Become Irresistible in Your Industry (Steal This Formula)

Graham Cochrane (0:01)

Welcome to The Graham Cochrane Show, where each week I help you create more money, margin, and meaning in your life. I'm your host, of course, Graham Cochrane. Let's get into it.

So what do you do? It's the most important question you'll ever be asked in business, and most entrepreneurs blow it every single time they're asked. They start explaining their process, their method, their certifications. You can literally watch the other person's eyes glaze over. But there is one simple sentence that flips it. If you say it the right way, people lean in, they ask for your card, and sometimes they turn into clients on the spot. And today I'm going to hand you the exact formula. So stop explaining yourself, and let's make you irresistible. Now, I don't know if you're an extrovert or an introvert, but if you've ever been on an airplane where you're sitting and then you've got someone next to you, and invariably they want to talk to you because they're probably an extrovert, I'm looking at you, mom, and they say, so what do you do for a living? Right? When that conversation happens, it might start with where you're going, you're going home, or you go on vacation, and then when they want to ask the obvious question that everybody seems to want to ask, what do you do?

I always freeze up. I mean, historically I have. And I've tried to explain what I do a myriad of different ways. And I just, I hate talking about myself. I really, really do. As an introvert, I just prefer to be quiet on an airplane. In fact, the airplane to me is, and was at least before the internet made it to the airplane, the last quiet place on earth. It was the same thing with cruise ships before the internet made it to cruise ships. This darn satellite internet's finding us everywhere. Cruise ships, airplanes, and maybe out in the woods were the only last remaining places you could be and not be bothered by somebody and actually have peace. And it's not that I don't like people, it's just I'm around people a lot, and there's moments where I want to have some peace and quiet. But invariably when I want to have peace and quiet on an airplane, somebody asks, what do you do? That's why, pro tip, I wear my AirPods, even though I'm not listening to anything. I'm just signaling to you passive aggressively to say, please don't talk to me.

So if you sit next to me on an airplane, you see me with AirPods, you know I'm not listening to anything. You just tap me on the shoulder and say, hey, Graham, I know there's nothing coming out of this. Yeah, you're right. But if you've ever been asked that, what do you do? How do you typically respond?

And it's not just on airplanes. It's when you're at a conference, you're networking, you're at an event, you are in a mastermind, you're new to a group coaching program or a mastermind, and someone says, what do you do? And you fumble and you stumble, you don't know what to say, or you say all the wrong things. Here's what most people do when they're asked that question. They start describing their work.

They start describing their work, and that's not the right answer. So they start to say, well, these are the things I do, the tasks I do.

I podcast, I do YouTube, I write books, you know, they talk about the things they do. Or they talk about their certifications. Well, I'm a certified John Maxwell coach, I'm a this, I'm a that, I'm a certified nutritionist. That's again not answering the question, what do you do? That's answering the question, what certifications have you achieved? They start to talk about their process or their method. This one's huge. Well, I have a unique methodology where I take, you know, people through this 17 step process that connects them to their higher consciousness and a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You've lost them, right? They talk about their process or their method.

Related to that, people talk about their unique angle. Well, I, you know, I'm a business coach, but I do things very differently. It's like when you go to those restaurants and they say, hey, welcome to whatever, whatever kitchen. We do things a little bit differently around here. It's like everybody says that. Everybody says they do things a little differently. I mean, that's kind of the whole point. So it's a pointless statement, right? But we love our unique angle. I'm so different. I'm the most unique business coach in the world. And we talk about what makes us unique.