At a glance: the words for describing your work were written for platforms and finance
Marketing's everyday vocabulary — distribution, targeting, attribution, optimisation – was authored by Silicon Valley and the Big Four accounting firms, not by the people who do the work.
That's why describing your practice can feel wrong: you are translating what you actually do into a frame written for a different buyer.
The fix is to name what you actually do, in your own words.
Four Wisepreneurs guests : Meredith Fuller, Robert Vlach, Michael Zipursky and Krystal Hille show how.
The words we reach for to describe professional work were written by platforms and finance, for their purposes, before any of us sat down to name what we actually do.
You open LinkedIn and place the cursor inside your summary. A sentence appears: "I help organisations achieve measurable outcomes through tailored solutions."
It could be a job ad, a pitch deck, or a line lifted from someone else's website. The sentence may be technically accurate, but it still feels borrowed and can apply to anyone.
The sentence feels borrowed because it is. The words we reach for to describe professional work were written by platforms and finance, for their purposes, before any of us sat down to name what we actually do.
I think that 'feeling' matters. You recognise the words, yet you can't hear your own voice in them. The living detail of your work has disappeared into what we believe are approved phrases.
Perhaps you replace "tailored solutions" with "evidence-based support". You add a reference to outcomes, impact or value. The sentence becomes smoother while the sense of wrongness remains.
It's tempting to treat this as a writing problem. A better headline, a firmer niche statement or a clearer formula appears to offer the answer. That response sends you deeper into the same language that produced the discomfort.
The problem begins earlier, with the frame deciding which words count.
The language came from somewhere
The common language of marketing now centres on distribution, targeting, attribution and optimisation. Campaigns reach defined audiences, activity enters a funnel, and dashboards assign value to each step. The work becomes visible through what can be tracked.
That language has a history. Silicon Valley built much of the technology that turned marketing into a measurement discipline. Platforms needed activity that could be counted, compared and sold.
Finance also shaped the frame. The large accounting and advisory firms, including the Big Four, helped reposition the chief financial officer as an arbiter of organisational value. Other functions then learned to explain their contribution through finance's terms.
Paul Worthington makes this point in his Substack newsletter, Off Kilter. In "Off Kilter 235: Danger Will Robinson, Danger", he traces how powerful institutions helped establish the frame through which marketing is understood.
I take Worthington's observation as a useful explanation for the language many independent professionals inherit. The available vocabulary was built around the needs of platforms, large organisations and financial reporting. Those systems want activity that can be distributed, attributed and measured.
Frames do not win because they best explain reality. They win because they align the financial incentives of the powerful institutions behind them.
Repeated often enough, the frame begins to look like reality itself. Work that fits inside it appears clear and credible. Work that resists easy measurement can appear vague, even when its effects are readily understood by the people involved.
This creates a translation problem for an independent professional. Your work may depend on noticing what a client has missed, asking the question that changes a decision, identifying a pattern across several conversations, or giving language to a concern that has remained indistinct.
An attribution engine has little use for those descriptions. A CFO may reasonably ask for evidence of value, yet the reporting categories rarely capture the full path from a well-timed conversation to a sounder decision six months later.
When you describe your practice through that frame, you start translating living work into institutional categories. "I help" leads to an audience, an outcome and a mechanism. The sentence becomes neat enough for a database field.
The wrongness comes from the distance between the sentence and the work.
Marketing still has clear uses. People need ways to find each other, understand an offer and decide whether a conversation is worth having. Distribution, targeting and measurement can all support that process.
The trouble begins when marketing's measurement frame becomes the only acceptable way to describe professional work. Every contribution then has to pass through words designed for campaigns, reporting systems and purchasing decisions at scale.
An independent practice has a different centre of gravity. The work often happens between particular people, around a particular problem, at a moment when experience changes what can be seen or done. Its value can be specific before it becomes countable.
This helps explain why another round of rewriting can make an about line feel even less convincing. The language becomes more compliant with the frame while moving further from the actual work.
Listen to how practitioners name the work
The guests on the Wisepreneurs podcast offer a more grounded vocabulary. They speak about naming, reputation, conversations and authority through the work each person knows directly. Their words carry more weight than another formula for a profile page.
Meredith Fuller is a psychologist and the guest in the episode "Invisible Expertise". She puts the first task like this:
One of the things that's important is to understand, and name what it is you do, rather than feeling that you should be apologizing because of what you don't do like everyone else.
Meredith Fuller
Her wording begins with understanding and naming. That sequence matters because a borrowed description often starts with comparison. You look at what others call themselves, identify the accepted category and squeeze your work into it.
Apology can enter almost invisibly. You soften the unusual part, hide the range of situations you can read, or choose a familiar label that requires less explanation. The result feels safer because it resembles something already recognised.
Meredith's invitation returns attention to the work itself.
- What do you notice that others miss?
- What can you name, assess, repair, clarify or resolve?
- Which situations become more workable because you're in the room?
Those questions seek concrete verbs. They move closer to what happens between you and the person who asks for your help.
Robert Vlach, author of The Freelance Way and guest in "Why Your Good Name Beats Personal Branding", describes reputation in equally direct terms:
An established association of quality between the person and their expertise. It's not a general reputation; it's a reputation for being great at what you do.
