Interview with Fadeke Adegbuyi
WISDOM FROM A WRITER
Fadeke Adegbuyi works for Shopify as a lead writer and has been featured in Harvard Business Review, Think With Google, Vulture, and many more magazines. We caught up with her to talk about her successful career. She gave us some tips on how to become a better writer, and we are so grateful. Now, let’s talk about the foundations of writing. These make or break the communication skills your brand has.
Owning the piece
You can tell when a writer doesn’t care about a piece. And in many jobs, those are the pieces you’re assigned. The solution?
Get to work by owning the piece. Owning the piece pushes you to write and think, even if you’re not feeling it. Fadeke is grateful for the time she’s had to work as a freelancer and writing in-house for companies because that’s where her writing skills have grown the most.
She encourages you to become self-editors by analyzing your work and listening to feedback from professional editors. Like Fadeke, you can become a writer by diving in. When you develop your writing style, you can use your personal interests to guide what you write. Fadeke has written three pieces about parasocial relationships because she is fascinated by them.
Separate writing and editing
Writing a piece can be gut-wrenching, especially if you’re on a time crunch. Fadeke’s piece of advice, “I believe in separating the writing and self-editing process as much as possible. For me, that means spitting out the first draft as quickly as possible without agonizing over structure or getting tripped up by word choice.” While writing this interview piece, we took those considerations into action. Turns out, it works! Trying to be the best writer adds pressure, and writer’s block is real. Take the added pressure away, and just write to your heart’s content.
Your environment matters
We all want to know what success looks like, but a major part of success is where you work. Environment matters, and as a young marketer, it’s important to be in a place where you can focus on your job. One of Fadeke’s favorite quotes is from Ashlet Mayer. She says, “One of the best career hacks I know is to work for a CEO who already gets the value of your profession/function. It’s far more rewarding to focus on doing your job than to continually explain and justify it.”
Having adequate resources encourages growth as an employee. Having a safety net of people allows you to feel secure to achieve success.
Fadeke reminds us we can become successful writers by simply starting today, don’t get discouraged because it’s a long-term commitment. Now, get to work!