0:00:00 Alex Shevelenko
Welcome to Experience-focused Leaders! I am delighted to introduce you to one of my muses in creating RELAYTO, Oren Klaff. Oren is one of the world's leading experts in sales and capital raising. His first book, Pitch Anything, is a bestseller and part of American sales tradition at this point. It has defined what he calls West Coast fundraising and West Coast finance. Oren, welcome to the pod! Excited to have you on.
0:00:34 Oren Klaff
Thank you, Alex. I appreciate the invitation! Here we are, let's make something happen.
0:00:45 Alex Shevelenko
I think it's a definition of impact. I was using your book on how to connect really important ideas in a way that doesn't feel salesy. It creates value for all parties and empowers people who don't want to sell. I was using it to build a digital product. Then, I joined an organization called Alchemist Accelerator in Silicon Valley. I thought I was very smart to discover your book. I saw it as a competitive advantage that I was giving to all our customers by incorporating your ideas. Of course, guess what I hear from Ravi, who runs the program? He says, “By the way, I recommend that everybody goes and reads the book Pitch Anything.” Since then, you've written Flip the Script. So, Oren, tell us in a big idea way that you're an expert at, introduce the audience to the big idea behind this and why they should drop everything and listen to the rest of this podcast!
0:01:54 Oren Klaff
Yeah, for sure. I started to learn the ways of Pitch Anything from a guy that I worked with. I was seeing him close deals that made no sense to me. He was saying things that I felt like if I said it, in any transaction or sale or deal that I was in, everybody would just roll up and put their paper in the briefcase, say thank you very much and leave. But I once saw him email every lawyer, investor, and partner in a multimillion-dollar deal. The email was all caps, three words in the subject line: lose my number. It was in the middle of a deal we were trying to close for our benefit. I thought, “Oh! The deal's over.” Jonathan got mad, let his darker angels prevail, emailed everybody, all caps: lose my number. This deal is dead. I am not going to make the $500,000 I was expecting this month. This was before Gmail. We were all using Microsoft Outlook. I hear ding, ding, ding. I thought, oh, here come the go F yourself. The deal's over. But the emails were apologetic. They said, “So sorry, Jonathan. Sorry, it took so long. We're wiring right now to sign the paperwork. Appreciate your patience.”
How did lose my number on our side? We're the salespeople, not the guys with the money or asking for it. How to lose my number and close that deal? Then I started thinking about what Jonathan was doing. He did everything opposite of what I would do to close a deal. So, I entered this anti-gravity land. Then I began to understand there's this entire social undercurrent in deals that's not obvious to the average bear, which I was. That day, when I recognized what he was doing, it was like I found a secret door in my closet. I opened it to find flying dragons, spaceships, witches, and war—magical things I didn't even know existed. So, I started exploring them. What I realized is everything you see in a deal today, in a sale, or in a transaction. I've been in 250 equity transactions over the last 10 years. The things you see day-to-day are just the surface. There are things happening below that guide the behavior of the participants. What are those things? So I started peeling back the layer and understanding the things that were actually the Narnia level beneath the surface of a deal. And those are things that I wrote about in the book: intrigue, status, frame, frame control, time constraints. Those are the guiding elements in a deal you wouldn't be aware of unless somebody brought you into that world and showed you how they work.
0:05:22 Alex Shevelenko
What I love about what you're describing is that there has been a bunch of research on this, coming from the behavioral science and neuroscience world. It works in episodes and is often conducted by really smart academics. I love them, but you rarely see someone say, "Let's pull it all together in a very applied, practical, and concrete way for high stakes deals." And I think that's what you've done.
0:05:57 Oren Klaff
This is what I call the coffee cup conundrum. So, name your author in social psychology, business psychology, academia. I've interviewed them. Take Cialdini, for instance, he may be better than average. Give me another couple of names in social psychology. Near is one. Who else are you thinking of? Books that might be on your bookshelf? "The Neuroscience of Marketing" was one that was not bad, actually. It wasn't applied; it's the coffee cup conundrum.
