How to Craft The Perfect Elevator Pitch (With Examples)

Check this out. This is the notepad that they gave me on Shark Tank. And in it is every pitch, every detail and every deal of the millions that I invested on the show. You really want to blow this thing up? I am going to make you an offer. If you're building anything, this will make you millions. Which brings us to point number one. Everybody asks me all the time, is it exactly what you see on television? Yes, it is. We know nothing about the people that come out. They take our phones off us, we all walk out on set. That's the first time that we actually get to see the setup that the entrepreneur, entrepreneur has prepared. And then the entrepreneur walks through the doors and you can see very, very quickly the entrepreneurs that have actually put in the work and the preparation and they really take the weight of this opportunity they've got, just the way that they stand, how they breathe, the energy that they're giving off. Is it extremely nervous? Who has put the work in, who is confident of their pitch and who is kind of winging it? Most founders, they think that they're similar selling a business, but they are not. They are selling certainty. I am betting on the jockey and not the horse. I'm betting on that entrepreneur having the ability to get put into deep water and figure their way out of that situation. And that's why the whole format of Shark Tank is brilliant. It allows you to put this entrepreneur in. The most unnatural situation is being on live television with five astute sharks grilling the fuck out of them for two hours straight. That is a high pressure situation. And when you put someone in that situation, you really start to see how they react and what that level of certainty is. And this next entrepreneur, Davey, his pitch is my favorite example of this.

I'm Davey Rooney and I'm the founder of Boring without you, the only skincare brand dedicated to people with Combination skin.

One of the things that Davey did incredibly well is that he got rid of all of that nervous energy before he actually came out on set. I didn't get to see all of that footage of him shaking his legs and pacing back and forth. And he held himself back, very composed when he came out to the set. And then in terms of his delivery, he's not stuttering, he's not mumbling.

Our TikTok was flooded with comments saying, thank you for making something for Combination Skin. People genuinely feel left out and forgotten about now. They don't need to be.

And you can hear it in the way that he delivers it. His conviction behind those words is what counts because that's what it is that the entrepreneur is selling me. They are just transferring certainty. Why they believe that this product is going to work and that they are the business owner that that's gonna actually carry this thing out and be a success.

We launched only nine months ago, and we've grown the brand solely based on organic marketing. We haven't done any paid advertising, and we've done 115,000 in revenue just in that nine months.

Now, that in itself, $115,000 in nine months, like, that's not a huge number. But it was the way that he told the story, and it was his level of certainty that, hey, look, this is how far I've come just with organic. Imagine what I could do with running paid ads behind this thing.

I'm seeking $36,000 for a 20% stake in Boring without you.

By that stage, Davey had already made an offer, and I wanted to one up him. I didn't think that he was asking for enough money. I'd like to offer you $56,000 for 30% of the business.

Thank you so much for the offer. I wouldn't take that offer.

We went back and forth. I didn't end up getting that deal. Davey closed that deal. But the way in which he pitched was a transfer of conviction. And the key question that every founder must ask themselves is, am I so sold myself? You can't transfer something that you don't possess within yourself. If you don't have an extremely high level of certainty, you're never going to be able to convey that, regardless of what it is you're pitching. And that is point number one, the smell of certainty. So here's specifically how to apply this for your business before your next big pitch. Whether you're pitching a new customer or you're asking investors, sit down and record your pitch and really start to analyze it. What is my tonality like? What's my body language like? Am I very confident in my delivery? Do I feel little bit hesitant? Do I know my pitch cold? By watching yourself back and actually putting the time in to be prepared, this is the thing that pays the most amount of dividends. And then just rate yourself. Do I come across as somebody that has an extremely high level of conviction and certainty around what it is that I'm selling? Which brings us to point number two. You can have the best body language, you can have the strongest pitch, and you can have really, really big charisma. That's going to be enough to open a door. But your unit economics is what actually Closes deals, and we see it all the time. There's a charismatic founder comes out onto the tank. I'm thinking, man, this person seems like they got their shit together. And then you start drilling them on their numbers and it all falls apart. Hi, Sharks. My name is Amadou and I'm from Woolly Grooming. Today I'm seeking $150,000 for 15% equity in my business. The moment that Amadou opened his mouth, I knew that this guy was a put together salesperson. He had his pitch dialed, he had delivered it hundreds and hundreds of times. But then what happened was we heard about his numbers. They were very unimpressive. This year we've generated so far $23,000 in sales and are on target to be hitting $150,000 this year in revenue. And then he went on to say all the reasons why the numbers are the way that they are and gave some solid justification on it. As an entrepreneur, you need to know your numbers cold. You need to know, what is the lifetime value of a customer? What is the average order value? How much does someone spend with you in one purchase? And then how many purchases do they make off their entire Life?

