E56: The Power of the Pitch: How to Secure Funding for Your Business with Kat Weaver, Founder of Power to Pitch

Jim: Remote Start Nation, as a founder, have you ever had to pitch your business to grow it or are you in the early stages of starting your business and not sure what you should focus on so you can get grants or even venture capital? Today we're gonna find out just how important having a clear, concise pitch will be to growing your business. We're gonna do that by bringing in one entrepreneur, who's built her brand on helping owners do just. I'm Jim Doyon, your host, and I welcome you to another episode of Remote Start. On today's episode, we are going to be talking with Kat Weaver, founder and CEO of Power to Pitch, and this isn't Kat's first business either. She's a two times accidental founder whose power is pitching, and I'm excited to have her join the Remote Start Nation today. I'm excited to join Kat in sharing her story with you, as well as tips and strategies on what we need to do as founders to be ready to pitch. Kat, welcome to the Remote Start Nation.

Kat: Thanks so much for having me, Jim, appreciate it.

Jim: Absolutely. I'm excited, I'm been following following you on LinkedIn and excited to share your business journey and everything you do with Remote Start Nation. So yeah, thank you so much for taking the time to stay with us today.

Kat: Yeah, I've got plenty of mistakes, lessons to share and in all the exciting bits, happy to get started.

Jim: So let's start on that note. Let's start, tell us something that you've had to overcome in your business journey that most people would've given up on.

Kat: Yeah, so I wanted to go into medicine in college and I had my valuable stolen outta my gym locker. So I invented a wearable wrist result for myself. Didn't wanna be the fanny pack girl, and it just started and it was small. My mom at a bridal store, I was making everything out of there and it was exciting, I was only a few months in and then my mom unfortunately lost her store that she had for 26 years. So I was making everything in there. I had the sewing machines, prototype fabric, it was everything, so it was devastating, not only to her, my small startup idea. And I still had people asking me for products. So when, I could've, that could've been my sign to quit right there, but it just wasn't enough for me, and I realized that I still had this vision. I didn't have any money, I didn't have any local family and friends around to tap into. But I won 22 of 23 pitches to scale the business. And that was being super early, but that was something that changed my whole career path and into a second business but the fire could have stopped me right then and there. And then we wouldn't even be here today.

Jim: Wow. And you built it up again from nothing by pitching.

Kat: Straight by pitching and it was being gritty, going to local markets, I started making product myself, my grandma was helping me until I could, took me over a year to find an overseas manufacturer, and then I had semi-trucks of inventory coming to my parents' garage before I went into a warehouse. All the nitty gritty things, all the mistakes, I wouldn't trade it for the world, but I'm just glad no one told me that I would've gone through that before I had started, otherwise I would've probably been a bit more deterred.

Jim: That's awesome. So you obviously are not afraid to pitch, has it always been this way?

Kat: Absolutely not. And I get that question all the time because I have a pretty solid success rate obviously, but the first pitch I ever showed up to, I was so nervous that I almost threw up on stage. I wanted to run away and leave, and the only reason I didn't leave is ‘cause my parents said they were gonna come watch and support me. So it would've been more embarrassing to have quit because I was an athlete in college. So I'm like, all right, just competing with myself all the time. And I had to really learn and work on those skills. It was absolutely something that did not come naturally to me, but now that I've worked on it and pitched hundreds of thousands of times, it's a bit more clear and that's why I now share it with the world.

Jim: And I am so excited. For the later in this episode when we get to figure out exactly how someone like me who's afraid to start a podcast a year ago is now like chomping at the bit to get on stage and just. Share with the world my story, so I cannot wait to, for you to share that with us. Tell us a little bit more, you talked about your first business. Talk about how that launched you into power to pitch and a little bit more about your business journey.

