Remember Dialing for Dollars? I’ve been Writing for Dollars my whole career. People often ask me how I went from English professor to entrepreneur. Who knows? It just sort of happened.
The better question is: what did you learn as an English professor that made you successful in business? That answer continues to surprise even me! The most important skills I learned from formal education and teaching have to do with framing and presenting ideas systematically to attract clients, to serve clients, to attract investors and to understand your own business.
- Business Proposals. Entrepreneurs need plans, proposals, contracts, product and service descriptions, and scores of other written materials. If you don’t write them yourself, you need to know when they’re good enough to represent you at your best. Great proposals = more dollars!
- Sales Development. My specialty was the study and teaching of rhetoric, which happens to be the original formulation of a sales process–the art of persuasion to influence other people’s decisions. More successful sales = more dollars!
- Business Growth. Entrepreneurs need language-based activities and documents for strategic planning, public speaking, networking, newsletters, team building and more. More thoughtful and better researched business development documents = more dollars!
Do you have Writing for Dollars under control? And what skills have you transported from another career into your business?