You did 33,000 in the first year. You didn't do any of it online. You're only selling at markets. But you're telling me that the business is worth about a million dollars a year in. I don't buy that explanation.

When an entrepreneur comes in and you're peppering them with questions, one shark's asking them, how much profit did they make last year? I'm asking them what the roas is on their ads, and they're just like, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Answering them. It's like, okay, this person's an operator. They're put together, they know their numbers cold. And nothing will give you a greater sense of confidence that somebody that can go under the scrutin of the sharks in questioning them about their numbers. And that's point number two. Founders lie, but numbers never do. Here's how to apply this for your business. Write down your five key metrics on a single page. It might be your customer acquisition cost, your lifetime value, your payback period, whatever it might be. You need to know what the five core metrics are for your specific business, and you need to be able to explain them in 60 seconds to a fifth grader. That shows that you truly understand them and you grasp those numbers because whether you're standing in front of investors or you're in front of a customers or even your team, all of these people, they follow confidence and conviction, and that comes from really knowing your numbers cold. And if you like this type of content, then hit the subscribe button, because I've done over $7.8 billion in sales, and I'm documenting everything that I've learned on this channel to help you grow your business. Which brings us to point number three. Some of the biggest checks written in Shark Tank history was all fueled by emotion. Because even us investors, we buy emotionally, and then we justify that sale with logic, authentic passion. It builds belief, and you can't fake that. And this next pitch is exactly a perfect example of it.

Hi, my name's Tan. I'm a podiatrist on a mission to stop pain from the feet up. I created Strata Sols. Once you get them on your feet, you won't want to take them off.

Tam, tell us about your background.

I was born in Vietnam, and my family and I left. We had to flee, and we fled by boat.

Wow.

And you're out at sea, and there's pirates, and there's all these sorts of challenges. And, yeah, we went through absolute hell to get here and get to a country that allows me to stand in front of you and make this opportunity a real thing to change the world.

The room started to shift when he started to really get you bought into his emotional story and everything that had happened in his life up until that point. That opened up the emotion in Robert.

I come from a little village in the mountains of what used to be Yugoslavia. The reason we left, my dad was thrown in jail 22 times when people made fun of us because we're immigrants and we had nothing. He never complained. And I always remember he said to.

Me.

All you're owed in life is an opportunity. And fortunately, I have the means to pass that on and give you that opportunity. I will give you the 50,000 because I know how much work it is, because I think we all see something in you that could be great. That's my offer.

You've got a guy here worth billions of dollars crying on television. Because that message really resonated with him and his origin story and his upbringing. And so he takes a logical room of investors that are looking at it with their business hat on, and he starts to get us bought into his story. And before you know it, there are five sharks all making offers on his business for $50,000, a $2 royalty. Until that $50,000 is paid back, we'll each get 10% of the business. Do we have a deal? But there's a really, really key point in the shark tank. Most entrepreneurs think they can come in and that they can just tell a sob story. And because we've got all this money, we're going to just write a check. You have to have the unit economics stack up. And he had already showed us he's already getting sales on here. What little bit of ads that he has run were highly profitable. So not only we bought in emotionally, but then he justified all of those reasons with logic by elaborating on the math of his business. And that's point number three. Emotional connection wins. So here's how to apply this specifically in your business. You want to redesign your website, your About Us page, and your ads to be centered around one core story. If you create an ad that talks about all of the problems that existed of why you created your product or service in the first place and you tell your origin story and you use yourself as the hero in that journey and showed. I tried all of these solutions and none of it worked. Until one night I said enough is enough and I drew a line in the sand and then I came up with this superior product. Then I started to sell it and word got out people were going completely nuts about this thing. And we've got thousands of reviews. That is an origin ad story. If you run that right now in your ad account, I can guarantee you that that will out convert any other ad that you're running. This brings us to step number four. The most critical, key important part of a pitch is the opener. Because you only have one chance to make a first impression and it really does count because a great pitch is simply psychology disguised as business. And a perfect example of that is this pitch by Madison.

