Mini-masterclass with Ashleigh Paholek, founder and CEO of TIER Society (previously, news reporter and producer).
We asked Powrsuiters what their biggest email pet peeve is, and almost 90% of you said the same thing: no clear ask. The other 10% said too much context before getting to the point. Ashleigh Paholek is here to fix both.
Ashleigh is the founder and CEO of TIER Communications, and calls herself a word economist. A decade in commercial TV news taught her how to choose her words wisely – when turning eight hours of court testimony into a ninety second story, every word has to earn its place.
What she covers:
💡 The three questions to ask before you write a word: Who is reading this? Why should they care? And what do you want them to remember or do? If you can’t answer the last question in a single sentence, you’re not ready to write.
💡 Every word does one of three jobs. It informs, makes someone feel something, or it’s filler. Just circling back. Might possibly be worth considering. Sorry to bother you. A test: if a word was written on autopilot, or to make you feel ‘safer’, cut it!
💡 AI is a filler machine. It delivers hollow warmth and vague asks because it has no idea who your reader is or what you want them to feel. Do the thinking first, hand it those answers, then edit like a news editor and swap the words back to yours.
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"Love this session - my favourite button on my keyboard is delete and I use it a lot when composing emails. Figuring out what is filler and what makes the ‘ask’ really opaque is a really valuable skill. "
