When pitching, your goal is agreement… That’s all.
You want the investor to agree with what you’re saying; agree with you that your idea is not just good, but great. You want them to agree with you that investing in your idea is a no-brainer. You want them to agree with you that they will make their money back many times over.
Keep in mind, you’re not gonna walk away with a check and you’re inbox isn’t going to light up with “Where do I send the money!?!?” emails. It doesn’t work that way.
What you want is an investor to lean over to his/her partner about 3/4 of the way through your pitch and whisper “Hey… let’s talk to that guy.” That’s it. Because that means you’ve gotten to stage 2; due diligence.
So, remember; When pitching, your goal is agreement… That’s all.
As Entrepreneur In Residence at the Entrepreneur Center, I see pitches every day.
A pitch for an iPad app. A pitch for a healthcare robot. One for a drink company, one for a drug and then one for a line of safety helmets. The list is long and extremely varied.
Most of the pitches are long and way too focused on how “shiny” the product or service is.
Michael Burcham, President and CEO of the Entrepreneur Center, has a saying that should be in a little frame on the nightstand next to every Entrepreneur’s alarm clock.
It should be the last thing they see before they go to sleep and the first thing they see when they wake up.
I hear him say it in my head when I’ve been listening to a pitch that’s all about how wonderful the product or service is while not showing where the profits are. He taught me how to pitch and how to examine every pitch from many different angles and points of view. When I would get wrapped up in how great a product or service was and bring those points up, even subtly, in the pitch or in a few slides, and not focus on how it made profits, Michael would inevitably say:
“If your shiny object doesn’t make money, it’s art. It’s not a business. Hang it on the wall.”
If you think about that and say it out loud, it will put your head right where it needs to be when you start designing your pitches. I’m pretty sure you’re thinking to yourself, “Is my pitch too shiny?”. It may be. If so, that’s okay. We all start there because of the passion we have for the idea. You must realize that’s what you’re doing and get beyond that stage very quickly.
If you don’t, you may be pitching the most powerful and cost effective health care system ever conceived… that will look just fantastic next to that extremely potent, fast acting cure for baldness that hangs right above the good couch in the living room.
(You can see Michael actually saying “If your shiny object…” at the White House here.)
When you get a new idea your brain begins asking questions one right after the other.
Can I sell this? Where can I sell it? Who do I sell it to? How do I get it to the people who may want to buy it? The list of questions grows and grows and you try to answer each one until you’re back to the first question… and it starts all over again.
The loop has begun. The stress begins to build. Soon, you don’t want to talk about it with anyone about it because you’re so tired of thinking about it.
In less than 2 minutes from right now your mind will be at ease. Because watching this video about The Idea Frame will show you how to look at your new idea, and every new idea you get from now on, in an entirely new light. Watch it, you’ll see.
Much has been written about ideas. Very little has been written about properly collecting and framing them.
I had the honor of writing a book called “The Idea Frame” with Michael Burcham and John Murdock. If you’re an idea person and you need to find out quickly whether or not your new idea may be profitable, then The Idea Frame book is for you. If you need a way to collect, organize and execute an idea for a product or business, this book is for you.
You’re going to learn a secret that so many successful Entrepreneurs and business people have known for many years. They just didn’t realize it could be explained this simply. And it’s going to be explained to you so clearly, that from now on, you will most likely frame all of your new ideas this way.
Michael Burcham and I created The Idea Frame. To make a long story short, I grabbed Michael Burcham’s system for collecting information and organizing it when he got an idea for a product or business. I told him I thought we could transform it into a tool anyone could use to frame their new idea. I heard him explaining his method in a podcast called “The Eventual Millionaire” when the host, Jaime Tardy, asked him how he handled “information overload”.
When he started to explain how he did this, I understood it instantly. I saw this square with folders in it. The more he talked, the clearer the square and folders got. I put together a bunch drawings and things I thought were close to what he was explaining. (I used CURIO for that).
I showed them to Michael and he added things and erased things and moved stuff around. We went back and forth for a couple of months with sketches and ideas. Then I brought him what I thought was the finished work. He said “Yeah… Okay… make it look like THIS”. He drew this thing.
This is the actual sketch he shat out in about 2 minutes. It looks like a cake with a bow on the top and a circulating thing with folders in it. Then he said “Put the two together and I think we’ll have it.” A few weeks later I took it into him.
Michael: “That’s it. What are we going to call it?”
Scott: “The Idea Frame?”
Michael: “Done.”
Scott: “We’re gonna need to write a book.”
Michael: Leaning out the door “Yeah… John? Can you come in here a minute?”
