The Oren Klaff Method for Conversation Control and High Stakes Pitching | #Success - Ep. 92

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Do you have a funnel but it's not converting? The problem 99.9% of the time is that your funnel is good, but you suck at selling. If you want to learn how to sell so your funnels will actually convert, then get a ticket to my next selling online event by going to sellingonline.com/podcast. That's sellingonline.com/podcast. This is the Russell Brunson Show. What's up everyone? This is Russell.

Welcome back to the show.

Today I'm excited to have someone who I, I first found out about him, I don't know how long ago you wrote the original book, Pitch Anything, but I found this book, read it, and loved it. And that was a couple, again, a few years back. And I hadn't like connected with you or personally, this is the first time actually we just met a few minutes ago, which has been really, really fun. And then about 2 or 3 weeks ago, I had my big Inner Circle meeting and one of my friends, Peter Swain, was here. And you probably don't know this, but for my audience, they know I collect old books and things, we're building a museum and everything. And he's like, do you know Oren Klaff? I'm like, well, I'm aware of him for sure. And he's like, he just collected or he just got the, the something from the moon landing. And I was like, what are you talking about? And then he sent me a picture of it and I was like, I have to meet this guy personally now because that is cooler than anything I've bought. And I bought some really, really cool stuff. So I would love if we start there so that I can know the story or what it is. And just because it's the most insane thing ever.

So in essence, you know, you see a car here. This place was filled with like 18 cars. Right. One thing I'd like to add is, is, you know, I'm sort of, I, you know, my podcast is The Game of Money. I pitch for money. I live my life around money. But if you give me any of it, I hate it. Right. And I will just buy a car or something. So this place was filled with cars. We did a lot of media. And I just felt like this is a lot of Instagram feeling, you know, car marketing, you know, here, me by my Cobra, me by my M4, you know, me by this. I'm like, what, how can we rise above that? And there's nothing better than, you know, space. Like I love airplanes, you know, I've trained, but there's nothing better than space. And so then we built a replica of the lunar, the return lander, the Columbia. So the Apollo 13 Columbia lander, and then we outfitted it. And here's the inside of it. Inside Spaceship. So we have meetings in there. Really, in terms of closing, everybody wants to get in there when they have an event, right? They want to get in, they want to get inside the Spaceship.

How many people actually fit inside of there?

About 8. So it's larger than you think. But the way you get in there is you sign your paperwork.

That's the hook at the end. If you sign it, then you can come in here and celebrate.

It's this facility here. It's, it's free to get in. It's $1 million to get out. The spaceship, I think, elevated, you know, I started aging as we were talking about, and the spaceship just elevated it out of cars. And, you know, hey, check me and my cars out. I actually don't like to do cars for that reason. But the spaceship is so cool. And, you know, everybody loves space.

And is it built to the same dimensions of the, of what actually went to space back in the day, or how does that work?

Exact same dimensions.

Okay. That's so, it's very unique. You think about everyone's, a lot of people have Lambos, a lot of people have planes now, but you're the only one with a spacecraft, whatever you call it.

We were talking about being competitive. If everyone on Instagram gets a spaceship, I will go further, right? So you're saying like, test me, right? If it's 500 spaceships showing up on Instagram and every sales guy has got one, I will, I don't know, but I will.

You're buying the moon. We're going to go to the moon.

Buy the moon. Exactly.

Oh, that's too cool. That's too cool. Well, man, so cool. It's been fun getting to know you just prior to jumping on. I think we have a lot of commonalities in our personalities and things like that. And before we were talking about like what to focus this podcast interview on, I was telling you like our core entrepreneurs, anyone who are like the startup phase of a business to, you know, $10 to $20 million. And you brought something that was really fascinating, was just like, okay, these people are dealing with bigger fish, bigger people. It could be looking for bankers, other things. A lot of times you get in these power positions that are hard and you're trying to pitch something or create a deal or get a loan or get investor money or whatever the thing might be. And it can be hard. And you come from a different world of selling than I do. Like what I do is one-to-many, me in front of 1,000 people at a time. And there's ways we sell, but your structure is different. And there's a lot of similarities actually. When I read your book the first time, I was like, wow, that's interesting how many similarities of like how I look at selling one-to-many versus how you're doing it. But I'd love to go deep into that just to help our entrepreneurs who are in that situation where they're trying to move up the ladder and like to feel more confident, more comfortable, and know what to actually do.

100%. I think I've listened to a quick interview that you did with— I can't remember his name. He has like one letter in his name, like G or something like that, but a sales guy. And he's one-on-one and you're one-to-many. I'm kind of one-to-one, but at supersized. The guys I deal with run billion-dollar funds. They have $300 million. They come in with so much power. And before we get into that, I believe, and I'm interested in your reflection on it, that guy was very good at selling whoever you had on, Mr. G or G or—

Yeah, Danny G. Danny G, okay.

So, you know, he was very good at like selling directly to like couples and everything like that. You're good at one-to-many. You know, I'm, I'm okay at those, those big tickets, you know, million dollars, $300 million, whatever it is. I feel like whatever that wound— so like everybody got wounded at some point by money. And then a few of us overcorrected by like 9,000%. And that's what you're good at, right? By your overcorrection. I bet it— I bet if you interview the guys in sales and you look way back, And you go, what? Because I'm good at money, but as I told you, I don't care about it, right? I just love the W. And so what happened is I was in a company and we grew too rapidly, really before there was a lot of venture capital and there was no money. And so we went out and we had a great company. Today that company would've raised $50 million in a minute 'cause there's so much, but couldn't find money anywhere for a software company in like, 1991 because there wasn't a lot of venture capital and private equity. And ultimately, that created a wound in me that I couldn't find money for a good company. And then I just overcorrected by being great at walking into funds, kicking the door down, and saying, "No, you sit down. No, stop talking." And just getting frame control over them and getting the people who normally scare other people scared of me. And that is what I like to give the $10 and $15 million guys from being on the front lines of doing that, maybe to my own detriment many, many times. And I'll give you an example. I get on a— and everybody should start doing this immediately until everybody's doing it, it doesn't work anymore. But I get on the phone with billionaires or guys managing billion-dollar funds all the time. Guess what they do every single time? They come late, right? Why? Because they can't, they're busy, um, because they can, because, you know, they're packed too much stuff in their day, whatever the case is. They always come, you know, so I'm looking for $10 million and they're running a $300 million or $3 billion fund or they're a $3 billion— you can guarantee they will come late. 3 minutes late, 5 minutes late, 8 minutes late, whatever it is. I always go, John, are you here for the 10:07 call? You want me to catch you up on what has happened up to now? And every single executive, banker, private equity guy, money manager in America knows the value of time. It's the value system that we are all in alignment with. So when you call them out on the inability to be professional with time, they will always say, I'm sorry. So that is the right way to start a call. You know, if you're a $10 million guy talking to a $300 million guy with them apologizing to you, because what happens is, as you know from the book, there's this status imbalance. And I don't know how status works in the selling that you do. You sort of have a very humble, you got your Unabomber sweatshirt on and everything. But in the environments that I go into, it is critical to lower the status of the fund, the high net worth guy, the big guy coming in late shooting big guns, because nobody's gonna buy from you when they feel like they are higher status than you are. So I think what a lot of people do is they focus on raising their own status. But that is folly because you haven't been in that environment. You're walking into a bank, you're walking into a private equity group, you're dealing with venture capital, you're just dealing with a Mark Cuban high net worth individual. Rather than trying to make yourself look good in an environment that you're not familiar with, like imagine you and I going to a Katana nightclub in Los Angeles like tonight. Friday night, right? We're just like two, you know, 45-plus-year-old guys walking in there, right? And there's just— there's no way we're going to, you know, get into cool, right? Because it's just— we're not going to— we're not going to figure out that environment and be cool in that environment. And that's the same challenge. You're not going to make your stuff look good in an environment or in a situation you have no experience in. So rather than raising your status, lower theirs. And it's easy to do. A lot of—

