Awarepreneurs interview Zoë Dove-Many

Hi. This is Paul Zoellizer, and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social media. Our goal is to help increase your positive impact, profitability, and quality Before we get into today's topic, I have 1 request. If you could hit subscribe and do review on your favorite podcast app, it helps more people learn how to have positive impact through values based business. Thank you so much. Today, I'm really excited to introduce you to Zoe Dov Manny. Dive and our topic is get your climate startup funded with a good pitch deck.

ZOE is on a mission to get climate solutions out of the lab and into the mainstream with the power of storytelling. As a brand strategist and designer, her well crafted pitch decks helped raise a total of, well, some of these folks, $22,800,000 last year in 2022. We she writes a weekly newsletter on storytelling brand strategy and climate solutions, and you can sign up for that at www.hellocreative.com. Zoe, welcome to the

show. Hi, Paul. Thank you so much for having me. It's So I'm so excited to be here dive I'm very grateful for all the support that you offer the impact community and to me personally too.

Well, thank you. And we were talking before I hit record, Zoe. Done not too long ago, I was sitting at an event where a wonderful and very smart impact entrepreneur was dive pitching a group of judges in a, like, pitch competition kind of thing. And at the end of this person's 5 minutes, one of the judges, also a very smart person, said, I hate to tell you this, but I don't understand what you do. And I said, You know what? Like, in 310 episodes, we've never on Awarepreneurs done an episode on pitch decks. And, like, I've seen that happen more than once in my 16 got teen years in this space. So I tell that story to say, like, you're somebody I've come to know and respect, and this is such an important issue. And in some circles, particularly like very technical circles, I do see some attention to this, dive in the wider impact space.

I don't see as much attention on pitch decks as what they weren't, and we know each other from enduring planet. Dive that wonderful community. Shout out to Dimitri and Aaron and the great group of scouts there. So I was like, I gotta reach out to Zoey, and here we are. So listeners, that's how we got here, and Zoey is somebody I've come to trust and respect a lot in the space. So thank you for saying yes when I reached out.

Dive My pleasure.

Yeah. So somebody's listening to this and saying, okay, before we get into pitch decks, who is Zoe? And, like, dive. What's a little like where is she coming from? What's a little

bit of her backstory? Yeah. My name is Zoe Dove Mahoney, as you mentioned, And I help climate start ups get really clear on their storytelling so they can either get funded or dive Grow their teams or their influence. I run Hello e Creative, which is sort of a loose collective of strategists, Designers, copywriters, and we make things like pitch decks and brand strategy documents, workshops, and brand designs for those dive Those climate startup founders.

Cool. And, like, how'd you get into that work?

Yeah. It's dive You know, my business started like many do from a place of seeing a problem and not finding a solution anywhere else. Dive My background is in design in the entertainment and hospitality spaces, and dive I was doing that for 10 years, doing graphic design, art direction, video editing, motion graphics editing. And in 2020, I I'm sorry to bring you back that year, but this is sort of where things change for me. I was, By that time, just feeling I've been feeling stuck for a while, and I was noticing some problems, first of all, within dive The industry of of advertising and also, you know, noticing some problems globally, I'll say. Dive And

I was going Are there any problems in the world? I I I I didn't know that. Thanks for

queuing us onto that. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And then I was just feeling some problems internally, personally, with the work I was doing. And so I'll talk about each of these and how I built solutions to fit each of them. With the industry, with with advertising, I worked at something like 14 different companies. And in agencies, there is this dive Pervasive culture of complaining about clients.

And, you know, the first 1 or 2 places I worked, I was like, yeah. Clients. They're so Annoying. And then after a few more, I thought, you know, I don't think it's the clients. I think there may be something that we need to Look at here and address. And meanwhile, if you talk to a lot of people who have worked with agencies, a lot of people feel like they've been burned. Dive So I've I sort of was thinking about and looking at this problem for a long time from the perspective of being the designer who's producing all this stuff die. People are sort of going through cycles of revisions on.

And I think it comes down to 2 things. There's There's the business model of agencies, which I won't go into, like, in too much detail, but there's sort of misaligned financial incentives. There's spec work. There's overhead. There's inflated pricing goes on. And one of the big issues there, I think, is hourly billing. So I decided if I wasn't do my own thing. I was not gonna do hourly billing.

