Oren Klaff - Pitch Anything

Full transcript: Oren Klaff on London Real

9:18 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Mr Oren Klaff, who is an investment banker, a keynote speaker and author of Pitch Anything, an innovative method for presenting, persuading, and winning the deal. You study neuroeconomics, which combines neuroscience, economics, and psychology to determine how people make decisions. Oren, I’ve watched you a ton online, and heard a lot about you.

9:42 Welcome to London Real. Thank you for the invitation, and we’re actually here in London, which is awesome. I live in San Diego and Southern California, work in Los Angeles, but we’re in London, and we got the invitation and this is awesome. Yeah, I’m so glad you’re here. And I’m from San Diego.

9:57 That’s a thing I think I grew up, like, literally probably 10 miles away from where you live, which is crazy. You know, it was Del Mar Torrey Pines high school, and you know, you remind me a bit of Southern California. You know, everything’s a little different over here, much colder usually. And yeah, it’s London. You know, so, you know, I was I was researching everything that you do, and you have so many interesting messages, and I want to get through all of them.

10:22 You know, you you talk about, you know, many things: the difference between selling and pitching. You talk about the crocodile brain. You talk about when you’re talking to someone, you being the prize, and how the customer is not King, and when I was I was listening to a bunch of your things, I was flashed back to one of our first episodes on London Real, and we had a guy in here that was a pickup artist, and it was our one of our most watched and most hated episodes.

10:47 Neil, this was actually Nick Krauser. It wasn’t Neil Strauss. Neil’s supposed to be here, I think, when he ever gets to London. But this guy was a guy that’s in London, and he practices something called Day game, which is where you go out in the middle of the street in the middle of the day, and he actually took me and my co-host, and we went out to Oxford Street, not far from your hotel, and we went out to try to talk to women on the street and get them to go on a date with, you.

11:12 So for sure, Pitch Anything is Day game for business. The issue is you can’t go on hybridge and try it a 100 times. You have two, three clients, right? And you’re sort of limited in your times at bat, and you have to be a lot better. And a lot of people say, hey, there’s these parallels between Pitch Anything and game right?

11:33 Walk in the boardroom wearing a feather hat and lizard boots and moon boots, right, and smoking a corn on the cob pipe or whatever, you know, peacocking. They’ll call security and throw you out. This is real business: small number times a bat. Yeah, there parallels. There are parallels, and I mean, the Day game is a little different than the night game is that you and that you can’t be wearing the feathers, and that the crocodile brain is very strong with Day game, cuz a girl will use usually probably make a decision on you, probably before you even open your mouth, which has a lot of things that you talk about, like you know, with the crocodile brain and stuff.

12:05 But fair enough, I guess that’s not first time you heard that, but you know use a lot of the same terms I use, you, frame control, low status supplication, which are most things that guys don’t even think and know that they do, especially when it comes around a high value woman, which translates to high-value client. So to, yeah, so to orient you, and I think, easy, there’s this a show called The Pitch. I don’t know if you saw it. It’s on national television in the US, and it’s ad agency competing for a big client, like to get, you know, Hilton brand’s new hotel opening.

12:35 So, have two ad agencies competing. These are pitch professionals, and they walk in, and they don’t even know what low status is. They say, hey Hilton, thank you so much for allowing us to put together this pitch for you. We think you’re going to love it okay, we worked really hard for free for over a week to put together this great presentation. If you pick us, we will bend over backwards to make you happy.

13:02 The client’s always right. We’re going to do the most amazing job for you and we really hope that you, we, get your vote today to win the contest. This is the lowest status position you can possibly take. And that’s what the professionals are doing. That’s what professionals, that’s what the professionals are doing.

13:19 You know, we meet, you know, with ad agencies all the time. They know how to advertise, but they don’t know how to pitch, and so this is, this is the problem, is companies have good products. They have, they’re proud of their products. They just take the low status position when going in and pitching to a client because they want to be nice. Okay, where should we start?

13:40 Should we start between the difference between pitching and selling, or do you want to start with the crocodile pre you know, how do we get people the essence of what you’re talking about, the quickest way, right? So some people don’t like the word pitch, right? And so, but I think there is a distinction between pitching and selling is something you know, you sell copy or paper. You go into the client, they buy copy or paper all the time, right? They’re going to buy from you at some point.

14:04 They may say, hey, we don’t need it this month. Come back next month. You know, if you have some more of that 30 bond paper, you know, we’ll take another look at it. If you can get the pricing down. That’s kind of selling, where you have a relationship, kind of a repeating transaction in some way.

14:16 Yeah, pitching is when you go in is one bite at the apple, one shot, one kill, lick the bullet, pull the trigger. It needs to find a home, right? Right. When you go to Bank of America for a $100 million loan to build a project, right? You pitch them your project, your financials, your background, all of that, and then they say yes or no.

14:38 If they say no, they say get out and don’t come back. You pitch them, they said no. If you come back again, they go, what are you doing here? We already said no. You go, we revise it a little bit no, we took a pass, right?

14:50 And so pitching is when you do a lot of work to go in, get the meeting. You know, some the meetings I go to, sometimes takes 6 months to get. We might spend $50,000 preparing for it. We walk in the door, and as you said, in 5 minutes they have a good sense of whether they want to buy it. In 10 minutes they’ve got, you know, past the 50% judgment mark.

15:13 Within 20 minutes they know. So that’s a pitch. It’s high stakes, takes a lot of preparation. It’s a, it’s binary. It’s yes or no, and you leave there, you know, sort of conqueror or or conquered.

15:28 Okay. And so high stakes, I think I is really what distinguishes a pitch. Okay, okay, understood. And can you talk to us a little bit about how breaking down a human being into the crocodile brain applies to that whole pitching thing? And I’d love it if you could just talk about the brain a bit, because it’s actually something that some of the pickup guys talk about, but I don’t think it’s used much in a normal mainstream, even philosophy.

15:54 Yeah, so if you could just break it down for us, let me walk you through my interest in the. I’m a investment banker. I work in finance. I’m not a biologist. I don’t do organic chemistry my interest in the brain is limited to the degree that I can make money by understanding it better, right?

16:10 I’ve never heard of anyone in finance going to the brain, right? There’s some guys who do it. So I was going in and giving a pitch, and it was working on some days and not working on other days. Same me, same pitch, failure, success, and it was very high degree of people love it, they love me, we love the project, we’re in, take our money. And other people, we hate you, we hate to pitch, get out, never come back, right?

16:35 Lose our number, right? So why the same pitch, the same person, on different days, works on some people not on others? So I hired a cognitive psychologist, and I said, what is going on here? He says you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the brain works. I’m like, no, I understand psychology and the mind.

16:52 And he’s like, no, the how the brain works, not the mind, the brain. So the brain is composed of three people pieces. You have the neocortex, that’s what we’re familiar with, that is the smart, linguistic, problem-solving, mathematical when you are trying to think. Should I make a coffee? Should I go out for coffee?

17:09 Should I call this phone number? Should I pitch this deal? Should I do this job? Should I stay at home today? Should I go vacation?

17:15 That’s all the neocortex is, that all in the, is that frontal or whatever? Yeah that’s the majority of the brain, but it’s very, very high energy consumption. It’s the last part of the brain to get information. Okay. Below that is the midbrain, and the midbrain processes social situations, and below that is the crocodile brain, and the crocodile brain thinks very simply, right?

17:39 So you got the neocortex, the midbrain, and the crocodile brain. So I come in to your company, and I’m selling a new kind of ball bearing technology, and I say, hey Brian, I want to tell you all about this new intellectual property developed. You can save money, and you can buy ball bearings from us, and we’re the best manufacturer and your equipment will last longer, you won’t break down in the field. 300 mil for anything, and this information I think is going from my neocortex to yours, right?

18:06 Like fax machines transferring information, right? You know, Class Three protocol fax machines talking to each other. That’s not how it works. The information comes out of my mouth, my brain, and it goes up through your crocodile brain, and your crocodile brain is much more simple. It thinks, huh, here’s a person confronting me, should I eat it, should I kill it, should I mate with it first?

18:32 Right? Yeah, right. One of those three. We all felt, we meet somebody, we go, or run. Is that one of them?

18:38 Two, okay. Well, it’s kill, kill. Okay, kill, run, kill, run, eat or mate. Should I eat it? Should I mate with it?

18:45 Should I kill it? You used to say f*** it, but okay, that’s right. So, beyond that, the crocodile brain then filters dramatically your messaging, because it doesn’t want to give information to the neocortex that it can solve on a survival basis. There’s way too much information swirling around us to pass up to the neocortex. We would just completely, you couldn’t process it, right?

19:15 In fact, and this is the fun brain stuff, the stuff around you, you don’t even… are not processing. So the picture on the wall, the cameras, the lights, the floor, you don’t even notice that it comes out of your memory, cuz your brain would not be able to process all. So, so crocodile brain wants things fast. It wants things summarized. It wants things high contrast, very binary: safe, not safe, good, evil, fun, not fun, hot, not hot, cold, hot, high contrast, fast, information, visual, in a narrative format.

19:49 If you don’t give the information to the other person fast, visual, narrative format, high contrast, right, then what the crocodile brain just brain does, it just filters out and ignores the other thing if it’s not novel. So the neocortex has an instruction set that it gives to the crocodile brain. It says if I have already solved this problem, don’t give it to me again. Just deal with it the same way you did the last time. Deal with the last.

20:18 Right? Okay. So if your presentation, your pitch, your mannerisms, who you are, seems overly familiar, the crocodile brain says, I don’t. We don’t have to deal with this. Set it to the side.

20:31 I’m not going to send up the neocortex to solve this. It’s not novel, and it’s not dangerous, and I’m going to ignore it, right? Because, and in the final analysis, the brain is a cognitive miser. It uses a huge amount of energy to solve problems. Give you a quick example.

20:49 So you’re driving to work. Everybody knows this example. You can get to work, cup of coffee on a cell phone, and you know, 20-minute drive not even remember how you got there, and I know it happens to me. You just do it on autopilot, right? And so, but you’re driving to work, you come to a detour.

21:05 It’s like, that Tom Hanks movie, Bonfire of the Vanities. Right. Right. Right. You’re Tak you’re off an exit ramp, you’re in an area you’re not familiar with, all a sudden creates a huge amount of processing requirements in the brain, and it’s exhausting.

21:20 So what the crocodile brain is tries to filter out information that’s not new and not dangerous. So if you’re not new and you’re not dangerous, you get ignored. Gotcha. Then everything you’re saying is to get up to the midbrain, and the midbrain, we started talking about status, understands relationships, social relationships. Is this a cop?

21:42 Is this a boss? Is this my little sister that I can tell her what to do? Is this a person of authority? Is this somebody who has control over me? It’s just simply a bin.

21:51 It’s just a value. Isn’t it really, it’s, is it really just a linear thing? Cop is above me, little kid is below me, peer is at me. So pretty girl is above me, ugly girl is below me. So when the President of the United States comes in with his staff and Secret Service and says, sorry to show up, suddenly we need the building, and your home and your wife and your girlfriend and your dog and your car, get the f*** out.

22:15 You’re like, yes, sir, right, and you hi-tail it. Right, right. When some guy comes in off the street, right, and you never seen him before, you don’t know who he is. The UPS guy comes in, he says, Oren, get out of your house, house, I want to use your car. U, you know, leave for a couple days, I’m going to live here.

22:32 You say, whoa, I’m calling the cops. Low status, high status, a high contrast. Right? So, so you got to give the information fast, novel, in a narrative format. Then you have to do it from the high social status position so people pay attention.

22:46 That’s the next filter. So it could be novel and have a narrative and everything, but if it’s coming from the three-year-old, I think, the cop and the three-year-old’s a great way, cuz the cop, you’re going to be like, yes, sir, yes, sir, and the three-year-old, you’re going to be like, would you ever supplicate to a three-year-old? You’re always going to be like, go away. So now, right, right, so now we tied it in. In the beginning, where you come in, and you may have a great value proposition, a great pitch, a great product, but when you say, thank you for allowing me to fly from San Diego to London to come and prepare for a week to come tell you about our product, and we hope that you choose us, right?

23:19 And if you do choose us, we’ll, and by the way, we have some great discounts to show you, right? We have some great discount program, and you know, the price is negotiable. We’re really easy to work with, we, you know, your first order, we’ll bend over backwards just to get you. This the low status position, right? And makes humans cringe.

23:36 On top of that, not only do you not listen, you are repelled from it. Aren’t you? That’s right, because I think socially we know that if we hang out with those lower status monkeys, then we’re going to go down the tubes with them anyways, right? That’s a whole… well, I hadn’t thought about that, but that’s a great point. I’m not a biologist, or a sociobiologist.

23:53 So E.O. Wilson is a guy who’s an expert at this stuff, but the way we think about it is neediness, right? Okay. So if you think about back to ancient times, if I come up to you and I’m needy, you don’t want to be associated with me, cuz that’s weakness, right? I need your help, or so you have one woman, two pieces of meat, and one cave.

24:20 If I need anything from you, you have such scarce resources, you have nothing to give me, so I become your enemy, right? And you want me to go away. That’s why neediness is repulsive, because it comes from a time when we didn’t have abundance. We had such a scarcity of resources that neediness scares us. So the low social position, coming through neediness, causes the crocodile brain the midbrain just to go insane and be scared, and you never.

24:51 So what, so what? You never get the information about your company, your product, your service, your idea, your startup, whatever it is, to the neocortex. It just isn’t past the information to even assess, and you feel it. You know when people aren’t listening to you. Right, right, and there’s ways to deal with that.

25:11 We’ve all been in the meeting where somebody’s playing on his mobile phone, even though you have the solution to all of his problems, and it’s all in the graphs, and the guy is really thinking about, you know, the date he’s going to go on later that night. You know, the crocodile things. Right? So you talk about the construct, your pitch, to get past the crocodile part, then have a belief in yourself and know your status to get past the midbrain part. So the, one of the tools that we’ve developed, as we call, and we share this name with other people, is prizing.

25:40 So this is important. Okay. There’s a fundamental misunderstanding with most people who are going to raise money, talk to private equity, venture capital, banks that lend, people go to sell joint ventures or big deals where there’s sort of an imbalance, you know, small guy salesman to a company, startup to a venture capitalist, company to a private equity group, where there’s just really an imbalance. These guys have a lot of money and we need it, whether it’s in a purchase order or investment.

26:12 Right? And so they view the money as a prize to be won. I come in here, I give my pitch, I do the best job possible, give, might even call the dog and pony show, right? And I perform for King who can grant me the prize that I’m looking for, of money. Right, right.

26:33 And so this is, organizing it that way is the low status position. Low status pitching from the low status position means that people aren’t paying attention to you, right? And I mean, tattoo this on your arm if you care about this stuff. Attention equals convincing power. Okay.

26:55 Explain that. All right. So to the degree somebody’s paying attention to you, you can continue to give, deliver them logic and information, and build your case. So I believe if you would spend 3 hours with me and somebody forced you to listen, I could sell you anything, right? Okay.

27:17 And I’m making an investment with you. You’re making an investment, time and energy, right? But the problem is nobody on the other side, that the buyer, will not spend 3 hours paying attention. They have other stuff to do, and it’s beyond the span of human limits to pay attention for that long. So you’ve got about 20 minutes of real attention if you’re lucky, right?

27:39 So while somebody’s paying attention to you, you can be convincing. When they’re not paying attention to you have no convincing power. All the information, all the arguments, all the ideas, all the compelling rationale, all the narrative that I want to give you, right? Even no matter how great it is, if you’re not paying attention, falls on you know, deaf ears. And so you need somebody paying attention to you in order to be convincing.

28:08 Okay, right. So, so know that window. Yes, you got to know that window. So we were talking about prizing, fundamentally coming from the low status position, where you say, you guys have the money, right? You’re the, that’s the prize I’m trying to win, and I’m here to perform.

28:26 Thank you for this meeting, right? This call, this Skype call, or you know, this landing page. Thank you for your time. I’m going to perform for you, try and win the prize of your money. But who cares about the money.

28:37 Money is the most basic commodity the world over. It’s available anywhere. It’s in your own bank account. It’s in your family’s bank account. The bank can lend you some.

28:47 It’s in every ATM. It’s a more fundamental commodity than rice, oil, anything, you know. So money is a basic commodity. You shouldn’t try and win it, all right? The thing is to understand in your mind that you’re the prize.

29:04 Okay, let’s say you sell ball bearings. You’re the best ball bearing salesman. You understand how these things work. If they buy from you, you, you know this product better than anyone else. You’re going to help them be successful with it.

29:16 If they don’t buy it from you, they’re probably get an inferior product from China. They’re certainly not going to benefit from all your engineering background, right? You’re the prize that the customer has to win. Okay. So you get people to try to give this self-narrative TOS, cuz a lot of people don’t come at it that way.

29:34 Right. That this is, and we talked earlier about motivation, I’m… when you structure a pitch correctly, you don’t need to be motivated. You don’t need to be up. You don’t need to have high emotion. You don’t need to have willpower.

29:48 It’s just the structure that works. This is the only little thing of, you know, that touches on motivation is you have to understand your own self, your the value you bring the equation. If you’re raising money, capital can do nothing without companies to put it in. If they don’t put in your company, they’re going to put in some other crappy company. So, so companies that are honest, that have good products, that have good entrepreneurs, that have good management, that care about the environment and care about how they deploy technology and take their business seriously and are motivated, and that’s rare.

30:28 So if that’s you, you’re the prize. Money needs to seek you out. Right? And so let’s go back to talking about the human condition a little bit. So it’s hard for people.

30:38 Go, well, I don’t know. I go in to pitch a venture capitalist, right? And they’re like, hey, I have 20 minutes, tell me what you have, I have to bounce. Right, right. How, how do I get him seeking me?

30:48 And then I think, now I think we’ve arrived somewhere. People want what they can’t have. They chase that which moves away from them, and they only Val value that which they pay for. That’s built in to the human condition. This is in a world where everything’s free on the web.

31:04 Right, that’s right. Well, so, so now let’s go back to this meeting. Right, I come in and I say, thank you, Mr. Investor, for allowing me to give you this presentation. We hope you’re enamored with our company, and you decide to, uh, invest in us. Right?

31:22 So you’re breaking all the rules, right? You’re not moving away, you’re chasing him. Right? So, so people want what they can’t have, but they can have you. All they have to do is say, yeah, I like you, let’s do the investment.

31:35 So you’re making yourself available. Would you have me? You want me to do it backwards? How do you want it? Right, right, right.

31:42 Take me. Right? So you’re breaking that first rule. People want, people chase that which moves away from them, but you’re moving towards them, right? And they’re, you know, like a, like a, in a clothing shop, you know, you’re coming, you’re the salesman, or a car lot, so you’re coming at them, right?

31:59 So you’re breaking that rule: people chase that which moves away from them, and people only value that which they pay for. And you’re saying, you know, I I can give you free terms, we can lower the price, so so that’s the problem with not prizing. When you prize, you make people chase you. You make them pay. People in value, right?

32:19 And you make people, you give them a glimpse of something that they’re not allowed to have. So when you can build that into your presentation, now you have people wanting what you have, they’re chasing you, and they’re willing to pay. That’s the ideal condition. Okay. So the idea is, you structure your presentation before you go in, you practice it for weeks, and you make sure in that presentation you form those three things.

32:45 We’re not going into Chase. Well, you’re going to have to pay for this highly value-added service or product I have. And what’s the other one? Chase… oh, you, something you can’t have.

32:55 No, yeah, yeah, yeah. People want what they can’t have. So you, they, so what we’ll say is, we’ll give a presentation, and then at the end we’ll say, listen, Brian, as you can see, we have these Kevlar-coated ball bearings. They’re amazing, like we can’t make enough of them. We’re shipping them from the factory like crazy.

33:18 I barely had enough time to come here today to meet you. If you said to me, Oren, I’ll take 10 crates. Here’s a purchase order. I’d have to give it back to you and rip your check up. I can’t take an order from you right now.

