Malcolm Larri: How to Perfect your Elevator Pitch

hi and welcome to today's episode of Josephine meets and today I have a very super special guest I have Malcolm Barry here with me and before we before we introduce him let me give a little bit of a background why I think he is such a fantastic guest because when I quit my corporate job in 2019 I was super scared I was super lost and I had no clue what I wanted to do and I listened to a podcast back then that was it's it's I think it's still online but it's not active in a longer it was the sunshine podcast and I listened to that one and Malcolm was a guest and when I heard his episode I was like oh my God this is so cool and and if Malcolm can do it I can do it and I actually connected with Malcolm afterwards fantastic that is what this whole thing is about right right without any other introduction let me give you Malcolm Larry who is a coach he is a how do you say like conference facilitator and a workshop Workshop facilitator and you're the master of elevator pitches which is a little bit the topic that we are going to go into today but Malcolm please give us a little bit of a background about you and who you are and what you do yeah so the first thing I just want to say I've got some hay fever so please excuse any sneezing during this session so my name is Malcolm Larry leadership and culture consultant and I'm working with individuals teams and companies to help them manage change and I've been doing that now for 25 years I started by just coaching people individually starting in like 97 98 in my 25th year I think it is of coaching people and that led to coaching teams and coaching teams led to working with organizations and now I am sort of a pizza with everything because I'm working with corporates I'm working with individuals I work with startups every year helping them to find their pictures and I'm working at Betty's School of communication and Hyper Island as well helping their students learn how to communicate their professional value and I think our ability to communicate our value in the marketplace now is so critical because I think that in the marketplace now everybody needs to be think of themselves as an individual brand that is marketable the value of that brand can increase and we actually have more opportunity Unity than ever before in history to actually set our value in the marketplace and I think it's that that is an opportunity everyone should be taking absolutely and what I also think is critical because we don't know what happens like two to three years further down the road when I mean if I look back two to three years before I really you know before I really handed in my resignation I didn't have any idea or didn't didn't even think about resigning one day but if I had started building my personal brand already then so many things would have been different and I had I actually connected with one of my prior colleagues a while a while back and I told her I told him on LinkedIn I said I think you should add a profile picture and his comment was like you know Josephine that is not really one of my priorities these days and I was like maybe it should be maybe it should be one of your priorities yeah what are your thoughts about that Malcolm to build your because there are many people who are really scared about building their personal Brands when they are still in an organization like oh that I even heard comments about yeah you know I think the company tracks everything we do and if I put something on social media they will connect they might punish me in one way or the other so what are your thoughts because I bet you have heard these comments too well I think you you know you need to respect sort of your company's boundaries of what they accept that you probably may not be happy about you talking about let's say you're a marketing person you start talking about the company's marketing campaigns and how you came up with it they might think that's sort of proprietary and in-house but if you're let's say you're a digital marketing expert and you're working inside sweat Bank why wouldn't you go online and talk about things that you know about talk about Trends you know as a digital marketing expert these are the macro trends that I'm seeing these are the things that I think AI will impact digital marketers on why wouldn't you be out talking to the marketplace about the value you have and I don't think many companies really actually have any most companies don't have policies about it the ones that do they generally have pretty defined boundaries so you can't talk about what we do here and you can't talk about our customers that doesn't mean I can't go out to the marketplace and say these are the big trends that I'm seeing hey did you see what Pepsi you just did hey did you just see what Microsoft's doing in their new campaign and why it's so clever why wouldn't you be out there telling stories sharing your insights because at the end of the day you know I think the myth of the marketplace is you get paid for your education if I have a University degree then I'm going to get paid a certain amount of money based on my education and that might be true for things like engineering or you know some certain things but most people are actually going to pay you for insights for your knowledge wisdom and experience and so your CV I always tell students your CV is just um your invitation to get into an interview and then in the interview is where you actually make your kind of push your CV aside basically and say this is what I can offer and this is where most people fall down Josephine because they don't know their value