Kat: Yeah, so I was, I graduated and took the company full-time. It wasn't easy by any means, but after winning the FedEx grant, they posted my top pitch tips on their YouTube and it went absolutely viral. I had hundreds of founders, DM me, how do I tell my story? How do I raise money and do all these things? And I realized that I had accumulated these skills over time and that's what kept me winning and getting in front of the right people and getting even the right mentors, not just getting money. So I was coaching founders on the side, and one day my husband looked at me, he goes, you take that inventory and you burn it out back because that is your superpower. And my parents used to joke that I should pitch for a living instead of actually running the business. So there was a lot of factors that, other people who had to tell me, Hey, that's what you're the best at. That's really what you're good at sharing. So I actively sold and exited the company after six years, and I did everything from retail, Amazon, good Morning America, and then decided that, my superpowers lied with starting power to pitch. So we help founders with their pitch deck fundraising strategy, and then directly connect them with investors in their industry.

Jim: That's incredible, so when you as a founder, when I come into your program, is it one-on-one? Is it like, talk to me about the process.

Kat: Yes. We focus on pre to seed stage in our course in community. So we focus on investor psychology, relationship management, pitch first because a lot of founders, they think they need to rely on their deck, but it's all about the pitch and communication ‘cause you can raise without a deck, but we do help with potential Q and A, we give a due diligence checklist, and once we approve those materials, then we make those direct introductions so founders can go through it as fast as they can, we're flexible, we're not anti accelerator, but we don't limit them on time, geography, and we do offer post program support, which is a little different than the average accelerator.

Jim: hat's awesome. How big's your team?

Kat: We're a small women run team right now, which is awesome, we've worked with founders across the country. We've helped them raise over 8 million in VC and grants and counting. So we've got a few, actually one person on my team who I have to give a special shout out to, so she's spent 25 years in finance world, managed 10 billion of commercial real estate and is an active angel in 16 plus companies. She was sending you founders on the side, she's said young cat, we need to partner up on this. I'm leaving my job, and I said, okay. And so she brings the investor perspective to the program, nice, and I have the honor and storytelling perspective to the program.

Jim: That's fantastic, congrats on that, it's so important to find a solid partner like that to help grow, that's huge.

Kat: Yeah, and I wasn't looking for one, which is funny. I didn't have a co-founder in the first business, I had one in the early days and pivoted and it never became relevant. And then, it slowly evolved, one founder who I was helping with a pitch, introduced me to Katie, who's my partner now. So it was so random how we met. She even had a job at the time, so you never know, putting yourself out there, what it will really bring you.

Jim: That's great. All right, let's get into pitching, let's get into the weeds of how us as founders need to, what we need to know, what we need to understand and how to take it to that next level. So first, who needs to know how to pitch?

Kat: Absolutely every business, whether or not you're raising venture capital or not, everyone needs to know how to communicate their own value and then what they're building, working on, and growing. It is a universal skill and I could not stress that enough.

Jim: All right, all right, so let's get into pitching let's get into how pitching is gonna help us founders. And with that said, my first question, who needs to know how to pitch.

Kat: Whether you're a lifestyle business or you're someone going for a job, every single person knows needs to know how to pitch themselves in communicating not only themselves, their value or their company, how they're growing it, scaling and building, because you never know who you're gonna run into. And if you can do that in a clear and concise way, that person that you just met has to be able to regurgitate that to someone else and repeat that, there is a bit of art that comes to you being able to communicate that, but everyone needs to have pitching skills.

Jim: What would you say for someone like myself who I've had a business for a long time, I understand my story, I understand my value and my customer, but when it comes to sitting down and pitching a client, is it is there an art to that aspect of having to understand exactly how to get my point across?

Kat: Yeah, so we, we say that, preparation is key. Anyone, some people have the skills where they can go out and just put a couple bullets in spitball, but for 99% of the people out there, they really, it needs to be rehearsed in practice because, and you need to, it needs to be tailored to your audience, right? If you put something down that's just, you're cut and dry and you think it's gonna work for everyone, that's not true. So one is knowing who you're talking to. Two is actually maybe writing it down, practicing, and then doing it out loud as well because it's going to come across differently of you just trying to write it down, memorize it, versus actually saying and communicating it. So there are a few different phases to the process, but you can't expect to maybe read over your practice pitch script a few times and hope for the best. Our founders practice anywhere from 50 to a hundred times minimum. Before we make introductions, they need to be clear, concise, strategic, well-rehearsed and professional. And that's just part of the pitch process itself.

