F*ck the Slides – Creating A Winning Pitch Using Storytelling with Nir Zavaro

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This thing's only 1500amonth. Check it out. Scalingcoach.com all right, welcome to the show. Near Zavaro, Nears normally lives in Israel, in Tel Aviv or are you live in Tel Aviv normally or. Yeah, right. Well, it could be Ashkelon Petakva, like, whatever. Right. But so. And we've known each other for a little bit. We were together last year in Greece in Santorini for a big EO event. And I did a scaling up webinar for the EO Israel chapter. And I love what his book is all about. He joins us today from Sofia, Bulgaria, where he is out working with European media on kind of his book tour. And it's got to be an awkward thing to be away from Israel at a time of crisis like this.

Yeah, it feels like you're not part of the story. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I, you know, my brother was born in Jerusalem. My family immigrated there, so I have a deep connection to the feeling. I did my bar mitzvah in Israel, so I have a profound feeling of the crisis of it. But I also had friends who were Palestinian and Israeli Arabs and, and I understand the. The, like the long struggle and. And all of the complex politics of the region. Right. So it's. It's intense to be in a crisis like nothing like this. So that's a heavy place to talk about. We're here to talk about your book f the slides. And it's about the power of storytelling. And I've seen this again and again. People get up there and they. They read off their boring ass slides, bullet after bullet. They read it to you and like, you know, to give away the core of it, let you tell the story. But why don't you talk to us first about where this all got started for you and like the beginning of it all in your friend from Dublin.

Yeah. I think I've always loved sales in stories. I've written two novels of. I don't know. I write every single day. And selling has a lot to do with the craft of what story you tell. How do you plant an idea in someone's head and in the end and see, wow, I came up with this. So I, I'm so happy I made that decision. And someone's always been fascinated by this and then writing and so on. I remember in 2018, I went to. I was in Dublin. We were standing in a bar. There was an event. Funny enough, it was a leadership event on how to mentor your employees, how to become a better mentor. And at the time, my first employee and I, he's been with me for years. We've had. We started to argue like a married couple about everything. And it wasn't working and I couldn't figure out what. And then someone thought, you know, there's a mentorship, a Mentorship. I said, yeah, sure. I bought the ticket, I flew. Fourteen hours later, I'm there. They van. They teach us everything, by the way. What I realized is we needed to break up. Until this day, we're very close friends. His business this year, I think would be bigger than mine, I'm not mistaken. And revenue. So I'm very, very happy about the idea of the decision to say, I don't know what to do, find other people to help. Was the last night of that event, and Brian Keegan, your member from Dublin, and I are standing there and he had this funny interaction with his wife the whole couple of days. And I said, listen, Brian, you mind if I ask, how did you guys meet? What's the story? He says, ah, it's a great story. And he has this Irish way of telling stories. And slowly people are standing, gathering together with a pint. And at the end, I said, that's such an amazing story. And I believe that every EO member and every person on the planet has some story that is unique to them that I would love to here. That took me on a big journey that year. I visited 19 cities in 30 days around Europe every day, meeting EO members, giving them a talk about my journey, teaching them a little bit about fundamentals of storytelling and collecting their stories. And that's amazing things. And I haven't stopped since.

Yeah, it's. I, I love that. Now, Brian, I should tell listeners, viewers is also a scaling up coach. He's a good friend. He likes to tease me for the show and the music and the things like that. So we have a good. But I haven't yet spent time with him in Dublin. So I, I. Last time I saw him here was in Westchester, I think.

So anyway, by the way, the last time I visited him in Dublin, we did it during. I think it was. Twice in 2018, and one of them was St. Patrick's oh, if you want to have a once in a lifetime experience, go to Dublin and St Patrick's aha.

That's a. I, Yeah. I don't know what that's like. When I think of epic St. Patrick's things, I think of like Chicago and dying, the river green and a lot of people drunkenly marching around the streets.

Yeah, yeah.

You shared another story as we got ready about a guy in Lisbon whose slides went wrong. I think that's a great place to do because I've watched people and I've had a moment of panic where some of my elements weren't there. And then I'm like, oh, what am I gonna do?

I don't know if you know this. It took me two years to write the book, finish the first version, and we looked at it, we said, yeah, it's not good. The concepts are good, but the book is not good. And then I say, okay, I need to revisit everything.