so a lot of times—

so I'll do it on time. A lot of times the billion-dollar guy will come on the phone and I'll go— he's like, hey, yeah, sorry, I'm a few minutes late. I'm like, okay. And the first thing I'll say is, I'm confused. The things I see on your website are really confusing for all the things you said in the email. And so I'm here to try and reconcile what I see, uh, on the website and what you're saying in media, because I'm confused. And billionaires hate that, right, when they're sending out confusing messages about their business. So I'll always find something where they're out of integrity or out of their value system. I'll say, look, uh, you know, I saw— perfect example, uh, Luke Nosek at Founders Fund. Right. So Founders Fund— I'll give you a better example. Uh, I want to try and answer your question. I'll try and land the plane here. Guy Kawasaki ran a small venture firm in Silicon Valley called Garage Ventures, and we go there to pitch a deal with one of my clients, and he goes, really, I really like this company, you know, it's amazing, uh, would be very interested in it, but, you know, we'd like to see the revenue more seasoned. We'd like to see faster scaling in the, you know, in the customer growth. We'd like to see more seasoning in the management team. Like to see just a little bit more of a mature business before we could get involved. And I go, it's literally called Garage Ventures. Change your name, okay? Do not have my client drive here across town or fly up and talk to them. I'm out of integrity. It says Garage Ventures. If the client had scaling revenue, if they had more seasoned management team, if they had predictable user growth, it wouldn't be here. It'd be a goddamn Bank of America. All right, so name yourself correctly. Oh, I'm so sorry. Yeah, so, um, not to be angry, but I think the important thing is to have the courage to call out an imbalance in people's value system. They say one thing, do another, call it out. I'll give you one more example and turn it back over to you. And I want, you know, people running $5, $8, $10 million companies to be able to do this. You get on a call with investors or, you know, big partner or whatever. There's 2 or 3 of them on there. And ultimately there'll be one of them going like this, and I'll just go, who's that guy? And they go, that's our CFO. I go, listen, are you guys able— we're— this call is 20 minutes long. Are you able to focus on this call for 20 minutes? All right, um, because, because it's one thing my, my 11-year-old knows, my 12-year-old knows, is people are on their best behavior in the first meeting because they're trying to attract you. We're trying to attract them, right? And, and I go, um, if you guys can't come to the call authentically interested, listening with people, uh, that are focused for 20 minutes, I don't even know how to start a relationship with you. Teach me how to work with you. And two things will happen if it's authentic. They will know, like, yeah, you don't come to a call and start texting on a serious financial discussion. And they will go, "I'm sorry, right? Let's just all focus. We had a call, we're closing a deal, we're a little bit distracted, but let's focus now." Or they'll say, "What's the big deal? That's sort of normal course of business." And now you know. Not people that care enough to say, we booked a 20-minute call, 3 of us are here, we're going to listen and focus. And it's just— there's just not a deal here. And so these are the things, um, that, uh, are, are less top of funnel, but I would call, um, just above mid-funnel, right? So you pitch, you get somebody in, have a conversation with them And then you've got to get some status balance where they don't perceive themselves to be more important, more valuable, more cashed up, and more powerful than you. Does that make sense?

Yeah, 100%. It's really interesting because we do the one-minute selling. We talk a lot, same, a lot about status and how, you know, when you're even when you're selling something from stage and you got people, you know, by default of them buying something, their status is going to go down, but they're hoping for increased status later. Right. So it's like we're using that in the buying process. Like one-to-many a lot of times, and try to figure out how to keep that status profile so that they, by investing, they're not feeling like a decrease in status. They're feeling like there's a temporary decrease, my bank account goes down, but the potential increase in status is worth it. Therefore, I'm gonna, you know, I'm willing to invest in this thing and try to buy the stuff. But I've never thought about it from like a negotiation standpoint. And I think what you said is dead right. It's harder to increase your own status other than you bragging about yourself, which is, never like a nice thing. I can't stand if people come on like, let me tell you how great I am, versus that way is a sneaky, like a backdoor I've never thought about, is like to decrease and try to level out the status from there. Does it typically happen like a one-time thing? Is this something like as you're doing multiple calls and meetings, like you re— you're resetting this continually? Or is it the first one kind of set the tone for the, the relationship usually?

