I’ve recently been encouraged by some friends and colleagues to enter a business competition.

The competition is being run through an organisation that is promoting female empowerment in business, and in order to enter, applicants need to write and submit an original business quote – or mantra, as they prefer to call it.

I’m female, I’m in business, and I write for a living.  This should be easy, but it’s really not.

Why?  Two reasons.  One – I’m too honest.  Two – I’m sorry but I really don’t like quotes.

The honesty thing is obviously going to see me getting a very early rejection from the competition, because I’ll be too harsh in whatever I come up with.  For example, the first ‘mantra’ that came to my mind for business was, “Dreaming doesn’t pay the bills – wake up!”  My husband winced when I told him this was my initial entry.  I truly believe in this mantra (because it’s true) but somehow I think the organisation in question is going to go with a quote that’s a lot softer and fluffier, and will almost definitely include the word “dreams“, but in an entirely different context to my harsh reality.

I just can’t bring myself to write something ‘dreamy’, though.  I wouldn’t care what the prize was, I cannot face the thought of creating, utilising or saying out loud any reference or quote which presents what I’d refer to as Disney-style overtones, such as “believe in your dreams“, for example, or pretty much anything relating to the word “destiny“.  Don’t even get me started on any kind of quotes from ‘mumpreneurs’ and people who use the hashtag #girlboss .  The former screams “pyramid scheme” and the latter just sounds so high school, and for me, growing up as a teenage girl, those days were horrific.  I’d like to think we’re all better people in the workplace now without a need to sororitise* ourselves to prove power or business sense, but that’s another blog.

As this blog is clearly just a bit of a rant, I have no problem in stating again that I really don’t like the use of quotes (certainly in written work).  This is because in order to ‘sell’, such quotes tend to be very vague at worst and wildly optimistic at best.  Even at this morning’s antenatal class, my midwife gave me a list of ‘affirmations’ to help me with my impending labour in a few weeks, and I just felt so uninspired in reading them.  As a result, I always try so hard to tell my clients to steer clear of using or creating such quotes in their promotional literature, works of non-fiction and presentations.  Firstly, if it’s an existing quote, then you can never be sure who it is correctly attributed to and in what context; which could be embarrassing if you thought it was Disney and it’s actually the DUP.  Secondly, it can be viewed as lazy to rely on someone else’s “thought leadership” (oh don’t get me started) when you should be taking the opportunity to use your own words for your own purposes.  Language is such a powerful tool, but seeing so many re-hashed quotes peppered in people’s work just dilutes any power that such references may have once really had.

I have one client who kind of followed my advice when I told her to quit the quotes after manuscripts upon manuscripts of bingeing.  As a compromise, she decided she was going to create her own musings.  It didn’t go down too well when I had to inform her that the ‘original’ quote she was splashing all over social media and claiming as her own brand affirmation was actually a fairly well-known Madonna lyric from 1994.  She hadn’t realised it at all and it was truly an innocent mistake, but it was hugely embarrassing – especially for me, because I was well-known as her copywriter and so everybody thought it was my deluded marketing strategy.

One client of a copywriting friend of mine truly does come out with some original quotes though, but they are so ridiculously random that you’d need either a degree in philosophy or a good litre of cheap vodka inside you to understand how the hell to interpret them…

Now, try and tell me you’re not inspired by that little beauty!

I will keep you posted as to what happens with the competition, but I feel it will almost definitely be won by someone a lot less cynical and a lot more ‘inspirational’ than me.  You can quote me on that.

*I think I may have just made up that word…