Life-Changing Books Podcast Episode 13. Brant Pinvidic: Author of The 3-Minute Rule

Hello, Book Thinkers family, and welcome to episode number 13 of our brand new podcast, Book Thinkers: Life-Changing Books. During each episode, I interview some of the world's top authors, and as a listener, you can expect to discover new books, new mentors, and new resources that you can now use to achieve more and live better. In this episode, I have the pleasure to interview the author, Brant Pindovic. Brant is an award-winning film director, C-level sales and presentations coach, top-rated podcast host, and columnist for Forbes. His endless energy, his quest for adventure, and the 3-minute rule have helped him climb to the consultant status he now has. Our conversation touches on his book, The 3-Minute Rule: Say Less to Get More from Any Pitch or Presentation, but we also talk about why people tend to oversell and about some of his favorite books. So without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Welcome to the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. For those in the audience that don't know you, I'd love to have you introduce yourself and tell everybody a little bit about what you do and about the 3-minute rule.

Yeah, I'm Brent Pivittich. I am a TV producer and director by trade for the last 20 years. About 5 years ago, I started helping companies pitch and present their ideas to investors to raise money, and that kind of got in my soul. Helping people simplify their message. So I used the, the 20 years of pitching television shows in Hollywood. I converted that into a book called The 3 Minute Rule, which is what we used to use in the edit bay for pitching an idea to a network, and broke that down to this, The 3 Minute Rule, which became sort of a, you know, a sensation, a bit of a bestseller that basically helps you take your idea, simplify it step by step, break it down to the perfect 3-minute pitch. And so now I, well, I don't tour the country right now, but now I do a ton of speaking and coaching and consulting with companies, simplifying their message, getting their pitches ready virtually, in real life. And I'm almost retired completely out of TV and into this full-time now.

And how does that feel? Does it feel good? A good transition?

Yeah, I mean, TV was great. It did, it was a very good run. I had some really good luck. So that helped a lot. And, you know, financially was a good run for me as well. So that helps you make other decisions in life. But really, as a guy who's driven by ego a lot, as most guys like me are, having people, you know, talking about how I've changed their company or changed their lives or helping people that they're really appreciative was just so overwhelming. Compared to what I was doing in TV. There's no— it's a thankless job. You make stupid reality shows or a movie that's frivolous, and it's like, great, you made a good TV show, big deal, doesn't do anything. So it's just been, from a lifestyle perspective, it's been a huge win.

That's really interesting to hear, and I definitely didn't think about it like that. As I was going through your book, you tell all of these amazing stories, and I found a lot of value in them. Coming from a place where I don't know much about TV, it was pretty fun to listen to those. But now you're in a place, like you just said, where you sort of see the instant gratification. You post something, people find value in it, it can change their life, and then they tell you about it. Yep.

Yeah, yeah. And it's just like, that's addictive, end of story. Um, and, and it, it, it's a little bit of a problem sometimes because now with the book and the, and the popularity of it, like, I get so many requests. Hey, can you look at this? Can you look at that? It's like sometimes somebody will send something to my office and they just ask nicely or say nice things or tell me I'm pretty or whatever. It's just like, oh really? You wanna tell me how great I am? I'll help you. And so I end up doing stuff for free that I shouldn't do and taking time that I shouldn't be doing. Like, it's— I'm addicted to this process because it's— it does change me. I've had companies that struggled and then I've been able to just changed their pitch and they raised $14 million in a week. And it's like, that's just hard to get away from. I can't stop doing that. And that's it.

It's just fun.

It's just really good for me.

Yeah, well, that's great. And there are a lot of content creators or business owners and entrepreneurs in my audience specifically. So I'd love the overall message of the book, which is that your success in life depends on your ability to communicate what's inside of your head to the outside world and then have other people see things as you do. And that's really important. So I'd love to have you just touch on that for a minute or two. And how did you come to that realization?

