Your why, in one sentence

Pull up five plumbing websites and read the first line of each. You’ll find the same few promises over and over: quality work, fair prices, friendly service, years of experience.

Those promises may all be true. Every company on the page makes them, though, so they don’t help a customer pick. When everything sounds the same, people compare the one thing left, which is price.

A homepage only gets specific once you know why you do the work, so that’s where this guide starts.

Your why is the reason behind your work, beyond paying the bills. It’s what you give the people you work for, and what changes for them because of it.

It helps to picture three rings, one inside the other.

Most businesses talk from the outside of those rings in. They say what they do, sometimes how, and rarely why. I work the other way round: start with what you believe, and let what you sell back it up.

What you sell still has to be good. Nobody hires a heating company that can’t fix a furnace. When two companies do the same work well, though, the reason behind the work is often what decides.

A customer comparing three landscapers on their phone needs a reason to pick one. Give them a reason besides price, and the people who care about what you care about have something to call you for.

Trust grows when what you say and what you do keep matching. When they part ways, people stop believing what you say. A heating company that promises straight answers and then pushes a new furnace on every call won’t keep many customers.

A why is also a filter for hard decisions. Think of the big job that only works if you rush it, the tech who sells well but oversells, or the new service you’re adding because a competitor did. Check each one against your sentence. If it goes against what you wrote, that’s your answer.

Then there’s everything a customer sees: the website, the truck, the invoice, how the phone gets answered. When all of it comes from the same sentence, it reads as one business, and people can tell what you’ll be like before they meet you.

It helps your staff too. When they know the why, they can make the call you’d make on a day you’re not there, like whether to quote the cheap part or the one that lasts.

As you hire, the reason you started can end up living only in your head. Write it down, and you can use it in interviews and when you train someone new.

I put a why into one sentence with two blanks:

The first blank is what you give people, written as something you do. The second is what changes for them because you did it.

It’s kept to one sentence on purpose, so there’s no room to hide behind big words.

A good one passes these checks:

• It’s short enough to say on the phone without reading it.
• The first blank is a verb, something you do every week.
• Both blanks are about other people, the second one especially.
• There are no digs at other companies in it.
• It uses words you’d use with a customer.
• It would still be true if you changed what you sell tomorrow.

My last check: would you paint it on your sign or your truck? You don’t have to, but if the answer’s a flat no, keep working.

First drafts go wrong in a few familiar ways:

• “To install furnaces so that homes stay warm” just describes the job. Ask what the warm house does for the family, and keep asking.
• If the second blank says “so that we can grow”, it’s about you. That half belongs to your customers.
• Money doesn’t go in either blank. It’s what you earn when the rest works.
• Three ideas crammed into one blank usually means you haven’t picked yet.
• Leave out any word you wouldn’t say to a customer, like “empower”.
• Don’t worry if yours sounds like a competitor’s. What sets you apart is what you do about it, which comes later in this guide.

Here’s one for a trades business. Example Heating & Cooling is a company I made up to show how this works:

Nothing in it mentions furnaces, so it would still be true if they switched to roofing. It’s also easy to check: either customers get a straight answer or they don’t.

And one for a café, also made up:

It doesn’t mention coffee, and a customer could tell you in a week whether it’s true.

A why comes from things that already happened. You find it by looking back at your own life, at the moments you were at your best. Writing one to please customers doesn’t work, because people notice.

So you start with stories, the more specific the better. If a salon owner tells me “I like making people happy”, that’s a feeling. “The bride whose hair we redid twenty minutes before the photos” is a story.

For each story, note three things: who was there, what you did and what changed for them. The last two turn into your blanks.

Aim for at least five. They can come from anywhere, because your why is the same at home as at work. A story from coaching your kid’s hockey team counts as much as one from a job site.

Then look for what keeps coming up. An idea that shows up in two stories with nothing else in common is worth circling. One or two will stand out so clearly that you recognize yourself in them.

Spotting it is hard in your own life, because you’re too close. It helps to tell your stories to someone who’s curious about you but doesn’t know you too well. A spouse or best friend has heard them too often to hear them fresh.

That’s the role I play on a first call. You tell the stories, and I listen for what keeps coming up.

A first call won’t cover all your stories, so what I send you afterward is a working draft. That’s enough to start using.

The draft itself is quick. Give it a few minutes, no more. The first version only has to be close.

Then read it out loud. You’ll hear straight away whether it sounds like you or like a poster in a waiting room. If it’s the poster, go back to your stories and use their words.

Don’t wait for perfect. The exact words can take weeks or months to settle. I’d start using it as soon as it’s close, because the feeling behind it won’t change while the wording improves.

Haven’t opened yet? Your why is older than your business, so stories from earlier jobs, school or home all count. What your customers say about you can come later.

Once you have the sentence, the next step is deciding what you’ll do because of it. That’s the How ring in the circles above. What you sell sits in the What ring.

The other things that kept coming up, the ones that didn’t make it into your sentence, come back here. Turn them into a short list, no more than five things you do when you’re at your best, and write each one as an action.

Compare “honesty” with “show the customer the old part before quoting a new one.” Only the second tells your staff what to do on a call, and you can hold anyone to it, yourself included.

On a homepage, the sentence settles what goes first: the headline, the photo, which service leads and which reviews sit at the top.

Your customers care about their own reasons first. Someone with no heat wants to know when you can come and roughly what it’ll cost, and your homepage has to answer that before anything else.

A sentence won’t fix a slow website, a missed call or sloppy work. Those come first.

You also need to know who your best customers are. The stories behind a good why are mostly about them, so working on one helps with the other.

Writing it down is the easy part. Keeping to it costs you something now and then, like the job you turn down or the upsell you pass on.

It isn’t the only way to run a business, either. Plenty of businesses do fine competing on price and speed. If that’s how you want to compete, you can skip all this.

If you want to try it before we talk, this is how I’d do it, with a pen and a bit of quiet.

1. 01

   List five moments

   Jot down five times the work felt worth it, one line each: who it was for, what you did and how it turned out for them.

2. 02

   Underline what keeps coming up

   Mark anything you did in more than one story, and anything those moments gave people.

3. 03

   Write the sentence

   Start with “To” and what you did. Finish with “so that” and what it gave people. Leave the polishing for later.

4. 04

   Say it out loud

   Read it to someone who knows your work. If you wince, swap the big words for ones from your list.

5. 05

   Use it once

   The next time a job, a hire or a new service doesn’t sit right, check it against the sentence.

If step two stumps you, that’s normal. It’s the part a second pair of ears is for.