Negotiation Hacks: An Award Winning Film Director's Approach to Getting More By Saying Less
00:00:00.000 | It's how many people are listening that have a favorite movie and they watch it and they
00:00:04.360 | know what happens and they still like it.
00:00:07.260 | It's not because it's so cleverly written that you're just like magic with words.
00:00:12.660 | It's like you follow the story beat by beat by beat and that's what makes it interesting
00:00:19.980 | and that's what makes it fun and that's what leads you.
00:00:23.060 | So when I talk about storytelling, I'm not telling people how to tell the story of how
00:00:27.860 | they came to be in this piece and why this is going to work for someone.
00:00:32.820 | I see a lot of that it's a terrible idea because nobody wants your story to be wordsmith for
00:00:37.860 | them.
00:00:38.860 | Right?
00:00:39.860 | They want to get to the point.
00:00:40.860 | They want to get to the point.
00:00:41.860 | If I'm there to be entertained, okay, wordsmith me.
00:00:44.860 | Make it fun.
00:00:45.860 | But if I want something from you or you want something from me, can we just get to the
00:00:49.260 | point, right?
00:00:50.980 | Here's what it is.
00:00:51.980 | Which will tell, which then you want to know how it works.
00:00:54.780 | Then once you understand, you want to know is that like, is that, could that be real?
00:00:57.660 | Could that actually do what you think it is?
00:00:59.820 | Oh yeah.
00:01:00.820 | Okay.
00:01:01.820 | Well, how does that, how do I get that?
00:01:02.820 | Or how does this actually get there?
00:01:04.100 | Like that's what a story builds, right?
00:01:07.620 | That's how storytelling in Hollywood works.
00:01:09.060 | You inform people and lead them to the conclusion.
00:01:12.500 | Hello and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life,
00:01:17.060 | money and travel.
00:01:18.060 | I'm your host, Chris Hutchins, and each week I sit down with the world's best experts
00:01:22.260 | to learn the strategies, tactics and frameworks that shaped their success.
00:01:25.980 | Before we get started, big shout out to Chris Van Vliet, who hosts the fantastic podcast
00:01:31.420 | Insight, who introduced me to my guest today, Brant Penvidic.
00:01:36.100 | Brant is an award-winning film director and veteran television producer with decades of
00:01:41.180 | experience working on shows like MasterChef and The Biggest Loser.
00:01:45.180 | He's also a C-level sales and presentation coach and keynote speaker.
00:01:49.860 | But I found him through his bestselling book, The Three Minute Rule, say less to get more
00:01:54.580 | from any pitch or presentation, which teaches anyone how to use Hollywood's storytelling
00:01:59.540 | techniques in business to persuade and succeed.
00:02:03.780 | Today we're going to talk about why it's critical to dial in your pitch in the first three minutes,
00:02:08.900 | maybe even the first 10 seconds, including how to do it, why in those three minutes you
00:02:13.980 | need to answer four questions so people won't tune you out, and of course, what those questions
00:02:18.660 | are and how to answer them succinctly.
00:02:21.180 | I'm going to ask him what he thinks of my pitch for all the hacks and how to improve
00:02:24.480 | it.
00:02:25.480 | And I want to hear about his travel adventures.
00:02:27.420 | Last year, his family sold their home and took a 48-state RV trip.
00:02:31.340 | I want to know what he learned and whether he'd do it again.
00:02:34.380 | And I'm sure there will be more.
00:02:36.180 | So let's get started.
00:02:37.180 | Brant, welcome to the show.
00:02:38.180 | Hey, what's up, man?
00:02:39.180 | Happy to be here.
00:02:40.180 | Yeah.
00:02:41.180 | So let's just jump right into this three-minute rule.
00:02:42.180 | Dive in.
00:02:43.180 | You've said it's really a way to teach people how to use the Hollywood storytelling
00:02:53.380 | techniques to say less and get more.
00:02:56.140 | How did you get so good at pitching shows and persuading people?
00:02:58.860 | And how did that lead to this three-minute rule?
00:03:00.940 | Listen, I'm a Hollywood producer by trade.
00:03:04.260 | When I was early to the business, I was running around, pitching shows and trying to make
00:03:09.220 | my way.
00:03:10.220 | And I was at the lobby of CBS.
00:03:11.220 | I remember when this happened.
00:03:12.220 | I was in the lobby of CBS and getting ready to go in for my pitch meeting.
00:03:16.860 | And as I was there, I walked from the pitch room, Simon Cowell.
00:03:21.220 | And I was like, "Oh, hey, Simon."
00:03:23.660 | And we were chatting a little bit and I was thinking to myself, "Oh, man, I hate pitching
00:03:27.740 | after that guy.
00:03:28.740 | Like, you know, who's not excited to hear his pitch, which is great."
00:03:32.740 | And so as we're chatting, I could see him looking over my shoulder.
00:03:37.260 | And when that happens, I look over and it's Mark Burnett.
00:03:41.500 | And so Mark Burnett is coming in right after me.
00:03:44.140 | And I'm thinking like, so now I'm wedged between these two superstars, right?
00:03:48.960 | And I got such anxiety.
00:03:52.740 | I am such a newbie and no one, like, no one cares.
00:03:56.920 | And I'm going into the pitch, the president of the network.
00:04:00.300 | What am I going to say?
00:04:01.580 | Like, what sort of fun thing, small talk, crap am I going to go through that makes this
00:04:07.700 | make any sense that the president is going to want to hear?
00:04:10.940 | Like he's not going to care.
00:04:12.460 | So I just got into this panic.
00:04:14.620 | And as I was in the room and we, you know, said hi, and everybody sat down, I was like,
00:04:18.180 | I got to get out of this room.
00:04:19.180 | Like, I just, I got to just tell them what the show is.
00:04:21.580 | I got to get the hell out of here.
00:04:22.580 | Like, they don't want to hear from me.
00:04:24.500 | So I literally just said like, "Here's the show.
00:04:28.660 | Here's how we would produce it.
00:04:29.660 | Here's why we think it's good for you.
00:04:31.020 | Here's what we think it's going to cost.
00:04:33.300 | And I'm out of here."
00:04:35.180 | And I was in and out of that minute in nine minutes.
00:04:39.220 | And my agent was like, "Oh my God, that was the best pitch we've ever done."
00:04:43.300 | And CBS bought the show.
00:04:46.040 | And so I started doing that more often where I was just like, "Okay, so what if I don't
00:04:50.420 | tell Fox about how product placement in this show is going to work?"
00:04:56.860 | Because you know, they do that for a living and they kind of have an entire department.
00:04:59.700 | Like they don't need to hear from me.
00:05:01.500 | And I remember being in NBC and the guy who ran it was like a very, very good producer,
00:05:07.460 | like on my side of the field, and went over to run the network.
00:05:11.780 | And so I remember pitching shows and being like, "Why am I getting in all this crap with
00:05:15.220 | him?
00:05:16.220 | He's a better producer than I am."
00:05:17.220 | Like, once I gave him the basic idea, like he's going to figure this stuff out, right?
00:05:21.740 | So I got this reputation very quickly about having some of the best pitches in Hollywood.
00:05:28.160 | And the irony was, it was like, I wasn't really doing anything.
00:05:31.260 | Like I was doing less.
00:05:32.260 | I was saying less.
00:05:33.460 | I wasn't trying as hard.
00:05:35.180 | I happened to be conveying more confidence.
00:05:37.660 | I was able to get the buyers to offer more of their suggestions, like everything just
00:05:41.500 | started going my way.
00:05:43.520 | And so we started to develop this system that it was like what we use in the edit bay of
00:05:47.620 | a three minute scene.
00:05:48.620 | Like you can't have a scene go more than three minutes.
00:05:50.660 | You have to resolve all the conflict, blah, blah, blah.
00:05:52.180 | And it's like, there's a lot of science behind three minutes itself about how the human brain
00:05:55.880 | processes information and makes decisions.
00:05:58.700 | And so I just realized like, I'm using this three minute rule across everything.
00:06:03.140 | And when I started to apply that across other businesses besides television, it worked even
00:06:07.700 | better than it did in television.
00:06:09.860 | So that's how it all started.
00:06:12.180 | You also mentioned that, you know, there's like the three minute version and the 10 second
00:06:15.260 | version and some people make even quicker judgments.
00:06:17.780 | How do you think about the span of that three minutes?
00:06:20.200 | The three minute rule basically says that everything about your business, product or
00:06:22.980 | service must be conveyed clearly, concisely and accurately in three minutes or less.
00:06:28.100 | The key is you need to get your audience to buy into the general concept before they make
00:06:31.940 | the yes or no decision.
00:06:34.260 | Everybody listening to this right now has had someone come pitch or present them or
00:06:37.220 | want to get them to do something.
00:06:38.420 | And in the first 10 seconds, you're already thinking, I don't think I like this.
00:06:42.260 | I know I'm sure I want this, right?
00:06:44.300 | And that's because the person has not let you grow into that decision.
00:06:48.180 | You have been forced to make that instantly by big statements and there's a whole bunch
00:06:52.300 | of things that I talk about in the book on how you get people to be almost defensive,
00:06:56.180 | almost make a decision and then defend it as opposed to get all the information and
00:06:59.900 | then make a decision.
00:07:00.900 | And so the three minute rule, if you do it really well, you could extend someone's yes
00:07:05.900 | or no in their mind to about a maximum of three minutes if you do it really well.
00:07:10.780 | But you don't need three minutes, a minute and a half, sometimes two minutes, whatever
00:07:14.020 | is required.
00:07:15.020 | It is about what needs to be said, not what you want to be said.
00:07:20.780 | So there's a book, people can read it.
00:07:23.220 | I enjoyed it.
00:07:24.220 | I would highly recommend it.
00:07:25.580 | But what's the high level of how you lay out those three minutes?
00:07:30.020 | So it's called the WAC method, W-H-A-C.
00:07:33.600 | And that's basically the structure for any pitch or presentation, how you can convey
00:07:37.140 | the information.
00:07:38.140 | Anytime you want to convey something to someone or convince them to do something or try to
00:07:41.780 | get them to your way of thinking, think of it in the WAC method, W-H-A-C.
00:07:45.260 | The W is what is this?
00:07:48.580 | Literally, what is it?
00:07:51.820 | H is how does it work?
00:07:55.380 | Those are the first two questions anybody has on anything that's going on.
00:07:59.220 | If you've ever had somebody droning on about something and you're like, well, just tell
00:08:02.940 | me what this is and how it works.
00:08:05.340 | That's all your brain wants.
00:08:06.620 | It needs to find that.
00:08:08.520 | It's called a three step rationalization.
00:08:11.660 | First we conceptualize, we have to understand what it is.
00:08:14.220 | Then we contextualize, we got to put context to us, how it works for us.
00:08:19.020 | And then we actualize, which is, okay, how do I get it?
00:08:21.620 | So what is it is literally tell me what it is.
00:08:24.500 | I am a personal trainer that trains Hollywood actors for major action films.
00:08:34.340 | That is one sentence.
00:08:35.580 | And everybody listening now has a pretty good idea what my buddy Jeff does.
00:08:39.940 | You actually kind of know it right away.
00:08:41.980 | That's what is it?
00:08:42.980 | Then it's how does it work?
00:08:44.180 | Okay, well, how does he do that?
00:08:46.340 | I move in to the celebrity's home and live with them for 90 days.
00:08:51.900 | So they never break program, never break diet.
00:08:56.700 | Okay, that is two sentences.
00:09:00.180 | Now do I really need to go into all that much or have you already made an idea of how this
00:09:04.380 | works?
00:09:05.380 | Right?
00:09:06.380 | Your brain is saying, I get what he does.
00:09:07.380 | I get his method.
00:09:08.840 | Now you're either interested, not interested, whatever, but like you're there, right?
00:09:12.020 | Yeah.
00:09:13.020 | I want this guy to move into my house.
00:09:15.020 | There you go.
00:09:16.020 | You're like, that's kind of cool.
00:09:17.020 | Okay.
00:09:18.020 | The next is the A, are you sure?
00:09:20.540 | Are you sure it's sort of like, wait, can you validate that?
00:09:24.500 | Like I don't care about your facts and your figures until I understand what it is you
00:09:28.500 | do.
00:09:29.500 | People want to start with their history and their stats and all the size of the market
00:09:35.180 | and all this other crap that no one cares about until I have context and structure.
00:09:40.580 | That's it.
00:09:41.580 | So when you talk about, are you sure I'm using it as a second phase, which is like, I have
00:09:47.020 | given you the basic of what I do and how it works, and now I'm going to explain to you
00:09:50.980 | the value of it.
00:09:51.980 | I'm going to give you some context, how it works for you.
00:09:55.440 | I trained Chris Hemsworth.
00:09:58.120 | I trained the rock.
00:09:59.940 | I trained Mark Wahlberg.
00:10:02.900 | Now you're like, okay, so you're pretty good at your gig.
00:10:05.980 | Or I know those aesthetics.
00:10:06.980 | That's what I got.
00:10:07.980 | I understand that.
00:10:08.980 | Or, you know, like I've done this for 15 years.
00:10:12.020 | Like that's the, are you sure about it?
00:10:14.140 | I trained Hollywood actors for big action films.
00:10:16.500 | I moved into their house nine days.
00:10:18.100 | They never met.
00:10:19.100 | You know, they never, I've trained some of the biggest actors in Hollywood, including
00:10:21.820 | by make light.
00:10:22.820 | Right.
00:10:23.820 | Three sentences.
00:10:24.820 | And now you're like, okay, I get it.
00:10:26.260 | And then the final piece is, can you do it?
00:10:29.900 | Which is effectively what do I have to do to make this happen?
00:10:33.700 | Like how much is it going to cost?
00:10:35.340 | Do you have a patent?
00:10:36.940 | When is it available?
00:10:37.940 | How's the supply?
00:10:39.620 | How do you get paid?
00:10:41.020 | Like all those things.
00:10:42.020 | All those things about the actualization of the element.
00:10:46.020 | Come later, come later, come later.
00:10:47.860 | Right.
00:10:48.860 | After all this stuff is done.
00:10:49.860 | Now I care about that.
00:10:50.860 | And the irony is it's the smallest piece, the smallest piece is like how much does it cost?
00:10:57.340 | Is it available now?
00:10:58.340 | It's like, if I buy into everything else, I will find a way to make the, can you do
00:11:03.420 | it work?
00:11:04.420 | If you're like, if you have this great idea and all these things work, but at the end
00:11:07.180 | of it, you're like, but I've never done before.
00:11:09.020 | I'm not even sure how to do it.
00:11:10.020 | You're like, okay, well, let's figure that out.
00:11:12.340 | Right.
00:11:13.340 | And like for Jeff says, can you do it is like, I only work with major studios.
00:11:18.340 | They pay me directly per film.
00:11:21.220 | My booking right now is nine months in advance.
00:11:24.100 | Okay.
00:11:25.100 | So now you're like, oh my God.
00:11:27.300 | I totally get it.
00:11:28.300 | Right.
00:11:29.300 | That's basically his pitch.
00:11:30.300 | Now from that point, the conversation opens up.
00:11:32.940 | Right.
00:11:33.940 | Everything starts opening up.
00:11:34.940 | Like, when did you get started?
00:11:35.940 | How often does it work?
00:11:36.940 | What do we do for food?
00:11:37.940 | Who pays for that?
00:11:38.940 | Where do you live?
00:11:39.940 | You have a million questions at a million conversations to have from that pitch.
00:11:43.620 | You just can't put all of that in the pitch.
00:11:45.680 | You have to trust the fact that if you get people to those first basic structures and
00:11:49.740 | get them through that, they're going to want to know more.
00:11:52.040 | If you can't get someone to be interested in those basic structures, you have no hope
00:11:56.940 | of getting them interested just by talking more and giving them more information.
00:12:00.980 | It doesn't work like that.
00:12:02.320 | It has the opposite effect.
00:12:03.940 | The more you talk, the less confident you appear, the less value you convey.
00:12:09.700 | That is the end of the story.
00:12:12.060 | After you've conveyed all that, whether it's minute and a half, three minutes, is it silence?
00:12:16.200 | Just let people ask questions?
00:12:18.740 | Your example, you went nine minutes.
00:12:20.220 | Yeah.
00:12:21.220 | It's like there's two versions.
00:12:27.220 | One is you have somebody that's like an interactive person.
00:12:29.980 | That's usually where it's like questions kind of thing.
00:12:34.640 | You're a minute and a half in and you've got the basic points and then you can start talking
00:12:37.900 | about elements like they understand, asking questions, have them go through stuff.
00:12:42.340 | That's easy.
00:12:43.340 | A lot of times you're making a presentation to multiple people and you can't just be like,
00:12:46.340 | "Okay, I'll take questions from the field."
00:12:48.900 | What I normally do is have a transition that feels like you would say, "I'm going to answer
00:12:53.340 | some of the questions I'm sure you probably have."
00:12:57.480 | Because what you're doing then is let's get into the engagement.
00:13:00.700 | Let's get into the details, the nitty gritty, the stuff that you're going to find interesting
00:13:05.060 | and all those kinds of things.
00:13:07.180 | So that helps people get that transition between like, "Now we're engaging and now I'm informing."
00:13:13.460 | The first step is to inform and lead and then the next stage too is engage and follow.
00:13:18.420 | It's like those two are very separate pieces.
00:13:20.740 | It's the one thing I find most people get mixed up is they try to start an engagement
00:13:24.540 | conversation before anybody really understands what it is they're working with.
00:13:29.460 | When you work with people or help people for examples, how long does it take to get that
00:13:33.780 | minute and a half?
00:13:34.780 | It seems like...
00:13:35.780 | Or three minutes.
00:13:36.780 | It seems like if it's the most important thing, you should be spending the bulk of your planning
00:13:40.300 | on honing that first pitch.
00:13:43.180 | Yeah.
00:13:44.180 | It's taken me 20 years to learn how to say things in three minutes, right?
00:13:48.420 | So it's difficult, and it's more difficult depending on how big your personality is.
00:13:55.740 | Ironically, I train a lot of companies and some of my best students are the biotech scientist
00:14:02.460 | type guys with the most complex of companies and drug therapies and whatnot.
00:14:09.220 | And oil and gas guys are good too, because they don't want to perform.
00:14:13.900 | They don't want to overcome the audience with their cool awesomeness.
00:14:18.700 | They just want to tell people what's going on.
00:14:20.460 | They're excited about their product, they're excited about their company, and it's like
00:14:23.420 | I can strip all that down for them and be like, "Just tell these things and you'll get
00:14:27.660 | to say all this other stuff about the gene therapy and you'll get there.
00:14:31.180 | Just say these things so people understand and then they'll want to talk."
00:14:33.380 | And they love that.
00:14:36.540 | But it takes me a full day.
00:14:38.980 | I'll give you a perfect example.
00:14:39.980 | When I wrote the book, the publisher was like, "Hey, don't write the forward to the book
00:14:44.420 | until you're done the entire book, because then you'll know all the details and you can
00:14:47.540 | really nail that," right?
00:14:48.540 | Because that's how people decide they're going to read a book.
00:14:50.620 | So I did a little research.
00:14:51.620 | Turns out people in a business book read usually the first four to six pages before they make
00:14:57.460 | a decision.
00:14:58.460 | Then the average business book has a forward of 11 pages.
00:15:01.740 | And I was like, "Four pages is about three minutes to read.
00:15:04.980 | No surprise."
00:15:05.980 | So I was like, "Oh my God, this is genius.
00:15:07.820 | I'm going to start the book saying that.
00:15:10.220 | The average business book is 11 pages, the average publisher takes four pages, that takes
00:15:12.740 | three minutes."
00:15:13.740 | So I got three minutes to make you want to basically read the rest of the book, right?
00:15:16.260 | I was like, "Yeah, this is going to be great.
00:15:18.460 | Three-minute push for my book."
00:15:21.020 | So I went on vacation because I had finished the book.
00:15:22.980 | I'm in Jamaica, my wife.
00:15:24.940 | And I was like, "Great, I'm going to take the first day or so, I'm going to write this
00:15:27.100 | intro and send it off to the publisher and then I'm going to take the rest two weeks
00:15:30.820 | and stay on the beach and have a good time."
00:15:33.540 | First pass of writing my forward for the book, 14 pages long.
00:15:37.500 | Right?
00:15:38.500 | And it was good.
00:15:39.500 | I was like, "Oh my God."
00:15:40.860 | So I cut it down and I spent the next day just trying to edit it and it's 10 pages long.
00:15:46.260 | Nine pages, eight pages, I got to seven pages.
00:15:49.980 | And then I start negotiating with myself, "Well, this is so good.
00:15:55.220 | It's written so well.
00:15:57.420 | I really need people to hear this right away.
00:15:59.980 | I can't wait till later.
00:16:02.060 | Maybe this is the time when it's this good and this important that the three-minute thing
00:16:06.180 | isn't as important.
00:16:07.580 | Maybe it's just I can..."
00:16:08.580 | Right?
00:16:09.580 | So then I was like, "What the hell is wrong with me?"
00:16:12.780 | So I even called the publisher and I asked him, "Is it four pages?
00:16:17.140 | Is that just any size page or is it words?"
00:16:19.380 | He's like, "No, it's words.
00:16:20.900 | That's how it works."
00:16:21.900 | So I'm looking at the word count and I'm like, "Oh my God."
00:16:24.820 | I couldn't finish it in two weeks.
00:16:26.340 | Couldn't do it.
00:16:27.340 | Couldn't get it done on the trip.
00:16:28.340 | I had to come back home.
00:16:29.660 | I had to go to my office.
00:16:30.660 | I had to take out my sticky notes and do my entire whack method from the very beginning
00:16:34.940 | for my own book.
00:16:36.500 | An expert who does this for a living.
00:16:39.120 | And I had to take the whole thing and finally got it to my four pages.
00:16:43.140 | It's just because I became so precious about the information.
00:16:46.420 | And in fact, I don't tell a lot of people this, but there are drafts of the book that
00:16:52.140 | they use, these draft copies that they send around to some press and stuff like that before
00:16:56.820 | they print the final version.
00:16:58.500 | There are a few draft copies that have, I'm going to say three quarters of a paragraph
00:17:02.940 | or three quarters of a page from my original intro that I pushed into the first chapter
00:17:08.460 | because I was so in love with it.
00:17:10.580 | And it wasn't until after it all said done, I read it again, I was like, "Oh my God,
00:17:14.280 | this is total drivel.
00:17:15.280 | This is crap."
00:17:16.280 | And I forced my publisher to take it out and redo it.
00:17:19.100 | I still think there's one or two sentences I probably could have cut.
00:17:21.540 | But when you're precious about your information and when you're really passionate, it's
00:17:25.340 | very difficult to chop the bodies away and kill the dead weight.
00:17:29.780 | And so for me, with clients, it's very, very different because I can tell you right
00:17:35.620 | away what's dead weight.
00:17:36.980 | I can tell you right away what to put off to the side and weight.
00:17:40.300 | So the book really trains you to try to find those pieces.
00:17:44.660 | It isn't like, "Hey, wear this certain color tie and your pitch will be better."
00:17:48.020 | It's like, "No."
00:17:49.020 | It's like, "Here's the way to find out what you should be saying first, what you
00:17:52.780 | should be saying second, what should you be saying last, and what you shouldn't be
00:17:55.180 | saying at all."
00:17:56.180 | So I want to go two places, but I'll ask one quick question.
00:17:58.740 | You said, "This isn't the color tie."
00:17:59.940 | Does it even matter what you wear to a pitch?
00:18:02.260 | No.
00:18:03.260 | No, none of that matters.
00:18:04.260 | It doesn't matter what you say.
00:18:05.260 | None of that crap matters anymore.
00:18:07.140 | People are so inundated with information and details and all this crap, they're just not
00:18:10.660 | interested in all those other things.
00:18:11.940 | None of that works.
00:18:12.940 | We should train salespeople to use their person's name.
00:18:16.940 | "Hi, Dave."
00:18:17.940 | "Hi, John."
00:18:18.940 | "How are you, John?"
00:18:19.940 | "Have you ever thought about this, John?"
00:18:20.940 | Use your client's name over and over again.
00:18:22.700 | Could you imagine if someone did that to you today?
00:18:26.540 | That's the reality of a hypersensitive audience.
00:18:28.980 | I mean, unless you're doing something that's a detriment, none of that stuff impacts you
00:18:33.860 | whatsoever.
00:18:34.860 | Everybody wants to sift through that and get to the good stuff.
00:18:38.260 | And then the second, I'm going to go in.
00:18:39.460 | I sent you this in advance, so I'm going to ask you about my show.
00:18:43.260 | I'm constantly talking to everyone from sponsors or shows for me to go on and try to explain
00:18:49.580 | what we do.
00:18:51.340 | And I'm super passionate.
00:18:52.660 | So if you're great, because it's not your show, at knocking down the bodies to try to
00:18:57.780 | narrow it down, I'm curious what you thought of what I sent.
00:19:01.860 | And this was the description of all the hacks.
00:19:06.340 | I'll give you that in two pieces.
00:19:08.260 | Your description of the show, your intro of the show, what the show is, is really good.
00:19:12.340 | Super solid, right?
00:19:13.500 | Because you're doing it for the consumer, there's not a lot to get into what a podcast
00:19:17.220 | is and what it contains.
00:19:18.220 | And you were pretty clear about like, "Hey, I gave you all the great travel hacks, saved
00:19:21.660 | money.
00:19:22.660 | I got more fun stuff."
00:19:23.660 | It's nice and clean.
00:19:25.260 | Could it be a little bit less wordy?
00:19:27.060 | Sure.
00:19:28.060 | Would it make any difference?
00:19:29.060 | Most likely not.
00:19:30.060 | It's relatively simple.
00:19:31.700 | You keep it relatively simple.
00:19:32.860 | I will say that your outreach email to get people like me and Chris and other people
00:19:37.660 | on is way too pretty, and conveys a sense of, not desperation is too much, but conveys
00:19:45.380 | a sense of less value than you want to convey, right?
00:19:49.980 | Because you're pitching like, here's the size of the audience, which is impressive.
00:19:54.540 | Here's this stuff.
00:19:55.540 | But it's like, if your show was like, if Joe Rogan wanted me on the podcast, do you think
00:20:02.460 | he'd put a paragraph in there about his show and how big it is and where it is, right?
00:20:07.540 | No.
00:20:08.540 | He'd be like, "You want to be on my show?"
00:20:09.540 | I'd be like, "He doesn't want me on the show.
00:20:13.020 | I've asked him.
00:20:14.020 | He said no."
00:20:16.580 | So that's the highest level, right?
00:20:20.820 | That's the top of the food chain.
00:20:22.940 | The lowest end is a podcast you've never heard of, that's like just starting.
00:20:27.060 | And they are going to inundate you with facts and figures and information and pretty pleased.
00:20:32.220 | And these are the people I worked with and like, "Let me prove myself to you.
00:20:35.540 | Let me prove myself to you with words."
00:20:38.580 | And so, you're about a third too long in that.
00:20:44.980 | Because these people are peers, your show kicks ass, and that outreach from you should
00:20:53.220 | be less.
00:20:54.220 | It's like, "Hey, I got a podcast.
00:20:57.660 | I think you're cool.
00:20:58.660 | I've heard you on other stuff.
00:20:59.660 | I'd like you to be a guest.
00:21:02.380 | Let's connect."
00:21:03.620 | When you're a new brand, and people probably don't know you, obviously, you don't want
00:21:07.060 | to...
00:21:08.060 | Joe Rogan, people know him, right?
00:21:09.300 | So he sends a message.
00:21:10.300 | Everyone knows him.
00:21:11.300 | You want to come across like you're not desperate, but you also need some validation.
00:21:15.020 | Is it just limit the validation?
00:21:17.260 | Yes, it's limit the validation.
00:21:19.020 | Because if it comes across as you pitching or selling, you're dead.
00:21:22.620 | It's over.
00:21:23.740 | So what would you rather have?
00:21:25.660 | Someone who's kind of curious because you didn't give them a bunch of everything to
00:21:28.460 | figure out or someone who's just like, "This guy..."
00:21:32.660 | People and value, people of value, people value money moves away from whatever chases
00:21:39.700 | it.
00:21:40.700 | That is just a fact.
00:21:42.540 | Women, money, people, they move away from things that chase it.
00:21:48.340 | And so if you sell, if you're pushing, if you're trying to convince, if you're trying
00:21:54.700 | to influence, people are repulsed by that.
00:21:59.020 | They are repelled to go the other direction.
00:22:02.200 | Now, sometimes what you have is so much value that you overcome that, but that is not where
00:22:06.220 | you want to be.
00:22:07.780 | And if you're saying, "Hey, I want you to be on my podcast," there's only a couple of
00:22:11.700 | things that make sense to talk to somebody about, right?
00:22:15.620 | What does your podcast focus on?
00:22:19.060 | Is it a podcast about gyms?
00:22:20.860 | Is it a podcast about airline flights?
00:22:22.620 | Is it oil exploration?
00:22:24.500 | You got to explain that.
00:22:25.660 | "Hey, I do this podcast, it's called this, it does this," right?
00:22:31.140 | If you have some credibility on the size and the scope and the people you've had is reasonable,
00:22:37.380 | but unfortunately, and that you know this, everybody knows this, that's everybody's going
00:22:42.180 | to say that, right?
00:22:44.340 | Everybody's going to say it's the number one podcast in this category, right?
00:22:48.740 | Or it's got 90,000 unique views or something, something, something, right?
00:22:55.940 | So that you just got to keep to a minimum because, and that's what you do if you were
00:23:01.620 | the number one podcast in the world, but no one knew you, I guess you'd say it's the number
00:23:06.420 | one podcast in the world.
00:23:07.420 | Not like, "It's the number one podcast rule according to these things on this date by
00:23:10.820 | this measure, and you can verify it here.
00:23:13.100 | Here's the link to see whether I'm the number one, and I've attached the certificate of
00:23:16.340 | my number one authenticity," like you wouldn't do that.
00:23:19.180 | And irony, if you did, I'd be like, "This probably isn't real," right?
00:23:23.820 | And the more things you included to explain and validate it, the less I believe it.
00:23:29.060 | That's the irony of it.
00:23:30.060 | It's like the more you prove it, the less I want to accept it, right?
00:23:33.300 | Even if it's like, "Oh, okay."
00:23:35.380 | So your thing is like, you have great guests, present company excluded, you have good numbers,
00:23:43.340 | it's a great show with a great, unique hook.
00:23:45.860 | If you're reaching out for people to be as a guest, it's kind of like, that's all you
00:23:50.500 | really need to say from your perspective, right?
00:23:53.540 | And it's like, it'd be like, or the other way is like, imagine if you wanted to get
00:23:57.220 | my 16-year-old son as a guest, you'd be like, "Hey, man, I got a podcast, it does this.
00:24:01.820 | Want to be a guest?"
00:24:02.820 | Right?
00:24:03.820 | Okay, so there's the two extremes, right?
00:24:05.100 | Like, my son's nobody, he would die to be on anybody's podcast.
00:24:08.460 | Joe Rogan is the greatest podcast, everybody wants to be on it.
00:24:11.580 | Those two things and those two situations, you pitch them exactly the same, right?
00:24:16.480 | Very few words, almost understanding that you're going to want it, and if you want to
00:24:20.740 | get more details, like when, how, why, all that kind of stuff, great.
00:24:24.920 | And that's normally what you'll end up getting, shorter that outreach, the more responses
00:24:29.900 | you'll get asking for things, right?
00:24:31.580 | "Do I need to do this?
00:24:33.260 | When do I do that?
00:24:34.260 | How do you do this?
00:24:35.260 | What reach do you have?"
00:24:36.260 | - One thing that this just made me think about, so in a previous life, I was a founder of
00:24:40.820 | a tech company that raised money, and I found that one of the most effective things was
00:24:46.140 | to give everyone a really easy out.
00:24:48.220 | So I know you have a different thought on closing than a lot, but I would always end,
00:24:52.300 | I would be trying to raise money, and I'd send an email follow up two days later and
00:24:56.540 | say, "Hey, just want to follow up, need to see if you need any more info.
00:24:59.860 | If not, no worries, catch you next time."
00:25:02.740 | Like kind of give them this easy out, because a lot of people struggle with the no, and
00:25:07.380 | then you have the anxiety of them, "Oh, are they going to say yes?
00:25:09.940 | What are they going to say?"
00:25:10.940 | If you just make it so easy for someone to say no, they just give you the answer faster.
00:25:16.500 | - That's part of it, right?
00:25:17.500 | You just want to make it clear that if what you were offering had real value, you wouldn't
00:25:24.420 | desperately need them, and if they didn't see the value, you wouldn't be like, "I need
00:25:27.980 | to convert your," no, "I need to overcome the pushback," right?
00:25:34.360 | It's like, "What?"
00:25:35.700 | It's like, "No, you got other people to go deal with, people who will see the value.
00:25:39.740 | If the person doesn't see the value, like, "Oh, buh-bye," that has to be what you convey
00:25:44.660 | in the words.
00:25:46.260 | - In an in-person pitch, you had a perspective that I thought was maybe one of the most unique
00:25:50.900 | I've seen, and something that makes me want to go do an in-person pitch, which is on how
00:25:54.540 | you shouldn't actually wrap up.
00:25:56.740 | - I always been cringy about that kind of stuff, because a lot of people want to wrap
00:26:01.040 | up their pitch with a fancy phrase or a saying.
00:26:03.740 | I mean, think about when you watch Shark Tank, and it's like, "Hey, sharks, who wants to
00:26:06.740 | dive in here with me and swim?"
00:26:08.740 | Whatever, right?
00:26:09.740 | You're like, "Ugh."
00:26:10.740 | It's like, "Oh, yeah, you're pitching this.
00:26:12.660 | Oh, yeah, you've rehearsed this.
00:26:14.420 | Oh, yeah, this is your shtick," right?
00:26:16.260 | You've basically took them out of that moment of like, "I'm listening to your story," to
00:26:20.540 | be like, "Oh, sorry, we're pausing it for commercial break," effectively.
00:26:24.000 | You're just like, it lets the room down.
00:26:25.980 | I've never found a closing that makes people stand up and clap other than, "That's it,
00:26:31.980 | thanks," kind of thing.
00:26:33.780 | And that's my idea, and that, "Welcome to this," whatever that last piece is, which
00:26:37.740 | is like, "I'm done.
00:26:39.300 | I've explained it to you.
00:26:41.140 | We're talking or I'm leaving."
00:26:42.740 | That's the vibe, right?
00:26:45.340 | If they have more they need from you, they will ask.
00:26:49.860 | And that is a classic Hollywood ending, right?
00:26:54.780 | Because there was a guy who ran CBS, and he's famous for the most deadpan looks, no emotion.
00:27:03.060 | You didn't know what was going to happen.
00:27:04.300 | You left that room.
00:27:05.300 | You weren't sure if he loved it, hated it.
00:27:06.300 | It didn't matter.
00:27:07.300 | He was trained.
00:27:08.300 | And the irony was the people who worked after him, they worked for him, they learned how
00:27:11.260 | to do that too, right?
00:27:13.060 | And if it didn't go well, if the pitch didn't go well, Gen would simply say, "Great, I got
00:27:17.620 | it.
00:27:18.620 | Thanks."
00:27:19.620 | And that was it.
00:27:20.620 | Nothing else.
00:27:21.620 | Right?
00:27:22.620 | So you're like, "Okay."
00:27:24.900 | And then if you'd ask a question, "Well, how are you going to deal with this in the third
00:27:27.580 | act?"
00:27:28.580 | You'd be like, "Oh, shit.
00:27:29.580 | He's got...
00:27:30.580 | He's interested."
00:27:31.580 | And then you would engage, right?
00:27:33.060 | And that's the vibe that is hard to let people capture on their own.
00:27:38.100 | You've got to find out what your audience thinks.
00:27:40.860 | You can't convince...
00:27:42.020 | You can't push them.
00:27:43.840 | You got to give them the basics, and then you'll know.
00:27:47.260 | Is this something in your wheelhouse or not?
00:27:51.460 | And there's no...
00:27:52.460 | I mean, the amount of people that you can convert from an objection, and the amount
00:27:57.620 | of work that that takes, and the amount of lasting good that's created, that is so small
00:28:03.260 | in today's world.
00:28:04.260 | It's not worth it.
00:28:05.260 | So instead of objection handling, which I know they teach in sales, it's like, just
00:28:10.100 | move on.
00:28:11.380 | It's better to go try again than to try to overcome every objection?
00:28:15.140 | It's not even close.
00:28:16.520 | It's not even close.
00:28:17.520 | It's like an objection is somebody that basically has said, "I don't buy into this."
00:28:23.780 | Now it's different if they don't understand it.
00:28:26.340 | And a lot of times what I'm dealing with is I'm dealing with companies who are trying
00:28:30.620 | to get through objections by giving the audience the information they should have given them
00:28:35.900 | in the beginning.
00:28:38.740 | And so they're trying to handle objections that they're actually using the information
00:28:42.220 | they should have used in the beginning as like, "Oh, no, no, no, that's not what I mean,"
00:28:45.700 | or, "Oh, no, we can do this twice for you," or whatever it is.
00:28:48.660 | Whereas when we retrain and go through it again, it's like, "Hey, here's all the objections
00:28:52.780 | kind of laid out."
00:28:55.240 | And if you're talking about objections like, "Hey, I need to talk to my wife because I'm
00:28:58.680 | not sure we can afford it, and your job is to close them," A, that's not my world.
00:29:04.980 | I don't work with that kind of piece.
00:29:07.980 | That's not what I do.
00:29:10.100 | And I've been approached by a lot of companies that have that type of sales stuff.
00:29:12.820 | And I worked with a very large company on their timeshare business.
00:29:18.140 | And it's like, I just couldn't get them to really make the big enough changes, right?
00:29:25.560 | Because they're just a slow moving thing.
00:29:27.520 | And their goal is to get people in an emotional state and trick them into signing.
00:29:32.760 | And it's like, "Yeah, that's not what I do."
00:29:34.760 | Like, the timeshare is good for a certain group, a certain demographic this actually
00:29:38.520 | works really well for.
00:29:39.880 | So why don't we just tell people how it works really, really well.
00:29:42.440 | And if they fit in the demographic, they'll let you know.
00:29:44.300 | And they're just like, "What?
00:29:46.220 | That's not how we do things.
00:29:49.120 | We get them.
00:29:50.120 | We force them into it.
00:29:51.120 | We make them feel guilty.
00:29:52.760 | Every trick in the book."
00:29:53.760 | That's not my world.
00:29:55.160 | I've gone to the timeshare pitches mostly out of curiosity to see how they do it.
00:29:58.840 | But I have yet to ever say yes.
00:30:01.520 | But one thing that I've tried in the past, I'm curious if you've seen it or used it.
00:30:05.720 | When it comes to objections, I knew when I was raising money for my last company, I knew
00:30:09.160 | that if someone wanted a lot of information about customer acquisition, we just hadn't
00:30:15.480 | done it.
00:30:16.480 | And I knew that it was the most common objection.
00:30:19.000 | And I would just start the pitch.
00:30:20.240 | I would walk in a bag.
00:30:21.760 | After I explained what the company did, I would say, "Hey, I just want to pause.
00:30:25.320 | We don't have customer acquisition data yet.
00:30:27.360 | We have not gone through that part of the business.
00:30:28.880 | If that is not something you guys need to see, we can just stop right now.
00:30:33.100 | And we don't need to keep going."
00:30:35.300 | And a part of that was I wanted them to get over it because they wanted to see the rest.
00:30:42.400 | They've already blocked off 30 minutes, they want to see the rest.
00:30:45.240 | It's not necessarily going to work, but at least makes them less focused on this thing
00:30:49.140 | that they might say no to.
00:30:50.720 | It's genius, right?
00:30:52.120 | It's owning the negative.
00:30:53.120 | And that's a big piece of storytelling is people get sucked into the idea that they're
00:30:58.520 | negative, what's negative about their pitch or what the downside is.
00:31:01.440 | I start every development meeting when we're talking about television shows, it's like,
00:31:04.200 | why is a network going to pass on this show?
00:31:07.600 | Tell me why.
00:31:08.600 | What is the reason?
00:31:09.600 | It doesn't fit with the brand.
00:31:10.600 | It's too hard to produce.
00:31:11.600 | We can't cast it properly.
00:31:12.600 | I don't think people are going to like it.
00:31:13.600 | It's not going to be relatable.
00:31:14.600 | And it's like, okay, if I can't get past that in this room, the network's never going
00:31:18.800 | to get past that.
00:31:19.800 | It's like, if you pretend you don't know what the negative side is, there's not a lot of
00:31:24.880 | good options, right?
00:31:26.280 | One is your audience never brings it up.
00:31:29.080 | And so they just think that you're either too dumb or you're hiding it from them.
00:31:33.120 | Number two is they bring it up right there.
00:31:37.360 | And now it's like, oh, you've got to scramble and answer it.
00:31:40.960 | So what happens is, if you end up not mentioning it and they bring it up, you can answer it
00:31:46.560 | except for they've been thinking about it the entire time, right?
00:31:51.880 | That's what they've been doing.
00:31:52.880 | They've been talking and talking about it.
00:31:55.840 | And that is a disaster.
00:31:57.720 | You cannot have them doing that, right?
00:32:00.760 | And so the last option is you bring it up, because it's not going to be that they didn't
00:32:04.160 | figure it out.
00:32:05.160 | They didn't understand what could be wrong here.
00:32:08.240 | That's never going to happen.
00:32:10.080 | So the negative is important.
00:32:12.240 | How big it is and how much importance it has is all directly proportionate to where you
00:32:16.720 | sort of put it in the pitch, right?
00:32:18.680 | And by you talking about it right in front saying, "Hey, we don't customer acquisition
00:32:21.240 | data.
00:32:22.240 | So if that's an important thing, just know we don't do that.
00:32:24.120 | We haven't done that yet."
00:32:25.120 | It's like, okay, that's done.
00:32:27.560 | Now everything else hangs on it.
00:32:29.280 | And when we end up having storytelling in Hollywood, you don't get in a moment where
00:32:36.020 | it's like in the Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne gets beaten up, but he looks like
00:32:42.000 | he's going to die.
00:32:43.000 | And you're not like, "Oh, what a wimp.
00:32:44.680 | I hate him.
00:32:45.680 | It's over.
00:32:46.680 | He's a loser."
00:32:47.680 | Right?
00:32:48.680 | Rocky gets knocked down.
00:32:49.680 | You're like, "Oh, that's it.
00:32:50.680 | This movie sucks.
00:32:51.680 | He's a bum."
00:32:52.680 | Right?
00:32:53.680 | It's like, all is lost is the setup for here's what's great.
00:32:58.120 | That is the best part of it, right?
00:33:00.240 | When you talk about you're not having customer acquisition, and then you explain everything,
00:33:05.120 | your audience is then going to be like, "Ooh, I wonder how this customer acquisition could
00:33:09.460 | work."
00:33:10.460 | And they'll start overlaying their own excitement to get to the result they want, right?
00:33:14.380 | The negative can never hurt you, never hurt you in a pitch.
00:33:18.140 | So you mentioned a lot of storytelling in that kind of response, but I noticed that
00:33:22.700 | when you gave your example of your buddy, Jeff, there wasn't really any storytelling.
00:33:26.500 | Is it that storytelling maybe doesn't need to be part of the first three minutes with
00:33:30.140 | the whack part?
00:33:31.140 | No.
00:33:32.140 | It's that people look at storytelling as, "Once upon a time, I was here," right?
00:33:38.340 | And that's not what storytelling is.
00:33:39.700 | That's wordsmith.
00:33:41.340 | That is wordplay.
00:33:43.560 | Storytelling is, "Here's the situation.
00:33:45.820 | Here's what's happening.
00:33:46.900 | Here's what's going to happen next.
00:33:48.260 | Here's why."
00:33:49.260 | Scripts are storytelling because they fill themselves with words, right?
00:33:53.340 | And they flow to the points.
00:33:55.140 | The points are the elements of a story that lead you to the next piece.
00:34:00.260 | How many people are listening that have a favorite movie, and they watch it, and they
00:34:04.460 | know what happens, and they still like it?
00:34:07.340 | It's not because it's so cleverly written that you're just like magic with words.
00:34:12.740 | It's that you follow the story beat by beat by beat, and that's what makes it interesting,
00:34:20.300 | and that's what makes it fun, and that's what leads you.
00:34:23.140 | So when I talk about storytelling, I'm not telling people how to tell the story of how
00:34:27.940 | they came to be in this piece, and why this is going to work for someone.
00:34:32.900 | I see a lot of that.
00:34:33.900 | It's a terrible idea because nobody wants your story to be wordsmith for them, right?
00:34:38.900 | We want to get to the point.
00:34:40.980 | They want to get to the point.
00:34:41.980 | If I'm there to be entertained, okay, wordsmith me.
00:34:44.940 | Make it fun.
00:34:45.940 | But if I want something from you, or you want something from me, can we just get to the
00:34:49.340 | points, right?
00:34:51.100 | Here's what it is, which will tell ... Then you want to know how it works.
00:34:54.900 | Then once you understand, you want to know, "Could that be real?
00:34:57.740 | Could that actually do what you think it is?
00:35:00.060 | Oh, yeah?
00:35:01.060 | Okay.
00:35:02.060 | Well, how do I get that?
00:35:03.060 | Or how does it actually get there?"
00:35:04.820 | That's what a story builds, right?
00:35:07.700 | That's how storytelling in Hollywood works.
00:35:09.140 | You inform people and lead them to the conclusion.
00:35:12.640 | That's all Hollywood storytelling is, is leading people to the conclusion you want.
00:35:20.220 | You know the boat sinks in Titanic.
00:35:21.980 | You watch the film.
00:35:23.760 | Andy Dufresne, you want him to escape from the prison at Shawshank.
00:35:27.720 | You want it to happen.
00:35:29.560 | We don't start that movie by saying, "Andy Dufresne escapes from a very bad prison.
00:35:33.760 | Let me tell you why he does that."
00:35:35.780 | That's not how you tell a story.
00:35:38.100 | Tell a story and be like, "Here's where he's at in this story.
00:35:41.420 | Here's what he did.
00:35:42.420 | Here's why he's in the prison.
00:35:43.420 | Here are the conditions.
00:35:44.420 | Here's his choices.
00:35:45.420 | It looks like he's not going to make it."
00:35:47.420 | Then you're like, "Please escape," right?
00:35:50.300 | That's how a story is told.
00:35:51.860 | Is there an example of that kind of storytelling with a pitch for a product or a service?
00:35:58.640 | Yes.
00:35:59.640 | The way that I use that in a classic storytelling with wordsmithing sort of idea is in what's
00:36:04.440 | called the intro, that my reason for being.
00:36:07.200 | It's the only time where that makes sense, where you want to explain to people the reason
00:36:12.860 | why they are there, you are there, we are here.
00:36:15.520 | How did this come to be, right?
00:36:17.640 | It's like I started developing that technique when we were doing pilots and presentations
00:36:24.460 | for the networks.
00:36:25.900 | Sometimes you'd send it in and they would take this DVD, they would take the DVD, put
00:36:30.260 | it in the DVD player, they'd watch your pilot and then they decide if they're going to buy
00:36:32.860 | it or not.
00:36:34.380 | I just couldn't live with that, right?
00:36:36.140 | Because I didn't know there were things I wanted them to know about it and things that
00:36:39.660 | happened along the way.
00:36:41.120 | I became very, very good at warming the room and creating the anticipation.
00:36:49.660 | If I knew something might be an issue, I would be calling the head of the network and saying
00:36:52.780 | like, "Hey, by the way, I feel like our second act is really shallow here because I didn't
00:36:57.180 | have this scene.
00:36:58.180 | I wanted to film it, so I feel like that second act drags a lot."
00:37:02.740 | They're like, "Okay, so now they're anticipating, so it can drag and it doesn't kill it."
00:37:07.180 | I would say like, "Hey, I would have added this longer because I love this scene so much,
00:37:12.320 | but I know that your delivery, we need nine minutes of this act.
00:37:16.000 | There is so much here that blank, blank, blank."
00:37:17.960 | I set that room tone.
00:37:19.880 | So when they put the DVD in, they know exactly what to think, exactly how to feel, exactly
00:37:24.840 | what went into this and they can judge it on its merits.
00:37:28.720 | Your pitch is kind of the same where it's like, "Well, how did you get here?
00:37:31.840 | How is your reason for being about why this product or service is interesting?
00:37:36.320 | How does that translate to why you're sitting there?"
00:37:39.000 | I'll give you a great example, one of my favorites from one of my favorite companies I've ever
00:37:42.320 | worked with is an electric vehicle controller manufacturer called X-Row Technologies.
00:37:48.200 | They had come to me, the chairman had come to me a while ago and said, "Hey, will you
00:37:51.880 | come on board?
00:37:52.880 | We really need some help."
00:37:53.880 | I looked at the company.
00:37:54.880 | I was like, "Nah, too small, Canadian, small, micro cab company, no, not my world."
00:38:01.360 | I really liked this guy, but not going to happen.
00:38:04.040 | He called me back three months later and he said, "Hey, listen, we just hired a new CEO,
00:38:08.320 | taken over.
00:38:09.320 | She's moving to Calgary, the head office to start this up.
00:38:12.480 | She could really use some help and I think you guys would hit it off."
00:38:14.840 | And I was like, "Nah."
00:38:15.840 | And he said, "She's the CEO of GE, Small Industrial Motors, and she's leaving that gig."
00:38:26.080 | And I could not get my brain around why she would do that, right?
00:38:30.140 | And so when I talked to her on the phone, I said I'd talk to her and I asked her, I
00:38:34.640 | said, "Why would you take this job?
00:38:36.340 | Why would you leave one of the highest profile jobs in that business and move your entire
00:38:40.900 | family to Calgary, Alberta for this micro cab, infinitesimally small company?
00:38:46.260 | Why would you do that?"
00:38:47.820 | And she said, "Oh, well, do you know anything about electric motors?"
00:38:51.220 | I said, "Well, no, not really."
00:38:53.660 | She goes, "Well, I do.
00:38:56.180 | And I've been looking for this technology since I was 12 years old, winding electric
00:39:00.900 | motors in my family's electric motor shop.
00:39:03.940 | I know what this technology can do.
00:39:05.580 | I could not resist."
00:39:07.580 | Everybody listening now wants to know what that technology is because I've set up that.
00:39:13.260 | And so when she pitches shows, she would say, "I was CEO of GE, Small Industrial Motors.
00:39:18.260 | I got a call from this company.
00:39:19.980 | I ignored them for many time until I finally said one phrase that changed my life.
00:39:24.940 | I said, 'Show me the technology.'
00:39:27.820 | And they did.
00:39:28.820 | And 30 days later, I attended my resignation at GE and moved my entire family to Calgary,
00:39:33.940 | Alberta to take over as the CEO of Xro Technologies."
00:39:38.600 | And now you're like, "Okay."
00:39:41.760 | And then, you know, then that's the start of the pitch.
00:39:43.720 | That's the story that leads you to be like, "So let me tell you a little bit about Xro.
00:39:47.260 | We are a technology company that makes controllers for electric vehicles.
00:39:51.820 | We use coil switching in a dynamic way to be the brains behind the way an electric vehicle
00:39:56.640 | performs.
00:39:57.740 | With our coil switching technology, you can go farther and go faster on the same charge."
