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Powerful Pitch Automation on The Startup Talk Podcast with Will Greenblatt
Powerful Pitch Automation on The Startup Talk Podcast is brought to you by TorontoStarts and OutLoud Speakers School present. We discuss the tricks and techniques that take your pitch to the next level. How to be prepared to pitch in any situation and overcome fears, anxiety, and distraction to deliver your best pitch with Actor, Musician, and Pitch Coach Will Greenblatt as he joins The Startup Coach in the last in the 5 part pitching series.
Will Greenblatt is an Actor, Musician, Pitch Coach with numerous acting credits including Life with Derek, Little Mosque on the Prairie, Radio Free Roscoe, and more. You have heard him in Assassins Creed Games and Immortals Fenyx Rising. Teaching public speaking, communication skills & pitch coaching. OutLoud’s clients include Google, ICBC, DMZ and TechStars, and collectively have raised over $40 million USD in investment. Will travels all over the world coaching individuals and companies, helping entrepreneurs and professionals tell their story with more passion, clarity and confidence.
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Transcript of Powerful Pitch Automation (Automated Transcript)
00:00:02 – 00:05:09
Direct from The Six, world renowned, Canada’s largest city with Canada’s biggest thinkers’ visionaries and hustlers. I this is startup. talk featuring the founders funders innovators and community leaders who’ve led Canada’s startup ecosystem. Right here in Toronto. You’ll hear the challenges. The failures the successes Toronto startup on cast gives you the full story direct from the entrepreneurs and influencers who made a difference now the host of startup talking the founder of TorontoStarts The Startup. Coach
Welcome to Powerful Pitch Automation with actor. Musician and pitch coach Will Greenblatt. The co-founder of OutLoud Speakers School. How are you doing?
Well. I’m doing shitty but I don’t know if I can swear on this? But I’m okay. I’m sick but I’m going to be fine for today. I’m going to be great. Powerful Pitch Automation is going to be awesome. I’m super excited for this. But yeah, it’s really nice to be back other than being sick. I’m doing quite well my Businesses kind of all gone virtual. So, I’m one of those lucky people who is able to do my stuff Online and not have to rely on in person events or spaces so I’m doing great and as my wife she’s able to work from home so yeah. We’re good fantastic so while you get your presentation going. I want to remind people who are on YouTube era Join us on zoom here in the chat room that we all your questions so if you have any questions about this we’ll be answering them pretty much at the end or will might be. Sometimes he asked questions in the middle because it’s interactive but we’ll answer and we’ll get to all your questions and will probably have an opportunity for you to pitch at the end. We’ll give you some feedback so Definitely look forward to that. And when you’re ready over to you will let’s do it So we are here at act five for anybody who doesn’t know me. Craig introduced me but my name is with green. I’m the CEO and co-founder of out loud speaker school and we help founders and teams and executives tell powerful stories to grow their business. We mostly work with public speaking training and communication coaching. And we have a number of services that I can link to at the end if anybody’s interested in taking their public speaking storytelling and their marketing game to a whole another level through developing really good communication skills. Today is the last Stage of our five-step model which we call five acts as a little wink to the actor thing that we do we have act one which is awareness starting to become aware of these skills act to which is articulation developing story understanding and skills act. Three which is actions starting to get up and do it. Act four alignment which is get going into your story and aligning that with what you do in your business. And today we come for act five automation how to automate your good speaking skills making great public speaking skills and storytelling a habit. How do we do that. And also becoming your own coach. How can you monitor and track your progress without needing my services? Or somebody like Craig. Without an outside I Gauging your pitch and looking at it and telling you how to make it better. How can you look at it yourself and go. I can tweak this I can work on that. You really want everybody. That I work with the have those skills by the time. I’m done with them so they don’t need to keep keep paying me to get better. So, these are the five steps that we worked with before and now we are going to do. Act five automation today. So why is it important to automate skills. Why don’t we just say. Oh, this is what we do and you can think about it and you know. Why do we have to automate and make these things a habit. It all comes down to this I don’t know how many people have seen this before. I find this really fascinating. The conscious competence model. There are four stages to gaining any skill. There’s the first stage where we call unconscious incompetence. It means you don’t know how much you suck at something like people pick up guitar. And they’re like him playing guitar and their strumming making horrible sounds but they think they sound good because they just have no idea what it should sound like and then there’s the awareness stage you start taking some guitar lessons and you’re like oh my god I suck at this. That’s conscious incompetence. You realize how much goes into the skill set. How many things you need to think about. How difficult some of those chords are and you start to learn how much there is to know after doing that for a long time you start to get to the conscious competent stage where you’re good at it if you’re really working and paying attention so for public speaking that would look like okay. I’ve learned some skills. I’ve learned some techniques. I have a bit of confidence but some days. I just don’t have it. And I have to really think about what I’m saying and be really focused to get my point across but if I’m not it kind of all goes out the window and if I’m tired if I’m hung over if I’m overworked I if I’m not prepared I lose all my skills. Then we get to the skilled stage once you start to master this stuff. These are what true masters whatever it is. They’re doing this is the stage. They’re at unconscious competence. A soccer player doesn’t have to think when the ball’s coming towards us to jump up and push their head forward and you know hit the right spot on their skull and use their body to talk towards the net to get a perfect header.
