Note: While reading a book whenever I come across something interesting, I highlight it on my Kindle. Later I turn those highlights into a blogpost. It is not a complete summary of the book. These are my notes which I intend to go back to later. Let’s start!

  • Every time you make a pitch, presentation, or proposal to try to influence anyone to do anything, your audience’s first impression will be fully formed in less than three minutes. That yes or no is already in their heads. It’s not your fault. That’s just how people are.

  • The proliferation of technology and the ability to get unlimited information instantly have created hypersavvy consumers. They have zero tolerance for long-winded explanations, exhaustive chatter, or linguistic sales tactics. They will tune you out in an 8.2-second instant.

  • Audiences today simply want information. They want it quick, clear, and concise.

  • To succeed, you must be able to capture and hold your audience’s attention with only the quality and flow of your information, long enough to take them through that initial decision-making process. They must conceptualize your idea, contextualize how it will benefit them, and then actualize it with potential engagement or further interest. You have about three minutes.

  • Success in life and business is dictated by your ability to convey your information to others so they understand it the way you do. If you do that well, you can sell. If you do that well, you can market. You could even write a book.

  • In every TV show, the conflict in each scene is edited to resolve at almost exactly the three-minute mark. Shark Tank , for example, uses this decision marker in nearly every episode. From the time they introduce an entrepreneur to the time one of the Sharks says “I’m out,” it is almost always three minutes. I pitch more than forty TV shows a year, and every one of my sales tapes is now almost exactly three minutes. Within the first three minutes of any presentation or pitch, the audience will process the basic elements of your offering, start to place value on that offering, and determine their likelihood to continue further with meaningful engagement. That’s why it’s so important to control that narrative and guide the audience through each facet of a presentation.

  • I built every pitch from that moment on with the idea that someone was going to have to share it with someone else. Even if they were the decision-maker, there is always someone else they are going to relay it to.

  • Always be aware: It’s not just who you pitch to, it’s who they have to pitch to, that matters.

  • No matter how much beautifully crafted material you are able to lay out directly, and regardless of how long you immerse someone in the depths of your proposal, they are going to have to summarize and relay your pitch to someone else.

  • The two most important factors to consider when building any presentation or proposal are knowledge and rationalization:
    • What knowledge does my audience already possess?
    • How will they rationalize the decision to “buy in” to my proposal?

  • You will break down your reason for any decision using simple declarative sentences and phrases. To yourself, you use just the basic and simple version of even the most complex elements. You don’t do long explanations.

  • Why do you live in your city? Or why do you have the job that you have? Or why did you get married or divorced? What movie are you going to go see this weekend and why? Go a few layers deep on the why questions, answering them in short, simple sentences. These are called statements of value. They represent what’s important to you, and your brain naturally organizes them in order to build your story. That is the rationalization story. That story is the collection of the most valuable elements placed together so you can understand your actions, your feelings, and your desires. If you just booked a vacation, you will have used the rationalization story, without thinking about it, to decide where to go, where to stay, how much to spend, and what to pack. You use a story like that for every decision in your life. That story is precise. That story is succinct. That story says only what needs to be said. That story is the clearest, most efficient way to convey the information to yourself. If you are attempting to convince anyone of anything, that rationalization story is what they will use to make their decision. Even if you spend three hours pitching every single detail, they will ultimately rationalize their decision using a simple story and collection of statements, guaranteed to be less than three minutes long.

  • When you look back at my Extreme Weight Loss pitch, you can see how the simple bullet points helped form the framework of the entire pitch.
    • We find overweight people who are too big for The Biggest Loser.
    • We follow them for an entire year while they lose weight.
    • We edit that entire year of weight loss into one episode.
    • They start out fat and by the end of the hour they are thin.
    • We film all of them at the same time, then they each get their own episode.
    • It will be biggest transformation ever on television, every single week.

  • Your first step is to create a master list of all the bullet points you can come up with that describe what you do or what you want to present. Once you have the master list, I’ll show you how to identify your most valuable bullet points and then connect them all with simple declarative sentences that will capture and hold your audience’s attention . . . for a full three minutes.

  • Start by asking yourself a few simple questions and use only one- or two-word phrases. Use Post-it notes or index cards and a marker and write down your answers.
    • What do you do?
    • What do you do well?
    • Or:
    • What is it?
    • Why is it good?

  • If you were asking for a raise at work, your questions might be: Why do you deserve it? Why are you worth it? Make these questions fit your offering. What do you want someone to do or buy? Why should they do it or buy it? What’s in it for them? The questions are asking you to bullet-point the concept, how it works, and why it’s good. Tell me in single words or phrases everything relevant about your business, product, or service. Don’t edit yourself; we’ll get to that part soon enough. When you think you’ve got them all, go get a cup of coffee or a glass of water. Come back and write down more. The key to this exercise is volume (thirty minimum). The more you write, the easier it will be to sort them later. You’ll be stunned at how much information your list will contain.

  • You can use WHAC to refine the precise order of your information.
    • W—What is it?—Does it describe what your offer or ask is? Is it what you do or what service you perform?
    • H—How does it work?—Does it explain why the elements of your offer are valuable or important? Does it explain how your product works or how you achieve your goal? Is it about the process?
    • A—Are you sure?—Is it a fact or a figure that backs up some of your information? Does it prove something? Does it validate or establish potential?
    • C—Can you do it?—Is it something that speaks to the ability to execute or make the offering real for your audience? Is it about you or your ability to execute? Is it how you deliver? Is it about the price?

  • As you look at your collection of Post-it notes that represent every word that applies to your company or idea, let’s send these notes through these four questions to help categorize your information and give us the foundation to build out your story.

  • There is a very specific order to how your audience will most effectively process your information. The WHAC method will allow you to establish and follow that structure.

  • When building the ideal 3-Minute pitch or presentation, you need to lead your audience through the information and build the story. By simplifying your message in this way, you are really feeding your information in statements and stages that allow your audience to form a core understanding of the value of the proposition. Effectively, you want them to see your proposal the way you see your proposal. Many people start out wanting to use facts, figures, logic, and reason to explain their value proposition to others. But facts, figures, logic, and reason require context to be effective and credible. Context requires a foundation of understanding. A foundation of understanding relies on a solid premise. To build an effective story we must begin with a solid premise. Your audience must first understand the offering, what you do, what it is, why it exists. This must be in the simplest of terms. It must stand alone and allow the audience to fully grasp the concept. Next, they then begin to deal with the context of the information as it relates to them and their needs. When they understand what it is and how it works, they try to understand what it can do for them: How is this going to help me? Once they conceptualize and contextualize your offering, they will look for how to make it real: How do I take action? How can I make it happen? How is this going to be executed? Who will deliver it? What does it cost?