Well, mostly it's because when you pitch a TV show, you're pitching air for the most part. And really quickly, and as everybody listening will understand, uh, this is a phrase that if I'm on stage, I get groans in any language anywhere in the world. And it's because we're all in a world of decision by committee, and nobody makes a decision anymore. They got to talk to somebody else. They got to go talk it through. And in TV, it's really bad. You pitch an idea, somebody likes it, and it gets to a big boardroom and it gets destroyed. It's very hard. And I was getting so frustrated with, you know, my pitches being great in the room, and then, you know, that executive's to pitch it 4 more times, and by the time they're pitching it, it's all mangled and didn't work right. And so What I was starting to understand was is that these the network presidents understand their network so well. They know the details of their sponsors and their demographics so perfectly. The only thing they want to know is what is your TV show? What's the idea? How does it work? How are you going to produce it? What's the budget? That's about it, right? Nothing else is important to them. They get everything else. And so what I realized is like. I had to do was translate my understanding of the show and why I thought it was great into their understanding. If I could just bridge that gap, then they would be off to the races pitching it to each other, talking through it, and they would, they would be just as good as me in the room, right? So my goal was to get the network executive as excited about the show as I was, and the only way to do that was to get them to understand the show the same way I was. And that started to translate to to other companies and to other industries. You know, I do a lot of biotech, high-level medical pharma stuff, and it's the same thing. If you can get people to understand what your product is, the surgical tool's gonna do, like if you get them to understand that the same way you do, then they start to see the potential. So if you're selling potential based on something real, if you can get them to see it, they will start to build the value with you, and it's just so crucial. Just knowing that that's the process will help you dial back your objectives. And I always have to tell people like to dial it back. Like your first 3 minutes is not meant to sell everything. You're not, nobody's writing you a check from that, but what you can do is get them to not tune you out, not turn you off. And so if you just like, I just need them to understand The basics. This is what we do. This is how we do it. We've been doing this for many years, or here's how I know that it works, and here's how we can work together. Like, those things are like, okay, I get that. That's called a foundation of understanding. And once you have that, then you can build real value.

All fantastic points. And at the beginning of that, you said you're in the room You're pitching to somebody who then needs to go and pitch it to somebody else who needs to pitch it to somebody else. And in the book, you talk about that game we all played as kids, telephone. And so by condensing it into 3 minutes, by hitting those home run points, by providing what's most valuable and what you need to say instead of what you want to say, you're optimizing that process for other people.

Which is really important, right? Like, that's, that's the core of what you're doing. Like, if somebody else can't explain your idea. Like, what's the point of you explaining it? Like, that doesn't help, right? That's really where the issue is, is that like you've got to put it in a way that other people can understand it and explain it. I call it the rationalization story, right? And I use this exercise when I'm on stage where it's like, imagine, you know, you pitch somebody, they go home, their wife comes to say hello to them, or husband comes say hello to them and say, what'd you do? Say, oh, I invested in this company. And the husband or wife says, oh, why did you do that? It's like, what's, what's he gonna say, right? He's not gonna go through your 15 to 25 minute pitch with his wife or husband. He's gonna condense it and explain it. And guess how long the maximum he'll do it? 3 minutes is the most, no matter what. Most likely it's a 45 second to a minute and a half summary. Oh, it's a company that makes controllers for electric motors in cars. Tesla likes them. And it's just like, bing, that's it.

And we do it with movies and everything too, right?

By the way, and I have this exercise when I'm, when I'm doing a seminar, I'll have people come up and explain their favorite movie and tell me every detail. The movie you've seen 50 times that you love more than anything. Tell me every scene. Tell me every detail. What do you love about it? Why is it so great? And it's like, you can barely get 3 minutes out before you're like, uh, Uh, and, uh, you know, because that's what you do. You rationalize. If I asked you why you do this, you rationalize it. And I have people go through these statements in my weekend seminars where they're basically like, explain to yourself the phrases that you use when you explain why you live in the house you live in. Why did you buy it? Why'd you rent it? Why do you choose that neighborhood? These are the— this is the biggest decision of your life effectively. And when you hear yourself rationalize it, it's like, oh, I like this. This is where I've always grown up. It's a good value. I bought it here. Like, you talk in simple, clear statements. There are no adjectives, no big huge sort of promises in your brain. It's just simple, straight to the point. This is why I live here. Why do you drive the car you drive? And it's like, ding, ding.

Ding. You know what I mean?

Oh, it's the car I always want to drive. It makes me look like I have money. Yeah, I like to show off. It goes really fast. Like, those are real things, but they're just so simple. They're one sentence. And so if you can make your pitch kind of mimic that rationalization story, surprise, surprise, things start to work out a lot better and people start to gravitate to your pitch. Let alone the fact— is another bonus— let alone the fact that you now look like somebody who has The confidence to lay something out simple, let alone the fact that people are so overwhelmed with jargon and crap and marketing and media and promises, they don't hear it anymore. When they hear someone speak simply and directly, they're like, whoa, that was different. And so all of that combined, it's like 3 minutes, it's all you need.

