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

Having generated over $2.5 billion in product sales, hosted nearly 200 infomercials, and built a multimillion-dollar online business, Forbes Riley has spent decades mastering the psychology of getting people to say "yes," earning her the title "Queen of Pitch." In this episode, Forbes shares the Ultimate Pitch Formula that helped her make billions, teaching entrepreneurs how to confidently communicate their value, build instant credibility, and win people over in seconds. In this episode, Hala and Forbes will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (01:10) Pitching Mistakes That Keep Entrepreneurs Broke (08:42) How to Speak With Confidence and Credibility (27:23) The Elevator Pitch That Opens Powerful Doors (33:34) Forbes’ Pitch Formula and Storytelling Secrets (41:48) The Difference Between Selling and Pitching (48:01) How to Build Real Confidence Before You Pitch (1:02:35) The Power of Writing Down Your Goals (1:12:15) Creating the Best First Impression (1:15:22) Why Demonstrating Value Drives Up Sales (1:30:23) How Childhood Struggles Shaped Forbes’ Success Forbes Riley is an entrepreneur, author, communication expert, and sales strategist. Known as the “Queen of Pitch,” she has hosted 197 national infomercials, and her work has generated more than $2.5 billion in product sales. Her new book, Pitch Secrets A to Z, helps readers strengthen their confidence, messaging, persuasion, and negotiation skills so they can get more people to say yes. Sponsored By: Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/profiting Shopify - Start your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/profiting. Northwest Registered Agent - Get a complete business identity with Northwest. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/YAPFree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Mindstone - Master practical AI skills without the complexity with Mindstone’s AI Competency Programme. Head to experience.mindstone.com/yap and get 10% off. AT&T - Stay connected with reliable, secure internet built for entrepreneurs. Switch to AT&T Business at business.att.com. Quince - Make your summer wardrobe feel easier. Go to Quince.com/profiting for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too. Resources Mentioned: Forbes’s Book, Pitch Secrets A to Z: bit.ly/PitchSecret Forbes’s Free Weekly Training: pitchsecretstraining.com Forbes’s Website: forbesriley.com Forbes’s Instagram: instagram.com/forbes_rileyForbes’s YouTube: youtube.com/forbesriley Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Newsletter - youngandprofiting.co/newsletter LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Startup, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Economics, E-commerce, Ecommerce, Prospecting, Inbound, Value Selling, Account Management, Sales Strategies, Business Growth, Scale, Scaling, Sales Podcast

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:08Speaker 01

  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 who comes to me only cares about the words. Most founders make this mistake.

• 1:22Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:33Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:45Speaker 00

  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 going to be broke forever."

• 1:52Speaker 01

  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-

• 2:10Speaker 00

  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?

• 2:16Speaker 01

  This is what I want for everybody out there. So-

• 2:19Speaker 00

  Forbes, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  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.

• 2:26Speaker 00

  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.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  I've got the crown and everything.

• 2:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  And I have the new book about it, so apparently I am the queen of pitch.

• 2:38Speaker 00

  You've got all the pitch secrets, and us young improffters, we want to 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 going to be broke forever."

• 2:53Speaker 01

  As an entrepreneur, having now trained people every single week, over 200,000 of them, for six 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, and everyone does these words. They play small. When I ask somebody, "What do you-" So, let me ask you, "What do you do?" What do you say?

• 3:13Speaker 00

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

• 3:21Speaker 01

  You know what you just did that you don't realize? It's okay if I coach you.

• 3:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  You started shaking your head no. Isn't that funny?

• 3:27Speaker 00

  I did. I did subtly. You made me nervous because you're the pitch queen.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  You made me nervous. Well, here'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." 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, what we could do together, what the opportunity is. And if you're so busy literally throwing up words while I'm 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."

• 3:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  Did I say anything?

• 3:58Speaker 00

  No.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  You don't know what I wrote, what I speak about, or what business I've 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. You have to go, "Okay, I'm looking at you. I'm going to make an assumption. Who are you? What do you do?" And if you said, "Well, you know, we're a top 100 podcaster," I might say, "You know, as someone who's on a new book tour, I might consider being on your podcast with that work." And if you can get a yes, tell me more. And that yes thing comes from me being a magician. And that sounds crazy, but my dad was a magician. I've been doing magic tricks my whole life.

• 4:28Speaker 00

  I didn't know that.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  And my daughter does them as well. 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, "What just happened?" And then they'll say something like, "Wow, you're 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. 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 the age of AI, really listening to somebody-

• 4:59Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 4:59Speaker 01

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

• 5:02Speaker 00

  Well, you just said a lot, and I've got a lot of follow-up questions. Of course, one of the things that you mentioned is like you want to amaze people. You want that wow factor. If we've got a business that's not necessarily very exciting, 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?

• 5:28Speaker 01

  Let's not call bookkeepers and recruitment people boring. They're liable to go, "What did she say?" If you're doing it, it excites you on some level. So, 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? As a bookkeeper, I come from a long line of bookkeepers. And I've discovered they are the backbone of every entrepreneur's business. Do you have a good one?

• 5:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  Great. And I'm glad that you do. So, I'm also very skilled, and if you got recommendations for me, I would love that. Oh, all of a sudden, they're like, "Oh, okay. You seem like a really nice person. I'd refer you." But you have the moment where you call to action. 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.

• 6:16Speaker 00

  What do you do?

• 6:16Speaker 01

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

• 6:23Speaker 00

  No, he's sad.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  Oh, guys, I've got a whole crew of young people that I've trained. Your dog's going to 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.

• 6:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  The other thing I do is I have a fitness company. I don't know if you know that. And so, when people ask me what I do, ask me again.

• 6:40Speaker 00

  What do you do?

• 6:41Speaker 01

  I created the greatest fitness product on the planet. You want to see it?

• 6:44Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 6:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  See, then I would do this. I would literally push your microphone in. Come here. I know this sounds crazy. Give me your thumbs. 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.

• 6:54Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 6:55Speaker 01

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

• 6:59Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  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? Is that kind of interesting?

• 7:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's pretty cool.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  I know, right? So, now we're at a party. All of a sudden, you're playing with me.

