The Secret to Explaining What You Do Clearly with Allison Lane

Your message isn’t too nuanced, it’s just not landing.

This episode of the Author's Edge, host Allison Lane explains how experts and creators use a one-sentence "I help statement" to make people get quickly interested.

Allison shares a quick action you can take to rewrite your intro and turn confusion into tell me more. Learn when to use outcomes instead of credentials.

You can be brilliant and still be unclear. Smart people often describe their roles, titles, and process, but skip the result. That’s why people disengage. In this quickie episode, Allison walks you through a simple one-sentence framework that helps people understand what you do in one breath. 

Time Stamps:
 00:00 Why smart people sound vague
 01:10 The hallway problem
 03:05 People hire clarity, not credentials
 04:30 The I help framework
 06:10 How to test and tighten your one-liner
 07:20 Free guide mention

🔗Use this guide to help people understand what you do in one breath. 

Quick Action: 
Write one sentence using this structure:
I help [audience] [get result] so they can [bigger outcome]. 

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Transcript

0:11

It's Allison Lane here with your quickie episode of the Author's Edge, giving you a marketing nugget that you can put in your pocket and use today inside of 15 minutes. I have an issue that I need to share with you. I recently went to the pod fest. Multimedia expo, and I was a speaker there. It was my first year and super exciting hundreds of people, and I turned to someone and said, what's your podcast about? They would hem and haw and it sounded something like this. Well, what we do is we talk to. This type of person, or we interviewed these people because I find that they're so fascinating in their stories, people should really know them. What? I can't even make sense of all of those phrases. It's like they don't match. So these are people who are experts in their fields or they're passionate about. Topic or a cause, and when you struggle to explain what you're doing, it means that people don't get the benefit. They just don't get you. Experienced people often feel like their work is nuanced and complex and interdisciplinary. But I can't, as the audience member who just met you, I can't figure out from your very complicated, we do this so that you can do that. It, it's just not clear. It's super vague even though you feel like you are giving me so much. If people ask, so what do you actually do after you've explained it, clarity is missing. And the real issue is that people tend to lead with their titles or their roles or their credentials, or even worse, their process. Here's what I do and my background is this. As a listener, I'm listening for the outcome. As it relates to me. When people don't quickly understand the result of what you're doing, they disengage. They just sort of walk away from you, as I did several times at Pod Fest where I just thought, I know I'm an expert in this, but. I can't help this person too, especially if they really just can't get their arms around what they're actually doing or why people don't hire your credentials or your background or your process. They hire clarity. Your job isn't to explain everything. It's to orient people fast. So take this one simple action. Write one sentence that starts with, I help, I help someone fill in the blank. The second line is do this. So I help someone get something, do something, achieve something so they can, and then fill in the blank. So the full sentence is, I help audience get, fill in the blank, whatever it is that they wanna do so they can. Fill in the blank and result state of being that they're shooting for, and then test it on someone outside of your sphere of influence and outside of the people who know what you do, you have to test it. If your message sounds muddy, you have to back up and start with clarity. You can do this. If you download my free guide seven Shifts to Build Real authority. at Lane Lit dot com back slash authority, you can start that shift that helps people understand you. In five seconds or less in one breath, because when you're standing next to somebody in a hallway waiting to go into the next workshop or to talk to the next person, you really only have five seconds. So what are you gonna do with your five seconds? What are you going to do with that one breath that you have to share? How you can help someone understand? The good that you are putting out into the world, that's your job. That's this week's action. Go ahead and take it and DM me. What is your one sentence? DM me on LinkedIn. I'm at Allison Lane Lit everywhere, but mainly on LinkedIn and I can't wait to hear from you.