Vanya Wryter Consulting Services

Category: Business

  • How to Find the Perfect Mentor

    How to Find the Perfect Mentor

    Updated post

    When you’re busy building a business or career while juggling family and social life, it’s hard to find time for career-related training. One way to improve your knowledge is by taking a course or program. Another is to read books. Another effective way is to learn from a mentor who has already reached a level of success that you want to achieve. Finding the perfect mentor is not easy, but there are some tips you can follow to find the right one for you.

    Determine your mentor’s teaching style

    To learn from someone who has an online presence, start with an online search. Follow this person on their social media platforms, watch their videos, or subscribe to their newsletters. If they have free seminars or workshops, sign up for them. Does their teaching style and what they teach resonate with you?

    Whether your mentor is a well-known celebrity or someone you know personally, ask yourself if your mentor challenges you. For example, if you just became an entrepreneur and your potential mentor started a business six months ago, your mentor may not be able to guide you. However, if your potential mentor has owned a successful business for ten years, you have a greater distance to climb to catch up to that same point.

    Take action after you choose a mentor

    When you’ve found someone you like as a mentor, ask yourself if your mentor can motivate you to get results.

    Your mentor should inspire you to take action when you watch their video or teach you about a new concept. Their message should excite you so much that you want to learn and change.

    Their mentorship should have you thirsting for more knowledge about the same topic or have you madly taking notes. You should be excited about applying what they are trying to teach you as soon as possible.

    To get the best results from working with a mentor, have some goals in mind. The worst scenario is to be too general about what you want your mentor to teach you. If your mentor posts a lot of learning material online, focus on one topic at a time, not getting your hands on everything they have ever published. If your mentor wants to help you improve your skills, don’t set a general goal, such as, “I want to get better at my career.” Set specific goals and share these with your mentor.

    Choose a mentor who chooses you

    Getting feedback from your mentor is important. I’ve taken online courses from experts whom I respect as mentors. I understand their lessons, but I’m unsure whether I’m interpreting their learning points correctly.

    At a workshop or live webinar, choose a mentor who answers questions and provides feedback to participants. This style helps you to gauge if you understand what they teach.

    If you can schedule an hour with your mentor, have your hour planned in advance. Prepare questions to ask your mentor, or list what you’d like to improve on before your meeting. Set clear expectations and outcomes to show your mentor that you respect their time.

    For example, if you want to improve your presentation skills, ask your mentor if they can give you some pointers and feedback on the way you speak at a presentation. Be prepared to show them part of your presentation so they can provide you with specific tips and feedback.

    After receiving feedback, take some time to reflect on what you’ve learned. Was the feedback valuable? Can you use the feedback to make improvements? Did your mentor seem genuinely invested in you? A mentor who is genuinely invested will encourage you, tell you what progress you’ve made, be honest in their critique, and help you set goals for next steps.

    Keep moving forward

    Finding the right mentor is like an investment. You want someone who is approachable, excited about what you want to learn, and honest when mentoring you. It will feel uncomfortable and even painful to be told that you aren’t doing something well.

    In life, the best direction to keep moving in is forward. After you reach one milestone in the road, aim for a new one. Always keep challenging yourself and you will grow as a person.

    Key takeaways

    Finding the perfect mentor is a search for a two-way relationship. Your mentor should be someone you are inspired to learn from, but also someone who is excited about seeing your career grow.

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    How to Find the Perfect Mentor
  • Powerful Persuasive Writing Tips You Should Know

    Powerful Persuasive Writing Tips You Should Know

    Updated post

    When was the last time you saw an ad or read an article that persuaded you to buy something you didn’t even need? Well-crafted words can be powerful enough to influence your decisions. This writing skill is worth developing in your professional and personal life.

    Here are some powerful, persuasive writing tips you should know to convince your reader to buy from you. First, let’s define persuasive writing.

    What’s Persuasive Writing?

    Persuasive writing convinces your reader to side with your point of view. To achieve this, you need facts, statistics, and other research from credible sources. When your point of view is backed up with strong and credible evidence, your reader is more likely to agree with you.

