Words on Fire: Small Group
Potent Expression Work

Transformative Message Development:
Twenty-week Small Group Training with Individual Writing Review

There are very few places in the small/solo biz world where we are invited to slow down, take off our shoes, sink in to a big armchair and settle in to who we are and what we have to offer. And yet almost nothing matters more to the success of our business – both our bottom line results and the sense of satisfaction we have running that business!

There are many ways you can show up in business. But I think the only worthwhile way is to show up with the full force and power of your being, out in the world, writing and speaking, as a powerful advocate for the things you think matter most.

The more fully yourself you are, the more cleanly you reveal who you are in your words, the more power you have. The more capacity you have to reach the people you can help. The more deeply you deliver on the promises you make to transform people.

This is Potent Expression.

Potent Expression makes EVERYTHING you do more effective, more rich, more real, more resonant. It makes the moments you intersect with other human beings crackle with possibility.

The Words On Fire training is a place you get to encounter your own magnificence, venture into territory you haven’t fully explored before, stretch your writing skills, and build the capacity to bring forward your most Potent Expression.

The Words On Fire Communication Training – $3500

In this intimate group of no more than eight people, you’ll move through four phases of developing Potent Expression. I’ll walk you through an in-depth exploration of your message, a mapping of your Sane and Sustainable strategy, the development of a Book of Language that holds the magic you bring to the world, and creation of at least one expression of that you can use immediately in your business.

I’ll break down the big bugaboos of business language and communication into manageable bites. Each week, we will focus on one specific element of communication. You’ll write, and I’ll read and review your writing each week so you know if you are on track.

This is more than a communication training. You’ll experience a profound recognition of who you are, a deepening ownership of the material that wants to move through you, and greater freedom to move out into the world, and write and speak as your true self, not a cardboard cutout of who you think you should be.

The training consists of 18 weekly calls, two 3-hour Intensives, and lots of writing and writing review!

In the course of this training, you will:

• Develop Signature phrases – language that effectively communicates the magic of what you do that can be used in all contexts
• Better understand the heart of your work and what makes you different
• Bring into focus the key concepts and overall structure of your distinctive Intellectual Property
• Own more fully the value you bring to the table
• Map out your Blue Sky Vision for your Life and Work
• Choose your Income Streams and Preferred Marketing Paths
• Develop your Basic Story that you tell in all marketing contexts so you never write copy from scratch
• Create copy for your Marketing Needs
• Write a handful of solid Elevator Speeches and Taglines
• Craft juicy Sound Bites to get your ideas across quickly and powerfully
• Produce a written or recorded “something” that you can use in your business right away to bring in more work

Step in to Your Potent Expression

The Words On Fire training has four phases:

Phase One: The Gateway – Recognize and Name Your Own Magnificence

When we step through the Gateway, we are choosing to express the truth of who we are in this lifetime, and through our work, rather than trying to fit ourselves into a mold of who we think we should be, or trying to communicate what we think people want to hear.

The Gateway work is about defining the spiritual truth of who you are in words, and using those words to both recognize and express the magnificence of who you are. Not in a “wow, I am great” way, but in a “dang, look at what wants to come through me” way.

• Calls 1, 2, and 3: The True Spirit of Your Work (really your Life) – By telling stories from your life, you’ll uncover language to describe the specific outcome you love to deliver that has been a theme throughout your life.
• Calls 4, 5, and 6: Your True Wisdom – Next, we’ll unpack the underlying principles, ideas, or ingredients that reveal what life has taught you about bringing your True Spirit into the world. First, you’ll talk while I create a mind map of your body of ideas. Then you’ll write up each of what we identify as the key ingredients so we can review it together.

Phase Two: Your Path – Release Overwhelm and Vagueness to Find Your Right Way Forward

The blessing and challenge of designing work around what you want to express is that it can look like anything. This work helps clear out the clutter of the million possibilities of where you could go with your work so you can focus on the projects (including Revenue Projects) that will be the best use of your precious time and energy.

We will do this work in two 3-hour working Intensives. Each Intensive will have a short teaching time followed by work time.

Prior to the first Intensive, I will review your Hand Analysis and Human Design and send a short recorded video with the key information I want you to consider.

