WRITING SAMPLES

NICOLE TOMMARAZZO

The following samples are three posts that were ghostwritten for end-client blogs. Client referrals can
be provided upon request.

6 MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT RETIREMENT BEST PRACTICES

Published: October 2017 Post Link

When it comes to retirement planning, many people in the workforce don’t really think about it. They
put money into the 401k provided by their employer and focus on their financial needs in the moment.
Unfortunately, this lack of true planning leads to a lot of misconceptions about retirement best
practices. Here are seven assumptions you may be making about retirement, along with the reality you
need to be aware of.

INVESTING MONEY IS TOO RISKY.

As with many things in the financial world, not every form of saving or earning is best for every person.
Yes, investing comes with risks, however, if you have an adviser you can trust and who has your best
interests in mind, they can help you make wise investment decisions. If you regularly invest while
keeping the costs low, then, in the long run, investing may provide you with some of the greatest
returns of any asset.

SPENDING LESS TIME IN RETIREMENT MEANS SPENDING LESS MONEY.

This assumption seems sound at first: you won’t be adding money to retirement funds, transportation
costs will drop because you no longer have a commute, etc.. But the truth is, you’ll have more leisure
time to travel and take advantage of opportunities you couldn’t while working. And according to a
recent report from the IRS, during the first three years after claiming social security, half of taxpayers
spent more. This isn’t even accounting for potential medical bills.

YOU CAN DEPEND ENTIRELY ON YOUR FAMILY TO TAKE CARE OF YOU.

Everyone’s financial reality is different. Assuming they’re willing to, perhaps your children are well off
enough to take care of you. However, this is as big a risk as investing money. They’ll have their own
financial obligations to be concerned with — paying off student debt, paying down a mortgage, or costs
of raising their own children, etc.. Depending solely on them for your retirement will diminish what you
can do with your retirement, and it may make it harder on everyone if medical emergencies arise.

SELLING MY BUSINESS WILL FUND MY RETIREMENT.

As we mentioned in a recent post, this assumption is built on a host of other misconceptions, like
assuming that you’ll get the price you believe reflects the value of your business, or even that your
business will sell at all. Selling your business isn’t necessarily a bad piece of your retirement planning,
but it does require having a succession plan in place now, and it shouldn’t represent your entire
retirement plan.

YOU CAN RELY ON YOUR EMPLOYER’S PENSION TO COVER YOUR RETIREMENT.

Companies that offer pension plans are disappearing, and among those that do offer them, the
pensions are shrinking. Even among federal jobs that provide satisfactory pensions, they may shrink or
be eliminated in the future based on the economy or shifting expectations of responsibility. Counting
on a pension also means working at the same company for long enough to qualify for one, and then
staying longer to qualify for one that’s a reliable stream of income. If you’re already close to retirement,
this may work out for you, however, if you’re younger, it’s probably better not to count on it at all.

YOU CAN WAIT LONGER BEFORE YOU START SAVING FOR RETIREMENT.

This is the easiest assumption to make. Sometimes it’s because people want to spend freely as they
enjoy the present, and sometimes it’s because finances are simply too tight to want to think about the
seemingly distant retirement age. But the truth is, starting your retirement planning now allows you to
make the best decisions for your current financial position, which in turn allows you to make the best of
your retirement later.

As you can see, believing these myths could hurt you in the long run and make having enough money to
fund your retirement that much harder. Instead, you should commit to serious retirement planning and
get in touch with professionals who understand retirement best practices. This will help you develop a
diversified plan to save enough money to meet your unique needs and desires once you retire.

CORE MOTIVATIONAL INTERVIEWING STRATEGIES AND HOW TO USE THEM

Published: November 2017 Post Link

Originally developed for substance-abuse counseling, motivational interviewing is a powerful way to

help any type of client to change. It relies on four processes — engaging, focusing, evoking, and
planning — to identify and resolve internal conflicts and help motivate the client to change themselves.
While the most obvious application of motivational interviewing is for counseling and therapy sessions,
other health professionals (for instance, a dietitian) seeking to assist clients in changing behaviors can
utilize this method as well.

