The Word Distiller - Copy & Content Writing

Marketing without the right messages is like selling steaks to vegetarians.

Your messaging is the linchpin of your business success. 

Understanding your uniqueness and all that you have to offer allows you to show up confidently as the expert that you are - and without any of the doubt that is holding you back. How you show up and what you share about yourself is the key to resonating and connecting with your audience, to demonstrate your expertise, and gain their trust. 

Understanding your audience on a deep and psychological level, allows you to serve your clients on a higher level. Knowing exactly what they need and leading them through a transformation that allows them to belong and grow - empowers them to achieve all they want and need.

Creating an offer that is free of fluff and gives your clients the best and fastest results allows you to confidently price and sell your offer based on its real value. But that requires you to be able to express your offer's benefits and long term outcomes in a way that extends beyond your clients' immediate benefits and connects them with their aspirational goals and purpose - and with those that they serve. 

The insights that you have about yourself, your ideal clients, and your offer allow you to build a highly personalised brand that is recognisable and memorable. With the clarity that you have about your psychological brand foundations, you won't feel the need to constantly change little details and be concerned about colours, images, logos, design etc. - because all your visuals will naturally flow from your foundations and your brand personality.

Brand and marketing messaging clarity do all sorts of magic and magnetic things. Like connecting on a human and emotional level through copy and content that sells and leaves an impact. 

If you need help getting absolute messaging clarity to be able to write amazing and heartfelt copy and content that influences your audience, then please send me a message.

Brand Messaging Strategist & Copywriter

Aotea Consulting

"Transform your Expertise" is a part-time programme to help career professionals transition out of their job into a consulting business by laying solid business foundations. 

I helped clients building businesses that reliably replace their incomes within 3-6 months. 

Together with my business partner, I created a business programme that helped high-performance business professionals transition from their 9-5 jobs into their own businesses.

To create the programme I tested some new & psychology-driven approaches that work in this scenario. The programme consisted of:

	• Re-programming minds for success - shedding limiting beliefs and adopting an entrepreneur mindset
	• Finding the perfect niche - & defining a personal advantage to achieve results for their clients
	• Crafting an irresistible offer - & designing powerful solutions to end niche pains
	• Designing an authentic brand - using psychological insights to connect & transform client lives
	• Establishing proof of concept - by testing the market & fine-tuning their offer
	• Learning organic & paid marketing - to reliably create leads & transform these into clients

Business Consultant for high-performing career-professional Women

Home

After leading a high-demand corporate career, studying for an MBA, and being a mother to two young children, I decided to stop having no life and took a sabbatical.

My family moved to New Zealand and I spent more time with my children, checked out the New Zealand business landscape, decided to build my own dream business instead of someone else's, reconnected with my old passion for writing, got a copywriting qualification, and prepared to launch my first business.

Sabbatical

Calibre Events

Calibre Events was a small event management business, specialised in organising global investigator meetings for clinical trials. 

After leaving my corporate career, I explored the coaching/consulting world to gain more in-depth knowledge about SMEs and SME/entrepreneur coaching.

Working with a one-person business taught me how different the struggles and needs of a small business are in comparison with a big corporate. 

Being an SME providing services to large pharmaceutical corporates was the most difficult business model and the hardest struggle I've ever encountered.

During the few months I was working with Calibre Events, I re-wrote all business documentation, wrote proposals and participated in bid defences.

With re-written business documentation and a clearer market positioning, Calibre Events was able to lead much stronger bid defences that led to new contracts.

Consultant

MedAvante

I found that strategy is the one aspect that holds a business together and keeps it on course. It must be in place and shared between all employees. 

Strategy feeds the WHY of a business and helps employees understand what the business is about and how every single employee can whole-heartedly contribute to their company's success. 

