The Elevator Story

The Elevator Story

The Elevator Story is the elemental creation of the startup business.  It is foundational.  You must have an Elevator Story. It is intended to be a Habit, able to be told as a reflex, a Go To definition of the business.  It is the standard answer to the question "What do you do?" (and Why do you do it.) However, it is seldom delivered frequently enough to become a habit, and over time falls into disuse and is abandoned. The focused startup CEO will have a powerful Elevator Story for all occasions.


Pitch or Story?

Some call it an Elevator Pitch rather than an Elevator Story. I recommend Story. A pitch is what you hear from a used car salesman, or on late night TV commercials for a set of steak knives. Calling your story a pitch cheapens and demeans it in your thoughts. It lacks sincerity and integrity. A story is a sharing event.


The Magic of the Elevator Story

By design it is the finest distillation of everything you are all about, focused into the fewest and most powerful words, delivered with great impact and results.  By definition, delivering your Elevator Story is one of your greatest Opportunities in Life. Your shining moment.
A story that is crafted to be delivered verbally from one person to another, or a group of others, that describes the startup business.


The Spirituality of the Elevator Story

The Elevator Story is an Extraordinary Opportunity.
Sometimes the delivery of the Elevator Story will be a pre-planned event, such as at the beginning of a presentation before potential investors.  This setting allows for the maximum preparation and customizing the Elevator Story to the circumstances.  In the moments just prior to the start of the story, you should go to a Place of great personal Power.  Breathe.  Be grateful for the Opportunity. Start smiling.  Engage your Core Energy. Enthusiasm is contagious.

The Physicality of the Elevator Story

Breathe - to generate Energy, and Pause
Smile -  Human Interaction 101
Eye Contact -  Human Interaction 101
Tone - appropriate for the audience
Posture - project confidence
Gestures - hands, arms...
Pace - mirror the pace of the audience, moving to increase the Pace.

Pauses - the Pause gives Power to the previous, and creates attention to what comes next.
Energy - Enthusiasm is contagious.
The Surprise Gift - your card. The gift that keeps on giving.  Karma.
Duration - the shorter the better, less than 30 seconds. Add Chunks as the opportunity presents.


The Introduction

The first instants of the delivery are critical in getting attention.  Consider the framework: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action


The Call To Action

The Elevator Story is a meaningless waste of time unless there is some Call to Action.  Examples of a Call to Action would be to ask the listener to contact you, or to check out your website, or order your book on amazon.com.

A basic tenet of Sales is to Assume The Sale, so it will be better to Assume the Call to Action. The Call to Action is an Invitation to join you in your Adventure.


Other Forms of the Elevator Story

Website - the home page, or "about" page
Video -  add great Leverage to the Power of the story
Key Team Members - customize the Elevator Story for each key team member (CTO, Biz Dev, etc)


Additional resources

the-elevator-pitch
elevator-pitch-define-compose-practice-and-polish-rinse-and-repeat
why-your-startup-pitch-should-be-8-seconds-long
What Great Salespeople Do: the power of Story

Focus: Prevention of Random Events

Prevent Random Events. Distractions slow us down on our way to the goal. Shiny objects drain energy and consume bandwidth. Beware The Shiny Object. Prevent Random Events.

As CEO, your job is to Delegate, to create a Reality through the Actions of Others. Your focus must be clear. Your focus must be like a laser.

As CEO, you must come to your business as one who is working a plan rather than one who is wondering what's going to happen next, or grasping at straws, or reacting to Random Events.

You are either In Control, or Out of Control.

Choose.  Commit.  Act.  Learn.  Repeat.

I Am = My Business = Me

One of my favorite Emerson quotations:

An institution (business) is the lengthened shadow of one man.

There is one person in every business who sets the tone, the mission, the character of the business. Success or failure is in one person's hands.

If you want to know how well a business is really doing, look beyond their website and even their financial statements, beyond anything anyone tells you about the business.

Look to the person behind the business, the founder, the CEO who will attract team members with like character.  And together that team will grow, or destroy, the business.

When I take on a new Protege, I first evaluate the person's character, without regard to the business. Where there is a strong character, I can add value. Where the character is weak, I will keep looking.

For more practical advice on this matter, check this link:

http://www.supertracblog.com/how-can-you-tell-how-well-a-business-is-really-doing/

Get to the point. Fast.

Get your message down to the fewest possible words. Small words. Action words. Emotion words.

Average attention span is close to zero. You must get the customer's attention immediately.

The longer you take to get into their brain, or to create an emotion, the less chance you have of getting a sale.

Get to the point.  Fast.

The Post-It Persuasion

As we know, there are Ten Basic Principles for Managing a Young, Growing Business.
The Tenth of these Principles is: Test.