And the other piece, which designers feel very This really is that in agencies, we're we're making a lot of deliverables without establishing goals and dive creating internal alignment up front. And so what happens and this will sound familiar for anybody who's, like, who's been on either end of this relationship is that Often, the relationship between a client and an agency is that the client requests a deliverable, say, a a website or an, You know, a banner ad or something, and the agency produces it. And then the client looks at him and says, yeah. Could we? That's not quite what I was looking for. Can we try again? And the agency goes back and does it again die And produces again, and the client says, that's not quite what I was looking for. And around and around we go. Dive The project goes over budget. It goes over it goes past deadline.

Nobody's happy. Dive And what I learned from looking at this and experiencing this a lot is that it's really on us as creatives to dive To do this up front work and to to elicit what those common goals are, what those values are, and do that deep work up front dive before we even start designing anything. And that that's it's called brand strategy, and that was the missing piece, I think, in a lot of these dive companies, we either weren't doing any strategy or we were doing really rushed strategy up front. So I pivoted I I pivoted my work to dive Include much more brand strategy and be more brand strategy heavy. I'm still doing design, but it always includes strategy up front.

Nice. And I love that you do that, Zoe. And I've seen that happen a lot. There are people go back and forth on whatever dive asset, whether it's a logo or a pitch deck or, like you said, something for ads. And sometimes it gets so focused on the image or the color or the text. Like, wait. Wait. Wait.

What what are we trying to do with this thing that we're making. This isn't necessarily made to hang on a wall and look pretty. This is we're trying to have something happen with this thing. And today, we're talking about pitch decks. So we'll we'll 0 in listener thing in there. Right? But whether it's a pitch deck or a logo, it's not just about wowing people with how pretty it looks. We're trying to get something done. In your case, like we said, in your intro, raising your clients raise 22 point $8,000,000 in 1 year using pitch decks that you design.

There's a there's somebody who that pitch deck is going to, and you want them to be engaged and at least some significant portion of them say this is an awesome impact start up. This is an awesome climate solution. I wanna give you money. Die. And if we lose sight of that, I think it's easier to get into some of that sort of hamster in the wheel kind of thing where you're just going around and around and around and not having anybody be happy. The does that is that that's some of the things I've seen. Does any of that sound familiar?

Dive Yeah. Oh, yeah. Very familiar. Cool. I had a an unnamed big tech client dive where we created a social media asset that took 14 months of revisions.

Oh, wow.

Dive And the view count was so low anyway because yeah. It it was it was wild. And so it's it's really pervasive. Dive So I I mentioned the global problems. I don't think I need to elaborate on all that. But what I will say is that with climate change in its public health that was growing larger and larger in my periphery at the time, and I was just sick of sitting on the sidelines about that. And dive And that we've seen talking about just the internal problems I was feeling, which was just a misalignment of what I was doing with my dive time every day, what my day to day work was, and then what was the impact of that work. And at the time, the impact of the work was, okay, more people will watch this TV show.

Sure. That's fine. It's not hurting anybody, but I felt like I had all this fuel because I'm so passionate, and I was just pouring it down the drain. Dive So I have these problems everywhere. The question is what to do about it. I worked with a coach. Her name is Melinda Lizzie. Melinda Lizzie, shout out to her.

She's brilliant. Work with her if you don't feel like this. And she helped me think about this in, like, terms of what what are the skills that I have and who do I wanna serve with them, which is such a valuable way, I think, of any kind of when you're trying to switch at any direction dive Rather than what do I do, it's like, who do I wanna serve? And I decided I wanted to serve people doing something about climate change. Now I was in The entertainment and hospitality space, I did not have any idea what that would look like. I didn't know who these people were. I didn't know where they were. I didn't know what they looked like, die But I just did a lot of knocking on doors and poking around and being curious, and it led me to the climate start up space. Dive And then, again, ask the question, well, how can how can I be of service to these people that are doing this meaningful work? And I started offering free help dive in consultations to anybody who would take the time and doing free workshops, which I still do with early stage founders.

And dive What I learned was there are all these brilliant solutions that are locked up inside these labs because of a lack of communication tools in the space. And that was when I really zeroed in on pitch decks. So now I work with accelerators as well. I I'll teach teach their founders how to do pitch decks, and dive I work with clients 1 on 1 doing their pitch decks and their brand strategy.

Cool. So you're working with and and listeners, I'll put a link to, as always, LinkedIn, but you can get done scanning that. There's some big names you worked with in the entertainment world. You know, you had a lot of dive gravitas in the design space, but you're like, alright, the world's literally on fire and I gotta find a way to move into that. Dive So you you you zero in on pitch decks. And let's just, like, give somebody some people on here have raised who listen regularly have raised 1,000,000, even 100 of 1,000,000. Some people don't even know what a pitch deck is. So if somebody are, like, they kinda heard the term, but they don't done really like, what is that again? So if somebody's like, what is a pitch deck? Give us the, like, real short version of it.

