Win Your Pitch: Tips from a Television Producer
With Guest Brad Holcman
Why most pitches fail in the first 30 seconds - and how to make yours succeed
The How to Sell More Podcast
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November 20, 2024
Brad Holcman spent 20 years making TV decisions at A&E and Fox, where one rule determined a show's success: the first 30 seconds matter most. This same principle, he discovered, drives successful business pitches.
"Most shows fail in their first season," Holcman notes from his network experience. "Success starts before anyone walks into the room." He learned this reviewing thousands of show proposals, where creators often focused on selling instead of connecting.
During his time at the networks, Holcman developed a simple question that changed everything: "What's your biggest pain point?" This single question reshaped how he evaluated pitches. While others packed information into opening minutes, he watched for signs the presenter understood their audience's needs.
The network boardroom taught him an unexpected lesson about selling. "When someone pitches me a show," he explains, "they're not just selling content - they're showing me they understand what viewers want." This insight transformed his approach to evaluating projects.
His method breaks from typical pitch advice. Skip the credentials and capabilities. Focus instead on showing you grasp the specific challenges your audience faces. The best pitches, he found, come from people who've built trust through consistent work before the meeting starts.
You can tell the best story in the world, but if the other person who's listening is not at all connected with that story, it doesn't matter. I can't bring somebody over who doesn't want to be over. -- Brad Holcman
Listen to The Episode!
Top 3 Reasons to Listen
Network TV Insights: See how Brad Holcman evaluated thousands of pitches at A&E and Fox, where success hinged on the first 30 seconds.
Tested Methods: Learn the specific steps TV executives take to keep viewers watching, and how these same techniques win business meetings.
Sales Psychology: Find out why establishing expertise before meetings changes how prospects respond, leading to more valuable contracts.
Follow Brad Holcman on Social
More About Today's Guest, Brad Holcman
Transforming Brands Through Story | Building Wealth Through Real Estate | Empowering Midlife Entrepreneurs
Brad Holcman spent over 20 years selecting and developing unscripted television shows at A&E and Fox Networks. As Senior Director of Non-Fiction Programming, he oversaw hit series including "60 Days In" and "Intervention," earning four Emmy nominations. Brad reviewed thousands of show pitches and guided productions from concept to screen, working directly with creators to refine their presentations and stories. His experience spans both sides of the pitching process - evaluating ideas as a network executive and presenting shows to secure multi-million dollar production budgets. Brad now teaches others how to connect with audiences by applying proven TV industry methods to business presentations.
Key Takeaways
- Open With Questions - Start by understanding your prospect's specific problems. Their answers guide your presentation, not your prepared pitch points.
- Build Before Meeting - Share insights and experiences consistently before requesting meetings. When you arrive, people should already know your work.
- Show Don't Tell - Present specific examples that match your prospect's situation instead of listing what you offer. Their problems should lead your conversation.
A Transcription of The Talk
Mark Drager: So Brad, I was lucky enough to have you on my other podcast, The Mark Drager Show, about a year and a half ago, and it was one of the most fun episodes that I've had. Even though I, a very long time ago, started my career in television—I went to film school, I started in television and news and what have you—I've spent very little time speaking to someone who spent 20-plus years in the entertainment and television industry, literally at A&E and at Fox, producing unscripted television shows. And you have seen thousands of pitches as people have brought you their ideas and said, "Please turn this into a TV show." And then on the other side, you have had to pitch hundreds and possibly even thousands of times to be able to get the money you need to make creative television.
So I wanted to bring you onto How to Sell More because I thought there'd be no one else who would have the experience you have to help us figure out how to pitch based on story. I'm good with features and benefits, but how do we pitch based on the story? Where do we start with this?
Brad Holcman: Boy! Well, thank you, Mark, for having me. And your other podcast was fantastic. I have to be a little bit biased—I'm sure this is going to be better than the other one, right? Because everything gets better.
Mark Drager: Well, it always gets better, right? As we go—
Brad Holcman: So it's a big question you asked: How do we start with the story? I think the biggest thing is, that you can tell the best story in the world, but if the other person who's listening is not at all connected with that story, it doesn't matter. I can't bring somebody over who doesn't want to be over.