Yeah.

And one of the key understandings were that the fundamentals are good. But it's not necessarily only for startups. It might be for students, salespeople for meetings, for a lot of stuff. But could be I was trying to write it for everything and ended up with a group, nothing. Yeah. And I was a bit frustrated. And then we went to Web Summit in Lisbon, and I've been asked to emcee some of the events. Was standing there. First company go, they go on stage, they pitch, it's okay, average, like everyone else. Second group goes, presents. It's okay, it's average. The sec, the third one goes on stage and they made a mistake and they showed slides of the fourth group. The guy freezes, he panics. And the. The technician says, hey, we need to fix it. Go back on stage, say something. The only problem is, I thought I was going to launch the book. So I go back on stage, my T shirt is red, and it says in white F the slides. And I go, hey, so we're having a technical difficulty here. But you know what they say? If the slides just like 300 people cracking up. And I tell him, listen, if you keep going without the slides, I'll make sure you get extra points.

Huh?

And it made him even more stressful. Yeah.

Yeah.

And two minutes later, they fix it. He does his pitch. He comes back afterwards. He comes to me and says, thank you very much and everything. And I tell him, listen, never rely on your slides. They're the bonus. They're not the basics for everything. You, my friend, on the presentation. And I think that was the moment where I started telling people, you are the presentation. Yeah.

You know, it's funny, like, when you get something really well prepared and organized, like you don't necessarily need the slides, you know, your points, you know, the order, that kind of thing. And there are tricks for doing it. But I remember I was in a corporate job early in my career, and. And I was doing the slides again, and I had somebody. I had a great. Well, I had a great, but not great boss. Very difficult character, but a brilliant speaker and charismatic and that kind of thing. He said, listen, take everything, like, do your slides as you do them, then take everything off it and leave like seven words, one word. Like just. Or a picture or a graph. Like, take it all and put that down into the speaker notes. And. And I remember watching years later watching Steve Jobs talk and he would throw up. Like one word would be on there or one picture or something like that. I'm like, that is great. So the slides are a reminder, They're a background, they're a vehicle. But I'm going to tell the story and I know already the sequence of it and I've memorized what comes when. So if the slides don't work, I can do it. But it sure is nice to click through it and just tell the next story and tell the next story and tell the next story.

Right. Like so let's take it one more level, if that's okay with you. We became so reliant on slides. By the way, when I work with startups, they must have slides. The reason why it's called F the slide was because no matter what I did with startups, prepping them to demo for demo day, they would fix the slides and come back. It was still bad. Yeah, come back. Still bad. And then I said, you know what? No slides. No, forget the slides. If the slides now, what do we have? Nothing. Now the problem became for us that especially in corporate and when we go to meetings or stuff like that, we rely on the slides. So we'll open the PowerPoint, we'll do the competition, the need. And so we all know that there's a problem, there's a solution. This is my needle mass. This is how much money I need. This is my time. The problem is that this is all about information.

Yeah. No feeling, no hook, no story.

That. But that becomes we. It's more than our crutch. It becomes the spine of everything we will talk about. If I take away the spine, everything else crumbles. Now, if instead we understand that you, my friend, are the presentation, then what does it mean? We need the spine to be what we say, the text. Why is that? Because even now, when you and I are speaking, about 93% is the non verbal communication. But in order to define the spine, that's the 7%. That's the verbal communication. If this is not written, I don't know when I want to be happy, excited, when I'm sad. I don't know if I don't know how to build everything on top of the spine of the text, what happens is I cannot control the audience. Steve Jobs was amazing. You and I, we both know. Amazing speaker. We're in. You and Outside, they're gifted, they're talented, some of them are amazing actors. They're able to learn. They have keynote talks. They're unbelievable. Take them out of that. They're okay. Yeah. I think the main, main key is once we understand that the text is the spine and without that, then what happens? Most people will say I'm not a good storyteller, right?

Yeah.

That's not true. You and I both know what it means to improve. You work with companies and you take them from point A to point B. Doesn't mean there are bad CEOs, right? Yeah. But using your abilities, your techniques, scaling up method and everything from A to B is almost exponential. And the example I give in the book is when I run, I will never win a competition. I will never win the 10k marathon. What happened? I started running from 300 meters to 500 to 10k and then improving my time. I run five times a week. The improvement was exponential. The mistake we made is that we are still calling storytelling a soft skill instead of a must skill. We do it all day, yet we practice the least. This is the skill we practice the least.

