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From Croissant Maker to Content Maker

Before I wrote blog posts or edited books, I stood in the kitchen of a French bakery in a flour-covered dress, flattening thick slabs of dough into thin layers for croissants.

I was a college student in Florida in need of extra cash. The local French bakery hired me as a croissant maker. The bakery was styled with French authenticity. The kitchen was open behind the counter, so I had to wear a dress along with my apron and bakery hat. The bakery didn’t serve beverages because authentic French shops specialized.

One of my coworkers was from France. She added her charming accent and bubbly personality to the authentic traditions. People loved to come in, talk with her, and select their favorite treats: sweet and savory croissants and tarts.

Working at a French bakery taught me endurance, tenacity, teamwork, and always keeping the customer experience first in mind. Photo by Sergio Arze at Unsplash

What Does a Croissant Maker Do?

Every day, the baker prepared thick slabs of layered croissant dough. Part of my job was to use an imported French dough roller to flatten the dough into thin sheets. This step involved lots of flour, which I often ended up wearing on my dress.

Next, I had to cut the thinned-out dough into triangles and rectangles at just the right size for the croissants. I added fillings and rolled the croissants, setting them on trays for the baker. Each day, I followed the owner’s daily production chart for how many of each type of croissant to prepare.

The Hardest Parts of Croissant Making

Croissant making required a lot of physical labor and repetitive movement, even with the help of the dough roller. I had to work quickly to meet the production chart totals but without sacrificing quality. Each croissant was expected to come out perfectly for our customers. I learned to balance speed with perfection.

As a croissant maker then, and as a writer and editor now, I’ve learned to balance moving projects forward while focusing on high quality and excellence. Photo by Bethany Wigmore at Unsplash

I worked around my class schedule. Sometimes I was on day shift, which always felt lighter because my coworkers were awesome. Often, I worked alone at night when the shop was closed. That was harder. I would end my shift by cleaning the equipment and floor while exhausted and covered in flour.

What Croissant Making Taught Me about Writing and Editing

The bakery taught me a customer-centered lesson I still carry into my writing and editing life today: speed matters, but quality matters more. I learned how to balance the two. How to move things forward to reach goals, while constantly focusing on quality and customer experience. The customers may have changed—readers instead of croissant enthusiasts—but the focus on providing an enjoyable, quality experience is the same.

Guidelines are important. At the bakery, I followed the owner’s production chart. Today, I follow my client’s guidelines or outlines.

Repetition built skill. Making hundreds of croissants taught consistency. Writing and editing regularly builds strength and speed.

Precision matters. No customer wants a sloppy croissant. No reader wants a typo or weak paragraph.

Creating a quality experience for customers is as important to a writer and editor as it is to a croissant maker. Photo by Mahyar Motebassem at Unsplash

Speed matters, but quality matters more. Projects need to move forward consistently but with excellence. It’s possible to balance both.

Working alone built discipline. Night shifts alone at the bakery prepared me for freelance writing and editing alone.

Teamwork matters. My best shifts were when my coworkers were present at the bakery. Today, collaboration with clients and authors makes work stronger.

At the time, I didn’t realize I was learning lessons that would follow me into my future career. At the end of each shift, I just knew I was tired, flour-covered, and ready to go home.

If you’re young and working a job that feels repetitive, exhausting, or unrelated to your dreams, don’t underestimate it. Every job teaches something: discipline, people skills, endurance, precision, teamwork, or resilience. You may not see the purpose today, but one day you may look back and realize that job prepared you for exactly where you’re meant to be.

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Writing a Simple Customer-Focused E-book: Start with 10

When you’re busy running your business, an e-book might seem like one of those projects that offers value but takes too long to write. Even though e-books are a helpful way to keep existing and potential customers engaged with your brand, how will you ever find the time? The key is to start simply: Start with 10.

What? 10 e-books? No. 10 points you want your customer to know. That’s the basis for your e-book.

Let’s say you’re a small company that uses sustainable packaging. That packaging is important to the way you do business. You want your customers to know about it, to understand it better, to realize when they do business with you, they are engaging with sustainable practices.

An e-book is a great way to let your customers know about your sustainable packaging and how they benefit from it. Start your e-book with 10: Make a list of 10 things you want your customers to know about your sustainable packaging.

Keep it simple and customer-focused. Your list might include a description of your packaging, what makes it sustainable, why you chose this packaging, where and how it’s sourced, why it’s a better alternative, how it benefits your customers, how it promotes sustainable living, the best way to dispose of the packaging, etc.

To create your customer-focused e-book, start with 10. Photo by Adrian Curiel at Unsplash

Whatever those 10 things are that you want your customers to know about your sustainable packaging, that’s what goes on your list. That list of 10 becomes the basic building blocks of your customer-focused e-book.

Next, zero in on each of the 10 items, one at a time, adding content based on the steps below. You can repeat these steps for each item on your list. Do them one item at a time and focus the steps on that particular item.

Step 1. Describe the main point

Start with just one item on your list of 10. What is the main point you want your customers to know for that one item? For example, let’s say your list of 10 items includes wanting your customers to know how to properly dispose of your packaging. Your main point could look something like this: To help this packaging continue its journey of sustainability, you’ll want to recycle it in the simplest and best way. That’s one way to describe that main point of that one item on your list.