  • This is the format of the 3-Minute pitch:
    • Conceptualize—What is it and how does it work?
    • Contextualize—Are you sure? Is this true, is it real, is it right?
    • Actualize—Can you do it? Could this actually happen the way it’s being described?

  • These are three distinct stages to your 3-Minute pitch or proposal. First, you conceptualize (explain the offering), then contextualize (engage and verify details), and finally you actualize (encourage the buy in or opt out).

  • Look at these stages in a practical application:
    • 0:00–1:30—Conceptualize
    • 1:30–2:30——Contextualize
    • 2:30–3:00—Actualize

  • So as you look at your Post-it notes again through the WHAC filter, you can see how your information will form in groups.

  • The idea is to get all your bullet points into one of these categories.

  • Here is a list of questions I often ask to help ramp up the process. You may find that these questions cause you to grab your Sharpie and add a few more bullet points. W—WHAT IS IT? What makes you unique? What can you do that others can’t? What is the biggest need this fills? Are there big monetary advantages to your methods? What problem does this solve? Who is helped the most by this? Why does this have to happen now? What will be different after buying in? What hole in the market does this fill? What could this be worth in success? Why is it low risk? What makes your competition inferior? Why can’t someone copy you? How easy is this to implement? H—HOW DOES IT WORK? What allows you to make your offering work? How can you deliver on your promise? How long will what you propose take? Is this a gradual or immediate change? How many people have this problem? Why haven’t others used this method? Who is actually performing the service? Is there a process that must be precisely followed? Has this been done successfully in the past? Are you taking any shortcuts? How is it safe? What are the things that only you know how to do? Why are there no other ways to do this? Why would you choose this method over others? How much money will someone save? Why is your way the only way? A—ARE YOU SURE? What have you said that someone might not believe? Has a third party verified your claims? How can this result be replicated? How do you know there is a need for this? What in your history confirms this? Who are you using to deliver this? What do your reviews say? How valuable is this market? How have people succeeded in this before? What makes you so sure you’re right? How did you know you were onto something? Why is this not “too good to be true”? Has anyone lost money like this? Has any of this been announced in public? Do you have unexpected supporters? Why can’t your competition do this better? C—CAN YOU DO IT? What have you done that’s similar? Why don’t the regulations apply? Why isn’t this restricted? Is there anything in your past that would ruin this? How have others failed trying something like this? How have you trained for this? Are there other steps to take before you can deliver? Is there any fine print? Are there any other third parties involved? What successes led you to making this work? Do you have this in your possession now? What do you do if someone changes his or her mind? Do you have the connections that are necessary? Is there anyone better suited to deliver? What are the repercussions of underperformance? Who does someone contact if there is a problem? How have you dealt with problems in the past?

  • Once you’ve gone through your bullet points and categorized them, place them in columns or groups under each of the four WHAC categories. I want you to separate them out clearly because these are the four pillars that will make up your story and your three minutes.

  • Story trumps style. Always. That’s why the 3-Minute Rule and the WHAC method are so effective. People want to know what it is you are offering, how it works, why it’s good, and how they get it. If you get that out quickly and concisely, you’ll have an engaged audience looking for more.

  • When you force yourself to explain what you do and why it’s valuable, down to the very core, you will reveal things you were probably missing. At TV development meetings, I started hitting my executives with simple, probing, basic “I don’t get it” questions. This was helping us put the information in order, and it was forcing us to come up with more simple and clean statements. “We’re going to find the country’s most crooked contractors and expose them.” “Why would we want to do that?” “Because everyone has had a crappy experience with a crooked contractor.” “So, what does that mean?” “That means if we can catch them and get justice, people will love that.” “I don’t get it. How are you going to do that?” “We’ll set up a sting, like To Catch a Predator.”

  • After asking your “I don’t get it” questions and seeing the simplified answers in front of you, you may be able to put the most valuable element of your offering into a single sentence or phrase. In media and entertainment, this is called the logline. If you take The Biggest Loser, the most successful show my company has produced, it was sold to the network president at a Super Bowl party starting with just this logline: “Overweight contestants compete to lose the most weight; the winner is the biggest loser.” This would fit easily into Twitter’s old 140-character limit. Could you make a Twitter version of your idea? Try to refine it to a crisp 140 characters (not the flabby 280 characters we’re now allowed). This is where you start to see your information in terms of must say instead of want to say.

  • Without question the number one mistake I see is combining information with engagement. It is a very easy mistake to make, and it makes pitching and presenting so much harder and less effective than it should be. Your goal in your 3-Minute pitch is to inform, then engage.

  • The prolific Academy Award—winning writer Aaron Sorkin once said to me, “The worst mistake you can make is telling the audience something they should already know.” After you’ve WHAC’d your bullet points, categorized and expanded them, we want to build your story and your 3-Minute pitch by deciding what gets said first, second, and not at all. To do this, we’ll play the before-and-after game. When I work with clients, I usually print or write out on index cards each of their statements of value. Then I’ll have the client play this game. I shuffle the cards and arrange them randomly on the table. Starting with any random statement, I ask: “What information would someone need to know right before this, and what information would they want to know right after this?” This becomes a quick back-and-forth as it gets the client talking out loud about their proposal. They go through their information and quickly see some obvious befores and afters. These statements become married to each other. Kind of like slotting in two puzzle pieces. Go through your statements and look for obvious befores and afters. Connect the statements together that are obvious. You should be able to see some statements that move to the front of the line, and, more important, you should see some that keep getting bumped further and further down the line. Besides those easy ones like “I’m a personal trainer” or “We invest in pharmaceutical companies”—which are the basic “What do you do?”—look carefully at those detailed ones that are deep in your information. For example, when Jeff says, “You can stay in your house while the work is being done,” it’s a great statement of value, but you can see that lots of other information needs to be said first to get to this. The question is “Why can you stay in your home?” The answer is “Because they make no construction mess,” which leads to another why: “Why no mess?” “Because they only cut small holes.” You can see how this framework starts to form. Go through your statements one by one, and start connecting the ones that fit naturally. To figure out what comes next, ask, “How can I do that?” or “Why is that important?” or “How does that work?” Also ask, “And then what happens?” and find statements that will come next. Start arranging them like a puzzle in linear order. You will see them connect. Some statements will be on an island and some will be a toss-up of what comes first or next. All of that is OK. Shortly you’re going to see how to connect all these together and fill in all the gaps. The important thing is to order as many of your statements as you can. What you will notice is that some of your statements need a lot of “before” to be relevant. This is a clear indication that this is an “engagement statement.” You know you have your information and engagement statements mixed up if your audience keeps interrupting to ask questions midstream, if they jump ahead and conclude something too soon, or if they ask you to repeat points you covered before because they didn’t understand it as you were saying it. Questions from the audience are usually a good sign, and they indicate the level of interest you’re getting, but you don’t want the questions to come from a place of confusion or impatience. Have you ever pitched or presented anything where you had to say, “Yes, I’m getting to that in just a minute”? Or maybe halfway through your pitch you went off on a tangent and you never ended up getting back to the rest of your pitch? About 99.9 percent of the time that’s because you were using engagement information too soon in the process. What’s worse is when this mix-up is very subtle. The audience doesn’t stop you or ask questions out of order or get confused because they’ve already dismissed your information. I hear clients say after a presentation, “It felt really good. I thought they were totally following along, but they just didn’t seem to get it in the end.” Ouch. I know what that feels like. That’s a product of mixing engagement ideas in your pitch where information is needed, eroding the overall effect. Now we have to face some tough decisions about your information. It all can’t advance to the 3-Minute final. It’s time to make some cuts.

