Just heard this template from The Art of Charm ep. 782 for how to answer “What do you do?” when you are meeting someone in a business context.

The idea is that you want to tell them something they can remember and repeat to the right person. So, you lead off with the kind of people you help, and then you say how you help them.

For me that’s something like: “I help B2B software companies by advising them on their product engineering.” I would somewhat alter that based on who exactly I was talking to (maybe niching down to fintech or mobile). It’s intentionally not very detailed to either invite questions or to let the conversation move on.

Later, if that person meets someone who works at a B2B software company that says something like “I wish I could get a handle on our developer productivity”, they might think of me.