Powerful Pitch Automation – 00:05:09 – 00:10:02
They just do it. Their body is trained in their minds trained to execute on that. Play a guitar player. Who’s playing a really complicated complex finger. Picking song is not going. Okay thumb first finger middle finger ring finger. They’re just playing. The body is working from muscle memory. And they’re just doing it and the more you can get into unconscious competence the better the performance will be so that is why we need to automate. Obviously, that takes time. And that’s what I’m here to show you how to do it. And how to create a regimen. If you want to get better at guitar you need a good Program in a good coach and a good practice schedule. You want better at soccer. You have to get out on the field and train and do the right things. I’m going to show you how to do that for your public speaking. There’re three things that I think are super important to automate so the good speaking skills. That’s what we’re here to do. So how do we automate those good speaking skills while we have to do daily exercises but then the question becomes. How do we automate the daily exercises. If we’re not in a habit of doing daily exercises chances they will not get done. So, I’m going to talk about a habit forming around that. And then also one thing that I think is non-negotiable and really important is anxiety management will get into this later but the amount of time we waste on anxiety and mental energy and capacity is I don’t I don’t have any statistics about how much that is but I can only imagine. The percentage would be significant for how much time we waste thinking about. Oh my god. Did I say that wrong. Or oh my god. Is this good enough. Oh my god. Did I send that email too fast or below letting that go and learning to recognize in your body and your mind when that’s coming on breathing it out and letting go of it is one of the biggest skills. I’ve learned as an entrepreneur and I believe it is vital to being a great public speaker so I one act five scene. One is the rehearsal. How can you make your rehearsal effective to automate great public. Speaking skills, we need it to be repetitive. Means you have to do it enough that it becomes a habit but it needs to be varied so that it doesn’t get boring and that it. It imitates the very nature of public speaking appearance. Right we don’t do a public speaking appearance exactly like we practice and in fact if you just practice the same way if any curve ball gets thrown at you like you’re tech doesn’t work or somebody asked a question you’ll fall apart so we have to practice with that variation in mind and it’s got to be fun if it’s not fun chances are you won’t do it unless you truly believe in the in the outcome which I hope you do that. Public speaking is super important for your success as an entrepreneur. But if it’s not fun chances are you’ll just give it up because you won’t enjoy the experience. So how do we do that. Well the warm up. Which I’m here to show you again. I’ve done this so many times on Craig’s platform. But I always love to do it. And this is something that you can and should and must do every single day if you want to develop stronger voice more expressive face in more expressive hands. So, we’ll do a very quick version of this. Come to the edge of your seats and close your eyes and breathe feet flat on the floor. This is also great for anxiety management. This is kind of like quick. Mindfulness meditation breathe in and breathe out. Make sure the breath that you’re breathing in is filling your belly not filling your chest and your throat because that creates tension so we breathe into her belly and we breathe out pushing our belly button and belly button back to the spine. That’s what creates strong voice. So, we do that a couple times more and now on the next out breath we start to work on our voice to make our voice more powerful resonant you breathe in it you make this out on the out-breath Craig can you do that for everyone. Know youthful Craig. I don’t know if it’s because we’ve been working together for so long or because you’re naturally a great public speaking but that’s lovely so much residents and volume in power to that sound right. It helps that we have these fancy microphones. But these microphones are also only as good as the voice that goes into it. So, if we have these microphones but we talk like this. It’s still won’t sound good. You want a nice powerful voice and that is one of the best exercises you can do to make your voice more resonant and powerful that ma breathing ma. The more you do it the more you’ll feel how you can connect breath to sound which is how you have a great voice next one we want to wake the face up and get the face facing eyebrows going so we do big face small face big faces like this and small faces like this We go back and forth big face. Small face big face.
Powerful Pitch Automation 00:10:03 – 00:15:01
Small face big face and small face and shake it out. And I like to lazar and slapped my face to wake myself up. I’m really sick right now. So, this is very useful to get my face going in. Get my energy up. Then we need tongue. Twisters to work on our articulate. Our muscles tongue twisters like unique new. Yeah, I hate this part. Unique New York beautiful Craig. Red leather yellow leather red leather yellow leather good. And how now brown cow. How now brown cow. Good now. The point of these are not to just sound stupid. The point of these are to connect your mind your voice and your lips and tongue jaw to make these sounds. This is the mechanics by which we speak so just like a soccer player. Needs to work on their jumping in there kicking in the running and they’re the way that they’re leg comes from the hip down to the knee down to the ankle and striking the ball or the guitar player has to think about. Okay I want to play g my fingers go here and if I want to make these strings on my right hand I got to go thumb. Middle finger ring finger. These are the mechanics by which we public speak. This is the instrument you’ve got to get to know your body get to know your instrument and get comfortable with doing these things and the more you can do. These tongue twisters. And he doesn’t have to be a tongue twister. You can use any piece of text where you can work on the first few lines of your presentation or pitch and then just say it slowly and clearly with exaggerated effort and passion and power. It’ll be a great training for getting better at public speaking. I’m just going to check the chat to see if we have any questions or another. Okay great So that is the warm up. If you do this every day you will see your public speaking skills get so much better. I promise you try it for a week. And then if you don’t if you’re if you don’t feel that you have more confidence more power and more precision in the way that you talk. I will give you a free half hour lesson about that. That’s good yeah okay. Now we get into daily we get into the other rehearsal question which is how much. How much should I be rehearsing my pitch. This is from carmine gallo. Who is the tedtalk coach. He says in his experience as a professional communication advisor. The number of rehearsals is ten. Some people might need more others a little less but if you practice your presentation from start to finish at least ten times you’ll have more confidence than ever but I think we need to go a step further so the magic number is ten but we need to do it in different ways. Think about this. If you are sitting at the living room table practicing your pitch or your rehearsal and then you do it once and then you stop and you do it again facing the same wall sitting in the same position with the same lighting in the same room with the same physical energy. What are the chances that that rehearsals really going to build on the first one that you did not much it might ingrain it a little more. But you’ve got to change your environment. Your physicality you’ve got to change the intention. You’ve got to simulate all the different ways that you could do this so that by the time you get up there you’re comfortable with doing the same content a whole bunch of different ways. So how do we create these fun rehearsal variations. Here’s a great one focus on doing it at a high volume. If you know me you know. I work with the speech settings from zero to ten so focus on doing one whole version of your pitch from start to finish with a really high volume. Now this would be great especially if you know that you tend to speak a little too soft and don’t have a lot of power. You would literally your whole pitch like this. Hi my name is will green black. And I am the CEO and co-founder of out loud speaker score we work with founders teen. That would literally be how you do. The entire thing takes a lot of doesn’t it. you need that stamina to be a great public speaker. This is how you build that stamina. This is how you make sure that when you are exhausted you still have energy when you’re sick like I am right now. This is how you make sure that you can still summon those reservoirs of energy by practicing at a high altitude a high volume right if you always practice sitting at your kitchen table facing while going. Hi my name is Will the CEO and co-founder speaker school. we helped. How are you going to be able to do it with more energy than that. You won’t have the capacity won’t have the breadth. You won’t have the muscular in your lungs and in your ribs to get there you practice like this. It’s like wearing a weighted vest. By the time you take it off you’re that much stronger another one to do and this is one of my favorite exercises. If you stand up. And if you’re watching right now feel free to stand up with me and focus and do this with me. Is boxing on the key. Words of your speech so think about what are the key words.
