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Part 3: Brainstorming with Family and Friends Now you get to write the "touchy feely" stuff. This is VERY IMPORTANT! It will help you decide exactly what great things you want a Birthmom to know about you. The best way to figure this out is to have OTHER PEOPLE TELL YOU. That means you should get together with a few close family members and friends to come up with what makes you GREAT. Don’t do this alone. Human minds are like batteries. The more of them you have connected together, the stronger the "electrical current". You need some close family and friends to identify all the great things about you...the things that you may take for granted. For example, your kindness may seem "ordinary" to you, but may be seen as extraordinary by others. You need others helping you with this. I repeat…don’t do this alone! Make plans to hold this brainstorming session THIS SATURDAY! Don’t wait! The laundry can wait. Cutting the lawn can wait. Adoption can’t wait! Order a pizza, invite your closest family and friends, and figure out all the reasons why you’ll make fabulous parents! Following these guidelines... Guideline #1: Features and Benefits My earlier career was in sales training. In the sales profession, the very first lesson you learn is the difference between "Features" and "Benefits". And when drafting words about what will make you wonderful parents…you must understand the difference too! This will make your message to a Birthmom stand head and shoulders above anyone else’s message. This is HUGE! So, Here is Lesson: Features and Benefits 101 A FEATURE is a Characteristic of something that can be seen, touched or directly referenced as a "thing".A BENEFIT is what that thing will do for you (or in this case, for your Birthmom and her child). For our purposes here, a Birthmom will want to know how YOUR FEATURES will BENEFIT her and her child. Here are two examples:
Most people are inclined to just list features. The problem with this is that it requires the reader (in this case the Birthmom) to "figure out" how and why this will benefit her and her child. As an example, if you simply wrote, "We love tennis, golf and most team sports", the Birthmom would be required to figure out why it’s important to her child. However, by stating clearly the benifit to her child, your statement will be much richer. Your letter will explain WHY this love will enrich the life of your adopted child. Your sentence should sound more like this: " Do you agree this is a more powerful sentence? I hope so. In the second example, you never want to just say, "I am a talented pianist." You need to tell your Birthmom exactly why this will make her child’s life wonderful, empowering, and enriched! It might sound like this:" OK…your turn (with the help of your close friends and family). Guideline #2: Brainstorming Rules Using 20 to 30 5x8 index cards, label one side of each card with the letter "F" for feature and the other side with the letter "B" for benefit. Begin your brainstorming session with your friends and family by writing on each card, a single characteristic (feature) about you. (Don’t worry about getting pizza sauce on the cards!) Don’t focus on benefits yet! Go around the room, letting everyone offer ideas. (Don’t be embarrassed. Just let these people say nice things about you.) After you’ve exhausted all the wonderful characteristics about you both, its time to work on benefits. Next, pass the cards out equally among the people in the room. Go around the room, one person a time, and have that person read a feature on one of their cards. Everyone else should then begin to shout out BENEFITS… that is REASONS WHY and HOW this feature will benefit the Birthmom and her child. The person holding the card is responsible for writing down (on the "B" side of the card) all the ideas being shouted out. Continue around the room until every Feature card has been discussed by the group and has Benefits written on the card’s back. After your brainstorming session, when everybody has gone home, you will continue to "hone" these statements. You’ll want to keep flipping through the cards, adding, deleting, changing, editing, until you have crafted the perfect statements about your "Features" and how they will "Benefit" the life of your adopted child. This may take days (even a week) of refinement. Take the time. THIS IS IMPORTANT. REMEMBER: Your reader is a Birthmom. Be sure to write with her in mind! |