I mean, it's basically a PowerPoint presentation, and it looks nice, and it's easy to follow, and it helps. Does And you use it to communicate to someone why they might want to give you money for your start up, or you might use it to get donations or to sell a thing. So it's a it's a persuasive piece.

Great. Die. And when you started talking to climate founders, climate accelerators, etcetera, etcetera, and you started to zero in on pitch dash decks. Like, what were some of the things that you were hearing that people were struggling with when it came to pitch decks? What are some of the problems that you're like, oh, yeah. Dive this makes sense, and I need to pay attention to that, and then people will hire me. What what were some of those things that people were struggling within the space?

The the thing that I heard over and over was struggling with Struggling with their story, struggling with making it concise, making it understandable. There's a really big gap in in technical knowledge between the person delivering the information and the person receiving

that judge that I started us off with today who was looking at blank, like, you're really smart, but I don't understand what the hell you're doing. But yeah. Yeah. That that kind of a problem when that judge can say here's quite a bit of money and also get the ball rolling because that was there are a lot of people in that room who could really help that under get that startup, which was an impact startup off the ground. And instead the people that the whole room was looking at, looked at him and said, I I don't understand what the hell you're talking about. Right? So that's a that's a little snippet. You don't want that when you do a pitch.

Yeah. You don't.

The best outcome.

Dive And and I'll tell you my secret, Paul, is that I I just get to be the dumbest person in the room and have that blank dive I don't understand what you do. Can you please explain it like I'm 5? And we just do that over and over and over until we get to something that makes sense. Yeah. Dug that makes sense. Yeah.

Awesome. In a pitch deck, in addition to the words that go with it, there's oftentimes imagery, sometimes there's charts. Right? So let's let's let's unpack a little bit. Like, from your perspective as you've started to, like, say, okay. Explain it to me, like, 5, now we're gonna build this thing that you're gonna show to a potential investor. I've also seen pitch decks used of somebody. Done it. I've seen people pitch for cofounders, right, or other leadership team members who to invite them to come in because maybe, die.

I'm thinking of somebody who's a new, young, hungry, smart entrepreneur at a solution, and he was pitching somebody who'd been in the for decades. And if that person came in with their network, he didn't ask them for money. He asked them to come in as an equity partner in this start up because he knew if that person came in, they'd bring their whole network. Right? So he pitched a cofounder relationship. Right? So there's lots of ways you can use these. Right? Dive but what what goes in that like, how do you start to, like, help somebody understand what happens in an effective pitch deck because telling the story, that's very broad. Right?

Oh, yeah. Telling a story can mean so many different things. Dive The thing that I always start with is who is the audience? And I mean, no. Really, who is the audience? Let's talk about dive everything about them. We wanna 0 in on 1 particular person and make a persona out of them, like a brand persona. Die Or, well, I suppose that you would use that word more in brand strategy. But we make a persona out of this person that's, like, marketing speak for sort of an an avatar. And dive We we say, okay.

Well, how how old is this person, and, you know, where do they live, and what do they do with their spare time, and what kinda dive do they drive, and do they have kids and whatever. And what do they care about? What do they care about deeply, and then also what do they care? What are their sort of external problems that they're dealing with with their business that you can solve, and we're really focusing the whole deck dive on that human and and their needs rather than, hey. We have all this stuff we wanna shout at you.

Dive Yeah. So you're looking at getting like, I've heard it called demographics. Right? Things that would show up on a census, does, you know, how old they are, where do they live, maybe what kind of occupation they have, you know, certain things like that that would dive age, gender, things like that that would show up on a census. I've also heard a growing trend in the avatar space is like the psychographics. Like, dug how do they think and what do they most con what keeps them up at night, which, you know, whether you're 12 or whether you're 92, dive you still have things that you're excited about, you're passionate about, you're worried about. Right? So is that something that you also would cover with clients?

