back to index

ATHLLC3667125647


Whisper Transcript | Transcript Only Page

00:00:00.000 | A quick word from our sponsor today.
00:00:01.680 | I love helping you answer all the toughest questions about life, money, and so much
00:00:08.040 | more, but sometimes it's helpful to talk to other people in your situation, which
00:00:12.880 | actually gets harder as you build your wealth.
00:00:14.920 | So I want to introduce you to today's sponsor, Longangle.
00:00:18.200 | Longangle is a community of high net worth individuals with backgrounds in
00:00:22.240 | everything from technology, finance, medicine, to real estate, law,
00:00:26.040 | manufacturing, and more.
00:00:27.600 | I'm a member of Longangle.
00:00:29.480 | I've loved being a part of the community, and I've even had one of the founders,
00:00:33.040 | Tad Fallows, join me on All The Hacks in episode 87 to talk about alternative
00:00:37.200 | investments.
00:00:37.920 | Now, the majority of Longangle members are first generation wealth, young, highly
00:00:42.640 | successful individuals who join the community to share knowledge and learn
00:00:46.400 | from each other in a confidential, unbiased setting.
00:00:49.600 | On top of that, members also get access to some unique private market investment
00:00:54.400 | opportunities.
00:00:55.200 | Like I said, I'm a member and I've gotten so much value from the community
00:00:59.120 | because you're getting advice and feedback from people in a similar
00:01:02.320 | situation to you on everything from your investment portfolio, to your
00:01:06.280 | children's education, to finding a concierge doctor.
00:01:09.240 | So many of these conversations aren't happening anywhere else online.
00:01:13.160 | So if you have more than 2.2 million in investable assets, which is their
00:01:17.440 | minimum for membership, I encourage you to check out Longangle and it's totally
00:01:22.000 | free to join.
00:01:22.760 | Just go to longangle.com to learn more.
00:01:26.400 | And if you choose to apply, be sure to let them know you heard about it here.
00:01:29.960 | Again, that's longangle.com.
00:01:34.640 | Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading
00:01:41.520 | your life, money, and travel.
00:01:43.280 | I'm your host, Chris Hutchins, and each week I sit down with the world's best
00:01:47.640 | experts to learn the strategies, tactics, and frameworks that shape their success.
00:01:52.280 | Before we get started this week, I want to give a big shout out to Chris Van
00:01:55.640 | Vliet, host of the fantastic podcast Insight, who introduced me to our
00:02:00.360 | guest today, Brant Penvitic.
00:02:02.200 | Brant is an award-winning film director and veteran television producer with
00:02:07.120 | decades of experience working on shows like MasterChef and The Biggest Loser.
00:02:11.240 | He's also a C-level sales and presentation coach and keynote speaker.
00:02:15.560 | But I learned about Brant from his bestselling book, The Three Minute Rule,
00:02:19.720 | Say Less to Get More from Any Pitch or Presentation, which teaches anyone how
00:02:25.000 | to use Hollywood's storytelling techniques in business to persuade and succeed.
00:02:29.840 | Today, we're going to talk about why it's critical to dial in your pitch in
00:02:34.040 | the first three minutes, maybe even the first 10 seconds, including how to do it.
00:02:37.760 | Why in those three minutes, you need to answer four questions so people won't
00:02:42.320 | tune you out, and of course, what those questions are and how to answer them
00:02:45.720 | succinctly.
00:02:46.480 | I'm going to ask him what he thinks of my pitch for All The Hacks and how to
00:02:49.720 | improve it, and I want to hear about his travel adventures.
00:02:53.000 | Last year, his family sold their home and took a 48 state RV trip.
00:02:56.640 | I want to know what he learned and whether he'd do it again.
00:02:59.240 | And I'm sure there'll be more.
00:03:00.720 | So let's get started.
00:03:02.000 | Brant, welcome to the show.
00:03:05.080 | Hey, what's up, man?
00:03:06.240 | Happy to be here.
00:03:07.280 | So let's just jump right into this three minute rule.
00:03:09.560 | Dive in.
00:03:10.440 | You've said it's really a way to teach people how to use the Hollywood
00:03:13.240 | storytelling techniques to say less and get more.
00:03:15.680 | How did you get so good at pitching shows and persuading people?
00:03:19.200 | And how did that lead to this three minute rule?
00:03:21.600 | And listen, I'm a Hollywood producer by trade.
00:03:23.480 | When I was early to the business, I was running around pitching shows and
00:03:27.240 | trying to make my way.
00:03:28.800 | And I was at the lobby of CBS.
00:03:30.800 | I remember when this happened, I was in the lobby of CBS and getting ready to go
00:03:33.120 | in for my pitch meeting.
00:03:33.920 | And as I was there, I walked from the pitch room, Simon Cowell.
00:03:38.000 | And I was like, Oh, hey, Simon.
00:03:41.200 | And we were chatting a little bit and I was thinking to myself, Oh man, I hate
00:03:44.960 | pitching after that guy who's not excited to hear his pitch, which is great.
00:03:48.880 | And so as we're chatting, I can see him looking over my shoulder.
00:03:52.320 | And when that happens, I look over and it's Mark Burnett.
00:03:56.800 | And so Mark Burnett is coming in right after me.
00:03:59.600 | And I'm thinking like, so now I'm wedged between these two superstars, right?
00:04:03.720 | And I got such anxiety.
00:04:07.080 | I am such a newbie and no one cares.
00:04:10.040 | And I'm going into the pitch, the president of the network.
00:04:12.520 | What am I going to say?
00:04:14.720 | What sort of fun thing, small talk crap am I going to go through that makes this
00:04:20.120 | make any sense that the president is going to want to hear?
00:04:22.840 | Like he's not going to care.
00:04:24.360 | So I just got into this panic.
00:04:26.520 | And as I was in the room and we'd said, hi, and everybody sat down, I was like, I
00:04:30.080 | got to get out of this room.
00:04:31.000 | I got to just tell them what the show is.
00:04:32.240 | I got to get the hell out of here.
00:04:33.080 | Like they don't want to hear from me.
00:04:34.200 | So I literally just said, here's the show.
00:04:37.320 | Here's how we would produce it.
00:04:39.160 | Here's why we think it's good for you.
00:04:40.520 | Here's what we think it's going to cost.
00:04:42.040 | And I'm out of here.
00:04:44.680 | And I was in and out of that minute in nine minutes.
00:04:47.800 | And my agent was like, Oh my God, that was the best pitch we've ever done.
00:04:52.080 | And CBS bought the show.
00:04:54.120 | And so I started doing that more often where I was just like, okay, so what if I
00:04:58.920 | don't tell Fox about how product placement in this show is going to work?
00:05:05.200 | Because they do that for a living and they kind of have an entire department.
00:05:08.560 | Like they don't need to hear from me.
00:05:10.040 | And I remember being an NBC and the guy who ran it was a very good producer on my
00:05:15.400 | side of the field and went over to run the network.
00:05:17.760 | And so I remember pitching shows and being like, why am I getting in all this crap
00:05:21.760 | with him?
00:05:22.000 | He's a better producer than I am.
00:05:23.400 | Once I gave him the basic idea, he's going to figure this stuff out.
00:05:27.160 | So I got this reputation very quickly about having some of the best pitches in
00:05:31.960 | Hollywood.
00:05:32.480 | And the irony was, it was like, I wasn't really doing anything.
00:05:35.400 | Like I was doing less.
00:05:36.760 | I was saying less.
00:05:37.880 | I wasn't trying as hard.
00:05:39.840 | I happened to be conveying more confidence.
00:05:41.840 | I was able to get the buyers to offer more of their suggestion.
00:05:45.400 | Everything just started going my way.
00:05:47.080 | And so we started to develop this system that it was like what we use in the edit
00:05:51.840 | bay of a three minute scene.
00:05:53.000 | Like you can't have a scene go more than three minutes.
00:05:54.720 | You have to resolve all the conflict, blah, blah, blah.
00:05:56.840 | There's a lot of science behind three minutes itself about how the human brain
00:06:00.160 | processes information and makes decisions.
00:06:01.960 | And so I just realized I'm using this three minute rule across everything.
00:06:06.720 | And when I started to apply that across other businesses besides television, it
00:06:11.160 | worked even better than it did in television.
00:06:13.000 | So that's how it all started.
00:06:14.800 | You also mentioned that there's like the three minute version and the 10 second
00:06:18.360 | version.
00:06:18.680 | And some people make even quicker judgments.
00:06:20.600 | How do you think about the span of that three minutes?
00:06:22.760 | Well, and then people ask me a long time, "What do I say first?"
00:06:26.640 | and all that.
00:06:26.960 | That's a big thing for people.
00:06:28.120 | The three minute rule basically says that everything about your business product or
00:06:31.080 | service must be conveyed clearly, concisely, and accurately in three minutes or
00:06:35.360 | less.
00:06:36.320 | The key is you need to get your audience to buy into the general concept before
00:06:39.840 | they make the yes or no decision.
00:06:41.720 | Everybody listening to this right now has had someone come pitch or present them or
00:06:45.520 | want to get them to do something.
00:06:46.680 | And in the first 10 seconds, you're already thinking, "I don't think I like
00:06:50.360 | this.
00:06:50.640 | I don't know.
00:06:50.920 | I'm sure I want this."
00:06:51.600 | Right?
00:06:51.880 | And that's because the person has not let you grow into that decision.
00:06:56.360 | You have been forced to make that instantly by big statements.
00:07:00.120 | And there's a whole bunch of things that I talk about in the book on how you get
00:07:02.480 | people to be almost defensive, almost make a decision and then defend it.
00:07:06.600 | As opposed to get all the information and then make a decision.
00:07:09.040 | And so the three minute rule, if you do it really well, you could extend someone's
00:07:13.480 | yes or no in their mind to about a maximum of three minutes if you do it really
00:07:18.400 | well.
00:07:18.680 | But you don't need three minutes, a minute and a half, sometimes two minutes,
00:07:21.560 | whatever is required.
00:07:23.560 | It is about what needs to be said, not what you want to be said.
00:07:27.560 | So there's a book, people can read it.
00:07:31.280 | I enjoyed it.
00:07:32.280 | I would highly recommend it.
00:07:33.480 | But what's the high level of how you lay out those three minutes?
00:07:37.240 | So it's called the WAC method, W-H-A-C.
00:07:41.360 | And that's basically the structure for any pitch or presentation, how you can
00:07:45.080 | convey the information.
00:07:45.840 | Anytime you want to convey something to someone or convince them to do something
00:07:49.600 | or try to get them to your way of thinking, think of it in the WAC method.
00:07:52.280 | W-H-A-C.
00:07:53.320 | The W is...
00:07:54.000 | What is this?
00:07:55.960 | Literally.
00:07:57.680 | What is it?
00:07:59.160 | H is how does it work?
00:08:03.360 | Those are the first two questions anybody has on anything that's going on.
00:08:07.080 | If you've ever had somebody droning on about something and you're like,
00:08:10.080 | could you just tell me what this is and like how it works?
00:08:12.040 | Like that's all your brain wants.
00:08:13.880 | It needs to find that.
00:08:15.720 | It's called a three-step rationalization.
00:08:18.720 | First, we conceptualize.
00:08:20.160 | We have to understand what it is.
00:08:21.320 | Then we contextualize.
00:08:23.080 | We got to put context to us, how it works for us.
00:08:26.000 | And then we actualize, which is like, okay, how do I get it?
00:08:28.880 | So what is it is literally tell me what it is.
00:08:31.880 | I am a, I'm a personal trainer that trains Hollywood
00:08:36.760 | actors for major action films.
00:08:39.480 | Okay.
00:08:41.000 | That is one sentence.
00:08:42.720 | And everybody listening now has a pretty good idea what my buddy Jeff does.
00:08:46.640 | You actually kind of know it right away.
00:08:48.160 | Okay.
00:08:48.640 | That's what is it?
00:08:49.440 | Then it's how does it work?
00:08:50.800 | Okay.
00:08:51.280 | Well, how does he do that?
00:08:52.520 | I move in to the celebrity's home and live with them for 90 days.
00:08:58.640 | So they never break program, never break diet.
00:09:02.000 | Okay.
00:09:02.520 | That is two sentences.
00:09:04.080 | Now, do I really need to go into all that much?
00:09:06.840 | Or have you already made an idea of how this works?
00:09:08.880 | Right?
00:09:09.120 | Your brain is saying, I get what he does.
00:09:11.480 | I get his method.
00:09:12.880 | Now you're either interested, not interested, whatever, but you're there.
00:09:15.720 | Right.
00:09:16.040 | Yeah.
00:09:16.840 | I have a fundamental house.
00:09:18.800 | There you go.
00:09:19.640 | You're like, that's kind of cool.
00:09:20.720 | Okay.
00:09:21.080 | The next is the a, are you sure?
00:09:23.640 | It's sort of like, wait, can you validate that?
00:09:26.880 | I don't care about your facts and your figures until I understand what it is.
00:09:30.560 | You do.
00:09:30.920 | People want to start with their history and their stats and all the size of the
00:09:36.800 | market and all this other crap that no one cares about until I have context and
00:09:41.680 | structure.
00:09:42.200 | That's it.
00:09:43.000 | So when you talk about, are you sure I'm using it as a second phase, which is I
00:09:48.880 | have given you the basic of what I do and how it works.
00:09:51.440 | And now I'm going to explain to you the value of it.
00:09:53.640 | I'm going to give you some context, how it works for you.
00:09:57.400 | I trained Chris Hemsworth.
00:09:59.160 | I trained the rock.
00:10:01.600 | I trained Mark Wahlberg.
00:10:03.240 | Now you're like, okay, so you're pretty good at your gig.
00:10:07.360 | Or I know those aesthetics.
00:10:09.120 | I understand that.
00:10:10.040 | Or I've done this for 15 years.
00:10:12.200 | That's the, are you sure about it?
00:10:13.800 | I trained Hollywood actors for big action films.
00:10:16.560 | I moved into their house nine days.
00:10:17.960 | They never met.
00:10:18.480 | They never left.
00:10:19.320 | I've trained some of the biggest actors in Hollywood, including, right.
00:10:22.400 | Three sentences.
00:10:23.920 | And now you're like, okay, I get it.
00:10:25.880 | And then the final piece is, can you do it?
00:10:28.840 | Which is effectively, what do I have to do to make this happen?
00:10:32.920 | How much is it going to cost?
00:10:34.280 | Do you have a patent?
00:10:35.240 | When is it available?
00:10:36.240 | How's the supply?
00:10:37.360 | How do you get paid?
00:10:39.400 | Like all those things, all the things about the actualization of the element.
00:10:43.320 | Come later, right after all this stuff is done.
00:10:46.760 | Now I care about that.
00:10:48.120 | And the irony is it's the smallest piece.
00:10:50.920 | The smallest piece is like, how much does it cost?
00:10:53.520 | Is it available now?
00:10:54.400 | If I buy into everything else, I will find a way to make the,
00:10:59.000 | can you do it work?
00:10:59.880 | If you have this great idea and all these things work, but at the end of it,
00:11:02.440 | you're like, but I've never done before.
00:11:04.120 | I'm not even sure how to do it.
00:11:05.000 | Okay, well, let's figure that out.
00:11:06.240 | Right.
00:11:06.520 | Jeff says, can you do it?
00:11:07.960 | Is I only work with major studios.
00:11:10.000 | They pay me directly per film.
00:11:11.880 | My booking right now is nine months in advance.
00:11:15.480 | Okay.
00:11:17.480 | So now you're like, oh my God, I totally get it.
00:11:20.120 | Right.
00:11:20.280 | That's basically his pitch.
00:11:21.520 | Now, from that point, the conversation opens up, everything starts opening up.
00:11:26.120 | When did you get started?
00:11:27.360 | How often does it work?
00:11:28.120 | What do we do for food?
00:11:28.800 | Who pays for that?
00:11:29.400 | Where do you live?
00:11:30.080 | I don't have a place.
00:11:30.600 | There's a million questions at a million conversations to have from that pitch.
00:11:33.760 | You just can't put all of that in the pitch.
00:11:36.040 | You have to trust the fact that if you get people to those first basic
00:11:39.840 | structures and get them through that, they're going to want to know more.
00:11:42.680 | If you can't get someone to be interested in those basic structures, you have no
00:11:47.120 | hope of getting them interested just by talking more and giving them more
00:11:50.880 | information.
00:11:51.440 | It doesn't work like that.
00:11:53.000 | It has the opposite effect.
00:11:54.480 | The more you talk, the less confident you appear, the less value you convey.
00:12:00.400 | That is the end of the story.
00:12:01.680 | And so after you've conveyed all that, whether it's a minute and a half, three
00:12:05.440 | minutes, is it silence?
00:12:06.960 | Just let people ask questions or your example, you went nine minutes.
00:12:11.040 | Yeah.
00:12:11.600 | It's like there's two versions, right?
00:12:12.960 | One is you have somebody that's like an interactive person.
00:12:15.880 | And that's usually where it's like questions kind of thing.
00:12:19.240 | Right.
00:12:20.040 | So you're a minute and a half in and you've got the basic points and then you
00:12:23.040 | can like start talking about elements.
00:12:25.600 | Like they understand asking questions, have them go through stuff.
00:12:28.280 | That's easy.
00:12:28.800 | A lot of times you're making a presentation to multiple people and you can't just be
00:12:32.120 | like, okay, I'll take questions from the field.
00:12:34.080 | So what I normally do is have a transition that feels like you would say, I'm going
00:12:38.400 | to answer some of the questions.
00:12:39.840 | I'm sure you probably have, because what you're doing then is let's get into the
00:12:43.800 | engagement.
00:12:44.320 | Let's get into the details, the nitty gritty, the stuff that you're going to find
00:12:49.000 | interesting and all those kinds of things that helps people get that transition
00:12:53.360 | between now we're engaging.
00:12:54.600 | And now I'm informing the first step is to inform and lead.
00:12:57.240 | And then the next stage two is engage and follow.
00:13:00.160 | Those two are very separate pieces.
00:13:01.720 | And it's the one thing I find most people get mixed up is that they try to start an
00:13:05.320 | engagement conversation before anybody really understands what it is they're
00:13:09.200 | working with.
00:13:09.720 | When you work with people or help people, for example, is how long does it take to
00:13:14.080 | get that three minutes?
00:13:15.320 | It seems like if it's the most important thing, you should be spending the bulk of
00:13:18.800 | your planning on honing that first bit.
00:13:21.920 | It's taken me 20 years to learn how to say things in three minutes.
00:13:24.160 | Right.
00:13:24.440 | It's difficult and it's more difficult depending on how big your personality is.
00:13:30.360 | Ironically, like I train a lot of companies and some of my best students are the
00:13:34.880 | biotech scientist type guys with the most complex of companies and drug therapies
00:13:41.920 | and whatnot.
00:13:42.600 | And oil and gas guys are good too, because they don't want to perform.
00:13:47.880 | They don't want to overcome the audience with their cool awesomeness.
00:13:52.360 | They just want to tell people what's going on.
00:13:54.400 | They're excited about their product.
00:13:55.560 | They're excited about their company.
00:13:56.720 | I can strip all that down for them and be like, just tell these things and you'll
00:14:01.320 | get to say all this other stuff about the gene therapy and the, you'll get there.
00:14:04.360 | Just say these things so people understand.
00:14:06.240 | And then they'll want to talk and they love that.
00:14:08.440 | But it takes me a full day.
00:14:10.040 | I'll give you a perfect example.
00:14:10.960 | When I wrote the book, the publisher was like, Hey, don't write the forward to the
00:14:15.280 | book until you're done the entire book.
00:14:16.680 | Cause then you'll know all the details and you can like really nail that.
00:14:19.200 | Right.
00:14:19.360 | Cause that's how people decide they're going to read a book.
00:14:20.880 | So I did a little research.
00:14:22.440 | Turns out people in a business book read usually the first four to six pages before
00:14:27.400 | they make a decision.
00:14:28.080 | Then the average business book has a forward of 11 pages.
00:14:31.000 | And I was like, four pages is about three minutes to read.
00:14:34.720 | No surprise.
00:14:35.600 | So I was like, Oh my God, this is genius.
00:14:37.840 | I'm going to start the book saying that the average business book is 11 pages.
00:14:41.600 | The average person takes four pages.
00:14:42.600 | That takes three minutes.
00:14:43.280 | So I got three minutes to make you want to basically read the rest of the book.
00:14:46.040 | I was like, yeah, this is going to be great.
00:14:47.640 | Three minute push for my book.
00:14:49.480 | So I went on vacation cause I had finished the book.
00:14:52.760 | I'm in Jamaica, my wife.
00:14:54.200 | And I was like, gate, I'm going to take the first day or so.
00:14:56.400 | I'm going to write this intro and send it off to publisher.
00:14:59.040 | Then I'm going to take the rest two weeks and stay on the beach and have a good
00:15:02.240 | time.
00:15:03.080 | First pass of writing my Ford or for the book, 14 pages long.
00:15:07.040 | Right.
00:15:08.160 | And it was good.
00:15:09.000 | I was like, Oh my God.
00:15:10.560 | So I cut it down and I spent the next day just trying to edit it.
00:15:13.600 | And it's 10 pages long, nine pages, eight pages.
00:15:17.840 | I got to seven pages and then I start negotiating with myself.
00:15:21.200 | Well, this is so good.
00:15:24.520 | It's written so well.
00:15:26.520 | I really need people to hear this right away.
00:15:28.400 | I can't wait till later.
00:15:29.560 | Maybe this is the time when it's this good and this important that the three
00:15:33.640 | minute thing isn't as important.
00:15:34.960 | I was like, what the hell's wrong with me?
00:15:36.720 | So I even called the publisher and I asked him, it was like four pages.
00:15:40.480 | Like, is that just any size page?
00:15:42.040 | Or is it words?
00:15:42.640 | He's like, no, it's words.
00:15:43.640 | That's how it works.
00:15:44.440 | So I'm looking at the word count.
00:15:45.680 | I'm like, Oh my God, I couldn't finish it in two weeks.
00:15:49.080 | Couldn't do it.
00:15:49.920 | Couldn't get it done on the trip.
00:15:51.000 | I had to come back home.
00:15:52.360 | I had to go to my office.
00:15:53.720 | I had to take out my sticky notes and do my entire whack method from the very
00:15:57.360 | beginning for my own book, an expert who does this for a living.
00:16:01.640 | And I had to take the whole thing and finally got it to my four pages.
00:16:04.800 | It's just because I became so precious about the information.
00:16:09.280 | And in fact, I don't tell a lot of people this, but there are drafts of the book
00:16:13.480 | that they send around to some press and stuff like that before they print the
00:16:16.080 | final version.
00:16:16.920 | There are a few draft copies that have, I'm going to say three quarters of a
00:16:21.040 | page from my original intro that I pushed into the first chapter because I was so
00:16:26.040 | in love with it.
00:16:27.880 | And it wasn't until after it all said none, I read it again.
00:16:30.240 | I was like, Oh my God, this is total drivel.
00:16:32.000 | Like this is crap.
00:16:32.840 | And I forced my publisher to take it out and redo it.
00:16:35.600 | I still think there's one or two sentences I probably could have cut, but
00:16:39.400 | when you're precious about your information and when you're really
00:16:41.440 | passionate, it's very difficult to chop the bodies away and kill the dead weight.
00:16:46.040 | And so for me with clients, it's very,
00:16:49.560 | very different because I can tell you right away what's dead weight.
00:16:53.160 | I can tell you right away what to put off to the side and wait.
00:16:55.920 | So the book really trains you to try to find those pieces.
00:17:00.160 | It isn't, Hey, where this certain color tie and your pitch will be better. No,
00:17:03.960 | here's the way to find out what you should be saying first,
00:17:06.640 | what you should be in second.
00:17:07.680 | What should you be saying last and what you shouldn't be saying at all.
00:17:09.760 | So I want to go two places, but I'll ask one quick question.
00:17:12.880 | You said this isn't the color tie. Does it even matter what you wear to a pitch?
00:17:16.080 | No, no, none of that matters. It doesn't matter what you say.
00:17:19.160 | None of that crap matters anymore.
00:17:20.680 | People are so inundated with information and details and all this crap.
00:17:24.120 | They're just not interested in all those other things. None of that works.
00:17:26.600 | We used to train salespeople to use their person's name. Hi, Dave.
00:17:31.480 | Hi, John. Hey, John. How are you, John? Have you thought about this, John?
00:17:34.280 | Like use your client's name over and over again.
00:17:36.240 | Could you imagine if someone did that to you today?
00:17:38.200 | That's the reality of a hypersensitive audience.
00:17:41.440 | Unless you're doing something that's a detriment,
00:17:43.640 | none of that stuff impacts you whatsoever.
00:17:45.720 | Everybody wants to sift through that and get to the good stuff.
00:17:48.840 | And then the second I'm going to go in, I sent you this in advance.
00:17:52.160 | So I'm going to ask you about my show.
00:17:54.000 | I'm constantly talking to everyone from sponsors or shows for me to
00:17:58.760 | go on and try to explain what we do. And I'm super passionate.
00:18:02.960 | So if you're great because it's not your show, it knocking down the bodies,
00:18:06.720 | to try to narrow it down. I'm curious what you thought of what I sent.
00:18:10.520 | This was the description of all the hacks.
00:18:12.680 | I'll give you that in two pieces. Your description of the show,
00:18:15.920 | your intro of the show, what the show is, is really good.
00:18:18.440 | Super solid because you're doing it for the consumer.
00:18:21.080 | And there's not a lot to get into what a podcast is and what it contains.
00:18:24.480 | And you were pretty clear about like, Hey,
00:18:25.920 | I give you all the great travel hacks, save money. I got more fun stuff.
00:18:29.320 | Like it's nice and clean. Could it be a little bit less wordy? Sure.
00:18:33.760 | Would it make any difference? Most likely not. Like it's relatively simple.
00:18:37.080 | You keep it relatively simple.
00:18:38.360 | I will say that your outreach email to get people like me and Chris and other
00:18:42.960 | people on is way too pretty and conveys a
00:18:47.480 | sense of not desperation's too much,
00:18:49.800 | but conveys a sense of less value than you want to convey. Right.
00:18:54.640 | Because you're pitching here's the size of the audience, which is impressive.
00:18:59.560 | Here's this stuff. If Joe Rogan wanted me on the podcast,
00:19:02.320 | do you think he'd put a paragraph in there about his show and how big it is and
00:19:06.000 | where it is? Right? No. He'd be like, you want to be on my show?
00:19:10.360 | And by the way, he doesn't want me on a show. I've asked him. He said, no,
00:19:14.400 | that's the highest level, right? That's the top of the food chain.
00:19:18.320 | The lowest end is a podcast you've never heard of. That's like just starting.
00:19:22.360 | And they are going to inundate you with facts and figures and information and
00:19:26.240 | pretty pleased. And these are the people I worked with.
00:19:27.840 | And like, let me prove myself to you with words. Okay.
00:19:31.200 | And so you're about a third too long in that.
00:19:36.600 | Okay.
00:19:38.240 | Because these people are peers, your show kicks ass.
00:19:41.280 | And that outreach from you should be
00:19:46.400 | less. It's Hey, I got a podcast. I think you're cool.
00:19:50.880 | I've heard you on other stuff. I'd like you to be a guest. Let's connect.
00:19:55.720 | When you're a new brand and people probably don't know you, Joe Rogan,
00:19:58.560 | people know him, right? So he sends a message. Everyone knows him.
00:20:00.920 | You want to come across like you're not desperate,
00:20:02.960 | but you also need some validation. Is it just limit the validation?
00:20:07.000 | Yes. It's limit the validation.
00:20:08.200 | Because if you, if it comes across as you pitching or selling, you're dead.
00:20:11.440 | It's over. So what would you rather have someone who's kind of curious?
00:20:16.040 | Cause you didn't give them everything to figure out or someone who's just like
00:20:19.360 | this guy, you know, women, money, people,
00:20:23.760 | they move away from things that chase it. And so if you sell,
00:20:28.680 | if you're pushing, if you're trying to convince,
00:20:31.840 | if you're trying to influence people are repulsed by that,
00:20:36.480 | they are repelled to go the other direction.
00:20:39.800 | Now sometimes what you have is so much value that you overcome that,
00:20:43.320 | but that is not where you want to be. And if you're saying, Hey,
00:20:46.520 | I want you to be on my podcast.
00:20:48.000 | There's only a couple of things that make sense to talk to somebody about what
00:20:52.120 | does your podcast focus on? Is it a podcast about gyms?
00:20:56.320 | Is it a podcast about airline flights? Is it oil exploration?
00:21:00.080 | Like you got to explain that, Hey, I do this podcast. It's called this,
00:21:03.720 | it does this, right?
00:21:04.680 | If you have some credibility on the size and the scope and the people you've had
00:21:08.560 | is reasonable, but unfortunately, everybody's going to say that, right?
00:21:13.400 | Everybody's going to say it's the number one podcast in this category, right?
00:21:18.280 | Or it's got 90,000 unique views or
00:21:23.000 | something, something, something, right?
00:21:24.720 | So that you just got to keep to a minimum and that's what you do.
00:21:29.960 | If you were the number one podcast in the world, but no one knew you,
00:21:33.560 | I guess you'd say it's the number one podcast in the world.
00:21:35.920 | Not like it's the number one podcast rule,
00:21:37.800 | according to these things on this date by this measure.
00:21:40.280 | And you can verify it here.
00:21:41.320 | Here's the link to see whether I'm the number one.
00:21:43.400 | And like I've attached the certificate of my number one authenticity.
00:21:46.160 | You wouldn't do that. And the irony, if you did, I'd be like, Hmm,
00:21:49.800 | this probably isn't real. Right.
00:21:51.480 | And the more things you included to explain and validate it,
00:21:55.000 | the less I believe it. That's the irony of it. It's like,
00:21:58.200 | the more you prove it, the less I want to accept it. Even if it's like, Oh, okay.
00:22:02.320 | So your thing is you have great guests,
00:22:06.040 | present company excluded. You have good numbers.
00:22:09.720 | It's a great show with a great unique hook.
00:22:13.400 | If you're reaching out for people to be as a guest,
00:22:15.880 | that's all you really need to say from your perspective. Right.
00:22:18.400 | Or the other way is like,
00:22:19.960 | imagine if you wanted to get my 16 year old son as a guest, you'd be like, Hey,
00:22:23.880 | man, I got a podcast. It does this. Want to be a guest. Okay.
00:22:26.720 | So there's the two extremes, right? My son's nobody.
00:22:29.080 | He would die to be on anybody's podcast. Joe Rogan is the greatest podcast.
00:22:32.520 | Everybody wants to be on it. Those two things in those two situations,
00:22:35.120 | you pitch them exactly the same, very few words,
00:22:38.200 | almost understanding that you're going to want it.
00:22:40.400 | And if you want to get more details like when, how, why, all that kind of stuff.
00:22:44.360 | Great. And that's normally what you'll end up getting shorter.
00:22:47.640 | That is sort of that outreach. The more responses you'll get asking for things.
00:22:51.720 | Do I need to do this? When I do that, how do you do this?
00:22:54.360 | So what reached you have, you know,
00:22:55.480 | one thing that this just made me think about in a previous life,
00:22:59.960 | I was a founder of a tech company that raised money. Right.
00:23:02.880 | And I found that one of the most effective things was to give everyone a really
00:23:06.800 | easy out. So I know you have a different thought on closing that a lot,
00:23:10.240 | but I would be trying to raise money.
00:23:11.600 | And I'd send an email follow up two days later and say, Hey,
00:23:14.240 | just want to follow up and see if you need any more info. If not, no worries.
00:23:19.120 | Catch you next time.
00:23:20.280 | Give them this easy out because a lot of people struggle with the no.
00:23:24.000 | And then you have the anxiety of them. Oh, are they going to say yes?
00:23:26.960 | What do they say? If you just make it so easy for someone to say no,
00:23:30.160 | they just give you the answer faster.
00:23:32.400 | Yeah. And that's part of it, right? Like you just want to make it clear.
00:23:35.640 | If what you were offering had real value, you wouldn't desperately need them.
00:23:40.080 | And if they didn't see the value, you wouldn't be like,
00:23:42.120 | I need to convert your no, I need to overcome the pushback. It's like,
00:23:46.960 | what? It's like, no, you got other people to go deal with people who will see the
00:23:51.320 | value. That person doesn't see the value. Like a buh-bye.
00:23:53.440 | That has to be what you convey in the words.
00:23:55.600 | I wish I could say that I'm eating a fully balanced diet every day.
00:24:00.520 | But the reality is that I am definitely not.
00:24:02.960 | So I love having an easy way to get my daily nutritional insurance,
00:24:07.320 | which is why I kickstart my day with Athletic Greens.
00:24:10.160 | And I am excited to be partnering with them for this episode.
00:24:12.880 | I started taking it because I wanted to see what all the hype was about.
00:24:16.480 | And I've kept it in my daily routine for months. Every morning,
00:24:20.440 | I mix it up with some cold water, add a few ice cubes.
00:24:23.320 | It tastes so good when it's cold.
00:24:25.160 | And I head to my office feeling focused and energized for the day,
00:24:28.800 | which is a feeling I absolutely love.
00:24:31.160 | I also love that it's made from 75 high quality vitamins,
00:24:34.960 | minerals and superfoods and contains less than one gram of sugar.
00:24:38.840 | It also has no GMOs, nasty chemicals, or artificial anything.
00:24:43.000 | To make giving it a try easy,
00:24:45.160 | Athletic Greens is going to give you a free one-year supply of immune supporting
00:24:49.640 | vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase.
00:24:53.640 | All you have to do is visit allthehacks.com/athleticgreens.
00:24:56.440 | Again,
00:24:59.640 | that's allthehacks.com/athleticgreens to take ownership over your
00:25:04.600 | health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance.
00:25:07.960 | Being a parent can be scary, whether it's watching your toddler,
00:25:12.440 | jump on your new couch naked during potty training,
00:25:15.160 | or the indescribable pain of stepping on tiny plastic dinosaurs in your bare
00:25:19.920 | feet. Both of which happened to me recently. Well,
00:25:22.720 | one thing that doesn't have to be scary is getting life insurance,
00:25:26.480 | especially when you do it with Fabric,
00:25:28.520 | who I'm excited to partner with for this episode.
00:25:31.000 | Fabric by Gerber Life was designed by parents for parents to
00:25:35.560 | help you get a high quality,
00:25:37.200 | surprisingly affordable term life insurance policy in less than 10 minutes.
00:25:41.720 | And when I say surprisingly affordable,
00:25:43.720 | I actually went online to compare prices and found Fabric to be highly
00:25:48.400 | competitive with great policies,
00:25:50.600 | like a million dollars in coverage for less than a dollar a day.
00:25:54.080 | It takes less than 10 minutes to apply,
00:25:56.400 | and you could be offered coverage instantly with no health exam required.
00:26:00.640 | So protect your family today with Fabric by Gerber Life.
00:26:05.000 | Apply today in just 10 minutes at meetfabric.com/allthehacks.
00:26:10.120 | That's meetfabric.com/allthehacks.
00:26:15.000 | M-E-E-T fabric.com/allthehacks.
00:26:20.080 | Policies issued by Western Southern Life Assurance Company,
00:26:23.280 | not available in certain States.
00:26:25.120 | Price is subject to underwriting and health questions.
00:26:28.680 | In an in-person pitch,
00:26:29.640 | you had a perspective that I thought was maybe one of the most unique I've seen
00:26:34.080 | and something that makes me want to go do an in-person pitch,
00:26:36.600 | which is on how you shouldn't actually wrap up.
00:26:38.720 | Yeah. I always been cringy about that kind of stuff.
00:26:42.960 | Cause a lot of people want to wrap up their pitch with like a fancy phrase or
00:26:46.280 | a saying. Think about when you watch shark tank and it's like, Hey sharks,
00:26:48.640 | who wants to dive in here with me and swim? Whatever. You're like, Oh, it's like,
00:26:53.120 | Oh yeah, you're pitching this. Oh yeah. You've rehearsed this. Oh yeah.
00:26:57.040 | This is your stick. You basically took them out of that moment of,
00:27:00.760 | I'm listening to your story to be like, Oh, sorry.
00:27:03.440 | We're pausing it for commercial break. Effectively. It lets the room down.
00:27:06.880 | I've never found a closing that makes people stand up and clap other than
00:27:11.680 | that's it. Thanks. Kind of thing. And that's my idea. Welcome to this,
00:27:15.480 | whatever that last piece is, which is like, I'm done. I've explained it to you.
00:27:19.240 | We're talking or I'm leaving. That's the vibe.
00:27:22.000 | If they have more they need from you, they will ask.
00:27:26.800 | And that is a classic Hollywood ending.
00:27:29.000 | There was a guy who ran CBS and he's famous for the most deadpan looks,
00:27:33.640 | no emotion. You didn't know what was going to happen. You left that room.
00:27:37.080 | You weren't sure if he loved it, hate it. It didn't matter. That was he trained.
00:27:39.920 | And the irony was the people who worked after him, that he worked for him.
00:27:42.760 | They learned how to do that too. And if it didn't go well,
00:27:45.480 | if the pitch didn't go well, again, would simply say, great. I got it. Thanks.
00:27:49.440 | And that was it. Nothing else. So you're like, okay.
00:27:55.320 | And then if you'd ask a question,
00:27:56.480 | how are you going to deal with this in the third act? You'd be like, Oh shit.
00:27:59.480 | Like he's got, he's interested. And then you would engage.
00:28:02.960 | And that's the vibe that is hard to let people capture on their own.
00:28:07.440 | You've got to find out what your audience thinks. You can't push them.
00:28:11.120 | You got to give them the basics. Then you'll know,
00:28:14.160 | is this something in your wheelhouse or not?
00:28:17.160 | And the amount of people that you can convert from an objection and the amount
00:28:23.680 | of work takes and the amount of lasting sort of good that's created,
00:28:28.160 | that is so small in today's world. It's not worth it.
00:28:30.240 | So instead of objection handling, which I know they teach in sales,
00:28:34.720 | it's just move on.
00:28:36.080 | It's better to go try again than to try to overcome every objection.
00:28:39.600 | It's not even close. It's not even close.
00:28:42.040 | An objection is somebody that basically has said, I don't buy into this.
00:28:46.240 | Now it's different if they don't understand it.
00:28:48.440 | And a lot of times what I'm dealing with is I'm dealing with companies who are
00:28:53.040 | trying to get through objections by giving the audience the information they
00:28:57.760 | should have given them in the beginning.
00:28:59.440 | And so they're trying to handle objections and they're actually using the
00:29:03.600 | information they should have used in the beginning as like, Oh no, no, no,
00:29:06.640 | that's not what it means. Or, Oh no, we can do this twice for you.
00:29:08.880 | Or whatever it is. Whereas when we retrain and go through it again, it's like,
00:29:13.280 | Hey, here's all the objections laid out.
00:29:15.200 | And if you're talking about objections like, Hey,
00:29:17.480 | I need to talk to my wife cause I'm not sure we can afford it.
00:29:20.040 | And your job is to close them. A, that's not my world.
00:29:23.240 | I don't work with that kind of piece. That's not what I do.
00:29:26.480 | And I've been approached by a lot of companies that have that type of sales
00:29:29.080 | stuff.
00:29:29.320 | And I worked with a very large company on their timeshare business.
00:29:33.600 | I just couldn't get them to really make the big enough changes
00:29:39.160 | because they're just a slow moving thing.
00:29:40.800 | And their goal is to get people in an emotional state and trick them into
00:29:45.320 | signing. Yeah, that's not what I do. The timeshare is good for certain group,
00:29:49.240 | a certain demographic. This actually works really well for.
00:29:51.320 | So why don't we just tell people how it works really, really well.
00:29:53.880 | And if they fit into the demographic, they'll let you know. And they're just like,
00:29:56.240 | what? That's not how we, that's not how we do things. We force them into it.
00:30:01.280 | We make them feel guilty. Like every trick in the book. It's not my world.
00:30:04.720 | I've gone to the timeshare pitches mostly out of curiosity to see how they do it.
00:30:08.680 | I have yet to ever say yes.
00:30:10.560 | But one thing that I've tried in the past,
00:30:13.280 | I'm curious if you've seen this or used it when it comes to objections.
00:30:16.480 | I knew when I was raising money for my last company,
00:30:18.760 | I knew that if someone wanted a lot of information
00:30:23.360 | about customer acquisition, like we just hadn't done it.
00:30:25.600 | And I knew that it was like the most common objection.
00:30:28.360 | And I would just start the pitch. I would walk in a bag.
00:30:30.840 | After I explained what the company did, I would say, Hey, I just want to pause.
00:30:33.640 | We don't have customer acquisition data yet.
00:30:36.480 | We have not gone through that part of the business.
00:30:38.000 | If that is something you guys need to see, we can just stop right now.