Powerful Pitch Automation 00:15:01 – 00:20:01
And this is a great way of finding them to seek. Okay hi my name is Will Greenblatt. And I’m the CEO and co-founder of out loud speakers school. You box on what you think is the key word or key ideas of what you’re talking about it’s great to get the energy up to get your cardio going but it’s also great to think about. Where do I need to emphasize for example. If you go hi my name is will. Does that sound good. No, my name is will no. That’s not quite right either. My name is will there. we go. I want to emphasize my name. And you start to feel that as you box out Your speech and it’s such a great way. Also give yourself something to do to connect with your words. If you’re doing an action on a word. It does so much more to help you memorize the words first of all but it also gives it some kind of emphasis in meaning emphasis. Is the key to speaking really well. Once you learn how to emphasize the right information in the right way then. You’re already a good speaker even if you’re a little nervous even if you don’t have great You know sharp precise speaking skills. If you’re able to know that this word is really important. Song going to emphasize it and this is not so important. The better you get at that distinction the better of a speaker you will be. Here’s another one speaking over loud music. I love this one. Put on your favorite pump up song. Craig what what’s your favorite kind of music. I like alternative. Rock alternative rock. So what kind of what kind of bands like are we talking. Our lady peace Those that are arctic monkeys. Yeah more stuff like that okay What’s your favorite arctic. Monkey saw Put me on the spot. I’ll just pick one song. I’m just going to find. Why do you always call me when you’re hi. That’s a great title. Okay Craig can you hear this. Yep okay what I would like you to do is give me your pitch and speak with the emotion that this song is giving you and speak so you can be heard over the music. My name is Craig major. And I’m the founder of TorontoStarts with no. Oh it’s really. We help entrepreneurs go from to over ten thousand monthly recurring revenue by connecting education resources. I can’t do it with the beat. Isn’t that that That’s difficult at I write. It absolutely is difficult. But that’s so good because if you can start again if you can start to put some kind of external obstacle on your public speaking and then speak through that. That’s how you can speak if somebody’s coughing. Ed like having a coughing fit in the corner. If you’re in a live event that’s how you can speak if somebody’s doing something really distracting. It’s how you can speak if your dog barking her head off in the other room. Which mind is always doing. If you train yourself to deal with those distractions you’ll get so good at handling curve balls and things happening That that always happen when you’re on zoom or you’re in a live event is practicing with the curve ball and then the other thing that gets great as it helps you project your voice and it helps you. It’s like a soundtrack right. You’re like okay. What’s my life pump up song. What’s my song that really into it and whether you like rap whether you like rock whether you like country your pop classical or jazz whatever it is you put that you put your favorite song. It’s better you know if it’s like a really chill jazz or a really slow classical song. That’s not always ideal because that can bring the vibe down a little too much. It should be something with a bit of a beat and generally upbeat to get you there. Because most people are a little to chill when they’re presenting and they need more energy more enthusiasm so get a pump-up song. Put it on and practice over that Any questions here. there’s a whole bunch of other ones. Here I will be sharing. The slide deck has always But I just. I don’t want to go too much into this because we have some other stuff to cover but if anyone has any questions right now about ways to change up your pitch rehearsal Please ask me now. And I’m happy to answer them See if there’s an we’ve not seen anything. Apple came a second who I think my neighbors think crazy. A lot of people don’t do this because there’s people in the house they don’t want to practice cause they’re going to bug people or you know what will people think of them and you know you got to kind of get over that or think of techniques you know. I always have my headphones in so a lot of times on a practicing speaking. You know I mentioned this before. I just pretend. I’m on the phone. Yeah so you know. My neighbors. Think I’m crazy or always on the phone. I don’t really care. I mean that would be a great way to practice your pitches. Pretend you’re on the phone.
