Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - How She Sold $2.5 Billion On TV Using This Pitch Formula - Dr Forbes Riley

Episode Date: May 26, 2026

On this episode of Escaping the Drift, we sit down with Dr. Forbes Riley: the woman called the Queen of Pitch, host of over 197 national infomercials, two-time TEDx speaker, and the inventor behind the Spin Gym who has personally sold over 2.5 billion dollars worth of products on television.Before becoming one of the most coached pitch experts in the world with over 100,000 entrepreneurs in her playbook, Forbes was a goofy little girl from Long Island with frizzy hair, eight years of braces, a broken nose, and a mother who told her there was no money for college. Then a doctor overheard that conversation in a hospital, fixed her nose for free, and one decision to enter a beauty pageant for a scholarship set off a chain reaction that landed her on Broadway with Christopher Reeve, hosting ESPN's X Games with Stuart Scott, and standing next to Jack LaLanne on the most successful infomercial of all time.In this episode, Forbes opens up about the legally blind Shakespeare professor who saw her potential when no one else could, the agent who chased her around a hotel room and pushed her to invent her own management company at 22, and the stripper-gram empire she built during the New York writer's strike that funded her move to Los Angeles.We dive into her exact pitching formula that turned a single Jack LaLanne juicer infomercial into a billion dollar product, the difference between sales and pitching that almost nobody understands, the springboard story technique she uses to build instant connection, and the question flip that makes prospects beg you for the solution. She also breaks down why she stopped telling people what they need and started getting them to want what she has, and how parents can pitch their kids into cleaning their rooms without ever raising their voice.If you have ever pitched anything to anyone, a product, a deal, a kid, a spouse, this conversation will rewire how you do it forever.💬 Did you enjoy this podcast episode? Tell us all about it in the comment section below! ☑️ If you liked this video, consider subscribing to Escaping The Drift with John Gafford *************💯 About John Gafford: After appearing on NBC's "The Apprentice", John relocated to the Las Vegas Valley and founded several successful companies in the real estate space.➡️ The Gafford Group at Simply Vegas, top 1% of all REALTORS nationwide in terms of production. Simply Vegas, a 500 agent brokerage with billions in annual sales Clear Title, a 7-figure full-service title and escrow company.*************✅ Follow John Gafford on social media:Instagram ▶️ / thejohngaffordFacebook ▶️ / gafford2🎧 Stream The Escaping The Drift Podcast with John Gafford Episode here:Listen On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7cWN80g...Listen On Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...*************#EscapingTheDrift #ForbesRiley #QueenOfPitch #PitchSecrets #SalesTraining #Infomercials #JackLaLanne #SpinGym #Entrepreneurship #SalesPsychologySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Back again, back again for another episode of the show, like it says, and the opening man gets you from where you are to where you want to go. And today, man, I could not be more excited for today. I have been looking forward to this for a week because I got, dare I say, a legend in the studio for you guys today. This person has sold $2.5 billion worth of products on television. Yeah, that's billion with a B. She's been called the Queen of Pitch. She's hosted over 197 national infomercials on QVC, HSN, ESPN, TLC, and more.

She's coached over 100,000 entrepreneurs on how to communicate better and how to close better. She's a two-time TEDx speaker, a best-selling author, National Fitness, Hall of Fame, and Duck Tea. This is like Tiger Woods at the first tea at the Masters. It just goes on and on and on and on. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the program, the author of the new book, Pitch, Secrets A to Z. This is Dr. Forbes Riley. I'm just going to play that every morning when I wake up. Is that it? I was like the coolest. Yes. I got to hype you up, buddy. I got to hype you up. Man, I am, I was so excited to have you because I got to tell you when I did your podcast,

it was so energy filled. And I just felt you do those things. We do a lot of this stuff, right? You have to do it. And at the end of your podcast, the time I got to spend with you, I felt energized, not drained. And for me, that's a lot. That's a lot. So I, I, I know that you're going to bring the heat today and you're going to help people. And listen, if you are in sales, if you are in any type of business that requires closing, and if you're in life, life requires closing, this is your lady. You need to listen up. And here we go.

So Forbes, man, let's dive into it. Here we go. I just want to go, as you see, I don't have any questions. I don't do questions because we're going to have a conversation about this. So the first I want to ask you is, why do you love this so much? What do you mean by this? I mean, because this could be life. Right.

No, why do you love educating people and making them better so much? So here's one of things. Pitching has afforded me everything. In fact, my first TED talk, and I just booked my third one for July 4th. Pitching is a skill. It is not something you're born with, I think, because I know I can teach that. And what you do is when you can pitch, you can get anything and everything you want in life. And so as a speaker, I've gone back and looked at my life and realized all the tragedies that I went through that I've managed to overcome and I'm still here.

I've gone through a lot. I've gone through five different movies in my life. from raising a little boy who was murdered, to having a mom and dad who were so sheltered and didn't want to see the world and worked hard like everyone said and then just died at 70 and never enjoyed their lives.

To a little girl here who had braces when I was a little kid for eight years. I know you've got kids. Eight years, your entire time you're a pretty little girl, I have full silver. I had that daughter. Oh, really? My daughter's had braces for five years.

Then they put a tongue thruster in my mouth, though, for two years from eight to ten. I couldn't talk. Oh. No one could have... She's 16. She's had braces since she was like 10 years old. Why? Why did you do that to her?

It's not me. I'm not orthodontas. No, because I'll tell you why. It's the, because she has one tooth that we were waiting for her to come down, and it took, they waited for two years, and now they finally attached a chain to it, and they're pulling it down. So hopefully she's about 12 months out from being out of them. How does she feel about it? She's over it.

She's so. So here's the thing. You know, you don't know when you're going through life, good, better and different. You're just going through it. And if you're smart, you keep going. And then things evolve from that. And so I got a lot of lessons.

Why would somebody like me want to do all the things I've done? People who say, well, but you're all over the place. I was the host of the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles for three years. I'm working with Jerry Seinfeld, Robin Williams, Ellen DeGeneres. I host the original X games for ESPN with Stuart Scott. And you're like, wait, you went from comedy to the biggest national sports platform, and I know nothing about sports, to sitting next to Howard Stern's office on a show called Off the Record. I'm interviewing classic rock stars.

That alone is three different people's lives. Yeah. That's pushed into like 10 years of my life. In between that, I am starting companies. I am an actress. I've been movies, television, soap operas, Broadway. And I, so when you say this, this is about sharing the greatest life ever. Well, let's talk about that because something you just said is really interesting.

You've managed that, some of the things that you've done would be the absolute highlight real. Correct. Of what person's life? That was the peak of my existence. So what did you do in life to put yourself in a position to have these opportunities, become reality. Kept going. And kept going

when no one said it was possible. So I have this dream. Let me start at the beginning. So goofy little girl who is very much a loner had no friends. An interesting thing when you don't ask

other people for approval and you don't listen to them say no, you just have your own sensibility. And my sensibility was watching movies and TV. And I kept thinking if James Bond can do this,

why can't I? If James Fonda can be at the Academy Awards and Kiss Robert Redford, why can't I? And I kept, those were my mentors. They were not real people.

I just imagine what it would be like to be mentored by them and then all the books that I read. And so when I go off, so get this, I'm this goofy little girl, my braces finally come off, my dad has a horrible accident. He slips, he's a printer, and he cuts the whole front of his hand off. I'm 15. He's going to spend the next three years in a hospital, 15 operations. We were flat broke.

We already lived in the 1,300 square foot house anyway. We were very loving family, but second generation immigrants, my dad didn't even vote because he didn't want to get called for jury duty because he'd miss a day of work. So we were like wildly insulated. We didn't really like the neighbors. So I had this kind of very sheltered, weird way of growing up. And I was really smart.

Smart enough to skip a grade of high school and to graduate college with two degrees in three years. Like so weirdly smart. Do you have siblings? I had one younger sister. Okay. Did you just ruin her life through college for that? Oh, oh. She never went to college.

She doesn't talk to me. I ruined her. Well, because it gets better to get this because she had the same parents I did. Yeah. So we're in the hospital. and the craziest thing is I'd ran into a baseball bat and I'd broken my nose and if I'm going to share this picture with you

because you guys at home you'd love to see this I am one ugly girl I have hair like this it's frizzy from Long Island I'm overweight my mom is always 260 pounds I had braces most of my life for a count shock and now my nose looks like somebody smashed it with a baseball bat so I'm standing in the hospital with my mom and she turns to me one day and said kiddo we have no money for college

that's the only dream I really could tangibly imagine and she said but there's a beauty pageant house The Miss Teenage America page was coming to town and they're offering a full scholarship to college. And she looked at my face and said, that's not going to work for us. Now, no, no, see, I was butt ugly. And when you see the photo and I'm sorry that I don't have it to show you, that's protecting. Because I was. The weird thing about that moment, and this is one of the first time it changed my life,

is that my dad's doctor overheard her say that. And he said, I'm going to fix your daughter's nose for free. I'm going to show you a picture of before and after picture, like literally a week later, I looked really cute. Apparently having a cute little nose made my eyes bigger, cut off all my hair, lost a couple of pounds. I wasn't eating that week. And I said, I'm going to enter this pageant,

which I hated idea of pageants. And one of these girls are going to be on NBC with Bob Hope, and it's going to be me. There were 500 girls initially. So let me ask you this, because you said that was protecting you, right? Your mom was trying to protect you. Absolutely.

