Lesley Worthington  0:00 
What happens is that we write the way we have been rewarded to write in university. You're rewarded to write as much as you can. You're aiming for a 500-word limit, 10,000-word paper, or whatever the goal is to show the teacher how much you know. However, that's not the goal of writing in the real world. So it's a completely different shift.

Harsh Thakkar  0:22
[Podcast Intro Message]

Alright, we're live. Thanks again. Thank you, Lesley, for joining. And thank you, listeners, for coming on and giving us your time to listen to another episode of Life Sciences 360. Our guest today is Lesley Worthington. She is a writer and consultant who helps Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs professionals improve their writing and communication skills. Thank you for your time, Lesley, and welcome to the show.

Lesley Worthington  1:05 
Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

Harsh Thakkar  1:06 
The first thing I want to ask you is about the three pieces of information that I found on your profile while doing research. Firstly, you went to law school; I'm not sure if you practice law, but you did attend law school. Secondly, you spent more than a couple of decades working in life sciences in quality assurance and regulatory affairs. Lastly, you went on to become a writer. To me, these three things don't seem to line up. Could you walk me through what was going on in your career during these phases?

Lesley Worthington  1:39  
Yeah, nothing intentional, I just kind of... So I started heading towards a law degree after a science degree that was pretty heavy in psychology. And I was called to the bar, I did my articling, and all that kind of stuff. Then someone I knew mentioned an opportunity as a quality/regulatory person in a small medical device startup. I knew nothing. I didn't even know what a quality and regulatory person was. I knew nothing about it. But it sounded interesting. This is also when I had just had my first child. And I realized, "I don't think I want to do that lawyer thing that I thought I wanted to do before I had kids." So I thought, "Let me do this." 

So I took that job. And I stayed in that area for 20 years. That company was purchased a few years in; it was purchased by an international conglomerate. So I worked there for a bit. Then the original owner started another startup and pulled me over and all the other staff and hired me. So I worked with him again. Then that company was purchased. And the same thing repeated three times. So it was small, big, small, big, small. And then I left altogether, around the same time that my youngest child was leaving for university. So it was sort of like a transition point in my life. And it was like, "What do I want to do when I grow up?" That was sort of my thinking. So yeah, it's kind of a weird path. But I feel like what I'm doing now is everything that I've ever done has led to this point and made me the perfect person for what I'm doing right now.

What's interesting is that you obviously have the fundamentals, like going to law school. You've studied a lot of regulations. I'm guessing when you were in school, you had to go through that process of understanding what a 30-page regulation means and how you can remember the concept in two or three paragraphs. So you can study that in school, then you worked in the industry. So you have the application of how that works. And now you're helping others, right? So you have the perfect, even though it wasn't planned, when as an outsider looking in, you've had the perfect foundation to be successful.

And I think for me, too, what's really helpful is that I had to teach myself everything about the quality and regulatory stuff. Yeah, I knew how to read regulations. And I knew how to think and all of that stuff. And that's why this guy hired me. He's like, "Well, she's got a brain, she can figure this out." But I knew nothing about medical devices. I'm in Canada, so it was the Canadian system. But I taught myself everything, and I think when you teach yourself everything, you learn it differently than if someone throws a book in front of you. And so I really feel I have a good understanding, especially of what new people are faced with when they're in this industry.

Harsh Thakkar  4:40 
Yeah, so let's talk about having a good understanding of writing. I'm actually excited to discuss this topic with you because I don't think it gets enough attention that it deserves. It's not as juicy a topic as quality four-point or digital transformation and AI and all these trends, but it's such a fundamental topic in the business world or even in personal relationships. So I'm really excited to learn more about this because there's something in here for everyone. Even if a listener is not in life sciences, I'm sure they can take away something from what we're going to discuss today. So, when you're working with professionals or clients, what are the top one or three challenges that you've seen happening repeatedly with regards to writing and communication?

