The other day, my niece (who is 10 years-old) asked me: “What do you do for work?”
I told her: “I teach safety courses for kids such as babysitting, I teach first aid classes for grown-ups sometimes, and I’m doing a presentation on how to use humour when teaching people to help them remember what they learn in class. Plus I sometimes write things or edit things for other people.”
“So…you teach people stuff.”
“Yes, I guess that’s what I do. I teach people stuff. I like that; it’s so simple!”
I’ve spent time agonizing over what to include in my LinkedIn profile summary, telling people what I do, figuring out how to tell people what I do, figuring out what it is I do, and starting that all over again when I change my mind about what I do.
I’ve done all of that multiple times trying to land on one thing that I can easily describe to someone who doesn’t know me and hearing all over the place that “you’ve got to find your thing.” Just ONE thing? More on that later (all of this could be part of why I don’t have a profile summary on medium yet).
I’ve agonized over how to say things, what information to include, word choice that will get people interested and allow them (and me) to easily understand what I do for money without using a title, and my 10 year-old…