One Pitch, Two Pitch...

I think we had a couple weeks to prepare for our pitches. Honestly, I can’t remember anymore. A word of advice to anyone who decides to pursue an idea, pitching will be the most important skill to learn throughout whatever your endeavor is. Simply put, it is your medium to engage an audience, raise capital and garner support. It doesn’t matter if you have a product or service, my advice is to watch people pitch, study it, practice it, and when you go out in front of others… and attempt it for yourself, have fun doing it. It is amazing how an audience will completely glaze over your content but zero in on your attitude and demeanor. Sell yourself, nothing else.

My first pitch for EnduraMark was pretty off the cuff. I had a very boring powerpoint presentation, but in contrast I was very animated. I explained something we all experienced everyday and hucked markers in the trash can while I did it. I personalized a common problem for everyone in a room. It worked.

We did a vote after the presentations and I saw the results. The EnduraMark Renewable Dry Erase Marker got the most interest. I thought after seeing this that I would get to go ahead and commence with my project. I was mistaken. Performing well in this presentation resulted in me being requested to do another pitch for the department faculty and some grad students. Oh joy.

Again, my advice from before… Get good at pitching!

The second pitch was a little different than the first. The audience went from about thirty students down to four professors and a couple of grad students. One would think that it may be easier with less eyes to entertain, but those fewer eyes had far more scrutiny to dish out. This leads me to another crucial point about pitching, KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE. Now, I knew the people that I was pitching in front of somewhat, but I wasn’t exactly sure how they would be during this pitch. I gave a similar candid spiel as before and then upon questioning after, my idea was torn apart from every possible angle. I’ll come right out and say that for me personally, I love confrontation like this. Most of the criticism I received was in the sense of them minimizing the problem I decided to solve. That it did not really matter and therefore I would not be able to obtain support outside of our niche group. I decided to double down and attack my audience (this was a situational decision with definite risk, I would not advise everyone to take this path, just KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE). I essentially told my audience, “Yes, screw the environment, it does not matter.” I was met with dead silence, but I didn’t flinch. This was the end of this presentation and I would not hear another word about the marker project for about a month.