To make your pitch stand out to a producer or editor, you have to find a counterintuitive hook or shiny new angle that will grab audiences’ attention. And finding that angle often requires some creativity—and a fully stocked pond of inspiration.
Often, experts make the mistake of bearing down on their domain too hard, mining and stripping it for all they can, shaking their fists at the sky when they come up short. But the key to a fresh take is to actually think outside your niche.
The power of your pitch lies in its relevance. And if you’ve got tunnel vision, you miss the little details and nuances of the real world—what’s driving us, what we need, what’s popular, how we relate to one another—that, when weaved into your pitch, make it stand head and shoulders above the rest.
If you’re in desperate need of inspiration, fear not! Here are four places to start looking for it right away.
1. Get out of your head and observe what’s around you
When tunnel vision is at its strongest, sometimes the best move is to grab a cup of coffee, go to the park, and just take in the world around you. Do some people watching, make up colorful backstories, soak in some nature, or narrate the passing dogs inner monologues with fun voices (no? Maybe that’s just us).
Wherever you go or whatever you do, give yourself a moment to get out of your head and just soak in your environment. Watching two entangled dog walkers solve a problem can spark the perfect pitch. Allowing a little silence can give inspiration that was otherwise suffocated much needed room to breathe.
2. Reignite your other passions
The media is obviously looking for passionate experts. But if you’re pulling a Whitney Houston and saving all your love for your work, you’ve got it backwards. Passion begets more passion—and you can risk burnout if you rely on your work as your only source.
Dive back into a hobby. Pick up a book to read for pure pleasure. Indulge in something that provokes a sense of wonder, curiosity, and joy. Big ideas usually strike when you’re lost in something completely different (Einstein said he always got his best ideas in the shower).
But even more importantly, reconnect with the people you love. Spend time with your friends, family, significant other deep in conversation or do something fun. Give yourself a chance to be vulnerable, loved, connected, and comfortable. It’s so much easier to put yourself out there with confidence when you know your emotional safety net is firmly in place.
3. Unplug and reconnect to yourself
In order to stand out to the media, you’ve got to know what your thing is. And since you are the heartbeat of your brand, you’ve got to make time for yourself! Step away from the pitch, away from the computer, turn off the phone (we know, we’re asking a lot) and give yourself some time to unplug.
- Three pages of stream of conscious journaling can unearth ideas you didn’t know you had.
- Meditation can remove some of the unconscious blocks that are keeping you stuck. (We love the Calm app!)
- Try something new and learn about another side of yourself. The better you know yourself, the more specific and interesting your brand will be.
4. Up your pop culture game
Ah, water cooler talk. It’s so deliciously zeitgeisty. The beauty of pop culture—be it TV, movies, music, or viral videos—is that it gives us something to discuss with anyone. Even your coworker with whom you have nothing in common.
But when it comes to your pitch, pop culture opens up a world of metaphors and common experiences that can bridge the gap between your material and the audience. The best of pop culture inspires us to get lost in stories about humans overcoming massive problems. And since, as a media expert, you’re now in the business of solving problems for hundreds of people, getting lost in a story or two can spark the imagination.
Plus, referencing everyone’s favorite Netflix binge shows you’ve got your thumb on the pulse of what’s happening—and that shows producers and editors you understand the demands placed upon them to find relevant, timely content.
So you’re fired up and ready to launch your media career…and then you see it. The giant mountain of Self-Promotion, looming ominously, standing between you and your goals. It’s ugly, it’s craggy, and it can come with a degree of altitude sickness.
Self-promotion feels icky for most of us.
Fear of self-promotion ranks on our list of worst fears right behind losing all our loved ones, tsunamis, and gas station sushi. These are all rational fears.
But while some fears are helpful (like gas station sushi) because they keep us from making harmful mistakes, other fears don’t actually serve us—instead, they let the possibility of pain eclipse our potential gains.
Take it from us: When it comes to self-promotion, you have nothing to fear but fear itself. (That’s how that quote goes, right?)
So let’s face those fears one at a time:
You’re afraid you’ll come off as selfish or arrogant.
Self-promotion doesn’t require Kanye levels of self-aggrandizement. It doesn’t require you to oversell your abilities or skill set—in fact, exaggerating or lying about yourself is a surefire way to fail at self-promotion.
Self-promotion means owning your hard work, expertise, and authority.
It requires recognition of your goal—to help as many people as possible—and putting yourself out there in order get the word out. If you want to reach and help more people, you can’t wait for them to come to you: You have to step into the spotlight and draw attention to the problems you’re solving—and how you’re solving them.
