In the Steve Martin film Roxanne, when a dart-throwing bully insults the loveable, big-nosed fire chief C.D. Bales (played by Steve Martin) by calling him, well, “Big Nose,” a verbal battle ensues. Eventually the bully challenges C.D. to come up with something better than Big Nose.

On the spot, C.D. invents twenty “something betters,” including: “You know. It’s not the size of a nose that’s important. It’s what’s in it that matters.”

When coaching interview teams, I press my clients to begin their interview presentations with something better than “Good afternoon, we are [insert your firm name here] and we are pleased to be here today….”

They, in turn, challenge me to come up with something better.

For fun today, I sat down to see if, in the spirit of C.D. Bales, I could write out twenty something better phrases in fifteen minutes. I think I did. Here they are: [Read more…]