Instead of improving your writing skills, it’s better to learn to tell a good story first: before selling products, learn to sell yourself first

Everyone who does business hopes to sell goods or services smoothly. This is a natural desire. But we also know in our hearts that in order to sell something, we have to put in a lot of effort behind the scenes. So some people spend money on advertising, while others immerse themselves in writing product copy, just to impress those potential customers and make them willing to stop and take out their wallets.

As a writing coach, I am often asked similar questions: Teacher, how can I improve my writing skills? How to practice writing better? Everyone seems to have an imagination in their hearts, thinking that as long as they can write brilliantly and speak well, they can win everyone’s attention and favor.

But I want to say something that may be contrary to your intuition: instead of rushing to improve your writing skills, it is better to go back and strengthen your essential learning skills and practice your storytelling ability.

Writing is technology, storytelling is the underlying ability

Writing is certainly useful, but it is more like superficial decoration. What really captures people’s hearts is a good story.

Have you noticed that what we remember is never a gorgeous sentence, but a story that resonates with us, has a picture, and even makes us feel a little bit bitter. Stories will grow on their own and be passed down from person to person. When you can tell something into a moving story, you don’t have to use rhetoric at all, and everyone’s attention will naturally be attracted to you. In fact, this also echoes my previous experience: [Ugly writing is precious] (/blog/imperfect-writing-is-precious), because what impresses people is never neatness, but authenticity.

So if you ask me where to start writing, my answer is not to memorize a bunch of rhetorical skills first, but to ask myself first: Can the thing I am doing turn into a story that people want to listen to? If you want to practice more systematically, I have also written an article [How to write a good brand story] (/blog/how-to-write-a-brand-story), which you can use to practice accordingly.

Instead of selling products, it is better to sell yourself

The second thing I want to share with you is to shift the focus from the product back to yourself.

Many people are preoccupied with thinking about how to sell their products, but they forget that in this era of information explosion, there are many similar products and services on the market. What is truly scarce is actually you.

Instead of selling products, sell your own persona. You might as well start with yourself and think about it seriously: What are your sincere and attractive personality traits? What are your strengths that others cannot replace? These things are often more worth investing in and managing than the goods you sell. This is also a concept I have repeatedly emphasized: first think clearly about your [content pillars] (/blog/content-pillars-make-readers-remember-you), and then develop a [unique brand voice] (/blog/brand-voice-moat-ai-era). That is the real moat in the AI ​​era.

Because goods will be compared and replaced, but a person with warmth, opinions, and trustworthiness cannot be copied by others. To put it another way, when AI-like content is flying all over the sky, your problem is often not that your writing is not good enough, but that it is too easy to be replaced; and the solution to get rid of being replaced is to put “you” back to the center.

An example of my own

Recently, I am teaching Vibe Coding and AI content automatic production. To be honest, AI is the most popular topic right now, and many friends are interested in it, which I completely understand.

However, there are already a large number of teachers teaching AI applications in the market, and they talk about more tools than each one. So, if you are willing to learn from me, I know very well that the focus is probably not on how many AI tools I can operate, nor on whether I am familiar with certain popular applications.

The real difference lies in my views on AI; in whether I can sort out my own system view and methodology in this trend; and in whether I can integrate it, combine it with my own learning and my daily practice in work and life, and then completely share it with every student.

In other words, what I sell is never just AI knowledge, but my entire set of ideas on how to view, digest, and use AI. This is something that no one else can take away.

Write at the end

So, the next time you start to worry about how to make your writing more beautiful and how to advertise harder, you might as well stop and ask yourself two more fundamental questions:

Can I tell this into a good story?

Can I make everyone fall in love with me first?

Take care of these two things, and sales will often come naturally.

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