Your introduction is closing doors
You’re handing people a sealed box with no handles.
The conference happy hour. Someone asks what you do. "I'm a program manager at a healthcare company." Their face shifts into that polite mask — the one people wear when they're already thinking about who else to talk to. They ask a follow-up about healthcare, but it's performative. You can feel the conversation dying. The problem isn’t your job. It’s the way your answer lands: like a sealed box. No handle. Nothing for them to grab. Charlie Houpert calls the fix “leaving crumbs”: instead of a closed answer that ends the exchange, you add small, real details that create multiple conversational doorways. But the part most people miss: The crumbs are for you. You're not embedding interesting details to seem memorable. You're doing it so that when someone picks up a crumb, you get a conversation you actually want to have. And the psychology of first impressions explains why this matters. People form judgments fast — often from very small slices of behavior — and those early signals shape what they notice next. You can’t opt out of being read. You can only choose what you’re giving them to read. Also: warmth tends to register before competence. People are quietly asking, “Are you safe / pleasant / worth engaging?” before they ask, “Are you impressive?” So the goal of a good introduction is not “information transfer.” It’s: make it easy to continue. Here’s the framework I use (and I haven’t shared outside this newsletter). The Two Critical Moments Moment One: The Anchor Drop (first few seconds) This is the emotional entry. Your tone, micro-expression, and energy set the frame. Not hype. Not performance. Just a small, genuine signal: I’m here; I’m engaged; you can come in. If you skip this, even great crumbs won’t land because the listener has already decided the exchange is “fine but forgettable.” Moment Two: The Distinctive Signal (next breath) This is where crumbs live: one or two specifics that break the generic pattern. Distinctiveness matters because our memory privileges what stands out in a sequence — the “isolation effect” (Von Restorff). Most introductions blur together. A single vivid detail becomes a hook. Building a Crumb-Rich Introduction (that still feels like you) * What do you find interesting about your work? (Not impressive. Interesting.) * What’s non-obvious about how you got here? (The weird path, the pivot, the constraint.) * What kind of question would you hope they ask next? (That’s your breadcrumb.) Embed 2-3 of these into how you answer "what do you do?" Before: "I'm a program manager at a healthcare company." After: "I'm a program manager in healthcare. I got into it through documentary filmmaking, actually, which turns out to be weirdly similar.” Now they can grab multiple handles: * Documentary filmmaking * Why the career shift * The unexpected connection between the two And more importantly, every one of those leads to a conversation you’d probably enjoy having. Action This week, write out how you currently introduce yourself. Then list three things you genuinely find interesting about your work or path. Rebuild the introduction to embed at least two of them. Test it once. Notice what people pick up. Notice which conversations you actually enjoy having. See you next Monday, Airi P.S. I work with senior leaders navigating strategic positioning challenges—moments where how you’re perceived shapes what opportunities become available. If that’s the territory you’re in, reply and tell me what you’re working on.
