Transcript of Forbes Riley: Pitch Like a Pro! Sales Secrets That Get People to Say Yes | Sales | E409

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55% of how you show up for somebody else in their brain is visual. 38% is the tone of your voice. And only 7% of the words that you use. Yet everybody comes to me, only cares about the words. Most founders make this mistake.

Forbes Riley. She's the queen of pitching, a bestselling author, TV host, entrepreneur, and pitch expert who has generated over $2.5 billion in product sales.

There's never been an inventor who pitched their own product. In fact, they sucked at pitching. You know why? Because they know so much about the product. They want to tell the backstory and the this. That's not what sells your product.

What is something that entrepreneurs say where you immediately hear it and you're like, oh, if you keep saying it like that, you're going to be broke forever.

If you're a network marketer, I can oust you in about 30 seconds and you don't have to say the name of your company. It's the way network marketers are told to speak. It's horrible. Hi, what do you do? I help so-and-so transform and do this and do that. You missed the point. The point of the what do you do at a networking event is I don't really care what you do. I care what you—

How do we go about believing more in ourselves? Like, what are some of the things that we can do to get more confidence before we go on and pitch?

This is what I want for everybody out there.

So Forbes, welcome to Young and Profiting podcast.

I'm very excited to be here. I flew all the way to Austin just to talk to you and be here for your audience.

I am so honored that you came out here and I'm so excited to talk to you about pitching. You are the pitch Queen.

Mm. I've got the crown and everything.

Yeah.

And I have the new book about it.

So apparently I am the queen.

You do.

You've got all the pitch secrets and us young improfiters, we wanna find those out. So my first question to you is, what is something that entrepreneurs say where you immediately hear it and you're like, ugh, if you keep saying it like that, you're gonna be broke forever.

As an entrepreneur, having now trained people every single week, over 200,000 of them for 6 years. You open your mouth and I can tell you don't know what you're doing. You say words like actually, basically, like, you know, um, and everyone does these words. They play, they play small. When I ask somebody, what do you, so when I ask you, what do you do? What do you say?

I'm a top 100 podcaster and I'm an entrepreneur with an 8-figure production agency and podcast network.

You know what you just did that you don't realize? And it's okay if I coach you. Yeah. You just, you started to shake your head no. Isn't that funny?

Mm-hmm. I did. I did stutter a little. You made me nervous cuz you're the pitch queen.

You know I made her nervous. Well, here's what most, here's what That's what most of you guys do. You start going, hi, what do you do? I help so-and-so transform and do this and do that. I'm like, I'm sorry, you missed the point. Mm-hmm. The point of the what do you do at a networking event is I don't really care what you do. I care what you can do for me. Mm-hmm. What we could do together, what the opportunity is. And if you're so busy literally throwing up words while I am on, and here's the next thing, if you say words that don't mean anything, here's what doesn't mean anything. Hi, I'm a speaker, author, entrepreneur.

Yeah.

Did I say anything? No. You don't know what I wrote, what I speak about, or what business I built. And you have such a beautiful opportunity in those first few seconds to connect with somebody, but you have to be really unselfish about it. Mm-hmm. You have to go, okay, I'm looking at you and I'm gonna make an assumption. Who are you? What do you do? And if you said, well, you know, we're a top 100 podcast, I might say, you know, as someone who's on a new book tour, I might consider being on your podcast. Would that work? And if you can get a yes, tell me more. And that yes thing comes from me being a magician.

Yeah.

I know that sounds crazy, but my dad was a magician. I've been doing magic tricks my whole life.

I didn't know that.

Yeah. And you, my daughter does them as well. You, so you don't walk up to somebody and go, hi, can I show you a magic trick? No, I'll be at dinner and I'll make something magically appear and people are like, wait, what just happened? Mm-hmm. And then they'll say something like, wow, you are amazing. So all of a sudden I have strangers at a dinner table telling me I'm amazing. That was one of my goals all along. Mm-hmm. And most people never live in this rarefied space of how do you control a conversation, how do you get what you want, and how do you be human? You know, in a, in the age of AI, really listening to somebody.

Yep.

And connecting to them is the most human thing that we can do.

Well, you just said a lot and I've got a lot of follow-up questions. Of course. Uh, one of the things that you mention is like you wanna amaze people. You want that wow factor. If we've got a business that's not necessarily very exciting, uh, for me, podcasting I think is like a really exciting space. It's easy to get excited about it and get people energized about that topic. But if you're a bookkeeper, Or, you know, you've got some boring business like a recruitment company. How do you make it exciting?

Let's not call bookkeepers and recruiting people boring. They're liable to go, what did she say?

Mm-hmm.

If you're doing it, it excites you on some level. So if in fact I was a bookkeeper, why don't you drill down? Why are you the best bookkeeper? You don't have the biggest company, but you know what? Uh, as a, as a bookkeeper, I come from a long line of bookkeepers and I've discovered they're the backbone of every entrepreneur's business. Mm-hmm. Do you have a good one? Yeah. Great. And I'm, I'm glad that you do. So I'm also very skilled and if you got a recommendation to me, I would love that. Oh, all of a sudden they're like, oh, okay, you sound like a really nice person. I'd refer you. But you had the moment where you, you called to action. Mm-hmm. And I do think there's something very exciting about what everybody does. Now, it may not be a right fit for us, but you're always out there. If you're networking, you're pitching for some reason. Ask me what I do.

What do you do?

I own a dog walking company. And you know what? I take puppies like yours. You're so busy, right? Is your little baby loved on when you're not home?

No, he's sad.

Oh guys, I've got a whole crew of young people that I've trained. Your dog's gonna, he's gonna love you because during the day he won't be lonely anymore. All of a sudden that sounds like the greatest job in the world.

Yeah.

The other thing I do is I have a fitness company. I don't know if you know that.

Mm-hmm.

And so when people ask me what I do, ask me again.

What do you do?

I created the greatest fitness product on the planet. You wanna see it? Sure. Oh really?

Yeah.

See, then I would do this. I would literally push your microphone in. I know this sounds crazy, gimme your thumbs. Okay. And this is what I would do at a party. All of a sudden she's like, yes. Here, come here for a second so you don't hit that.

Okay.

And I know you've never felt this before, but here, give me one thumb and two thumbs, thumbs up.

Okay.

One and two. Pull your belly button in, hold it and make a fist. And I want you to go 10, 9, 8, go 7, 6. How does that feel? Isn't that kind of interesting?

Yeah, it's pretty cool.

I know, right? So now we're at a party, all of a sudden, You're playing with me. Yeah. And we're having fun and it's not boring even though I sell fitness product.

So you do so many things, right? You're an author, you're a speaker. How do you decide in the moment which one line you're gonna use on someone?

Because I look at the person, I look at the scenario and figure out what is it that I want? What was my intention going into this networking event? I don't need more pitching clients. I do really, really well, but I also offer free training every Sunday. So I might say, you know, as an entrepreneur, If you're looking to uplevel and pitching makes you nervous at all. Yeah, I've got a free Sunday training. If you're interested, I'll give you a card. Boom. That's a great thing. If I'm— when I'm on vacation, ask me what I do.

What do you do?

I'm a brain surgeon. It's tough work. Please don't talk to me about it. I really have to focus on enjoying myself because I don't want to always say what I do. Isn't that funny?

Yeah.

It's not always the right time. And if you're in a networking event with hundreds of people, what's your goal? What's your intention? And mine is to meet lots of people, get lots of cards and saying, Now here's another little phrase that I love, and it's a great takeaway for you guys. Rather than say, I am, or I help, say, as someone who, oh, like, what did you do before this, before you podcasted?

I used to work in corporate and I used to work in radio.

Great. Hey, you know, as someone who worked in corporate, saw the burnout factor there, moved to radio and realized podcasting's even bigger, I have the ability to take your program or your business and put it online. Ooh. So all of a sudden, this as someone who thing, is a really powerful statement. Mm-hmm. So as someone who's generated over $2.5 billion in sales, I now coach entrepreneurs to ma— to master their message.

Mm-hmm. So it's a way to like give your credibility, right?

In one sentence, because I live by a phrase that says less words, more impact.

A lot of people tuning in are really afraid of bragging about themselves. I teach a lot about personal branding, and one of the things that I get from my students often is like, well, I don't wanna sound like I'm bragging. I don't, I don't wanna brag. How do you feel about that?

I would ask them to unpack First of all, we're not in, in, we're not in 4th grade. We don't brag. Yeah. Giving your credibility and attaining certain levels of excellence is not bragging. That is a very young way of thinking about life. 'Cause by the way, if you don't talk about yourself and say what you do, who's going to? So when I started saying $2.5 billion, which is what my infomercials and TV added up to, I was like, wow, that was an impressive number. And I say that like a, just like a magic trick. When I say that number, what's your reaction to that? It's like, wow, you must know what you're talking about. Yeah. So there's no bragging. What I'm doing is I'm instilling a sense of authority in you when you look at me going, wow, if she's that good, maybe she can help me. So you gotta really reframe why you're saying what you're saying and then literally reframe the words you're saying.

Let's talk about confidence and how to be more confident. So you mentioned like you don't wanna say kind of, I don't know, I think, really drill deep and tell us like what are the words that we should avoid and how should we replace those words? What, which should we say instead?

When you say, You said two things that are interesting. You said, what is confidence, do you think?

What is confidence? I think confidence is competence, being an expert and really knowing your stuff and believing in yourself.

Right. So if you go to my book and you go to letter B, 'cause every word is a letter, B is belief. Mm-hmm. And inside of belief is the word lie. And so there's a thing when you first start out, you are not that successful. You don't have 1,000 hours to be an expert. You have all these reasons to believe that you're an imposter. I would love everyone to just take a breath and go, look, you have to build the illusion to achieve the dream. And it's a funny thing about steps. Confidence comes over time. I don't think it's something that you're born with. I think we as a society like to chip away your confidence by saying you're not pretty enough, you're not thin enough, you're not tall. And when you start to hear all those things, because I have, I have this vision in my head that we have 3 voices that we have to deal with. Okay. One is the inherited voice. That is your mom, your dad. Anyone who raised you, a bully, a teacher who stuck things in your head going, well, you can't do that, or you can do that, depending on who they are.

But it's usually the negative ones people hold on to. Then there's the other voice. This is the 4-year-old voice. This is the one that's gonna protect you. So they said I can't do it, so we are not gonna be able to do it. And then you find evidence to prove you can't do it. And it's this voice that's protecting you but keeps you playing small, literally playing small, 'cause it's safer to play small. And then there's the future voice. And this voice whispers going, You can do it. Go dance like no one's watching. Start that business. The problem is, which one are most people listening to? The loudest voice, the historical voice that's not serving them. And so one of the ways to get better and more confident is to take those risks, is to jump off a cliff and build a parachute on the way down. Yeah. And to firmly believe that life happens for you, not to you. There are going to be really bad times. Yeah. If you choose to live this life fully, you're going to experience massive heartbreak. Pain, death, and. And what I've learned is that when you're down in those times, it's when you just pull yourself up by the bootstraps and go, "Look, it's my movie." And in every movie, doesn't the hero go through some really bad stuff?

Yeah.

That gives you character. Right. The question is, do you learn from it? What do you learn? And take a moment to go, "Wow, don't want to experience that again.

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She's going there, isn't she?

Yes. You had a very successful acting career, but ultimately you sort of pivoted, right?