00:30:41.680 | We don't need to keep going. Right.
00:30:43.640 | And a part of that was I wanted them to get over it because they've already
00:30:48.240 | blocked off 30 minutes. They want to see the rest.
00:30:50.000 | It's not necessarily going to work,
00:30:51.760 | but at least makes them less focused on this thing that they might say no to.
00:30:55.720 | It's genius. It's owning the negative.
00:30:57.680 | And that's a big piece of storytelling is people get sucked
00:31:02.400 | into the idea that what's negative about their pitch or what the downside is.
00:31:05.440 | I just start every development meeting when we're talking about television shows.
00:31:07.920 | Why is a network going to pass on this show? Tell me why. What is the reason?
00:31:12.560 | It doesn't fit with the brand. It's too hard to produce.
00:31:15.080 | We can't cast it properly. I don't think people are going to like it.
00:31:17.440 | It's not going to be relatable. Okay. If I can't get past that in this room,
00:31:20.880 | the network's never going to get and like never going to get past that.
00:31:24.040 | If you pretend you don't know what the negative side is,
00:31:26.560 | there's not a lot of good options. One is your audience never brings it up.
00:31:29.960 | And so they just think that you either too dumb or you're hiding it from them.
00:31:34.480 | Number two is they bring it up right there.
00:31:38.080 | And now you've got to scramble and answer it.
00:31:40.840 | So if you end up not mentioning it and they bring it up,
00:31:44.120 | you can answer it except for they've been thinking about it.
00:31:47.040 | The entire time that's what they've been doing. They've been talking about it.
00:31:50.760 | And that is a disaster. You cannot have them doing that.
00:31:53.960 | And so the last option is you bring it up because it's not going to be,
00:31:57.320 | they didn't figure it out. They didn't understand what could be wrong here.
00:32:00.760 | That's never going to happen.
00:32:02.040 | So the negative is important.
00:32:04.880 | How big it is and how much importance it has is all directly proportionate to
00:32:09.000 | where you put it in the pitch. And by you talking about it right in front,
00:32:11.880 | saying, Hey, we don't customer acquisition data.
00:32:13.560 | So if that's an important thing, like, just know we don't do that.
00:32:16.040 | We haven't done that yet. It's like, okay, that's done.
00:32:18.720 | When we end up having storytelling in Hollywood,
00:32:22.040 | you don't get in a moment where it's like the Shawshank Redemption, uh,
00:32:25.760 | Andy Dufresne looks, you know, you get beaten up,
00:32:27.760 | but he looks like he's going to die. And you're not like, Oh, what a wimp.
00:32:30.760 | I hate him. It's over. He's a loser. Right. Rocky gets knocked down.
00:32:35.120 | You're like, Oh, that's it. This movie sucks. He's a bum.
00:32:37.800 | All is lost is the setup for here's what's great.
00:32:42.640 | That is the best part of it, right?
00:32:44.360 | When you talk about not having customer acquisition,
00:32:47.080 | and then you explain everything, your audience is then going to be like, Ooh,
00:32:51.120 | like, I wonder how this customer acquisition could work.
00:32:54.080 | And they'll start overlaying their own excitement to get to the result they want.
00:32:58.000 | The negative can never hurt you. Never hurt you in a pitch.
00:33:01.240 | So you mentioned a lot of storytelling in that response,
00:33:04.280 | but I noticed that when you gave your example of your buddy, Jeff,
00:33:06.600 | there wasn't really any storytelling.
00:33:08.240 | Is it that storytelling maybe doesn't need to be part of the first three minutes
00:33:12.400 | with the whack part?
00:33:13.520 | No, it's that people look at storytelling as once upon a time,
00:33:18.040 | I was here and that's not what storytelling is. That's wordsmith.
00:33:21.640 | That is wordplay. Storytelling is here's the situation.
00:33:26.320 | Here's what's happening. Here's what's going to happen next. Here's why.
00:33:29.680 | Scripts are storytelling because they fill themselves with words and they flow to
00:33:34.360 | the points.
00:33:35.200 | The points are the elements of a story that lead you to the next piece.
00:33:39.960 | How many people are listening that have a favorite movie and they watch it and
00:33:44.200 | they know what happens and they still like it.
00:33:46.520 | It's not because it's so cleverly written.
00:33:50.600 | You follow the story beat by beat by
00:33:55.640 | beat. And that's what makes it interesting. And that's what makes it fun.
00:33:59.480 | And that's what leads you. So when I talk about storytelling,
00:34:02.560 | I'm not telling people how to tell the story of how they came to be in this
00:34:07.000 | piece and why this is going to work for someone. I see a lot of that.
00:34:10.720 | It's a terrible idea because nobody wants your story to be wordsmith for them.
00:34:15.240 | They want to get to the point. If I'm there to be entertained. Okay. Wordsmith.
00:34:18.240 | Make it fun. But if I want something from you or you want something for me,
00:34:22.720 | can we just get to the point? Here's what it is.
00:34:25.360 | I want to know how it works. Then once you understand,
00:34:27.800 | you want to know could that be real? Would that actually do what you think it is?
00:34:31.120 | Oh yeah. Okay. How do I get that? That's what a story builds.
00:34:35.280 | That's how storytelling in Hollywood works.
00:34:36.840 | You inform people and lead them to the conclusion.
00:34:39.800 | That's all Hollywood storytelling is,
00:34:42.800 | is leading people to the conclusion you want. The boat sinks in Titanic.
00:34:46.920 | You watch the film, Andy Dufresne.
00:34:48.920 | You want him to escape from the prison at Shawshank. You want it to happen.
00:34:52.560 | We don't start that movie by saying, Andy Dufresne escapes from a very bad prison.
00:34:57.440 | Let me tell you why he does that. That's not how you tell a story.
00:35:01.440 | Tell a story and be like, here's where he's at in this story. Here's what he did.
00:35:05.480 | Here's why he's in the prison. Here are the conditions. Here's his choices.
00:35:08.480 | It looks like he's not going to make it. Then you're like, please escape. Right?
00:35:11.960 | That's how a story is told.
00:35:13.160 | Is there an example of that kind of storytelling with a pitch for a product or
00:35:18.800 | a service?
00:35:19.640 | Well, yes.
00:35:22.920 | The way that I use that in a classic storytelling with wordsmithing sort of
00:35:27.280 | idea is in what's called the intro with my reason for being.
00:35:30.920 | That's the only time where that makes sense,
00:35:33.000 | where you want to explain to people the reason why they are there.
00:35:37.360 | You are there. We are here. How did this come to be?
00:35:40.120 | I started developing that technique when we were doing pilots and presentations
00:35:44.640 | for the networks.
00:35:45.280 | And sometimes you'd send it in and they would take this DVD,
00:35:48.960 | put it in the DVD player.
00:35:49.760 | They'd watch your pilot and then they decide if they're going to buy it or not.
00:35:52.240 | I just couldn't live with that because there was things I wanted them to know
00:35:56.200 | about it and things that happened along the way.
00:35:57.840 | So I became very,
00:35:59.440 | very good at warming the room and creating the anticipation.
00:36:04.440 | And if I knew something might be an issue,
00:36:07.880 | I would be calling the head of the network. I'm saying, Hey, by the way,
00:36:10.280 | I feel like our second act is really shallow here because I didn't have this
00:36:14.320 | scene. I wanted to film it. So I feel like that second act drags a lot. Right.
00:36:18.560 | And they're like, okay, so now they're anticipating.
00:36:20.560 | So it can drag and it doesn't kill it. I would say like, Hey,
00:36:23.560 | I would have added this longer because I love this scene so much,
00:36:26.960 | but I know that your delivery, we need nine minutes of this act.
00:36:30.040 | There is so much here that blank, blank, blank. I set that room tone.
00:36:34.000 | So when they put the DVD in, they know exactly what to think,
00:36:37.000 | exactly how to feel exactly what went into this,
00:36:39.840 | and they can judge it on its merits. Your pitch is kind of the same.
00:36:42.360 | How did you get here?
00:36:43.400 | How is your reason for being about why this product or service is interesting?
00:36:47.760 | How does that translate to why you're sitting there?
00:36:50.840 | And I'll give you a great example.
00:36:52.040 | One of my favorites from one of my favorite companies I've ever worked with is
00:36:54.720 | a electric vehicle controller manufacturer called XROW Technologies.
00:36:58.960 | And they had come to me, the chairman had come to me a while ago and said, Hey,
00:37:03.560 | will you come on board? We really need some help. And I looked at the company.
00:37:06.080 | I was like, nah, too small Canadian, small, micro cab company,
00:37:11.320 | not my world. I really liked this guy, but not going to happen.
00:37:14.320 | He called me back three months later and he said, Hey, listen,
00:37:16.480 | we just hired a new CEO taking over.
00:37:19.040 | She's moving to Calgary to head office to start this up.
00:37:22.120 | She would really use some help. And I think you guys would hit it off.
00:37:24.640 | And I was like, nah. And he said,
00:37:26.520 | she's the CEO of GE small industrial motors and she's leaving that
00:37:32.080 | gig. And I could not get my brain around why she would do that.
00:37:35.760 | And so when I talked to her on the phone, I said, I'd talk to her and I asked her,
00:37:39.760 | I said, why would you take this job?
00:37:42.120 | Why would you leave one of the highest profile jobs in that business and move
00:37:46.200 | your entire family to Calgary, Alberta for this micro cap,
00:37:49.080 | infinitesimally small company? Why would you do that? And she said, Oh, well,
00:37:54.320 | do you know anything about electric motors? And I said, well, like, no,
00:37:57.840 | not really. And she goes, well, I do.
00:37:59.800 | And I've been looking for this technology since I was 12 years old,
00:38:04.400 | winding electric motors in my family's electric motor shop.
00:38:07.920 | I know what this technology can do. I could not resist.
00:38:11.400 | So when she would pitch that story, that was the reason for me.
00:38:17.000 | Now you don't know anything about that company,
00:38:20.000 | but I guarantee everybody listening now wants to know what that technology is.
00:38:24.600 | I've set up that. And so when she pitches, so she would say,
00:38:28.080 | I was CEO of GE small industrial motors. I got a call from this company.
00:38:32.320 | I ignored them for many time until I finally said one phrase that changed my
00:38:36.480 | life. I said, show me the technology. And they did.
00:38:40.680 | And 30 days later,
00:38:42.320 | I attended my resignation at GE and moved my entire family to Calgary,
00:38:46.240 | Alberta to take over as the CEO of Xtro Technologies.
