#201: Your Best Elevator Pitch with Sara Thompson

Welcome back to another edition of the Course Creation Incubator podcast. I’m your host, Gina Onativia, here to help you take action to motivate you to hopefully get you excited to build your online course program live cohort and build up the online based business of your dreams. Now, today, we’re talking about something that I think we could all use a little help with, and that’s our elevator pitch and talking about our course or our program in a really clear and cohesive way so we can grab attention from the get go regardless of who we’re talking to.

This is so relevant right now because as I’m recording this, we are in the midst of the Conversion Copywriting Playbook launch and we’re talking about the playbook. We’re talking about our Zoom live session and ultimately we need to know how to grab attention in just a few seconds, either via copy or if I’m talking to someone. Jeez, I’ve been talking to affiliates, I’ve been talking to interested students, whoever I’m speaking with, I want to be able to grab their attention from the get go and talk about the course in a really powerful way.

And that’s why I wanted to bring on my new friend Sara Thompson, who calls herself the presentation coach. And on her website she says, I’m passionate about helping you get the best version of you to shine through no cookie cutter rubrics or teaching you to be some stuffy business, bro. I mean, you got to love her. That’s just a little tease of her awesome personality and how smart she is.

So I wanted her to come on the show to teach us how to improve our pitches and get rid of any imposter syndrome or any doubts that are holding us back from putting out our best versions of ourselves. So without further ado, let’s get to it. Sara, Welcome to the podcast. Can’t wait to drill down on elevator pitches.

How we can be more confident and more. Yes, absolutely. I’m so super excited to be here, excited to talk about course creation and all of the the cool stuff and how we talk about that with potential clients, potential investors, potential partners, etc., etc.. Okay, love it. First and foremost, let’s just dive in. Sara, why do you think we have such a hard time talking about ourselves?

Are our courses. This is complicated and I think I sort of come down to two reasons. The first one is I think based on how we’re raised and how we’re socialized, right? We are told talking about yourself is bragging. And if you’re saying like, Oh, I did this thing and it’s good, then the impulse is the instinct is, oh, I’m being so I’m full of myself.

I’ve got a big head, I sound braggy essentially. And so the extension of that is that if you’ve got this course that you’ve made and you’re trying to sell it to people, you can’t just say, Hey, I made this course, it’s all right, That doesn’t get people to want to buy. And I think it makes it feel uncomfortable to say, I made this course.

It is fantastic and it’s going to help you do this thing. So that’s the first barrier that I think a lot a lot, a lot, a lot of us have and face the second one, which isn’t maybe quite as obvious, is that when you’re an expert on something, it’s very hard to figure out how to talk about that thing with people who are not familiar with that topic.

Yes. And so you know, you’re you’re a big old nerd about something and you can just go for hours and like dive in and maybe you’ve been educated on it or maybe you’ve spent years learning about it, or maybe you’ve just spent a couple of months, but you’ve done a real deep dive. It’s really tough to then take a step back and figure out, okay, what are the parts that this person that these people who don’t know everything would need to know?

Sometimes you start talking about it and then you realize that, like, this person’s missing a lot of context and then you kind of go, Well, crap, how much context do I need to give them? Like, are we lost here now in the mire of this knowledge? And so in that respect and we’ll talk about this more, that’s one of the ways and one of the reasons that thinking about this kind of stuff in advance can be really, really helpful when you’re put on the spot and you meet somebody, okay, I love this and we are going to talk about the context thing.

And and I struggle with this too, right? Thinking through, okay, where are people right now? What are they thinking of? Like what have they already be exposed to? And I talk about my course creators wear black belts. Right? And we’re trying to teach somebody with no guy on. Right. Never even stepped on the mat. Yeah. How how to do the thing that you want to teach them.

So let me I’m going to jump around a little bit. So you talked earlier about, you know, we’ve been taught not to brag, right? So how do we boost our confidence that and especially I find this with women, right. And just, hey, we’re not supposed to put ourselves out there in a bigger way. I feel like men are better about it.

