In episode 33 of the Unfiltered and Unshakeable podcast, host Steve Lichtman zeroes in on a single, often‑overlooked element that can sabotage a professional’s ability to attract business: the marketing sentence used when someone asks, “What do you do?” He argues that most people default to a bland, LinkedIn‑style description that lists titles, industries, and years of experience, which quickly disengages listeners. Lichtman proposes a tactical shift: craft a concise, under‑15‑word sentence that focuses on the transformation a client experiences, not the service itself. He illustrates the difference with a concrete example—changing “I help companies with strategic marketing solutions” to “I help consultants go from invisible to booked out in 90 days.” The episode introduces a simple RISE framework (Identify what the client truly wants, then simplify and distill the message) to guide listeners in developing their own outcome‑focused sentence. Listeners are given a homework assignment to write and rehearse their own sentence, emphasizing that people buy the destination, not the process. The episode ends with a reinforcing riff: “People don’t buy what you do, they buy where you can take them.”
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All right, everybody. Today, episode 33, and today we're gonna get into something that just absolutely drives me nuts, man. And it might be the thing that's quietly costing you more business, maybe more than anything else you're doing wrong. Yeah, it's your marketing sentence. It's the thing that you say when somebody comes up to you at a networking event or just anywhere and goes, hey man. What do you do? Every time I ask somebody that, I go, what do you do? They say the same thing to me, right? And look, I know we've touched on messaging before, but today I really wanna be surgical and tactical about this, this one thing, because I see so many smart, capable people just completely blowing it in this one moment. Like freaking legends that because they stumble and fall over themselves on the What do you do? Response that I wanted to make this to help people. So here's the test. If somebody asks you, what do you do? Can you answer in one sentence that makes them feel something? Like, can you feel energy from it? Do you feel somebody's vibe from it? Not understand everything about your business, cuz nobody will in one line. Like, that's impossible unless you're like, I'm a heart surgeon. Okay, great. But that's. That's not typically what in the world of corporate business, doing business with business, that's not typically what you're gonna hear somebody say. Just feel one thing, whether it's curiosity, relief, recognition, something, man. Right? Just something. You gotta feel something when somebody asks you, what do you do? Your response has gotta give them energy. Most people give what I would call the LinkedIn bio answer. Yeah. They rattle off their title. Maybe the industry, maybe years of experience, and the person's nodding in front of them. They're already checked out. They're like, oh, fuck this, right? That's just, you know, that's what they're thinking. They're just looking around the room for the next place to walk to. And it's not because they don't care. They might actually like you a lot. You're just boring the hell out of them and nothing landed, right? Cuz you're sitting there going, well, I'm a financial analyst with 23 years experience. First I worked at, at, uh, you know, Wells Fargo. Then I worked at New York in life insurance, and then I worked at, you Nobody cares. It's nothing personal. They'll— if they get to know you down the road, they'll care, but they're not gonna care now, meeting you in a room with a bunch of other strangers. You need to make them feel something. The sentence that's gonna work, it's not about what you do. It's about what changes for someone when they work with you. Think about that for a minute. Think about it this way. Don't say I help companies with strategic marketing solutions. I might do that. Hell, I've been doing that for 20 years, maybe more, definitely more. I'm old now. Instead, I would say something along the lines of, I help consultants go from invisible to booked out in 90 days. Now, I'm not a lead gen guy per se. I do a lot of lead gen work, but don't get me wrong, that's not me personally, but that is a better version of instead of walking up and saying, hi, I help I help companies with strategic marketing solutions. Okay, another marketing guy. I help consultants go from invisible to booked out in 90 days. Now somebody's got their attention up. They're going, wait, you get something done in a timeframe, right? There's a difference. You can feel it. One describes the service and the other's describing the destination. The destination is all people care about. Nobody cares about what you do. Let's be honest with ourselves. What we all do is commoditized. There's a million other people doing it. Unless you're truly, even when people say you're a category of one, you're a category of one of many. That's just the way that goes. If you truly believe you are a sole single category in anything, that is called delusion. Yeah. Unless you're on stage as an artist or something and you're the only one doing that song that way, that time, that how. Then yeah, you know, we, we're pretty much all in the world of business. Everybody's kind of doing the same thing, just different versions of it for different people in different ways. So let's use RISE in this situation. The move here is identify, identify what your people actually want. Yeah. Not what you offer, what they want to experience on the other side of it. And then simplify your message and distill it down to that one thing. And your homework for this episode's gonna be write your one sentence right now while you're listening. What changes for someone when they work with you? Try to keep it under 15 words, give or take. Read it out loud a bunch of times. If it sounds like a PowerPoint slide, do it again, man. Just do it again. If it sounds like, if it sounds all herky-jerky, just be like, screw it and start off again. I believe in you. I know that you've got this. Look, one sentence. It's all I'm asking for today. That's the move. One sentence. Of what changes for someone when they work with you. And the riff of the episode's gonna be this. It's the one thing I write down for all these, so I'm always gonna read it at the end. People don't buy what you do, they buy where you can take them. And now you guys understand how when I write down one riff for an episode, I could turn it into a, uh, 8-minute piece. Thank you so much. I'm Steve Lichtman. This is Unfiltered and Unshakeable, and I will see you on the next episode.