I love it. And I worked as a sales professional for about 5 years and having read so many different sales books, you come to understand what you talk in the book as the difference between passion and promotion. And I love that difference because if you stand up there and you just spew energy and it's unrealistic and irrational, then that confuses the person, you know, evaluating your, your process or your service or your product even more. And so once you stop caring so much— not stop caring, but once you tone it down and you remain professional and you stand up and you simplify and you do more with less, Then they're going to walk away thinking, wow, that is a really credible salesperson that really understands what they're talking about.

Yeah, exactly. And it really, you have to, and I start this a lot, I say you have to understand you can't sell people, right? You cannot sell people stuff. And if you look online and you'll see, I'm not going to name, but there's, you know, there's people that are out there telling you how to sell, how to close, how to do all these things. It's like, That's not the way the world works anymore. We run on Amazon reviews and we run on like research and we just don't— everybody says you buy an emotion. That's just not true. You rationalize your emotions that let you make you want to buy, but like, I won't let you sell me. I'll buy from you, but it won't let you sell me. And so all you really need to do is get the person as much information as possible and let them make the decision. You can't convince somebody to do something that is against their best interest. It doesn't work like that anymore, and those sales days are those are long gone. And it's just a matter of when you do less, it just conveys a different level of confidence and expectation, and people really gravitate towards. I'll tell you a funny story. So a very big influencer friend of mine, this big actor, big following.

He.

He tracks rich people all the time, right? And he says, hey, you got to get on this. This is an investment that I just got in. You want to get in on this investment? Okay. And I have an investment club and I'm like, so I get on the phone and it's this guy and I've never met him, don't know anything about him. And he's bringing N95 masks from South Korea. And what he's gonna do is he's importing the Machines that make these things, huge massive machines. He's importing like five of them, and then he's going to make these N95 masks with this special technology from the South Korean company in the United States. Masks are going to be around forever. Blah blah blah. Okay, and so I was like, okay, it's kind of interesting. How much money are you looking for? You know, what are the terms? Can you send me the deck? And he's like, yeah, I think I'm gonna do ten million, maybe five. He didn't have a real number of what he was looking for yet. He wasn't sure. The terms—he was like, "I'm gonna convertible note." I think he wasn't even solid on that, and he didn't have a deck. He had no deck. He's like, "I don't have a deck. I don't have a lot of time, and you know, it's just his opportunity, and blah blah blah." And you know, I knew you know from stories. I know he's super wealthy. So we left that phone call, and asking for billions of dollars, and to connect to my network and stuff. With no deck, with no outline, no details, and basically just sort of said like, this is what I do. And I'm telling you, I get pitched, I don't know, 100 a week investment things. They're everywhere. And there was a part of me that almost got my checkbook out and wrote the guy a check because in my mind I'm thinking, listen, nobody gets on that phone call and says this stuff and doesn't have a deck if they're, if they're not solid. Like nobody would be trying to scam me. Like it's, you know what I mean? The only person who would make that pitch is a guy who doesn't need the money and doesn't really care. And it's going to all work out. And I was this close to just tossing some money in there just because, right? So that is an extreme example of what it's like in the world today when you, when you go against the system and the system now that we've been used to is I'm gonna wave shiny objects in front of you, and I'm gonna make big promises, and I'm gonna give you a money-back guarantee, and I'm gonna put you through a click funnel, and I'm gonna promise you that you could change your life in 24 hours, and you can lose weight and eat anything you want, and you can make 10 times your investment, and I'm gonna show you exactly how I made all my money in real estate. You can buy my ebook, and then you'll be able to make all your money. Like, oh, that's Those days are gone. Now it's like, you know, and Oren Klaff is the greatest at this, but like it's the same thing when I have somebody reach out to me that they want to hire me to be a consultant for them or whatnot. My response is, have you read the book? And if someone says, I haven't read the book yet, I'm like, great. Let me know when you have. We can't, I'm not having a conversation with you yet. And they're just like, what? So we're talking about, and you know, I'm not cheap. But it's like, I'm not gonna get into a sales thing where I have to explain who I am and what I do. Like, you either want me to do this or you don't. If not, that's totally cool. You don't have to make up excuses. You could just hang up the phone and don't even call me back. Like, I'm good with that. And just that alone just changes the conversation. It changes the narrative, everything about it. It's like, if you want to know what I can do for you, I just lay it out. It's like, You want it, you don't want it. I'm not selling you. That's it.

