How do you get truly confident in how you're presenting yourself asking for money? There's one share solution and that is to practice on video. Before you call the first donor. Before you go see that first person face to face, I want you to practice. But not just talking to a mirror, here's what happens if you practice to me or you start looking at the mirror, you think, wow, that's my hair falling out even more, am I getting more of a double chin? That's not the way to do it.

Don't look at a mirror instead. Practice on video these days. Just pull out a cell phone, talk to your own cell phone, talk to a webcam and watch yourself afterwards figure out what do you like, what do you not like? Now, ideally, you could practice on another human being have a friend a family member. Their part isn't that important. It's just someone to talk to and they can hold your cell phone or a video camera in front of you to monitor how you're doing it.

Here's what you want to look for. When you're asking someone for money, you do not want to have doubt in your voice. You don't want to make it sound like I think we could use this money. Or maybe it's a good idea if you donate it. Now, you don't want to be pushy or obnoxious or arrogant. But you want to speak with authority and conviction.

If there's the slightest little bit of doubt in your voice, that this is a worthwhile cause or that the money will be spent in the right place, you're finished, you're not going to raise any money. Now, if you're a little bit nervous, that's okay. That's understandable. It is unpleasant to ask people for money. But you can't act like you're nervous because you're uncertain of the worthiness or the goals or yourself. Remember, you're not asking for a handout for yourself.

You're not telling somebody I'm starving. I'm hungry. I need it. You're doing this to help other people. You're doing To help other hungry people or other charities or political causes that you believe in to make the world a better place. So, in some sense that makes it much easier than trying to raise money for yourself or for your own business venture.

You're trying to do this to help other people to help society. So you need to practice and you need to practice on video. And you've got to watch it. And here's what I recommend. Get a pad, get a pen, watch that video and write down everything you like, about how you're coming across. And everything you don't like.

Judge every aspect of style and substance. Because if you see yourself fidgeting with your ring the entire time and you look nervous. That could work against you. You don't want the person you're asking money from the think why is this person nervous? Are they upset about something they seem fidgety? Are they gonna steal the money and go use it on drugs, you don't want them thinking about any of those things.

You want them focused on you and perceiving you as highly credible and highly confident. Now, if you're all nervous about asking people for money, the video practice is the perfect thing. Because if you keep practicing, and you keep watching your video, at some point, you'll get to the point where you like it. You think, Wow, this person is coming across confident, relaxed, comfortable, if I can do as well as this person, I'll be fine. If you practice to the point on video where you like what you see, guess what, it actually becomes impossible to get nervous when you're in front of a real person asking for money because what makes you nervous, is not knowing how you come across is not knowing what you're doing with your hands or your tongue in your mouth or anything like that. What makes us nervous is fear of the unknown.

Thanks to the power of video, nothing has to be unknown, you can know exactly how you're coming across. You'll know if you're speaking too quickly or too softly or too high pitch, you'll know all of that. And you'll be able to adjust before you go to that face to face meeting, or before you pick up the phone and call. So I beg you, this is a critically important step in the whole process. If you want to be a great fundraiser, and you really want to go into every single pitch with ultimate confidence. You need to rehearse on video, and it doesn't take long, you can simply pull out your cell phone, talk to it for a minute, listen to it for a minute, total amount time.

Two minutes, you have two minutes to refine your pitch and to really hone it and get it great. So please That's your homework right now. Practice your pitch, recorded on video. Write down what you like. Write down what you don't like. Do it again and again and again, until the delt likes have disappeared and what you like is now along this, do that, and you will be supremely confident before every fundraising pitch