Lesley Worthington  5:41 
I think what happens is that we write the way we were rewarded to write in university and high school. You're rewarded to write as much as you can, aiming for a 500-word limit, a 10,000-word paper, or whatever. The goal is to show the teacher how much you know, right? That's not the goal of writing in the real world. So it's a completely different shift of mindset about what writing is about, and I don't think people make that shift. In the real world, you have to remember that the main things you have to think about are the reader and why you're writing. Then, you adjust things accordingly. People don't really do that. They're not necessarily thinking of the reader; they're thinking of themselves. They're thinking of showing how much they know, making themselves look like an expert, and all of that stuff. They're not thinking, "Wait a second, I just need to write what I need to write to get this person to do what I need them to do or know what I need them to know."

Harsh Thakkar 6:48
So, I want to read something that I found on your LinkedIn profile. And these are your words, "I help people improve their communication skills. So their outside matches their inside, and they get the respect and authority they deserve based on their education, experience, and knowledge." First of all, I love how you've captured your entire purpose, vision, and goal in just a handful of words in one sentence. Walk me through how you came up with that. How did you decide that this is what's going to go on? Walk me through the process of how you defined that as your purpose.

Lesley Worthington 7:29
Well, first of all, for a little better context, when I started off doing this online business teaching stuff, I worked with a lot of non-native English speakers who often lacked confidence with their English and worried that it undermined their expertise and authority. So that's where that sort of statement came from. Like, they're these highly educated people with umpteen numbers of PhDs under their belt, and they're nervous because of their English. So for me, that's what I started off doing. Then I shifted into helping people, generally, native speakers, non-native speakers, just be clearer when they're talking about quality stuff. Now it's even shifting more towards helping people communicate in a way that helps them build a quality culture at their place. That's the direction I seem to be going now. So that's how that first came to be that kind of phrasing.

Harsh Thakkar 8:31
You obviously shared the challenge that people face. When you are giving them recommendations as a consultant, as a coach, from all the people and all the clients you've served so far, is there a common one or two recommendations that you find yourself giving every time? Hey, first, do one and two before you do anything else?

Lesley Worthington  8:50 
Yeah, sort of, like I would say, and the advice is the same for native speakers. It doesn't matter if you're a non-native speaker. My advice for non-native English speakers would be, first of all, don't worry about perfection in your grammar. And don't worry about your accent; that stuff doesn't really matter. Just know what your message is, and you'll be fine. So my first point really is to be clear in your thinking. Most unclear communication is unclear because the thinking is unclear. Alright, so know your message, know who you're talking to, and know what you want to happen in this conversation or this bit of writing. So that would be my number one.

And then my number two, which is easier if number one is in place, is to keep things simple. So simple usually means clear, and clear usually means people understand you. And that's presumably the goal. So if you confuse people by using words and phrases they don't know, they're not going to think you're smart. They're either going to think you're arrogant or confused. Right? And they probably won't understand what you're saying. So keep it clear by keeping things simple.

And I have to add a third one: listen. Right? Because there's no way we can know our audience, which is our reader or listener, if we aren't listening to them. We have to know what they know, what their biases and priorities and motivations are, how they feel about us, and whatever it is we're dealing with. So we have to listen. So we know how to approach those conversations with a sense of empathy and figure out what we need to say to get this person to do what we need them to do. So those are my three.

Harsh Thakkar 10:39
That's great. I really like the one about using simple language, or simple writing. It's the one that really resonated with me. And I'm speaking from experience here. When I started creating content on LinkedIn, or I started my business and talking to clients, even just emails, I used tools like Hemingway and Grammarly, and all these other tools that kind of scan your text and tell you what grade level you're writing at. I started obsessing over that so much, where if my text was at an eighth or ninth grade reading level, I tried to cut words to bring it to fifth or sixth grade. It just makes it easy for the person to understand and appears more natural. We're not going to use those words when we talk to someone, so we shouldn't use them in an email.

