As an entrepreneur, it can be an enormous struggle to explain what you do to your friends, family, and prospects. 

For some, it’s clear cut and obvious. But for others, myself included, it’s not as black and white. I’ve gone down the rabbit hole multiple times trying to figure out a nice, concise way to make this easier.

You’ve probably done the same at some point. I know several other entrepreneurs who definitely have. 

To put it bluntly, I’m a struggling guy. That’s my jam. I help others find the focus, the methods, the systems, and the processes they need to gain more business, make more money, and work more efficiently than ever before. Depending on your viewpoint, this might make me a coach or a consultant. Maybe I’m both, plus some other things. Tech support, trainer, writer, little of this, little of that. 

I’ve helped clients close more deals and feel better about their pipeline and results during COVID-19 than they ever have before. I strategize around software options to keep your costs where you want, and I can help create messaging for those tools that will keep the calendar and pipeline full.

If you have a big goal, I can help you crush it. 

But conveying this to others hasn’t always been easy. 

Some people say the answer is niching down. They say that if you niche your services down, you’ll be able to have better conversations and more luck landing clients. Not the worst advice, but also not always necessary. 

My friend, Morning BIL partner, and marketer Jake says, “To me, niching is just finding your best customer, then tailoring your messaging to attract more of them.”

This is a significantly easier concept to understand than most people’s definition of niching. There are numerous books, hundreds of articles and blog posts, and tons of training and consulting about how to niche. It’s probably one of the most stressful concepts entrepreneurs face thinking about their business. 

Jake’s explanation is much simpler and more approachable. Not that it doesn’t still require some work and thought, but it’s a lot easier to wrap your head around. 

Instead of thinking about “what you do,” think about who you want to help. Build an avatar of your perfect customer. And if you offer several different services, build one for each of them. This is the kind of niching people need to focus more on. When you know who you’re talking to, you can tighten up the messaging that better explains how you can help them with no struggle. 

Largely, it doesn’t matter if the majority of people know what you do. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve explained my business(es) to family members. Most of them still don’t get it. And that’s okay. 

As long as you can hit potential pain points with your prospects, you don’t really need to struggle a specific job title or byline. 

Use your 30-second commercial or elevator pitch as a starting point. You can gain seriously helpful data by watching people react to it and listening to what they say after you’ve delivered it. If they go glassy-eyed, it’s not hitting home. They’re either not qualified, or if it happens to everybody every time, you need to adjust your messaging. 

Start making notes about what they say afterward. 

• If they consistently ask something along the lines of “could you explain that again?” or “huh?” you probably need to scrap it and write a new one. 
• If they ask, “can you tell me more about this specific thing?” then maybe you just need to go a little deeper into whatever that specific thing is. 
• If they say, “sounds great, but it’s not for me,” keep the conversation going. Try digging a little deeper to find out what they do need. It might be that your message is a little off, but you can help them. 
• And if they say, “take my money!” you’ve nailed it. 

I’ve been in sales training and I’ve been studying the art of sales, psychology, and communication for years. And it was still a struggle for a long time. At the end of the day, I know exactly what I do. Because we want to help people and make the world a better place, we think we can rattle it off and people will eat it up. But it doesn’t always work that way. 

When you take the focus off yourself and put it on the people you want to help, you’ll have a much easier time explaining what you do and why it’s important.