What's Your Brilliance?
Posted on April 10, 2012 by Debra Woog, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.
Let Debra Woog help you to define your Brilliance as a woman entrepreneur
Last week I shared how I revisited my definition of my Brilliance. Here’s a funny story about what happened next.
Building on my revision, I wanted a snappy new way to introduce myself. After two days of reflection (admittedly I was doing this work part-time, not all day long), I dreamed up a bright, shiny elevator pitch for connect2 Corporation. That evening I went to a women’s networking event in New York City. Their format for networking was for each woman in our group of 8 to introduce herself and ask for any help she wanted, within a seven-minute time limit. (Excellent format, by the way.)
So when it was my turn, I said my name and that I wanted to test market my new intro on them. They all gave me friendly nods of agreement. I introduced myself with my beautiful sentences, read right directly from my journal. Then I asked my mini-focus group what service they thought I provide. They all guessed differently, and none of them were right. What surprising and valuable news!
Then I said, “Okay, forget about that. Let me try my ‘old’ one out on you.” Again, they nodded in agreement.
Off the top of my head, I gave them my tried-and-true description*. They totally got it right away. Again, surprising and valuable! To test them further I asked, “If you could spend a whole day with me working on your business, how would you want me to help?”
Their responses varied. “I’d want you to help me figure out my Brilliance! … I’d want you to help me get systems in place so I could spend more time doing what I love to do! … I’d want you to help me set up a team!” Amazing. These are all services I provide as part of the Brilliance-Based Business Success System,TM which none of these delightful strangers had ever seen.
Long story short, I brought to that introduction all sorts of well thought-out vocabulary words that made perfect sense to me. But it turns out that as intellectually crafted as my words were, they weren’t well felt-out. Worse yet, they didn’t make sense to anyone but me.
Three lessons learned here, for all of us trying to articulate our Brilliance:
1. A newer way isn’t always better.
2. Get out of your head and into your heart.
3. Get your heart out of your house and into your community. Only after testing it with your target market will you know what language communicates with them most effectively.
How do you introduce yourself? Do people immediately understand the value of what you provide? If I might be in your target market, I invite you to set up a quick Connection Call to test your language on me. I’m good with giving constructive feedback – like my SIQ says, I’m “lovingly honest.”
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- Tried and true version actually varies every time I speak it. It’s something like: “I’m a management consultant for women entrepreneurs whose businesses are based on their ideas and creativity, what I call a Brilliance-Based Business.”
