Pitching an idea isn’t an art any more, its a learned skill. Oren Klaff is the Pitchman, and he is giving his knowledge to you.

Pitch is a book designed to explain just how you can succeed on your next idea. You can visit his site ypitch.com to learn more about the book and Oren Klaff.

Everyone has heard of the elevator pitch and how important your pitch is, but nobody has been able to equip you with the techniques needed to effectively deliver a good pitch time and time again. No more guesswork. Pitch is about proven techniques.

Oren has successfully pitched and raised $400 million for investment and venture capital groups. He spent 10,000 hours of his time figuring how to deliver amazing pitches over and over again and is going to share this with you in his new book.

We now live in a world where just about everyone is reachable, but just because you can contact anyone doesn’t mean you’ll be any better sharing your ideas with them.

When it comes to getting an idea across, we are notoriously bad at doing so. The right pitch to the right group of people can change the outcome of your life. Higher pay, more clients, more publicity and just about anything you can imagine.

Use the form below to receive the first chapter of his book set to come out on October 15th. I along with the rest of the Echelon Media crew will be promoting the book and will notify you to receive an advanced copy of his book.

If you are interested in learning much more about Pitch or Oren visit intersectioncapital.com. If you have any questions for Oren please email josh@joshwhitford.com. Visit the post here to get your free copy of Pitch.

This is the third and final in a series about Nido Qubein and his book, Stairway to Success.

Developing a plan for success involves three things:

1. Setting Goals
2. Setting Priorities
3. Developing Strategies

“Good personal planning involves no more than determining how you will get from your present circumstances to the future you have created through your vision.” – Nido Qubein

I tend to set pretty ambitious goals for myself, and I do so by writing or printing them out and hanging them around my office. Up until last week I listed goals on my blog for page views and other meaningless stats. I have since pulled those off because I personally think those are the wrong goals to have because of their small measurable impact. I am instead working on a new set of goals that I might not publicly post for this blog and its growth. Goals are a must and should be taken vary seriously.

“Wisdom ofttimes consists of knowing what to do next.” - Herbert Hoover

Setting priorities gives you a place of reference when you come to a situation in which you are unsure of where to go. Knowing your goals and making them your priority makes day to day decisions easier. Suppose your goal is to save $2,000 and you are buying Christmas gifts for your family and extended family. It is easy to want to splurge on the people you love even if it goes against your goal of saving money. Is there a best way to save money and still buy / create gifts for your family? Of course there is. It might take a little more imagination than cruising the isles of Best Buy, but it can be done.

More important, the issue of saving money vs. buying Christmas presents for your family shouldn’t even be an issue. Nido talks about the different levels of planning and problems. Most problems like the one above can be addressed early and then shouldn’t ever be an issue down the road at Christmas time. If you plan ahead with your goals and set priorities you should be able to navigate your way through most problems fairly easily.

“There usually are half a dozen right answers to “What needs to be done?” Yet unless a [person] makes the risky and controversial choice of only one, he will achieve nothing.” – Peter F. Drucker

Developing your strategies for success in any area of your life is like having a playbook in sports. Could you imagine if a professional sports team just said: “Aw…this week, let’s just wing it and see what happens”? My guess and I am sure yours as well would say they are guaranteed to lose.

Your strategies should meet these criteria:

• They must specify actions to be taken.
• They must specify the person or persons who is to take the actions.
• They must establish a time for beginning the actions.
• They must establish a deadline for completing the actions.
• They must establish criteria for determining when the actions have been satisfactorily completed.

This can be addressed pretty easily by stating what the problem or goal is that you are trying to achieve or overcome. Then developing a plan of action to tackle that issues in a systematic and bit sized way. You need to set an “end game” for that issue when you get to your defined goal or conclusion.

I have brought you through roughly half of the book Stairway to Success by Nido Qubein. If you would like to learn more, I would highly suggest buying it or checking it out of your local library. Although I did not read this book before I started out on my own quest for success in business and life, I have been using many of the same techniques learned by other teachers and writings. I think this book has the plan well laid out and is a solid package of advice for building upon your success in any facet of your life.

Here are the first two parts, Nido Qubein Part 1 and Nido Qubein Part 2

This is the second in a series about Nido Qubein and his book, Stairway to Success.

After writing the first post about Nido Qubein and one of his books, I thought I would take a minute and explain why I am even talking about this to begin with, and why here on a marketing blog.

Boiled down and condensed, Nido Qubein says we are our greatest marketing tool. There is nothing in the world that can replace what each of us knows on any given subject or topic. If you were to put me in a room full of sports enthusiasts, I would be pretty lost. I wouldn’t feel the need to run and hide, but I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the stats, players, teams, so on and so on. But, if you were to put me in a room with economists and monetary theorists I could hold my own.

The greatest thing we as individuals can do is find the things we can do and love and develop those talents to be the best they can be. I didn’t take any marketing classes in high school or college. I didn’t learn theory on marketing and how to persuade people to buy things. I instead picked up some books and started reading from some of the best marketers around. I started following blogs, learned about web marketing and permission based marketing.

What I came to realize is that if I had taken some of those classes and had been taught those more “traditional marketing techniques,” that experience probably would have skewed my perception on marketing. Instead of reading about people in turkey costumes being targets of water balloons, you would be reading about proper banner sizes for your store and approachable vs. unapproachable color combinations.

The main message Nido Qubein is hitting hard at in his book is that each of us has a choice. That choice is the ability to determine our future, our success, our wealth and much more. According to William Jennings Bryan, “Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.”

Creating a Vision

“Many people go through life unaware that this creative power lies within them. Yet we all have it. You can create the future you want. It’s all a matter of forming a vision, committing yourself to that vision and acting in harmony with the vision.” – Nido Qubein

Here we come back to having that choice again in how we are going to be 2 or 3 years from now. First we have to choose what our life, business, physique or emotional status is going to be. Then you break down those goals into smaller, more manageable pieces. When all of this is done with the commitment of the head and heart it is much more likely to stick around than your last New Year’s resolution.

Crossing your own Rubicon

“Crossing the Rubicon” is a popular idiom meaning to pass a point of no return. It refers to Caesar’s 49 BC crossing of the river, which was considered an act of war. -Wikipedia

I am not saying that you have to start war with anything, but I think the point Nido is trying to make is there needs to be a catalyst. It’s like an alcoholic making the commitment of sobriety after hitting rock bottom, or a morbidly obese person starting recovery after being told life will be cut short otherwise. The event has to be significant and memorable to the effect of when things are tough you can look back to where you have come from since then as a source of encouragement. For me this was when I quit my traditional day job around Christmas of 2007 (almost been a year, WOW!).

I made the choice back then that I would no longer let others determine my fate, but I would pursue the things I enjoyed and learn those things to the best of my ability. I can tell you it was worth every bit of it and I would never take back that choice. I did have my doubts from time to time and ups and downs like anything else, but this is true anywhere and under any circumstance.

To be continued…

You can find the first in the Nido Qubein series part 1 here and part 3 shortly.