What’s Your Hook?

Posted by Peter on Feb 4, 2012 in Careers, Featured | 7 comments

Imagine for a moment you’re attending a music conference and you meet several individuals for the first time.  Each one tells you what he or she does as follows:

Person A:  “I’ve started a business offering private music instruction, selling guitars, and repairing amplifiers.”

Person B:  “I do a variety of things: notation, sound design, performing and some music therapy, when time allows.  I also just released my first CD.”

Person C:  “I’m running a web site for jazz musicians, performing in an Eighties rock band, and studying for my real estate license.”

What’s your reaction to these individuals?  Are you impressed? A month from now, if you were to find their business cards lying on your desk, do you think you’d remember who they were?  Would you even keep their cards?

Chances are, based on these introductions alone, you would not.  Each provides too much information for someone to follow effectively. They lack a focus; they lack a hook.

Your “hook” will be your pitch, your “personal branding statement”, your “elevator speech,” and it will be particularly helpful on your job search and generally helpful woth everyone new person you meet. Just as the hook of a song sticks in the mind, so your own hook cuts through mental clutter and delivers a clear impact.

When people ask me what I “do” I have a lot of potential responses: I conduct the Career Development Center at Berklee College of Music, I write books for musicians, I help my wife raise and provide for three children, I facilitate professional development experiences for faculty, I play second base on my softball team, I perform with an improvisational music group, and so on.

But this litany is not going to make me memorable. There’s just too much information. So this is the answer I provide when asked this question: I help musicians and music lovers put a plan to their passion. That is my life work; that is my calling. Once I reveal this, the conversation fans out from there.

Here‘s a process for developing your hook and using it:

• Inventory – Write down all your skills, resources, experience, and positive traits.

• Assess – Which are the mountain top qualities that help you stand out?

Is it perfect pitch, quickness at grasping how software works, a unique understanding of children, a special aptitude with numbers, ease with organizing projects?

• Distinction – How can you apply your top quality to the real needs of real people and companies? This becomes your core value proposition. Write it down. Nothing easy – Probably one of the hardest but best things you’ll ever write

• Rehearse/Apply – Distill it and practice expressing it in writing and in conversation.

Find your hook. Be remembered.