They go, "Hey, look, we gave coffee cups to a bunch of college kids. On some of the cups, we had them write their own name and draw a design. Then we baked that in a kiln. On other ones, we just gave them regular coffee cups with designs on them. Three weeks later, we came back and tried to buy those coffee cups from the college students. The ones that wrote their own name on and did their own design were very desirous of a high price. On average, they wanted five to seven dollars to sell that cup. The students we just gave cups to, who had no affinity for them, were willing to sell them for less than a dollar. Hey, wonderful.”
Except, I walked into Goldman Sachs asking for $40 million for an equity transaction in which I still don't have the side-by-side debt wrapped up. I have to walk them through downside protection, the narrative, who the team is attached to, and what the valuation defense is. What are the strike points of the price, how is the cap table constructed, and why do we believe this team can enter a high growth period? The fact that college students were willing to sell their own coffee cups back for a higher price than the other college students, at that moment in time, when I was in Embarcadero on the 35th floor trying to work with a managing director 62 years old at Goldman Sachs, there's absolutely nothing in any of those books that I can use at that moment to drag that deal across the line. That was the motivation for "Pitch Anything," which is, what can I do tomorrow? What methodology can I use today, this afternoon, in a meeting to drive the impact? Sometimes, you can see the studio here behind me. There's a stage. So, we'll do presentations from that stage there and have people in the audience. We'll go through a bit of the pitch framework, and then they'll go to the conference room in the back. They'll come back and go, "I just closed a deal that was stuck for the last three months." So, this stuff works in real time, as opposed to the coffee cups or these little college student games. And also, these games work. I get it, in Boston on the Harbor campus with college students. I am working with seasoned CFOs and CEOs who have negotiated billions of dollars out from vendors and investors and know the game of money as tightly as it can be played. These aren't naive college students stepping into a discussion of capital markets for the first time in their lives. So anyway, I don't want to beat it to death, but yeah.
0:09:24 Alex Shevelenko
But what? If you don't mind, I double-clicked what you've just done because it was a perfect illustration in my head. You tell me if I'm right or wrong from one of your frame control points of view. Like 99.99% of podcasts, there's nothing of interest underneath the person, including my own. So, I need to learn that for the audience listening. What you did is you zoomed out into a huge stage where you're sitting, which is your West Coast Finance Center experience. And there you go, welcome to the matrix.
Yes, this is the Matrix. This is huge. You're a big car fan, showcasing some of your hobbies. It says look, this is serious production value experience and this is not your average podcast guest. This is somebody who really knows the game. You have lighting, your hair looks amazing. I don't know what hair products you're using, but you're presenting this as a higher frame or perceived value in milliseconds. People don't need to know anything about you. They go, 'Oh wow, this is serious.' Am I right?
0:10:45 Oren Klaff
I think that's right. This is very important to say. What these are are status pings or status symbols, right. A lot of times, exactly say like I have a cool thing. So if you see that wall behind me, right, I can put a video to the know. If you look at this wall here, if I go, so I can throw some video to it. What's up there now? Oh, that looks like a Star Wars video.
Sometimes I'll have this up, right, and I'll get on a call with private equity guys. I'll be talking to them for a few minutes and then they'll go, 'I'm sorry, what's that mural in the background?' And then I can't do it here. I didn't set up to do it, but I just push a button. 'Hey, Nate, can you just go press the space bar?' Yeah, just go press the space bar and get that thing moving. So then this will happen. Nate will fly and they'll go, 'What kind of green screen is that? Somebody like walking through.' I'm like, 'Hey, man, it's not a green screen, right?' Oh, it might not be loaded, let's see.
So anyway. Then the Star Wars will start playing and they'll go, 'What in the world am I looking at?' And then I'll go, 'Oh, this, right.' And they go, 'I don't even understand what I'm seeing here.' And so I go.
Well, you're seeing the offices of West Coast Finance in a $2 million of equipment, set up to only do one thing, which is to pitch finance deals. So this, welcome to West Coast Finance. And so now I go, 'I know what you're used to, guys opening their laptops in their kitchen trying to pitch a $3 million deal. Right, welcome to West Coast Finance.