I had a teacher coach some years ago and he worked with me about in particular how to be a better speaker. And he recommended a book to me one day. Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln. And. And it's from an old speechwriter, James Humes, for the Nixon administration. And there's a lot of dated references and things in it, but the core idea that I got from it is really the hook. Like using something to grab people's attention right at the beginning. And so in like storytelling and pitching a business or whatever, often opening with a crisis or a problem, a moment of conflict, like a decision point, like opening in the middle of the story, can be a really useful thing. I. I gave a talk at a EO regional conference some years ago. 4, 500 people in the room. And I walked to the front and I said in. In 2005, I got a call from the emergency room that my dad had tried to kill himself. And the room got quiet and everybody leaned in, right? Because I was going to tell you about my dad's decline and eventual death. People like, oh shit, this is a business conference, right? It got real. And then from that I got booked like 35 things around the world to talk about dealing with crisis and navigating through it. But I opened with a powerful hook right in the middle. And then I shared a story. The story wasn't talking about the mental health and that thing. It was Sharing about, look, here's what happened to my dad and how I dealt with it. So there were details, there were pictures. I let some feeling come out in it. I wasn't afraid to be upset, you know, every time there's a little bit of upset and feeling every time I talk about that whole thing. But feelings, details, right? You talk about this in the book. The need to bring in some actual information and not speak about it in a remote detached way. But that it for some cultures is really hard to do, to let some feelings show.

So people are people all over the world, by the way, when they found the last tribe in the Amazon river, they interacted exactly the same. The six basic facial expressions. They understand smile, sadness, disgust and so on. There's a claim that now we have some expressions and so. But the concept remains the same. We understand these things. What happens to us today as the modern people as we try and communicate with the information. I need to give you as much information because I'm gonna ask you for something in reality that gets me to shut down. Yeah, too much information, I opt out. It's not interesting. I opt out. I don't feel anything. I. Why do I care? Yeah, that's your story. That's great. I have nothing to do with it. Yeah, I believe that the concept should be exactly the opposite. You know, I used to sell snowboards in Israel, okay? 30 degrees outside, flip flops and shorts. And people come to buy a thousand twelve hundred dollar snowboard. Everybody's in flip flops, okay? I'm not selling you a snowboard. There are one hundred and twenty different types of snowboards. They all look the same except for the graphic. It means nothing to you if you buy 500 or $1,000 means nothing. I need to make sure that I give you the right information at the right time when you need to make the decision. But everything before that has nothing to do with the snowboard or the cost. We interact first and foremost through the emotions that we convey when we tell a story. And if I tell you, you won't believe what a night we had last Friday. Next time you say, you know what, I also want to join, right Then eventually the first thing. So if we do not understand how we interact first and foremost with the emotions and the feelings, it's very hard to define if the session was good or not. So you go into a sales meeting, we finish the sales meeting. I ask you, so Bill, how did it go? And you say, yeah, think I went well. How are you measuring this to subjective feeling? Why didn't we define all the KPIs for that meeting before every paragraph? What do they need to understand and how do they need to feel about it? Secondly, if you think about it, we. How do we understand things from experience? If I will tell people about the time that you and I met in Santorini in a conference, every person now that's listening or watching this imagines the conference, the last conference or the conference they like that they attended because they don't allow. So if I'll tell anyone, I went to a bar, I went to a club one time. I had so an example for that we used to. I worked with a startup that helps airlines lose less luggage. Going into a demo day with 60 investors. For most people, this is not a very sexy, let's say industry. But if I tell you that time that you stood in front of the belt waiting for your luggage and you see, oh, that's my luck. No, it's not. My this look. No, it's not. They lost, they lost. I'm gonna be late. I lost. No, it's coming. And when you find that luggage, the joy, every person and you're now nodding every time I do this, people nod because you are now standing in front of that belt. It was such an easy thing to take you there now so you can understand from your experience. And another thing is we don't need to give you all the information. I didn't tell you the airport or the luggage. I didn't tell anything about the startup yet. But you're like, yeah, how are they going to solve it? I don't want to lose my luggage again. So the third thing, if we have emotions and experiences, the third thing is we are able to fill in the gaps. You go into a sales meeting, you try and throw at your client everything. They don't need everything, they just need enough to fill in the gaps. And the example I always give is I written novels. What's a novel? At the end of the day, it's a white piece of paper and black ink. When I sold my first novel, I didn't have any money. I would ride my bicycle that I lent for my brother in law in Tel Aviv. I printed books and told the printing manufacturer, don't deposit the checks, I don't have money, I will come back. And I'm going and imagine I meet you in the middle of the street in Tel Aviv and I'm like, hey Bill, I just published my first book. And like, oh, that's not. Yeah, 50 shaker. And that's how I sold the first 200. And the other 300 I sold as a gift for the Jewish New Year for bars. I knew all the bar owners, and they bought the book as a gift. All the waitresses, waiters, bartenders got a book and a bottle of cheap wine. That's how I became famous for that book. Jewish New Year passes. And three or four days later, I meet a friend, and she says, oh, we got the book as a gift from the bar. I love the book. Thank you. It was amazing. You know chapter three, that place where you mentioned that coffee place, we go there all the time. And I said, that's great, but that's not the coffee shop. She says, what do you mean it's not a coffee shop? I said, no, it's not. And we started arguing, which I thought was very strange to stand in the middle of the street about a book I wrote. And she's explaining, it was the first time I realized once that was out, it wasn't mine anymore. Yeah, she sees. Yeah. So the audience is able to share.

