“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” -Oscar Wilde
The day was consumed with preparing for one more speed pitch later this week as a finalist for the Willamette Angel conference. I should have been more prepared, but for last minute meetings that change the shape of the slide deck, now all my words are out of order. I work to stay calm and focused. I don’t want to add stress to my recent low white blood cell count reading. Yet the longer I am in the midst of the success and failure of ten perfectly timed minutes, I lose track of the gratitude I had to be there. I resist being perfect. It is not a state that reflects humanity truly, or maybe for just a minute at a time.
I want my presentation to speak to the heart. I am supposed to speak to the purse strings. I want to teach about the real raison d’etre for Good Clean Love and all the years of working for love, but I am compelled to a format with traction, financial performance and exit strategies. I know those parts, but not with my heart. Investors don’t care about that part, where the heart is. I flash to how true and real that statement is in light of the current financial crisis that still looms large over millions of lives.
Money splits us off from ourselves, and it doesn’t matter what side of it you are on. Having more than enough or needing more than you have are not as different as they might seem, although everyone would choose the former. Yet even those with so much can often be missing the same something.
I write and rewrite what to say, I want to know it, not need cards to prompt me, but I am still revising. I still have some days to figure out how to communicate the essence of this company into a package that contains not only a great ROI, but also an investment in the heart of relationships.
Thankfully, I have a few more days to let the words find me.