Oh, I didn't sort of pivot. And this is really interesting. I loved acting. Acting was all that I wanted to do. In fact, you guys can see a movie I just played the bad girl in called Black Creek. It's on Amazon Prime and Apple TV right now because I'm not giving up the dream. But it's all I wanted to do, and two things happened. One, the story goes that I went to an audition, a "sell me the pen" moment, and I got a very lucrative, interesting job to pitch products when that was not even a job description. And Body by Jake had created this network for cable television, and I went on to sell 1,500 different products. We sold that network for $500 million in 1993. That really worked. And I hadn't given up my acting career at the time. I was still balancing everything. And I was convinced in my naivete that you really could ride two horses in different directions and be just fine. And everyone said, "Oh, you have to focus." But I didn't. I'm an actress and a TV host. I didn't want to have to choose. Well, the universe chose for me, and I don't know how your singing career ended.

My acting career ended really abruptly. I had the lead in a TV series. It's called Fashion House. And if you go to YouTube, you can see the pilot. I was really good in this. I was the slightly bitchy, cranky Devil Wears Prada with all of these beautiful models. And I was 65, 1-hour episodes. I don't think I could have been happier. I had 2 little 3-year-olds. I got the dream job. We shoot the pilot and I'm, ugh, Now, two things happened. One, we all had a big meeting with the Fox executives. And I'm not gonna name names, but there was a gentleman who showed up who was rather big and slightly slovenly and couldn't wait to touch all my cute little models on the knee and got very— And when I said something about it, I had a feeling that nobody wanted to stand up, and I did. And I could feel the energy. Something shifted. A couple days later, I get a call going, "Hey, we love you, and you did really well, but we're gonna give your role— Your name is not famous enough to bank the whole series on. We're gonna give this role to Bo Derek." Oh, man.

And Bo Derek, as wonderful as she is, she's not a strong— that kind of a female character. Well-known actress, and she ended up playing the role. You can see it. And I'm not quite sure if it's that I stood up for myself and all the other women on the set, or that that was, in fact, my name wasn't famous enough. And I was so sad. I was shattered. And then I went into my agent's office, a guy that I'd fought so hard to get to. He was an A-minus agent, but really powerful. And he looks at me and he says, "We're gonna let you go." And I'm like, "Go? Where am I going?" And then, you know, they play these cards, and I don't think it was the truth as I'm hearing it later years. He said, "Oh, you know, you're already 40. You've got 2 kids. You know, it's kind of old in Hollywood. And my son's taking over the business. He doesn't want anyone over the age of 20." Good luck to you.

Oh my gosh.

Now, I don't know if the people from the network called him and said, "Look, we're not gonna have her around." But I walked out of the door, and I said to myself, and I had a little conversation with the guy upstairs, and I'm like, "I'm not gonna act for a while, aren't I?" I said, "Okay." My marriage was falling apart at the moment because I'd raised a little boy from South Central who was murdered. And my husband and I both took it very— It was very hard. It's hard to overcome that. And he's the father of both my children. And I picked up my babies, I left Los Angeles, went all the way to Florida where HSN was, where I was beginning to grow a— it was, to me, it was my side hustle selling products on TV. It was never the thing I wanted. It was the thing that I did anyway. Yeah. And I got down there and the irony is that's when I developed my own fitness product for the first time. I'd always sold other people's products. Yeah. You know, one of the things about pitching that you really should get good at Most founders make this mistake.

Mm-hmm.

They cannot wait to have their own product. My own course, my own training. I went through trauma. I'm now a life coach. Well, back up for a second. There's never been an inventor of a prod— of a company that I worked with who pitched their own product. In fact, they sucked at pitching. You know why? Because they know so much about the product. They wanna tell the backstory and the this. That's not what sells your product. And so I was brought in. In fact, if you look in the book here, mm-hmm. I hosted 197 infomercials, some of them to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. And what these represent is I am the original influencer. All of it's like—

Yeah, you are, right?

All of those companies came to me to be the spokesperson for their product.

Oh, that's such an interesting reframe. I didn't think about that.

Right? And we shot infomercials and I would take them on home shopping and your product became my livelihood. Yeah, that's what influencers do. Well, there was nobody doing that back then, especially as women. When I started in that industry. And so it was fascinating to think, stop pitching your own product, learn how to pitch first. Mm-hmm. And it's easier to pitch something that you're not emotionally attached to. So I got really good at pitching because they weren't my products. I just looked at the product and I came up with a formula that I'm happy to share with you in a minute. But there was a moment when I realized that I wasn't gonna get to act for a while.

Mm-hmm.

I also said, I love doing theater. I've done Broadway, I've done Lily Tomlin let me do her one-woman show. I've had the most blessed— and I'm talented enough to do those things. I love this. But I thought, you know, in theater, you go to work at like 6 o'clock and you don't come home till 11:30. I wanted my two beautiful babies. Are you a mom?

Not yet, no.

I'm gonna tell you the coolest thing I ever did. And I didn't have them till I was 42. And I found myself making a deal with myself. I said, look, you need to tuck these little ones into bed every night. It's not a nanny's job. If you said you wanted them this much, enjoy them to no end. And I haven't been back on stage in a play in 23 years. And I'm thinking, hmm, Broadway show? I could do this.

Don't you feel fulfilled because you're still using very similar skills that you would have used as an actress?

Yes and no. Speaking has done that for me. I have been so blessed. I've stood on stage at the 10X Convention, spoke in front of 10,000 people. Yeah. I speak on platforms all the time, and I love speaking. And it comes really close. You get your ideas out, you get to stand up there and speak. I'm about ready to do my third TEDx. Wow. But it's not— There's something about acting, I gotta tell you. This is not quite like singing, is it? When you get up and you perform something that's yours. I am gonna look very much forward to fulfilling a little bit more of the acting bug for me. It mattered so much when I went through so many traumatic times in my life.

Yeah.

But I have a very fulfilled life. I wouldn't, I wouldn't trade the journey for anything. Yeah. But you mentioned earlier about your entrepreneurs. Let's get real.

Yeah.

There is no destination.

Yeah.

You don't win. When my daughter came downstairs during COVID she was 17 years old. She already been online. She did a dropshipping business and she was working with some of my celebrity friends behind the scenes, building their YouTube channels, building their online presence. I had no idea. And she said, mom, let's start a business because when COVID hit, everything slowed down for me. And I'm like, start a business? Could you just get an A in English? That's all I wanted. Yeah. And she's like, Mom, I've been coding and I've been doing a lot of this and I already have a bank account. And she showed me a 6-figure bank account. I'm like, she's 17. I'm like, where did you get this money? She said, Mom, you're the only one who doesn't believe in me.

Aw.

I said, no, no, that's not true, baby girl. I'm, I believe in you more than anything, but I'm also the only one who's responsible for you getting an A in English and graduating high school. Yeah. And we sat in a room for 3 weeks and we put together the very first webinar I ever did. Do you remember those days? Like in the early 2020, you and I were talking about Clubhouse. Yeah. And the world was just kind of different, right?

Yep.

And I'd always looked at my Funnel account and I always had zero. I made pretty funnels, but I never launched them.

Mm-hmm.

I wasn't really good on the internet. And she said, I'll, I'm gonna fix all that. First night I do my first webinar, we have 25 people on Zoom and nobody knew what Zoom was back then. Mm-hmm. And I created a $1,000 program, 4-week training with me live. Using my ultimate pitch formula. I said, guys, I've generated $2.5 billion. I'm gonna get you to add a zero to your income. Watch me do this with you.

Mm-hmm.

And the next morning I called my daughter 'cause I looked at our account and I had to say, what was the, what does the K stand for? She said, what do you mean, mommy? I said, well, it always said zero. Now it says $25K. What's the K? She's like, mom, you made $25,000 last night. I'm like, what? We, we did what? Then we did it for 4 consecutive weeks with just 25 people. In each class. And all of a sudden we had a 6-figure business in 4 weeks.

Amazing.

9 months later, got our first 2 Comma Club Award. And 2 weeks ago I got a notification. We just got our 10 million 2 Comma Club Award. Wow. A 17-year-old and a 60-year-old who couldn't figure out the internet. So my, my goal in coming on here and talking to you guys is that to offer this crazy level of inspiration, cuz we really did it. Yeah. I grew up with nothing. I've created millions in my career, billions in my career. I didn't give it to my daughter. I made her have to go out and fight for it.

Mm-hmm.

She did. And now we're writing the most amazing story.

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So we started with the 4-week AI competency program. You don't need code. And so I sent 60 people on my team to take this training. And with that training, you get access to this platform called Rebel, where you can ingest your email, your Slack messages, and then you can basically use it as a coach, as a tool. Before I hop on a meeting, I ask Rebel, hey, what do I need to know for this meeting? And it will scan Slack and even send me things that I didn't realize what was going on in my company. It is. Amazing what you can do with this platform. I recommend you start with their 4-week AI competency program. You can get access and get 10% off at experience.mindstone.com/yap. That's experience.mindstone, M-I-N-D-S-T-O-N-E.com/yap for 10% off their 4-week AI competency program. You've come so far and you've done so much and you're such an inspiration to young women and I'm just so proud of everything that you've accomplished.

I'm gonna get really emotional. You know, you saying that means the world. And I'm gonna start to cry. All kidding aside, it has been such a long, slightly painful journey. A lot of nights where I just cried to sleep in the pillow and going, what am I supposed to be doing here? Yeah. And so to everybody who is struggling, I would make a list of what you want. I would surround yourself with people who are positive thinkers. You gotta kick the negative people out. I don't care if they're your mom or your spouse. But you gotta get rid of the garbage because it just clutters your head.

Yeah.

Find amazing mentors, listen to uplifting podcasts, which I do all the time. 'Cause you get to meet a lot of people very quickly. Yeah. And hear their stories and learn from their stories.

Mm-hmm.

Because there was a time, I remember when I first met Tony Robbins many years ago and he talked about modeling.

Yep.

I was like, how do you model somebody if you don't know their real story? Well, now with YouTube, you get to go into people's homes. You can see, you know, Vogue does that. They take you into people's closets.

Mm-hmm.

You can model anyone that you want so you don't feel alone. And when I started, my mentors weren't real.

Yeah.

My mentors were Jane Fonda, Barbara Walters. I just looked at their careers and thought, okay, connect the dots. What did they do? What didn't they do? But nowadays, you guys, you have an instant roadmap. Yeah. You can Google any of us and find our histories, our books, our Instagram. There's so many ways to do it that I never had access to. But to have a beautiful young woman with a hit podcast be proud of me means the world.

Well, you got there also by pitching yourself, right? You weren't afraid of asking for what you wanted. A great story that I came across in your book was when you, uh, basically asked Elena Cardone if you could join the 10X stage. I'd love for you to tell us that story.

Well, so that, that's a great story. Uh, I'll reframe that a little bit. I have a thing called elevator pitch. I would get very nervous when I would meet new people.

Mm-hmm.

And throw up on them. Ask me what I do. I'm like, oh, well I'm an actress and a TV host and I would get very excited. I wanna do, and I would leave cuz I'd see their eyes go and I would, and I'm like, What did I just do?

Yeah.

And then there's another little famous goofy story I have. George Clooney, many, many years ago, he was standing at a party when I first got to LA, and I walked into this party and he was just— and I remember standing there. I don't drink. And so I walk into a party and I'm like, starstruck. And I'm like— and I couldn't say anything. I couldn't move. I didn't do anything. And then I realized every girl that he dated ended up on Dancing with the Stars. Like, damn, I just should have said hello. That's a fun example of missed opportunities that I had. So I created this elevator pitch and it's a very step-by-step system to allow people who are shy or introverted or just confused about how to position themselves to say hi. Yeah. And so I had heard about Grant Cardone. He was supposed to speak on a platform with me and he didn't show up for this. And I thought, I, I need to— this guy seems to be moving and grooving. This was like 2018. And I heard there was gonna be in Vegas. I was there and I tracked him down. I'm in a hallway and I see him at the very end of the hallway with a whole entourage.

Now I've got 20 seconds to put something together. Yeah. Before I give you my answer, and I think this will help everybody else, if somebody that you wanna meet is in the elevator with you, mm-hmm, who might that be? Who do you wanna meet?

