Uncomfortable Confessions: A Post 5 Years In the Making
For the past five years, I've been telling my clients that they need to be consistently blogging as a way to connect with their audience and educate their people.
"Consistent content builds trust," I'd say.
"Your ideal clients need to hear your voice and see your expertise," I'd explain passionately.
Want to know how many blog posts I wrote for my own business during that time?
Zero. Zilch. A big fat goose egg.
Not because I don't know how to write (hopefully that’s obvious). And not because I don't have things to say (believe me, I have opinions).
At face value, it’s a simple task. But my ADHD brain has always rudely refused to provide me with the proper brain juices to motivate myself to write my own blog, especially after I’ve already spent several hours on client work.
Believe me, the irony of essentially telling my clients to “do as I say, not as I do” wasn't lost on me. Especially since keeping up with deadlines for their writing has never been a problem.
Turns Out, Your Brain Matters
Every productivity guru in the online business world has advice about content creation. The problem is, a lot of that advice doesn’t really work for most neurodiverse folks.
"Done is better than perfect" feels impossible when your brain demands either a masterpiece or nothing at all
"Batch your content" assumes I can predict when my hyperfocus will kick in (spoiler: I cannot)
"Write about what you know" becomes paralysis when you have several special interests and can't pick just one thing
Productivity advice always kind of treats executive function like it's a choice instead of a neurological difference. When your brain works like mine, "simple" tasks become 100-bullet-point lists that require entirely different strategies.
Recently though, I decided that I’ve spent enough time feeling guilty about my empty blog while growing my professional writing business. The guilt was real, but it wasn't helping anyone. Instead, I decided to just sit down and write about how I haven’t been writing.
What I've Been Doing Instead
While my own blog was nonexistent, I've been supporting other amazing folks with their work, like a therapist who specializes in religious trauma and deconstruction. When we started working together, he told me he'd get motivated for a week, write one blog post, then three months would go by before he had the energy to do another one.
Two years later, he has a consistent monthly newsletter that people actually look forward to.
New clients tell him they read several of his blog posts before reaching out for therapy because the content helped them understand his approach and values. He receives regular feedback from his clients that the posts feel like he's talking directly to them.
I’ve also been offering strategy sessions to some pretty cool people, like the therapist who felt stuck trying to explain her vision clearly. She left that call saying I'd immediately understood what she wanted and translated it into exactly the right words.
She felt more confident that she could convey her message without sounding boring or like every other creator out there.
These experiences, along with the dozens of other projects I’ve taken on over the past four years, have taught me that translating life-changing expertise into language that feels authentic AND accessible is a skill worth having. There’s a delicate balance between maintaining professional credibility and still remaining human.
Why I'm Starting Now (And Why You Should Too)
At some point recently, I realized I was treating my own marketing like a performance instead of a conversation. Here I was, helping other people share their voices online, telling them that presence and humanity were more important than perfection… and yet, I was scared to do the same thing.
It turns out, I don't need to write the definitive guide to ethical marketing. I don't need to solve every copywriting problem anyone has ever faced. I just need to show up and share what I'm learning, what I'm seeing with the clients I work with, and what's actually working in the real world.
This blog isn't here to prove I'm the smartest person in the room (even though my ego really, really wants that to be true sometimes). It's about connecting with the kind of people I actually want to work with, like the therapists and coaches I already know who care about doing good work AND paying their bills.
If you're a helping professional who's been putting off your own marketing because it feels too overwhelming or inauthentic, this is your permission slip to start messy.
Your first blog post doesn't have to be perfect. Your email newsletter doesn't need to solve world hunger.
It just needs to sound like you. Especially as more and more people use AI to write their stuff, it’s going to become more and more noticeable and important when someone actually sounds like a person.
What's Next
For now, I'm committing to showing up here regularly to share what I'm learning about marketing that actually works for people who care about doing it right. Some posts will be tactical (how to write subject lines that don't make you cringe). Others will be more philosophical (why wanting to make money doesn't make you a sellout).
All of them will be honest about the fact that running a values-driven business in a late-stage capitalistic hellscape is weird, so we might as well figure it out together.
If you're a therapist, coach, or educator who's been struggling with the same tension between wanting to help people and needing to pay rent, I'd love to hear from you.