33:33 I don’t know anything about you, right? We need to know what kind of customer you are, what your credit is, how much you order, what your reorder rate is, and frankly, I’m just trying to work with people who are good to work with, allow me to hold my margin, and are nice and fun, cuz we’re busy and we don’t have to choose shitty customers. Okay, right. I know you’re probably a great guy and probably amazing customer. I don’t know enough about you.

33:56 Why don’t you spend a few minutes in context of the ball bearings that we have and tell me about your business, okay, and how you are as a customer, okay, and let’s figure out if there’s some overlap between what your needs are and what we have, cuz we’re in the business of having it right now, and you’re in the business of wanting it, okay. That’s another way to turn it around. In other words, and if there’s a way to fix that, I’m here to do it today in the next 21 and a half minutes.

34:23 Okay. I like that. You know, Tim Ferriss talks about something he did with his 4-Hour Workweek book. He said he did an 80/20 analysis on his customers, the 80% that were giving him 20% of the returns. He basically went in and fired them, and the ones that wanted to stay went out of their way to stay, and the other ones just weren’t worth his time.

34:40 And it’s a, a very strange concept, especially for an American, to think the customer isn’t always right. And you talk about that, the customer not being King. Well, get, get a shitty customer, right? We’ve all had shitty customers. Enjoy.

34:53 So, so it’s true. I’m sorry, sounds very exciting. You guys are a big company, we’re a small company. It would be awesome, but I just like maybe you’ll drop a huge order on us that we can’t even fulfill. I don’t know, right?

35:08 There’s a distinct possibility that we could leave here today without points of overlap and say, hail fellow well met, but we’re not right for each other. So even though you want the customer, you know they’re right for you, just the ability to put that wall, that you could walk away, that you could walk away, is… and you and so and the earlier you can do that, the better. I walk in a room, and I don’t recommend this, but I’ve been doing this for years.

35:35 Like, hey, [expletive] let me see. I’m going to kick off the island first, you know. And just, they’re not used to being talked to them. It’s a strong signal within 5 seconds of entering the room that I’m willing to leave it, right? But you know, so, forgot.

35:52 I work out with the Navy SEALs. I don’t know if you know Mark Divine, at SealFit in San Diego, runs the SealFit Navy SEAL training center. The guys are amazing. But the SEALs… so I work in their work out in their civilian section of the SEAL prep. They have a very good program.

36:09 They help guys who really want to be in the SEALs understand, like, the conditioning that they’re going to go through in the program. Very high success rate. So, but the one thing I learned from them, the limited amount, is that when the SEALs s see a threat they close distance, shut it down. So very early on in the meeting, if you hear people say, well, you know, we’re excited to meet you, but you know, you got to sharpen your pencil, you got to have a green eyes shade, you got to get the pricing right.

36:36 If pricing is your concern, call me a cab, cuz I’m out. That’s not what we do. All right. You’re, you’re a standup comedian. You’re putting down the threat of someone ruining your performance.

36:45 Yes. Okay, right away. You don’t say, well, you know, I’ll deal with that when we get to the pricing section. You have to. When you see that kind of threat, you close it.

36:54 You close distance on it and shut it down, cuz people, you know, they like to do that. You know, very early on, things like, oh, well, you know, we already have a big supplier, but we decided to spend a few minutes with you today. If you’re dedicated your supplier, call me a cab, I’m busy. We got customers ready to roll, right? Right.

37:11 Plus, in a meeting with five people, there’s always someone in there that wants to assert status. Probably that has nothing to do with you. Probably has something to do with the company, and you need to shut it down, whereas most people would just supplicate, supplicate, supplicate. I got to come in here, I got to be nice, I got to be even keel, the walk on. Sh, they’re afraid, they’re nice.

37:28 What is nice? Do I seem nice? Not really. I was nice earlier, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

37:36 You’re nice earlier, you’re still nice, you just opinionated. So all right. I pitch, I pitch all the time, and I’m always pitching different things: advertisers, deals, this, this, this, and that. And I’m just thinking, well, next time I go in, what are some of the basic things I should, I should think about? I know you talk about fast, novel, concrete, visual, high contrast, but like, to get me out of my own box, and I think I’m pretty good at this.

37:57 Like, what, what should I start thinking about? Should I think crocodile? What should I think? Yeah, I think in order to… here’s what I think you should, you should be thinking about eradicating neediness and begin finding ways to establish yourself as the prize. Okay, all right.

38:14 We’ll give you some tools to do that. Almost is a mental game with yourself. It’s like, if you could do the Spock Vulcan mind meld on yourself. I’m going to give you a way that you don’t have to work that hard in your brain. Okay, we’re going to go up to… we’re at sort of, so if we’re at feet levels, we’re at 100 ft, then there’s 1,000 ft, and then there’s 5,000 ft.

38:38 So the way, if you think about this mythology of Zuckerberg going to Sequoia or whoever it was, in his bathrobe? Yeah, okay. You heard that in flip flops? I’ve heard the story. Okay, everybody’s heard the story.

38:52 Need to be true, right? Yeah, it’s probably true. Why does a guy go to one of the most significant venture groups, you know, a guy who’s raising money needs $30 million in flip flops, in a bathrobe? I mean, it’s completely irreverent, even for Silicon Valley, right? Because he doesn’t need the money, and he’s got 17 other groups saying, we’ll give it to you at the terms you want.

39:21 So the way that you go into these meetings, saying, I’m limited on time, we’re very busy, we’re choosing our customers, I’m going to give you a 15, 20-minute pre-stop, telling me about your big company. We understand, you know, Kemx is a giant company. You’ve been around since the ’50s. You do amazing things, but for the next 15, 20 minutes, I’m going to tell you what we have. Then I’m going to give you some time to tell me about yourselves.

39:48 We’ll see if there’s points of overlap and ways we can get along, where we can let you have some of… we have, you guys can get some experience with the product. How’s that for an agenda? Good. Anybody need fluids in or out? If not, let’s roll.

40:01 So the reason you would say it that way because you have another 20 meetings to go to, and it’s true, right? That’s if it’s true. What if it’s not? What if it’s not true? So there’s work to be done on your pitch that goes to market, that brings in, right?

40:18 So there’s the in-person pitch that we’re talking about, but there’s also work to be done on your collateral or your outreach, so your INF funnel even if you’re a salesman or you’re raising money is bigger, and you can be bolder with the potential clients or investors that you have, because you’re not afraid to lose one, cuz you can pull another one out of your funnel. Okay. So the better your funnel is, the less needy you are, cuz you’re less afraid of losing a, you know, a client or or a buyer or an investor.

40:55 About constructing a really good, you know, PDF file or whatever that puts it out there and gets the most people interested. That’s right. So that’s why that pitch deck or the landing page is so important, and there’s better ways to do that, and we can talk about that. But the better the pitch deck is, the more call it, because my business is finance. The more investors come to the table, the more aggressive you can be with the investor when you have more of them at the table.

41:23 Okay, all right. Do any companies come to mind that do it right, do it wrong? I, I guess it’s a bit tricky if I’m talking about corporates, but do are there, besides that, the show The Pitch, are there glaring examples of people that do it wrong and people to do it right? So, so I mean, this, the reason I know about this is, investment banks are built to run a disciplined process, funnel process, for companies raising money or selling themselves. I’ll tell you, you know, 30 seconds.

41:51 We’ll come back to your question. What can you do, right? But this is what, this is why a investment bank lives and has a business. So you want to, uh, raise $20 million for the show, which you should, it’s an awesome show. Thank you.

42:06 Right? Put on TV, get on Bloomberg TV, get on Yahoo TV, 60 Minutes, a bigger studio, take over, boom. Right, right. Where did he come from? This Brian guy is amazing.

42:16 Like, he’s blowing up like I thought he would. It’s all good. All right, that Biggie Smalls, right? All right, so you want to raise $20 million? Yeah, right.

42:24 You’re going to have to sell a part of the company. Yeah, you go out to what you’ll do is you’ll go out and talk to a few investors that you know, and you’ll network, right? And a couple investors will show up, and then one guy will go, Brian, I love this show. It’s me and you forever. I love you.

42:45 We’re going to do this, $20 million, no problem. Here’s a term sheet. Let’s do this together. You’re like, f*** that was easy. Why do people say raising money is so hard?

42:56 Sign the term sheet. You, you either ignore all the other guys, investors you were talking to, or you tell them you found, you know, you entered a love affair with this investor and you’re going to go close with him. Then you start to, um, you do a, the letter of intent. You start flushing out terms. You get to a purchase and sale contract, and then the investor senses you have no other options and starts turning the screws.

43:28 Right? $20 million, the valuation to me has seen a little high, cuz I didn’t realize that you’re using, you only had five cameras. I thought you were a seven-camera studio, which is fine, but I just feel like the valuation is probably lower. Let called $30 million. So if it’s $30 million, then probably going to put in $15 million, make the term, and I’d like to have three board seats. Right?

43:49 So, supply and demand, turning the screw, supply and demand. So what an investment bank does, bunch of investors come in, good job, Ryan. You know, we added some. You found some. Everybody can invest $20 million, and then that same guy goes, hey, I’m ready to invest, and we say, sit the f*** down.

44:04 We’ll tell you when you’re ready to invest. Right now you’re just learning about the company. We season all those buyers until they’re seasoned, in the same amount then we announce it’s time to issue a letter of intent, and lots of guys will go, w, i, I can’t do it right now, or we need more time. Too bad, get out. Right?

44:26 And a few of them will say, okay, I’m willing to go forward, and we move that process forward. Right, right. Much more supply, ideally, ideally. And that’s what an investment bank does, ideally, when they’re not doing their other funny games. And, you know, so, but you can do that.

44:41 They tell you they’re doing right. As a client, if you hold that same discipline in your business, get enough people in, to when they, so when they start saying I want a discount, I want different kinds of terms, I want, I’m not ready to make a decision, you can say, get out, I’m not dealing with you. I’m working with people who are good to work with, who are easy to work with, who let me hold my margin, and who are on my timeline. Right? Okay.

45:07 So you want lots of options. Lots of options. You get to the closing table with limited options, you have to take the deal you’re offered. That makes sense. A better job early gives you options later.

45:17 Okay, okay, back to the pitch. Yeah, some basic things, basic things. So now let’s get down. So you, uh, you want to talk about a meeting, a phone call, a Skype, what’s this? Just talk about the in-person meeting.

45:30 That’s the one where you ultimately clinch the deal. I mean, I work in banking for 10 years, and I was an inter-dealer broker, and I always used to tell the young kids coming up, I’m like, you’re ultimately selling yourself. And I know that’s a trite line. It was probably written by some guy in the 1920s, but like, and they’re like, what are you talking about? It’s all about the liquidity we provide.

45:48 It’s all about this, this, and I’m like, that’s, it’s just not true. You have a long relationship with these guys. They want to know if you are a high-value guy, if you, you know, the guy they want to do business with, you can back up this, you can back up this. So you’re constantly selling yourself, and the pitch is all about one-on-one, making someone want to buy. Right, let’s do basics.

46:07 Okay, okay. People waste time with rapport. Okay, okay. Tony Robbins has indoctrinated, and Zig Ziglar and Tom Hopkins. You don’t like Tony Robbins, do you?

46:17 You guys are fine, you know. Wait, so he’s, he’s waiting Zig Ziglar and who? Zig Ziglar, Tom Hopkins, Tony Robbins. These are all sell artists, sell artists. You know, they’re from the ABC, always be closing era of selling, and Tony always says establish the rapport, establish rapport.

46:35 Right? Touch some guy on his shoulder. Trust me, you’re not going to give me $20 million cuz I touch him on the f***ing shoulder. All right. You just like being a contrarian, but that’s okay too.

46:47 So all right, you break rapport. Is what you do, which is what the pickup guys say to do as well as much as you don’t want to be compared to those guys. I have to go and do this stuff. Tony has the luxury of teaching it. True.

46:58 Yeah, I do this every day. I don’t talk. I go do these things, and then I come back and tell you what works. Forget about rapport. Oh your sister went to Northwestern.

47:11 My cousin went to Northwestern. Maybe they know each other? Did she play lacrosse? My midbrain is already being like, get the f*** out of my office. Yeah, right, right.

47:21 Looking, plain Jewish geography, right? finding, you know, common lacrosse, what Catholic schools do we go to? And, come, you like the Bears? I love the Bears oh, when are we ever going to get a quarterback of s*** time? Okay.

47:35 Be, why? Because what you’re trying to do is orient yourself to who’s in the meeting, what they think of you, what how they regard you, whether your jokes are being La, you know, you’re just trying to get some orientation in this meu of emotions and ideas and personalities and social positions. You got to build your status. Don’t seek to understand what status you have. That’s what rapport is okay, right?

48:04 It’s having enough of… so, so if I say, hey, you know, you guys watching football this season, and some guy goes, we’re not here to talk about football, let’s get the meeting started. Go, oh, I figured out where I am on the totem pole, right? Which is nowhere. That’s the big bear that shits in the woods. Right there.

48:21 Okay, right you get an understanding of status from rapport, right? Rather than understand in what status you have, build status up. Okay, talk about this in the book. Okay, how do you do that? There’s, well, there’s three sources of status, four, but three real sources: wealth, power, celebrity.

48:43 Interesting. You don’t have any of those. Okay, okay. Neither do I. I mean, I have some wealth I have some celebrity, I have some power, but in most of the meetings I go to, billionaires, $7 billion funds, you know, Mark Cuban, guys with $100 million, whatever, they’re like, who the f*** are you again?

49:05 Yeah. So all my celebrity, all my power. So what celebrity? Brad Pitt, you know, has celebrity. Yeah.

49:13 Warren Buffett, celebrity and wealth, right? the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, power. Understood. We’re not any of those guys. Forget about them.

49:23 So we have to build local, local status, local star power. All right. So we’re going to build our status from scratch. I have to do that every meeting. How do we do that?

49:35 The main tool is prizing ourselves, saying I’m the prize that you’re going to win. So, so let’s go back in time constraint. Very easy. Gentlemen, pleasure to meet you today. I’ve got about an hour.

49:51 Why don’t we get started? Okay, number two is profession. Prof al understanding, giving a sense to the guys listening that they’re in the hands of a professional that you have a narrative that you have an agenda, you have a time constraint, and you understand the process by which buyers buy. Okay, all right. Most people come in and they try and refine how sellers sell, but you, but buyers buy the same way.

50:19 I can give you the process that every buyer thinks about in his mind. It’s not how you think about selling your product. It’s how he thinks to evaluate it. So, time constraint, I got about an hour today. I’m going to break down our service, our idea, our deal, in about 20 minutes, then I’m going to give you some time to talk about yourselves.

50:44 Okay, these are some very simple things, right? Get in their brain, find out what, why they’re making their decision. Process, is that what you mean? Think about a buyer from a buyer’s point of view. From a buyer’s point of view.

50:54 Okay, so they go, whoa, I’m in the hands of a professional, right? I can relax and enjoy the show. Okay, so those are easy things. You can do the next thing you can do is have a prepared pitch that is not winging it, because the better, and here’s the better your pitch is the higher your status goes. Okay, right?

51:22 If you pay in the way that buyers wish they could pitch their own deal, they admire you. They go, f*** this guy’s amazing. We, we wish we had this guy doing this for us. We don’t, we can’t explain ourselves that well. Yeah, you’re just associating with a powerful monkey at that point.

51:40 It’s still very crocodile midbrain, like, this guy has his s*** together, we better listen. Yeah, right. So they go, and at the end of your pitch, if you have set a time constraint, set the agenda, told them to relax, you’re going, going to give a pitch, and give a pitch the way they wish they could pitch themselves, in a short period of time 12, 13, 14, 20 minutes at the most. Right? At the end of that pitch, no slides, no slides, mono mono, just mind, mind meld.

52:09 Okay, yep, no slides. Okay, just you in a narrative format, right? You need to tell them a story. the story, right? Information, cuz that’s what the monkey brains relate to.

52:22 If you need to give people information, send a FedEx package. Okay, okay. Do not fly somewhere, drive across town, walk to a different floor, give people information, right? You can email that to them. You don’t even need to.

52:37 They can get on the internet. They already got the information, right? Okay, they need a frame or a narrative to understand what you have. Quick example of a narrative and not a narrative? Sure, simple example, sure.

52:53 So we’re helping San Diego Airport raise a couple hundred million for expansion to another runway when we got there, right? They, it was a jumble of information, which was $200 million buys you another 8,000 ft runway that allows such and such kinds of aircraft to land, with an increased passenger capacity of 240,000 annually, to alleviate some of the pain, pressure on the regional air, security plan. Facts, facts. We got in there and we said, listen San Diego is, San Diego International Airport is the busiest single-runway airport in the world, and it switches with Gatwick back and forth.

53:47 It’s that busy, right? In 2014 it will be at 99% capacity in terms of air traffic. That traffic has to go, so the traffic that’s turned away from San Diego International has to go north to Palomar Airport or all the way to LAX. The, this is one of the most significant travel pain points in Southern California, and to the degree there isn’t an alleviation of this problem, the San Diego International will have to continue to turn away flights. Can’t you just build another runway?

54:23 Well, to the left you have the spotted three-eyed frog, which the environmentalists will never let you build a runway near, and on the right you have the Marine base, and try and get rid of them to build a runway. What’s your option? We have a pre-built runway 10 miles inland at Brownfield, 8,000 ft long, it’s got an FAA clearance, it needs to be revamped with some city funds. That’s a narrative. That’s a story.

54:48 That’s a story. Problem, solution, is that kind of a narrative? You know, it’s high stakes, it’s economics, it’s a problem you want to be careful about introducing the solution. Okay, cuz then you’ve told the whole story, and you don’t need to listen, the cat’s out of the bag. Okay, right?

55:03 So you don’t need to listen to the rest of the page. So information versus narrative. So let’s go back to what you can do. You can walk in, establish yourself as somebody who knows what they’re doing. The prize, you’ll be fortunate if you convince me to work with you as a customer.

55:20 What we have is very valuable. You give the pitch in a structured way, in less than 20 minutes, that covers everything the buyer needs to know in a narrative format. At the end, your status, you went from who is this guy to whoa, I love the value proposition, I love the return on investment, I love the ideas, I love the narrative format, I understand that, I wish we could tell our own story in that way. And then you go, as we said earlier, so you can see what we have, why we’re busy.

55:53 I think it’s a good chance for you to tell us about yourselves in context of the idea, service, product, company that we have. Okay, then they will begin to give their pitch to you. Now they’re pitching you now they’re going to try and explain themselves, cuz it’s like a dance-off. You’ve just done this, like, amazing, right? Dance and they’re like, and now it’s our chance to try and explain ourselves, and they will wing it, and they’ll do badly okay, cuz they’re going to try and construct a narrative story on the fly.

56:23 It’s not possible, and they’re not ready to pitch in their own meetings. They’re not ready to pitch. They’re there to listen, cuz 98% of the time they get people with that, with low value. I guess that’s right. They’re not ready for this at all, right?

56:36 And now they’re just discombobulated. your status is up here, right? Theirs is here, and they want to regain, because they’re the buyer. They have the money they, you know, they can issue you the purchase order. They can give you the investment.

56:47 They’re not used to being in the low status position that you just put them in. Okay, so what do they do? They want to regain it. Okay. who the f*** are you?

56:57 Right, we’re in the high status. Now you’ve given them the opportunity to regain the high status position, which is, tell me about Kem Co ball bearing extraordinaire. They’re going to try and tell their story in a narrative form that they don’t have, haven’t prepared, in order to regain status over you. Okay, which they probably fail at and then how they’re going to fail. They’re going to do miserable, and they’re going to go lower.

57:23 So now you’ve created that imbalance. Okay, right? Where you’re high status and they’re in the low status position, and that’s how you enter a meeting within 30 minutes of somebody not knowing about you, not caring about you, you’re not having power, celebrity, or wealth, gain the high status prize position and have control over the meeting, and at that point you have control over the meeting, and then what do you do? How do you close that meeting? Do you leave it?