So, staying true to the Entrepreneur Center‘s slogan, “Turning Ideas Into Reality”, The Idea Frame is a our new book and you can watch the 2 minute video of Michael Burcham explaining how The Idea Frame works and download free Idea Frames at TheIdeaFrame.com.
If you’re an Entrepreneur/Idea Person living in Nashville and you’re looking for important Nashvillians to follow on Twitter, here are some very potent suggestions. Even if you don’t live in Nashville, you should follow them anyway.
These people are all in the Idea Business. Every day, all day long, they deal with new ideas and developing them into products, companies, books, apps, systems and anything else you can think of. They cover all 3 intellectual styles; Creative, Analytical, and Philosophical.
Their Tweets will supply you with links they feel are important to creativity, thought, and business. Their Tweets will supply you with ways to think about and look at your product or business or new idea from a perspective you may not have come across yet. After a while you’ll begin to get an insight on their thoughts on life in general by what they Tweet and you may be able to apply those to the way you look at the world.
(Dave Stewart doesn’t actually live in Nashville, but he’s here so often, and is becoming an important part of the music scene as well as the Entrepreneurial and Idea scene here, so he gets an official “I Live In Nashville” pass.)
1 – @MichaelrBurcham - Michael Burcham – As the CEO of The Entrepreneur Center and Professor at Vanderbilt University and Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Management, among the many things he’s involved with, and being a shit-tillionaire from building businesses and business systems, Michael Burcham is King Kong, Michael Jackson, Rocky, The Beatles and Socrates all smushed together to make 1 person. I don’t have the blog space, nor do you have the time for me to detail him. Even a little bit. Yeah. He’s that busy.
2 – @HelloMarko – Mark Montgomery is the “Kick Ass Rock Band” of the Nashville Entrepreneurial scene. With a frontal lobe the size of a small home in the country, his view and take of the big picture and what is on the way and being created in the digital world is uncanny. If you, just this second thought it up, Mark did too, about 3 weeks ago.
3 – @ChrisBlanz - Chris Blanz may be the most creative person I know. My brother, Mitch, usually holds that spot securely while fighting off the aforementioned Mark Montgomery. However, after spending 3 minutes talking about any kind or style of new idea with Chris you’ll think to yourself “Holy Smokes… This might be the most creative guy I’ve ever met…” Guess what? You’re probably right.
4 – @DDeBusk – I talked to David DeBusk for about 45 minutes the first time I met him. It felt like somebody opened the top of my head up, like it was a lid, looked at my brain and said “Oh… hang on a second… There’s a whole section of this thing that isn’t plugged in… There we go… How does everything look now?” You know that line we all attempt to gently balance on, walk quietly around, and whisper in hushed tones about, that separates the analytical side of our brains from the creative side of our brains? He built a Go-Cart track on his.
5 – @DaveStewart & @WeaponsOfME – Dave Stewart is a Polymath. He’s one of those people who accidentally brushes up against something and it starts working or pooping gold. From The Eurythmics to The Blackbird Diaries to TV shows and products, and new ideas, he’s an international force to reckon with. Or better yet, to join with.
You can tell a lot about a person by what is on “Page 1″ of their phone. 
Is your Page 1 filled with stock apps and a couple of free games? Maybe it’s Weather, Calendar, Clock, News and Email. I’ve noticed that Idea People like to have the apps that catch or collect information close to the top of the page. It makes sense as you have the most powerful field information collector known to man in your back pocket, purse or jacket pocket. So why not keep the most potent apps as easy to get to as possible?
Here’s what my Page 1 looks like. What does yours look like?
Send me a screenshot and tell me a little about yourself and I’ll post it when I get a few more.
Have you been putting off doing something with that great idea you got a while back? Are you waiting for a “sign” to let you know the time is right and you should get started? Well, well, well… Today’s your lucky day.
You can now make that call, email that guy at that company, go by and check with that lady at the thing or get that book on developing products and stuff you saw a couple of weeks ago.
This is that sign you’re looking for. So get started, hot-rod.
In the music world you can tell you don’t like the music someone listens to by what they’re wearing. In the business world you can tell how serious someone is by their haircut/style. In the Idea Game you can’t tell anything by just looking…
People with the greatest ideas in the world dress like nerds, rock stars, 9th graders and little old ladies. Some dress like Policemen and some dress like politicians. Why? Because: THAT’S WHAT THEY ARE. There’s no specific “look” an Idea Person has. They are everywhere and are every kind and style of person.
