I have been influenced in many wonderful ways by my dad, both personally and professionally. While it’s not uncommon for a son to say that his dad was a big influence on his career, in my case it is a bit unusual given how different my dad’s career is than mine.
My dad, Steve Wentworth, is a corn and soybean farmer in Central Illinois. Like me, he is the owner of a small business, but the fields that we work in (pun intended) are very different. His farming business is capital-intensive and somewhat dangerous, requires in-depth mechanical skills and scientific knowledge, and creates a commoditized product. My business—leading a team of financial writers who work with clients in the asset management, investment banking, private equity, and consulting industries—is basically the opposite of those things.
Despite these differences, my dad has had a profound impact on my career as a financial writer. Here are three of the most important lessons about financial writing that I learned from my dad:
Honor the Process
I remember sitting at the kitchen table one day as a teenager lamenting a big research paper that I had to write over the weekend for my English class. I had to write five whole pages(!!!), and I didn’t know how I’d ever manage to crank out that much prose. My dad told me, “There’s only one way to eat an elephant: one bite at a time.”
That’s a valuable piece of advice for anyone who writes for a living. If you try to tackle an entire project at once, you’re setting yourself up for failure. It’s important to realize that writing is a process with multiple distinct phases: brainstorm, research, outline, write, and edit.
By going through these steps one at a time, you allow your mind to focus on a narrow, finite task, rather than overwhelming yourself by trying to accomplish the entire project in one giant bite.
Use Anecdotes to Illustrate an Idea
Like most dads, my dad likes to tell stories. Some of my dad’s favorite stories involve things that happened to him as a child or some of the pranks he and his fraternity brothers would pull in college. My dad’s insistence that my sister and I never go swimming alone was a lot more meaningful when he coupled it with the story of how he almost drowned in a pond as a child, only to be rescued by an older cousin who happened to be nearby.
For anyone who works in marketing, storytelling is an essential skill—and this is especially true in the financial services industry. At a recent event for PAICR (one of the leading associations for asset management marketing and communications professionals), I gave a presentation about how marketers can incorporate storytelling techniques into their thought-leadership content. I encouraged the audience to look for opportunities to articulate abstract ideas using anecdotes and case studies. A well-crafted story makes a concept more tangible and memorable for the reader.
Don’t Be Afraid to Repeat Good Ideas
When certain situations come up, I always can predict what my dad is going to say next. For example, if I rattle off a series of complaints about a recent project I was working on, my dad likely will respond by saying, “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”
If my dad had only used that line once, I might not remember it. But because he has used it multiple times, I’ll never forget it.
Often financial marketers make the mistake of thinking that they are only allowed to publish a good idea once. For example, if they wrote a white paper about wealth-transfer strategies for entrepreneurs last year, they think they can’t revisit that topic for a few years. It’s hard to establish yourself as a thought leader on a topic if you comment on that topic only once in a great while. Publishing multiple pieces that address a topic from several different angles shows that you have an in-depth, nuanced understanding of the issue. Plus, this approach gives you multiple opportunities to stay top-of-mind with clients.
About the Author
Scott Wentworth is the founder and head writer of Wentworth Financial Communications. Scott and the team of writers and editors at WFC help professionals across the financial services industry build their brands by creating investment-grade white papers, bylined articles, newsletters, blogs, social media posts, and other forms of content marketing. Just because Scott applauds his dad’s ability to “stay on message” by consistently telling the same story in a given situation, that doesn’t stop Scott from rolling his eyes occasionally when this happens.