Today we're gonna talk about how to create
a one sentence elevator pitch. That's right, by the end of this little show
of mine, you're gonna know exactly how to create that elevator pitch in one sentence,
what the three components are that absolutely need to go in it, and how one of my one on
one coaching clients used this exact formula to get hired on the spot. So, let's talk about this. Elevator pitch. You might be thinking, "Why do I even need
one of these?" Well, let's talk about this for a second. I can think of many reasons, but I wanna talk
about two. One is, you've got to have away to introduce
yourself whether you're in a professional setting, whether you're doing it in person,
whether you're doing it in an email, whether you're doing it online, this elevator pitch
that we're gonna talk about is a great little application for the LinkedIn headline you
might wanna use. So, there's many, many ways to use it, to
outwardly introduce yourself to the benefit of others, so that they can understand who
you are and what you do. But also, one thing that I think gets really
overlooked with the simplicity of something like this is, how valuable it can be ... I
like to call it an internal clarity marker or a focal point. It's very easy today, in the world we live
in to get distracted, life is distracting in general, but as far as your careers go,
you know, "What should I do? What should I try? Should I switch careers? Should I?" You know, before you know it, you sorta incrementally,
before you really notice it, you've drifted away from who you are, what you're about and
what you care about and why you do what you do. And, you need a little anchor point to pull
you back in. So, I think that's a very, very valuable reason
why you need to have this. So, just a couple of really good ones. And, I always like to warm up with that because
I want you to know the value and not just the tactics. So, so those are a couple of great reasons. Now, let's talk about how to create that elevator
pitch. So, I wanna preface this by saying, there's
about a thousand videos out there that talk about this, and every trainer's got his or
her opinion on how to do this. This is just the formula I like, I want you
to take what I give you today, put your own spin and twist on it, and I want you to be
yourself and use what is appropriate for you and what you feel most comfortable with. But, but, I can tell you, there's three really
important ingredients that need to go into your introduction of yourself. First one, who you are or what you are. Second one, for whom you do it, and the third
one is, how those people or those companies or whoever it is, groups, will benefit. So, how will they benefit? So, who you are, for whom you do it and how
they'll benefit. And, let's look at that. Let's get to an illustration here, just so
you can see it visually. These three parts, who you are, for whom you
do it and how they benefit. Now, that how they benefit, you know, the
first two might be really obvious to you, but how they benefit is the money piece. You wanna be able to show this world and these
people or these companies or these groups or institutions or whoever it is that you're
serving, how they will benefit. And, from an internal, that clarity marker
that I was talking about, and for your focal point, the benefit of serving others is what
ultimately will keep you going. So, it's great for you to do things that make
you happy and I want you to do things that make you happy. But, when you have a necessity, and you feel
as though you're doing it for other and you're able to share it and be clear about that,
that is gonna keep you going when stuff gets tough. When stuff gets tough. So, I wanna switch back, show you my face
again, and I wanna talk a little bit about, well how do we put that sentence together? Now, at this point, I could just give you
the sentence, but, but, after teaching thousands of people how to do this and watching the
agony and the struggle and the iterations that they go through, I wanna give you a little
story, so that you can in advance realize the challenges that you're probably gonna
face when you pull this together for yourself, and I wanna help you avoid it. Okay. So, I have a client, he's a coaching client,
a one on one coaching client. He enlisted my services to help him in his
search. When somebody does that, they get a handful
of sessions with me, and we either talk on the phone or we go through the computer and
we do the Google Hangouts or something like that, or we meet in person if they're geographically
near me. This guy happened to live in my town, so,
we were going to meet for lunch for our first session. And, before the first session, for anybody
that works with me, there's some homework you gotta do. You gotta gather some thoughts about yourself
that usually takes people a little longer than they think, but there's a little soul
searching that I want them to do, they go through all the stuff, we get together in
the first session. So, he and I are meeting for lunch, we sit
down at the restaurant, we sit down at the table, we order, we ditch the menus, and we're
sitting there and the first question that I ask him, as we begin, 'cause I wanna see
what I'm working with here, I said to him, "Tell me what you do, and tell me what you
do, and tell me as fast as you possibly can." So, he starts talking. And he's talking, and talking, I don't interrupt
him, I wanna see how long he'll go before he takes a breath. Well, about 10, 10-12 minutes into this, I
say, "Okay. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. Stop. Stop." I said, "As fast as you can." He says, "Well I was, there's a lot to tell
you." I said, "Well, you can't introduce yourself
that way, no one's gonna allow you talk for 10 or 15 minutes about who you are and what
you do." So, he said, "I want you to tell me in one
sentence." He says, "I can't tell you in one sentence,
I can't tell you in one sentence." I say, "All right Mr. Smarty Pants, tell you
what? Let's go for one sentence. I'm gonna ask you three questions and I want
you to answer me in as few words as you possibly can." So, he says, "Okay." So, I asked him, "Okay, what are you?" And he said, "I'm a CIO." And I said, "Stop." And then I said, "Okay. Okay, great. Who do you do that for?" And he must have thought this was a trick
question, I said, "Who do you do that for?" He said, "Well, companies." I said, "Okay, stop." And then I said, "Okay. And what do they get out of it?" He says, "Well, when I work with them, I'm
always optimizing their systems and the staff and whatever, and we're creating solutions
that either usually generate revenue for them, help them generate revenue, or reduce their
costs. So, basically, I try to increase profits." I say, "Okay, stop. Write that down. Write that down. Just write down what we just said, just those
words." So, he writes that down and here's what it
looked like, three minutes later. So, I'm a CIO who helps companies optimize
their IT resources, so they can increase revenue and reduce cost. That was it. Took us just a couple of minutes to create