57:52 You say, get back to me if you really want to get my tension? Or do you try to close? Or what, what do you do? There’s a, so you know, what I’ve given up to this point is pretty mechanical. You can just do it.

58:06 It’s structural. Okay, what I recommend is you look at this point. So, so once you’ve done this, you’re going to have them off balance. They’re going to have the low status position, and you’ve taken it away. You need to be a little bit generous.

58:24 They’re going to be very uncomfortable. Let them come back up a little bit. So now you can sort of be unstructured, just have conversation, give them features and benefits and sort of just let it go a little bit wild for a while. Right? Uh, and and let that meeting just, you explain features and benefits and use cases and ROI and value proposition about your product you know, whatever it is.

58:51 And they’re going to ask a bunch of questions for a few minutes, and then you need to get control over the meeting again. Now you want to start taking it away. Right? So guys, listen. And you do that by creating a very high contrast scenario.

59:08 I like to do three. Right? So guys, listen, what’s clear here is in terms of these ball bearings, right? We’re the high-tech, high-cost route. They last the longest, they work the best, they’re the most reliable.

59:24 We have customer service, right? But we’re just not the low cost. We don’t discount, and it’s right. I need to understand where you guys are in your philosophy around this product. Do you guys just want the cheapest ones from China?

59:39 When they fail, they fail, which is fine. It’s just not what we do, right? And I have some people you should talk to. Got some great manufacturers. Okay, you keep your value up.

59:49 Okay, if you like the sort of middle of the road ones, quality is spotty, pricing is middle, customer service sometimes there, sometimes not, but that’s good enough for you then tell me. I work with some guys. I have some friends in the industry, but if you have equipment that goes 300 miles out in the field and it has to stay uptime, you need ball bearings. Okay, I get you’re putting them up for the big sell. Yes.

1:00:15 So just tell me what kind of guys you are. You’re cheap asses, and you want the cheap stuff from China. You guys, I get it. So you want them to say, yes, I want the expensive stuff, and you try to close there. That’s right.

1:00:27 So, but, but I think from the high status position you can do that from the low status position, they tell you to get out. Who are you? Okay. Now, how many, how many meetings have you been thrown out of by, by coming in with this attitude? Is there always, is there always going to be a certain part of the bell curve that says, who the hell literally is this guy, get out of my office?

1:00:44 So one thing that happens is, because I have this approach, people think this is the attitude, and it’s unfortunate. It just happens to be me. But you can do all of this, soft-spoken, nice. It’s structural. I think you know this is all attitude.

1:01:02 Yeah, the attitude doesn’t have to be as bad as mine. I just, I work with venture capitalist and private equity guys who are mean to the companies I represent. So I’m mean back, right? Okay, and they can probably take it. They can take it, or probably enjoy you.

1:01:15 You don’t have to treat people like this, and sometimes the fewer options I have, the nicer I get. As you can imagine, you don’t have to be, sort of, come out of the gate this vindictive or acrimonious or aggressive. You can do this very nicely. So, uh, the ability, so, so to the degree you don’t do this, your deals or your sales will get worse. This is client, this is what client control is about.

1:01:45 Right? Right. If they’re not chasing you saying, when could I have it? I understand we’re not going to ask for a discount. You know, in sort of asking you questions about having it.

1:01:55 If you don’t get to that point, you don’t have client control, and you’re going to end up discounting. You’re going to end up submitting proposals. You’re going to end up doing all the things we sales people, or and you, you’ll lose the clients. In the, you’ll lose the client, or maybe you’ll get it, but it’s not good margin business, or it’s a hassle, or they know they have control over you. You don’t want any of that.

1:02:17 If you want, you know, rack rate price sheet pricing, you don’t want to drop your valuation. You want a firm timeline, you want commitments, and you don’t want to have to submit a proposal. You want a firm answer, and you want a sign contract, and you want a, you know, sign term sheet. If you want all that stuff, you need client control. To the degree you get away from the stuff we talked about here, you’re not going to have client control, and you’ll be under price pressure.

1:02:40 Okay, so you don’t get thrown out of meetings. I don’t get thrown out of meetings, right? I, but because when we determine that they’re not right for us, we throw ourselves out. Right? I mean, I think that’s the difference.

1:02:56 We don’t get thrown out. We don’t wait for that. I throw myself out if I find the investor is a kind of guy that doesn’t have credibility of closing without changing terms or changing price. Why do I want to put myself through that? We just say, you’re out of the process.

1:03:13 We’re going to go forward with someone else. Okay, now when you see, when you look at some of the the great, so pitchmen, or the great corporate guys. I mean, who who’s up there when you see them speak the way they do business that you admire? Is it like Apple and Jobs, or is it other people? I mean, this, the thing I don’t think you get to see, this is why I do these kinds of interviews.

1:03:34 You don’t get a window into this world because there’s nobody’s filming it. It’s one-on-one, or one-on- three. It’s in a board meeting. I, uh, I had, I have to be careful here, but, um, just to not disclose details but 45 days ago I was in a meeting with a billionaire, negotiating a contract. I got, I, it was a yelling match.

1:03:58 We’re yelling at each other. It was acrimonious. I got up to leave, and every time I get up to leave, put my stuff in my briefcase, pack it up. I’m not going to do this. I’ll tell you specifically, just so let me build it up.

1:04:11 They asked us to raise $100 million. Yeah, okay. We said, fine, we’d be glad to raise $100 million for the project. They determined we could do it. We said we’re glad to do it.

1:04:21 Billionaire had already invested, say, 25 million in the company. Needs another $100 million. We said we do it. They like us. We said we need a $250,000 fee to make the pitch deck and do the financial model, and, and they don’t want to pay it.

1:04:36 Okay, that’s reasonable. Wall Street fee. It’s discount from Wall Street. It’s a reasonable fee. You know, they want to pay half of that.

1:04:43 We have to get the fee, cuz if we bring the money, the $100 million, they can always say no and we’ve, you know, spent 6 months of our time wasted. It, so we need to get some cash to make, put to, so, so they’re invested in the process. Put them at risk and give us some, you know, running-around money. Okay, you know, cuz building the financial models and the documents are expense. So we’re in the meeting, they say they only pay $125,000 fee, and we say the fees fixed at $250,000.

1:05:11 Uh, in addition, they say if they find somebody to put in the $100 million, they don’t want to pay us our fee. Right, and said that’s ridiculous, because it’s going to use our documents to bring somebody else. So we’re, we’re at disagreement with terms. I go, I’m done. I can’t deal with this.

1:05:30 We’re it’s, it’s a great project. We’d love to raise the money. You know, we like you guys, sort of, but I’m done. I’m out. So I put my stuff in my briefcase, I stand up to leave, I go to walk out, they let me get one step for the door.

1:05:41 Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, come back. Don’t be unreasonable. Now, what, what percentage of this walk-out was bluff, and what was real? None. What I’m telling you, okay?

1:05:48 Right? None. Okay, if somebody’s not going to pay what you want, you can’t, you, you’re constantly going to be supplicating to the client or the buyer. That’s because over the years you’ve built up in your mind what’s acceptable, and that’s a digital choice for you, and this is it. This is the minimum or I’m walking.

1:06:06 Yes, okay. You know, it’s like a relationship. Right? Once they know they can bend the rules. Yeah, the beginning.

1:06:11 It’s never going to stop. So yes, you’ll win the account. You’ll turn into your boss. You’ll get paid on it, but it’s, it’s going to take up so much psychic energy and so much money to manage. I mean, you know, the, if you get a bad, you get, get an investor, they get on the board, bad board members kill companies.

1:06:27 Yeah, right. So, so these are some, you know, the higher the stakes, the more you have to be willing to walk away. Right? And like you said, it’s, it’s true about a good relationship as well, which, uh, you know yes. You don’t like comparing this to relationships, though.

1:06:41 Uh, uh, yeah, you, you said this, you tweeted this the other day and I thought it was really interesting. You said something to ask an investor, and you said, quote, do we like each other, could we love each other, and could this be in a relationship instead of a transaction? And I thought about that and I thought, thought about people I’ve done business with here, sponsors and that kind of thing, and I’ve had both kinds the good kinds and the bad kinds, and I mean, and the bad ones, I mean, they’re just emotionally draining.

1:07:03 Like you said, a bad board member or a bad startup venture cap guy can ruin a company. Right? Yes. So this is why I like to, you know, I’m trying to think of this in terms of tools, right? As well, so the, the, the the philosophy and the theory is great, but this is a tool I use.

1:07:20 They go, Oren, okay, we’re in. And what does that mean in? Yeah, we, you know, we’d like to go into due diligence. The $10 million we’re going to put in the company. We like you.

1:07:30 We like the deal. That’s not good enough for me. What we just said, we’re in, it’s not good enough for me. I want to hear, Oren, I love you, I love this deal, we’re extremely excited. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but that’s what I want to hear.

1:07:45 Right, right. Because we’re in doesn’t mean anything to me. There’s so much hard work to do. We got so much distance to go before we close. It feels to me like, if we like each other and we’re in, it’s not enough to get there.

1:07:59 Uh, and, and they’re like yeah, I know, we really like you, we’re excited, we’re going to close. No, tell me, or, we love working with you. This is awesome. Right? We can’t think of anything better.

1:08:08 We couldn’t be more excited. I got to hear that. It’s too hard. You stand by that? I stand by that.

1:08:14 Okay. Why, if they can’t say that, there’s not enough at the, you know, there’s n enough at the beginning. You know, all relationships begin as good as they’re… it’s just back to a relationship again. Yeah, like, either she really loves you, or she’s like, yeah, he’ll do. I mean, that’s not going to last.

1:08:28 Is it? Well, that’s what I say in the book. We don’t marry people cuz we like them. We don’t, you know, take a job, you know, across the country because we like it. We don’t play a sport because we like it.

1:08:39 We do those things. We’re passionate, we love it, we’re excited. Right? It, it motivates us, and so if your customer, or especially your investor isn’t extremely passionate, I think there’s just there problems down, it’s going to break up anyway. That’s, it’s not if you, if you go in with, like, it’s not enough to stay in a strong relationship in perpetuity.