Dive Yes. I'm I'm glad you brought it up. The the way that I separate it in my mind is there's demographics, like the things that you mentioned, the things that would show up on a census. Dive There's psychographics, which is behavior. What is this person like, what are like I said, what are they doing in the weekends? What are they dive Reading. What are they listening to? Who are the people in the space that they follow that that inspire them? And so there's still kind of external factors in their life, but they're they're more personal than something like how you know, the their their age. Dive And then the 3rd category is mindset, and that's where you get into those deeper things. Like, what are their beliefs? What are their values? What really drives them? Dive

So you make this avatar and you work you work with people or you dive Go to Zoe's site. Go to 1 of I've been to 1 of Zoe's free workshops. They're awesome. Like, you'll get walked through how dive you can get clear on those things, but you help people get clear whether you're working with them 1 on 1 or working with the whole room full of people. Now what? Done. Right? So okay. I I get it. I'm I'm I'm thinking of the wisdom of one of my mentors.

My mentor said, Paul, when you try to help everybody, you wind up helping nobody. Right? Die Especially in 2023 where there are it it's so easy to kind of find a segment. Dive right in the climate world, but even different, like, is this something that's going to put on the top of somebody's got roof for, like, some new thing that is gonna make it more efficient in a heat pump kind of a way, or is this like you're talking about the CEO of a $1,000,000,000 company. Right? It's like Mhmm. That's very, very different. Right? So so once I start to get clear on who this is, dive. Right? Is this a Tesla driving person who goes to yoga classes, or is this somebody who's, like, working in one of the biggest shipping, you know, done in the world. Very, very different people.

Alright.

So

once you start to get clear about that, then what do I do? How do I start to translate that wisdom into dive a pitch deck that might help accomplish my goals.

We so there's sort of the my my answer is not gonna become dive be super clear about how what exactly this looks like in terms of a pitch deck, but I will tell you what part comes next, which is mapping that person into dive The hero's journey. You know? The the classic western storytelling structure of you have a hero, the hero has a vision or dug a value or a need, and then they have a problem. They have something getting in their way. And then a guide comes and helps them along to dive achieve the thing, and then they get what they want. Super simple. We take that persona, and we put them in the hero zone. And we put ourselves, meaning the the the climate start up, in the guide position. And then we get really clear on dive how that hero is viewing the problem that they're having because they're having all kinds of problems.

A lot of founders get tripped up on this Problem solution thing because their solution solves a whole bunch of different needs for a whole bunch of different people. So this is a good way of dive crystallizing who is the person, what is their problem, how do how do we come in and fix it, and and what's the impact of that?

Dive So in other words, I should start calling you Yoda. Is that what you're saying?

That's exactly what I'm saying.

Okay, Yoda. Thank you for that wisdom. Yeah. So so dive I love that you brought up the multiple problems because especially with impact entrepreneurs, climate folks, it's like we tend to live in worlds where there's like, dive I've heard of things called the poly crisis. Right? So, like, not only are we talking about climate change on things, you know, what does it mean in terms of trying to cool where we live, let's say. But it also is impacting agriculture, you know, and how we grow our food and certain it's making it really don't disruptive to anybody who has a passionate gardener. You know? I I've seen that living in the desert southwest. It was a hon it was over a 100 degrees for two and a half weeks straight in Albuquerque this past summer.

Like, it it it's a game changer for a gardening. It made it really, really, really hard. Right? So, anyway, the we're seeing multiple things happen as a result of climate change, and sometimes somebody's solution, somebody's technology, or whatever their startup is about can move the needle in a number of different ways. And then they try to tell that story, and they get that look in the judge's face. Like, I don't understand what the hell you just said. Sounds good. And it's awesome that you can, like, save the world, but, like, I don't even know what to do with all this. It's too much, and I don't have $20,000,000,000.

In this case, this judge was making a decision of it was a 5 figure decision. It went to somebody who was much crisper. Right? Dive so Yeah.

And and I to to to just touch on what you just said, it it's I think this is especially hard in the climate space dug the problems that we're solving are so huge and so multifaceted. And this is this is not an app that's like helping you figure out what to watch on Netflix. You know? So it's like, where do we start?

Right? Yeah. Die. So how do you help somebody 0 in? Like, okay. I understand who I wanna help, and I wanna go back to that in a second because sometimes that moves as a start up grows. I just wanna put a pin in the map there. But but you land on an avatar, say, okay. I'm gonna start with them. But even that person, there have multiple things they're concerned about when it comes to climate.

Right? So so how do you start to, like, say, well, yes. But dive for the purpose of the pitch deck to start the conversation. I'm gonna 0 in right there. How do you help somebody point their finger right there?

Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question. A lot of people a lot of people get tripped up on this, and the answer is simple. I just follow the money. Like, what is the money problem? What is the problem that is is costing somebody the most money? Because If an investor is looking at a deck and they're saying, oh, some segment is spending 1,500,000,000 on x y z, die And they're not getting what they need out of this existing solution. Their ears are gonna perk up because they're gonna say, well, that's a huge market that we can take a piece of.

Dive Definitely love that you went there. And what I would say is sometimes founders dive in this podcast to listen to this show, sometimes we lead with impact, and then money's also important. But if you're pitching somebody for their money, sometimes we have to at least make them equal or at least for the dive the purposes of getting an investor's attention if this is a pitch for money, for investment, to to raise up the here's the short version. I will show you very quickly in that 5 minutes that that founder had on the stage in front of the judges. I will show you the financial aspect of this in a clear, no yeah. There's just no fog in the kind just like crystal clear in the 1st few minutes, and then we can get into the multiple layers and where this could go. Right? And that's what I hear you saying. With the with the finances, we can, like, 0 in really quickly and help somebody see that we've looked at that very carefully and that we're not kinda mishmashing done things together, and, yeah, there's a financial return in there too.

Right? If you end your pitch and that's the last thing you say and you haven't made that case strongly, you're gonna have a harder time

of it. Yeah. And and it I'm I'm so glad you brought it up because Because like you mentioned, we're an impacting space here the impact investing space here. And, usually usually, I'm working with pitches in the dive in the VC space. So in the climate investing space. So I think in if if somebody This is where you always think about the audience of the pitch. And if the person who you're pitching is there to 10 x their return, then we wanna talk about their return. But if the person is there to make an impact with these funds that they're donating, That's when we lead with the impact.

100%.

Yeah. So knowing your audience is key. Is this a dive is this a grant that is, like, looking for the maximum return on the grant, or is this a VC where if I don't get 10 x ideally in 3 years return, but certainly in five, I'm probably gonna give my money to somebody else. Right? And those are very different audiences. And if we approach them the same way, we're probably not gonna get traction in 1 or the other or most likely both of those scenarios. Right?

Yeah. Exactly. I did I did make a deck earlier this year dive someone who is pitching pitching foundations to get well, to to get donations. And it was I don't think yeah. We didn't talk about any Financial returns

at all.

It was it was about, hey. Look at our solution and how unique it is and the impact that we've already made. And And if we could just get some of your support, we could five x our impact in a year.

Yeah. Beautiful. So let's do this in a minute. I wanna come back and hear both where you take founders once they get clearer on what is that lever, and also I wanna hear more about your own journey in your own business where you think it's going. But before we do that, just want to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor. Dive Are you facing 1 or more important decisions in your impact business? And you'd like an experienced thought partner to develop a plan talk about how to proceed in the complex times we're living, but you don't feel the need for an extended coaching or consulting contract that's gonna cost you many 1,000 of dollars. You're looking for an affordable, targeted, and time efficient type of support. Through paulzellizer.com, I offer a strategy session package.

These packages are ideal for entrepreneurs who are facing 1 to 3 immediate decisions, like how to increase your positive impact, fine tune your marketing strategies to get more results for less effort, launch a new product or service successfully, we refine your pricing structure so it's both inclusive and provides you with a great quality of life. You can find out more by clicking below, we And thank you so much for listening to this podcast. So welcome back, everybody. I am here with Zoe Dovmanti, and we are talking about all things pitch decks, climate solution, and in the impact space. And Zoe, before the break, we were just talking about, okay. Dive first, we wanna get clear on the avatar and some very specifics about that, who we're pitching to and what they're looking for, what they're like, dive what they are passionate about and most typically their problems. Then we were talking about how we pick out 1 particular issue that that's really gonna engage their attention. Right? That we can quickly help them understand if I invest or lean in in the way I'm being asked to, here's what is likely to happen, right, without confusing people.

And then, again, I'm gonna ask, how do we translate that into something that goes up on a PowerPoint and we show to somebody or we email them our slides? It's like, how do you start to turn those awarenesses into a deliverable, if we can use that word?

Yes. Yes. A deliverable. Dive The next step, believe it or not, is not to open up PowerPoint. The next step is die I create a document that is just words, and it's got the title of each slide, dive And then it's got some details about each slide, and we always start, of course, with the problem slide. And Sometimes I have a second slide that goes even deeper into that problem, and then we go into the solution. And then the flow from there, dive It changes depending on on the client that I'm working with and which aspects of their story we wanna play up. Dive But it typically involves all of the the the slides that you would expect from an investor pitch, you know, your your dive traction slide and your target market slide and your team slide, etcetera, etcetera.

