What Do You Do?

There’s a real challenge, I think, for so many of us when we’re asked the question ‘What do you do?’. If you can fit it all in to a single LinkedIn bio you’re doing pretty well.

I don’t mean this as a symptom of a lack of focus - although obviously that can be an issue as well - but if you’re attempting to monetise your skills, it can be difficult to know how to sell yourself, how to do that, and to who (depending, perhaps, on who’s asking the question). For instance, I at times am an actor, a director, a tour guide, a dramaturg, a playwright, a novelist, and a public speaking coach. And (as you may have guessed) that’s not even half of a full list, and I’m only stopping now because it’s beginning to sound like an incoherent sales pitch).

Not only might this be a bit of a challenge when touting for business (or indeed writing your business cards), but it may also present difficulties when prioritising workload: do you spend time refining a series off workshops when you haven’t yet secured the clients for those workshops, or do you sink a month working on the opening chapters of a book that you had the idea for this time last year? You’ll notice that both those examples involve manifesting work (and presumably money) for yourself without anybody else asking or expecting an end result.

I speak to many people who have this challenge - that have been given the (in my opinion unhelpful) advice that they should focus on ‘just one thing’. I have a series of methodologies that I find work for me - not all the time, to be transparent, and sometimes they do outright fail - but I’m interested to hear from you: if you are demonstrably More Than One Thing, how do you make that work? And how do you successfully sell that to your clients without being confusing?