00:38:50.600 | And now you're like, okay, then that's the start of the pitch.
00:38:55.080 | That's the story that leads you to be like,
00:38:56.480 | so let me tell you a little bit about Xtro.
00:38:58.200 | We are a technology company that makes controllers for electric vehicles.
00:39:02.480 | We use coil switching the dynamic way to be the brains behind the way electric
00:39:07.760 | vehicle performs with our coil switching technology.
00:39:10.680 | You can go farther and go faster on the same charge.
00:39:16.840 | And you're like, what? And then it's like,
00:39:19.240 | let me tell you the details of the technology. And then she gets into it.
00:39:22.520 | The power of that story in the beginning to set up that thing is very hard to
00:39:27.600 | ignore. That's how you lead somebody to that piece. It's not always like that.
00:39:31.840 | Sometimes you got to send a deck.
00:39:33.000 | Sometimes people don't want to hear your little small talk in the beginning.
00:39:35.240 | They just want you to play it. But that's where classic,
00:39:38.600 | let me tell you a story fits in is it should be the story of how you got there or
00:39:43.440 | why this counts. And is that the first part of every pitch?
00:39:46.760 | Almost every pitch has that because 90 times out of a hundred,
00:39:50.200 | you're going to have a conversation to begin to pitch.
00:39:53.240 | Sometimes you're just sending a deck or an email.
00:39:54.920 | You're not going to be able to do that, but it becomes a, how did you get there?
00:39:58.200 | Why is this interesting? What compelled you to be there?
00:40:01.040 | Like the one I wrote in the book, this woman show jumped with her horse.
00:40:04.880 | She had an axle problem on the way to the event.
00:40:07.960 | She on the side of the road,
00:40:09.600 | the horses were freaking out and it was nine 30 at night.
00:40:13.520 | Where do you put your horse? She's like, Oh my God.
00:40:16.960 | And yet you could see in the area,
00:40:18.640 | there's gotta be houses everywhere that have barns and
00:40:23.120 | stables, but no way to access them. I don't know what to know.
00:40:26.520 | And then he's closed.
00:40:27.360 | She realized that's when she came up with bed and bale, which is Airbnb,
00:40:31.400 | but for horses. Now, do you need a lot more? Like if you were an investor,
00:40:36.720 | now your questions are not like, Oh, what is this thing?
00:40:40.120 | How does this app work? Or what's the driving force? It's like, okay,
00:40:44.560 | where are you? Like, do you build the app? Like now you're engaged already.
00:40:48.400 | Cause you get it.
00:40:49.240 | Understanding is the fundamental importance for being
00:40:54.800 | engaged. People who don't understand something can't engage with you.
00:40:57.880 | But if it's Airbnb for horses, people travel with horses,
00:41:01.000 | they need a place to put them. There's houses all over America with barns.
00:41:03.960 | Unused. Yeah, I get it. But I want to know this, this, this, this, this, this,
00:41:08.800 | this, this, this, this, this, right. Yeah. And that's really the key.
00:41:12.200 | Getting the crew together. Isn't as easy as it used to be. I get it.
00:41:17.240 | Life comes at you fast, but trust me,
00:41:20.000 | your friends are probably desperate for a good hang.
00:41:22.800 | So kick 2024 off right by finally hosting that event.
00:41:26.880 | Just make sure you do it the easy way and let our sponsor drizzly,
00:41:30.840 | the go-to app for drink delivery, take care of the supplies.
00:41:34.280 | All you need to come up with is the excuse to get together.
00:41:37.600 | It doesn't even have to be a good one.
00:41:39.240 | It could be your dog's birthday that the sun finally came out,
00:41:42.640 | or maybe you just want to celebrate that you got through another week with
00:41:46.600 | drizzly. You can make hosting easy by taking the drink run off your to-do list,
00:41:50.800 | which means you can entice your friends to leave their houses without ever
00:41:54.840 | leaving yours. And since I know you like a good deal,
00:41:57.560 | drizzly compares prices on their massive selection of beer, wine,
00:42:00.880 | and spirits across multiple stores.
00:42:02.880 | So when I really wanted to make a few cocktails while we were hosting family
00:42:06.240 | last week, not only could I get an Italian Amaro delivered in less than an hour,
00:42:10.560 | but I found it for $15 less than my local liquor store.
00:42:13.920 | So whatever the occasion download the drizzly app or go to drizzly.com.
00:42:18.920 | That's D R I Z L Y.com today must be 21
00:42:23.920 | plus not available in all locations.
00:42:26.200 | I just want to thank you quick for listening to and supporting the show.
00:42:31.720 | Your support is what keeps this show going to get all of the URLs,
00:42:36.200 | codes, deals, and discounts from our partners.
00:42:39.000 | You can go to all the hacks.com/deals.
00:42:42.280 | So please consider supporting those who support us.
00:42:45.640 | One thing you mentioned is, okay, so maybe if you have to send a deck,
00:42:48.160 | the intro isn't part of it.
00:42:49.560 | There are a lot of times where I've met people who are like, well,
00:42:52.880 | if someone tells me to send a deck,
00:42:54.200 | I try to force them into having the conversation in person.
00:42:58.720 | Do you think you should, as a business or a person selling anything,
00:43:02.160 | kind of hone all the mediums or try to...
00:43:05.200 | Unfortunately, yeah, because it's just like,
00:43:07.440 | you try to push somebody to do an in-person meeting.
00:43:09.440 | If you can get that to happen, great.
00:43:11.480 | But if your deck or your written material can't stand on their own,
00:43:14.560 | you're buggered because if you think that person that you're pitching,
00:43:16.920 | it makes the ultimate decision and isn't going to share it with someone else.
00:43:20.040 | It doesn't have to do that. That's never going to work.
00:43:22.600 | What's happening is we live in a sort of decision by committee world.
00:43:26.680 | They have to rationalize why they liked it to somebody.
00:43:28.960 | And that means they're going to have to share your deck with them and they're
00:43:31.400 | going to have to summarize your pitch.
00:43:33.400 | But if I told you and I sent you the deck for bed and bail,
00:43:36.960 | and I told you to go explain it to somebody, you'd say Airbnb for horses.
00:43:41.280 | It's because I already gave you that.
00:43:44.200 | And so now the summary, it lives on its own.
00:43:48.400 | And the deck kind of reinforces that. In her opening of that deck,
00:43:53.280 | it's occasionally there'll be something of a story that led her there.
00:43:57.440 | But all I really needed from that story to get across to people is that there's
00:44:01.880 | nowhere for people who travel with horses to put them other than a
00:44:06.240 | professional kennel. And those places close.
00:44:09.080 | It's not like a hotel where they're open for reservations all the time.
00:44:12.200 | It's stables. Those people go home. So that's really all I needed to convey.
00:44:16.280 | That's the setup, right? Is it the problem?
00:44:18.880 | Sometimes it's the problem that you answer.
00:44:21.080 | I find people get too detailed into that,
00:44:23.160 | but really the part of the deck that makes the most impact
00:44:28.200 | is what is it? That's it.
00:44:32.760 | That's what it is. Airbnb for horses.
00:44:34.600 | The phrasing around that makes people go first page, second page. Now they're,
00:44:38.440 | like, okay, I'm going to read this. Cause I want to find things out.
00:44:42.080 | Not I'm reading it. It's four pages. I don't really understand how many people
00:44:46.200 | listening have done that,
00:44:47.280 | where they get a deck and they're looking through and they're like reading it.
00:44:49.920 | And they're like, I don't really get it.
00:44:51.600 | And so their first question is I don't really understand how this works.
00:44:55.400 | I don't really understand how that works. And you're like, oh no,
00:44:57.680 | that was like page four. And the thing that happens to people all the time,
00:45:00.480 | or you're pitching it. And someone says to you, they ask a question. You're like,
00:45:03.720 | oh yeah, I'm getting to that in just a second here.
00:45:05.360 | That's a pretty good sign.
00:45:08.160 | You've got your information in the wrong order because people are already having
00:45:11.240 | thoughts.
00:45:11.880 | Are there other signs or ways to evaluate how you're doing with whatever kind of
00:45:16.000 | pitch you have, whether it's for business or something at work?
00:45:19.080 | It's hard because the engagement doesn't give you what you need.
00:45:22.560 | People pretend to be interested. They pretend to be disinterested.
00:45:25.720 | It's really about what they engage with next. Do they ask questions?
00:45:29.960 | Are the questions about what you're doing and the concept,
00:45:33.160 | then you've got a problem. If the questions are like,
00:45:35.560 | what are you doing next? How do you solve this problem? Where does this go?
00:45:39.560 | How do we deal with this? Is there a way this happens?
00:45:41.960 | And there are those kinds of questions. They understand the concept.
00:45:46.440 | And if you can't get that square,
00:45:49.560 | then you will see people's reaction.
00:45:51.960 | It'll mostly be in the questions they ask, kind of tell you how you're doing.
00:45:54.920 | How do you feel about rehearsing?
00:45:56.720 | Should people be practicing this a lot and with who?
00:45:59.000 | I do think you should practice a lot with anybody.
00:46:02.800 | The key is you should be able to say it to anybody
00:46:07.480 | at any time. You should have those 4 sentences pretty locked down.
00:46:13.320 | And what you'll find is then you can start to color them and add to them and
00:46:16.800 | make them better. And you can gauge the people that you're talking to.
00:46:20.040 | If my buddy Jeff is talking about his personal training business,
00:46:22.400 | and he's talking to another personal trainer,
00:46:24.000 | he would pitch what he does a little differently,
00:46:25.520 | but he already has the language in his repertoire. He might start with, yeah.
00:46:29.200 | Oh, I'm personally, I do this. I do that. Like his basics are already there.
00:46:33.200 | The framework structure is already there. It's good to rehearse,
00:46:37.560 | but have you ever heard somebody that you know,
00:46:40.280 | they're reading or, you know, they've memorized it, it just detracts.
00:46:44.320 | Cause then you're like, Oh, right. This is rehearsed.
00:46:46.160 | And it sucks the passion out of it.
00:46:49.880 | And it just makes it look like you're trying too hard.
00:46:52.640 | And that's just like in a romantic relationship,
00:46:55.800 | like somebody is trying too hard. It's just not interested.
00:46:58.720 | My guidance has always been rehearsed as much as you need so that you don't need
00:47:02.560 | notes. That's part one.
