How Do You Bounce Back From A Failed Pitch Meeting?
There's a lot of pressure on you when you're raising funding. After all, the odds are over 100:1 against an investor funding you.
I knew the odds were against us raising money, yet I never felt nervous. In this short video, I'll share with you the mindset I used to successfully raise money during the worst economic downturn since the 1930's. I think you'll find it really helpful whether you're raising money or pitching a big customer.
Read the video transcript below:
So how do you bounce back from failure from specifically when you're pitching and you fail? You're either pitching a customer or you're pitching investors. Well, let me tell you the philosophy that I've used and this is what I tell everybody I work with. It's also what I tell my family, what I try and teach my daughter too.
Because my daughter is in theater. In fact, she's kind of a perfect proxy for this. She loves performing, yet when she auditions, every audition is life and death. And when she doesn't get the role she wants, she's crushed. The thing that my wife and I have tried to teach her is this philosophy. Is worry about the progress. Worry about the process. Try not to worry so much about the result because you know eventually you're going to get the role you want. But if you focus on the process, it eliminates all the pressure about the role.
Let me go a step deeper. Maybe this will help a little bit more. So the idea is that, you know, eventually, for example, let me give you another analogy. You know, eventually you're going to get married, but every person that you date is not likely to be your partner in life. But you know, eventually you're going to get there. So it takes the pressure off. You know, when you meet somebody who you think might be that special someone, because you know what? I don't have to worry about that. All I have to worry about is just having a nice time and if the rest of it happens, it happens.
And it's the same thing with raising money. It's the same thing with customers. Yeah, there's a lot of pressure. But I'll tell you from personal experience, when I had that mindset of, you know what? I know I'm going to get there eventually, maybe not with this one, but eventually it talked the pressure off each one of the events.
And that made it such that even though you're raising large sums of money or you've got that million dollar customer in front of you, it took the pressure off of that specific intance. I saw this and believe me, I had a ton of pressure on me when I was raising money and investor after investor told me no, I was never panicked. I was never worried. I learned. I got better. The team got better. We kept focusing on it, and eventually we got there and I never ever, ever panicked and I was never worried about it.
I know that sounds crazy, but it's true. Now, that doesn't mean in the moment. I wasn't disappointed a time or two, but it allowed me to bounce back because I knew eventually we get there. That's the thought process. I hope it works for you. I'm Brett at brettjfox.com. Have a great, great day.