Think About What You Are Selling

“What do you do for a living?”

For many years, my answer to that question was that “I am a developer.” Later, this evolved into “I am a solution architect” and “I am an application development strategist.”

On a side note, I must — very shamefully — admit that these little title upgrades made the ancient, primitive, status-hungry part of my brain very happy. Whenever I received or gave myself a promotion, the needle on my status-o-meter went up, and I felt special. And in another dark corner of my mind, my inner child fantasized about how clients now would beat a path to my door for sure.

Anyway. While all the titles I’ve had were perfectly accurate, I can’t really say that any of them got me any new clients.

Nor were they a great catalyst for further conversation at parties. At best, they resulted in the follow-up question “Oh, so you’re in IT?” Often captioned with “That’s so boring.”

And I don’t blame these people for judging me:

Most job titles and skillsets can sound pretty dry if you just lay them out plainly.

One guy that knew this well already is Dave, an anesthetic specialist doctor whom I met on a mountaineering trip to Chamonix. He introduced himself with “Hi, I’m Dave. I put people to sleep.” To which I…