… asked someone what he did for a living and got a 10-minute answer.

I have no idea what he was talking about.

It may seem that giving lots of detail is the key to an explanation. In most cases, it’s the exact opposite.

If you have any hope of my understanding what you do – let alone remembering it two weeks from now – you need to hyper-simplify it.

Like it or not, to the extent they remember you at all, people are going to boil you down and put you “in a box.”

Your job is to tell them what the box is!