  • It’s time to pull some of your value statements out and put them aside. They will not be making the final three minutes. It’s not that they aren’t valuable or important; they are just statements that can only be at their maximum value after your three minutes. Your first three minutes isn’t about everything you have to say; it’s about saying only what needs to be said. Your goal is to get down to the twenty-five statements that are clearly the most informative. In each of the WHAC categories, you have statements that are going to be effective only after your audience clearly understands and has all the necessary context. You have to be prepared to save some of your favorite statements for after your three minutes.

  • I speak a lot about the sophisticated audience. I say the two most important questions you need to ask before creating any pitch or presentation are:
    • What knowledge does my audience already possess? (Remember Aaron Sorkin?)
    • How will they rationalize their decision?

  • Telling your audience things they already know is a very bad habit. It subtly shows a lack of respect for their time and their intellect.

  • When you cut some of your statements from the final 3-Minute list, look at the number you have in each of the WHAC categories. Use this as a guide:
    • W—What is it?—nine statements—1:30
    • H—How does it work?—seven statements—1:00
    • A—Are you sure?—six statements—0:20
    • C—Can you do it?—three statements—0:10
  • THE FIRE ALARM TEST: This is a great exercise I use with clients when we first start to filter their statements of value. Picture yourself in a meeting presenting to an audience. Three minutes into your pitch, just as you are ending, the fire alarm goes off. The room evacuates and everyone is ushered out into the street. (This actually happened to me at MTV once.) Now ask yourself three questions:
    • Would the audience want to come back in and hear more?
    • If you didn’t get to go back in, would they have enough information to make a decision, or is there something you still needed to say?
    • If they were to explain your pitch or proposal to someone else, what would they say?

  • It’s important to be impartial about this. Particularly question number two. I find a lot of people still hold on to something important they are building to. They get this idea that a big reveal or an aha moment way at the end can help. They haven’t read the previous chapters. But you have, and that’s why I bring this exercise out early with a new client. I don’t want them saving something for later. Once you’re comfortable with your answers and you’ve adjusted, I want to you to do the exercise again. This time, though, time your presentation and stop after two minutes. The fire alarm goes off. Same scenario. How do you feel about what got cut off? Which part was it? How do you feel about what the audience didn’t hear? Does your message still resonate? Would they want to come back in the building and hear more? Could they explain it to someone else if they got asked, “Hey, what was that pitch about before the fire alarm went off?” Again, try to be impartial. What you may find is you have used some fun language or phrases that you love but have pushed some relevant information too far down and the early fire alarm killed it. I still struggle with this. I like clever sayings and details. I like to lead my audience, and sometimes I have to take a step back and really look to see if I’m adding fluff for fluff’s sake. I’m in the middle of a huge game show pitch right now that tests the contestant’s ability to instantly recall information. In my proposed pitch I’m dying to talk about the science of how the brain processes memory and what it deems important. And I have a great phrase and line about how “you have no idea how much information you really know.” But it’s slowing my explanation of how the game functions, and if the fire alarm went off at two minutes, it would not be as strong. So I just reordered the pitch to pack a lot more up front. Now repeat the exercise at one minute. That’s obviously not enough time to pitch your idea. But if you really look at your first minute, could you get someone to come back in and hear more? The answer has to be yes, or you need to adjust. Take a look at your logline again. Look at that Twitter version. Have you readjusted? These exercises will help you finalize the order of your information. In an eight-second-attention-span world, capturing and holding your audience’s attention for an entire three minutes is a Herculean feat. Many people mistakenly assume that the 3-Minute pitch is just condensing a long-winded explanation into a brisk three minutes. No, most of what you’ve been doing here in this book is learning how to make three minutes impactful and interesting enough to get your message across in the most effective way. It’s about keeping your audience focused long enough for you to create the desire.

  • I’ve heard hundreds of pitches that made three minutes feel like a painful eternity. Timing is a tool. It’s no substitute for content.

  • The pitches were clean and crisp, and contained only the most relevant and valuable information. The hook for each pitch was different. The pitch to Time Warner or Verizon would have a slightly different hook than one for JetBlue or Honda. The pitch for Levi Strauss to put its name on the stadium was classic and simple. All the elements and details are clear and clean when put through the WHAC system. Size of stadium, number of seats, media exposure, return on investment, signage. That was the easy part. But all that information needed a hook to bring it to life. The hook for Levi’s was that Levi Strauss was founded in the gold rush. It’s a California company. The forty-niner is a miner. It’s a California team. Not only that, the Levi’s and 49ers’ logos had exactly the same shade of red. That meant every piece of merchandise and decorated or painted item in the entire stadium, including the players’ uniforms, would contain Levi’s red. The brands were meant to be together. “Ah, that’s cool!” We had our hook, and that’s why it’s called Levi’s Stadium today. After introductions and pleasantries, the mayor of Santa Clara gave a brief introduction to the city, said how excited he was, and shared some city details. That served as their opening and reason for being. Vince got right to it. “Gentlemen, why should we give you WrestleMania?”

  • Then Paraag began. Here are some of the core statements:
    • (What is it?) This is the opportunity for WrestleMania and the WWE to be at the center of the digital world. The biggest and most influential companies in social media and technology are in Silicon Valley.
    • (How does it work?) Levi’s Stadium is in the center of Silicon Valley. It’s become the iconic building that represents the valley. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Salesforce, Cisco, Google, and more have their corporate headquarters surrounding the stadium, and many have corporate boxes.
    • (Are you sure?) The world is digital; the world is social media. Santa Clara and Silicon Valley are the center of the digital and technological world. It’s not just physical location, it’s part of the culture.
    • (Can you do it?) Levi’s stadium holds seventy-six thousand for football and will be able to hold almost ninety thousand for WrestleMania. The stadium is brand new and has every possible amenity.