I'm Maddie and I'm the 23 year old founder of reusable film camera company 35mm co. I'm from Melbourne and I'm seeking a $300,000 investment for 10% equity in the company. Depending on your age, this one might feel a little bit nostalgic. When I was 19, I listed a vintage film camera for sale in a Facebook group for $50. Much to my surprise, people started bidding in the comments and the camera sold for $250. I invested all of my savings, $50,000 into developing a film camera of my own. Today we've sold over 40,000 units and we're stocked in major Australian retailers. The Iconic and Universal Store.

Well done.

Wow.

We're currently in conversation with some of the biggest brick and mortar retailers in America and I need your help to ensure that we can meet the expectations of these retail giants whilst also building a strong direct to consumer strategy in the new market.

You can tell by her delivery that she is simply going through the motions. She knows this thing cold. She's done this probably a thing thousand times and before she was even done, you could start to see that us sharks, we were hungry to get in there and start peppering her with questions and getting down into the nitty and gritty so we could make her an offer. Because the perfect pitch has a particular structure and it starts with a big bold hook. You want to come out and hook everybody. We've been sitting in these chairs watching pitch after pitch after pitch, oftentimes sitting there for 14 hours on end. And you need to be able to come out with a very, very bold hook. To get us to kind of sit, sit up in our chair and pay attention to what it is that you do, then you need to clearly articulate the problem that exists in the marketplace. Why does this business even exist? What is the problem that it solves? Then the solution? How does it actually solve that problem? What makes it unique? How is it different from all the other alternatives that exist in the marketplace? Proof. This is probably one of the biggest things that we look for in the tank. Do you have proof that you are going to de risk this investment for us in terms of order celebrities that use this, how many customers that you've got, how many reviews, views do you have, how long have you been doing this? What is the trajectory of your numbers and your sales velocity? And ideally your proof needs to be louder than the claims that you're making. And then the close. Be confident enough to let the silence do the closing. You need to know when to shut up. We are digesting everything. We're running the numbers, we're writing them down in our notepad. If you're going to interrupt that and keep on over explaining thing when no one's asked your questions, this is the way that you talk yourself out of the deal. And that's point number four. Master the art of the pitch. And here's how to specifically apply this to your business. Every offer that you make, every ad should follow this framework. Hook, problem, solution, proof, close. Do it on your landing pages in your ads and watch your conversion rate shoot through the roof. Which brings us to step number five. I can tell in the first 60 seconds if your business is going to scale by the way that you talk about your team. Is it just the you show or is there a team in place that's going to help you scale this business. And this next pitch from Luke and Daniel at SUTA was a perfect example of just this. These guys are young, 25 years old, already done a million dollars in sale and we're growing at 300%.

Hello, sharks. I'm Luke, co founder of SUTA and this is my business partner, Daniel.

G', day, Sharks.

We're here to give you the chance to invest in Australia's first and only online student hire company. We're looking for $250,000 in exchange for 10% equity in our business.

Last year, in 2022, we did over $1 million in sales at a growth rate of 300%.

Wow.

So, sharks, who's ready to be the sharpest looking investor in the team and be a suitor of our business?

They knew their net profit, they knew their growth rate from quarter on quarter, year on year. The way that you do anything is the way that you do everything. And I knew that if I lifted up a rug in this person's business, it would be clean because they just knew their numbers cold. They knew everything about their business.

In 2020, we did $100,000 in sales. During COVID last year we did 1.06 million. This year we're forecasting 1.7 million in sales.

