Copyright 2020 The Entrepreneur’s Wordsmith LLC 1

Write This, Not That

I'm the world's only award-winning, celebrity recommended, number one international
best-selling, certified professional ghostwriter. I've ghost written more than fifty books and over
a thousand individual pieces of content. Everything from blog articles to white papers, to
bestselling books, as well as TEDx speeches and speeches for politicians, but that is a whole
other conversation. One of the things that I see so often in first drafts, even in what the client
would consider a final draft that just needs some proofreading is anti-persuasion. Let's go
through the top 45, most common anti-persuasion writing and the biggest mistakes that I see
most often. We're going to look at their opposites. What is a more persuasive way to say it? So
we will have a list of the top 45 do's and don'ts of written persuasion.

The first one is jargon versus the vernacular. Vernacular is everyday language. Jargon is
terminology that's only going to be known inside of your niche. Or you are an expert in your
product or in your service and you're wanting somebody to reference the specifications or the
features using the language from the manufacturer or from your deep knowledge and your
expertise. Does your prospect, does your reader share that language? If you're going to use those
features and those specifications and that language, do they actually know what it means? If you
are not 100 percent certain that your jargon is a shared language with your reader, use the
vernacular instead. Next abstract versus concrete: Become successful, what does that even mean?
Can you give me some concrete versions of what exactly you mean by that successful?

Are you talking about being financially successful in making or saving money, but what about
making money? What are the different versions of that? Is it passive, is it active, is it passive
aggressive? I need to know. Be concrete rather than abstract. Next theoretical versus sensory.
Theoretical is anti-persuasive. This is usually when you are talking about a topic without actually
saying anything about that topic that I can understand. This is especially true when I see people
describing frameworks. They'll talk about the components of those frameworks without
explaining in sensory language, as in seeing it, touching it, feeling it in the real world. What does
this thing actually do? Don't tell me what the component means tell me what it is. That will go a
long way to going from theoretical to sensory. The next big mistake I see is hypothetical like
using the phrases, let's imagine, or suppose. Could you give me a real life example from your life
or from someone's life? That goes a long way to being persuasive rather than anti-persuasive.
Next are mixed metaphors and analogies versus complimentary metaphors and analogies. A
mixed metaphor would be something like "that hog with a mouthful of slop was so happy, he
was over the moon."
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I'm literally envisioning a hog rolling around in slop, happy flying over the moon. What? If
you're going to use a hog analogy use another barnyard metaphor to go with it. If you're using the
over the moon metaphor, use another one that goes with that. With analogies, make sure you're
using ones that are in the same world. For example, let's say your business or your brand uses the
metaphor of driving a lot; you talk about driving results or you're going to drive business, and
maybe there's even some tire skid marks in your brand's visuals that indicates speed. When you
are using analogies, make sure they are all related to driving, to speed. That way there's visual
congruence and brilliant persuasion.

The next mistake is adverbs and ubiquitous verbs, as opposed to visual verbs. Ran quickly. That
is a word I see every single day, many times—run, ran, running, it's ubiquitous. The adverbs
quickly, very, and truly don't actually give me any more information. What about a visual verb
like dart, or dash, or skipped. Darting, dashing, skipping are three totally different experiences,
but they're also very precise. You can visualize them can't you? Rather than use "what I really
mean," use a strong visual verb that I can actually imagine. The next anti-,persuasion mistake is
not, can't, don't, versus the affirmative. This tip comes from hypnotherapy. A hypnotherapist is
someone who brings a patient into a highly receptive state so that they can speak directly to their
subconscious mind, past their mental barriers, mental blocks, and obstacles. The subconscious
has a difficult time understanding not or can't.