We just make sure that they have fun titles.

Dive What's an example? What would be a what would be a fun title?

I mean, instead of, you know, saying team slide, the title could say, we have dive the exact mix of people to do x y z that you need. Dive

Nice. I I saw an example on your website getting ready for this. You have a section on your website that says, let's pod. Right? And and that's that's a great, like, just you're obviously, you know, experienced it being a podcast guest, and you have a Let's Pod. Done I never seen that before. Yes. I've seen, like, press kit, but that was a fun title that I saw that I really appreciated.

Dive I I think using language in a colorful way can communicate so much more than just your your average dive Boiler plate copy.

Press kit. Let's pod. Who would you rather have listeners? Awesome. Dive. So walk us down the the next step. So so you start, like, kind of mapping out the slides. You gave us some sense of how many slides typically go in a pitch deck that you do with clients or that you teach people to do?

Dive Ideally, we're we're usually landing, like, between 15 and 20. Ideally, we wanna get even lower than 15, but, dive You know, there's a lot to be said. Once you get over 20, you're really in the danger zone. We might start put you know, putting them in the appendix and having these, like, back pocket slides. The next piece is I actually don't even let so when I when I I make this, dive you know, text outline, and I show it to the founders, but I don't I don't even let them really read the dive The body copy of each slide, it's like they can only read through the titles. So we just look through the titles of each slide, die And it's almost like reading the way you would read a picture book that has so few words. Right? Like, I say that sometimes. Pitch decks are like they're like picture books.

Right? I love that. Words need to be in it.

That's great. That's such a great analogy. Yeah.

And and think about how when you when you read a picture book, how much more Information is on the page than just the words on the page. Yeah. Because think about the audience. Dive They're very visual. So I so so I so we go through this outline, and we make sure that dive And this is a way of, like, squinting at it from far away and seeing high level. Does this story make any sense? Dive And then we start to just fill in the details under each heading. And dive I show this to the founder, and we kinda go back and forth. We we we talk about, okay, like, is is is this story resonating with you? Is it making sense? Is the dine Explain like I'm 5 language that I'm putting on it.

Does it actually make sense? Because sometimes I need you to tweak it a little bit for me. And then dive Then I look for opportunities for in any of the words that I'm seeing, I look for opportunities to eliminate those words. So there's one way of eliminating words is and and that is just to back up a little bit because the great, Like, rule that we are following here is that nobody reads anything. Any website that people go to I mean, you know, dive Our attention spans are, like in in the in the TikTok era, we're not working with a whole lot. So I'm looking for so okay. So opportunity's there. Dive You can first, you could just cut down your language, cut all cut out all the the filler words, make your sentences shorter. Dive The next thing is I look at a a sentence that I wrote, and I think, oh, could this be a chart? Could it be a photo? Could it be a photo that maybe has a super short caption to give a little bit of context? Could it be an icon? Things like that.

Yep. And then then only then do I open up sometimes PowerPoint. I actually usually end up working in Google Slides, But sort of program agnostic. I don't I don't have a strong bias there. That is when I start working with a designer and Roughing out what what this is gonna look like and layout.

Nice. I love that process that you've given us. And dive in. What I've seen is people oftentimes overwhelm with I don't know if you've seen this, and and I I should back up and just say dive in the past not quite year, like, 9, 10 months. Some of the listeners know this. I got recruited, and I'm now a consultant for New Mexico Angels, which is the largest network of early stage investing individuals and got groups in New Mexico. We're a small state, and we kinda like are the only game in town. Right? Like, VC, there's a number of things, but before VC, so precede and seed if you wanna use that language.

Like, it's kind of the only game in the state, and I'm like recruiting dive members and sponsors and all that stuff. But, anyway, basically, I'm, like, going to many more start up events than ever. Like, more in the past year than I have in the dive 16 years of being business because, you know, I'd go to some, but suddenly, like, it's part of my contract to be at these events and schmooze and do certain things. Anyway, so I'm seeing a lot of pitches. And one of the things I'm seeing is dug that you you can tell when somebody's gone through a process like this, and when somebody's just like, just throw a bunch of words at it, and how it land, like, die sitting in the audience and there's 200 people at a pitch event, right, and the 5 judges, and how when somebody has great visuals dug in the right amount of words, and the judges say that was really helpful. And they just, like, ask a question and just, like, go right to building on the story as opposed to having to clarify the story, if that makes any sense. They can then deepen the connection. A good pitch kinda gets you into the next level of the conversation.

