STORYTIME FOR VENTURE CAPITALISTS
I spent 25-years of my adult life telling stories that I’ve written and published to an audience full of mostly elementary school-aged children. Creating, writing and telling stories was my passion and what I thought would be my life-long career. I never even considered the possibility of doing anything else. I loved being a children’s author and a storyteller.
All that changed when my mother, my father, my husband and my sister were all diagnosed with diabetes. My life took a completely different, and totally unexpected new course, and so did the stories that I tell now.
For the last several months, I’ve been working on a way to convey my highly personal story to Venture Capitalists with the help of the mentors and my fellow cohorts in my Social Innovation Accelerator at Austin Impact Hub.
At first, I was using a format that many folks use to create a streamlined, informative and brief pitch. I practiced my pitch over and over and delivered it with mixed results in front of the class. It never went as smoothly as I’d hoped, but the feedback was always helpful.
Finally, I quit calling my presentation a “pitch” and decided to just tell my story the way that I would if I was talking to an audience full of squirmy elementary school students, instead of a room full of adults.
While the information that I’m providing in my story about why I left my career as an author of children’s books to become a Chef and start Diva-Licious Brands, our diabetes-friendly, vegetarian-based, food products company, remains the same, the feeling that I have when I’m in front of an audience has completely changed.
I’ve found that I’m more relaxed now with this new story-telling mindset because I’m doing the same thing that I’ve done for years..only this time, I’m telling my story to an audience full of adults.
Some public speakers visualize that their audience is sitting there in their underwear to help them relax. I like to visualize my audience as a bunch of curious five-year old children waiting to hear a great story. It may not work for you, but it definitely works for me!