Robert Vlach
A good name connects a person with a recognisable standard of work. Someone remembers that you can bring a divided group to a decision, edit an argument until its logic holds, or identify why a project keeps stalling. The association grows through specific experiences and credible accounts from others.
Robert then separates that good name from the production of an image:
Personal branding is a marketing discipline, and it's quite new. It's about creating an image, often inspired by show business.
Robert Vlach
Image-making invites attention towards appearance, consistency and audience response. A good name directs attention towards the quality attached to a person's work. That distinction helps explain why some advice about visibility feels theatrical to professionals whose credibility comes from what happens in the work.
Michael Zipursky is the founder of Consulting Success and the guest in "Why Conversations Beat Marketing". He names the commercial centre of consulting:
In the business of consulting, the most important thing, hands down is conversations with clients. Everything that people do from a building perspective, the goal of that is conversations.
Michael Zipursky
This gives every article, profile, podcast appearance and email a human destination. A person reads or listens, recognises something relevant and decides to speak with you. The conversation allows both people to understand the problem, the fit and the possible work.
Metrics can report reach, clicks and responses. The conversation reveals whether your words reached someone with a real concern and gave them enough confidence to talk about it. That's a much closer account of how many professional relationships begin.
Krystal Hille is a book mentor and the guest in "The Book That Makes Your Expertise Visible". She describes authority as something discovered through expression:
Authority isn't created through the book, it is recognised, it is uncovered. So the 'onlyness' of somebody, the unique essence of who they are. I find it's the hardest thing for people to identify what that is.
Krystal Hille
A book can make a person's way of seeing visible. It can show how they distinguish one kind of problem from another, which questions they ask first, and how they arrange ideas so a reader can act. The authority comes from those recognisable choices.
Krystal's word "onlyness" points towards the hardest part of writing any professional description. The details most natural to you can be the hardest to see. They've become ordinary through familiarity, even when other people experience them as rare and valuable.
Taken together, these guests describe work in human terms. Name the thing you do. Build a good name around its quality. Use public activity to create worthwhile conversations. Reveal the particular way you see and respond.
None of those ideas requires a grand claim. They ask for accuracy.
Author the description
The task is to author your own description of what you do.
Authorship begins with permission to use language that belongs to the work. A psychologist may name the pattern she helps someone recognise. A consultant may describe the decision he helps a leadership group make. A book mentor may explain how she identifies the idea that can carry a manuscript.
These descriptions may take longer to write because they can't be assembled from standard phrases. They require attention to the actions, distinctions and changes that make the work recognisable.
A useful description can hold complexity without becoming foggy. It can say who brings you into a conversation, what has usually become difficult, what you pay attention to, and what becomes possible through the work. Each detail gives the reader something concrete to recognise.
The aim is fidelity. The words should stay close enough to the work that you can say them aloud without feeling that a corporate copywriter has borrowed your mouth.
That may produce a sentence with less polish and more truth. It may use a verb that rarely appears in marketing templates. It may name a problem through the words clients use in conversation.
Your description also has room to change. As your work develops, you may recognise a thread that was present all along. A phrase that once felt adequate may become too broad, and a more exact name may appear.
I'd treat that change as part of authorship. You're paying closer attention to what you do, how you do it and why someone values your contribution.
The larger marketing frame will remain around us. Platforms will measure, finance teams will ask for evidence, and organisations will continue to buy tools promising clearer attribution. Those activities can serve their purposes.
Your practice deserves words written for its purpose.
So return to the sentence on the screen. Listen for the borrowed phrases, then look past them towards the real encounters, decisions and changes your work supports. Give yourself permission to write the description from there.
Name the work as closely as you can, and let the right people recognise it.
Frequently asked questions
Is marketing the problem, or the way I describe my work?
Marketing still does useful work: it helps people find you, understand your offer, and decide whether to talk to you. The problem starts when its measurement frame becomes the only acceptable way to describe professional work. Your practice deserves words written for its purpose, not for a dashboard.
What should I write instead of a generic 'I help businesses grow' line?
Name the specific thing you do and the change it produces. Who brings you in, what has usually gone wrong by that point, what you pay attention to, and what becomes possible through the work. Concrete verbs do more than a category label.
How is this different from personal branding?
Personal branding is a marketing discipline about creating an image. A good name is different: it is an established association between you and the quality of your work, built by other people's accounts of it. One is a performance; the other is a reputation.
References
Meredith Fuller, The Wisepreneurs Podcast
Invisible Expertise: How Introverted Professionals Articulate What They Know
Robert Vlach, The Wisepreneurs Podcast
Professional Reputation: Why Your Good Name Beats Personal Branding
Michael Zipursky, The Wisepreneurs Podcast
Consulting Success: Why Conversations Beat Marketing for Independent Consultants
Krystal Hille, The Wisepreneurs Podcast
Expert Positioning: The Book That Makes Your Expertise Visible
Paul Worthington, "Off Kilter 235: Danger Will Robinson, Danger" (Substack)
Gregory Bateson, framing theory
Erving Goffman, framing theory
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When you want a second pair of eyes on your own practice, the Positioning and Practice Audit is how I work with people: wisepreneurs.com.au/marketing-partnership