Episode 40 | How to Craft Your Elevator Pitch?

Laura Hargrave: 0:00

Welcome everyone here at Boss It. We would love to hear from you. Join us in our Boss It community by heading over to our website, bossitclub.com, and join our mailing list. As we grow, we will be launching our community of fellow Boss It BFFs, and we want you to be a part of it. Okay, Sophia Noreen, let's dig into this. I can't wait to tell them all about how we got here.

Sophia Noreen: 0:25

Welcome to the Boss It Podcast. My name is Sophia Noreen and I took an Etsy startup and launched it in big-box retailers within 12 months. As a creative with an entrepreneurial drive, I left my full-time career in healthcare to find better harmony between career, family, and self-care. We believe you can have it all. Yes, you can launch and run a successful scalable business while maintaining harmony in all aspects of your life. We believe we can learn from each other and draw on many experiences to create the best life possible. During each episode, we will share proven life hacks that will keep you on top and striving every day.

There should be no hesitation. Make a plan. Take action. We are here for you.

Hello everyone, and welcome to another amazing episode of the Boss It Podcast. My name is Sophia Noreen, and I'm going to be your host for today. Today, we're going to continue on with our branding series. Our branding series is all about getting you on brand, and being on-brand is not just about the colors and portray yourself, but also in how you deliver your speech.  The topic of today is your elevator pitch.

We have been working for the past three weeks, now this is our fourth week. The past three weeks, you guys have been covering different areas of branding such as your brand angle, your brand mission, your brand voice and your brand positioning, understanding who your target audience is, and also understanding that you don't serve everyone. You can only serve a very small segment of your population, and we need to know how to speak to these individuals in order to basically get our message across. Today, we're going to speak to your elevator pitch. We're going to understand how to craft your elevator pitch, and I know this may seem scary because some people are like, "Oh my gosh, elevator pitch means that you're actually selling yourself or selling your company to somebody else." 

My hope for you is that you'll be able to craft your elevator pitch with confidence, and then if you meet somebody and they ask you, "What are you doing?" or  " What is your company?" You can easily give them 30-second pitch without distress. So let's get into it. Now, if you are listening to the podcast, there is a clickable link in the show notes where you can get the workbook associated with this audio. You can work on your elevator pitch after listening to the podcast especially if you're driving, or if you're doing something else, go ahead and continue listening. But remember, we wanted you to take action so make sure you click that link in the show notes, and that way you'll have access to the workbook.

If you're watching this presentation in the student portal, then you will have a link directly below this video that will give you access to the workbooks so that way you can get started on crafting your elevator pitch. Today, we're going to speak specifically about what is an elevator pitch and then the elevator pitches that you should master.

Now you're thinking, wait, there's more than one? Yes. You're going to have two elevator pitches. Before we get into that, what is an elevator pitch? Everybody doesn't know what an elevator pitch is, so I think it's very important to understand that an elevator pitch is how you describe your personal brand or your company in 30 to 60 seconds.

You don't need to give a lot of information in that 30 seconds. You just need to convey a message, and hopefully have a call to action at the end of it so it will prompt a discussion and spark some interest. There are two types of elevator pitches that you should have in your back pocket. The first one is, how do you introduce yourself?

You'll never know who you're going to bump into in the lineup at the grocery store, or if you're not going to the grocery store, you'll never know who you're going to mix and mingle with at a networking event. My point is you need to always know how to introduce yourself, and you should also know the audience that you want to introduce yourself to.

For example, if you are looking for a new job, you want to have a great elevator pitch for yourself that promotes your skills, so that way a potential employer might be like, "Oh, you'd be great for this role. We're going to introduce you to so-and-so." You may also want to introduce yourself as the brand owner or the founder of a company, so that way they'll be like, "Oh, this person's great. I wonder what their company is all about", which would then set you up for your next elevator pitch which would be about your company. 

Having the elevator pitch for yourself is very, very important. We're also going to speak about elevator pitches for your brand or your company specifically, that way if you do hire on additional folks, additional team members, they will also know what the elevator pitch is so they can just put their name and title in front of it and then they can say, "This is the elevator pitch we use. If you are in a situation where you need to introduce yourself to the company's objective, or you're at a networking event on behalf of the company, you can use this framework. 

Again, thinking big picture, you may not be there yet but having an elevator pitch for your company and then thinking beyond just yourself is a great strategy to ensure that everybody has the same brand voice, and has the same brand mission and brand positioning.