they don't have a value proposition they don't know how to share that value and so I think though you know where somebody says you know it's not my priority to be out in public I think that's a really short-term thinking and why wouldn't you invest an hour a week two hours a week into building some personal brand building a network I mean I've got over 5 000 followers on LinkedIn right now even if I pivot if I go out tomorrow and say I don't want to have my business anymore I'm looking for a job I've Got 5 000 eyeballs on me that would have a huge networking effect and even if you're not planning to be an entrepreneur just that Network the network effects I'm looking for an amazing such and such to join my team amazing shortcuts you know available absolutely or people when they kind of get a little bit older they want usually they want to take on you know board positions or whatever that might be or advisory advisable positions and then it's also so much you know as you say it's a shortcut and you have already built that Network so yeah definitely and why would you call him a letter when you could have an escalator exactly I even had someone saying oh I have built the wrong Network I need to tap in because now she was looking for a job she's been an entrepreneur for it for many years and now she was looking for a job I need to tap into my old Network I was like but it's not as if you have this network and that Network you have one network of really important and like supportive individual usually supportive individuals yeah and I think don't underestimate the power of like third third and fourth connections I'll give you a really great example of this is yesterday I did a breakfast Workshop in malmer rock and roll having a great time everyone leaves going yes great fantastic one hour later one of the participants that I've never met before tagged me in a post where someone said we're looking for someone to come and talk to our teams about change urgent need and this lady wrote in on LinkedIn I found your guy and tagged me in the post so I meet somebody someone sees me do my work now I got connected to a lady in Copenhagen by a lady in malmer don't know either of those ladies personally the network effects are phenomenal you should be leveraging them yeah yeah definitely absolutely I really I really like this so if someone says so we talk a little bit about personal branding and we talk and we talk about a little bit like if you're an entrepreneur but even if you are kind of like working in corporate or you're having a role in the corporate if we move into a little bit the pitch the elevator pitch because we only have so many seconds if it's meeting someone in person or if it's on social media or wherever it might be so what are kind of like the if we try to break it down a little bit so where does someone need to start first if they have no clue because that is a little bit you know when I when I quit my job I had been in in banking for 20 or almost 20 years I had a program management project management skills but I was like I don't know anything you know you feel that and it's so hard to see your own skills and what you're really good at yeah unless you have someone who helps you do it right so where would you say that someone starts figuring out what they're good at yeah so when someone comes to me for coaching or I'm doing a workshop on this the first thing we do is we talk about value proposition what is your value proposition meaning what is the thing that you do that actually creates the most value and let's say I'm gonna let's just take an example what what role did you have before you quit your job I was a program manager within operational risk yeah now tell me Josephine what did you do in that job what was the thing that you did in the job that made the most impact every day what were the things that people came and asked you for help with where you love to spend your time so you were working with programs and operational risk but inside of that role what were you doing that made you really really valuable I think one of my major skills and that is also something that I've kind of been working on later on too is the whole networking thing like being being the go-to person when someone didn't really know who to talk to next great great so you were the Hub yeah yeah people you know and you connected Talent with need yeah yeah absolutely definitely yeah you make sure that everyone who needed to be in in my particular program made sure that everyone who needed to be involved was involved too yeah and so your value is actually connecting people and connecting talent to problems and so your value proposition is that you're you're a connector right definitely yeah right and then you could if I asked you if you look back two or three roles that you had can you see that maybe that in your other roles that you had you also naturally did the same thing is that something that could be true yeah yeah definitely and I always saw like networking more like in a contain unusual thing because you never know you I remember in particular there was I was an auditor like very long time ago and I remember talking to a woman in a totally different department and just connecting with her and then some weeks later I needed something from her department and just because I knew immediately who to go to instead of trying to figure out I could immediately call her and say hey I need I need a file yeah it wasn't random networking it was competence yeah you would go out and you sort of make a map of competence in the organization and then you'd be connecting competence to need all the time yes subconsciously