When your are asked what you do, do you describe yourself by the name of the “thing” that you do? For example if you run an accountancy practice do you describe yourself as an account? If you design buildings do you describe yourself as an architect? What if you treat athletes for muscle injuries do you describe yourself as a physiotherapist? If you do you are missing a trick and you are keeping yourself with the crowd. Its important to understand that you’re more than the thing you do, much more.
As a species we like to label things, we have names for everything, it helps us communicate easily and understand what things are. However in the World of business we miss a trick if we describe ourselves as the “thing” we do. There are two main tricks we miss. The first one is, we put ourselves with everyone else who does what we do and secondly we don’t give people an opportunity to see the difference we make when we are doing our “thing”.
Lets take a look at the first point. When we describe ourselves as our business activity, then we are missing an opportunity to separate ourselves from everyone else who does what we do. The World is full of people who do what we do. We are also giving people no real opportunity to form a view a what we really do. For example if you’re an architect and thats how you introduce yourself then people know what you do. In reality they know what an architect does but they don’t know what you really do. They don’t know your area of expertise, or why your different from other architects, or the difference that you make for your clients.
In my own case I will never describe myself as “a coach” because coaching is the activity I do. There are lots of people who coach so i’m not separating myself from anyone else who coaches when I say this.
How should we describe ourselves then?
We should always look to describe ourselves not by what we do but by the difference we make for our clients, as thats the most important thing. In my case when asked what I do I will say ” do you know how no one starts a business for the sake of starting a business, they start a business to create a lifestyle. In reality what happens is they spend so much time running their business they forget about the lifestyle. If they then realise they are not really having the lifestyle, what do they do? They go back and work even harder on the business which means they have even less of the lifestyle they wanted in the first place. I help them do both.”
This gives people a clear idea of the difference I look to make for my clients. This type of reply also generates statements such as “Oh I need to speak with you” or “you should speak with………… as they are working really long hours and their business is stuck at the moment. I will also be asked “tell me how do you that?” This is an invitation to explain a little more about what I do.
People want to engage with us because of the difference we make for them and their World not just for the “thing” that we do. We are much more than this and letting others know this helps us engage in a two way conversation which is the beginning of building a long term relationships in business.
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