How to show us your stuff - the video

Picture this: A video pitch with the speaker seated between rows of bottled cleaning products on a table in front of her and shelves of products behind her. Only her head and shoulders are visible. Though she mostly makes good eye contact, she seems a bit frozen for the first several minutes.

The story starts with the tale of her son’s illness and how it motivated her to create her line of safe, green cleaning products. She tells us about being a single mom and then she finally moved on to her great business stats – how much her business and income have grown.

The idea for a video pitch is a great one and I applaud her bravery for putting the video in public place and asking for comments. What I saw made me think some more about how we decide to pitch, what kind of advice we get, and also more about typical gender differences.

Kristen Becker has an impressive business model and story. But much of the power was lost for me in the telling. Not entirely lost, but it's certainly not as compelling as it might be and that had a lot to do with energy and the shape of the story telling. How we tell our stories needs to be carefully crafted. As this video unfolded I thought, maybe this is a good way to describe what you do to a group of women who might be thinking about starting a business or a group of moms. Though not a very scientific study, the comments from other women entrepreneurs on the website were all very positive. There was not one bit of feedback that made any suggestion about changes. I guess you might call me crazy or harsh. But I think it’s partly the nature of women to support. And this is a great tendency. But most of the funding out there for small businesses comes from men, so we need to be able to talk to all kinds of audiences. And we need to be aware of how the way we put forth our message may be minimizing not only our results but also our sense of power.

So there’s the shape of the message: story about what motivates you and there’s the business case. And then there’s also the energy that you bring to the presentation. If you want to convince people you are a powerful person, you can’t be sitting behind a wall. You need to stand up and demonstrate your power. This can be very personal, stylish and brand appropriate. And it needs to radiate. Deciding to share that oomph in all of your message can significantly affect everyone who comes into contact with you.