someone asked me what i do a few weeks ago and i could not answer the question.
not in a coy way. i opened my mouth and there was nothing clean to say.
because what do i actually do. i run workshops. i design packaging for brand products and i print it. i build websites. i write content strategies for b2b companies. that is four different jobs and they do not fold into one tidy sentence, so what came out was a mumble with commas in it, and i watched the person’s face do the thing faces do when you have given them nothing to hold.
polite nod. eyes already moving. “oh nice, that’s cool.”
and that was the end of it. no follow-up question. no “wait, tell me more about the packaging thing.” nothing for them to repeat to anyone later. i had just met someone who might have hired me, or sent me someone who would, and i handed them a shrug.
here is the uncomfortable part. i was not new when this happened. i have been doing this for years. i run workshops where at some point i stand in front of a room and tell other people to get specific about what they do.
and i still fumbled my own answer at a dinner.
you are not losing work to people who are better than you. you already know that, somewhere. you are losing it to people who are easier to describe.
your positioning is not a statement you put on a website. it is a referral script. it is the sentence a person who likes you says to a person who needs you, when you are not in the room. if a friend cannot repeat what you do at a dinner table, you do not have positioning. you have a job title, and job titles do not travel.
this letter is the fix. the one-sentence test, why “i’m a designer” is quietly costing you, and the four levers that turn a mumble into something a stranger can carry across a room.
you’re not competing on talent, you’re competing on memorability
the thing almost everyone gets wrong about a specific answer is that they think it shrinks their income.
it does not. it shrinks your description. those are different things, and the difference is the whole game.
when i say “i work with creative people to perfect their company branding,” i have not signed a contract that bans me from doing anything else. i still run the workshops. i still print packaging. i still build the website when it is the right project. the sentence is not a fence around what i am allowed to accept. it is just the doorway people walk through to get to me.
but it feels like a fence. that is the part worth being honest about.
saying one clear thing feels like standing in a hallway of doors and pulling most of them shut. every job you do not mention feels like money you just turned away. so you keep the sentence wide. you list everything. you say “i do branding, web design, content and workshops” and you tell yourself you are keeping your options open.
you are not keeping options open. you are asking the other person to work out what you are for, and they will not do it. they have their own job. they will nod and move on, and you will stay a generalist, which is a polite word for “considered, occasionally, and never first.”
generalists get considered. specialists get called.
picture two freelancers. same portfolio, genuinely. same skill, same taste, same years in.
one of them says “i do branding, websites and social.” the other says “i name and brand food businesses.”
now picture someone at a barbecue saying “my sister is opening a bakery and the branding is a mess.” which of those two gets named in that conversation? not the better one. the describable one. the one whose work has a shape you can say out loud while holding a plate.
the first freelancer might be twice as good. it does not matter, because she never comes up. being good is what keeps a client once they have hired you. being easy to describe is what gets your name said when you are not there, and your name getting said when you are not there is the entire job of positioning.
mine got specific slowly, and not from a branding exercise. it came from doing the workshops, and from repositioning myself more than once until something held.
i must have answered “what do you do” a few hundred times in those rooms. at the start, in the breaks, after. and somewhere in there it clicked that the answer to that question is not a summary of your business. nobody asking it wants your whole story. they are making small talk and their attention is about six seconds long.
the answer to “what do you do” has one job: make the person a little curious, and give them one thing to remember you by. that is it. it is a door, not a download.
so i stopped trying to push everything through the door. i used to give the full list, workshops and packaging and websites and strategy, and i watched it land as noise every time. now i say “i work with creative people to perfect their company branding.” it is not the whole truth. it is the true thing that makes someone lean in and ask a second question, and the second question is where the real conversation starts.
it still changes. i rewrite that sentence more often than i would admit. but it is always built to do the same job: get you to ask me more.
here is the reframe that made it stick.
specificity is not a cage. it is a handle.
a person cannot hand you to someone else if there is nothing to pick you up by. “he does a bit of everything, design and marketing and stuff” has no handle. it lies flat on the table. “she names food businesses” has a handle, and handles are how you get carried into rooms you were never in.
you are not making yourself smaller. you are giving people a way to lift you.
the sentence you are building has a name. call it your referral sentence, because that is its actual job. it has four levers you can pull: who you help, what you do for them in plain words, the outcome they would actually brag about, and one flavour word that could only be you.
get those four right and you have a sentence that works whether you are in the room or not.
build your referral sentence in 45 minutes
you do not need a weekend for this. you need about forty-five minutes and a willingness to write a bad version first.
that is the real blocker, by the way. not time. most people will not write the bad version, because looking at your own generic sentence on a page is embarrassing, and they would rather keep it vague and unexamined than see it clearly for thirty seconds. do the embarrassing part. it is the fastest way through.
1. write the bad version on purpose.
put down “i’m a [job title].” designer. construction worker. artist. musician. consultant. strategist. whatever yours is.
now look at it. every other person competing for the same work has written the identical sentence. it is not wrong, it is just wallpaper. you cannot improve a sentence you refuse to look at, so look at it, and let it be as boring as it is.
2. pick the who, and make it a person.
not “small businesses.” not “startups.” a person you can picture.
“food founders doing their first rebrand.” “therapists who hate their website.” “musicians who need a brand but not a whole agency.” you should be able to see their face and name the thing keeping them up.
“everyone” is not a market. it is a fear of choosing, wearing a suit.
3. say the what in verbs, not services.
“brand identity design” is a service-page phrase. no human says it at a party.
“i name things and make them look expensive” is a sentence a person would actually say out loud. verbs travel. service categories sit still.
4. attach the outcome they would brag about.
not “brand clarity.” nobody goes home excited about clarity.
what does your client tell their friend the week after you finish? it is closer to “we finally look like we charge what we charge,” or “i stopped being embarrassed to send people to my site.” borrow their words, not your industry’s.
5. add one flavour word only you would use.
this is where your voice goes, and it is the difference between a sentence and a tagline.
one word or phrase a competitor would not be caught saying. a little funny, a little sharp, a little too honest. that is the point. it is the fingerprint, and it is the part people quote back to you.
6. run the dinner table test.
say the sentence out loud to one person who is not in your industry. a friend, a cousin, someone at a party.
then ask them the next day to tell you what you do. if they can repeat it back, it works. if they say “something with design?” it is still too clever, and clever is the enemy here. you are not writing to impress a peer. you are writing something a distracted person can carry for twenty-four hours.
7. put it in five places before you touch anything else.
your bio. your email signature. the first line of your site, above the credentials. the way you open a pitch. the way you answer the question at a party.
a sentence you have written once and never repeat is not positioning. it is a note in your phone. positioning is what happens when the same sentence hits someone from five directions until it sticks.
8. rewrite it every 90 days.
it is supposed to move. mine changes several times a year and i have stopped feeling strange about that.
your work shifts. your favourite clients shift. the thing you want to be known for shifts. the sentence is a living thing, not a monument. put a recurring reminder in your calendar to look at it and ask one question: is this still the door i want people walking through?
you do not have to be the best one on the list. you have to be the easiest one to explain.
the person who can say what they do in one clean sentence beats the person with the deeper portfolio and the vaguer answer, every time, because the first person’s name gets said in rooms they will never walk into, and the second person’s does not.
i teach this and i still fumbled it at a dinner. so if your answer is a mumble with commas in it right now, you are not behind. you just have not written the sentence yet.
— mike
reply with your one sentence. i’ll tell you if i could repeat it tomorrow.