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Why You Should Have an Elevator Pitch and How to Develop One

The term “elevator pitch” conjures an image of an overly slick salesperson delivering his or her best sales pitch to you in a short amount of time.  All while you’re trapped in an elevator, with no path to escape.

That’s not very compelling at all.

But Michael Hyatt in his new, great book entitled Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World makes a great case for why and how to develop one.  (Important sidenote:  since this week is the official release of Michael’s new book, purchasing a copy this week gets you over $300 of extra bonus materials, so if you’re interested in buying a copy, I’d encourage you to do so this week.)

The reality is that time is short, and you never know when you’re going to have a chance to share about what you do.  Whether what you do is stay at home as a full-time parent or lead a complex ministry or leadership organization, how do you explain it to others in a succinct, accurate, and meaningful way?

Enter the elevator pitch.

According to Michael, there are 4 primary components to an elevator pitch:

1. Your product name and category

2. The problem you are attempting to solve

3. Your proposed solution

4. The key benefit of your solution

Michael helps flesh out these components by sharing his own elevator pitch for Platform: 

I am writing a new [Component 1] business book called Platform.  [Component 2] It is designed for anyone who is trying to get attention for his or her product, service, or cause. [Component 3] I teach my readers how to build a tribe of loyal followers, using social media and other new technologies. [Component 4] I explain that it has never been easier, less expensive, or more possible than right now.

No overly slick sales pitch involved, but rather a clear and compelling explanation of what you do.

This month I’m working on revising the elevator pitch for the Fuller Youth Institute.  It’s still a work in progress, so I’m not even ready to share it here.  Plus I need to get the FYI team’s input before we go public with it.

But it’s something I need to do if I’m going to be ready at any time to share about our mission and its impact.

Anyone else want to share their elevator pitch, or their thoughts about elevator pitches?

Volume 8, Issue 11 FYI E-Journal

IT’S GRAD SEASON!
This week’s E-Journal offers some of our best resources to help prepare students for faith beyond high school.

Create Your Own WOW Experience

How can we make sure our message, product, or service creates a wow experience? 

According to Michael Hyatt, author of the new book, Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World, this is one of the most important questions we can ask.  As someone selected to be part of the “Platform Launch Team,” I received an advanced copy of Michael’s new book, and I must say, I’m impressed.  As someone who spends a fair amount of time and energy on social media and thinking about how to turn research into the best resources possible, I was both affirmed in what FYI is doing well, as well as challenged to do even better.  This book officially releases today and the great news is that anyone who buys it this week receives over $300 worth of special bonus materials, so if you’re going to buy it, do it this week!

In the first part of Platform, Michael focuses on this idea of a WOW experience.  According to him (and I think he’s right), the key to a WOW experience is that we must exceed the customer’s current expectations.  In order to do that, Michael offers five questions:

1. What is the product or experience I want to create or transform into a wow?

2. How will the customer or prospect feel as a result of this experience? (In other words, what is the specific outcome you want to create?)

3. What specific expectations does the typical customer bring to this experience?

4. What does failing to meet customers’ expectations for this experience look like?

5. What does exceeding customers’ expectations for this experience look like?

One of the most memorable parts of the book is when Michael paints a picture for what it would look like to exceed customers’ expectations in the greeting they experience in your office lobby.  The description is too long to post in full (you’ll have to get a copy of the book to read it yourself) but here are some of my favorite parts in describing a guest’s encounter with a female receptionist:

• The receptionist always refers to visitors as guests. The term visitor implies someone who doesn’t quite belong and whom everyone hopes leaves quickly. The term guest implies someone who is to be honored and shown hospitality.

• The receptionist warmly greets the guest by name. The guest wonders, How did she know that? The receptionist extends her hand and introduces herself. She says, “It is so nice to meet you [or see you again]. We’re glad you’ve come by today!” or “It’s so nice to see you again. The weather is a lot warmer than when you were here in March.”

• The receptionist asks the guest if he’d care for something to drink. “I have bottled water, soda, or freshly brewed Starbucks coffee,” she says. If the guest says, “Coffee,” the receptionist asks how the guest likes it.

• The guest sits down on a comfortable chair and notices a selection of the most recent edition of several popular magazines, as well as a few industry journals. In addition, there is a stack of one of our new products. A small card next to the stack invites guests to take a copy with our compliments.