Intensive One: Life-driven Vision

• Your Blue Sky/Magic Wand Vision of your Life and Work
• Design Constraints and Financial Needs
• Coaching

Intensive Two: Your Expression Plan

• Thrilled Beyond Belief Clients
• Marketing Pathways and Income Streams
• Coaching

Phase Three: Your Story – Words and Flow for Your Message

In marketing, we are telling the same story, over and over, in different places, at different levels of detail. Knowing the arc and flow of that story helps you deepen your energetic ownership of what you are here to do and greatly simplifies the process of writing copy when and as needed.

• Call 7: Bridging – Connecting Your Audience’s Desires to What You Offer
• Call 8: Your Basic Story — Love and Pain: Speaking Into the Hearts of Your Ideal Clients
• Call 9 : Your Basic Story – The Hope and the Plan
• Call 10: Your Basic Story — Saying More with Fewer Words
• Call 11: From Story to Copy — Polishing Touches for Public Consumption
• Call 12: The Short Version – Intro and Tag Line

Phase Four: Your Expression Project – Polish and Product for Your Potent Ideas

The more fully you develop the language needed to present your view of the world, the more you make of the opportunities for connection that come your way. The more ease you have with speaking your key concepts, the more deeply you own and embody the message that wants to come through you. We’ll end with you designing and creating some form of expression for the language you’ve developed in the previous 18 weeks that will help take you out in the world.

• Call 13: Your Expression Project and Personal Definitions
• Call 14: Your Expression Project and Misconception Messages
• Call 15: Your Expression Project and New Connections
• Call 16: Your Expression Project and Why Now
• Call 17: Your Expression Project and Distinctions
• Call 18: Completion and Celebration

You can also go through these same phases of Potent Expression work with me one-on-one.

Why This Training Works When Others Haven’t

Words On Fire isn’t like most marketing communication training I know of. Here’s some of the reasons why:

1. You’ll take a deep dive into your life and work to find the transcendent message that is here to come through you. Not a quick scan for something “hooky” or mass market-appealing.
2. The focus is on you becoming the most full and vibrant expression of who you genuinely are, knowing your effectiveness marketing, your effectiveness doing your work, and your personal fulfillment comes from that.
3. You’ll develop foundational written pieces – building blocks – that you can assemble and reassemble as needed to meet the communication demands of your business.
4. You’ll get personal guidance and feedback on all your writing from someone you can trust.
5. You’ll get structure and support to follow through and land your key business language pieces. Many participants say they would not have “hung in there” for the more challenging parts of message development without the container of this course.

Who It’s Right For

This training will be a good fit if:

• You are ready to stop trying to be what you think people want and start doing your business in a way that rings true
• You are ready to cast out all those stories that you are too ____ (big, loud, esoteric, sensitive, complicated) and find out what happens when you show up in a way that is more fully you
• You know who you are and that you do good work but you are sick of twisting yourself into knots trying to get others to see that
• You’re sick of missing opportunities because you don’t feel ready or confident to step forward or wasting time trying to find just the right words
• There’s something you’ve been wanting to do in your work — launch a program, start a podcast, ask someone to speak on their stage — and you just aren’t doing it because you don’t feel like you have the right words
• You like deep, you trust messy, you aren’t starry-eyed or caught up in fantasy of a magic wand. You know good things require hard work, inner and outer, and you’re willing to do that work

Who It’s Not a Fit For

You will dislike this program if:

• You want a quick-and-easy, neat answer to the question of what to say about what you do
• Attracting large numbers of people to you is more important than attracting the right people
• You want someone to tell you what to say versus being stretched and challenged to develop communication skills and muscles for yourself
• Part of you still gets hooked by the urge to conform to mass-market, direct-marketing, conventional standards
• You have trouble asking for help when you struggle
• You aren’t serious about having a business, or having a business that is an expression of you

Logistics

• We will have an Orientation Call a few days before our first content call. This call lets you meet each other and helps you understand how to get the most from the training. This may be a different day or time that our usual calls.
• Each week we’ll meet on Zoom. You can join online (recommended) or by phone.
• All calls will be recorded and available for download and replay.
• You’ll have a PDF manual for each phase of the work.
• Each call, you’ll have a chance to check in about what’s coming up for you, and share a snippet of the language you’ve been working on. Then, I’ll teach a new piece of the communication puzzle, using demos and volunteers to walk you through your next step. You’ll have a chance to ask questions and share what you are taking away from the call. The goal of the call is to leave you inspired to take the next step.
• Between calls, you’ll complete specific written assignments and post them to our class forum. Every Friday and Monday, I’ll read what you’ve posted and provide detailed feedback.
• We’ll have two longer Intensives of three hours each to do more in-depth work on Strategy. These Intensives will be a combination of meeting on Zoom for instruction and coaching and working on your own.

