Itty Biz: 20 Infomercials and 1 Question, or How I Found Clarity In My Business

Originally posted on Itty Biz by Ashley Sinclair on May 31, 2010.

This article is by artist and designer Amy Crook, who I should have had writing here years ago.

I was talking to the magnificent Ashley Sinclair the other day, and one of the things she remarked on was that I had an unusual amount of clarity about my businesses — I know what I do and what I don’t do, what my assets are and where my boundaries lie.

So how did I get from there — from that sense that I had so much to offer but I didn’t know what or to whom or for how much — to where I am now?
Practice makes perfect.

I was in BNI, a networking group, for a while that required us to give a 30-second “infomercial” (what you would probably call an elevator speech if you’re not in BNI) about our businesses. We were encouraged to mix it up, say something interesting, tell a very short client story or have some sort of special going on every week. So every week I had to stand up and say, “Hi, I’m Amy Crook with Not Dead Yet Studios, and I…”

The first dozen times, it was really painful. And then, one day, it got easier. I’d said it a number of different ways. I’d thought about what got me there, and where I wanted to go from here. I had to tell these people, every week, in a very short amount of time, what made me different from the 73 other graphic designers they’d met.