I think the biggest thing to know, probably walking into a pitch beforehand—and in fact, I just did this today—is what's your biggest pain point? What's the problem you're having? And that's how you create the story around it, and what you're selling hopefully supports that exactly. From the first sentence, they hear something that connects with the problem that they're having—they're going to be on your ride.
But if it's "I need apples," and you're selling oranges, I don't care how good the orange story is—it's just a story. You don't just passively listen to a story, I don't think. I think the greatest stories cause you to lean in and take action. So whether it be I'm selling a product, I'm selling a proposal, I'm selling a business, or I'm just selling myself as somebody that—maybe I'm your friend, or we could do something down the road—there's got to be that connective tissue. Because apples don't sell oranges, but apples do sell other types of apples, and you've just got to be on that same wavelength.
So if you don't know that, that's the first question that you ask, if you don't know already: What is your biggest pain point? What's the one thing that just causes you some sort of problem, or what's the one thing you've been dying to do? And then you quickly know what you have, and that's how you formulate your pitch and your story.
Because somebody that is a seller should come with experience, come with a million stories. So you quickly go into that vault up there somewhere. And I know I have stories for days. If you told me, "What are 20 great stories?" I couldn't tell you. But if it was specific towards something we're talking about, undoubtedly I'll probably pull something from that bank that I have in my head to then connect with you based on either our experience that I've had or maybe another customer or audience has.
So you've got to be at least on that first wavelength together so that you're speaking in the same universe and language.
Mark Drager: And so I imagined your response was going to be something different. I thought we were going down the path of "Imagine this with a bit of this," Okay, open frame, or like, something much more how I imagine stuff gets pitched in Hollywood or something. No, it's not—but you brought us right back to just Sales 101: connect with people, understand their pain, all of that stuff.
Brad Holcman: But it's the hook. So when you think about every show that I've ever produced, the first 30 seconds is if you, as an audience member, want to stay with the show or not. If I'm producing a film and it's two hours—you've paid a ticket, you're going to a theater to watch—then I don't need to do that because I've got you for two hours. Yeah, you may walk out of the theater, but the chances of that happening are probably slim to none.
But if you watch a scripted television show and an unscripted television show, undoubtedly that first 30 seconds is a hook. And if I don't have you in that first 30 seconds, you're gonna change the channel. So for me, all my programming—it's funny, I've never even really thought about that because I've been in the television world so long.
Film is exactly what you described: you paint this beautiful picture, this universe, this world. You suck me in there, and then you spit me back out after two hours. Television—I gotta get you in and intrigued in the first 30 seconds. What I can't do is sell you everything in the first 30 seconds, because then you're also then going to change the channel. So I've gotta just tease you; I gotta tickle you just a little bit, and then I can set up a little bit of the world. You know, I can say, "Okay, and here we are now." Because if you don't do that either, then what are you watching?
But really, for me, just like Sales 101—which, by the way, I never knew that I was selling 101; that was just who I was. So when I learned about—when I'm starting to learn about sales, I'm like, "Wait a minute, I've been doing that for 20 years." I've been selling like a very professional salesperson, just differently.
So for me, it's with the content that I make and that I sell, or products that I'm going to sell, I gotta really connect you very quickly to why you need to be watching this or consuming this. That's exactly what we do in television; that's the only way to hook you.
Mark Drager: So I have spent probably more time than most—because I'm interested in it, because I love it, because whatever—over the years listening to podcasts, reading stories about different storytelling techniques. And whether that's—there's this technique called the "E Timeline," where if you think about—if you closed your eyes, listener, if you're driving, please don't close your eyes—but if you have the chance to close your eyes, and you thought of the way a shape of a lowercase "e" looks, you start the story at the beginning of the straight line, and you move forward. And so you introduce a little bit of story, a little bit of timeline, a little bit of characters. And then you stop, and you say, "But wait, let's go back." And so you go over the loop all the way back in time, and then you start to establish what happened in the past. And then now, as you start to move forward again, you catch up to where the story started, and you move past the beginning of the story.
And there are these different types of techniques that I've learned, and I thought, "My God, they're great." And once you understand them, you can start to see how they're using them. Many movies open this way, right? With the main scene, the biggest scene—the movie The Gentlemen with Matthew McConaughey, that movie starts where he's sitting in a pub, and he sits down, and we're not sure who's who or whatever, and a gunshot goes off, and it's clear that someone's been killed. Ah! But then we go back in time, and then we catch up to that moment, and then we move past that initial moment.