so I didn't you know it wasn't as if I was targeting the people but it was more subconsciously yeah and this is what most people's value proposition is it's this subconscious way that they work inside their role inside the company that they keep doing over and over again and when I work with people they realize oh I'm a competence networker or I'm a confidence connector yeah whichever way you prefer to phrase it but what you see is that everybody has something like this now in your current role as your business owner coach Etc you're doing more or less the same thing yeah correct yeah definitely yeah it is connecting people with people I always connect people with people I got some you know connect requests from someone I was like oh that person needs to connect with that person you know always yeah I think the the thing to really recognize is oh my value proposition is is I'm a connector of competence and opportunity and uh and so then now we've got this fundamental DNA of your of your value proposition to go out to the marketplace with and I love to actually you know when I do a workshop on this basically get people to look at some of the most famous brands in the world what is Apple's value proposition that we're addicted to what is Tesla's value proposition and if you break down Apple you might get you know when I asked the audience you know tell me getting groups or two one of the things that they they start to see is that they all start to say the same things about the brand or about the you know the the company yeah and they start to see that even though the company's not saying it out loud in their branding or in their pitch they've subconsciously picked up those messages so Apple Innovation but also beautiful design yeah that they've done for 30 years they've kept innovating that they've never strayed from their value proposition being the most beautiful products right and so that's the DNA they can do anything they one so long as they don't break that promise a beautiful design now if you go out to the marketplace with your value proposition and saying this is my promise I will connect talent to opportunity I am a confidence Magnet or I'm a confidence networker and now that you make this vat you've got this value proposition for me it's managing change my value proposition is I help individuals teams and organizations manage change that's all I get paid for it's all all I've gotten paid for for 25 years but I'm really clear about that so every time someone calls me I know I'm helping them manage change but let's take you for example and we're going to build an elevator pitch so you start by saying telling people up front who you are as a value proposition so as a competence connector what how would you like to phrase it Josephine would you say confidence networker how would you like to phrase it what feels good for you I think I would actually because what I think it does but maybe that comes later because what it does is it actually creates opportunities for other people right to connect with with more people and I remember once it's a little bit of a Sidetrack but I remember I had one coffee coffee chat with someone and she she wanted to pitch me her strategy half day thingy I had went to that meeting because I thought there was some kind of collaboration opportunity for us and she started pitching me immediately so I felt you know a little bit didn't feel good and then in her pitch it was also that if I pay her to to hire her for a half day strategy session and she might give me access to her network and for me yeah for me you can imagine I was like what no you don't you don't so that was kind of like that was such a no-go for me right to to no no no that's not where we go so I think it's to create opportunity is for other by connecting the right people with the right people without me kind of knowing okay so of course I have like an idea of where it might lead but it's more like if I connect the two of you and I do that almost daily in LinkedIn I always do like these three part messages if I I connect the two of you but you have it now in your hands to take it further on so let's just for the sake of this uh little short you know uh call you an opportunity connector yeah and so then you start with something like every day is an opportunity connector I'm matching people to opportunity or opportunities to people and by doing so I create a network effect that allows my clients and people in my network to have greater access to opportunity something like that now that's a very general one what do you call yourself right now Josephine what is your job title I know you was Josephine but I never stopped to look at your job and this is where you're like oh when you're when you have like a pitch pitch uh specialist in front of you that's that's where I failed not once but several times you know where where I say you call yourself currently I think I say I or I know I say I'm a business coach and Mentor for former corporate professionals to help them create their their businesses yeah great so now we're getting more specific so as an opportunity connector every day I help people transition from corporate life to entrepreneurship by helping them connect their uh skills and value to Opportunities uh in the marketplace and I teach them not only do it for them but I teach them how to do it every day yeah yeah right and now we're starting to get it's like oh I'm an opportunity connector and so now we've taken your your value proposition and now we're connecting it to your target market yeah so I think I said something like I'm down I've had four coffees and I'm downloading this