How to perfect the elevator pitch for your creative business

We’ve all experienced that horrifying moment when someone asks the dreaded question…”so what do you do”

Panic sets in, thoughts fly like mad around your brain, and before you know it, a jumble of words are pouring out of your mouth.

But it doesn’t have to be like that.

Let’s talk about how to perfect the elevator pitch for your creative business.

Where can you use an elevator pitch

Aside from elevators, you can use this pitch when you’re:

• Introducing yourself on a podcast
• When asking a brand if they want to sponsor or collaborate with you
• At the beginning of a talk or presentation
• To introduce yourself to someone at a networking event
• In your award application
• Pitching yourself or your work to newspapers or magazines for features
• As your bio on the ConvertKit Creator Network
• On your website’s about page
• In your media pack
• Asking someone if they’re looking for a podcast guest
• Pitching yourself as a speaker at a conference
• Submitting your application for a market stall
• In funding applications
• As your bio on marketplace websites
• When reaching out to another artist to see if they want to collab

The formula for a successful elevator pitch

The formula for an elevator pitch is super simple.

Whether you’re in a literal elevator, talking to someone at an event, or introducing yourself in an email, you just need three simple things:

• Your name
• Your job title
• What you do

Basically, it’s structured like this:

• Hi I’m X
• I’m an X
• I do X

For example:

• I’m Hollie Arnett
• I’m a brand strategist & coach for creatives
• I help artists and makers build their brand so they can share their work, grow their audience, make more sales, and craft the creative life of their dreams!

Yours might be:

• I’m Jessica
• I’m a hand-blown glass artist
• I make bespoke glassware that’s inspired by nature and brings a lot of joy and colour to people’s homes!

How to perfect your own elevator pitch

Introduce yourself

The first step in perfecting the elevator pitch for your creative business is telling the person your name. I know that’s easier for some than others, but it’s the most straight-forward when it comes to branding! Jot that down and let’s move on to step two.

Own your job title

Your job title can be a little trickier. This is where the imposter syndrome can start to kick in a bit. Am I an artist? Can I call myself a creative?

But your words have power. Power to give you courage, power to get your dreams out there, power to put your plans in action, power to tell others what you do, power to own who you are and where you wanna go.

Whether you’re dreaming of being an artist, getting started as an artist, being an artist in your spare time, building a business as an artist, or making a living as an artist, you are an artist.

No matter what your creativity looks like, or what stage you’re at, you can claim who you are and shout it from the rooftops!

People tell me all the time that they don’t feel like they can call themselves an artist because they are just starting, aren’t very good, and only do it in their spare time. This is so not true! Stop comparing yourself to other creatives!

But I get it - it took me ages to call myself a branding designer, and then another age to call myself a strategist! But when I did, it felt liberating and powerful.

So whoever you are, an artist, illustrator, writer, designer, designer, makers, streamer, or other creator, claim that title, start owning who you are, and open yourself up to the magic that comes with believing you are worthy of being whatever creative you wanna be.

Outline what you do

This could be the most complicated part, but if you’ve worked on your brand strategy at all, you might have already done this part.

This part of your elevator pitch is essentially just your mission statement.

The key to a powerful mission statement is to cover the what, how, who, and value of your business. In order to do that, you can use this simple template:

[What you do] by [How you do it] for [Who you do it for] to [What value you provide]

Let’s look at the Spotify example and break it down:

“To unlock the potential of human creativity—by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the opportunity to enjoy and be inspired by it.”

What they do is unlock the potential of human creativity, how they do it is giving an opportunity, who they do it for is creative artists and their fans, and the value that they provide is those artists being able to make a living off of their art, and the fans enjoying and being inspired by it.

This example follows the template pretty much to a tee, just in a slightly different order, but yours doesn’t have to so closely. As long as you cover those four main elements (the what, how, who, and value,) in one way or another, you’ll be winning.

You can check out some more mission statement examples here if you’re looking for some more inspiration.

Practice

Now you’ve got your pitch, it’s time to practice.

Firstly, you can start with the easiest format: written. Change your social media bios to the job title you want to own, start using your mission on your website, and when you need to share your bio, you’ve got a full pitch to send!

Pitching yourself in writing is much less scary than doing it in person, and its easier to take those little steps of updating one social platform at a time, so this is a great way to ease your way into this next level.

Then, when you’re ready to pitch yourself out loud, start doing it to yourself. It might feel strange, but practicing saying your job title and what you do out loud will make it tonnes easier when you go to do it to a stranger in real life.

And lastly, it’s time to venture into the real world! Next time someone asks you what you do, try it out! It’s okay if you bail, at least the intention was there and you tried. You just have to try again. It will get easier and easier every time you do.

You can also learn from each time you do this. Firstly from yourself. How did it feel? Which parts flowed well? Did any parts feel unnatural or forced? Does it need more of your brand voice? Could you improve any parts?

Then from the people you talked to, how did they respond? Were they confused by any parts? What questions did they ask?

Then you can tweak your pitch and make it better each and every time so you continue to feel more and more confident talking about your work and your business!

Now you know how to perfect the elevator pitch for your creative business. You can confidently explain who you are, what you do, and what your business is all about whether you’re in person or online! If you work on yours, tag me on Instagram or Threads  – I’d love to hear it!

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