00:40:05.420 | And you're like, "What?"
00:40:07.100 | And then it's like, "Let me tell you the details of the technology."
00:40:10.180 | And then she, you know, then she gets into it.
00:40:11.620 | And like, the power of that story in the beginning to set up that thing is very hard to ignore,
00:40:18.740 | right?
00:40:19.740 | Like, is that's how you lead somebody to that piece.
00:40:21.800 | It's not always like that.
00:40:23.140 | Sometimes you got to send a deck.
00:40:24.340 | Sometimes people don't want to hear your little small talk in the beginning.
00:40:26.260 | They just want you to play it.
00:40:28.340 | But that's where classic sort of, "Let me tell you a story," fits in.
00:40:33.220 | It should be the story of how you got there or why this counts, right?
00:40:36.660 | Is that the first part of every pitch?
00:40:40.180 | Almost every pitch has that because 90 times out of 100, you're going to have a conversation
00:40:47.340 | to begin the pitch, right?
00:40:48.820 | There's a conversation that's most of the time, like I said, sometimes you're just sending
00:40:52.220 | a deck or an email.
00:40:53.220 | You're not going to be able to do that, but, you know, it becomes how did you get there?
00:40:58.020 | Why is this interesting?
00:40:59.520 | What compelled you to be there?
00:41:01.620 | Like the one I wrote in the book, it was like, you know, this woman, you know, show jumped
00:41:05.780 | with her horse.
00:41:07.140 | She had an axle problem on the way to the event, she was on the side of the road.
00:41:11.380 | The horses were freaking out and it was 9.30 at night.
00:41:15.980 | Where do you put your horse, right?
00:41:18.680 | Like she's like, "Oh my God," and yet you could see in the area, there's got to be houses
00:41:24.740 | everywhere that have barns and stables, but like no way to access them.
00:41:29.880 | Know what to know.
00:41:30.880 | Everything's closed.
00:41:31.880 | When she realized that's when she came up with bed and bale, which is Airbnb, but for
00:41:36.540 | horses.
00:41:37.540 | Like, do you need a lot more?
00:41:39.140 | Like if you were an investor, if you were whatever, like now your questions are not
00:41:43.900 | like, "Oh, what is this thing?
00:41:44.900 | How does this app work?" or like, "What's the driving force?"
00:41:48.660 | Like, it's like, okay, where are you?
00:41:50.540 | Like did you build the app?
00:41:51.980 | Like now you're engaged already because you get it.
00:41:56.100 | Understanding is the fundamental importance for being engaged.
00:42:00.900 | People who don't understand something can't engage with you, but if it's Airbnb for horses,
00:42:05.460 | people travel with horses, they need a place to put them.
00:42:07.460 | There's houses all over America with barns, unused, you're like, "Uh, yeah, I get it,
00:42:14.180 | but I want to know this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this," right?
00:42:17.260 | - One thing you mentioned is, okay, so maybe if you have to send a deck, the intro isn't
00:42:20.260 | part of it.
00:42:21.700 | What do you think about...
00:42:22.700 | There are a lot of times where I've met people who are like, "Well, if someone tells me to
00:42:26.700 | send a deck, I try to force them into having the conversation in person."
00:42:32.380 | Do you think you should, as a business or a person selling anything, kind of hone all
00:42:37.340 | the mediums?
00:42:38.340 | - Unfortunately, yeah, because it's just like you try to push somebody to do an in-person
00:42:42.460 | meeting, if you can get that to happen, great.
00:42:45.620 | But if your deck or your written material can't stand on its own, you're buggered, because
00:42:48.860 | if you think that person that you're pitching makes the ultimate decision and isn't going
00:42:52.340 | to share it with someone else or doesn't have to do that, that's never going to work, right?
00:42:57.660 | What's happening is we live in a sort of decision-by-committee world, and so they're going to have to rationalize
00:43:05.180 | why they liked it to somebody, and that means they're going to have to share your deck with
00:43:08.300 | them, and they're going to have to summarize your pitch, right?
00:43:12.420 | But if I told you and I sent you the deck for bed and bail, and I told you to go explain
00:43:16.500 | it to somebody, you'd say, "Airbnb for horses."
00:43:20.700 | It's because I already gave you that.
00:43:23.420 | And so now the summary, it lives on its own, and the deck kind of reinforces that.
00:43:30.260 | And so in her opening of that deck, it's like occasionally there'll be something about the
00:43:37.340 | story that led her there, but all I really needed from that story to get across to people
00:43:42.820 | is that there's nowhere for people who travel with horses to put them other than a professional
00:43:48.500 | kennel and those places close, right?
00:43:51.180 | It's not like a hotel where they're open for reservations all the time.
00:43:56.120 | It's a stables, and so those people go home, right?
00:43:59.980 | So it's like, well, so that's really all I needed to convey.
00:44:04.660 | That's the setup, right?
00:44:06.140 | Is it the problem?
00:44:07.780 | Sometimes it's the problem that you answer.
00:44:09.180 | I find people get too detailed into that.
00:44:12.500 | But really the part of the deck that makes the most impact is what is it?
00:44:20.820 | That's it.
00:44:21.820 | That's what it is.
00:44:22.820 | It's Airbnb for horses.
00:44:23.820 | Like that's the phrasing around that makes people go first page, second page.
00:44:27.980 | Now they're like, "Okay, I'm going to read this because I want to find things out."
00:44:33.060 | Not I'm reading it.
00:44:34.060 | It's four pages.
00:44:35.060 | I don't really understand.
00:44:36.060 | A lot of people listening have done that where they get a deck and they're looking through
00:44:38.500 | and they're like reading it and they're like, "I don't really get it."
00:44:41.740 | And so their first question is like, "I don't really understand how this works.
00:44:45.340 | I don't really understand how that works."
00:44:47.060 | Right?
00:44:48.060 | And you're like, "Oh no, that was like page four on the thing."
00:44:49.540 | That happens to people all the time.
00:44:52.140 | Or you're pitching it and someone says to you, they ask a question, you're like, "Oh
00:44:55.500 | yeah.
00:44:56.500 | Well, I'm getting to that in just a second here."
00:44:59.220 | That's a pretty good sign you've got your information in the wrong order because people
00:45:02.580 | are already having thoughts.
00:45:04.220 | Are there other signs or ways to kind of evaluate how you're doing with whatever kind of pitch
00:45:08.900 | you have, whether it's for business or something at work?
00:45:11.860 | I mean, it's hard because looking for the engagement, it doesn't give you what you need.
00:45:17.860 | Right?
00:45:18.860 | Because people pretend to be interested, they pretend to be disinterested.
00:45:23.100 | It's really about what they engage with next.
00:45:26.060 | Do they ask questions?
00:45:27.780 | Are the questions about what you're doing and the concept?
00:45:31.180 | Then you've got a problem.
00:45:32.180 | The questions are like, "What are you doing next?
00:45:34.260 | How do you solve this problem?
00:45:35.900 | Where does this go?
00:45:37.220 | How do we deal with this?
00:45:38.220 | Is there a way this happens?"
00:45:39.220 | When there are those kinds of questions, they understand the concept.
00:45:42.940 | How do you feel about rehearsing?
00:45:44.020 | Should people be practicing this a lot and with who?
00:45:46.460 | I do think you should practice a lot with anybody.
00:45:50.060 | The key is you should be able to say it to anybody at any time.
00:45:56.640 | You should have those four sentences pretty locked down.
00:46:00.260 | And what you'll find is then you can start to color them and add to them and make them
00:46:03.980 | better and you can gauge the people that you're talking to.
00:46:07.820 | If my buddy Jeff is talking about his personal training business and he's talking to another
00:46:12.100 | personal trainer, he would sort of pitch what he does a little differently, but he already
00:46:15.260 | has the language in his repertoire.
00:46:18.780 | He might start with, "Oh, I'm a personal trainer.
00:46:21.100 | I do this.
00:46:22.100 | I do that."
00:46:23.100 | His basics are already there.
00:46:24.540 | The framework structure is already there.
00:46:27.540 | Everything else is like, it's good to rehearse, but I mean, have you ever heard somebody that
00:46:31.740 | you know they're reading or you know they've memorized it?
00:46:36.620 | It just detracts because then you're like, "Oh, right, this is rehearsed."
00:46:41.980 | And it sucks the passion out of it and it just makes it look like you're trying too
00:46:46.340 | hard.
00:46:47.340 | And that's just like in a romantic relationship, like somebody's trying too hard.
00:46:51.220 | It's just like, "Ugh, not interested."
00:46:53.140 | Yeah, my guidance has always been rehearse as much as you need so that you don't need
00:46:57.700 | notes.
00:46:58.700 | That's part one.
00:46:59.700 | But then part two is, and get really comfortable with the fact that there's going to be multiple
00:47:04.900 | things you forget and it's okay.
00:47:07.500 | Because if you rehearse it all and then you forget something, you get caught up and you're
00:47:11.100 | like, "Oh, there was one, a fourth point and let me go back and look."
00:47:14.700 | And I think it's better if you just roll with the three and forget the fourth point.
00:47:19.220 | If it's important, it'll probably come back later because you don't want to be searching
00:47:24.220 | for notes in the middle of the conversation.
00:47:27.580 | You talked about slides.
00:47:29.180 | When people are giving presentations, you want the slides to live on their own because
00:47:33.340 | you mentioned they might get shared around, but you also don't want them to be distracting
00:47:36.460 | when you're talking.
00:47:37.460 | Do you tell people to create two different presentations?
00:47:40.340 | Yes.
00:47:41.340 | 100%.
00:47:42.340 | Okay.
00:47:43.340 | Yeah.
00:47:44.340 | Almost always.
00:47:45.340 | Because at the end of the day, your slides that I mean, think about it.
00:47:47.660 | You're giving a presentation with slides.
00:47:49.380 | What do you actually want them to do, the person?
00:47:51.340 | Do you want them to read the slide, the words on there and read the information?
00:47:55.460 | Then what are you doing there?
00:47:56.860 | They're reading it.
00:47:59.380 | And if you don't want them to read it, then why have it?
00:48:01.940 | Unless it's just a picture, you're describing it.
00:48:05.260 | Right, exactly.
00:48:06.260 | So there are your two things.
00:48:07.700 | You want them to read it or you don't.
00:48:09.180 | If you don't want them to read it, then it better be something that accentuates what
00:48:12.340 | you're saying.
00:48:13.340 | It better be bullet points, pictures, simple messages, like that simple.