Lesley Worthington 11:34
There's so much scientific evidence about how we read. So we shouldn't let that dictate how we write, right? Keeping it simple is key. People are afraid to keep things simple because they think they won't seem as professional or smart and savvy. But honestly, if people understand you, they will think you're smart and know what you're talking about. It's so logical, but there's such resistance. I think part of it is that people tend to want to write the way they see other people around them writing. So it feels like they don't want to be the one to make a big shift and suddenly start writing in a totally different way if their boss is writing in a passive, formal, archaic kind of way. There's that peer pressure almost to keep that kind of writing going. So my mission in life is to say, forget it.

Harsh Thakkar 12:36
Yeah, one of the specific things about writing that is one of my pet peeves is acronyms.

Lesley Worthington 12:44
Mine too.

Harsh Thakkar 12:45
There are so many acronyms in QA, reg affairs, and life sciences, QA and RA, you know, that itself is, yeah, this starts from there. And then when I join a new company, or when I was working, and now as a consultant, there are internal company acronyms. So here's an example: I was sitting in a meeting and somebody said, "Oh, yeah, we can't really do anything about this change control until we talk to CRP, or until CRP does something." And it was my first week. I had to ask my colleague, "Hey, what is CRP?" And he said, "Change Review Panel." I was like, "Okay, thank you. Now, I understand what was happening in the last 15 minutes." Do you have any do's and don'ts with acronyms that people need to remember specifically inside their business documentation?

Lesley Worthington 13:36
Yeah, well, it's one of my pet peeves too. There are acronyms and initialisms, which are slightly different. An acronym is when the initials are said as a word, like CAPA, instead of C A P A, we say CAPA. And initialisms are when you say each letter separately, like MDR, or UFO or something like that. Right. So I think the best way to use them is to not use them on your team unless you're 150% sure that everyone knows them. For instance, like MDR, in some places, that's medical device regulations. In other places, it's medical device reporting. And it could be a million other things. So we have to be careful, especially because we're working almost always with international peers, colleagues, and customers. If there's an acronym that's important for everyone to know, that's fine, but take the time not just to tell them what it is, but to tell them what it means. Right? 

So, for example, you might say CAPA, so if you say, "Oh, that's easy. That's corrective and preventive action." Does that help someone actually understand what that is? Like? No. Oh, it doesn't. So those are just words. So if you're going to use it, make sure you tell the people what it actually means. A big problem with this is that people don't. People really don't want to admit that they don't know, like you. You didn't say, "Oh, what's CRP?" You just scurried away and asked somebody quietly what they were talking about because you think you should know it, or you think that everyone else knows it or whatever. So even if someone says, "Everyone knows what that means," and you nod, you should still take that moment to quickly refresh people.

Harsh Thakkar 15:26
Right. And when you are talking about acronyms and explaining these things, I can relate to that. Because even in another example that came to my mind was GDP. So sometimes when people say GDP, it's not clear if they're referring to good documentation practices or good distribution practices. So if I'm in a supply chain meeting or a manufacturing meeting and they're talking about it, I have to assume the context and think, "Oh, they might be referring to this." So that's another example that gets really tricky because GDP is such a common thing that people use.

Lesley Worthington 16:06
And you should ask for, you know, if you're using it, go ahead and say GDP, good distribution practices. This is what I'm talking about. Go out and say it. If it's in a document, make sure you've got it either defined somewhere or right afterwards, write out the words, right? You don't have to do it every time it appears. But the first time it appears, write it out. And then so that everyone's on the same page. Yeah, it's tricky. Especially because it's a global workforce now.

Harsh Thakkar  16:36
Right. So another question I have about it. This is more around writing style. And I have always thought about this myself, and I struggle with this a lot. I'm not I'm not perfect at this. How can someone switch or adapt their writing style? Because if you look at me, are you today or anybody in the industry, right? We are writing emails, we are writing some sort of chat messages in our company, internal systems, we're creating PowerPoint slides, we're probably writing SOPs, policies or documents. And if we post on social media, we're also writing content, right? So how can someone adapt their writing style? Depending on where they're writing? And they might have to write the same content in five different ways?

