At my first Surge breakfast I ran a stopwatch under the table. Eight of us gave weekly pitches. Seven opened with our name, our business name and how many years we'd been open, and I was one of the seven. That's about ten seconds each, spent on facts already printed on our Surge profiles.
I make short-form video for 14 local businesses, and my whole job is the first three seconds. That's how long a video gets before the thumb moves. A breakfast room works the same way, except nobody can scroll, so they look at their eggs.
Here's the structure I use now, and the one I've been handing to anyone in the chapter who asks.
The structure
Five parts, in this order:
- A hook. One sentence from inside a real moment this week. Not your name. Start where the story gets interesting.
- The story. What happened, with one or two specific details: a town, a number, a time of day. Details are what people repeat to their spouse that night.
- One ask. Describe one person or situation, ideally in the words that person would say out loud. "Anyone who needs marketing" gives the room nobody to think of. "A restaurant owner who says 'I know, I know, we need to post more'" gives them somebody by lunch.
- A memory line. One sentence short enough to repeat at a cookout. If the room is going to quote one line from your minute, you should be the one who picks it.
- The same closing line every week. Name, business, and a line that never changes. Repetition is how a room of busy people learns who you are. Mine is "I'm Maya, Fieldnote Social. Somebody has to explain TikTok."
The timing, in seconds
Sixty seconds is roughly 150 spoken words. Write 130. You'll talk slower standing up than you do rehearsing in the car, and if the room laughs you lose three seconds waiting for it.
| Seconds | Part | Words |
|---|---|---|
| 0-5 | Hook | 10-15 |
| 5-30 | Story | 55-65 |
| 30-45 | Ask | 30-35 |
| 45-52 | Memory line | 10-12 |
| 52-60 | Closing line | 12-15 |
The story gets the most time because it makes the ask believable. If you run long, cut from the story. Never cut the ask to save the story.
Read it out loud once with a timer. If you hit 60 seconds in the middle of your ask, the cuts belong somewhere above it.
What to cut
When I edit a client's video, the first thing I delete is usually the first sentence, because it's the person warming up. Pitches have the same problem. Cut these:
- "Good morning, for those who don't know me." By week two, everyone knows you.
- Your business description. "We're a full-service, family-owned..." is on your profile, and nobody refers a list of services. Pick one service and tell a story about it.
- Years in business, unless the number is the story.
- Your phone number and website read out loud. Nobody writes them down. They look you up in the app.
- "I'll be quick." Just be quick.
- Any ask that starts with "anyone who."
- The second story. You have time for one.
Change it every week
The pitch that lands in week one bores the room by week four. I post for clients from a content calendar so I never stare at a blank caption, and the same trick works here. Rotate through eight themes, then start over. The closing line stays; everything above it changes.
| Week | Theme | Prompt |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | This week's job | What happened on a job this week that a customer would tell a friend about? |
| 2 | The mistake | What do people get wrong before they call you? |
| 3 | One number | What number from your business surprises people? |
| 4 | Thank a member | Which 1:1 or referral from someone in this room turned into something? |
| 5 | The question you always get | What do people ask you most, and what's the two-sentence answer? |
| 6 | Seasonal | What changes for your customers in the next 30 days? |
| 7 | Behind the scenes | What do you do that customers never see? |
| 8 | The strange call | What's the oddest request you took, and what did you do? |
Week 4 does two jobs at once: it thanks someone in public and it shows the room that the group works.
During the week, keep a note on your phone. When something happens that makes you think "nobody would believe this," write one line. That's next week's hook. The dog lodge I shoot for gets more views from a seven-second clip of a basset hound meeting the splash pad than from any tour of the building. Your pitch works the same way. One small real moment beats the tour.
Three pitches, word for word
Three people in our chapter let me draft pitches for their businesses after our 1:1s. Each paragraph below is one part of the structure. Read them out loud and time them. They land between 50 and 60 seconds.
Tess Villanueva, Kalinga Home Care (week 1: this week's job)
Last Tuesday at 4 p.m., a woman called me from the hallway of a rehab center in Dublin.
Her dad is 84 and just had a hip replaced. They were discharging him at 10 the next morning. She lives in Cincinnati, and nobody had told her he couldn't be alone for the first two weeks. By 9 a.m. we had a caregiver in his kitchen making oatmeal, and I did his nursing visit that afternoon.
Here's who I want to meet: someone who says "Mom comes home from rehab Friday," or "Dad's getting discharged and I live two hours away." Give them my number that day. Families usually get a day's notice, sometimes less.
Discharge day is the worst day to start looking.
I'm Tess, Kalinga Home Care. Twenty years a nurse, and I still answer my own phone.
Roy Castañeda, Castañeda Excavating (week 2: the mistake)
Most people with a wet yard make the same mistake: they wait for it to dry out.
A man west of Plain City waited two springs. His yard sits lower than both neighbors', and after every big rain, water stood against his basement wall for three days. Last week my crew cut a swale, laid 140 feet of French drain and regraded the yard. Monday it rained an inch and a half. At 6 the next morning he sent me a video of dry grass.
My ask: listen for somebody who says "the backyard floods every spring" or "that corner of the field never dries out." New houses and old farms, both.
If it holds water after a rain, it's a Roy problem.
I'm Roy Castañeda, Castañeda Excavating. First one on the lot, last one off.
Gene Holtz, Holtz Farm & Home Insurance (week 6: seasonal)
Four horses, a skid steer, a horse trailer and a pole barn full of hay, all on a homeowners policy.
I found that Monday at a policy review near Unionville Center. The couple moved out there in 2013 with two horses and a garden. It grew into a small farm, and nobody told the insurance company. If a storm took that barn, most of what was inside wasn't covered. We fixed it in an afternoon, three weeks into storm season.
My ask: if you know somebody on five acres or more with animals or equipment, ask them one question before the next thunderstorm. "Is your barn on your homeowners policy?" If they say "I think so," that's my call.
A homeowners policy doesn't know you bought a skid steer.
I'm Gene Holtz, Holtz Farm & Home. I still drive to every claim myself.
None of the three explains what the company does, and it doesn't matter. By the time each one gets to the ask, you already know.
Before your next breakfast
Write yours out using this week's theme. Record it as a voice memo and play it back. Delete the first sentence, because it's almost always throat-clearing. Then check the ask: could someone in the room name a real person who fits it before they finish their coffee? If not, make it more specific and record it again.