    What Makes Persuasive Writing “Persuasive”?

    Persuasive writing has three key elements. First, includes the beliefs of a group of people or a culture. If the writer seems to understand the reader’s beliefs, then the reader is more likely to agree with the writer. Second, the writer must appeal to the reader’s sense of logic by providing scientific evidence and facts. Third, the writing must appeal to the reader’s emotions.

    If you can’t appeal to the reader’s beliefs, sense of logic, or emotions, then it’s difficult to persuade the reader to agree with your point of view.

    How Can You Use Persuasive Writing at Work?

    If your job is to influence people through the written word, then persuasive writing will be an extremely handy skill to have.

    Persuasive writing will persuade your audience to follow your social media channels because people value the insights they get from your blog posts or articles. 

    Persuasive writing persuades customers to buy products and services. Advertising and marketing copywriters, for example, write copy for web content, email campaigns, marketing brochures, ads, and corporate brochures.

    Persuasive writing skills are also necessary for press releases, copy for fundraisers, and articles about government policies.

    How Can Persuasive Writing Help Your Business?

    Persuading your customers and clients to invest in your products and services is key to your business’s success. Dr. Robert B. Cialdini’s research on the psychology of persuasion has had a tremendous impact on marketing.

    One concept he has proven is the principle of reciprocity. Humans naturally want to return favors and pay back debts. An example of this in marketing is a business that provides advice to website visitors through free blog posts, training courses, and PDF downloads. The informative, free content increases the likelihood that people will pay for the company’s products and services in the future.

    Another principle is social proof: whatever most people do, someone joining the group will do the same, even if the behavior doesn’t make logical sense. Consider how a worker may work a little longer just because everyone else in the department works late. And think of the last time you decided whether to give a new restaurant a try because of how busy it looked. If you read about a popular trend with your age group, you’ll be more likely to try it.

    Scarcity is another persuasive tactic. An ad for “the last available room,” “30% off your purchase today only,” and “offer ends at midnight tonight” will create a fear of missing out (FOMO).

    Persuasive writing will give people the push they need to decide to subscribe to your email list, buy two for the price of one, sign up for a course, or invest in your consulting services.

    How Is Persuasive Writing Useful to You?

    Persuasive writing can help you to get a job when you’re writing to a prospective employer. It can help you to get a promotion or raise.

    Persuasion is also critical when speaking during an interview or conversation for a promotion. Whether spoken or written, words can be used to appeal to others and convince them to agree with your point of view.

    Key Takeaways

    Persuasive writing uses psychology to give people that nudge to make a decision now. It wins you over with logic and appeals to your emotions. It may even play to your fears (FOMO) or convince you to make a purchase because of the free value you have already received. Persuasive writing creates action through the power of words.

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    Powerful Persuasive Writing Tips You Should Know
  • What Would You Do With an Unlimited Budget for 24 Hours?

    What Would You Do With an Unlimited Budget for 24 Hours?

    Now, this is a dream-come-true situation! Everyone wants an unlimited budget. No one wants to decide if they should buy A instead of B, but they want both! When I saw this question, I thought, oh dang, this is a business owner’s dream come true! No more prioritizing software subscriptions or delaying the purchase of new equipment because the budget says no.

    So here’s what I would do if I could go wild with the spending for just one day.

    The Spending Spree

    With unlimited funds and a ticking clock, I’d start with my wish list and buy the best office setup available: an ideal office chair, the most up-to-date monitors and keyboards, and a year’s worth of subscriptions for all the software I need and wish I could try out.

    Next, I’d lock in memberships. Industry associations with annual fees. Premium networking groups. Masterminds I’ve admired from the outside. One year, paid in full, before the clock runs out.

    Beyond the Business: The Fun Part

    Here’s where it gets fun. Elite credit cards with eye-watering annual fees? Applied. Exclusive dining clubs? Joined. I’d prepay for a year of reservations at restaurants I’ve only read about. (Or buy gift cards to them.)

