Life's a Pitch

Want Entrepreneurial Success? It's all in Your Mind

"Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal, nothing can help the man with the wrong attitude.”

                                                                                                     Jefferson

It’s often said that the primary reason startups fail is a lack of funding. Ultimately, whether startup failure is attributed to funding challenges, market conditions, too much competition or the economy, the underlying cause can almost always be found in the same place – the entrepreneurs mind.

World Class Athletes and the Military

Some experts contend that psychology is 80% of the reason why a person fails or succeeds. The critical role psychology plays in a successful outcome is recognized by world class athletes, military and Fortune 500 companies. Many sports coaches will place as much importance on ensuring their athletes develop a winning mindset through the consistent practice of regular psychological exercises as they do on the physical training.

And throughout the world, the military ensure their personnel undergo intensive psychological training in order to prepare them for the extreme challenges they may face. In the US, The United States Military Academy (USMA) created the Performance Enhancement Program which integrates 5 elements of applied psychology into a systematic approach. These elements include goal setting, attention control, stress management and visualization.

Psychology and Entrepreneur Performance

Parallels are often drawn between the psychological stresses entrepreneurs face and those faced by world class athletes and military personnel. The late Anita Roddick, Founder of the Body Shop once said

“Nobody talks of entrepreneurship as survival, but that's exactly what it is.”

Many entrepreneurs invest their savings and a huge part of their life trying to make their dream of startup success a reality. They often do while holding down at least one day job, often neglecting family, friends and their health. The stakes are high, the challenges and stresses very real.

When working with clients on our Entrepreneur Peak Performance Program, I consistently see the same psychological causes preventing success. These include:

1.An inability to retain a laser focus on achieving goals because of the demands and distractions of daily life e.g. family, holding down several jobs, bills etc.

2. A fear of failure that prevents necessary actions and risks being taken.

3. An inability to consistently take the steps necessary to achieve long term goals. Entrepreneurs are often have clarity on the long term goal, but struggle to maintain consistency and momentum when things go wrong and the timeline slips.

4. Burnout

Develop those Mental Muscles

It isn’t sufficient to have a goal and high levels of optimism in the beginning. If it was that simple, the military and world class athletes and their coaches would not invest the time and money on developing winning mindsets.

Your ability to withstand the challenges and stresses associated with launching a startup and achieve your goal faster and more effectively, will be significantly enhanced if you devote time to developing your mental muscles and a winning psychology. A failure to do so, may well mean that your dream of startup success continues to exist only in your mind.

Martin is the creator of the Entrepreneur Peak Performance (EPP) program and author of 'Here's the Pitch'

 

10 Pitch Deck Principles (or How to Blow them Away With Your Deck)

Taken from ‘Here’s the Pitch- How to Pitch Your Business to Anyone, Get Funded and Win Clients’

Most pitch decks are disasters. They are confusing, boring, uninspiring, and misused. The worst thing is that it isn’t a secret. Death by PowerPoint is a syndrome as well-known as many a medical condition.

Despite the efforts of presentation design gurus such as Nancy Duarte (Slide:ology) and Garr Reynolds (Presentation Zen) to show the world a better way, by and large entrepreneurs continue to churn out the same text-laden pitch killers.

Adopt the following principles, and you'll ensure your pitch deck stands out from the crowd and engages and excites your audience:

1.         Make yourself the focus of your pitch rather than your visual presentation. Your presentation is there to support and reinforce your key messages, not replace you.

2.         Don’t create a text-rich, picture-poor presentation. People cannot read and listen at the same time. If your audience is reading from the text on your PowerPoint, they are not listening to you. Of course there will be some slides where some text is necessary, but they should be the exception rather than the rule. If you must use text, try to follow Seth Godin’s wise words of never more than six words on a slide.

The proper place for a text-rich document is either in the executive summary or presentation you send ahead or the document you leave behind.