I'll give you an example, don't think about a purple waffle. You can't think about a purple waffle
right now. Do not think about a purple waffle. What's inside of your head right now—a purple
waffle. If I want you to think about a standard waffle, instead you describe a nice fluffy waffle
right off of the waffle iron, with maple syrup. Now you're visualizing. That's actually what I
want you to think about. Don't tell people what not to think about. Tell them what to think about.
Use the affirmative instead. The next two anti-persuasion mistakes will be described alongside
each other, because I see them together—overwriting and under developing. Here's an example,
"to be a humble person is to embrace the principles of humility. By embracing the principles of
humility, you will demonstrate that you have a humble spirit."

I have both overwritten that and I've underdeveloped it. I've overwritten it because I said the
same thing multiple times. I underdeveloped it because you don't actually know at this point
what I mean by humility. So only say what you mean to say one time and then say precisely what
it is you mean. What I have in my head about what it means to have a humble spirit, I want to
say that one time, rather than talking around the point, dancing around it, rather than actually
saying what it is that I mean. The next mistake is writing to think rather than writing to persuade.
If you've gone through the best way to say it, my persuasion system, then you know that I
recommend thinking on the page to get all the material you need for your very first draft.
However, that's for your very first draft, not the final draft.
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You still need to put yourself in the position of what is going to be maximally persuasive. How
can I enter my readers' world and give them what they need to know versus what it is that I
think? So this is more of a mindset than choosing this word over that word. Write to persuade
rather than write to think. The next thing I see as a big mistake is what I call, "nobody gives a
crap background" versus need to know details. Let's say you're sharing a story to help me learn
how to validate a product idea. And then you spend a page describing the setting, how you were
in this coffee shop, sipping an espresso with just a splash of oat milk and outside you heard there
was a dog barking. What does this have to do with starting a business?

I see this all the time. Only give me details I need to know in order to get the result. Think about
good fiction. Bad fiction is describing the setting, and what a character looked like in as much
detail as possible. First is need to know details; he was six foot seven, 400 pounds. Or he was six
foot seven and looked like his clothes were three sizes too small. You get exactly what I mean by
this simple description. Rather than writing, "he was wearing this color, and this brand of shirt,
and his jeans were like this, his hair was slicked back." Do I need to know any of that to know
what this character's about to do? No, need to know details only please. Next is hedging.

"In my opinion . . . I think that the way I feel is this, but that's just for me." No, tell it the way it
is. Language like that tells the reader you're not super confident in case they come after you and
challenge you, you can say, "that's just my opinion or that's just what I feel." It's the same when
you're giving instructions; "you should do this or try to do this more." No, do it. The imperative
verb is a command. People are reading material you've written that's going to help them get a
result. They want to know that you have every piece of confidence that you could possibly have
in your idea. So show up and tell people what to do. And the same way I just said that, versus if I
had written "in my opinion, you should try to show up."

Next is "she told me to use dialogue" versus, "use dialogue, she said." Most of the time when you
are describing a conversation that went back and forth, put me there. Have the character, whether
it's you or someone else actually use dialogue. So I can have the conversation versus giving post
game commentary where you would write, he told me, or when I asked, he said, and then you
write it out as if it's not dialogue. Let me hear the character speak in their own words so that I
can see the difference between what they have to say, and what it is that you had to say. Next is
having no call to action or a pussyfooting around call to action, versus a Jack boot call to action.

Whether it's in your chapter or your blog post or in your email, if I'm scrolling down or flipping
quickly, I need to have an in my face call to action I could not possibly miss. Instead of just
consuming a 500 word blog post and then I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do next and it just
kind of ends. Or the pussy footing around call to action. If you'd like more of this content, you
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might want to go check out one of our blog posts like this one, or maybe this one over here, or
subscribe to our email list. We're not sure which one is actually valuable or which one you want
so we're just going to give all of them to you in case you don't like one of them. No. One thing in
my face, tell me what to do, no questions asked.

