Writing your elevator pitch and intro with AI is a Skill: one prompt and the right material get you five spoken versions of what you say at a networking event, and the whole job takes one sitting of about an hour. The AI writes the five; you say each one out loud and keep the one that sounds like you. An elevator pitch is the short answer to "so, what do you do?" It usually runs fifteen to thirty seconds, names who you help and the problem you take off their plate, and leaves room for the other person to ask a question. The AI is good at writing five different versions. Only you can tell which one comes out of your mouth naturally.
- Shape
- Skill
- Sitting
- one sitting
The shape: Skill
This job is a Skill because it turns on one prompt and the material underneath it. There is no chain of steps to run, no tool to connect and nothing to publish. What matters is what you feed the AI, how you ask, and how fast you can reject a version that sounds wrong.
The AI earns its place here for one reason: variety. Most owners have one way of describing their business, and they have said it so many times they can no longer hear it. The AI can hand you five intros built on different openings, such as leading with the customer, with a short story, with a question back to the listener, or with the thing people get wrong about your line of work. Hearing five side by side makes it obvious which one fits you and which one sounds like a stranger.
The shape also tells you where the work actually is. Writing is the short part. Saying each version out loud, cutting, and saying it again is the long part, and that part happens with the chat window closed. Plan on about twenty minutes to gather your material, a few minutes of AI time, and half an hour of talking to yourself, a friend or your phone's voice recorder.
What you give the AI
Put this into one document before you open the chat. Label each block so the AI can tell your words from your customers' words.
- What you do, in one plain line: the work itself, the way you would explain it to a relative, not the name on your sign.
- Who usually buys: the two or three kinds of customer who bring you most of your work, described by their situation ("families who just bought an older house"), not by age or income.
- Three things customers say before they hire you: the worries and questions you hear on calls or in your inbox, in their exact words.
- Three things customers say after: lines from reviews, thank-you texts or notes, copied word for word.
- One true story: a single job or customer moment you are proud of, told in four or five sentences, with no names.
- Your value proposition, if you have one: the one sentence from your homepage or listing. If you do not have one yet, our value proposition page walks through it in one sitting.
- Where you will use it: the rooms you actually stand in, such as a chamber mixer, a business breakfast, a school pickup line or a trade show booth.
- How you talk: three words that describe your speaking style ("dry, quick, friendly") and two phrases you would never say out loud.
- What you will not claim: anything regulated in your field, any promise you cannot keep every time, and any number you cannot prove.
The customer quotes and the true story matter most. A pitch built from your own description sounds like a brochure. A pitch built from what customers say and one real moment sounds like a person, and people remember a person.
What comes back
Paste this prompt, then your material below it.
You are helping a small business owner write the short spoken intro they give
when someone at a networking event asks "what do you do?"
Use only the material pasted below. Do not invent facts, numbers, awards,
customers or results.
Write 5 versions of the intro. Rules for every version:
- Written to be said out loud, not read. Short sentences. Contractions are fine.
- 40 to 70 spoken words, about 15 to 30 seconds.
- The first sentence must make sense on its own, in case the owner is interrupted.
- Names who the owner helps and the problem they take off that person's plate.
- No jargon, no slogans, no puns, no words like "solutions", "passionate" or "one-stop".
- Matches the speaking style described in the material.
Give each version a different opening:
1. Leads with the kind of customer they help.
2. Leads with the problem, in a customer's own words from the material.
3. Leads with the true story, told in two sentences.
4. Leads with something people usually get wrong about this line of work.
5. Ends with a short, natural question back to the listener.
After each version, in brackets, quote the line from the material it rests on.
Then write a one-sentence version of each, for a crowded room.
Then list anything you were tempted to add that is not in the material, so it can be left out.What comes back is five short intros, each tagged with the line it rests on, then five one-sentence versions for loud rooms, then a list of anything the AI wanted to stretch. The source tags matter. They let you see in a second whether a version is built on something a customer actually said or on nothing at all.
Read all five before you react to any of them. Then stand up and say each one out loud, at the speed you would talk at an event. Reading silently will fool you, because written sentences that look good often trip the tongue.
If none of the five sound like you, change the material, not the prompt. Add more of your customers' exact words and a better story, and tell the AI which version came closest and why. Run it again in the same chat, and ask for five more variations on the closest one.