• 7:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  And we're having fun, and it's not boring, even though I sell fitness products.

• 7:19Speaker 00

  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 going to use on someone?

• 7:27Speaker 01

  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 up level and pitching makes you nervous at all, 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.

• 7:51Speaker 00

  What do you do?

• 7:52Speaker 01

  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.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Because I don't want to always say what I do. Isn't that funny?

• 8:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  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. What did you do before this, before you podcasted?

• 8:19Speaker 00

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

• 8:21Speaker 01

  Great. Hey, you know, as someone who worked in corporate, saw the burnout factor there, moved to radio and realized podcasting is 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. So, as someone who's generated over $2.5 billion in sales, I now coach entrepreneurs to master their message.

• 8:45Speaker 00

  So, it's a way to like give your credibility.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Right, in one sentence. Because I live by a phrase that says, "Less words, more impact."

• 8:52Speaker 00

  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 want to sound like I'm bragging. I don't want to brag." How do you feel about that?

• 9:05Speaker 01

  I would ask them to unpack. First of all, we're not in fourth grade. We don't brag.

• 9:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  Giving your credibility and attaining certain levels of excellence is not bragging. That is a very young way of thinking about life. Because, 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, 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. 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.

• 9:51Speaker 00

  Let's talk about confidence and how to be more confident. So you mentioned like, you don't want to 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 should we say instead?

• 10:04Speaker 01

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

• 10:09Speaker 00

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

• 10:15Speaker 01

  Right. So if you go to my book and you go to letter B, because every word is a letter, B is belief. 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 thousand 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 this vision in my head that we have three voices that we have to deal with. One is the inherited voice.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  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 four-year-old voice. This is the one that's going to protect you. So they said, I can't do it. So we're not going to 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, because 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

• 11:40Speaker 01

  to jump off a cliff and build a parachute on the way down. And to firmly believe that life happens for you, not to you. There are going to be really bad times. 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?

• 12:06Speaker 00

  Yeah. It gives you character.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  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. What did I learn?

• 12:18Speaker 00

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• 13:27Speaker 00

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• 14:11Speaker 00

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• 14:26Speaker 00

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• 15:08Speaker 00

  If you're ready to launch your business before Black Friday, go to Shopify.com/profiting to start your free trial. That's Shopify.com/profiting. Go to Shopify.com/profiting today to hear your first... I meet a lot of young entrepreneurs that are like really sold on like some specific outcome. And like, they really want some specific business or dream to work, even though it's not necessarily working. So for me, for example, I wanted to be a singer. And I was a great singer my whole life and I recorded albums and like really took it seriously until one day, you know? Or through my experiences, I started experiencing radio and I realized I can have a very similar outcome if I go the radio podcasting route.

• 15:53Speaker 00

  And it would be easier to achieve. And I thought that I could, you know, achieve something big in that space rather than keep trying to do singing when nothing was really working out for me. And it worked. I became a top 100 podcaster. I have my dream company and I kind of switched the outcome. You wanted to be an actress and you did a lot of, you did a lot of acting.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  She's going there, isn't she? Yes.

• 16:11Speaker 00

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

• 16:17Speaker 01

  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.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  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 and 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 a 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, it was 65 one-hour episodes. I don't think I could have been happier. I had two little three-year-olds. I got the dream job. We shoot the pilot and I'm, oh. Now, two things happened. One, we all had a big meeting with the Fox executives.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  And I'm not going to 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. Couple of days later, I get a call going, hey, you know, we love you and you did really well, but we're going to give your role, you're not, your name is not famous enough to bank the whole series on. We're going to give this role to Bo Derek.

• 18:12Speaker 00

  Man.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  And Bo Derek, as wonderful as she is, she's not a strong, that kind of a female character.

• 18:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  Well-known actress, and she did a 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 got, it was very, I was so sad, I was shattered.

• 18:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  And then I went into my agent's office, a guy that I'd fought so hard to get to. It was an A minus agent, but really powerful. And he looks at me, he says, we're gonna let you go. And I'm like, go, where am I going? And then, you know, they play this cards, and I don't think it was the truth, as I'm hearing it later in years. He said, oh, you know, you're already 40, you've got two 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.

• 18:57Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  Now, I don't know if the people from the network called him and said, look, we're not gonna have her around. Uh, 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. Um, 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 up. 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.

• 19:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  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.

• 19:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  You know, one of the things about pitching that you really should get good at, most founders make this mistake.

• 19:48Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  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 product, 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 want to 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,

• 20:13Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  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,

• 20:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, you are.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  Right, all of those companies came to me to be the spokesperson for their product.

• 20:30Speaker 00

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

• 20:33Speaker 01

  And we shot infomercials, and I would take them on home shopping, and your product became my livelihood.

• 20:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  That's what influencers do.

• 20:39Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  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.

• 20:49Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  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.

• 21:04Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  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 to 11:30. I wanted my two beautiful babies. Are you a mom?

• 21:23Speaker 00

  Not yet, no.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  I'm gonna tell you, the coolest thing I ever did, and I didn't have them until 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.

• 21:46Speaker 00

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

• 21:52Speaker 01

  Yes and no. Speaking has done that for me. I have been so blessed, I've stood on stage at the 10x convention, spoken in front of 10,000 people.

• 22:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  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.

• 22:11Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  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 trauma, traumatic times in my life.

• 22:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  But I have a very fulfilled life. I wouldn't, I wouldn't trade the journey for anything.

• 22:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  But you mentioned earlier about your entrepreneurs, let's get real.

• 22:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  There is no destination.

• 22:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  You don't win. Well, 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?

• 23:00Speaker 00

  Haha.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  That's all I wanted.

• 23:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  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 six-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.

• 23:13Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  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.

• 23:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  And we sat in a room for three weeks, 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?

• 23:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  And the world was just kind of different, right?

• 23:31Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 23:32Speaker 01

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

• 23:37Speaker 00

  Mm.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  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. And I created a thousand dollar program, four-week training with me live, using my ultimate pitch formula. I said, guys, I've generated two and a half billion, I'm gonna get you to add a zero to your income, watch me do this with you.

• 23:58Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  And the next morning, I called my daughter because 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's always said zero, now it says 25K, what's the K?

• 24:10Speaker 00

  Haha.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  She's like, Mom, you made $25,000 last night. I'm like, what, we, we did what? Then we did it for four consecutive weeks with just 25 people in each class, and all of a sudden, we had a six-figure business in four weeks.

• 24:23Speaker 00

  Amazing.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Nine months later, got our first Two Comma Club Award, and two weeks ago, I got a notification, we just got our 10 million Two Comma Club Award.

• 24:31Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  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, because we really did it.

• 24:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  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.

• 24:52Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:53Speaker 01

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

• 24:58Speaker 00

  What's up, Yap gang? I recently had Gary Vee on the podcast, and he told me something that really stuck with me. If you've got sales DNA, you've gotta be paying attention to live selling, because it's one of the biggest opportunities right now online. And that really got me curious, so I checked out an app that he told me about called Whatnot. I jumped into a live show, and I instantly got it. The seller was showing products in real time, answering questions in the chat, and building a real relationship with the buyers. It didn't feel like boring shopping, it felt like a community. Whatnot is the largest live shopping marketplace in the country. And for entrepreneurs, the results are really hard to ignore. Sellers on Whatnot can sell up to 10 times more than traditional marketplaces, and the number of sellers making over a million dollars a year on the platform has doubled.

• 25:42Speaker 00

  So if you've got products to sell, and you're looking for a new way to reach customers, search Whatnot, W-H-A-T-N-O-T in the App Store. Download it, and you can start selling right away. That's Whatnot in the App Store.

• 25:57Speaker 00

  Hello, young and profiteers. If you're running a business, getting website traffic is only half the battle. The real key to profiting is turning those visitors into paying customers. And I know checkout friction can quietly kill your sales. That's why I always say, serious entrepreneurs build on Shopify. Shopify is a commerce platform that helps you launch and run an online store without needing to be super technical. You can build your storefront, manage your business, and make it easy for people to buy. And here's the major advantage. Shopify Checkout with Shop Pay converts up to 36% higher than the competition. With Black Friday coming up, now's the time to get your store ready and simplify your checkout experience.

• 26:39Speaker 00

  If you're ready to launch your business before Black Friday, go to Shopify.com/profitting to start your free trial. That's Shopify.com/profitting. Go to Shopify.com/profitting today to hear your first

• 26:56Speaker 00

  What's up, Yap fam? You guys know we love reading on this show. So I'm always excited when I find a book I genuinely think is worth sharing. Life at the Speed of Play: Launch Products People Love by Mark Pincus is one of those books. Mark is a legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor. And this fast-paced 170-page book is his playbook for testing ideas quickly, navigating uncertainty, and figuring out what's actually worth pursuing. One of my favorite concepts is what he calls the abyss. Those moments when you feel stuck or unsure of what's next. Instead of fearing uncertainty, he shows you how to use it as a tool for discovery. Right now, Mark is doing a buy-one-get-one offer for Yap listeners.

• 27:41Speaker 00

  Go to getmarksbook.com/yap, buy one copy for $32 and get a second copy free. So you can keep one for yourself and give the second to a friend, future co-founder, or someone who needs a little push. 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.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  I'm gonna get really emotional. You know, you saying that means the world. And I'm gonna start to cry, not, all kidding aside. It has been such a long, slightly painful journey. A lot of nights where I just cried, just sleeping in the pillow and going, what am I supposed to be doing here?

• 28:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  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 cluttered your head.

• 28:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Find amazing mentors, listen to uplifting podcasts, which I do all the time. Because you get to meet a lot of people very quickly and hear their stories and learn from their stories. Because there was a time, I remember when I first met Tony Robbins many years ago, and he talked about modeling.

• 28:44Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 28:44Speaker 01

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

• 29:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  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.

• 29:21Speaker 00

  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 basically asked Elena Cardone if you could join the 10x stage. I'd love for you to tell us that story.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  Well, so that's a great story. 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 and throw up on them. Ask what I do, I'm like, oh, I'm an actress and a TV host and I'm getting very excited. I want to do it, and I would leave because I'd see their eyes go. And I'm like, what did I just do?

• 29:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  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 starched, 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.

• 30:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  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 need to, this guy seems to be moving and grooving. This was like 2018. And I heard he 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.

• 30:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  Before I give you my answer, and I think this will help everybody else, if somebody that you want to meet is in the elevator with you, who might that be? Who do you want to meet?

• 31:01Speaker 00

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

• 31:06Speaker 01

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

• 31:10Speaker 00

  I would invite him on my podcast.

• 31:12Speaker 01

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

• 31:15Speaker 00

  I would let him know, hey, I have a top 100 podcasts. 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.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Okay, that was good, and I would coach that just a little bit.

• 31:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  Because he does need to share his wisdom. I would give him something he wants. 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, you know what, I follow you, I've been, and the next, you know, they're gone.

• 31:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:44Speaker 01

  And then you got nothing. So it's really smart about what you're doing and why you're who you are.

• 31:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  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? Oh, I don't know. You guys, you don't have time in life for that moment at all. 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.

• 32:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  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, because I knew who Elena was by my research.

• 32:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  Never met them, don't walk up to the husband because it's not a good energy. And so I walked right up to her and I said, Elena, hi. 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, 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 have 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.

• 33:09Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  Doing an infomercial. He looked at me and said, great, I'm doing a party in two nights, 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 nine, it's nine years ago.

• 33:50Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  And I would like to take a picture on the strip, you know, of where Mandalay Bay sign. 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.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  And so when we recapped all this, him and I, Elena got on the phone and had a really in-depth conversation because I was a little PTSD.

• 34:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  And Grant said, well, I'd love to invite you to come to my 10x convention. I thought, that's great. I looked at the lineup and it was all men. And I said to him, there's no women? And he said, do you want to speak on Saturday?

• 34:56Speaker 00

  He's like, oops.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  And that's truly how it happened. And I've done that a couple of times because I love being a trailblazer.

• 35:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's so smart. That's so smart to pull that card, you know, like.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  It made sense in the moment, it's what I wanted all along. And it seemed to be the leverage thing that got him to say yes.

• 35:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  Because I didn't have a bestselling book at the time, I was just, it was nine years ago. 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.

• 35:30Speaker 00

  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 from an entrepreneurship mindset, we're usually selling our own products and services. So how should we think about storytelling?

• 35:47Speaker 01

  I have eight steps in this formula. The, one of the steps that's really important.

• 35:51Speaker 00

  And this is your ultimate pitch?

• 35:52Speaker 01

  My ultimate pitch formula, I'm not gonna give it all to you, but I'm gonna tease you enough that you're gonna want to 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. 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?

• 36:09Speaker 00

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

• 36:14Speaker 01

  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.

• 36:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  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 right.

• 36:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's right.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  But those are things that I'm getting, the way you've done your hair, the way you, I have all kind 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 gonna be selling it all to them. In fact, let me show you something really interesting.

• 37:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  Because assumptions goes to avatars. You all need a, what, ideal avatar? We've heard that.

• 37:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, like your ideal customer.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  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, doesn't 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 seven-year-old girl. And a seven-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, five minutes a day, and your mom's got your credit card. Then I'm gonna find two 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.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  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 barca lounge, or 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 wanna be around? You gotta 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 gonna even find your sex here. 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 five spin gyms and none of them were named Sheila. So I have a very different take on how to find customers.

• 38:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  Before we even get to the storytelling part. 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. There's no such thing as a perfect pitch. But there is a really skilled, perfect pitcher. And when you're this good, you have the ability to change what you're pitching.

• 38:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  But most people don't. That's the most embarrassing thing I find of entrepreneurs. Like, all right, I've got my pitch for, could I do my pitch for you?

• 39:00Speaker 00

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

• 39:05Speaker 01

  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 gonna 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 wanna keep that going. I'm gonna tell you, give me five minutes a day. And this is gonna 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. 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.

• 39:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  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. And it gets into somebody else's hands. They become a customer, a partner, an investor, and you're always pitching. You know that?

• 40:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  I wake up in the morning, honey, could you rub my neck? And he does. That's a pitch. I win. 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, because we're not selling each other. But we did get a yes. So I have a little secret that I do.

• 40:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  If I ask you the question, you wanna see something cool? What do you say?

• 40:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, everybody wants to see something cool.

• 40:22Speaker 01

  Great. So ask a question you know the answer to. I love getting yeses. Yeses are a game changer. Most people, especially you guys, when you pitch, you don't think about getting a yes.

• 40:33Speaker 00

  So like a yes ladder you're talking about?

• 40:34Speaker 01

  Oh, a yes ladder? Well, I thought about that, yes.

• 40:37Speaker 00

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

• 40:44Speaker 01

  Well, yeah. And then again, I wouldn't wait till the big ask till the end. 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?

• 40:55Speaker 00

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

• 41:02Speaker 01

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

• 41:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, I wanted it.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  Okay, so the salesman's got a pretty easy answer.

• 41:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, very easy job.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Did you have a good salesperson or a bad salesperson?

• 41:11Speaker 00

  Well, maybe this is a bad example because I just bought it over the phone.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  Oh, that's so.

• 41:16Speaker 00

  I called and they drove it to me from Dallas, so.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  Somebody must have been very, very happy.

• 41:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was a very easy sale. That's maybe a bad example.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  Well, I'll unpack that for you. Because you pitched yourself. And that's a very interesting, because you know, my, my next TEDx talk is about permission. You, did you grow up with money?

• 41:33Speaker 00

  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. 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.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  Good, and I love that. 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.

• 41:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:54Speaker 01

  Because nobody needs a Porsche. I have one. Nobody needs one. Nobody needs a pink car, right? At all. But you said, 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. Did you have other car options in mind?

• 42:11Speaker 00

  Uh, yeah, there was other options in mind.

• 42:13Speaker 01

  And then somehow this one said, you know, this is, and it checked off a box for you. And then you're like, well, what color? It was like, wait a second, I'm gonna make a statement. And so now I want this. And it's the 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?

• 42:28Speaker 00

  It's not their business, not their money.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  Oh. But see, it took you a while, you know, you're a great role model for that.

• 42:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  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.

• 42:42Speaker 00

  It was, 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.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  And I'll tell you what, two things happened. One, you pitched yourself, because 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 have gone wrong and you might have walked out. Because that person, probably most car salesmen, men or women?

• 43:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  A lot of men. Might have said, pink? Really? You want pink? And what would you have said?

• 43:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, pink represents me. I like pink.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  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 out of that for all kind of reasons. I've had that happen. I walked out going, that was such a, I'm not buying anything because they're terrible.

• 43:38Speaker 00

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

• 43:42Speaker 01

  That's what I was talking about, yes.

• 43:43Speaker 00

  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.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  No, in fact, I teach that selling and pitching are very different.

• 43:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  So selling is about having quotas. And selling is the thing. 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.

• 44:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  What I wanna do is I wanna find out, I've got this product, right? Give me, give me an arbitrary product, any product or.

• 44:19Speaker 00

  A water bottle.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  A water bottle, okay.

• 44:20Speaker 00

  A Stanley cup type thing, yeah.

• 44:22Speaker 01

  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?

• 44:41Speaker 00

  They're dehydrated.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  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. Drill down even deeper. Why would you want a container?

• 44:50Speaker 00

  Because you travel a lot.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  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 three 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 two. And go, let me ask you a question. You travel a lot, right?

• 45:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Do you love hot coffee?

• 45:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  Doesn't it really annoy you after like 20 minutes and it's lukewarm and you don't have a microwave?

• 45:17Speaker 00

  Yes, and you're getting me to say yes.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  Aren't I though? 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.

• 45:35Speaker 00

  I'd love that.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  You'd love it. I made a sale for a product I haven't even made yet. 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. Stories don't come in a pitch until a little bit down the road. Because a story, and I call it springboard stories.

• 45:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  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?

• 46:09Speaker 00

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

• 46:15Speaker 01

  Okay. And then I'm gonna throw in something else too.

• 46:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  I'm gonna 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.

• 46:29Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 46:30Speaker 01

  But now you look at your product or service, or whatever it is that you're doing. And it's, I know people are like, but I have a massage therapy business. It works for everything. Your massage therapy business is a solution to somebody's problem.

• 46:42Speaker 00

  Their pain, their back pain.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  Get, but drill down, be very intentional. What does your massage business do? You love working on releasing Maya Fashio, right? 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. That was a question flip. Now, go back to the insulated water bottle.

• 47:26Speaker 01

  So now I've 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, guys. There's no aluminum, there's no plastics. 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 of 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.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  Wow, all of a sudden you're like, this, she's really passionate about this. 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.

• 48:18Speaker 00

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

• 48:21Speaker 01

  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. I mean, 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?

• 48:40Speaker 00

  No.

• 48:41Speaker 01

  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.

• 48:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  I firmly say to every one of my students, every story has a point and every point has a story.

• 48:55Speaker 00

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

• 49:00Speaker 01

  Well, because they weren't trained to tell stories.

• 49:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  People think because they can just talk. Now, here's a funny thing. I give speeches all over the world.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  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 want to be talking about. We agreed on the topic, but here's a phenomenon. Who am I talking to? When I walk into an arena, and I usually show up the night before. I want to 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, not always what I want to talk about.

• 49:36Speaker 00

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

• 49:47Speaker 01

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

• 49:57Speaker 00

  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 because 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.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:23Speaker 00

  What's the importance or how should we go about talking about what we've already done for ourselves?

• 50:29Speaker 01

  Okay, so it goes back to the whole bragging thing. Give me a sponsor, a name of a sponsor, kind of a sponsor.

• 50:34Speaker 00

  Shopify, Indeed, LinkedIn.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  So Shopify, why would Shopify want a 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. But you have to figure out, okay, what is it? Why is it? And what is it looking for? And so when you conclude, give me one thing you think Shopify is looking for.

• 50:51Speaker 00

  They want audiences with new founders, like people who want to start businesses.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  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? 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? Because you're only there to help them. You do want to 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.

• 51:36Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  Feature benefit.

• 51:37Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  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 talked 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. That's a 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. So feature benefit equals a yes. You get three yeses. You don't have to wait till the end to sell somebody. They were already sold.

• 52:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  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.

• 52:29Speaker 00

  They're already ready.

• 52:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I usually don't have to, that's what selling is. Selling is, well, I wait to the very end and then I give you the big boom. Don't do that.

• 52:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  People want what I have long before. In fact, the crazy thing about Spin Gym, I say very few words. People put it in their hands like you did. They start to feel it and they sell me. They're like, oh, my God, I can feel this.

• 52:48Speaker 00

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

• 52:50Speaker 01

  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've got a solution to somebody's problem, they want it. Why wouldn't they?

• 52:59Speaker 00

  So when I was asking that question, I was more alluding to, so I've got a podcast network. I recruit podcasters. When I was reading your book, one of the things that really was eye opening to me, people want to know that the person they're buying from, like, has done it before.

• 53:16Speaker 01

  It does help in certain cases, yes.

• 53:17Speaker 00

  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.

• 53:35Speaker 01

  Well, so if you started with the, as someone who, talking to Shopify, 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.

• 53:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  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.

• 54:00Speaker 00

  I love that tip. I love that tip.

• 54:02Speaker 01

  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.

• 54:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  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's stool 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 in, for your college would be an awesome use of my time and energy. And they were like, yeah, we, dude, we want you.

• 54:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:50Speaker 01

  Nobody does this.

• 54:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  Because they think the question is, tell me about you. And then they get into lost, I did this last night. I had a big training. I had 1,500 people online.

• 54:59Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  And this woman, we do that every week now. I mean, we're doing, knock on wood, Pretty Amazing is 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.

• 55:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  Do you really think they care? 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.

• 55:39Speaker 00

  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.

• 55:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 55:45Speaker 00

  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?

• 55:51Speaker 01

  Well, I tell you what, now that I'm gonna pitch my book, but I know 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. 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 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.

• 56:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:23Speaker 01

  But then the book is literally one word per letter.

• 56:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:25Speaker 01

  So the first one is A.

• 56:28Speaker 00

  Attitude, right?

• 56:29Speaker 01

  Yes. But that's not, you know, it's funny, I could write a whole book now on different A words. Apparently between ask and audience and ambition, there's a lot of awesomeness, a lot of A words. But attitude is the first step in all of this. And how do you increase your attitude? It's not walking around just saying affirmations all day long. But, and I put it in here. I literally put an actionable thing about called the PPA, the Positive Pitch Attitude System.

• 56:50Speaker 00

  Oh, okay.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  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 on.

• 56:59Speaker 00

  Oh, amazing.

• 57:00Speaker 01

  I only launched this two weeks ago, by the way.

• 57:01Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 57:02Speaker 01

  12,000 units sold in the pre-launch, USA Today bestseller. And you, 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, you're an engineer, we walked into the podcast. If he was kind of grumpy over his computer, bad attitude.

• 57:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:22Speaker 01

  But if he perked up because you're here, better attitude. 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.

• 57:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  And I learned that lesson and I've always managed to carry that with me. The word belief leads into everything else.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  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?

• 58:17Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 58:18Speaker 01

  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?

• 58:24Speaker 00

  No.

• 58:24Speaker 01

  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 will 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 pounds my whole life. But I, let's assume, is this a fat glass of water? No, it's just.

• 58:55Speaker 00

  I don't think so, no.

• 58:56Speaker 01

  Right, but if you put it next to a finger, it looks fat now, doesn't it?

• 58:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, poor glass of water. Well, that was me my entire acting career. I was about 15, 20 pounds overweight, which is normal now. But I was working with Julianne Moore and Meg Ryan and people who were little and 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 turned 60, I built a business. And my husband, bless him, he is a bodybuilder. Have you seen a picture of my husband?

• 59:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, your husband's, yeah, very.

• 59:32Speaker 01

  He's up, he's pretty fit, yeah.

• 59:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:34Speaker 01

  And he loved me no matter what. But we had our body fat scan done at the beginning, two 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.

• 1:00:12Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  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 when, you know, the people who were strapped in the seatbelts above, next to me were now dangling from the thing.

• 1:00:32Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  People got hurt. I tore my shoulder, but nobody died.

• 1:00:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  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 for, 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 eight 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.