In their mind the. The evocative. You tell the story about lost luggage. And I remember, oh, when I landed in Tel Aviv and my luggage was lost. And I go to the counter, and the woman can't help me. She's talking on the phone to her friend, and she's talking about her plans for later that night in the weekend. And I understand that because although I have this face and name, I speak a little Hebrew. And so I'm listening to her, and then after a while, I say in Hebrew, could you help us maybe? And she looks up at me, startled, like, busted. But by sharing a little detail, you talk about a coffee shop or a bar by saying a conference, by saying Santorini images, and things come up, and then the feelings, like, we can connect with the feelings. So, you know, if I share about my dad, your dad might be fine. You might have a great relationship. But you think about love for another person, and you think about loss and fear of loss, like, and the pain of losing someone in a crisis, right? All of that comes up, and then maybe that goes on to someone else, but it doesn't happen if you don't let a little feel show, if you don't share a few details. And I think in business, there's very often, like, we're afraid to show. Let any feeling come out. And then we also don't want to tell about details. So people say, well, I can't tell you about that company because it's private or whatever. That's my Client like, fine. So tell me about the female CEO of a Midwest manufacturing company. Right. And now I'm starting to create a picture. You could anonymize it a little bit, but share something.

Right. I'll take it into an interesting direction. Yesterday I was in Berlin for a workshop, and they're talking about their client that we used an example for one of their pitches, sales pitch. They need to present big companies, you know, every single one of their clients, you know. Yeah. And the same we started the pitch this and that, and I told him, do you know the story about Michael Schumacher and how he moved to Ferrari after he won two world championships? Look at me. They're like, no. And for two minutes, I tell them that story. And he looks at me and he says, we should have used that. So I don't need to know everything. What I know is something that will click, has a connection. It resonates. So basically, the emotional aspect, what you did with your father is in one sentence. We are able to have the same level, the whole room. And that meeting is now the same level.

Yeah.

Experience will allow me to project them into where I want. Yeah. And they will fill in the gaps. You know, the workshops I always do, a man walks into a bar, everybody. And then I ask questions. I'll never, never in my life if I've gotten the same story. And I've done this 400 times now, I think, and over 440 countries different. Lastly, if you imagine how many times. So you go to buy a car, you like the car, you like how it feels. Everything sounds good. You go home, you think about it, you discuss it with your spouse, and you say, no. But the mileage is good. This is good. The price is good. You know what? So basically, you use the last piece of the puzzle is the information you will convince yourself to buy. When we sold snowboards, I didn't need to sell you anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We were together on in the Alps in France. And the board is amazing. And you're cutting through the snow. The fact that it costs a thousand dollars is not relevant because how much would you pay for happiness? It's one week a year between you and I. Doesn't matter if it's 800 or a thousand. It doesn't. The best sale is a no. Say you will sell yourself. If the story is good enough, you will find a way to convince yourself that the information is good.

Yeah, you know, it's that there is that piece. I, I, I learned to ski in Andorra between Spain and France. When I Was very young. And then I skied in Mount Hermon once, which funny place to ski. And I ski, I don't know, anywhere from two to three weeks a year. And I'm pretty close to a good mountain. And I think about all that and then I go to buy something, right. And so I want a new equipment, a new jacket or whatever. I'm like, well, I'm going to be back, so I'm not going to go skimp, but I'm also not going to buy. There's a certain level of spend that's comfortable for me and then a style. And I think about. And this extends also to like the car purchase. There's. How do I see myself? So the graphic matters, right? What the look and feel, the level of it, what it says about me. Well, I want to be seen as an athletic, capable skier, but maybe not crazy. I'm also not 20. You know, like, there's a. I'm finding that image the same thing. True. Like my car, I've had many very cool, interesting cars over the years. But I like, I want a car that's for my surfboard so that I can load my things in the back. And that fits in with that group and that kind of thing, you know, that's a different kind of an image. Then I justify it with, with all those facts and information. Well, it fits this because of that.

And, you know, let's, let's take that into an interesting discussion, if we may. When you come to buy a car or a snowboard, this basically, in our market, what we might define is almost endless opportunities or options to buy from. I can buy from 10 different car manufacturers. They have different cars. Big, small, I can put the circles on the roof and so on. When you go to my shop, used to come into our shop where I worked, you had 100 different types. Yeah. But let's talk about clients. You probably have. They have a service. You either take that service or you don't take that service. Now, I assume that if they made a million or above, the service works for sure. Now what we need is to redefine that story, that pitch that they have when we meet today, when we meet a startup and they go to a demo day, one of the first things they say, why only three minutes to pitch? It's not enough. And I think you remember this. Years ago, TED talks were 18, 19 minutes. They went down and down and down. They keep shortening them.

Yeah.

And I will tell the startup, you know, I understand three minutes is not enough. You want, you, you need to squeeze so much information. It's not enough If I give you, let's say, an article in the newspaper, 500 words. It's a nice article in the newspaper, huh? It's a new blog. This. Yes, that's enough. In fact, my friend, this is almost the same thing. When I speak, the pace I speak in three minutes is about 500 words in it. So now we know that we have enough time to put everything into the pitch. But what happens is we really remember, right?

If you think three minutes is too short, but you think a 500 word article is good, you want to notice that you could probably say, you know, I. I can easily speak over 60 words, you know, in 30 seconds.

Yeah, easy. But what happens now? People still think that in the three minutes they need to sell everything. No, you don't need to sell me everything. What's a demo day? No one raises their hand at the demo day, like an auction and says 500,000. No. So I don't need to sell anything. All I need to do is open a door. And where does that happen the best when we go to the movies. Two years ago, my dad, Right?

Yes. In a world.

So when my dad recovered from cancer and we decided to go, they said he would never make it. Very like. It's a bit of a weird miracle. And we go to the movies. It was Top Gun 2. And I remember as a kid, watched Top Gun 1 and I used to love to play flight simulators with the helmet of a motorcycle at the house when I was like 12. And we're watching the trailers before the movie and the Elvis trailer, remember that? The Elvis trailer comes on and my dad loves, he says, ah, when this comes out, we have to see this as well. Now you know the genre, you know the concept, you know the, the. The actors, the actresses and stuff. You know the, the general idea. What do you say? I want to go watch it. Yeah. You don't commit, you don't give them money, you don't say. All you say is, was interesting enough for me to go, right, this is the trailer pitch. You have three minutes to turn me from. Send me something to. Wait, wait, how does it work? Yes.

Hook them, get them interested.

Yeah.

Don't tell them everything. They're not making the decision about funding in that moment. They're just deciding that they want to know more. Do they want to take a meeting?

Exactly. You gave a great example when you said about the story about your father.

Yeah.

For some people, some cultures, they don't want to have too many Emotions or they don't know how. The culture, when they fly.

Yes.

You know this story. In the late 1990s, Israelis would fly to the US to meet, and they had, like, these tech companies, and they wanted to scale or sell them. Yeah. So they would fly to the US they'll have a meeting. At the end of the meeting, the Americans would say, that was amazing. Let's keep in touch. Love it. Which American means, we're out, not interesting. Israelis would fly back and say, they're gonna buy it. It's dumb. So now they said they love it. And it took us about seven or eight years to figure out what it actually means.

