The importance of who you are
Amongst all the business related sentences, we believe there one that has been wrong for quite some time now:
You can say whatever you want, people matters in business. You can hide by saying that you don’t like the got to market strategy or the business model, in the end, the project will be tainted by your opinion of the project manager/CEO/guys you have in front of you.
Entrepreneurship is a question of people. Yes your ideas are essential, your product as well but your personality, who you are, is paramount for the good completion of your objectives.
Of course the advices following those lines are generic and cannot be considered as “laws”. Moreover, we will see how some bias about personal branding can be harmful to your progress.
Who are you?
This question is paramount. Even if you’re not eager to share your pedigree with the audience. Even if you think that soon, you’ll go back to your lab / your desk and let someone else do the public speaking.
Even if you don’t care, your audience does.
Whatever your ideas are, they want to know who the f*ck you are. Not because they don’t care about your idea, not because they are looking for love and romance. Because entrepreneurship is a question of people. You can take the greatest idea ever had on earth, if the people running the company are looser, it will crash and burn. If you have an A-team, you’ll get funded, you’ll rock your market and all, even with a limited idea such as YO!
If you fail to show who you are, people will consider that you have something to hide.
What do you think will happen if you send this kind of vibes? You will be impacted but even worst, your project will suffer the consequences too.
By not showing your true self while pitching or public speaking, you’re damaging your project. The things that kept you awake for the last months, the thing that made you rise early to hustle like Gary would say.
How can you do that?
Start by making it personnal. We are all craving for stories, above all, we are all craving for stories we can relate to. You don’t want a beautiful story, you don’t want the perfect story for your goals. You want the true story that will impact the people listening to.
To create a good story, you just have to follow some advices from other sources like here( @matthewtoren) and here (Forbes).
Beside stories, we can also work on other aspects of our presentation to show who we are.
Dress the part
Do you have what it takes to be yourself?
Do you have what it takes to wear your favorite shoes in front on investors?
Talk the part
Are you confortable enough to use your own words and not the hype buzzwords of your field?
An immersion into your mind
Do you have what it takes to show your way of thinking, planning and conducting your business?
SHOW IT!!!!
We are really attached to this question of identity. A business angel we know once said “there are 3 things we (busines angels) are looking before investing in a Startup:
- people,
- people
- and people”
So we created this card to make sure everybody will think about it while using our amazing product!
Be strong, you can do it!
Be cool, all is it control!
Start now.
Pitch Card Team.