How do we boost our confidence So we feel like we can put ourselves out there in a bigger way? Yes. And and that’s sort of related. I feel like we’ve got to two topics that we want to talk about today. One about like sort of being the best version of ourselves and the other about yeah, walking, speaking with confidence.

And I think these two things are related. Yeah. On the one hand, there are lots of outside forces that we are subject to that that keep us from being, you know, a certain way, a certain thing. This can be society, this can be the expectations of our families, it can be our social, socioeconomic, our mental or physical health.

All of these things have an impact on us and who and how we show up in the world. So that’s one thing to keep in mind, is that there are outside factors that there’s only so much we can do about them internally. One of the biggest things that I talked to my clients about with confidence is their imposter syndrome voice.

I’m sure lots of folks know about Imposter. Oh yeah, I’m already. Yeah, but if they don’t, it’s just this idea. It’s that voice in your head that says things like, Oh, I’m not supposed to be here. They gave me this job, but they don’t know that I’m actually an idiot. Or why would anybody listen to what I have to say?

I’m no expert like so-and-so, right? Or you’ve given one of the big ones, you’ve given a presentation, you’ve done a speech, and then you’re like, Oh, I didn’t know how to answer that question. And now I bet everybody noticed. And they’re all talking about it. And we keep ourselves up late at night just ruminating about these sort of imaginary issues that that that we’re just sure everybody else noticed and everybody is thinking about it.

 

And no. And bottom line is, yeah, the bottom line is the likelihood that anybody’s thinking about it is slim to none. Zero. One of the most comforting thoughts might sound a little bit cynical, but one of the most comforting thoughts for me is that nobody’s paying as much attention to me as I am to myself, and nobody yet is incredibly freeing.

FACT Yeah. So so that’s one one thing to remember. Nobody else is paying as much attention. And so when we’re hearing this imposter syndrome voice, you need to be aware. You need to know and acknowledge that voice is not coming from a a place of reality, right? That voice is I don’t know where that voice is coming from.

I think somewhere along the line that voice is probably a defense mechanism, but it’s keeping us in a state of stress. It’s pumping is full of adrenaline, it’s raising our cortisol levels, and it’s this vicious cycle, right? Because if I finish a presentation and then all I do is I focus and I ruminate on every little thing that didn’t go the way that I want it to, then I’m essentially training my brain that doing presentations is dangerous.

MM Okay. Brains are amazing. I love brains. I can get nerdy about brains, but they are also very stupid and suggestible. And your brain can’t differentiate between a mortal threat like a grizzly bear or a social threat, like a fear of being judged by people. And so it reacts the same way. That’s why when we have to get up and talk about ourselves and it makes us feel uncomfortable, our heart starts to pound, we get short of breath, we start to get like the armpit stress sweats, because those are all the things that we would need if we were about to have to fight a grizzly bear.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So your brain’s just trying to keep your. You safe. You know, it’s not being super helpful because those are not helpful things when we’re in social situations, so. Okay, great. So what do I do to like, I know I talk to myself, right? So, like, I pull out to my Tony Robbins old magic and I say, I remember Tony would say like, what’s the worst that could happen?

Like, what would happen if that right. And like, keep digging into it and then what? And then what? So but I know you’ve got some tools like what do you teach to get us out of that fear? I do have some tools. Number one, I, I love telling clients to, to name their imposter syndrome voice. Oh, I love that.

Yeah. And oftentimes it’s a name of somebody that like, whose opinion you just don’t care about or you just the person is mean. It could be like your mean auntie who’s like. Or that dress your mother in law. Yeah, exactly. But it could also be a character from a TV show or movie. Yeah, but give it a name because name, it’s easier to be like, Oh, that’s Janine.

Janine’s here, right? And once the first step is just giving it a name and getting used to noticing it, but once you get used to noticing it, then you can start to say, Oh, that’s that’s my imposter syndrome voice. That voice is not based in reality. Another strategy that I feel like is really helpful for people is that when we think about the fact that we’ve all taken in these messages about who we are, who we should be, who’s the kind of person, what does a leader look and sound like, Who have they historically been?

