I know, I know. It’s an age-old saying. But my parents were in town from Texas this weekend and when we bumped in to friends of theirs (yes, it’s a small world after all), it was interesting to see how they answered the question of what I did for a living. Mind you, these are people in their late 60’s who I don’t talk “shop” with a whole lot.

But you know what? They did a great job of explaining it. Which made me feel good, and then think back to the basics. When I talk with colleagues, I often assume that we are all working with the same general information. But when I talk to those who don’t really have an idea of what we do or how we do it, I use the same vocabulary, but tell a simple story. After all, a company is the stories that it tells (and that others tell about it).

So make sure that a five-year old can tell your story. If not, then you may be complicating things. After all, it doesn’t feel good when you spend ten minutes explaining what you do and then the other person says, “That’s nice, but what do you really do?”.

Just another reason to eradicate all marketing speak from our lives (starting with “out of the box,” please.)

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