Why “What Do You Do?” Is So Hard to Answer

I should be very good at answering the question:

“So, what do you do?”

I mean, years ago I literally wrote a six-page guide teaching other people how to answer it.

So naturally, when someone asked me at an event recently, I can't believe how I responded:

“I’m in the branding world…”

Ugh. Really?

Not my finest positioning moment.

What makes that especially funny is that I’ve spent years telling clients not to lead with vague category labels or job titles.

And there I was doing exactly that.

But this isn’t the first time I’ve struggled with the question. It's been a long time struggle because it's such a loaded question.

Years ago, I was heading to a professional women’s networking event.

Networking events are not naturally comfortable for me anyway, and I remember driving down the freeway rehearsing my answer to that difficult question out loud in the car.

New outfit? Check.

Business cards? Check.

Confident response to the inevitable question, “So, what do you do?”

Absolutely not.

Everything I came up with either sounded too vague, too complicated, too puffed up, or somehow disconnected from what I actually did.

I almost didn’t walk into the building.

I made it through the event okay, but determined to figure out why it was so hard to answer the question.

When I got home, I pulled out one of my large drawing notebooks and started writing down all the things I did.

The kinds of clients I served.

The problems I helped solve.

The different ways I helped them.

I literally ran out of room on the page.

And suddenly I thought:

Well, no wonder I don’t know what to say.

If I couldn’t figure out the throughline in all of that, how could I expect someone I had just met to figure it out?

All these years later, I understand that problem differently.

I don’t think struggling to answer “What do you do?” is always an elevator-pitch problem.

Sometimes it’s a positioning problem. And more importantly, a clarity problem.

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Why the question feels so loaded

“What do you do?” sounds like a simple request for information.

But I don’t think that’s all that’s happening.

Whether we realize it or not, we use the answer to quickly place someone in our minds.

What kind of work do they do?
How experienced are they?
How successful do they seem?
How relevant are they to me?

And if we’re being really honest, there can be a little invisible hierarchy happening too. We hear someone’s answer and make quick assumptions about expertise, credibility, status—and sometimes where we think we sit in comparison.

Which is probably why answering the question can feel so loaded.

We know people are forming an impression of us, so we try to manage the impression.

We reach for a title that sounds a little more important. We add jargon. We over-explain. We try to make the work sound bigger or more sophisticated than it really is.

Or we go the other direction and diminish what we do because claiming the full value feels uncomfortable.

Neither one is particularly useful.

The goal isn’t to make yourself sound more important. It’s to help someone place you accurately.

Don’t inflate it. Don’t diminish it. Represent it.

And that requires clarity before it requires clever wording.

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Start by helping people understand where you fit

One of the things I used to teach was:

Go beyond your title and tell people the problem you solve through your work.

I still believe that because a title simply tells someone where to place you in their mental filing cabinet:

“Consultant.”
“Coach.”
“Brand strategist.”
“Financial advisor.”

Useful, but very limited. Titles can put you in a box. And for most people, the "branding box" means logos, colors, and fonts. That's a very, very small part of branding.

Instead, give them enough information to place you more accurately—to understand the kind of value you create and what changes because of your work.

But don’t make it an elaborate “I help…” statement that sounds like you memorized it on the way into the room. That’s equally awkward.

And, your first answer to the question doesn’t need to explain your entire business.

It just needs to give someone enough of a picture to understand you—and enough reason to want to know more.

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Your answer should create recognition, not complete comprehension.

It should be true, understandable, specific enough to mean something, and open enough to invite another question.

That last part matters.

The goal isn’t to have a flawless pitch to impress a stranger and make a sale.

No.

The goal is to have a useful answer that arouses curiosity and leads to actual human conversation.

Start with what you want to be known for

This is where the question becomes especially difficult for experienced people.

Because the longer you’ve been doing something, the more things you’re probably capable of doing.

I could answer with:

Branding.

Design.

Websites.

Marketing.

Messaging.

Strategy.

Consulting.

All true.

But capability and positioning are not the same thing.

The better question is:

If this person remembers one thing about my work tomorrow, what do I want it to be?

That question took me much longer to answer.

For years, a lot of my public-facing brand emphasized the things I made… like websites, marketing materials, brand identities, communications. The deeper strategic work had always been there driving the things I made.

Discovery. Clarity. Positioning. Helping people see what they were too close to seethemselves.

Figuring out what was valuable and distinct about their workbefore we ever started designing anything.

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What changed was that I finally understood I wanted that to be much more central to what I was known for.

And once I got clearer about that, answering “What do you do?” became easier.

Not because I discovered some magical elevator-pitch formula.

Because the positioning underneath the sentence got clearer.

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Today, my answer is:

“I build brands from the inside out, so who you are, what you offer, and how you show up all tell the same story.”

It doesn’t explain everything, thank goodness.

It doesn’t explain Brand With Bravery, my process, positioning, messaging, design, visibility, or every way I might help someone.

But it gives you a pretty good idea of how I think.

And very often the next question is some version of:

“What do you mean by inside out?”

Perfect.

Now we’re having a conversation.

And I have the second layer ready:

“A lot of branding starts with what people see. I startwith getting really clear about who you are, what makes your work valuable, and what you want to be known for. Then we make sure the brand actually reflects that.”

That sounds like something I would actually say to another human being.

Which brings me to another important rule:

Please say it out loud.

Your positioning statement may look gorgeous on a website and sound completely ridiculous coming out of your mouth.

Those are two different tests.

If you would never say it across a table over coffee, don't make yourself recite it at a networking event.

Use normal words.

You don’t need to sound more sophisticated than the work actually is.

And you don't need one sacred answer that you repeat word-for-word everywhere you go.

At a business event, I might use my more specific brand answer.

At church or standing around talking with someone socially, I might simply say:

“I help business owners get clear about what makes their work valuable and then communicate it in a way people understand.”

Same truth.

Different context.

Consistency does not require sameness.

Or, as I sometimes tell clients:

Everything doesn’t have to match exactly. It just needs to look like it’s going to the same party.

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Here's another thing to remember: If nothing you write feels right, stop rewriting the sentence.

This may be the most important part.

If you’ve rewritten your “What do you do?” answer twelve times and every version still makes you cringe, don’t automatically assume you need better copy.

You may need better clarity.

Maybe you’re trying to cram every capability you have into one sentence.

Maybe you’re describing the work you’ve historically done instead of the work you want to become known for.

Maybe your title is technically accurate but doesn’t communicate the real value people experience when they work with you.

Or maybe your understanding of your own work has evolved faster than the language you’ve been using to describe it.

That was me.

Again.

Which is why I can laugh at how I so easily responded to the “What do you do?” question with “I’m in the branding world…” now.

Technically true.

Almost completely unhelpful.

But the sentence itself wasn’t really the problem.

Before I could arrive at:

“I build brands from the inside out…”

I had to get clearer about what my deepest contribution actually was, what I wanted to be known for, what belonged upstream of design, what was distinct about the way I worked, and what I was finally willing to claim.

Then the words got easier.

Because sometimes “What do you do?” is difficult to answer for a very simple reason:

You’re trying to write the sentence before you’ve made the positioning decision.

And no clever elevator pitch can do that work for you.

If you've been circling your own answer and nothing quite feels right, you may simply be too close to the bottle to read the label.

That's exactly the kind of thing we can uncover together in a Clarity Session.

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