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"I loved your stories and I liked how you told them. I could almost see them right in front
of me! Thanks for making my day."
-- From a fan letter
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Freelance wordsmith STEVE ANDERSON has been an avid writer ever since the second grade. He and
his classmates had been studying fables, and as the final assignment, they were each asked to write one.
His was about a royal baker who, desperate to please the king, added way too much yeast to his bread
dough until it rose... and rose... and rose... and finally exploded, splattering dough all across the
sky to form the clouds.
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He's been creating fantastic new worlds ever since. He's created half a dozen original plays;
three have been produced at Haverford College and Bryn Mawr College, one's been sent out on tour from
a major regional theatre, another will soon celebrate its three hundredth performance, and yet another
will have its second live production in the summer of 2005. He's also helped children write new plays,
he's co-written one novel and he's halfway through two others on his own, and he's written stories and
songs and poems galore.
But he's not just a pie-in-the-sky dreamer; he's also an expert on the
tools of the literary trade. He studied language and literature as an English major in college and
through four years in the doctoral program in English at Emory University. He won awards for his academic
work exploring the techniques of the masters. And then, with his classwork complete, he turned around
and taught writing (and literature and classical drama) at Gettysburg College, Elizabethtown College,
Emory University, Susquehanna University, and Harrisburg Area Community College.
And most recently,
he's been honing his sales skills, as well. He's studied copywriting and advertising techniques as a
student with the American Writers & Artists Institute. As an actor and writer, he's sold his way into
interviews for jobs he never would have been considered for otherwise. He's worked as a carnival barker
at Hersheypark, selling almost three thousand tickets in just one summer for the most expensive game
in the park. And for one client, a tour company serving more than ten thousand visitors a year, he's
generated ad copy, web copy, press releases, sales letters, mounted a one-man, no-budget PR campaign,
and even scripted the company's second-ever radio promotion.
But he's at his best when he can
bring together creating, studying, and selling--and ideally, acting, too--on a single project. He's
researched, written, and performed his own ghost stories, persuaded nearly three thousand people to pay
good money to experience them, and done it so well that they've applauded and tipped and even written
fan letters at the end. And he's piled love of teaching, off-beat humor, bold performance, and the "hooks"
of a salesman to open thousands of children's eyes to science by welcoming them into the lunatic world
of his mad-scientist zeal.
And did we mention? He's quadupled sales for one client in just
three years.
How? Not by pretending to be a typical salesman. Not by setting aside his other
talents.
No, it's being a salesman and a writer and an actor and a dreamer, all at once,
that's made him a powerhouse at the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire, where people put aside Shakespeare
and swords and other shopping and spend as much a half a day looking for him, where they stop the Queen
and ask directions to him, where they laugh uproariously at his jokes day after day after day, and where
they sometimes almost tackle him in their rush to buy.
What does he do at the Faire, you ask?
Is he the king? Is he a noble, or a swordfighter, or at least the royal jester? No. No, he's the
pickleman. He sells pickles. Yes, pickles. Big, green, skewered vegetables on little, wooden, shish-kabob
sticks.
Now, you have to understand. Patrons at the Faire have always enjoyed pickles. They’re
crisp and juicy, they’re delicious, they’re packed with all the phosphates and electrolytes you need
for a long, hot day in the sun.
But in his first two years as the "Pickleman," SGA CREATIVE's
lead writer, Steve Anderson, tripled net sales—and he nearly doubled them again in his third year, selling
a whopping ten thousand pickles in just twenty-seven operating days.
He did it by being the
big, brazen, shamelessly ridiculous actor-writer-goofball that he is.
People laugh... they pause...
they notice... they buy. And they go away with a smile, calling their pickle their favorite part of
the festival day.
Isn’t that exactly how you want people to feel about your book, your magazine,
your website, your business? That it’s the very best part of their day?
I thought so.
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