How do I tell people what I do?

Sam. Hello, everyone. I'm Katie McManus, Business Strategist, Leadership coach. I went live realizing that I hadn't actually dried my hair and it kind of tried. Funny. Anyway, happy Thursday. I wanted to go live this morning, afternoon, whenever, to talk about a question. I get all the flipping time that I have kind of a contrary answer to. So the question, just a little housekeeping. So I am going live to the Facebooks and. And to LinkedIn and to YouTube and to Twitter, which I may drop with the whole Muskie situation. Not that they're gonna notice me dropping with my seven followers anyway, because I've never really gotten into Twitter. But sometimes not all the comments come through. That's why I bring it up. So if you comment and I don't shout you out because I do love this to be interactive. If I don't shout you out, it's just because I haven't seen your comment, that or maybe you posted something kind of rude and I didn't want to acknowledge it. But because I tend to bring in really nice people, I doubt that would ever be the case. And. Hi, Asher, good morning. One of the nice people that I love. Hello and LinkedIn user. I can't see. I think your privacy settings are on, so we can't see your name. So please tell us your name and good morning right back at you. Okay, so the question I get all the time from clients and non clients and people who come to Brave Biz Labs, which is tomorrow at 11am Eastern Time, is how do I introduce myself and how do I describe what it is that I do? And it's usually followed up with, I describe myself as a mindset coach or an executive coach. And I've literally been in a group setting where someone said something like, I am the lightning to your thunder. And I didn't know what to do with that. Like, fully support you describing yourself that way. And also, I have no idea what to do with that. Anyway, she. That person did not like my answer to this, but my answer to this is that no one gives a. No one cares how you describe your job, and no one cares how you describe what it is that they do. Okay? I want you to. I want you to, like, go back to your last, like, social environment that you were in, okay, where you're meeting people, maybe making new acquaintances. Maybe you're a networking event, maybe you were at a friend's barbecue or something and they're introducing you to people. I want you to think back to what was going on in your brain as you're meeting these people, your brain. I don't even have to hear your answer because I know your brain was sorting for are you useful to me? Are you useful to someone I know? Or can I throw away remembering you? Because you're not useful to me or anyone I know. When you give people titles that they do not understand, guess which category you get chucked into. That's right. You get chucked into that third category. Like, I'm gonna forget even meeting you because you are not useful to me or anyone that I know. Our brains are miraculous for getting machines. Okay? When you walk to the subway to go travel, you know, four miles to get to your office or whatever, you're seeing literally hundreds if not thousands of people, okay? Your brain is taking all of them in and deciding to forget most of it, okay? Your brain is a magical forgetting machine. We, we have to survive. That's, that's what it boils down to is survival. When we come across someone who either is a resource to, to us or a potential resource to us, we remember it. We remember that person. We remember what it is that they do. When we meet someone who's not necessarily useful to us, but is useful to like seven people that we know, or maybe just two people that we know, we remember them. Because if I can offer this resource, this person to these other people, not in like a human sacrifice way, but like an introduction way, then my status as a human goes up because I'm a connector. Then I've given value to two different parties, if not more. Okay? So I'm going to remember you if you tell me that you're. You solve problems that my, my friends over here decide, you know, describe that they have. When you introduce yourself and you tell people what you do, your title really doesn't matter. What matters is you need to describe exactly who it is you help and you need to describe exactly the problems that they talk about having all the time. I'm getting a phone call from someone. I think it's from my representative. My mail in ballot in Pennsylvania hasn't arrived yet. I'm going to obviously answer this later and call them back, but it's good to know that they're getting back to me. But you have to think about what your ideal clients, when they've like had a couple glasses of wine, they're bitching to their best friend. What are they bitching about? What are the complaints that they have about their life? The real and raw complaints. Not the fluffy like, oh, I don't feel fulfilled. And, and you know, I Would really like to process these emotions better. No, they don't care about that. I want you to think about their wake up in the morning problems, the problems that literally keep them up at night and how they think about them. All right? This is one of the reasons I have all my clients do market research so that you can find out how people describe their problems. Because, you know, we can play the guessing game all we want, but usually we get it wrong. And also the results that you help people get, generally, if they do the work. Okay. And I'm talking mainly about coaches right now, but this works for absolutely everyone. Okay? So if you are in it, I'm sorry, I don't know what to do with that. I don't know what to do with that unless you tell me. I help companies do this and this and this and avoid this problem and mitigate this problem and blah, blah, and get to this result that might be relevant to me or it might be relevant to someone I know. So your job is to figure out, in layman's terms so that a 7 year old would understand how to describe the. The ideal person that you help. The, you know, three to five problems that they have that you help solve and the results that you help them get. The things you want to stay away from are things that are like the root of the problem. The root of the problem. Like, oh, people who just don't love themselves enough. No, like people, it's not a problem of them loving themselves. They want a relationship. They want. They want someone to come home to at the end of the day. Okay, maybe, yes. Once you start working with them, you realize it is a loving themselves problem. But they don't see it that way. They see it as, why is dating so hard? Okay. It's also not your solution. Like the thing that you do to help solve this problem. No one cares. Honestly, no one cares what it is that you do. There are very few humans in the world who will be like, tell me your process exactly before I hand you my money. No, no, very few people will ask for that. And if they need it, they will ask for it. Okay. People honestly would pay you money to belly dance in front of them if you had magical belly dancing skills that solve their problems. Okay, I don't know how to belly