So I geek out, and I love these types of techniques from a storytelling point of view, from a pitching point of view, from how we can help draw people in. Do any of those types of things matter? Or really, at the end of the day, is it much more about the hook, about finding the problem, about personal connection? Is it more conversational, perhaps, when you're pitching these big ideas, these big creative ideas, than I'm laying it out?
Brad Holcman: It's so funny. Just recently, I've learned that there are actually techniques in storytelling. I swear to God, I did not go to school for entertainment. In fact, I went to school for business. I started out in business—the only reason I'm in entertainment is because of a girl that I was dating, and she did not want me to be in entertainment. And when we broke up, I decided to go into entertainment. That's a fact. It was many moons ago, and I thank her every day—I wouldn't be in the position I'm in if she didn't break up with me in L.A.
So honestly, I don't know any of this. What I am, though, is I'm a student of watching television, and I'm a student of the craft that I'm in. Even just the word "craft" feels weird because I'm basically—I'm just making entertainment. Now, I know what I like to watch. What I like to watch is, give me something to make me spend the next hour with you.
I am not a film watcher. I knew very early in my career that I did not want to read 120-page scripts or watch two-hour movies. I also like somewhat of an instant—or sorry, a delayed gratification. And film was not that; it was instant gratification because you got everything in two hours. Whereas in TV, if you have a great character, I can create that character over 100 hours. How cool is that? And I could see them evolve.
So I've never been one—I've never been of techniques. I've never—the Hero's Journey is a very standard technique or so. I think it was four months ago that I really learned what that meant. And I was like, "Wait a minute, I literally have been just organically doing that my entire career." I do not follow any prescription.
I put myself—I'm from Detroit; I'm a Midwest boy who grew up loving television, and I'm so lucky to have made television for so long that I'm making it for my young self. What do I want to be watching? And I believe that I'm the masses. I am not a critical person that only watches Emmy Award-winning television shows and Oscar Award-winning films. In fact, I somewhat reject those. I'm mass TV; I like to influence the masses.
How do you influence the masses? You've got to give them something that they didn't really know that they wanted. That's what hooks them even more. Because if you speak to somebody that already is saying "yes," you're probably not going to have an in-depth relationship with them because it starts kind of surface area, and you can only go so deep. But if it's somebody that's like, "Here for the entertainment," and then you hook them, and you're like, "Oh wait, I didn't expect that because I didn't have any preconceived notions," then you really have them.
So I try to not dumb down my shows but really speak to the masses of, like, why does somebody need to be hearing this or watching this right now? And that 30—and again, going back to the 30 seconds—if you saw my history of notes, if you saw—so part of my job for the last 12 years was I helped create the show. I helped with the journey of the show. But really, a lot of my time was spent on crafting the show to get to air. Every frame of television, I was the last person who saw it before it went to air, and I really concentrated on that first 30 seconds.
Mark Drager: Are you the guy giving those studio notes that everyone complains about?
Brad Holcman: No, I'm worse. I'm the network. So studio notes—studios actually employ the creative; the network employs the studio, so we're the worst. Because guess what the studio can't say is? No. Because we're the money people too. So without our paycheck, without our check, they can't feed.
Now, I very early established me as a collaborator. If you want to object to my note, do it all day long, but you've got to back it up. You can reject 100% of my notes, but I have to know why for two reasons. One, because I just have to know why. But two, I want to be better. I am not right 100% of the time. I consider myself to be an all-star baseball player. I'm right three out of ten times—that's an all-star baseball player, right? I think in entertainment if you're right three out of ten times, you're a Hall of Famer because it's mostly failures. Most—90% of shows don't get past their first season. I think it's actually higher than that. So just to continue on and to be a winner, it's a very rare feat.
So I am that guy that gave notes and the notes that I gave—I really cared about that open, that first 30 seconds, that first minute, that first two minutes, because in the middle, you're not really leaving. Once you've got the product, once you understand, you're really not leaving. Then I also focus—and I think this is part of the sales process too—is that last 30 seconds, that last minute. That's how I convert somebody from a fan to a customer. Because I don't just get paid for that one hour; I get paid for 100 hours. That's where you really make money.