So what happens is, uh, I think I repeat it until it's under control. Now you can go the other way. You can raise your own status, right? And I'll give you a couple of ways I do that. I go, hey guys, welcome. By the way, so I have to deal with a lot of people just don't know, haven't read Pitch Anything, don't know, aren't online and everything like that. And they're now, well, now today, everybody's like, wait, are you Warren Clough? So I'll get a lot of that. We're just on a call. So I will go, hey, Hey Russell, good news. You can go home today and tell your family that you met a genuine C-level celebrity. And they'll like that. And then I'll go, listen, I'm going to walk you through this really quickly. You know, just, you know, understand, I want you to understand we had this big bay door just recently installed here so my ego could fit in the door, right? And so I'm going to walk you through this. I'm going to give you an opportunity to reflect. And at the end of the call, we're going to decide, is this, you know, are we a good fit for each other or is it hail fellow well met? And by the way, if I can get to that in 3 minutes, great. If it takes a full 20, you know, that'll be a long time. Are you ready to roll? So that you could get there where you, you do raise your status above people. That, but you have to let them know you, the people, you have to let them know you're in the hands of a professional. I do this all the time, right? You are now at Disneyland. You bought a ticket, right? You're going to see the exhibits. At the end of the day, there's, you know, I'll tell you when you're at lunch, you know, when lunchtime, you'll, you'll buy a, you know, $18 bottle of water, a $26 hot dog, and that's how it goes. And you're in the hands of a professional on a professional tour. You know, like, uh, have you been to Universal Studios? You know, shark jumps out, like, uh, you know, and, uh, and you're on the tour. I'm the guide. I'll let you know when the tour is over and where the tip jar is. Are you ready? We're going to begin now. So it's okay to raise your status if there's a sense that you're in the hands of a professional. If you are a beginner and feeling your way through it and everything, then you got to pull them down to where you are. But the middle ground is the worst. I'd love to hear your opinion on that. I'm getting a little bit more, but like, either pull them down or you go up, but to just leave this, the status quo or this gap. I really love photography. And for me, you're either zoomed in super close and capturing people's face, or you're zoomed out and capturing the environment. But like these mid-shots where it's like, you know, there's people and it's just, it's nothing. So you're either all in on your status or you're pulling them down. But the gap in the middle to me is a no man's land.

Yeah, I feel that on— I'm not someone who usually does negotiation. You know, I put my team to do that, but people eventually get through gatekeepers to me and I'm feeling it from that side where You can, you know, on my side, within 20 seconds or so, the decision's been made. You know what I mean? And it's interesting because a lot of times it is that, or I'm like, in fact, I remember the very first time I'd moved to a new area and I went to church the first time and this guy came to me and he was like a financial planner. And he was like, he knew I was successful. And so of course he wants me to invest. And within talking to him for 2 or 3 minutes, I was like, I'm not going to give my money to a financial planner who makes less money than me. He tried for months to try to, I was just like, you haven't managed your own money to get the spot where, you know what I mean? And it's like, I had that really, really quickly thing where had he come in and figured out a way to position it correctly or to get the status where even if it's not his, maybe it's his client's, some other version, it would've opened the, it probably could reopen the door, kept the door from shutting versus very quickly I was just like, there's a mismatch here. And like, I work with people that, that work with different people. You know what I mean? Anyway, it's interesting.

Yeah. Yeah. So, the status is so important that there has to be that alignment that you guys are on the same level. What happens is— I don't want to get too much into evolutionary biology, but when somebody feels they have more power than you— and this is why I'm so keyed in on power, right? I'm not keyed in on getting my own power. My joy is taking power away from people so we are on a level playing field. And that's what wrestling does, right? It strips you. That's what sports does. You know, when you go to a college campus, it's amazing because everything outside of the campus— you know, I grew up on a University of Illinois, as I said, University of Wisconsin, University of Delaware, and, and When you go on a college campus, especially in the sports part, all the society stuff strips away and there's just a purity of academia and sports. The commercialism and the financial purposes fall away and you're just there for the competition and the relationship and the purity of it. I feel like that's what I enjoy is taking the power away from the other side and now we're on a level playing field and we can actually talk about the business without the social overlay. So I want to take that away from people so they don't have it to use. I'll give you an example. A good investor of mine was in a big negotiation, $30 million contract, right? They— everybody signed off on it. I have this, this, this archetype. I like to name all the archetypes in deals, right? And I have this type called the final boss. If anybody's played video games, Right? So you're playing a video game and you're like, "Oh yeah, I'm on level 30. Like, I'm really winning. I might even get to the end of the game." And then like, out comes Shiva. He just throws like 19 fireballs, you know, 11 of them hit you and you're like, "What? I just lost like 1,000 lives in 1 second. It took me 2 years to build up. Like, that is not fair." You know, the final boss and, you know, in video games, you're like playing that level you know, over and over and over. So the final boss will always come out. So they're in this $30 million deal. And the final boss comes out, they've got, you know, a letter of intent, they've got a definitive agreement, everything gets signed up, the final boss that— and this archetype, the final boss, you never heard of him. Nobody ever mentioned him before, you know, he's hiding behind the door. And all of a sudden, hey, what's going on here?

I gotta sell that guy now. We've been doing this for a long time.