When It’s Happening

Our next group will meet on Wednesdays starting mid-September.

The Cost

The cost for the full training is $3500 (plus tax for NM residents).

You can also choose a six-month payment plan for $642 a month. I charge 10% extra for this option to cover additional fees, admin and risk.

Your Next Step

If you think you might want to join our next group, answer these questions so we can both be sure this program is a good fit.
Once I review your answers, we’ll have a brief conversation, and if we agree it’s makes sense, you’ll register.

If you need more information before considering this kind of commitment, a great way to do that is by listening to these single-session Potent Expression classes (recorded and live):

Potent Expression: How to Make Your Voice Ring Clear and True

The Building Blocks of Potent Expression: Creating Your Book of Language

Each audio comes with a detailed PDF handout and includes hands-on exercises. Audios are $31 each and can be purchased here.

What I would say to anybody who has a large vision and is doubting that it is possible to talk about it, know that it’s so important to connect to and speak to that larger vision, because it will juice you and give you the energy to take your next steps.”

Through your training, I became more coherent. While I was healing from mold poisoning and doing NO outreach, I had more clients than ever. I wasn’t even posting on Facebook about my work. I was posting about social justice. I am getting more clients, I’ve turned people away. I am literally embodying what my true work is. There is an energetic magnetic that is happening.

~ Aine Dee, Wealth Reimagined, http://www.wealthreimagined.com/

You can read Aine’s full story, including some of the language she developed, here.

The most significant change is that I now believe that marketing is important. I really get that for people to find me I have to put out what I offer. I have all these tools and written pieces from the training that I am using all of the time – elements of my True Wisdom, the bridging statements. I have really practical ways of expressing myself that feel good to me and seem to be getting a response.

When I say what I do, people say ‘whoa’! As I got more clear internally, people started coming up to me and asking ‘Tell me more about what you do, I am interested.’
I now use language that had been scary to me to use before. I am now bold about saying ‘I don’t offer you answers, I offer you tools to get answers.’ That seems to be drawing people in rather than repelling them! Surprising to them, but they like it.

~ Ellen Grossman

It was a release in a sense that getting really clear takes away a lot of stress. It became very easy for me to write my blog or send out a newsletter, come up with titles, to come up with a program. Everything’s centered around that focus. I felt really good about it.

Because my message was so clear, I found that when clients phoned me, they had already hired me from seeing everything that I so clearly put out there.
They knew what I was about. I really didn’t have the traditional consultation that people do to attract that client. I just didn’t have that. I really got my ideal clients. They knew who they were, and they were ready. I never had to talk them into it. They felt the already knew me and knew what I was about. That continues to this day, actually.

~ Jeannie Campanelli, www.innerconfidencecoaching.com

After Words on Fire

After completing Words On Fire, you can work with me one-on-one over time to review the status of your language and your path of expression in the world.

You can also join my Firewalk Mentoring Group, a small group of no more than four people, to be supported in taking your work out in the world or my Magnify Your Message Action Circle, larger group coaching to keep you on track and inspired.

FAQ

Q: I think I know my message (or I’ve worked on it with someone else), can I skip Phase One: The Gateway?

A: No. I have no way of knowing if the message you have, or created with someone else is the biggest, deepest message you are here to share until I take you through the steps, read your stories, and help you language what emerges. The success of everything else we do depends on getting this first step right. If you don’t want my eyes and ears helping you do this crucial step, then there is not much point working with me.

Q: I am going to be away for a week, or two, or three of the training. Is there a way that can work? What if I get behind?

A: The training is five-months plus, which means life is going to happen. All calls are recorded and posted within a day of the call, so as long as you have some internet access, you should be able to keep up with the calls.