00:20:01 – 00:25:02
Go and pretend you’re giving your pitch to somebody on the phone and just go. Hey so yeah. Thanks for calling. That’s great that’s a great question. What I do is I help entrepreneurs in Toronto. We’re starting to Toronto community of entrepreneurs and then it helps you like pretending you’re talking to someone which is great public speaking Exercise anyways to pretend that there is somebody in your room with you listening. And how would you explain to them what you do. And then that’s the practice and then the other thing is if you can get comfortable making a fool of yourself or not caring what your neighbors Or your spouse thinks of you obviously within reason you have to maintain relationships but if you can get over sound like an idiot yelling over loud music or boxing and doing this without an and not care if your roommate makes fun of you or if your kids make fun of you or if your partner makes fun of you or your neighbors think you’re weird then. You’re going to be so much more confident. Onstage has. you’re like. I don’t care what people think of me. I’m here to do a job. I’m here to communicate something and if you think I’m weird doesn’t matter I’m here to make sure that somebody that people who are going to benefit from my ideas. We’ll hear them. So, Lauren the chatroom was asking about practicing on zoom Can you can practice on zoom with yourself and start. Start a meeting. I do that a lot actually just to see first of all to see how my camera setup looks am so you just started meeting on zoom. Don’t invite anyone and just talk and practice like you practice looking at yourself. Where do I want to put my little window. So, I have a good eye line. You know practice Talking with your setup if you have your notes and just go through it. That’s a really great idea. Laura and I really liked that yet started meeting. Don’t invite anyone and record it and watch it back record it and use us. I mean if you’ve seen all the stuff I’ve done so far. You’ll know that I use speech settings so judge your volume your pace your pitch your clarity your inflection your physical expression and your facial expression the seven speed settings judge yourself between zero and tat not good or bad but between zero and ten and if you start to do that you’ll notice where your strengths where your weaknesses. What are those communicating. And then start to adjust those the more you watch yourself the better it. It’s an awful experience when you start doing it but it’s so good and will make you more comfortable on camera any other questions. Not so far. I think people are today. Yeah that’s fine Okay so now. How do we make these Rehearsal routines and I always say you should warm. You should do your warm ups every day and you should rehearse a piece of text every day. That piece of texts can be your pitch but eating. Be anything you can. You can literally rehearse a section of a book. I found this book at a garage sale. Recently it’s called reading people Obviously it seems to be within my area of interest. It’s a jury who was on the Oj case in on some other high-level cases and she talks about. She’s developed a sort of system of reading people and what they’re what they’re communicating in the courtroom and outside as well So you could literally pick this book up and go okay. I need to practice speaking out loud today. I need to practice something. I don’t have anything written. I’ll take a book when I was a child. I peer down from my perch at the top of the stairs above my parents living room during their frequent dinner parties. I’d watch as my mother scurried around carefully ensuring that no glass was empty. I remember the chubby bald man whose booming laughter resonated throughout the house and his rail thin wife who shook her head and rolled her eyes as he launched into an only slightly modified version of a story. He told dozens of times before boom doesn’t matter that it’s not a business thing it doesn’t matter that it’s not maybe with your Industry specific jargon. It’s words and ideas and emotions to be related through language by speaking out loud. That is that’s your playground. That’s what an actor uses to get better at speaking text any text you should look at as like as an empty soccer field or an empty. Jim you. You have a book you have a gym to strengthen your speaking skills So I say everybody should warm up every single day and they should and they should practice out loud something every single day whether it’s pitcher presentation or whether it’s your text And you can even read something or you can Or you can use something you’ve written so and another thing is the two day rule so I would ask everybody. Are you rehearsing every single day to make your speaking skills. Better the answer to this great. Do you do that. No no so. The question becomes w-why why not honestly because I’m actively speaking three or four times a week and you know I’m hardly getting prepared for that I should practice more. Yeah but I think just. Because I’m doing it all the time and the stuff I do.
Powerful Pitch Automation 00:25:02 – 00:30:05
I don’t have a prepared speech to give these days. I am working on stuff. And I will practice at but right now. It’s just you know doing this. You know reacting to you acting to what’s happening and so I don’t practice every day. Well that’s a great. That’s a great answer. And a very understandable reason and most people don’t practice every day and most people don’t even once I start working with them and take. This is step five and by the time we get to step five where we’re almost done. They’re still not practicing every day. Even though I’ve been suggesting it and working on with them. How the main obstacles. I usually find is that people are either. They don’t know when to do it. They don’t know how to build it into their routine. They think it’s too much or they did it for a few days and then they stopped and they didn’t get back on the horse so first of all. When should you do this first thing in the morning when you wake up get up and do your warm up and read something out loud. The reason is if you focus on something right away in the morning and make it part of your morning routine. It is the easiest time to make sure you keep doing it consistently I’ve found that’s true of working out yoga meditation checking my email doing early morning Whatever routine sometimes. I’ve used it for writing. But first thing in the morning before the day comes crashing in and all this other stuff comes in get up to it right away in the morning and it can be as simple as going to the bathroom breathing. Doing the mob big face. Small face tongue twisters just four things. Right breathing ma. Big face-to-face tongue twisters. Do that in the morning and then find something to read out loud Facebook article on your phone. That doesn’t matter a book that’s lying around a piece of mail. It doesn’t matter what it is. As long as it’s English text out loud. Yeah and then the other thing is if you fall off the horse get back to the two-day rule. The two-day rule is never take two days off in a row from your commitment that means if you have a bad day you need a rest take it then. Just do it again the next day and then the next day. You don’t want to do it or you get too busy. That’s fine do it again the next day. Make sure you never take two days off in a row if you follow this. There’s a great youtuber personal development habit-forming all the stuff. His name is matt davila. I’ll put his name in the in the chat because he’s helped me a lot as an entrepreneur and as a habit builder and then also this guy James clear who wrote atomic which is incredible book. And it’s all about habit forming Building good habits and breaking bad ones. I really highly recommend this book. So, the idea is to make sure that practice becomes part your daily routine and there’s lots of ways to practice and get better at your public. Speaking as we’ve seen boxing speaking over loud music singing is a great way to practice your public speaking Going for a jog. Believe it or not is part of it. Doing yoga is meditating. Part of it anything that creates a better relationship to your mind and your body and near and your thoughts. That’s practicing your public speaking so even if you don’t practice out loud if you meditate for five minutes you’ve done your job and you’ve honored the two-day commitment and this is a cool thing from the atomic habits. He says if you get one percent better at something every day for year by the end of the year you’re thirty-seven times better at it and if you get one percent worse by not doing it then you’re almost zero by the end of the year so that’s a cool a cool way of thinking about it. I’m sorry that’s my phone going off. Now we come to anxiety management relaxing training yourself to manage recognizing anxiety and manage stress. This also has to start to become a bit of an automated automatic cabinet because there’s so many people who know they suffer from anxiety or they know that and that that stress bothers them but they don’t recognize it and they consistently fall back into the same traps and habits of getting stressed getting tense making poor decisions and wasting energy mental energy and even physical energy by holding so much tension in their body when they should be working on other stuff working better stuff and doing things that are more productive so by training yourself to re-reading manage stress. You can take back so much of your time and your capacity to do work on this stuff. So, I just want to share some of these statistics because it’s I. I don’t think people really understand how big of a problem this is. Because if they think off I’ve not been diagnosed with anxiety. Who cares. it’s not a big issue for me but mental health problems. Any mental health problems are linked to increased risk of more risk of mortality and currently during this pandemic thirty five percent of respondents in china report mild to severe psychological distress. And since it’s china we can be sure that the numbers are higher. We always know they. under report. Negative statistics from china anxiety. Disorders are the common most mental illness in the us affecting forty million adults eighteen percent of adult population anxiety disorders.
