IAM1830 – CEO Helps Professionals Create Persuasive Pitches

Previous Episode: https://iamceo.co/2022/11/26/iam1566-ceo-helps-professionals-create-persuasive-pitches/

Transcription:

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Kelvin Johnson Teaser 00:00

But the experience we want to have is, you don't want to lose opportunities because people don't understand what you do. There's a statistic, there's a stat from a quote from Y Combinator Michael Siebel that the number one mistake that founders make is that they can't explain clearly what their business does.

That is exactly what our software is designed for.

Intro 00:20

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you are in search of.

This is the I AM CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:49

Hello. Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I appreciate you listening to this episode. If you've been listening this year, you know that we've hit 1600 episodes at the beginning of this year. We're doing something a little bit different where we're repurposing our favorite episodes around certain categories, topics, or as I like to call them, business pillars that we think are going to be extremely impactful for CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business owners, just like you, what I like to call the CB nation architects who are looking to level up their organizations.

This month, we are focusing on CEO Hacks and CEO Nuggets. This is by far one of my favorite questions I asked on the show. In other words, I asked, what are the apps, books, and habits that make you more effective and efficient? Those were the CEO hacks. Then I asked for a word of wisdom or a piece of advice or something that you might tell your younger business if you were to hop into a time machine and those were the CEO nuggets. That's what we'll focus on this month and some of the top ones that can instantly impact your business.

I love all the questions, but with every episode, I thought I would walk away with something I could look at and implement right there to save the precious resources, time and money. Or I would also learn about the advice, tips, and tidbits or tools of the trade on how to level up our organization. So you'll hear some of these this month. So sit back and enjoy this special episode of the I AM CEO podcast.

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Kelvin Johnson of Brevity. Kelvin, it's great to have you on the show.

Kelvin Johnson 02:24

Thanks for having us.

Gresham Harkless 02:25

Yes. Excited to have you all on and talk about all the awesome things you've been working on. Before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Kelvin so you can hear about some of those awesome things.

CEO and co-founder of Brevity an AI-powered software, helping professionals create persuasive pitches, Kelvin has a versatile career experience as a CPA consultant and executive at a fast-growth tech startup in Denver.

He's the author of the forthcoming novel; Don't fear the sharks. Six principles to pitch investors coming out in October 2022, and Johnson graduated from Villanova University with a Master's of Accountancy.

Super excited to have you on the show. Kelvin. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Kelvin Johnson 03:05

Absolutely. I'm excited for this.

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Gresham Harkless 03:07

All right let's get it started then. So to kick everything off. I wanted to hear a little bit more on how you guys started what I call your CEO story.

Kelvin Johnson 03:14

Yeah. How do we land on Brevity? So, before Brevity, I was running a consultancy called Humble Warrior Advisors, and even in the background, you highlighted on how I went from being a CPA to now how do you run a communication software as a service company? So I went from being a CPA, did management consulting, eventually was a fifth employee of a tech company out of Denver. From that experience, I started my own consultancy called Humble Warrior Advisors, where I was helping other early-stage entrepreneurs get to that next major milestone, whether that was the help they needed with their finances, whether that was sales.

But what I found myself helping out the most with was the pitch, right? And whether it's to acquire customers or secure funding. When I was running my own consultancy, it was always in the back of my head. How can I productize my insights at scale? And what would hurt me was there was a lot of people who found value in my services, but for those who couldn't afford it, how could I actually help those people that have amazing ideas, but they have difficulty crafting and delivering a clear, concise, and compelling pitch.

So, I asked myself that question, I started asking questions. What are the options for people that need to improve and optimize their story to get someone else to take action. So, on one side of the spectrum, you had like myself, those expensive pitch coaches and consultants that not necessarily everybody could afford to help clarify their message. On the other end, you had these expert books, blogs, YouTube channels. My discovery showed that a lot of people found it too time-consuming and overwhelming to learn those actions and apply those into action. Then I started to really dive deep into the pitch and presentation software as a service market and I would say 98% of the landscape was hyper-focused on pitch deck, aesthetics, slide, design, layout, and formatting.

We've all seen pretty few presentations where you can put lipstick on a pig. So we saw a gap in the market in a self-service manner. How could people create a clear, concise, and compelling story? That's where we started to go on this journey with Brevity.

Gresham Harkless 05:24

Nice. I absolutely love that. So I want to drill down a little bit more, hear a little bit more about brevity. Can you take us through exactly how it works? However, you're making that impact?