Yeah. Let's keep in touch.

Yeah. So there's a difference in culture. Yeah. So some say again, your clients might say, I understand. I like the story about your father or my father, but we. We can't start a sales pitch like that. Or it doesn't work like that in the US While working on the concept of the slides, I was working with a fund. They were raising the first fund outside of Israel. They had very successful four funds in, like, five years. And they went to the U.S. they come, they have 16, 17 slides, all of them very boring. But there's no story. They said, we need to figure out the story. My assumption was that 90% of their meetings will happen in the golf course in Miami, in a coffee place, in a bar, someplace like that, where they either cannot take out the laptop or they'll be asked not to take the laptop because, ah, let's talk. And they can't start with this emotional story. They needed to find a different hook. So what we went with is something along the lines. And most of the meetings happen in the golf course, which is funny. And it went something along the lines of, you know, we're sitting now here, and I remember four years ago when my partner called me, I was watching the World cup, the soccer World cup, and he told me, you won't believe it. We got the license. I said, what license? We got the license for an investment. It's been five years, and I can't believe we've done four funds. This will be the fifth. Seven unicorns, and over 55 investments. In the first 30 seconds, you learn something personal about the person, the success stories, everything they've done, the fact that they have a license, the fact that they're already successful. So now what do you think? I want to be. Of course, I want to be part of the fifth. Done. 50 good investments.

Yeah.

So within the trailer pitch, the first 70 words are your hook. Yeah. That means that again, I go from sell me something to wait, how did you do that? Or I want to learn more. And basically, two and a half minutes now to prove your point. Yeah, and it works really fast.

I had an EdTech founder that I was coaching some years ago, and he had a really interesting technology, and he was very passionate about the business, and he was having trouble raising money, and he needed to raise another round and get to the next level. And they were already operating, but they were not yet cash positive. And he's like, I make the case. I show why our solution is good and what the problem is. And I'm like, yeah, everything's important, but why do I care? Why do you care? Every time you talk, I'm just sort of bored. And I had enough relationship with him that I could say that because he knows I'm committed to him and like that. But I'm like, why did you start this business? Why this business? You could work on many things. And he's like, oh, that's a funny story. And I'm like, okay, now this is going to be good, right? So my daughter was doing this thing, and then she came back and she was all upset and she wasn't talking about it. And I realized no kid should have to have this experience. And I knew how to change it, or at least I thought I did. And that's what led to this business. I'm like, okay, now I care. Like, and what if you just opened all your pitches with that? He's like, and suddenly he started getting those meetings where they took a call and then they're like, well, let's talk more and let's talk more and let's bring in some more people and let's bring in some partners. And that changed everything because he opened with why we actually care. Right? Everybody's tackling with the same kinds of problems, but, like, why this? Where's the heart?

Where's the connection? We're talking now about the. The pitch where we do the actual presenting of what we do. Most meetings, which I found are very similar all over the world. But let's take an example for where I come from. The first 10 minutes, if people showed up on time, are about, what are you having for coffee? It's very hot outside, as if it's not hot all year now. And then we have a short conversation about the parking that's very expensive. Now in sales, and I believe most people in your audience know this, in sales, it's very important to be the leader so I'll ask a question. I lead the conversation, right. I control the narrative. So one of the fastest ways to do that actually, when people come to my office is to say, before we start, I have one question. How did you get into this business? The moment they say, ah, it's a funny story, Their gods are gone, everything's lowered. Now they're open. The easiest way to get into a good meeting is to ask them how they got into this business. And it works like magic. By the way, if you ever come to visit or any one of you in the audience, you're always welcome at my office. There's, I don't know if you know these funko Pop, but these doors with big heads with all the franchises. So James Bond, Star wars, whatever. And six or seven years ago, I really like this idea of having that door, which seemed very weird for someone at my age to buy dolls. So I told my employees, you know what? Every time I get a contract, I buy a door. I signed everything I could find, okay? Because I wanted the next Batman the next day. We. Today we have about $200 in the office. So when you go in, everybody sees something they like, oh, I love Teenage Mutant Turtles. Okay. I love James Bond. And I. I have a lot. And what happens is now we have something that binds us.

