“Lose those cupcakes!”

This was one of the ‘harsher’ comments – amongst otherwise very positive and constructive feedback – by a super experienced and professional copywriter, who very kindly responded to my call for a copywriting mentor on the ProCopywriters’ forum, back in 2016 when I started Power-Words.com.

Although he felt strongly about it and elaborated quite a bit why these cupcakes have no place in a professional business, it never really occurred to me to follow this piece of his advice. It simply didn’t feel right and in today’s post I felt compelled to reflect on the making of my logo (that cupcake that is spread all over my website!) – where it came from, but also where I might be heading with it.

7 reasons why my heart-shaped logo is here to stay

It’s a reflection of my life journey from listening to my fears to following my heart

In a nutshell this journey involved leaving a bumpy road of a few unhealthy addictions, traumatic experiences and failures behind and following a much more blissful path of much healthier hobbies (e.g. yoga, gardening, dancing) and paved with a much more positive mindset. My peak experience was without doubt my heart opening and saying yes to a relationship, which my ego well and truly rejected initially.

It’s a reflection of my professional transformation from hard-core to heart-core

In terms of work life and career, I similarly believed in chasing money, career titles, managing deadlines, budgets, and diligently implementing technology capabilities and solutions as requested by my employers… until I realised that there is no such thing as technology projects (only people projects) and success is all about people and a purpose beyond technology or money. I have found the same to be true for search engine optimisation and have written a post about why I think SEO has not got a lot to do with ‘engines’ and everything with people and providing value.

It’s a reflection of my belief that content (not cash, or technology) is at the heart of business

I already felt that particularly content and communications are key to success when I was working on large scale website/intranet development programmes, and I totally attribute the transformation of our family business to getting our content strategy and copy right. However, it really hit me that (good!) content is everything in business, when I attended a workshop and the consultant kicked off by saying “cash is the heart of the business”. Find out more about this epiphany moment in this blog post…

It’s a reflection of my opening of my heart to my uniqueness, and good-enough-ness

Looking back at my writing habits and preferences throughout my youth and university, it seems strange that my career choices never focused on content and copywriting, but it never occurred to me as a viable career; not to speak in English, which is not my mother tongue. Once I kept creating the content and copy for my husband’s business despite those fears, I started recognising my talent, as well as embracing my good-enough-ness and uniqueness. The latter was also very much helped by a copycat experience in my husband’s business, which led us on a wonderful path of self-discovery.

It’s a reflection of my desire to pass on my experience of my own transformation

Displaying my heart-shaped logo, I’m hoping, conveys and even more than that, inspires a view of content as the heart and soul of business and copy as the life-blood that brings it to radiate and flow. Moreover, my values and all my blog posts are testimony of my heart-centred transformation, and last but not least I’ve created my own little changemaker and storyteller cartoon through my work for my husband’s business. Find out more about this passion and legacy project of mine.

“Content is the heart and soul of business and copy is the life-force that makes it shine and grow.”

It’s a reflection of my appetite to work on projects with a heart-centred purpose

Although I firmly believe in the transforming powers of copy and content – that conveys a meaningful purpose in clear and technically excellent ways – and generally enjoy working on any projects that involve writing, editing, strategising, structuring, simplifying, streamlining, or also planning and managing communications, I also enjoy it most when I can help people-focused and heart-centred organisations, changemakers, visionaries and thought leaders express and share their benevolent message and service to their target audience, and ultimately to the world.

It’s a reflection of my vision to bring more heart into business and the world (not to take it away)

My mission (and passion) is to help my clients achieve copy, content and communications excellence. My vision is to use it as vehicle for positive change, and transforming factory-like, messy and mostly uninspiring and meaningless content production into copy and content that is clear, simple, stylish, targeted and which at the heart of it has a compelling and strategic purpose that is far beyond money, for the betterment of individuals, organisations, or society as a whole.

I, for one, say that business, and the world, needs more heart – the way (life-force) to get there is via better (not more) copy and content – and while I might consider toning down the appearance of my cupcakes, I feel stronger about my heart-shaped logo than ever and it is here to stay.

I’d also love to hear further thoughts and comments on my cupcakes!

“I used to just follow the path and lost my heart in it. Now that I’m back in touch with my heart, I am creating my own path.”

---

Need help with your brand, marketing and website words?

I combine brand and content strategy, content writing and copy editing, and particular website expertise as well as a general passion for content quality – whether online or offline – to make brand propositions and stories, web pages and blogs, marketing and print materials, business documents and everything and anything that relies on words to connect, engage and win over an audience, more powerful. If your words need more power, please get in touch!