“What do You Do?— In Exactly 7 Words”

 

What do you do? This brief statement causes many of us to freeze as we search to find and craft the perfect ‘elevator introduction’ that usually is too wordy, unclear and leaves people scratching their head wondering…’what do we  really do?”

 So- when my friend, Morris Glazer, Regional Vice President of Transamerica Retirement Services emailed me this great exercise- and said—“Blog and tweet about this and see what type of response you get”, I immediately agreed.

 Here is the exercise and I would love to hear how you describe what you do—

 The directions are simple:

*What do you do in exactly 7 words?

*You cannot use “I” or “We” or the name of your firm.

 

What a great opportunity to create your own headline, a conversation starter and as you will notice all of the responses start with a word of action—rather then a title.

 I asked Morris—‘so what do you do?”

His response:  “Help folks retire comfortably and with dignity”

 I came up with: “Remove anxiety from networking and public speaking”

 Morris’s friend, Peter—“Our firm provides businesses customized retirement solutions”

 

A few others that have already been posted:

 “Manage institutions portfolios based on their risk”

 “Help people control their weight-get healthy”

 “Develop and grow small businesses in New York”

 “Listen, measure, coach and innovate for improvement”

 After Morris and I discussed this on line, I immediately thanked him for teaching me something new and then emailed our mutual friend, Annmarie Woods,Regional Vice President- MAINSTAY Investments who introduced me to Morris when she realized that his daughter, Allison also was a graduate of my alumni, Washington University in St. Louis.  All of this created several assignments  as I already work with Annmarie and then ended up doing a project for Morris’s company.  Once again—it all goes back to connections—so thank you, Morris and Annmarie.

  So far, I have gotten quite a few Tweets on this exercise and what is even more powerful—it has been retweeted and other people are sharing this exercise in their own offices and groups around the world.

 Think about what you will say next—when someone asks you—“What do you do?”

 

Be brief, be brilliant and be ready to listen to the other person— as they tell you what they do, you will then be able to weave in more about your work and what’s great is that by doing this, you will have also gotten their attention!

 Have fun and share with me some of your answers to this question.