Next anti-persuasion mistake is writing above the fifth grade reading level. Part of what I am big
on is the self-read result. Meaning, anything you write is so easy and breezy to read that the thing
basically just reads itself. This is for general audiences versus writing for medical professionals,
or an academic audience. Most of the people, you included, are probably writing for general
people. Now that could be entrepreneurs, that could be mothers, that could be professionals, but
you want to keep it at the fifth grade reading level or below. Basically can a ten year old
understand it, grasp it, take action and get the result. This means it's very easy to read, sentence
after sentence. Not these paragraph long sentences with five dependent clauses, an independent
clause, That just goes on and on.

No, let's not do that. Next mistake is naked cliches. Meaning it's a cliche that is so freaking
obvious. You can not possibly miss it and it just makes you roll your eyes. You want to look
away in shame at the fact that the author chose to use that cliche. It's better to be clear rather than
clever. If you have a thought, I want to use a cliche here and then maybe say I know it's cliche,
but . . . I had an offer the other day, I was literally going through their content and they had three
of those on one page. I know it's cliche to say, but . . . then they said that they had the cliche
there. That's not good. Be clear before being clever. Next is predictive but wrong. This is where
you are saying, you're probably thinking right now . . . And then you put what you hope they're
thinking, and it's not even close to what they're thinking.

Now, predictive but right means you understand your audience enough that, you know if you're
saying you're probably thinking, or right now you're feeling, you have enough market research
backing you up. You've had enough customer conversations that you know that what you're
saying they're thinking is actually true. Next rather than go from A, B, C, D E, step by simple
step with no step skipped, your instructions or your story is all over the place. The way you're
telling your story is A to B to G to Y back to L. To have advice that people can follow, or they
can take action on and get the result you promised, go from step to step with no step skipped.
Think about giving people instructions. This is the same as true for your story. Don't make me
get lost in your story by telling one stage of your life, the next stage of your life, skipping way
ahead, skipping even further ahead, and then coming back. It's just very difficult to follow. It's
anti-persuasive.

The next persuasion mistake is, "bruh. I know that WTF'' versus. "wow I never heard it put that
way before." So for example, it's people giving advice that shows they don't actually know what
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they're talking about. This is usually what happens when a client I end up with had previously
hired someone they found on a freelancer marketplace or platform who might charge one tenth
of what I do, but the client gets one hundredth of the quality that they actually paid for. If the
topic is, "How do you use video marketing to grow your business?", the first tip will be
something along the lines of, write compelling content. Like no one has ever heard of that tip
before! And then usually it needs to be dressed up and is called "Three killer tips to grow your
audience and make money!"

It's going to be really overblown. And then actually read the tip and it's things people learn the
first time they ever get into this world. So that makes people lose incredible respect for you. If
you're going to tell people what they already know, that shows you don't actually know anything
useful and that your content is a waste of time. Probably 90 percent of business people that I see
creating content to grow their businesses that are brands online, make this mistake. They give
what they feel are probably tips and actually people already know that and it looks like you have
nothing useful to offer. It is customer repellent. Don't do it. Instead, give creative, unique, useful,
even controversial takes. What are the opinions you have about content? So maybe with a video
marketing example, one of the things that you've learned is that people always want to see your
face on videos.

They don't want to have just audio with a picture in the background, overlayed. That's a warning
point to give people to never, ever use in your video marketing just an audio clip with a picture
in the background, and publish that to YouTube or Vimeo or a live Twitter video or Facebook or
whatever. That's actually interesting and something people likely haven't heard that before.
Always go with never heard that before. It would have been better to say "two video marketing
tips you've never heard before," than "seven killer mini marketing tips to decimate the
competition and dominate your niche." I don't believe you if the first tip is write good content, or
use keyword research. I already know that. "But it could be better" is the next anti-persuasion
maneuver I see in content so often versus "good enough is good enough." If it's good enough to
get people to take action, it's good enough to get people to take action.