3.     Use stunning visuals. Do it like Steve Jobs, and use stunning visuals and the odd word or term here or there. Great visuals inspire and engage people emotionally.

4.         Ban the bullets. Bullets kill people, and bullet points kill presentations. Don’t use them. They are unattractive and will detract from the aesthetic qualities of your images. If you heed the advice to abandon using text, then you will no longer have a need for them.

5.         Don’t use animations or transitions. They are cheesy and overused, add nothing, and are distracting. Remember, you must remain the focus throughout your pitch.

6.         Aim for simplicity and clarity. Each slide should convey a single thought or idea.

7.         Place your logo smartly. Use your company logo on only the first and last slide so as to minimize any visual distractions.

8.         Use quotes and data that support your key messages. A slide with a single quote or significant statistic from a credible source can be very impactful.

9.         Review and edit. Once you have created your presentation, review it with the filter of asking whether or not each slide directly supports your primary objective i.e. securing investment or the sale. If it doesn’t, delete it.

10.         Address your audience’s concerns. It may be your pitch but you need to focus on what’s important to them, not you.

Martin is the creator of Startup Caffeine and the author of 'Here's the Pitch - How to Pitch Your Business to Anyone, Get Funded and Win New Clients' available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and all leading booksellers.

 

The Most Important Key to Delivering a Killer Pitch

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

                                                                                                               Benjamin Franklin

Three undisputed truths:

1.            Delivering a winning pitch will often determine the survival and success of a business.

2.            People create their best work when they have time, space, and silence.

3.            Proper rehearsal is critical to delivering a professional, persuasive performance.

Despite these truths, most sales and investor pitch preparation takes place at the eleventh hour, amid constant distraction and noise with minimal, if any, rehearsal. Small wonder that most pitches are weak and ineffective and consequently fail.

“The first draft of anything is shit.”

                                                                                                        Ernest Hemmingway

There are two phases to all pitch preparation. The first is the creative process where you create your presentation and prepare your delivery. The second phase is rehearsal. Both take a considerable investment of time—days, weeks, and months, rather than seconds, minutes, and hours. This is not easy for time strapped entrepreneurs working in cash starved startups; but it is essential.

The greatest performers, athletes and world-class experts from every field are not ‘naturals’. They reached the top of their game through using effective techniques and investing thousands of hours in preparation.

Neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, in ‘This is Your Brain on Music’, talks about 10,000 hours of practice being the magic number to achieve mastery:

… ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert—in anything. In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is the equivalent to roughly three hours per day, or twenty hours per week, of practice over 10 years. . . . But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.

Steve Jobs, wrongly perceived by many to have been a naturally gifted performer, was reported in Businessweek to spend “grueling hours of practice” when preparing his Macworld keynote speeches, a process Jobs began weeks ahead, even though he had been delivering spectacular keynote speeches for years. Jobs made presenting look easy because he worked so hard at it.

Starting your preparation well in advance of a pitch allows you time to research, reflect, and revise. Time gives you the opportunity to step back and look at the big picture and develop and refine your pitch so that you avoid the pitfall that Hemmingway highlights in the quote in this post.

Your choice is simple. If you want to create a forgettable, boring pitch that fails, simply spend a few hours at the last minute rehashing a pitch you delivered previously. If, however, you want to create a pitch that motivates your audience to take action, start your preparation weeks in advance of your meeting, and be prepared to invest days, if not weeks, in its creation.

Martin is the author of 'Here's the Pitch' available now from Amazon and Barnes & Noble and all leading booksellers

 

The Sales Pitch: It's About Them, Not you

One of the most frequently made mistakes during a sales pitch, is when entrepreneurs focus on their companies rather than on the audience’s problem and their solution. Companies will buy and hire your solutions to their problems, not your products and services.

The first minute of your pitch is critical. If your audience believes you understand their pain and can provide them with a solution, then you’re more likely to gain and keep their attention than if you start by talking about yourself. So always begin by focusing on their problem and your solution, and make that the focus of your pitch.

