Who Are You and What Do You Do?: A Practical Workshop for the BPW Community

As you know, the Entrepreneur and Small Business Committee is always bringing our members new and useful information. This workshop, led on Zoom by Agatha Barretto (BPW Curibita, Brazil and DC) is a great example—you should have been there.

It covers one of the most essential elements of anyone’s work whether you’re an entrepreneur, a corporate exec, a summer intern, or someone reentering the job force. It’s your introduction.

Like your handshake, the first few words you utter when someone asks what you do create a lasting impression for better or worse. It sketches you in the mind of the person you’re meeting with hundreds of tiny strokes, each one working together to create an image.

And that image is hard to alter. So you want them to see who you really are, and how you can help them with whatever their goals might be.

Ágatha quickly established her expertise, authority, and ease with the topic. Then she told us the personal story that changed everything about how she works.

She explained that in 2022, at the age of 31, she survived hemorrhagic stroke caused by a brain aneurysm and spent 20 days in intensive care. She left the hospital with six tiny pieces of titanium in her head and a new way of looking at everything, including what she did for work and how she did it

The first and most important lesson involved learning to “slow down enough to listen.” Then she decided to “apply it not only to my body. But to people.”

That’s all?

Yes, that’s all, and that’s actually everything.

In work and the rest of our lives the people we interact with want to be heard. They want to know, especially in a professional setting, how whatever it is that you are offering them will make their life better, easier, richer, or solve a specific problem that will lead to those outcomes.

Everyone had a chance to participate at whatever level worked for them, especially when it came to offering a company or project for evaluation and suggestions for improving the pitch.

She is the founder of 220mkt/220tek in Brazil and Global Practice Advisors in the USA, marketing and business development agencies in the global healthcare and legal sectors. Her agency helps professionals - including doctors, lawyers, , and entrepreneurs - build authority and visibility, helping them to stand out in crowded and competitive fields.

Ágatha’s mission is not just to build a successful, award-winning agency. (in 2025, 220tek was named the Best International Marketing & Business Development Agency for Doctors and Lawyers in the US.)

It’s to empower women to realize that they can be visible, grow themselves and their businesses, expand their leadership success, and maintain alliance between their strategies with their core values.” She wants to create the kind of change that lasts, and that can only happen if people listen when women talk, and that only happens if they speak so people want to listen.

Eleanore Roosevelt said it all in one sentence: People will not remember what you said; they will remember how you made them feel.

The simple process Ágatha outlined explained offers a scaffold for anyone to create an introduction or elevator pitch that leaves people feeling inclined to learn more about you. You need to tell them WHO, WHAT, WHY, and WOW.

WHO: Define your audience – who do you help? Be specific and remember, it’s not about you, it’s about what you can do for them.

“I am a consultant.”

“I help [specific audience] facing [specific problem].”

WHAT: Define your impact – what exactly do you do? It’s not what you do, it’s how what you do will change things and impact them/their business positively.

“I run workshops on financial literacy.”

“I help women eliminate financial anxiety and take control of their future.”

WHY: Define your core belief – people don’t purchase what you do, they buy why you do it. Why do you do it? Knowing that builds person-to-person trust.

“Because I believe [your mission or core belief].”

WOW: Define your unique differentiator – what makes you different from everyone else who says they do the same thing? This is the closer for your pitch. It contains three things, specific results, social proof, and genuine distinction.

“We helped [X] achieve [Y] in [specific time frame].”

Of course, the actual presentation had lots more detail and explanation—you should have been there…

Lisa Dicksteen