from the universe as we speak but I'm an opportunity connector who helps people transition from corporate life into entrepreneurship and now we've already told in people in like one sentence I I really a lot about what you do and who you do it for yeah yeah that's true and now we need to just add the last piece which is or the last pieces which is how do you do it right so now I'm gonna I'm gonna add to it now so as an opportunity connector I help people transition from corporate life to entrepreneurship through coaching and workshops so they can build up their own businesses and learn how to connect to opportunity every day and share their value with the marketplace and now you've got a really nice compact what was that 22nd elevator pitch which tells people basically everything they need to know about you in one kind of small compact thing because we've covered your value proposition your target market your products and services and how people are changed by them yeah and and I think it still creates a little bit of a curiosity so okay so tell me more about it because I think that is also really important yeah it is yeah and then you know of course once you once you say that and you've given people that big picture one of the great things that people don't understand is that when you have an elevator pitch like that and you can say really clearly and I'll just see if I can remember it and repeat it hey I'm an opportunity networker and every day I help people transition from corporate life to entrepreneurship through workshops and coaching so that they can actually share their value with the marketplace and opportunities every day what you've done then is you've created a framework in their head which now you can have a much bigger and much more detailed conversation because you've already told them everything they need to know so now you can go into much more detail and their brain is actually primed for much more detail not trying to guess why are you telling me this now I often tell startup companies I often teach you know startup companies to pitch their business in seven sentences yeah you need to be able to pitch me your startup in seven sentences and I work with about 150 startups a year working with antler and digital well and these other startup generators but I tell them if you can't tell me what your business is in seven sentences you won't be able to tell me in 45 minutes either but yeah if you're going to talk to me for the next half an hour about your business tell me everything I need to know in like 60 to 90 seconds so that everything I say after it will make much more sense yeah because I already know the whole story now you're just giving me more and more detail and the Brain loves to work that way to have that oh I've got the big picture now give me the detail about the big picture yeah yeah so what is your elevator pitch marker my elevator pitch is you know I already given it to you a couple of times but uh frankly I've heard it but then it's like okay so yeah every day I help I help individuals teams and organizations manage change through energetic and interactive workshops and coaching so that they can fully engage all of their talents knowledge and wisdom uh in creating the next level of their business and their life yeah something like that it changes a little bit every day depending on how many coffees I've had it gets more and I also think it has to change it has to live a little bit depending on where you are and in which I mean if you would be let's say cocktail party with I don't know wine connoisseurs or whatever you might need to change it a little bit I'm the reason why I said wine connoisseurys is because we're going to a wine event on Saturday so need to handle prepared for for that right but I mean even you know you've just given the first part you know you don't need to go into like the whole thing about energetic workshops and and you know you can say it much more casually at a party it's like oh I work with uh some of the biggest companies in the world um helping them manage change depending on like what I wanna share you know it's like I'm a leadership and culture consultant and I work with large companies on their leadership and culture and I help them manage change what do you do you know it depends the audience you're in if you're in serious networking mode if you're in casual networking mode and you know if I'm at a dinner table I don't need to tell them everything in the first 30 seconds because we're going to be together for 90 minutes and if we've got a conversation going then it's just going to be a natural conversation yeah are there any things that are no girls absolutely not include that in your elevator well you actually talked about it about your experience of oh yeah yeah of someone you know my background is NLP neuro linguistic programming and we in neuro-linguistic programming you know there's a saying which is Rapport is everything or sorry uh yeah Rapport is everything you know you don't have to do it but you're not going to get anything you want without it it's kind of insane something like that and the person that you were with they didn't build enough Rapport and connection with you before they offered you something and so then you've got this really horrible salesy feeling right yeah and so I went there with a totally different intention right and I wasn't ready for her offer if because I had this was fairly soon after I had quit my job yeah and she was offering me something I was like I don't even know if I need this you know yeah exactly and also she didn't actually build enough connection to you to know what to offer