The first one we're going to speak about is introducing yourself. What do you do?  We need to understand who you are, and a great way of setting yourself apart from others is introducing your skills, and also introducing the goals of who you are but what is your goal? When you are introducing yourself, your goal might be just to say, "Hey, by the way, I offered this service."

You may not say that to everybody. You may be saying that just as a segment of the population you meet, for example, if you're at a networking event with other entrepreneurs, you could say,  "I am an entrepreneur and I am the owner and operator of Also Sophia, and I'd love to show you my products," because who knows, maybe they would collaborate with you. If you're in a grocery store and somebody is like, "Oh yeah, I'm really interested," then you can also offer your products. But you may not want to go ahead and offer your products if, for example, they're an employer or they're somebody who may not be interested in your products, you might have to say something along the lines, "Let me know if you have an interest in learning more about the business." 

Introducing your skills is great, but also understand the goals and who the goals are for. We want to tailor it down to the actual audience. When you're thinking about your audience, you want to go back and review your brand angles. Remember the whole episode on brand angles, that's episode 36 for anybody who may have missed that, you can go back and have a listen.

We talked about the different angles that people will see your business in. You also have the competitor's angle, so you may want to understand how your competitors view you and how you would actually go ahead and do a pitch to them, an elevator pitch to that competitor.

It doesn't come off as being condescending or abrasive, and not to say you should be concerned about competition. Remember, we welcome competition, it's a great thing to elevate your brand and the entire community.  Before I show you an example, I want to give you a few more tips. You do not want to ramble. You want to actually put a smile on your face like when I'm smiling, you guys can tell that I'm smiling. During the entire recording, I'm actually smiling at you guys, if you're listening to the podcast. And if you're obviously watching the video, you can see I'm usually smiling. 

By putting on a smile, actually helps with your tone of voice and you don't come off as monotone. So you want to make sure that you put on a giant smile, and pronounciate what you're trying to say, so you're offering the best information in a more clear fashion.  Also don't speak too fast, I have a bad habit of speaking way too fast so I need to actually work on that myself. You speak slowly, make sure you pronounciate, and remember it's 30 to 60 seconds. 

You don't need to offer all the information in 30 to 60 seconds. You want to offer just enough information. Let's go through a few examples so you guys get the general idea of how I constructed my personal pitch. Remember, I'm going to be speaking to you as my audience, so I've taken the brand angle of my customer, and this is my elevator pitch.

"My name is Sophia and I founded a product-based company called Also Sophia. With my experience, I now provide guidance to new entrepreneurs. If you know anyone who needs help with starting or scaling their business, sends them my way." Now, of course, I have to practice this a little bit.  The goal is that you want to practice your elevator pitch, so it sounds natural. The more you practice, the more natural it will become. 

For me, I need to practice. I know that it doesn't come off as natural yet, but the goal is that I can easily say it in a conversation. If somebody goes, "What do you do?" And I'll be like, "I founded a product-based company called Also Sophia, and now with my experience, I'm providing guidance to new entrepreneurs. Let me know if you know anybody who's starting or scaling their business. I can definitely help them out." I've abbreviated the texts there to just make it more fluid and more natural. My audience now is going to be like, "Oh she is a person who's now helping entrepreneurs. She has the experience and so I'm going to definitely send people to her if they need help with starting or scaling their business."

When you're writing it out, we're going to make sure that we keep it short and sweet. Honestly, guys, it was two sentences long but it conveyed the message and it gave them a call to action at the end. So let's go on to introducing the company, how can your company help? You're always going to introduce yourself, and who are you in the company? In this example, I am the founder of Also Sophia, and then you're going to introduce your company. What does your company do?

Also, Sophia produces cultural festivity products for underrepresented communities who reside in North America and in Europe. What is the value proposition for Also Sophia? How does your company serve its target audience?

Now, this is an example for Also Sophia. Our customers are delighted with our unique designs, great customer service, and fantastic price point for products that were previously difficult to find until now. You can see that we have three main goals in our company elevator pitch. We want to introduce ourselves, we introduce a company and we need to make sure that we introduce a value proposition as it relates to the target audience. 

So let's move on and see an example for Also Sophia's elevator pitch. I'm going to read it. It might sound not as natural, but I'm going to read it and then I'll abbreviate it in a more natural tone.

