For years, whenever someone asked what I did for a living, my answer was always the same.
"As little as possible."
My wife hated it. She'd give me the look from across the table — the one that says, you're doing this on purpose — because I was. Some people laughed. Some probably thought I was trying a little too hard to be clever.
There was actually a reason behind it.
We spend a lot of our time helping businesses build systems, automate repetitive work, and eliminate busywork. In my head, the joke was the setup. I figured people would laugh and ask, "Okay...what does that actually look like?" Then we'd have the real conversation.
Almost nobody ever did.
Instead, they usually took me at face value. And if I'm honest, I probably delivered it with too straight a face to convince them otherwise.
It took me much longer than it should have to realize I had fallen into the same trap I see business owners fall into all the time.
I assumed everyone else was connecting the same dots I was.
They weren't.
The joke wasn't costing me because it wasn't funny. It was costing me because I expected curiosity to do the work that clarity should have been doing all along.
Eventually I had to answer the question for myself.
When you strip away everything on our website, Growth Forge Studio really does two things. We help trades, contractors, and other blue-collar businesses generate more leads. And we help nonprofits and municipalities build strategic plans and then actually execute them.
Those are two completely different conversations.
A roofer doesn't care about strategic planning. A city administrator doesn't care how many roofing leads we generated last month.
So I stopped trying to force one answer to fit everyone.
If I'm talking to someone in the trades, I tell the story about helping businesses generate leads. I talk about the systems we build, the way we think about marketing, and the results we've seen for businesses like theirs.
If I'm talking to someone in the nonprofit or municipal world, I tell a different story. We talk about strategic planning, community engagement, and why execution matters more than the document itself. Our value isn't just helping organizations decide where they're want to go. It's helping them actually get there.
If I don't know who I'm talking to yet, I simply say we're a content and strategy studio. Then I explain that our work generally falls into one of those two paths and let them tell me which conversation applies to them. That isn't a dodge. It's still a system. It just leaves room to learn who's standing in front of me.
This isn't some revolutionary marketing breakthrough. Everyone has heard they need an elevator pitch.
What took me so long was realizing I didn't need one pitch.
I needed the right one.
Most businesses aren't split between two very different markets like ours. But almost every business owner faces the same challenge. Someone asks what you do, and you start building the answer in real time. You mention a little of this, a little of that, hoping something lands.
Take a landscaper.
One homeowner wants someone dependable to mow the lawn every other week. Another is dreaming about a backyard where their family will spend summer evenings together.
Same business.
Completely different conversations.
The landscaper doesn't need to change what they do. They need to change which story they tell.
The real question isn't, Do I have a good elevator pitch?
It's, Do I know who's asking, and do I have the right answer ready for them?
Most owners have one answer for everybody. It's usually some version of, "We do a little bit of everything."
True. Useless.
Put It to Work
Don't ask AI to write your elevator pitch.
Ask it to help you discover it.
Start with this:
"Help me identify the different types of people who ask what my business does. Don't organize them by demographics or job titles. Organize them by why they're asking and what they're hoping to accomplish."
Once you have that list, pick your three most common audiences and go one step deeper.
"For each audience, tell me what they actually care about, what they're worried about, and what proof would make them trust me."
Now you're thinking like your customer instead of like your business.
Finally, ask AI to help you turn those insights into something conversational.
"Write a two-sentence answer I could give if this person asked what my business does. Make it sound like something I'd actually say over coffee, not something I'd put on a brochure."
Don't stop there.
Read it out loud.
Change the words.
Make it sound like you.
The goal isn't to let AI write your story. The goal is to use AI to think through your story before you're standing in front of someone trying to invent it on the spot.
The biggest lesson for me wasn't that I needed a better elevator pitch.
It was realizing I'd been expecting other people to connect the dots for me.
That's exactly what weak marketing does. It assumes customers will figure out why you're different instead of simply telling them.
Turns out clarity beats curiosity almost every time.