Video Yourself
Almost a year ago, for the VT KnowledgeWorks blog, Inside VT KnowledgeWorks, I wrote Google Yourself, a post inspired by advice from Seth Godin, and then about six weeks ago, Have You Googled Yourself Lately?
For 2010, I'm going to offer a different directive: Video yourself.
According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index, "By 2013, the sum of all forms of video (TV, VoD, Internet video, and P2P) will exceed 90 percent of global consumer IP traffic."
In An Explosion of Video Content, we wrote: "What does this mean for businesses who want to communicate and engage with customers and clients now and in the future? Might be a good time to get on YouTube."
We got on YouTube. We have the Handshake 2.0 YouTube Channel and The Handshake Video and are offering video production services to our clients.
What I have learned from taking videos of myself and clients - all of us amateurs - is that in terms of social media authenticity and genuineness, we make a fatal mistake.
Shifty eyes.
In deep, thoughful, one-on-one conversation, it's natural for people to look away from their listeners as if searching parts of their brains for what they mean before they say it, then to look back into the eyes of the listener.
On film, that looking away looks as if we're not telling the truth.
When I submited an application for angel investor funding, for which a video was required, I took video after video of myself. In addition to recurrent flared nostrils from impassioned speaking, I noticed that, in my sincerest effort to look away and find just the right word, paradoxically, I looked insincere.
In business, a good handshake is accompanied by good eye contact.
The solution for me was to ask someone to film me. Lindsey Eversole of VT KnowledgeWorks helped me with my angel investor application video, Z. Kelly Queijo took the video for my application to be a blogger for Murphy-Goode, and Jarred Foresman filmed this video for the blog I write for VT KnowledgeWorks.
As you can see, I haven't quite ditched the flared nostrils yet, but, after practice, I've got the eye contact down. Whether you agree with what I'm saying or not, it's pretty clear that I mean what I say.
Video yourself. Get really comfortable looking straight into the camera and saying what you mean. The future of your business may depend upon it.
Anne, Good post. Would you like some feedback on your angel investor pitch video? (I hope so, because I'm about to give you some!)
While you come across as completely sincere and enthusiastic about Handshake 2.0, the video completely fails as an angel investor pitch! Why? Because in your 1:10 of video, not ONCE do you tell me anything about the business!
You spend the first half telling me how wonderful it is to go looking there as a viewer, and the second half telling me why you'd want to participate as a vendor. Both of these are sales pitches for the product. But you don't spend a single second discussing anything related to the venture in which I'm investing: the market size, the market need, the business model, the target customers, the market entry strategy, your unique advantage(s), the financials, the management team, the exit strategy, etc. etc. etc.
Remember that investors are NOT investing in the product. I can't tell you how many wonderful products that I've been pitched, that I loved, and might even purchase myself...but I'd never invest in the business because it didn't make sense (at least for me as an investor.) What investors ARE investing in, fall into the following categories (more or less roughly in the following order):
1. YOU, the entrepreneur
2. The Market
3. The Business Model
4. The ability to execute
5. The product
6. The financials
7. The deal
The first one (YOU) involves communicating a lot of things to a potential investor, starting off with Integrity and Passion (both of which come across in the video.) But, unfortunately, without the rest of #1 (such as your background, abilities, experience, etc.) and absolutely nothing of anything else (even after watching the video, I still don't know what Handshake 2.0 actually does), there's just not a lot to help an investor make the decision to invest.
At the risk of answering a video with a video, let me point you to a brief video (not particularly great quality, but...) that distills a bunch of pointers about how to do an angel pitch. I'd love to see a re-shoot of your video after you've watched mine, and taken the lessons!
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/david_s_rose_on_pitching_to_vcs.html
http://angelsoft.net/blog/2008/05/04/videos-are-so-important-heres-whyand-heres-how/
Posted by: David S. Rose | December 22, 2009 at 11:26 PM
Thank you, David Rose. Your feedback is invaluable. I've written two responses!
Here's the 1st:
http://www.handshake20.com/2010/01/transparency-akin-to-nudity.html
and here's the 2nd:
http://www.handshake20.com/2010/01/angel-investor-video-pitch-trashed.html
Thanks again!
Posted by: Anne Giles Clelland | January 04, 2010 at 11:16 AM