What do you mean, what's going on here? He's like, yeah, I'm like CEO of the company, you know, uh, you know, I'm the founder, right? And like, so, so, um, yeah, we, in order to do this contract, you know, we would need 15% off. And so my buddy calls me like, what do we do? Like the founder, we didn't even know existed, you know, I didn't know his name. He just showed up and he's asking for a 15% discount. And so they go, we have to do it. Like we need this contract. I go, go back in there and this is the playbook. You say, you know, whatever, Herman, look, I understand like this, this goofy thing works for you. You come in the last minute, we need 15% off. There's a couple of things going on here. It works. It's goofy. You've made a lot of money in the past, right? But like, we've been working with your team for 8 weeks. We have 60 hours in this contract. We negotiate, everything's ready to go. So one of two things is happening here. One, this is a goofy thing you do, it usually works, it's not working here, okay? There's no 15% discount, you want 3% off, whatever. Or this is the real you and you actually show up at the last minute and demand, with nobody even having met you or talked to you before, 15% off. Um, because we're— and if that is, we're out of here because We will— it— we will see that all the time, and this is who you really are, and we would never work with somebody who believes that's the right way to do business. Which is it? And that takes all their power away, because if they come back and go— right, it is a riskless move, because if they go, this is us We will, we will show up at the last minute, ask for 15% off, constantly negotiating, ankle-biting you, and be, be a pestilence on the margin of your business, then you know these wallets— and I can sell this account, it's a horrible account to have to live with. If the account tells you, I am a horrible account, to your face, you have to believe them. And so this is how you strip people's power away, is you, you create this nakedness in which you say you are either this or you are this, and you have to tell me which one it is. And you can literally say— and here's the line that will lean you into this— Yogi Berra said, when you come to a fork in the road, take it. And this is that fork in the road. You are going to tell us who you really are, and then we're going to make a decision if we're going to provide this value, this account, this deal, you know, this whatever to you. And that is the ultimate transition, is when, when you let them know, based on something they're going to tell you about their integrity, their values, you are now going to make a decision about them. Does that make sense? Yeah. In any way?

That's so fascinating.

Huh.

You're basically putting them in a— not a corner, but like, yeah, the two options, and both are good for you. Uh, only one ends up being good for them.

Here's a great one. I think there's, there's two such easy lines in this high stakes one. So the stakes is important. The problem with guys at $5, $6, $8, $10 million is they don't raise the stakes high enough. When the stakes aren't high enough— we were talking about consequences, you know, a proxy for stakes— when the stakes aren't high enough no decision is going to be made, and they're going to go, hey, yeah, this is really interesting, I'm going to show it up, you know, to my partner, the team, uh, we'll take a look at it, get back to you if we have any questions, and then they're gone, right? You haven't been able to set another— oh well, we should set another meeting, yeah, we'll get back to you, we're not really ready to set a meeting right now, I'll show it to the committee, um, we'll get back to you, and then you're just— are you, you know, uh, checking for an update, checking in, wanting to do another call, like you have no control. So your job is to raise the stakes high enough where you can authentically say, you know, kiss or kill. Let's figure out whether we should move. You don't have to sign the contract or do the deal or whatever, but is there enough here where we're going to move to the next step? Or hail fellow well met, should we let each other go? And if you— if there's status alignment, if you have value, if they have a problem and you've correctly made them feel the pain, then they're not— and you're a, a high-functioning, high-processing person— they're not going to want to let you go. So, so what, what you want them to feel is like, listen, Russell, You have this problem. I didn't create this problem. We, we don't have the problem you have over here. We solve it. And it's not just that you have it, you have it kind of as bad as it can get. So if it gets any worse under your direction or whoever's helping you, even we would not want to help you out. Too hard, too high friction, too high cost. So you're sort of at this teetering edge where we would even consider helping you. Let's figure out in this last dying glimmer of hope that you have that you could get someone like us to help you out if it makes sense for me to jump in and fix all these problems that you have created for yourself. And, and that's where they need to get to So, so, you know, and that's how you get the stakes. So now you can say, um, you know, a decision is being made in this meeting to either take one more step forward or to knock off. And, and you get— you, you got to get there. And that decision shouldn't be a 50-50 flip of the coin. It should really be that if they choose to go away, it's because, uh, you were in control of that decision.. And that is really the right thing to have happen. And also, I'm sure you've felt this in your own life, deals come back around just because, you know, it's like you let it go and it truly loved you. It will come back, like, whatever. It will come back, right? But if you hold your integrity and you hold your values and you hold your stakes high and it goes away, they will cogitate on it. And they will come back around, right? And, and so that's what I mean by, you know, raising the stakes and making somebody choose a path forward.