• Within five minutes, the person with whom the guest has an appointment steps into the lobby and warmly greets the guest.  As they leave the lobby, the receptionist says, “It was good to meet you, [name]. I look forward to seeing you later.”

Maybe at one of your next team meetings when you have some time for big picture thinking, it would be worth it to ask these 5 questions and dream, especially about the fifth question.

As a parent, I’ve also wondered what it would look like to create a sense of WOW in our family times together.  A particularly fun game night in which I never glance down at my cell phone.  A weekend picnic lunch in our backyard with a water fight to follow.  It doesn’t have to be all that elaborate or costly, but I do have to think about it ahead of time and make sure I have enough energy to be present.

So often we assume that good enough is just that – good enough.  What if we went for WOW in our lives, ministries, and families?  What ideas do you have to create a sense of WOW in your spheres of influence?

Fourteen-Year-Old Against Seventeen

What happens when a 14-year-old girl decides to take on Seventeen Magazine?

You may have caught this news feature recently, but that’s exactly what’s happening. Eighth-grader Julia Bluhm decided she’d had enough with the unrealistic expectations places on girls (and guys) in Seventeen and other teen mags and media. A teen blogger, she joined forces with teenagers around the country to petition Seventeen to run one “unaltered” photo spread a month of real teenagers.

Awesome.

Nearly 75,000 have signed the petition at change.org to date.

I love that real teenagers are standing up to the media monsters of our culture to say they’ve had enough. Will it change a whole industry? I’m not sure. But perhaps other real kids will be inspired to make changes in their own lives, schools, and communities.

What courageous acts by teenagers have you been inspired by lately?

Being Careful with Research

Yesterday I blogged about handling brain (and all other) research with care. We simply cannot take researchers’ probings and popular commentary on those probings as absolute truth, any more than we should take Sticky Faith research as absolute truth.

Here’s a second study that may be easily misinterpreted: Some teenager’s brains may make them use drugs.  As a WSJ article wondered aloud, “Are Some Teenagers Wired for Addiction?”

The abstract emphasizes that this exploratory brain scanning found different neurological networks active in impulse-control experiments among different teenagers. The biggest finding here is that those who had ADHD symptoms were activating different parts of the brain than those who had a history of drug and alcohol use.  That could mean that having ADHD is not necessarily a risk factor for drug use.

It also seems that underfunctioning of the orbitofrontal cortex of 14-year-olds is one factor correlated with teenagers who have a history of drug use. But here’s the thing: The study is not a before-after longitudinal study. It only shows correlation after the fact. So to conclude that this low brain activity means some kids are predisposed to drug use is taking a leap beyond the research itself.

In other words, we still don’t know that some teens are hard-wired for addiction. As the researchers point out, “impulsivity is a multi-dimensional construct.” Let alone addiction, which is certainly a step beyond impulsivity.

As you read the headlines, be aware of the leaps we researchers and commentators make. Sometimes we all need reminders that the first rule of research is humility. Let’s apply that to interpretation as well.

Handle Brain (and all other) Research with Care

I am not a neuroscientist.

I say this every time I quote neuroscience in a presentation, because I think it’s fair to warn listeners that my interpretation of the brain research I mention could be off-base. We do work down the hall from some brilliant neuropsychologists at Fuller, and feel smarter just by walking by their doors. But beyond that, I’m leaning on one neuropsych class in undergrad well over a decade ago, which isn’t much to go on.

I bring this up because I have seen a few instances lately where popular interpretation of research feels skewed.  Of course all research (including our own) is skewed in some way itself, but public reports can create all kinds of further misunderstandings. Two examples that seem to be open to misinterpretation within the past couple of weeks:

First, analytical thinking experiments (not actual brain research) triggered an interpretation that, as one headline read, “Thinking can undermine religious faith, study finds.” The study abstract states it slightly more positively, “Analytic Thinking Promotes Religious Disbelief.” To be more clear, the journal article reports that “these studies indicate that analytic processing is one factor (presumably among several) that promotes religious disbelief.”

What did this study actually find?

That there is some correlation between triggering analytic thinking (via asking subjects to perform cognitive tasks in a lab) and responding less positively to religious belief statements. In other words, when we get our brains into critical-thinking modes we’re less likely to voice agreement with statements that are, by their very nature, based on faith. That is different from proving that thinking undermines faith. As one commenter noted, belief responds to context. Faith is elastic, and elasticity and stickinesss are not necessarily opposed to one another.