Lesley Worthington  17:23 
Yeah, that's a really good question. And it always comes back to the same thing: you always have to think about your audience and your purpose. Who is going to read this? Do I know this person? Am I trying to be authoritative? Am I trying to show my personality, like on a social media post where you want them to see that you have a sense of humor or something? So, you really have to do that thinking part first and ask yourself, what exactly am I trying to do? All of that dictates the tone, which is determined by the sentence structure and word choice.

If you're writing something more academic or formal, like a white paper or procedures, you'll probably ditch contractions, pronouns, and words like "ditch." You might say "the evidence shows" instead of "I think." If it's less formal, you might use more passive sentences. But even with a technical document, there's no need for particularly heavy-duty words. As a rule, you should use the simplest word that works. For example, there's no reason to use "utilize" instead of "use." You don't need to make too many changes in terms of the words because you want to be using plain words as much as possible. Getting rid of contractions, like "you're" instead of "you are," would be a fair one to change if you're going more formal. They don't sound as conversational and make you sound more human, but you don't need to sound like that in some sort of technical document.

Also, when we're talking about a workforce with many different native languages, people might not understand contractions. You don't want somebody not understanding that "don't" means "do not" in a procedure. So get rid of contractions in really important documents. The other obvious thing that you could change in terms of switching up the style would be the structure and the layout. Again, you're considering the audience and the purpose. That usually tells you what to do. Does someone need to find something really quickly in here? Will they know where to look? Will they be scanning and jumping around on this document, or will they just be sitting down and reading it? That sort of thing determines whether to use bullet points or headings.

Ultimately, it's not so much understanding how to change things, but it's really about understanding how we read. And since it's a person reading, in every case, the changes don't really have to be that dramatic. We're still dealing with the human brain. Even super bright, highly educated people like to read things that are easy to read. There's evidence for that. We tend to write our technical documents as though they are academic or legal documents in passive voice and prim and proper. We shouldn't necessarily be doing that.

But we're kind of stuck in that mode because that's what exists already in our companies. We're kind of afraid to be different, but that formal, passive, long writing with the big words and the long sentences creates a big cognitive load. It makes our brain work too hard. We don't want to tire people out when they're reading important things. We want to keep things simple and clear so that they still have some brain space left to do the thinking that we want them to be doing. A tired brain is going to make more mistakes, take longer to read, and take longer to make decisions. Passive writing and unfamiliar words tire the brain. Just keeping that in mind is the motivation to change our style a little bit.

Harsh Thakkar 22:45
Yeah, it's more tiring to know what "utilize" means if you're not from an English-speaking country or if English is not your first language. If you use simpler words, people are more likely to understand. It's also less stressful for them to figure it out.

Lesley Worthington 23:03
Even though "utilize" has three syllables and "use" has one, using simpler words saves time, especially if you're paying someone's salary. If you start thinking like that, it's scary to think how much time is wasted because of the way we write.

Harsh Thakkar 23:18
Yeah, I want to switch gears here and talk about a topic that is really hot right now: artificial intelligence tools and writing. Pretty much one in five posts on my LinkedIn is about ChatGPT and how people are testing it out with different inputs to see what it can do. Have you tried it?

Lesley Worthington 23:43
I haven't tried it because I'm scared to. But my understanding is that these tools gather their data from existing data points, right? They predict what a good next thing would be. But if they're gathering their data from existing writing, I think they're just going to continue mimicking the poor writing that's currently out there. That's my initial thought. I'm not too panicked about it. For sure, there are going to be certain types of writing that will be replaced and certain types of writers that will be replaced. But I figure that anyone who thinks they're safe will be easily replaced if they reproduce what's already out there. Maybe that's fine. It motivates people to use their heads more. Something like a literature review is easy for AI. But can the machine come up with an opinion or a new direction to go? Maybe eventually, but I hope not anytime soon.

Harsh Thakkar 25:04
Yeah, it's really just a tool and the quality of the outputs depends on the specific inputs that you provide. So just having access to ChatGPT doesn't make someone a good writer. But if they're able to get an outline or an output from ChatGPT or any other AI writing tool, then they can tweak the language to maybe simplify it or change the tone to be more empathetic or whatever they need.

