— Today you will learn how to pitch and sell your idea!
This is how literally starts any pitching workshop.
The truth is that a pitching workshop might last 2, 4, 8, 10 hours but it never ends with a perfect pitch. Participants, these entrepreneurship novices, startup enthusiasts, still remain with a lot of space for perfection.
BUT IS THE PITCH WHAT REALLY MATTERS AT SUCH A WORKSHOP?
You’ll never know unless you’ve been there as an observer. It’s fascinating. The unconscious journey the participants go through during the workshop is fascinating.
The journey starts with a basic “present yourself” moment when participants get usually blocked about who they truly are. It takes them some long minutes to think and a good amount of words to express themselves. Regardless of the different background each and all of them have ended up saying about their ideas.
You would never think that deep inside, pitchers might be blocked by the impostor’s syndrome, fear to disappoint people they just met or anxiety of being below the audience’s level.
context -> problem -> solution -> conclusion -> PERFECT STORY
At this point, you could see participants digging deep inside themselves, looking for true reasons of them doing a startup, personal pain points they solve, and that pure motivation that keeps them going.
THE PITCH IS THE LAST THING THAT MATTERS AT A PITCHING WORKSHOP!
Don’t get me wrong, by the end of the workshop participants’ pitches were fantastic but it was more like a side effect. Your reasons, your value, your needs, yourself never were easy to learn, nor to put it into words and make it shine.
After some good hours of self-discovery, the participants were 99% sure about them as innovators of the problem that is a real pain in the ass (they felt themselves). The solution they came with might be not so brilliant but they learned to highlight its irreplaceable value parts. And when it comes to putting it in practice, they were confident to ask the right resources for making an idea a business. In this case, wrapping up the whole startup into a 30-sec pitch was a matter of a few minutes.
Next time think twice about skipping a pitching/ public speaking/ storytelling/presentation workshop.
A sneak pic:
0 Comments