00:47:04.360 | But then part two is and get really comfortable with the fact that there's going
00:47:08.920 | to be multiple things you forget and it's okay. Yeah.
00:47:11.920 | Because if you rehearse it all and then you forget something,
00:47:14.960 | you get caught up and you're like, Oh, there was one,
00:47:16.680 | a fourth point and let me go back and look.
00:47:19.320 | And I think it's better if you just roll with the three and forget the fourth
00:47:22.320 | point. And if it's important,
00:47:23.560 | it'll probably come back later because you don't want to be searching for notes
00:47:27.520 | in the middle of the conversation. Yeah. You talked about slides.
00:47:30.960 | When people are giving presentations,
00:47:32.640 | you want the slides to live on their own because you mentioned they might get
00:47:35.720 | shared around,
00:47:36.440 | but you also don't want them to be distracting when you're talking.
00:47:39.080 | Do you tell people to create two different presentations?
00:47:42.240 | Yes. A hundred percent. Okay. Yeah. Almost always. I mean,
00:47:45.800 | think about it. You're giving a presentation with slides.
00:47:48.200 | What do you actually want them to do? The person,
00:47:49.880 | do you want them to read the slide,
00:47:51.480 | the words on there and read the information? Then what are you doing there?
00:47:55.120 | But then they're reading it. And if you don't want them to read it,
00:47:58.480 | then why have it? Unless it's just a picture, you're describing it.
00:48:02.280 | So there are your two things. You want them to read it or you don't.
00:48:05.320 | If you don't want them to read it,
00:48:06.480 | then it better be something that accentuates what you're saying. Bullet points,
00:48:10.760 | pictures, simple messages, like that simple.
00:48:14.240 | If you're put up something enough that they have to read,
00:48:17.360 | there's no point in having it there. Because if you're talking,
00:48:20.240 | they're not going to know what are they trying to split time on reading it,
00:48:22.440 | doing jumping ahead. It's just, it's a disaster.
00:48:25.680 | People want to put slides so it looks like they've done a lot of work.
00:48:28.200 | It's like, okay, by the way, I'm not even against that. Sometimes,
00:48:32.080 | sometimes there's graphs and charts that look good.
00:48:35.880 | So you put it on a slide and when you're presenting in person,
00:48:40.040 | but you're not speaking to the numbers on there. You're saying,
00:48:42.920 | we did extensive research and I will send you this in detail.
00:48:46.520 | So you can read what this slide says, but here's the summary,
00:48:49.640 | as opposed to here's the market research response. As you could see here,
00:48:54.520 | it's like your slides should accentuate what you're saying,
00:48:58.840 | not trying to do the work for you.
00:49:00.920 | One other thing that I'll share just in case anyone's making a presentation,
00:49:04.560 | you could tell me if you don't like this idea,
00:49:06.000 | but every time I went and gave a pitch for my company,
00:49:08.800 | I took notes after the fact of all the questions I was getting asked.
00:49:12.000 | And then I took every question and I said, okay,
00:49:14.360 | this question is either going to be a question that I think everyone needs the
00:49:16.760 | answer to. It needs to be part of the pitch.
00:49:18.880 | Or it's a question that some people might have, but not everyone.
00:49:22.480 | So it's not as part of the pitch,
00:49:23.600 | but I'm going to create a slide for the question. And it was basically,
00:49:29.200 | I don't know if this was like a psychological trick,
00:49:31.560 | but I found that someone would ask a question at the end and I would jump to a
00:49:34.840 | slide to answer it the first time I wouldn't. And then I'd go home,
00:49:38.080 | I'd make the slide. And the next time I would jump to it.
00:49:40.080 | And for some reason when it was written on the slide,
00:49:43.240 | as if I thought about it in advance, people were like, Oh, you can answer this.
00:49:46.880 | I'm not worried anymore. But if I off the cuff answer it, I'm just like, Oh,
00:49:50.280 | this is what we're going to do. People were a little more apprehensive.
00:49:52.520 | Exactly. It's like what I used to say when I was pitching TV,
00:49:54.720 | it's all in the casting. I was like, no, it's in the concept.
00:49:58.600 | If I have to tell you that we'll figure it out in casting,
00:50:01.600 | it means I really don't know how to make it work.
00:50:03.280 | And I'll just get good cast that'll fix it.
00:50:05.280 | And that's the same thing where you asked me a question that's even tough.
00:50:08.160 | And I just answer it. There's a chance that I may not believe you,
00:50:11.880 | that I think you just will say anything to make the pitch good.
00:50:14.360 | Any final tips for people obviously not pitching Hollywood and that kind of
00:50:19.640 | thing that you left off?
00:50:20.480 | It's anything. It is literally a guide for conversation in life.
00:50:25.240 | Keep it simple.
00:50:26.360 | Probably the best exercise that seemed to work the best for people is I have them
00:50:31.240 | do my Twitter exercise.
00:50:32.560 | You had to tweet what your product or service was and that's it.
00:50:37.240 | And not the new extended Twitter length, but the original 144 characters,
00:50:42.880 | what would you put, what would you say?
00:50:46.360 | And if you can't get it there because you think everything is so valuable and so
00:50:50.680 | complicated, you need to work harder.
00:50:53.320 | It means that you're actually in more need of it. And it's just happened to me.
00:50:56.680 | I have a very big client. I'm very excited about their company.
00:51:00.120 | I've come on as an advisor. I'm really involved.
00:51:02.880 | It is a very in-depth company.
00:51:05.760 | There are layers on layers and we are talking about it and I couldn't get a log
00:51:10.360 | line for them because there was just so many things. Oh,
00:51:12.880 | but we don't talk about the financing. Then we don't do that.
00:51:14.880 | When we finally got it, it was like, Oh wow.
00:51:17.440 | It was more important than we thought because at the beginning, you're like, Oh,
00:51:20.600 | we got so many good things. Let's just get people in a little bit.
00:51:23.280 | And then they'll see all the good things. And you're like, no,
00:51:25.200 | go to the Twitter thing. And can you make it that simple?
00:51:29.840 | Sometimes with clients I'll be like, okay, here's seven words.
00:51:32.960 | Tell me your idea in seven words. That's it.
00:51:35.560 | Which seven do you choose? Platform,
00:51:39.360 | used for hailing, whatever.
00:51:44.400 | You have to put it in such a small thing. You're like, okay,
00:51:47.040 | if I do that TV shows, we used to do it all the time.
00:51:49.440 | It's the amazing race for the smartest people in the world.
00:51:54.240 | I don't really know the show, but you could get a basic idea. It's like, okay.
00:51:57.920 | Then you add, all right, here's 10 more words. Go ahead.
00:52:00.560 | What would you choose? And then you're adding.
00:52:02.800 | And that's probably the best exercise,
00:52:05.920 | which is could you actually explain it in 144 characters if you really had to?
00:52:11.280 | So people don't necessarily want to buy it,
00:52:14.240 | but they don't understand what it is you sell.
00:52:16.920 | That's basically trying to convey the four points of the whack weather or just
00:52:20.760 | the first.
00:52:21.480 | If you only have 144 characters or 15 or 25 words, just the first,
00:52:25.600 | it is the most important. What is it is the most important.
00:52:27.760 | How does it work is the second.
00:52:29.320 | Those take up 50% of everything that you need.
00:52:32.080 | All right. And everything else people will get to.
00:52:35.240 | They can't get to those two things on their own.
00:52:37.800 | It's the only two things they can't get to on their own.
00:52:40.520 | They need you to inform them. Everything else,
00:52:42.640 | they can start to put together themselves. They can have an idea,
00:52:46.040 | they can develop it, but until they understand what it is and how it works,
00:52:49.480 | you got nothing.
00:52:50.720 | If they can come to their own conclusions for the second half of your pitch,
00:52:54.400 | at least at those steps,
00:52:55.840 | how much of your pitch is planned in advance versus free form based on the
00:53:00.160 | questions people are asking and where it's going.
00:53:01.800 | I still have pretty good structure just because they come to the conclusion.
00:53:05.880 | They may miss things because they're focused in one
00:53:10.520 | area, which is fine. You want all the details laid out the rest.
00:53:14.640 | After the three minutes, you can have very loose,
00:53:17.280 | very loose because they're already interested. They want to engage.
00:53:21.800 | They are looking for confirmation of their predetermined bias already.
00:53:26.840 | That's what they're looking for now. Oh, I like that idea.
00:53:29.640 | But do you have a patent? Do you do this?
00:53:34.240 | That's what you want. You want them to be like, Ooh, this could be good.
00:53:38.200 | But is that a good valuation? But how far are you from revenue? You want that.
00:53:44.240 | You don't get that you are fighting uphill.
00:53:46.600 | I feel like I have a lot of notes.
00:53:48.960 | I'm going to work on my pitch that I send out to other guests like you,
00:53:52.240 | all kinds of people. I want to take a quick turn.
00:53:54.920 | So we talk a lot about travel on this show and hack it up,
00:53:59.320 | hack it up last year. You sold your house. You bought a fancy RV.
00:54:03.880 | You went around the country,
00:54:05.120 | hit all 48 contiguous States in six months with your wife and your two kids.
00:54:09.680 | Before I hear more, would you do that again?
00:54:13.200 | I would be on the road right now if it wasn't for my youngest,
00:54:16.240 | wanting to go back to real school. So I loved it. I loved every second of it.
00:54:20.480 | I mean, I'm, I'm in a semi-retirement mode anyways.
00:54:23.240 | I didn't know America was, I didn't know it was that good.
00:54:26.960 | That was the one takeaway from seeing all 48 States interacted with people every
00:54:31.480 | single day. It was part of the documentary that I was making about.
00:54:34.080 | It was like, we got to go meet people. We got to go see people.
00:54:36.560 | We was called dinner with America.
00:54:38.120 | We went and just random people we met and just heard their stories.
00:54:42.400 | And it's just shocked at how great this country is. The people,
00:54:46.560 | I know it feels like we're tearing each other apart and there's such divide,
00:54:51.000 | except it's not really like that. It really isn't. It's like that in the media.
00:54:54.560 | It's like that on your social media feed.
00:54:56.040 | It's like that in a few cities at certain times and it's a protest,
00:54:59.240 | but for the most part,
00:55:00.920 | the things that humans and Americans have in common so outweigh the things we
00:55:05.280 | don't that in the real world, people are just doing their thing.