CORE STRATEGIES FOR FACILITATING CHANGE

To move a client through the four processes of motivational interviewing, professionals need to
leverage four core strategies:

 Open-Ended Questions: Ensuring the client is doing most of the talking, helping them to explore
their own thought processes and behaviors.

 Affirmations: Recognizing key strengths to help build the client’s confidence and acknowledge
their own successes.

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  Reflective Listening: Paraphrasing client statements back to them to demonstrate listening and
empathy as well as to clarify reasoning.

 Summarizing: Encapsulating an entire session to help a client move to the next process,
encapsulating a topic to facilitate moving to a new topic, or clearly linking two topics.

HOW TO USE THESE STRATEGIES

Motivational interviewing is a client-focused process, and that requires health professionals to be aware
of both their verbal and non-verbal communication to ensure that their own behavior is intentional for
the most effective session possible. It’s also critical to remember that each client is different, and that
the processes of motivational interviewing are not checkboxes to be achieved within each session.
Instead, the core strategies should be leveraged throughout every session to help clients move through
the processes at the most appropriate pace for themselves, thus achieving lasting change.

OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS
Unlike closed questions, open-ended questions do not have a single, straightforward answer. For
instance, “How long have you been smoking?” versus “Why did you start smoking?” Closed questions
do not encourage explanations or help clients to tell their story; it leads to the professional doing most
of the talking, rather than helping the client to open up.

Open-ended questions help engage the client with why they’re in a session, as well as to establish the
trust necessary to draw on their personal beliefs and experiences to define their own ideas and
motivation for change. These types of questions also help identify underlying behaviors and beliefs that
can either help or interfere with the client’s efforts to change.

AFFIRMATIONS
Affirmations are a type of response that encourage the client and display empathy while building
rapport. It helps the professional emphasize positive moments in the client’s experience, or to
acknowledge difficulties in a positive way. However, it should never sound like outright praise. For
instance, “Great job dealing with that situation,” versus “It took a lot of strength to handle that
situation.”

Direct affirmations should be used regularly but sparingly. This can help focus the client on the right
behaviors and emphasize their success so far. Indirect affirmations should be maintained at all times —
for instance, an attentive posture that demonstrates the professional is listening is key to maintaining
trust, versus one that can be interpreted as bored or disinterested.

REFLECTIVE LISTENING
This can be a difficult skill to master. It requires the professional to observe the client’s body language,
tone, and choice of words closely in order to reflect back what the client has been saying with the
professional’s perceptions added in. This is important for ensuring the client stays engaged with the
right topics and to clarify the client’s own reasoning behind their current behaviors and desire for
change.

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This must demonstrate empathy in order to guide the client toward a proper awareness of how they’ve
been thinking and acting, which in turn helps to guide them toward intentional behaviors and real plans
for change. Sometimes it can be as simple as repeating their words back to them, but sometimes it
needs to be more nuanced, either through amplification or reframing.

SUMMARIZING
Summarizing is probably the most straightforward of the four strategies. It utilizes paraphrasing to
transition the conversation in one of three ways: closure, transition to a new topic, or a linked
transition. Closure is for ending the session, and serves to tie together everything that had been
discussed, while transitions move toward new topics or new perspectives. For instance, some clients
may be avid talkers that get off topic; summarizing allows the professional to acknowledge their
interests or distraction while bringing the focus back to where it needs to be. Or, the professional can
use summarizing to transition the client’s focus from a problem to a conversation that helps them
establish ideas for changing that problem.

It’s especially important through the planning process, which requires action plans based on what’s
been discussed, along with revisiting and changing plans based on the behaviors and situations that
resulted from the plan. Summarizing ensures that both the professional and the client are on the same
page.

For a more in-depth look at motivational interviewing and the related methods and principles, please
sign up for our practice-based training class. It’s geared toward any type of professional in any setting
that works with clients toward changing behavior.

CONTRACTOR-FOCUSED COPY FOR PRINT

Created: November 2018

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