If you have a week or two where you are unable to do the course work, you will need to do extra work before you leave, or in the following weeks to catch up.

That said, I work with you each week where you are. If you are behind the official assignments, I will review and support you in taking YOUR next step, regardless of where the rest of the group is.

As long as you are engaged in the process, and submitting work consistently, you will progress and you will get value.

Q: The training seems long. I am not sure I need all these pieces.

A: People come to me because I DON’T approach communication the way most business and marketing coaches and consultants do where there is a quick push to get something that sounds good without this level of care to make sure this is the right message.

The writing work we do is a rite of passage, it develops you internally as well as helping you develop language you can use out in the world.

If you are looking at this through a conventional frame or are wanting a quick fix to your communication, it will seem like a lot. But I can assure you that clients find that each piece we do is necessary and useful and expands your capacity to communicate with more power and depth in the world.

During the process of creating my Core Message with Isabel, I really struggled with the fear that there was no need for what I wanted to offer, that people wouldn’t want it, and that they wouldn’t pay me for it. I have to say, the process pushed every button I have!Isabel’s approach to message creation goes much deeper than simply ‘writing good marketing copy,’ which is what most business owners focus on exclusively (a big mistake, I have learned!)Instead, Isabel took me down a path of discovery to learn what I am here on earth to say and do… and as a result, I looked closely at what I really love, what I’m here to share, and the changes, feelings, and experiences I most want to create through my work. Writing from that Core Message is so much more powerful and compelling than simply ‘writing copy!’

~ Sue Rasmussen,  www.suerasmussen.com

The value of this work with Isabel is beyond measure. It not only boosts my business, but it has provided a jumpstart for all aspects of my life. I communicate much more clearly than ever before, people are hearing me and I feel so much more effective. This is on top of my list of valuable training investments. I’m not sure how I could move my business forward without it.

~ Thea Sheldon

The work is deep and wide and goes beyond my expectations. The value far exceeds the cost. Subtle, yet powerful; confrontational but non-threatening. The processes/exercises allow one to experience their own brilliancy. The value is showing up in visible and invisible ways. What’s visible are the words and actions, what’s invisible, and most important, is the energy that is carrying the words. What I am now saying is connecting people to themselves.

~ Coly Vulpiani

I seem to be attracting more connections and clients without having actually changed my marketing materials per se. I feel more inspired by what I am offering and clearer in my own mind about what that is. I am encouraged by the reception of others to what I have produced for classes and more confident about the idea of sharing this with others as well.

~ Karen Shue

For the first time I feel hopeful about pulling together the voluminous knowledge and skills I possess and present in a series of classes that will benefit me and my students tremendously.— Lynn Bieber

This is one of the most valuable investments I have ever made in myself and my work. The way that Isabel creates formulas that work and make something that seems hard to do, manageable, is amazing. It has helped me clarify what gift I bring to the world and believe in its value, and develop the precise language I need to get that message out in a variety of formats. Thank you. I have finally been able to hone in on what I know, the unique message that I have to articulate in this world. I am able to articulate what my ‘calling’ is, and to see how it is something that is needed in my industry that isn’t being offered by anyone else.

~ Rifka Saltz

I am more excited about finding words for what I do, now that it’s clearer why I need to and how! I am more focused in my development of the program that I offer because I have gotten less fearful about putting it out there, through recognizing its unique qualities through this languaging process. I’ve learned the different techniques of putting words together that I didn’t know before and that has been immensely helpful. The step by step process had an ease to it and I am no longer dreading or daunted by marketing.

~ Margot Smit

I have the words on the tip of my tongue. They weren’t there before! My energy is stronger and more grounded when I communicate. I feel more confident in my ability to communicate what I do. The combination of having the words to use, having had the time to practice using them in the safety of the class, and simply feeling much more prepared to present myself has made a big difference in my confidence level. I recently attended a class on the “Power of Referrals” and was amazed by the response I received simply by explaining with confidence what I do. My energy was completely different from what it had been. The process of clearing out the old beliefs and stuck energy that I discovered while crafting my message has been transformative and profound.

~ Ann Hill

Clarity, ownership, tools (thank you!), confidence, WORDS that I LOVE.

~ Gyllian Davies