Writing That Moves Your Career Forward

And the mistakes you might be making

There’s a massive difference between knowing your sh*t… and convincing people you know your sh*t. The latter matters way more for your professional (and personal) success.

And most people fail at communicating their value to others.

I’m no writing guru. But I’ve been blogging for 5 years and I’ve been writing professionally for longer — so I am giving you the secret sauce that worked for me.

Hopefully this helps you level up your communication game too. Let’s dive in.

Always focus on your audience

Almost everyone gets this wrong: Unless you are journaling, you do not write for yourself, you write for your audience.

Your audience is your customer. Understand what they want — and deliver that value as soon as possible.

Examples:

• Resume — hiring managers care about whether you can create value, not what tasks you did. 99% of resumes list tasks — not impact. The best resume gets the interview, not the best candidate.

• Stock pitch — PMs don’t want a book report. They want to know what to do with the stock now and why. Lead with the call (buy, sell, short, pass) + thesis.

• Sales — people buy benefits, not features. Lead with the outcome the customer receives, not the product features. That’s why gyms don’t highlight what machines they have, they message that you too can look like your celebrity crush.

• Corporate emails — state your point or your ask upfront. Senior people make decisions all day — don’t make them dig.

“ELI5”

You impress people by making complex things simple — not by flexing jargon. Explain Like I’m Five (ELI5)

Clear thinking → clear writing.

If you have to use acronyms, spell them out. Better yet, just explain what they mean without using the acronym.

My college friend who has a PhD in economics, he loves tossing out jargons such as “Coase Theorem” and “Folk Theorem” like I was supposed to know.

He made two mistakes:

1. He wasn’t speaking to his audience (me — not academically trained in econ)

2. He wasn’t helping advance understanding — he was simply signaling knowledge

Communication is about transferring understanding — not displaying credentials.

If you come from a technical field, know whom you are talking to. It’s your job to make others understand your ideas — not their job to learn your entire domain just to understand your messaging.

Minimize the word-to-information ratio

I learned the “word-to-information ratio” from an ex-colleague — and it’s been a lasting concept for me as a writer.

You can usually say the same thing with fewer words without losing informational value. Always think about reduction after you are done writing.

Tips:

• Avoid compound phrases: “in order to” → “to”; “due to the fact that” → “because”

• Avoid filler phrases: if you catch yourself saying “the point I’m trying to make is…” or “what I’m trying to say is…” — just make the point and say the thing. (This applies in writing and verbally, but more excusable in a verbal setting)

• Use active voice: “The stock was downgraded by Goldman Stanley” → “Goldman Stanley downgraded the stock.”

• Break run-on sentences and use more paragraph breaks

• Use bullets

• If there are too many numbers in your text — make a table or visual instead. (A picture really is worth a thousand words.) There’s a great book on this subject called The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.

Tell stories

I’m still improving here — but storytelling is a cheat code.

Story arc formula: curiosity → tension → struggle → surprise → satisfaction → meaning

This works in business writing too — not just entertainment.

Look at Steve Jobs presenting. Look at Jamie Foxx telling a story. They worked on it — it wasn’t magic or luck.

Use ChatGPT

ChatGPT is a force multiplier. I drafted this article using ChatGPT — then I revise and publish.

Prompts I use constantly:

• “make the tone more casual” (you might want to use this prompt for office writing)

• “add more paragraph breaks”

• “make this concise without losing information value”

AI saves time — you still need to add the final human touch. Your writing voice is your competitive advantage in the world of zero-cost distribution.

Conclusion

Great communication skill is not optional. People can’t read your mind. Words create perception.

Look at how OpenAI fumbled messaging this week vs how Sydney Sweeney redirected a tough question gracefully in real time. These things matter — for celebrities and the company at the center of the world’s biggest secular trend.

Whether you want to be more effective at work, more persuasive socially, more influential as an investor, or build a personal brand online — you need this skill.

Develop your communication skills and improve them daily — by reading more and writing better. Great things will come your way.

Thanks for reading. I will talk to you next time.

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