Powerful Pitch Automation 00:30:05 – 00:35:02
You know it’s a global pandemic A right alongside with covid. It needs to be taken more seriously on an institutional level for sure but I can only speak to individuals right now. Start taking your mental health more seriously as much as you can’t just want it’s bad but all the time every day. So how do we do that. what can I do. What can I do about this. Well this is a checklist that I can share with. Everybody is an m. I to stress checklist I can send this document Craig and maybe you can send it out to all the at ten. I can do that afterwards. So, what you’re doing. Is I recommend printing this piece of paper and putting it on your desk and looking at it every so often and ask yourself. These questions are my heart. beating fast. is my jaw. Clinch are my shoulders tents and held. High is my breath moving in my chest or my belly and if it’s chest it tends to be tension and stressed and tapping my fingers my bouncing my leg and like chewing on a pencil at my biting my nails or my doing any other anxious repetitive. Without thinking and my feeling upset and my feeling angry you might feel annoyed or impatient for no clear reason. Now if the answer is yes to one or more of these things then tell yourself to do the following. Close your eyes. Sit still and breathe again. That’s like the beginning of the warm upright in through the nose and out through your mouth slowly with the belly moving primarily do these three times and then one last one and make sure it’s slow and out already. I mean if you do three real deep slow breaths you’ll feel a great little change. It really takes the edge off. Look away from all screens like tv phones. Computers for at least two minutes really just like log out. I mean it’s hard to do that right now when you’re on a webinar but you really can’t do that and especially if you’re participating in zoom call or webinar. You don’t have to talk for the next couple of minutes. Disclosure is mute. Your video mute your thing and just close your eyes. You can listen but just take your eyes off the screens for a couple of minutes and if you can really tune out if you can actually shut down when you’re feeling really stressed it’s okay to stop working for two minutes and take a break. Also tell yourself this. It’s okay to feel like this. I’m stressed because many things right now. And maybe I don’t even know what the reason is but that is also and I’m safe unless you’re not which is something that you need to address obviously unless you are somewhere where you’re not safe. Chances are if you’re in your own home and you’re not you know there’s nothing that right now is going in your body doesn’t need to be in flight or fight mode right now. Which is the sympathetic nervous system. Firing up and making your body really Tents and also sympathetic nervous system over firing which we get out of dangerous situations. Most of us live without heightened state of anxiety most of the time. And it’s really bad for your health so telling yourself and literally saying either out loud or in your head that you are okay is a great message to the sympathetic nervous system to calm down and the important thing is to practice. Mindfulness breathing slowly paying attention to your breath and your body listening to the sounds in the room because it works to communists. If you close your eyes breath and just pay attention. What am I doing right now. What is what of my legs feel. Like what is my breath. Feel like what is my head and my body my feet feel like what are the sounds coming out of the room. What are all these things happening right now. you know. These are really great practices for calming anxiety. And the more you do this when you start to feel stressed the more it will become a habit and then tell yourself again everything will be fine. Even if it doesn’t feel like it right now it always is right every time worried about something. It eventually passes even. If it’s the worst thing in the world it will pass and it will get easier and better and chances are it’s not the worst thing in the things that we worry about. Most often day to day are not things that do irreparable damage there. Things that are momentarily weird or bad and chances are were also exaggerating in our head. The negative aspects of these things. Because that’s what human beings do. we tend towards negatively because paying attention to negatively. Helped us survive right. If you’re always focused on negatively you’re like what’s that is that a lion warthog. Is that a stampede. What do I do. I got to get away from that and then if you but if we what. We’re constantly doing that now. Even though we don’t live like that anymore we live in safe. Houses generally again not everybody but we live in safe houses away from lions. We can relax but we don’t because this is how our nervous systems are wired so we have to practice this and then you think you know what I’m worried about. I probably won’t even remember in a week. And there’s all these great kinds of pasta psychology affirmations.
