The Art of Pitching MP3

I just found out how easy it is to include an MP3 in my blog, so here’s my first shot. This is a recording of me reading Chapter 3 of The Art of the Start: The Art of Pitching.

"Pitching," in the context of this reading, is the process of reaching agreement—when seeking an investment, closing a sale, forming a partnership, or recruiting an employee. "Agreement" is not soley (souly?) about raising money.

There won’t be a lot of MP3s from me because recording a reading is a long, tedious process that is not conducive to a balanced lifestyle. :-)

Uploaded at: Watsonville, California.

Comments

[viewer]

pitching?

excellent advice for anybody!

especially the "elevator"

thanx

[Foxx Jamie Unpredictable]

Very nice blog.Thank's.

[Jim Trascapoulos]

Excellent to hear a podcast from you! I've got the books, but it's so good to have it at hand, something I can skim over on in the train on the way to a meeting.

Please do more of them! They don't need to be as long, but some of the recent articles could have been expanded to a good 3-5 minute podcast.

I'd happily subscribe to a few zen minutes with Guy!

[Bill Lennan]

Hi Guy,
great MP3.

I am pleasently surprised that despite your decades in Cali, I can still hear that you grew up in Hawaii :-)

Mahalo nui loa!

Bill

[Ebstar]

Great to hear the voice behind the words. Very insightful reading. Inspired me to practice my pitches no end.

[Bardo N. Nelgen]

Guy:

1. Thanks. I'll send you a TrackBack when I'm done... ;-)

2. iTunes:
Edit => Preferences => Advanced ;-) => Importing

Import Using: AAC Encoder
Setting: Custom

Stereo Bit Rate: 192 (nice), 128 (acceptable)
Sample Rate: 44.1 kHz (not necesssary for good MP3s, but for good AACs IMHO...)
Channels: Mono (Your voice may be music to our ears, though clearly not to the codec...)
VBR: Yes.
Voice-Optimized: Never tried that by now, so maybe you will want to give it a chance.)
=> OK. OK.

Now open your recording in iTunes, simply right-click and convert to AAC.
(Hint: Make sure to undo our setting-changes before you import music from a CD into the library for the next time...)

Done.

3. I wasn't exactly suggesting 'reading' the stuff to someone, but having him/her ask you the questions that you are going to answer in that excerpt. Then freely explain in your own words - more like the Q&As or an interview after a lecture; you may want to use notes, but don't literally READ them. If you give that just a couple of minutes of planning, you may even cut out the questions lateron just leaving great spoken content, presented in a very friendly and relaxed way.

4. About Podcasting on TypePad/Feedburner:

Since you got your feed 'burnt' you will need to check their podcasting options (including those for iTunes) either, because, indeed, the 'encosure' element is missing from your current Feedburner-feed, but included into the one that TypePad itself generates automatically from your entries.

http://support.typepad.com/cgi-bin/typepad.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=71&p_created=1125519640&p_topview=1

Greets,

Bardo

[Mladen Mihajlovic]

After looking at the source to your feed, there does not seem to be any enclosure included. Is it just me?

[Mladen Mihajlovic]

Guy,

I notice that the MP3 is not included in an enclosure in your feed. This would be ideal as most feed readers (I use FeedDemon), has support for automatically downloading enclosures.

Hmm, after reading this http://www.sixapart.com/typepad/news/2005/08/podcasting_supp.html it seems that Typepad should already support enclosures. Wonder why it doesn't work for me?

[Guy Kawasaki]

Bardo,

Mirror all you like. I'm flattered.

I do have iTunes. If I can figure it out, I'll AAC it. I did submit it to iTunes for podcasting too.

And thanks for the suggestion about reading to someone. It's just that someone will have sit there for 4-5 hours!

Guy

[Faisal Khan]

Good hear! Listened to it during lunch time and drew a small crowd around the audio speakers! I think you got some more traffic coming to your blog.

FK

[Deepak Shenoy]

Guy, Thanks! Awesome stuff. I'm now looking forward to when the book will be available in India.

By the way, your site's "download" page offers a pitching MP3 for $4.95. That any different from this one?

Cheers,
Deepak

[Bardo N. Nelgen]

Guy,

though I must admit not being from Watsonville ;-) , I got some questions concerning your first audio-post:

1. As I noticed, downloading media files from TypePad seems to be somewhat slow nowadays; would you mind me to mirror the file when blogging about an audio entry on your blog ?

2. Do you have iTunes on your Mac ? If yes and it won't cause you too much trouble, it would be really great, if you could post an AAC-version of your recording either, since these just use sound even better.

3. Finally an additional proposition on sound recordings: Being a professional webcast producer myself, I found out, that it's much less hassle for most people to talk about a given topic with someone else, rather than reading/recording it from a piece of paper...

However I'm really looking forward to hearing more from you - literally...

Regards,

Bardo

[jimothy]

Solely, surely?

[Steve Addison]

Guy

Thanks for going to the effort of recording an audio file.

I agree. It's extra (tedious) work for you.

Can I make a suggestion?

Next time you're speaking hit record on your Mac (Sound Studio or equivalent) and choose a segment for an MP3 download.

Alternatively, get someone to interview you for their podcast, let them do the editing and then publish on your blog and their simultaneously.

Steve

[Ben Artin]

I fully support your goal to limit audio entries. You may find http://www.idlewords.com/audio/manifesto.mp3 interesting. :-)

[Guy Kawasaki]

Smittie,

I thought I saw you!

Guy

[Smittie]

Watsonville? You passed right by my house.

Aloha

[Andrew Fife]

Guy:
just out of curiosity, how did you find yourself in Watsonville on a Saturday afternoon?
-Andrew