Jim: Wow. And so I know for a lot of founders out there, they might be really good at one thing. But they might like, pitching might be the thing they're most scared about at all, like completely. What would you suggest for them of like how to get over the fear or is it even something different of finding someone else to pitch for them? What would you suggest there?

Kat: Don't find someone else to pitch for you. You should be able to communicate your own value. It's something that you absolutely need to practice and it's not gonna happen overnight. Like I said, I was, I wanna throw up the first time I got out there and wanted to start pitching. It was something that I really had to work on and get uncomfortable with in order to grow, but, for someone who's struggling with it, if you're going after capital, that's exactly what we help with. But for someone just going after they have a lifestyle business that they're just communicating it to, you have to start, you practice in your room, write it down, then record yourself on Zoom and loom, watch it over, get uncomfortable with watching yourself. I hit it doing that, but it was a super helpful skill, and then asking a couple friends maybe who won't judge you as hard, then add a few more, then asked to go in front of different groups and there's ones that do that, but it's something, like I said, it's not gonna be built overnight, you have to actively work and build on getting uncomfortable and do different situations around that.

Jim: So practice, practice, practice, that's the biggest thing.

Kat: I would put a tally mark. So when I had a pitch competition, I wrote a tally, I would do the first paragraph, I would tally 10 times, I repeated it over and again and until I went through the whole pitch and I, 50 to a hundred tally marks. 50 was the bare minimum that I would practice. And it showed, when I was at these competitions, half the people, they had note cards, they would stutter, they forgot their word, they messed up, they're sweating, they're making awkward pauses, and it was unprofessional. And they wanted someone who was serious about the business. So by having that practice beforehand, it showed that, okay, you were ready to take that money and do the most right by it, essentially, that practice is something that is underrated, but a really crucial step.

Jim: That's great advice. What do we know? I know I would think that an investor is really into something, but they might be thinking about something completely different that they want to know. As a founder, how do I know what to focus on?

Kat: So the first re the first meeting with an investor, we say it's relationship building, okay, it to seed stage. They're buying into you before what you do. So you wanna get to know them, figure out what their stage is at, you should have done some research beforehand, but that first one is relationship building. The second you're gonna have a general pitch outline, which we help with, and you would cater it towards whether than an angel or a VC and what their thesis is, what they focus on, and then from there, it's, practicing through that, like you, there are certain boxes that you do wanna check, but an investor is gonna ask you the tough questions. We go through potential Q and A, you wanna anticipate what those questions are gonna be and actually practice your answers to them, it's gonna show that you're really on your game. You understand the next steps, and then you can ask them like, Hey, you know what? I can, it's okay to admit I don't know the answer. I can get back to you on that. Have another meeting or it's, putting extra things in your appendix. So there's a lot of different ways to go about that. But it starts with, be yourself in the relationship. Don't rely on that deck. Then you wanna make sure you check all the boxes, which we have that pitch outline that we've set out and the investor is gonna ask questions that they need more clarification on. And that's totally okay.

Jim: Can you give us an overview of what that outline looks like?

Kat: So that is part of our secret sauce in our program, okay. That we have founders check certain boxes off and we have winning examples of the founders that we've helped raise millions of dollars, so that's part of when you're in our program, we could check it off, but essentially it starts with your story, it ends with your, ask the things you've seen or what we help, kinda formulate.

Jim: Awesome, very cool. But what we should focus on, even at the start of our business, really understand ourself, what value we provide, who we are, and how we can be a resource to not only this person, but anybody for our company.

Kat: Yeah, and even if you're a first time founder, your experience, your qualifications, any expertise matters whether you're not, you're technical and a lot of founders, they brush past that or put themselves down not thinking that they're qualified, but that's actually something that's proprietary to you every experience you've had. Your work ethic challenges that you've overcome, those are things that an investor will want to know because they're buying into you first, right? If they wanna know that, if you had to pivot or you experienced a really big challenge, how would you react under pressure? ‘Cause their money is on the line.