Powerful Pitch Automation 00:35:02 – 00:40:01
You can say to yourself to help you calm down but the but the more you practice doing this the more it actually becomes a habit. I used to suffer from extreme anxiety and depression. And I mean you know. I don’t want to oversaw too much like I was functioning but it was really bad. The thoughts that I had in my head in and the depression that I had was pretty unchecked and pretty intense I had a lot of sort of really negative self. Talk in my head. I would tell myself that. I wasn’t good enough or that. Everything was talked all the time. And until I went to therapy and started practicing CBT. In mindfulness. I wasn’t able to recognize how toxic those patterns were and start to get out of those and then through mindfulness and CBT. Which I learned at the same time. I figured out how automate that now when those thoughts come to me a much more successful at realizing oh. I’m doing that thing again. Where I go home I got. Oh my god oh my god and then I can kind of just breathe and then keep it at bay. And it’s way more automated in my system now and it’s so much more successful and I and I’m able to spend way less time worrying about things I can’t control and worrying about Anxious thoughts and depressed lot any questions about this before we move on. Now we go. What about hanging out with toxic people hanging out with toxic people. Yeah there’s a lot of things. I see online right now which is like cut toxic people out of your life Which I do not agree with. I think I think that labeling somebody is toxic when they may be going through their own mental health temporary mental health issues Can be a little dismissive and apathetic. Especially if we ourselves have dealt with mental health issues. I was probably considered toxic by some people when I was at the heart of my depression and anxiety and if the people who my friends had cast me aside of that time designating the toxic because they want to succeed and they only want to be around positive. Cool successful people I might have been in a way where situation than I am now. But their friendship and you know spending time with me and Investing in me is part of where I am today. And I. I think that you can certainly get dragged down by people who are Who are stuck in a state of negativity and maybe spending too much time with them is not good and maybe offering too much of yourself and not setting boundaries is a problem but I don’t believe in cutting those people out of your life Because I think that they deserve more than that. Especially if they’ve been a good friend you before and if you care for them then cutting them out of your life. I think is not helpful unless it’s unless they’re really dangerous. Were really Extreme but in general being there for them in a limited capacity as much as you can handle and being clear on those boundaries and saying listen. This is how much I can do. I can only spend this much time with you or you know I can’t really talk about this right now. I think that’s a lot more useful even to because you’re going to have to deal with toxic people all the time. There are talking to people everywhere and whether they’re toxic all the time or just temporarily whether you guys have just a you know a toxic relationship. It could be anything right so learning how to talk to toxic people not take on their energy not get upset by them talking to them maintaining your own sense of peace insanity while talking to somebody who’s really negative. I think it’s a great life Skill so instead of putting those people out keep talking them Set boundaries but keep stay in their life. And just do what you need to do. And spend time with them and give them messages positively much as you can and then just you know let them figure it out when they figure it out grace by that was bit of a rant there. That’s okay yeah. As should I move on. Stop and give people the opportunity to pitch if they want. I think we can move on. We’ll give people an opportunity a little bit later. Only we’re going to have one or two. I’m not sure Laura or you’re going to want to pitch Margaret or you’re going to want to pitch let us know Because we’ll get you a short period. Go ahead Yes, I think Talk to yourself like your best friend is sort of like when I try to tell people what CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy is there like what is what I boil it down to at least most helpful parts of it that that That I found is like talk to yourself like your best friend. There’s a lot of people who say this but what it really means is if you are a good friend or if your best friend is a good friend then when you come to them with a problem or when you come to them with negative thoughts especially about yourself they tend to be good at cheering you up and they give you good perspective right like oh my god. This person is texting me back. And I’m so upset. They probably hate me or it means or my god.
Powerful Pitch Automation 00:40:01 – 00:45:02
I sent my boss the wrong email and now everything’s screw them going to get fired. Your best friend will go okay. Hang on a second is not the end of the world is probably going to be fine. You know you’re not a screw up. That person could just be busy. Or maybe they’re not interested in you but that’s fine too. You know you see you have a lot to offer all those kinds of cheering up. you know. think about it in a different way things. That are so hard to do when you’re inside something that that an outside best friend can offer. You need to train yourself and again. This is about automation. Train yourself to do that with yourself. And this is so important public. Speaking the biggest barrier to public speaking I believe is lack of confidence. Stage fright right imposter syndrome. All these things. I shouldn’t be talking up here. Whom I say these things who might be up here. Pitching this product Or I should get somebody else to do. My pitches for me or oh. There’re so many smarter entrepreneurs in the space me who might be working on this business Oh my god these. Investors have seen so many pitches. I I’m probably the worst entrepreneur here. All those feelings that we have your best friend would talk to you. Talk you out of those things. You have to start doing that yourself. Every other entrepreneur probably feeling like that right now to you know I’m here talking about my pitch. Because it’s my idea and I’ve worked hard on it you know and I want I deserve to talk about it. people could really benefit from this and You know I’ve done my work. I’m smart. I’m hardworking. All these things being able to talk to yourself like your best friend. is a big part of CBT and then there’s a little exercise that you can practice to start to automate that and that is step one notice the negative thoughts and this goes back to awareness. Which is my first step paying attention to your negative thoughts and recognizing them as negative thoughts. Not just having thought and going. Oh, this is a true thought. No this is a negative thought whether it’s true or not is actually kind of beside the point and there’s room for interpretation what I’ve learned is that anxiety and depression are liars. They will lie to you and tell you incorrect. Wrong things certainly unhelpful things. You’re the stupidest person in the room. You’re lazy you’re a piece of shit you don’t deserve anything. You don’t deserve happiness all this stuff by training yourself to realize those thoughts is not true but negative and therefore unhelpful and really damaging. You can start to put them in context. You’d get that thought and you don’t think this is a real message from the core of my being you go. This is a negative thought that comes from. That’s where these thoughts come from anxiety. Fear depression worried and noticing it and just going hot. This negative thought just appeared at my mindfulness. Meditation teaches you this process as well observing thought rather than internalizing it. So, thought comes up to you. Like oh my god. My presentation is going badly. I’m bombing. nobody’s interested. That’s a negative thought. The practices this you write the thought down now. Obviously, you can’t do this mid presentation you do it. When you’re not presenting you write the negative thought down and literally right down. My presentation sucks something like that. Whatever the thought is and try to make as close to the actual thought as possible. Step three is you identify the fallacy. What is the mistake in your thinking. And there’s all these mistakes that CBT teaches you recognize all or nothing thinking labeling There’s some other what are the other ones should statement. There’s all these different. I think some people teach ten. Some people teach fifteen But I can show you them here there. This is a great website. Positive psychology program or positive psychology dot com. It has all these tools and resources to start to learn more about these negative thought patterns and how to deal with them. you know. Here’s another one emotional reasoning. I feel it therefore it must be true blaming others pointing to others looking for cause of negative events expecting to change to suit your needs or desires. Being too concerned with things are fair. There’re all these sorts of different fallacies that we that we Fall victim to when we’re having anxious or depressed thoughts so we identify that fallacy. We write the thought that we identified the fallacy and then we give ourselves best friend advice or a rational counter. Thought I my presentation sucks the fallacy is labeling or all enough Thinking the best advice would be. Your presentation doesn’t suck. It’s as good as it is Maybe you could work on the little more. Maybe you could get some help on it but it’s still valuable and you still worked hard and You’re still if you put some effort and some passionate into it even if it’s not where it needs to be chances are you’re still doing your job. Also, people are used to a very low standard of presentations. That’s what I’ve noticed is a public. Speaking coach people will listen to the most boring mediocre presentation. goes pretty well Which is why. I have a job because the standard is very low but giving yourself all this perspective. You know it’s better than some not as not as bad as others Worse than others.
