Why And How To Bring Your Personal Values Into Your Brand – Jennifer Zeven

So Crisp Podcast

Jennifer Zeven is one smart cookie. You may not know her name yet, but you will. She’s also one of my best feminist rant writing mates. Jennifer has purposefully positioned her freelance writing brand to incorporate her personal brand and her beliefs – with the phrase

“opinionated woman”

Where so many other women in business fear to tread, I wanted to know; how come she is so brave?

Jennifer and I discuss internalised misogyny, what challenges women face as modern feminists, bravery and honesty in website copy, and House of Cards. Spoiler alert! l learn what makes Jen tick, and why she established #OpinionatedWoman

The Crisp Takeaways

* Yum *

1.  Practice writing like yourself.

“I know this sounds totally nuts, but if you find you’re always editing the spicy parts, or bits you think might be a bit unseemly out of your copy, then chances are you’re editing your personality out. I used to write stuff, delete the good parts, and ended up with some boring words which meant nothing to me. I think you really need to develop a ‘devil may care’ attitude, and be ready to wait until the ideal client finds you. Obviously, there’s lots of stuff you can do with marketing and SEO to facilitate this, but really dedicate time and thought to find your actual personality, what makes you YOU, and then be brave enough to write her in there. “

2. When people say ‘Can’t we just all be humans?’ tell them to eff off.

It’d be nice if we were all just humans together, but the reality is the gulf between the space I occupy as a ‘human’ and my husband is massive. 

The reason we still have feminism is because, contrary to what some say, we haven’t finished. Which brings me to my last point:

3. Sit up and take notice of how you perceive and react to yourself.

Be aware of how you perceive and react to yourself as a woman and your space in the world, and how you perceive and react to other women in business, or just other women generally.

We don’t need to add fuel to the fire on the story about women being bitches and not wanting to help each other, but thinking it’s a big sisterly love-in just because we all have lady parts is equally untrue.”

(Nice advice, Jennifer – Jay)