Every independent or small business person has at one time or the other had to explain what they do. I’ve found that the shorter and the sweeter, the better. The guru of the short-but-sweet product or service presentation is Guy Kawasaki of “How To Change the World” gives an excellent tutorial, appearing at Open Forum an American Express product, on how to give the short-but-sweet.

This week I sat through eight hours of companies pitching themselves to a panel of experts at SXSW. It was a challenging experience because the companies had two minutes to explain what they do, and very few could. Indeed, in most cases the first question that the panelists asked was, “What exactly do you do again?” The same thing happens hundreds of thousands of times every day as people visit company websites. How many websites pass this simple test: “People can understand what the company does in two minutes or less”?

Guy in the past has talked about the three keys when speaking to people about your business. 10-20-30 is the phrase to remember: 10 slides, 20 minutes and 30 point font. If you’ve got a compelling message then it should shine through in this amount of time.

MikeT_simplifiying everything I do in front of clients.