Powerful Pitch Automation 00:45:02 – 00:50:02
You’re constantly getting better. You’re a work in progress. you know. don’t take it so hard. Most people are used to a low standard. So as long as you give it your best shot people will appreciate even if it doesn’t go well today There’s another opportunity your con- you know all those kind of messages that you can give your friends so easily but it’s so hard to give ourselves this is the kind of a step in the more you do these exercises and the more you practice doing this with your negative thoughts easier. It is to deal with stage fright and the impostor syndrome and all these things that stop us from being republic speakers. Buy one piece of advice is there is when you have these thoughts and your speaking. Just keep going like you can’t give them attention at the time and yes, the end. And Laura I will be giving these materials Out to you guys later on so no worries about that and Margaret’s ready to pitch. I think if you’re amazing. I’m done basically that’s the that’s the end. I want to see I can give information about how to contact me later. But that was That’s basically the end of my content. So, anybody Margaret. Who wants to go jump. Jump in there and allowed her to talk. She’s going to have done meet yourself and we’ll see Welcome Margaret I. Everybody how are you nice to meet you. Base to meet you too Margaret were you in the fa are you in the founders institute. Yes, that’s where I know you from I. I knew I to your name and your face and good thank you good. Yes. I mean. Trotta and Yeah, I’m here to learn fantastic of. Can you give us your pitch in whatever state it’s in we’ll give some feedback. Sure gay. Hi my name is Margaret. She’s are my company. Pack collections is developing ecommerce website. That bill oppor suburb products to the public for free or at the dollar offer in exchange for providing them a seamless press donating to their choice of charity in amata checkout at planned to sell products for both men and women in order for regular swimmers to the donors inspire them all buying with impact. Great is that the end. Yeah okay well done. I’m going to give you a nice round of applause for jumping up and doing it so very great job. It’s really hard to do it in this in this forum and to do it you know just jumping up like that. That’s really great market and the more you can do that. The better Know founder institute is great for that it gives the opportunity for the founders to pitch every week and get that feedback from the mentors. But anybody listening the more you can jump up and give your pitch when called upon the better and you only get more confident as you do that. More so Margaret one thing is might be more like Laura only do you do you know of my powerful pitch course my boot camp. No now we will. Okay yes, we have a. I have a powerful pitch boot camp. That I that I run where we spend basically Three straight weeks honing the elevator pitch and honing the core pitch of the company. So, if you want. I can send you the information you can check it out and sign up if you think it looks So I’ll just let me just put that in the link right now actually So that you have that but Today I want to also work on The content but more so the delivery and talk about this the anxiety that comes along with pitching and see if we can help you around that. Because that’s what we sort of just talked about in the content. So how do you feel when you get up to a pitch in this kind of environment Margaret and it’s my third like a little bit nervous. I’m not prepared yet. I think every single time with from nick. More affordable great. Yeah and that’s a great thing to note. So, what I want to do is see if we can give you the confidence that even if you’re not quite sure about the content you can nail the delivery so basically one of the messages the best messages you can send to yourself is my pitch is what it is right now. That’s just where it is. There’s nothing I can do to change it. While I’m pitching and in fact I shouldn’t try to change it midair kind of I should just stick to what I’ve got but then deliver that with lots of confidence so whatever you have right now I want you to say it again but with much more passion and volume if you increase your volume and you increase your clarity the clearness And the effort with which you deliver your ideas.
Powerful Pitch Automation 00:50:02 – 00:55:01
It will just sound more confident. Also, do you have the ability to go on video This will make a huge difference. Because it’ll help people get to know you like we have your picture but it will just be so much better if we see your face moving in and get to see you as you’re speaking because that’s just how you create connection with people right Words are great audio is better. Pictures are better than that and videos the best you know in zoom webinar format. I have to promote somebody to panelists for them to And I have. I’ve just promoted Margaret panelist if she wants to enable okay Margaret charge to turn on your video again amazing there. You are all of a sudden, we can get to know you right there we go. We see a smile we see movement. You know this is what you want. He wants to show yourself. You want to you. Want to you. Want people to get to know you. one thing I’ll just give in terms of a couple of tips I don’t like them. I like the logo that you have there. But I don’t like the green screen in general if you can get a natural background. It’s a lot better and it just feels like we’re a bit more. It feels more real the green screen to me. If it’s notable like Craig’s is good because it kind of doesn’t make it seem like a because he’s got the background but with the green screen It makes us feel that we’re not really together and we lose that personal connection And so and then also see if you can find a nice background with some books Some arts implants Anything like that just to help us feel like we’re in a in a sort of conversation setting And then if you can also make sure that you center your camera but right now your head is a little too low in the frame if you can bring your head up so that you’re almost at the top of the frame right. Yeah you do that. Now so Margaret. I want you to give me your pitch again. But just louder more enthusiastic. And don’t apologize for your pitch. Don’t apologize for it your here to pitch and the more confidence you show. The more people are going to be like. Even if I don’t think the pitches perfect yet. I’m going to give her some good feedback. Because I like her and I like her energy and I liked her enthusiasm so can give her feedback or I can talk to her later. Get a bit more understanding about what she’s doing. The more of that energy you can create and be more likable. Be more enthusiastic passionate. It just gives you more opportunities to improve your pitch more people. Come talk to you more. People will give you that feedback so Margaret. Same pitch again louder. More hands more excitement more is all that stuff. Yeah great hi everybody. My name is Margaret Caesar. My company back book elections is developing a website Ecommerce website that deliver by products to the public for free or other than either. I’m over in exchange for providing. Us seamless process of donating to your choice of the amount a checkout liberal by broad dust for man and woman in order for them to become the donors and inspired them. Thank you lovely lovely. Great adjustments there Margaret. Yeah so and that smile that you have at the end. I want you to have that in the pitch because smiling is such a great way to make people like you. We like people who are smiling. It means that they’re friendly. Means they’re not dangerous like all evolutionary psychology. If you’re smiling if you’re open people will like you and they’ll be more likely to. Yeah, I can with you afterwards. Listen to what you have to say. Beautiful We have time for one more and then we can shut down for today. Thank you thank you Margaret. Nice job there you are. Hi Laura welcome good afternoon. It’s great to be here. I’m not going to take your time up. My name is Laura Tyson. And I’m a cause related. Marketing specialists with a company called a social strategy group. We help nonprofit companies to raise funds by offering product where a portion of the sales will go directly to the charity of really nice. Really tight really clear beautiful. You’ve really nice speaking skills. Laura the way that you said cause related marketing company. Was that the phrase you slow down you. Emphasize the keywords remember talking boxing on the keywords. The way you emphasize those really helped me understand that. Sort of large potentially jargon mystic phrase right When we say these of long busy phrases we sometimes throw them away. It’s what I call daily jargon. Fatigue you say the same terms again and again and you kind of mumble them. But you didn’t do that at all. You very slowly and with effort helped us to understand what it is that you’re talking about. I like the idea. I really love the business idea. So, one thing that We can we can Talk about is how can you. How can you share a quick story in this quick. Pitch to help us understand why you do what you do.
