Why I Love Writing Financial Copy

“I like thinking of possibilities. At any time, an entirely new possibility is liable to come along and spin you off in an entirely new direction. The trick, I’ve learned, is to be awake to the moment.” –Doug Hall, professional inventor and idea guru

In This Issue:

Why I Love Writing Financial Copy
by Monica Day

Twenty years ago, I landed my first sales job with a very hip new tea company called The Republic of Tea. Strangely enough, I landed that job using…you guessed it…a killer letter.

I was considering starting my own business – but couldn’t decide what business I wanted to be in. I spotted this book called Letters to a Young Zentrepreneur – which tracked the seed of an idea through to the launch of a company using the faxed transmissions between the founders. I was hooked – so much so that I dropped the idea of starting my own company and decided I wanted to work for them. I knew it was meant to be when I discovered on the last page of the book that their offices were in San Rafael, California – and I was living in San Francisco. Synchronicity at work!

After immersing myself in their world for a couple days – and brewing many, many cups of tea – I sat down to write what I now realize was my very first direct response letter. I put my heart and soul into convincing the founder and president that he needed to hire me and I drove it over to his office personally. Within an hour of returning home, the phone rang.

“Mr. Rosenzweig was very impressed with your letter,” his assistant told me. “He would like to meet with you.”

So began one of the most exciting years of my life…and one of the most challenging. My starry-eyed romance with the mission of the company – to start a ‘tea revolution’ in America – required that I acquire some concrete skills that my degree in English Literature and Creative Writing left out. I had to learn about things like profit margin… percentage mark-up…retail allowances…and a million other business terms that felt way out of my league.

To make matters worse, I had a stereotypical case of female math phobia. Words were always my thing, not numbers. The first time I was presented with an Excel spreadsheet, I was reduced to tears. Embarrassing, but true.

That’s when I learned a very powerful lesson – one that paved the way for my career in financial copywriting today.

I learned that numbers can tell stories as powerfully as words. Sometimes even more so.

I discovered that I could look at a spreadsheet and know from just a few numbers whether the company was making a profit, how effective my sales calls were that week, and whether the last trade show I worked was worth the expense.

So when I began my career in copywriting and discovered that I could combine the power of words with the power of numbers to write about some very big ideas in the financial arena, I was completely hooked. (It didn’t hurt that I was broke, and writing copy for the financial markets is one of the most lucrative specialties in the industry. But I can honestly say I write financial copy today because I love it – not just because it pays well.)

Terms like commodities and options and exchange-traded funds and IPO’s were as foreign to me a few years ago as those early business terms were 20 years ago. But this time, I didn’t break down in tears or get intimidated. I knew enough to look for the story behind all that terminology and charts.

This is what lured me to financial copywriting – and why I find it the most compelling of all the specialties you could choose as a copywriter. Behind every company, every stock, every trade…there’s more than just a set of numbers. There’s a story.

Why are so many company executives selling their stock – when the headlines say the company is doing well? What impact do the policies of the Federal Reserve Bank have on the electronics industry in Japan? What does the corn growers lobby in America have to do with the price you pay for gas?

Every single one of these questions – and a million more like just like them – could be the seed of a multi-million-dollar promotion. In the same way that a cup of tea between two men on a plane launched a book…that launched a company…that got me to write a letter…that changed my life 20 years later – it is the ability to ask enough little questions to find the big ideas that compel people to take action.

If the joy and intrigue of finding such nuggets of information, making connections between seemingly disparate things, and spinning them into promotional gold excites you – I’m willing to bet a financial copywriter lives inside you, too.

Resource Referral: Is Financial Copywriting Calling You?

You don’t need a professional background in finance or experience in the stock market to write for financial publications. But you do need to understand a few basic principles in order to write winning copy for this sector. And if my essay today got you even a little excited – it’s worth checking this market out. Believe me when I tell you – there is a serious shortage of good copywriters in this market!

Don’t let it scare you away – check it out for yourself. Scoop up AWAI’s Secrets of Writing for Financial Market and see if this might be for you. It is one of the fastest roads to a six-figure copy career – and perhaps one of the most interesting things you’ll ever do in your career to boot!

Reader Feedback: More on Swipes

We got plenty of responses on last week’s tip on keeping swipe files…I can see that drowning in swipes is every beginning copywriter’s challenge! So I thought you might appreciate one very helpful tip we received. It would not only make storing swipes more manageable, but it is much more space efficient as well. Would never thought of this myself, but love it! Thought you might like to give it a shot, too:

Hi Ladies: One method of keeping your swipe file under control is to scan the copy into your computer then save it to a CD file. By using different CD’s for different types of promotions e.g. financial, health etc, you eliminate file cabinets that look like wastebaskets. Best, T.R.