There is the promise of the Internet that if you sell online, you never, ever have to see the person you are selling to.
Now that might be true, but then I just have no idea how it works.
If you read this blog for some time already, you know that I’m building a number of products on the side. This is a fun hobby and an extremely convenient position to be in: it’s not like we need to bring on any customers for these projects.
Although many of them require quite some amounts of work and resources, and they tend to reach a point where I’m not that comfortable throwing everything out the window either.
Then, some of those projects I create together with others. There, responsibility is the bitch: when you’re playing with someone else’s time, suddenly a whole lot of girlfriends (including your own) will start hating you.
And there always comes a point where I have to do something highly uncomfortable. Get feedback. Talk to lawyers. Reach out to magazines. Talk in public.
As luck would have it, I got a demo spot on the last Berlin Tech Meetup to introduce Appwoodoo (the service you haven’t heard much about for the last two years, but we suddenly received some real attention).
Talking in front of so many people is scary.
This is how it looks like, a slice of the 235 people in front of you. (Photo by the organiser Gabriel Matuschka. My hands were rather busy pointing towards each and every direction. And shaking like hell.)
To assemble the slides is not more than a day really, but that’s the easy part: you will see how simple they are once I find a way to upload them to SlideShare. (I’m not saying I did it all alone though: all my friends and even the Pitch Doctor helped me out.)
The hard part is, to talk. Once or twice I’ve been on radio shows, and I’m always astonished by how many things the presenters do there in real time. Taking care of each guest’s sound levels, fading out the music, queuing the new song in, reading comments on Facebook, Twitter and what not, and, by the way, following the programme, talk and actively engage the listeners.
It’s much less work to just, sort of, walk about on the stage, talk to the microphone and point towards the presentation, I know. But then it does feel a lot. Look how busy I am there.
Ok, looking at it now, I don’t look that extremely busy. But my brain is running on full power, believe me.
A great shock, and I will want do it again. As many times as possible.
First, everyone says these things get easier with practise.
Second, people loved what I was talking about. I mean, really, some folks did actually sign up to the service while I was introducing it.
And lastly, it sort of feels like runner’s high. Once you get to the point where you can’t breathe any more and are just about to spit your lungs out, it kicks in and you feel like you could just run, run forever and more.
Can’t wait to be shit-scared again.