You’re probably blowing the single most important moment in your marketing — and you don’t even know it. When someone asks “What do you do?” your answer either opens a conversation or kills it dead. In this episode, Steve gets surgical about the one sentence every business owner needs to nail: not what you do, but what changes for someone when they work with you.
Key Takeaways
- The “what do you do?” moment is quietly costing you more business than almost anything else — and it’s entirely fixable with one sentence.
- Your response needs to make people feel something — curiosity, relief, recognition — not just understand something. Energy beats explanation every time.
- Service describes what you do; destination describes what changes. Only one of those sells — and it’s not the one most people lead with.
- Identify what your people actually want to experience on the other side of working with you, then distill your whole message down to that one thing.
- People don’t buy what you do. They buy where you can take them — and your one sentence has to make that destination crystal clear.
Show Notes
- The “What do you do?” test — can you answer in one sentence that creates a feeling?
- The LinkedIn bio answer — why rattling off your title, industry, and years of experience kills the conversation before it starts
- The difference between describing your service vs. describing the destination — and why only one makes people lean in
- The “invisible to booked out in 90 days” example — what a resonant, outcome-driven sentence actually looks like
- Why everyone’s commoditized — and why the only real differentiator is the outcome you clearly promise
- The RISE Framework applied to messaging — starting with Identify: what do your people want to experience?
- How to simplify your message — keep it under 15 words, say it out loud, and if it sounds like a PowerPoint slide, start over
- Episode homework: write your one sentence right now — what changes for someone when they work with you?
- The episode riff: “People don’t buy what you do. They buy where you can take them.”
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Full Transcript — Episode 33click to expand
[0:01]All right, everybody, today, episode 33, and today we’re going to 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 want to 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.
[1:04]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 because nobody will in one line. Like, that’s impossible unless you’re like, I’m a heart surgeon. Okay, great. But that’s not typically what in the world of corporate business doing business with business, that’s not typically what you’re going to hear somebody say. Just feel one thing, whether it’s curiosity, relief, recognition, something, man, right? Just something. You got to feel something when somebody asks you, what do you do? Your response has got to 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.
[2:06]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? Because you’re sitting there going, well, I’m a financial analyst with 23 years experience. First, I worked at Wells Fargo. Then I worked at New York Life Insurance. And then I worked out, like, nobody cares. It’s nothing personal. If they get to know you down the road, they’ll care. But they’re not going to care now meeting you in a room with a bunch of other strangers. You need to make them feel something. The sentence that’s going to 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
[3:09]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 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 time frame right there’s a difference you can feel it one describes the service and the other is 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 commoditize there’s a million other people doing it unless you’re truly you know 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
[4:10]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’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. 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 is going to 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.
[5:11]One sentence of what changes for someone when they work with you. And the riff of the episode is going to be this. It’s the one thing I write down for all these. So I’m always going to 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 an eight-minute piece. Thank you so much. I’m Steve Lichtman. This is Unfiltered and Unshakeable, and I will see you on the next episode.