An opening along the following lines will immediately get your audience’s attention:

“In this presentation, I am going to show you how you can reduce your distribution costs by 35 percent.”

Steve Jobs, who, among his many other achievements, consistently delivered the best sales pitches the world has ever seen at the annual Macworld events, understood and demonstrated the importance of focusing on customer benefits of Apple’s latest product. In a 2007 CNBC interview, Jobs was asked about the iPhone and its importance to Apple. Jobs answered

“We have the best iPod we’ve ever made fully integrated into it. And it has the Internet in your pocket with a real browser, real e-mail, and the best implementation of Google Maps on the planet. iPhone brings all this stuff in your pocket, and it’s 10 times easier to use.”

Although the reporter’s question was about the importance of iPhone to Apple, Jobs focused on the benefits for Apple’s customers. So always remember when pitching, it’s about them not you.

Martin is the author of 'Here's the Pitch - How to Pitch Your Business to Anyone, Get Funded and Win New Clients' available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and all leading booksellers.

How to Create a Brutally Simple Pitch

As communication channels increase along with the speed of doing business, the ability to pitch your startup in one sentence, becomes critical. This applies equally to both sales and investor pitches.

Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs are so immersed in the minutiae of their business, that they forget the importance of communicating clearly and simply to an audience who is being exposed to their idea for the first time.

Many years ago I hired global ad agency M & C Saatchi to help a startup I was advising. Their philosophy is ‘Brutal Simplicity of Thought’ and is clearly a key to their success. Their rationale is that simple ideas enter the brain easier and stay there longer.

A concise one liner is easier to remember and easier to share with others.

There are two approaches to pitching your startup in one sentence. The first is to create a ‘high concept pitch’. Alienwas pitched to studio executives as ‘Jaws in Space’. As is true of all ‘less is more’ approaches, creating an effective and impactful high concept pitch takes time but is worth the effort.

An alternative approach is to use the following formula:

My company  [company name]

Has developed / is developing [product / service]

That solves the problem [define problem]

For [target market]

So an example might be

Acme has developed an app that delivers a light electric shock via a smart phone, that solves the problem of investor attention disorder, faced by entrepreneurs raising capital.

Whichever approach you use, if you want to be heard, understood and remembered, make sure that an effective one sentence pitch forms part of your pitching arsenal.

Martin is the author of 'Here's the Pitch - How to Pitch Your Business to Anyone, Get Funded and Win New Clients' available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and all leading booksellers.

 

The Democratization of Startup Funding

                                                          “The crowd makes the ball game.”
                                                                     Ty Cobb, American Major League Baseball Player

 

Most startups will say that the biggest challenge they face is access to capital. Many good ideas developed by great entrepreneurs fail to get to market, not because of a lack of commitment, innovation or energy, but because entrepreneurs have families to feed and bills to pay.

The current economic downturn has made the funding challenge more difficult with the reduction in available capital. The future, however, is looking brighter for entrepreneurs.

 

The Present: How Crowdfunding is currently Financing Startups

Individuals, businesses, and nonprofits of all types are successfully using crowdfunding platforms to crowdfund part or all of their ventures, raising anything from several hundred to several hundred thousand dollars.

There are thousands of crowdfunding (also referred to as crowd funding) success stories from all over the world. The TikTok iPod Nano Watch Wrist Strap is probably one of the most well-known. Scott Wilson attempted to raise $15,000 using crowdfunding  to fund the production of two Nano watch kits. Scott exceeded his target and went on to raise an incredible $942,000 within three months without having to give away equity or take out loans.

Currently, crowdfunding sites in the United States would fall foul of SEC regulations if entrepreneurs were able offer non-accredited investors equity in return for funding on their platforms. Instead, entrepreneurs can offer rewards i.e. a copy of the software or product, in return for funding.  Scott Wilson raised $942,000 by offering ‘rewards’ of his Nano watch kits. 