When it could be, this is where you belabor over and over and over again, every single line,
every single sentence. That is your ghost writer's job, or your editor's job to do that. If it's good
enough to persuade, it's good enough to persuade. This is something where if you focus on the
exact right preposition line by line, by line, you never actually get the content out there to do
anything for you. This also is about typos. You may have in fact, noticed a couple of typos in this
sheet. Guess what? I don't care. You know why I don't care? Because my clients don't care. An
occasional typo does not cause any problems whatsoever. In fact, typos can often be a persuasion
maneuver. You may have heard of the journalist and filmmaker, Michael Cernovich.
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His first book was called Gorilla Mindset. It's basically about having a strong yet calm presence,
like a Silverback for example. Now in the first chapter, I counted no fewer than a dozen typos. In
fact, that might have been back from the first five pages or so. That didn't stop him from selling
100,000 copies of his book in just a couple of years, people really don't care about typos. The
one caveat to that would be if you're publishing in a journal, or a major publication that has
multiple editors going through, because then what you'll have people comment on all these
typos, saying "It passed all of these reviews, the editors, this publication must be terrible." So if
you're publishing on your own blog or even in your own book, typos are not the big deal that
they're cracked up to be.

Unless you're being published in Forbes, in which case it makes Forbes look bad rather than just
you because everyone knows that there's typos. So could be better, with every single typo
removed. Good enough to persuade is good enough to persuade. You would not believe how
many typos I've caught on my old sales pages that I've written for myself or for clients that have
made hundreds of thousands of dollars. I was shocked that people would buy it. But the fact is
the brain just kind of skips over the typo. In many cases, they never actually see it as they're
reading. The next one is ego without a cause versus why you already care. I see this a lot where
people will talk about how great their ideas are. Can you imagine using my idea in action?
Imagine how great this is going to be for you!

When I first discovered this idea, I was shocked by my own brilliance! You laugh, but it happens
all the time, especially when it's first person accounts of people's success. Instead, tell me why I
already care, meaning what's going on in my life? What are my pain points that you can tie your
idea to that than you imagined, and show I already care about the solution that you have come up
with. Why is that important to me? Rather than say, "imagine my brilliant ideas in your world.
I'm so impressed with myself," talk about, "imagine using this solution to relieve this burning
pain point, or to solve this persistent problem." Do that instead. Next is success doesn't scale
versus systematizing your success. I actually have an entire 10 minute training on just this
anti-persuasion mistake on my YouTube channel.

This is where you tell people exactly what you did to go from the land of suck to the mountain of
success. Step by single step and a couple of the steps, it's impossible to repeat. You see this
especially with hyper successful entrepreneurs, experts in their niche. When they're telling you
their story, it doesn't scale, meaning you can't take that success story and then apply it to
everyone else who's reading. It happens so often where someone says, "Oh, it just so happened. I
was at this little cafe outside of this airport waiting for my flight. And I met a billionaire venture
capitalist who gave me seed money for my startup." What's the advice there? Go to cafes and
look for venture capitalists? That doesn't scale. Instead systematize your success.
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So you could tell that story and then maybe talk about a couple of other times in your life where
it just so happened, you met ultra successful people who brought you your breakthrough. What's
the pattern there? Put yourself in the company of your next breakthrough. That is a system I can
repeat over and over, even from the comfort of my living room. I can join groups. I can
participate. I can comment on celebrity entrepreneurs' YouTube videos, I can email them,
thanking them for their advice. And that's the equivalent of the random chance airport cafe
meeting. That is a success story that scales. Next zombie modifiers. If you wish to reach this
level of success, one of the components every person should have is . . . Level. Component.
These are called zombie modifiers. They just kind of lifelessly wander across the page. I got this
idea from the philosopher and also writing teacher, Steven Pinker, best-selling author in addition.