that very nice, very crisp introduction. Call it a pitch, call it a headline, call
it your one sentence, call it whatever you want. But, let's take a look at this, because I
wanna decompose this for you and I wanna get your hamster running about how this applies
to you. So, the first part here, I'm a CIO. Okay, he's a CIO. You might be a business analyst, a financial
analyst, a mortgage broker, a Senior Vice President of sales, a sales leader, sales
manager, sales executive, whatever you might be. So, that's kind of the front part. Who helps, all right, so he helps companies. He could've said, manufacturing companies,
healthcare companies, he could have said, small companies, startup companies, fortune
500 companies, whatever it might be, he could have said groups, he could have said educational
institutions or whatever it might be for you. The entertainment industry, the market, the
whatever. Optimize their IT resources. Okay, that's his key thing. That's specifically what he does as a CIO. And what does that lead to? So, they can, so the companies can, increase
revenue and reduce cost. Now, we could have said, increase profits,
but I think we wanted highlight for him that he's a strategic CIO. So, we want companies who are looking at him,
to understand that he can actually focus on helping them generate revenue, not just reducing
cost which is real stigma with CIO's for him. But, I wanna say this a few times, so they
can, so they are, so they are able, so they needs the be in your pitch, because the so
they is telling your audience or whoever it is you're introducing yourself, what you are
enabling the world to do. So, your beneficiaries, your companies, your
groups, your people, your employees, your customers, your whatever. What are you enabling them to do? What do you think mine is? What are you doing here? I'm helping you with your careers. I want you all leading rewarding careers. That's what gets me out of bed every day. That's what really gets me excited on Thursdays. Because I know you need me and that's why
I'm here. So, I am, my mission is to enable you to lead
a more fulfilling career. So, what are you doing? What is it? So, start to think about that. All right now, I wanna take you back and I
wanna tell you what actually happened to this guy. So, we get done with this, we get done with
this and then we go through some other very painful exercises about PIM and self-awareness
and his why and all the requirements and things that he needs. We get his resume in order, that's next, right? First you wanna work on yourself, then you
wanna work on your resume, we get that thing polished up, we sling it onto the world, all
of sudden immediately, he starts getting interviews. He goes to an interview for a company he really
loves, and they're interviewing a few other candidates, so it's very much in process,
it's very much in play, he goes through like four interviews. He interviews with the HR department, he talk
to the CTO, the CFO, the COO and now he is schedule as a last round to go meet the CEO
for an hour. And, coincidentally, I think there were three
other candidates and my guy was last. My guy just happened to be last in the process,
and so, he was going to meet the CEO. He gets into the room with the CEO, CEO shakes
his hands, they both sit down. CEO opens his portfolio, he looks at him,
just deadpan face and says, "Tell me what you do." Not, tell me about yourself. Not walk me through your resume. Not what are you gonna do to the department
when you get here. Tell me what you do. Now, I'm sure, at this moment my client is
thinking, "[inaudible 00:11:49] genius." Or, he's probably not what he was thinking,
he's probably thinking, "I better not fumble my words." But, but, he says to the guy, "Well, as succinctly
as I can say it, I'm a CIO who helps companies optimize their IT resources, so they can increase
revenue and reduce cost." And he stops. And then he stops. And, the CEO, who I'm absolutely certain is
a colorful, funny guy, and probably a wonderful sense of humor, closes his portfolio, stands
up, starts walking toward the door. I almost wish I was sitting in the room, because
I'm absolutely certain my client, the color from his face probably went ash white and
he broke out into a sweat. And, he turns to the CEO and he says, "What
did I say?" And the CEO looked at him and he said, "The
right thing. The right thing. And, the job's yours if you want it." And then as the color started to probably
come back to my client's face, the CEO went on to say, "Because anybody who is that clear
about who they are and their goals in life, and what they do for the companies they work
for, is gonna be a great employee. And, and, I'm also guessing with that clarity,
you are not gonna need a lot of time from me and that's very important because I'm very
busy and I need my people to be able to run their units on their own. So, the job is yours if you want it." Now, I've come to know, the CEO sits back
down, they probably kicked it for another 30 minutes, but there's a lot of reasons why
you have this, and I am not saying you're gonna get hired in 18 words, but, this is
an important element. We talked about a couple of ways that you
can use this, obviously there's lots of ways to introduce yourself, emails, LinkedIn headlines,
in person, whatever it might be, and that internal clarity marker, so don't overlook
the value of this simple sentence for yourself. Okay now, if you like this step, I mentioned
earlier when we started that there's a three part video series. There's a video series that I created about
a year and a half ago, and I've tinkered around with the titles, I think I've settled on,
Five Steps To Career Success. It's in the job description of this video. It's free, it's on the YouTube channel, you
can just click it and go watch it. And, it takes you from this elevator pitch
or headline, and it moves you through your why and confirming your why and testing your
why and creating your requirements, so that you can assemble a virtual environment for
yourself that you'll be successful in. And, it's a great series for people who are
just starting out in their careers. It's a great series for people who are changing
careers, and it's also a darn good series for people who just simply wanna change jobs
but wanna make sure that they're doing the right stuff, they're investigating it properly
and all that good stuff. So, no matter who you are. It's a good watch. So, I hope you take me up on that. Now, if you guys are still here, you 171 one
of you, if you're loving this, click the thumbs up button. Share the video, share the video, and put
your comments in the chat, I'm gonna go look at it. I can see it going feverishly, zipping on
my screen here, but I don't look at it when I'm taking 'cause I get distracted. Now, if you are somebody who is listening
to this in the future on my podcast, on one of the podcast platforms, I'm letting you
go here, I wanna say so long, and until next week have fun. And if you want more along these lines, then
head over to the YouTube channel and look up this video on how to create your elevator
pitch.