That level of organization and certainty, that just transfers to me. It's like, hey, they're going to be good operators. They're going to have their shit together. And the way that they had come up, their story about how they had both done this and started from a granny flat, you could see that they had a very clear path of exactly where they wanted to go in their business. And I bought into that and I could see that it wasn't just a pitch because anything that you asked them, they knew exactly to the forensic level of detail about their business. I am willing to offer you half of the money, so you'll have to convince another shark the other half. And I would want seven and a half percent of the business. There was a little bit of negotiation back and forth, but they just stayed calm. Just seeing the way that they carried themselves throughout the tank, it spoke volumes about who they were as operators. Because your business is just a mirror of yourself. Business problems are really business problems. They're simply personal problems masquerading as business problems. It's all well and fine running a small business, but the moment that you want to start scaling up multiple geographies, different SKUs managing inventory, different systems in place, unless you are very well put together, you're going to Be overwhelmed by all of this, and this chaos is going to ruin your business. Because wealth equals leverage, people, capital, systems, and time. If you're not organized enough at a small scale, you're never going to be able to organize to get to a big scale. And that's point number five. The founder is the ceiling. And here's how to specifically apply this to your business. If you're not spending 80% of your time on systems, people and growth, then you are the bottleneck of the business. It's simply your ability to think. Think a bright enough, big enough future, and then also have the fortitude to build the systems and team to actually get you there. Because businesses will never outgrow the think of a founder. Which brings us to step number six. You need to have given the tank the respect it deserves by putting in the actual preparation to be here. Because the best founders don't wing it. They anticipate all the questions, all of the objections, all pitfalls, pitfalls in their business and in the market they operate in. And they know how to handle that well in advance. It's like Mike Tyson says, right? Everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the face. And that's exactly what happens in the shark tank. When you've just delivered this concert pitch, you're so emotionally invested in your business, and we start to say, hey, I don't believe in your business. I think this is a horrible idea. I think it's going to zero. How do you react to that? How do you handle that? Objection. And still don't say, suck all the energy out of the room and keep momentum in the deal. The only way to do that is to preempt those situations and to have handles and know where to navigate in those scripts so you can keep that momentum going in your pitch and in the tank. Because the tank rewards people who treat it like war and not tv. And, you know, the people that are there just for the exposure, just for the pr. And when you come in and all you're doing is this thing, oh, this is a fun TV show. Let me just go on. There's a bit of a gag, right? We get angry very, very quickly because we're sitting here for hours and hours on end. And the last thing that we want to do is have a founder rock up unprepared and not taking this situation seriously. We let him know very, very quickly with our line of questioning. And this next pitch is a perfect example of that.

Hello, Sharks, My name is James King, co founder of AI Toolkit, proprietary limited. The product I'll be presenting today will be an AI powered set of tools for teaching and learning. I'm asking for an investment of $250,000 in return for a 10% share in the company.

But after demonstrating his product, everything started to unravel.

Do you have any customers?

Not yet.

Have you sold any to a school board?

The answer is yes.

I thought you said you didn't have any sales. When somebody asked you if you have sales. It's very binary. It's either yes or no.

We have two and a half thousand users and we will be invoicing those users when we deliver the product. As soon as we've implemented all of those schools, we can then invoice that.

I feel like with every question that we're asking, we're just going down a different rabbit hole. Right, Just Chris, tell us point blank, what are the gross sales to date? Have you charged anyone through any merchant facilities? James?

Nope, we have not.

Then you don't have any sales.

Okay, we don't have any sales. I did come with, you know, figures that don't make sense. I get that.

Think about the gall of this guy. I have come to you with numbers that don't make sense. People to get on the Shark Tank, they go through multiple rounds of pitching with the production team. It's not like he just woke up out of bed and decided he was going to be on Shark Tank that day. He needs to treat it with the results respect that it deserves by taking it seriously and knowing your numbers. And that's point number six. Preparation, clarity and conviction equals deals. And here's how to specifically apply this to your business. For any major high stakes pitch, you ask yourself these three simple questions. Am I prepared? Am I clear? And do I have conviction? Preparation is far more important than your actual skill. You want to feel like you have done this to a place that it is redundant, like you've just rehearsed it so much that you know every detail. Because it's much better to be over prepared than underprepared. And I know that sounds so simple and so novel, but the amount of people that don't really treat these big opportunities that they get in life with the level of seriousness that they should, they should spend 10 times the amount of time preparing for this opportunity. Because oftentimes these doors only open once. Which brings us to point number seven. Let's just say that you've done everything right up until this stage and you've made it to what we call the deep end of the Tank. You've got sharks, hopefully multiple of them, making offers on your business and to be a partner with you, you think that the deal is over once you start to get your first offer. That is where it just begins. Because now we're beginning to see how you react to that. You sound very excited of that. And then I've got another offer in my mind. I know where it is. You stand and silence is a weapon. You want to use it, it's completely fine. We never object to someone sitting there silent, digesting the numbers. Because after we've made their offers, if someone's sitting there and they're running the numbers, first of all, they're taking it seriously. But it also looks needy for us to then ask them to like what their feedback is or to elaborate on that. So oftentimes there'll be a shark that makes an offer in the tank and the person will say, thank you for your offer, Subway. And then they keep on speaking to the other sharks. So they don't even acknowledge it other than the that they thank you for it. They don't give you all, I like that offer. I don't like that offer because they know how to play it. They want to play the room and get all of the offers out. And in a negotiation, the person that cares the least has the most power. Walk away. Power is real power. If you're not happy with that offer and you feel completely fine and content leaving that offer and walking away, it kind of sets the scene for the rest of the tank. And we kind of know where things lay. But you also need to know how to keep the momentum in the deal. Some founders, right, they get two offers that feel like exceptional offers, like they're even better than the actual offer that they asked for. And they are being greedy and they try to get everybody's offer. And then those two deals that you had, they evaporate. We see it time and time again.