So isn't there, I mean, with my kids, Is there a bit, like where's the line of protection in limiting their beliefs? Well, on the flip side of this, I can tell you how I empowered my daughter, who's now a TEDx speaker. How did that impact you with your kids? Oh, my God. I, you know what? A couple of ways. My mom was an only child of a butcher and I think my mother, my grandmother ran dogs in numbers or whatever she did in the lower part of Brooklyn in New York.

And my mom wanted to be my friend and my sister's friend. She never wanted us to get along. She didn't do it purposely, but because she was a very sad. She was a very sad person. Yeah. And so I said when I had kids, and I had mine at 42, that I was going to raise my kids by design. And I did. And I would love to write the book on that.

I have a way to get kids to share that nobody does. I have a way to get kids to clean their room. Okay, here's a great example of why pitching is so important. How do you get your kids to clean their room? Well, how I got, you know what, you know what finally worked with my daughter? I'll tell you my method that finally worked was my daughter is, my daughter looks just like my wife and has my personality. So God help. Oh my God.

Yeah. And my son looks just like me and has my wife's very affable personality, very rule following, very affable personality. So my daughter's room is always a mess. And she would always say, oh, I'm just messy. I'm just messy. I'm just a messy person. I'm a messy person.

And then one day I looked at her when she was about 12. And I said, you're not messy. You're inconsiderate. And she went, what? And I said, you're not messy room. You're just inconsiderate because if your room doesn't get picked up, your mother has to go pick it up. So you would rather do something that inconveniences others than take responsibility for yourself.

And her eyes got this big. You know what you did? Pitched her. Pitching is getting a yes. If I said to you, you want to see something cool, what are you going to say to me? Absolutely. That's a yes. That's a pitch.

Unless there's a dark alley involved. Well, then it's another conversation, but I'm not for today. Might be a little hesitant. So most people, my mother yelled. If you don't clean your room, you're not going to give up and that's what I heard all the time. So I said, you know, let's see, pitching is getting a yes. You get one yes, you can get a credit card. And you know this from sales, but they don't know it yet.

So I figured my rule is stop telling people what they need, get them to want what you have. That's the golden rule in pitching. Very different from sales. So that means I've got to understand you a little bit of psychology, and I got the solution that you want. If I've got a beautiful apartment and you're the right kind of person, let's make a marriage here. So I would say to my kids, hey, you want a talk of a cookie for dessert, right? Yeah, we do.

And they're twins. I was like, God, I can smell something in the oven. You think that's a talk of a cookie with your name on it? Oh, mommy, yes, yes, yes. Okay, that's three yeses. Then would you like to play cards with me? and I'll put my phone away after dinner, just yes, now four yeses. You tell you something, you only need three to get what you want.

I'd say, here's what I want. I want that floor completely clean in your bedroom and both those things are yours. They would race upstairs, happy to do it, come downstairs going, we're done, mom, let's have fun. And that's how they were raised. I didn't even punish my kids. Apparently, my son called me from college not long ago. He was like, Mom, thanks for not punishing me.

I'm like, that's not how I remember it. Well, here's what I remember. Here's what he got. I said to them, why am I the bad guy? You did something wrong and I'm supposed to punish you. I'm supposed to hit you. I'm not doing that. So here's the deal.

You punish you. You did the, you know, let's create consequences. You did this. Okay, mom, here's my cell phone for a week. Yeah, that's a great punishment. And he said when he got off to school, he said the cool thing is he now knows his consequences. So he's not running around stupid at college like all of his friends. And he called me to thank me.

Yeah. The only consequence that ever really paid off with my kids when they were little was writing sentences. Oh my God, they hated it. Just put him at the counter like, Just write the sentence. You would have thought I would have taken them to a work camp in Siberia because they're writing sentences for whatever they did when they were little. That's funny.

When you talk about pitching, right, everything's a pitching. Let's talk about the elements you just said getting yes. Before you get to that. Okay, yes. So I'm just going to be chronologically to help you understand. So anyway, I end up going into this pageant, by the way, and winning. Oh, God, yeah, back to the story. Well, that's the crazy part of the story is that I was in the local pageant,

got a hand-me-down bridesmaid's dress. But I could see the whys. I wanted to save my family. That was my why. And apparently the judges picked up on that, and I won, and I go off to the nationals. Nationals sucked, because I'm from New York, and I'm talking like this. And all those girls wanted to be in pageants. I just wanted a scholarship to college.

They're like, y'all had the funniest accident I ever heard. What are you talking about? I'm an accent. We talk in New York. What's only the people? And so I experienced a great sense of prejudice, of alienation. Took that off to school, was going to be a lawyer. If you're smart, where I grew up, your guidance counselor said,

one of two things. Dr. Lawyer, hate blood lawyer. I'm like, they didn't tell me you could be an advertising or real estate or anything else. I went off to be a lawyer. The things I wanted to play a lawyer on TV, I didn't want to be a lawyer. So I'm in college, and in the back of my mind, I wanted to be an actress. I just did my whole life. And we did plays and musicals in school.

I can't sing. So I never got the lead in any of them. In fact, I got every play, all six of them a year, Townsperson number three or chorus. Yeah, tree, number seven. I was number, yeah. Tree number seven. But I kept thinking, and I don't know if, it'd be interesting to hear if you felt the same way.

When I was little, I knew I was special. I just knew I was special. I don't know, I couldn't prove it. And then I win the page, and I'm like, see? And then it didn't go, well, I'm like, gosh, I know that there's something here, you guys. Why does nobody see it? Now, that's an interesting thing to say to the universe.

So I'm in college, senior year. I audition for, as you like it, Shakespeare's biggest play that he wrote for a woman. Two and a half hours, this character, Rosalind, runs the world. I audition, I go to the call board, finding my name and it's not, God, there's no, not townspeerson anything. And I had a moment, and I know we all do this, where I said,

I'm not even good enough for that, damn it. And I remember looking at the callboard feeling completely dejected, and then I looked at the top to see what lucky girl got the, oh my God, there's my name at the top. I got the lead role for the very first time in my life. Wow. And I'm looking at this going, that's a Shakespearean play. That's too.

I went to the director, and I really said to him, help me understand this. I've never gotten this before. I don't even know if I can do this. Why would you choose me? He sat me down and said, you're my ideal, Rosalind. He said, she's manipulative. She plays a boy.

She does this. She does that. That's what I've seen in you ever since I met you. Now, here's the crazy thing about this. And maybe this will help your kids. But my whole life, I was judged on how I looked. I was ugly. I was awkward.

I was deformed. I was whatever I was. I was overweight. My thighs. It got old. Everyone always commenting on my looks. The crazy thing is, by the time I got to college was kind of all put together, but the guy who was saying all these things.

the director of this play was 100% legally blind. Wow. Professor David Richmond couldn't see me at all. He could see me for the first time in my life. And it all jelled. And the play was a success. I called my parents and I said, I'm going to New York. This is it.

I'm going to be an actress. And I went in there like, we love you, but we can't help you. I said, I got this. I moved into a tiny little 400 square foot studio and landed the lead role in my very first feature film called Splatter University. Yeah. It's, uh, release his Sundance was up for several awards, I'm guessing. You making fun of me?

What are you joining? Never, no, never. Hey, by the way. Number of movies I've been in, zero. So there you go. Slasher horror film has its own Facebook page and Julie Parker is the character I played. Is it now like a cult favorite? Oh, it's a major cult favorite.

Are you kidding me? I'm in. Yeah, in fact, one of the, well, I won't spoil it for you, but there's a reason that this film is rather famous in that area. Okay. And then I went off and I did other movies, soap operas. I did, and then all the lessons of my life. life started happening because so now I'm I'm an actress right I'm doing all this but I went to go

get an agent right agent a very famous agency invites me to lunch at this hotel I'm thinking we're going to have lunch turns out in his room so I go up and there's the beautiful sit there and turns out I'm on the menu and I'm like what's going on here so he's chasing me around the bedroom luckily he was a short guy and I'm like how laughing at him you got to be kidding you just long arm at him well that's really what it was it was almost laughable plus I was a little bit of a prudish girl back then and I'm like this is ridiculous. I said, I need somebody really qualified to represent me. So I got a piece of stationary, this is how long ago this was, and I

created a company called CMA, Creative Management for Artists, and I hired a British woman named Lindsay Maxwell, and Lindsay was a wonderful pitcher. You know why? Because she was me. And I was my own manager for three years. Dude, that's I love that story, because one of my favorite stories entertainment is, I was in Atlanta,

running a nightclub in Atlanta in the early 2000s. And there was a DJ at one of the stations, his name Chris Lover Lover. Oh, God. And Chris Lever Lover started playing this new artist that he found. This new artist, you got to hear this record. This guy Ludacris.

Oh, wow. It was him. So he broke himself on the radio. I did not know that. Yeah. Ludacris was Chris Lover Lover in Atlanta and broke himself on the radio. Let me tell you something. I could pitch.