You never know when the person sitting next to you in Church will whisper, “You know, if you _____ and then turned this so it would ____ with a ________, the hymnals would just pop out of this holder into your hands to the correct page.” So if somebody says they have an idea, listen to it. Take it seriously. You may be able to help them, or they may be able to help you. You never know.
So, what do idea people look like? They look like you.
When you search “Blogs About Ideas” for “Apps For Idea People” one of the least discussed Apps is the most important tool every inventor, entrepreneur and idea person should always have with them. It should have simple and immediate access under most any circumstance.
Why is it so important? Because as soon as you get an idea, no matter how big or small you think it is, you must catch it. Catch it and look at it later. Go over it like it’s the Zapruder Film. Then keep it. ALWAYS KEEP YOUR IDEAS.
So what’s the best and fastest way to do this? I use Evernote. Here’s why: At Cracker Barrel when I’m walking around the gift shop waiting for our table, I always get an idea. I might see a tiny little birdhouse made out of a corn cob and then BAM! My brain says “Hey man, you could make birdhouses that size out of little football helmets for college teams.” I don’t stop to think whether or not it’s a big or small or stupid idea. Here’s what happens next:
1 – I take a picture of the little birdhouse with my phone.
2 – I touch the picture and the little “Email to” thing pops up and I click it.
3 – In the To: box I put ev. This auto-fills the address of my Evernote account to a folder labeled “INCOMING”. In the Subject: box I put idea. In the Email Text I put little football helmet birdhouses.
4 – I hit Send and forget about it.
Then on Friday during my “Review Time” I go to my Evernote account and look in the “INCOMING” folder and see what I’ve collected that week. I sift and sort and put each idea in the folder it belongs in and make decisions about what to do with any ideas that might need immediate attention.
If it’s a situation where the phone service is iffy or if I have only seconds, I’ll fire up my “Notes” app on my phone and just write the idea there until I can get to my Gmail and send it to Evernote safely. If I’m driving, I ALWAYS us my Voice Recorder App and send that audio file to Evernote whenever I reach my destination.
There are many ways to catch ideas quickly. These just happen to be the ways I do. I’d love to hear yours, so tell me how you catch your ideas.
When Buddhist Monks are presented with a problem they have an interesting way of solving it. They focus their mind on the problem for 20 to 30 minutes, then go do something else. Anything else. Completely leaving the problem and the solving alone. Then they wait for the answer to come to them. And it does.
Here’s why: When you focus on solving a problem, your brain understands what is happening. It begins to gather the information you’ve seen, heard and created over the years. Like a 3 pound master puzzler it begins fiddling with the puzzle’s pieces. When you take your mind away from the problem and watch tv, read, go for a walk or run… That’s when “it” starts happening.
Conversations with children, TV shows about cooking or hunting ghosts, watching your dad fix the car, poetry you’ve read and heard, the squirrel that fought off that bird yesterday, the time your grandfather cleaned cow poop off your shoe with his pocket knife and a hose, the time you and your brother made that zip line thing that hooked on to the treehouse and then on to a the bottom of a tree 40 feet away so you could “escape” really fast if you needed to… All of those things are being sifted through and taken apart and put back together in different ways in your subconscious. Scenarios, pictures, actions and thoughts are forming and you have no idea it‘s happening.
Later, as you think of that app you almost bought this morning while on the hopper, your frontal lobe presents the answer with the “Hey look! I found it!” abandon of a 5 year old. Most of the time you will excitedly exclaim “I’ve got it!” or “That’s it!”. (I have never, ever heard anyone yell “Eureka!” while pointing upward when this happened.)
If you have a problem with your new idea, you can’t get it to make noise, something just doesn’t fit or look right, it won’t hook on to what it’s supposed to hook on to and then stay hooked on, whatever the problem. Think about it and try your best to solve it for 20 or 30 minutes. Every 4 to 7 minutes say “Come on brain, you can solve this.” Then go eat a bowl of cereal and watch TV or go to a movie or something. For get about the problem.
A few hours later, while your at the movies or as you’re falling asleep or when you wake up the next morning… BAM! You’ve got it!!! (Word to your mother).
The IdeaBang Blog
Scott Rouse
As the Entrepreneur In Residence at The Nashville Entrepreneur Center, I meet people with great ideas every day. An idea for a toy, medical device, weapon or an app. Or maybe an idea for babies, sports, travel or pets. Most are truly great. Getting that great idea protected, prototyped and licensed or sold and into an analog or digital store is the goal. To do that you need to pitch that idea to licensees, Venture Capitalists and/or Angel Investors. Helping you do that is the focus of the IdeaBang Blog.THE #1 Book for Entrepreneurs & anyone with a new idea
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