How to judge it
You are looking for the one version that sounds like you on a good day. Reject any version that shows one of these signs:
- You stumble saying it: if you trip over a phrase twice, the phrase goes, however clever it looks on screen.
- It sounds like a website: "We provide comprehensive solutions for" is something nobody says to a person holding a drink.
- It is all about you: a pitch that lists your services and never mentions a customer gives the listener nothing to picture.
- It runs long: if it takes more than thirty seconds, the other person is waiting for a gap, not listening.
- It needs the second sentence: if the first sentence means nothing alone, an interruption leaves you with nothing.
- It rests on nothing: no source tag, or a tag that does not say what the line claims.
- It promises too much: "the best in town" or "guaranteed results" invites a question you do not want to answer at a mixer.
- It is a riddle: a mysterious opener can make people curious, but if they have to ask "so what is it you actually do?" the pitch failed.
When one survives, say it to one real person before the event. A friend, a spouse or a customer you trust is enough. Ask them to say back what you do and who it is for. If they get it right in their own words, the pitch works. If they guess wrong, the pitch is too vague, and you know which part to fix.
What stays with you
The AI can write the words. It cannot say them, and the saying is the whole job. A pitch lives in your voice, your pace and your face, and only practice in the real world tells you whether it lands.
The truth of it is yours too. Every line in your intro is a small promise, and only you know whether you keep it on your worst week as well as your best. If you work in a field with rules about claims, such as health, law, finance or insurance, check the words against those rules before you use them in public.
Reading the room is also yours. No AI can see that the person in front of you is a possible customer, a possible referral partner or simply someone being polite. Good owners shift the same pitch a little for each, leading with the customer type the listener is most likely to know. That judgment happens in the moment, and it gets better only with practice.
Finally, the follow-up is yours. The pitch earns you a question, a card or a coffee. Writing that person a note the next day, and remembering what they told you, is the part that turns an introduction into business.
Which version for which room
You will not use the same length everywhere. Keep the winner in three sizes, all built on the same core claim, so people who hear it twice remember the same thing.
| Where you are | Which version | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A crowded mixer or trade show floor | The one-sentence version | Noise and interruptions make anything longer a gamble |
| A breakfast round where everyone introduces themselves | The full 15 to 30 second version | You have the floor, and the whole table is listening |
| A one-on-one coffee | The full version plus the true story | The listener asked for more, so the story earns its time |
| Talking to someone who serves the same customers you do | The version that leads with the customer | They can picture who to send you, which is how referrals happen |
Save all three in one note on your phone. Read it in the car before you walk in, then put the phone away.
An editorial example
This is an invented business, used only to show the job. Say you run a one-person bookkeeping practice for restaurants in a mid-size city. Your material includes a worry you hear often, that owners do not know whether they made money last month until their accountant tells them in April, a review line about getting a clear number every Monday, and a story about a cafe owner who found a supplier double-billing her.
The five versions come back. One leads with restaurant owners, one with the April worry in the customer's own words, one with the double-billing story, one with the idea that most restaurants do not have a sales problem but a food cost problem they cannot see, and one ends by asking the listener whether they know a restaurant owner who does their own books. The food cost version has no source tag, because nothing in your material says it, so it goes first.
You say the remaining four out loud in the kitchen. The story version runs long, but its first sentence is strong, so it becomes the coffee version. The worry version is the one you can say without thinking, so it becomes the main pitch. You try it on a friend, who says back that you do the books for restaurants so they know their numbers every week, which is right.
That is where the example stops. Nothing in it is a real business, a real customer or a real outcome.
Where the pitch goes next
Once you have a version you can say easily, it travels. The same core claim belongs in your email signature, the first line of your social bios and the opening of any talk you give. If speaking is next on your list, our speaking page covers the abstract, the slides and the talk from one set of notes, and your pitch makes a good first line for the abstract. If you are getting ready for a room full of strangers, the trade shows page covers the booth line and the follow-up emails after the show. Keep the four versions you did not choose, because their openings often make good first lines for posts and emails later.
Of every job on this list, social media is the one that comes back every week, and Boomp is software that does that one for you. See ten posts made from your website, free