Shoot your shot, man. Oh, my God. I ended up on a Broadway show with Christopher Reeve. I did all kind of amazing things. And it was a little awkward because back then it was pay phones. Like literally, I'm on a set one day. And the directors, I need to talk to your manager about something.

I'll be right back. Very Superman-ish. Yeah. And I did that for three years thinking, I kept thinking it's illegal as soon as somebody finds out they're going to get me. But I did it, and it was just fine. Here's another thing that most people don't know about me,

and I love the look. He's looking at me going, I did not know all this about you. No, no, no, my question is different. We'll get back to the story and second, but my question was this. It's like, look, you're doing this thing. You're achieving at the highest level here. You're on Broadway.

You're Christopher Reeves. You're doing movies. You're getting there. So at what point do you look around and go, eh, maybe not for me? And pivoted to something else? Oh, no. No, no, no.

The universe pivoted me. I did not. Okay, so what happened? Oh, no, no, no. Oh, no, no. Wait, there's one more layer to the story. All right, go, keep going. All right.

I know, this is like 18 movies. So at some point, the writer strike happened in New York, and I've got two friends. One is a comedian, the other is an agent for strippers. And they come up with this idea for a thing called strippergrams. Do you know what stripper am? Sure. Send a stripper to somebody else and say that.

I created it. Okay. In fact, I just found one of my original telegrams. So it is 19, whatever it is. And they called me into their office, and I love this episode, or this concept that I created, because they knew that I was a dancer. And I was a little bit of a chunky dancer,

but I was still making it happen. And there was one moment on a Broadway show where I had 23 seconds to change my clothes. And again, I'm like a little prudish. The big guy pulling the curtains, and I said, excuse me, could you turn around? He's like, not on your life, little lady. That's why I got into this piece.

Yeah, let's go. So I would, so as a dancer, you just don't really care about the physical. It's not sexual, it's just clothing. So my friends call me and said, look, we got this idea. We're not quite sure how it's going to work, but we've been using, you know, Rob's strippers, and they don't work because you're going to go in and you're going to punk somebody.

You're going to come in to John's office with a $20 million check on, dude, sell me an apartment right now, and you're going to be drooling, and your wife's standing in the background somewhere, your assistance over there, and they're waiting for this moment where you're so, like, ready to sign some sort of a deal, and I press play, and it's like, happy birthday, Johnny, it's your birth. I'm like, oh, cute singing telegram. Then the music would go, da-da-da-da-da-da.

And I have 18 layers of clothes on. Yeah. And I'm doing this. We stopped Wall Street for seven minutes. I did one on a commuter train. I did an undercover cop in the Hudson Warehouse District. I did 10,000 of the... Talk about being obsessed.

I was making cash, which I'd never made before. Everybody was tipping me. And, I mean, I literally had drawers in my apartment full of cash. Because my parents told me, if you get cash, don't ever put it in the bank. They'll take it from you. So all of these crazy thoughts. And I had three rules back then. No sex, no touching, no nudity.

And the weird part of this is my mother and father knew what I was doing. That's how innocent it was. And I'm punking people. And I'm loving. And all of a sudden, I am loving this life. This is pretty extraordinary. And then New York City just got a weird place to live in the 80s. And I dropped an apple on the street one day coming home from the Chinese market.

And I thought, my apples should go right from the supermarket to my car, to my garage, to my kitchen. They don't see a street anywhere. And I moved out to L.A. And as soon as I did, every audition that I did, every audition that I was. I would go on, I got. But they had nothing to do with each other. I literally got ESPN's X games as the host. I'm like, I don't do sports.

I don't know anything. How did I get this? How did I walk into the laugh factory and walk away with the coveted spot for three years? I would just walk in and people would give me a job. Everything changed. Okay, but why? You're skipping over this. Why?

Because I'm amazing. No, no, but you can't just say because I'm amazing. So here's the pivot moment. I walk into one meeting, like every audition. And the crazy thing is auditioning. you never know what you're going to get. You can get a feature film one day, a commercial the next day. You walk in, and there was a pen on the desk.

And a camera, just like this one, and said, sell me this pen. My first thought was, I don't sell anything. I hate money. I don't. We're not in retail. I looked at the camera, and I said, funny thing about pens. I was 15 and a half when I went off to college. I was really insecure.

My mother, God bless her, would write me long-hand notes with a pen just like this. I would race to read them to feel comfortable, and I realize a pen like this can reach out and touch somebody's heart. Jake, a body by Jake, comes out from. behind this camera. He grabs my pictures, you're going to make me a little bit. I do not know what he's talking about. Cable TV has just launched. He's got a 24-hour

network called Fit TV. His concept is a wheel concept that plays 24 times a day. The top of the hour is Tammy Lee Webb doing aerobics. The next is healthy living tips. Jake doing a workout and somebody selling health and fitness products. No one had ever done that on television before.

There looked at me and there's no onboarding. There's no training. There's no one to look at a YouTube video. He said, here's a product. Go for it. This was the, you were pioneering this. 1,500 different products in five years. I don't care what product you give me, I know how to sell it. It's the weirdest thing. And I would coach the inventors and the cute little models who showed up.

Okay, okay, hang on. We're running. So, okay, let's break that down. When you get a product in front of you no matter what it is. Yes. I'm going to use a miraculous spin gem that you invented. I love this because I'm going to plug to another one of your products. See, I did that?

That's a solid segue, right? So let's say we grabbed the spin gym. And you've never seen this before, even though it's something you invented. So what are we looking at in, like, how do I figure out how to pitch this right? First thing is you never talk about it. So you're not interested in buying a spinjim. You don't even know what it is at home, right? But let me ask you a quick question.

Put your arm up like this. How does it feel in the bottom of your arm? Solid. Yeah, solid. But let me ask your wife and your mother. Yeah. Probably not so solid, right? In summer's coming, they're going to take their jacket off.

You know how wiggly, jiggly, jiggly arms and women? I hate that. Right. What if I told you five minutes a day, the three weeks, you do this? and you, the way the tension works on this, they're going to have the sexiest toned arms. They're going to feel so good about themselves that you're going to go, thank you, oh, my baby boy.

He helped my arm look wonderful. Do you want to do that for your mom? Mm-hmm. So it has not done with the product. You're always selling the result. So, no, you're not, here's an interesting thing. And there's no always. I created a formula.

There's a couple things that I just did for you that you don't realize. Well, this is a big deal. One of the first things is an assumption. We're not all made the same. You do never get a perfect pitch. You become the perfect pitcher. which means I really look at you and go what's important to you. And the way I hear you talk about your wife and maybe your mom,

they're really important to you. So yeah, your arms are nice, but the women that you love in your life, come on. So I made an assumption about something that's important to you, so now you're keyed into that. If we talk long enough, I would tell you my personal story. We call that a springboard story of how my mom was 260 pounds my entire life. She never worked out. I took her to a gym.

I bought a membership. I was so excited. We get to the door, she won't go in. She goes home when she's crying, and I made it my mission, that I'm going to find at-home fitness equipment that anybody never has to suffer in their bodies. Whoa, now you're like, all right, I need six of these from my office. The woman up front really, that was a springboard story.

I made it relatable to me. I'm also a daughter who cares, you're a son who cares about his mom. All of a sudden, we got. We're the same. I know, right. We're the same. Now, then you go to the next part of the formula. You don't ever have to, I never have to tell you what this is.

This is a solution. What's the solution it does? It gives you tight, tone, sexy arms. So what's the problem you have to have? You have to have flabby arms. I call it the question flip. If I just say, hey, not maybe to you, but to a group of women, let me ask you a question, ladies.

You suffer from saggy arms. You're not feeling sexy like you want to take your clothes off in front of your man. I got the solution. I want it. They don't even care what it is. I can solve their problem. When you understand that pitching is solving somebody's problem, you win every time because they'll give you money to solve a problem.

Most times people go to pitch. Let me tell you how wonderful this is. It's made of steel. It comes in purple. got a little bit. Who cares what it is? What does it do and what is the promise? Focus. Yeah. Man, you're exactly right. You're exactly right. And so much, you know, especially because we're in the real estate space here. And I find that the biggest mistake that I see people making is all of their marketing is about them. Yeah. It's never about the client.

They never put pieces together that are beneficial to the client. And like, I'm giving a talk on Wednesday next week for the Nevada Association of Realtors at their national at their convention deal. And my whole speech is the analog agent talking about, you know, every day there's a new app or something or AI or this, this design to make it so you never have to work again and don't handle your CRM and talk to your database and do everything for you. But those nuanced moments of understanding how to connect with people and solve those problems. I understand what these problems really are. That requires a human touch. And the less human that every sales industry is starting to become, the easier it is going to be to excel in those same industries by being more human. I was looking at real estate here.

My least favorite cases, I walked in and the agent was like, so do you feel like you're home already? And I'm like, no, you don't know anything about me. This is not my home, no. And her whole energy was this superficial plastic thing. Like I was not even real. I'm like, baby, if you did a little bit of research on me or asked my agent something about me, this conversation wouldn't be happening the way you're doing it.