We're here today to talk about a $200 million financing, of which $15 million has already been financed in the last 30 days. Are you guys ready to go? And so you. You don't need two million dollars of equipment and a ten thousand dollar facility to do that, right? But the gambit. There is frame control and status. You can do status in your own way. You can do status from your kitchen with a laptop if that's your situation. But what you do have to do is status. And I'll give you a quick example. You know, hey, how do I? Or, 'Hey, I don't have a $2 million studio. I'll just put myself aggrandizing name up behind me, so you can see there.”
You know, so then I'll throw my name up there and that. But if you're just sitting there, you know in your which, for many years, it's all I had. You know, I get on. I get on the funds, with billion-dollar funds or even with billionaires running a family office. You know, and they've got this high-status frame which is we have the money, we control the conversation, we say when it starts, when it stops, what happens next? That's their frame right. And you, without, without knowing pitch anything or being in you know the Narnia world, I mean you walk into that and you go. You know, 'Hey, billion-dollar fund, thank you so much.
0:13:33 Alex Shevelenko
Thank you so much for taking a busy schedule to fit us in.
0:13:37 Oren Klaff: I know you guys have a busy schedule, really appreciate you taking time out of your day, so thank you. I've got some really great slides to show you. I hope you like them. We're really excited to meet you guys. Can't believe we have the opportunity. We've heard so much about you. We just recently read about this deal you did and you guys are involved in such great deals. It's just an honor to be able to get on a call with you and show you what we're doing.
If you have any questions, feel free to stop me along the way. Do you need anything? Get some coffee? Are you ready to go? Can you hear me okay? Is the sound good? So we'll hear this. And you don't have to do that, right, you can just reframe the whole thing by going, 'Hey, Alex, good to meet you. Are you here for the 10:03 call, cause the 10 o'clock call started a few minutes ago.
Right, and you could say that to a billionaire. How do I know that? I've said it to 10, 12, 15 billionaires. I've said it to a hundred family offices and what that is you know. You don't want to say it rudely, but you can say it. Then you can smile. Really, and people understand you value time.
Every businessman in America values time the same way. Nobody enjoys coming to meetings late. They know it does not impress anybody. When people come to meetings late, you can just say, “My value system and my peer status are equal to yours.” You can have a billion dollars, but this is America. We don't value people by how much money they have. We value them by their integrity, credibility, ability to live by their word, and honesty. That, in America, is how we measure your value. You can just say, "Hey, are you here for the 10 to 3 call? The 10 o'clock call started a while ago. We covered a lot of stuff. Are you guys ready to go?" They will always apologize. So that's one little thing you can do to pull your status back and say you do not have to supplicate to people because of money in America.
That is not our value system. Money does not make the man or the woman. What makes them, and I think everywhere in the world, is integrity, keeping your word, family values, belief in community, taking care of yourself, running a good company, being able to work 30 or 40 hours a week, and then putting stuff aside to have a weekend with your family. Those are the things that make you a good person. So, no matter how much money you have, it's very likely you have all those things and they can drive your status.
0:13:37 Alex Shevelenko
And expertise, to some degree we're talking about, is also valuable, wouldn't you say?
0:16:41 Oren Klaff
So, for sure, the. What we find is that the status comes from treating the counterparty as a peer and not supplicating to them, not saying, “Just because you have money, you get to order us around.” We talk to a range of partners and look for the right one. We have criteria for choosing a partner and can share a bit about that criteria. The level of expertise that most people show on a call is quite low, right up to the end of the meeting. Then they start getting comfortable, showing that they're truly experts in their domain. We, as people who fund deals, are looking for deep content experts, not strategists. Strategy is free and simple but theory and application are difficult. How do I know I'm talking to someone with deep application chops? Then I want to hear about their strategic ideas. So now, you've got status, expertise, and the big idea wrapped up, and someone is interested in talking to a true expert working on a big idea in the next generation of an industry.
0:18:43 Alex Shevelenko
What I love about what you're describing I'll translate it a bit for our audience that's more technical, like in technology sales. For example, what I learned from being early at Salesforce. Salesforce is now a big name, but when we were going pre-IPO, we were hunting for big names recognized whether it was a small business or a large one. We were deliberate in getting that big name, even when our core business was small. When we tell these stories, it immediately raises credibility. Now, everybody has logos. You could back it up with evidence. So it's not just an empty logo. That's one simple way of doing social proof, trying to get G2 ratings or Gartner ratings. We deliberately went after getting a lot of customer reviews and feedback because it says if you want to buy something in this area and we are a leader, you got to take us seriously. We have third-party evidence, not just us talking about how great we are. These are just some of the things we've been doing.
We're asking people to promote them. You could see them sometimes on the landing pages. The quality of the introduction matters. It's like, "Hey, do you have some time to help out my poor friend here who's fundraising?" versus "Hey, you got to check this out. These guys are killing it. They've got great brands, maybe not even listing who the company is to create a sense of excitement and curiosity there." So do you see other examples like that, where you could even win the pitch before the pitch because a lot of this comes before? You've written books. So people come to you thinking, "Wow, I'm going to get Oren."
0:20:56 Oren Klaff
So, listen, I think there are a couple of ways to think about this. One is I have the perspective everyone wants to know about closes. There are 99 ways to close, but what's the best way? This is because they find themselves backed into a corner at the end of an hour or 45 minutes. How do I take the situation I've created and then create a conversion or a close? The close real dealmakers use, and I've been in hundreds of transactions, is this: "Hey guys, looks like we're running out of time. But what should we be doing here?"
0:21:34 Alex Shevelenko
That's a close. Stop and pause, really important, and then you're done, right?
0:21:38 Oren Klaff
"What should we be doing together? Yes, that is the only close I have. I wrote a book called Pitch Anything, which sold a million copies. It is taught at 500 of the Fortune 500 companies and most major entrepreneurial universities, from Yale, Harvard, Stanford, MIT on down. It is a rigor for Silicon Valley and Wall Street. The book is published in 17 countries, including many where I never authorized its publication, like Russia and Iran. I just had a guy go, 'Hey, love your book. Thanks for publishing in Iran.' My publisher doesn't publish in Iran, you know, sanctions, whatever. It's published in countries we haven't even targeted.
And the only close, after all that love and distribution of the book, is 'I'm running a little short on time. What should we be doing together?' So why does that close work? Because everything up to that point was done correctly. People want to know about closes because they've created chaos in the mind of the buyer up to the point where time is running out. Now they need a fancy close, like when buying a car. 'Hey, Mr. Jones, press hard. The fifth copy's yours.' That is not close. 'If I could get it to you in frozen black at the price you want, do we have a deal today?' That is not close; that's an emergency call to action.
So, what is the correct way to frame up a sale or presentation for money, equity, debt, whatever you're looking for? Step one, which everybody skips, involves recognizing that the world is changing beneath your feet. You can consider that you've got both of your feet on tectonic plates. These plates are moving and separating. One will form Guanabana land, and the other will form the future in which you survive. I'm going to show you how fast these tectonic plates are separating and what the drivers are. For example, what is changing today? If you look at our economy or our business environment, we're converting from ice engines to electric vehicle engines. Electric vehicles are difficult to operate and have huge problems. There are debates about what will happen to the American automotive industry as it tries to transition to EV. Massive change.
If you pick the wrong company, like Rivian, you can invest in a $92 billion valuation and then lose 95% of your money a year later as the stock price sinks. The war in Ukraine is driving geopolitical changes between China, Iran, and Russia. It is changing the global market for oil. Oil itself is changing as Saudi Arabia and the Middle East look for different sources of revenue for the years to come. China is more green than anybody else to the point where it's affecting the green markets in the United States and Switzerland. The global pandemic has changed the entire healthcare system. Healthcare in the United States is extremely expensive.
0:25:19 Alex Shevelenko
Let's not forget AI.
0:25:22 Oren Klaff
Right, AI is wiping out an entire layer of white-collar workers. If you're an intern intending to become an investment banker, AI is wiping out your position. We're going to have an entire generation of missing investment bankers who lack those crucial years of experience because banks see no need for junior associates or interns. So, whatever industry you're in, it's undergoing some tectonic change that will affect your business.
0:25:56 Alex Shevelenko
Can I draw the attention just for a second? The way you did it was a masterclass in itself. You used a concrete metaphor of standing on tectonic plates that are pulling apart. This makes the audience envision themselves dropping into a volcano. This imagery engages the primitive parts of our brains, where survival instincts lie. It makes us think, "Wow, I need to pay attention to this. There's a lot at stake."
