Chapter 10Do you mind if I tell you about our core business

The show is free, and I say so out loud. Then I ask permission. Then I take one minute, and only one. Those three moves are the whole turn from the spotlight to the sale, and the strange part is how little of that minute is about me. By the time I ask, the guest has usually made my pitch for me.

Forty-five minutes of him

In June I walked someone through a taping I had just finished. I wrapped the live stream with about fifteen minutes left on the call. The guest had spent the interview on his own business, the way guests do when you let them. Then I asked one question.

And at the end, after he talks for 45 minutes, I asked him, do you mind if I tell you what I do? ... because he already just told me for 45 minutes that he needs it.

Look at the order there. He talked first, for most of an hour, about his own company. I asked the questions a host asks, which turn out to be the questions a good salesperson asks in discovery. When the recording stopped, I knew his problem better than most of his investors did. My minute was mostly a mirror.

That is the reason the turn feels natural instead of slimy. I am not springing a pitch on a stranger. I am answering a question he already has, about a problem he already named, with a person he has just spent an hour liking.

The question they are already holding

A free show creates a question in the guest's head, whether they say it or not. Who pays for this? What do these guys get out of it? If you leave that question hanging, they will answer it for you, and the answer they invent is usually worse than the truth. Pay-to-play. A list-building scheme. Some catch they haven't found yet.

So I answer it before they ask. I've said some version of this on hundreds of calls:

But a lot of people also ask us, well, how do you guys make money? Like what's the, what's the catch? What's the kind of the business behind all of this as well? So I wanted to be upfront about that.

Upfront is the word. Hiding the business behind the show makes the show look like bait. Naming it makes the show look like what it is, a gift from a company that also sells something, and everybody understands that arrangement. Your favourite podcast has sponsors. Nobody feels tricked by that.

Move one: say it's free

The first move is the boring one, and I don't skip it. Before I say a word about our business, I make sure they know the interview cost them nothing and never will.

a lot of people are like, oh, do you charge money for this? No, no, no. The interview is free.

On a pre-interview with a family office I put it even more plainly:

So I make it clear that, hey, look, the podcast is not like pay-to-play. It's, we just connect with like-minded people like yourself.

This draws a line down the middle of the call. Everything before the line was a gift, and it stays a gift whatever they say next. Everything after the line is an offer, and they can turn it down without losing the episode, the clips or the relationship. People relax when they can see that line. A guest who suspects the spotlight has a price tag spends the whole taping guarding his wallet. A guest who knows it doesn't can listen.

Move two: ask

Here is the turn itself, word for word, from a call in August. I'd read it slowly, because every clause is doing work:

Do you mind if I quickly tell you what we do as a, like, so the interviews and stuff, those are all free. We don't charge anything for it. But do you mind if I tell you a little bit about our core business, just like for one minute?

I ask twice in two sentences. The first try trips over itself, so I back up and plant the free part before asking again. That stumble is in the transcript, and I left it in because it shows the order my mouth has learned: free, then permission, then the minute. On my business calls this year I said "do you mind if I" a few hundred times. It is the most practised sentence I own.

Permission does something subtle. Once they say yes, they are no longer sitting through a pitch. They are listening to something they agreed to hear. The same words land differently. And almost nobody says no, because you just gave them an hour and you are asking for sixty seconds:

And then they say, yeah, of course. Of course, sure. And then I go in and tell them

I call this part going for the kill, which sounds aggressive until you hear what the kill sounds like. I told a teammate in July:

Get them to book the actual show and then go for the kill. Like, hey, do you mind if I tell you? Because everyone asks us, well, how do you guys make money? Because we don't charge for the show.

That's my kill shot. A polite question.

Move three: one minute

One minute means one minute. If I need five to explain what we do, I don't understand what we do. So I start with the shortest version I have, the one I'd give if the guest had a train to catch:

If I had to say it in like the least number of words, it's like if cold email and podcasting came together and had a baby.

That line gets a laugh, and the laugh buys me the next thirty seconds. In those thirty seconds I do two things.

The first is to agree with whatever doubt they already carry. Most founders have tried cold email or been burned by an agency. If I start by defending cold email I've lost them. So I say the thing they're thinking before they can:

And the truth is. Direct sales doesn't work. The truth is. Raising capital even, it's very difficult. And then they start nodding ... So I'm agreeing with them. But then I go, you know what does work? Giving instead of taking.