That's so funny is my partner and I would talk all the time about, when we're selling superlux homes and stuff in the real high end, it's like showing those homes as an art form because it's like walking around going here's a fireplace like it's relevant about the house the people can see the house unless there's something hidden they can't see it's about making a quick connection with the buyer in a way where they feel like you understand them in that home right are you looking because you want a place for your kids to come when they come from out of town that they feel special right are you a party throw are you a didn't if you don't know those things right why do I want this house yeah where are you coming yeah it's about connection

It's more about connecting on a personal level with the buyer than showing off the house. And people don't understand that. That's why you're winning. They do it. It's such a chunky thing that they do. All right. So let's get back to where we were. So now you're hosting the SBs. You're doing all that stuff.

All of those things. You just got the body by Jake 15 minute corner every hour on the hour. I'm doing that. So that is going amazingly well. But that's my day job. I don't really care. I don't want to be in sales. And the whole fitness, I don't even know what I'm doing.

There is nobody. else doing this, so I'm just doing it. And then in 1993, Jake sold that network for $500 million. At that same time, infomercials came out, right? This is the early 90s. It almost feels like somebody wrote the movie for me. And so the next thing you know, there's no women who pitch. It's a male thing. They wouldn't know women game show hosts either. I wanted to be a female game show host. There was none for a long time. They were no female sports announcers. So I managed to be the woman that they go, oh, okay, you. That was one reason. They hired me. Then they found out I could do the job. So I ended up standing next.

to in the beginning, whether it was Jack Lillane or Montel Williams or Billy Mayes or George Foreman, because they needed a girl who could also close. And all of a sudden, they're like, she does this really well. And it's a very small industry and word caught on. And then home shopping happened. And I'm like, you guys made this playground for me. I could take any product on air. I did skincare. I did fitness. I did health and grooming. And I, there's 85 million potential buyers. Now here's why my formula became important because you're talking to a TV camera. So now you can technically figure out what their problem is. So you've got to be even smarter.

And this is where I won. I go on at 9 a.m. on a Tuesday. Who's the buyer? Most people, because I brought on a lot of guests, they never, they're so consumed with what this is. I'm going at 9 a.m., she's not feeling well. She's at home from work. She has a new baby.

She's taking care of her kids. Maybe she's got lupus. I'm going to talk to all five of her. And then I'm on at 3 a.m. That woman can't sleep. She had a fight with her husband. She's working late night shift. That's a different energy.

And I think people were, I always made my numbers, unbelievable numbers, because I was talking to people, even though I could never see them. And that's why I developed this entire system, because I didn't have buyer objections. There were no objections. Yeah. They had to be in my head.

There was no EQ. You couldn't feel the room slipping away. No, so I, and you could because you could see the numbers. Oh, yeah, the sales were there. So I would just kind of put two and two together going, that's how this is. And so, I mean, I had a phenomenal career for 35 years in five different countries. Now, the whole time, this is my day job.

In fact, it was so weird. I really just want to be a Julie Roberts with Sandra Bullock. I'm in Los Angeles. I am acting. I'm doing a lot of these things at the same time, which is weird. And one of my friends says, you sell crap on TV. And I'm like, yeah, I just made 50 grand for the weekend. And you're a waitress.

Which one of us is a better actress? You sell 50 grand. Yeah, you sell crap on TV. Right. And I'm, you know, and that's... You're so crap at a restaurant. Right. Well, that's kind of, but no one ever thought about it that way.

Yeah. They saw it as kind of cheesy, and I kind of marched to my own drummer, and that was okay. And I did really, really well. Like, we made a whole lot of money. That's one of the things that you do. What's your favorite story during that time about when somebody completely underestimated you? And then you actually just stuck it right in their crawl. Oh, God, I have a lot of this.

You know, I will say Jacqueline Jucer. So Jack Lillane, by the way, Mark Wahlberg is going to play him in a movie next year. The Juice Tiger? No, no, no. No, that was the product. The Jukegling. Oh, Jack Laine. Sorry, yes.

Jack Lillane. Yes, was the comic book. It kicked the sand in your face on the comic book. Yes. And his wife. who surpassed him, he passed away at 96, she just turned 100 last month. She's still going strong and wonderful.

And they brought in a very famous actress to co-host this show. And I was like, okay, I'm a fan of hers too, and she read the script and the show bombed. And they said, well, could you come in? You do this pitching thing. Could you write this for them? Can you tell them how to do this better, pitching better?

And I'm like, uh-huh, uh-huh. And the whole time I'm like, I'm right here. I know I'm not as famous as her, but I'm really good at what I do, and they just didn't want to hire me. And at some point, Jack's like, why don't you do it? And I'm like, why don't I do that? That one show aired for eight years in 80 countries

and grossed a billion dollars of juicers. It's my all-time favorite pitch. Jack is genius at. No, Juice Tiger. No, Juice Tiger is a different guy. Oh, so Jack Lay just had a juicer. He had a juicer. It's called the Jacqueline Power Juicer.

So let me ask, in the early days of this, right? Now, this business is primarily moved online and everything is about VSL, right? It's about the script and very carefully crafted by copy writers and the style of guys like Dan Kennedy and have these like very intricate sales scripts that are done. Who do you think they called in the beginning? I talked to Dan Henry.

This is my question, right? This is where I'm going with this. So, you know, when I shot my one and only infomercial, I got tapped at some friends of ours that we know randomly at a bar one night to come to Tampa and shoot an infomercial, which I did. All right. It went nowhere. I think the reason it went nowhere was they wanted me to be the guy, like I was

supposed to be the tax sale guy. Oh, yeah. And the guy that was actually the tax sell guy that had the program, he really wanted to be the tax sell guy. So at the last minute, he became the taxill guy, and I became the host with Gil Garardo. Oh, yeah, remember. On that show. And it was bad.

I knew it was bad. It was bad because we were going off a script off of VSL. So you were just freestyle on this stuff. Oh, no, no, no. No, no. Okay, no. There's definitely times when you write this. In fact, I talk to all the big guys.

I'm really good friends with Anthony Morrison, who, did one of the hit infomercials with books years ago, and then I did infomercials with him. He's one of the best digital marketers ever, him and his brother, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. They came to me, Ty Lopez came to me, Russell Brunson and I had conversations about how does an infomercial get structured, that it works at 2 o'clock in the morning. You're getting people out of their bed with a credit card. That's the birth of the VSL.

Yeah, it is. Yeah. So I'm very happy. I run a very nice company. We do great Bsls. Some of them are scripted. Some of them are not. Because one of the things when you don't script things is you can ramble.

reading a teleprompter is probably one of the best things I do. I agree. I agree. And then so, all right, so let me fast forward because this is a part of the story that maybe you don't know. So things are going along. Now here's what I learned. And you can't change me, but I teach this. Don't put your foot in two different boats because they will go in different directions. I always want to be an actress.

I love being a TV host. I made a lot of money over here. I still love my acting. So I go back and forth and back and forth. And then one day the universe, and I don't know how much you believe in this, but I could hear it very loudly. I had the lead in a TV series. I was really happy.

It was called Fashion House. I was the devil wears proud of bitch with all of these people running things. She was a great character. I loved it. We shot the pilot. At the 11th hour, I wasn't famous enough,

and they replaced me with Bo Derek. It's Bo Derek an actress. I love you, Beau. She's beautiful, but yeah, it's not exactly an actress. But not the Joan Collins kind of bitchy character that I embodied. And I had a moment,

and then my agent let me go. It's a whole thing about ages. I'm in Hollywood. And he said, look, you're 40 years old, and you know, my son's going to take over the business. You hit the wall. And I was like, you know what?

I'm moving to Florida. That's where home shopping is. I'm going to pick up my two, three-year-olds, and I'm going to start a completely different version of this. And then when you cut ties sometimes, you're allowed to view life differently, right? Things just change. So H-S-N was an amazing home for me. I felt very loved.

I gave up my acting, which I didn't really want to. But last year, by the way, I did star in a feature film. So I'm not done yet. Olympia Dacca's still out there. Come on. She didn't win an Oscar, too. She's 65. That's a good point.

I know. there's, you know, Dame Judy Dent, still going to your 80s. But a couple of a miraculous things happened. Number one, I made a decision. I said, one, you're not going to do any nudity in movies. That was important to me. I don't know why.

And two, don't sell anything you don't love. So of 197 infomercials, I don't love all of those products. I was hired to be a host. Yeah. And I got off on that part until I meet somebody at an airport and they go, yeah, I bought that thing. And I was a piece of crap. And I'm like, not my product.

I was just reping it. I just worked there. Right. And so I made a deal to myself. and I would go over to London all the time. I went to London. I made 48 trips to London because QVC over there was huge. And one night I said I'm going to go over there

and do what's called it Today Special. My kids were little, and somebody offered me, you can make about $100 grand for the day. I said, okay, I'm going to do this. And then they sent me the product. And it was a portable manual treadmill piece of crap. And I looked at this and I thought, oh my God, I just made a vow to myself,

but I also have integrity. So I'm going to go over there and do this. Those sales start at midnight. I go on at midnight, and for the first time in my career, it didn't go good. Because I didn't want to sell. You didn't believe it. Then you go back on at 1 a.m., and now it's even worse. And I don't know if you've experienced this, and I think maybe you have.

I hit my wall. I found myself on my knees with two little kids. My marriage was falling apart because I'd raised a little boy from South Central who was murdered. That's a part of my story. He was the best man at my wedding. And my wedding photos on the cover of the L.A. Times. We found his killer. It's a long story.

but I had to live through all of that and have two babies and lose my parents all at the same time and be the breadwinner. Wow, what a crazy person you are? So there I am on my knees going, I give up, I'm done. I'm sad, I don't want to be away from my kids. I don't know how to make a living. I don't know how to, and not be with them and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then as if by magic, the door opens. And a guy walks in and he's a corporate magician. Now my dad is a magician. I do magic tricks. There's no irony lost on me. And he's got something kind of similar to this. and silver. And I'm like, what is that?

He's like, it's an awful de-stressa. And I'm like, okay? And if you pull it wrong, it doesn't do anything. And I'm like, well, okay, that's a piece of junk. I gave it back to him. I'm all by myself in the green room. It's in London. I'm very sad.

I watch the TV, and he's doing pretty well with it. I'm like, I don't get it. He comes back in the green, which is the two of us. And I said, what is this thing again? He winds it up. He's like, yeah, you just talk like this. And you felt it. The first time I felt this, oh, my God.

As God is my witness, is my kids. I saw a vision. I saw my life. I saw me selling this crazy thing. And I'm like, how do I get this? He said, what do you mean? I said, how do I get? He's like, well, you're all fool.

It was Riley. Want to take that one? I said, no, no, no, no. Tell me about the company. Yeah, I need to make. How do I manufacture this? But see, I never mentioned the word manufacturer or companies. There wasn't even in my mindset.

I came from a very blue-collar work. Yeah. Work for other people. So even with all that success, you had a limiting belief where you've never even thought about launching your own product. No. I wouldn't know how. I didn't understand it.

I also have a very frail little ego. Right, but see, to me that's so shocking because of all of the things, with my broken nose and getting it fixed and my being told I'm ugly, I'm going to go win this pageant. And then I'm going to go and I've never done sports. And I'm at CSPA John. I've done this. And you're making so much money for so many people.

And it never occurred to you could do it. That's wild to me. I don't think that's real. Hang on, no. Let me go back to 15 when I got molested. Okay. and as a woman, and every woman that you will talk to has gone through this and every man, there's a moment where things don't really add up for you.

There's a moment where I've talked to a lot of very successful, mostly female executives who have imposter syndrome. Because at some point they were told they were not good enough, or they were heavy, or they were ugly, and that stuck with them, or they were touched or raped or worse. And so they put on this great front, and you keep going. Remember those strippergrams? I didn't realize I'd gone through all this too recent. I just went through a little bit of a tragedy in a car accident,

and a lot of things came up that had never been unraveled before about why I've been so relentless to prove who I am, how much I matter, and how much I want to fuck with men. Yeah, it's driven. Whoa, I didn't, that was not a conscious thing. I love men. I'm like, wait a second, what are you doing? You don't do that many seeing you telegrams,

and you don't embarrass that many men if you don't have an agenda. Now, I never really hurt anybody, but I pushed the limit, and I was like, what was really? Somebody really, really hurt you, didn't it? And you covered it up, but you didn't tell your mom or your dad about it. That's a shadow self-talking to you right there. Yeah.

Screaming at you. And I had, well, it's funny because it came out in the middle. I ended up in a bodybuilding competition this last year after a car accident. And after I lost a lot of weight, all kinds of things came up, that I had been covering up my whole life. Because my whole life, I'd been a little bit chunky. And that was always an issue. And I was on Broadway, and they made me go to Overeaters Anonymous.

I lost out a movie role with Dan Aykroy and John Belushi and neighbors because I just couldn't lose the 15. It was always about my freaking weight. Well, I will tell you, when I finally lost all of it and more, because I was in a competition, everything came up. And I am kind of insecure, and I do have a terrible sense of shyness. When I go to, that's why I created, I have a thing called elevator pitch 2.0. I literally wrote out how to meet somebody and connect to them.

And by the way, that resulted in me going down the hallway to connect to Grant Cardone, which could put me on stage in front of 10,000 people at 10X, because I had a system. If I didn't have some system, I would have gone, okay, I don't know what to say. I always now know what to say. Makes sense? Yeah. And so now, and it's unfortunate.

I mean, I'm turning 66 next week. So it's about putting all those pieces together, and you ask me why I want to teach, because I don't want to see anybody suffer like I did for so long. Real quick, if you don't know who Forbes is, if you're listening to this, you need to go to YouTube and just turn this on, and you're going to be like,

that woman would just say 66, and you will be shocked when you see this, sir. I've been biohacking since I was 20. I've been doing infrared saunas and massages and retreats and ashrams, and I lived, I was vegan for a long time. I have all of these things that I've been doing my whole life that everyone's like now finding. And I'm like, that's been my lifestyle.

That's a thing. That's my wife. Yeah, we have it all. We have the red light panels and the grounding mats and the saunas. And the hyperbaric? We don't have the hyperbaric at home, but we do go to what, there's one right over here that's close. Yeah. Yeah.

A friend of mine, Ari Rastagar, they call him the Oracle of Austin. He's a very successful. He has an $8 billion portfolio in Texas. But GQ did an article on him for BioHassie. And Ari became a friend of mine, and I was like, okay, of all the biohiking stuff, because we just talked about everything we did. And he's like, the best thing you can do for your health is eight hyperbaric treatments is back to back as close as you can get him at 2.1 atmospheres.

He goes, hard stop. Like, that is the best thing you can do for your health, hard stop. Yep. That's it. Yep. So I've been doing a lot of that my whole life. Love it. I love it.

And then there's more. Got time for more? As much as you got. So the funny thing is, so the guy says to me, in the green room. He says, if you can sell 25,000 of these things in the first year, I'll give you the company, give me a small percentage. So he gave me all the IP on the company.

I went home, and all of a sudden, everything that I'd ever done in my life up until then all made sense. And I download, I don't know if you've ever had this experience. My kids are like five or six years old, and they're swimming all summer long in a pool, neighborhood pool, or taking classes. And I'm like going, oh, my God, abs, abs. Okay, so this is really technically a tricep.

I got bicep exercise over here. Ooh, you can stretch with this. You can do abs and legs. and I downloaded everything. I created manuals like I was on fire. And then the weirdest thing happened. I made a couple of them. I gave one to my girlfriend that Christmas,

and she looked at it and said, that's nice. I would never use it. I was like, no, no. Okay. Most people would stop there, by the way. But I didn't. And so as if by magic,

I take this little thing. It's in silver at the time. Why? Why? Why did you stop? Because this thing spoke to, you want to get really surreal? You were just possessed by this.

Oh, let me tell you. My current husband happened because of this thing. Again, a lot has happened because of this thing. So what happened was I was thinking about what the name is, what the exercises, and I put it in my pocket and I come from Florida to Vegas. I have a conference. I am the queen of that conference. I've won multiple awards as infomercial host, infomercial producer.

I'm very well known there. And I'd heard about a TV series they were going to do called Pitchman. Initially, A&E had called me and said, hey, you, Billy Mays, and Anthony Sullivan, great combo, and then it fell through. So I walk in with this thing in my pocket. I could have left it at home. I was not there to sell it. I had no, I had zero, zero marketing strategy

because I'd never marketed anything. I'd never owned a company before. And I didn't even have that in my mind. I still just want to be an actress, which is such a sad, detrimental thing. Hiring me, let me be an actress and wear a nice gown with the Oscars. I know that's weird.

So it's in my pocket. A guy walks up to me, and this changed my life. Again, he's got a camera. He says, hey, can you give me an interview? I know you work with Billy and Sully. I'm like, why? He said, oh, Discovery is doing a show called pitchman with the two of them. I'm like, oh. Two of them. Yeah, that's great. And that's,

and I felt that kind of like, oh, not me again. Yeah. Which is unfortunate. And he said, but, but, you know, talk to me. So I gave a little whatever. And he says to me, so what are you working on? Change my life. And I'm like, oh, I've got to, yeah, I just created this thing called a spin gym. He's like, oh my God, you should show this to Sully. And I'm like, Sully sells soap. He said, no, no, we could put it on the show. And I'm like, yeah, and I'm like, okay, I show it to Sully. He loves it. He's, and by the way, this is all videotaped. I have the moment of you imagine like the moment of conception. Oh wow.

So I'm literally walking. I think a lot of people try to film that. That's it. Dan Anderson, yes. So I'm walking there. Billy looks at it. He loves it. Their assistant loves it. Next thing I know on a plane to New York. And I'm showing it to AJ Kubani, who's the guy who created the as seen on TV logo. And so it's AJ myself, Billy and Sillian. I'm like, this is freaking infomercial royalty. Yeah. And AJ says, yeah, I don't get it.

I really don't move. And I went in all my Strypagram, whatever I could do being that outrageous, I grabbed his secretary, and said, come here for a second, do this for me. She's like, oh my God, AJ, you don't get this. This is a man. Oh, my God, and she couldn't stop raving about it. I got a deal. Okay, now I'm relentless.

This thing is going to be, spend five months filming this, and I kept saying, Suzanne Summers is to Thymaster, as Forbes Riley is it, it's a spin gym. And I just, I literally became possessed. Here's, get this. It turns out that pitch men and the people behind it were very much male. Every show, Billy did a little infomercial inside of the show. This one, they let the female do the infomercial,

and they have an agenda to prove me wrong. I don't know why. The guys who produced this also produce Ice Truckers and Deadly's Catch. Very male-oriented, they think women should be big, blonde, big, and not talk. That's it. Really great place to put Forbes Riley. So I'm doing all this filming thinking it's going great, and I don't realize what's behind the scenes.

At one point, we're filming the infomercial inside of the episode, and it says, for the chest, it's the best for $2,99. For the chest is the best, for $19.99. For the chest, for the best, it's $9. Guys, I'm sorry, I can't say $9.99. I've got to deal with that guy in China, in England, that I'm not going to beat him on a price. At least not for a year.

Sully gets out like he's an actor going, well, if you don't do this, we don't have to scrap the entire episode. If we have to sell this off, and I'm like, what's going on here? Well, they knew exactly what reality television is not your reality. No. And then they brought out a plastic version of it. of this. And I said, I would never put my name on a piece of cheap plastic crap you're selling for $999. Yeah. Edit, edit, edit. You know what America sees? I would never sell anything for $9.99.

When that episode aired, they did a whole lot of things to make me look really bad. Oh, man. YouTube. Okay. The night discovery aired. Spingham was the number one Google Word. Forbes. Riley was number giving me PTSD right now. And it was not good. Yeah. And I'm in a whole bar. By the way, Brian was there watching this whole, my whole career, like literally go down. down the tubes. Yeah. And everything I'd worked on for five months, they lied to me up one side and down the other. I wake up the next morning and my then husband says, so, what are we going to do now?

I said, we're going to make spin gyms. He says, nobody wants it. He said, they're wrong. He said, they can't all be wrong. I said, but they are. And that's the stupidest thing you can say as an entrepreneur. But let's get real. I've got an ace in the hole.

I sell fitness equipment. I've been doing that. How bad could it go? Don't ask the universe how bad because it can get worse. because now I've got inventory and I'm ready to go here and nobody wants it. Okay, broke quick. How much? Did you take his inventory?

No, no, no, no. I had made, no, no, no. I had made, no, I completely changed the name of the product. I made some of my own. Oh, no. We're going to sell this through. So I, like, made 10,000 of them, think we're going to sell these on television. Before you even tested the market.

Oh, absolutely. Oh, no. Well, because I thought, you know, we're going to be great doing this. Listen, if you're listening to this, this worked out wonderful for Forbes. The story's going to have a happy update thing. Don't do this. Don't do this. Well, I'm actually, sorry.

Don't test the market. Test the market. Well, here's the thing. I'm going to say, and I don't know why I knew. So now I go to HSN, my home, right? And I say, hey, guys, can we do this? And they look at me going, no. Like, I made them hundreds of millions of dollars.

Like, what do you mean no? Yeah, we saw it bombed on TV. I'm like, but that wasn't real. What you saw wasn't. Yeah, it was manufactured. Yeah, that was. And so they said, yeah, no. And I'm like, and I left the office going, oh, oh, because we go back to the bed with my ex

husband. Because he said to me, you know, we have. have to mortgage our house and our kids' education fund to fund these. And I said, that's okay. For the first time in my life, I pushed in every chip that I had, didn't take money from anybody. Burn the boats. Absolutely burn the boats. And now I walk out of the office thinking the boats are going to fucking sink. But here's the magic of Forbes Riley. I run into a friend of mine from the UK. I said, what are you doing here? He said, well, we're doing this kind of, we're doing our show through HSN on American television. I'm like, oh, really? Could I, could I buy a couple

of time? He said, we don't really do that. I said, I know that. Can I buy a couple of minutes airtime? And he looked to me, he's like, well, you are Forbes Riley, because you know what we'll do. It'll make sense. You're there. Right. And nobody's going to know you bought it. It's just it looks like it does. Right. So I, they, they read to 50 units. I sold out 50 units in two and a half minutes. I put out a press release the next day. It said Forbes Riley sells at her international debut of spin gyms. They then said, we're coming back. Which was factual? Absolutely factual. Absolutely factual. The next month, they sell 200. They, they give me a legitimate Sold that again.

And the CEO of that company is standing over, I don't know that. And I do my thing. And he walks up and he was like, I've never seen anybody like you. You're amazing. Can I buy 8,000 of these? Yeah. Launched my entire company in the UK.

By the way, the crazy thing about selling in the UK is the exchange rate was two to one. I was selling them wholesale at retail prices. You're buying American dollars and selling a pound. I'm flying first class over to the UK going, this is so cool. You're doing well. HSN agrees to do this. They begrudgingly on January 10th, 2000. Shen 10 said, all right, we'll buy 5,000 units, like really begrudgingly.

37 minutes later, I sell 5,500 units, more than they even bought. And then I've done it today's special. The most I've sold in H-Sem was $64,000, $1.2 million for one day. Wow. And nobody wanted it. Man. Right? Dude, that, like, like that is so, I'll show a team we'll walk out of here.

I don't know if I talked about this on your podcast. Sitting on my desk and my office on a little stand that lights up, I have a $100,000 bottle of vitamins. And the reason it's $100,000 dollar bottle of vitamins. See, my office will walk back there. I'll show you. A lot of people like to collect awards. I collect failures.

It's like a serial killer of things to remind me not to make the same mistakes. Oh, I have a script from I got invited to my favorite, besides $100,000 bottle of vitamins that I invested. We bought $100,000 worth of vitamins before I found out of anybody wanted to buy them. Spoiler alert, nobody wanted them. But my favorite back there is I have a script because, after The Apprentice, I got a call from David Flaubat's people that David had seen me on The Apprentice and wanted me to come read for his new sitcom. And I was like, what is this real?

Like, I don't know if this is real. So I call my buddy he's an actor in L.A. He's like, yes, these people are real. You need to go do this. So they FedEx me the script, because apparently that's what they did then. And I get the script. And they say they want me to read for the lead of this thing. So I read the lead, and I get down to the inner of the, this is this called Goodies Place.

And thank God it didn't get made. I read the title character says Goody, and it says something in effect of, in walks Goody Valletta, mid-30s, slightly overweight, boyish charm, but by no means man candy. And I was like, oh, I'm like, this is who I am, right? I'm like, oh, my God. And then I read like five pages later, and it says, enter his cousin, so-and-so, loud, tall, think Vince Vaughn from Swingers. And at that time in my life, like when I went on this Today Show, like they did a

by side with me and Vince. I got compared to him all the time. So I go to New York to this casting call and I walk in and it was a guy sitting there with the camera and the lady was behind it. The guy was behind the camera and the casting director was there and I walked in and I said, I believe there's been a mistake. And they go, I'm sorry? And I said, yeah, I don't think you wanted me to read for this. I think he wanted me to read for this. And I'll just never forget the guy behind the camera's like, like, look at me like, who's this dude? And then the lady looks at me and she just like, she goes, you can read for whatever you want. And I was instantly like, oh no oh no oh no oh no and later i find out that those those descriptions of the characters are

just kind of placeholders it don't really matter that much but got your ego didn't it yeah and i should have just gone there and read for that so that that little trophy teaches me to uh never assume i know what people want or thinking that's that's that's why it's there so television certainly got its own bent on all that it it's it does what it as you've gone through your trials and tribulations right that's why i tell i tell that story to ask this question what are your favorite lessons that you feel that you've learned through trials and tribulations that you see people maybe they haven't learned. Okay.

So there's a, so the story, crazy when you live this long, there's a little blip to the story that you haven't heard yet. So COVID hits. Okay. And this is where this is going to come in. My beautiful job. Oh, by the way, how did I meet my husband? I know you just asked that.

We're in Vegas. I'm doing... Do you got a studs or us? This dude's like a savage. He is a seven-time world champion bodybuilder. My goodness. For a Chippendale. What a tremendous specimen.

me. I'm not, listen, I'm not, I, there's, listen, I am very heterosexual, but I'm just saying, this dude was like, this is a good-looking man. I'm throwing out there. I mean, I'm willing to learn, and I'm saying, he was that good-looking when he walked in. I was like, wow. To Joshua Self, S-E-L-F, it's really his last name on Instagram. And I usually show, there's a picture of him in Speedos. It's kind of funny. People are like, can I see a picture of your husband? And I always say, if you don't say, wow, when I show him your picture, I'll give you 100 bucks. It's like, wow. You know, I said, like, certain people think you want to be a better man. This guy just wants me to stay inside all the time.

No, no, no. All right, keep going. That's not fair. But the point of that is I'd been single for 10 years. I'd separated from the dad of my kids. And at some point I decided I'm ready to do this. I manifested a list of what I wanted, in detail, what I wanted the guy to say to me and be

because I was tired of whatever happened last time. And then a friend of mine said, you know, I put on mine, I wanted him to look like he walked off the cover of a romance novel. And I said, I'm putting that on top. But John, how weird is that? I'm literally going to put it on top of mythical, magical manifesting. list. I'm in a hotel room here in Vegas. It's some condo, not even a hotel.