Like, I guess it's been explained to me, Zoe, is, like, dive the pitch doesn't get you the money. The pitch gets you into the conversation that gets you the money, or the pitch gets you out of the conversation. Don't what

do I have to do to extract

my yeah. It's like dating. It's like it's like a date where you say, wow. This was a great date. I'd like to see you again die as opposed to, like, how can I extract myself from this situation as with the not with the least amount of drama as quickly as possible? Right? And pitches Yeah. Like, that's kinda what happens. Is that fair to say?

Totally. I I think of it like a teaser versus a movie.

Yeah.

And There's a reason why I wouldn't say, hey, Paul. There's this great movie. I would love like, I think you'll really like it. I'm gonna send it to you right now. Do you have dive Two and a half hours of undivided attention to focus on it immediately.

Right.

No. There's a reason there's a teaser. There's a a trailer out there to it hooks you, and And it still leaves you with questions. Right? It doesn't give you the whole story.

Yeah.

That's what a stitch deck is.

That's such a great analogy. Cool. Cool. Well, let's let's pivot a little bit, Zoe. So please go to Zoe's website listeners, sign up for awesome newsletter, go do one of the free workshops, which I had the pleasure of doing. So all that will be in the show notes. You know? Go connect with Zoe on LinkedIn. Dive you can see her planting trees and stuff like that.

It's a real human there. Right? But let's let's let's talk a little bit about your journey. So you, in 2020, decided you're gonna pivot into the climate space, and die. You start, like, knocking on doors and, like, how did you go from knowing nobody in the climate space to, like, being dive somebody that a lot of climate people that I respect are you're like the go to person in a relatively short amount of time, and we're we're at the end of 2023. So it's not quite 4 years. Maybe it was three and a half, and you're, like, esteemed in the climate circles I move in. How did that happen?

Well, it was 2020, so we couldn't go anywhere in person. And I think the blessing about that is that dive People were more focused in their online spaces, and I started to tap into I just started to find the hubs. You know? There's work on climate. There's climate journey. There's plenty of other, sort of slack spaces. Dive I just started to to to to look for the hubs. I think the first thing I did was actually ask myself, dive How do I find out about new stuff in spaces that I actually know stuff about already? Like, the design world, for example. I was like, how do I know what's going on in the design world? Well, I get these email newsletters.

So I think I started googling, like, email newsletters, and I didn't even know it was called the climate space. I was using the word sustainability. And I think I found this, like, wild hyper connector, Daniel Kruseier, who is another everybody knows we Daniel is. He's wonderful, and he I talked to him, and he directed me to my dive journey and or no. He directed me to to some founders, I think. I started talking to founders. And once I was just on the ground, talking to the people the people doing the work, the people, like, right at the app, dive What what I consider the epicenter of, you know, the direct making of the impact, I just dive I just followed my curiosity. I just never hesitated to ask questions, and there were so many questions to be asked Because I had no idea what these people were talking about.

And so everything that I didn't understand, I said, dive What did what did you say? Can you explain what that means? And who is that person? And okay. And do you know anybody who might wanna talk to me? And then I also led or was led by a trying to figure out a question dive A question of how can I okay? I know who these people are. How can I help them? How can I serve them? What do they need? And and that's not super easy to figure out. Right? That takes some trial and error. I mean, I was coming in saying like, hey, guys. Dive I wanna do your brand strategy, and they were like, what is that? We don't care.

You seem nice and get out of the way. Right? Dive we're trying to, like, keep the planet from burning up.

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, nice lady. And then and but, you know, what I so I it it's dive a lot of deep listening. It's like the the same things that I was saying that you would do When you're crafting a brand or a pitch deck and creating this persona and trying to really deeply understand that person and what makes them tick, I was kind of dive Mentally doing that with the people I was talking to and trying to trying to really get to know them and figure out what they cared about dive And ultimately, just just make friends.

So and you got involved in the climate space as it got a lift, shall we say, like, between when you started thinking about how do I get involved in 2020 and where we are now, there have been a pretty major happenings. Right? I'm thinking specifically of the inflation reduction act and all the money in the US that that brought into one of the largest the largest economy in the world, right, in terms of got sheer dollars and and suddenly, like, a whole bunch of money came into the space made available to start ups and other dive ways of funding things that climate founders are interested in doing. So things that were harder to get funding suddenly started to accelerate more quickly. Is that fair to say?