dance. Obviously that's not how I work with my clients. But, you know, if I could help my clients literally go from 0 to $100,000 a year with their own businesses by belly dancing magically in front of them, people would pay for that. Okay? But no one cares about your process. The only person who cares about your process is you, because you know how magical your process is. You know the results that your process get you. And stop getting tripped up. Just stop getting tripped up over how to make it sound special, okay? Stop getting tripped up over how you can make it sound important or cool or poetic, okay? I know there's been that advice that's floated around, and it's like, you know, give someone. Give people something that sounds interesting. So they're like, oh, my gosh, what's that? Okay. It rarely works the way you think it's going to work. Okay? The. The person who said, oh, I'm lightning to your thunder or something like that, like, I know what she was trying to do. She was trying to get people to, like, lean in and say, oh, well, what does that mean? No, people were mostly been like, okay, weirdo, like, I'm gonna go grab a hot dog and talk to someone else. Because I don't know what the that means. Okay? When people lean in. So when you set people up to have to lean in, you are counting big on them being okay looking stupid on them being okay, not knowing what you're talking about. Here's the general truth about humanity. We, for survival, want to appear strong and knowledgeable. Like, we know everything. Okay? Especially in social settings where we're networking with people who could potentially be useful to us. So if you say something that's kind of vague or sounds too important or is over my head, it's very rare that I. And I'm not talking about me. I ask this all the time. But most people, it's very rare. They'll be like, well, what does that mean? You know, because they don't want to seem stupid. What they're going to do is go, oh, that's nice. And then they're going to, like, you know, dip their celery in the ranch that's on their plate. They're going to put in their mouth, they're going to chew it for a really long time, and then they're going to say, oh, excuse me, I have to go use the bathroom. Because they don't even know what to talk to you about. You have just shut down that conversation right then and there for most people that you meet, okay, stop doing that. Stop doing that. Give people the simple little wooden building blocks to be like, oh, how neat that you help those kinds of people with that kind of problem. Get to that kind of result. Awesome. You know, I actually know a few people who fit that Description. And I'm being literal here. Okay. You could be a dating coach who works with divorced lesbians who have children to find their next life partner. Okay. To create a blended family. Okay. You could be that specific. Now, not everyone you speak to is going to know someone or who's going. Is going to be that ideal person. But the people who know someone are going to be so adamant about introducing you. Let me see. Asher, Being able to communicate what problems you solve in a way that's easy to understand is so vital. Thank you. Yeah, it is. And it's. It's something that we get so messed up around because there's all this talk about elevator pitches and this and that. No one. No one cares. We're all humans humaning with other humans. What we care about is connection. How do I feel connected to you? One of the ways I'm going to feel connected to you is understanding what it is that you do and how you could be helpful to me. Another way is understanding. I'm trying to make sure the tips of my fingers actually touch. It's kind of hard seeing it on the camera and then having to be, like, right here. Understanding how you are useful to the people in my life also. Okay. That is how I will feel connected to you. All right. Just be a human connecting with our humans. It's. It's very simple. Don't get hung up on having the perfect title. When I start this thing, I say, Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business coach and leadership, or business strategist and leadership coach. I'm messing it up. No one actually cares about that. Like, people will remember as. Because if they hear it often enough, they'll be like, oh, Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. But do they actually know what business strategist means in all the ways that I do it? Probably not. Do they actually know what leadership coaching is in all the ways that I do it? No. They're so. So many different formats for leadership coaching where they figure out if I'm useful to them or if I'm useful to someone they know is by my content. How I talk about the problems my clients have, how I talk about the results I help my clients get, and by the little questions that I answer in formats like this. Okay, if I were just going on and just shouting, hi, I'm a. I'm a business strategist and leadership coach. No one would know what to do with that. Okay, so stop doing that yourself if you're doing that anyway. And, yes, of course you are the lightning. Of course you are the lightning, but that's not how you describe what you do and how you help people. That just is not helpful to anyone. And also if you are trying to get leadership clients, like executive leadership clients, which this person was like, how are they supposed to take that to HR to get the invoice paid? I just don't understand. Anyway, Luna's being very patient. I have to take her for a little walk before my BYOB call. My BYOB group. I don't talk about it as much as I probably should. So it's a group program for people who aren't ready to work with me one on one yet. We do all the same things that I do with my one on one clients. We get I get my clients up and running with their first few clients, train them on selling, how to market themselves, how to describe and decide on their niche, all the things we work on, their money money mindset. And it's an amazing group, honestly. And I'm not just saying that because it's my group. I'm saying it because I just have some incredible human beings in there who are making a huge difference in their own respective worlds and who are building really incredible things. So it's a group program that has a small cohort. It's there are three 90 minute calls per month and there's also in between support through our Mighty Networks community. If you're interested in that, send me a DM and I'm happy to hop on a call and tell you about it, but I'm so excited. We have a call this afternoon at 1pm Eastern and I'm so excited to talk to my humans. But Anyway, Asher and LinkedIn user thank you for joining anyone else who was listening. I hope you have an amazing Thursday and if you found this useful I'd love to hear what your takeaways were in the comments. Also, if you have any questions about how you can build your business and how you can take it to the next level, then shoot me a DM and what we'll do is we'll hop on a generate income strategy call. Anyway, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. Have an amazing day and I will talk to you all soon. Bye.