My earliest experiences as a “writer” all involved expository work, usually assignments that were a part of my job. In the first stage of my international business career, I was lucky to have worked for an amazing German entrepreneur named Willy Korf.  He was a charming blur of constant motion whose appetite for travel and the high life was exceeded only by his appetite for debt and risk-taking.

One of my fondest memories was being summoned to meet with him during one of his frequent visits to our US headquarters. He told me he wanted me to help with a very important project. He had recently met with the Emir of Qatar who was very interested in our business and wished to make a substantial investment in us. The problem was that the Emir had very little understanding of exactly what it was that we did.

Mr. Korf explained my assignment this way: write a description of what we do, i.e., the unique way we make our steel products, from the raw materials, through the various processing steps to final products and how we sell them. Then I was to describe how we would invest the funds that Qatar would invest in us. I asked him which of the projects I was aware of that were under current consideration I should include. He replied, “All of them, and then add whatever you can also think of to bring the total to at least $1 billion!” This was in the 1970’s and numbers didn’t start with a “b” back in those days.

 Then he added the one requirement that explained why I had been singled out for the honor of working on this special assignment: I was to compose the entire proposal as if I were addressing a grammar school student!

I proved to be the right man for that job. Mr. Korf was very pleased with the document I wrote, and I basked in the moment of rare praise that regrettably came in private. Alas, the Emir did not, in fact, invest a billion dollars in our company, but he did purchase a steel-making plant for his tiny oil-rich sheikdom that generated several millions of profit for us.