It's interesting too, because coming back, we talked about earlier, right, the final boss is coming in with this increased status to be able to come back and, and, you know, force you to go do the thing, and you're switching it back around and be like, if you do this, you just decrease your status directly, uh, or, you know, so it's, it's, uh It's interesting. Do you look at all the negotiations through that status inbound? Is that the core thing that you're doing throughout? I mean, I know there's a lot of other stuff, but it's such a fascinating thing.

I started going down this road, um, evolutionary. If somebody feels they are higher status than you, have more power, a couple things happen. One, they only see you at a surface level. Number two, they take risks around you they would not take with someone of their own position and status. And number 3, they— so see you at a surface level, they take risks around you, and they really are sort of negotiate, you know, or they sort of, they operate from this, you never get anything you don't ask for, right? And so they ask and ask and ask. And, you know, even if, even if they watch you go down to where they know you have no margin, it's okay with them, right? You and I as colleagues or same status, I would have no joy if we did a deal together, we did a conference together, we did a book together, whatever, if I made all the money and you made none, right? It would bring me no joy. But when somebody feels more powerful than you, they take no effort to protect your position. So they're okay with it being the economics being hugely imbalanced. And so that's why you have to correct the status. They see you at a surface level. They don't care about your family, your depth, your company, you know, whatever. It's purely transactional. They take risks around you they wouldn't take, and they are, you know, again, purely transactional. They don't care if they make $100 and you make zero. When I say they'll take risks around you, it's as simple as, you know, they're just You know, if you see somebody checking their phone while you're in a meeting with them, right, that is a risky behavior. Because if you walked into Bank of America to get a $100 million financing, you know, and we're meeting with the committee that determines financing, and they're sitting there and asking you some questions, you're not going, "Hold on, I'm doing a couple's massage later. I just wanted to see if they have time available." You're like, oh, I'm so sorry. You're like, figuring out how to turn your phone off, right? So that's what I mean, they would take risks around you, right? It's not slapping you on the butt and saying, hey, you know, but they, that is why you need that status balance between you so they don't have this evolutionary sort of power surge over you. That's cool.

Do you have a training where you go through all the different archetypes of all the different people in the deals? You have me curious now with the final boss. What are the rest of them?

Yes, I do. So, so there, I'll tell you some of the other archetypes that are in every deal, right? It's the conciliatory, you know, the guy who doesn't have a role. It's, it's most of the people listening here will know that person as the wife, right? Um, so, so, uh, a lot of times, you know, we'll hear, oh, you know, my wife, um, is an expert in this, but there's the third party who's not in the business. All right. And so the wife is a good proxy for that, but it's really like a real person. It's like the CPA or their best friend from college, right? And it's always somebody who has like a little overlap on your business, enough to be dangerous, has an opinion. So they'll bring that person in. And the reason that person is an archetype, the only way they can make themselves look good is by making you look bad, right? And so you've got to reframe that guy and get him out. And that's challenging because usually that's a personal relationship because they're not in the business, but it's like my buddy, my college buddy, my most trusted friend, you know, my— a guy I did a deal with, you know, whatever. Uh, so that's an archetype that always shows up. Another one is the analyst. The analyst As you can imagine, the analyst cannot rise within the organization by finding good things about the deal, right? That's— you're like, they're just doing their job. The only way they can rise in the organization is by finding bad things about the deal. So we talk about status. I think it's really interesting as you're doing a deal. I don't want to get too much into deal making. I know that's not, you know, really your topic. Entrepreneurs and guys at that $10 million company level, when they go to make a deal, there's an analyst, and so they know the most about the company or the subject. They'll answer the analyst questions. Then there'll be a chief marketing officer, whatever, on the other side. Who knows more about marketing than the $10 million founder? He'll answer these questions. Then there'll be a CFO. Who knows the spreadsheet and the financials and the bank better than You know, the founder. So he'll answer. So this guy's like Bugs Bunny, you know, running around playing every position, you know, like pitching the ball, batting the ball, outfielding the ball. Um, you don't look like a real organization when you're the one running around talking to the analyst, talking to the marketing guy, talking to the CFO, talking to the CEO, talking to the consigliere. So the, so the way to deal with that is You get your analyst, even if it's hired, even to borrow a position, to deal with their analyst and make that guy and tie him up, grapple him up and get him in a hold and just get high friction around that analyst so he's not rampantly running free in the deal trying to make himself feel better. Does that make sense? You've got the archetype of the analyst. When I say it doesn't make sense, I don't know. I don't have a chip to see how well you're understanding it. I get it. You're very experienced and you don't color with crayons. But I just— it's thinking. So, so there's the analyst, there's a conciliary, there's the final boss. Like, those are the— and then there's the law firm, right? And the law firm, uh, is— they're, they're, they're not trying to make themselves look good or bad. They're just trying to bill hours.