 

But that that stuff is changing. Leadership and knowledge are changing. People who are in positions of authority are changing what they look and sound like. And so I think a lot of folks find it really helpful if they can understand that a, you know, my voice, who I am, is now more likely to fit into that broadening spectrum.

And then a lot of I imagine a lot, of course, creators, a lot of your clients are service minded folks. Oh yeah, we want to help other people. And so another way to think about it is by you taking this risk, stepping outside your comfort zone, doing this thing that’s scary, you’re actually helping others behind you. Step up and feel like they can enter the space because they’ve seen you do it.

I love that. Yeah. And it’s something that we discount in our set. You know, We’re like, Oh, that’s something other people do. Well, no, you can do that too. Yeah. Yeah. I love I want to go back to that. The way that these experts are looking are changing. And I think back in the old days, like ten years ago, I used to get this too.

Where’s your instructional design degree? People would say to me, Right, It’s like I built programs for frickin Tony Robbins. Yeah, right. And a bunch of different experts. And they would be like, okay, well, what university did you go to for instructional design? And I’m like, No, no, no, no. Yeah. So that is such an old school way of thinking, right?

And I’m not and I’m not discounting like you are very educated. For example, you have some fancy degrees. However, just because you don’t have a fancy degree doesn’t mean you’re not an expert 100%. And I regularly get clients who come to me and they are incredibly successful. I mean, yeah, you know, I’ve had vice presidents of American whatever, four international companies come to me and they’re far more badass than I am or could be, but they are self-conscious because they don’t have a college degree, right?

I’m like, girl again, Who cares? You’ve built $1,000,000,000 business, right? Right. It doesn’t matter. Yeah, well, and I do think that some of that is starting to change again as we realize that, like college degrees are not necessarily the promise of financial stability that right they used to be or if they ever were. Right. Right. If they ever were.

We’re also recognizing that, like there are different kinds of knowledge, things like skills based resumes are more common where you’re describing the skills that you have rather than the positions, the job positions that you access. Again, things are changing and that’s super exciting. Yeah, that’s good for us, right? Yeah, absolutely. As experts. Okay. I would be remiss not to get to kind of the meat of this episode about crafting a great elevator pitch.

I mean, we’ve talked about getting through the fear, how we can feel a little bit more confident now. I mean, I struggle with the great elevator pitch for for my courses to or my services. So, I mean, what’s the secret? The secret is that you’ve got to prep like, Yeah, Oh, yeah, totally right. Yeah. I think a lot of us just like we hear somebody else give a great elevator pitch and we’re like, Oh, they must just be good at it.

Because. Because, because a good elevator pitch does seem like it’s just off the cuff. Easy. It’s just like it’s the easy, right? Just flow. So but that is not true. Like, there are maybe a couple of people in this world who can just off the cuff, come up with something that sounds fantastic without having prepped in advance. Those people are few and far between.

Yes. When you hear and see a good speaker or presenter, that person has practiced. Yes. Either they practice the exact speech that they’re giving. Now they’ve hired somebody like me to help them prep it or they have. It’s it’s the same spiel that they’ve given over and over again. Yeah. So they’ve been doing this for years. They’ve pitched this product for years, so they don’t even have to think twice about it when it when it comes to the moment where they need to sell first step with an elevator pitch is that you’re going to think through some different scenarios where you might need to tell somebody about your course.

Okay? Because that’s that’s one of the big things, right? An elevator pitch is going to be flexible. It is not going to be one thing. And that’s the thing. And it never changes. Right. That’s the worst possible idea to come up with an elevator pitch because the scenario where, like it’s not for this one scenario that you that you thought about and then you just kind of go haywire a little bit.

So you’re going to think through a lot of different scenarios. So for you or you talking to potential students or potential clients who are going to buy your course, are you talking to maybe a content creator that you’re going to or another kind of creator that you’re going to maybe partner or collab with? Are you looking for an investor?

