MBA877 Stop Talking About Your Business That Way

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Hey O. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA show, the business podcast that helps you build the business that you want with our deep dive lessons. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar MBA and webinar Ninja. And in today's lesson, you're gonna learn how to break a deadly habit that a lot of entrepreneurs have, especially when they're getting started. And most of us are oblivious that we're doing this, but it's something that I noticed in myself and worked very hard to eradicate from my life, eradicate from my habits. And it has to do with the way you speak about your business. Let me paint you a scenario. You're invited to a picnic by a friend and you're gonna be meeting some new people there. And at the picnic, people are gonna be asking you, what do you do? Then you're gonna tell them, hey, I'm an entrepreneur, I have a business. And they're gonna ask you, what's your business? What is it all about? And most new entrepreneurs and some seasoned entrepreneurs answer this question horribly wrong. And it usually sounds something like this. Uh, yeah. So I have like this small, I don't know, like startup, you know, that helps people with, you know, some, some issue that they have this Issue could be like, you know, not getting enough exposure with marketing, and I'm pretty good with Facebook ads. And what I do is I help them with that. What. What is that? Now, some people call this answer or this statement an elevator pitch. I don't call it an elevator pitch because you're really not pitching anybody. You're. You're really just talking about your business. You're really just describing what you do. And I'm here today, in today's episode, screaming from the rooftops to say, stop talking about your business that way. Stop playing down your business. There's a few things about the way I answered that question that's completely wrong. But the biggest thing that's wrong about it is it sounds like you have no idea what you're talking about. Like, you've given no thought to what you do. You have to know what you do like the back of your hand, and you have to just state the facts. You don't have to talk about your business like it's nothing, like it's a nobody business. Now, I'm not saying you should embellish, no, not saying you should embellish, but there's no reason for you to have to talk it down. You can keep it short and you can keep it just factual, but most of all, you should keep it positive. And we're going to be talking about all this, what to do, how to actually craft this response in a proper way. Now, why is this so important? Well, number one, you want to be able to communicate clearly to a stranger that has no idea what you do, is not in the field that you're in, that's not an expert in your area of expertise. You want to communicate clearly to anybody what you do. So it's clear. Why is this important? Because, one, it's important for you to be able to do that because you're going to have to do that on a regular basis with selling and communicating and all that stuff with sales copy. But number two, if you ever want a referral from anybody that meets you, they're going to know exactly what you do and be like, hey, I know a guy, I know a gal that is great at that, that their whole business is about that. They can help you out. Here's their number. But if you're completely ambiguous and you have no idea what you're saying and they have no idea what you're saying, then you just lost a huge opportunity there. On top of that, there could be a chance that that person you're meeting can use your services, can Use your product, but they just never understood what it was the first place, so they don't know that. So in today's episode, we're going to break down how to talk about your business with others. And I'm not talking only about, you know, meeting and greeting. You might have friends that be like, hey, tell me again what you do? What is your business all about? How. How do you have that discussion? What to say, how to say it, when not to say something, when to allow questions to come into the discourse. I want to stress that this episode's not about when you're meeting people in a meetup situation or in a business context. This is just about being able to articulate clearly what you do to the masses, to anybody who you meet, to loved ones, to family, to friends. Because as an entrepreneur, what you do is a big part of who you are. It's not like that. I know in the 9 to 5 world, people are like, oh, I'm in accounting, oh, I'm in marketing. I do sales. And that's it. That's the end of the conversation. They kind of see their work life as separate as their personal life. But you as an entrepreneur, your business is a big part of your life. And it's really important for people to know what you do because that's how you get business, right? You know, you get paid no matter what in a 9 to 5, no matter how you talk about your job or what you do. So we'll talk about all of that and more in today's lesson. So let's get down to business. So for the purpose of today's lesson, I'm going to use my business webinar Ninja, our webinar software, as an example. I'm going to show you how I like to respond to that question. What do you do in social settings? And show how we can have a dialogue with people and not play down our business. But I'm not going to play down my business, nor will I play it up. No one likes to show off, right? But at the same time, we just got to state the facts. A lot of us, we like to minimize our business. We think it's like, I don't know, we're just not confident in what we do, or we think it's humble, but it's just filler words and it takes away from understanding what you're all about. So somebody asked me, hey, Omar, so tell me a little bit about your business. I know you're an entrepreneur. What do you do? So when you're answering this Question. The first thing you have to keep in mind is that you can't assume that people understand jargon. They understand