Heartspoken Notes for Genuine Connection with Elizabeth Cottrell (The Price and Value Journey, Episode 143)
In this episode of The Price and Value Journey with host John Ray, Elizabeth Cottrell shares how the simple act of writing a heartfelt note can create genuine connections, open up opportunities, and make a lasting impression in both business and life. Drawing from her book Heartspoken: How to Write Notes That Connect, Comfort, Encourage, and Inspire, Elizabeth explains how a single note she wrote to a grieving stranger became a turning point that revealed the profound power of thoughtful communication.
She describes how personal notes stand out in a noisy, digital world, offering a tangible expression of care that people often keep for years. The conversation explores the origins of her “Heartspoken” concept, the four essential connections that form its foundation, and how the practice has grown into a movement. Elizabeth shares practical tips for overcoming common hesitations, such as worries about handwriting, uncertainty about what to say, and fear of saying the wrong thing.
You will hear how to move beyond routine thank-you or sympathy notes and create meaningful, unexpected connections that strengthen relationships. Elizabeth also offers strategies for sustaining the habit, from batching notes to keeping a simple record of what you have sent, and explains why the generosity behind each note benefits the sender as much as the recipient.
As a special gift for you, Elizabeth is offering a free two-page PDF, 10 Powerful Prompts for Business Notes that Connect and Convert. It’s filled with ideas to help you move beyond the standard thank-you and craft messages that truly stand out. Follow this link to download your copy.
The Price and Value Journey is presented by John Ray and produced by North Fulton Business Radio, LLC, an affiliate of the Business RadioX® podcast network.
Key Takeaways You Can Use from This Episode
- The personal story behind Heartspoken and how a single sympathy note revealed the deep, lasting impact of handwritten messages
- Why Elizabeth sees personal notes as part of a broader “Heartspoken” movement built on four essential connections: with God, with self, with others, and with nature.
- How to overcome common barriers such as poor handwriting, lack of confidence in what to say, and fear of saying the wrong thing
- Ways to go beyond routine thank-you or sympathy notes to create surprising and meaningful points of connection in everyday life
- How small, thoughtful acts of written encouragement can build trust, strengthen relationships, and open doors in both personal and business contexts.
- Practical tips for sustaining a note-writing habit, including keeping a simple record, batching notes, and setting realistic goals
- The mutual benefit of generosity in communication, where both sender and recipient gain value from the exchange
Topics Discussed in this Episode
00:00 Introduction and Guest Introduction
02:41 Elizabeth Cottrell’s Background and Book
04:10 The Power of Personal Notes
06:55 Heartspoken Movement and Its Impact
16:20 Overcoming Hesitations in Note Writing
26:54 Expressing Sympathy: Finding the Right Words
28:59 The Power of Empathy and Compassion
29:40 Heartspoken Notes: Hugs by Mail
30:29 Avoiding Common Pitfalls in Sympathy Notes
32:32 The Swipe File: Collecting Beautiful Phrases
33:30 Using AI to Enhance Your Writing
34:17 Notes as a Public Gratitude Journal
36:48 The Therapeutic Power of Helping Others
38:46 Keeping a Record of Your Correspondence
42:07 Setting and Achieving Note-Writing Goals
47:02 The Generosity Mindset in Business
48:44 Connecting with Elizabeth Cottrell
50:06 Final Thoughts and Special Offers
Elizabeth Cottrell
Elizabeth H. Cottrell—writer, award-winning author, and speaker—has long been a business and nonprofit leader in the Shenandoah Valley and the Commonwealth of Virginia. When she was elected to the board of trustees of First Bank/First National Corporation in 1992, she was the first female board member in its almost 100-year history, and since 2016, she has been its first female Board Chairman. Her book HEARTSPOKEN: How to Write Notes that Connect, Comfort, Encourage, and Inspire, published by Koehler Books in 2022, launched the #HeartspokenMovement and created a ripple effect among note writers and sales professionals.
Elizabeth’s circuitous career has taken her from published leprosy researcher to stay-at-home mother, to community activist and leader on nonprofit and corporate boards, to ham radio operator, to freelance writer/editor and blogger at Heartspoken.com.
Above all, she is a connector and encourager whose writing explores the four essential connections of the Heartspoken Life: with God, Self, Others, and Nature. Her expertise and passion for note writing in her 2022 book come at just the right time to touch a pandemic world desperately in search of connection. Elizabeth is the right person at the right time to help readers find their own heartspoken voice and learn to harness this powerful tool for nurturing their most precious relationships.
Elizabeth is an idea curator, sharing inspirational, interesting, and educational ideas from her own eclectic reading and harnessing them through her writing in pursuit of her own Heartspoken Life. She invites her readers along for the ride.
John Ray, Host of The Price and Value Journey
John Ray is the host of The Price and Value Journey.
John owns Ray Business Advisors, a business advisory practice. John’s services include business coaching and advisory work, as well as advising solopreneurs and small professional services firms on their pricing. John is passionate about the power of pricing for business owners, as changing pricing is the fastest way to change the profitability of a business. His clients are professionals who are selling their expertise, such as attorneys, CPAs, accountants and bookkeepers, consultants, coaches, marketing professionals, and other professional services practitioners.
In his other business, John is a podcast show host, strategist, and the owner of North Fulton Business Radio, LLC, an affiliate of Business RadioX®. John and his team work with B2B professionals to create and conduct their podcast using The Generosity Mindset® Method: building and deepening relationships in a non-salesy way that translates into revenue for their business.
John is also the host of North Fulton Business Radio. With over 880 shows and having featured over 1,300 guests, North Fulton Business Radio is the longest-running podcast in the North Fulton area, covering business in its region like no one else.
John’s book, The Generosity Mindset: A Journey to Business Success by Raising Your Confidence, Value, and Prices
John is the #1 national best-selling author of The Generosity Mindset: A Journey to Business Success by Raising Your Confidence, Value, and Prices.
If you are a professional services provider, your goal is to do transformative work for clients you love working with and get paid commensurate with the value you deliver to them. While negative mindsets can inhibit your growth, adopting a different mindset, The Generosity Mindset®, can replace those self-limiting beliefs. The Generosity Mindset enables you to diagnose and communicate the value you deliver to clients and, in turn, more effectively price to receive a portion of that value.
Whether you’re a consultant, coach, marketing or branding professional, business advisor, attorney, CPA, or work in virtually any other professional services discipline, your content and technical expertise are not proprietary. What’s unique, though, is your experience and how you synthesize and deliver your knowledge. What’s special is your demeanor or the way you deal with your best-fit clients. What’s invaluable is how you deliver outstanding value by guiding people through massive changes in their personal lives and in their businesses that bring them to a place they never thought possible.
Your combination of these elements is unique in your industry. There lies your value, but it’s not the value you see. It’s the value your best-fit customers see in you.
If pricing your value feels uncomfortable or unfamiliar to you, this book will teach you why putting a price on the value your clients perceive and identify serves both them and you, and you’ll learn the factors involved in getting your price right.
The book is available at all major physical and online book retailers worldwide. Follow this link for further details.
