Building and Maintaining the Buzz at Marijuana Investor Summit

Entrepreneurs and investors are ready to profit from the legal marijuana industry, but there are two crucial elements that can enhance the ability to create and sustain a venture’s buzz: communication and leadership.

The ability to communicate succinctly and successfully is vital for anyone who has an important message to share. With this in mind, Marijuana Investor Summit will offer a session with two experiential workshops on April 21, 2015: “Building the Buzz” led by Hilary Blair, and “Maintaining the Buzz” led by Brandon Twine and Barb Van Hare.

 

“Building the Buzz”

Hilary Blair, CEO of ARTiculate: Real & Clear, a company that uses artistic expertise and business experience to enhance a client’s communication skills, will begin with “Building the Buzz” at 9 a.m. This workshop is designed to prepare entrepreneurs for pitching to investors because the ability to secure funding is what transforms an entrepreneurial idea into a viable investment option.

According to Blair, “It is all about making sure that you understand how to share your message succinctly and with enough buzz to get investors, or anyone else who might be there to support you, interested in joining your team.”

Pitching is an art that can take practice because “the pitch is one of those arenas in which people are often misaligned,” Blair said. However, this is where Blair’s expertise comes into play. “We call ourselves communication chiropractors so we’re helping people align their message with their verbal and nonverbal.”

Blair’s workshop will also encourage audience participation. “It’ll be interactive throughout and at the end, one or two people will share their quick pitch, we’ll give feedback and have them try it again,” Blair said.

In order to get the most out of Blair’s workshop, she recommends participants “come with strong ideas and then be open to play and see what happens” because her hope is that attendees “feel emboldened to share their voice and their story for their business.”

Blair’s session will wrap up at 10:20 a.m., at which point attendees will have a 20-minute break before the next 80-minute workshop.

 

“Maintaining the Buzz”

While Blair will have prepared entrepreneurs for building the buzz, Brandon Twine and Barb Van Hare, executive coaches at enVision, a business consulting firm, will lead participants in a workshop on “Maintaining the Buzz.” This is where an entrepreneur’s great start can transform into a successful venture with strong leadership.

According to Twine, “Our workshop is really about leadership presence and about team building and about team cohesion. It’s experiential so we’ll be doing some fun interactive exercises.”

These exercises are a means of helping entrepreneurs understand that a venture’s progress depends upon leaders who can orchestrate the many moving parts of a startup. “You’ve got to keep everything really humming, especially when there’s a lot of money and expectations on the line.”

Whether you’ve never been a leader before or you’re a leader looking to enhance your game, this workshop is designed to help people see and maximize their potential. “We’ll actually give people some experience of some form of leadership that maybe they hadn’t manifested before,” Twine said.

This experience should empower entrepreneurs to harness their leadership abilities for the benefit of their businesses. Twine explained, “The impact that we’re hoping for the participants and the people who come is to gain more insight, to gain more understanding what leadership is in our view and to learn some things about themselves that they can immediately put into play with their organizations, with their teams, with their investors.”

Twine has also suggested that if you are looking to get a head start on tapping into your inherent leadership presence before the workshop, read “The Anatomy of Peace” by The Arbinger Institute. “The Anatomy of Peace is a great way of understanding which boxes you put yourself in in life and the ways that you limit yourself, especially as a leader,” Twine said.

 

Maximize Your Efforts

While launching a startup takes hard work, “Building the Buzz” and “Maintaining the Buzz” are crafted to show participants innovative ways to maximize entrepreneurial efforts as a means of establishing a business and sustaining its growth.

As investors and entrepreneurs will continue to mature with the legal marijuana industry, these workshops will help your communication skills mature with them.

 

This article is a part of the World Cannabis Week series sponsored by World Cannabis Week and Marijuana Investor Summit.

Caroline Cahill is the Managing Editor of MJINews. She earned her BA in Communications from College of Charleston and her MFA in Creative Writing from Virginia Commonwealth University. She has previously worked in higher education, development and radio. You can follow her on Twitter @CtheresaC.

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