the terms that you understand. So we run a webinar software. So I might say I run a webinar software, right? But maybe people don't know what webinars are. The person that's asking you this question. So there's a couple options here. You can just flat out ask somebody a question. You can say, hey, do you know what webinars are? Now, that's an option that I don't prefer just because it kind of puts the person on the spot. And sometimes they say yes, and they don't really know what a webinar is. They just say yes because they want the conversation to keep going and they don't really want to look like they don't know what a webinar is, right? So often I just replace those words with something that everybody can understand. And I like just to paint a scenario with a short, brief sentence. And I say, a lot of businesses like to teach as a form of marketing. It helps them get potential clients and customers. My company, webinar Ninja, helps people teach online with live video via our software, Webinar Ninja. See how simple that was? I didn't complicate things. I made it super simple. I gave a example, and it was very brief. Now, this is something that I've crafted over time. It's not something I just made up on the spot, you know, and I just think about it off. I know it. I know it like the back of my hand. I know it like my name. And you should be able to do the same with your business. And that's just an opening line, right? That's just the first sentence to start the conversation, to lay the foundation, to say, hey, this is what I do. I help these people do this. And that's really what you want to do. That's the formula of the sentence of I help these types of people do this. And that's a lot clearer than saying, I have a software, I run a software business. I run a SaaS business. All this is jargon, right? All this is just, you know, things you would say to people that understand exactly what you do. But for the common person, you know, they may not know even if they are an entrepreneur. You know, if you travel and you meet new people, you might meet somebody who's been running a souvenir shop for 30 years, they've been an entrepreneur for 30 years, but may have never heard of a webinar before. So you want to think of that kind of scenario, so it's super clear. So after I say who I serve and how I serve them, I talk about what makes us unique in just one quick line. Online video software or webinar software is notoriously difficult to use. So our software, Webinar Ninja, this is where I put my name in, right? The name of the business. So I just continue. So our software, Webinar Ninja, is made for people that want an easy software to use. So you get the point. In my first couple of sentences, they understand who I'm serving, how I serve them, and how I differentiate myself from the rest of software out there that deals with live video, right? So in a couple sentences, they know who I'm serving, how I serve them, and how we differentiate ourselves from the package. Now, before I move on with the rest of the dialogue, I want you to take a look at what I've said so far. Even if you have to rewind the episode a little bit to listen to what I said, you know, I want you to notice that it's just factual. I'm not, you know, embellishing. I'm not selling them anything. I'm just stating what we do in an easy to understand way. At the same time, I'm being very economical with my language. I want to save as much time as possible because the next step in this dialogue is me asking a question. I don't want to talk anymore. So the best way to not to talk anymore is to ask somebody a question so they can talk. Now, the reason why I don't wanna talk anymore is because any longer than this, it's gonna sound like I'm pitching them, like I'm selling them something. When I don't wanna give that impression. I just wanna give a good answer to what I do. And sometimes we feel like we have to ramble and we have to keep on talking and we gotta, like, talk it up or we gotta, you know, kind of play it down. I'm doing none of this. I don't wanna fall into that trap. I don't wanna do that. And it's for several reasons, and I wanna talk about these reasons before I move on with the dialogue. Number one, it's just bad for you as an entrepreneur to talk about your business in a way that doesn't make you proud. You should be proud about what you've built. You should be proud of what you're building, right? When you use filler words or like descriptive words like small, startup, all these things, it doesn't really Give any information to help understand what you do. So why use them? Like, what is a startup anyway? People don't know what that is. They're gonna be like, are you venture backed? But are you like Instagram? What does that mean? People don't know what that really means, so don't use it. When people say small business, that's relative. You know, if your business makes, you know, $4,000 a month, that might be more money than what that person you're talking to is making every month. So to them, that's not small. The point here is that you're just using these words because you don't have anything prepared, right? You don't have anything that you want to say. Now, I want to say that even though this is prepared, you know, it's not scripted. It's not like something that you're going to script. I just like to have a framework, you know, who do I serve? How do I serve them? How am I different? I just answer those questions that I have in my head to the person that asks me, what do you do? Number three, notice the way I'm talking about my business, the tone of my voice, the way I'm answering is not in a way that makes me feel like, oh, I don't want to talk about this, or let me rush through this answer. Or like, oh, don't worry about me. This is not, you know, something important. Let's talk about something else. No, I just state the answer to the question. And I'm saying it with a sense of pride, with a sense of, you know, this is what we do. With a sense of enthusiasm. A little bit. I'm not. It's not over the top, but it's positive. You