That polite nod haunts more business owners than they'll admit, because you can feel the feigned engagement and interest.
I've watched this happen hundreds of times (often to myself) at conferences, in pitch meetings, on websites, and at networking events. Someone explains their business, and they get the nod. The polite acknowledgment that they've communicated something, followed by absolutely nothing. No a single follow-up question. No "tell me more," no spark of recognition. Just courtesy. And in business, courtesy is often just rejection with manners.
What's happening in that moment is they understood your words but didn't understand the meaning or the significance behind them. They know what you do, but they don't know why it matters. Because they don’t know the stories of the customers whose lives you’ve changed and impacted. The people you’ve helped. The problems you’ve solved. The value you’ve added to the world.
Think about the last time someone told you about their work and you actually leaned in. What made that different?
It probably wasn't that they were more articulate. It was that something they said hit a nerve. It connected to something you cared about, or made you see yourself in their story somehow. That's not just communication skills. That's brand clarity.
When a brand is genuinely clear about what it stands for, who it's for, and why it matters, even an imperfect explanation lands because the meaning is already baked in. When a brand is unclear, even perfect articulation falls flat because there's nothing underneath the words to resonate with or remember.
The polite nod is actually valuable information. It's telling you that you have a coherence problem, not a communication problem. Somewhere between what you actually do and how you describe it, meaning is getting lost.
No amount of refining your elevator pitch will fix a meaning problem. That takes different work.
Don’t just try to help people understand what you do, tell them why it matters.
When you do that, you don't just get a polite nod. You get "Wow, tell me more about that."