The following are just some of the steps I took to help people understand and support the company's WHY:

§ I formed a cohesive high-performance office team & introducing a supportive, collaborative and quality-oriented team culture
§ I improved office & inter-office communication while overcoming cultural differences (communication & working style)
§ I established a self-managed team to improve processes and their contribution to the company
§ I developed and implemented cross-functional process improvements
§ I improved meeting reporting systems to clarify the purpose and progress that each meeting made to the company's strategic goals
§ I drove collaboration improvements partnering in a Russian-German steering committee
§ I changed mindsets to think and operate strategically rather than being reactive
§ I took initiative and resolved conflict, performance issues and business challenges

Corporate businesses operate on a different scale but the main point remains the same for large corporates and for entrepreneurs: Understanding your WHY and communicating that to your audience is the key to success.

Office Head

Delivering results - that's what operations management is about and when the main focus is on utilisation and profitability - you think about how the output of each utilised minute can be maximised. 

The extreme pressure of maximum people utilisation, standardised processes, and project related billing creates an artificial lens through which each employee is measured by the same parameters. 

While this seems to be a very efficient way of generating profit, it is also a very ineffective way of trying to get top performance from highly skilled knowledge workers. 

The fact that every employee was highly skilled, is an advantage, but only if the variance of skills and the range of different skills is appreciated. People have different skills and talents and are naturally motivated or even passionate about their work - if they can work within their zone of passion and their preferred style.  

I transformed a group of individual contributors from different cultures (and with different languages) into a team of high performing collaborators where each could accelerate through their strengths, communicate effectively and complement each other's talents to deliver better team results.

Operations Manager

Covance

Covance is a global Clinical Research Organisation with now over 50k employees.

I was part of this corporate giant for almost 13 years - learning and developing knowledge, experience, and many skills that I am teaching my clients now.

Above all, I discovered the significance and power of sharing knowledge and building relationships.

Responding to new market needs, Covance needed to expand to emerging markets. I created a business case and a model that included a financial profitability analysis for several emerging market countries. The model played through different expansion strategies and became the default model for geographic expansion. 

Writing a convincing business case required an in-depth understanding of every little detail and the ability to translate these into a convincing set of documents. 

This is the same understanding that entrepreneurs need when raising funds or persuading potential clients to buy their services.

Manager, Clinical Vendor Management

I focused on coordination, integration & management of processes & procedures and the streamlining of vendor management efforts. 

I concentrated on building and maintaining relationships. The right choice of language was crucial to success, especially in a position with no power to negotiate. In such a situation, you need to speak the language of persuasion and rely on the quality and strength of the relationships you've built through sensitive communication.

This is one of the foundations that I teach my clients - copywriting as the craft of written persuasion. No matter what, you are always talking to another human being. And the deeper your relationship is - the better you understand which language to use to communicate clearly.

Resource Co-ordinator & Specialist Clinical Vendor Management

Much of my work was centered around process development & management, performance & knowledge management, competitor research & benchmarking, and partnership management.

Covance has a highly qualified workforce (and business partners), hired purely for their knowledge and expertise. I created and introduced a vendor knowledge management system that made crucial information accessible to everyone in the company, leading to better service quality and saving resources through sharing information in a manner that is digestible for all stakeholders.

I understood that knowledge and expertise were assets to be applied in the right way and in the right place to make a valuable impact.  The same is true for communication. As an expert, your knowledge and expertise create value for your clients and you must be able to communicate to your clients how you can help them satisfy their most burning needs. 

But it is crucial that you "unlearn" how to write as a subject matter expert and learn to write in a way that your non-expert audience understands and resonates with.

Admin Assistant

RENA LANGE Fashion

Working in Haute Couture fashion was a learning experience on the importance of authenticity. While I was responsible for the back office management, I improved co-ordination with other departments. Mediating and managing inter-departmental conflict was a large part of my day-to-day job. 

I discovered that being authentic, syncing my language with my counterparts, and being my natural self helped to connect and create relationships - and it motivated people to perform at their best possible level. 

Today, I help my clients understand their strengths and talents and show them how they can be their authentic selves to accelerate their business by working with and expressing their strengths. I teach my clients which language to use to differentiate their service and stand out simply by being authentic.

Assistant to the Sales Manager

Artograph Publishers

Office management in a small, multinational business taught me about different communication styles and all the moving parts that create a successful business. From marketing, HR, bookkeeping, sales, and branding to project management - I learned my basics about every different aspect of running a small business. 