Yeah. There was a big big boom there in the past few years.

Yeah. Dive So you came in at a good time.

I guess I did. Yeah.

Yeah. So here we are. We're, we're recording this in early November die of 2023, and you've been out at a couple years now, and things are moving, and you're helping people raise 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 of dollars. Like, dive look ahead. Where where do you think your business is going as you look ahead 3 years, 5 years? What are what are some of the things that you're wanting to lean into?

Yeah. I the the inquiry that I'm living in right now is how can I leverage my impact dive the most to impact climate change? And I don't know that I have fully articulated that vision yet, but it's It's leading me to, again, ask, who can I serve? How can I help them? Who who could I serve who who is really dive who's really making a big impact. So I think I wanna turn that question around to you and your listeners. Are you someone, die Or do you know someone who could really be making a lot more of a difference if only they could get clear on their message? Dive And if Selco talked to me.

Talk to Zoe. So in terms of working with more scaled enterprise, I've heard it called, like, got growth stage. You're up, you're running, things are working, you've got a team, and now you're thinking about the next thing. Dive You wanna grow your team by 300%. You wanna help more people. You wanna bring your product or service to a new continent. Right? Die. Like, what is the nuance of somebody who's thinking about a pitch for a something that's got scale and there's more zeros involved versus somebody who's, like, trying to raise their very 1st round and dive maybe that's a couple $100,000.

What how is it different in terms of how you work with somebody, and what do they need to keep in mind talk about some of the topics we've talked about but in a different phase of their growth.

Dive Yeah. But, I mean, we're we're still focusing a lot. We're still asking, okay, who are we pitching? What do they care about? We're still asking who is the audience of dive the product or service that we're making and what do they care about, and what's their journey through it, but we're focusing a little bit less on that. We're sort of using that to explain what the thing is and done does, but we are way more focused on the business case.

Dive in. There's more, like, real world data in the ones I've seen. It's like not we will or we think. Right? Yeah. But we have. Here's what we've done so far, and here's where we're trying to go, but you're charting you're oftentimes dive telling the story of how we got to here and how we've been successful. We've raised funds. We've helped x number of people.

We've sold so many things. We've, you know, installed x number of solar panels or batteries or, you know, climate friendly dive solutions in x number of communities. Right? So so you're the ones I've seen, it's more dive real world data as opposed to here's the opportunity we see, but it's a hypothetical conversation because dive your startup by definition. Is that fair to say?

Yeah. I think I think you nailed it when you said the word chart. It's a lot more charts. And and, yeah, to your point, it's it's much more about the traction and, the speed at which we are scaling Yeah. Dive And, and having a deeper understanding of the market segment that we're that we're drilling into. Dive Beautiful.

Well, Zoe, I can hang out with you all day, but I know you're really busy and so are our listeners. So as we start to wind down our conversation, we what's something that you were hoping we were gonna get to and we haven't touched on it yet, or what's something you wanna leave our listeners with as we start to say goodbye?

I think I wanna when people are thinking about their visuals and their branding and their story for For their climate business, I think I wanna encourage people to lean into their joy dive and and make some really fun brands because I'm seeing a lot of seriousness in the space, and, obviously, it's a It's a super, super serious issue. But when we think about the audience, Do they necessarily wanna be serious all the time? I mean, who does? So, I think I would love to see more of that, and and dive And, yeah, and and and love to create more of that too.

So before we go, Zoe, you have have something that can be really helpful to people who are excited about up leveling their pitch deck game. Tell us about that.

Dive Yes. I have a free pitch deck guide on my website that you could download. It is in the form of a pitch deck. It's a pitch deck about a pitch deck die Because I think I'm hilarious.

How meta is that? Right?

And it just kinda gives you some some basics and some some tips and tricks, what to be thinking about on a high level when you're when you're building your deck.

Cool. And I've seen it. It's awesome. Highly recommend it. So check out the show notes and go get the guide. And, Zoe, thank you so much for being on the show today.

My pleasure. Thank you.

So, dive again, all the links are in the show notes. Before we go, just a quick reminder, we love listeners suggested topics and guests. We get a lot of our listeners, dive a lot of our guests from you listeners. You say, Paul, we should hear from so and so who's doing something awesome that I literally have never heard of even though I've been doing this for 16 die because you are an awesome group of folks. So please send in your ideas, go to the Awarepreneurs website, and pitch an episode. And I wanna say thank you for listening. Please take really good care in these intense times, and thank you for all the positive impact that

your