I remember thinking I wanted to be a writer as far back as high school. Only thing is I didn’t really know how to become one.

Then one day I decided that writing articles would be a good way to build my business, so I just started writing and a funny thing happened.

The practice of writing daily turned me into a writer.

But, the habit of writing also shaped far more than my ability to create meaningful sentences and that’s the reason I believe that everyone in business must write.

Writing to express my thoughts transformed everything about how I approached business and trained me to view the world and my place in it in a completely different way.

Below are seven benefits I attribute to the fact that I write on a daily basis.

Writing makes me a better thinker – (understand that better is relative!) In an effort to create content that is succinct, reveals new ways to look at common things, or apply simple solutions to seemingly complex problems, I believe I now think about business much differently.

Writing makes me a better listener – When I engage in conversations or listen to radio interviews, I listen with a writer’s ear and often find my head filling up with ideas for blog posts by simply listening to others discuss sometimes unrelated subjects.

Writing makes me a better salesperson – I write like I speak and often I write to sell an idea or even a very specific tactic. It’s amazing, but I find that clearly stating idea pitches in writing has improved my ability to quickly articulate them in a selling or interview setting. It’s like you build up this reserve bank of pretested discussion points.

Writing makes me a better speaker – This one falls nicely from the previous point, but I’ll also add that working through blog posts on meatier topics, those that readers weigh in on, has produced some of my best presentation material to date.

Writing keeps me focused on learning – The discipline required to create even somewhat interesting content in the manner I’ve chosen requires that I study lots of what’s hot, what’s new, what’s being said and what’s not being said in order to find ways to apply it to the world of small business.

Writing allows me to create bigger ideas – The habit of producing content over time affords you the opportunity to create larger editorial ideas that can be reshaped and repurposed for other settings. I’ve taken a collection of blog posts on a specific topic and turned them into an ebook more than once.

So, think you don’t have the time or the reason to write? – I hope you think again.

Tomorrow I plan to share a little bit about my writing process and how I choose what to write about. In addition I’ll features the thoughts of Mark Schaefer, Seth Godin, Mitch Joel, Ann Handley, CC Chapman, Ian Cleary and Brian Solis.