you yeah you know there's a lot of people out there that would uh that are networking in a in a sort of a little bit of a desperate way it's like you need to buy this from me because I need to sell it and you can really feel that and so I think that once you've done your elevator pitch and you're kind of established who you are and what you do just focus all of your attention on the other person you know if they have a need they will buy from you if they don't have a need they have no reason to buy it from you yeah but if they feel really good about you they'll tell other people about you yeah yeah and so for me I never go into any situation with an intention of really selling anything but if I make a strong enough connection and there is a need there then I will get business and I you know my business grew by 60 last year and I don't spend any money on marketing I have a zero marketing budget uh and I you know the business grows and grows and the reputation in the marketplace is the best thing for that the best you know doing good work is always the best marketing but even when I'm just meeting people I'm just really trying to make a connection a genuine connection know the person and really just trust that as I meet people I will meet enough people and I do to have a thriving business and not everyone needs to buy from me but my mission every day is to make sure that everyone that I meet feels really good about meeting me because if I do that then there's always an opportunity for another meeting or for them to recommend me but I definitely want them to feel valued I mean that's that's really such a big mission of my work is for people who don't feel valued so you know don't be salesy and I think make a connection is much more important than make a sale if you make a connection you might make a sale but if you only make a friend or add someone to your network that's plenty that's a big that's a big win yeah and this person if you think about this person I still remember the name I would never ever recommend that person to anyone right yeah but if if they would have just told me about what they were doing first of all I might have become ready maybe a couple of months down the line and then have invested in that or I might have known someone who was already ready that I would recommend that person to like the person that you met on this Workshop that you were who who then recommended you to to this other company in Copenhagen I mean that's that's major right yeah and she only did that because she left the breakfast workshop with a Feeling yeah yeah right she didn't walk out with a proposal she didn't walk out with anything she just walked out with my business card and uh and a great feeling about what she just experienced in this one hour breakfast workshop and I just immediately went out into the world wanted to share that feeling with somebody and she did right so that's it's fantastic but I think just getting back to the elevator pitch the best thing about the elevator pitch is it makes you feel confident about yourself yeah it makes you feel confident about yourself and what you do so that when you're sitting with somebody you can confidently talk about it rather than going that's a really good question what do I do what I do and I'm really good at it you know and be confident that you're good at it yeah yeah definitely they need to rehearse in my connector networker Network yeah what do you remember I need to re-watch this episode every day every day that is one of them too it's not set in stone so it it will develop and further yeah and I always tell people like yeah you know just have that shitty first draft work with it for a while and then upgrade upgrade upgrade and also I think over time it it just becomes much more natural to say it you know as a coach speaker conference host you know for 25 years I've been helping people manage change that sounded really strange to me when I started saying it but now I've said it so many times it feels really normal yeah yeah and it's actually a really good conversation starter as well like managing change how do you do that well I coach I do workshops I do webinars I you know etc etc and of course if you have a really good value proposition you can build all kinds of things around it so as an opportunity networker which you are or you know or opportunity connector you can write a book you can make have a YouTube channel you can just keep building up but just stay in that around just make sure you have a value proposition that you can pivot around this is what again what I talk so much about with startups is you know you've got to have a value proposition so you can add and subtract products and services and that's pivoting instead of just drifting along into different areas you know it's like people start I'm making a health app and you come back six months later what are you doing we've opened a car wash after a car wash we pivoted no you didn't pivot you drifted as an opportunity connector you might say I want to work with people who are transitioning from corporate to entrepreneurship but then maybe five years from now it's like no I want to connect huge corporates with other huge corporates who are unbelievably good at sustainability to create a network effect across huge corporations it could be anything in five years but you're still that opportunity ninja that you are because that's your natural gift right that's your god-given gift of being able to just naturally you see things that other people don't see yeah yeah I call myself Sherlock and Watson depending on who who called Watson right so that's you and and when you go into