Well, in today's environment where we're just being pushed a million different, uh, you know, we're being pushed messaging and branding messaging from every which way and every device that we look at. And every time we get in the car, we're seeing dozens of billboards and stuff. It's, uh, it's a breath of fresh air when somebody like yourself jumps on and says, relax, slow it down. What's your main, what, you know, what's your value proposition? Black and white text.

Yeah. And I was a judge in a, like an investor conference on, you know, it was a biotech investor conference and they had a bunch of companies pitching and I was judging pitching or whatever for the day. And the rules were like, you got 3 minutes to pitch your idea and then you had 5 minutes for questions. And the amount of companies that just spoke faster and tried to get through their stuff quicker because they only had 3 minutes was staggering. And there was only a couple of companies, and because I did a little seminar for the whole group about a week before, and you could see like clear as a bell who took the advice or who was on that call and took my advice and who didn't. Because the companies that did were just like, here's what we do. Here's how we do it. Here's the record that we've had so far and the results of our tests. And here's what our next phases are. And you're like, damn. Okay. I got it. It's an Alzheimer's treatment. It's a biotech medical device. Like you get it, you know? And it was just interesting because you could see these people were really clear and the other ones were like, okay, so diabetes. And they try to go fast because they only have 3 minutes and some of them didn't even get through their pitch. We just stopped and was like, yeah, your 3 minutes is up. Like, why would you do that? We told you it was 3 minutes. Like, why would you? But that's the difficulty.

Yeah. Wow. That is funny. So now everybody that's listening to this point knows that 3 minutes is the golden number. Anything below 3 minutes is the right way to approach it. And so in the book, you give the WHAC framework. It's the backbone for any pitch, any presentation. And throughout the book, you build up to that. But I'd love to have you explain the WHAC framework for everybody now. That's it.

Yeah. So, and, and 3 minutes, I have to explain, it's not just a— it's just not a number to try to condense your pitch to. Like, there's real science behind it, right? The science is that if you focus on something, you start to desire it. There's a whole study, it's called the Journal of Emotion and Personality Studies, what's called approach motivation. And they've learned now recently that because of the way we deal with things, if we focus on something, We start to actually desire it. And so if you do a really good job and lay out your information, you could grab and hold someone's attention for about 3 minutes till they start to make their initial yes or no decisions. Now your audience has experienced this where someone comes to pitch or present or want them to do something and they've already said yes or no in their mind in the first 30 seconds, 10 seconds sometimes you're saying yes or no, right? And the idea is can you make people Hold off that initial decision, the yes or no, I'm interested, for as long as you can to get as much information as possible. And if you do it right, you can get up to 3 minutes. And so to do that, I lay it out in the 4 steps called the WHAC method. W, what is it? H, how does it work? A is, are you sure? And C is, can you do it? The, the what and how are very easy. What is it that you do and how do you do it? Those are the first 2 things. 