Question: Where can I find these drywall anchor bolt words?
The short answer:
In the headlines of the Financial Times.
Okay, here’s the longer, more thorough answer:
Keep in mind that your client has a gazillion other options, and often, you are not competing on price, you are competing on who can most clearly explain ideas that are probably quite similar.
When you are pitching your idea, you need to make sure that it is clear. And a key part of clear is “short.” So figure out how to sum it up in six words.
You need to pack as much meaning into those six words as possible, so choose them very carefully. In a business setting, most of the six words are probably going to center on 2 or 3 of 5 concepts:
- to start something
- to move upward
- to move downward
- to move forward
- to be stopped or blocked
There are other concepts, but these are five of the most common ones.
As you pick the six words that are going to express your concepts best, you need to draw on a deep well of drywall anchor bolt words.
What do I mean by drywall anchor bolt words?
Here’s an example: “Spark” is a drywall anchor bolt for “to start something.” It has a similar meaning, but it is more vivid visually. “Spark” makes people think of fire. Fire moves fast, is hot, and is dangerous. When you use the word “spark,” the image of fire appears in the listener’s head. That image of fire sticks in the listener’s head, which makes “spark” a drywall anchor bolt word.
Where do you find these drywall anchor bolt words? In the headlines of the Financial Times.
The FT, unlike the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, is written for a lot of people who are not native English speakers. A large part of the FT’s readership is in continental Europe, which means the FT is only working with 60% of the vocabulary, and they have to pick their drywall anchor bolt words from that smaller pool.
BTW, the FT is famously expensive, but you can read it for free if you know how.
Here’s how:
