Mr. Asher Epstein: The Perfect Pitch

Mr. Asher Epstein “eats, sleeps and breathes” business, as he admitted Thursday afternoon when I interviewed him in his Dingman office. It’s not hard to see why: since 2004, Mr. Epstein has been the managing director of the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. But even before then, he worked in business, starting his career by being a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies and even starting up in own enterprise, SilentFrog, in 2001. I chose to interview Mr. Epstein because he clearly had a lot of experience in entrepreneurship, especially since he leads several different lectures on it at Smith.

            Mr. Epstein reminded me that business and communication are inextricable. As I was asking him questions, I began to notice that while he was offering me specific answers, the general gist of his responses all tied back to communication. Even background questions like why he majored in history and English as an undergrad (when he knew since he was around 8 he was fascinated by business) revealed this. He simply said history and English, with all the required essays and critical analyses, teach you how to communicate your ideas. The most important question I asked was whether or not he made any communication errors before, earlier in his career. I expected him to launch into anecdotes about mortifying communication blunders but what he said instead was a concise summary of his entire interview: “communication challenges are everyday, all day.” He explained that communication is so challenging because we rely on it every single day. When I asked him about how he would define a business pitch he said, “the pitching is telling your story, sharing your excitement,” but he added on that every individual is always pitching. Everybody is pitching everyday. You’re not always selling a product or an idea, but you’re always presenting yourself. He used the example of a businessman and an English professor to illustrate this concept. If the businessman isn’t aware of his environment and the background his audience, the English professor, is from, he will be unsuccessful. He’ll use business jargon and it will create semantic (and perhaps cultural) noise that will clog effective communication. But if he knows whom he is talking to, he’ll be able to shape his communication accordingly to avoid noise and therefore be successful.

Mr. Epstein’s message throughout the entire interview was to always be aware that you are always communicating yourself, and he is obviously very good at what he does because his responses were clear, thoughtful and he avoided any inarticulates. His body language was equally as positive: his gestics were purposeful, as were his ocalics because he maintained eye contact, and he was very aware of his paravocalics, for he adjusted his tone and pitch appropriately to react to what I way saying. I unfortunately was less elegant: after re-listening to my recorded interview, I found that I responded to a lot of his insightful phrases with meaningless phrases like “that was interesting.” What’s worse is I sometimes started a question with “uh…” and fidgeted in my seat to the point where I could hear my movements on the recording. I was indicating through my body language and inarticulate squeaks that I wasn’t confident. But then again, who wouldn’t be at least a little intimidated by a man who has increased revenue streams of start-up companies by 10 fold? Mr. Epstein is a clearly successful man and it wasn’t hard to see why after he conducted the interview with such poise and with such efficient and effective communication skills.