Being involved in so many different aspects of business showed me how strongly each area can influence the other -  and that it is crucial to understand every single foundation of the business to be able to talk about it in a concise and convincing manner.

And that's something that I make sure my clients know - understanding the foundations of your business allows you to adapt your language to any situation.

Office Manager

Comprehensive School No. 1, Kokshetav, Kazahkhstan

Teaching in Kazakhstan continually got me out of my comfort zone. On a daily basis, I had to resolve problems that I had never encountered before. 

Kazakhstan challenged and stretched me in ways that were scary and unfamiliar - but I learned that it is important to step out of your comfort zone and address issues head-on. 

Especially when was forced to communicate in a language that I hadn't quite mastered. Operating in a completely different culture and building relationships truly challenged and developed my communication capabilities. 

I learned that finding the right words is a matter of very close listening and feeling into other peoples' personalities. 

There was no room for a "talker's block" if the situation demanded it. I was forced to be very specific in my choice of words and had to pay attention to delivering exactly the right message.

German Teacher

Bridgewater School, Surrey, England

Working with teenagers on projects and igniting their interest for an "unpopular" language created the first fundamental insights about what teaching and coaching is about for me. 

Teenagers are brutally honest and if they are bored, they won't participate, they won't learn, and they will miss out on an opportunity to shape their lives through knowledge. 

Making the learning relevant for your pupils is one of the most important rules that I learned. If pupils cannot make a real-life connection to the content you are delivering, then it's difficult for them to find value in your teaching. 

Understanding the reality of your audience to deliver relevant teaching is a concept that I apply to my programme - because - if you do not understand wants, needs, and desires - you cannot write authentic copy that captivates your audience.

Assistant teacher for German

Clarity leads to messages that grow your visibility, impact, and revenue.

People listen to people who clearly communicate something that truly matters to them. Those who have messages that speak to their audience's (sub)conscious desires, aspirations, struggles, and needs are able to connect with and serve people who value their messages and offers. 

The trouble with this is: What can you do to find the messages that matter to the right people? 

A few years into my copywriting business, I noticed that messages that matter are driven by clarity and rooted in a deep understanding of yourself, your perfect client, your offer, and your brand. And because I love to empower people rather than serve them done-for-you copy (that they can only use for one specific purpose), I developed a framework that stops business owners... 

🙁 Burning themselves out with posting at an insane frequency 
🙁 Struggling with creating high-quality content 
🙁 Attracting no one or the wrong people 
🙁 Wondering what to write about 

And enables them to... 

😍 Show up with confidence 
😍 Identify the messages that attract quality leads 
😍 Build a well-respected brand based on their knowledge 
😍 Skillfully create clear content & copy that connects & converts 

From a corporate misfit to clarity-obsessed Copywriter & Brand Messaging Strategist, I serve coaches, consultants, and small business owners to build a personalised messaging framework (and the skills) to create content, copy, and marketing messages that make them visible, valued, and trusted – and allows them to sell with confidence and authenticity.  

There are three ways in which I'll help you to achieve that... 

✒ Content & copywriting services (based on a personalised messaging framework) 

🛠  A 1:1 workshop series (to create clarity about YOU, YOUR IDEAL CLIENTS, YOUR OFFER, YOUR BRAND & YOUR CONTENT STRATEGY including a personalised messaging framework that infinitely inspires you) 

🗓 My monthly content & copywriting membership (where I empower you with all the knowledge, tools, and techniques to write all the content and copy that you need to market your business) 

More details about my framework & services are in my featured section.  ☝ 

And if you still have questions – then book a free 30-minute session with me:  👇

👉https://calendly.com/kirsten-wd/30min

Hello friends and followers of Kirsten. This is Nigel, Kirsten's husband for nearly 25 years.

Kirsten wanted to share an update on her condition as it's been around 3 months since her last post and I'm sure many of you are wondering how she is doing. As it is currently difficult for Kirtsen to write, we agreed I would create this update.