  • Those were the basic statements in the pitch. But Paraag had also layered in the hook. And everything in his pitch played into it. For Paraag, the hook was clear. Here it is: With help from those tech icons in their backyard, Levi’s Stadium has a unique app that allows anybody in the audience to order food and, more important, merchandise from their seat to be delivered to their seat. No lines, no weaving through the concourse. No other stadium offers that. Vince McMahon and the WWE will make more money on merchandise at Levi’s Stadium than any other stadium in the nation.

  • The entire pitch took just about three minutes before Paraag turned to Vince for questions. Let me explain how that hook fits into Paraag’s pitch and how it’s used in the 3-Minute Rule. If you look at the hook, it has two parts, the statement and what it means: (a) it’s a system that allows fans to order merchandise at their seat, and (b) the WWE will make more money on merchandise because of it. The hook needs some context to be effective. As we go through Paraag’s pitch, you can clearly see that before you can get into the seat system, you need to establish the “What is it?” and the “How does it work?” to set up the hook. Here’s how it went: The world is digital; the world is now social media. This is the opportunity for the WWE to be at the center of the digital world. Santa Clara and Silicon Valley are the center of the digital and technological world. The biggest and most influential companies in the world in social media and technology are here in Silicon Valley. Our stadium is the most technologically advanced ever built. We worked with the technological titans in our backyard to create an app that allows the audience to order merchandise from their seats. They order during the event, while emotions are running high and the excitement is fresh. This system has massively increased our in-game merchandise sales, and it will do the same for WrestleMania. When you understand and hear the app described in context, you figuratively and literally say, “Ah, that’s cool.” And that’s exactly what Vince McMahon said. Because once the questions started, most of what Vince was asking centered on the technology and the impact of the app and how they could use it to their advantage. Vince actually said at one point, “That’s pretty cool.” In 2015, WrestleMania 31 was held at Levi’s Stadium. One of the biggest events in the history of the state of California was pitched and sold in one meeting that lasted less than thirty minutes.

  • Finding the hook for most companies is pretty easy. When I ask people for one sentence that nails it—the “Ah, that’s cool”—they usually come up with it pretty quickly. But most of the time they come out with it too quickly. Many people, and unfortunately many sales books and coaches, have the misconception that the hook is what you open with. “Hi, I’m Jeff from Re-Pipe Specialists, and we can take your whole home re-pipe from a major renovation to a minor renovation. Let me show you how.”

  • It’s possible this used to work well in the days when the “elevator pitch” was a thing. The idea being that when you drop that opening on someone in an elevator, they are going to say, “Hmm, interesting, tell me more.” You see this idea repeated today by a lot of experts (and nonexperts). But today, that’s not really what most people think when they hear that kind of opening, even if that’s what they say out loud to you. What they’re really thinking when they hear that opening is, “I’m not sure I believe you. Prove it.” Or, if your statement is even more grandiose, “Bullshit” is the first thought that runs through their head. Then it becomes your job to convince them otherwise. Does that sound like a winning strategy?

  • The saying I use with everyone is “If you start with a grand conclusion and then try to back it up, your audience will doubt you and look to disprove it.” Think about it. Why would you want to get your audience thinking, “That’s not possible. I don’t think so. No, you won’t”? Yes, you may win them over eventually, but in that scenario everything you say next has to convincingly validate the claim you just made with the hook. That’s just not a good position. You’ve just created an uphill battle. All the biotech companies I work with begin their presentation with something like “We are going to revolutionize the health care industry.” Besides the fact that that’s not a very good hook in the first place, the reaction is usually: “Really? You are? I find that unlikely, but go ahead and tell me more.” At that point the best outcome is that someone says at the end of the presentation, “Yeah, it’s good, but I don’t know about revolutionizing the industry.”

  • What you want to do is to start with the facts, plain and simple, and let them build to your grand conclusion. You want the audience, after hearing your what and how, to start to form your hook for themselves. So when you finally say it, in their mind, they will say, “That’s right.” I always tell my clients that the hook is something you almost don’t need to say. When Vince McMahon heard about the connection to the tech world and the ability to sell merchandise to the audience in their seats, he was already thinking, “I can make more money in merchandise at Levi’s Stadium than anywhere else.” But if Paraag had started with “We can make you more money in merchandise than any other stadium in the country,” Vince’s first thought would have been “Prove it,” and he’d be questioning and judging every statement against that. After Jeff explains that his company only cuts small holes and feeds the flexible pipes through the walls, that there is no mess and you don’t have to move out of your house, his customers are thinking before he says it: “This isn’t even a major renovation.”

  • The hook almost doesn’t need to be said. Your hook should be self-explanatory. That’s what you want. That’s the power of a great story that leads you through it. Because we are being marketed to and sold to everywhere we go, we’ve learned to treat all claims with distrust and skepticism. Every statement and promise and offer are going to be scrutinized, instinctively, by your audience. Any promises you make that are better than the competition will be perceived as too good to be true. And even if your audience believes your offer has real value, they will start to look for what strings might be attached. It gets worse. If you also use some big adjectives like “revolutionary” or “greatest,” they think, “‘I’m being tricked. This is waste of time.” Your presentation has to go against that grain. You’re not going to start with “This is an amazing deal.” You are going to set the stage and feed out information so that your audience will naturally conclude, “That is an amazing deal,” without your having to say so.

  • Look at your statements of interest again. Pull out your biggest promises, your summarizing statements, your opinions on how good it is. Take anything that speaks to your hook, and set it aside. Let’s focus on the what and how sections of the WHAC filter first. You want your statements to lead up to your hook. You should be able to see the buildup happen right before your eyes. If you haven’t done so already, write all your statements on index cards. The ability to move them around is extremely helpful to the process. You could move these around on a screen, but nothing beats the speed and fluidity of having physical cards you can move by hand.

  • I put up the picture of Katy Perry again. “I’d like to introduce you to one of my friends, Katy Perry. I know you know her and her music, but there was a lot about her career I didn’t realize till I spent some time with her . . .” Then I told a short story about Katy’s career and proceeded to bullet-point out some simple facts, one by one: First female to have five number one hits on one album. Which is a record that’s second only to Michael Jackson’s. First artist to have multiple billion-view videos. Eight Guinness World Records. Record for most streamed single. Record for sixty-nine consecutive weeks at number one. Record for eighteen consecutive number one hits (no one is even close). One of the top-selling female artists, over 100 million records. Highest-grossing female artist six times. I turned to the audience. “You know what I’m going to say next, don’t you?” I walked straight over to Jamilla. “Do I even need to say it?” She just smiled and gave me a little fist bump. “Just think about how much closer you are to my statement now.” Don’t state and prove. Inform and lead. I love this part. If you’ve found your hook, you are starting to feel your story come to life. I know that feeling; it’s intoxicating. You probably want to run out and try it on everyone around. But wait. Because there’s more, and it gets even better. You’ve got your hook; now we want to find your EDGE. Your edge is something your audience wouldn’t see coming.

