50 YEARS, 50 LESSONS · BONUS LESSON
What You'll Take Away
◆ Your job title is an answer to a question nobody asked. It tells people where you sit, not what you do.
◆ “What do you do?” is a hook, and you already know how to write hooks. You just never applied the skill to yourself.
◆ Three lines, said out loud, until you are bored of them. That is the whole exercise.
The Question That Never Goes Away
A TikTok from Vanessa Van Edwards stopped my scroll a few weeks ago. She asked the viewer the same question you get asked at every wedding, every conference, every kid's soccer game sideline, every time you sit next to a stranger on a plane.
What do you do?
Van Edwards is a behavioral researcher and the founder of Science of People, and here is the funny part. Her team ran an experiment with 500 speed networkers and found that “what do you do?” ranked among the weakest conversation starters they tested. She actively coaches people to stop asking it.
And yet. People are going to keep asking it for the rest of your life. So you have two choices. Complain that it is a lazy question, or get very good at answering it.
I picked the second one, and then I realized my answer was terrible.
My Answer Was Losing People At Hello
Here is what I used to say.
“I am the Global Head of Media and Licensing Partnerships at TikTok.”
Sounds fine. Sounds senior. Means almost nothing.
Watch what happens when I say it. There is a small nod. There is a pause while the other person tries to build a picture in their head and comes up empty. Then they either ask something generic about TikTok, or they change the subject, and we are both a little worse off than we were ten seconds ago.
That sentence is not an answer. It is an org chart location. It tells you which box I occupy inside a company you have heard of. It does not tell you what I actually spend my days doing, which is a far more interesting story.
A title tells people where you sit. It does not tell them what you do.
The trap is that titles feel safe. They are accurate. They are the thing on your LinkedIn profile and your email signature and your badge. Nobody can argue with them. But accurate and memorable are two completely different jobs, and you have been sending accurate to do memorable's work for your entire career.
You Already Know How To Do This
Here is the reframe that unlocked it for me.
You have spent your career thinking about attention. You know the first three seconds decide everything. You know the “see more” cutoff is a filter. You know that if the opening does not land, the rest of the work does not matter because nobody scrolled far enough to see it.
So treat this like content. Because it is content. The only difference is that the product is you.
Nobody publishes a post that opens with their job title. So stop opening with yours.
The Build: Hook, Proof, Hand Off
Three parts. Ten seconds total. Here is how each one works.
The hook. One plain sentence that gives someone a picture. No company name, no title, no department. Just the thing you make happen, described the way you would describe it to a friend who does not work in your industry. If they have to translate it, you lost.
The proof. One specific thing you built, fixed, or shipped. Specific beats impressive every single time. A number, a name, a thing they can point at. This is where you earn the right to be believed.
The hand off. Stop talking. Early. Leave a loose thread hanging so the other person has somewhere obvious to go next. The goal is not to finish your answer. The goal is to start a conversation.
Most people fail on the third part. They keep going, adding context, explaining the reorg, clarifying the reporting line. Every extra sentence buries the good one.
If someone has to work to understand you, they will not remember you.
So mine became something closer to this.
“I take creators and brands out of the phone and put them in front of the world. That is my team.”
Is it a complete description of my role? No. Does a stranger now have a picture in their head and an obvious next question? Every time.
If You're Stuck, I Got You
Staring at a blank page trying to describe your own job is harder than it should be. You are too close to it. Everything either sounds like your resume or sounds like you are bragging.
So here is a prompt that will get you ninety percent of the way there. Paste it into Claude or ChatGPT or whatever you use. It interviews you first, which is the part that makes it work, then it writes.
I want a memorable answer to the question "What do you do?"
I don't want to respond with my job title. I want a short, conversational logline that makes someone curious and encourages them to ask a follow up question.
Interview me by asking these 5 questions, one at a time:
1. What is your official title, and what company or product do you work for?
2. In plain English, what are you actually responsible for? Ignore your formal job description and corporate language.
3. What are 3 examples of things you've built, launched, changed, sold, or made happen?
4. What is surprising or unusual about your job? What do you do that someone probably wouldn't expect from your title or company?
5. What is the biggest impact of your work? Think about scale, audience, revenue, cultural impact, industries affected, or anything else that makes the work significant.
After I've answered all five questions, generate 5 completely different loglines describing what I do.
Each should be one sentence and ideally under 15 words.
Give me five distinct approaches:
1. The Conversation Starter: Designed to make someone immediately ask, "What do you mean?"
2. The Big Idea: Describes the larger mission or transformation behind my work.
3. The Unexpected: Focuses on the most surprising aspect of what I do.
4. The Impact: Focuses on the scale or outcome of my work.
5. The Cocktail Party: The most natural, interesting answer I'd actually give when someone asks, "So, what do you do?"
Avoid corporate jargon, buzzwords, inflated language, and anything that sounds like a LinkedIn bio.
Don't simply rewrite my title.
The goal is curiosity, not completeness.
A great answer should make someone want to ask the next question.
After presenting the five options, tell me which one you think is the most memorable and why. Then create 3 improved variations of the winning direction.Two things to know before you run it.
Answer question two like you are talking to a friend at a bar, not writing a performance review. If you type corporate language in, you get corporate language out. My suggest is use Wispr Flow and just talk.
And do not accept the first thing it gives you. The five options exist so you can steal a piece of one and a piece of another. The machine gets you to a draft. You still have to make it sound like a human said it.
Three Ways To Test It
The kid test. Could a ten year old repeat your answer back to you? If it needs a glossary, it is not done.
The second question test. Does your answer produce a real follow up, or does it produce a polite nod? A nod means you handed over information. A question means you handed over interest.
The retell test. This is the one that matters most. When you walk away, can that person describe you to somebody else? Your brand is not what you say in the room. It is what gets repeated when you leave it.
Say It Until You Are Sick Of It
Last thing, and this is the part people skip.
Write it down. Say it out loud in the car. Say it to your partner. Say it to the mirror if you have to, and yes, that feels ridiculous.
You will get bored of it long before anybody else has heard it once. That boredom is the finish line, not a warning sign. Every band that has ever played the same song for thirty years figured this out. The thousandth time you say it is somebody's first time hearing it, and they deserve the version you have polished, not the version you are improvising at a bar with a drink in your hand.
You have spent years perfecting hooks for other people's brands. Spend an afternoon on your own.
Community Challenge
Run the prompt. Then post your logline in the comments.
Not a description of what you do. The actual line, exactly as you would say it out loud to a stranger holding a drink.
Two words to pick from:
LOGLINE if you ran it and you are dropping your line below.
TITLE if you are still leading with your job title and you know it needs work.
I will read every one. The lines that make me want to ask a follow up question are going in a future piece, with credit.
Dan Page