conversation is an engine

My $1.25 Grist Mill

For years I’ve kept notes on conversations with clients.

Anyone in business (or anyone in the business of getting something done) knows the value of accurate notes from a conversation. These quick jottings record promises made, delivery dates, special circumstances and conditions.

As a copywriter, I’m also poised to record quotes from my client or team: small summary statements, overview quips, self-proclaimed “dumb” analogies and tangential jokes. These little asides often prove valuable to solving the communication or marketing problem we’re gathered to work on. It’s curious how often the seed for the solution is in the conversation we had that defined the work we would do to solve the problem.

I know this because I often look back through my notes. I go back using a red pen and highlight notes that are proving critical (that’s right: reviewing notes in real-time is productive. Reviewing notes after the work is done is even more illuminating.).

Just today I found myself paging back through my notes looking for a particular conversation and stumbled on another conversation I had forgotten. And that forgotten conversation announced in red ink the precise answer to a communication question I’ve been asking for the last six days.

What good fortune!

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Image credit: Kirk Livingston