0:26:43 Oren Klaff
Why do you start every pitch with moving tectonic plates? One is because change is the only thing that the human mind requires itself to pay attention to. Movement and change are built into the mechanics of the human mind and it causes it to instantly stop thinking about everything else and focus on movement and change. So if you say the world is changing, as I said in the book, “Winter is coming”, if you start talking to someone about dramatic weather, they will stop everything they're doing and want to collect the information you have about the storm, rain, heat wave, dust storm. We are programmed to notice systemic changes in our environment. So, you don't start your pitch with a story about new product introductions or how excited you are to meet. Instead, mention the dramatic change in the finance industry. We've moved dramatically from an everything bubble to a high-interest rate environment. A good portion of our industry is locked into assets that have not yet repriced. When they do, we'll see who's not prepared.
What we're here to decide today is the value and liquidity of your assets as this interest rate environment continues for the next six months. I've looked at your assets, and it's relatively public.
I see the problem you have as the market shifts, Alex. In my opinion, it's so severe that if it worsens, even we wouldn't want to work on this account. So, I'm going to outline what we believe will happen over the next six to eight months. You will either agree with our vision or not. I can't work on your business harder than you. If you see this change affecting you as we do, we have much to work on together. We should spend the next 20 minutes finding a solution.
Let's use our experience, our people, our IP, and our investor base to work alongside you. Or we conclude it's impossible to work together and return to our previous tasks. But let's spend five minutes determining that. Sound good? Now, you see, we have change, status, expertise, and a fork in the road.
0:30:21 Alex Shevelenko
Yogi Berra said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." Two things stood out for me. We're taking this perspective from our podcast audience, focusing on the shift from me-centric communications and experiences to customer-centric ones. You framed the initial reason for our meeting not by highlighting our products or history but by focusing on what's in it for the customer. This approach is loud, clear, and compelling.
0:31:32 Oren Klaff
Did I get that right? Let me summarize it for you. Hey, Alex, I've got a box here with everything you need.
0:31:39 Alex Shevelenko
Yeah.
0:31:40 Oren Klaff
The IP, the software, the financial strategy, the spreadsheets, the people that execute it—everything in this box solves your problem. But before I show you what's inside and our approach, I need to know more about you. We're selective about whom we work with.
Once you reveal what your product is, the meeting is essentially over. Why stay to learn more? The next questions are about cost, value delivery time, and possibly traction. Then it's, "Sounds good, send me a proposal." And you're left waiting while the other party explores other options or looks for cheaper alternatives. In my presentations, you won't see the company's details until the potential investors are ready to commit.
0:33:14 Alex Shevelenko
I'd let that sink in right. One of the reasons you did that is you had the status, but you also framed it as a must-have solution without going into details about what the solution is. Is that accurate?
0:33:29 Oren Klaff
Correct. I have a company I'm funding right now. What the company makes goes into every single American home. Domestically, it's a $21 billion market. Every American home needs one. Prices range from five thousand to twenty-five thousand dollars. You could easily spend a hundred sixty thousand dollars on this product in a five-thousand-square-foot home. Every American home needs this, otherwise, you know, you live in a trailer that isn't fully built.
There is one company in the world that makes the equipment for this product. Seventy percent has to be imported from India, China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Spain, and Israel because the US lacks manufacturing capacity. Not only that, all these products from abroad are toxic to American workers, giving them lung cancer. Most of it has to be imported because we don't have enough domestic manufacturing, and one company controls the world supply.
The company I'm working on has a new machine that can make it in the United States without being toxic. If you're interested, just give me a dollar amount. If it's a good amount, we'll go into a meeting. I'll tell you what the product is, where it sits in your home, and how we make money doing it.
0:35:39 Alex Shevelenko
Yeah, that's brilliant. You've set up what you describe as an intrigue frame. Everybody listening wants to know what this product is. It sounds incredible. Give me a number.
0:35:56 Oren Klaff
Give me a number that you're in. It's not a binding commitment. Give me a number you'd be comfortable with if all of this was true, and we could build a billion-dollar asset in 36 months, making 60 percent gross margins, 40 net. You could make a 4x on your money in 36 months, non-toxic, domestically, with new technology from an Italian company, replacing Chinese and Indian products. What's the number you would be comfortable putting in for that kind of return?
0:36:41 Alex Shevelenko
Then you actually make people give you their number.
0:36:42 Oren Klaff
"Give me your number. I'm all in. Related, man."
0:36:48 Alex Shevelenko
I'm sorry, I'm a one-trick pony. What you described opens up a whole new way of thinking about how we present it.
0:37:09 Oren Klaff
But I will tell you something. If I were doing it for you, I would say, listen, I think in the United States, content, especially business content with AI, has jumped the shark. It has tipped to having zero integrity in its current packaging. So, once you've seen three, four, five presentations, documents, products made by AI, you no longer trust single-point documents to be valuable. Because you can clearly see the fingerprints of AI all over it, and so you know that it was made from three-year-old Wikipedia. You know the value of that content is near zero because it doesn't have a current human insight in it. So, with the value of content going to zero, the only thing that will have value for business consumers going forward is context. It's documents organized together, made and organized by humans, that have context.
What I would do is I would reframe single-point documents as having zero value in the current generation business. Then I would start to build examples of that being true. Then I would say, “The question is how do you give a business user enough context so you know the information that he's getting actually has value to his business and was not pre-assembled IKEA style by AI?” The answer to that question is fundamental to how much revenue growth you'll have in your business over the next three years, and that's it. So now I don't have to say anything about RELAYTO.
0:39:21 Alex Shevelenko:
Right.
0:39:22 Oren Klaff
Going into it, I get to reframe all other modes of business content as irrelevant. And then I get to say, where do you want to take your business over the next three years?
0:39:41 Alex Shevelenko
And you know, I don't have enough data to make this pitch, but that's how I would start to build into it. Yeah, and I think the magic is actually in having both, because changing behaviors is hard for sellers and marketers. What you've done is brilliant. Some points resonate, obviously, around zero cost of content, but the framing is an interesting lever.
0:40:24 Oren Klaff
I mean, normally, I would not if I had the platform. I would show how multiple content technologies have just gone into the Sparta pit and been kicked in. The value of content that isn't on a platform and doesn't have a credentialed creator vouching for it is zero. So, if I were pitching this, I would say, “Hey, Alex, until you tell me we need that context for our content and we know how to attach a creator's credibility to our content, I'm not going to show you the platform.” I'm not going to give you religion. If you believe you can stick your stuff into AI, have AI produce content, throw that content in a Dropbox, send it to someone, and they have high trust, high believability, and want to do business with you, I'm out. Things are moving way too fast in this area, and we are too busy for me to have to give you religion. By the way, right now, you're just killing the entire SEO industry.
0:41:57 - Alex Shevelenko
You're annihilating them. The issue with optimizing for algorithms rather than humans has been a travesty. Now, with AI, it's just going to get worse.
0:42:17 Oren Klaff
Great. That's a great example. I mean, the thing I like to do in these frameworks is to show how the same thing has happened repeatedly over time. For example, take the theater industry, which I know little about. You've seen it change several times. Originally, films were silent because audio couldn't be integrated. Then, with the advent of stereo audio, the silent era ended, rendering many in the industry unemployed and ushering in a new era. But what you might be most familiar with is the introduction of stadium seating. Within one year, it completely replaced flat seating because it allowed you to see over the person in front of you, making flat seating theaters unprofitable.
Then the pandemic hit. Nobody went to the theater, pushing content providers to distribute online. You could watch major releases, like 'Thor Renegar,' from home, with 'Mission Impossible' being one of the few holdouts. This pattern of change has repeated throughout the theater industry. Now, for the fifth time in 25 years, it's undergoing another transformation. If you can identify a pattern of change in your market, you're ahead.
1999 completely wiped out Xerox, right? Do you know what Xerox does today? Not me either. So who cares? Nobody. From 1999 to 2008, it was Blackberry and everything like that. And then content moved to, obviously, the iPhone. And then Dropbox. Now we're seeing content in 2010 was completely transformed. Today we're making the transition into the fifth generation of content.