I've met a lot of people that I wanna meet, but like Elon Musk is somebody I would like to meet.

Okay. Let's put Elon Musk in the elevator. What do you say to him?

I would invite him on my podcast.

But how would you do that? So you're standing next to him, you got 20 seconds, go.

I would let him know, hey, I, I have a top 100 podcast. I've got, you know, millions of entrepreneurs who listen to me every single month, and I'd love to have you on the show so you could share some of your wisdom.

Okay. That was gr— that was good. And I would coach that just a little bit.

Yeah.

Cuz he doesn't need to share his wisdom. I would give him something he wants.

Mm-hmm.

So what you did, that's great. And because you have met so many famous people, what most of you guys don't do is that person's in the elevator, oh my God, I love you. You're so wonderful. Can I work out? You know what? I've been— and the next day, they're gone. Yeah. And then you, they got, you got nothing.

Mm-hmm.

So it's really smart about what you're doing and why you're who you are. Yeah. Is that you thought to formulate a question, an ask, and credibility all within 10 seconds. You know, when I do that to most people, you know what the reaction is? Mm-hmm. Oh, I don't know. You guys, you don't have time in life for that moment at all. Mm-hmm. And one of the reasons that we not only teach pitch, but we train, you get to practice and implement what we do That's part of the training. Yeah. I see Grant. One, I believe in research. Second, I believe in strategy. And third, I believe in leverage. Those are my three key core pillars. And so as I walked up to Grant, my thought was, when one woman walks up to somebody else's husband, 'cause I knew who Elena was by my research. Yeah. Never met them. Don't walk up to the husband 'cause it's not a good energy. And so I walk right up to her and I said, Elena, hi. Um, you may recognize me, Forbes Riley, been on television, $2.5 billion in sales. I make people billionaires. I think through an infomercial, your husband could earn an extra billion.

Would that be okay? What do you say to that? She's like, "Of course, let's talk." She turns to Grant and says, "You need—" Now, she said this. She said, "You need to meet this woman." Chapter O is called "An Open Door." She literally opened the door. Now, for busy men, you get 20 seconds. And I know that's how his brain works. I'm like, "Hey, Grant, nice to meet you. I'm friends with Kevin Harrington." I dropped a name that we both know very well. I said, I've generated over $2.5 billion. I'd like to see if I can make you an extra billion. I already know he's a billionaire. So that's credibility and authority and loving on him. Yep. Doing an infomercial. He looked at me, he said, great, I'm doing a party in 2 nights. You're my, you're my special guest. It was that, it was literally the whole thing was maybe 30 seconds. And then we, you know, pursued each other. When I got to his party, he knew exactly who I was. He was big on research too. He didn't initially invite me on the 10X stage. I don't know if you know, but something really tragic happened that night of that party.

And we don't all talk about it very much, but it was October 1st, 2018, I think it was '18, when the Las Vegas shooting was happening. Grant came over to me, Kevin Harrington was at that party from Shark Tank, and said, "Hey, do you want to go downstairs and play poker?" And I said, "I'd love to, but I want to walk out to that balcony. I've just met what I think is the love of my life." And turns out he is. It's 9 years ago. Wow. And I would like to take a picture on the Strip, you know, of where Mandalay Bay sign is. We walk out with my iPhone and we hear pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. And we're thinking it's the fireworks. And then we look down across the street and there's some strange things. People seem to be running or not running or what's going on. And what happened was the guy 10 floors below us is shooting and killing people at the country music concert. And it's all on my iPhone. And if you Google Las Vegas and Forbes Riley, you'll see that for 11 hours we were locked down in that room watching and waiting for all of that to unfold.

And so now Grant, he was downstairs with Elena in— I mean, they thought there were terrorists everywhere. It was a very scattered, insane experience. And so we recapped all this, him and I and Elena got on the phone and had a really in-depth conversation because I was a little PTSD'd. And Grant said, "Well, I'd love to invite you to come to my Tenex convention." I thought, "That's great." I looked at the lineup, and it was all men. And I said to him, I said, "There's no women." And he said, "Do you wanna speak on Saturday?" He's like, "Oops." And that's truly how it happened. And I've done that a couple of times because I love being a trailblazer. Yeah. That's so smart.

That women have not been given. That's so smart to pull that card, you know, like.

It made sense in the moment. Yeah. It's what I wanted all along. Mm-hmm. And it seemed to be the leverage thing that got him to say yes. Yeah. Because I didn't have a bestselling book at the time. I was just, it was, but 9 years ago. Mm-hmm. So I was just beginning to find my ground as a speaker, as a teacher. And from that stage, I sold over $280,000 worth of pitching.

Well, I feel like we just learned a lot from your storytelling, and storytelling is so important when it comes to a pitch. So walk us through what we need to know about storytelling and, and from an entrepreneurship mindset. We're usually selling our own products and services. So, so how should we think about storytelling?

I, I have 8 steps in this formula. The one of the steps that's really important, and this is your ultimate pitch, my ultimate pitch formula. I'm not gonna give it all to you, but I'm gonna tease you enough that you're gonna wanna come because I'll tell you what, even if I gave you each one of the steps, it's actionable and implementation that gets you good at it. Mm-hmm. One of the steps that's really important that no one's allowed to do anymore is assumptions. Are you allowed to make assumptions about people?

I feel like people do, even if it's— are you saying like you shouldn't make assumptions about people?

Oh, I'm saying you should at all times. And here's the funny thing. We're told to be very polite in 2026. I can't assume if you're a man or a woman, if you're tall or short, but I can kind of look at you and get a couple of ideas. Yeah. Right. Well, but that's an important thing to know. You don't say the assumptions out loud, but there's a lot of things I can tell about you. I can tell the fact that you're wearing a short skirt and high heels, that you seem athletic, that you work out. And I may or may not be true.

You're right. Yeah, that's right.

But those are things that I'm getting. Yeah. The way you've done your hair, the way you— I have all kinds of assumptions about you. Now, if I'm talking to a woman who's 90 years old, I might talk to her differently because my assumption is she's an older woman. She is not as aggressive, as interested in her future as you are. So if I've got an insurance product, I might sell it different to you than I would to her. And then if I've got a kid, I'm not going to be selling it at all. In fact, let me show you something really interesting. Yeah. 'Cause assumptions goes to avatars. You all need a, what, ideal avatar? We've heard that. Yeah. Yeah.

Like your ideal customer. Yeah. Yeah.

So I had an MBA student team come and say, you know what, Forbes, the ideal customer for your spin gym is 45 years old. Her name is Sheila. She walks a Labradoodle, drives a Lexus, not a Tesla, likes hot yoga. And I was like, all right, good for you. I said, you know what guys, I'm gonna outsell you. I don't believe in avatars. I believe that everybody in front of me can be turned into an avatar. And they were like, what? And it's why I've grossed billions of dollars. So yeah, let me take a 7-year-old girl and a 7-year-old girl. I'm gonna look at her and she's in gymnastics class and I'm gonna say, you know, you need really strong shoulders, but you're too little to go to the gym. This comes in hot pink. It works your arms 5 minutes a day and your mom's got your credit card. Then I'm gonna find 2 TikTokers who are sitting there like this and going, hey guys, you know what? I'm watching people dance like you do. They're not like this. They've got big open chests. You want more followers? Give them what they want. This will do that for you.

She buys one in purple. He got one in silver. And then I'm looking at Grandpa. He's sitting in his Barcalounger. He's got this little belly and his wife's in the kitchen. His grandkids are playing. And I'm like, let me ask you a question. How long you want to be around? You got to get rid of this. I know you want the rest of your life to be the best of your life. Give me a couple of minutes. She's going to even find you sexier and you get to play with the grandkids. So now I've sold— he bought one for his wife. I bought one too. I've sold 5 SpinGyms. And none of them were named Sheila. So I have a very different take on how to find customers. Yeah. Before we even get to the storytelling part. Mm-hmm. And so the assumptions are, when you walk onto a set or you walk into a meeting, look at who you're talking to. Most people pitch everybody the same way. Mm-hmm. There's no such thing as a perfect pitch, but there is a really skilled perfect pitcher. Hmm. And when you're this good, you have the ability to change what you're pitching.

Yeah. But most people don't. That's the most embarrassing thing I find of entrepreneurs. Like, all right, I've got my pitch forms. Could I get my pitch form?

Yeah, it's the same thing every single time. And they don't think about who they're actually pitching to and what that person is desiring.

And that's how you close people. The next thing is when it comes to closing, don't wait till the end. How about you start with the closing? What do you mean? Well, Begin with the end in mind. What is it that I want you to do? Well, I'm going to look at you and say, you know what, you're very busy and you don't have a whole lot of time to go to the gym, but you look great. You want to keep that going. I'm going to tell you, give me 5 minutes a day and this is going to give you sexy, toned, amazing arms. And so now in our whole conversation, I'll get to the stories I'll talk about, but you're like, I want sexy arms. Mm-hmm. And so when I finally say, hey, would you want pink or silver? You're like, all right, I'll take one of each. I've already closed you at the beginning of the conversation. Because I structured it that way.

Yeah.

So I think what my pitching training does and why we're so successful is we take the guesswork out of, out of your dream. Mm-hmm. And it gets into somebody else's hands. They become a customer, a partner, an investor, and you're always pitching. Do you know that? Yeah. I wake up in the morning, honey, could you rub my neck? And he does. That's a pitch. I win. Mm-hmm. So pitching is a win-win environment. It's not selling. When you, we know when my team, when you pitched each other to be on the show, there's, we're not selling each other. Mm-hmm. But we did get a yes. So I have a little secret that I do. Yeah. If I ask you the question, you wanna see something cool?

What do you say? Yeah.

Everybody wants to see something cool. Great. So ask a question, you know the answer to. I love getting yeses. Mm-hmm. Yeses are a game changer. Most people, especially you guys, when you pitch, you don't think about getting a yes. Mm-hmm. So like a yes ladder you're talking about. Ooh, a yes ladder. Oh, I haven't thought about that. Yes.

So basically getting them in the mindset of saying yes. So at the end, when you make the big ask, they say yes. Well, yeah.

And then again, I wouldn't wait till the big ask till the end. Mm-hmm. I would set it up because that's the problem. And people wait till the end. So have you been pitched something lately? Have you bought a high-ticket item of some sort?

I mean, yeah, I buy stuff all the time. So I, I guess I bought, uh, I buy a lot of clothes. I bought a pink Porsche.

You bought a pink Porsche? Now, did you go in thinking you wanted a pink Porsche?

Yeah, I wanted it.

Okay. So the sales— salesman's got a pretty easy answer. Yeah.

Very easy job.

Did you have a good salesperson or a bad salesperson?

Well, maybe this is a bad example cuz I just bought it over the phone. Oh, that's so— I called and they drove it to me from Dallas. So somebody must've been very, very happy. Yeah. It was a very easy sale. That's maybe a bad example. Well, I'll unpack that for you.

Okay. Because you pitched yourself. Mm-hmm. And that's a very interesting thing. That's, you know, my, my next TEDx talk is about permission. You, did you grow up with money?

My dad was a surgeon, so I grew up with some money, but he gave a lot of his money away. He grew up very poor. Mm-hmm. He was from Palestine and like basically grew up in poverty and became rich. And then we gave all our money away. So I wasn't like poor, but I wasn't very spoiled.

Good. And I love that. Yeah. So at some point you said, hey, you know what? I've worked really hard. And this is the pitch and the permission you gave yourself. Yeah. Because nobody needs a Porsche. I have one. Nobody needs one. Nobody needs a pink car, right? At all. But you said, you know, wait, let me unpack this. Why would it be good for my business, for my image, for my brand? And maybe I just wanna enjoy it. And so you gave yourself permissions along the way and you literally pitched yourself. Mm-hmm. Did you have other car options in mind?

