“Coaching from Keith and his team lays fundamental groundwork for personal and professional development. As an entrepreneur, Red Mountain Theatre Company coached me on critical aspects like stage presence, pitch delivery, and captivating my audience. Personally, they helped me build confidence, become conscious of body language, and maximize presence. I HIGHLY recommend any entrepreneur to Red Mountain Theatre Company and cannot express the value of their coaching.” Will Bryant – Quantalytix,

 

 

The Challenge

 

How many times have endured a top-flight CEO delivering a painfully boring speech? How often do you watch an audience’s attention slowly slide to their phones (as if we cannot see that device under the table)? How many times have you suffered death by Powerpoint? How many times have you been present for a pitch that was so bad you had no idea what the entrepreneurs even wanted you to invest in? How often have you seen brilliant ideas that should have garnered a flurry of investors fall short? Or even worse, how many times have you watched a totally slick presentation of a terrible idea get funded? The corporate world and the world of budding entrepreneurs need some coaching, coaching in the art of theatre.

 

The Opportunity

 

Great athletes and artists such as Tom Brady, Serena Williams, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Celine Dion have two things in common: innate talent and great coaching, especially early in their careers. While talent is innate, coaching is not. In fact, that coaching was critical to fully realize their potential.
Great business entrepreneurs need coaching, especially early in their careers, yet too often the investment in presentation skills is not made until the executive and business are established. This model is backwards – early career coaching can take a brilliant idea and add to it brilliant presentation skills. Presentation skills taught through the medium of theatre and taught by Red Mountain Theatre Company, a first-class regional theatre in Birmingham, Alabama. The theatre is a world of managing constant authentic critique. We help entrepreneurs take criticism; criticism to both the individual and the team, forcing constant adjustments that focus on collective betterment. In the theatrical world, we learn that to succeed, both as an ensemble or an individual, we do so working toward a fixed deadline, we do not get to move the opening night. We manage stress and stage fright and last-minute changes and never let them see us sweat. If our story is not compelling, if the focus is off, the actors don’t know their lines or are misdirected, the lighting wrong, the sound bad, the costumes out of context ……then our show fails, the investment potential is never realized, and the show closes. However, when its right, like Broadway’s current smash hit Hamilton, we soar, we capture attention, we return on investment. RMTC makes your business team the success of the business world the same way a team of coaches made Hamilton the success of the Broadway world.

 

The solution

 

Through regularly scheduled individual coaching, our team will work with select entrepreneurial teams on all aspects of presentation. The first, and most critical, is storytelling. Every great story has an arc. Business stories are no different. A good story has a beginning, middle and an end. It has a clear protagonist and antagonist, a climax, it creates anticipation, it answers a burning question. A good story has the audience on the edge of their seats.
Our coaching focuses on helping entrepreneurs become great storytellers. We offer live assessment and critique on the entire presentation. We begin in the center of passion, creating the story around the idea. Then as we advance, our coaching services include – scripting the pitch, physical presence and body language, confidence and stage presence, casting the best talking heads, candor in costuming (i.e. how to dress for success and to meet your audience where they are), venue assessment, visual package enhancement (i.e., power point, video, etc), and inherent pitch adjustment to manage success in all settings.
Business model

 

Our fee structure ranges from $250 to $500 per hour depending on the client and the services we are providing. We recommend starting with five hours of coaching within a weeks’ time frame. After these initial hours of coaching are completed, a strategic individualized plan will be derived and mutually agreed upon. Recognizing that some companies (especially start-ups) may lack the funds to cover the full cost at the outset of the coaching, we also offer payment options spread over time.

 

About Red Mountain Theatre Company and Keith Cromwell, Executive Director

 

Keith Cromwell came to Birmingham and Red Mountain Theatre Company (RMTC) in late 2003. The organization had gone through a difficult down turn after the death of the founder and was near closing several times. The budget at that time was approximately $500,000. Today, in 2019, the budget eclipses 3.5 million an astonishing growth of over 600%. This growth was inspired by great storytelling and relationship building.
“Keith and the RMTC team played a vital role in helping us hone our investor pitch which ultimately led to a successful capital raise. They are an incredible asset for business executives looking to take their presentation skills to the next level.” Drew Honeycutt – Planet Fundraiser

 

 

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