    And yes—I’d buy a house, mortgage-free. It’s going to be a busy day, but you can get a lot done in a short time. And I have a year or more to enjoy all that I bought within 24 hours. 

    The Real Takeaway

    This thought experiment is the ultimate way to ask ourselves what we really want if money weren’t an issue. I would surely take advantage and make a great life for myself. 

    What would your 24-hour list look like?

    Daily writing prompt
    If you had an unlimited budget for 24 hours, what would you do?
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  • What’s a moment that made you question reality?

    What’s a moment that made you question reality?

    More than once these days, I watch a video about something that seems to defy reality and I question what I’m looking at. Is it even real? Can my cat cook me dinner? And then I go to the comments and someone says, “This is AI.” What a trick! It’s scary, the speed at which AI has slipped into everyday life. One minute it was science fiction, and the next it’s everywhere. 

    You can’t even write an email without a recommendation for AI to write it for you. How about doing something more useful? (Please, AI, make me my lunch. I’m too lazy to cook!)

    It’s both fascinating and unsettling.

    AI is Good

    AI can be incredibly useful, especially if you run your own business and you don’t have the funds to hire three staff members without giving up your child’s college tuition. It can handle repetitive office tasks faster than people. It can also analyze data if you prompt it correctly. But you still need human oversight, or it can reach some oddball conclusions.

    One way AI makes you question reality is by generating scenes that never happened. Not fake news. But reenactments of scenes from the past. Reading pages out of history books can be boring. Hiring actors and creating sets can be expensive. So using AI to recreate the past, such as a scene from the Ice Ages, is educational. I call this a benefit.

    But there’s another side to it that makes reality feel a little unstable.

    AI is Bad

    AI systems can “hallucinate,” confidently giving wrong information that sounds completely believable. That means people still need to double-check the AI’s work, even while depending on it more every day. AI once gave me advice to do something real humans wouldn’t do. That really made me question this new reality of AI assistance.

    Another scary moment was when I was watching a video by a creator I follow. Then I clicked on the profile and realized it wasn’t her. It was a series of AI-generated videos using her likeness and voice. I had been deceived!

    Key takeaways

    AI creates moments that make me question reality. Sometimes it’s for a good reason (accurate historical enactment) and sometimes bad (stealing someone’s work). Overall, we’re getting closer to living out those sci-fi movies we used to watch!

    Daily writing prompt
    What’s a moment that made you question reality?
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  • What You Learn in High School: Looking Back as an Adult

    What You Learn in High School: Looking Back as an Adult

    High school is a phase for learning general knowledge – but it sure doesn’t always teach you what you actually need to survive life. 

    My biggest protest is how we spend years learning how to write formal essays to prep you for college. Then you graduate college, and pretty much everyone I know hasn’t written an essay since then. Starting from your first job, you’re writing emails, reports, Slack messages, or PowerPoint presentations. There is a major disconnect between what we learn to do and what we actually have to do when we get a job. Of course, it’s a relief that you’ll be done with essays at some point if you really hate them.

    We also study a wide range of subjects in high school, such as science, math, and history. Some topics were more interesting than others. One example is chemical elements. It’s handy to know what you should and shouldn’t combine if you don’t want to create an explosion. But I’ve forgotten how to create a parabolic curve, despite dedicating two weeks of my life to learning the math behind it. 

    In hindsight, if there’s one thing that should have been taught to everyone, it’s business. Not because everyone will want to be self-employed, but because business teaches valuable skills: leadership, communication, resilience, budgeting, and how to present and “sell” your ideas. These are skills you use whether you’re running a company or working a 9-to-5 job.So what I learned about high school was that you learn a lot of generalist knowledge that is (mostly) not applicable to your adult life. Also, at that young age, you don’t know what you really need. A lasting example is learning to bake cookies in cooking class. Since then, I’ve learned that I’d rather buy than bake them.

    Daily writing prompt
    Describe something you learned in high school.
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