And my videographer says, hey, do you want to meet a two-time Mr. Arnold? And I'm like, no, no, I don't like bodybuilders. I've worked with them my whole life on television. They like three things, working out food in themselves. And he said, no, no, you're going to like this guy. I'm like, okay, fine, whatever. And in walks Joshua. And he just finished a competition.

He's beautiful. I don't think twice about him. I'm 17 years older. I don't really think about it. He takes a picture with me, he leaves. Next day on Instagram, he DMed me. And I don't know how you and your wife met, but I'm like, oh, and then we flirted for about three months. We met before the D-EBSs. We met the, I think we were communicating with AOL Instant Messenger when we first met.

That's what we were doing. Well, this was kind of crazy. And then he, it's a funny moment, because he came out on his motorcycle at house in L.A. After about three months of this going back and forth. And I kind of like, you know, I'm like, and there's a picture of him. Oh, my God, you're coming out. Yeah. He gets off his motorcycle wearing black leather, takes his helmet off.

And there's a moment. Again, remember, I'm in my own movie here. And the movie went, I'm like, it's like the poster of Chippendales came to life. And I'm like, okay, then I said Forbes, you're an idiot. He found out that you're on television, you have money, and he's a player. And it's going to be a great fucking weekend. And that's really what I, I looked at him going, all right, you're stupid, but it's going to be fun.

Yeah, here we go. But he got off his bike, and I said to him, what are you doing here for real? He gets down on one knee. He says, look, I'm not very religious, but something told me you need me. That was nine years ago. Wow. I know. I got the best guy on the planet.

Current company excluded. Wow. Yeah, he's been, and then the funny thing about that part of the story is that I understand that he's been a dancer and he's done all of these great things and he's been a model. He gets, I own a television studio in Florida. He comes out, he walks into my studio and he's like, I could run this place.

I'm like, I'm sorry, what? He says, I didn't happen to tell you I graduated two degrees. I'm a 3D graphic artist, and I'm an expert with film and video. I'm like, hired. Yeah. Like, literally, he's, I mean, we are a team now, and we've been a team for nine years, extraordinary. But go back to, so he looks great. Everyone always talked about how he looks. January 2nd,

2020, a kid wipes him out on his motorcycle, shattered his ankle. He's now going to spend six months in a wheelchair and he loves just everything. From his self-esteem to all of his muscles, just completely gone. So we're all in the middle of COVID. I didn't even know COVID was happening. I was so insulated. Like at one point, I'm like, you can't go to the store. I'm like, why? I literally walk going, I might need to watch the news. I know. I'm not. It was to the TV on. I was the only one who Did not know the world had shut down. The queen of TV just didn't bother to turn it out for six months. Yeah.

And so at that same moment, another miracle happened. And I hope this happens for you with your kids. My kids are doing high school upstairs. I'm sitting downstairs. My daughter comes down. She said, Mom, what are you doing? She's 17. I said, nothing.

She said, my mother's doing nothing. I'm like, everything. Nothing. I don't know what to do. Doing Facebook. She said, how about we start a company? And I'm like, how about you get a B in English? And that's really what I said.

Now, you have to remember, I took this little girl to meeting with me since she's eight years old. At eight years old, she did something with my company that saved us $48,000. She walked into the room. I had a spin gym here. We were all trying to figure out how to make this sale thing out today's special. Yeah. And this comes with a book and a little bit, and none of my C, none of anybody could figure out how to cut the cost to make the sale happen. She walked in as a little girl and said, why don't you just take out the bag? I said, well, because the bag got like, oh shit. The bag is 65 cents. 65 cents times 75,000 is enough to make this company. company work. And we shipped it in a little plastic thing and nobody cared.

Nobody cared about the bag. Right. And I used to tell everyone, my daughter saved my company. And so she would travel with me and we would go to a lot of these internet. Again, I was really sought after as when digital marketing started because everyone wanted to interview me to figure out how to make a Vs. Right, the Vsels. She was doing her own little thing. She started a drop shipping company at 12 with these lenses. She made her first 10,000. I knew that. But I said, McKenna, what do we mean start a company with it? What would we do? She's like, mom, can I share something with you. I'm like, what? She said, you know your friends like Joe

Thaisman, the NFL football player, and Les Brown? He said, I've been building their YouTube channels and their websites, and I have a bank account, it had six figures in it. And I'm like, I'm sorry, where did you get that money? She's like, you're the only one who doesn't listen to me. And I'm like, okay,

I was absolutely in shock. And then she said, in her genius 17-year-oldism, she said, you have a choice, mom. I will build a company for you, if I don't make you a million dollars in the first year, you don't have to work with me. And I'm like, I'm watching, her mouth move and thinking, I'm sorry, what? She says, you have to choose between pitching and spin gym. I'm like, that's like choosing between you and your twin brother.

She said, mom, if you don't focus, we won't be successful. So I said, you know, spin gym is manufactured in China. Let's put it over here. Let's focus on teaching pitch. I already had kind of a curriculum. I would teach to people live. She said, no, we're going to go on Zoom. And I'm like, what's Zoom?

She said, mom, here's what you're going to do. We did our very first webinar. We had 25 people in the room. I had a $1,000 product, four weeks of training with me. And I didn't even formalize the whole product's idea yet. I just knew that's what I wanted to teach. Good, because you're testing the market now before you actually do the work. I like it.

That's a really good lesson. I like it. Test the market first, test. I now know that. And so the next morning I woke up and I'd had a funnel system for three years. I built really pretty funnels. It always said zero. I never sold any one of them, never connected.

In fact, she witnessed this. I'd hired two agencies, both kind of screwed me over. And I'd lost about $30,000. And her motive, I didn't know that at the time, was no one else should screw over my mom. and she was really committed to saving the family. And I said, okay, the next morning I look and I have to call, I'm like, what does the K stand for? He said, what do you mean?

I said, well, it says 25K in the account. She's like, Mom, you made $25,000 on the night. I'm like, close a 100%? They had a 100% close ratio on the webinar? In the middle of COVID. It was off people. Oh, yeah. People knew me.

Where else were they going to go? They're like, I, we did that four weeks in a row, 25 people, that's it. At the end of one month, we did a six-figure business. We made a first 100,000. Nine months later, we're getting a two comic club award from Russell, which means you made a million dollars in one funnel. Now we're getting the $10 million one.

I got to tell you, we went from having 25 people in a room. We built this company, her eye, and one VA for the first year, and we grew it and grew it, and I started creating product, and I wrote books and I wrote courses. I now, and I've been doing a live webinar every Sunday for two hours. It starts at 5 o'clock. You guys, you're welcome to come to it. It pitch secrets training, and I'll give you that.

And I teach. I teach how to do pitching, why you'd want to understand it, and then I flip people's pitches. live. Well, and then we go into my training if you want to. We had 25 people the first time, maybe 100. I think the first year we ran like 100 every Sunday, mostly my social media, all organic for four years because we didn't know how to buy ads. You know how many people were there last Sunday? Three thousand. Every week I have 3,000 new people show up. And I don't close it 100%, but I do close between 10 and 30. Wow. Thank you. Good for you. Thank you. Good for her.

Yeah, good for her. That's amazing. It's a mother-daughter story. that no one's ever heard before. I mean, it's extraordinary. It's six years later. I'm going to go, I'm a judge my children now. What do you do? Where's daddy's million-dollar business? Florida's really got one.

No, my kids are amazing. I love the story because she tells people that she made her first million at 18. She had also written that in her Google calendar when she was 14 years old. And now she has to justify the fact that mommy didn't give her. In fact, she said, mom and dad,

now she's not going to college. Her twin brother is. Her dad, a former Notre Dame football player, It's like, look, if you don't go to college, you're going to become homeless. It's like, dad, I just made a million dollars. Yeah, but you should have to go to college. She's like, I can't afford to go to college. I have a team now of 16 people that I run.

They need me. And now she runs two companies, not only that, but her brother started a software company called GSD, it stands for Get Shit Done. And I love when she tells these stories now of how she did this on her own. Because I said, look, at 18, I'm not giving you money. I'm just, that's not how I was raised. I don't think there's any lesson in that. I covered your expenses till this age, but you're on your own.

She now pays everything for us. It's all her, which is crazy. And then the icing on that cake is I used to make them feel very uncomfortable. I used to bring them up on stage with me. I don't know why. I just, lessons I've taught my kids. Guys, come here. We talked about health and wellness.

And I remember my son was like 10 years old and I was doing a fitness training thing. And I said, Riker, come here for a second. Tell everybody here why we don't eat white food. And he's like, and then he just went. And so I developed this ability where it's okay. Because some people say to me now, oh, four, but you caught me off guard. I'm like, let me train you to never be off guard. you never know who you're going to meet at that moment.

