people. Unlike coaching where, you know, I'm always telling you to pick like that one target market. Well, CVS as a drug store, they were able to bring it down to just three main types of people that visit their store and everything that they write. They write to either one of those three, or they're trying to write to all three at the same time, but three out of like billions of people that they serve. So very important to know who am I writing for? We will talk about that.

Okay. Carol says, I have a hard time coming up with the right words that are concise and gets my message across. I believe my messages are too vague. Now we've mentioned some of these other things like coming up with the right words, being concise, but she says, I believe my messages are too vague. Here's something interesting about writing. The more specific you can be, the more interesting it is. So remember when I was telling you about sister Michelle/sister Grundle, that was such a specific story. And I even named the book and everything had to dig in my memory for that stuff. So much more interesting than if I was like, when I was in high school, my English teacher was very strict. That's boring. Nobody... I mean, you might also have had a teacher like that, but it's just, there's no emotion there.

There's no smile on your face. There's nothing to like for your, your heart and your, your mind to like grab onto it's just like, oh yeah, whatever. So when we're vague, like I just said, I had a teacher in high school that was too strict. That's pretty vague. When I told you a very specific story about sister gr, like I bet you're gonna remember that. So Carol, be specific, don't write an email about, um, various forms of protein to start your day with, you know, write your email about healthy breakfast, sausage, you know, like the more specific it is you cut through, you kind of cut through all the noise when someone can like, understand exactly what you're talking about. And it's, it's this very specific, interesting thing. Oh my gosh, I can talk about this forever. You guys, I'm gonna do a couple more of these challenges that you guys said you were, you have when it comes to copywriting, but do not forget that you have join us for the free training.

We'll be starting in a couple of weeks. It's at healthcoachpower.com/writing. Okay. Here's one from Hannah. She says, when I go to write any content, I am questioning myself quite a bit. What to say, to attract my ideal client and repel. Those who aren't now, Hannah, I know is a member of healthy profit university as we talk. And I know I talk about it here on the show too, about this idea of a, when we want to attract like a magnet. That means the flip side is that you're repelling like a magnet. So a very strong message is one that will yes, attract certain people and actively repel others. I'm sure you could think of some sort of political statement that would do that, right? That is a very strong piece of messaging either. You agree with it and you love it or you hate it and you think it's crazy.

That's strong Hannah. So I really like that. You're thinking about not just only, how am I more persuasive? How do I get people to buy? But also how can I make it so strong that I also repel people on the back end. Love that. Kim says I'm just setting up my website and I would love help with my key pages and also blog posts. Yes, Kim, I don't think I even mentioned websites mostly 'cause I'm always telling you guys, don't need a website. Like not the first thing that you need and your emails are so much more important than your website, but truly your website copy feels very important. Doesn't it? It's like, oh my gosh, this one page represents me. It has to say the perfect thing. You know, also breathe because you're not publishing a book. You can always change. What's on your website. That's lovely. Isn't it? When we're working on screens, we can always change things. Remember back in the day when something was printed and it was done, like, let's say you got wedding invitations done, or birthday invitations done. And there was a typo, oh my Lord. Now almost everything's on the screen. You could just go change it. But anyway, a website is definitely another area where you're copywriting is extremely important. So thanks for reminding me of that. Okay. So much more to talk about.

I hope you got a lot just out of listening today and we will put it into practice during our training together, um, happening June 13th to the 15th. If you cannot be with us on those days, that's okay. I want you to sign up anyway. You're gonna get access to the materials for, oh gosh, at least a week or two. So, you can always refer back to them. You can watch them on your own time. You can do the whole training on your own time, but I will be delivering it live from June 13th to the 15th. And again, that's at healthcoachpower.com/writing. Have a great day, everybody. And I will see you soon. Take care.