0:45:22 Alex Shevelenko
It's a movement that continues to build tension, and then people are just bursting to release. What you did was brilliant. You time-bounded this discussion, making it feel urgent and preventing it from becoming another endless Zoom meeting. This approach makes me feel involved, allowing me to make decisions and commit to them. You're not forcing information on me; instead, you're drawing me in, offering just enough choice. This is where most B2B and complex markets fail.
0:46:12 Oren Klaff
I'm trying to do. If you can provide insight, structural insight, about someone's own industry, yeah. If you can provide true insight where they go, "I had never thought about it like that." I never thought about the med tech industry, fintech industry, content industry, SEO industry, automotive industry, in that structural organization before. Now you're not pitching that person. That person wants to spend time with you and, more importantly, they want to introduce you to other people in their organization. Like, "Hey, man, you got to listen.”
What Alex is like this, can you do that again? Directors of companies have asked, "Can you do that again?" I'm like, "What? Like my pitch?" "Yeah, sure. Like, hold on, I want to get Tom, Susan, and Harry. Right, right on it. I'm going to go, okay, great. Yeah, I want you to show our senior directors that same thing. You remember everything you just said." "Like, yeah, that's what I do, right, you know?" Or, in a negotiation, people applaud. Give my presentation, "Hey, this is my view on how your industry is organized." And they'll be like, "My God, that was amazing." Then the chairman of the company goes, "We don't applaud our vendors, right, we negotiate against them." They're like, "No, that was great, it was amazing."
So, if you can help somebody organize their thinking about their own industry structurally and paint for them clearly what's going to happen next, then you don't have to close. Their desire to work with you will be evident. They will ask, "How do we work with you?" before you've finished your pitch or the meeting. When people say, "Hey, Alex, how do we work with you?" it is because you have given them such certainty that you know how to manage their uncertainty, the things that are most frustrating to them. You've given them certainty that you have experience in a domain where they feel they will fail without an expert guiding them, and they just go, "Hey, Alex, how do we work with you? Stop, I don't need the benefits, value proposition, logos, what are the next steps?" When people say that, it is because you've given them certainty.
0:48:52 Alex Shevelenko
But you're creating value, right? You're also just creating value because you're interpreting the world.
0:48:57 Oren Klaff
Well, I want to be careful. I want to be careful for all the young people listening here about creating value, because they think you have to give value. The value is you, your experience and your ability to solve these problems. What everybody tries to do is they try and deliver value.
0:49:20 Alex Shevelenko
You are the value. So it's not about, "Here's what I do." "I am the price." What you're saying is you need to.
0:49:24 Oren Klaff
"I'm the price. Yeah, listen, man, I don't know how you got this problem so bad. But again, if it gets any worse, even I'm not going to work on it, right, and it's my job to sell and win this business. I'm a good salesperson.
0:49:39 Alex Shevelenko
This customer experience is so horrible even RELAYTO can't help you. It was that type of thing. Right, like, "If this gets worse, yeah, got it."
0:49:48 Oren Klaff
If this gets busy, I do not want to work on it. She's got a lot of work. Can we solve it? Sure. But do I want to take five guys off, put two engineers on it, work on it myself, spend 30 days fixing a problem that you like? I don't own any equity in your company, I don't have any stock, I don't have the upside. So for me to take 80 of my hours, five of my engineers, and fix your problems makes no sense. You're just about at that tipping point where even we wouldn't touch it.
0:50:23 Alex Shevelenko
So you're continuing to create your environment, your frame, and then you're pushing back a little. You create more insight from your frame, then pull back, drawing them to you without going for the close. Unlike the traditional 500 sales training setups, you focus on the narrative and content and how it's delivered. Now, Oren, one thing we find really interesting, and I want to be conscious of time here, is digital interaction when you're not in the room. Your time is valuable. How do we clone Oren and have this type of conversational experience? That's a fundamentally fascinating problem for us, and I couldn't dream of a better thought partner on this. It's something that will be really relevant to our audience. How can they take your framework, which is brilliant, and scale it?
