Learning How to Pitch

It's a cloudy Tuesday morning in Downtown Los Angeles. On my calendar for 10AM is a pitching workshop hosted by the LA Small Business Development Center (SBDC), which offers free resources courtesy of the tax dollars that I've already paid. I made myself an iced coffee and logged into the meeting. There were only two people on the call: the host and me. My fight or flight instinct was triggered, and I left the call.

Wait. I had joined the meeting on time, maybe it would just take a few minutes for other participants to trickle in. I joined the meeting again. Still just me and the host.

"Hi Kriselle!" She greeted. "If you can, can you try to unmute yourself?"

Absolutely not. I went to college during the COVID-19 pandemic, so I'm used to doing virtual meetings with dozens upon dozens of other students. I can usually get away with keeping my mic and my camera off, taking notes, then leaving the call without saying a word. I got scared. I left the call again.

I started to click around on my desktop, getting ready to resign myself to doing solo work. But I hesitated. Wasn't this actually a great opportunity? I actively participated in the last LA SBDC workshop I went to, and it was actually a great learning experience. It's LA Tech Week this week, and I had a few in-person events planned. If I wanted to network, I needed to know how to pitch myself. Besides, being the only person in the meeting would mean that I could get special attention. Don't I usually have to fight tooth and nail to book 1:1 meetings with business professionals?

It took every last drop of willpower that I had, but I took a deep breath and joined the meeting again.

"Hi Kriselle!"
I unmuted my mic. "Hi!"
She smiled. "Oh, there you go!"
"Sorry, I had some...issues."
"I figured, so I wanted to wait for you before getting started."

I opened up a fresh page for notes on my iPad and added a title to the page: The Power Pitch. The host introduced herself as Emilia Rogowska, the Vice President at RightSource Services, an organization that helps small businesses expand. She walked me through the five steps to creating a powerful pitch, and helped me come up with examples for Chirp along the way. I hurriedly scribbled bullet points into my notebook, trying my best to capture the wealth of knowledge that Rogowska shared.

Once I got comfortable with the fact that the meeting was being recorded, it was easy to follow along and participate. It's sometimes embarrassing for me to join such buttoned-up events and start to talk about Labubus and Sonny Angels. But Rogowska took my ideas seriously and helped me work towards crafting my pitch.

An hour later, I had 9 pages of notes and a lot to work on. I needed to apply what I'd learned to pitching for Chirp, but also to pitching myself as an engineer at networking events.

I'm glad that I gathered the courage to join the meeting and stay. I still have a lot to learn when it comes to commandeering the ship that is Chirp, and I have to put myself in uncomfortable situations sometimes in order to learn.

"All growth starts at the end of your comfort zone."
Tony Robbins, life and business coach, author, and entrepreneur