If I'm hooking you up top for you to stay with me for the hour, I've got to leave you wanting more. I've got to leave you wanting to consume the next episode. So that last 30 seconds—what about it just goes, "I can't stop watching. I can't stop watching." So I think that's the perfect comparison to sales too. I'm not staying for your webinar if you haven't hooked me in the beginning. I'm not buying your product if you haven't sold me at the end and basically—if I don't watch the next episode, I'm missing out. That's the whole point of the sales process too, right? There's a little bit of that in a product, like, "You have to act now. You want to get this in your hands. You want to do this now." Same thing with us. That's how I get you. There are a million places to consume content and a million shows, but I want you to watch a second episode of me or a second hour. So how do you do it up top and at the bottom of each episode?
Mark Drager: You have just reminded me of something that I didn't even realize that I had learned along the way.
Brad Holcman: What's that, Mark?
Mark Drager: Because if I think back to when I first started my agency—2006—I was shooting every—you know, we were talking earlier about PD150s, these old Sony cameras and stuff. And so I was like—I was shooting on tape, I was digitizing, I was editing. I had film. We started as a video production company in 2006, the agency, and I was doing everything. But I would get all this footage back. It was all corporate. It was all very doc-driven. It was all reality-based. I'd get this footage back, and I would have certain really great sound bites and certain kind of garbage things. And I would look through all of the footage, I would look at all of the sound bites, all of the messaging, all of the things we have to work with.
And I would go, "What is the very best thing? We've got to start with that. What is the second best thing? Oh, we've got to end with that. What goes in the middle?" Like, frankly, just whatever will get us from point A to point C. I don't know if I really care what happens in the middle. I mean, like, we have the very best thing and we have the second best thing. Let's just do whatever we have to do to stitch it together.
And as the agency grew, and as we've worked on many more works over the last almost 20 years, I sit with my content team and I look at blog posts or articles we're writing, and I go, "What is the title?" The title is the curiosity hook. It's the promise of what will come if I give this my attention. It's slightly interesting. It gives me a little bit of context. I think I know what's happening, but I'm not sure. Like, the title has to do a lot, and the subheadlines and the bullet points have to do a lot. But by the end of this thing, if I read this thing, or if I give it a bit of time, like, it better deliver on the promise. What is that promise?
And then in the middle, it's kind of like whatever has to be there to get me from the title's promise to the end. I mean, like, the middle doesn't really matter that much. And I say this to people, and you helped me realize that most people—you say what I'm talking about, but now I know why.
Brad Holcman: Yeah. Well, let me even go before that too. You've got to get somebody to show up to that first 30 seconds or that pitch. So you've got the first—very important first part, very important last part. But even the pre-part, arguably, is where we don't spend enough time on: how do you get somebody there, somebody to the pitch, to show up, to be ready to be hooked in that first few minutes?
I wouldn't say I'm a student, but I like learning from people who are the best in class, and who have paved the path ahead of us, and one of those people is P.T. Barnum. And P.T. Barnum knew that the product he was selling was outstanding, but if you just sold the product that he was selling, it'd probably be a little earnest. It wouldn't make sense. It was definitely left of center. So what he did was he did anything and everything to get somebody into the seats, and he was bonkers on marketing. He was bonkers on selling. Sometimes it didn't even connect, but it was intriguing that just got somebody in the door to hear that first five minutes.
And then he concentrated very much so that first thing would blow your mind away because he did build up all these expectations that something was going to be big and different, and if you didn't pay off in the first few minutes, you would walk out—or at least he was fearful of that.
So I think you've got the first, you've got the last, and then you've got the pre. It's that sell. So for the content world, it's the 30-second spot. It's what's intriguing to pull you in that gives you enough to go, "Okay, maybe I'll stop everything and watch the first 30 seconds." Traditionally in entertainment, that's been produced by somebody who's disconnected from the content, and I always thought that was incorrect. I think the team of somebody who knows how to sell in 30 seconds to 60 seconds, combined with the creative that knows how to create an hour with those hooks—that is a force to reckon with.
And what I try to do, at least in my control, is work with those individuals, because I know one plus one equals eleven. I really did. Sometimes others didn't feel that way or sometimes felt, "Okay, my job is this; my job is that. I'm a marketer; I'm a creative." But I don't—but I think it goes hand in hand.
