Symmetry in Sales and Copywriting

My screensaver glows with the word of the day: “symmetry; similarity or exact correspondence between two different things”. Is there symmetry between a lucrative career as a sales executive and a ripe career as a copywriter? In choosing to let go of the stable startup ladder rung and add Writer to my resume, I certainly believe so. For the past decade, I’ve been tirelessly successful selling complicated and disruptive Silicon Valley products. In many ways, I’m already in the business of words. Delivering a captivating message to the few or many requires authenticity, clarity, and trust, coupled with imagination, delight, and humor. At each company, I’ve immersed myself in understanding both the product I’m slanging, and the audience that’s biting. I relentlessly weave problem with solution, over and over, until the words of emails and phone calls give way to words of credit cards and legalese. While I could credit part of my revenue magic to science, I’d be lost without the art of words.

So how do I repurpose a resume with a decade of polished business acumen teeming with metrics, numbers, forecasting, and sizeable commission checks, and awaken a dormant artist portfolio? I approach it like any new endeavor strategy, and flushed out a digestible plan of attack to examine my career with a new lens.

1. Pivot the measurement of success. First, I suss out my impactful written words, then tie it directly to top revenue performance. I choose to value the product marketing copy I’ve written for my employer’s website, and tally views captured. I amount the countless vetting emails that captivated a stranger’s attention and led to their action, as published works of art. I dug out my pages of storyboarding and design-thinking notes, and reiterate wins that resonated.
2. Recount brand audits. Quality storytelling is imperative in sales. Before hitting the pavement to lead revenue production, I spearheaded internal workshops to audit the brand in its entirety, focused the company voice, and created copy and content. Turns out, helping my internal team communicate a better story to prospects and customers, is copywriting by definition.
3. Gravitate towards your creative professional network. I offer to buy my badass friends coffee (or tequila) and ask them gab about their day to day. I get to catch up with people I care about, and they love the chance to provide a captivated audience of one more insight about their lives.
4. Absorb creative lectures and meet leaders. Ten years in sales teaches you how to hunt, how to cold call, and how to just show up. I utilize my experience prospecting with LinkedIn to reach out to mentors that I admire, and ask them for guidance. I am taking meetings available outside of my scope of job description. I peruse -and attend- local and online events.
5. Write with joy and without abandon. Regardless of the financial outcome, the pure pleasure I gain from writing has been an exercise of vulnerability and delight. Creative writing workshops, poetry meet-ups, and braving submissions to publishers, help me step into this more fully.
6. Catalog the brands that inspire me. I have shifted my perspective from consumer to creator. Brands and advertisements that linger with me, copy that makes me laugh out loud — these are serious research field notes. Now, I focus on examples around me with intention, and jot down whose storytelling inspires me, and why.
7. Stay humble. A path towards humility is to actively seek criticism, rinse, and repeat. The advice of critical mentors sparks my inner competitor, and keeps me fiercely driven. That same advice has also validated me as a worthy writer, and gives me a mental boost during my pursuit of a challenging goal.

I’ve reaffirmed that my career transition is just a problem to solve, and with it emerges a new story to tell.

In this new story, one of my old core values is unwavering: communication through words is the heart of human connection and change. I seek it with a fiery passion. I’ve always considered pivoting to a career in writing, but it’s taken me until now to do something about it. So, in craving personal and professional metamorphosis, I must also choose to embrace the unpredictable force of nature that accompanies change. Caterpillar to cocoon to butterfly is as messy as it is remarkable. But when a butterfly finally emerges and first folds its wings upward, the unique shapes and patterns are perfect matches. A poignant example of symmetry.