About this episode

This episode discusses how investors form judgments about founders before any pitch and the importance of personal branding in fundraising.

Investors form their first judgment about you before you've said a word about your product. At the early stage they bet on the founder, not the idea, which makes the signal you send long before the pitch one of the most important things you can control. In episode 133, Lance Cottrell sits down with Christine Blosdale, the Expert Authority Coach, to turn personal branding into something practical for founders who are raising money. They get into why expertise so often fails to translate, how to fix a pitch deck that buries the point, and the difference between confidence and the kind of braggadocio that makes investors run. Christine shares the "crown jewels" approach to surfacing the parts of your background that actually matter to investors, and Lance connects each idea back to the pitch decks and team slides he reviews every week. You'll also hear why your headshot and team slide quietly decide how seriously you're taken, how to handle imposter syndrome before a raise, and what it means that investors now Google and ChatGPT your name before a meeting. If you're a founder building credibility, visibility, and investor trust, this one is for you. CHAPTERS 0:00 - Investors judge…

People in this episode

Host: Lance Cottrell

Guest: Christine Blosdale

Topics covered

• investor perception
• personal branding
• pitching
• founder credibility
• imposter syndrome

Keywords

• investors
• founders
• pitch deck
• personal branding
• imposter syndrome
• expertise
• confidence

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: ChatGPT

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