So I don't think we talk enough about, how we get people there. Because once—if you're there, you have a great product, and your 30-second pitch is exactly what you want, but you're not there to hear it—who cares? Who cares about what that is? So for me, the selling and the pitch—it is a lot before, almost a little before and after.
And then we can also talk about the after. What pulls you to keep going? What pulls you in? How do you deliver on the promise? Because that's the other thing is, if I'm selling up top, I get you in there in the first 30 seconds, and then you watch this entire thing, and at the end, you're like, "Wait a minute, huh?" It's like the trailer to a movie that is the best two minutes of two hours, and there literally is nothing else. You've got to have something in the two hours or the hour.
But yeah, I always think about—that's why I work very hard on, how do I get you in the seat? And what about it will pay off even more beyond your ever imagining? I can tease you, but I want to overdeliver once you're there as well.
Mark Drager: So a lot of our listeners run organizations that have services tied to it—professional services. And it's interesting because I think it's often underappreciated how much of a bet or risk a prospect or customer is taking when someone moves forward with anyone who's providing services.
So if I go to the Apple Store, and I can pick up the phone, and I can pick up the tablet, and I can read some stuff, and I can learn about some stuff, and I can touch it and have a tactile experience and watch some demos and kind of imagine myself doing it—I can understand that buying experience, that shopping experience. I can understand what will be delivered; it makes sense.
If I get audited, and I'm working with a forensic tax accountant through an audit process I've never been a part of, I don't think there's anything they could say to me to help me understand what's about to happen. But I'm probably going to pick the person that I know, like, trust—budget, confidence, whatever it is.
And so it's underappreciated, I think, by many business owners and many marketers in service-based businesses that really the people we're talking to don't really understand what the hell's about to happen, or they have misconceptions about how easy it'll be, how fast it'll be, how cheap it should be—whatever it might be.
So they don't know that, and they underestimate the fact that we're really kind of just buying off of know, like, trust. And so you are selling—and I'm hoping you can help connect some of these dots. If you think about these listeners, you are selling a concept; you're selling a pitch; you're selling a story. I'm sure there's a framework and there's an idea and maybe a format and a personality, and you have a budget and timelines and all that stuff. But at the end of the day, I mean, they are buying an intangible concept. How do you sell that in the context of knowing, like, trust like I just explained?
Brad Holcman: You know, it's funny you say that because I've really been thinking about—just recently, I started posting every day, and as a byproduct of that, I have built unexpected trust in areas that I absolutely am not an expert in. But I'm talking about it, and people are literally watching my journey in real-time, and they're coming to me for advice and expertise on things that I don't have 20 years of.
So for me, that trust—when I look at my career, if there's a production company or somebody that has made something, and they're pitching me something, and they've done something really well—they've built the trust. They've built the narrative. I understand that they can do the job. Whether or not the new thing that they're giving to me is going to be exactly the result of the other thing, we will never know. I can't control that. But what I can control is that I believe that this company is best in class in what they do, and my goal is for them to deliver—
Mark Drager: Did they show that to you? Did they talk about it? Did they show it to you? Did you reference it? Did you do your own research? How are they—how are they convincing you of this?
Brad Holcman: The best don't have to, I think. I'm going to mess this up, but "closed mouths don't get fed"—I think that's somewhat the line. I think you've got to be promoting yourself, promoting your goods, talking about yourself, so that when you go into the pitch, you don't have to do any of that, you know? So that there's already an understanding of what you do. If you have to sell yourself as the right person, you probably haven't done enough selling to get to that point, or you're talking to the wrong person.
So I'm walking into a pitch next week with something that—it's an industry that I have no experience in, and I really haven't done exactly the job or what I'm pitching them to do, but there is a connection to my 20-year career. Now, if I'm walking into them and they don't know who I am or my background, why they're meeting with me, then we'd be starting from a negative place, and then I would have to get them to that zero place, or that even place, and then now I'm going to pitch them why they need these services.
But because I've already built this narrative based on my career, I've been talking about my past and how my past connects to other industries. I'm walking into this meeting with them going, "I already know who you are. I already know why you're great. We just need to talk about what you're doing—is it going to fit with our needs?" So I have built the trust, but I haven't intentionally built the trust to them. I have just talked about who I am and what I am, and what I'm pitching or what I'm talking about has a connection to it.
