Ship Your Pitch Before It’s Ready

Imperfect action is better than waiting for perfect.

Maybe you’ve heard that before, but how often do you find yourself saying, “I just need to polish a few details, then I’ll publish my video pitch.”

But what happens? Hours, days, even weeks go by.

Sure, maybe you end up improving the pitch a little – adding a project, re-shooting the video so you have no extra words, or adding another testimonial from a past supervisor.

Improvement is great! But remember how essential your time is.

Because finishing, publishing, and sending your pitch not only puts you in the running for a job, it frees you up to get after the next pitch! You can get more plates spinning in your job hunt. (And, you can start following up).

Plus, every time you ship a pitch, you’ll feel that burst of creative fulfillment. That feeling of, “I did it! I’m taking charge of this job hunt! I’m bold! I’m creative! Possibility lies ahead!”

And that feeling breeds momentum. Momentum brings results.

But Quality Over Quantity, Right?

You might be thinking, “yeah, but you guys at Career Hackers always say to focus on a few companies and go deep, rather than blast out to 100 companies.”

Hey, yeah, you’re right! Glad you remembered that. 😉 You want to go deep on target companies you love, build valuable projects for them, and send a pitch video that shows you’re interested in that specific company.

So that takes intention and prep time, for sure (especially compared to changing a couple words on a cover letter).

But at the same time, you want to be mindful of analysis paralysis, getting stuck thinking before you hit “publish.”

I remember when I started a 30-day blogging challenge (great project idea, btw). I was a halfway decent writer at the time, but not great. I had to plan and think a lot every time I wrote. It was a major hurdle and obstacle just to write a post.

But as I kept doing it, my mind got better and faster at writing. And I became more confident. Hitting “publish,” became less scary (“what will people think?”), and more exciting.

Now that I’ve blogged hundreds of times, I don’t think about what I’m going to write. I just open the browser and start!

The same goes for video pitches. Yeah, don’t be careless. Dive deep and create meaningful projects and an all-star video for that company.

But you’ll get better over time, the more you send. Because the truth is: quantity breeds quality. And, your pitch will never be “perfect.” All of us humans have imperfections (and that’s okay).

So show ‘em your perfectly imperfect self.

Ship that pitch! Before you’re ready. 😉