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  I don't own a bikini because I was molested when I was 15 in a bikini and I just never owned a bikini. So we're flying home and have you ever heard a voice talk to you?

• 1:01:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  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 and my bra and panties in the, in the bathroom. And I looked at the image and I thought, who's that chunky old lady? 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.

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  Well, that was an excuse because apparently there's a time on the clock called 5:00 AM. I'd only seen it, I'd only seen it once when I came home from college after a night out. Cause I would start work at 7:00, 8:00, you know, that's what I would do. And somebody 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 going to be in a bodybuilding competition. Wish me luck. And I turned off the camera and thought, oh, my God.

• 1:02:43Speaker 00

  What did I do?

• 1:02:43Speaker 01

  Why did you do that?

• 1:02:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  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, 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 two 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.

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  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?

• 1:03:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

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

• 1:04:08Speaker 00

  I love that.

• 1:04:09Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:04:20Speaker 00

  That's incredible.

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  Because I set out to have a consequence. If you don't put a consequence on a wish, it's just a dream and you don't achieve it.

• 1:04:29Speaker 00

  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? What else?

• 1:04:52Speaker 01

  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?

• 1:04:58Speaker 00

  I'm writing a book. So I, I just started the process of I have an agent and started writing books. I want to put out a book and it should be coming out in a couple of years. It's going to take a while.

• 1:05:08Speaker 01

  Why?

• 1:05:09Speaker 00

  Publishers. That my agents say it usually takes a year to two years.

• 1:05:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was the part that I couldn't handle, which is why I ended up.

• 1:05:17Speaker 00

  Self-publishing?

• 1:05:18Speaker 01

  I did a, I did a hybrid self-publishing because I decided that I was going to get this out when I wanted to.

• 1:05:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:23Speaker 01

  And I think then I do have a deal to do a book and they just, it doesn't seem to take that long. But I would really write down, what is it that you want from the book?

• 1:05:31Speaker 00

  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. And also to honestly get my thoughts really clear, understand my perspective, have original content. 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 want to say, so.

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  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 going to 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. 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 three, I, I want to be prettier. I want to 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.

• 1:06:38Speaker 01

  And what came out was I wrote, I want to inspire somebody every day.

• 1:06:45Speaker 01

  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, oh, so you just did that. I want to 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 got to have some really profound stories to tell, do great diligence.

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  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. And so that's, even when I wanted my man, okay, are you involved?

• 1:07:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  And is it somebody that you wanted?

• 1:07:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  But you kind of knew that, right? Did you make a list at all?

• 1:07:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, I did make a list because I was, 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.

• 1:07:53Speaker 01

  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 a list. I'd always written down things. And this particular time, 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. I made another decision to myself that said, as much as I'd selfishly like to find a partner, I really want to 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 three 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.

• 1:08:32Speaker 01

  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. 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 going to 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, we were at a dude ranch and there were 36 cabins and all they were all couples, except for me.

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  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. Why am I so unhappy? And I realized I was just really lonely.

• 1:09:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:27Speaker 01

  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. 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 Joshua's like, come here, kiss me. And I'm like, oh, no, no, I can't. I gotta go scope. And he's like, kiss me, beautiful. And I'm like, oh my God, you did it. Oh, yes.

• 1:10:11Speaker 01

  That was, that was literally one of the things I'd looked 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, I wrote all the things you think I wanted. And then I talked to a girlfriend of mine who's also very big into manifesting. And she said, she wrote that she wanted someone who looked like he walked off the cover of a romance novel. 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.

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  And I look at him on Instagram and I look at him in person and it's obviously so much more to him than that. But that's what I wanted.

• 1:11:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:03Speaker 01

  And I got it. So the question is, if you could write down what you wanted, did you get everything you wanted?

• 1:11:08Speaker 00

  I did. 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 six years. I'm six years older than him.

• 1:11:18Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:11:19Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:11:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:11:26Speaker 00

  Uh, but he turned out to be a great man that I want to spend my life with. And so the age thing didn't really matter.

• 1:11:32Speaker 01

  Baby girl, let me tell you something. Mine is 17 years younger. 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.

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  But he said something to me so romantic after, 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, oh, 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. And 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.

• 1:12:31Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:12:39Speaker 00

  You're like, I'm cool for.

• 1:12:40Speaker 01

  Right, I'm cool for a weekend.

• 1:12:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:41Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  Huh?

• 1:12:51Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:12:53Speaker 01

  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 a 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?

• 1:13:35Speaker 01

  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, no, you didn't tell me. And then, then he gets so mad at me because I, I sometimes say very inappropriate things. It's kind of my persona. And 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.

• 1:14:05Speaker 00

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

• 1:14:08Speaker 01

  I'm having the time of my life.

• 1:14:10Speaker 00

  Uh, let's get back to pitching.

• 1:14:11Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:14:11Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:14:23Speaker 01

  Why do you think that is?

• 1:14:24Speaker 00

  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 going to remember down the line.

• 1:14:35Speaker 01

  There's a very interesting statistic. Do you know that there's three things people judge you on immediately? I mean, we talked about judging people in assumptions. 55% of how you show up for somebody else in their brain is visual. It does it align. 38% is the tone of your voice and only 7% of the words that you use. Yet everybody who comes to me only cares about the words. How do I, 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,

• 1:15:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:15:09Speaker 01

  what am I doing here? And you're not going to make a sale when you shake somebody's hand. It doesn't work that way. Because 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. I just got this two 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.

• 1:15:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:15:48Speaker 01

  Let's be human. Hey, what do you do? I'm, I'm in this, 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 B and I meeting or in a Toastmasters and they say to you, would you stand up there for one minute and talk about what you do? That's a pitch.

• 1:16:11Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:16:11Speaker 01

  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?

• 1:16:21Speaker 00

  A couple.

• 1:16:22Speaker 01

  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?

• 1:16:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:34Speaker 01

  So I'm, 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?

• 1:16:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:42Speaker 01

  You understand that 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, God, 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 want to bother the other person. And so this beautiful moment that happened at the networking meeting or during the handshake literally becomes nothing.

• 1:17:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, results in nothing.

• 1:17:10Speaker 01

  Why are you wasting your time?

• 1:17:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, the way that your book is.

• 1:17:13Speaker 01

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

• 1:17:16Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:17:26Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:17:27Speaker 00

  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?

• 1:17:42Speaker 01

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

• 1:17:47Speaker 00

  In the intro conversation, it doesn't.

• 1:17:49Speaker 01

  The intro conversation is usually to get somebody very excited, that part of the handshake. When they say these magic words, this is really cool, tell me more. 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 want to organize in your world, given your business, given your solution, what makes somebody see the unseeable? So if you're selling, if you're in doing weight loss.

• 1:18:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:19Speaker 01

  It's kinda 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 impressive number. Maybe you only have two, then show the two that you've got, but show the amount, wow, in six weeks, this person went from this to this. Can you imagine, great words to use, that that happens for you?

• 1:18:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:36Speaker 01

  Oh, well, that's interesting. And I'm gonna 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, maybe at a reduced rate. 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%?

• 1:19:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:20Speaker 01

  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 three 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.

• 1:19:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:44Speaker 01

  It really, 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, spray this new, pat it and it's gone. You don't have to say anything else. So one of the problems is people over explain what they do.

• 1:20:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:02Speaker 01

  Less words, more impact.

• 1:20:03Speaker 00

  As I'm talking to you, I'm thinking to myself like, man, like, I need to revamp my discovery deck, right?

• 1:20:09Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:20:10Speaker 00

  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? 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?

• 1:20:36Speaker 01

  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, I tweaked something and they were like, Ben, you think I would have learned this already? I'm like, no, we never learned this. We're always the coffee in the cup. I had the great pleasure of working with Serena Williams many years ago. Uh, we were selling a thing called Mission Cool Towels. And she's not good at pitching. She was not gonna, nobody was good at pitching that product. It was a really odd product. You'd get it wet, you'd snap it three 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 wanted, 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.

• 1:21:17Speaker 01

  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'd take it out and go, ooh, that's hot, hot. You'd snap it three 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 heat stroke. All of a sudden, the phones went nuts.

• 1:21:57Speaker 01

  I did $55 million worth of sales in cool towels and nobody could figure it out before that because 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're like, phoom, phoom. 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. 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.

• 1:22:39Speaker 01

  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. 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 ROAS? What's your return on investment? All of those numbers became very apparent and very interesting and very predictable. So now it turns out, and you're not gonna buy ads until you do that. But if you're spending a hundred dollars and you know that you'll get 2,000 signups.

• 1:23:23Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:23:23Speaker 01

  But only 50% will ever show up because it's free.

• 1:23:26Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:23:27Speaker 01

  And then out of the thousand, you're selling X amount of dollars, what percentage will you close? I've discovered over the last six years, we can tell you what numbers we're gonna do. Did you always know that?

• 1:23:36Speaker 00

  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 on my webinar day.

• 1:23:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:23:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:23:57Speaker 00

  The other thing when, 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? Everybody's got different stats that represent success in their business.

• 1:24:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:24:17Speaker 00

  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 during a sales conversation or in your, like, actually put it in your presentation.

• 1:24:28Speaker 01

  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 want to be thinking about. And if you're not good at this, I'll out myself a little bit. I am a visionary and every business has a visionary and an implementer. Which one are you?

• 1:24:47Speaker 00

  Visionary.

• 1:24:48Speaker 01

  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 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?

• 1:25:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:25:06Speaker 01

  And who?

• 1:25:07Speaker 00

  Kate on my team.

• 1:25:08Speaker 01

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

• 1:25:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, she started as an intern, uh, seven years ago. So, but now she's my business partner.

• 1:25:15Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 1:25:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:25:16Speaker 01

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

• 1:25:19Speaker 00

  Oh, I love that.

• 1:25:21Speaker 01

  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. And it's been six years.

• 1:25:34Speaker 00

  Amazing.

• 1:25:34Speaker 01

  I know. We built up each other. My daughter is, at 22, had her first TEDx talk. At 23, runs two multimillion dollar companies.

• 1:25:42Speaker 00

  So cool.

• 1:25:43Speaker 01

  Keeps me in check and allows me to do what I love to do. So if you're visionary, you gotta find an implementer if you want to 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.

• 1:25:57Speaker 00

  So Forbes, I wanna play a game. It's called the Pitch Clinic. You are the Pitch Queen.

• 1:26:01Speaker 01

  I'm the Pitch Doctor. What's to do the magic?

• 1:26:04Speaker 00

  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?

• 1:26:11Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 1:26:12Speaker 00

  All right, number one, the vague founder. And that person says, you say, what do you do? And they go, I help entrepreneurs grow.

• 1:26:19Speaker 01

  Really? Like Pinocchio? Do you help them grow their noses? Do you help them grow like greenery? What's so, it's so sad. You don't help entrepreneurs grow. You might want to start out, as somebody who's been in business forever, I take burned out women and I help them find their truth in life. Very different than I help entrepreneurs grow.

• 1:26:37Speaker 00

  Yes, okay. Number two, the founder that is always like feature dumping. So somebody's like, our app has dashboards and reminders and templates and AI tools.

• 1:26:46Speaker 01

  Congratulations, good for you. And that's a good for you moment. What does it have to do with me? So as someone who's got a scheduling app, you're in business, right?

• 1:26:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:26:56Speaker 01

  What runs your business? Is it a team of people? Is it online?

• 1:26:59Speaker 00

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

• 1:27:05Speaker 01

  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 streamlined 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?

• 1:27:17Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:27:18Speaker 01

  All you want to do is get a yes. That is the goal. Because that yes becomes a discovery call.

• 1:27:22Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:27:23Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:27:29Speaker 00

  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?

• 1:27:42Speaker 01

  Everybody loves what idea? See, it's so funny. Pitching doesn't exist in the abstract. So you're a founder, what's the idea that you've come up with? I'm going to put you on the spot now.

• 1:27:52Speaker 00

  Okay, so the idea that I came up with is, this is somebody, a student once told me. She wanted to create a horoscope app.

• 1:27:59Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 1:28:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:28:00Speaker 01

  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 market? See, this is where the formula comes in. 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. 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.

