(00:04):

Hey everybody, this is Shontavia Johnson and welcome back to another episode of The Shontavia Show where I want to inspire you to build a brand, business and life that you love. It’s Thursday. And what I love to do on Thursday is answer questions from you. If you have a question you’d like me to answer about building a personal brand or starting a business or connecting dots between what you’re doing at work and what you’d like to do, send me an email at askshontavia@gmail.com, that’s askshontavia@gmail.com and you might hear your question and my response on a future episode of the show.

(00:44):

So I have a question today about overthinking, which I’m excited about because I tend to be an overthinker. And this question is about overthinking specifically when writing, so like pitching articles and writing for third parties.

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So I’m going to read the question and then give a couple of my thoughts about how this person can stop overthinking and get their writing and their work out there in the public. So here’s the question.

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It says, Dear Shontavia, I hope you’re well. Thank you so much for your show. I love listening and it has dramatically improved my outlook with my brand and business. I have a question about overthinking. I would like to get into guest writing to build my brand, including guest blog posts and contributing articles to large news agencies and blogs. My dream is to have a byline at a major newspaper on my topic of expertise, which revolves around weight loss and healthy eating for women in particular, but I get into this tornado of analysis paralysis whenever I think about writing a full article. I’m worried about how I’ll come across to people, especially if I’m loud and wrong.

(01:58):

I read each sentence a hundred times before moving onto the next one and once an article is done, I think it sounds terrible. I probably have 10 or 15 articles saved on my laptop, but I’ve never pitched any of them. Do you have any tips on this? How can I stop overthinking and just do it?

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Okay, so this person has to be anonymous and I will just call that person anonymous.

(02:22):

I really like this question because I tend to be an overthinker too. I will read and reread and delete and edit things to death and one of the reason I chose this question is because this is me. It certainly was me probably two or three years ago. It’s still me now to a lesser extent. I figured out some strategies that I’ll suggest to you. So one of the first things I’d suggest is go listen to one of my older podcast episodes about putting yourself out there.

(02:50):

I’ll drop a link in the show notes, but that article is really where I started with getting out of like overthinking and talking myself out of doing things that would really grow my brand and help me take things to the next level. And when you go back and listen to that episode, what you’ll find is I gave three suggestions that I won’t walk through all of them here because there’s a whole episode about it already.

(03:15):

But what I’ll say quickly is one of my first suggestions was give yourself grace because things are not going to be perfect. They don’t have to be. And you have to really just give yourself a little time, space and grace to start wherever you are right now. So that was number one. Number two, starting with your strengths. So I love that you already have what sounds like a really dynamic topic that lots of people are interested in: weight loss and eating healthy for women.

(03:44):

So you already have a really good starting place and starting from your strengths within that topic or industry will be important. And then number three, get over it and just do it anyway. And I think that’s really where you are right now, anonymous, figuring out how to get over it so you can just take advantage of the knowledge and the expertise that you’ve created, and not just for you but for all the people who really, really need your help and your guidance and advice. So again, I’ll drop a link in the show notes to that episode so you can take a listen.

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But in addition to those suggestions, I want to give you some specific advice about where you are right now with your writing because that’s really where I started. I think at heart, I’m a teacher and a writer. I love writing, but I was really, really nervous when I started writing publicly to put my work out there.

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I remember, this might’ve been 10 years ago, I wrote an article in a relatively large newspaper and while I liked it, I thought the points the I made were great. I got terrible comments and some pushback from people who even reached out to my then-employer who didn’t like what I had to say. And that was really hard because particularly at that time I was just getting started. It was one of the first things I wrote and there were people who didn’t like it. And I had to really kind of deal with it. But I was actually… Today I was glad that, or I am glad that I went through that because I survived it. The world didn’t end. My job didn’t stop, nothing stopped really because I got some mean comments on the internet. And so that’s a really hard thing. I know for people, particularly folks who, writing is their craft and their knowledge that they have, they feel so strongly about, but things happen and we move on.

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You have to just kind of roll with the punches a little. And so I have been in this space, I’ve gotten negative feedback and so I don’t even want to try to suggest to you that things will be perfect because they won’t, but here’s some suggestions I have so that you can ease into it so that you don’t end up in a situation where you finally published something and things go horribly and you never do it again.

(06:03):

So, um, one of my first suggestions in terms of putting your writing out there is to start with a low stakes article. So one of the first things I ever wrote was an op-ed. I’ll never forget it in the Des Moines Register where I basically was ranting about stupid things I saw people post on Facebook. In particular there was this viral post that was going around that basically said, “Hey, if you put this in your Facebook posts, Facebook won’t be able to own all of your pictures and images. You will own the copyrights in your work. And by making this statement you can disclaim any type of lawsuit Facebook might have against you” or something.

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And there were so many things that were wrong about this viral post that I wrote an op-ed in the Des Moines Register about it. Looking back, I mean it might’ve been a little silly, but what I was able to do is take this thing that everybody was doing and talking about and connect it to my expertise, which at the time revolved around intellectual property law and copyright law and the way that people out in the world and on social media interact with both the internet and with law. And so I could explain what the law really was that disputed all of the things that were in this Facebook post. And again, it sounded kind of silly maybe, but it allowed me to dip my toe in the water.