It propels us forward, with Continuous Improvement.
It has no Ego, it believes only in data, Cause and Effect.
There is no Truth except what is revealed in the Results of our Actions.

The video clip at this link is a wonderful example of how continuous testing can create extra profits out of thin air, with the simple addition of a post-it note.

Roberto Monaco interviews Dr. Kevin Hogan who reveals an extraordinary discovery that increases response rates significantly.  You will be amazed.

Highly recommended, for fun and profit!

The Business Plan: Indispensable, and Instantly Irrelevant

Join me in considering a conundrum:

For more than half a century the essential first step to do a startup is to write a Business Plan. This Plan would take the form of a thick binder filled with pages of words, numbers, designs, etc. showing the ideas and projections for the new business.

The binder is copied and handed out to a small number of people involved in the startup who would then put it on a self and ignore it.

Investors will require a business plan, but they will ignore it.

How can this be?

The answer is that the value of a Business Plan is in the critical thinking that you need to do in order to create the plan, not in the plan itself.  The plan tries to explain what the parties intend, but once the venture is launched, the plan becomes obsolete.

No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. 

The above words are the wisdom of a great military strategist of the 19th century.  Can you imagine going into a battle without a plan?  That would be suicide.  Yet, at the first shot, the plan is obsolete.  

The value of a Business Plan is the critical thinking that has created it.

And you can not be lazy and just do the valuable part, the thinking, you must follow through and do the thing that will be ignored, the Plan itself, the document, the pitch deck.  You must create the evidence of your critical thinking.  

Can it be Delegated?
Writing a business plan gives birth to a new life form.  As expected with birthing, it is painful. Can this pain be delegated, as to a surrogate?

Some people have trouble with the discipline that is required to create the Business Plan, and they will want to Delegate this step.  The common wisdom is that this is a mistake.  However, if the Plan (and therefore the startup) will not exist without getting help to create the Plan, then it must be delegated.

It still requires Work. The founder(s) must be fully involved in lengthy discussions with whoever is preparing the Plan, and review and approve the several versions of the Plan as it evolves.

How I create a Business Plan

The final form of the Business Plan could be a 3-ring binder, or a PDF file, or a PowerPoint pitch deck.  It doesn't have to take any particular form, but it must be written.  See Commandment #4: Write It Down.  Tables, charts, graphs are helpful.  Color helps get ideas across.   

For me it usually starts out with those old-school yellow note pads and a ball point pen, medium point, blue.  I never use a pencil, probably because they are dirty, the point is ever-changing, needing maintenance, so it's a distraction from the process itself.  To make corrections, I simply cross out and rewrite.  It looks ugly at first, but it gets better looking as I move through the process.

To start, I make one page for each major section of the Business Plan. At the top of the page I write the section heading, such as Executive Summary, Financials, People, Technology, Competition, Legal, Product/Service Definition, etc.

Then I attack the Executive Summary. If any part of the Business Plan is read by anyone, ever, it will be the Executive Summary. This should be a maximum of 2 pages, and at the very front of the document.  It should be written in a language an idiot could understand, describing in general terms what the business is all about, and why you are going to do this thing.

Then I just start writing about each of the other sections in the outline. It is typical that I will write a few lines about one section, which will spur a thought that I'll want to write down for another section, and then I'll return to writing more on the previous section. 

This hopping around will produce sections that will need to be edited later so they are organized in a logical form rather than the original sequence. The edit step is essential.

Once I have enough written so that it becomes disorganized, then I start using the computer, preferably Word on the Mac, and type out the stuff I have written, with page breaks and sections as on the original notes. People who really know what they are doing with Word can make easy work of creating an Index, table of contents, links, and proper fonts, sizes, headings, etc.  I don't get too involved in that level of detail at this stage, and usually delegate the final cosmetics of the Plan to a talented assistant. 

After the Plan has gone through a few rounds of review and update by the founders, it is ready for final printing and distribution.  And eternal obscurity.  

Separate plans are created for the follow-on documents such as Pitch Deck, website, apps, etc. These plans will drive the creation of these essential outputs, but the plans themselves will also become irrelevant very quickly.

Welcome to the wacky wonderland of startups!

A few changes to this site

With the New Year, this site has taken on a few changes:

1.  The blog name has changed
     From "The Art and Science of Success in Business"  (artscibiz.blogspot.com)
     To:  "Begin it Now!"  (BeginItNow.com)

     It sure seems like a no-brainer, because Begin it Now is more action-oriented, easier to remember, easier to spell the URL (BeginItNow.com), and it shows up more clearly on smaller screens.

2.  Some minor cosmetic changes to improve the small screen experience.

3.  A resolve by the author to post more frequently.

4.  Easier email address: MM@BeginItNow.com
     (compared to the previous MM@doubleMsystems.com)

5.  Let me know how it works for you.  Happy New Year!