  • The Butt Funnel was the edge. The edge is something that cuts through the simplicity of your pitch and reminds your audience that you have something special to offer. You can also describe it as the factor that helps push it over the edge. The edge is a cool fact or anecdote that makes someone metaphorically (and sometimes literally) sit up and take notice. If your hook is something cool, the audience should almost know by the time they hear it that your edge is something cool they hadn’t thought of before.

  • What is your Butt Funnel? What story or example best illustrates your hook? Can you find that one anecdote that’s just a little different to really drive the point home? For Paraag and the WrestleMania pitch, the edge was the fact that their new app would also give everyone in the stadium real-time updates on the bathroom lines. Every bathroom and its location is mapped out on the app, and a green, yellow, and red light indicator lets the audience know exactly which bathrooms have the longest lines. Paraag and the team couldn’t believe how popular this feature had become. Fans could judge the exact time when they could get to the bathroom and back to miss the least amount of the football game. The fans wouldn’t miss WrestleMania matches waiting in line for the bathroom. For Jeff and his plumbing company, the edge was a story about the hotel that hired him to re-pipe every room without disrupting the guests or alerting them that construction was going on. They didn’t want to close the hotel to re-pipe it, like every other company had proposed. Jeff’s guys booked a different room each night and re-piped it with no noise or mess. They went through all eighty-seven rooms without a single guest knowing they were there. They didn’t wear their coveralls in the lobby or hallways: they would change in the room and walk outside in street clothes looking like guests. Your edge is a story that has a little oomph to it, one that you can justifiably end with “Isn’t that crazy?”

  • “People almost use the app as a game. They wait for the green light and then see how fast they can get back to their seats. They love finding bathrooms on different levels or sections with no lines. Crazy, right?” “My guys were dressed like tourists walking through the lobby, and then they’d get into the rooms and put their work clothes on. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  • Look at your information. What’s the “Can you believe it?” item? Scour your statements and your hook. Create that moment in your head that best illustrates those statements. Which one is the most dynamic, short, sweet, and kind of cool? What’s your Butt Funnel? The edge doesn’t always have to be something that already happened. It can be something you think will happen or that you picture happening. When I work with startups pitching for funding, they often don’t have stories of how their app works or how the product will sell because their app or product is still in its nascent stages. I help them find their edge in the potential of their product, or tell a story that explains why they saw a need for their product in the first place.

  • The temptation will always be to use your hook and your edge early in the pitch because they feel good and have impact. It’s important to resist that temptation. There is so much more power in letting the information do the work and then using these pieces to capitalize on the situation. Inform and lead, don’t state and prove. A lot of my clients want to open their pitch with the story that should be their edge. Conventional wisdom says to open with the problem you are solving, and I totally agree. But what we are going to work on now is using an opening to illustrate the problem without stating it directly. It’s much stronger to set up your pitch or presentation in a way that has your audience seeing the problem before you state it. You actually want them to have formed the solution before you even offer it.

  • One of the first and most powerful questions I ask every new client or audience is: “What do you hope the audience doesn’t find out?” The answers are always very telling. If people are being honest, there is something that pops to mind. I go through this exercise because up to this point all you’ve been focusing on is the “value” and the “good.” You’ve been identifying and sorting only the strongest and most impactful information to build your story and lead your audience. When we’re in pitching or presenting mode, our minds are trained and conditioned to present the best and brightest and most optimistic and enthusiastic side. That might have been good enough once. But today, it’s equally as important to look at the other side of the coin. As I mentioned earlier, today’s audience is overexposed to marketing and inherently skeptical. The second you start giving off the “too good to be true” vibe, their Spidey-sense starts tingling. Just like the state-and-prove impulse causes your audience to look to disprove your statements, if your pitch or proposal is all positive and upside, your audience will look for issues and problems to balance. What’s really scary is that most of the time they’ll do that while you are presenting.

  • You don’t want your audience looking for problems or issues. You don’t want their minds working against you while you explain all the benefits and potential of your fantastic idea. But if it’s all sunshine and roses, that’s what happens. Have you ever made a presentation or pitch and the very first question is about something negative? You know, where your audience asks you the “What about X?” question the second you’re done? The truth is, if you can get “what about” questions, you are going to get them. Think about it. If the first question someone asks is about a potential issue they need you to clarify, it means they’ve been thinking about that issue while you’ve been presenting, and probably missed the value in most of what you said. You want to avoid that. But “what about” questions don’t have to be a bad thing. If you can identify them in advance, you can use them to your advantage.

  • Part of our development process was to identify the biggest negative issues and bring them into the pitch before the network executives had a chance to get them in their minds. I decided I was going to be the one to bring up the potential issues or questions about the format. I wanted the network buyers to be the ones defending the merits of the idea, not me. In a pitch on a big competition show to NBC, I said, “I’m not sure we can actually cast this show. The window will be very narrow and our goals might be too specific, and without the right cast, I’m not sure the show even works.” The response in the room from the network was “We always find a cast, and we can open it up wider if needed. Even with just a ‘good’ cast it makes for some real drama.” I couldn’t have said it any better myself, and it was so much more powerful that I didn’t have to!

  • By creating a small “all is lost” moment in your story or pitch, you create a rooting interest for your audience. You create that moment where they look to believe in your story. I tell everyone I work with that there are only three options with potential downsides or negatives:
    • You bring up the negative and let your audience look to solve it.
    • You wait until your audience brings up the negative and then you try to address it.
    • Nobody brings up the negative, the audience believes it, and nobody solves or addresses it.

  • Which do you think is the more powerful strategy? A, right? By the way, there is no option D, where the audience doesn’t notice or think of the negative. In today’s world, your audience is picking apart every statement and is always poised to find the downside. They will just assume you’re trying to hide it. That’s the other risk/reward to this equation. It gives a very distinct impression of you and the way you’re perceived.

  • Kurt had come up with the idea for Freebird while asking for dinner suggestions from a waitress at the golf course. When she suggested three places in town, Kurt asked, “Which one is your favorite?” She replied, “I like Jester’s.” “Why Jester’s?” he asked. “Because they pay for my Uber.” That was the spark. That’s what Kurt had developed. A ride service amenity for restaurants and bars. Kurt had a basic idea for how the app worked, he had run some tests, and he had created some models. He had done his research and done everything he could do on his own. Now he needed to raise money. I gladly agreed to help him build his presentation.

  • STATEMENTS Uber—Uber and Lyft do millions of rides each night Restaurants—people take Uber out for the night Bars—people take Uber to bars so they don’t have to drive home Free rides—bars/restaurants offer free rides to potential customers Millennial—use Uber service more than anyone Advertise—bars and restaurants can advertise to potential clients Attract customers—offer free rides to bring in potential customers App service—all done through the app Credit cards—we track credit card purchases Reimbursements—they get their ride money back after purchase Open source—Uber and Lyft opened their code Area specific—bars can set where to draw customers Paying customers—customers must spend money in bar to get free ride Drinking—people drink more when they don’t drive Groups—attract groups of friends sharing Uber Safety—encourage more people to use service if free Ride share—everyone going out for the night considers using Uber or Lyft Information tracking—we know who goes where and what they spend Credits—we give prizes for using service Behavior—customer must purchase to get free ride Ride budget—bars can set a budget per ride Prizes and incentives—we give sponsor prizes for all rides Area radius—the radius area determines the budget Captive audience—they are in ride for duration Self-contained—the app hails and pays for Uber directly All rides—not just sponsor rides earn credits Brands—other advertisers can market or give prizes Direct marketing—the app delivers direct to customer Increase bar tabs—when people take Uber to a bar, they drink and spend more Any service—doesn’t matter Uber or Lyft or taxi or something new; all work Next, we put them into our buckets: INFORMATION Uber—Uber and Lyft do millions of rides each night Restaurants—people take Uber out for the night Bars—people take Uber to bars so they don’t have to drive home Free rides—we offer free rides to sponsor bars Advertise—bars and restaurants can advertise to potential clients Attract customers—offer free rides to bring in potential customers App service—all done through the app Reimbursements —they get their ride money back after purchase Paying customers—customers must spend money in bar to get free ride Ride budget—bars can set a budget per ride Prizes and incentives—we give sponsor prizes for all rides Area radius—the radius area determines the budget Behavior—customer must act according to promise Self-contained—the app hails and pays for Uber directly ENGAGEMENT Millennial—use Uber service more than anyone Credit cards—we track credit card purchases Open source—Uber and Lyft opened their code Area specific—bars can target where to draw customers Drinking—people drink more when they don’t drive Groups—attract groups of friends sharing Uber Safety—encourage more people to use service if free Ride share—everyone going out for the night considers using Uber or Lyft Information tracking—we know who goes where and what they spend Credits—we give prizes for using service Captive audience—they are in ride for duration All rides—not just sponsor rides earn credits Brands—other advertisers can market or give prizes Direct marketing—the app delivers direct to customer Increase bar tabs—when people take Uber to a bar, they drink and spend more Any service—doesn’t matter Uber or Lyft or taxi or something new; all work BEFORES AND AFTERS Next, we did some befores and afters to organize the flow. Restaurants—people take Uber out for the night Bars—people take Uber to bars so they don’t have to drive home Uber—Uber and Lyft do millions of rides each night Free rides—bars/restaurants offer free rides to potential customers Attract customers—offer free rides to bring in potential customers App service—all done through the app Self-contained—the app hails and pays for Uber directly Paying customers—customers must spend money in bar to get free ride Reimbursements—they get their ride money back after purchase Behavior—customer must purchase to get free ride. Ride budget—bars can set a budget per ride. Area radius—the radius area determines the budget. Prizes and incentives—we give sponsor prizes for all rides. Advertise—bars and restaurants can advertise to potential clients

  • Then we started to filter the core information through the WHAC process to clean it up and find the hook. WHAT IS IT? App that lets bars and restaurants pay for customers’ Uber and Lyft rides. Bar and restaurant owners offer free rides to customers willing to come to their bar for the night. Customers open the app and see who’s offering to pay for their ride. They select the spot, and if they spend money in that bar or restaurant, their ride is free. The bars and restaurants aren’t paying for marketing to potential customers: they are spending money on actual paying customers.

  • Notice how we categorized the process of using the app as “what it is” and not in the “how it works” section, because the real question about how it works is going to be about how the app works for the bar or restaurant. The core idea is that the customer simply opens an app and gets a free ride. HOW DOES IT WORK?

  • While the service is seamless for the customer, they must spend money in that bar to get the free ride. The Freebird app connects directly to the customer’s Uber app, so the customer hails and pays for their Uber as they normally would. But with Freebird, the cost of the ride is tracked, and when the customer spends money at the bar or restaurant, the cost of their ride is credited back to them seamlessly. Because of this, the bar or restaurant can set a budget they want to spend on free rides, and knows that each new customer is guaranteed to spend that money in their bar or restaurant. Customers get free rides, and bars and restaurants get new paying customers. Freebird takes a commission.

  • ARE YOU SURE? The app lets bars and restaurants control when and how much they spend on attracting customers by the number of free rides they offer. On days the bar or restaurant is normally very busy, they may decide to offer little or no incentive. On days they are slow, that can turn up their budget and “drive” new customers, pun intended. Research shows that customers who use a ride service like Uber spend 20 percent more on their bar and restaurant tabs than those who drive. By offering an incentive to use a ride service, the bars and restaurants will attract higher-spending customers. CAN YOU DO IT? Uber and Lyft both opened their API (application programming interface) structure to allow third-party apps to use their platform directly. Freebird is connected directly to the customer’s Uber or Lyft account so we can track their rides and correlate them to their credit card purchases. It’s seamless for the consumer to use, but allows the bar or restaurant to guarantee they only pay for rides for customers who spend money in their establishment. Once we had the basic structure and the valuable elements in the right order, we looked at building our story and connecting each idea. THE HOOK As we’ve learned, the hook is something that your audience should be thinking about as they hear, read, or see your pitch. Freebird’s hook is that the customer can only get a free ride if they first spend money in the host bar or restaurant. That was a huge distinction because the ability to ensure that the customer buys something in order to receive the free ride is crucial. That’s particularly so when the average Uber ride is nine dollars and the average bar tab is twenty-six dollars. The hook: Freebird helps find your customer, picks them up, brings them to your location, and then ensures they spend money in your establishment to receive the free ride. THE EDGE AND THE NEGATIVE It was easy to define and connect the two. The negative to the idea was so big and definitive that by solving it, it pushed the idea over the edge. Kurt used the story about how they struggled early with the idea that if they paid for someone’s ride to the restaurant, there was no way to ensure that the customers actually went into that particular establishment. He talked about the early trials where customers would show up at the test restaurant to meet friends only to leave when they got there. This was a problem, as this meant that the app was effectively just a paid advertisement, where the bar would have to hope the customer spent money in their establishment. But when they discovered their credit card scraping technology, everything changed. It allowed Freebird to scrape credit card data from the bar or restaurant to look for matches to the customer’s credit card number. When it finds a match, it automatically triggers their reimbursement.