Lesley Worthington 25:55
I mean, we have to remember what I said earlier: good writing happens before you start writing. Good writing comes from good thinking. And machines can't think. You have to think first and then feed that thought into the machine. The machine will then give you the words to express that thought. I think it's going to be a great tool, and it's definitely a game changer. It will help people write more concisely. They'll input their content, and it'll come out clean. It'll probably help with clarity. And it'll give us more options for putting our particular thoughts into words. 

Sometimes we don't know how to say something, so we input it and see what comes out. I'm pretty sure that, if you give it the right instructions, it will be able to change the style of our writing. You could say, "Write this with a more formal tone," "Inject some humor into this," or "Change this industry white paper into something more suitable for a LinkedIn post." And I bet it would be able to do that. I think it's also going to be really helpful for non-native English speakers. It will bridge that language gap, allowing them to participate more in business conversations. They lack confidence now, I think, to voice their thoughts. So as much as I want to run the other way with this AI stuff, I think it's definitely a game changer. But I don't think it's actually going to replace humans.

Harsh Thakkar 27:29
Yeah, I mean, it's still too early to say because, like I said, it's missing that critical thinking component. Maybe it will happen someday. It might take some time to get there. But as of now, it's just input and outputs. The outputs are very generic. So it's also going to separate writers who are using it a lot. All of their content and text is going to look and sound the same. But other writers who are skilled at injecting their personality into the text or injecting their style will easily be separated. You could read something and say, "I know Lesley wrote this," or you could read that and say, "Oh, this is just an AI content." People are going to figure that out soon because everyone's going to be exploiting the use of it.

Lesley Worthington 28:21
Yeah, I do want to start playing with it just to see what happens. But, yeah, that's crazy. It's crazy.

Harsh Thakkar 28:28
When you were mentioning non-native speakers, something came to my mind. I've seen this myself working in life science companies, especially organizations that have different sides or colleagues and partners and suppliers, contract manufacturers in different countries. How can people use the best practices for writing or speaking when they're talking to someone in the US, Japan, or India? Do you have any advice for that?

Lesley Worthington 29:05
I think that it basically comes down to having a relationship with them. One of the critical things we have to think about is our intercultural awareness, so that we know how this culture works. How do hierarchies work in this culture? How does politeness work in this culture? How does all this stuff work? But I think that if we focus on building relationships and trust, then the communication part is pretty easy. You have this give and take, you're open. You can say if you don't agree or you don't understand, and you feel more comfortable saying that. If you have a very formal relationship and you're at a distance, it's really hard to admit when you don't know something or to set them on the right path if they've made a mistake, right? So I really do think that it comes down to the relationships.

Harsh Thakkar 30:06 
And when you talked about culture, what is your definition of a quality culture for a company?

Lesley Worthington 30:14 
Okay, you'd think I would have a nice, clean definition, right? All this time, really what I think is that a culture is where everyone understands the big picture of their organization, the big picture of their role, and the big picture of quality. And where everyone, top to bottom, takes actions that reflect the shared vision of quality. So, to be a little more succinct, I would say it's a culture where clarity, trust, and effective communication are driven by whatever the organization stands for, as well as the goal of continuous improvement and employee engagement. I think all of those things are so big, that's why I think I've never gotten it down. Right? Does everyone understand the big "why" of their organization? Like, literally, why it exists? Why are we in business? Right? Do they understand what quality is all about? Why do they have a quality management system? Right? Do they understand their role in the bigger picture and how it's all connected? And do they know what quality actually looks like in actions, not just in words? Right. Ideally, it has to come from the top. But we know that that is not always how it is. And I really believe you can make tracks building quality culture from down below, even if the people on top aren't on board yet. I think there has to be a lot of awareness, training, education, and real clarity on the connection between the business objectives and the quality objectives. Ideally, they're going in the same direction.

