Pain & Response

If you’ve found the pitch exercise that I shared yesterday valuable, here is another one.

I call it the Pain & Response Pitch. It follows a story arc that you might have heard before:

"I saw the pain first hand.”

“I felt that we needed to do something.”

"There are millions like me.”

“If we succeed, we can eliminate the pain altogether.”

“So, we built a solution.”

It’s often how a company founder will tell the story of how she started. But this is not just for startup founders. This is for everyone.

This exercise will help you surface the unique opportunity others didn't see. The opportunity is the core of your narrative.

The source of any great strategic narrative lies in a moment when we feel motivated to change the way something is done. In that instant, a particular emotion emerges from inside. Suddenly, our inner voice starts talking to us with a resonance that we can hardly ignore.

There is something very personal and internal here. It’s an intuition, a realization, an a-ha moment, a dream, or perhaps a cry.

Your ability to tell that story is arguably as important as having the skill to build an innovative solution that works for everyone.

Did you have a moment like that? How did it define your path?

I would love to hear from you. I read and respond to every email you send and share the insights that come my way (with your permission), so everyone on this list can benefit.