Yes, I know them.

So, so what will happen is the, the, the, uh, the worst thing in the world is to let your law firm and their law firm run one wild and free together, right? Because their— your law firm's goal is to take care of you, make sure you don't do a bad deal, get, you know, but their job is to bill hours, right? The, the law firm on the other side, who knows what control. So you can get a— you can get a $50,000 thing quickly hit $1 million in legal bills with the law firm. So the law firm is an archetype. They— what they want to do is they want to find issues that are non-issues and explore them, um, get a, get a legal wrapper around them. And so if you're a little bit inexperienced, your law firm's like, yeah, you know, compliance, uh, you know, compliance around hiring in California, you know, is an issue, and we should take a look at this in terms of the number of 1099 versus W-2 you have. You know, we should get an opinion over from you know, our HR, you're like, yeah, we better get an opinion on that. So the legal, the analyst, the final boss, the consigliere are like the 4 archetypes, you know, you're gonna hit in the deal. And so I think you have to look for those and go, how can I preframe and get ahead of these guys before, you know, you're What will happen, you know, Missile Command, in a deal, what will happen at some point, there's just too many things coming at you, right? You're trying to drop bombs on all of them in real time. And you're just like, ah, you know, I hit the reset, it wipes the screen. But they only let you hit that reset 3 times. After a while, you're hitting the reset and just the bombs keep coming and you lose all your cities. And the deal's over. So you want to figure out who these characters are ahead of time and get, get a dome, you know, get a dome over them.

As quick as you can. So cool. So fascinating. This has been a fun conversation, man. Way different than I think I was expecting and super fascinating.

So hopefully I'd be unhelpful. Like I want to— like I said, I want to be helpful to people who are facing these things. I'm gonna like— like, maybe, you know, um, I guess the quick takeaway is you should definitely try— sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I wanted to— you should definitely try when these guys show up late You go, "Hey, Jim, are you here for the 10:07 call?" Your instincts will be like, "I have never said anything so rude in my life." But what will happen is this is the only thing you'll hear. "I'm sorry, right? I had whatever reason." And you go, "All right, let's get it going now." So try that. It's amazing. And you'll start to feel the play of status, the shift, uh, the play in status with, uh, with people. And then definitely hold people accountable for their weird behaviors they should not be having, um, you know, bringing to the table. A lot of times I'll do that with their background on the Zoom call because my background, like I have a $2 million, you know, investment in this place of a spaceship. Right. And I will, you know, and there's a, you know, a 40-foot LED wall, you know, so if I go here, my laptop to wall, there you are. Oh, there is a 40-foot LED wall there. And so, you know, have enough— what happened, you know, have enough status there when they have a weird background, you know, if it's a fund or a big business you're doing, like, where, where are— are you calling me from a coffee shop? Like, seriously, do you want to— you should— how about we just reschedule? Oh, car calls. If you're in your office and they're taking the call from their car, don't do it. Just go, are you in your car? Right? It's like, why don't we reschedule to a time where you're in your office, I'm in my office, and we can talk seriously? Another one I just strongly recommend you try it. Anybody listening to this can, can do that. Why would you do that? Just run your numbers. Like how many calls with people in a car have actually— I mean, I would ask this to you— have gone somewhere?

Rarely, if ever. And I think about when I take calls in the car, it's usually not someone that's not as serious either. I'm like, oh yeah, are you in the car right now?

Hey, well, gotta go.

I'll follow up with you, I promise.

My favorite thing to do is if that becomes an issue and I'm in the car, I just go, I'm on a landline. And then I can see you're in a car and they're like, you are? Hey man, are you paying attention? I'm in my car. And I just said I'm on a landline and you asked me, are you? Like, oh, you think there's like a 40-mile fiber optic cable dragging? Like, what is going on here, right? Let's try and get you to focus. And so that is what I'm saying, like, call out the little behaviors that show that this is not serious. I don't want to have this spin off in a direction that's not helpful for your people, but start to notice that status imbalance. Start to notice the little behaviors that show this is not a serious call. I would just add one thing that's very different from, I think, my business and yours. I feel like I'm talking over you now. Is just sparking in my head. So in my business, we talk to people who, um, to raise money. So they're on the other side going, we have money. If you're in an $8 million, $10 million, $15 million business and you're talking to people about money, they don't have— 8 out of 10 people don't have any money, but they will say that they do. Because when you walk I would say this, like, um, uh, um, let's see. So I'm gonna ask you, um, what you do, and you're gonna say you're a fireman. Okay. Hey Russell, what do you do?