Jim: That's a great call and even, I've never pitched for investing, but I've pitched to sell my company and my business partner and i's first company that we had, an apparel brand, and I remember that was a big part of it, is a lot of the businesses that we were pitching to, they wanted us to stay on board. They wanted, it was all about us and that was the hardest thing for my business partner and I, is, we are ready to move on and go, jump all in with our branding agency and that was a big thing, but everybody, that was the main thing that these founders that wanted to buy our company, like they wanted to know who we were and what we were about and how the story started, and so it seems like it's similar whether you're pitching to get an investment or you're pitching to sell.

Kat: And it's also similar when you're pitching to get into retail. So I worked with multiple buyers, I actually just was speaking to a buyer from Costco, their expectations are so similar to an investor. So like I said, a lot of these skills they pass over. Yes, you're relaying maybe more different or specific information about your sell sheets and minimums and things. But in being concise in how you are managing the relationship and how you're pitching yourself and running the business with them because you're in it to make each other money, that's a huge factor and that's a huge piece of the puzzle.

Jim: That's yeah, that's huge. Having a clear and concise pitch that got you so far and we've talked about focusing, we've talked about, practicing. What else do we need to think about before we get into this opportunity to pitch somebody you said research, make sure you know who you're getting in front of. What else can you give us to help when we're getting ready to step up and pitch?

Kat: Making sure that you include your founder's story, your founder journey, because you even, let's say a really big mistake that founders make is that they pitch an investor as if they're their target customer, and that's always wrong. Let's say there's this young woman we have, she's pitching her beauty brand and she's pitching these old male investors, if they were to go walk in the store and buy her makeup, she positioned it wrong. She can still pitch them for money. It's just a matter of understanding who they, who those people are, what their needs are, and to get them to understand, you're fully capable of doing that. So it's a matter of understanding and translating the language and the benefit for them, not pitching for the you, it's revolutionary and all those things. It's no, no one really cares about that, we want the facts, the real data, the details, and how it's benefiting the person that you're actually speaking to, if that makes sense.

Jim: So in the case of you're selling a product for a women audience and you're selling it to, you're pitching it to a group of men, like you had mentioned, like you're gonna want to talk to them probably about the financial benefits.

Kat: No, not just that, just understanding, educate them on who the consumer is. How they use it, why they need it. Absolutely the financials, but a women investor is gonna want the financials as much as a male investor. It's a matter of how you are actually educating them on your industry. So the education, like as the founder, the education piece is part of your job in the pitch. Like you should be viewed as the expert now in this, and so it's okay that maybe someone isn't like that target consumer, that investors have the exact experience that you're looking for, but you're still capable of bringing them into your world.
Jim: So it's understanding your customer well enough to be able to talk to anybody about who that customer is.

Kat: Exactly.

Jim: Okay, so we've got that down, we understand our customer, we understand ourselves, our journey, and we get to the point of. Sitting down with these in investors and we're scared, but we've practiced a bunch. What can we do to get over being scared when we start talking to them?

Kat: So when you're already in that meeting, it's a matter of actually bringing your personality to it. So we've had a lot of founders where we do mock interviews and they're so stale and you could tell they're nervous. And we tell them, ask questions about the investor to start the meeting. Don't just ask to right away, go into your pitch, build a relationship with them. Talk about basic things in the environment, whether it's your environment, their environment. Ask where they're from those are small, little social cues that are actually gonna help break the ice, because people forget that investors are human too when they're talking, they think they're just big and scary. All of them, maybe most are, there's some really good ones out there too. So it's a matter of trying to create an emotional connection when you're in that meeting, bringing your smile, your laughs into it. If you have any sort of, if you are like to bring in jokes and things like that, do it, you don't want this super clear cut, so uptight, professional kind of deal that they lose you, like it's totally okay to bring your personality in into it, and that's what helps you soften while you're in a meeting, while you're getting nervous, first and foremost is the reps in terms of practicing pitching conversation.

