Yesterday I spent the day at the first Women in Biz conference in Toronto. Over a hundred women who were in business for themselves, for others, interested in social media and business and other fields came together for a day of learning, networking and planning.
Topics included branding, business planning, public relations, social media and marketing. Panels and fantastic speakers lead the day and I suspect most of us left motivated to do something for our own businesses, or to move business ideas forward. Don’t worry, I took notes and will be sharing on this blog!
As part of the day, we had the opportunity to set up a one-on-one coaching session with business coaches and leaders, other entrepreneurs who have been through what many of us have. My coach, Roger, has been involved with many corporations and recently just sold one business and is starting another. He was extremely nice and did his homework about my blogs, my brand and my questions. It was extremely worthwhile (and side note: he was really complimentary on my branding and logos and where I’m going, but because I am super professional I won’t do happy claps too much).
But he did ask me one question that completely stumped me: “Okay, Rebecca, give me your elevator pitch – tell me a bit about what you do”. Insert my best deer-in-headlights face here and you’d have an idea of how I looked in my chair.
What DO I do? And how could I sum it up quickly, concisely and effectively? I run A Little bit of Momsense (and love it) and have branched into A Little bit of Foodsense. I started Sense and Community to have an umbrella for my non-mom/food thoughts as I started thinking about blogging as a business. I’ve been taking on some consulting jobs – mostly training and coaching others with their small businesses (mostly moms) and creating their online presence like I have. I do a lot of charity work but does that fit somewhere?
I was lost and confused instantly and while I have always had a sense of where I wanted to take my ‘sense’ brand if you will, I realized I really need to be able to sum up each of my activities, figure out if they fit together and how, and be able to share that.
So, an elevator pitch. A few sentences about what I do, or what my online brand is, why it’s something people should be interested in and more.
I have a feeling this may take some time.
But I will ask you: Do you have an elevator pitch? Want to share it so I can have an idea of what to expect? Please share and let others read about your business!
Or, are you like me and need to come up with one?
(side note: on Twitter, follow the #womeninbizconference hashtag for tweets from the conference. There were some great tid bits)
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We launched with a logo and a tagline and ‘thought’ it was an elevator pitch (wrongly!):
“momstown.ca – Neighbourhood Moms. Connected.”
That worked for awhile until we grew. I find when a biz is in transition it is darn hard to cull the elevator pitch down, but after 3 + years we finally have one. Or two actually.
To biz/brand clients:
“momstown is a national network of influencers and bloggers with real life neighbourhood connections.”
To a potential momstown mom member:
“momstown is a really organized moms group.”
(a little too simplistic but what mom with her hands full of kid has any longer to listen anyways??)
Good Luck Rebecca!
as always Ann-Marie, you are such a great source of info and tips. Thanks for some guidance!
Still working on my elevator pitch however in time it will all come natural to me and what to say and not to say. Thanks for the great blog Looking fwd to reading some more comments!
it will come in time, sometimes I think it’s just a matter of actually believing this is what I am doing!
Just the other day someone asked me what I do and I gave that person the “deer in the headlights” kind of look too. Argh. It’s a hard question for me to answer because I do a lot of different things. Writer, blogger, web content manager, social media manager… I’ve also written scripts for video projects but I hesitate to call myself a script writer. It’s hard.
If I have an opportunity to describe my blog in one line or two I describe it as:
“a parenting lifestyle blog for families in the Ottawa area.” But I’m not usually so brief, AND punctuate with a lot of “UMS.” Need to practice more, clearly.
Andrea, it’s been over a week and I’m still clueless!