Unfortunately, Kirsten is not doing well. Most of you who follow her are aware that Kirsten was diagnosed with Cancer around a year ago, but she has really been suffering for nearly 2 years with some ailments and infections that were pre-cursors to the cancer. An operation to remove the tumour last October initially seemed successful and we were able to share the simple joys of walking again in nature, on beach and in forest, of course with our beloved dogs. Kirsten even returned to a demanding course of Ashtanga Yoga, something we both enjoyed enormously; our lack of a young person’s annoying flexibility was more than compensated for in passion and effort and the comedy of me trying and failing spectacularly in more complex positions!

But at the start of 2024, it was clear the Cancer was not giving up so easily and it broke cover to return with a vengeance. Over the last few months Kirsten has been under hospice care which, until yesterday, we were able to provide at home with her family. The Auckland Hospice team and their associates have been beyond remarkable in providing Kirsten and me the support and facilities to keep Kirsten home and comfortable. But over the last few days, it became clear that the need for 24x7 specialised care was beyond my ability to provide and Kirsten was moved to the North Shore Hospice Facility in Auckland.

It's difficult for Kirsten to use email/laptops so please do not assume she will read responses here. If you do want to share a personal message you are welcome to do this via me either at linked-in (linkedin.com/in/nback) or email nigel (dot) back (at) gmail.com.

I am unimaginably proud of the content and community Kirsten has built through the Word Distiller. In a world where writing seems increasingly dominated by Social Media algorithms design to promote and monetize rage and division, Kirsten's integrity, authenticity and her commitment to help others create well researched quality content were as exceptional as they are rare.

Your coach and my beautiful wife, and mum to Liam and Amelie has fought this cancer tooth and nail with the passion and strength she brought to her writing. But cancer has had more practice and will likely have the last word before too long. 

Kirsten and I wish you all success in your business and writing. Be authentic, compassionate but most importantly, write well. Kirsten will be watching.

From me, thank you. You have all helped Kirsten to grow the WordDistiller and I have never seen her happier in her work.

Warm regards from clan Back (Kirsten, Nigel, Amelie, Liam, Jamie, Shadow)

Kirsten Back (MBA, MA)

Being a small business owner and trying to be visible, valued, and trusted in a market that is loud and dazzling like a flock of parrots 🦜, can be overwhelming.  

Especially when the world is continuously reshuffling its cards and your results are no longer reflecting your marketing efforts.   

Almost certainly, it's your marketing or more precisely - your messages that are no longer aligned with your audience's priorities, focus, needs, emotions, and desires. 

Messages that used to...

🙈 excite people, are not registered anymore. It feels like your messages are INVISIBLE.  

🙉 carry meaning, are no longer VALUED because they've lost their significance.  

🙊 make your audience love and TRUST you, no longer reassure and excite your audience to buy. 

I see so many wonderful small business owners doubt themselves and double their marketing efforts without significant gains - when the first thing to do to fix this dilemma is to go back to basics and re-align their messaging foundations. 

Messaging clarity is the key to successful marketing.  

🔮 Are you crystal clear on your differentiation, your particular strengths, knowledge, experience, and skills that allow you to authentically connect with your audience and offer them a solution that works for them? 

🔮 Are you aware of how your ideal clients' needs, priorities, beliefs, values, goals, and desires have changed so that you have meaningful points of connection with them? 

🔮 Is your offer taking your ideal clients through a transformational journey that exceeds their dream outcomes? Do you have exactly the right language to talk about your offer to make your ideal clients feel that your offer is the perfect solution for them? 

🔮 Have you created foundations that clearly position your brand in your ideal clients' sweet spot because your brand's purpose, values, mission, story, and voice are aligned with their beliefs, values, and vision? 

If not, then I am here to help you. 

I have an agile framework, tools and techniques that combine the strategic focus and depth that is required to create messaging foundations that grow and adapt with you, your audience, and your marketplace for many years to come. 

All you need to do is send me a message and directly book a call where I can answer all your questions and we can see if we are a good fit.  👇

AND... 

If you are looking for a copywriter who ensures that you have solid messaging foundations in place and writes copy that converts – then send me a message or get straight into my diary: 👇

👉 https://calendly.com/kirsten-wd/30min 👈

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