Kelvin Johnson 05:32

Yes. Yes. So again, brevity is an AI power tool that helps people craft and deliver persuasive pitches that sell and that's relevant for fundraising, that's relevant for sales, that's relevant for interviewing for a job, that's relevant for corporate presentations, asking someone out on a date, right? We're really designed to help you get that clear, concise, and compelling message, better influence your target audience and the way this works.

I compare a product in 2 different realms. 1 is TurboTax. TurboTax did a really great job of taking those long tax filings and breaking that down and consumable digestible parts. We've applied that same logic for being able to create a pitch script across all those different scenarios. Our product launches on November 2nd. You're going to have over 100 different scenarios where you need to influence your target audience. What's difficult for people is how do I start a pitch? How do I transition? How do I end?

So, we basically applied that TurboTax logic where you're getting step-by-step guidance, directives, and examples along that path to help you curb writer's block and spur ideas. Then the other way our product works is similar to Grammarly, where we've created our own proprietary pitch intelligence that analyzes your pitch script and provides ways to be more clear, concise, and compelling to better influence that target audience.

Gresham Harkless 06:58

Nice. I absolutely love that. And, it's so important. Like you said, there are some really phenomenal potential products and service for people that are looking for funding or whatever it might be. Maybe even just trying to ask that person on the data as you talked about too, but it's almost as if it doesn't happen unless you're able to with brevity, a lot of times to be concise and effective in the things that you're saying.

So, I feel like you're helping people to bridge that gap to see those things, whether it be a data, obviously, the next big thing that's coming, outcomes to fruition.

Kelvin Johnson 07:27

Correct, correct. Because our goal and remedy is really around being understood. So, we can't guarantee that you get fundraising or you close that deal. But the experience we want to have is you don't want to lose opportunities because people don't understand what you do. There's a statistic, there's a stat from or a quote from Y Combinator Michael Siebel that the number one mistake that founders make is that they can't explain clearly what their business does. That is exactly what our software is designed for.

So, whether you're at a networking event, you're in the airport, you're in the elevator and someone asks you what you do, we have one of the best products on what I would say in the world to be able to do that. The purpose of our platform is to drive engagement so people actually want to learn more about what you do.

Gresham Harkless 08:15

Yeah, absolutely. That's so powerful. So, it almost makes me wonder do you feel like that's part of your personal or even the business's secret sauce, the ability to take that information and synthesize it and be able to help people to communicate that.

Do you feel like that's what sets you apart and it makes you unique?

Kelvin Johnson 08:33

Yeah, I think it's the entourage effect, but there's not one feature that I would say that's just superior. It's the aggregation of really helping people refine their story, their content or message, and their delivery. I didn't touch on the delivery part, but it's really the entourage effect of all these features.

That is the secret sauce in the workflow.

Gresham Harkless 08:55

Absolutely love that. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. This could be like an app, a book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Kelvin Johnson 09:08

The entrepreneurial journey is super, super hard. Your ability to manage the stress, your ability to manage emotions is huge because that allows you to think clearly. So one of the big things that George is prompted me to do early in my journey because I'm a Philadelphia guy, I got a lot of energy, a lot of passion and a lot of emotion. But your emotions can be either fuel or interference. So he challenged me to become what's called a professional emotions processor.

So one of the big things I do probably twice a day is, I do my deep breathing exercises, but I have this journal called rain. RAIN acronym stands for recognition of the emotions, acceptance of the emotions, investigating why trying to do some root cause, and then the N stands for nourishment slash non-identification. So literally journaling out.

No, I feel anxious about blah, blah, blah. I accept a lot of people are like you shouldn't feel this way. No, you got to recognize, you got to accept it, investigate why, and then you got to find a way to get some nourishment and not have some non-identification with that emotion so you can process that fully and move on. So you can think as clearly as possible. We make decisions as CEOs, outside of exercising and diet and all that other stuff, but I think really processing your emotions has been something that's been super helpful for me and my journey.

Gresham Harkless 10:39

Yeah, and I appreciate you sharing that, especially the way to think through those things and being able to spell out rain and have that feel like a better-term exercise to go through that. Because I almost feel with emotion, sometimes we can try to push them off or compartmentalize or say they're not affecting us. But I think that you end up giving more power to them when I think if you're able to really go through that exercise and explore that emotion.