Jim: And I think you said something there that's so important. Like we have to remember like they're people too, they're investors, yes, we are, we want to sell them. But establishing that personal relationship and understanding that they're human, like I think that would help for sure to get over some of that, those nerves.

Kat: Hundred percent. And it's, like you gotta, you're not gonna have two investor meetings and get a check in the bank. That's just not the reality of it, I know.

Jim: Unless your name's Kat, unless you have a superpower.

Kat: Yeah. It depends, I'm not everybody's cup of tea, I'm sure. But that's okay, and we I had a good friend, she sold a first company for multimillion dollars, started the second, invested 2 million of her own. Wanted to keep equity so she goes, banks denied by 27, banks went and pitched 70 VCs all denied her even though she was a first time successful founder. Had an exit, invested her own money in, already started tracking like she's checking all the boxes, right? It took the 71st VC to believe in her and invest, and she's raised 51 million to date. Probably even more since we last talked. It's, you gotta get a lot of reps in too, it's not just, these one or two meetings and really hoping for the best, get a hundred pitches in, it's not 500 cold emails, it's actual conversations with people and you're gonna start to pick up on, all right, I'm getting consistent questions around this in my financials or in my market. So it's okay to go back to the drawing board and reestablish some of those foundations.

Jim: Is it okay when you're in a meeting like that to ask the whoever you're pitching in front of, if you can video it?

Kat: Yes. And especially like you can have a note taker in your meeting that they see and ask if that's okay. Always ask for feedback, you can absolutely ask to record it. It might seem okay, you're just doing it for practice, so if you were live, depends maybe read the room or have your recorder on your phone open or something. And if you ask them, I think when you're on a Zoom call, if you have an a note taker and they can see it in there and they don't have a problem with it, then that's another way to do it too.

Jim: Cool. That's good advice, and I love the fact that anytime you do this, go back and review it and look at, look for any commonalities from the one before so you can improve on it.

Kat: Oh, I hated watching myself, I thought it was just the worst, but then it made me so much better to watch those things, it's you know when you're playing sports and you're watching tape of yourself playing, okay, I made these mistakes over and over again at this point in the game. It's like that when pitching as well.

Jim: Do you relate a lot of what you're doing to even with running your business, to being in Sports?

Kat: Yes, and a lot of investors I know only invest or and prefer to invest in athletes because of, the, and it's not people who weren't playing high level sports. It's not that they don't have this, but typically athletes have more of a competitive mindset, they're more goal setting, they've had hard experiences failed, got injured, and they had to get back up and keep going. So there's certain traits that most athletes have, and I know a lot of investors who, prefer those kinds of personalities, and what we screen for and what a lot of our investors screen for is coachability, grit, passion and integrity. If they don't have those four things, you're not a fit for our program and you're not a fit for our investors.

Jim: Wow, yeah that's important info. What else can you help with Remote Start Nation to, when it comes to pitching or preparing or after any, anything through the process that you can help the Remote Start Nation to understand when it comes to pitching?

Kat: Yeah, so it's never too early to start. Some founders think, oh, I'm gonna worry about that when I get this batch in, or reach this milestone when that pitch practice happens day one of the idea of your company all the way up to, you selling and exiting like the both of us did. It's an evolution, but don't think that it's too small of a task to start working on those skills by writing it down, and it's also good to see that, oh, I started this point, this is where my pitch was. And then when you look six months later and you update it, it's oh wow, that's awesome progress at the same time. And that's something that you share with your investors. Also, I would say that thinking that you can be a successful pitcher is not always going after VC money or angel. That type of money isn't for every business, and we try to point that out to founders who come to us, grants are great, going, tapping into your family and friends, bootstrapping, all those are great things and that doesn't make you any less of a founder if you don't have institutional money.

Jim: So how do you know if your company is like, what is the right path to go?