  • The edge: Freebird is not in the free ride business, it is in the ride reimbursement business.

  • Your story, your 3-Minute pitch, is an “and then” story. Straight, linear, clear. You want your audience to go “and then” all the way through. You want them to feel like they know how it will end. You want them to hope for the resolution they desire. You want your conclusion to be their conclusion. This is how I want you to pitch and present and convey information. I want you to make the audience subconsciously say “and then” after each statement and piece of information. We are laying bread crumbs. Delicious and easy-to-follow bread crumbs.

  • What Jimmy Fallon has mastered is a form of storytelling and interaction called “pre-suasion.” It’s the process of influencing what your audience is thinking before you start pitching or presenting. It’s a classic Hollywood storytelling system that filmmakers and novelists use to give you a certain feeling and understanding before the story begins. It’s important and powerful, and once I discovered it and started to study it, it’s been a core element in every pitch and presentation or story I deliver. I always ask in my seminars, “Why did Bambi’s mom die at the beginning of the film?” Disney could easily have told the story of Bambi just getting lost, or not shown Bambi’s mom dying, or done it later in the film. But by opening with that piece, they instantly set your emotions and thoughts exactly where they need to be to get into the story of Bambi. Bambi’s mom had nothing to do with the actual story. If you think of the movie, once his mom dies, Bambi’s journey and the movie begin. Take my favorite film, Braveheart. Yeah, yeah, just humor me here. The opening is William Wallace’s dad heading out to fight the English and coming back dead. Now we are prepared to watch this young boy return and eventually claim his country. It’s pre-suasion. The reason Jimmy Fallon is so good at it is that comedians do pre-suasion in almost every joke. They set up the scene and your thoughts on it before they deliver the punch line. A lot of comedy is done in little stories, so they master the art of pre-suasion.

  • I’m driving you toward what I call the reason for being. The reason for being tells the audience how you came to be involved with this idea or proposal. It’s the question of why you got interested and where the idea came from, and, crucially, how you figured out the idea was good. Think about it in a story setting. The reason for being is the setup that says, “Now you know why I’m about to tell you this story about this character.” Bambi’s mom is dead. William Wallace’s dad is dead. Airbnb has created the market (nobody’s dead). There was a really funny YouTube clip and now we have Cameron Diaz in a hammock with bunnies. It subtly tells the audience why they should care. And when done right it opens the audience’s mind to the possibilities ahead and warms them up to the story and events that are about to unfold. It’s like an opening act at a comedy show or rock concert. It prepares you for what’s to come. So you want to find your opening act. To get started, ask yourself some of these questions:
    • Why am I excited about this?
    • When did I discover the opportunity?
    • What happened to make this an opportunity?
    • What was my first thought when I realized how this could work?
    • Who opened my eyes to the possibilities?
    • Where did I learn about this?
    • When was the first seed of this idea?
    • What surprised me when I started looking into this?
  • This will help you find a story that opens up your pitch and sets up your reason for being. When I work with clients building a presentation, I always look for the reason for being that has two parts:
    • When you thought it was good
    • When you verified it was good

  • Part 1 is how you open and part 2 is how you “call back”

  • Identify your reason for being and create the intro that puts your audience in the right place and the right frame of mind. Start with what your audience wants out of your proposal, then look for the story that explains how you discovered how to deliver it to them. That’s how you use an opening.

  • Now that you have a reason for being, you want to be able to get as much leverage out of it as possible. If your reason for being is strong and compelling, you want to reinforce it if you can. In the structure of your 3-Minute pitch there is a perfect opportunity to do so. The callback is one of the most-used devices in comedy. Because it’s meant to drive laughs, it’s very deliberate and obvious. If you’ve ever seen a stand-up comedian, you’ll see this over and over. He or she will establish a story and a joke early and then throughout the set will hark back to that joke. It’s always good for a laugh and keeps the momentum going. You can’t see it as clearly in film or TV storytelling because it’s designed to be subtle. In a murder mystery it will be the clue—the empty milk bottle—you don’t recognize at first but will become relevant later. In a romantic comedy it’s the moment when the couple realizes something happened earlier—a chance meeting on the subway—that was the true signal they were falling in love. The idea of the callback in a pitch is to repeat your reason for being and verify it. It’s metaphorically the moment you say, “See what I’m talking about!” It’s a great way to connect your pitch to the opportunity you’re presenting. It brings your audience a step closer. It tells them, “Now you see it, too, don’t you?” The way we’ve set up your 3-Minute pitch lends itself perfectly to this callback. It fits naturally after you establish your edge, which is that thing that made you realize how good it really was, that thing that you just have to listen to. Once you’ve stated your edge, you’ll feel that natural moment to say, “Aha, now you get it.” So you want to layer in that verification as your callback.

  • For example, when we were pitching Bar Rescue, my opening was about how big personality and expertise were the benchmark of cable TV franchises and that for the audience to buy in to the over-the-top personality, there needed to be real depth. There needed to be substance, or the audience would smell the fake a mile away. I talked about how Gordon Ramsay was known for his combative style and rants, but he had the goods to back it up. He is that good of a chef. Simon Cowell was mean, but he was always right. If you don’t have the goods, you’re dead in the water. When I met Jon Taffer, it was obvious within minutes that he had the goods. It’s perfectly clear in my opening. I establish that I’m there because I found a talent with a huge personality who also has the knowledge and depth to back it up. (Just a reminder: when building your opening, make sure you don’t use big gestures and make grand statements. I was careful not to say Jon would be the next Gordon Ramsay, and I didn’t say he was going to be a huge TV star. I said the big boys get away with big, aggressive personalities because of their backgrounds. Jon has the background.) So now if we go back to the Bar Rescue pitch, after the opening, I laid out the hook of the show and then the edge (the Butt Funnel—how could you forget the Butt Funnel?). After the Butt Funnel explanation, it was the perfect time to call back to my reason for being. “You see, when Jon pulled out a blueprint of a bar he was designing and showed me how he used the Butt Funnel, I knew there was so much more to him than just the big personality. Jon knows as much about bars as Gordon does about restaurants.” Can you see how that dovetails perfectly? That’s how you use a callback. I reinforced that Jon is an expert with serious knowledge, which is what I was saying in the opening. Crucial here is that I didn’t say it straight out at the beginning. I let the facts and the information do the work. I didn’t have to state it and then prove it. I informed them and then led them to that conclusion. Take your opening reason for being and ask yourself, “When did I realize I was right?” Is there a story or a moment that verified all your thoughts and assumptions about your proposal? What happened that made you realize what you were thinking was true? You’ve built an opening that says how you came to be. Now build your callback as the part where you knew that was right. Something must have given you that validation. This will take your audience on the journey you went through as you became committed to your project. You want your audience to walk through your rationalization story the way you did. Your journey is a story. It’s a story of your commitment and purpose. How did you get there? Something happened that led you to be involved, and now you are sharing it with others. Your pitch is a story that says, “Here is how I came to believe in this.” Remember: If they can see your business, product, or service the way you do, they’ll have to be interested.

