You cannot possibly tell your entire business story in such a short time, but that is not objective. The objective is to break it down to its most essential elements, and get them to ask for more.

Several years ago I went to a high school reunion (never mind which one!) and saw a friend that I hadn't seen since graduation. I asked him what he did for a living. He said "I fix bones!" (It was pretty noisy and I thought he said, "I fix phones", but that's another story.) That grabbed my interest, so I asked him to tell me exactly what that meant and he explained that he was an orthopedic surgeon, he had his own practice, was chief of orthopedic surgery at a major local hospital, and that he specialized in foot disorders. Ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom! He grabbed me with "elevator speech" (in this case, just three words) and then, once he had my interest, took more time to tell me details. Perfect!

Work on your elevator speech. Practice it out loud when you are alone; it will get better more times you say it. Then, when those big potential customers come along, you'll be ready to hook 'em and reel 'em in!

What's my elevator speech? I thought you'd never ask...

"I help people make more money and have more fun with their small or home based businesses."

Dave Balch generated over $5 million from his home-based business. He is now a professional speaker, consultant, and author of "Big Bucks in a Bathrobe", available 2001. Visit http://www.TheStayAtHomeCEO.com. Comments and/or questions are always welcome at 1-800-366-2347 or mailto:Dave@DaveBalch.com.

Trademark your name.

Make sure that you follow proper procedures and acquire name and copyright of your web business.

Once you own rights, you can have them on file and this will save you time and trouble if someone happens to try and say they had name first.

Also if you go to get a Trademark for your business or product name you can do a search and find out if name has already been taken.

This is somewhat like doing a domain name search before you can register your URL name. However as you may know, domains in themselves really have no legal rights at all. A domain is just an address... it's when you have a trade marked name within a domain name that gives you rights.

Remember that you have worked hard to build a profitable business on Internet and you should protect it at all levels.