Step 2. Share a brief explanation

Imagine you are sitting across from your customer. You’ve told them the main point of that item: it’s important to properly dispose of (recycle) your packaging. Now, how can you explain it to them briefly, using simple, conversational language? Here’s the best way to dispose of our packaging so it continues its recycling journey. Step 1, step 2, step 3 …

Start expanding on each item in your list with a simple explanation in conversational language. Photo by Toa Heftiba at Unsplash

Step 3. Give a few examples

Give a few examples to help the customer understand that main point:

If your recycling center offers xyz, here’s how you would recycle the packaging.

It helps if you remove certain parts and dispose of them in a certain way, and here’s why.

Here’s an example of how you are helping the environment by recycling this packaging.

Step 4. Anticipate and answer customer questions

What questions do you think your customer might have about that item? Go ahead and answer those questions. You probably already know what the most common questions are because you’ve already been asked.

If not, put yourself in the shoes of someone receiving your packaging for the first time and not sure how to dispose of it properly. What questions would they have and how would you answer them?

You can literally include a Q&A for each item if you want to. The information might be repetitive of your earlier description or explanation, but some customers respond well to a literal Q&A format. If you don’t want to include a Q&A, you can just be sure your explanations and examples include answers to common questions.

Anticipate and answer your customers’ questions in your e-book. Photo by Yumu at Unsplash

Step 5. End with the main takeaway

For that particular item on your list, what is the main takeaway you want your customer to take with them? In the example of package disposal/recycling, you may want them to take away the idea that recycling the packaging is a simple process. Or you may want them to take away encouragement that their simple step of package recycling is helping the environment. Whatever your main takeaway is for your customer, wrap up the item with that.

As you repeat these steps with each of the 10 items on your list, you are building your e-book content. Not only is that 10-item list an organized, reader-focused way to build your e-book. It’s also a simple way to work on the e-book one item and one step at a time. That makes it easy to fit into a busy schedule like yours.

Go ahead and try it out. This week, write your list of 10. Then start taking each item through each step as you have time.

Not only will you end up with an engaging, reader-focused e-book. You’ll also spend valuable time focusing thoughts on your current and future customers. And you’ll have bonus material to convert to shorter blog posts and social media. All that by starting with 10.

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Why I Chose to Give a Toy Lamb: Anatomy of a Giving Campaign

When you’re designing a gift campaign, sometimes it helps to look at other campaigns from the perspective of a donor. See what makes the campaign appeal to you; suggest improvements; and discover whether the campaign actually prompts you to complete a giving transaction.

Let’s look at a campaign that caught my eye one Thanksgiving Day. In this campaign, led by a nonprofit organization, donors could purchase a particular gift to be given to a child or family living in poverty. The campaign focused on how a small purchase price could provide a gift with a much larger impact.

Continue reading “Why I Chose to Give a Toy Lamb: Anatomy of a Giving Campaign”
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Simple Steps to Writing Your E-book Content

E-books are useful for your business website. They’re great for giveaways, trust-building, and info guides for your visitors. But how can you write an e-book when you’re already busy running your business?

One of the simplest ways to write content for your e-book is to start with a top 10 list. Whatever topic you want to share, make a list of the top 10 things your visitors need to know about that topic. Write those 10 things down. For simplicity, I’m going to refer to those 10 things as your main topics.

Next, write five things people need to know about each of those 10 main topics. Don’t worry about full sentences yet. Just capture your ideas. What you have now is the outline for your e-book. Each of your 10 main topics is a chapter. Each of the five need-to-know ideas is a page. For simplicity, I’m going to call those five ideas your page topics.

With a few notes, you can be well on your way to writing your e-book content. Photo by Kelly Sikkema at Unsplash

Now that you’ve got those page topics written down under each main topic, I want you to focus on one page topic at a time. How can you help your reader understand that one page topic? Would you want to explain it? Give examples? Tell a story about it? Share wisdom? There’s no right or wrong answer. The question is how would you best explain it to someone sitting in front of you right now?

Go ahead and write (or record) what you would say. Keep going till you’ve given your reader the main takeaway for that particular idea. That’s a page of your e-book! Don’t edit yet; just get the content written down in whatever form it takes.

Repeat this process for each of your page topics. That will give you the content for your e-book. Now you can go through and lightly edit, tweaking anything that sounds awkward, filling in gaps, clarifying anything that might confuse your reader.

You’ve got it: the content for your e-book, ready to share.

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If You Can Teach It, You Can Write It: A Simple Test for Your First Business Book

As a business professional, you may be thinking about writing a book, but you aren’t sure where to start. What main topic should your book focus on? What would keep readers engaged? How can you narrow your vast experience into a single book?

Here’s a simple test for selecting your first book topic: Could you teach this topic in a one-hour webinar or workshop? If you can teach it, you likely have a viable book topic.

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Instead of a Book Outline, Start with a Clothesline

You might have heard the first step of writing a book is creating an outline. It’s true that an outline can be a big help in organizing a book. But it’s not necessarily the first step.

Some book topics lend themselves well to outlines, especially how-to books where the steps of a process are clear. But other topics might be more difficult to put into an outline up front. Some books are a process of discovery in the writing.

How can you create an outline up front if you don’t know yet what you’re going to write?

How do you take that journey of discovery as a writer that leads eventually to an outline?

Introducing the clothesline: a flexible, creative, discoverable approach that will eventually emerge into an outline for your book.

Continue reading “Instead of a Book Outline, Start with a Clothesline”