Entrepreneurs & Self promotion: don’t oversell, but don’t undermine either--by Terry Chase Hazell
Self-promotion is an important part of entrepreneurship. The fact is, many early employees, partners, and funders join a company based on an assessment of the entrepreneur. And yet many entrepreneurs—especially women – hate to talk about their own accomplishments. This can be a big mistake. As you develop your company summary or pitch, you should also develop a personal pitch that balances between overselling yourself and undermining your accomplishments.
In Texas State’s RampCorp program, one of the 16 “ramps” participants study to grow their business includes Self-Promotion. Women develop a professional biographical sketch, or “bio.” For entrepreneurs, the bio may be more important than the resume, because it’s used in many contexts—business plan, website, speaking engagements, LinkedIn profile – and for those seeking funding, your bio is summarized in your pitch.
Where to start? At RampCorp we’ve developed a tip sheet for women entrepreneurs (men need this too) that walks you through how to prepare your biographical sketch. You can download it at this link. RampCorp Biographical Sketch Tips
The Ramps Biographical Sketch Tip Sheet is organized into 5 sections:
1. Tips list for developing your sketch
2. Lists of words to use and words to avoid
3. Example sentences from and links to leading women’s bios & fill in the blank sentences
4. Biographical sketch checklist
5. Form to complete your own sketch
In addition to preparing your bio using the tip sheet, I also recommend the following resources:
• Book: How to Say it for Women, by Phyllis Mindell
• Slideshare: Caroline Cummings: Authentic Self Promotion for Women
• Blog: Carol Goman
If you complete your bio and would like us to review it, send it to us at www.txstate.edu/rampcorp/contactus . We’ll comment on the first 5 bios posted!
About the Author: Terry Chase Hazell is Director of Texas State RampCorp, a program to help women entrepreneurs start their first scalable venture. She is a member of the national advisory board for Springboard Enterprises, which has helped women raise $5 Billion in capital. She serves as part of the 17 member state committee that makes funding recommendations on regional applicants to the Texas Emerging Technology Fund. She is a charter member of the White House initiative StartUp America Partnership’s women’s high-growth entrepreneurship committee. Her specific expertise is biologics manufacturing, and she has founded two biotechnology-related spin-out companies from the University of Maryland.
About RampCorp: Texas State RampCorp is an incubation and training program for women entrepreneurs launching their first scalable business. Women who are or who want to be entrepreneurs receive coaching from experienced investors, executives, inventors, and other women entrepreneurs who have built scalable
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