What's your "Elevator Pitch?"

At the end of this month, my small company will exhibit at an annual conference in Las Vegas.  It is our major marketing event of the year, and we spend over $100k on these 3 days - it's a highly concentrated group of potential customers, every person at this conference is a current or potential customer and it is a make or break type of situation for us. If we do well, we're set up for a good year.  If we can't connect with enough new, potential customers, we'll struggle this year.  In order to cover the event we take 16 employees along - our sales and marketing team plus some of our technical folks.  We all work 20 hours a day from Sunday to Thursday to prepare, set up, execute, then tear down and pack up.  It's exhausting, but has proven it's worth for over 10 years of doing it.

One thing we practice is our "elevator pitch."  If you haven't heard this term before, it means this:  Suppose you were lucky enough to be in an elevator with a person very important to your business - customer, investor, influencer, etc.  You have just a couple of floors, 30 seconds maybe, to answer the question "So what does your company do?"  We work on this little speech extensively before the conference - our offering changes a bit from year to year, so we need to evolve the pitch.  At the conference this speech will be delivered hundreds of times, so we want all of our folks to know it well. At its best, an elevator pitch conveys your vision for your company - what it does best, where it's headed, and who should care.  

I was thinking about our pitch this morning, and conflating it with thoughts discussed here yesterday on goal setting for the new year.  And I thought, "What's *MY* elevator pitch (with respect to VSG/Weight)?"  What's a 30 second-long, sentence or two, explanation of what I'm trying to accomplish?  It's not necessarily something I need to deliver to others in an elevator or a stress-packed business event, but it's something I can refer to when hard decisions are required.  

I think many of us can be served well by having such a pitch with regards to our VSG-journey.  A "sub-pitch" if you will, to our big life vision.

Our (SMART) goals might be "get to x lbs by y date" or "increase my bench press weight from x to y by z time" or "get my glucose parameters into the normal zone."

These are fine goals.  They are the answer to "what." But they don't really address the "why?"  I think a great pitch addresses the "why," and really powers the goals we then set.

What is the pitch, or the "why" for your VSG?  Is it just weight loss?  Is it looking good?  Is it feeling good?  If we have this bigger vision, then our annual goals/resolutions should be easier to determine. And our focus can be laser-like.

If you're having trouble setting goals, try starting with a bigger vision first - your personal elevator pitch.  Your goals should flow naturally and support that.

-Tom

Haven't heard someone talk about the elevator pitch since college!  It brought a smile to my face.  My elevator pitch for VSG would be that I did this to feel good, look good, and be happy.  Lately, I've lost sight of that and I have been feeling crappy.  Mostly because I've been putting crap in my body and not exercising.  I'm tired of that - being lazy and feeling crappy - so now I'm ready to get my head back in the game and feel GOOD.  Happy New Year!

I wonder if there's any research on the exercise/food influence on each other?

I know that when I exercise right, I tend to eat better, and when I eat crappy, I tend to exercise less ... but it seems like the good part of the (good eating -> good exercising -> good eating) is "fragile" while the bad part (bad eating -> no exercise -> bad eating) seems "robust" and hard to change.

Have to noodle on that.

It's simple.  Doing anythig with focus puts more focus on your goal.  Here is what I mean: when someone is depressed, clinicians are told to give them meds, work with their thought process and make sure that they sleep, eat and move enough.  The funny thing is that you start anywhere, everything else gets better too.  You can start with meds, and the thought process and healty behaviors improve, or you can start with the behaviors and the thought process improves, or you can work on the thoughts and the behaviors imrpove.  It is the act of minduflly working toward a goal that improves everything else.  It is all connected.  I hope I am making sense. 

It makes perfect sense - you are talking about equifinality.  Systems theory says that in open systems one can create change by starting at any point in the system.  That's why people who are having relationship problems will be urged to go seek therapy by themselves even if their partner won't go; by starting with changing one person in the system, the entire system will undergo change.  

Makes sense - it feels "physiological" to me... but what you say explains it.  I'm still interested in the assymetrical nature of it... why is it easier to "break" the virtuous circle than to keep it going?

HEY! We are just about the same surgery date and beginning weight! HEY!!! yeah - put that crap down!! 6 pounds to go?!?!? You can finish this! C'mon!!! 

p.s. my original goal was 150  lbs too. keep going. you can do it. it's fking awesome.

I am going to have VSG because I tired of feeling tired after completing minor tasks. I want to be able to go into a store and buy clothes of the rack just like everyone else. I want physical restriction to help me control the amounts of food that I eat, and to learn to put only healthy things into my body. I want to be able to eventually stop taking high blood pressure and high cholesterol meds.

Are you at Micro @ Wynn?  I'll be in Sunday prior...

That's the one :) - See you there!