50% of your job is just to get that. The are you sure is literally your facts and figures, your logic and your reason, which is those are the graphs, the charts, the success you've had, the trials that you've done, how many products you've sold, all of those things, right? The sort of verification of what it is you do and how you do it. And then the can you do it is who are you? And when can I get this delivered? And what does it cost? Or what's the next phase of the trial? When are you going to phase 3 animal studies? All those things are the can you do it. Now, A lot of people get those mixed up. They want a lot of companies, and I don't know why. Mostly it's sort of like smart, fancy, educated people that want to go with the, can you do it up front of their pitch. I'm Brad Riddick. I graduated top of my class at Harvard. I went to MIT, studied 4 more degrees. Then I studied with ExxonMobil in the exploration space, right? And that's how they start their pitch. It's like, yeah, I don't give a crap. I need to know what it is you do first. Like, fine. And so, you know, and, and at this stage in the world, like, do you know how many people have Harvard degrees? There's billions of them. Millions of people went to MIT and they graduated and they went to, you know, they worked at McKinsey. Like, none of that's impressive anymore. So when you start with what is it, it, it really lays out the foundation. Here's what it is, here's how it works. Client of mine would be, uh, what was a good one? Xero. We are a software design company. We design software for the controller of the powertrain of an electric vehicle. That controller becomes the brains of the vehicle and makes the electric motor perform more efficiently. Okay. I mean, what does the company do? You get it. You get it, right? Like, that's not hard to understand now. Okay. Now I know what your company does. How does it work? We use coil switching technology. An electric motor is wound with coils, and once you set it, it has only one output. But with our intelligent design and our software, our algorithms recoil the electric motor in real time on the fly as you're driving, so you can get high speed and low-end torque from the same motor. It's like, I don't understand electric motors, but I got the basic idea of that. And it's like, okay, great. Like, you're talking about a $100 million company with the most advanced technology I've ever seen in my life, and in 45 seconds, any human on the planet can get a basic idea of what the company does and sort of how they do it, right? And then when I go into the are you sure moment, I'd be talking about we have lab space, we're not plug-and-play design, we have to design the algorithms for our controllers for each and every vehicle. So when we're working with Zero Motorcycles, we go into the lab and write an algorithm for that motorcycle. And here's the result. The motorcycle got 32% more torque, 27% more high-end speed from the same motor using only a software upgrade. Here's the chart. Okay, there you go. Now you're like, oh, okay, this actually works. And then it's like, can you do it? Yeah, we have lab space coming up in October available. We've run, you know, previous mock algorithms on your Harley-Davidson, and so we think we can get you an average of 23% on your, on your electric motor output. The process is a 3-month process for the testing and the design. It's going to run $150,000 and you license it, blah, blah, blah. And like, that's less than 3 minutes. It's one of the most complicated companies you'll ever come across from a technology standpoint. And every single person gets it within the first 2 minutes when the CEO pitches like that. She has 10 slides. Her stock went from 15 cents when we started working together. It's over a dollar today. And so, and they raised Millions and millions of dollars on private placement. Every time they go out, they're oversubscribed because she's super impressive and the company's really cool and she lays it out so perfectly now that everybody's like, damn, now I got to get into this.