  • So how do you get them to see things the way you see them? First you explain the reason you got involved or excited (opening), then tell the story of what it is (what) and how it works (how), and then explain how you knew you were on the right path (Are you sure?). Then you talk about your biggest struggle (All is lost), then explain how you overcame it and the result (your hook), and share how amazing that feeling is (the edge) and how it was all leading you here the entire time (the callback) so now you can share this with others (Can you do it?).

  • Structure:
    • Opening
    • What is it?
    • How does it work?
    • Are you sure?
    • All is lost
    • The hook
    • The edge
    • The callback
    • Can you do it?

  • You never want to say or do anything in your pitch that reminds the audience that they are being pitched or sold to. You don’t want to remind them that you rehearsed this one thousand times and are making this exact same pitch to anyone who will listen. If you are telling a story and leading them with your bread crumbs of information, you are building momentum and focusing their attention. Your catchy closing line or pun isn’t the climax of the pitch—you’ve already been there—so don’t try to make some clever wordplay the finale. I’ve experimented with dozens of different closing techniques, and nothing worked when I deliberately tried to come up with something to be an ending. Eventually I discovered the one version that worked the best. It was basically nothing. Almost no ending at all. This is about your first three minutes; there is always more to come and more to talk about. You don’t need to try to wrap everything up with a bow.

  • Never give people things to read during your presentation. People will always read ahead. Always. It will be distracting and unnerving, and all the work we’ve just done on flow and timing and structure gets tossed away. If you have big beautiful handouts, the best thing to do is to hold up your cool handout and say, “I’ll leave this with you to go through after we’re done.”

  • Make different slides for your PowerPoint and your handouts. Your presentation is there to help you; your handouts are there to reinforce what you’ve already said. Important rule.

  • There is a reason that every major brand in the world uses simple, clean fonts in everything they do. Fancy fonts don’t say anything other than you are just trying to be fancy. I strongly recommend using only one font in your PowerPoint, two at the most.

  • You don’t need a slide or a bullet point for every single thing you say. This is another extremely common mistake, and to be honest I still get this one wrong myself sometimes. I will catch myself in a pitch building a bullet point or slide for too many points or thoughts. I have to go back and ask myself, “Does this move the story?” This is a writing term that challenges writers to justify every scene in a script. The idea is that a writer will often get in their own head and write scenes that build character or tension or are really cool but don’t actually move the story along.

  • The rule is simple: If you don’t need it, you don’t need it.

  • You only need to make slides and bullet points for thoughts or statements that really need to be seen. You need to have a reason for each slide and each thing you put on the screen.

  • Don’t fill up your slide with text and lists. There is no point in listing fourteen different things on the same slide. You will be drawing the attention to your slides as you list things off, and that part of your presentation will become about a list on a screen. Don’t use more than six points on a slide. Keep it clean and the thoughts connected. If you are moving on to a different thought or section, move to a new slide. It’s important that your slides don’t force the audience to read through items. You need these bullet points to accentuate your talking points, not to make the points for you. So if you can, always have the bullet points come up on the screen one by one as you say them. If you put up a list of points and then try to talk through them, people will read ahead. You don’t need full sentences. You don’t need to be grammatically correct in a bullet point. It’s not meant to be read in the literal sense. When I make a bullet point list to pitch a show, I always try to keep the point to just one line.

  • The guide is a maximum of ten slides for your 3-Minute pitch or presentation. Anything more than that and you’re giving a slide show and not a presentation.

  • Don’t read your slides, but anything you do read should be used to bring your audience to each point in the pace and order you’ve decided.

  • If you can use a photo and speak to it, you will do better than if you have a bunch of tiny written text. It’s better to just put a picture of your warehouse and describe it than to use bullet points with the dimensions and a list of facilities. People process visual images almost instantly, so they will be refocused on your words seconds after they see an image. You can push ideas through imagery far better than through text. If you have the image, the text isn’t needed.

  • Let me give you the outline to work from:
    • Opening = 1 slide—The fact or image that gave you the reason for being. Show or tell them how you got here.
    • What is it? = 2 slides—Your logline or first sentence that explains it best should be its own slide. “Freebird is the app that lets bars, restaurants, and nightclubs pay for clients’ Uber and Lyft rides” is a slide with just that. The next slide can be three or four other clear points.
    • How does it work? = 2 slides—This is where you put a few clear bullet points. If you are describing functionality, a list works perfectly here.
    • Are you sure? = 1 slide—This is usually a simple list. You don’t need to put up slides of graphs with crazy detail about your numbers. You just need to put up the graph and speak to it. If the audience is interested, they’ll get to your proof later and dig in.
    • All is lost = 1 slide (optional)—If you have a good negative to bring up, having it on a slide will help transition it. It shows you’ve addressed it and have the confidence and plan to overcome it.
    • The hook = 1 slide—One simple slide that highlights and summarizes that one thing that ties it all together.
    • The edge = 1 slide—I always try to have a picture here that illustrates that push-it-over-the-edge moment. In my Bar Rescue pitch, I had a slide of the blueprint of the bar Jon was designing with a big arrow pointing to the Butt Funnel.
    • The callback = 0 slides—It is tempting to put your see-I-told-you moment on a slide, but you need to resist. This moment is intended to feel like it’s happening in real time. Like you just heard yourself pitching it and can’t help but say, “You see what I mean?” If you have a slide here it will lose the spontaneity and feel like part of a sell.
    • Can you do it? = 1 slide (optional)—If you know your audience or they know you or the details of the action items are kind of obvious, you really don’t need to have a slide here. You can easily talk it through and you are done. When I pitch a TV show, I never have a slide about how I’ll actually produce it unless there is something very unique or special. If there is, it probably moves up to the “Are you sure?” section.
  • You need to be informational, not promotional. When you become promotional, it almost immediately destroys your credibility. Your statements of fact and information begin to be questioned and doubted because your audience starts to believe that you will say anything to achieve your goal. Today’s hypersensitive audience is easily triggered into rejecting that promotional push. How do you avoid being promotional? Confidence. Not confidence in a personal way, but confidence in your information. The stronger you believe in the quality, effectiveness, and value of your information, the more likely you are to let that information stand on its own.