Yeah. Are you looking for somebody to bring on board to your team? These are all different audiences and I’m thinking about the people that we’re speaking to as an audience. Mm hmm. Is really revolutionary because if we think about the audience, all we need to think about with what we’re going to say is What does this person care about?

Yep. And once you go with what this person cares about and you’re, you know, you’re guessing, right? Like, maybe they’re they’re magical and they have some other interest that you could never think of. But by and large, we can kind of take a guess. And then based on that, what do they need to know and what do they want to know from this interaction?

We love to talk about ourselves. Yeah. Again, we’re we’re real focused on ourselves. Yeah, but the people that we’re talking to, they don’t really care, you know, They don’t really care about us. They want to know how what we do can help them. Help them, right? Yep. Yep. And so that’s that’s something to keep in mind. And we have a tendency to be like, Oh, I came up with this course because I went through this life experience and then I did that.

And tonight, okay, that’s not the elevator pitch is not the place for that. Yeah, because in elevator pitches, quick 20, 30 seconds tops, and you’re explaining to the person, you’re essentially trying to peek somebody’s interest. This is who I am. This is what I do or this is the product that I have. And this is why it’s good.

This is why you should buy it. This is why you should partner with me. This is why it would be helpful for your team to know this information. And so in order to do that, I talked about the difficulty that experts have of like figuring out where other people are. This is when you’re going to do that work.

Yeah, Think through a high level explanation of what you do and when you think you’ve gone high level, try and take it even even higher. Right. This is where something like GPT, if you say, yeah, you’re this is what I do, blah blah interchangeably and then say, can you explain this to a fourth grader? And then that’s going to be a helpful place.

Okay. It’s another thing to be really aware of is your word choice, because a lot of things like people, like life coaches or energy practitioners, you know, people who do all sorts of stuff that’s maybe not the mainstream. This may be more sort of qualitative rather than quantitative. You need to ask yourself, what does this word mean? What does the word purpose mean?

What’s a tangible way that I can position this for a potential client? Okay, You want to you want to know your purpose for life. What does that you know, maybe it’s you want to know your reason why you get out of bed in the morning, Right? That’s a tangible that’s great. I love that. Yeah. Because I struggle with this with course promises.

Mm hmm. Right. And we’re looking for something tangible because, you know, you could say elevator pitch. You could say, of course, promise, like, kind of similar. But it’s like I work with women like energy healing, right? I work with women to heal their inner energy. Like, okay, what is that? Right? What does that mean? What does that mean?

Right? Like, I’ll just walk away like, okay, that big city, right? Yeah, yeah. And it’s and this is the thing about that, I think, like, using that kind of language does get you a particular kind of client, right? Yeah. People who are already into energy healing and are like, orderly. Yeah, got it. They don’t need to know what that word means, But if you want to expand your base to people who maybe aren’t familiar with this world or or need a bit more of an explanation about what that means, that’s what we want to think about.

The word choice. Okay. And if you feel like it’s getting too confusing or not super obvious, then you need to change those words. Yeah, And that’s that’s kind of the third big tip is that you have to practice out loud. Yeah. This is not a thing where you write out your elevator pitch and then you’re like, Yep, good to go.

I’m going, I’m going to this event and I’m going to sell people with this new elevator pitch because we write differently than we speak. Yes. So you’ll write something down, and then when you go to say it out loud, you’re like, Well, that is a word that I would literally never use. And then we trip over it or it or it messes up our flow or it comes out weird in some way.

Doesn’t sound natural, right? I would never say that. Exactly. A $10 word. Right. And here’s the thing, because it’s not Shakespeare. You can change those words. Yeah. You don’t have to say the words that you wrote down. And practicing it out loud is going to help you be aware in advance of what some of those pitfalls might be.

But the other thing it’s going to do is get your muscle memory. If we practice something in our head, that’s great. Okay, sure. But then when we’re speaking out loud, then we’re asking our brain to do a lot more work. It’s got to make sound with our with our voice and our in our face. It’s got to take in breath to support that air.