Harsh Thakkar 32:01 
Yeah, it's not an easy task for any company or senior management or leader because I've seen a lot of companies make a lot of changes, and the approach is really well received by employees. But in other companies, it could be a very similar company, similar size, and they just try something different. And the outcome is completely disastrous, you know, it doesn't work at all. Yeah. So, are there any ideas that you have for leaders or senior management who are trying to improve their culture? Let's say they have some things that are working for them and maybe other areas that are not working. How can they figure out which thread to pull or which button to flip, so to speak, to tweak their culture?

Lesley Worthington 32:53 
I think that this is probably not the answer that anyone wants to hear, but it's a long process. And I think it really comes down to the relationship. So, you were saying that sometimes even in two companies that look very similar size-wise and maybe everything, why they look similar, one company takes off in terms of culture, the other doesn't. What's the difference? I probably, if you looked at the relationships, that's what it is, right? In my experience, having had those 20 years of going from small to start-up to big national multinational, small, big, small, big, without a question, there was a stronger culture in the smaller companies, without a doubt. And my feeling about that is because we treated each other like people, we realized we were people. Right? 

I remember the first time a small startup was purchased by a big corporate company, we got corporate sent us some instructions. The instructions were, "We've got these posters that have the company values and mission statements and all this stuff. And we need you to put them up in your office. And you have to get approval for the frame size and the matting color and the matting size and where the poster is in the frame." We were all going, "Well, that's because this is how things work in a big company. What about the words on the documents?" It felt really ridiculous. And then when the people actually from corporate came, they walked in as if they owned the world, oblivious to the fact that we had an existing culture. We were all this small group of people that built this from scratch. And they just came in and started throwing in their jargon, like "lean this" and "lean that," and we were all going, "What are they talking about?" It was like the secret language, right? And then we go away and we go, "Oh, we're doing all that anyway. We just didn't put a fancy word on it." So yeah, and it's not that I don't even think it's the size of the company. I really think it's the relationships. 

And so if even in a big company, you can focus on getting to know people as people, which means being vulnerable a bit yourself as a leader, showing yourself as a person, right? Then you're going to gain that trust that will then allow you to more easily influence people to adopt this shared mindset like we're a team, right?

Harsh Thakkar 35:29 
Yes, yeah, in my career, I've worked at some companies just like you were mentioning that were like a small group or that had a great culture. And I've gone through mergers and acquisitions, and then things started changing. Yeah, I won't go into much into that in this episode, maybe I'll save it for some other, but I completely understand where you're going with that. And I've seen it happen with colleagues and with people and how the communication and writing completely changed. And it's so hard to keep that culture, but that's what you need to preserve. Because that's what helps people have fun, they are productive. It has a lot of good things happening behind the scenes that you need to preserve.

Lesley Worthington 36:14
I think as leaders, the key things you need to do are listen, right? Really listen, understand quality yourself. Like sometimes leaders just come from another field they never. So go understand quality, make it your business to understand this, right? And then focus on the relationships, focus on being human, focus on building trust, be in touch with the employees, be tuned into how everyone feels, and show up with their own actions, not just with words, like really walk the talk. And that's when you're going to get that respect. And people are going to go, "Oh, okay, I get it. This is how we do things here." Like it's almost a matter of getting to the point where quality is common. It's just how we do things. It's no big deal, right? Because everybody does it. Starting at the.

Harsh Thakkar 37:04 
Yep. So, are there any books that come to mind for anyone who's trying to improve their writing or communication? Is there something that you recommend to your clients?

Lesley Worthington 37:15 
There's a good one I've got, I've got a few books here beside me. This one here, the Oxford Guide to Plain English by Martin Cutts, is just a great reference book with a focus on plain language. It deals with all the basics from planning something all the way to editing, including little chapters on writing emails and writing different types of documents. So that's a really good basic book. It also has simpler versions of words, like use instead of utilize and show instead of demonstrate. It has some nice lists and things that you can refer to in order to get your mind thinking more simply. There's one that's more specific to Pharma. 

