How to get in front of A-listers
This article is written by Mohammad Eslim, a Contributor Author at Startup Turkey.
Ross Kingsland is the Founder & CEO at Inception Business Solutions. They are a group of strategic advisory consultancies. As a team, they offer people a plug-n-play solution- offering them instant access to a marketing team and services to fulfill several marketing roles. They focus on making young entrepreneurs save time, as well as costs through the services that they provide. Mr. Kingsland was a guest of ours during Startup Turkey 2016 and delivered a speech about Marketing.
I’m not quite sure if you all have this person that you might consider a celebrity and you kind of have these thoughts of what would you say if you meet them. Well, entrepreneurs are people too so they sort of have this person in their mind that they wish to meet or to at least tell them how admirable their work is or how they want their support or connections invested in the entrepreneurs project.
You can’t simply run to them asking for advice or support without proper pitch of your idea, because you will only come face to face with a business card. Some might envy others of their wide connections and huge network that they get to the interested parties who are willing to invest very easy. But those people didn’t start big either, they were small with no networks or connections whatsoever.
So what is interesting is how you hack getting in front of those big investors, those famous celebrities, and get them to listen to you for five minutes. This strategy can work on someone whose worth is half a billion dollars and for a time limit you can set. The main thing you want to think of is how to prime their network through social media channels due to a simple psychological trick. As a matter of fact, there is this psychological fact that states that the social media or better called the social proof is extremely persuasive. It goes like this, if someone thinks everyone is talking about you they will want to know who you are.
This is the case with the social media, when investors think a lot of people talk about you, like on the social media channels, they will be willing to know about you enough to take some time to listen to you and understand what you are talking about. That way they will make time to listen to you telling him about your idea, where you are coming from and what are your suggesting in a friendly conversational way that your impression on them will be cool. However, the most important point you should not miss is specifying what is in it for them. You can’t spend this time stating your plans and thoughts on a matter they won’t have any interest but money in, that’s why you have to work your mind in a reverse-engineering perspective and grab their interest to attract them in your contact list.
All of this doesn’t happen in a two to five minutes pitch or a very small talk when you meet them. It takes the two sides to set together, lean it and start conversation. Be aware that overwhelming them with questions, praises and persistence to understand your idea means them losing interest in you and dropping the whole matter before it becomes something but an idea.
Once you are ready to start a real conversation, you take it easy. Because being mature, socially famous and smooth combined with a good, organized pitch of your idea takes you places you didn’t dream of. If he is not totally interested in that aspect of business he can possibly who in his network is interested enough to give you the support needed to start your startup.
Building a networks and having many connection is so important for you to start, launch and stay in business. I admit that working on gaining contacts is hard but patience and hard-work are highly requested for you to succeed.