Rather than using these words, that doesn't actually mean a whole lot, kind of corporatese
language. Have purposeful word choice. So this level of success, people say that all the time, this
level of sophistication, this level of features. Well, what do you mean by the level of success? Is
it the amount? Is it the breadth? Is it the depth? Is it the width? What exactly do you mean by
level of success? These components that you need. Is component actually the word that you
should use there, or is it element? Or are element and component both two sophisticated words?
Do you just simply mean a part or a piece? Should you say piece, part, component, or element.
Those words can all be used interchangeably. Choose the one that best describes exactly what it
is that you mean rather than, just thinking this will work. Next is you should versus you must.
You remember coming up with the should part earlier. This is more so about urgency. You need
to make it ridiculously clear why your readers must follow your advice. What's at stake? If I
don't know what's at stake, then it's just a should. You're shoulding all over people. Don't should
all over people. Explain why they must follow your advice. What is at stake. Rather than saying,
"hey, here's what you should do. Start a business . . . get a raise . . . get a better job.

Next is conscious bias. You've heard of unconscious bias, which it turns out actually, if you look
up the research doesn't exist. Unconscious bias is pseudoscience. You know why? Because it
really can't be measured. Crazy, huh? Conscious bias is where you are actually using language
that is constantly biased. It was a blind spot. That was so lame. You kind of cringe at both of
those. You want to be inclusive or you want to be offensive, intentionally. Use inclusive
language. So instead of blind spot, because that could be considered ablest or lame, obviously
also ablest. What's the inclusive version of those phrases? Or if you're the type of a person who is
known for controversy, for being in your face, be offensive intentionally. If that's what your
audience really likes, be super politically incorrect. Either be one or the other.

The worst is someone who is known for having a politically correct platform, maybe they're
associated with an institution, or they work with a Fortune 500 and cannot afford to offend any
single person. And there's just one or two things in this entire piece of content that is all about
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being inclusive, diverse, and equitable and they just drop what amounts to something that would
get them canceled inside of their piece of content, about being diverse, inclusive inequitable. So
either be 100 percent inclusive or 100 percent offensive rather than this middle ground. Next up
is editing to edit versus editing to impact. I see this a lot when an author will hire an editor or a
ghostwriter again from one of these freelance marketplaces. And they end up with me and I'm
not sure if this editor actually did anything.

When I look at the before and after of the piece of content the client wrote and it was edited, I
see a bunch of prepositions moved around. I see going from the sentence, construction being
noun, verb, preposition to preposition, noun, verb. Or you should really do this and change it to
really, you should do this. The person is editing just to edit because they feel like they're
supposed to edit. There's no rhyme, reason, or impact here. Edit for impact. If it's not making it
punchier, snappier, or clearer, don't change it next. Does this look right versus does this sound or
feel right. This is another level of editing. And by level, what I mean here, to take my own
advice, is depth to your writing.

Does this look right, okay there's no typos, it's fine. Does this sound and feel right? Read your
own stuff out loud to yourself. I do that all the time with my clients' stuff when I'm ghost writing
it. Does this sound right? And based on how it sounds, how does it feel? That tip will just blow
your mind as you use it. Next is what else can I add versus what else can I cut? Most of the
writing training out there does mention some version of this tip. So I will mention that I'm not
the first to come up with this one right here, but I see this a lot. It's like, I've got to say more, I'm
not sure if I said enough? Wrong question. What else can I cut is the better question. It is better
to be short, to be brief, rather than just to drone on and on, because it looks like you're not super
confident in what it is you have to say. Next is targeting general audiences versus writing for the
ideal reader.

I see this all the time, especially for tips. Weight loss tips . . . restrict your calories, intermittently
fast. A great way to lose weight is . . . Starting a business. If you want to start a business, the first
thing you should do is . . . Well, there's tens of thousands of different industries. What industry
are you talking about? Be very, very specific. Same as same as with weight loss. Are you writing
for male millennial professionals or are you writing for a diverse audience? Or is it weight loss
for LGBTQ plus people? That will be very, very different advice, a very different feel, and very
different examples. This is an example of one of the early ones, if it's theoretical actually make it
sensory. Let me see the person you're describing who the advice is for. Next is ignoring reader
expectations and missing reader sensibilities versus embracing reader expectations and
understanding reader sensibilities.
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Let's talk about these two. Sensibilities and expectations describes what your readers are already
bringing to the party, bringing to your content. What have they already read? What are their
expectations for that? And then what do they care about? What's going to be new for them, fresh,
and what are they actually expecting? A great way to do this is to look at the neutral Amazon
reviews for books on your topic. Whether you're writing a book or you're doing a video look at
the neutral views. There's two, three. And four star reviews. We know from the New York
Times, Entrepreneur, and other publications that have done this sort of thing before, they've done
studies that the two, three, and four star reviews tend to be the most trusted. Because people say,
"hey, I really liked this part, but they gave me advice I already knew. They really gave this great
example, but I've seen this great example before so many times, I wish this self help book was
not Tony Robbins restated." We see that a lot.