know, you want to make sure that you have positive feelings associated with what you do. When people see that you're smiling and you're talking about your business in a positive way, they're going to get a good impression subconsciously. They're going to feel like, oh, this seems like a cool business. If anybody's interested or anybody I know would need your business or services, I'm gonna let them know. And even if that's not the case, at least they have a good impression about you as a person, that you're a positive person, that you love what you do, that you're enthusiastic about what you do for a living. So at this point of the conversation, I like to pass the mic to them, you know, I don't want to talk anymore because again, any more than this, it sounds like I'm just rambling and I'm just trying to pitch them or something like that. I don't want to have that impression. So what I do is I ask a question so they are forced to talk and not me. And I make sure the question I ask requires more than just a yes or no answer because then the mic is going to go back to me and this defeats the whole purpose. Right? We want to have a conversation here. And usually this starts with the word how. So I just say, like, how do you use live video in your life or business? And it sounds weird if I just say that question. So I usually just kind of buffer it with a joke. Like, so I'm up to my ears in live video. That's what I do. How do you use live video in your life, in your business? And it kind of kicks off the conversation and they kind of laugh a little bit and they say, well, yeah, I like to use FaceTime with my family or oh, I use webinars. Yeah, for my business, I do demos. Or they say, I've done a Facebook Live last week or something like that. Right? Or they might simply say, oh, I haven't used live video before, but I'm interested. And they might ask you a few more questions. You see how now we have a conversation. Now we have something that's friendly and light and they have a good idea of who you are. And automatically, because they're asking you questions back and forth, they're starting to see you as an authority figure. They're seeing you as an expert at what you do. So after about a minute conversation, we talk a little bit about live video. In my case, I like to ask them, so tell me about what you do so I can learn a little bit more about them. Now, if you haven't noticed this yet, but the whole reason why I taught this lesson today is to emphasize to have common, normal, comfortable conversations with people. When it comes to what you do in your business, often we tense up. Often we just change who we are. When somebody says, so tell me about your business again. And you just get into business mode and you start talking in a different way and you start, well, we have a small startup that is working on this little project and we're in incubator phase, like all this weird jargon, right? Forget it. Have a conversation. Have a comfortable conversation. And this is the formula I want you to follow. It helps you. And it doesn't have to be verbatim, obviously, but you know exactly how the conversation should go and you can steer it to be Comfortable and comfortable for you. Comfortable for the person that's asking the question. Because most of the time, this is going to be a social setting. Now, the reason why this never actually happens, where people just ramble or they use jargon or all that kind of stuff, is that they don't actually anticipate the question being asked. In other words, they don't have a prepared answer. Right. They don't have something that they actually should say. When I personally think that's just being lazy. I know that sounds really harsh, but you know somebody's going to ask you that question, so you should have an answer. You should be courteous enough to be economical with your language and have something prepared. I know this is going to sound like a strange analogy, but when you were a child, you took you some time to learn your birthday, right? Like, when is your birthday? Okay, my birthday is this date. So when people ask you, so when's your birthday? You say this, or they say, how old are you? You remember, well, how old you are? And you practice, my birthday is January 3rd. Right? You say that over and over. I know this sounds funny or silly, but that's how we learn. So now when people ask you, what's your birthday? You don't like your back of your hand, this is my birthday. You don't even think about it. That's what you got to do when it comes to what do you do? Or what's your business all about. A good practice to do is to have a buddy system with this exercise. This could be a friend, or it could be, better yet, somebody you live with, like your significant other, and ask them to ask you the question. So tell me about what you do every day when you wake up in the morning after you have a cup of coffee. Their job is just to ask you that question. Tell me about what you do. And you got to get into the reflex, into the habit of saying exactly what you want to say and say it in the way you want to be presented. I mean, I can probably put some money down on the fact that if I ask you right now. I'm asking you the question right now in your ears. Tell me about what you do. You kind of freeze up. You're like. And you don't know what to say because you haven't said it enough. So what you're going to do is you're going to calm down and you're going to get in the habit of answering those three questions. This is who I serve. This is how I serve them. This is what makes me Unique. So when somebody asks you what do you do? First thing you think of is like, who do I serve? I help. Those are the first words, right? I help these types of people do this. Most other services are like this, but ours is like this. And that's what we try to focus on. Factual, positive, easy, conversational. So get a buddy, get them to ask you that question every day and see if you can actually get them to ask you the question at least every day for a week. It's going to help you tremendously. Trust me.