I'm out.

Thanks.

Okay, no worries.

I'm out. And a way that you can actually flip. This is what Mark Cuban does. He puts a 24 second shot clock on deals. He knows the importance of right time kills deals. The last thing that you want to do is you're on the other end of that conversation, is let the deal just shop around in the rest of the tank.

Tell you what, I'll give you $250,000.

For the whole company and a 3% royalty.

But it's yes or no right now. That is a technique that closes lots of deals for Cuban. So when you're In a negotiation, you need to have a sense of urgency and momentum. Understand the biggest killer of all deals is time. And the most that you can compress that, the higher your chances of actually closing a deal is. Which is number seven, the calmest person wins. So here's how to apply this for your business. Whenever you're in a negotiation and things start to get a little bit heated and a little bit prickly, never lose your calm. Just stay cool in the deal. Let silence do the work, because you need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. You're not going to be breathing easy, you are going to be hot. It is going to be stressful. And the more that you can come to terms with that and still be able to keep yourself cool and stay calm, it's going to end in a more favorable outcome for you more often than not. Which brings us to step number eight. On the surface, Shark Tank looks like a business show. It looks like an incredible platform for people to come out and test their business, when in reality, it's a great tester of people and human psychology. It shows you what kind of resilience that an individual has, what excuses that they're willing to buy that they're selling themselves on. It's either they come in with all of the reasons that they're successful or all of the excuses as to why they're not. Because the winners on Shark Tank are the founders that rock up prepared, they know their numbers cold, they don't give you excuses, and they paint a very vivid picture of what the future looks like. And they wrap you up with the emotion of it. And that's what gets us sold as sharks to actually write a check. What you don't see on television is that each Shark Tank pitch, it can go from a minimum of 45 minutes all the way up to two hours. And what you get to see on TV is just eight minutes. We compress a huge amount of time into those two hours. You can really find out a lot about somebody because the pressure in those two hours, it reveals the truth faster than time ever will. And you need to be the type of person that can handle the heat, having the ability to be able to bathe in those fires, it's gonna say a lot about you. And as a founder, which is point number eight, success is simple, but not easy. Here's how to specifically apply this in your business. Whenever things go wrong, you need to take extreme ownership and do a post mortem. Most people, when they fail in business, they just want to move on. They don't want to think about it, it's too painful. They want to move on to the highs of a win. But you learn more from your losses than you do your wins. Have a look when something breaks, when you feel a lot and say, okay, well, what happened here? What system broke? What events took place before this loss occurred? If you don't have the mentality, if it's meant to be, then it's up to me. And all of the losses that I have in my business are because of me. And you don't just think all of the wins and all of the successes because of you. If you think the wins are because of you, then you have to think that the losses are because of you as well. Put your ego aside, look at what happened and think about, okay, this is a system. This is something that I'm going to implement to prevent this from happening in the future. Because a business doesn't punish failure, it punishes the ignorance of failure. And if you think that this is just about pitching your business, you couldn't be further from the truth. Because everything in life is a sale and everything that you want is a commission. And if you like this video, you're going to absolutely love this one. On everything that I've Learned in my 17 years in sales, like, subscribe and I'll see you in the next one.