So what are the expectations your readers have of your content and also the sensibilities? What
do they bring to it? What are the points that it makes sense for you to bring up versus the ones
that it doesn't because they either don't care or they already know it? Understand both of those.
And I recommend Amazon reviews, the neutral reviews to find out what that is because so often
they'll actually mention what their expectations were of the book that they bought and how the
author failed them. And then what the sensibilities were going into this book, what they wanted
to get out of it, what they hoped to get out of it, where they were coming from before they read
it? Next is more than three prepositions per sentence. In, of, for, because, between, by, in order
to. Three of these or fewer. Preferably fewer, otherwise the sentence is going on so long each,
propositional clause is its own thought.

You don't want to have four or five, six, seven thoughts in a single sentence because then I have
to reread it again. It's supposed to be persuasive, not anti-persuasive. Next is identical sentence
structures. Subject, verb, period. Subject, verb, period. I feel like I'm reading the same thing over
and over again. Versus balanced, varied. For balanced writing, varied writing, subject, verb,
sentence construction, followed by just a verb, an imperative command. Followed by compound
sentences, begins with an adverb. Although I don't recommend adverbs, you get the idea. Then
you could have subject, verb, and subject, verb a compound sentence in there, for plenty of
balance. After that you have a simple fragment, which is fine, especially for general trade
publications. General trade publications are things like books, business, blogs, and emails. The
exception would be industry.

If you're writing for the technology industry and you're getting a white paper published, or you're
getting your thesis adapted and published, you are writing for a sophisticated audience of
medical professionals, it probably makes sense to keep out the fragments there. But I just want to
let you know that there's not a problem breaking some of the rules of grammar that were
hammered into you, possibly literally, during grade school. Next up is hedging versus risking.
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Now we talked about hedging in the context of walking back your opinion. What I mean here,
instead, is a little bit higher level, meaning above the content itself. Not literally word choices
with how you give your advice. Risk. It's better to be risky rather than being Hedgie I guess that's
a word now.

In this context, I mean, simply not giving the best advice that you possibly can. Pulling back,
pulling your punches. Not telling it the way that you see it and thinking, "well, I don't know if
people are gonna agree with that." So you don't say it. Another way to put this would be
self-censorship. Holding back. "I don't want to put it that way, that might offend some people."
And whether you know that it will or not, it's better to be riskier, put yourself out there.
Obviously not anything that's going to get you canceled or to get your blog article viral in all the
wrong ways, but it is better to refuse the urge to self-censor and hedge your bets, so to speak, and
it's better to risk. And that will also gain more respect because you will come across as authentic.
Even the right kind of vulnerable, which builds trust and earns respect.

Next is blended points versus siloed points. I see this often in listicles, list articles: Top seven
ways to accomplish this, 10 tips for this. And by blended points, I mean the first three are kind of
the same thing. So for example, going back to video marketing; top five tips to improve your
video marketing, get more viewers, and convert more into customers or whatever. Maybe the
first one is about the audio, make sure you have great audio quality. The next tip after that is
improve your audio quality in editing. It's the same idea there isn't it? Versus siloed points where
everything about audio quality is in the first one. Everything about my visual presentation during
the video is on the second point. Siloed, meaning they're all in one place.