So if you think about walking into a meeting and you have to sell yourself, you haven't sold enough before. You just need to be selling what you're going to do for them and how it's going to connect to their needs. That's the most important thing—that's all they care about.
So I think the best people get the jobs, they get the customers over, they get the people that trust them. Hey, you know, think about a coach. No coach can convince you that you're going to get a 10x return on your investment, or whatever the return is—nobody. But if I've seen them out there, I've heard testimonials, I know people that I can talk to, and they themselves say, "Hey, I did the work, and this was the return." And they're probably intentionally having those stories be told—people don't just give testimonials generally; there's a little bit of—literally that just happened today. Somebody whose book came out today, who I adore and love—I didn't read the entire book, but I read a portion of it—they said, "Hey, do me a favor. Can you write a review on Amazon?" And I'm like, "Yeah." Why? Because I know that, one, they wrote a book, so they've got to know something. I know where it came from, and they built the trust with me and the community. Now they need other people that don't know them to build that trust so that they're going to buy the book, because other people have provided that narrative for them. Because he can't go in and give his own testimonial—you need other people.
So it's just building that. So I've learned very quickly that you have to ask for these things, and you have to build that around you, and you have to talk about it. But if it's at the pitch moment you're doing that, I think that's going to be a problem. It's going to be a little bit—a lot more difficult to get that job or that customer to come over to you.
When I think about gurus and coaching and these people, I would imagine, if you really looked at their conversion rate, there was already a "yes" before they even went into a sales call. You just had to get that "yes" to the "Yes." It wasn't a discovery call—I think that's what people call this, "Let's do a discovery call." They're doing the discovery call because they really want to say "yes," because they've already done that due diligence on you. You've already been sold. Now it's just, "I need to sign. I need to sign on the dotted line. So convince me." But if you're not doing any of that, you haven't built the community, you haven't built who you are and your reputation and the ability to say or to deliver on what you're selling—you shouldn't be doing it in that sales pitch.
Mark Drager: I think you've just made a great case for the importance of branding and the importance of building a reputation and all of those elements. Obviously, it's a bit different from inbound versus outbound sales, but if we ignore outbound for now—I mean, I suppose the invitation to the meeting is your past—is credibility enough? The fact that you have the time, the fact that you have the meeting, the fact that there's some interest—does that.
I wanted to circle around on one thing you had mentioned earlier, about the first 30 seconds the importance of the first 30 seconds, and how you can't jam it all into the first 30 seconds. And that is something that I know a lot of people fall into traps of. And this is how it's manifested, right? I'm doing an elevator pitch, and I want to try and mention everything in the pitch in the first few lines. I'm creating a website, and I want everything on the website—not only everything on the website, on the homepage, at the top of the page. How do we get everything into the homepage, at the top of the page? And this is in emails, this is in letters. And it's almost as if, like, we only have one shot, we only have one opportunity, and people are only going to give us three seconds of their time. How do we get them to know everything about us?
When you are doing this on landing pages or websites or emails or anything else, it's a bit of a choose-your-own-adventure. But having produced the amount of video content we've produced and the amount of television you've produced—linear storytelling—we have to choose what we share, and in what order, because there is no choose-your-own-adventure, there is no scanning. We have to make these choices as producers to tell a linear story in a certain way. So how do you decide, if you can't jam all of it off the top, how do you decide what should be in and what should be out?
Brad Holcman: That's a—when you say "That's a good question," it means you're thinking about your answer. I'll be very transparent: I don't have all the answers in terms of what you choose. My gut's been wrong, but it's been more right than wrong.
So generally, that first 30 seconds only happens after you've gone through the entire—what, the episode for me—in the edit, right? So I'm not editing live; you're not pitching live. You're not pitching something that you haven't thought of before. So you have all the data. So your gut is, if it's a first few times, it's "What really am I solving here? What is that one big thing?" And that's your headline.
Think about a newspaper: to get me to get a newspaper or a cover of a book or a magazine, they can't put all the articles above the line, above the fold. They can't put all the articles on the front page; they generally choose one. So they think, "Okay, what's the one that's probably going to hit the masses? Also, what am I promising that's distinct and different from the sea of the same?" So you've got to understand what your promise is.
