Another one of those wishy-washy topics that a lot of people have a hard time even thinking about. Maybe you’ve seen it on the internet or you’ve heard it in video about business or career development, and it is ‘you need to have your own kind of tagline or unique selling proposition or elevator pitch’.
I mean, what is the 30 second blurb that describes you, in essence? Your skills, your talents. What makes you the special unique snowflake that you are?
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And a lot of times, getting to that point is a matter busting out a sheet of paper, a pen, and just going to town for 30 minutes until you can have somewhere between 5 and 7 bullet points that you can keep memorized and finesse over the years, to have basically a paragraph about yourself that encapsulates everything that’s awesome about you.
Of course, it’s not going to be a complete picture, and it’s not going to be due justice to the infinite awesome that you are. But it’s a useful shortcut to describing what makes you, you. What makes you, you.
Now how do you get to that point? Well, besides the pen and paper method I just mentioned, you can do personality tests, you can do strength tests, you can do motivation and conversation style tests, all of which I’ve got available on my website, at richardstep.com. Or you can just do a simple exercise where you figure out, or try to explain yourself as an animal, or an object, and say hey, if I was a tool, I would be this.
If I was an animal, I would be this. And that’s not where you stop, but that’s what gets you started in thinking of this, well, what about that tool, or what about that animal, is most like me, and then I could ascribe to myself. Because it’s hard to start with nothing, you know? Starting from scratch.
But if you can shortcut to an animal or a tool that you’re already familiar with, then you know what it does and how to use it, that gets your mind spinning and the creative juices flowing down a particular path of focus, that you can then flip up, and turn the information that you can use.
So if you are like a hammer, because you’re easy to use ” Not like that. Jeez, come on, work with me here ” But you’re relatively simple from the outer appearance, but you’re so useful and specialized that really nothing else can replace you. I mean, your sole purpose is to put all of your energy into ramming this goal straight into completion, or to yank out and solve problems that are stuck. You see where I’m going here? You provide a method of translating human motion into action, and ultimate results that get buildings created and put together.
That’s what I’m talking about, that kind of description of hey, you’re not a tool. You’re not some wishy-washy description out there in infinite space. You are using these objects and these ideas as shortcuts to describing you. Think about that. Pick something. Figure out how you use it, what it means to you, and how you can use those terms to describe you. And hey, maybe even use that term as a shortcut.
There you go. I hope that clears up a little bit of that wishy-washiness. Peace out.