1:09:00 Do you think you can teach people how to pitch, especially when it comes to artists? I mean, there’s a lot of people that can’t do even a few of the things that you said. A lot of people get nervous. A lot of people don’t know how to sell themselves. You know, they get, you know, go into a boardroom, they freak out, especially when it comes to the VCs.

1:09:15 Can you teach this stuff? My, my favorite thing is when I do it with important philanthropies. So, um, we support an organization called Nature Culture, which protects areas in Central America that are biodiverse. So if you protect, sort of, a square mile somewhere in the Arizona desert, you’ve, like, saved a spider. Right?

1:09:33 Right. But in Costa Rica, you, the spider, if you do it, you know, one square mile in this kind of swath in Costa Rica, you say, like, 65,000 different kinds of species, you know, all the way from monkeys down to the 92-eyed cped. So it’s important in areas of biodiversity, and so Nature Culture, this group we had, and sort of gave these very technical rationale, while you had to do it, we went in and changed their pitch from all this information to a very simple structure.

1:10:03 The big idea, how things are changing, how we sit in that change and why we’re part of the New World Order, what the problem is, what our solution is, how our solution works, what the value proposition is, what the return on the investment for the buyer or investor is, our pro forma, or how we spend that money, and what comes in the future, and who the team is. Exactly that way. Okay, when they started doing it that way, then the walls started coming down.

1:10:37 Sounds like a movie. Me, sounds like I just watched a movie. Yeah, that’s, that’s the narrative arc of a deal. Okay. And this is, I think this is a great place to have, you know, come around to, and very few pitches have narratives.

1:10:49 People just, they tend to go back to the quantitative a bit. They can tend to go back to the, let me Mel my brain and show you that these numbers are right, and you will make the decision. Information has no convincing power. Okay. And we’ve forgotten that over the years.

1:11:02 Yeah, you think the more tech we get, the more we forget that? Well, well, um, I think what, what what happens is, um, we relate. So if you don’t have a prepared pitch that’s a narrative, what you do is you give people the information the same way it got stored in your mind, which is not a necess a convincing way. It’s just chronological. Right?

1:11:26 Okay. Right. So think about it, if, uh, and this is example I use, tell me the alphabet backwards from G. Tricky. You can’t do it unless you’re prepared.

1:11:36 Right, right. You can’t sing, you know, some, what, the Macarena? I don’t know if it has any word more than four words, but you can’t back it backward. You can’t sing, uh, “Cocky” by Kid Rock backwards from, uh, chilling the most. All right, you can’t do it backwards, cuz it’s, it’s not how you experienced it.

1:11:54 So guys will go in, they tell about their product, their company, in the same way that they experienced it but that’s just chronological. It’s not a selling order. The selling order is the big idea. How does this, how is it high stakes? How does this fit in the world?

1:12:11 Why is it important? Why is it important today? And, um, how does this relate to economics? All right, that’s the big idea. We, I mean, I have, uh, I have compilation of 18 big ideas that have sold media companies, real estate, theater groups, technology companies, internet companies.

1:12:30 So if anybody wants to see that, they should email you, or b email Josh, pitch.com, Josh. Okay, for a compilation of big ideas. Are there only a finite number of big ideas? No, but there, but most big ideas probably fall into a certain category of 10. Right?

1:12:47 Uh, let’s build a big idea right now. How we doing for time? We probably got about 10 minutes. I’m talking about, like, what I call a meta narrative. Isn’t it true that as humans we have these narratives that go over and over, the stories of the Bible, and that the prodigal son and David and Goliath, and if you feed someone that that meta narrative back, they’re like, oh yeah, okay, I’m not sure I’m that sophisticated.

1:13:08 Okay, right? So I mean, we can, I heard that theory recently so I was curious what you thought. I mean, here’s the big idea for this show. If you bring in real characters from across the world of entertainment, business, and Hollywood, people who are affecting the way popular culture is viewed, and the world of finance is unfolding. Then you give people in the rest of the world who are aspiring to get their careers to that level a chance to look inside for a day, for an hour, a window of things they would otherwise never see never experience.

1:13:47 And if you do that in a way that’s candid, authentic, and truthful, then you can change a lot of lives, and, and by the way, earn a lot of money. Big idea. You just pitched London Real. Yeah, love it. Okay.

1:14:00 So I don’t know, you know, if that, if it’s a meta narrative, but that’s a big idea. Okay. The world is changing. Do all of your 18 big ideas have that in the beginning? Yes.

1:14:10 Okay. The world is changing. This is high stakes. The world is changing. Used to be, you got your information from 60 Minutes.

1:14:18 Hey [expletive], what are you guys doing in there, cooking up crack cocaine? Minutes used to be your window into these things that were unknown, and you couldn’t see, and because the media was very controlled, right? Love that show. Wall Street Journal maybe, an expose article once a month. But now, with the, uh, um, people willing to come forward and talk to interviewers and put that information out on the web.

1:14:44 There’s, there’s, you, there’s the ability to get inside these worlds that otherwise you would have never had access to because looking inside of Leers ship’s world, or looking inside of Joe Rogan’s world, was never going to make 60 Minutes or the Wall Street Journal. You never would have seen it. So, so today, the combination of technology, the media, and people wanting to tell their story has given rise to London Real. Right? And, and, um, so the world is moving in the direction of getting inside of important high-stakes environments and understanding what happens behind the scenes and finding some tools to apply that, to your business.

1:15:28 Right? People who don’t, um, use media in this way, 60 Minutes, whatever, going to fade in the background and they’ll be gone forever. People who do adapt to this new unfolding media, and, and desire, for, from hundreds of millions of people to learn, you know, about what’s happening in Hollywood, Wall Street, Silicon Valley. Right? That’s going to people who do it in that way are going to succeed.

1:15:52 It’s big idea change. I don’t know, it’s not fully developed, but it’s not bad, and something at stake. You know, something ultimately has to be at stake. So, so the things at stake. People who don’t adapt to this kind of storytelling will go, will become extinct.

1:16:07 They’ll lose their careers, they’ll lose their jobs, and in some cases entire companies will go away. And we know some of them, RIM, uh, AOL, to some degree uh, um, you know, might, and you see this happen to part, so Microsoft’s business, and they have to adapt. So if you don’t adapt to the way we’re doing here on this show, lose your job, lose your career, you can lose your company. Right? And if you don’t tune in, you’re going to be out of touch with your company, your health, your family you’re f***ed basically.

1:16:38 Yeah, well, right, and, and so that’s the… now we move into the problem. Right, right. The problem is there’s a 100 million people watching this show right here, and they’re learning these things, and they’re going to do their job in this way. The, these pitch methods are getting broader. Here’s a perfect example: if you come up against somebody that I’ve trained, and you’re pitching that same investor or customer, you’re going to lose in the same way if you’re not watching the show and learning some of the things.

1:17:06 Hundreds of millions of people are learning some of the things being taught here, and you’ll be unaware of them. So when it comes to health, you may not have the most recent health things, when it comes to curing cancer, you may not have the most recent perspective on it. When it comes to getting a pitch, you may not be going in with the same capability. Um, and, and the latest events. This show is, uh, so is critical to career advancement.

1:17:32 You got my attention, because you’re talking like a buyer. I’m listening to you now. So, uh, so, um, so the pro, you know, problem, then solution, how it works. So see, most people, the second they, um, they introduce the problem, they want to, they sometimes, they just skip over the problem. Let me just say this in limited amount of time.

1:17:57 Okay, most people do this backwards. They go solution, problem. The mind doesn’t explore ideas that way. We want to know about the problem, and then hear about the solution. The second we hear about the solution, we want to know how much it costs.

1:18:13 Okay, so this show is going to save your, da, d, da, they don’t want, they want to be told what their problem is first. Yes. So, so some of the problems. Here’s an example for related, the, prom. This show today.

1:18:25 There is so much how-to information on the internet: what to believe, what not to believe. Drink coffee with butter, drink coffee with margarine, drink coffee with soybean oil, drink coffee by itself, don’t drink coffee. Who do you listen to? Right? So the problem is you need to have trusted, the way that Whole Foods picks high-quality food, and you know, if you buy it off the shelf, the Whole Foods, it’s been vetted.

1:18:51 You need to have trusted sources, guys who have integrity and ethics, like the new 60 Minutes, right, who will sort out the wheat from the chaff, and find real guys who are credible and put their media and their information on the internet. So, so where do you get information that’s credible? Well, then people want to say, my show, my show, you get my show, right? Well, there’s lots of places, right? You calm people down.

1:19:17 That you’re not selling them so hard. Right? Nobody wants to be, you can get great information on 60 Minutes and if you go over to CNN, at least 50% of it is decent, you know, and you could sort of see what they’re promoting. Uh, and there’s a couple other shows like me that, uh, have a different sensibility, but do the Lord’s work in terms of getting good information out. Don’t there?

1:19:40 But I do something very specific. My solution, I find real guys who operate in the real world that are well known, and I bring them in for an hour, and I let you, you see inside of their worlds, what they’re doing, what works. That’s my solution. Let me tell you how this show works, you can kind of get more into the details. So that’s just the solution.

1:20:04 Then you can talk about how the show works, then the value proposition for guys out there on the web who are interested in what works, what doesn’t. My show is a vetted source of information with real celebrities and guys who know what they’re doing in finance, unlike the Drudge Report, the Huffington Post and Radar Online. We vet our, I’m just, you know, riffing now, right? Doing great riffing. We, uh, um, uh, we vet our guests.

1:20:40 We fact-check their information. Um, I ask them probing questions. Nothing is a layup, and I put my name on it. It’s not the name of the company, it’s not the name of a brand. I put my name on it.

1:20:55 My name has put information out there. So, um, so that’s the value proposition. Right? And then you can sort of go into the benefits, and then a little bit about the team, who you are and who your team is. Right?

1:21:07 From sewing up. So that’s a pitch. Is that a narrative? That’s a narrative. You know, the big idea was, I forgot what it was, cuz it was 5 minutes ago.

