define your niche
develop your elevator pitch
describe what you do in one sentence
what problem do you solve?
what do you do?????
I have been asked these questions thousands of times in my professional life, I have hired coaches to help be clarify my positioning statement and niche, I have spent hours (and I do mean hours) trying to come up with smart, clever yet meaningful statements that put me in a box so that prospects know ‘where’ I fit in the suite of business services.
The problem is … I do SO many things … that to fence me in … well, seriously, that would just be a waste of my talents, expertise and experience. Not to mention it would bore me witless.
That’s why, back in October, I wrote a heated email to my coach (the heat was in frustration of the continuing conversation of trying to come up with some kind of tag-line, hook, unique positioning statement, not at him per se)
I love CATalyst, spark, ignition … it is SO me it is ridiculous. And any dilution of that positioning for the purposes of creating a ‘hook’ isn’t it. So – Business CATalyst I am, and the deliverable is igniting peak business performance
I was further fueled in my quest to resist definition by a post by Danielle LaPorte, How to Be a Profiting Truth Omercial Rather than a Slickster. At the time it resonated: I don’t have to follow other people’s models of how to … I can do my own thing and it might just work. It means I don’t a have a formulaic play-book … it means I can call myself a Business CATalyst, and it allows me to have fingers in many pies. I like that.
I’m essentially a business problem-solver … and when I solve people’s business problems they improve the performance of their business. I don’t know when I first meet a prospect what problem I’m going to solve … but I do know I’m yet to face a business problem for which I couldn’t facilitate an effective solution. However ‘problem-solving’ is a very un-sexy sales proposition … particularly in a world where people want a suite of specialist problem solvers for each kind of problem … but what I do for my clients depends on what they need …
- For example, what I do for Karoline & Sean is show them the next steps in their business development. How to overcome their speedbumps, bottle-necks and roadblocks … and clarify how they build their graphic design business.
- What I do for Simon is act as a sounding board … when the noise in his head gets too much, when the internal conversations just go around and around, I ask pointed questions, provide perspective and reflect his business goals back to him and he gets the clarity he needs to make the decision.
- For Joe I act as an interface between his idea for a new app and the designers, developers and geeks who can make it happen … and when the time is right I’ll introduce him to sources of capital that will match his needs.
- For Andrew I liaise between opportunities in the technology and digital space and capital sources then project manage the deals.
- And for Clare I keep her moving forward, focussed on what matters most to the development of her business.
That’s just a handful of what I do for clients … in essence, I solve their problems and help them manage and build their businesses. If I tried to catch that all in one ‘niche’, in one title or one ‘box’ … well I’d miss 90% of what I currently do.
So I’m discovering that it’s ok to be me … to not have a conventional title, an easy descriptor (slowly, there are still days when I’d like to say I’m a ‘x’). I’m continually reminding myself not to fence myself in … to allow my work, my writing and videos to speak for themselves. And I’m learning to be more comfortable in not knowing exactly how I’ll help a client until I know more about their business and their challenges.
So next you ask me ‘what do you do’ … expect this response …
“it depends”
Do you feel fenced in by your title or ‘niche’? How do you get around it? If you could put aside societal conventions, what title would you give yourself? What do you do?
My standard answer to that is “why what do you need ?”. I have always been an source of information and contacts – I have wide and varied interests and know a lot of people – if my day job isn’t what they need I bet I know someone who does do what they need. And even in my day job there are many strands and fields. So I found this is a great answer it starts conversations about people’s favorite topic – themselves.
Great post Cat. I feel the same when ppl ask me what kind of events I deliver! I really want to say “good ones!”. All the descriptive language in this industry has been taken and diluted. Whatever elevator pitch I’ve come up with just sounds like a cheesy sales pitch! I, like you solve problems. I love encouraging total disruption in event delivery. I recently came up with an idea for an architectural firm to host a client evening to profile their business. Rather than the standard cocktails followed by a boring PowerPoint presentation explaining why they were the best architects, I suggested they create a gallery environment, curate their work as works of art and let the work speak for itself! This could be a response to the question “what kind of events” but to articulate something really cool, I have to know what YOUR business is, what YOU are hoping to achieve and what YOUR customers are used to. for now I’m sticking with “good ones” be ause that’s the only consistency in my business.
And PS, I love CATalyst. I hear this word now and your face instantly pops into my head.