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!

Big Apple and Bear Naked!

This past weekend I was in New York City and had the honor of meeting with one of the founders of Bear Naked

.

Just in case you are not familiar, Bear Naked is the delicious, all-natural granola brand that was recently sold to Kellogg's

for Millions. Kelly Flatley and Brenda Synnott founded

Bear Naked

in 2002. The wonderful thing about the all-natural and entrepreneurship industry is that people love helping one another. Kelly was gracious enough to spend time with me imparting her wisdom on what it takes to build a blockbuster brand and what I found is that our efforts are completely inline with her advise.

She stressed the following points:
• The importance of being unique
• The importance of being authentic
• The importance of the company being lean

We have persevered from the beginning to create packaging and materials that will standout on shelf and maintain the uniqueness both in packaging and attributes, which can’t be found in competitive yogurt. I also agree that without authenticity a product deceives consumers and will not last ultimately. Also, I can truly appreciate her lean suggestion. In marketing efforts, as well as sales force, Tula is lean. We are very conscious that we have to be wise about marketing choices, such as budgeting for guerrilla marketing instead of sponsorships. And I have found that no one can tell the Tula story better than me, because the passion and inspiration is rooted in my life and is very personal, which makes me the face of Sales.

Many thanks to Kelly for meeting with me and for passing along wisdom from her experiences!