Powerful Pitch Automation 00:55:03 – 01:00:00
Can I ask you Laura. Why did you start this company. I didn’t. I didn’t start the company. I okay didn’t start company Because at this particular guest part of my life. I want to be able to give back to the community and American express back in nineteen eighty-three started using a cause related marketing model. Where they said for every sale one percent will be donated to the statue of liberty restoration foundation. Okay raised over a million and a half dollars by using an idea where I can sell something. We’re helping not only is a win. Win were happening. The charity was helping. The people buy the product and they’re also protecting p because it’s related to the covid situation. I see okay. Okay I would lead with. I would be specific about the covid Thing cause that’s on top of everybody’s mind right now. People are worried about their physical safety. I always say there’s five main areas of human concern or five pain points time. Money physical health relationships and emotional wellbeing talking about covert is almost all of those right now right. That’s like it’s almost. It’s wasting our time. It’s wasting our money preventing us from making money. It’s causing physical health problems. It’s messing with our family relationships. We can’t see your friends and family and it’s causing intense stress. So, covert is like the big the big one big pain point that covers all those so if you can be specific that we’re we are We are cause related marketing company. Who is selling this product. That’s going to help with this cova cause so can you do it one more time and just be very specific and I love that thing. I was like I do this. Because I want to give back because the people you’re pitching. Do they want to give back as well. Right those are those are your customers. So, I can say to you. I like to think of myself as the midst. First shikha ha. That’s great. I love it. Yeah for any non-Jews that means our good deed Jewish woman doing good deeds Jewish woman. That’s great. I love it. I love it okay. Great so most of your clients are Jewish. No but my partner. That I see okay. I was going to say if they are. That would be a perfect the perfect race today. I’m but I. I love that and so yeah so leading with leading with the personal saying I you know I. My name is Laura. I love to give back. And I’m really. I’m really concerned with how we can give back and create a sustainable business model or whatever this sort of thing is and then just say We’re developing a product that you know. Just tell us about the product and then and then See if you can integrate those two things into your pitch. Okay hello my name. Is Laura Tyson. A cause related marketing specialist with a company called the social strategy group. I believe at this time. In my life I want to help give back to the rest of the rest of the community. The products that we are working with we are. We are working with nonprofit companies to raise funds by offering a product where a portion of the sales will go directly to charities specifically. We have a frontline protection. Kit that contains several a ppe mass. Some special a non-paraffin soaps as well as a sanitizer. So, the kit sold will help not only the charity by twenty percent of the of each sale donated to the charity. But it’s also going to immediately help your family and your friends by them using the product. Fantastic the tools for the rules. I love it. it’s so great. So just all you got to do is tighten. Tighten that up a little bit and it’s like boom. It’s there as soon as I heard. Where do doing a frontline kit protection kit. I’m salt great. What’s the product by. I’ll show it to you. Yeah that’s great. yeah. I I’d love that. Can you actually put in the chat. Laura where to learn more about this. Because I’m quite interested by the way lashing ten. You related to Kate off. I belong to act to act to theater and a small world. I just in the middle of taking. Jan looks third improv class. I stand-up comedy. And I’ll tell you Margaret to help improve your presentation especially because your English isn’t your first language. It’s so important to be able to articulate better and taking an acting class or an improv class for me. It’s really helped me. I mean I speak English but I speak several different languages as well. Sometimes when get tired of for me too. Yeah this is great. Well it’s so nice to have you. Laura and I’ll tell my mom that we work together. Okay well hey.
Powerful Pitch Automation 01:00:01 – 01:01:40
I got some great ideas. We’ll definitely connect fantastic. Okay we should probably wrap up Craig just to let everybody absolutely not do it but thank you salama which before we wrap up will can you tell people if they want to work with you. Find out more where to go for. Sure, absolutely so. The best way to contact me is Either by email or you can just book directly a call with me to tell me what your businesses and to tell me what you’re looking for so I’m just going to put my calendar link into the chat or email me at will at out loud now dot com will add outloudnow.com is my email or you can book a zoom or sorry a phone chat with me. Here fantastic amazing you again for taking the time today will thank you for Pitching Margaret and Laura. Thank you for everyone on YouTube and the rest of the people. Great embassy you all again soon. Okay everyone. This has been Startup Talk Toronto startup podcast for more exclusive content. The episode volt and to be part of TorontoStarts community visit TorontoStarts.com. Get your name on the newsletter mailing list and check out our upcoming events. Four more episodes subscribe now employees. Recognize the time and work behind the scenes. Put into connecting you with the biggest visionaries entrepreneurs and innovators in Toronto by leaving five-star review. Join us for more next episode from Toronto’s most active entrepreneur and startup community on Startup Talk.
