The technical part of your best pitch

Photo by Matthias Wagner on Unsplash

I am a tech startup founder and a mentor and lecturer in various universities. A year ago, I calculated that during the time that I am in the startup industry, I pitched at least 720 times.

It looks like a lot from the outside, but here’s the question — we don’t know if it’s enough or not enough based on the original goal.

So, let’s move on to the main topic — the form or purpose of the pitch.

Regardless of the goal, it would be best if you always thought about in kind of what language, form and speech you are dressing the message you send to the world.

Form and presentation always play a significant role in any pitch, which coaches and mentors will not tell you. But the speech therapist will tell you about this — that is, I.

My first profession is as a phonopedist and speech-language therapist. I will share language, breathing and speech lifehacks that will make your pitch soulful and fascinating, even if you have not fully worked on the content.

1. Sentences.
   The average person perceives no more than 5–7 words in one sentence. Perceives — it means it can process and process for understanding by the brain. It means that for any audience, you should build short sentences — no more than 5–7 words in one and be sure to differentiate their intonation. Remember: at the beginning of a sentence, raise your voice. In the middle, make it calm and complete the sentence with rising intonation at the end.
2. Language. Vocabulary — Think about the words you have heard can remember and the words you use every day. Do not try to write your speech with words that are not typical for you and are in the passive vocabulary. Use only what is in your active used language. So you protect yourself from unnecessary nervosity and support yourself at the moment when you need to choose words. It will be much faster and easier for your brain to remember what you use and not what you said at the world forum in Davos. Also, remember that the words in a sentence must have a connection with each other. This directly and critically affects the ability to understand what you say to people. If you do not know how to coordinate words among themselves or do it according to the pattern of another language — for example, your native Latvian, but you speak English and put the words in the same order as in Latvian — there is a high probability that people will not understand these constructions.
3. Voice. Your voice should correspond in tone and pitch to what you are talking about. Avoid infantile or jumpy intonations — when excited, the intonation often rises towards the end of the sentence. Keep an eye on it. Since people will reflexively feel danger or hysteria in a similar intonation with a rising voice, this is due to physiology. Be sure to drink warm tea before the pitch — don’t drink coffee (it dries out the vocal cords), don’t drink carbonated drinks (they lower the tone and also dry out the mucous membranes of the cords), don’t eat cookies and other sticky things — chocolate is also not allowed. What you can is — a banana, tea, warm water, and warm mineral water.
4. Speech. Your diction and pronunciation. Remember that it depends on 1) the relaxation of your face, neck, and shoulders muscles. Before the pitch, do a 2–3 minute massage of the cheeks and chin — all muscle tension accumulates there. The more accessible the muscles are, the easier it is for you to control and the easier it is for you to blow out the air with which you pronounce consonants. Don’t choose words with lots of consonants — you’ll stumble over them when you’re nervous. Choose instead of children — “kids” or instead of “startup” — “company”.
5. Breath. When you are stressed, your breath, part of speech, suffers first. You begin to breathe faster (18–30 cycles per minute), and, therefore — swallow words or hyperventilate and gasp for air like a fish in the middle of a sentence or phrase. Before pitching, touch your pulse on your hand, and put your finger there. Start breathing according to the scheme: at the expense of 1–5 inhale, hold for 6–10, 11–18 exhales. So about 3–4 times. You will feel that the pulse becomes slow. Therefore your lungs stop panting, and you calm down. Magic, right? Your stable and rhythmic breathing is key to your intonation, pronunciation and charisma. Remember about it.
6. Concepts. You won’t be able to convey even the most straightforward idea to the audience if you wrap it in a 100-word sentence, forget to breathe before you start a sentence, or hear your heart beating convulsively. Say only one idea per sentence. Operate no more than one thought at the beginning, one in the middle and one at the end. Do not overload with meanings and follow the hygiene of senses.

What I call the hygiene of meanings — our speech is always a product of our thinking. It is no secret that we can operate only with those concepts we can name for ourselves. But you need to remember that all people are different, and people generally think at different levels and operate with other concepts. Someone uses Kant’s concepts, and someone cannot delve into the sentence “A startup is a company that grows rapidly.” This is fine. As I said, if you don’t know what “startup” is, “company”, and exactly what “growth” is, you won’t be able to understand this sentence in its sense.

Strive to think about the threshold of understanding for the audience you pitch to or present to.

Lastly, remember that the secret to any successful presentation lies in managing the external and internal attention of the audience. Internal attention is their internal processing of what you say. External attention is what they do — listen to you, or they are bored and just trying to hide a yawn.

Follow the simple life hacks that I described, and you will be able to deliver absolutely any presentation to any audience on any topic.