Why am I angry? Why am I happy? Why am I whatever that might be? And you start to get more. I don't want to say power, but maybe awareness around it. So it allows you to be more, empowered by understanding. This is the emotion that I feel and this is how it's resulting. So, if you want to redirect it, or whatever it might be, you at least have more awareness around what's happening.

Kelvin Johnson 11:21

Awareness is the 1st step for any change, right? So that's why I really I use this twice a day, morning and night.

Gresham Harkless 11:28

I absolutely love it. So what would you consider to be what I like to call a CEO nugget? So this is a little bit more word of wisdom or a piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell your favorite business client potentially, or if you were to hop into a time machine, what might you tell your younger business self?

Kelvin Johnson 11:44

We get taught a lot of things in life, right? But it's very easy to fail in things that you might have done well in other roles. So, before Brevity, I was introduced to this hiring methodology called the who hiring method. It's considered one of the top hiring methodologies in the D. C. private equity space. I did that under somebody else, and when it came to running my own company, it's one of those things that I just forgot about. So have a hiring methodology and stay consistent. You don't have to be by the book per se, but have a hiring methodology, and test it out. Continuously iterate, but don't hire by bias.

Or even put it this way, even my co-founder, I've known him from 3 years old. I still leverage the hiring method when we decided to join forces. So, it's been unbelievable, but my best working relationship in my career.

So, to have a hiring methodology, stay consistent because regardless of whether you're running a software company hardware, fintech, or crypto, you're going to have to work with people and align philosophies, core values, alignment on the vision and mission of the company is super critical, especially at the early stages.

Gresham Harkless 12:58

Nice, nice, nice. So I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition, of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping for different quote and quote CEOs on this show. So Kelvin, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Kelvin Johnson 13:08

CEO, these are few things to me. So this may not be super Brevity, but Chief Energy Officer. Chief Everything Officer and then I like to say Chief CFO Chief Follow-up Officer. Right? At the end of the day, it all comes back to you and it's really important to be collaborative. But I would say that the chief follow-up officer, it's very easy for things to fall through the cracks. When you asked me the question earlier, I'm a big fan of getting things done. I think that's been mentioned on your podcast multiple times about time blocking. I don't want to bore the audience with the things they've already heard before. But, that is super important to make sure the eyes are being dotted and the T is being crossed.

Gresham Harkless 13:54

Yeah, absolutely. It's so underrated because I almost believe it's a misconception about success, is that sometimes people feel like the people that are most successful they try one time and then it happens and then they just do that over and over again. And then, their success, whatever that means. But it's often that follow-up persistence. A lot of those things I think, are in the recipe for success and it feels like you feel the same way.

Kelvin Johnson 14:17

Put it this way, even with current investors in my company, the amount of blue people who use iMessage, the amount of blue doesn't look great, but they ended up investing, right? So that's you gotta be willing to go into the blue.

Gresham Harkless 14:35

Yeah, absolutely. Literally and metaphorically.

Kelvin Johnson 14:39

Exactly.

Gresham Harkless 14:42

Awesome. Awesome. Kelvin, truly appreciate that definition and then that perspective, and of course, I appreciate your time even more.

So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course, how best people could get a hold of you, and find out about all the awesome things your team is working on, of course, get a copy of the forthcoming book.

Kelvin Johnson 15:00

Yeah. So a few things Instagram is at brevity pitch official. We will be launching our commercial product. In early November, you can go to brevitypitch.com and sign up for an account. This is relevant for anybody that's looking to influence and persuade.

Pitches for sales, fundraising, and interviewing for a job. We make sure that in, when you're competing with zoom fatigue, lower comprehension rates, and shrinking attention spans that you have something that's clear, and concise. That's easy to understand. For any time you're looking to present, so appreciate you guys having us on the show.

Gresham Harkless 15:35

Yeah, absolutely and to make it even easier, we'll have the links and information that show notes as well, too, so that everybody can follow up with you and take advantage of all the awesome things that you're doing. But absolutely love everything that you're doing again, I think it's so underrated in the ability to communicate what we're thinking and sometimes the great ideas and I appreciate you taking your genius and being able to share that with so many people and do that to scale.

I think it's something that is obviously very necessary in all aspects of life. So thank you so much for sharing your genius and your brilliance and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Kelvin Johnson 16:06

Absolutely. Thanks, Gresh.

Outro: 16:08

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and everywhere you listen to podcasts.

This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless, Jr. Thank you for listening.

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