Know This? It's the #1 Key to Pitching Yourself

A new client showed up on a call yesterday - she'd left her job 2 weeks earlier and had already booked a score of coffees, a clutch of "catch ups; she was reading a murder of books about how to find her new path and had already started a consulting gig -- oh but she was doing a lot more yoga. #selfcare.

By her own admission, she hasn't come to any deep or useful insights. She's a self-professed doer and this DOING of short term things relieved anxiety of NOT DOING but it also was NOT HELPING get clearer on what she actually wanted. Here's one of the first things she and I will do when we start our engagement -- it's the #1 key anyone needs to pitch themselves.

Knowing your professional story's happy ending.

WHAT'S A PROFESSIONAL STORY?

That's the thing you're telling people whenever you answer the questions: "What do you do?" or "How did you get into that?" Or when your manager asks: "Where do you see yourself going?" It communicates to people what you do in the world, what results you get, whether they want to lean in and ask more or yawn and walk away. For managers & bosses it also helps them remember, relate & invest in you. It's awesome that you founded a textile company when you backpacked through Kenya for 9 months after college, but how is it how relevant to your work as a Product Manager at Facebook 15 years on?

To answer that question we need to project into the future, which brings us to your happy ending = your professional vision (aka who you wanna be when you grow up). Where you are, not just in the next job, but in the next 10 years.

I know. It's a lot, but it's also crucial.

WHY KNOW YOUR ENDING FIRST

When you know your happy ending you know which pieces of your professional story - how you got to where you are, where you are going & what makes you uniquely qualified to bring others along to that happy ending - to bring in and which to leave out. That is essential when it comes to articulating what you want and why your boss, interviewer, colleagues, CEO, board members, etc. should invest in you. As you can see, communicating your value is as important a skill to master as the actual skills you need to do your job.
A wise woman (me) once said:

50% of the job is being good at the job.

The other 50% is being good at talking about how good you are at the job.

Let me hit you with a metaphor: remember writing essays in grade school? Think of that happy ending as your thesis statement. When you know that, you can backfill the relevant pieces of your experiences as supporting points to fit that narrative.
Included in that essay would be:

• Values: what you stand for

• Mission: what you want to be known for

• Relevant skills & strengths

• Relevant experiences.

EXAMPLE

One person’s background can go in any given direction - stories are fluid and malleable. A woman of Mexican descent who worked in finance could tell a very different story depending on her happy ending.

If she wants to become the Partner of a venture fund bent on investing in the best fintech startups in emerging markets then she’d speak to her finance background & experiences in fintech, her deep understanding of emerging markets, including Mexico, perhaps & the things that made her an effective investor or operator.

But if that same woman wanted to become the Diversity & Inclusion evangelist who won’t rest until over half the CEOs of all banks are women and people of color -- well that’s a whole other story -- one about the lack of diversity she saw in finance, maybe her experience as a woman of color & a lot of data -- if she wanted to speak on it, we’d have to bring up the times she had been a speak, develop that message.

WHAT WE RISK WHEN WE DON'T KNOW OUR ENDING

Spending time you can’t afford going round and round in your head, chasing opportunities that seem right but probably aren’t, having unfulfilling one on ones, reading random business books, taking advice from well-meaning people who don’t have their agenda top of mind and not getting what you want isn't just for job seekers.

Mid-career women with full time jobs are tap dancing themselves to exhaustion to get to the C-Suite. And while promotions are at least partially based on results and actions speak louder than words, they often leave the power of their professional story on the table. What a waste! It's free and re-useable and doesn't require you to do anything more than package all you've already done.

Instead they see all the possibilities in front of them and get paralyzed or overwhelmed and freeze in their tracks.

It's easier to tick off short term to-dos than it is to plan long term to-bes.

Meanwhile the opportunities, projects, extracurriculars, etc that are most effective for your brand & professional future pass you by.

Most people don’t get very far because they never take the time to really understand what they’re aiming for. They don’t have a clear system to tease out how exactly to find it and that’s what frustrates their progress.