Why do you think we as a society of salespeople or pitch people, whatever you want to call us, why do we have the tendency to over— to overdo things, to overpitch, to oversell, to put too much text on our PowerPoint slides? I know that's something that you hate, like Who told us to do that?

Um, you know, it's interesting. That's mostly a product of us being so overwhelmed in the sense that we know our information so well and the value we place on every little detail is the same as the important details. And that's the problem. Like, you think about this, when you watch a movie that you absolutely love, that you've seen a bunch of times, you know every detail of the character. You know every breath, you know every pattern, you know every look, you know why those lines are so good. You know the humor in it, you know the drama, you know the setup, and you're— you marvel at how someone wrote it like that and how it came together. And every scene has importance to you, right? And that's the way your company is. That's the way your pitch is right now, is everything you believe in your mind is like, okay, this is so good. This is so amazing. This is so over the top. Like, if they just like, like you want everybody to understand the same way you do. And the problem is, is when your audience doesn't have a foundation of understanding, when they don't know it like you do, they can't put the same level of value on it that you do. And that's the difference is they look at things in a linear building pyramid of information. You look at everything as one big pool. You can access anything at any moment and realize how fantastic it is. And that's why, like, most of us have so much to say. We just, we want to tell you everything. We want to show you everything. We think it's all part of us. And I had the, I had problems with my own book doing that. I'm sure. My, um, my publisher, after they got the first 2 chapters, was like, great, you're on the right track, keep going. Do the intro to the book after you've written the book because then you'll know everything that's in it in the order and you can write the intro. I got the great idea like, hey, I'm gonna do the intro as a 3-minute pitch, right? Like the average business book has a 14-page intro, but the average business book reader decides if they're gonna read the book in the first 4 pages, which coincidentally is about 3 minutes to read, by the way. And so I was like, hey, uh, I'm gonna write a 4-page intro that's about 3 minutes, and that'll be the kind of hook. Hey, I've got 4 pages to make you want to read this book, right? So my first pass, 11 pages long. And I was like, oh crap, okay, well, I write long, you know, I'm filling it out. And then as I— and I, and I, I was already done the book, and I was on vacation. I was in Jamaica, and I was like, you know what, I'm just gonna take my time on the beach here. And I'm gonna nail this intro. My first pass, 11. Second pass, 9. Third pass, 7. Could not get it down to 6 pages because everything was so good. It was so brilliant, and every line and everything I wrote was so important and so magical. And like, it's— I can't delete that. Of course not, right? So then I started telling myself, well, this information is so valuable and it's so clever And it's so well written that it's okay for it to be longer in this case because it's just that good, right? And then I had to smack myself in the face and be like, it's a book about getting to 3 minutes and you can't even do it in the first 3 minutes. So I, I, I tried my hardest. I couldn't get it done on the vacation. I had to come back and to reset. And I had to go into my office, start the WHAC method and redo my thing. I actually have a picture in the book of me doing my own intro. To get it down, and I finally got it down to the four pages, which I'm really happy about. But what was interesting was, is I had actually taken some of the really stuff that I love that I wrote, and I had moved it into chapter one to start chapter one. And that was a little bit of a cheat I used. It's like, oh, I got it to four pages, and some of the stuff I just pushed into chapter one. And the book came out in what's called galleys, which is before they print the hard copy, they send around these. These soft copy rough versions, right? And you send it around to press and everything. And one of my best friends that I had sent it to had said, oh man, you know, great book, blah blah blah. But he said like, I don't know, I think maybe chapter 2 should be chapter 1. Chapter 1 starts off a little slow. So I was like, this guy's crazy. So I went and read it and I realized, holy crap, I put 2 pages of absolute jargon bullshit in the first 2 pages of my book because I was so partial to it that I moved it out of the intro. But I still wanted to say it because I loved it so much that I moved into chapter 1 where it did not belong. And I had to call the publisher and get 2 full pages of the very first chapter yanked out. And we luckily did it and it's better now. But that's how hard it is. Yeah. To release information that you are passionate about. I am arguably the foremost expert in this world and I struggled with it. So it's not as easy to simplify as you think it is. It does take some work, but, and that's why it's so powerful. That's why the book does well. That's why when you read it, you're like, goddamn, this was an easy book to read because it's like, I worked really hard to make it simple, to make it flow, to push through it. And that's what I do with my clients.

There's that— there's some famous quote, I forget who said it, but they were like, I apologize for the length of this letter. If I had more time, I would have written a shorter one or something like that.

Exactly, exactly.

Yeah, that's so funny. And I struggle with it too. The other day, my business partner and I were anticipating the mobile app launch for Book Thinkers, and I was trying to make a video to explain, you know, basically the 3-minute rule. And I was having a very difficult time with it. And then I went through your book and I completely reorganized everything into that WACK method and followed your cadence. And it becomes a lot simpler for people. So for anybody listening, if you're— if you experience that problem and you need to simplify and do more with less, you should definitely check out the book.

Yes, you should.

Yes, you should. Well, one or two more things before we wrap up. Something that I loved is you talked about propping up negatives. And oftentimes we are very fearful of a couple things with our business or whatever we're pitching. And we hope and pray that people who are— the people receiving our message or judging us are going to avoid those certain areas because then we'll all crumble down. But why is it important for us to prop those up and to put them into our actual messaging?