1:21:16 I’m glad I had this recorded, because this is great stuff, but I didn’t leave with the solution, which is just saying what most people do, and it turns people off. Right? So, so again, I can’t beat it in your head enough. The big idea, which is a story, not what you have, it’s a story of what’s happening in the world, where the stakes are, a little flavor of how you economically play in those stakes. The big idea isn’t what you have.

1:21:40 That is a small idea. Right? You know, we could do this all day long. Ball bearings, the big idea for ball bearing. I don’t know.

1:21:47 I’ve never bought or sold a ball bearing. If you dropped one in my head, I probably wouldn’t be able to identify it. Right? Today you can make, um, ball bearings and different kinds of things from composites, but they’re much more expensive. They’re good to use, right?

1:22:06 Because composites are, uh, take less resources to manufacture. They’re more environmentally sound, and they only cost a little bit more. This presentation is about our business, manufacturing composite ball bearings that are environmentally safe, and only, right? It needs to be novel to get past the croc brain. Basically, all right, let me ask you a few more questions just really simply.

1:22:30 There’s so much free content on the web, including mine, including your show from Chase Jarvis, including Tim Ferriss and the 4-Hour, everything that, that, that, uh, that. How can you, you know, charge for something? How can you make it valuable by charging when, you know, the new internet age is to give everything for free, you, including investment banking advice, actually, that’s probably not true, but how do you compete with that? It’s simple, please, you can answer that.

1:22:54 So I think, um, we got to go back to a couple things: intrigue, status, people want what they can’t have. So it’s the same as a pitch. You raise your status. It’s something new and intriguing and novel, and you take it away. That’s what people will pay for.

1:23:16 You got to take it away, then you have to take it away. So that’s what Creative Live does is they take, they, it, you have to, it. So there is a true model down the line. Tim Ferriss sells his books, etc., etc. ET.

1:23:29 Okay, that’s a very succinct way of saying that I think most people don’t ever get there, especially in the photography industry and everything. It’s just give, give, give, give free, you know, free everything, and then it just dilutes everyone’s business model. Right? But you need to raise your status and start taking away. Well, I think if you look at what iStock Photo has done, right?

1:23:49 That stuff’s expensive. You know, they’ve done a very good job of, you know, if you go to iStock Photo versus some, um, uh, you know, I’m trying to think of some of the other free exchanges, or $5. I mean, a short video clip on iStock Photo is 60, 70 bucks. Okay, but it’s high quality, and it’s, it’s high quality, and they just never were willing to give it away. Okay, and now they got the status up.

1:24:12 Right, right. And they say, if you don’t want it from us, go somewhere else and get it free. And that’s what we know. We know people are willing to pay for something as long as that something is maybe a little better in quality, whether it’s a high-quality digital download an iTunes song. You know, you can get that same song for free somewhere, but you know, people pay for it.

1:24:29 So all right, I got to ask you a little bit about you before we wrap up here. Okay, let’s take Char Chase Jarvis, for example. All of his guests, their career is teaching people how to think differently, and you are very different than any of those, because you kind of straddle the side of I’ve got a book, and I’m one of these new age, you know, mind guys, but at the same time you’re still in the investment banking world, and you, you run a, what is it, a boutique investment bank where you put deals together over the course of the year.

1:24:56 Uh, why are you straddling the two worlds? Uh, you, you must have a split personality because you have the personality to be kind of Pharisee. That’s a compliment. So I personally don’t want to be a guru, okay? And this, I get pulled into this guru world.

1:25:11 I appreciate that that you don’t want to be, don’t want to be a guru. It is an ego trip. It it is, it’s funny, you get on stage and there’s a thousand people in front of you, and you’re talking, and it’s, you get this out-of-body experience. Like, why is my hand moving like, you know, and it’s like being an X-Men, and you can hear everybody thinking, simult, cuz you go to a meeting. Right?

1:25:31 You got five people in front of you, and you can control them. You learn to control them, so you control this guy. You get frame control him. You get him doing what you want, and he’s spinning. You can go over here, manage this guy, right?

1:25:42 If this guy starts getting out of control, you can come back to him. There’s only five people to control. I can do that. Now there’s a thousand people, and you hear them thinking, is he Jewish? Is he fat?

1:25:51 Why did he wear that suit? Right? Look at his… why is his hair like that today? Right? Is he going prematurely great?

1:25:56 Does he really talk that? Why is he swearing? What you hear, all these thoughts coming at you. Then your arm starts moving. You go, so, so it’s addictive is what you’re saying?

1:26:04 So, um, it’s, it’s being in front of, you know, thousands of people, teaching them, is very, you know, un unusual. I prefer to do work. Okay, do you respect the gurus out there or not? Are they, you, not even believe they’re genuine? It’s not that it’s guru R did something sometime in the past.

1:26:25 Right? And then for the next 10, 15, 20 years they talk about something they did 10 years ago. They sold their company. They found something. They invented something.

1:26:37 They came up with an idea, but where’s the fresh material coming from, right? Okay, so what I do is I’m out every day doing the same thing. You have to do the same thing people listening have to. I walk in a room and people go, what, what’s your name again? Why are you here?

1:26:54 Oh, yeah, that’s right, you’re pitching $20 million. I, I have to walk in a room where people don’t know me, don’t know the company that I’m pitching, and I’m got to come away with a commitment for $20 million, $30 million. That’s hard work, right? And so I do that work, and I like to tell people what my experiences are in those very high-stakes, high-outcome environments. I think really hard about what works, what doesn’t.

1:27:19 I hire lots of people, psychologists, to break it all down. We try and communicate every once in a while, once a month. Some company out there hears an interview like this and says, I want that guy raising our money, cuz we’re over at such and such investment bank, and they’re not doing a good job. They don’t understand, you got to run this process. You got to get frame control.

1:27:39 We’re the prize. We don’t want to supplicate for the money. We don’t want to tell investors thank you and please, and what time is it, and yes, will discount. Okay, so when they hear my message and they say, I want Oren to raise the money. Right?

1:27:52 Then they come and say, you know, uh, uh, that’s, that’s why I love this world. So I put this information out there. When somebody hears it and says, we want to raise our money or sell our company using those principles, then they come to me. In my life, okay, so you’re going to keep straddling these two worlds. It’s a great business model for you.

1:28:11 It works going forward. Okay, I like it. It’s very novel. Um, I always ask everyone that comes here a few questions at the end. I’m going to hit you with them.

1:28:17 Uh, if you can make a phone call to the 20-year-old Oren Klaff and give that young man a bit of advice, what would you tell him to do or not to do? If I could call that guy, let me see. Um, well, Susan was not a good choice. Was that the first wife? I’m guessing.

1:28:38 Okay, crazy girlfriend. Uh, consistency. I, I mean, you read this message on Business Insider, and it’s, I would call him up and say, whatever it is you choose to do, just can be the best at it. You, you have millionaires in, you know, towns with 200 people in it. You can be successful in whatever it is you’re doing.

1:29:03 Just stay focused, do the same thing, and, and over and over and over until you can pattern make, understand your industry, find the breakthrough and then get to the next one. Don’t shift industries, or, um, be, because it seems that the grass is greener on the other side. Just stick, repetition, stick to your knitting, continue down the path you’re on, and that will lead you somewhere. And how long have you been following that advice? Uh, for 10 years?

1:29:36 Okay, and before that you didn’t, you were all over the shop? Yeah, well, I mean, I funded an internet company, you know, and that went difficult, right? And then I it’s good advice. It’s funny, cuz my first, like 10 years, were, were on Wall Street, and like my first four or five, I mean, just I was just a total f***-up. I was just like, Jesus Christ, I couldn’t figure this out.

1:29:55 I was just bouncing all over the place, and, but then I found, like, over 6, seven, 8 years, like all the punks and suckers left, and all of a sudden I’m like, what? I’m an MD, and this guy’s an MD. how the f*** did we do this? Well, because we stuck to it, and you got a lot smarter than you thought you were, and you actually got much better, and all the P, all the suckers left. So you find, and right?

1:30:16 Find beauty in the work. You know, all work can be good work. You just, you, you chop the wood, you carry the water. Find beauty in whatever work you’re doing, and it will lead you to the next thing, instead of jumping to the next thing with no resources, no background, no supporters, no knowledge, you know, and, and starting cold and fresh. What you’re doing now will take you to the next thing, I think.

1:30:43 So I mean, sorry, I know, I know you have questions, but I want to say this quickly. You hear about WhatsApp. You hear about, uh, Snapchat, okay, and you seem like oh, you know, go to Silicon Valley, start a company. Those are so low probability. If you could make those so V hear me out.

1:31:03 Venture capitalists who say have a fund of $500 million are trying to do that all the time, so they have money, they have experience, they have resources, they have deal flow, they have, they have um salaries and houses, and they can keep their families, and they don’t, right? And they have everything, and they can’t make those happen. They need sort of 20, 30, 40 times at bat to make a modest success. Problem is, with your life, you can’t take 40 times a bat.

1:31:34 So say it takes three or four years to do a startup, you know, and figure out if it’s going to work or not, you would need to get the alpha out of that, the assurance that you’re going to get one major hit. So you got to do that 40 times. You don’t have 160 years to have a guaranteed, get the alpha out. Do something that’s important work, you love, surround yourself with people you love, stay consistent with it, chop wood, carry water, be happy with that stuff.

1:32:02 Don’t you, you, you don’t have, you can’t take the risk to shoot for the start. It will come to you or it won’t, it doesn’t matter. Wise words. Chop wood, carry water is an old Buddhist phrase. Yeah, it just means that.

1:32:14 Yeah, just means that basically. That’s a hard question. Sometime somebody once told me, he said, Brian, you get paid twice for doing the work. You first get paid for actually doing the work, and that, and then maybe, maybe someone will actually give you money for that work, and that’s something I always try to think about. I mean, there is value in the work.

1:32:31 And it’s funny, we have another show called Silicon Reel, and we’ve just had 50 episodes, and we talk all about these great startup companies, and you look at the Snapchats and the WhatsApps and the 3 billion, the 16 billion, the, you know, it’s easy to get it caught up in that, and as a person you can’t run a diversified portfolio like seoa, you really are putting all your eggs in one basket for three, four more, like, 7, 8, 10 years. So, well, I know we’re short on time, but I’ve never talked about this before. Maybe this is, um, helpful.