Uh, yeah, there was other options in mind. Right.

And then somehow this one said, you know, this is, and it, it checked off a box for you. Mm-hmm. And then you were like, well, what color? It was like, wait a second, I'm gonna make a statement. Mm-hmm. And so now I want this. And it's a funny thing about pitching yourself. Because all of a sudden when you do, you stop playing small. And it's the funniest thing. Did anyone say, no, you can't do that?

It's not their business, not their money.

Oh, but see, it took you a while to, you know, you're a great role model for that. Yeah. Because I didn't grow up with money either. And it took me a long time to figure out that I could enjoy all my hard work.

Mm-hmm. It was a, it was a symbol of me being like, I'm finally buying something really like out there. I've been making money for a while and I'm gonna treat myself. It was like, it was a present. It was a birthday present to myself.

And I'll tell you what, two things happened. One, you pitched yourself cuz you have to go through that whole checklist. Now, if somebody were in the store, if you walked into a Porsche dealership and they were trying to sell you, and here's why this might've gone wrong and you might've walked out because that person, probably most car salesmen, men or women. Yeah. A lot of men might've said pink. Really? You want pink? And what would you have said?

Yeah, pink represents me. I like pink.

But notice how he's now not selling you. Isn't that funny? It'd be interesting to see. I almost wanna do that as an exercise to walk into a dealership and to find somebody who's not good at his job, who would probably talk you outta that for all kind of reasons. I've had that happen. Yeah. I walked out going, that was such a, I'm not buying anything cuz they're terrible.

Yeah, cuz I don't like him. It's important to actually like the salesperson, right?

That's what I was talking about. Yes.

Yeah. When it comes to likability and being a good, I know you, you don't, you don't call it selling, right? You don't even like calling it selling.

No, in fact, I teach that selling and pitching are very different. Yeah. So selling is about having quotas and selling is the thing. Mm-hmm. There's sales trainings, there's sales objections, there's getting a transaction and it's done. I don't do that. See, when you are pitching, when you understand the concept the way I present it, you realize that your product, your service, or even your idea is a solution to somebody's problem. Now that's a different way. I'm not selling you that. Yeah. What I wanna do is I wanna find out I've got this product, Right? Give me an arbitrary product, any product or— A water bottle.

A water bottle. A Stanley Cup type thing.

Yeah. Okay. So let's say I sell a water bottle. Now, this particular water bottle that I've decided to sell, because I only sell things I like, this one has got special insulation. It keeps cold for 24 hours. It keeps hot for 24 hours. So I love that. Now, as I'm thinking about this, what's the biggest problem somebody has to have who wants this bottle?

They're dehydrated.

Well, one is they're dehydrated, but that's not quite the biggest problem. That means you could just have a glass of any water. And then I drill down even deeper. Why would you want a container that keeps— 'Cause you travel a lot. Oh, bingo. All right. You're somebody who travels. You're somebody who doesn't like diluted ice cubes in your tea or your soda. Or you're somebody who wants your coffee hot the entire day. So now I've got 3 problems that this would be the answer to. I'm not even gonna show you this. I'm gonna do what I call a question flip, which is step number 2 and go, "Yala, lemme ask you a question. You travel a lot, right?" Yep. "Do you love hot coffee?" Yeah. "Doesn't it really annoy you after like 20 minutes and it's lukewarm and you don't have a—" a microwave? Yes.

And you're getting me to say yes.

Aren't I though? Mm-hmm. What if I told you I've got the newest Himalayan rock-embedded insulation? Keeps cold, ice cold, 24 hours. Hot 24. You can put this in your bag. You can go out to the tennis court and it's like water from a freezer. That's how cold it is. I'd love that. You'd love it. I made a sale for a product I haven't even made yet. Mm. But isn't that funny? All I did, it's a very specific technique, you guys. It's got nothing to do with your product or service. Which is why I said in the beginning that as a founder, you're so close to this that you wanna start telling stories and stuff. Mm-hmm. Stories don't come into the pitch until a little bit down the road because a story would, and I call it springboard stories. Yeah. I want a story that does a little bit, goes down, gets you emotional, and comes right back off of it. I'm not here to tell you why I created my product or why I'm passionate about it. I should only be caring, why do you wanna buy it?

Yeah. So talk to us about what that question flip exactly was. So what part of that was the question flip? Okay.

And then I'm going to throw in something else too. Yeah, I'm going to throw in a story into this. So now I've got this product. Okay. This is what I call the hub. The beginning of any product. You should figure out your research. What is it? Why do you love it? Why are you connected to it? And do all of that. And then don't talk about that just yet. Okay. But now you look at your product or service or whatever it is that you're doing, and it's— I know people like, but I have a massage therapy business. It works for everything. Your massage therapy business is a solution to somebody's problem. Their pain, their back pain. Get— but drill down, be very intentional. What does your massage business do? You love working on releasing myofascial, right? Mm-hmm. So you do something other typical massage people don't do. So you're— the problem you're solving is somebody who's got a knot in their neck that just won't go away, a lower back pain that has been throbbing. They've tried medication. Okay? That's what I've determined I solve. All I do is flip it. Hey, in my marketing, are you somebody who's tried everything.

You're tired of the pills. You've been to the chiropractor. They're telling you you need surgery. Nothing's working. Before you make that investment, come see me. I have a track record second to none. Mm. That was a question flip. Now go back to the insulated water bottle. So now I figured out you are someone who— we want someone who travels, who loves their beverage hot or cold and likes it for a long time. Also doesn't want typical aluminum. Another one. They might be health conscious. Yeah. Guys, there's no aluminum. There's no plastics. Mm-hmm. So all of those things now I know I'm gonna say to you to get you go, oh yeah, I've been thinking about that. I don't want plastic water bottles anymore. Great. This is that. Now once I've got you that excited and you're going, yes, I want it, now I'm gonna throw in my springboard story. I'm gonna say, you know, the crazy thing about this, why I'm so, why I'm so passionate about it, it's a couple years ago, I wasn't drinking enough water. I had water bottles, they would get hot, they would break. I ended up with a kidney stone in the emergency room and almost died because I wasn't drinking enough water.

Water. Wow. All of a sudden you're like, this— she's really passionate about this. Yeah. So what did I do? I dipped into a story and now I'm gonna say, and this bottle comes in pink, goes with your car.

How do you get them to not feel sorry for you? And why is that important?

Don't stay there too long. And it's okay if you do feel sorry for me, but that's not the point. It's the way you tell a story. And guys, that is practice. Most of you have never had any practice telling stories. Hmm. I mean, you as a singer, Would you, even if somebody really has a good voice, would you ever expect someone to cut an album that never had any kind of coaching training at all? No. Right. But people tell stories like they think they know what they're doing. By the way, you know that come the holidays and you sit around the table and people tell stories that have no ending or no point. Yeah. I firmly say to every one of my students, every story has a point and every point has a story.

Some people are so bad at telling. I always tell my sister, like, what is the point of your story?

Well, because they weren't been trained to tell stories. Yeah. People think because they can just talk. Now here's a funny thing. I give speeches all over the world. My formula applies to speech giving as well, because when I'm— before I'm ready to go, I know what the speech is. I know what I wanna be talking about. We agreed on the topic, but here's a phenomenon. Who am I talking to? Mm-hmm. When I walk into an arena, and I usually show up the night before, I wanna know, is it men or women or young or old or successful or not? All of those indicators, I'm gonna go back and reframe my entire speech based on what I think that audience wants to hear. Yeah. Not always what I wanna talk about.

And you're thinking through like, what problems do they have? Yes. That I wanna solve. Mm-hmm. So I can make them feel like this is relatable. And what stories do I have that are relatable to them?

Isn't it funny how pitching now also became storytelling and speech giving? Mm-hmm. But I think it's the same thing. I think when you learn this formula, I think life gets more fun. Mm-hmm. You're not guessing as much.

Now for a lot of founders, like for instance, I have a podcast network and I get people sponsorships. And the reason why I do that is 'cause I was really good at getting myself sponsorships. So I've got this social proof and credibility. And when I'm pitching people, just me telling my story or explaining how much I make on my podcast and comparing that to what they're making, I feel like they start to trust me more because they're like, okay, she's done it herself. Right. What's the importance or how should we go about talking about what we've already done for ourselves? Okay.

So it goes back to the whole bragging thing. Give me a sponsor, a name of a sponsor, kind of a sponsor. Shopify, Indeed, LinkedIn. Okay. So Shopify, why would Shopify wanna sponsor? So the first thing I would think about is I would do my research. I learn all about Shopify. I have a Shopify platform and I love it. Mm-hmm. But you have to figure out, okay, what is it? Why is it? And what is it looking for? And so when you conclude, gimme one thing you think Shopify's looking for.

They want, uh, audiences with new founders, like people who want to start businesses. I love that.

So they're looking for audiences with new founders. Question is, when you're doing your podcast or somebody, are you attracting those kind of people for them? Mm-hmm. And based on your age and the kind of guests that you've got and the credibility and numbers you have, I would lay all that out. And when I went to Shopify, I would say, guys, you know what? Cuz you're only there to help them. You do wanna talk about you, but not until they want you. So, hey, you know, I know that it would help build your platform if you had young founders who are starting companies that really don't quite— haven't really, you know, begun yet. Funny thing, my audience is made up of those people. And why do they like me? Because I'm young and I'm fresh. I've had these 10 guests on, we've done these numbers, and then we have another little piece of the formula called Febit. Oh, feature benefit. Okay. And most people just list feature, feature, feature. They don't list, they don't tie it to anything. So if I say this water bottle that I'm talking about before is pink, it insulates and it sells for $19.99, you're like, okay, but now there's benefits to those things.

If I just list the benefits, you're like, okay, but watch what happens if I do feature benefit. Hey, this water bottle comes in pink. I heard you got a Porsche. It's gonna look great in your car. Mm-hmm. That's yes. This keeps hot drinks hot for 24 hours. And I promise you that's gonna solve the problem of you having to constantly get up and go to the coffee maker. Mm-hmm. So feature benefit equals a yes. You get 3 yeses, you don't have to wait till the end to sell somebody. They're already sold. Yeah. And I don't know if you've ever experienced this, but when you do this formula well enough, halfway through what you think your pitch is, the other person's like, okay, I'm ready.

They're ready. I want it. They're already ready.

Yeah. I usually don't have to, that's what selling is. Selling is, well, I wait till the very end and then I give you the big boom. Don't do that. Yeah. People want what I have long before. In fact, the crazy thing about SpinGym, I say very few words. People put it in their hands like you did. They start to feel it and they sell me. They literally like, oh my God, I can feel this.

How much does this cost? Where can I get it?

Yep. That's exactly what they say. That's the craziest thing. So I don't feel like I'm selling at all. When you got a solution to somebody's problem, they want it.

Mm-hmm. Why wouldn't they? So when I was asking that question, I was more alluding to, so I've got a podcast network. I, I recruit. Podcasters. Okay. When I was reading your book, one of the things that really, um, was eye-opening to me, people want to know that the person they're buying from, like, has done it before.

It does help in certain cases. Yes, it does help.

So for me, I was thinking, okay, in the beginning of my pitch, I'm gonna let people know how much money I make on my podcast because I feel like it should inspire them and trust me more because I've done it myself. Where usually I don't, maybe they'll find out later on, but I don't really like tell them like, hey, I make $2 million a year in sponsorships or whatever.

Well, so if you started with the, as someone "Talking to Shabba Hey Shabba Fi, you know, as somebody who's generating $2 million a year just from my podcast alone, I'm now blah blah." You say it like it's not even a thing. You know what they just heard? She makes $2 million on her podcast. We should seriously take her seriously. Yeah. So that as someone who, without putting a lot of energy on it, allows you to state your credibility and not sound like you're bragging.

Mm. I love that tip. It's just a fact. I love that tip.

You know, as someone who's now got 22 other podcasters who are all generating X, Y, and Z, we're coming to you because we think that we can serve your audience that fast. Yeah. If someone— this is great for interviews too. Oh my gosh. My son called me after he had his interview for college and he literally said he was 18 years old. He's like, Mom, I just pitched the interviewer. I'm getting into the school of my choice. Thank you. And I'm like, wait, what did you do? He said, well, I sat there and realized When they say, tell me about you, they didn't care about me. They cared what I could do for their school. And I found myself saying, as the head of the school newspaper and somebody who played quarterback on the football team, I really believe in school spirit and I became blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I think using that for your college would be an awesome use of my time and energy. And they were like, yeah, we— dude, we want you. Yeah. Nobody does this. Yeah. Because they think the question is, tell me about you. And then they get lost.

I did this last night. I had a big training at 1,500 people online. Oh, wow. And this woman— now we do that every week now. I mean, we're doing, knock on wood, pretty amazing as a company. And I asked one of my students, I said, so how was your week? She just started my Pitch Like a Pro, and I was hoping that she would tie the conversation to her pitch challenge. She didn't. She gets on, she's like, well, you know, so I got lost a little bit and my kids had a little problem. She started going down this rabbit hole and I had to stop her. I'm like, I asked you about your weekend, but there's 1,500 people listening who don't know you.

Yeah.

Do you really think they care? They care. Yeah. I know. I didn't mean to be rude. And she's like, oh, well, okay. But the end of it was that I pitched so-and-so and I got a free something.

And I'm like, that's the part they wanted to hear. Yeah. So before we go on a pitch, there's probably a lot of things that we need to prepare for. First of all, we need to believe in ourselves. Yes. How do we go about believing more in ourselves? Like, what are some of the things that we can do to get more confidence before we go on and pitch?

Well, I tell you what, not that I'm gonna pitch my book, but I'm gonna share something with you. I put so much, by the way, this is not the Ultimate Pitch Formula that I only teach live. Mm-hmm. That I teach. It's, this book was one, it was brought out in full color and I'm very excited about that. And I had to fight everybody for this. Nobody wanted to do a book in full color. It's more expensive. Mm-hmm. And I didn't care. So I make less money per book. What was the point? But I don't see life in black and white. And if you're gonna have people like Kim Kardashian and Jake Seinfeld and Mario Lopez in your book, It should be that color photo if you've got pictures with all of them. Yeah. But then the book is literally one word per letter. Yeah. So the first one is A.

Attitude, right? Yes.

But that's not, you know, it's funny, I can write a whole book now on different A words. Apparently between ask and audience and ambition, there's a lot of awesomeness. There's a lot of A words. Yeah. But attitude is the first step in all of this. Mm-hmm. And how do you increase your attitude? It's not walking around just saying affirmations all day long. But, and I, I put it in here. I literally put an actionable thing about called the PPA, the Positive Pitch Attitude System. Oh, okay. Is a bonus. It's free. I have a lot of free bonuses in here. I invite you to scan this. I have thousands of dollars. I created a school community. We have 2,000 people. We've only been out. Oh, amazing. I only launched this 2 weeks ago, by the way. Wow. 12,000 units sold in the pre-launch USA Today bestseller. And you go, how did you do that? Pitch. I know that sounds like an obvious concept. But when you understand what I know about getting into other people's hands— and so attitude's the first thing. You know, when you walk into a room, you can— your engineer, we walked into the podcast.

If he was kind of grumpy over his computer, bad attitude. Yeah. But if he perked up because you're here, better attitude. Mm-hmm. When you— and you can monitor your own attitude. And there is a little bit of fake it till you make it. But I learned a long time ago from one of my first mentors, my acting professor, he said, look, he said, attitude monitors talent. At the end of the day, most people don't care how good you are. They really don't. If you're not nice to be around, life's too short. Yeah. And I learned that lesson, and I've always managed to carry that with me. The word belief leads into everything else. Part of it is giving yourself permission to fail. Part of it is giving yourself permission to stop labeling yourself. I am a procrastinator. And people will say this, you know, Forbes, I'm a procrastinator. And I look at them going, I don't even know what that word means. And they're like, what do you mean? I said, there's no such word. You made that up. And they're like, well, no, I put things off. I said, well, why do you put them off?

You put them off because you didn't have a consequence. And they're like, wait, what? Okay, let me share something with you. Did you ever hit the snooze on your alarm? Of course. Because it didn't matter if you snoozed a little bit, right? But would you do that if you're coming to do a podcast with a famous guest? No. Because that would not reflect very good on you. If the house is on fire, you're not hitting the snooze alarm. So you're not a procrastinator. You just didn't have the right Consequences. So I have a consequence story that I don't— that's not in the book, but it is. I'm going to share because I think your audience would get a kick out of this. I have been somebody who fought my weight my entire life, and not that I was big and heavy. My mom was big and heavy. She was £260 my whole life. But I— let's assume, is this a fat glass of water?

No, it's just— I don't think so.

No. Right. But if you put it next to a finger, It looks fat now, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, poor glass of water. Well, that was me my entire acting career. I was about 15, £20 overweight, which is normal now. But I was working with Julianne Moore and Meg Ryan and people who were literally tiny, and I was like this. So my entire acting career, people always put me on a diet. I was on Broadway. They sent me to Overeaters Anonymous. It was always like, your thighs are too big and you're a little too chunky. Okay, I heard this my whole life. At some point, I don't care anymore, right? Because now I turn 60. I built a business and my husband, bless him, he is a bodybuilder. Have you seen a picture of my husband? Your husband's—

Yeah, very— He's pretty fit.

Yeah. Yeah. And he loves me no matter what. But we had our body fat scan done at the beginning, 2 years ago in January, and I was 33% body fat and I crossed over the 60 mark and I'm like, I don't really care anymore. And I do care, but I didn't. And then we were in a really bad car accident in March of that year. And luckily I didn't become a little byline that you read in Facebook. It says, oh yeah, she and her family perished. But I was— living what I call a James Bond moment. We were literally snowmobiling on a glacier. My twins, my husband having the best time ever. We get in the van to go home, and as we hit the road, we ran into a patch of ice. The bus goes flying through the air and it crashes down on my side of the bus. Oh my God. I'm right behind the driver. And I wake up, there's glass everywhere. My face is on the street. But here's what I know to be true. I didn't lose my cheek or my eye or my face or my life. And we all crawled out the top of the van.

And by the way, it was a little harrowing. I mean, you know, the people who were strapped in the seatbelts above next to me were now dangling from the thing. Oh my gosh. People got hurt. I tore my shoulder, but nobody died.

Yeah.

And as we're leaving Iceland, my husband turned to me and he said, "You know, there's a bodybuilding competition in our hometown for the first time ever, and I need to be a part of it to qualify for the Arnold Classic." And I'm like, "Good for you. Good for them." He said, "There's a category for women over 60." I'm like, "Good for them. Why are you telling me this?" And again, I had a little PTSD, and I don't quite know what happened. I've watched my husband do bodybuilding competitions for the last 8 years. Nothing personal, honey, I love you, but they're boring as all get-out. You see, I mean, literally, people parade all day long, and they only get like a couple of minutes on stage, do your posing, and you're done. Took you a year of eating only protein and training every day to get to that moment. And they wear little bikinis. I don't own a bikini because I was molested when I was 15 in a bikini, and I— I just never owned a bikini. So we're flying home and have you ever heard a voice talk to you? Yeah. See, I thought I was crazy.

You really, you guys, have you heard voices? So I'm flying home and this little voice says, "Go for it." I'm like, "Go for what?" "Go for it." And I'm like, "Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no." You guys see, I'm 33% body fat. The competition is in 99 days. It was June 29th and I'm thinking about this in March. And I'm like, and I've never done anything like this. And then we came home and I found myself, I took a picture of me in my bra and panties in the, in the bathroom. And I looked at the image and I thought, who's that chunky old lady? Mm-hmm. And I really was really sad. And my husband would ask me to go work out with him every day. And I'm like, honey, I don't have time. I'm building a company. And he'd come back and I'm still sitting there and I didn't have time. Well, that was, an excuse. Mm-hmm. Because apparently there's a time on the clock called 5:00 AM. I'd only seen it once. I'd only seen it once when I came home from college after a night out. 'Cause I would start work at 7, 8, you know, that's what I would do.

Yeah. And something said, go for it. And I went online when I got home that night, I had a mastermind in front of 300 people. And for some odd reason I said, hey guys, we survived this accident. And in 99 days I'm gonna be in a bodybuilding competition. Wish me luck. And I turned off the camera and thought, Oh my God. Wait, wait, wait, wait.

What did I do? Why did you do that?

Yeah. So now I have a consequence. I cannot be embarrassed in front of all my students and people who believe in me. And I went to YouTube the next day and I said, how do you train to do this? I found a woman online on Instagram, love you, Julia, who had lost weight and she, in her late 60s, became a bodybuilder. She did exactly what I think I was going to be doing. And I reached out to her, but I did it on my own. I found this great carnivore diet. I went to the gym every day for 2 hours. I used my husband's training system. He's got a very intense kind of weight training thing. I'd never really done weights before. And 99 days later— and the crazy thing about that journey, that's one part of it. I got on stage and I ended up getting a medal. And I made a movie about this because it was a very interesting experience that I think everyone should— everyone should go for some outrageous, delusional dream at some point. The other dream I had You know, when you go out in the grocery store, I've seen this, this magazine forever, right?

Yeah. And for 20 years, all my friends have been on the COVID Denise Austin and Jane Fonda and all these other actresses that I've known. I'm like, I want to be on the COVID of Women's World. And so this year I told my story. I launched my book. I am on the COVID last week. Aww. It says my age and it literally says how I lost half my body fat in 99 days. And then they gave me a centerfold. I'm literally a centerfold.

I love that.

I could not be happier of my story. Not my pitching, not my movies, but my weight loss story. So that at 66, I am the fittest I've ever been in my life. That's incredible. Because I set out to have a consequence. Mm-hmm. If you don't put a consequence on a wish, it's just a dream and you don't achieve it.

That's an awesome story. Speaking of, you know, making things solid or real, you often talk about how if you don't write things down, they often don't come to fruition. How do we actually make sure that we execute our goals? So you mentioned one thing, which is make it real, have a consequence, announce it to the world, right? Yep. What else?

Well, well, okay, so that's the first thing. Decide on something that you want. What's the next thing that you want? What's a real big, hairy, scary dream for you?

I'm writing a book. So I, I just started the process of, I have an agent and, uh, started writing books. I wanna put out a book and it should be coming out in a couple years.

It's gonna take a while. Why?

Publishers. Um, they, my agents say it usually takes a year to 2 years. Yeah.

So, and that was the part that I couldn't handle, which is why I ended up reading a self-publishing. I did a self, I did a hybrid self-publishing because I decided that I was gonna get this out when I wanted to. Yeah. And, I think then I do have a deal to do a book and they just doesn't seem to take that long. Um, but I would really write down what is it that you want from the book?

Yeah, for me it's a, it's not necessarily like leads for my business or anything. It's more of like a brand building. Um, and also to honestly get my thoughts really clear, understand my perspective, have original content. Uh, I go on podcasts all the time and I always find like when I have written something down, I do a better job because I have like my clear ideas and messaging that I wanna say.

So there is a beautiful phenomenon that happens when you take a pen and you put it, or a pencil, and you put on a piece of paper and you commit words to it. Something is very magical. And I'm gonna tell you that whether you believe or not, it's kind of like here, I don't believe in gravity, right? I don't believe in gravity. It works whether I believe in gravity or not. Mm-hmm. So whether you believe that this works or not, I would do it. Through the ages, it has been proven that when you write something down, so one of the things that I would recommend to everybody out there is to write down a list of what you want. And to write it to the point that your hand wants to fall off. Because it's not the 3— I wanna be prettier, I wanna be more successful, I want more money. No, no, no. Write down all of those things and spend pages writing all the things that you want, ever you wanted. And you'd be surprised what comes out of that. So the first time I did this exercise, it was many, many years ago.

And what came out was I wrote, I wanna inspire somebody every day. I'd never thought about that in my life before. I was an actress. I didn't really need to inspire anybody. But when I wrote that and I looked at it, I thought, well, what does that mean to inspire somebody? And then I took that one sentence and I drilled that down. It means that you have to have something worth talking about. You have to have life experiences. You have to have a mission. When I drilled on that one, it was like, ooh, so you just did that. I wanna write a book. Now I'd write down all the things you want your book to do. Who do you want to have read the book? What do you want the reaction to be? I will very clearly tell you that I stated this book is a USA Today bestseller. That is hard to get. It's not Amazon bestseller. And my goal next with my next book is a New York Times bestseller. That means you've gotta have some really profound stories to tell, do great diligence. And when you write a book, for example, you're not writing it for you, you're writing it for the people who are reading it.

Mm-hmm. And so that's— even when I wanted my man, okay? Are you involved? Yeah. And is it somebody that you wanted? Yeah. But you kind of knew that, right?

Did you make a list at all? Yeah, I did make a list because I was, um, I was really trying to find like my forever person. And so I was very, very picky about the person I would be in the next relationship with. So I did have a list.

Isn't that funny? So now she hears voices, she has a list. She's my best student ever. And I'm going to say that this is what I want for everybody out there. So I'd always made lists. I'd always written down things. And this particular time, uh, when I, my husband and I officially split up, which was really challenging for the kids and kind of hard, I spent 10 years without anybody. Mm-hmm. I made another decision to myself that said, as much as I'd selfishly like to find a partner, I really wanna be mom. And so I devoted a number of years to taking them on vacations and we went to dude ranches and we traveled to China. We did all kinds of crazy things, the 3 of us, because that was really important. And I will tell you, I'm in business with both my kids. Both my kids really like me, and that was time and energy and investment. I never stopped my career, but I never stopped investing in them. And I did a couple of things that I think every mom should do. One, I never told my kids to go away when I was doing business.

Mm-hmm. So I signed one of my biggest deals in New York City with my daughter playing tic-tac-toe in one hand and signing the contract with the other. And I told the people in the room, I said, look, as much as I love all the things that we're doing, we can make a lot of money together. No matter how much money I have in the bank at the end of my life, You're not gonna be in my deathbed. She will if I do this right. And if I screw it up, I can't not have them there. And that was one of my philosophies on how to, how to make my kids. What I wanted at one point, oh my gosh, it's okay. We were at a dude ranch. Mm-hmm. And there were 36 cabins and all, they were all couples except for me. My kids were playing. We had the best day ever. They go to sleep and I'm sitting there at night in this little rocking chair thinking, I am so unhappy right now. Aw. Why am I so unhappy? And I realized I was just really lonely. Yeah. My daughter said to me, Mom, don't we make you happy?

I'm like, oh, you guys make me happier than you'll ever know. But you are so little, you don't realize that as an adult, you don't want to go to— I didn't want to go to bed alone anymore. I wanted that partner with me. And so I began to make this forever list, and it was very in-depth, in-depth to the point where I wrote down some of the things I wanted him to say to me. And I wrote, I want someone who in the morning looks at me with mascara down my face my hair all frizzy, my mouth smelling like ass, and says, "I love you." Hmm. Well, I'm going to tell you something. When Joshua did that, I about fell off the bed. I'm lying there one day and Josh was like, "Come here, kiss me." And I'm like, "Oh, no, no, I can't. I got to go scope." And he's like, "Kiss me, beautiful." And I'm like, "Oh my God, you did it. Oh, yes." That was literally one of the things I'd look for. And then the other thing that I'll share with you guys at home, if you look up Joshua Self, S-E-L-F, and yes, that's his real last name.

I couldn't believe it. Because he's really that handsome. He was a fashion model and a Chippendale. He's got all those looks about him. But come on, your last name is Self? Mrs. Self? And I wrote all the things you'd think I wanted. And then I talked to a girlfriend of mine who was also very big into manifesting. And she said she wrote that she wanted someone who looked like he walked off the COVID of a romance novel. Mm-hmm. And I said, I'm putting that on top. I said, I know I'm 57 years old. But I want someone so beautiful that I melt into his eyes. And that's my man. Mm-hmm. And I look at him on Instagram and I look at him in person and, and it's obviously so much more to him than that, but that's what I wanted. Yeah. And I got it. So the question is, if you could write down what you wanted, did you get everything you wanted?

I did. Um, we have something similar. We, I have a pretty, I have a pretty big age gap with my boyfriend right now. Not that big, but 6 years. I'm 6 years older than him. Okay. And so something I wasn't expecting is that my man would be younger than me. That's— age is not something I actually wrote down. Right. Uh, but he turned out to be a great man that I wanna spend my life with. And so the age thing didn't really matter.

Baby girl, let me tell you something. Mine is 17 years younger. Mm-hmm. I didn't write down the age thing either. It didn't even dawn on me that I would ever want to be graduating high school on the day that my lover was born. But he said something to me so romantic after we— shortly after we met, and he came out to visit me in Los Angeles, and he rode on his motorcycle. And I told my daughter, "Don't ever date someone on a motorcycle." Screwed that one up. Well, because my cousin lost her leg when we were kids. And he shows up on a motorcycle, I'm like, "Ooh." I didn't put that on the list either. Shouldn't ride a motorcycle. He gets off his bike, takes that helmet off, and I'm like, oh my gosh. It's like the Chippendale poster came to life. I'm such a little girl. And then I realized, okay, Forbes, you're being silly. He's that good looking. He's a player. He only wants to, you know, whatever. He found out who you are. And I had that moment of self-doubt, which is unfortunate that I still am wired that way. But this, this humility, by the way, is not— is very much real.

And he came over and I just looked at him and I said, what are you really doing here? Because if you're here just for the weekend, that'll be okay.

You're like, I'm cool for— Right.

I'm cool for a weekend. Yeah. But he got down on one knee, grabbed my hand and said, look, he said, I'm not very religious, but something told me you need me. Huh? Wow. I'm— this man is never going anywhere. He is my— and he wrote on the top of his list and he wrote a list. He wanted his best friend. And he'd never had that before. And when he found me, we are— we're like crazy buddies and lovers. And then the funny thing again, by the way, here's the funny thing about a list. You don't have to include everything. You're allowed to be surprised. So I knew that he was a 3D graphic artist. He was a top bodybuilder. He was— had been at Chippendale, had been a model, all that was okay, fine. I own a television studio, a really big 5,000-square-foot TV studio in St. Pete, Florida. He walks into my space, looks around and says, "I could run this place." And I'm like, "Excuse me?" He said, "Oh, didn't I tell you? I used to work in movies and television, and I do gaffer and grip and lighting and video and photography." I'm like, "Perfect." No, you didn't tell me you could.

And then he gets so mad at me because I sometimes say very inappropriate things. It's kind of my persona. And, uh, I often say, you know, in today's day and age with all the videos that we do and all the content we need, you have to travel with your videographer, right? And they're really expensive. So I just thought it'd be cheaper to sleep with mine.

I love that. It sounds like you guys are such a perfect match.

I'm having the time of my life.

Uh, let's get back to pitching. Okay. So one thing that I liked learning about was that you've got like a pre-handshake, the actual handshake, the post handshake. The first impressions are so important when you're, when you're pitching and networking.

So why do you think that is?

Well, from my own research, first impressions are like what people remember even time and time after they met you. Your first 15 seconds is what they're gonna remember down the line.

There's a very interesting statistic. Do you know that there's 3 things people judge you on immediately? I mean, we talked about judging people and assumptions. 55% of how you show up for somebody else in their brain is visual. Does it align? 38% is the tone of your voice. Mm-hmm. And only 7% of the words that you use. Yet everybody comes to me, only cares about the words. How do I say, what exact words do I say to get them to like me? No, no. First show up and align who you are, what you're there to do. And when you go to literally shake somebody's hand, understand how to do that. And what do you want from the relationship? I don't think people stop to think, yeah, what am I doing here? And you're not gonna make a sale when you shake somebody's hand. It doesn't work that way. Mm-hmm. 'Cause that would be weird. So what do you want? For me, I want a yes. If they're interesting, I want to either do business, find an opportunity to work together, be on their podcast, have them be on mine, whatever the relationship might be at the end of it.

And I, oh, I have this new cool ring. This ring is literally, I touch somebody's phone and all of my information pops up on your phone. Oh, cool. I just got this 2 days ago and I thought that makes this process easier. And then you have to follow up. So this pre-handshake is you showing up. What's your intention? What do you want to do? Don't sound too salesy either. That's the other thing is even though we're all, you know, I want you to know what I do. Yeah, let's be human. Hey, what do you do? I'm in this, this, this. That's great. Here's what I do, blah, blah, blah. And then keep talking. When you meet me, don't walk up to me and give me your pitch. I don't want your pitch. Isn't that funny? It's like, it's because your pitch isn't a thing unless somebody— maybe you're at a BNI meeting or in a Toastmasters and they say to you, would you stand up there for 1 minute and talk about what you do? That's a pitch. Okay. When you're in a pitch contest, that's a pitch. When I just meet you, how many sentences do you think you're willing to listen to before you just stop listening?

A couple. Yeah. And even then it's like, hi, what do you do? You know, if you say you're a life coach, that's cool. But if you say, you know, I'm a life coach who likes to transform women because as somebody who went through something really traumatic, I mean, it's like, oh my God. Why are you still talking? Yeah. So I would love people to practice all the things that I teach so that you don't have to do most of them. Does that make sense? Yeah. You understand them. You show up a certain way. I can shake your hand, say a few words, boom, we're into it. And then when you leave, the post-handshake, follow up with people. I've got— I've done an interesting study recently. Do you know that about 85% of people do not follow up at all afterwards. They're intimidated. They don't wanna bother the other person. And so this beautiful moment that happened at the networking meeting or during the handshake literally becomes nothing.

Yeah. Results in nothing. Why you wasting your time? Yeah. The way that your book is—

I love that you really read the book. I gotta tell you, this could be the coolest interview I've ever done.

Oh, great. I always read the book. So the way that you've actually designed your book is that it's the ABCs and every letter stands for something and you've got D, demonstrate. Yep. Now you used to do infomercials and obviously like that's a very visual thing. How can you make this more real for entrepreneurs? Like how should we demonstrate if we're like on a Zoom call or in person at a meeting? Like, like how should we actually demonstrate something?

Well, I'm gonna say the demonstrate does not exist in an intro conversation. Nobody really wants to see your before and after immediately in the intro conversation.

It doesn't.

The intro conversation is usually to get somebody very excited. That part of the handshake. Mm-hmm. When they say these magic words, this is really cool, tell me more. Mm-hmm. The tell me more is let's book a meeting, let's go to a conference room, let's get on a Zoom. And that is the moment now where you're gonna take your pitch to another level because you want something, you want them to enroll, you want them to buy your product, whatever it happens to be. And you wanna organize in your world, given your business, given your solution, what makes somebody see the unseeable? So if you're selling, if you are in doing weight loss, Yeah, it's kind of easy. Hey guys, you know what? Let me show you the 30,000 people before and after, before and after. Oh my God, you got 30,000. That's an impressive number. Maybe you only have 2, then show the 2 that you got, but show the amount. Wow. In 6 weeks, this person went from this to this. Can you imagine? Great words to use that that happens for you. Yeah. Oh, well, that's interesting. And I'm going to tell you at every moment, if you can recalibrate why you're talking, and I love getting these from people.

