How I Won With a 5-Minute Presentation

Yesterday, I competed in the second round of Innovate Illinois. This organization is giving $80,000 worth of grants to start-up companies. The first round was a written application, which narrowed the list of competing companies to five. They then held the second round, which was an oral competition. Each company had five minutes to present their company and two minutes to answer questions. And, guess what...we’ve made it to the third round!

Let me tell you why I think our company made it to the final round. I'm going to borrow some principles from the latest book I'm reading Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.

Simplicity—With only five minutes, I decided not to use an overhead presentation. I practiced and whittled the presentation down to 5 minutes by highlighting only the most salient points.

Unexpected—It was completely unexpected that I didn't use an overhead presentation. Instead, I surprised, and delighted, the judges with physical props and fed them my product. Every other company just did the usual, ho-hum, overhead presentation.

Concreteness—Physical props help convey the concreteness of what you’re trying to sell or explain. By providing the judges with samples, they could touch, smell and taste. I would have lost these senses in an overhead presentation.

Believability— In business, be a name dropper! There is something to be said for Sinatra’s New York, New York song. "If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere". I dropped Whole Foods, the Chicago Blackhawks, my background from Kraft, and the list goes on....

Practice—Someone once told me "If you have 6 hours for a presentation, you can prepare for 6 minutes. If you have 6 minutes for a presentation, you need to prepare for 6 days!"

Wish me luck at the final competition!

There is always a Better Whey

A Day In My Life As An Entrepreneur

Today, like many of my days, consisted of thinking through and executing better ways to run my business. On the surface, it was no different than a day at Kraft, where I was constantly tasked with bigger, better, faster. The difference is, as my former Kraft colleague so eloquently said, I am not making incremental changes to a product that has been in the hands of countless brand managers over the course of years or filling in the blanks of annual planning templates. I am creating this template with limited precedent data.

Here is what today entailed…

FedEx arrived with samples of our new packaging. We improved our graphics and added “Vitamin D” copy to the package. The new packaging will run at our plant on Wednesday and will be hitting shelves in the next few weeks! Ahhh…if only it could be that easy. Much to our dismay, packaging printers made a few mistakes that, if you look closely, you may notice. On back of the package, you will see what you may think is a colorful design. The line of circles should NOT be there! And the purple printing is not consistent; some areas are dark and some are light. The packaging is definitely a “Better Whey” from where we are today, but we are still not there yet! We are quickly regrouping with the printer.

Next we sampled several prototypes. Brian is screening a variety of ingredients to improve the taste of our plain yogurt (people say it is way too sour) and we are also looking at some delicious new products for future launch (that’s about all I’ll say so as to not tip our hat too much!). Brian convinced me today there are definitely “Better Wheys” to formulate our current and future product. Stay tuned on that, lots more to come…

Next, we thought through future growth plans. A couple of weeks ago, I had a conversation with Julie Smolyasky from Lifeway Kefir. She gave me some interesting advice on growth, which is impacting our expansion strategy. After looking over our original business strategy, I believe there is a “Better Whey” now!

All that, and still time for a workout and blog post!

Great Greeks

It’s no secret that I’m Greek. We’re working on a new campaign for our yogurt and we will discuss the differences between our product and Greek yogurt. This got me thinking about Greeks in general. Here’s some of the research regarding famous Greeks.

Socrates: What do little kids and Socrates have in common? They constantly asked “Why?” I’m sure his mother was thrilled. His constant questioning got him into trouble as he was found guilty of corrupting the minds of the youth and sentenced to death by way of poison hemlock (hmm…a new exotic flavor?).

Archimedes: After discovering displacement, he exclaimed “Eureka!”, the motto California adopted (you’re welcome). He is considered one of the greatest mathematicians (must have been a fun date). MIT students put his theory of heat ray to the test on the Discovery Channel’s MythBusters and the theory rendered busted. I guess he’s not so hot these days.

Alexander the Great: Well, his name has Great in it, so he should probably earn a spot. In short, he was quite the military commander as he founded around 70 towns and went undefeated in all of his battles during the heyday of his career. All this before he was 33?! But did he start a yogurt company? Nooooooo…..

Aesop: We would never learn “slow and steady wins the race” or “birds of a feather flock together” without his Fables. He was our Father Gander. The Grimm Brothers decided to steal his thunder a mere 2,312 years later with their Tales of princesses and stepmothers and toads.

Pete Sampras: He dominated the courts for most of the 90s racking up seven Wimbledon titles (the current record) and finishing #1 in the world for six consecutive years. Where did he get all that muscle? Well it wasn’t from our yogurt (we weren’t around), but you never know where the next champion might come from. He left on a high note in 2002 with his last performance winning him the U.S. Open.

Nia Vardalos: Windex can thank Ms. Vardalos for their rise in their 2002 sales. My Big Fat Greek Wedding started out as an independent production and went on to become the biggest independently produced box office hit. Her latest film, My Life in Ruins, did not see this same fate.

Jennifer Aniston: You wanted her hair in the 90s and now, you want this 40-year-old’s body after her recent GQ cover (this can happen with our product, seriously). She left the TV set in 2004 after a 10-year run on Friends and can be seen in the upcoming Love Happens with Aaron Eckhardt.

Learn a little something? I know I did (thanks Google!). Knowing there are great Greeks out there makes me feel comfortable in my entrepreneur skin and feel my good fortune is within reach. Repeating to myself “Slow and steady wins the race” every time I roll out of bed doesn’t hurt either.