So if you are—again, very basic—if you are coaching people on how to invest in real estate, a very broad topic, and I ask you, "Why do you over the other 100 people that are pitching how to invest in real estate?" If you don't know the answer, then I can't help you with that first 30 seconds. Because I know all of the people that I'm friends with, and I know—I can tell them, just based on their content, who they are as people, what they're teaching, why they're different than everybody else. The output could be exactly the same: coaching programs, investing in real estate, financial freedom, all the buzzwords. But the process and how they get there—there's something in there that makes them unique and distinct. And then you just have to understand from the customer or the person that you're attracting: is that going to speak to them?
So if you're speaking to Texans and you have a Hawaii pitch, it's never going to work. So you also have to understand your audience and who you're pitching, because that's got to connect. Then what you have to do after the first few is you've just got to listen, and you've got to talk to people, and you ask that question: "What convinced you to say yes?" If you get very similar answers, rinse and repeat—do it over and over and over again. If you get a lot of answers, okay, still great because they said yes, but probably not the best.
So one, I think you have to really go with gut and go, "Here's how I'm distinct and different." By the way, that's been a struggle of mine too, you know, because I've never had to do that before. Now I have to do it. Now it's pretty obvious for me because I'm the only guy that has my background that's living in this entrepreneurial world. As far as I know, there are very few of me, and I know that by talking to people like you. I listen, and I'm like, "Oh, wait, you never know until you talk to somebody that doesn't know."
So that's also probably something else that I would suggest: talk to people who know nothing about what you're selling and sell them. And then you ask the question, "Okay, what was distinct and different about it? What intrigued you? What got you to think, 'Maybe I want this'?" You know, and if, again, if it's something that's repeated, then I think there's something strong there.
And that's what we do on our television, on our shows, is we do have an idea leading up to it. What is that logline? What's that one sentence that's going to grab the audience? But we don't lean into that until we have the goods, because what may happen is something totally different. So you watch, and you're being part of the journey, and you're like, "Okay, what is the sell to an audience member that gets them, one, to show up at the beginning in the first place—sorry, show up in the first place—and two, what about this hour?" Because most of my hours have a beat or a scene that's probably in Act Three or Act Five or Act Six or Act Two. I could tease the very—I could even tease something that happens after the episode ends because now you're on the journey of the entire episode to get to that. And then guess what happens at the end of the episode? It's really the end scene that leads into what I just showed you up top, so I can get you to the next episode.
These are all—they're not techniques, they're not purposeful; they're just the best storytelling, at least in my mind. But yeah, it goes down to—you've got to know what makes you distinct and different, and that's how you push it forward because that's what's going to separate you from everybody else. And you have that—everybody has that. Everybody's unique; everybody's a snowflake—you're different. And if you're not, you know, then don't create something that's inauthentic, because—that's the other whole part we haven't even talked about: this is authenticity.
So many people—if I didn't care about friends and being friends with people, I would have very honest takes of individuals that I would die to help them—that just come across as inauthentic, because I don't believe they're selling who they are or what they are. I think they're selling what they believe is going to get them another customer. And the last thing you want is somebody walking into the world and going, "Oh, that's not who or what I thought was going to happen." You know, think about a storefront. You walk into the storefront because you're intrigued about what's going to be inside the store, and if in the storefront you have something in the store that's completely something different, you're going to walk right out. You're not going to buy anything.
There are so many analogies to this, but yeah, the biggest thing is you have to know what makes you distinct and different. And if you don't, talk to people because they likely will see something that you don't see in yourself.
Mark Drager: I remember having this moment about midway, I guess, through my career—so, like, I don't know, eight or ten years ago, let's say—and I wrote a white paper on the strategy behind creating great content. I developed this system through many questions and many, many mistakes, where we would—you know, if someone came to us for work, we would say, "Okay, so there are three levels of objectives: there are corporate objectives, there are campaign objectives, and then the objectives of the media asset itself. Okay, let's break that down." Then there's target audiences—primary audiences and secondary audiences. Then there are motivations: what are the motivations of each? And then there's the distribution channel because the channel you're speaking with and the context that this is dropping will affect everything. And then there's the message.
And so I developed this system because everyone wanted to rush to message right away. And you'd sit in front of a blinking screen and you'd go, "How the hell do you write anything? Like, you know, whatever, I'm 23, 24—how am I supposed to write something for a pharmaceutical company? I have no idea." So I developed all these frameworks, but I wrote this white paper, and I got a call from someone I really respected, who was about 20 years older than me, leading a consulting strategy firm. This person had been the CMO for two different beer companies at two different points in their career, launched an entertainment company as a CMO, and then decided to break out on their own.
And he calls me into his office—like, I go downtown, I sit down in the office, and he wants to talk. And, you know, he's in a suit, and it's a beautiful place, and I'm just some kid. And he pulls up my white paper, and he starts shaking it at me, and I'm thinking, "Oh my gosh, what is happening?" And he goes, "This—I expect this kind of stuff from us. I don't expect this kind of stuff from you. You're a creative." And I was thinking, "I didn't know I was creative. I went to film school. I thought I wanted to be a strategist. I love strategy. I thought I was a strategist." I was a little offended he called me a creative. But then he goes—and then he started asking me a million questions about stuff. And I realized, this guy is so experienced, has done all of these amazing things, and he's asking all these really stupid questions to me, like, "Why are you asking these?" And I realized, "Oh, he doesn't know anything. Like, I am boots on the ground." And I had this moment of clarity where I went from being intimidated to being like, "Oh man, I can help him. Oh, oh, oh, he's not dressing me down. He's not—he saw something, and he realized maybe I can ask this guy some stuff." And it changed everything in that moment.
Brad Holcman: Yeah, I don't know if anybody—like, I did a 360 feedback many moons ago, and it's all about what other people see in you, and it's generally people at your level, above you, or below you in the hierarchical world of corporations. The best and worst day of my life—others saw something in me that I never saw, never. But I was so thankful, because now I had the knowledge to do something about it, and now it was on me. And if I didn't change and said, "Well, that's who I am, Mark," then that's my fault. But I took the opposite, and I said, "Wow, I have an opportunity to be better now." And thank you to all the people who responded.
I may have been in tears, but those tears happened to be the best tears of my life. I wasn't happy then—I was crushed. I was crushed because, of course, I went to, "How many years have people been thinking about this? I wish I would have known earlier." And then I quickly changed that word. I thanked God that this happened on this day and that not a day went by so that I could change things.
So I do think that you know, going back to pitching and knowing who your audience is and how you connect with your audience, it's really about conversation—seeing what other people see in you, your pitch, what you're selling, rather than what you see. You need both, certainly, but you have to have both to sell properly. And that's been a lot of my change—is we're very much about, "How do we help ourselves?" And we are organically and unconsciously—you want something out of something. Like, you're looking for—if you're looking for a sale, you're looking for the "yes." But we have to also really think, arguably even more so, that it's not about you. It's about them. It's about, you having such a gift to help somebody. I just need to understand and connect with what they need help with, and can I provide that service?
And sometimes, guess what? You're not the right person. Sometimes they walk into your store, and you're not going to sell them that sweatshirt, and that's fine. One, they walked into your store. And if you're providing the best environment, and you're like, "You know what? This is Gap; you're better for J.Crew," you're always going to remember that—that they referred you to either a competitor or someone else, because at that time, you weren't the right fit. And then two years later, you remember that Gap referred me to—I'm going to go back.
So be that person, you know, that if you're not that right person, you've told the great story, you've connected, and what just didn't work out on either side—or it was a collective "doesn't work out"—just lead with kindness, lead with heart, because you never know what's going to happen a year, two years. I had somebody reach out to me that I was in business with 15 years ago. Why? Because I was kind to them, and they remembered that for 15 years. And now I've been in business with them—I hadn't spoken to them in 15 years, and they just remembered that day. And I was like, "Wow."
So again, that doesn't happen overnight. You cannot build overnight. You have to, every day, show up, be your best self, and keep laying down those seeds and just helping others. Be that guy, be that kind, because then when that pitch happens, maybe they're even just saying "yes" because they want to be in business with you—because you've built that runway. How many times have we said "yes" to something just because of proximity to somebody? We don't know how it's going to be, or what it's going to be, or what this means, but we just want to be around that person because they've built that runway.
So again, for me, pitches happen way before the actual pitch. You know, going back to that—you yourself have built that runway, and then you likely have gotten them in the room from something else that leads directly to that pitch. The pitch almost should be an exclamation point or just a sign on the dotted line.