Well, I just started my business. That's great. You know what you say to somebody? As someone who just started, I did this on my own and it worked. And now I'm looking for 10 women to go through this at the— and maybe at a reduced rate. Mm-hmm. Now, if you're somebody who's been in business for 20 years, you have the 30,000 examples. But what is a demonstration? A demonstration can be how fast can I sell your home? Well, that would be maybe some statistics. Guys, I had 100 clients last year. 94 of them sold their home for exactly what they wanted. 3% higher and the other 3% fell off. Wow. I'm in business with a realtor who can do 90%. Yeah. What I'm gonna say is demonstrating is having facts behind the myth. Most people say words like, well, it's just an incredible product. It's just amazing and I love it. Those 3 words don't say anything. In a pitch, credibility is really important. What makes somebody say yes to you? So if you can demonstrate by showing a statistic, by showing a photo, By showing a before and after of anything, you win. Yeah.

It re— and in infomercials, I learned this, it's like cutting my teeth in elementary school, is that if you could show a stain remover, all you have to do is say, look, there's a red stain, say, spray this new, pat it and it's gone. Mm-hmm. You don't have to say anything else. So one of the problems is people overexplain what they do. Yeah. Less words, more impact.

As I'm talking to you, I'm thinking to myself like, man, like I need to revamp my discovery deck, right? Okay. I need to think through what are like the, the new problems that are, that people are facing? What are some of the new case studies that I have? Yeah. What are some of like all my different stories depending on who's coming on the call so that I don't say the same story about myself and I kind of customize it for the person that's on the call. So I feel like this is a great point for everyone who's tuning in, who's an entrepreneur to think about, like, can their sales process be revamped a little bit? Oh my gosh.

You know, I also have a mentor. I have somebody who comes in. I said this to somebody the other day. I tweaked something and they were like, "Ben, you think I would've learned this already?" I'm like, "No, we never learn this. We're always the coffee in the cup." I had the great pleasure of working with Serena Williams many years ago. We were selling a thing called Mission Cool Towels. And she's not good at pitching. She was not good at— nobody was good at pitching that product. It was a really odd product. You'd get it wet, you'd snap it 3 times, it would get cold because of the evaporation. And in that particular case, it was a demo that sold that. Turns out you can talk about that all you want. It did nothing. Here's what I did. And it comes from being a magician and a demonstrator. I would take a bowl of really hot water and a heat gun, and the water would be about 200 degrees, really hot. I would— and my— I was on Home Shopping, so my host would go, ooh, that is hot. So now we know it's real. The heat gun demonstrating it.

We'd put this towel in there, we take it out and go, ooh, that's hot, hot. You'd snap it 3 times. The heat gun would then go from 200 to 150 to 140 to 99 to 57. This thing was now cold. So the demo for the audience was they saw the number change. Then my co-host would go, oh my gosh, this feels so cool. Then you go into a springboard story of, can you imagine where would you use this? If your mom is out gardening and it's really hot or your kids are playing, you know, in the heat, you don't want heatstroke. All of a sudden the phones went nuts. I did $55 million worth of sales in Cool Towels and nobody could figure it out before that cuz they didn't use any demonstrating. And then, so Serena got very excited about this and invited me out on the tennis court. And I gotta tell you, I can't hit a ball to save my life. And they were like, zoom, zoom. And she taught me two things. One, you have to practice, but two, she had five coaches. She had a fitness coach, a finance coach, a fashion coach, a food coach, and a tennis coach.

Mm-hmm. And I was very naive. This is almost 28 years ago. And I looked at her and I said, "But you're the best in tennis. Why would you need a coach?" "I'm not a real sports person." And she's like, "You're kidding me." I was like, "No, why would you need a coach?" And she said this, it was so profound. She said, "Look, my coach sits in the stands." She doesn't even play tennis anymore, but she'll walk down from the stands when I'm missing my shot and lift my elbow up because I was just getting a little tired, a little lazy, and I couldn't see what she could see. I was like, oh man. So does everybody need to revamp a little bit? Yeah. Here's the other thing. When you get really good in this pitching sales world, you start to work on statistics. I didn't really know how valuable this was until recently because I run a coaching company. And so if you get free clients into a webinar, what's your closing percentage? What's your, your ROAS? What's your return on investment? All of those numbers became very apparent and very interesting and very predictable.

Hmm. So now it turns out And you're not gonna buy ads until you do that. But if you're spending $100 and you know that you'll get 2,000 signups. Yeah. But only 50% will ever show up because it's free. Yeah. And then out of the 1,000, you're selling X amount of dollars. What percentage will you close? I've discovered over the last 6 years, we can tell you what numbers we're gonna do. Mm-hmm. Did you always know that?

It's bottoms-up sales forecasting, right? All the different actions. And if you know your percentages, then you can basically calculate, if I get, you know, 1,000 signups, I'm gonna make X amount of money. X amount on my webinar day, right?

Yeah, it's a very interesting phenomenon. And it's so funny because I took statistics in high school and now I know why. And now you can go back going, man, that stuff's good.

The other thing, when we're talking about stats, that you got me thinking about is, as you do business for a number of years, you start to collect data about like, have you ever gotten any returns? How much money? Like, for me, it's like, how much money have I made people? Or, or how often do I sell out shows? Or everybody's got different different stats that represent success in their business. Right. But you also have to think about that and write them down so that you have those data points to kind of just pull out, uh, during a sales conversation or in your, like, actually put it in your presentation.

Well, that's why I love working with advanced entrepreneurs. I'm having a lot of fun working with businesses because it's predictable, because there is data to look at. And if you're a young entrepreneur, I'm gonna tell you, this is one of the things that you wanna be thinking about. And if you're not good at this, I'll out myself a little bit. I am a visionary. Mm-hmm. And every business has a visionary and an implementer. Which one are you? Visionary. Yeah. As a visionary, I can do numbers. I did okay in math class, but I haven't done it in a while. But implementation and, or that kind of organization, not my thing. I'm not even really good at managing people. I'm great at teaching, pitching, writing, doing all the things that I do. And I found it's essential for me to have that partner. Have you discovered that? Yeah. And who would Kate?

On my team.

Okay. Oh, and you found someone on your team to do it. That's even better.

Yeah. She started as an intern, uh, 7 years ago, so, but now she's my business partner.

There you go. Yeah. Isn't that a wonderful environment? I, I chose to give birth to mine.

Oh, I love that.

Now I'm going, I should have had more kids. By the way, it's an interesting thing. I did not know that I was gonna raise a daughter who was that smart, that good an implementer. And the thing for me is that she cares so much about not only me, but what we're building.

Mm-hmm.

And it's been 6 years. Amazing. I know. And we built up each other. My daughter is at 22, had her first TEDx Talk at 23, runs $2 multimillion companies. So cool. Keeps me in check and allows me to do what I love to do. So if you're a visionary, you gotta find an implementer if you wanna move forward. Somebody who is looking at those numbers, looking at the bottom line, collecting data, doing KPIs. And in my, the way I view it is you gotta put on your big girl pants.

So Forbes, I wanna play a game. It's called the Pitch Clinic. You are the pitch queen. I'm the pitch doctor. Watch me do the magic. So I'm gonna give you like a one-liner and you tell me what's wrong with it. How'd you make it better? They're really generic. So let's just go. Okay. Here we go. All right. Number 1, the vague founder. And that person says, you say, what do you do? And they go, I help entrepreneurs grow.

Really? Like Pinocchio? Do you help them grow their noses? Do you help them grow like greenery? What's this? Oh, it's so sad. You know what helps entrepreneurs grow? You might wanna start out as somebody who's been in business forever. I take burnt out women and I help them find their truth in life. Mm.

Very different than I help entrepreneurs grow. Yes. Okay. Number 2, the founder that is always like feature dumping. So somebody's like, our app has dashboards and reminders and templates and AI tools.

Congratulations. When you ask them what they do. Yeah. And that's a good for you moment. What does it have to do with me? Mm. So as someone who's got a scheduling app, you, you are in business, right? Yeah. What runs your business? Is it a team of people? Is it online?

I've got a team of 60 people. We've got lots of different tools and lots of different apps, uh, lots of different systems.

We have streamlined. Can you imagine taking all the apps that you probably pay a fortune for? I'll tell you what I'd love to do. Our new app is the streamline invention of all time. Major companies are using it. Would it be okay if I did an audit of all your apps and see if I can save you money? Yes. All you wanna do is get a yes. That is the goal because that yes becomes a discovery call. You don't know anything about my app. I'm not telling you about my app. I'm just looking at what you've got and seeing if I can find a problem that I can solve.

A founder that doesn't have traction yet, they just have an idea. So you meet them and they say, we don't have traction yet, but everybody loves the idea. What could they do differently to sell their idea before they even have done anything with it?

Well, everybody loves what idea? See, it's so funny. Pitching doesn't exist in the abstract. Hmm. So you're found— what, what's the idea that you've come up with? I'm gonna put you on the spot now.

Okay. So the idea that I came up with is, this is somebody's— a student once told me she wanted to create a horoscope app. I love that.

Yeah. Well, don't call it horoscope, call it astrology. Horror sounds like it's all got evil people in there. It's an astrology app. Great. Then I would ask her, what does it do? What's in the mar— see, this is where the formula comes in. Mm-hmm. What's already in the market that you're competing with? And here's another thing about competition. When people say to me, I don't have any competition, number one, they're lying. And number two, they're naive. Yeah. You want competition. Can you imagine that a company opens across the street from McDonald's, the all-time hamburger, milkshake, and French fry mecca? Well, Burger King did just that. Yeah. Why do they exist on the same street corner? Well, because Burger King looked at the first one and said, you know what? You do A, B, and C. I'm gonna do flame broiled, not grilled, so it's less fat. You only offer it one way. We're gonna do hamburgers your way. So all of a sudden, the direct competition is excelling. So I would ask her going, what app are you close to like now? And why are you better than opening the magazine? And also, what does knowing your horoscope do for somebody?

So, hey, as somebody, you know, one of the things you may or may not believe in horoscopes, but there is— there's a reality check here that if you fall into a certain thing and you become comfortable with it, like I say all the time, I'm a Taurus, I'm kind of stubborn. Leveraging that for your own good and also understanding that the sun and the moon and the stars do play energetic roles in you. So again, she's got a great idea, but you can't just— I wouldn't go out there and say that until I've done more research. And guys, don't— first of all, don't pitch ideas anyway in a networking environment. What's the value? And if you're in Hollywood, where I've spent a lot of time, if you pitch an idea, someone's going to steal it. So drill down on your idea, make it into a business, do your due diligence, find your customers, find your competitors. And then you launch. Mm-hmm. And also don't— how about you test drive to see if somebody wants what you have? Yeah. The worst thing you can do as a new founder is go, my idea is so revolutionary, you've never heard of it before.

And it turns out to be something we've heard a lot of before. Mm-hmm. I would be embarrassed, wouldn't you?

Yeah, totally. Yeah. Now I wanna talk a bit about your story before we go. I know that you grew up and you were a bit overweight and you had some dental issues, some breathing issues. Talk to us about what you were like as a kid. And how that allowed you to become so successful later on, because sometimes your weakness becomes really your strength.