Something to connect on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So if I think for people who want to do that, it's very important. If it's okay, I'll ask you a question. You have a lot of clients that maybe you like the founder, you like the business, the way they structure things. How often do is it that you see that if they change their sales pitch, a huge impact might happen in the revenue.

So I'm not always involved in the sales pitch, but more often involved in the funding pitch or other aspects of it. But sometimes in the sales pitch, and always, always there's a little shift in the pitch that would make a difference. Whether it's to hire, to partner, to fund, to sell, like whatever. It's all kind of the same thing.

Yeah, I think if founders would focus on that, they would learn like a lot of the things are already in place. And I think especially working with the. The methodology of scaling up, I think in every step of the way the hiring right could be fixed. The way we raise capital, the ways we save.

In my world, the gap is not that their pitch isn't well prepared, it's that they forget they have an audience so they don't start in near. I'm really glad to meet with you today because we've been working on this thing, but I know that you have a particular interest in startups in this sector, and I just thought this would be the perfect thing for you. So they rarely do they connect it to the person. They just start speaking about like, whatever and not like humanizing it and connecting to the audience. You know, I think that's common thing.

I believe if we don't have a written pitch, then we go raise capital by improvising. And it's such a weird thing. Would you improvise just for millions? And they would say, no, but we've been working on this for weeks. Saying, you're working on the wrong thing.

Yeah.

And that's, that's the key people, they're like, whoa, what now? But I don't know what to do now.

You know, you mentioned a story in getting ready that I didn't hear, but I was intrigued by a Russian genius who needed some money. What? Tell, tell me that one sounds like that applies here.

I was working with a very interesting fund that works with Industry 4.0. So heavy industry, supply chain management, ports, warehouses and everything. I understand nothing about what they're talking. So I always say I'm not the smartest person anyway. I do marketing and sales.

Yeah.

And you meet geniuses, people.

Yeah.

I mean, this guy, he can do water purification in a whole new way. He's 29. He has three or four degrees. It has a heavy Russian accent. We do the slide session with a dozen companies, and then the next session is to understand what they do and what they learn from the session. And I can't understand what they do. We've done the session and I still can't understand what they do. I say, can you. Can you explain to me? And for people to do marketing, not smart people, marketing. Can you give me the example one sentence. What do you actually do? And then between his very heavy English accent to the complexity of an engineer trying to put a lot of things. All buzzwords.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I said, you know what? I literally don't understand. Let's. Let's get back to this. And I. Each company had 30 minutes to work with me. Afterwards, I told them, listen, to work with you for an hour, we'll fix everything. And we ended up simplifying everything to the point where you and I understand water. Right. We understand the need, we understand what it makes, what it means for us, and then we come back together. Was, I think, during COVID if I'm understanding it was online, 12 companies pitch everything They've learned. And he pitches a story in plain English with an okay accent that we can all understand. And what I remember is when he, he's, he's done, he has the last slide. We'll talk about the last slide in a second. Everyone on the zoom on mute is clapping and people say, we've been with you in this hub for three months. We finally understand what you do. It was interesting because we were able to help him take out all the technical words, these buzzwords, simplify what they actually do in one sentence and then build on top of that. And he understood that there's layers of the pitch. So if he meets engineers, different discussion. If he meets semi engineers or investors, different discussion. The pitch for people like me has to be completely different because I'm able to connect him afterwards because the story was well written, he could work on his accent.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Brilliant. Like tailor it to the audience. Right. Don't go off on like whatever technical. There's a funny old Steve Martin joke about a lawn supervisor out on a sprinkler maintenance job.

You know this one, I lost him.

Off says sprocket, not socket. Right. Like you can't go technical on someone. You have to, you have to somehow connect with and relate to whatever the audience is. And, and sometimes we fail to do that. Right. I, I did a whole bunch of emotional and family oriented business leadership tie in stuff after landing at a workshop in Riyadh. It didn't go over well. Like they were like, oh my God. Like, don't know. No emotions.

By the way. I think for me. And I wrote it in the book and was a personal experience for me.

Yeah.

I asked questions. I don't mind if I don't understand, I'll ask them 100 times. Most people opt out now. It's very weird to prepare for a week, a month, two months. Yeah. Go ask for money. And the outcome without noticing this, you made your audience feel dumb. Yeah. And it's not fair. Yeah, yeah. So three levels will solve almost anything you need.

