Your Story in Three Sentences

Imagine a tutor named Delphine Marchetti who teaches math to students in middle school and high school. Mrs. Halvorsen calls her about her son, Theo, who is 14. Since a hard year in seventh grade, Theo has told everyone he is “not a math person.” Near the end of the call, Mrs. Halvorsen asks, “Tell me a little about you. How did you end up tutoring?”

Delphine has a student at four, and she gives the answer she always gives. “I have a master’s in math education, and I taught middle school math for eight years. I’ve tutored for six years now, mostly algebra and geometry. I’ve worked with about 120 students, and there are a lot of reviews on my site.” All of it is true. Mrs. Halvorsen thanks her and says she will be in touch.

Mrs. Halvorsen has spoken to two other tutors that week. Each one also gave her a degree and a number of years. She cannot tell what would be different about any of them, so she chooses the one who charges $20 less an hour.

Suppose instead that Delphine answers with her reason for the work. “Every year I taught seventh grade, a few bright kids decided they weren’t math people, nearly always over one topic they’d missed. Now I tutor to find that one topic. So with Theo, I’d spend the first session watching him work before I teach him anything.” Then she asks, “What does Theo say happened in seventh grade?”

“Fractions,” Mrs. Halvorsen says. “He says that’s when he got lost.” She books Delphine for Tuesday afternoons.

Delphine had the same eight years both times. What changed was the question she answered. The first answer told Mrs. Halvorsen that Delphine was qualified, which every tutor on her list could say. The second told her why Delphine does this work and what Theo would get from it.

So when a client asks about you, or opens your About page, give them three sentences. Say why you do the work, what you bring because of it, and what that means for them. Here is why a list of credentials falls short, and what three professionals found.

A list of credentials answers only one of a client’s two questions

People want two questions answered about anyone they meet. The first is whether the person means them well. The second is whether the person is able to act on what they intend. The psychologist Susan Fiske calls the first warmth and the second competence.

The step from her research to a client’s question is the course’s own. Here is the step. A degree, a certificate, and a number of years answer the second question. A client sent by a friend has mostly answered it already, because they placed you in a tier before the first call. The first question is still open. Your reason for the work is what answers it, because it shows what you care about when you are on their job.

Mrs. Halvorsen asked how Delphine ended up tutoring. A list of qualifications answered a question she had not asked. It works the same way as a credential offered before anyone asked for it. A client who has hired many professionals has heard that before.

A new agent stopped competing on his track record, and won listings

William McIntosh is a real estate agent who started selling homes in the early 1980s. In 2016, he wrote on ActiveRain about his first listing appointments. He was scared, he wrote, and looking back, his biggest problem was his own doubt. He kept asking himself the same question. “Why should home owners hire me instead of one of dozens of other agents who all have an established, successful track record and I don’t?”

Then one day, he wrote, he saw that “it is impossible for a new agent to compete with established agents based on track records and sales success.” So he stopped trying. He made a list of what he could offer sellers that the other agents could not, or did not focus on.

The list held words like “honesty; enthusiasm; integrity; passion; dedication.” He began “weaving these qualities and powerful themes into my conversations with sellers,” he wrote. After that, he “consistently beat out the top agents for listings.” He signed more than 80% of the sellers he met at a listing appointment.

McIntosh’s move is the one this lesson teaches. He stopped answering the question about his record, and he told sellers what he would bring. His words are where the course parts from him. Honesty and dedication are words any agent can say, the same way any business can call itself luxury. So keep his move, and give the fact behind each word. “I call every seller on Friday, even when there’s nothing to report” says dedication in a way a seller can check.

A Los Angeles designer’s reason for the work comes from the jobs she is hired after

In August 2026, Business of Home asked six interior designers how they make a good impression at a first consultation. Brooke Spreckman, a designer in Los Angeles, answered with her reason for the work.

“It is far too often that I’m hired after a client has dealt with an incapable previous contractor or designer,” she said. Some of her clients had been “taken advantage of by a contractor who overpriced and underdelivered.” So she feels “the need to be protective over how people are taken care of in this industry.”

Her answer opens with “I’m a people person,” which any designer could say. The part nobody else could say is the jobs she is hired after. That is her reason. It also tells a client what she brings, which is someone watching how their project is bought and built. A client who was let down on their last job might recognize it in her answer.

A photographer put two plain facts in his bio, and a client wrote within minutes

In 2014, a photographer who signs himself Scott wrote on the Photocrati blog about rewriting his bio. He had a long, personal bio and a much shorter introduction. He rewrote the introduction as 10 facts about himself, and he kept the long bio for anyone who wanted more.

Two of the facts were that he is color blind and dyslexic. Those facts, he wrote, define him “as a photographer and writer.”