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Gas snacks, tolls this trip is draining my wallet.

Yeah, but we'll be with family.

You're in a good mood. What's your deal?

What's my deal? I saved at Metro with no activation fees and I got one line of 5G for just $25 per month. Kept the phone I love and a 5 year price guarantee on my top.

Text and data detour to Metro. Get that more for your money feeling only at Metro by T Mobile. Just bring your number. $30 first month at $25 after with autopay not available if with Met Mobile in the past 180 days to wrap up today's lesson, the conversation of what you do, what your business is all about is so common that you need to know this very well. You gotta be very intimate with this answer. And again, it doesn't have to be high stakes or high pressure or a performance. Just gonna answer simple questions and you gotta be able to know the answers to those questions very quickly. So. And the only way to kind of do that is to rehearse is to actually answer it over and over again. Again, childhood metaphor. When you're a kid, you know the answers to questions like your favorite color and your favorite animal and your favorite food because you were asked that question by your peers, by your classmates all the time. Right? Now if you ask me those questions, I'll have to think about them because I haven't thought about it in a while. Right. But when you were a kid, you knew my favorite food is pizza. Didn't think about it. I knew it. My favorite animal, giraffe. You get the point. You know, you know the answer so well. But I want to give you one last piece of advice. When it comes to this topic, how you say what you say is just as important. So I can answer questions like, you know, we serve business owners that want to use live video to, you know, share their message, to teach. I'm saying the same words, but I'm saying it in a completely different way. Right? It's not confident, it's not positive, and it sounds like I'm asking a bunch of questions instead of making statements. Make statements. This is what it is. Now, I know it's hard to be super confident if you're just getting started, but you gotta believe in what you do or no one will. And this is the beginning. Talking about your business is the beginning. Now, obviously, when you get some success in your business, if you're having success in your business, this is gonna be a little bit easier, right? Cause, you know, you're like, hey, I have a good thing. I know people like my thing. So making statements in a positive way is gonna be a lot easier than when you're just getting started. But in this case, you have to believe it before you see it. And it shouldn't be so hard because you should be enthusiastic about what you're doing, what you're building, and that should permeate. That should resonate with what you say when people ask you what you do. All right. I hope today's lesson was helpful. If it was, let us know in an itunes rating and review. We'd love to hear from you. Don't forget to hit subscribe to get all our episodes automatically. That's it for me today, guys. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. Being positive about your business and talking about your business in a positive way is not only for those who are listening, it's for you. One of the things that great entrepreneurs do is lift themselves up. They need to be the biggest evangelist. They need to be the one that believes the most. Now, again, I'm not telling you that you have to be this huge cheerleader and over enthusiastic person when you're talking about your business, but you definitely shouldn't talk it down. You shouldn't, you know, sound like you're not happy about it. Some of us, we think that's humble or that's just a good way to kind of, you know, downplay it. Or maybe you're just too shy to kind of talk about your business. But this is a challenge you have to overcome. Don't have to be a salesperson, but you have to be positive no matter where you are in the spectrum of success with your business right now, if you have a company worth $100 or $100 million, you should talk about your business in the same way. I mean, if I asked Mark Zuckerberg. Hey Mark, what do you do? I never heard of you before for some strange reason. Do you think he's going to play it down? You think he's gonna be like, oh, I have like this small little thing. It's like a social kind of network. No, he's going to tell you exactly what he does in a clear, concise way because he's done it over and over and over again. And you need to get in the habit of doing that. Now you get the point. Alright, I'll check you guys in the next episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Gas, snacks, tolls. This trip is draining my wallet.

Yeah, but we'll be with family.

You're in a good mood. What's your deal?

What's my deal? I saved at Metro with no activation fees and I got one line of 5G for just $25 per month. Kept the phone I love and a 5 year price guarantee on my top.

Talk, text and data detour to Metro. Get that more for your money feeling only at Metro by T Mobile Just bring your number 31st monthly 25 after with autopay not available. If with Metro T Mobile in the past 180 days.