The about page you’ve rewritten four times and still don’t like. The newsletter that takes three hours because you keep deleting the opening. The paragraph you cut for sounding too casual, which was the only one that sounded like you.
Somewhere between starting and now, your business started to sound like other businesses. You can’t point to when it happened…
For 365 consecutive days I wrote down what I actually meant instead of what sounded good, and published every one of them.
What that year taught me is how to tell a true sentence from a borrowed one, usually by the second clause.
Borrowed sentences have a sound: smooth, defensible, and you could put another founder’s name on them without changing a word.
You send me three pieces you’ve already written:
Your three pieces, marked line by line. Yours in one colour, borrowed in another, and next to each borrowed line, the tell, the specific thing that gave it away. Not “this feels off.” The mechanism, so you can start catching it without me.
One page on the pattern underneath. Most founders don’t borrow randomly. There’s usually one situation that does it, like talking about price, talking about credentials, or the paragraph where you explain why you started. You’ll know which one is yours by the time you finish reading.
Three practices, built from what I found in your writing. Not general advice. Things to do with the specific sentences you sent me.
A 10-minute voice note, if you want it. Where I talk to you personally, intentionally and with care, because that’s how you should be talking to yourself too.
If you decide we’re a fit and start working with me within seven days, the full $87 comes off.
Not a special. I just don’t think you should pay twice for the same reading.
The Authenticity Gap Audit is for you if:
I keep this to five audits a month. Reading your words this closely is slow, and I’d rather do it intentionally than too often.
No, The Authenticity Gap Audit is not about consistency. That’s often easy, pick a rule and follow it. Consistent is often how the borrowing happened in the first place. This asks whether the sentences are yours, which is a different question and sometimes the opposite one.
A friend tells you it reads well. A copywriter gives you a fourth version you didn’t write. In The Authenticity Gap Audit, I show you where the borrowing is and what gave it away, so the next draft is yours and you can catch the next one without me.
For 365 consecutive days I wrote down what I actually meant and published it.
Most of that year was catching myself reaching for a better-sounding sentence. Borrowed lines have tells; they resolve too neatly, they’d survive a name swap, they explain a feeling instead of showing the thing.
I learned them on my own writing first.