The nod comes first and the turn comes second. By then they've watched the turn work on themselves. Giving instead of taking is how they ended up on my show in the first place.

The second thing is to hand their own words back. This is where the forty-five minutes pays off. I don't describe our services in the abstract. I describe the problem they told me about, then say we fix that one:

And for the kill, I'm just telling them that they told me. Like, they're like, yo, like, you just told me you don't need help with Gtm. But guess what? You just said you need help with fundraising. Okay, so let's start with there.

Notice what happened in that exchange. The guest said no to one thing, and I agreed with the no. Then I pointed at the thing they did say yes to, an hour earlier, in their own voice, on their own episode. I used no clever closing technique. I listened, and I remembered.

If there's a screen in front of us, the minute ends on my calendar. Saying "look at my calendar" does more than any slide, and the next chapter is about why. So the order never changes. The free line and the ask open it. After that I give the short version and agree with their doubt about cold email, and I close on the problem they named.

When the minute happens

I don't save the turn for the debrief. I believe you pitch in every meeting, and I said it to a founder in September in the strongest terms I have:

I have another philosophy: you have to be pitching in every meeting. You never leave a Meeting without pitching. It is your duty to pitch, and I have ways of getting there.

Duty sounds heavy. What I mean is that holding back what you do from someone who might need it is its own kind of rudeness. You'd tell a friend. Tell the guest.

But pitching in every meeting does not mean closing in every meeting. The pitch grows across the three calls. In the pre-interview, which runs fifteen minutes, once they've told me their story and we've booked the taping, there are two or three minutes left. That's where the first version goes, small, on purpose:

Oh, my new thing is I don't go too hard on my pitch on my first meeting. I'll plant the seed and I'll say, hey, I'll tell you more about it after the interview.

And the family office again:

You're not going to close them on that first pre-interview. But the seed is planted.

Then comes the taping, which is all theirs. Then, after the debrief is booked, the second pass:

Okay, boom, it's booked. And then I go for the kill again. Hey, I told you what me and Charles do, right?

By the debrief, the guest has heard the one-liner twice, watched his own episode go out, and seen the clips we made. The minute I ask for at the debrief is the third time they've heard it, and the first time they're ready for it.

Not everybody strikes

Some people hear the minute and say thanks, not now. Good. They still have an episode they're proud of, and I still have a relationship I wouldn't otherwise have. That is the floor of this method, and it is a high floor.

The people who do strike tend to strike hard, because they've been describing the problem for an hour:

And I tell them, and like I said, not everybody strikes, but a lot of people will be like, oh, like, that's crazy. Like that. We need that. And so right away in a parallel kind of universe, I start planting the seed for, okay, let's start going. Here's the payment. Here's the next step. Kickoff doc.

"We need that" is their line, not mine. When it comes, I move fast and make the next step concrete. The payment link and the kickoff date go out the same day, because enthusiasm cools overnight and a date on the calendar holds.

And the guests who say not now? I told a teammate in June about a guest I had interviewed and debriefed, who said it was not the right time. Then he went and raised money, and called back:

Now he's got money. And then he says, let's get another call.

The seed sat in the ground until the weather changed. I didn't chase him. I had given him the episode and asked for my minute. Then I left the door open. He walked back through it.

Try this week

Write your minute. Three parts, in this order.

1. The free line. One sentence that tells the guest the interview cost them nothing and never will. Say why you do it in words you'd use with a friend. 2. The ask. "But do you mind if I tell you a little bit about our core business, just like for one minute?" Use my words or your own, but ask the question and wait for the yes. 3. The minute. Start with the shortest version you have. Then agree with the doubt they probably carry. Then name the one problem they told you about, and say how you fix it.

Read it out loud with a timer. If it runs past sixty seconds, cut until it doesn't. The first thing to go is usually the sentence about how good you are.

Then, on your next three calls with anyone who could buy from you, use it. After each call, write down one thing the other person said that you could have handed back in your minute. If you can't find one, you talked too much before you asked.

When the person across from you has just spent forty-five minutes telling you what they need, what will you say in your one minute that they haven't already said for you?