00:48:18.740 | If you put up something enough that they have to read, there's no point in having it there.
00:48:23.220 | Because if you're talking, they're not going to, what are they trying to split time on
00:48:25.620 | reading it, jumping ahead?
00:48:28.580 | It's a disaster.
00:48:29.860 | People want to put slides so it looks like they've done a lot of work.
00:48:32.660 | It's like, okay.
00:48:33.660 | By the way, I'm not even against that sometimes.
00:48:36.140 | Sometimes there's graphs and charts that look good, so you put it on a slide and when you're
00:48:42.700 | presenting in person, but you're not speaking to the numbers on there.
00:48:46.120 | You're saying, we did extensive research and I will send you this in detail so you can
00:48:51.180 | read what this slide says, but here's the summary, right?
00:48:55.980 | As opposed to like, here's the market research response.
00:48:59.840 | As you could see here, it's your slide should accentuate what you're saying, not trying
00:49:07.060 | to do the work for you.
00:49:08.940 | One other thing that I'll share just in case anyone's making a presentation that you could
00:49:13.300 | tell me if you don't like this idea, but every time I went and gave a pitch for my company,
00:49:18.500 | I took notes after the fact of all the questions I was getting asked and then I took every
00:49:24.040 | question and I said, okay, this question's either going to be a question that I think
00:49:26.980 | everyone needs the answer to, it needs to be part of the pitch, or it's a question that
00:49:32.100 | some people might have, but not everyone, so it's not as part of the pitch, but I'm
00:49:36.420 | going to create a slide for the question, and it was basically, I don't know if this
00:49:42.420 | was like a psychological trick, but I found that someone would ask a question at the end
00:49:46.620 | and I would jump to a slide to answer it.
00:49:48.860 | The first time, I wouldn't, and then I'd go home, I'd make the slide, and the next time
00:49:52.000 | I would jump to it, and for some reason, when it was written on the slide as if I'd thought
00:49:56.480 | about it in advance, people were like, oh, you can answer this, I'm not worried anymore,
00:50:01.440 | but if I off the cuff answer it, I'm just like, oh, this is what we're going to do.
00:50:04.500 | People were a little more apprehensive, whether I'm, you know, the answer is just kind of
00:50:07.420 | made up.
00:50:08.420 | - Exactly, it's like what I used to say when I was pitching in TV, it's all in the casting.
00:50:12.020 | It's like, no, it's in the concept, like, if I have to tell you that we'll figure it
00:50:17.940 | out in casting, it means I really don't know how to make it work, and I'll just get good
00:50:21.420 | cast that'll fix it, right, and that's sort of the same thing, where it's like, you answer,
00:50:25.540 | you ask me a question that's even tough, and I just answer it, it's like, there's a chance
00:50:30.780 | that I may not believe you, and I think you just will say anything to make the pitch good.
00:50:35.020 | - Any final tips for people, you know, obviously not pitching Hollywood and that kind of thing
00:50:39.220 | that we left off?
00:50:40.220 | - Yeah, but it's anything.
00:50:41.220 | It is literally a guide for conversation in life, and keep it simple.
00:50:49.260 | Probably the best exercise that seemed to work the best for people is I have them do
00:50:53.900 | my Twitter exercise, like if you had to tweet what your product or service was, and that's
00:50:59.820 | it, and not the new extended Twitter length, but the original 144 characters, like, what
00:51:08.140 | would you put?
00:51:09.580 | What would you say?
00:51:11.660 | And if you can't get it there because you think everything is so valuable and so complicated,
00:51:16.020 | you need to work harder.
00:51:17.400 | It means that you're actually in more need of it, and it's just happened to me, I have
00:51:21.060 | a very big client, I'm very excited about their company, I've come on as an advisor,
00:51:26.060 | I'm really involved, it is a very in-depth company.
00:51:30.220 | Like there are layers on layers, and you know, we are talking about it, and I just, I couldn't
00:51:37.180 | get a log line for them, because there was just so many things, oh, but we don't talk
00:51:40.860 | about the financing, then we don't do that, and it's like, when we finally got it, it
00:51:45.340 | was like, oh, wow, like, it was more important than we thought, right?
00:51:49.900 | Because at the beginning, you're like, oh, we got so many good things, let's just get
00:51:52.980 | people in a little bit, and then they'll see all the good things, and you're like, no.
00:51:57.300 | Go to the Twitter thing, and can you make it that, can you make it that simple?
00:52:01.820 | How, like, sometimes with clients, I'll be like, okay, here's seven words, tell me your
00:52:06.500 | idea in seven words, that's it.
00:52:09.860 | Which seven do you choose, right?
00:52:14.100 | Platform used for hailing, whatever, like, you have to put it in such a small thing,
00:52:21.620 | you're like, okay, you know, and I do that TV shows, we used to do it all the time, it's
00:52:25.220 | like, it's the amazing race for the smartest people in the world, like, I don't really
00:52:33.220 | know the show, but you could kind of get a basic idea, it's like, okay, then you add,
00:52:36.620 | all right, here's 10 more words, go ahead, what would you choose?
00:52:39.740 | And then you're adding, you know, and that's probably the best exercise, which is like,
00:52:47.420 | how would you actually explain it in 144 characters if you really had to?
00:52:52.940 | So people kind of understand, not necessarily they'd want to buy it, but they'd understand
00:52:56.220 | what it is you sell.
00:52:58.040 | And that's basically trying to convey the four points of the whack whether, or just
00:53:02.620 | the first?
00:53:03.900 | If you only have 144 characters, or 15 or 25 words, just the first, it is the most important,
00:53:09.020 | what is it is the most important, how does it work is the second.
00:53:12.220 | Those take up 50% of everything that you need.
00:53:14.700 | All right.
00:53:15.700 | And everything else people will get to.
00:53:18.580 | They can't get to those two things on their own, is the only two things they can't get
00:53:22.140 | to on their own, they need you to inform them.
00:53:24.660 | Everything else they can start to put together themselves, they can have an idea, they can
00:53:28.620 | develop it, but until they understand what it is, and how it works, you got nothing.
00:53:33.780 | How much of the you know, if they can come to their own conclusions for the second half
00:53:37.440 | of your kind of pitch, at least of those steps, how much of your pitch is planned in advance
00:53:42.200 | versus kind of free form based on the questions people are asking and where it's going?
00:53:48.100 | I still have pretty good structure.
00:53:50.940 | Because just because they come to the conclusion, like they may miss things.
00:53:57.460 | Because they're focused in one area, which is fine, you basically want to, you know,
00:54:01.920 | you want all the details laid out the rest after the three minutes, you can have very
00:54:06.660 | loose, very loose, because they're already interested, they want to engage.
00:54:12.540 | And now it's they are, they are looking for confirmation of their predetermined bias already.
00:54:18.860 | That's what they're looking for.
00:54:19.860 | Now.
00:54:20.860 | Oh, I like that idea.
00:54:21.860 | But do you have a path?
00:54:24.580 | Do you do this?
00:54:26.100 | Right?
00:54:27.100 | No, that's what you want.
00:54:29.220 | You want them to be like, Oh, this could be good.
00:54:31.660 | But is that a good valuation?
00:54:34.000 | But how far are you from revenue?
00:54:35.460 | But like, you want that?
00:54:37.300 | Yep.
00:54:38.300 | You don't get that you are fighting uphill.
00:54:41.100 | Okay, I feel like I have a lot of notes.
00:54:43.520 | I'm gonna work on my pitch that I send out to guests like you.
00:54:48.020 | All kinds of people.
00:54:49.500 | I want to take a quick turn.
00:54:50.580 | So we talk a lot about travel on this show.
00:54:53.980 | And last hack it up.
00:54:55.180 | Yeah, hack it up.
00:54:56.180 | Last year, you sold your house, you bought a fancy RV, you went around the country hit
00:55:01.340 | all 48 kind of contiguous states in six months with your wife and your two kids.
00:55:06.660 | Before I before I hear more, like, would you do that again?
00:55:10.220 | I would be on the road right now, if it wasn't for my youngest wanting to go back to real
00:55:14.420 | school.
00:55:15.420 | So I loved it.
00:55:16.420 | I loved every second of it.
00:55:17.420 | I mean, I'm, I'm in a semi retirement mode anyways.
00:55:21.500 | I I've just, I didn't know America was that I didn't know was that good.
00:55:27.500 | And that was the one takeaway from seeing all 48 states interacting with people every
00:55:31.700 | single day.
00:55:32.700 | It was part of the documentary that I was making about it was like, we got to go meet
00:55:35.660 | people we got to go see people we was called, you know, dinner with America.
00:55:38.860 | We went and just random people we met and just heard their stories and just shocked
00:55:44.260 | at how great this country is.
00:55:46.500 | The people I know it feels like we're tearing each other apart and and there's such divide,
00:55:53.100 | except it's not really like that.
00:55:54.660 | It really isn't.
00:55:55.660 | It's like that in the media, it's like that on your social media feed, it's like that
00:55:58.860 | a few cities at certain times, and it's a protest.
00:56:02.100 | But for the most part, the things that humans and Americans have in common, so outweigh
00:56:07.060 | the things we don't, that in the real world, like people are just, they're out doing their
00:56:12.780 | thing.
00:56:13.780 | They're trying to have fun.
00:56:14.780 | They're trying to take care of their family.
00:56:15.780 | They're trying to make a better life.
00:56:16.780 | Like, people are really, really great.
00:56:17.780 | So I absolutely loved it.
00:56:19.200 | And I went from a, you know, a relatively good size house here in Los Angeles to a trailer
00:56:26.680 | for six months that was smaller than my bathroom.
00:56:28.960 | So it took some getting used to, but I loved it.
00:56:32.820 | Any places you went that were kind of unusual, and you're like, I didn't think that this
00:56:36.720 | would be a place I'd love.
00:56:37.720 | I mean, I'm sure you hit some places people all know, and, you know, you don't need to
00:56:41.600 | tell people, oh, Austin's a cool city, you know, kind of thing.
00:56:44.960 | I'd say big surprises for us were Alabama region, like Alabama, Tennessee, like that
00:56:51.120 | area, Oklahoma, Arkansas, like, just blew my, it was just amazing.
00:56:56.240 | We had such a great time.
00:56:57.240 | People were amazing.
00:56:58.240 | Loved the scenery, that kind of stuff.
00:57:00.160 | That was a surprise.
00:57:01.160 | And the other sort of big one for me was like Niagara Falls, like Niagara Falls was really
00:57:05.880 | fun and like a great, great day.