Think about grain in a silo, It's not like the grain is distributed all across and it's kind of free
floating out there on the farm. Nope. Everything you have to say about one thing is in one place.
And that also goes for the way you tell stories, or the way you give advice. Everything about that
piece of advice you have, don't distribute it across the entire book. Put it all in one chapter, one
section, one place. Same with the story. If your story illustrates one, then you put all of that story
in the place where you make that point. If different parts of that story make different points, they
put them where they go in those points. Think about the grain silo. Of course you don't put the
different types of grain in the same silo. It doesn't make sense. You put one type of grain in that
silo. Next is a repeat example versus one example per point. I see this a lot with both article first
drafts and manuscript first drafts. It goes a little like this, "here's another example." You mean
your first one wasn't good enough? Or, "I'll tell you another story." You mean your first one
wasn't good enough.

Choose the best example that makes your point and move on, unless you're giving a different
example for a slightly different point that is a subtopic of the main point. So maybe you have a
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thesis for the article that you're writing, or the blog post or for the white paper. And there's
different components of your system. Let's say in this case, I'm actually using the right
terminology here. This system has multiple components that all work together. So rather than
give one example of your system, you could give an example of each of your components. Let's
pick something simple, like nutrition, for example. We don't want to give one great nutrition
example you want to give, maybe different systems of the body that you're writing for.

So maybe nutrition for immune support. You don't necessarily want to give one example. You
want to give an example of what are the different types of foods? What are the different ways
that these foods boost your immune system? The antioxidants, for example? Well, give an
example for each of those different pieces. I think that makes sense to you. It's better to have one
example per point, making sure you're actually having multiple points rather than give multiple
examples for the same tip. Because then I start to get lost and it's like, "well, okay you already
made your point?" Next is assuming readers agree rather than making the case for something.
This applies to advice. This applies to a perspective you're sharing or a story you're sharing.
Never assume that your readers already agree with you. Come from the position that you're
making your case. I see this a lot actually with the sales page, interestingly enough, where people
describe the features of their product and then ask, would you like to buy it?

Do your readers already know that they need this? Have you made your case for these features?
Or do you just assume readers know that they need those features? Are you dropping your
political beliefs or your religious beliefs assuming maybe we just already agree with both of
those. Rather than making the case or demonstrating the utility of those beliefs without
necessarily stating that, "oh, and by the way, I'm of this religious belief or I'm of this political
persuasion." It's better to make the case for those ideas rather than simply drop them right there
and say, here's what they are: take it or leave it, I assume you agree. Not a good call. Better to
make your case in all things. Next is third party quotes. This is so common in books now. You
want to begin a chapter with a quote from someone famous. Or to paraphrase the words of this
famous person . . .

No! You're the expert people are reading. Don't try to leech off the expertise of credibility of
someone else. Just say it better, your own way. And this is fine. If you've got a couple of quotes
here, think about why you wanted to choose that quote from Oprah or from Tony Robbins, that
we've all read 1,001 times before.This is even worse as you drop a quote everyone's already
heard before. It just shows that you're not an expert. Now you and I both know that you are an
expert so prove it. Say it better than the quote was. Often what I'll do is I'll ask a client, why did
you choose this quote from Tony Robbins that we've all read 1,001 times to begin chapter one?
"Well, I liked what he said . . . " And then everything they say after that, I then work into the first
paragraph because they actually make their own point after that.
Copyright 2020 The Entrepreneur’s Wordsmith LLC 12

Next is internal consistency versus a uniform message. This has to do a lot of times with advice
where people will say, for example, "always, always write a certain length for your blog posts."
And then later on, "if you're ever writing a 5,000 word blog post." Wait. You said to never write
over a thousand words, what's the difference here. Now the uniform message would be, "in these
situations, write 500 words or fewer. In these situations write 5,000 words or more." Great,
uniform message here. It's excellent. Do that rather than being all over the place. Next is lacking
parallelism, a big anti-persuasion mistake I see a lot versus having parallel phrases and clauses.
This is especially useful when you're using those metaphors again. Let's say you're talking about
the limits of something, you could say something like, "these tips will help you break through
those limits."

