PITCHING WITHOUT BORING PEOPLE
“benefit first. background never. get to the point.”
The Lesson
Smart people make this mistake constantly: they build up to the point instead of leading with it. Wrong: 'Back in the 1900s, they bottled water this way, then in the 60s they changed to plastic, then this German doctor invented...' Your listener stopped listening after 3 seconds. Right: 'I have a way to bottle water faster and cheaper than anyone. You can invest and get in on the ground floor.' Now I know why I care. Now I'll listen to the background. Our filters reject anything that doesn't get to the point immediately. Tell me what's in it for me first, then I'll hear the rest.
Real-World Example
An engineer pitching a technical project to executives. Wrong: 'So the current architecture uses a monolithic pattern from 2015, and there's this new approach called microservices that Netflix pioneered...' (executives are checking phones). Right: 'This will cut our deployment time from 2 hours to 5 minutes and reduce outages by 80%. Here's how.' Now they're listening.
Watch Scott explain this lesson
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