Hi, my name is Sophia and I'm the founder of Also Sophia. Also, Sophia produces cultural festivity products for underrepresented communities who reside in North America and Europe. Our customers are delighted with our unique designs, great customer service, and fantastic price point for products that were previously difficult to find until now. Let me know if you're interested in seeing a few products.

I was reading the script, so let me see if I can abbreviate it in a more natural tone as if I was speaking to you at a networking event. 

Hi, my name is Sophia and I'm the founder of Also Sophia, which is a company that produces cultural festivity products for minority groups in North America and in Europe. Our products have delighted our customers because they have unique designs, we offer great customer service, and our products are at fantastic price points. Trust me. It was very difficult for our customers to find these products until now, so let me know if you're interested in seeing a few products. 

So you see, I just abbreviated the tone and I've tweaked some of the sentences so it sounded more natural. The goal really here guys, is to write down your elevator pitch with those subheadings that we had. If I go back, introduce yourself, introduce your company, and then what is a value proposition for your company?

We want to make sure that you're speaking to the audience so when you write it, think about who is it benefiting. What is your company doing and who is it benefiting? I'm going to show you one more example of a storyline being added to an elevator pitch, and this will help highlight the customer's experience and show a before and after effect, or experience with your company. 

The customer before and then the customer after, once they have experienced your company's service or products. Here again, is an elevator pitch with the customer story inserted. 

Hi, my name is Sophia and I'm the founder of Also Sophia. I founded Also Sophia to help customers like myself, who could not find cultural festivity products for underrepresented communities in my area. Now customers leave five-star reviews on our website and thank us for creating unique ethnic designs, great customer service, and offering fantastic price points for products that were previously difficult to find until now. Would you like to see a few products? 

I won't go ahead and read it again in my natural tone, but I want to just highlight a few things from this example, is that what we've done is we've inserted a perspective of a customer. I've said I founded Also Sophia to help customers like myself, and I've given them before.

So before they could not find cultural festivity products for underrepresented communities. They couldn't find products, but now they found the products and they're happy with it so they're leaving five-star reviews and they're thanking us for the points that I mentioned. For the design, for the customer service, and the price point.

You'll see here that we've highlighted the customer transition, the customer journey as they have gone through from before to after, and if you can do that in your elevator pitch, it will really highlight the value that you're bringing to your customers, and that will intrigue your listener to be like, "Oh really? That's fantastic."

 And I've offered at the end, "Would you like to see a few products?"  If your listener's intrigued, they're definitely going to be like, "Yes, I want to see these products." Again, this is a really great exercise that I really feel that everyone should sit down and complete, especially when you're getting your branding put together for yourself. It really helps align.  A lot of us, as creative entrepreneurs, we'll try to do many things at once.   I feel like the elevator pitch really helps target who you're speaking to and what your mission is in a very nice cohesive manner.

Now, before you get started on constructing your elevator pitch, I want you to go back and review your exercises on a brand angle, brand promise, and positioning. Also, understand who your target audience is by going through these exercises, and then coming to your elevator pitch. It'll help you understand what is the important points of your brand, and the important points that you're trying to convey as a value proposition. And remember, those were episodes 36, 37, 38 and you'll see these lessons as well within your student portal.

We are going to have in the workbook this slide. Now, I know everyone who's listening to the audio cannot see this, but it's a nice chart that puts together in a nice format your brand promise, positioning statement, your target audience, your mission statement, the tone of voice, the elevator pitch, and at the very end your brand pillars.

We did talk about brand pillars in episode 38, so if you have not done episode 38 or if you have not completed that exercise in the student portal, make sure you do brand pillars. That is actually one of my favorite lessons because it really helps me target what is the goals of the company.

I think it's really great for people who are in all the buckets, so make sure you do the brand pillar exercise if you haven't done so already, and that's it.  My suggestion now is to go ahead and grab the workbook. You can definitely listen to this audio again if you need to break it down and go step-by-step, but the workbook should be a great start for you. You're just going to sit down and really craft your elevator pitch for yourself and for your brand, and then that way you can practice and you practice and practice, and when you have those beautiful conversations when you're at events or you're speaking with a potential buyer, or you're speaking with a potential client, it's really easy to convey what your value proposition is and who you are to the company.

Okay, guys, that's all for today, and remember if you have any questions, you can always email us at [email protected]. The workbook is hyperlinked in the show notes, and also it's below this video so make sure you grab it.  And remember, make a plan and take action and yes, you can have it all. We'll see you next week. Bye. For now.