Why I stopped trying to fit my life into a single elevator pitch

For years, I thought a polished elevator pitch was the responsible way to explain a career. One sentence, a few impressive credentials, and a clear answer to the question, “What do you do?” It seemed especially useful when moving between television studios, book events, conference stages and conversations with people I had just met.

The trouble was that every neat description left something important outside the frame. I am a broadcaster, journalist, author, public speaker, advocate for women’s health and founder of This Girl Is On Fire. Each title is accurate, yet none of them tells the whole story. My work has changed because my life has changed, and I no longer want to pretend those two things can be separated into a tidy professional label.

This matters for anyone whose career has developed through several chapters rather than along a single straight line. In Australia, a person might work in media in Sydney, move into consulting in Melbourne, establish a wellbeing business in Brisbane and still be asked to describe it all in one sentence at an industry event. A concise introduction can be useful, but it should be a doorway into the conversation, not a locked room.

The neat label never told the full story

An elevator pitch is often presented as a confidence tool. It promises that if we choose the right words, people will understand our value quickly. In professional settings, that can feel reassuring. We learn to reduce a complex working life to a role, a niche and a result, then deliver the sentence with enough certainty to appear established.

I used to believe that clarity meant leaving out anything that did not fit. If I was speaking about television, I would foreground broadcasting. If the room was focused on books, I would lead with writing. When the conversation turned to corporate leadership, I would select the most relevant parts of my experience and quietly put the rest away. This made me sound prepared, yet it also made my career appear more fragmented than it really was.

The thread was always there. Television taught me how to listen quickly and communicate under pressure. Journalism taught me to ask better questions. Writing gave me space to explore the private realities behind public success. Speaking and advocacy allowed those lessons to become useful to people dealing with change, burnout, self-doubt and transition.

The real story was not a collection of unrelated jobs. It was a continuing interest in how people find their voice, recover their confidence and make meaningful decisions when life refuses to follow the original plan.

A career can be a landscape, not a ladder

The traditional career ladder suggests progress should move upwards in a recognisable direction. Each promotion confirms the previous step, and every new role appears to make the next one more obvious. That model can be comforting, but it does not reflect many modern working lives, especially for women who may navigate caring responsibilities, health changes, redundancy, relocation or a decision to start again.

My own path has been more like a landscape. There have been high points, unexpected turns, long stretches of uncertainty and periods when I had to stop before I could see where I was heading. A landscape does not become less coherent because it contains different terrain. The same is true of a career that includes broadcasting, books, public speaking, entrepreneurship and advocacy.

That perspective feels particularly relevant in the Australian market, where portfolio careers are increasingly visible. A communications professional may freelance for a national broadcaster, host an event during Melbourne’s conference season and run workshops for a small business in regional New South Wales. A person can be employed, self-employed and building a future offer at the same time.

When I stopped measuring my career against a straight line, I became better at recognising the value of experience that had once seemed disconnected. The skills had travelled with me, even when the job title changed.

The words I choose now

I still prepare an introduction before a conference or a meeting. I have no interest in making other people work hard to understand what I offer. The difference is that I no longer treat the introduction as a verdict on my identity. I describe the common purpose behind my work: helping people and organisations turn change into a source of clarity, resilience and forward movement.

That language leaves room for the different ways I may contribute. I might host a conversation, deliver a keynote, facilitate a leadership session, write about women’s wellbeing or speak openly about the moments when confidence disappears. The format varies, but the intention remains consistent. I want people to feel more capable of meeting the next chapter than they did before we spoke.

This is also why I have become more attentive to the distinction between a job title and a body of work. Titles can explain where we sit in an organisation. They do not always explain the insight we bring, the audience we serve or the change we help create. A fuller professional identity includes those dimensions.

On my own website, the television and events work sits alongside writing, advocacy and speaking because those parts of my career inform one another. That arrangement is more truthful than forcing everything into a single category.

Being understood does not require being reduced

There is a difference between being clear and being easily categorised. Clarity helps someone understand our experience and relevance. Categorisation can make them feel comfortable, but it may also flatten the qualities that make our contribution distinctive.

Women are often encouraged to become especially fluent in self-definition. We are told to own our expertise, state our niche and communicate our value without apology. That advice can be useful, yet it can quietly become another performance standard. We begin worrying that a varied background will look unfocused, or that changing direction will make us seem unreliable.

I have felt that pressure. There were moments when I wondered whether I needed to choose one lane to be taken seriously. But a narrow description would have hidden the very experiences that make my work meaningful. The years spent listening to people’s stories, navigating public scrutiny, writing through difficult subjects and rebuilding after personal upheaval are not distractions from my expertise. They are part of it.

For an audience in Australia, this can be especially visible in relationship-based professional settings. At a breakfast event in Sydney or a business gathering in Perth, people often want to know the person behind the résumé. A short, genuine explanation can create stronger connection than a string of impressive labels delivered without context.

Failure changed the way I describe success

A single elevator pitch usually highlights momentum. It tells people what we have achieved, what we do now and where we are going. It rarely leaves space for failure, grief, uncertainty or the periods when progress was difficult to recognise. Yet those experiences often shape the most valuable parts of a career.

I no longer describe my path as though every decision was strategic from the beginning. Some choices came from instinct, some from necessity and some from discovering that the life I had built no longer fitted. There were professional disappointments and personal moments that demanded a different kind of courage. They taught me that resilience is not constant confidence; it is the willingness to respond honestly when the plan changes.

I wrote about this perspective in reframing failure, because the way we interpret a setback affects the story we carry into the next opportunity. If failure becomes evidence that we are not capable, we protect ourselves by shrinking. If it becomes information, it can help us make a more deliberate choice.

That does not mean pretending difficult experiences were beneficial while we were living through them. It means allowing the full story to contain both the hurt and the learning. A professional identity that includes recovery is more grounded than one built entirely from polished outcomes.

A wider story makes room for the next chapter

Leaving behind the single pitch has made me more open to change. I can accept an invitation without needing to know exactly which category it belongs to. I can develop a new project without worrying that it will contradict an earlier chapter. I can speak to an audience about women’s wellbeing, leadership or personal growth without having to justify why those subjects belong together.

This matters in practical terms. At an EOFY event in Brisbane, an organisation may need an engaging host who can keep a room connected. At an International Women’s Day programme in Adelaide, it may need a speaker who can move between personal experience and workplace action. At a leadership gathering in Canberra, the most useful contribution may be a conversation about resilience rather than a conventional presentation. The audience changes, but the underlying purpose can remain steady.

A broader professional narrative also gives other people permission to develop in their own way. Someone returning to work after caring for children does not need to apologise for the detour. Someone changing industries in their forties does not need to pretend the earlier years were irrelevant. Someone building a portfolio of employment, consulting and creative work can explain the connection without forcing it into a predetermined box.

I have stopped trying to make my life sound smaller simply because a short sentence is easier to remember. The most honest version of my work is a living story: broadcasting, writing, speaking, advocacy, leadership and the continuing process of becoming more useful to the people I serve. A concise introduction still has a place, but it should point towards that story rather than attempt to replace it.