a room and by the way I want to say one more thing before we run out of time which is that if you want to kill imposter syndrome really know your value proposition because when you know your value proposition you can walk into any room with any group of people and know what your value is and just Center yourself in it I'm the guy who manages change you know and I can walk and you know my background is I didn't finish High School I didn't go to university just climbed the ladder one rung at a time through really hard work and self-development but I'm I could walk in I have walked into the Board Room of huge companies and just stood there and like told them how to do things and it's not that I know everything but I know everything about what I know about yeah I know everything about what I know about so if you want to talk about managing change I'm a ninja at that it doesn't matter if you're the CEO of h m or Elon Musk if I'm in a room with you and we're talking about that thing I'm the guy and I'm really confident about that but also imposter syndrome just walk into a room and know this nobody knows what I know how I know it that your gravity your journey Josephine from corporate to entrepreneurship and the way you did it taught you things that nobody else knows and so you can just get into any room and know that nobody knows but I know how I know it oh right and that's the same for everyone in the room so we're all equal yeah yeah and the elevator pitch is a great way to get to that value to peel that onion and make that happen oh there are so many gems I'm taking notes as we speak and I'm just I'm just waiting to to put this out there in the world because this is amazing and how could people because you are you are also power connector you could have said back then who you just been you know but you didn't we connected and we we DM back and forth and now today I got to have you here on my show which is amazing so how can people connect with you yeah for sure so anyone that wants to reach out to me on LinkedIn that's where I'm mostly active these days I also have a little Instagram uh at bravecoach a lot of pictures of my kids though so just be warned a lot of pictures of kids and my drum set and me on stage and stuff but uh connect with me I'm really happy to connect but you know the way that I ended up here today is a beautiful example of you not having to know at all the ways it's going to happen so you know I used to stand this is true story I'm a bit embarrassed to say it but when I was a teenager whenever I was in the shower I would practice being interviewed so I'd be in the shower and I'd be like so Malcolm what do you what are your thoughts on this and I would practice being interviewed so I kind of practiced for this life but then I came to Sweden let's just connect how we show all of the connections of how I got here so I meet a lady in Sydney I decide this is the one I moved to Stockholm I get a number of jobs I go through those jobs and then while I'm working in those jobs I'm building my coaching business underneath and I'm building a network I meet a lady named Jenny Jenny brings me to hyper Island to lecture at hyper Island two ladies in the class at hyper Island work for hammer and Hanbury those ladies invite me to be in their kickoff that goes really well they invite me to be a consultant in their company I then do a breakfast workshop for hammer and ham worry one of the ladies from uh the sunshine pod what was that group called I can't remember that name of that networking group and and um for good living yeah all good moving Network arena from and uh I forget the other lady's name wonderful ladies we're in the audience they invite me to come and speak at for good living and be on their podcast do you heard the podcast we got connected now I'm here yeah none of it was planned no and before that I actually went to one of their Retreats for good living Retreats or Retreat yeah it was it was like a weekend Workshop where everything kind of started where I started listening to their workshop so it's like a little bit like parallel universes going on and you grabbing all the opportunities along the way that presented themselves to you in various not saying no you know what I'm staying in Sydney that lady can go back home again you know yeah and also you do you do the podcast and you don't know if it's going to do anything or nothing or it's going to be a million seller or one person will hear it and you know this is the magic of just putting yourself out there sharing your value and you don't know when it's going to when you plant a seed when it's going to bear fruit I had a gentleman call me up two weeks ago and said I saw you speak six years ago at an event and today we were having a meeting and I thought that would be the perfect guy for a kickoff six years I've been living in this guy's mind it's probably being funny on stage you know uh introducing this other speaker Brian Tracy so I think it's you also you networking is magical yeah it's so magical you don't know what's going to happen so if you just put great energy out there every day on a consistent basis things will happen yeah yeah I love yeah I really love that so thank you so much Malcolm for being on the show today and I can't wait to see what happens six years ahead from now who might say oh you know I heard you and Josephine meat or whatever that would be so so fun so thank you so much welcome thanks for having me take care

Channel: Josefine Wanner

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Id: XtjLWk4Tj28

Length: 38min 10sec (2290 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 04 2023