Why Your Messaging Is Losing You Clients — And How to Fix It, with Lucy Bedewi
By Kate Ziuz | Presence Coach for Founders & Entrepreneurs
Lucy Bedewi got fired from her first job for having too many opinions.
She was fresh out of college. She started her business from her couch. By 22, she'd built a multi-six-figure brand messaging business — and today she's the strategist behind My Write Hand Woman, working with top coaches and personality-driven brands, with her work featured in Nasdaq and Thrive Global.
I brought Lucy onto Confidence Secrets because her work is the written version of mine. I teach women what their bodies communicate before they speak. Lucy teaches women what their words communicate before anyone meets them. Same problem, different medium — and most founders are leaking authority in both places without knowing it.
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Confident Women Aren't Afraid to Be Specific
I asked Lucy whether she can tell the difference between women who've owned their voice and women who haven't — just from how they talk about their business.
Her answer was immediate: confident women are specific. When a woman knows exactly who she serves and who she doesn't, she says it plainly. This is my person. This is not my person. And from there, everything gets easier to build.
The tell that confidence is missing? Generic language. I help. I empower. Lucy isn't judging anyone for it — she reads it as a signal that they need to back up a few steps and find their actual point of view.
She made a comparison that stuck with me. When you're not sure what you're saying, you overexplain. Think about a difficult relationship where you're trying to be heard — you say a hundred things trying to make someone understand. If you were confident in your point, you'd say one sentence and let it stand.
Then look at your website and ask which one you're doing.
I hear the physical version of this constantly. Women who over-qualify their expertise out loud — adding disclaimers, softening statements, explaining their credentials three different ways — are doing exactly what Lucy describes, just with their voice instead of their copy. The mechanism is identical: uncertainty produces volume.
Your Words Are Doing the Work Before You Walk In
In my work, I say first impressions are visual, not verbal. You appear on stage or on camera before you say anything, and people have already formed an opinion.
But Lucy pointed out the flip side, and it reframed something for me. Online, most people encounter your words before they ever encounter you.
Her metaphor was perfect: you've seen someone across a room who draws you in — great outfit, magnetic energy. Then you talk to them, and they're dull, or grating, or they try to sell you something in the worst possible way. That conversation either deepens the first impression or destroys it.
Your words are that conversation. They either take the visual impression further, or they undo everything your brand photos, your website design, and your presence built.
Which means the two disciplines aren't separate. Presence gets someone interested. Messaging determines whether that interest survives contact.
Building a Brand Voice That's Actually Three-Dimensional
Here's the part I want every founder to hear, because it applies directly to how we present ourselves physically too.
Lucy said something that surprised me: she would never build a brand voice out of purely positive traits. Outgoing, bubbly, empathetic — that combination is boring. It doesn't activate anyone.
Instead, she builds what she calls a three-dimensional voice. Real human traits, deliberately chosen — the way you'd approach designing a logo, not the way you'd approach hoping something sounds nice. She looks at who you serve, your business strategy, your positioning. Then she creates a mix that includes some "sparkly" edges. Maybe you're empathetic and kind — and also a little snarky.
That's what makes a voice magnetic instead of pleasant.
The parallel to presence is exact. Women who try to project pure authority — controlled, professional, no edges — end up reading as stiff, not powerful. The presence that actually commands a room has texture: warmth alongside gravity, stillness alongside energy. Flattening yourself into one acceptable trait is what makes people forgettable, on the page and in the room.
The Thing She Wants to Dismantle
Lucy asks her clients a question I've started borrowing: what are you dismantling?
Most of us can describe what we're building. I want to help women feel confident. I want to help women be healthy. It's fine, and it's usually vague. But asking what you're dismantling taps into something sharper — the frustration or anger most people avoid naming.
When she asks it, people get specific fast.
And then she gave me her own answer, which stopped me: she hates that so many incredible, confident women step onto a stage and immediately water themselves down.
That is my entire practice, said by someone who works in a completely different medium. She sees it in how women write about themselves. I see it in what their bodies do the moment attention arrives. Same woman. Same instinct to shrink. Two different places it shows up.
On AI, Templates, and Sounding Like Everyone Else
I asked Lucy about ChatGPT, since every founder is now using it and most are unsure whether they should be.
Her framing was the most useful I've heard: ChatGPT can only mirror what you give it. It produces pretty sentences — words that sound right and make sense — but the model isn't generating a point of view. Most business owners aren't clear on what would actually move their people, so they feed in general, unfocused direction and get back fluent, empty language. Then they put it on their website and wonder why the brand feels watered down.
Her broader version of this: any tool, template, or recycled hook that makes you sound like someone else is costing you. When you lose the ability to differentiate, you lose the moment where someone lands on your page and thinks this is refreshing, this is the person I want to work with.
Presence works the same way. You can copy someone's gestures, their stage blocking, their vocal style — and it reads as performance, because it isn't yours. The mechanics I teach aren't a template for looking like someone else. They're how you remove what's interfering with people perceiving you.
The Boundary Question
I asked Lucy where the line is — how much you can polarize before it costs you.
Her answer: your sales page should be a horror movie for your non-ideal clients. If someone isn't right for you, they should read your site and know immediately. Because if everybody likes you, nobody can love you.
The line isn't drawn by strangers in your comments. It's drawn by your ideal client. If the women you actually want to work with start telling you your messaging feels too negative or too aggressive, that's real feedback worth acting on. Random criticism from people who were never going to hire you is not.
About Lucy Bedewi
Lucy Bedewi is a brand messaging strategist and copywriter, and the founder of My Write Hand Woman. She works with coaches and personality-driven brands to develop distinct messaging and brand voice, and her work has been featured in Nasdaq and Thrive Global.
Connect with Lucy:
Website: mywritehandwoman.com
Instagram: @mywritehandwoman
Free quiz: What's Your Messaging Superpower?
The Takeaway for Founders Building Visible Brands
Lucy's closing advice was to treat your messaging as an extension of who people meet in person — to keep your side of the internet consistent enough that someone can hear you speak, love you, click through to your website, and find the same person waiting there.
That consistency runs both directions. If your copy is sharp and specific but your presence contradicts it, the disconnect is just as costly. People hear you on a podcast, get curious, watch a video, and something feels off — not because anything you said was wrong, but because your body was telling a different story than your words.
Your words and your presence are one impression, delivered in two formats. Both are trainable. Most founders only work on one.
Kate Ziuz is a presence coach for founders and entrepreneurs building visible brands. She specializes in the mechanics of on-camera presence, stage presence, and high-stakes preparation. Based in Los Angeles. Featured in Best Holistic Life Magazine, Femforce Podcast, Authority Magazine, and more.
