WEEK 9
PRACTICE MAKES FOR PERFECT PITCHES.
Last week, the e2e Accelerator cohorts were all insanely busy preparing for the second Pitch Friday. My goal was to be much more prepared than I was at the first event and, by many measurements, I think I succeeded.
Here's a short video I made about Pitch Friday:
I spent three nights working until 1:30 a.m. putting together materials, building my slide deck, learning the talk and nailing the timing. By the time Friday arrived, I was feeling much better than before our first Pitch Friday.
But when I arrived for the event, I had a shift in confidence. I wasn’t feeling the way I did when I practiced earlier that day. I guess no matter how hard you prepare for a presentation, it’s never the same when you give it live and in-person.
I made the case for my business to about 50 people and, even though I made an obvious flub in my delivery, I did what I set out to do.
On Monday, the e2e team got together as we always do. But instead of going through the regular e2e curriculum, we worked with a professional presentation and business coach who broke down some of the barriers many of us had in our pitches. In a day’s work, we all walked away with tools we can apply to make our next talk — the big one at Accelerate the Heartland on October 5 — one that we can be confident in.
I’m excited for the next week ahead of me. The rest of the program is really about looking back at what we’ve accomplished in the past 12 weeks. I look forward to recapping my experience, as well as reviewing my plan going forward.
-- Andrew