Crowdfunding in this form is working for many entrepreneurs, although for historical reasons there is far greater awareness of its potential in the arts world than the startup community.  With this in mind we recently launched Crowdbackers, a crowdfunding platform specifically for entrepreneurs.

 

The Future: The Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act

Earlier this month, the US House of Representatives voted 407 to 18 in favor of the Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act. If passed by the Senate, the legislation will allow entrepreneurs to offer shares of stock directly to ordinary investors through established and vetted crowdfunding platforms. 

Finally, ordinary men and women will be able to invest in the next Facebook or Twitter and entrepreneurs will no longer be limited to seeking investment from inaccessible investors.

No doubt there will be teething problems, and crowdfunding will not be the perfect or complete solution for every entrepreneur. For our part, however, we wholeheartedly welcome this positive step towards the the Democratization of Startup Funding.

 Martin is the author of 'Here's the Pitch - How to Pitch Your Business to Anyone, Get Funded and Win New Clients' available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and all leading booksellers.

Can Successful Entrepreneurs Have a Work - Life Balance?

Bunker Hunt once said

“To be successful, you must decide exactly what you want to accomplish, then resolve to pay the price to get it.”

For some, this philosophy flies in the face of entrepreneurs being able to enjoy a work life balance.

After having spent 15 years as an attorney working with other attorneys and 10 years working as an entrepreneur with entrepreneurs, I believe that the joy of a work life balance is a sacrifice that most entrepreneurs will have to make (at least, in the early years), if they want to achieve success in their entrepreneurial life

While, as some have recently commented, it’s essential that an entrepreneur retain their physical and mental health (though a degree of craziness can be beneficial ), that is not the same as saying entrepreneurs must strive to achieve a work life balance.

Every successful attorney or entrepreneur I have come across has spent a considerable period of their working life being obsessed with their work, working insane hours and neglecting their family and friends. These are not ‘badges of honor’, but the price that entrepreneurs pay.

There seems to be a relationship between the greater the sacrifice the greater the level of success as an entrepreneur.  This is a generalization based on my own observations rather than a statistical analysis, but a view I know many entrepreneurs share. Clearly, it is for each entrepreneur to decide what price they are willing to pay.

Perhaps Seneca had entrepreneurs in mind when he said

"It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness."

The key drivers for entrepreneurs are independence in every sense, leaving their mark on the world and personal satisfaction. Rewards that are difficult, if not impossible to achieve in most 9-5 employed jobs.

So perhaps the last word should be left to Leon J. Suenes who said

“Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true".

Martin is the author of 'Here's the Pitch - How to Pitch Your Business to Anyone, Get Funded and Win New Clients' available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and all leading booksellers.
  

 

 

Does Your Product / Service Really Solve Customer Pain? The 8 Point Checklist

Most entrepreneurs know that one of the critical keys to product success, is ensuring they are solving their customer’s pain. Unless you are launching a truly disruptive product, where people are not aware they have a ‘problem’, targeting pain is the route to startup pleasure.

For various reasons, however, many entrepreneurs fail to discharge the burden on proof, when it comes to convincing an investor that their cure justifies investment.

There is a natural temptation when you’ve come up with a ‘great idea’, to believe that the pain your product solves, is one shared by many. Once people get to know about your cure, all your problems are solved. Not so fast….

Pain Checklist

Before you quit your day job and put all efforts in to making your idea a reality, make sure that what you have come up with, is not in fact a solution looking for a problem or cure looking for pain. The following checklist will help you determine if you are on the right track:

1. What segment of the market experience the problem?

2. Is the problem widespread or isolated?

3. What evidence is there for the problem that is independent of your own belief? Are there respected market research reports or credible customer surveys available that support your belief?

4. What level of pain does the customer experience? Is it sufficient to cause them to pay for your solution?

5. Is your solution a ‘must have’ or ‘nice to have’?

6. How are customers currently solving their problem? If there are no ‘competitors’ providing alternative solutions, then you have to very think carefully as to whether there really is a problem.  Multiple solutions tend to appear wherever there are problems.