1:32:59 This phrase, by the work, one knows the workman. If you’re going to do it, make it representative of the best you can do. So that’s how I got into investment banking is out, is, uh, I made these pitch decks. Nobody knew me. I was irrelevant in the whole world of finance, and I’m like, the one thing I’m good at is Carell draw, at the time an illustrator, you know, and telling these stories.

1:33:26 And so when most banks would spend, say, 3 to four hours on a pitch deck, I would spend 300. Okay, but I learned to tell these narratives, and now that’s what my whole business is based on, the ability to construct a narrative pitch deck to represent a deal. And so, so you know, I said, if I’m going to do these, I’m going to do them the better than anybody else in the world has ever done a pitch deck. And that gave rise to a significant investment banking business.

1:34:03 By the work, you know, the workman. That’s powerful stuff. I really like that. Um, and don’t wing your pitch. Another thing you said earlier, don’t wing it, cuz that’s the worst thing that’s the, that’s probably the biggest chance you have to raise your value in that meeting, because the time constraint and the other things are, are, uh, logistical, but the pitch, it needs to be slick.

1:34:23 Practice. It’s unsettling to watch somebody who’s figuring out the pitch on the fly. You’re not relaxed. It puts you on edge. I’m not in the hands of a professional, right?

1:34:32 There’s lots of movement that I can pricing movement I can get from this guy. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. This is, you know, I’m in control as the buyer, right? Of a winged pitch. Two more of those advice questions.

1:34:43 Uh, best advice you’ve ever received, personal or business? Oh man. Um, so the best personal advice I ever received, I lived on Sunset Boulevard for 12 years in the Hollywood Hills, Beverly Hills. I know all those guys, you know, at Project Hollywood. I’ve been to Project Hollywood many times, out the Sunset Boulevard.

1:35:08 How, know those guys from living on Sunset. I just seen. Okay, you know Tyler Deron and all those crew in mystery and okay, that’s cool. Just, I don’t know those guys. You know, we worked out the gym, just started talking to those guys.

1:35:20 I’ve been to Project Hollywood, you know, during the day, living, uh when I moved to San Diego recently, uh, uh, Chevy Chase moved in the house that I moved out of. Okay, at a Lea Maroon 5’s house. So you know, I lived. So the best advice I ever got was, uh, uh, to start my family. And so, so you know, um, my business partner, you know, came time to decide whether I was going to you know, be with this woman and start a family, and he said, you know, that will make you happy.

1:35:51 Wow, and that was the best advice. You, that was the best personal advice. Wow, that’s powerful, because I have, I have a six-month old. Okay. I have a six-month-old baby now.

1:35:59 Okay, and now you can see it change your life, and all the partying and celebrities and lifestyle never made you feel whole. Is that what you’re telling me? That’s right. That’s right, all right. You know, and, and I always said, hey, you know, look at that guy.

1:36:12 He just had a kid. Just take him off our friends list. Right? He’s, he’s out of here. And sure enough, he’s like, I looked into my baby’s eyes, and I saw how precious life really is.

1:36:21 I was like, oh my God, if you ever hear me say that just kill me. And then we have this baby. Now you’re that guy. He fell to Earth on wings of an angel. He smells like fresh muffins when he drinks, it’s like a, a unicorn lapping up per from the edge of a rainbow.

1:36:39 You know, but anyway, so you’re that guy now. It really, it’s changed you in a big way. Well, so, oh, this ties back to the pitch. So we don’t love the baby because they’re C, cute. Are their years?

1:36:53 We love the baby because you have to. Right? You are designed to love babies more, so if it’s yours, cuz a baby cannot protect itself like other species. Babies, you know, like, you know, baby bears, I guess, can come out and just, like, kill you, you know, 30 seconds later. But, um, human babies are wired to for us to love them, and that is a big lever of the human in mind.

1:37:21 Okay, how does that relate to the pitch? So, so what what you’re looking for on the pitch is big levers, right? To pull, right? Um, I just get recently gave a webinar on this, very quickly. So, so we’re designed to love fruit, an apple and orange, because it has carbohydrates in it, sugar.

1:37:37 We don’t love apples because they’re sweet. Okay, we, um, apples and us were designed to work together. We love them because it’s carbohydrates, so let, run around, kill things, find a cave, live throughout the day. Chocolate cake is what’s called a supernormal stimulus. We’re in no way designed to be able.

1:37:57 So chocolate cake gets around the natural defenses, right? Okay, of the human mind. Babies get around the natural defenses. I said, hey, if I ever say baby, how precious, kill me, and now I say baby, how precious, look at why I didn’t change it. It’s because the baby is a big lever of the human mind.

1:38:17 It’s a super normal stimulus, and it gets around the natural defense of how we work. So what you’re looking for in your presentation is levers to get around the natural defenses of the statistical, um, complex mind of the buyer. All right, pull those big levers, pull those big L good analogy. Last part of that question to the 20-year-old listening somewhere around the world, in China, in Australia, in San Diego, what advice do you give to them? What should they do to get involved?

1:38:47 Tell me. Easy narrative, narrative. Learn how to tell a story. We get hired by ad agencies. Now that makes no sense.

1:38:56 Ad agencies are the best storytellers in the right, the, the storytelling, because everything is technology. So ad agencies now, by hiring technologists, they’ve lost the way of the sword. If you know how to tell a narrative, you, um, versus, you know, that’s the applied skill that people value today, is the ability to convey a n, it’s easy to convey information. People can research information on the internet. It’s all out there.

1:39:27 The ability to form information into a story, into a narrative, is what I would say is a highly, highly desirable executive or entrepreneurial skill set. Okay, so do that about yourself, about your products, about future parts of your business. Narrative, narrative. Okay, yeah, I like it. Um, or thanks so much for coming.

1:39:46 Uh, I’m so glad we got into a lot of the stuff that that isn’t in your book, book, because, uh, you’re quite a philosopher. You got a lot of things going on, and I hope people have tuned in to stay to the end part of the episode, cuz there’s some juicy stuff in there. Um, and it’s fantastic. Um, Pitch Anything, or they go to Amazon, where would they grab Pitch Anything.com book? Okay, or you just type in Pitch Anything, you know, at Amazon, and that, that is a good book.

1:40:10 We spent, you spent a year writing that, spent a year writing that for sure. A lot of money went in. It wasn’t just, you know, me coming home. We had researchers and analysts, and just that is a blueprint for how to get yourself organized to walk into a room, pitch a deal, own that room, come out with the money. That’s what that book is.

1:40:31 So I recommend it. Okay, uh, more books coming from you? You got a little anything, live, televised, coming from you in the future. Have you tried to write a book lately? No, no, somebody told me only insane people would ever write a book, cuz after you’ve written that book, you are a hermit.

1:40:45 You, you’re just gone out of your mind. Here, here’s how you write a good book. True. Here’s how you write a… you get a book contract, then you call your agent. You talk to your agent, right?

1:40:54 And then you’re, then you, uh, hire a marketing firm. You, a PR firm. You talk about the PR, and then you design the cover, right? And then, um, uh, you talk to your publisher, you know, and you get, get a sense of what the release tour, four months have gone by, haven’t written a word. You start writing a word, right?

1:41:12 And, uh, and you start getting depressed, and your family leaves you, and you lose your house, and you’re living in a desert in a trailer with a three-legged dog, and you’re drinking whiskey all day long. You have no money. You have nothing else to do but sit down and write your book for 5 months. That’s how book gets written. That’s what happens, and then, uh, you kill yourself.

1:41:31 Um, you know, Tim Ferriss is doing a podcast these days, and someone asked him, are you working on a book, a new book? And he’s like, no, I’m avoiding as much as possible, cuz when I do that I become lonely and completely cut off from the world. I become partially depressed, and you’re like, what, de a guy with three New York Times bestsellers. Yeah, it’s, it’s very difficult. So, uh, I have a very good friend of mine is a screenwriter.

1:41:51 I wrote a Collateral Damage and Hunted in Hollywood, big screen in Hollywood. When I was writing the book, I called him up I said, Dave, this going be so easy. Like, I’m going to have this manuscript done in 45 days. You know, today I wrote 2,200 words. Like, at that pace I’m going to have this thing done in no time.

1:42:06 He said, oh that’s awesome, you wrote 2,500 words. That’s terrific. He’s like, go back and read them. You can write like 200 words a day that are good. You know, plan that out across a year, and that’s exhausting.

1:42:18 Books are hard. All right, so no more books from you? Fine. Uh, cool. And they should go to your website.

1:42:23 We should keep an ear out for, uh, some other things coming in the future from you, media-wise. All right, fantastic. Um, Oren, thanks so much. It’s been, uh, extremely eye-opening. I was actually just shutting up when you were giving me the London Real pitch, because I’m going to like, I’m going to watch that later.

1:42:37 So thanks so much for giving me that big idea. Um, as we say on the show, it’s about the journey. I wish you well in yours and all the best. Okay, thank you. I’m glad I journeyed here and made this a stop.

1:42:48 This is cool. Awesome, man. Take care. All right. What we call reality is in fact nothing more than a culturally sanctioned and linguistically reinforced hallucination.

1:43:00 This week on London Real, we have American businessman and financial commentator Peter Schiff. If I make 100 million, I had to create a lot of jobs to make that money. That’s the point. Property prices are too high, stock prices are too high, they have to come down. You know, the banks, they know what they’re doing, but if they knew what they’re doing, how’d they cause a crash?

1:43:26 Our whole economy in the US is based on debt. It’s based on borrowing to consume, borrowing to speculate. We don’t have a genuine recovery. It’s phony. All the Fed did is blow some air back into the deflating bubble.

1:43:40 People should make themselves more aware of what they need to do so they don’t end up losing their pension, end up losing older savings. We’re starving Main Street for capital while we’re propping up Wall Street, relying on hope is not a strategy. On Sunday, London Real presents Peter Schiff, Market Crash 2014. It’s not that I want bad things to happen. I just know that even worse things will happen if we put it off.