TBC: Why Talking Too Much Is Killing Your Pitch

**Jason Yeh:** Hey there. Welcome to another episode of the Back Channel. In today's episode, I wanna talk about a concept that I often bring up in one context. Also push it over to another context where it's equally as relevant. That concept is less is more. Usually when I talk about less is more, I'm talking about decks.

When I'm talking about decks, I say we should have a 10 to 12 slide target. You should be working on cutting slides out of decks, sentences out of slides, and words outta sentences. It's a phrase I repeat over and over again. The point being that we are trying to eliminate anything that is inessential to the deck so that when someone consumes it, the core of the story is not confused, that people know exactly what they should be focused on.

Now that advice is not relegated or confined to just the deck. I actually want to emphasize how important this is [00:01:00] pitching and live pitching. Now in the fundraising program and community that I run called Adamant Fundraising, we often have live pitch practice. And in the session that we just had a couple days ago, we had one of the founders practicing who is extremely charismatic.

He has the gift of gab, and if you have a casual conversation with him, you feel comfortable. He's very easy going. He's great at making his words resonate with you. He makes you want to talk to him. Now that can be extremely valuable a superpower, even in so many parts of fundraising. But when combined with a little bit of uncertainty can be a kiss of death.

So when he was actually practicing his pitch and we were simulating what it was like to be in a final fundraise meeting with partners at a venture capital firm, his gift of gab turned into his own worst enemy. [00:02:00] What I saw was somebody who filling the space with words that didn't know what he wanted to say exactly for different slides or different parts of a presentation, and instead just kind of let things run as they came to his mind.

Now, when you do that, when you fill the space, you do a lot of things that work against you within a live pitch. One, especially when you're going against content that you're showing on a screen. But even when you're not, if you don't give a listener the space to consume and then process what you're saying, you're kind of making them play catch up.

These venture capitalists are very sharp, but they don't know your industry and your business as well as you do. So the things that you think just might rattle in, get understood right away so that you can go to the next point, probably take more time. And even if they don't take more time, you shouldn't assume that they can process super quickly.

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**Jason Yeh:** [00:03:00] [00:04:00] So what I push everyone to do is embrace silence, embrace a pace that allows people to follow along with what you just said, interject if they have a question to make it a conversation, and then move on after that. The other get out of jail free card that I give people and one that I encourage people to use within live pitching is the phrase, let me pause right there.

Sometimes, especially a founder like that who uh, might have a really easy time ad-libbing [00:05:00] words can sometimes get into trouble where you start going down a certain path and you're thinking to yourself, it's very difficult to have a smooth off ramp from what I'm saying. And the get out of jail free card,

let me pause right there is magic, because you don't have to have a smooth closing up sentence that allows you to pause. You get to just ramble for a little bit, realize you're rambling. Think to yourself, I need to give them space and just play the card. Let me pause right there. Do you guys have any questions?

Is there anything we should discuss here? No. Okay. Let me move on. The next, the next statement, the next slide is really important. Okay, so think about how you are in live pitches. Think about how you react to a nervous energy. Many people have this feeling like, I'm nervous. I want to keep talking. If I'm not talking, it makes it sound like I don't know what I'm talking about, and I'll let you know that the opposite is actually true.

[00:06:00] Rambling and filling the space screams uncertainty. Calm confidence, and silence screams, I know what I'm doing, what I've just said is important. Let me know what you think. Okay, so less is more is important in Dex, but less is more is also important in live pitching. Let me know what you think about this concept in the comments. I would love to hear how you've used less is more in your live pitches, and I'll see you next time on another episode.