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.