Elevator Pitch - Advice to Young Professionals

It’s Important, yeah?

This takes me back.

A phenomenon within both the corporate and creative world is that you need to have an 'elevator pitch'. This is what you would say to someone powerful - someone who has the ability to change your life for the better - in the twenty / thirty seconds available if you accidentally bumped into them in a lift.

It’s a theoretical exercise all young thrusting professionals need to engage with in order to quickly make an impression to a superior. Especially in larger corporates or for someone who has something to sell.

So, for example, if I bumped into the Managing Director of a major publishing company and told them I had written a book - let’s call it Franco’s Fiesta, for example, they might ask "What's it about?" and then I would launch into my elevator pitch. "Well it's about the end of the 60's, the end of fascism in Spain, the making of movie in Franco's Spain, the collision between liberal Hollywood, authoritarian Spain and the ordinary people caught in between." (1)

Yeah - you don't have to say it out loud: Crap, Tim. Needs work, yeah?

Meeting the CEO. In an Elevator.

Let me tell you about one time when I really did need for an elevator speech. I worked for a US multi national company - a titan of the financial world - and I was at a sales conference in Cannes. Hungover to hell one morning, I was late for the first session of the day. I pressed the lift button, the doors opened and there, in the lift, was the CEO of my company, apparently a surprise guest on the conference agenda. For a minnow like myself, this was like meeting God himself.

Well, he looked at me, with my company’s laminate pass, and I looked at him, looking exactly as he did on the company website. If ever there was a time for an elevator pitch, about me, about my career, about my ambitious plans, then the time was now. In a company of 100,000 employees this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to make an impression, to further my career and get my name 'out there'.

But looking at him and then swallowing with my dry mouth, feeling the nausea rising from the previous night's activities, I thought, 'fuck it' and slowly turned to face the other corner. My plan for paperclip harmonisation in the Swindon office - or whatever - could wait for another day. We spent the next thirty seconds in an awkward but conspicuous silence.

I think he appreciated my reticence - who the hell wants to be assailed by wannabes every hour of the day, with their fake smiles, fake positivity, bullshit resumes? "Hi! I'm Donna from marketing, can I tell you about this exciting, game changing project I'm working on?"... "Nah, fuck off, Donna," would be my response. I guess CEO's have to be more circumspect and grimly listen to the widget reduction project in Luxembourg.

My boss reacts. Bad Tim!

My reward for giving the CEO the space and time and courtesy he deserved, was, well, nothing, of course. He got out the lift - executive floor anyone - and I dry retched more openly. My boss, when I told her the story, believed, perhaps rightly, I was an 'asshole'; that I had shockingly given up such a career advancing opportunity. She, by the way, like all powerful people, kissed butt beautifully to any passing superior. You have to drop to your knees to raise your profile. There's a lesson there Tim, somewhere.

Thoughts. Then to Now

Anyway, I tell you this story because I’m Prometheus unbound these days. I deliberately abandoned the big corporate world for fintechs and I'm all about truth and honesty and authenticity these days (which aligns more with the industry).

Yeah. Authentic. Living my own values. Mainlining the personal code, my own brand. But the brand has to be you, ultimately. Has to be your turf you're prepared to fight for. Experience teaches you your strengths and weaknesses. Focus on the former and avoid the latter and don’t lie about either.

Otherwise it's an insincere elevator pitch with a hangover, with a CEO who doesn't give a toss, tired from a transatlantic flight and showing fear of employee intimacy in his eyes.

So, employing my usual awkward pivot, my advice is twofold: 1) Do avoid the wannabe elevator pitch. Imposing yourself unwanted is probably a bad idea. Interactions are better unforced. 2) Having said that, you probably should be able to sum up what you do in a few pithy sentences. Precision and concision helps in business.

Read on

I mainly focus on music and history and scabrous stories from various cities, some visited whilst a non elevator picthing corporate warrior - for example - my playing the blues moonlighting from a corporate real estate conference in Chicago.

Or maybe, the Roman world floats your boat? Or what about my Krakow Trilogy?

Obligatory Notes

1) Notice my use of non gendered language when I describe the powerful executive? Well, young people, this has been a thing for a good thirty or so years and isn’t a modern invention. Especially for graduates of Sussex University. As it happens, many of my top bosses in the corporate world were women. Often not very nice women; whilst the genders may have been equally divided the characteristics of those execs - both male and female - were pretty similar.

2) I originally wrote this in 2015. More jokes. Less knowledge. Invert that and you have my current elevator pitch.

3) The book I never pitched was published. Check it out. Probably Franco’s Fiesta is free now (on Kindle anyway!).