Yeah.

As for the last slide, by the way, in every workshop I say that please don't have the last slide. Say thank you. Nobody if cares. So in a company meeting, when you're pitching to a client in their office and you finish the pitch. And again, demo day startups must have slides. There's a chapter about how to utilize slides in a very simple way. But the most important thing is that that slide will stay the longest.

Right? Yeah.

This is the option to make sure that my subconscious reads this A hundred times while I'm standing there and they say I want to feel that or I want to take that or if we don't do, we won't achieve this.

Right.

People use this amazing piece of real estate to say thank you.

Right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What's next? The promise. Yeah, loop that. Use it thoughtfully, use it smart. Right.

It's the most important slide in most cases.

So before we go to some of your big takeaways, I want to remind folks that we've got coaching programs for every level of business up. You know, we've coached three companies through billion dollar valuations now many companies through hundreds of millions of dollars. But if you're between 1 and 20 million and you have at least 10 people, then we've got a program with weekly support to get you where you want to go to help you grow@scalingcoach.com and that program is more affordable, more comprehensive than anything that we've ever done. And it's super, super useful, helpful, it'll help you, includes all kinds of groovy things and it's a mixture of in person and online to make it super accessible for you. Includes you and your leadership team. So scalingcoach.com go find out about our growth navigator coaching program@scalingcoach.com all right, so near, what are the like main. Give us the first three things that people could do to start to up level their thing and stop relying on the slides.

So first of all, I think writing has to become a habit. Yeah, if you even write, by the way, it's not writing, typing, it's writing pen and paper. If you write for a few minutes, you will start noticing that the words matter. The best example is we all hate when people send us voice messages. They can take five minutes and say nothing about the place we need to meet. So try and write and then take that, turn it into something a bit more concise that still has the same message. You can do it on social media. It's very easy. You can do it writing on a pen and paper and it works. You need to understand that this is a must skill that you need to train. Now when you create and in the book there's a whole explainer about the structure of how to do it. But take any pitch you have, even if it's not written, record it will transcribe and review. You will notice that you repeat the wrong things at the wrong time. You'll notice that you have too much information, not enough emotion. You'll understand that sometimes you talk about the wrong Things too long. You will talk about your competition 15% of the three minutes instead of talking about your value for 15. So we teach how to measure that and divide it into paragraphs. One key message per paragraph. One other important thing to remember when I present and I'm the presentation, the slides play a different role when I need to send the deck out. Completely different.

It's a different deck.

Yeah, yeah. In the book I called it the toilet deck. And the the reason I call it that the toilet is because two things I learned a lot of VCs will read it in the morning while sitting in the toilet. And secondly, it's to clarify the fact that this is being sent out when I know for 100 certainty that I will not sit next to them. It needs to have more text, clarify logic. They need to understand and I'm not there.

Yeah.

And for the people who might be concerned about. Oh, but the trailer page, it's only three minutes. How do I put all the information? Especially if you're pitching in a meeting to a client. That's where the next type of slide would come in. This is called the Babylon. If you remember, you know, Babylon was the ancient city that had everything. They say in the glory days, they had 350 to 400,000 people, the biggest libraries, all the knowledge was there. Languages, math, everything was there. So if you finish the meeting and people then go into the Q and A, have everything else in terms of information and those slides, it makes you look good. It shows you came prepared that you have the answers. By the way, if you don't say, you don't. That's also fine in some cases with companies I work with, they might have 40 or 50 or 60 slides in that Babylon deck. They don't need to present all of them. But if you ask suddenly about, okay, so what's your ARR or lifetime of a client? Right.

Yeah.

Then you have the specific. Then you can discuss a bit more. It might have a bit more. More text. This is how you structure the whole meeting, in my opinion, in a. In a new way.

The book is f the slides near Zavaro. Thank you for spending time with us talking today. F the slides on Amazon. Go get it now. Start to up your game in pitching, selling, fundraising, all of it.

Right.

Partnering. It's all right.

We made Amazon best seller in 16 hours.

Awesome. My friend and mentor, Vern Harnish for creating this whole scaling up world to Wanda and Christelle, getting our show ready, produced and like that. The folks at Podfly and story on productions thanks everyone for watching for listening. We'll talk to you again next time. Meantime, keep scaling.

Foreign.

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