It's a few reasons. One is you can't get away from it. And that's a lot of things that I see happening is where people think, Yeah, this isn't such a good idea. This isn't a— this is a bad thing. This is sort of a negative side of what I'm doing. I'm not gonna talk about it. I'm not gonna bring it up. And then the idea is that, well, your audience isn't gonna bring it up, so nobody thought of it, which is just not the way it works. They come up with it, they find it, they know it, they were thinking about it. You didn't bring it up, so then they're questioning whether you're trying to scam them or you're just too stupid to even notice it, right? So that's a big, big problem. And the other thing is like The truth is, if the negative side of what you do, and I always ask clients to start with, you know, what question do you hope they don't ask? What information do you not want them to know? What do you not want people to be talking about after your pitch? Let's deal with that right at this moment. And if that was that bad, if it was that much of a deal breaker, you wouldn't be sitting there. You wouldn't be involved with a company that wouldn't be the job you have. You wouldn't have started the business. You know what I mean? Like for most people, whatever the downside is or the negative side of it, it is not a deal breaker. It's something to be considered and you have a solution for it. And in, you know, when you're writing a script or a TV show, there's this thing we call the all is lost moment where the hero is just about to lose. Rocky is down for the count. His face is smashed and he's down. He's finished. You don't like turn off the TV and be like, damn it, that's it. This movie sucks. Right? He's out. You're like, come on, man, please solve it. Right? And so that's really what you want to do is you want to build that moment. Like you've, you've laid out the story, you've talked about what's, what's good, how it works. And then there's something that has a little bit of friction on it. It's okay to bring it up. And then how you solved it, you know, like, That's an important process is like, it's not— everything is not roses and sunshine. Everybody knows that. So you have items that you need to deal with. And I just had this with a potential client and I'm walking them through that. They have a surgical tool for orthopedic surgeons where they test the depth of your screws when they're gonna put a screw into your bone. And the way they test now is an analog version. Basically, it's a clunky way to do it, and they've got a cool digital one, and that's the pitch. But the issue is— and I didn't find this out till I talked to my surgeon friend— is that it's not really reading the dial that's the problem. The problem is when you probe into someone's bone, it's hard to tell where the end is. So sometimes you put a screw that's too long, it sticks out the other side. And so that's the problem with this is that, yeah, it's digital, but it doesn't change the fact that it's very hard to get an accurate depth. Now, when I spoke to the company, I was saying like, hey, this is what my surgeon guys were talking about. It's like, well, he actually had kind of a solution for it. He has a patented hook on the end of this thing that actually does better. But because he wasn't bringing up that issue, he wasn't able to get the solution out.

Hmm.

My surgeon friend, who is you know maybe one of the top orthopedic surgeons in the world, is was not interested because he got hung up on that point. He he dismissed the idea that this is you know more accurate and all these things. He kind of dismissed all that stuff because he was hung up on the fact that hey, it's the same old version of testing the depth, and that's the problem. So as I'm working with this guy to reassess, like that's now going to be in the core of his presentation, which is. Depth is still an issue. We've developed this thing that helps get it more accurate, and it changed the tone of the pitch. So now you wouldn't have people being distracted by that or giving up on it.

I love that. I think it's a brilliant way to, to make sure you're communicating effectively. And I don't know, everything about that makes total sense to me. And so many salespeople are taught to avoid the negatives, so Thank you for touching on that. And when you think of books that have impacted your life in a positive way, if you're a reader, are there any books that stick out and that you'd recommend to the audience?

Um, you know, the two I love, Vanessa Van Edwards, and I love Oren Klaff. Science of People is genius. And Oren's Pitch Anything is still just rock solid. And actually, the irony is when you combine what, what my book teaches you and what his book teaches you, that's a Deadly combination. It's been a huge help for me and a huge help for him, ironically, is that we're partnered on so many things now. But you know, his book is very personality-driven, like here's how you should behave, here's how you should be acting so you're not chasing your client, right? And I'm more like, here's how— what you should say, how to say it. And when you combine those 2 things, it's like, whoa, it's a very powerful process to be able to know like How to say it right, how to say it in a way that your audience will understand, and then also how to act and respond and connect with people so that you're not repelling them to you personally. It's really a fascinating thing. So I think Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff is an absolute must-have.

All right, well, that's next on my list, and I appreciate your time today. So for people that want to find out more information about you or your book, where do they go? What do they do?

I'm super easy to find. 3minuterule.com has Pretty well everything. I'm on all those social platforms @BrantPinvidic. I love hearing stories. I love seeing pictures with the people with the book. I love seeing people with their bullet points and their Post-it notes. I got a whole thing going. So it's kind of— I love that stuff. So reach out.

All right, perfect. Well, thank you for coming on the show today.

Absolutely.

That is a wrap. Thank you so much for listening to my conversation with Brandt. There was a lot of value in there. And because I believe that we're the average of the 5 people that we spend the most time with, it could benefit you to share this episode with someone in your network that needs to learn a little bit more about saying less and getting more from any pitch or presentation. It only takes 60 seconds and it could change their life. So please go ahead and share the episode. Before I go, I want to remind everyone that Book Thinkers is both an online community and educational technology company that enables readers to achieve more and live better. That is our primary mission, but for more information on our mobile application, our shop, our social pages, or our mission, please check out www.bookthinkers.com. As always, remember that real learning requires education and behavior change, like reading The 3-Minute Rule. And then implementing what you've learned. And with that, I'm signing off. I can't wait for you to listen to another episode of Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books.