Kat: So we typically like to see that they have something proprietary. In terms of product development, trade secrets, methodology even an insane amount of maybe traction that they've proved out with a community or something like that. But it has to be something proprietary, scalable in a way, in an, at least a bare minimum of a national scale in hopes that, they wanna be acquired within, three, five or 10 years or so. That's typically something, you take on institutional money because you wanna grow faster, and you wanna beat out the competition and then you wanna get acquired, and that's how investors really make their money is through sale acquisition or IPO in most cases. It's something we always say proprietary, and you can have, you could be pre-revenue and have this great MVP, but it's, what have you done to protect it? What are your trade secrets? Do you have any patents at least pending, you know what? Anything that you're doing is proprietary to you, that's not easily repeatable, and that's typically what we advise go after institutional money.

Jim: Does that include grants or if someone's going after grant money, would that kind of be different?

Kat: So for grants, you could be more lifestyle, you don't have to be as proprietary, like for example restaurants or a local bakery, maybe that's just doing some basic things like that's something that can win grants, absolutely. But the founders that we help fundraise, we also help go for grants. Like we had one founder who never pitch. We helped them win an $85,000 grant in a weekend for their WIN grant, and they just have a proprietary method about their labeling, who they, what they use, and who they serve, and it showed, and it's, you don't have to, you can go after grants without wanting VC money though, for sure.

Jim: And then what else? You said family and friends. And I think with anybody, right? Like the pitch might change a little bit, but it's still the principles that you laid out for us today. It seems like those would apply to any of this.

Kat: 100%. Because there's also crowdfunding too, so it's convincing, the market that this is something that's worthy of buying, investing in, sharing, telling your friends about. Whether you're talking to family and friends, you're doing the crowdfunding around, you're talking to Angels, VC's, family offices, that process, they all align, they're very similar.

Jim: So you mentioned some things like proprietary or building a community or doing something different. So when I have an idea, oh, I'm gonna start this next software company and I have an experience in growing software companies before and sold them, and I don't, I'm just using this as an example, but if I did and I wanted to start this new software company, but I don't have any of that stuff, is it still too early for me to go and try to get funding or would you recommend like getting the basics done first?

Kat: We recommend getting the basics done first, because an investor, they want some score sort of skin in the game. There's too many applications and ways to get scrappy right now for you to waste time in just sharing a back of the napkin idea. Could you have a friend who could fund you off that? Absolutely, but you're gonna get taken on advantage of by an investor, or you're gonna give away too much equity in the early days if you can't get a little gritty in figuring out yourself, there are dev shops who will partner with you on equity. There are overseas developers who are super, super cheap in terms of just getting you wire frames if you wanted some sort of software. There are tools like Figma where you could build it out for free at first. And we recommend figure it out for yourself, and that's going to, it's gonna be really empowering, and then you get to say, okay, I failed at this, I learned this, I built this, and investor's gonna buy into that and they're willing to pay just because of you taking the time to learn those skills.

Jim: Awesome. So I saw, first of all, I want to know did you, did your husband ever come back to you and say, I was, you made the right decision by getting rid of the other company.

Kat: He was just, he was like, don't even take the time to sell it ‘cause it was a tough process, I was under contract four times actually. And it was so draining and all for crazy reasons. One, the other guy's business went under so he needed the cash and just ran one, I was supposed to close right, the week before our wedding, the, that guy bailed. He fell off the face of the earth. No, we didn't hear from him at all, didn't give us a reason. Nothing, don't know what happened, it just, so he was like, all right, come on, just move onto the pigeon, you'll make it up, like it'll be fine. And now he's okay, that was good that you stuck with it. That was, I was this close to saying, just throwing in the towel, I even had one mentor who this, maybe not mentor one. This person who told me, sell it for a dollar. And, that was the fuel where I was like, that is so insulting that I was on Good Morning America four times. I have patents, I have all this structure, this isn't just some side cute side hustle, it's what I did for a living. That kind of gave me some extra fuel to the fire to get, a pretty solid exit out of it. It wasn't retirement money, but it gave me the freedom to, figure out what I wanted to do and I'm so grateful for it.

Jim: That's awesome. I saw recently on your LinkedIn that you posted a story about was it headbands that were sitting in inventory just sitting in your garage, you held onto them and then something came along and you switched them up and sold all of what you had plus more. What's that story about?