I have a friend on LinkedIn, Kathy Walsh, who wrote this book a few years ago, "Eliminating the Gobbledygook: Secrets for Writing Plain Language Procedures". It's quite specific about procedures and includes parts about process mapping and document design, as well as some advice on how to talk to subject matter experts and things like that. So it's kind of a nice tool. 

This is a really good one, "The Culture Map" by Erin Meyer. It was published in 2013-2014. I just think that in our work now, we are always working in this international context. So it really helps us understand how other people think and behave so that we can interpret whatever they're doing and saying in the right light. For me, I like this book on emotional intelligence by Daniel Goleman. Because I think emotional intelligence is so key, and it's something that nobody teaches us ever. If you're lucky, you grow up in a family where people are in tune emotionally. But I think it's just a really good one. I really believe that good communication comes down to empathy. And in order to have empathy, one of the ways we develop it is through reading fiction. People think, "Oh, no, I'll read work stuff." It's not about the knowledge. It's about putting yourself in other people's shoes and seeing the world a different way from the way we see the world. That is critical if you're going to communicate well. Because the two things we're thinking about are purpose and audience, so we've got to know the audience.

Harsh Thakkar 40:06 
Yeah. Those are all great recommendations. I read the one from Daniel Goleman about emotional intelligence. I have seen Kathy Walsh on my LinkedIn feed, I've engaged with some of her content. I didn't know that she had written a book. I'll check that one out. That sounds interesting. It's specifically targeted to the life science industry. So what about your 2023? Are you working on any interesting projects? Do you have any goals that you're trying to accomplish?

Lesley Worthington 40:37 
Well, I feel like I joke with my husband that I kind of started my business by accident. So probably, I want to be a little more intentional about the direction I go in as I move forward. I want to try and do more corporate work. I've just started working with some corporations, sort of working with their quality team on their quality initiatives from the communication side. So helping them prepare their presentations or helping them think through what's going to be our communication strategy here for trying to get a quality culture going in their workplace. So I want to do more corporate stuff like that. I've also got on the books coming up doing some corporate training, where I'm doing writing coaching within corporations. So we'll see how that goes. And then I would like eventually to have some sort of digital products that I can make some passive income from and then focus less and less on the one-on-one, because it's just so time-intensive. So that's sort of my goals.

Harsh Thakkar 41:56  
Great. Yeah, I wish you all the best with all of that. I've seen your stuff on LinkedIn, and I've like I said at the start of the episode, this topic doesn't really get the attention that it deserves. So I'm rooting for all the projects that you're working on. And where can the audience and listeners find you or connect with you to talk about anything that you shared?

Lesley Worthington 42:18
Well, the only place in terms of social media that I am on is LinkedIn, just Lesley Worthington. And then my website is Lesleyworthington.com. My email is Lesley@Lesleyworthington.com. So that's it. Pretty straightforward. Will I go on other social media? I don't know. It feels exhausting just the thought of it. It's like, Oh, God.

Harsh Thakkar 42:45 
Yeah, and I'm with you. I'm only active on LinkedIn. I have Twitter, but I don't use it as much. But yeah, any final thoughts you want to add? Do you have any questions that come to your mind that you thought I was going to ask you, but I didn't?

Lesley Worthington 42:58 
No. No, this was excellent. I feel like I got a chance to share what I wanted to share. We touched on a lot of things. It could have gone more deeply into everything, probably, but no, it was great. Nothing that I can think to add.

Harsh Thakkar 43:11 
Yeah, thanks again for giving us your time. Thanks for sharing all the valuable advice. There's tons of stuff here. I'm going to listen to this one a few times because I'm trying to improve my writing in everything that I'm doing. And thank you so much for coming onto the show and sharing your insights on writing and communication.

Lesley Worthington 43:30 
Thank you for having me. My pleasure.

Harsh Thakkar 43:33 
Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and learned something new. For the life sciences industry, check out the show notes in the description for a full episode summary with all the important links. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast.