Pitch Perfect: Entrepreneur and amateur rapper Lourdes Juan shares her tips for winning pitches
Claudia Wong
Love rap music?! Hate giving presentations? These are common sentiments and Lourdes Juan, an alumni of Avenue Magazine’s 2013 Top 40 Under 40 list, actually found a unique way to utilize Chance the Rapper’s lyricism to help her better prepare for business pitches.
During the day, Lourdes runs Hive Developments, an urban planning company, and Soma Hammam & Spa. She is also the founder of Leftovers Foundation, a non-profit in Calgary that rescues safe, unsold food from cafes, grocery stores and other vendors and relocates the food to service agencies such as the Drop-In Centre. From business to non-profit pursuits, Lourdes has had extensive experience in pitching ideas to others.
For July, Chic Geek wanted to get some advice on how to pitch ideas and Lourdes was one of the first presenters that came to mind. Being the busy businesswoman she is, Chic Geek caught up with her over the phone during her weekday commute!
You have to pitch for Leftovers and your businesses all the time. Is this something you learned formally, or does it come naturally?
I’ve done a couple accelerated programs with Leftovers and, with those programs, you get a preliminary introduction to pitching, but that’s it. If you own a business or you’re passionate about getting something off the ground, your actual pitch comes naturally. It’s more that you need to craft your words carefully and communicate them well to whoever you’re talking to.
Are there any notable tricks or tips you learned from books or research that people could look more into?
I can’t remember who said this, but you have to appeal to someone through their mind, heart and their wallet. You basically have to pull on someone’s heartstrings. They have to really feel something from your pitch and then you have to connect with their wallet. You have to have a call to action to appeal to people’s wallets. If you don’t have a call to action, all that emotion gets lost.
What are the differences when it comes to pitching for Hive, a business, versus Leftovers, your non-profit?
For me, nothing. There shouldn’t be a difference between for-profit and non-profit. I think that’s where the conversation about social enterprise comes in: in every enterprise, how can you produce social good? For Hive, how are we showing the best practices? That’s an emotional pitch.
What’s the most difficult part of pitching?
The most difficult part is when you get nervous and second guess yourself. You can almost talk yourself out of something. There’s a bit of nervousness around pitching, but it makes you stronger as you have to be so eloquent, concise and direct. People don’t have the time to wait around for you to mumble on.
And what’s the easiest part?
It would be being able to express your passion about something, because it’s really fun and addictive to tell the world what you’re doing.
You mentioned nervousness is the hardest part. How do you overcome that, or stage fright?
It really is practice. I remember my first pitch on stage. I probably practiced it 500 times, but I was really struggling with memorizing it.
I thought, how can I remember the lyrics to a rap song, but I can’t remember something I wrote myself? It’s because I didn’t put any rhythm to it. It was very robotic because I was scared of not getting it right.
I would play a rap song and rap to it, then I would play a recording of my pitch and present over it. I would repeat this process. The rap song would get me in the rhythm. Then I really knew what to say and I didn’t miss a beat. You need to be on time because in serious pitch competitions they cut your mic off.
What rap music did you use?
I used several! Anything from Tupac, to whatever 90’s rap I had in my car at the time. Chance the Rapper was really good, too, because he’s lyrically so strong. Everyone should just listen to Chance the Rapper!
How do you deal with rejection and persist?
It’s a learning experience, so you take what you learn from that experience and use it next time. Nothing will be gone to waste.
What technologies or tools do you use? PowerPoint?
I definitely use PowerPoint, but I always have to write it out by hand. What I find helpful is to choose my visuals first and then build a speech around it.
You spoke about pitch competitions earlier. Why should people look into them?
The Hunter Centre teaches pitching, and pitch competitions are a great way to learn. They really prepare you for your next pitch or elevator speech about your business.
Any final tips for someone that’s learning to pitch?
To save yourself a lot of headache and time, because it’s really taxing preparing for a pitch, really research who you’re pitching to. Know your audience.
