What to Say When People Ask, ‘ What Do You Do? ’

What a joy it was speaking for the ASHA Connect Conference in Minneapolis. I want to follow up on one of the ideas that seemed to resonate with many of you: why to never again tell people what you do. My example below demonstrates why this is so important. While speaking at an Inc.5000 event, I introduced the approach of replacing elevator speeches with elevator connections. An entrepreneur named Colleen raised her hand and said, “I can’t figure out how to do this for my business.” I asked what she normally said when meeting people. She started explaining her job, using technical terms like magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography. None of us had any idea what she did. “Want to brainstorm a better way to answer the ‘What do you do?’ question?” I asked. She replied with a heartfelt “yes.” “Okay, from now on, instead of explaining what you do (which is kind of like trying to explain electricity), focus on the real-world results of what you do that people understand or may have experienced. What are those?” “Hmm. Well, I run medical facilities offering MRIs and CT scans,” she answered. That’s better already, because we can mentally picture what you described. It’s no longer conceptual or highly technical. Plus, we probably know someone who had an MRI or CT scan, so now we relate to it. Don’t stop there, however. If you tell people what you do, they’ll say, “Oh,” which ends the convers...
Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Press Releases - Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Tags: Audiology Events Speech-Language Pathology Practice Management private practice Professional Development Source Type: blogs