There's— I've told a lot about my mouth and not being able to talk for 3 years. I never had a thing in my mouth. I couldn't communicate at all. But there's something I haven't talked about. Yeah. And it's gonna come out next week for the first time, really, that my mom, when she was pregnant way back in the 1960s, She used to— remember, they used to wear curlers in their hair? She was in a really bad car accident, and her head went through the windshield, but the curlers saved her life. At least this is the story I was told. Uh, I survived, but my twin brother that she was carrying didn't. I've never talked about this. It just— it never seemed to be— I just didn't want to go there, especially since I have twins. Yeah. And I was in an incubator for 3 months, and we often joked if my grandmother hadn't paid $3,000, I'd still be there. 'Cause my parents had no money. And my whole life, I always looked for something, if that makes sense. And it's dawning on me as I'm getting older that that something might have been this thing that's missing for me.

And so, not being able to communicate as a kid put me in a really odd state. I don't know many other kids who had this. So, because of the way I was born, my teeth went in all different directions. And I was about 7 years old, they figured this out, put me in braces. A lot of people have had braces, but not for 8 years. Yeah. 8 years of full silver. And I look at little pictures of me, and I'm not smiling in any of the pictures. And they put this thing in my mouth. And so all of a sudden, as a chatty little girl, I can't talk at all. No. I never wanted to be my friend. I can't figure out what's wrong. And so I was very smart. I studied all the time. And when I wasn't studying, I'm watching TV. And there's something goofy about my generation The television that we watched— think about this— The Munsters, The Addams Family. We were watching dead people sleep in coffins. I Dream of Jeannie, a girl who's held captive in a bottle who can— and another one who's a witch who can wiggle her nose and make magic come true.

I had some very weird role models when I was a kid, right? Yeah. And I remember thinking, if they can live those kind of lives, I could do something more extraordinary. And for me, my role model, my mythical mentor, was James Bond. Mm-hmm. When I first started watching Bond, and not a Bond girl, but this guy who could snow ski and water ski and drive cool cars and wear awesome, awesome outfits and be an espionage— Why can't I? And I will tell you, through my entire life, I've done some crazy things, a lot of which I haven't thought to tell people. Like, everyone goes, "Oh, Forbes, we know your story." I'm like, "No, you don't. You know the story that I told you." But there was things that I hadn't talked about. About, again, looking for somebody to— and I think now it's, I always wanted to teach people. I think if you can't find the piece of you that's missing, and that's what I guess I've always felt like, but I never really articulated. Yeah. I think this is the time where everybody that I'm teaching with my 200,000+ students are my sisters and brothers, are the part of my family that I didn't have.

My mom was an only child. I didn't have any aunts and uncles. My grandparents were all gone, and I'm looking for that. And I will say, the other night we were talking, a big training, I love on people. And I'm not quite sure who your mentors were, but a lot of the standard mentors are men. Motivational speakers were all men to a certain point. And I just realized that with this part of my life, I want it to be about the feminine energy, the nurturing mom, the loving sister, the best friend. I don't need the money. I made a lot of money in my life. So what's the motivation? Because I'm not going to retire. There's no such word as retire. I don't know what that would possibly be. If you've got a mission, if you've got a reason for being here, and I would advise all of you to find that, and it could be your grandkids. It doesn't have to be some big thing, but maybe you've done something in your life that is worth writing about, that is worth pitching about, that is worth helping other people. And doesn't have to be your motivation, but it certainly is mine.

Yeah. I'm excited for you to call me and wish me a happy 100th birthday.

Well, Forbes, I end my show with 2 questions I ask all of my guests. The first one is, what is one actionable thing our young improfiters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?

www.pitsecretsbook.com. And I'm not kidding. I, it's, I don't need the book sales. You wanna read the book. You read the book and you took a lot of things away from it. Yeah, I did. I'm gonna tell you, The reason I'm so successful is in that book, the actionable words. Pick a letter, go to N and find out what NLP is all about. Go to M and do mindset and get my permission card. Go to Z and figure out how to do a much better Zoom presentation. There's so many nuggets in here, and that is something that you can do. I cannot teach you to be a better pitcher in just one class or in one podcast. I can give you the formula. I can teach you the formula. You're gonna wanna practice it. Mm-hmm. And just truly understand that there is no such thing as an overnight success. Cakes take how many minutes to bake at a certain temperature with the best ingredients. If you screw any of those up, you've got nothing.

And what about those— you were saying you do like weekly webinars. How does somebody get involved with that?

You know, everything is pitch secrets. So pitchsecretestraining.com is a free 2-hour training that I do every single Sunday. I've been doing it for 6 years. I have over 380 episodes. Wow. And I take people from around the world. And here's a crazy thing about being in our world. You know, you can be part in today's day and age of different communities for different things. Yeah. In our community, we love on people. We're very passionate about that, that we're supportive. If you need something in our world, I have a, I have a beautifully large, free Facebook group that people come in and just get support, get help, get loved on. And I think that's an important thing to do. But keeping in mind that we're not a charity, we are business. Yeah. And I'm here because you want to have that great dress. Eat that nice meal, have a vacation, buy presents, have a roof, and pay your car payments. So stop giving away your stuff for free. Come and learn that there's a level of self-esteem that we teach people. Mm-hmm. We work on clarity and confidence in your messaging, and you're gonna want all of that.

And I don't need to be the only mentor you have, but I promise you there's a level of expertise that's come with my life story. Yeah. That I just wanna wash over people. And I'm finding, you know, this is a funny thing. We didn't talk about School of Hard Knocks. James came to me, the kid that you see running up to people, and he did one of those—

I've only one— Street interviews. He does the street interviews. Yeah.

And I have one valet in my hometown. He said, "Meet me there." And when we finished with that one interview, I said, "How did you even know who I was?" He's like, "I didn't really know who you were, but my parents love you." Aww. And they're like, "If you're out in Tampa, you need to meet this girl." And it's one interview that changed my life. Oh. Because TikTok has 21 million views. Mm-hmm. Instagram has 12 million. That's 32 million views. They're crushing it. Of 60 seconds. The reason that I'm good at that, it's pitching. Mm-hmm. It's this conversation. It's this repetition. It's finally understanding, I know what my message is now.

You were like outperforming Tom Cruise, or like you, you had one of their most popular videos.

Isn't that crazy? Yeah. Yeah. Tom has about 5 million. I've got 21 million.

Look at that.

And not that I noticed. And it's because it's not about me. I'm not some mythical character in a movie set. I'm a young girl who grew up with no money, whose dad was in the hospital for 3 years when I was a kid, who just decided that my life was gonna be worth it. Yeah. I was gonna make it matter, and I was gonna do what I could to help other people. And it's exploded. Who knew the word pitch? When I started, people would say, "Ew, that's like a used car salesman." Mm-hmm. I'm like, "No, you guys, it's how you get someone else to say yes." It's how you get someone to go to the movie of your choice or the dinner or ask someone to marry you. You want them to say yes. That's a pitch. Yeah. And so I am loving that I finally gotten this word out to people. Mm-hmm. And now I'm just gonna keep running around the country and celebrating with people who are finally getting what they deserve and what they want.

Yeah. And you were so prepared for that moment, for that 60 seconds to make sure that you were able to get your point across. And that's what it's all about.

It is. It worked. Yeah. It really worked. And now I need it to work for you guys.

Okay. So my final question to you, what is your secret to profiting in life? And this can go beyond business.

You know, profiting and wealth are very interchangeable. Profiting in life, it means that there's a little leftover for you after you've paid your taxes and you've paid your bills. That's the good stuff. That's the time in your life when you get to go get a massage, when you walk on the beach in Bora Bora with your beautiful man and go, you know, no matter what I've done in life, I love you. You love me. I feel special. I do think that profiting in yourself is a bit of self-care. I watch some of my friends who didn't do what I've done. I've biohacked my whole life. I've been doing saunas and massage and red light therapy and eating crazy foods and doing peptides. And I could go down the list of all the modalities. I lived in an ashram for a while. I ate vegetarian, I ate vegan, I did meditations, I've done chanting. I feel like I stepped up to the buffet of life and just kept tasting all the different foods. And I'm reminded that my little boy, when he was in the back of the car, he was about 9 years old, his name is Ryker.

He turned to me, he was so sad. He's like, "Mommy." I'm like, "What?" He's like, "All the good ideas have been taken." And I thought, "Oh, you precious, beautiful boy. I can see how you would think that. There are cars and houses and food and Post-it notes and computers." And then everything comes out again like, oh, We had Facebook, but oh, now we have Instagram and now we have TikTok and now we have AI and now we have robots. There is no good idea that's taken, which is so important to remember. So to profit, I think, means to flourish. Yeah. To be happy, to be loved. And then for me, the last part of this is to be remembered.

I love that lesson. That was one of the best answers I've heard to that question. The fact that there's still so much more to be discovered, there's still so much more opportunity. Don't think that all the good ideas are are already taken. And where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?

Luckily, I've got a very unusual last name or first name. So Forbes Riley, type it into Google, type it into YouTube, but only if you have 8 weeks to sit and watch all my YouTube videos. But so if you go to any of those, go to ForbesRiley.com, you'll find me. And just to be very clear, as of this recording right now, I still do all my own DMs on my Instagram. Mm-hmm. And why do I do that? I really like people. I want to meet people. I've been getting a lot of— since James's thing launched on School of Hard Knocks, I have a lot of 15-year-olds reaching out from all around the world saying, hey, how do I get started in business? My hometown has nothing. What do you suggest? And I'm touring around to a lot of different countries because we need a voice. We need someone going, look, you can do this, and you can do it with no money, just ingenuity and your ability to pitch.

Well, Forbes, thank you so much for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast.

Thank you so much. You're beautiful. I appreciate it. Yap gang.

It was so much fun to speak with Forbes today and learn more about the art of pitching. And I think pitching is a skill that every entrepreneur needs to master because no matter how great your product is, people have to understand why it matters to them before they can say yes. Forbes told us that pitching is not about being pushy or sounding salesy. As she said, pitching is a win-win environment. It's not selling. Here's some of my favorite pieces of wisdom that she broke down today. First, make your pitch about the person in front of you and feel free to make assumptions. Forbes reminded us that there's no such thing as one perfect pitch, but there is such a thing as a skilled pitcher. The best communicators and pitchers pay attention. They ask questions, they understand what people care about, and they tailor their message to their situation. Before you pitch, think about who you're talking to, the challenges that they face, and how you can help. Do that pre-work. Second, stop leading with generic labels. Saying you're a founder, coach, speaker, or consultant doesn't tell people why they should care. Instead, lead with credibility, context, and the outcome you create.

Forbes loves the phrase "as someone who" because it allows you to establish authority naturally while making your experience relevant to the conversation. And it doesn't sound like you're bragging. And finally, use stories with intention. Your story should not become a rambling backstory or a pity party. It should build trust, create emotion, and reinforce the value that you bring. So choose stories that prove a point and bring people back to the solution that you offer. So yeah, fam, here's your challenge. Take a few minutes this week to rethink how you talk about yourself, your 1-line pitch, because the opportunities that change your life or business do not arrive with a warning. They often begin with a single conversation, a 60-second elevator ride, and your ability to communicate your value quickly and clearly may determine whether that door opens or closes. The second thing I want you to do is to rethink your sales process. What presentations do you have? What is your process for calls, and how can you alter what you say in those conversations to pitch more effectively? Do you've got before and after case studies? Do you've got more data What do you need to do to improve your sales process based on what you learned in this episode?

And hey, if you enjoyed this episode, make sure you follow and subscribe to Young and Profiting so you never miss an episode. We'd also love it if you dropped us a review or rating. You can watch all of our interviews on YouTube and Spotify Video. You guys can connect with me on social @yapwithhala on Instagram or on LinkedIn. I'm Hala Taha. If today's conversation inspired you, be sure to check out Forbes' new book, Pitch Secrets A to Z. Until next time, keep learning, keep growing, and keep putting yourself out there. Your next big opportunity may be just one conversation away. This is your host, Hala Taha, AKA the Podcast Princess, signing off.