“Within minutes of making the switch I received an email from a potential client,” he wrote. She was an optometrist who wanted photos of her office and her patients. “What captured my attention most was you said you were color blind and dyslexic,” she wrote. She works with children whose reading problems often turn out to be vision problems.

Neither fact is a qualification. Each one was true, specific, and his own, so a client who cared about it could find herself in it. Scott’s page also has the shape this lesson suggests. The short introduction is what a client meets, and the long bio is there for the client who wants more.

Three sentences say why you do the work, what you bring, and what the client gets

Three sentences is the course’s suggestion, and here is the reason. One sentence carries why you do the work. One carries what you bring because of it. One says what that means for the client. A fourth sentence is usually the start of the list of credentials. Or it starts a story that runs on until the client looks at the clock.

Why you do the work is a moment or a fact from your work or your life. Delphine’s was the bright students in her classroom who decided they were bad at math. Spreckman’s is the clients who come to her after a bad contractor.

What you bring is what you do differently because of that reason. Delphine looks for the one topic a student missed. A client can see it in the first session.

What it means for the client is that habit, said about their job. For Theo, it meant a first session spent watching him work. The course suggests starting the third sentence with “So,” because the word ties what the client gets to your reason.

The three sentences go in two places. The first is the top of your About page. Your training, your years, and your memberships stay on the page below them, for the client who looks. The second is your answer when a client asks about you or how you started. Say the three sentences, then hand the conversation back with a question about the client.

Your story is not the first sentence about your work. That sentence names the one kind of work you want to be known for, and the three sentences come after it. They also stay out of a proposal, which leaves out the page about you.

Why a story that stays about you goes wrong

Imagine a florist named Imogen Pell who writes her About page on a Sunday night between two weddings. “Flowers have been my passion since I was a little girl in my grandmother’s garden. After 12 years in banking, I followed my heart. I opened Pell & Bloom in 2018 and have loved every wedding since.”

Mrs. Kettering is planning her daughter’s wedding in June. She opens Imogen’s page, then the pages of two other florists. Both of them also begin with a love of flowers. She cannot tell what Imogen would do differently, so she books the florist her planner suggested.

Imogen’s mistake was writing three sentences that stay about her. They give a reason, but no sentence says what she brings or what a bride’s mother would get. “Passion” is also a word every florist’s page can use.

The version that works keeps the garden and carries it through to the client. “My grandmother grew everything she cut, so I learned flowers in a garden, not at the wholesale market. I still grow about a third of what I use, on two acres outside town. So in June, your tables can have garden roses that were in the ground that morning.” Mrs. Kettering calls to ask whether the roses come in pale pink.

Your reason for the work does not have to be a moving story

Many service professionals feel their reason for the work is too ordinary to tell. They fell into it, or it paid better than their last job. A story, to them, sounds like something with a hardship in it.

Spreckman’s reason is what she sees on the jobs she is hired for. Scott’s facts were two plain facts about himself. Delphine’s reason was what she saw in her own classroom every year. A reason only has to be true and to show up in how you work. If you fell into the work, your reason is what has kept you in it. It is the part of the work you still care about.

How to write and use your three sentences

1. Write down your reason for the work, as a moment or a fact. Ask yourself what you saw, in this work or before it, that you still think about. For example, a dog walker might write that he walked a neighbor’s rescue dog one summer. He watched it stop shaking at the door.
2. Under it, write what you do differently because of that reason. Make it a habit a client could see in the first week. For example, an event planner might write that she visits every venue at the hour the party will start. She goes to see the light and hear the noise.
3. Write the third sentence, which says what the habit means for the client. Start it with “So.” For example, a home organizer can write, “So before I move a single box, I ask each person in the house where they look for things.”
4. Read the three sentences aloud. Cross out each word a competitor could use unchanged, such as passionate or dedicated. Cross out the shop words that lower your tier too, such as package and deal. Put the fact behind each word in its place. For example, a music teacher’s “I am passionate about music” becomes “I still play in a string quartet every Thursday night.”
5. Put the three sentences at the top of your About page. Move your degrees, certificates, years, and memberships below them. For example, a personal trainer moves “certified strength and conditioning specialist” to the end of the page.
6. When a client asks about you, say the three sentences, and then ask a question about the client. For example, after her three sentences, a private chef asks, “What does a good Sunday dinner look like at your house?”
7. When a client asks about a credential, answer in a sentence or two and stop. For example, a travel adviser who is asked whether she is a certified Italy specialist can say, “Yes. I’ve planned about 40 trips to Italy since 2019.”

Next: You will see why posting less online gives you more authority, because too much visibility makes good work look ordinary.