7. Does your product solve the customer’s problem better than your competitor’s solution?

8. Is your product sufficiently better than your competitor’s solution, to cause their customers to switch?

While some of the above can be answered by reading research reports and articles, the most useful data will come from you spending the time to speak to customers. Get their feedback on both the problem and your proposed solution.

Once and only once the pain is so clear and intense that you can almost feel it, should you consider moving forward down the product launch runway.

Our Free Startup Coaching Videos & Guides Can be Downloaded Until the End of this Week. Videos Include- The Bootstrap Blueprint, Killer Pitch Techniques and Zero Cost Fame Building Strategies http://www.StartupCaffeine.com

 

How to Become an Investor Magnet

This is the true story of ‘Ryan’ (not his real name). A serial entrepreneur with no qualifications and a very limited understanding of financials or launching a startup. Ryan, however, is an entrepreneur with a deep understanding of people, who consistently and easily raises hundreds of thousands of dollars from very savvy, experienced investors.

I first came across Ryan six years ago when he approached me to help him create some pitch materials. He explained that he had persuaded 2 investors (both bankers) to invest $500K in his IDEA (no prototype, company or team) but that one of the investors had asked to see details of his business model and financial projections.

Initially, I was sceptical as to whether the potential investors had, in fact, actually committed or had simply expressed an interest in learning more about Ryan’s idea.

Sensing my scepticism, Ryan called one of the bankers on his cell phone, explained I was helping him put together the information that had been requested and asked him to confirm to me that he was investing. Sure enough, banker X confirmed that both he and banker Y were investing but would appreciate understanding a bit more detail. About a month later, Ryan received the investment.

I subsequently helped Ryan raise nearly 2 million dollars over the next two years, though it’s fair to say that my role seemed limited and that all I was doing was effectively confirming, in writing, deals that Ryan had already successfully pitched and negotiated.

Over time, through observation and discussion, I came to understand that although Ryan is a very disorganized, creative entrepreneur, he does use a highly effective ‘system’ for securing investors. This is how Ryan does it.

1. Research – Ryan goes out of his way to identify potential angel investors. Typically these are people who have some capital and are involved in business or finance. Ryan’s research method is real world as opposed to virtual. He is a ‘social butterfly’ continually making new connections and expressing a deep interest in these people and their friends.

 Slowly but surely, Ryan builds up a picture of those people who are likely to be potential investors.

2. Target Early – Once Ryan identifies his prey (potential investors), he puts himself into situations where he will meet them.  This can be anything from the opening of an art gallery to a mutual acquaintances party. Ryan is very determined and resourceful and always seems to find a way to cross the path of his targets.

 Ryan doesn’t wait until he is desperate funding. He describes himself as being in ‘perpetual funding mode’. By lining investors up in advance, he effectively ensures that he is able to access investment as and when he needs it.

3. Seduce – Applying the same principles that most of us use to persuade someone to come on a date, Ryan presents his best side to his target. In addition to being upbeat, witty and charming, Ryan expresses deep interest in the potential investor. He makes the encounter about them and makes every effort to ensure they enjoy the experience of meeting him. Far better than pitching an investor at a urinal!

 Though Ryan has the same worries and stresses that every entrepreneur does, he never reveals these to his target. He also never talks about his latest venture unless specifically asked. Social protocol means that he is always asked about what he does. 

4. Convey Success – Ryan is a master at making dry toast sound mouth- watering. When asked what he does by his targets, he always makes it sound as though he is already successful. While being careful never to mislead, Ryan focuses on the positive and any successes that he has already achieved as well as others who are interested in his venture. Even when talking of potential challenges, Ryan focuses on the solutions.