You don't get to go home and prep a script. And so that's why I said you don't want a script. You want to be such a good picture that you look at the situation, know what you have to offer and put things together. You know, it's funny that right before you came in, I was interviewing somebody to join my personal real estate team, which I have a couple, like, absolute superstars that work for me, just a handful of people that take my personal real estate business

because I don't do a lot of personal real estate business anymore. And, you know, I was like, listen, we're going to train you. And, you know, yes, there are scripts, but they're not A to Z scripts. They're chess pieces that we're going to teach you this is the chess piece. This is the psychology behind why this chess piece works. And then we're going to teach you how to know when to play it. And that's the difference, I think, between people that are scripted and people that do what you're talking about. And that's what you should be teaching in school is critical thinking.

Well, you know, it's funny talking about exposing your kids. I agree with you. I had my son intern with there's a company based in Vegas. You probably know it. It's called V Shred. They're really good friends of mine. And my son spent the entire summer of his freshman year with those guys learning sales funnels, learning all of that stuff

from some of the best guys in the business that do that. Oh, he must have been a sponge. He was, man. But, you know, even after all that, you know, God bless him. This is, this one that goes back from where I said he takes after his wife and he's very role following this. He still wants to go to law school. So, hey, he's got almost full ride to SMU.

We'll go there in the fall. You know what? Here's the thing about kids. You cannot tell them what to do. You can expose them. And I often have to say, great, I'm grateful that COVID happened. I lost my best friend who was my publisher during COVID,

but I would have also lost my daughter had that not happened. Yeah, we were talking about that the other day. Don't you kind of miss that a little bit? Like, I don't look back. Like, I think it definitely had some developmental effect on our kids that they got pulled out of school and didn't get socialized so much for tears. And we were blessed enough that we put our kids in a private school that had just opened. So they still got to go to school.

But I think I miss that. Every day, you're just home with the fam. And I think for people, that probably financially it was very difficult. I understand they're not looking at. Or you're stuck with a spouse that you were divorcing that you don't want to be with. I was in love. I was very happy.

But I think for those of us that maybe are okay, when am I ever going to have time like that with my kids or have the opportunity at time like that where it gets ever again? It was the greatest blessing. It was. When my daughter hit 12 years old, she literally looked at me one day and said, Mom, what have you done for me lately? And I'm like, I'm sorry, what's like, don't touch me. And we, she will tell you, she hated me for two years.

because I was whatever it is that I was. I wasn't there enough. I was too busy work. She had all these excuses and she went through her hormonal, whatever that is. If it wasn't for COVID, we wouldn't be who we are. And we both look at each other and go, I'm so grateful that that happened. You know, I'm sorry it happened for a lot of people, but I miss them not having to go out on Friday or Saturday night because you can't go anywhere and just cuddle in and watch TV and huddle and make popcorn and hang up with the fam.

Yeah. I know. Well, let's talk about the book. All right. Pitch Secrets A to Z, How to Increase Your Influence, Impact, and Your In Then come. Pick a letter. Flip through. Coming out.

Pick a letter? Just pick a letter? Pick a letter. Just any of any of these letters. Yeah. Because they all stand for something really kind of unique. Leads fall into three categories. All right.

Well, that's a good one for you. Not probably my favorite one for you. You know about what else. Yeah, let's pull something else. I got one for you called Open Door. Okay, open door. You go to pitch somebody because you don't blindly pitch real estate. You don't walk around going.

No, of course not. Okay. Help me out here. You're at a party. Okay? Somebody says to you, what do you do? What do you say? Well, it depends.

It depends. answers for that. So if it's real estate agents, what I say, what do I do is I create million dollar agents. That's what I say. Do you know who people who are not millionaires? You know what you say? I help. Yeah, I help. Literally just that. I create. I help. No, no, no. Yours is I create. Very different. Most people when you ask them, trust me, I've asked thousands of people. What do you do? I help women transform from now and my name and I'm like, really? No, the word create vastly different. Yeah. And if I was listening to that, I would go, wow, tell me more. Or if I'm raising capital for a project, it's like, what do you do?

You know, I help people with dead 401Ks, convert that into double-digit returns through real estate. Bingo. What do you tell your agents and people in your world to say when they go to a party? What do you think? Because here's the answer. I'm in real estate. Again, that's it. You don't know how many times I've made fun of this, right?

It's like, this is the conversation they all have. It's like, so what you do? I'm in real estate. How's the market? It's good. And that's it. Like that's your whole conversation. Right?

It's, what do you do? It's, I help people. It needs to be something like, I make people financially free through the acquisition of real estate. I, you know, I help people achieve lifestyle, whatever it is. It's got to be the end result of what it is. It's never the process. Do you innately know how to do that? Probably.

You know, when I was, when I was similar a little bit to you, right? When I was 12 years old in seventh grade, I got tagged up to be on the high school extemporaneous public speaking thing. I wish we had one of those. And I would have won the state championship had there not been a discrepancy with the time clock a little bit. I went over by like a minute

or not a minute, but like 10 seconds so I got the queued, but I would have won. But as 12 year home, I could be in these high schools in this. And also at 12, I was the star of a local play through the community thing in my hometown. It was called First Confession. So whatever was a play.

Yeah, I got 10. And it was a cool thing, and I always loved that. So, yeah, I mean, I think, and I think being the kid of divorced parents, I think, taught me that. Okay. Because I learned very easily how to hustle my parents, right? So, like, I could go, my parents got divorced, but we were still relatively close to go. My dad's office was here. My mom's an assailant was here.

So, like, I could go hustle my mom for something, hustle my dad for the same thing, pocket the money and still get what I needed. So I was hustle. I was always hustling. Right. the kid that, you know, at 13, me and my friends would blow up a raft and dive into the ponds on the golf course, dodging alligators because we lived in Florida, getting golf balls, and then posting up on a hole selling them back to the golfers the next day. Like, we were always kind of hustling.

Can you teach somebody that you think? I think, unfortunately, I think, you know, tough times make, they're the saying, tough times, what is it, tough, rough seas make great sailors? Yeah, something like that. I think, something like that. I look at that a couple ways. Yes, it's true if you have some strife and some challenge, but I think wanting to get that is somewhat innate.

I think you can teach process, but that internal skill, I think, is something you have to have. And you said something earlier that I thought was really good. When I sit down with somebody, this person I just sat down with for my team, I said, what do you want to make? And they said at least six figures, right? That's what their goal is to make. My next question is why.

Okay. And if you can't articulate the exact reason that you want to make the amount of money you want to make, I don't hire you. Like somebody that says, I want to make six figures. I don't know because it sounds good. Right. They say, listen, my kids are going to college, and I want to walk across that stage debt-free.

I want to pay their college off in two years. Okay, that's good. That person is going to get up and grind when they don't want to. That person is going to show up when they don't want to. Okay. Why is that spend-jim work? Because you burn the boats. Yeah, I did.

You had a very clear why, which was, if I don't do this, this is an absolute financial disaster, right? That's absolutely true. That's a crystal clear why. I see you can do that. So I think some of it is innate. I think some of it's learned, but I think like anything in life,

if you don't have a crystal clear why as to why you're doing anything, you're never going to be good at it. That's so funny. You know what one of my wise is? I want to walk around anytime I want to hand somebody a $10,000 check just because I want to. Yeah.

I watched one of my billionaire friends do that, and I thought, that's got to be one of the coolest feelings in life to be able to any time that you want, invest in a company, help people do frivolously something so extraordinary that they're like, oh my God. Yeah.

It's a little, like, what is it? One of my favorite things that a celebrity does, Shaq lives in Vegas. I don't know if you knew that or not. But every time he goes to Walmart or Target, he buys a kid a bike. Blows my mind. I love watching him.

Just every time, just buy a kid bike. Right. Why not? Go get a bike. But why don't other rich people do that? You know, I don't know. We were at, well, I don't want to tell the story.

Okay. There's, well, it's, I don't talk about when I do stuff like that. I think if you do it for a camera or you do it, for any other reason other than your self-gratification, it's self-servative.

and it's not real, right? And let's just say that something happened the other night. And my wife was like, how many people do we know that would have done that? Oh, and I said, oh, man, no. I said, you know what, honey, I'm grateful because I think I know a lot of people that would have done what I just did. I think I know a lot. I think we surround ourselves with people that it wouldn't even occur to them not to do

what we just did. Got it. You know what I mean? Yes. And I think, so some of that I think is contagious. Again, it's who you're around is important. So where can they get the book? All right.

So at the moment, the best place to get the book is pitchsecretsbook.com, because when you do, until the launch date, we're doing a massive party on May 16th. And what that will be is I'm interviewing a lot of my celebrity friends. Love it. Because. An online launch. Yeah. Good.

Yeah. Because they are, so it's a beautiful launch party. And when you unlock these Easter eggs here, I have created a vault for you so that whoever you are, there is some resource. that you're going to want. There's literally 26 resources that my team is built, and they're all free. Well, pick up the book, guys, go online, order it,

pick it up, it's going to be available out there. And I got to tell you, I'm going to sum this up with one thing. The whole time I've been talking to you, I don't know why. But there's a song by band called OAR, and there's a lyric in that song that, for whatever reason, through this conversation has been resonating my head. And it talks about, I don't know if, in the context of song, I don't know what it is, but in life, this just sums you up, I think.

It's you go round and round. you go over and under, I go through. And I think of all this stuff in your life, I think you go through. And that's what makes you you. Guys, by the book. We'll see you next week.