All the Skills and Knowledge You’re Not Using

Let’s take a look at your subject matter experience (even expertise).

What subject matter experience do you have that you never thought you’d get?

I graduated from college in the middle of the Great Recession.

It took me 10 months to get a job.

Every day at 10 a.m., I ran out of ideas. I already had scoured the new job listings and applied for what I could.

I remember disliking the weekends, because no one would be available to get back to me for two whole days.

When I finally got a freelance writing job, it was for a behavioral health company. They wanted me to write about drug and alcohol addiction.

It wasn’t the sort of job I would have chosen nearly a year before that. But by this point, I was ready to try anything.

Soon afterward, they offered me a job as a copy editor, and I was eventually promoted to executive editor.

For six years, I learned more about substance abuse and mental health conditions than I ever imagined I would.

To edit treatment material, you have to read it. And I read a lot of it. I also got to interact with a lot of treatment professionals and people in recovery who had rebuilt their lives.

I learned things about physical, emotional, and mental health that have helped me in my own life. And I was able to help others who had questions about these issues and wanted to know how to assist loved ones who were struggling.

Among other things, it taught me the power of empathy and understanding, which I’ve used in my copywriting career.

Think about your life.

You have areas of unique expertise that have come along with your life experiences, whether you sought out that education or not.

You might think it’s irrelevant. How can your finance knowledge, your teaching career, your photography skills, your art degree, your cooking skills, your corporate experience, etc. — how could any of that be useful to the people around you, or in writing copy?

Don’t underestimate where you’ve been and how you might be able to help others.

What do you uniquely bring to the table that can now inform how you write and market to customers?

Your friendly neighborhood copywriter,

Anna @ CreativeDemand