• 1:28:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:28:30Speaker 01

  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 going to do flame broiled, not grilled, so it's less fat. You only offer it one way. We're going to 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 tourist, 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.

• 1:29:13Speaker 01

  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. And also, don't, how about you test drive to see if somebody wants what you have?

• 1:29:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:29:43Speaker 01

  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. I would be embarrassed, wouldn't you?

• 1:29:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:29:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:53Speaker 00

  Now, I want to 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.

• 1:30:15Speaker 01

  There's, I've told a lot about my mouth and not being able to talk for three years. Whenever I had a thing in my mouth, I couldn't communicate at all. But there's something I haven't talked about.

• 1:30:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:30:24Speaker 01

  And it's going to come out next week, for the first time really. That my mom, when she was pregnant, way back in the 1960s, she, do you 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 curler saved her life. At least this is the story I was told. I survived, but my twin brother that she was carrying didn't. I've never talked about this. It is, it never seemed to be, I just didn't even want to go there, especially since I have twins.

• 1:30:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:30:55Speaker 01

  And I was in an incubator for three months. And we often joked if my grandmother hadn't paid $3,000, I'd still be there. Because 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.

• 1:31:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:22Speaker 01

  So I, because of the way I was born, my teeth went in all different directions. And I was about seven years old, they figured this out, put me in braces. A lot of people have had braces, but not for eight years.

• 1:31:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:31Speaker 01

  Eight 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. I never worked to be my friend. I can't figure out what's wrong. And so I was very smart. I was, 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 killed captive in a bottle, who can, and another one is 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?

• 1:32:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:32:12Speaker 01

  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. 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. My 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, I always wanted to teach people.

• 1:32:55Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:33:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:33:02Speaker 01

  I think this is the time where everybody that I'm teaching with my 200,000 plus students are my sisters and brothers, are the part of my family that I didn't have. My mom was an only child. My, I didn't have any aunts and uncles and 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.

• 1:33:47Speaker 01

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

• 1:34:14Speaker 00

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

• 1:34:25Speaker 01

  www.pitsecretsbook.com. And I'm not kidding. It's, I don't need the book sales. You want to read the book. You read the book and you took a lot of things away from it.

• 1:34:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, I did.

• 1:34:34Speaker 01

  I'm going to 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 going to want to practice it. 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.

• 1:35:12Speaker 00

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

• 1:35:16Speaker 01

  You know, everything is pitch secrets. So pitchsecretstraining.com is a free two hour training that I do every single Sunday. I've been doing it for six years. I have over 380 episodes.

• 1:35:27Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:35:29Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:35:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:35:37Speaker 01

  In our community, we love on people. Very passionate about that, that we're supportive. If you need something in our world, 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.

• 1:35:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:35:56Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:36:10Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:36:10Speaker 01

  We work on clarity and confidence in your messaging. And you're going to 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.

• 1:36:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:36:21Speaker 01

  That I just want to wash over people. And I'm finding, you know, this is a funny thing. We didn't talk about School of Hard Knocks.

• 1:36:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:36:28Speaker 01

  James came to me, the kid that you see walking, running up to people. And he did one of those, I have only one-

• 1:36:34Speaker 00

  Street interviews. He does the street interviews.

• 1:36:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I have one valet in my hometown. He said, meet me there. And when I, we finished, 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.

• 1:36:46Speaker 00

  Aww.

• 1:36:47Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:36:52Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:36:52Speaker 01

  Because TikTok has 21 million views.

• 1:36:55Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:36:55Speaker 01

  Instagram has 12 million. That's 32 million views-

• 1:36:58Speaker 00

  They're crushing it.

• 1:36:59Speaker 01

  Of 60 seconds. The reason that I'm good at that, it's pitching. It's this conversation, it's this repetition. It's finally understanding, I know what my message is now.

• 1:37:08Speaker 00

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

• 1:37:13Speaker 01

  Isn't that crazy?

• 1:37:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:37:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, Tom has about 5 million, I've got 21 million.

• 1:37:16Speaker 00

  Look at that.

• 1:37:17Speaker 01

  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 three years when I was a kid, who just decided that my life was going to be worth it.

• 1:37:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:37:31Speaker 01

  I was going to make it matter and I was going to 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.

• 1:37:41Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:37:41Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:37:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:37:52Speaker 01

  And so I am loving that I finally got this word out to people.

• 1:37:55Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:37:56Speaker 01

  And now I'm just going to keep running around the country and celebrating with people who are finally getting what they deserve and what they want.

• 1:38:01Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:38:08Speaker 01

  It is, it worked.

• 1:38:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:38:10Speaker 01

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

• 1:38:12Speaker 00

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

• 1:38:18Speaker 01

  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 watched some of my friends who didn't do what I've done. I biohacked my whole life.

• 1:38:50Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:38:50Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:38:58Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:38:59Speaker 01

  I lived in an ashram for a while. I ate vegetarian, I ate vegan, I did meditations, I've done chanting. I, 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 nine years old, his name is Riker. 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.

• 1:39:22Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:39:23Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:39:41Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:39:41Speaker 01

  Which is so important to remember. So to profit, I think, means to flourish.

• 1:39:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:39:47Speaker 01

  To be happy, to be loved. And then for me, the last part of this is to be remembered.

• 1:39:54Speaker 00

  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 already taken. And where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?

• 1:40:08Speaker 01

  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 eight 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.

• 1:40:26Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:40:27Speaker 01

  And why do I do that? I really like people.

• 1:40:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:40:31Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:40:38Speaker 00

  Aww.

• 1:40:39Speaker 01

  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, we need a voice.

• 1:40:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:40:50Speaker 01

  We need someone going, look, you can do this. And you can do it with no money, just ingenuity and your ability to pitch.

• 1:40:56Speaker 00

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

• 1:40:59Speaker 01

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

• 1:41:02Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:41:47Speaker 00

  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 Yap fam, here's your challenge.

• 1:42:31Speaker 00

  Take a few minutes this week to rethink how you talk about yourself, your one-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 points? 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.

• 1:43:16Speaker 00

  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, at Yap with Hala on Instagram or on LinkedIn. I'm Hala Taha. If today's conversation inspired you, be sure to check out Forbes's 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.