Do you actually break through a limit? Or do you supersede the limit, or do you pass over them,
or do you break through the obstacle? You see that. It's kind of hard to visualize. It sounds
motivational, but when you read it, overcome those limits. Do you actually overcome limits? So
whenever you're using motivational language, like that, always be sure that you're using parallel
phrases, that actually stick together. So this is the conceptual version of parallelism. The more
common version of parallelism is, let's say with verbs, for example.

Let's say you're exercising, "in order to lift weights, get into posture, pick up the weight, and to
begin lifting, do this. No. You just said ING verb, ING, verb, infinitive. You're picking up the
weights, you're setting your posture, right, you're getting into position, and when you're ready, do
this. No, no, no. That's not how it works. Keep that verb construction there. That's a more
common version of parallelism, but I see most offers are great at that. It's the conceptual part
where they'll say things like, we have to make sure you have to overcome those barriers. Well,
do you actually overcome barriers?

Do you pass over those limits? That is a much more effective version of parallelism rather than
just simply not going from running, flying, to swim. That's a little obvious. It's the conceptual
version that I find is a little more problematic. Next anti-persuasion mistake is don't write in
order to, so, that, or even that if to or so, or the invisible that works just fine. For example, in
order to write better, to write better. So that you're able to, could I just say, so you're able to? Do
I even need that even there? No. You'll also find that if you remove that and you read it, it still
makes complete sense. So if the sentence makes complete sense without the word that is in it,
remove that.

Next is numbers. And I bring these in here because these irk so many people. Especially if you're
used to Chicago Manual Style. Within the publishing industry, Chicago Manual Style is the gold
standard style guide. We always spell out years, thirty-five years rather than number 35.* And I
Copyright 2020 The Entrepreneur’s Wordsmith LLC 13

have the asterisk there because you'll see oftentimes in marketing emails and in blog posts and
even in social media posts, the numerals are used. So 35, literally three, five rather than
thirty-five. That would be the exception here, simply because you want to take as much space as
possible. When you're writing a book versus writing blog posts it's a little bit different. So for
books, for chapters, spell out numbers below 100, unless you are writing a blog post or a
marketing email. Same with percentage, always write out percent the word.

If you're writing social media posts, blog, marketing, email sales page, use the percentage sign.
100 bucks. It's better actually, in any piece of content at all times, to use the currency symbol,
and then write it out. With the one exception being if you're starting a sentence. You cannot start
a sentence with a number according to Chicago, Manual Style. Did you know that? Leaving it up
to readers means you don't tell them what you want them to do next, or what to think next or to
believe next, or what to change. Lead readers to where they want to go. To what they're supposed
to do next, towards how they're supposed to think differently, and then how that is going to
benefit them. Think about the result that they're going to get. That's how you lead people, as you
describe here's the promised land, would you like to come with me?

The promised land, meaning the benefits, the advantages of your idea, the way you're thinking
about it, your belief system. Don't just simply state what it is, and then get off the page, and let
readers decide whether or not they want to agree with you or take that action, but lead them
where they want to go. The final one here, rather than simply doing dot, dot, dot, do space, dot,
space, dot, space, dot, when you're kind of doing the ". . ." This is the Chicago Manual of Style
stuff. Next is if you're having some kind of an exclamation point with a question mark, it's the
other way around. If you're writing dialogue and you're yelling, "how could this be?!" You
actually write the question mark, and then the exclamation point. The exclamation point is
considered terminal punctuation so it's always last.

Then rather than having the text followed by the quotation followed by the comma, the period, of
punctuation. No, no, no, punctuation goes inside. There are a few exceptions, but for most of
what you'll be writing, you will always go inside rather than outside of the quotation. Simply by
following this one page persuasion sheet, you will find yourself up to forty-five times more
persuasive. Isn't that that amazing. So go out there, write better, and persuade because life's
short, you might as well be as persuasive.