I'm a fireman.

Oh really? What, um, um, what municipality are you in?

In Boise.

Oh, Boise. Okay. Do you, um, you drive the truck? You're in dispatch? Like, are you in search and rescue? Or like, do you have a dog?

What, what Search and rescue, that sounds cool.

Yeah, what's your engine number? 43. Yeah, so you're like looking up into the left, you have no idea, right? So if you say you're a fireman, or you say you're a policeman, or you say you're a college professor, there's breadcrumbs that I can follow just as a layman, you know, really far back, right? So now go ahead and go and ask me what I do.

Oren, what do you do?

I'm a fund manager.

Oh, how big is your fund?

$500 million.

Okay. What's the last 3 deals you did?

Uh, you know, we're working on some stuff. Um, this is a continuation fund, uh, that we're doing. So, you know, um, I was at Yahoo for a while and we did some stuff there. And, uh, you know, this is a, this is a new fund that we're establishing. We're doing some AI, uh, things, you know, and we expect a 46% IRR for our next 5 years.

Okay. So there's $500 million you actually have in the fund now. That's what you're projecting to try to grow to?

Yeah, I mean, we have it, you know, we've got, we've got an investor base, um, that's committed.

Do you want to write me a check for half of that?

I'm just kidding. Right, it's like you don't, like, like you don't know how to interrogate. So what you have is all these, uh, you know, you have, uh, do you know Bridger? Yeah, yeah. So Bridger, you know, Bridger and I, I'm guilty of it, are training, you know, these legions of people to run around going I'm a fund manager. To your point, they haven't raised— You see, I brushed off that question so easily.

Where's your money? They're committed. They're committed.

They're committed. So you have these legions of people running around going, "I'm an investor. I have a fund." Why? Because they get into the good rooms for free. They get the free IPAs, the free shrimp, the wine, the invites to the thing. They talk to serious people. And they're just circulating in that world really having no money. So, as you're talking to people, there's just 8 out of 10 people we talked about money are in the process of raising money, feel like they didn't have access money because what they'll do is they'll take your deal, they'll package it with some other deals, and they'll go, "Hey," and they'll go try and then promote themselves to some money to try and really be a broker. But they won't say, "I'm a broker." They'll say, "I have a fund." And so the status— the importance of status is to break through that and call people out who are saying, "We have money," when they don't. And so that's why you have to be good at this, is to get through the facade that people are portraying. I'm sure that's a lot of your work, one-to-many as well. You know, it's getting through this facade that people are projecting behind it and see what's really going on. So in fact, my close is as complicated as pitch anything is, and the stuff we talked about are really simple, right? Which is, Russell, you can tell me what's really going on there. The other one is once you can get past there and you sense it, like there's really the, you know, the ability to do a transaction, the only close that I have is this, which is, what should we be doing together? And that's it. And if you get this far down the road, they will tell you. So the, the close is not, are you in, um, the, the, um You know, can I get the contract over to you? The close is, what should we be doing together? And then they'll go, what's next? What's next step? So it's— if you do all the pre-work and the framing and get the status right, get the stakes high, get the choices correct, then the close is so simple in my experience.

I love it, man. That was really— that was a masterclass on all that stuff. I love it.

I hope there's enough— you know, I hope there's enough morsels there that people can actually just go on and try that. Nobody's gonna spit in your face. Nobody's gonna say, what are you talking about? Just start to play with it. And you'll go— Peter, I've taught this to Peter, and he'd come back giddy. He's like, it worked. Because people are people. Yeah.

If people want to like learn more from you, or like what's the best place— books or podcasts— what's best place to plug in for people to study with you and learn more?

If you really want to get good at all this stuff, go to russellbronson.com. That's the guy who really knows what he's doing. Thank you. If that site is down not take any more subscribers. Then go to Tony Robbins. If Tony Robbins is down, then go, damn it, I'm going to have to go to my third choice and go to orenkleff.com. Orenkleff.com. Yeah, that's it. Hey, I know you had a 15-minute time limit and we went over, but thank you for—

No worries, man. It's so good to get to know you better. And learn from you. So I, I really enjoy the time. So it's a great way to lead into the weekend. I appreciate it.