How to describe your freelance business.

If you're a freelance like me, you're probably always looking for a better way to describe what you do to potential clients. As many times as I've described my practice, you'd think I'd have come up with the perfect elevator speech. But nope. Whatever I say always seems to fall short.

Turns out we're in good company.

David Seah offers a great blog post on his own struggle to describe his freelance practice. It's the kind of article that bears close study and probably some careful reflection.

A few teasers:

I had an insight about how I should tackle the challenge of describing myself in a way that felt intuitive. It's a matter of remembering that the biggest challenge of describing yourself isn't coming up with the right keywords and categories; it's being able to paint a picture in people's minds about how they work with you....

I'm not planning pursuing a straight service model, otherwise I'd just be hanging my set of keywords up on various job boards. The skills I have, in other words, are NOT my offering. I'm seeking a certain kind of personal interaction that happens to make use of my skills; this is the expression of my general desire to create more "awesome and inspiring" experiences for myself and people that I like....

You need to have some kind of story that lays down the foundation, which then helps put you in context to the prospect's vision of the good life.

David goes on to ask five very specific questions in this vein. The first two are from his perpsective and help him discover the kind of client he likes working with; the remaining three are from the prospect's perspective and help the prospect discover whether David's a good fit for them.

The whole thing's very inciteful. Read it all.