You Are Invited to Attend One or All Seven Workshops
on Writing Well About Your Design Business

What is the story of your company? What’s unique about it? Can you describe some of your latest challenges — and your unique solutions — solutions that your clients would like to know more about?

While designers and industry professionals are quite adept at conveying these narratives in 3-D, not all clients are as visually savvy. They respond more to the written word. And that’s where this workshop can help. We’ll work on our “voice” as expressed in words.

Our goal is to have finished a first draft of a Founders’ Story, two project descriptions and two proposals by the end of the seven workshops. We will only be looking for preliminary drafts, because we’re going to emphasize the power of re-writing — writing first drafts quickly and re-writing slowly. Confidentiality, safety and a non-critical environment will be essential elements of keeping our group energy at a high level.

These workshops are a unique opportunity for our IFDA NE community, and one that no other organization is offering.

Attendees are welcome to attend all or any one of these workshops. Please note that these workshops have limited capacity. If a workshop is full when you try to sign up, email Jen Driscoll to be added to the wait list.

As a senior editor at Design Times and later New England Home, Louis has dedicated the past thirty years to telling the stories of designers in New England to a wide audience. His commitment to editorial team building and collaboration has had a lasting impact on a new generation of editors, art directors, photographers and writers. It is his hope that by leading this workshop, attendees will gain greater confidence in expressing themselves, and the value of design and construction will achieve greater visibility among homeowners, as well as the general public. Examples of Louis’ many contributions to national as well as regional magazines can be found at http://www.mediabistro.com/LouisPostel.

COMPLETE Workshop One: Describe your Company in Writing. This can sound like a simple request, but it can leave many procrastinating, rather than leaping at the opportunity to respond. We’re so close to what we do every day — where to begin? One way to start is recognize the difference between a Subject (Your Company) and a Story (Your Company’s Story).

COMPLETE Workshop Two: Company Mission Statement. These three-line “elevator speeches” are often the result of many pages refined over time. Let’s get the many pages going with a list of What Makes You Proud as a professional.

COMPLETE Workshop Three: C-Word Stories. We will write about the times we have felt really creative, compassionate, calm, clear. And we will write about specific projects that benefited from those C-words of yours.

COMPLETE Workshop Four: Challenges and Solutions. What was the story behind the project? What were the constraints and how did you use all those C-Words to make the best of them. We’ll also discuss the Time magazine “specific to general” story-telling format.

Workshop Five: Proposal Writing. Let’s write a Proposal, either real or make believe. We will have to answer three basic questions: Why this project? Why me? And why now?

Workshop Six: Being a Writer. We are all writers — writing well is often just a matter of practice, of building the writing muscles. Let’s write about the showroom where we’re doing the workshop. What do we see around us and what’s the story behind it? Learn how to use metaphors to describe design elements.

Workshop Seven: The Power of Re-Writing. Let’s conclude by re-writing one of our first drafts from a leadership, or “we” point of view. “We had the following challenge, and we found the following solutions.” As a leader who writes from the perspective of “we”, and “my team” you may experience a paradigm shift in your business.

**** Please note that refunds will not be available for a class, multiple classes or the entire series after Tuesday, August 19, 2014 for no-shows, cancellations or any other reason.****

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