Hiring a writer will save you time
In one of my earliest blog posts, I explained why you should hire a speechwriter. (To be clear, in that post and in today’s, I am using an expanded definition of “speechwriter” to mean “any professional writer who can help you”.)
Here are the reasons I mentioned in that post:
Send the audience home happy
Strive for more, don’t settle for less
Gain a competitive advantage
A fresh perspective
Bridge the gap between brain and pen
Reduce jargon and the potential for misunderstanding
Ego/vanity
I stand by all those reasons! But there is another one which, while implicit in the list above, really deserves its own treatment.
Hiring a speechwriter will save you lots of time.
There’s a paradox at the heart of speechwriting: the people who are most often asked to give speeches are frequently the people with the least time to write them. Remember that paradox, because we’ll return to it later on.
Consider, for a moment, politicians, business leaders, and other eminent public figures who are asked to give speeches. Audiences want to hear from them because of their insights and their vision. But where do they find the time to sit down, gather their thoughts, and compose a great speech that moves their audience?
There will always be the 1% of people who can do all those things. But this advice isn’t meant for them (what do they have to learn from advice, anyway?).
For every other leader out there, hiring a speechwriter – or a professional writer of any kind – is one of the best investments you can make because it frees you up to do more important things.
To properly understand the significance of this, let’s consult the field of economics. Specifically, the economics of trade.
One of the cornerstones in the study of trade is the principle of comparative advantage. An economic agent (a dry way of saying person, company or nation – basically whoever or whatever we’re considering) possesses a comparative advantage over others in producing a particular good if they can produce that good at a lower relative opportunity cost.
OK – we have run into another term which requires a definition. Opportunity cost is another foundational principle of economics (if you’re wondering why I know things about economics, it’s because I have a degree in it! So if you work in business or finance… hire me!).
Opportunity cost is, plainly put, the highest loss of value that you suffer by doing something. How about some examples? If I stay up until 3am playing video games, then my opportunity cost is the full night of sleep I don’t get to have. If I decide to keep working instead of going to medical school, the opportunity cost will be the income that I “give up” by not being able to qualify as a doctor. If I go to the zoo, then I won’t be able to go to the football game.
These are all examples of opportunity cost. Let’s now consider an example which is relevant to our case of speechwriting. If you – the CEO, the politician, the executive, the content creator – write your own speech, then that is some amount of time (5, 10, 20 hours) that you aren’t able to use for anything else.
Here is the part where we return to that paradox I introduced earlier. The paradox which lurks at the heart of speechwriting. The people who are most often asked to give speeches (leaders) are often precisely the people without the time to write them.
For most leaders, money is not the scarcest commodity. If you’re trying to build a business, run a country, or get people invested in your cause, then it’s far more likely that your scarcest commodity is actually time.
Speechwriters understand that. That’s why a good speechwriter is able to work closely with a client and efficiently obtain all the information they need to do their work.
The same is true for ghostwriters. Yes, it can be fun to think about celebrities (especially those not known for their erudition) writing books by themselves. But, beyond their abilities, the mundane reason why they hire a ghostwriter is because they can get the job done fast, freeing up the celebrity to do the things that they have a comparative advantage in (like, say, acting in movies).
In fact, the same thing is true for any type of professional writer or editor: speechwriters, scriptwriters, ghostwriters – you name it.
Hiring a speechwriter is an investment. But if you’re a leader, it’s not the kind of investment that breaks the bank. The dividends, however, can be massive. If you’re reading this, even if you’re not someone who might usually be called a “leader”, think about all the important things you could achieve with an extra 20 hours. You could host several important investor meetings. You might be able to hire someone really talented for your business. Or make real progress on your growth strategy. Here’s a crazy idea: you might even finish work on time.
The other important thing is that this trade-off, of money for time, works in all situations provided that the client’s time could be more efficiently spent on another task. It doesn’t even matter if the client is a better writer than the speechwriter! I have been lucky enough – I sincerely mean that! – to work as a speechwriter for people who I know, for a fact, are better writers than I am. They had what economics calls an absolute advantage. They were better at their business and better at writing.
But it was still worth it for them to hire me, because they could create more value doing other things than sitting down and trying to order their thoughts in an interesting, moving, inspiring way.
Before I wrap this up, let’s quickly recap. If you’re a leader in your field that is often asked to give speeches, or share their thoughts through op-eds, essays or really any form of writing – it will almost always be worth it to hire a good writer. The answer can be found in two key insights from economics: comparative advantage and opportunity cost.
Once you’ve come to that realisation, the only thing left to do is to decide on who to hire. I have a suggestion.