Kat: Yeah, so I came up with this great idea for this pocket headband that I thought everyone would love, and it was really just confusing and I didn't do enough research and I made, had thought had thousands made anyways, just because I thought it was a good idea and they barely sold. It was like pulling teeth to try to get them to sell, and I had so many thousands just sitting there for over a year and covid hit and, kept seeing nurses with their like nose, ear problems. And I thought, okay, if we could do a button headband somehow, how much is going to ship? I could ship these back to get the buttons put on, and my grandma goes, I'll do them. And I was like, what? They're thousands like, my grandpa, unfortunately, he was sick at the time and it helped her get off her mind and she taught me how to sew these buttons on and we had some bonding time together and she would just asked for more and more. She was so excited to help. I sold out of them within after the first original post that I had made in my backyard, just a short video explaining what this was. I didn't have many son yet, they sold out within a week. And I ordered thousands more because, it was something that I thought, wow, this is a total failure, I can't believe I did that. And then it turned into a top selling skew.

Jim: I love it just by getting creative, pivoting a little bit and not giving up.

Kat: Nothing wrong with a pivot that doesn't make you a bad founder, like investors love pivots ‘cause they wanna know how you got through those tough times.

Jim: Because investors know it's not the first time or the last time that's gonna happen.

Kat: Oh, yeah. It's inevitable, they know, and they also, they don't like when you have this, pure, most positive, everything is perfect answer to everything, they know it's hard, they know that's why you're raising money because you're running out of money, that's part of it, and they wanna be a part of a solution.

Jim: Yeah, be honest and be truthful, they're gonna see through it, if not.

Kat: A hundred percent.

Jim: We've got a couple more questions, but before I let you go, where can the remote start?

Kat: So I am super active on LinkedIn at Kat Weaver, with a bunch of extra free daily pitch tips and founder stories. And then you can apply for our program if you're a prec to seed stage founder @powertwopitch.com. And we also have free pitch tips on our YouTube @ Power To Pitch. So lots of fun places to find us for pitch education and resources, so would love to connect with the audience her.
Jim: Awesome, I appreciate that. Question here, cause I do, like I said, I do follow you on LinkedIn. How often do you post a week?

Kat: It started as just a couple ideas here and there, but I found that I post Monday through Saturday now and it's not, what I'm doing that day or whatever, it's real stories from founders and investors that I'm meeting with daily, real struggles that I went through in my entrepreneurial journey. It's all based on experience and the more I post, the more people ask. So it's just, it's been really great and it's my top channel so far.

Jim: That's awesome, have you been able to find a lot of business that way as well?

Kat: 95% of our business actually comes from what they see on our LinkedIn because they see how we communicate with founders and about the process and that what's, that's essentially what draws them.
Jim: That's awesome. Remote Start Nation, if you're watching this, listening to this, you're thinking about pitching, give Kat, reach out, give her a shout, get signed up and learn how to pitch. Kat, one last question I have for you, what is the one biggest takeaway that you'd leave with the Remote Start Nation that we either hit on today or we didn't get to, but you wanna make sure they know.

Kat: I wanna make founder, I wanna make sure founders know that they're never too early to start practicing their pitch. I can't drill that enough and people think, oh, I'm just, I'm gonna leave it to the side and hopefully a grant opportunity comes up or this pitch opportunity in it's last minute, it's a skill you should absolutely work on now, because in networking events in an elevator, you never know who you're gonna meet, and you're gonna want a concise, clear answer about who you are and why they should pay attention to what you're building.

Jim: Awesome. Kat, thank you so much for coming on and joining us today, I appreciate it.

Kat: Yeah, thanks so much for having me and letting me share my story.

Jim: Absolutely. Remote Start Nation, I hope you learned as much as I did today and can put some of what Kat shared with us to work for you. Thank you for joining us on this journey, and remember, leave a comment, subscribe and share this episode with your community who you think can learn from what you heard today.
Until next time, go start something, start today and go build a lifestyle you desire by taking action.