On a call a few weeks ago I asked a chief executive with more than forty years in business a very simple question.
“What do you actually want your presence to do?”
He stopped. Properly stopped. Then he told me, quite honestly, that he’d never thought about it.
He’s not unusual. Most of us build our presence the way we fill a kitchen drawer. A new role here, a new photo there, a post when something feels worth sharing, and one day you open it and can’t find a single teaspoon.
So it ends up doing a bit of everything
It proves you’re experienced. It lists everything you can do. It shows you’re still alive. And it does almost nothing to bring you the work you actually want next.
When I put the question to people, the answers are usually very clear once they stop and think. I want to be asked to chair boards in my industry. I want clients who already know what I do before they call. I want to stop chasing work and start choosing it.
Once you know that, everything becomes a decision, not a habit. Does this photo help? Does this post move me towards it? Does my headline describe who I’m becoming, or who I was in 2019?
This week’s question
What do you actually want your presence to do?
Answer it in one sentence. Not a paragraph, not a vision board. One honest sentence.
Then send it to me at rosanna@rosannavisser.com. I read every one, and I promise I’ve heard worse than “I have absolutely no idea”.
Until next Tuesday,
Rosanna