0:51:48 Oren Klaff
I do this. I'm saying, hey, look, I've got some ideas to share with you about finance. In my experience, someone like you looking to invest has two perspectives: get rich quick or get rich slow. If you're cresting through your 30s, 40s, or even 50s without $10 million set aside, you gravitate towards get rich slow, which includes mutual funds, core index funds, core real estate - stuff that your wealth manager recommends. However, you'll run out of time before you have enough money to retire on. So what happens? You gravitate towards get rich quick schemes, whether that's Bitcoin, CBD manufacturing, mining copper in asteroids, AI, electric vehicles, battery chips, new kinds of AI chips, or flipping real estate in Dubai. In the attempt to 100x your money quickly, it doesn't work. Professionals with money, PhDs, and organizations can't do it. So how are you, sitting in your house with your laptop, going to 100x your money in a very short period of time? That's not going to happen.
So in the middle is something that real investors do, that is between. You know, make money slowly in the stock market and get rich crazy investing in new technologies that are have a one in 3 million chance of getting beyond. You know, off the, off the laptop, you know, getting any real customers and so that is called a 4X in 18 to 36 months. Who does that? Every single family that has made 10, 20, 30, 50, a hundred million dollars. They're not trying to get rich crazy and they're not, you know. They certainly have money in the markets, you know, just slow, but they're looking for these 4X deals and these 4X deals have very particular elements to them, right, right, I've organized that into what I call just a royal flush five simple cards ace of spades, king of spades, queen of spades, jack of spades and spades, and you can just go.
Hey, I, if you see those five cards that every family office uses and how they play them, then you can also play those same cards and start looking for these same 4x opportunities. Because if you take a hundred thousand 4x, it start looking for these same Forex opportunities. Because if you can take 100,000 Forex, 400,000 Forex, set again, you know, be 1.6 million, then you'd be up in 6 million and then you have an easy chance. So if you do that over and over again, the way people do every day, then you would be satisfying your need to, you know, increase your nest egg, the ability where you have enough money to do whatever you want or retire in safety. And so come, check out this little presentation that I have on how to do that, right, if you love that, we'll figure out what to do next with each other.
It's on Thursday at 10 o'clock, you know. You can jump in, and so that's how I do it, Alex, you know exactly. And then people jump in that presentation that can be recorded, that can be live, and then at the end you just go listen. If this is for you, let's talk one-on-one right and make it happen. So that is how you scale, using intrigue, insight. You know value, but you have to take people, you have to show them you have some insight to their choices. Right now that those choices are getting, you know, they got a foot on, you know this tectonic, this tectonic, and they're spreading, you know, and they're just going to plunk into the middle without you know, some additional knowledge and experience in someone who knows what they're doing. And so that's how I would scale that.
0:55:52 Alex Shevelenko
This is brilliant, Oren. I enjoyed it so much. Thank you for digging in for everyone. Oren runs Intersection Capital. We're going to take the nuggets from this episode and the links to the webinar you want to share with the audience, Oren, and put it together in a pod book. This way, you guys can take this and digest it because there's so much richness here. I know I'll go back to this episode, especially the RELAYTO freebie advice. Thanks, Oren.
That was great, but I think anybody who is not Goldman Sachs walking into a deal that's tidied up for you and you have to work for it. Oren has just shared with us an amazing, proven playbook of how to equalize your status, create amazing excitement for the users that it's a life and death situation for them to pay attention, and not force them, so you don't have to feel bad about being salesy anymore. You showed the value. This is something every startup, every entrepreneur, everybody who's a small team that dreams big, should be doing. Oren, if I type Oren on the internet, it'll bring me to you. We'll provide the pod book. Any last words?
0:57:19 Oren Klaff
I think I think it's good. I think you know if you like this stuff. You know, obviously, work with RELAYTO Content Experience Platform. I'm very impressed by it. I use the platform and I love it. That's why I was able to talk about it in this way. I think it satisfies the needs going forward for people to see video documents in context from a trusted source. So I like it. I recommend you use it. If you want to hear you know more stuff that I've you should go to orenklaff.com. You can sign up and I've put out an email. You know more stuff that I've used. Go to orenklaff.com. You can sign up and I put out an email. You know a couple of times a week on this stuff, and so that's how we could interact. So those, that's it, but I've really enjoyed talking to you today.
0:58:05 - Alex Shevelenko
Love it, Oren. Thank you so much, and everybody you will listen to the episode more than once, I promise you. Thank you.