At the end of the day, self-promotion is hard work. If you stay centered by your why—helping people—it ends up being the very opposite of selfishness. You have something they need and it’s a disservice if you don’t tell them about it!
You don’t feel like an “expert.”
An expert is literally defined as, “A person who has a comprehensive and authoritative knowledge of or skill in a particular area.” Please note that it does not say, “A person with multiple Phd’s” or “A person who can definitively prove they are the absolute best in the world at this.”
Truth is, you know something that we don’t. You have experience and skills that we lack. You have researched and field tested solutions to my problems—and the world needs your help! Accolades and degrees are nice. But if you keep playing small out of a fear of not being big enough, you’re guaranteed to limit yourself. And you’re denying us—and the world—the help we need.
Will there be people who scoff at you? Undoubtedly. But they’re not your audience. And you do your audience a disservice when you silence yourself out of fear of criticism—or value your opposition more than your followers.
You’re afraid of failure.
Of course! The heartbreak of failure is scary, for sure. But leaving your potential untapped because of fear? That is the literal definition of failure: “A lack of success; the omission of expected or required action.” Yikes.
Look, failure is a guarantee in media, no matter which way you slice it.
There is a learning curve for crafting a pitch, knowing whom to pitch, killing it on air, and getting booked again and again. (If you’re interested in how to do all this – hop on our waiting list for our premier training course).
You’re bound to blow some leads, have a few slip ups, and learn a few hard lessons. That’s the price of progress. Teachers pop up everywhere. But, if you’re willing to learn and grow, those failures can become the chisel that refines the potency of your message, the specificity of your brand, and the power of your reach.
Facing your fears is, in many ways, the true marker of success. Or, as Teddy Roosevelt said (and Brene Brown reminded us),
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood…who… if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Use this moment right now as permission to talk about what you know best. You could reach people whose lives will change forever all because you were generous enough to share your gift.
Think you’re ready to be a media star?
Take the ultimate media-readiness challenge. It’s the one thing that you absolutely, no exceptions, must be able to do in order to kill it on TV or in print.
Be able to explain what you do and why it matters—to a fifth grader.
Yup.
Here’s why: Fifth graders are bright, inquisitive, and skeptical, have no context for your niche, don’t understand your jargon, and have a lot competing for their attention.
You have one minute or they’re moving on—and that’s being generous.
…Sounds a lot like your average producer.
The perfect media expert can break what they do down into terms anyone can understand. They know how to connect the dots to make the problems they solve universal. And they raise the stakes just enough to grab people’s attention, and are engaging, practical, and relatable enough to keep it.
So, can you explain what you do to a fifth grader? Here’s a few tips.
Assume nothing
First things first, jargon is a definitive no-no: It will quickly isolate anyone outside of your field, when what you want most is to connect.
For example, “I provide customized growth solutions to private, entrepreneur-led tech companies,” sounds like you’re speaking French. Or Dothraki. It’s total nonsense.
“I help young but established tech companies find the money they need to hit their next, big growth goal—like launching and developing a new product.”
Now we get it!
Connect what you do to what they know
Remember when your parents had to give you the birds and bees talk? Your job is to give us the birds and bees of your topic—using what we’ve probably seen or experienced to explain a complicated, totally foreign, and abstract concept—without making it awkward or uncomfortable (looking at you, Mom). And much like the perfect birds and bees talk, you should:
- Use clear metaphors and examples to connect what you do to something I know. How does the problem you solve manifest itself in smaller ways in everyone’s life? Where might I have seen it play out before? Relate the problem you solve to something they’ve encountered, even metaphorically, in order to help make what you do stick.
- Get as specific as possible. Much like “anything a bathing suit covers” creates more questions than it answers, the more specific and simple your language, the more likely your audience is to grasp it.
- Keep it light without compromising sincerity. Injecting humor and levity can make complicated, dense, or heavy subjects more accessible. But keeping it light is not the same thing as making light of your subject: We want your sincerity, high stakes, and vulnerability—just with a dash of humor to put us at ease.
Enthusiasm is contagious
Tell someone you want to talk about the wonders of science, and most people start counting sheep. But Bill Nye? There’s an entire generation of kids-turned-adults who would follow that guy into the jaws of the very polar bears he’s trying to save from global warming.
Neil Degrasse Tyson? Even Key and Peele wrote sketches about him! Think about that: A sketch comedy show lampooned a physicist and were confident everyone would know who he was. And we did!
Why? Bill Nye and Tyson are passionate. Their enthusiasm and love for what they do is so infectious, it makes people care. They’re not even on a mission to berate their audience into caring, or even to convince them why they should care. They just dial the complexity of what they do down to a 1 and the passion with which they share it up to a 10 (maybe an 11). And that makes us care!