Just as faith and doubt are not always enemies.

Tomorrow I’ll share the second study that could easily lead to misinterpretation.

How to Be More Creative. Good News: You Already Are.

This week I seem to be surrounded by talk about creativity.  It’s been a topic of interest to my 9 year-old, I played a video in my Fuller class about creativity, and then I ran across this Harvard Business Review blog about creativity.

In the past, I’ve thought of myself as a not very creative person, largely because I’m not a very artistic person (you should see me draw, let alone try to read my handwriting).  But over the years I’ve realized that I’m more creative than I thought, largely based on an expanding definition I have of creativity.  As the blog describes:

The bad news is that if you don’t think you’re creative, our survey data say that you probably are not. But there is good news: You can actually become more creative by changing your mind-set. Anyone can innovate, if they choose to. Disruptive innovators do it by choice, not chance. Their everyday actions swap out an “I’m not creative” mind-set for an “I am creative” one. And then magical (not mystical) things unfold.

According to the various researchers who wrote the HBR blog, there are 5 types of creativity:

Associational thinking: I creatively solve challenging problems by drawing on diverse ideas or knowledge.

Questioning: I often ask questions that challenge others’ fundamental assumptions.

Observing: I get innovative ideas by directly observing how people interact with products and services.

Idea Networking: I regularly talk with a diverse set of people (e.g., from different functions, industries, geographies) to find and refine new business ideas.

Experimenting: I frequently experiment to create new ways of doing things.

I like these various categories of creativity because they remind me of what I think is true about creativity:

1.  Much of creativity comes from observing others.  We think creativity happens when we’re alone, thinking deep thoughts.  Sometimes that’s the case, but often (maybe even more often), creativity happens by seeing what others are doing.

2.  Creativity comes often from a team.  I’m often my most creative when I’m with my great FYI colleagues, thinking about next steps, dreaming about the future.

3.  Creativity takes time.   The more time we have (especially with our team), the more creative we can be.  Because of that, our FYI team is trying to block off half of every staff meeting for “big picture” issues – the type of issues in which we need to be creative and can’t be squeezed into 7 minute chunks.

4.  Not only am I creative, everyone else is too.  Every student I know, every adult with whom I interact has their own brand of creativity – God-given creativity.   How can I help them tap into it?  How can the world benefit from it?

Here’s the good news:  you – and everyone else you know – is already more creative than you think.

Volume 8, Issue 10 FYI E-Journal

Millennials’ Perspective on Christian Faith

Recently, a joint study by the Public Religion Research Institute and Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs found that younger Millennials, age 18-24, report high levels of movement away from religious affiliation.  According to the report, “While only 11% of Millennials were religiously unaffiliated in childhood, one-quarter (25%) currently identify as unaffiliated, a 14-point increase.”

Personally, I do not find this statistic surprising.  It merely validates what the church has already known for years.

What might be surprising are the three words the majority of religiously unaffiliated Millennials believe describes present-day Christianity.  These words are “judgmental” (84%), “hypocritical” (84%), and “anti-gay” (79%).  No wonder these Millennials are walking away from Christianity!  But is this an accurate picture of Christianity?  Scripture doesn’t portray Jesus as being judgmental, hypocritical or overtly anti-gay.  Which makes me wonder, why is there such a large disconnect between what Christianity is and how people view it?  Somehow we have become known more for what we are against than what we are for.

The three descriptors I personally would use to talk about Christianity are welcoming, forgiving, and redeeming.  What three words would you use to describe Christian faith?  And how can the church begin to inspire others to view Christianity in a similar way?

Finding Risen Life in Tough Kids

Working with young people is hard.  Sometimes unbearably so.

Even if you don’t work with gang members or high-risk kids, you probably feel this way from time to time. And for those who do serve kids on the margins, the day to day struggles can fog our vision for why we serve in the first place.

Recently Father Greg Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries here in L.A., spoke in chapel at Fuller.  His meditation, a post-Easter reflection on the risen life, inspired our FYI team and the full house who joined us.  This week take some time to consider these words from Father Boyle about the risen life we find in one another—gang members, tough kids, and anyone else in whom life is often hidden.

(Note: Boyle’s talk starts at 8:22)