00:57:09.600 | And so that was a surprise because I expected to be very touristy and, and it was, it just
00:57:14.320 | didn't matter because it was awesome.
00:57:16.360 | And so, but I found that Southern hospitality and that kind of vibe, South Carolina and
00:57:23.560 | all that was just like, it was so heartwarming and the people were amazing and we just fell
00:57:28.320 | in love.
00:57:29.320 | How did you meet all these people?
00:57:30.320 | I think everyone I know when they're traveling loves to have the story of, oh, we met some
00:57:33.560 | locals in this place.
00:57:36.040 | You said you did every day.
00:57:37.680 | Every day.
00:57:38.680 | How did you say?
00:57:39.680 | Every single day.
00:57:40.680 | How did you make that happen?
00:57:41.880 | So we picked like every day we had, you know, a few things we had to try to, you know, what
00:57:45.680 | the place was famous for, for foods.
00:57:47.280 | We had to find the restaurant that sort of represented that best restaurant in the city
00:57:50.720 | kind of idea.
00:57:51.720 | We had to find out what the cool adventure was, whitewater rafting or downhill mountain
00:57:55.760 | biking, or whatever a cool adventure was and what the great site would be.
00:57:58.640 | What do you have to go see?
00:57:59.640 | Are you going to go see the St. Louis arch, like that kind of stuff, you know?
00:58:02.520 | So we did a lot of the touristy things that you have to see if you've never been to St.
00:58:05.480 | Louis.
00:58:06.480 | Like you kind of got to see the arch, that kind of stuff.
00:58:07.480 | You know, rock and roll hall of fame, you know?
00:58:10.920 | So we did all those, but then while we were out doing that, we just like, our goal was
00:58:14.840 | to find someone to interact with and be like, Hey, can we take you to dinner?
00:58:19.320 | This is what we're doing.
00:58:21.320 | And it was all, all the time, every time, every place it happened, like, that's just
00:58:27.440 | what we did.
00:58:28.440 | It was amazing.
00:58:29.440 | Like, I'll give you, I'll give you a great example.
00:58:31.160 | My kids were pulling into Kentucky, big Kentucky horse park, RV place, huge place, big round.
00:58:38.600 | And you could park on the inside or you could park on the outside.
00:58:40.760 | The outside has these amazing views of the vistas, right?
00:58:43.320 | And then we felt we were driving around, we found the one, you pick whatever one you want.
00:58:46.880 | This is beautiful, backed right onto a park, basically a park.
00:58:49.920 | We could drop our door out the back, have the deck out there.
00:58:53.360 | It would be amazing.
00:58:54.360 | But on the inside, it was about six RVs that were clustered together and everybody in their
00:58:58.640 | middle sort of like fire going, chatting, right?
00:59:01.840 | And then we drove around and I said to the kids, all right, well, what should we do?
00:59:04.560 | Should we take this spot?
00:59:05.560 | Super beautiful.
00:59:06.560 | Would we be able to back right on the park?
00:59:07.840 | It'd be amazing.
00:59:08.840 | Or do you guys want to back into this group of people and just join in?
00:59:12.000 | And my kids were like, you know, 17 and 14 or 15 were like, yeah, let's go with the people.
00:59:18.640 | And so we backed our RV into a site that sort of backed into them.
00:59:21.640 | We got everything all set up and we literally walked right over their campsite.
00:59:24.840 | It was like, Hey, where are you guys from?
00:59:27.560 | That was it.
00:59:28.560 | We're playing volleyball with them all night.
00:59:29.560 | We're making dinner.
00:59:30.560 | Like that was it.
00:59:31.560 | I, in Washington state, we're riding our electric bikes and this guy had this recumbent
00:59:36.160 | bike.
00:59:37.160 | You know, the one that you sit on and you peddle with your hands or whatever, and he's
00:59:39.380 | flying.
00:59:40.380 | Right.
00:59:41.380 | We get to the stoplight place, waiting for the light to change.
00:59:42.380 | And I looked down, it's like, no, it's not a recumbent bike.
00:59:44.760 | He's got no legs, no legs.
00:59:47.840 | And I looked at him and I just made the joke.
00:59:49.240 | I was like, oh man, you're making me look bad.
00:59:50.840 | I'm on an electric bike here and you don't even have a leg.
00:59:53.120 | Like this is, you make me look at we're laughing and the kids and what's your name?
00:59:58.160 | He's like, Luis.
00:59:59.160 | And I was like, what are you doing tonight?
01:00:00.160 | Luis?
01:00:01.160 | He's like, why do you ask?
01:00:02.160 | Like, Hey, we do this thing.
01:00:03.160 | You want to come to dinner?
01:00:04.160 | He's like, we'll make dinner for you.
01:00:05.860 | He's like, okay.
01:00:07.760 | So he came down.
01:00:08.760 | Right.
01:00:09.760 | And then, and so we spent the night with him and, and it was just, we met people from all
01:00:14.780 | four corners of the country.
01:00:16.800 | Every race, creed, religion, every style, just was amazing.
01:00:19.600 | It was the greatest experience of my life.
01:00:22.440 | Best thing my kids ever have ever done for them.
01:00:24.840 | That's amazing.
01:00:25.840 | Had you traveled a lot with your kids before?
01:00:28.520 | We do a lot of adventures.
01:00:29.520 | Like I run an adventure club, nonprofit for, so I do a lot of adventure stuff.
01:00:33.640 | So the kids are not unused to doing weird kooky things like my daughter and I rappel
01:00:38.360 | down waterfalls, like silly things like that, but we'd never, but we're not campers.
01:00:43.080 | We're not RV people would, you know, that's just not our world.
01:00:47.160 | So this was all sort of new in that sense from, and we'd never been away for longer
01:00:51.040 | than a week or two ever.
01:00:52.960 | That's amazing.
01:00:53.960 | Are the lists of all the, we had to find the best place here and do this thing.
01:00:57.840 | Is that published anywhere?
01:00:58.840 | Or will it be?
01:00:59.840 | I got, I have all that.
01:01:00.840 | I haven't published it all yet.
01:01:01.840 | I'm in the middle of trying to finalize it all where we went, what we did, who we saw,
01:01:05.800 | like all that stuff.
01:01:06.800 | I have all that stuff.
01:01:07.800 | But it's coming up.
01:01:08.800 | It'll be somewhere.
01:01:09.800 | Yeah.
01:01:10.800 | Yeah.
01:01:11.800 | It'll be coming.
01:01:12.800 | Awesome.
01:01:13.800 | It's a book.
01:01:14.800 | I'm going to be, it's like a coffee table book.
01:01:15.800 | It's coming out, hopefully for September.
01:01:16.800 | And it's basically, it's called what I learned about America.
01:01:18.360 | We jumped quickly to something totally different.
01:01:19.760 | So first off, thanks for all of that.
01:01:22.440 | I really enjoyed the conversation.
01:01:23.840 | I think people are going to want to hear all these tips because we normally end every episode
01:01:27.900 | asking people find a place, what do you suggest they eat, do, you know, have a drink?
01:01:33.240 | Where do they go?
01:01:34.680 | I'll let you punt on 48 state answer for the book.
01:01:40.040 | But I'm curious if there's one place that, you know, whether it was on your trip or where
01:01:43.520 | or in LA that you have some recommendations for people maybe traveling there, I don't
01:01:48.280 | know this summer.
01:01:49.280 | I mean, I think one of the best spots that I've still can't get over is still Whistler,
01:01:55.280 | British Columbia.
01:01:57.120 | It's like one of my favorite spots in the world.
01:02:01.240 | There's in the summer, winter, everything looks like, well, so all the places are great.
01:02:05.480 | But in the summer is a unique experience because it's like being in the middle of the wilderness,
01:02:11.600 | but with all the trappings of everything, which is just really, really cool.
01:02:16.240 | So that's where I would say if you if you've never been there, that'd be the place I would
01:02:19.160 | go.
01:02:20.160 | But if you're in LA and you want great sushi, that's a whole other thing.
01:02:24.440 | I will second your Whistler, I went on a bachelor party in Whistler and I will encourage anyone
01:02:30.600 | going there to try their mountain biking trails, which are out of this world, like, you know,
01:02:36.360 | like I felt like I was biking through an Ewok village with these like elevated ramps.
01:02:40.400 | Yeah.
01:02:41.400 | And it's so smooth and just non stop.
01:02:43.240 | You're like, wow, one person did break their leg.
01:02:45.680 | So for him, it was not as smooth.
01:02:47.800 | But for the rest of us, we had a good time.
01:02:50.480 | Thank you so much for being here.
01:02:51.720 | Can people stay on top of everything you're doing and find out when this book's coming
01:02:56.280 | out?
01:02:57.280 | I'm easy to find on my socials at Brant Penvidic, you can go to three minute rule calm and see
01:03:01.840 | all that kind of stuff.
01:03:03.560 | My travel club, you can visit that reject average calm.
01:03:07.400 | I'm pretty easy to find.
01:03:08.760 | I don't have a lot going.
01:03:09.760 | I mean, I have a lot going on.
01:03:10.760 | I just don't have a lot going on.
01:03:12.640 | I don't.
01:03:13.640 | I don't sell anything.
01:03:14.640 | I don't have a course.
01:03:15.640 | I'm not trying to get people's money.
01:03:16.920 | I don't take on new clients right now.
01:03:18.480 | Like, I'm just doing my thing.
01:03:20.480 | I love helping people.
01:03:21.560 | I love helping people find the value in their message.
01:03:24.520 | It's like one of those things I've had fortune 500 CEOs like in almost tears because the
01:03:30.360 | thing they've been working on for years is finally they're finally able to explain it
01:03:34.520 | properly.
01:03:35.520 | And it's like the frustration of having something that you really believe in that you love,
01:03:39.360 | and you can't get people to understand it or believe in it is is overwhelming.
01:03:42.600 | And it's just like, it's kind of great to be able to help people do that.
01:03:45.040 | So why appreciate it.
01:03:46.040 | Absolutely, buddy.
01:03:47.040 | Thanks for being here.
01:03:48.040 | Right on, man.
01:03:49.040 | Transcribed by https://otter.ai
01:03:49.200 | Transcribed by https://otter.ai
01:03:50.260 | Transcribed by https://otter.ai
01:03:50.760 | Transcribed by https://otter.ai
01:03:51.760 | Transcribed by https://otter.ai
01:03:52.760 | Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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01:04:06.760 | (upbeat music)