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This was not the front page of the New York Times or anything. And I did it. I put myself out there, I wrote this article, it was probably 750 words or something like that, and it actually was pretty well received. So I didn’t get a ton of negative comments or negative feedback or negative push back or anything like that. But people actually kind of liked it. And when I posted it on Facebook and online, a lot of people reached out to me and said, Hey, I didn’t know that. I didn’t think about this particular post that way. And I learned something. And so that allowed me to dip my toe in the water. It was a lower stakes type of thing. It was an op-ed and what was my local newspaper at the time. And that kind of helps. So I suggest that to you, figure out a low stakes way to get your writing out there.

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So maybe it’s an op-ed, maybe it’s a letter to the editor. You’re in a field where there are always things in the news and in the media about it. I bet your local newspaper is going to run an article at some point about health and wellness, weight loss for women, and you could respond with your thoughts about that article, agree or disagree, in a letter to the editor. So that’s one of my first suggestions. Start with a low stakes articles. Start small, allow yourself to get some practice and do that as much as you need to. That’s a way where you’re writing something short. You’re taking things that you know the public is interested in because you’ve seen it already in a newspaper or there’s something already happening in the news where you can dip your toe in the water. So that’s the first thing.

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The second thing I would suggest is checking out something called The OpEd Project and I think it’s just opedproject.com I’ll drop a link in the show notes when I figure out exactly where the domain name is, but the op-ed project is an organization that scouts and trains underrepresented experts to take thought leadership positions in their industries. So they essentially, help take people whose voices are not always in the media the way that they should be and they train them and help them figure out how to do that.

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I have used The OpEd Project a lot. I’ve used a lot of their resources because they do help you gain that confidence that you need to really kind of put yourself out there, and sometimes I think we overthink things because we don’t have that confidence. I know when I don’t feel as good about something that I’m about to do, that’s really when I start to overthink things. But using these resources and tools from the OpEd project, and I imagine there are others out there, that will help you figure out where your lane is out in the media, within your field of health and wellness, and weight loss for women. And that’ll start to give you some of that confidence. So lean on the resources that are available to you to help you figure out how to stop overthinking, and really stopping that overthinking by gaining confidence and learning the training and skills and techniques that will have you out there with your content, with whatever you’ve created.

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And like you mentioned, one of the things you’re worried about is maybe being wrong about things, but if you are working with other experts to develop some of your expertise and ensuring that you’re ready and prepared, then you won’t be out there wrong. And even if you are wrong, that’s fine too. There are so many people out there who are loud and wrong that all kinds of things. So I would definitely suggest that you check out The OpEd project.

(11:13):

And then the third thing I would suggest is that you perfect your pitch. So in your email you mentioned that you have already written 10 or 15 different articles that are just sitting on your laptop. So one of my first questions is why have you written all of these article, instead of pitching the idea and then working with editors from wherever it is you’re trying to pitch to create something that ultimately that full article aligns with both your interests and the interest of the media entity that you’re wanting to work with or the blog that you’re wanting to write for.

(11:52):

So if you’re sitting in your house or in your office or whatever, just writing full articles, I’d suggest you take a step back and learn how to pitch an idea to a newspaper or to a blog so that they can give you some external validation that this is a good idea and it’s something we want, or this is something that needs a little bit more refinement, or this is something that maybe you should tweak a little, because this topic isn’t really right for us right now. So instead of spinning your wheels writing full blown articles, try pitching and pitch, for, and I’m sure you know what a pitch is but, but generally speaking, the pitch is just a couple of sentences, three, four, maybe five sentences that you submit to these folks that you’re interested in publishing with. Not a full blown article.

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And what it does is answer a couple of questions, three questions, really. It’s the why, like why is this important? Why is this relevant to the news right now? It’s the who cares — who’s interested in the story right now or this piece or whatever it is you’re pitching. And then number three, why are you the right person to publish this article and write this article? So instead of writing a full blown thing, you just craft the idea, you give some good connections to the idea, to your expertise and to you. And then you let folks decide, is this something that we want? I suggest too that you start pitching instead of just writing full-blown articles. And I mentioned The OpEd Project a few minutes ago. They have an entire resource that teaches you how to pitch. And this is something like I was saying a few minutes ago, I’ve used The OpEd Project a lot, and I’ve used The OpEd Project specifically the most with crafting the right pitch.

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And I mean I’ve pitched a lot of different media entities. I’ve probably gotten more nos than yeses, but over the years I’ve probably written, I don’t know, 80 or a hundred different articles for other people — that doesn’t even include all the work I’m publishing and writing on my own blog. And it’s hard to do. It’s really, really hard to perfect the pitch. But once you learn how to do it really well, it’s kind of like riding a bike. You learn how to do it really well and then you start to get more yeses and more opportunities to do guest posts and guest write for other people.

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So those are my three suggestions for you in addition to what’s in my previous podcast episode about putting yourself out there. (1) Start with something low stakes. (2) Use the resources around you, like The OpEd Project, and then (3) Number three, perfect your pitch.

(14:38):

So I hope something I said was helpful. I hope those suggestions help you get out of the overthinking, specifically when it comes to writing articles for third parties. For everybody else I hope that helped you too. If you still have questions or comments or other insights that I didn’t mention here, or if you disagree with me, make sure you either drop a comment below or shoot me an email at askshontavia@gmail.com. Your question might appear on a future episode of the show. I’d love to hear from you and love to engage with you about this topic and whatever other questions you might have. Thanks.