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In Hollywood, you only get one chance to make an impression, so you'd better give it all you've got and make sure they never forget you.
Once upon a time, I was at this wonderful networking class at UCLA Extension taught by Emmy Award-Winning Screenwriter/Producer Carole Kirschner, author of Hollywood Game Plan: How to Land a Job in Film, TV and Digital Entertainment, Director of the CBS Diversity Writers Program, now known as the Paramount Mentoring Program & WGA Showrunner Training Program. Her class was all about how to pitch yourself. In the class, we had to come up with some brief, elevator pitch, a story that would cause complete strangers not to forget who you are.
I was in a complete panic. I couldn't think of anything, and I wasn't the only one. Most people think of pitching themselves as introducing themselves, telling people where they're from and what they like to do. This is the exact opposite of how you want to memorably introduce yourself to someone who meets a million people a week.
And so, as each of us tried and failed at the personal pitch over and over again, Carole told us to dig deeper. We were all screenwriters, actors, directors, storytellers, so she told us to tell her a story. The only caveat was that it had to be true. So, here's my personal pitch.
Hi, I'm Amy Giaquinto. I'm from Colorado, and yes, I do ski, but I also love to hike and one day my husband and I randomly decided to climb this 14,026' mountain, called Mt. Bierstadt. Everything was going well until my husband started dealing with severe altitude sickness. Of course, like idiots, we continued on and summitted the mountain, but by the time we started our descent, my husband was so sick he could hardly walk.
With no cell phones and no way to get help and, dealing with my own altitude sickness (I was coughing up blood), I strapped both of our packs to my chest, put him on my back, dragged him all of the way back down the mountain. This left quite an impression. In class, I forever became known as the woman who carried her husband off of a mountain. It was a story nobody could forget, which meant I was a writer no one would forget.
Another personal pitch no one could forget was when I revealed that I was an amateur dirt bike racer and freelance motorsports journalist who had attended countless major racing events and interviewed some of the biggest names in the sport. I also ran the website, MXINTHEUS.COM, and hooked up with riders I didn't know all over the country to ride and review different dirt bike tracks that they had recommended. It was great! As you're probably well aware, there aren't too many women who ride and race dirt bikes and there are even fewer who write about them professionally, so as you can imagine, my personal pitch really stood out. It was fabulous. People really listened and there were a lot of double-takes because it's not exactly like I radiate "dirt bike racer." People found my background absolutely fascinating, and it always stimulated conversation, which is fabulous for networking.
ALWAYS KNOW TO WHOM YOU ARE PITCHING
Successfully self-pitching depends a lot on who your audience is and what you're trying to sell. It's important to brand yourself for a particular job. For example, if I were pitching myself to write or sell a raunchy comedy project, I'd tell the story about how I had worked my tail off to get assigned a feature article by a national dirt biking magazine to interview an up-and-coming pro motocross/Supercross racer. My husband and I had then driven all the way across Pennsylvania to do the interview.
We arrived to interview the up-and-coming racer. He was a sweet, but very shy, racer who had just turned 16. We met his father, their small, scruffy dog and then the racer invited us inside and I start the interview. Suddenly, mid-question, the dog kicks his back legs out behind him and starts humping the floor. Okay, I thought, dogs do that sometimes, so I did my best to ignore it and to not make eye contact with Justin, who I knew would make me laugh.
But then the dog started grunting and humping the floor, so there was no way to ignore him. Worse, he'd then get up and sniff the area he was just humping and start the humping and grunting routine all over again. I was about to lose it. The dog just kept going and going, like the Energizer Bunny on Viagra.
The poor racer was BEET RED, and I really didn't want to embarrass him, but I was about to lose it church-laughter style. To try and buy myself time and choke back the laughter I stupidly said,
"What's the matter with your dog?"
And the poor racer replied, "He's itchy."
Itchy! My brain screamed. ITCHY! Somehow, I managed to finish the interview without losing it. But as soon as we got in the car and were out of earshot (we hoped), Justin and I lost it. We laughed so hard we cried. We laughed so hard we had to pull over because we couldn't see to drive. We laughed so hard I think we both peed. We literally laughed the entire 4.5 hour drive back home from a suburb of Pittsburg to a suburb of Philly.
The moral of this post is to always, always, always tell an authentic, true, memorable story about who you are that is custom-tailored to your specific audience, custom-tailored for the job you want. Producers, Directors, etc. are looking to hire a writer, but they want to know who that writer is and whether or not they want to work with them and most agents, managers, producers, directors, etc. meet thousands of people every year, sometimes hundreds of people a day, nervous people, at certain events. They hear the same introductions, the same, boring stories thousands of times.
"Hi, I'm so and so and I'm a screenwriter from wherever and you should read my script because... blah, blah, blah."
Blah, blah, blah is exactly what they hear and as the day goes on, they stop paying attention unless the person and their story hook them in an engaging way.
So next time you have the opportunity to meet someone, don't be one of the boring people. Take some time to work on your personal pitch. Run it by your friends and family and even the grocery store clerk. See if next time you shop, the clerk remembers you and your story.
Prepare different length versions of that pitch. Custom-tailor it to the person with whom you're meeting. And, most important, tell a unique, authentic story that captures their attention, makes you stand out and opens the door to opportunities you may not have been given otherwise.