It’s got to move our body. Mm hmm. I mean, the things that we’re asking our brain to do when we are speaking out loud are so. And we don’t think about it this way, but they’re so vastly different. Yeah. If we’re sitting and thinking in our heads of it, so practice it out loud. You can do that by yourself in a mirror.

 

Record yourself. If you record yourself, be nice to yourself when you watch it. That tendency is to like, pick apart every little thing and Oh, I hate my voice. Everybody hates their voice because the voice, this is just me now getting off on a tangent. Yeah, No, that’s okay. I want to be sure. Did you cover your tips before I ask you the next, um, your three big your big tips in.

Yes, those are. Yes, those are the three I’m trying to think through. If I need to say one more thing about practicing out loud, you know, I’m wondering if I can put you on the spot and if you could share your own elevator pitch or one of your clients. Like, I hear like, I kick, like a great example.

Yeah. I mean, my my main one that I give for people is super short. So if somebody says, what do you do? Or you say to yourself, I say, My name is Dr. Sara Thompson, and that presentation coach and I help people become more confident, authentic and prepared. Public speakers see? So good. So that’s, that’s what you do.

Yeah. And that is so I’m doing a couple of things in there. One, I’m telling people who I am yet throwing in the doctor. So that’s. Oh, fancy, I love it. Yeah. Again, think of things like you have things that are, that make you authoritative, right then. Yeah. And then I’m making it very clear this is what I work on with people.

Yeah, that does a couple of things. One, that opens me up to any questions that they might have, but to it also, like, that’s kind of my starting point that I’m going to share with everybody. But then like if I’m talking to a company CEO, then I might say then I might change it a little bit. So I’ll say, I hope people become more confident, authentic and prepared public speakers.

Not that fast, obviously, but then I’ll say something like I work a lot with organizations to help your staff and employees feel more confident when they’re going on sales calls or in team meetings or what. I love it. I’ll go into companies and train up their sales staff. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So again, I’m but on the flip side, if I’m talking to somebody like you, I might say I work with I work with clients one on one to help them get more confident and feel like they can share their voices with the world in a way that’s authentic for them, that’s not keeping them up at night and making them dread having to get up

and speak. Yeah, So good. Sorry. Just give us like right. You were talking about the environments, right? Going back to number one, think about the scenarios you just adapted for three scenarios there, right? Absolutely. Yeah. All right. I love it. This is a great Segway. I mean, we could talk all day, but where can we learn more about you?

So I am that presentation coach on Instagram. You can find me on LinkedIn. I’m Sara Thompson. I also have a business page there, but I don’t do a whole lot with the business page. You’re more likely to to get more from me on on LinkedIn, just from following Sara Thompson program. And like I said, I work with folks one on one who are wanting to either they have something specific that they’re working towards, like, Oh, I’ve got a presentation or I’m going to be on a podcast, Hey, I’m going to this conference and I’m doing a presentation.

Yeah. Or folks who just in general might want to work on their public speaking, this is something they’ve always hated. And so now I’m going to actually invest some time and money into becoming more confident and making this less of a stumbling block for me. And then the other thing is I do work with the corporations and organizations.

I have a background in nonprofits, and I’ve worked with lots of big companies and corporations with everybody from their C-suite to their sales team in order to get everybody on the same page, helping with Missguided, helping with with sharing that messaging. Okay, awesome. Well, I really appreciate you coming by and sharing your knowledge. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

This is fun. I love talking about this. What did you think of Sara? So smart, right? She’s so quick. I love how she walks through those elements that make our elevator pitches really juicy from the start. And I think I can improve upon how I talk about my courses and my services. So looking forward to implementing everything that she’s teaching.

So make sure you check out her website. That presentation. Coach dot com. I will of course include it in the show notes and make sure to follow Sara. She’s got a lot of insights to to learn and to implement. And if this podcast has made any kind of impression on you would love for you to leave me a review.

Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode. And until next week, go create, be you and be brilliant and get it done.