00:55:08.520 | They're trying to have fun. They're trying to take care of their family.
00:55:10.280 | They're trying to make a better life. People are really, really great.
00:55:12.560 | And so I absolutely loved it.
00:55:13.680 | And I went from a relatively good size house here in Los Angeles to
00:55:18.360 | a trailer for six months. That was smaller than my bathroom.
00:55:21.880 | So it took some getting used to, but I loved it.
00:55:24.960 | Any places you went that were kind of unusual and you're like,
00:55:28.680 | I didn't think that this would be a place I'd love.
00:55:31.120 | Yeah. Oh yeah. I'd say big surprises for us were Alabama region,
00:55:36.080 | like Alabama, Tennessee, that area, Oklahoma, Arkansas.
00:55:40.800 | It was just amazing. We had such a great time. People were amazing.
00:55:43.200 | Love the scenery, that kind of stuff. That was a surprise.
00:55:46.280 | And the other sort of big one for me was like Niagara falls.
00:55:48.680 | Like Niagara falls was really fun. And like a great, great day.
00:55:53.920 | That was a surprise because I expected to be very touristy and, and it was,
00:55:58.720 | it just didn't matter because it was awesome.
00:56:00.040 | But I found that Southern hospitality and that kind of
00:56:04.280 | vibe, South Carolina and all that was just like,
00:56:06.880 | it was so heartwarming and the people were amazing. And we just fell in love.
00:56:10.680 | How did you meet all these people?
00:56:12.280 | I think everyone I know when they're traveling loves to have the story of, Oh,
00:56:15.640 | you met some locals in this place. You said you did it every day,
00:56:18.400 | every single day. How did you make that happen?
00:56:20.720 | Every day we had a few things we had to try to, you know,
00:56:23.800 | what the place was famous for foods.
00:56:25.320 | We had to find the restaurant that sort of represented that best restaurant,
00:56:28.640 | the city kind of idea.
00:56:29.600 | We had to find out what the cool adventure was whitewater rafting or downhill
00:56:33.520 | mountain biking or whatever a cool adventure was and what the great site would
00:56:36.640 | be. What do you have to go see?
00:56:37.640 | Do we got to go see the St. Louis arch like that kind of stuff, you know?
00:56:40.000 | So we did a lot of the touristy things that you have to see if you've never been
00:56:43.160 | to St. Louis, you kind of got to see the arch, that kind of stuff.
00:56:45.440 | You're going to rock and roll hall of fame. So we did all those,
00:56:48.880 | but then while we were out doing that,
00:56:50.200 | our goal was to find someone to interact with and be like, Hey,
00:56:54.000 | can we take you to dinner? This is what we're doing.
00:56:56.040 | And it was all the time, every time, every place. It happened.
00:57:01.240 | That's just what we did. It was amazing.
00:57:03.120 | I'll give you a great example. My kids were pulling into Kentucky,
00:57:06.400 | big Kentucky horse park, RV place, huge place, big round.
00:57:11.080 | And you can park on the inside or you can park on the outside.
00:57:13.920 | The outside has these amazing views of the vistas. We felt we were driving around.
00:57:17.560 | We found the one, you pick whatever one you want.
00:57:18.880 | This is beautiful backed right onto a park, basically a park.
00:57:22.720 | We could drop our door out the back of the deck. It would be amazing.
00:57:26.760 | But on the inside was about six RVs that were clustered together and everybody
00:57:31.320 | in their middle sort of like fire going, chatting. Right.
00:57:34.480 | And then we drove around and I said to the kids, all right, what should we do?
00:57:37.280 | We should take this spot. Super beautiful.
00:57:39.200 | We'll be able to back right on the park. It'll be amazing.
00:57:41.160 | Or do you guys want to back into this group of people and just join in?
00:57:43.880 | And my kids were like 17 and 15. We're like, yeah, let's go with the people.
00:57:49.400 | And so we backed our RV into a site that sort of backed into them.
00:57:53.120 | We got everything all set up and we literally walked right over their campsite.
00:57:56.560 | It was like, Hey, where are you guys from? That was it.
00:57:59.920 | We're playing volleyball with them all night. We're making dinner.
00:58:01.640 | Like that was it in Washington state.
00:58:04.560 | We're riding our electric bikes.
00:58:05.920 | And this guy had this recumbent bike or the one that you sit on and you pedal
00:58:08.680 | with your hands or whatever. And he's flying.
00:58:10.320 | We get to the stoplight place waiting for the light to change.
00:58:12.880 | And I looked down and that's not a recumbent bike. He has got no legs, no legs.
00:58:16.480 | And I looked at him and I just made the joke. I was like, Oh man,
00:58:20.000 | you're making me look bad.
00:58:20.840 | I'm on an electric bike here and you don't even have leg. Like this is,
00:58:23.440 | you make me look at we're laughing and the kids. And now what's your name?
00:58:28.560 | He's like, Louise. And I was like, what are you doing tonight? Louise?
00:58:30.640 | He's like, why do you ask? Hey, we do this thing. You want to come to dinner?
00:58:33.520 | Come down to the campsite. We'll make dinner for you. He's like, okay.
00:58:36.920 | So he came down.
00:58:38.360 | So we spent the night with him and we met people from all four corners of the
00:58:42.120 | country. Every race, creed, religion. It was amazing.
00:58:44.600 | It was the greatest experience of my life.
00:58:46.240 | Best thing my kids ever I've ever done for them.
00:58:48.760 | That's amazing. Had you traveled a lot with your kids before?
00:58:51.840 | We do a lot of adventures. Like I run an adventure club nonprofit for exactly.
00:58:56.640 | So I do a lot of adventure stuff.
00:58:57.800 | So the kids are not unused to doing weird kooky things like my daughter and I
00:59:02.160 | rappel down waterfalls, like silly things like that, but we're not campers.
00:59:06.640 | We're not RV people. That's just not our world.
00:59:09.840 | So this was all sort of new in that sense.
00:59:11.960 | And we never been away for longer than a week or two ever.
00:59:14.840 | That's amazing. Are the lists of all the,
00:59:17.040 | we had to find the best place here and do this thing.
00:59:19.600 | Is that published anywhere? I got all that. I got, I have all that.
00:59:22.640 | I haven't published it all yet. I'm in the middle of trying to finalize it all.
00:59:25.360 | Okay. Where we went, what we did, who we saw, like all that stuff.
00:59:28.360 | I have all that stuff, but it'll be somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. It'll be killer.
00:59:31.640 | Awesome. Yeah. That's like a coffee table book.
00:59:33.600 | It's coming out hopefully for September.
00:59:35.960 | And it's basically it's called what I learned about America. That's amazing.
00:59:38.600 | Visiting all 48 States. We jumped quickly to something totally different.
00:59:42.000 | So first off, thanks for all of that. Of course.
00:59:44.200 | I really enjoyed the conversation.
00:59:45.520 | I think people are going to want to hear all these tips because we normally end
00:59:48.200 | every episode asking people find a place. What do you suggest they eat?
00:59:52.280 | Do have a drink? Where do they go? I'll let you,
00:59:55.840 | I'll punt on 48 state answer for the book,
00:59:59.440 | but I'm curious if there's one place that whether it was on your trip or in LA,
01:00:03.520 | that you have some recommendations for people, maybe traveling there.
01:00:06.760 | I don't know this summer.
01:00:07.880 | I think one of the best spots that I've still can't get over is still
01:00:12.920 | Whistler, British Columbia.
01:00:14.320 | It's one of my favorite spots in the world in the summer, winter,
01:00:19.560 | everything looks like, well, so all the places are great,
01:00:21.520 | but in the summer is a unique experience because it's like being in the middle
01:00:26.520 | of the wilderness, but with all the trappings of everything,
01:00:29.960 | which is just really, really cool. So that's what I would say.
01:00:33.160 | If you've never been there, that'd be the place I would go.
01:00:34.960 | But if you're in LA and you want great sushi, that's a whole other thing.
01:00:38.320 | I will second your Whistler.
01:00:40.840 | I went on a bachelor party in Whistler and I will encourage anyone going
01:00:45.600 | there to try their mountain biking trails, which are out of this world.
01:00:49.840 | I felt like I was biking through an Ewok village with these like elevated ramps.
01:00:53.760 | One person is so smooth and just nonstop. You're like, wow.
01:00:57.720 | One person did break their legs. So for him, it was not as smooth,
01:01:00.920 | but for the rest of us, we had a good time. Thank you so much for being here.
01:01:03.600 | Where can people stay on top of everything you're doing and find out when this
01:01:08.040 | book's coming out?
01:01:08.880 | I'm easy to find on my socials at Brant Penvidic.
01:01:11.440 | You can go to three minute rule.com and see all that kind of stuff.
01:01:14.440 | My travel club, you can visit that reject average.com.
01:01:17.400 | I'm pretty easy to find. I have a lot going on.
01:01:19.520 | I just don't have a lot going on. I don't sell anything. I don't have a course.
01:01:23.040 | I'm not trying to get people's money. I don't take on new clients right now.
01:01:26.120 | I'm just out doing my thing. I love helping people find the value in their message.
01:01:30.200 | It's like one of those things.
01:01:31.240 | I've had fortune 500 CEOs in almost tears because of the thing they've been
01:01:35.480 | working on for years. They're finally able to explain it properly.
01:01:39.240 | And it's like the frustration of having something that you really believe in,
01:01:42.400 | that you love and you can't get people to understand it or believe in it is
01:01:45.600 | overwhelming. And it's just, it's kind of great to be able to help people do that.
01:01:48.160 | So, well, I appreciate it. Absolutely, buddy. Thanks for being here.
01:01:51.640 | Right on, man.
01:01:53.160 | I really hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for listening.
01:01:58.000 | Reminder to vote for all the hacks and the people's choice podcast awards by
01:02:01.960 | July 31st at all the hacks.com/vote.
01:02:05.440 | If you have any feedback on the show questions for me,
01:02:08.320 | or just want to say hi chris@allthehacks.com or DM me on Twitter or
01:02:12.760 | Instagram. And if you haven't subscribed to the show on Amazon music,
01:02:16.320 | they've been featuring all the hacks this week as a hidden gem podcast.
01:02:19.680 | So definitely check it out. Okay. That's it for this week. See you next week.
01:02:24.240 | [inaudible]
01:02:29.240 | [inaudible]
01:02:34.240 | [inaudible].