For the majority of my working life I have been self employed. I first set up business nearly 20 years ago now - you can find out a bit more about that here
Being self employed isn't what a lot of people think it is. There's this idea that running your own business and being your own boss is something less real than being employed. That if you are your own boss, especially if you happen to be a woman, actually means you spend a lot of time just faffing about & not really doing anything. That is isn't a 'proper' job. That you are actually just playing about doing a few bits and bobs around the school run. Which is especially annoying if you don't have children.
What they fail to see is the HUGE effort it takes to run your own business. You are everything - the MD, the CEO, the Sales Director, the Marketing Manager, the PA, the Social Media Manager, the Accounts Department. You are EVERYTHING. The buck stops with you. There is no one else to blame. No one else to haul over the coals when something goes wrong. No one else to bale you out if you've made a crap decision. It's just you. Doing it all.
Including actually driving new customers to your business. Yes, that's right - when you run your own business, you do actually have to get new clients all by yourself. There is no magic button that you push when cash flow is looking a little ropey, or you have a new product to sell, or a new service to deliver. If you want new business, you have to go get it yourself. That's another self employment myth busted right open.
One of the most effective ways to get yourself out there is by networking. You need a platform to tell people about your stuff in the hope that some people will actually buy it. Sometimes that happens really quickly - but for most of us, successful networking takes time, effort and energy into creating a strong personal brand that gets you remembered for the right reasons, not the wrong ones, all the time. Even when you are not in the room. And one of the ways you do that (apart from treating networking as an essential part of your business, and not something you drop as soon as a shiny thing floats past you (don't be a twonk)) is by developing a great elevator pitch to showcase what you do. In the networking organisation I belong to, 4Networking, we do this in something called the 40 Second Round. It does what it says on the tin. Most of the time. Each business owner at the meeting gets 40 seconds to pitch to the room. Just 40 seconds to encapsulate who were are, what we do, how we help people, what people we've helped have to say about us, and what our audience need to do next to get involved.
We don't actually do it in an elevator - well, we wouldn't in the UK anyway because it's a lift - but you get the idea. It's designed to help you focus on your core business message and make people want to find out more about you and what you do. The concept is of being in a lift with someone like Richard Branson and only having a very short amount of time to make a good impression.
It's a skill. It needs practice.
You can't wing it, because lack of preparation shows, and frankly - makes you look a bit of a biff.
And every now and again, it happens for real.
About 10 years ago, I was working on a big project with the Ministry of Justice and was spending a lot of time on the road. This particular week, I was up in Glasgow training senior judiciary on the basics of a new, paperless system for tribunals. It was rock and roll. Not.
I was staying at the Hilton in Glasgow (another myth buster here - staying away in hotels for work is not glamorous. You're not on holiday for a start. It's noisy, expensive and you miss your own bed), and back in those days, dear reader, I was a smoker. I know. I'm not now.
This was just after the ban on smoking indoors came into being, so instead of enjoying a glass of wine and my cigar (yes, cigar) inside in the warm, I had to go 18 floors down in a lift to stand outside for 15 minutes. In Glasgow. In February. At night.
So I made my way to the lift to traipse downstairs and indulge in my ghastly habit. I pressed the button to call the lift and then proceeded to drift off in a little daydream whilst I waited for the lift to arrive. The bell pinged. The lift stopped. The doors opened.
And there was Billy Connolly.
Yep.
Billy Connolly.
The Big Yin himself was in the lift. I looked at him. He looked at me. I looked at him a bit more. Eventually, he said 'are ye getting in then hen?', to which I made some strangled burble of an answer and got in the lift.
I'm in a lift with Billy Connolly!! now is my chance to wow him with my scintillating wit & humour! To show him I'm a 'real gas'! To enchant him with my personality and style!
Instead of which, I just stood stock still with a slightly stunned expression on my face whilst hearing 'if it wasna for your wellies' going round and round in my head. It was a song I knew well. My family and I sang it often (Dad on guitar, Girls on vocals). We'd even sung it in public to a group of very bemused Americans who had no real idea what wellies were.
We reached the ground floor. I hadn't said a word. The bell pinged. The lift stopped. The doors opened.
He said 'are ye getting out then hen?'
I squeaked.
He left.
I was so star struck I'd spent the entire 45 odd seconds looking like a stunned goldfish. I'd just had my 'Richard Branson Moment' and fluffed it completely. I'd simply stared at him whilst thinking about wellies.
Which just goes to show, if your elevator pitch moment actually happens to you need to be on your game - you need to know your stuff. You need to be confident in it's delivery and style - and I can help you with that. It's just taken another 10 years of practice to get there!