5. Engage – Having already worked out what makes his potential investor tick, Ryan focuses on those points that are most likely to appeal to them. He always asks for their opinion and lets them know he values it. Importantly, however, Ryan never mentions that he is looking for investment unless pressed by his target.
 
6. Enchant – In his latest book ‘Enchantment’ Guy Kawasaki discusses the importance of enchantment to business success. Ryan understands this principle well and makes his ‘investor encounters’ magical, mesmerising experiences using the power of story and likeability, while focussing on how his venture will make a difference to the lives of others. If you want to enchant others, I strongly recommend you read Guy’s book.

7. Hook and Leave – Though somewhat counter intuitive, Ryan usually leaves the encounter at the point he is certain his target’s interest is at its high point. This seems to be a variation on ‘playing hard to get’ which tends to have the desired effect with the target making contact a few days later with a request that Ryan let them invest.

Conclusion

Ryan’s way may not be for every entrepreneur. But Ryan has proved time and time again that it works. Even during today’s tough economic climate. Many of the techniques and strategies Ryan’s uses are the very same advocated by Angels and VC’s in their blog posts and elsewhere.

At the end of the day, Ryan is focussing on building relationships. People and relationships are the most critical factors in investment. This is why investors consistently say that the team is the most important factor in a deal. It is also why when talking about an investment, investors will often start out by saying that the founder is a great person with lots of integrity

Free Startup Coaching Videos: Bootstrapping - Pitching - Marketing

 

Why Most Startups Shouldn’t Seek Investment

 client said to me last week that if I was so against startups raising capital from investors, why did I always blog and tweet about pitching investors. Fair point, made in response to my attempt to encourage him to bootstrap rather than pursue Angel Funding.

The current bubbling market and spate of tech IPO’s seems to have increased the desirability of getting funded by Angel Investors or Venture Capitalists. While investor funding may be the right option for some startups, these instances are by far the minority of cases.

Why You Don't Want Investment

There are several compelling reasons not to seek investment from Angel’s and VC’s:

1. You lose control of your startups destiny. This is your life and your startup. While you should welcome the advice of seasoned investors, you always want to retain the option of rejecting it.

2. Fundraising is time and energy consuming and often demoralizing. No matter how good your business or investor pitch, securing investment takes months, sometimes years. For the vast majority, they will be unsuccessful. No matter how determined an entrepreneur you are, frequent rejections are demoralizing. Far better to spend that time and energy growing your startup.

3. Far better to receive 100% of the profits. The old adage that 50% of something is better than 100% of nothing only holds true if it is impossible to launch and grow without investment. Investment taken when it isn’t really needed, is simply a short term booster  that is ultimately replaced by long term pain.

A Better Well-Trodden Path to Success

There are many startups all over the world who have successfully bootstrapped their way to millions. As you may have seen this week, the team at CSN Stores bootstrapped their way to $380 million in sales in 2010, before deciding to take $165 million in Venture Capital.

37 Signals have an inspirational series on their website ‘Bootstrapped, Profitable and Proud’ which profiles companies that 1) have $1MM+ in revenues, 2) didn’t take VC, and 3) are profitable.

And lastly, Dileep Rao, in ‘Bootstrap to Billions’ documents in some detail the journeys of entrepreneurs who have built their goliath companies from scratch.

Embed Bootstrapping in Your DNA

For bootstrapping to have any meaningful impact, entrepreneurs must adopt and implement bootstrapping tactics and strategies across the whole of their business. Bootstrapping will not work where only one or two strategies are employed on an ad hoc basis.

Startups who have bootstrapped their way to millions or even billions, regard their bootstrap plan with the same importance as their business plan. Without a proper bootstrap plan that you execute, your business plan may end simply end up as a record of your aspirations.

So, to the entrepreneur who inspired this post; ‘thank you’. Putting our money where our mouths are, we’ve created two free comprehensive bootstrapping videos and a detailed Mindmap which can be accessed here ‘The Bootstrap Blueprint’. Here’s to your investor free success!