Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #487: Pitching

Episode Date: November 9, 2017

An important skill is selling your ideas live in a meeting. In this podcast, I talk about how to deliver a good pitch.

I'm pulling up my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today's topic is one I've been promising for a while. The art of pitching. So one of the things that I do in my job, that I actually did in my old job, is... So what a pitch is, is you have an idea, and you want other people to buy into your idea. So you have a meeting where the goal of the meeting is to sell them on your idea. Now, obviously, so in my current job as the head designer, I pitch a lot. I often have to go in and sell people ideas that I'm doing. My previous job, writing for television,

I also had to pitch a lot. In fact, a lot of writing for television is going into rooms and pitching ideas. Could be ideas of individual episodes. You often do that when you go into existing shows and you pitch them new episode ideas. Sometimes it could be ideas of series in general. You can go to networks and pitch the whole idea for a series. So one of the things that I did back in Hollywood is I took a whole bunch of classes in pitching. Because pitching is really important. In fact, whether you make it or not in Hollywood has a lot to do with, are you good at pitching your ideas? And it turns out, when I got to a brand new job, game design, pitching was also really important.

So what I want to do today is walk you through a lot of the basics of pitching and how to be better at it. Note that this topic today, I mean, it applies to game design because I think game design has a lot of pitching in it. But this is not really just a game design thing. This is a larger world thing. Like I said, my last job, which was about writing, was about pitching. And, you know, so there's, I think every job has a certain amount of pitching in it. Okay, so lesson number one. So what is the most important thing to do when you're pitching? Of all the things you can do, what is the most important? And that is excitement for your own idea.

So one of the things to be aware of is you are trying to convince the people you're talking to that your idea is a great idea. In order to do that, one of the most important things is that they have to firmly believe that you think it's a good idea. Because if you go in and you're sort of like lackluster about your own idea it just conveys the sense of well how good an idea can it be the person selling to me they're not even that excited by it so you really need to be excited by your idea now hopefully hopefully if you're pitching the idea you like the idea so I guess a corollary to this is don't pitch

ideas you don't actually like. When I say I need you to be enthusiastic, I don't mean you need a fake enthusiasm. I mean you have to have ideas you are actually enthusiastic about. Why is that? Most people are not good at faking things they're not actually excited about. I'm not saying nobody. they're not actually excited about. I'm not saying nobody. Obviously, there's actors in the world. But the key is that you need to... One of the ways to show enthusiasm

is to honestly like the thing you're selling. I think that's important. And then there's also a matter of just your energy level. Now, I happen to have a high energy level. I'm not saying everybody's supposed to be at my energy level. But I am saying that when you are going to pitch, pitching is something very intense that you want to come in and you want to, you know, usually pitches aren't particularly long.

I'll get to that later. You actually don't want your pitch to be tremendously long. But what you want to do is you want to keep a high energy when you're pitching. You want to have, really what happens is a lot of the way an audience responds is the way the performer, in a lot of ways when you're pitching, you're performing, communicates things. That there's a lot, I mean, actors can tell you this, that a lot of how the audience responds is off what you are giving them.

So when you walk in a room and you are pitching, you are being a salesman, first and foremost. You are selling something. You are selling your idea. And so in order to sell your idea, you have to communicate to them that it's a good idea. Now, obviously, you'll say things about how you like your idea, but that's not the most important part.

It's not the words that convey excitement to people. It's the energy. And so one of the things I say to people is, even if you're not a particularly high-energy person, pitching needs to be relatively high energy. You need to get people invested in excitement in what you're doing. And part of doing that is having body language that communicates that you are excited about this.

And the body language that communicates excitement tends to be high energy. There's not a lot of low energy excitement. Excitement is connected with high energy. So you have to have, depends on who you are. I'm not saying you have to, I tend to be, you know, high octane.

That's just me. So I'm not saying you have to, like, I tend to be, you know, high octane. That's just me. So I'm not saying everybody has to be necessarily at my level of excitement, but you need to be at your own level of excitement. You do need to be excited, and the people have to read from you that you're excited about it. Okay, the next big thing, actually, this is something I talked about in my podcast about my 20 lessons. Okay, this is a really important concept, so I'm going to spend a little time walking through this. People are more invested in their ideas than your ideas.

You know, people fundamentally, humans fundamentally, have a self-interest built into them. I mean, it's biological, it's chemical, that, you know, you are more interested in the things that you do than the things that other people do. So what does that do with pitching? So it has a lot to do with how you pitch. So here is one of the other big lessons that I learned,

is what you want to do is you don't want to walk in a room and just talk nonstop for a long period of time. What you want to do is you want to get the person you're pitching to invested. Oh, let's talk about the person you're pitching to. You don't often have a say in who you're pitching to. So sometimes it's like you're pitching to who you're pitching to. If you have some ability to influence it, less people is better.

Pitching to fewer people, and the reason for that is you want to make a connection when you pitch. You want to look people in the eyes that you're pitching. You want to sort of get a connection. Part of this point is really what you're doing when you're trying to pitch is create a bond with one or more of the people you're pitching to. And part of doing that is you want them to ask you questions. Now, here's why that's important. That if I'm just talking to you, I mean, maybe I'm saying things that interest you. Maybe I'm not, but I'm less invested. You're talking, whatever you're talking. Now, let's say I ask a question. Now I'm not. But I'm less invested. You're talking. Whatever. You're talking. Now, let's say I ask a question. Now I'm more invested because you're answering my question.

That I got involved. I now have a stake in the game. You know, I've now involved myself in this conversation. And usually when you're doing a pitch, by the way, you're not pitching alone. Usually the people you're pitching to, it is rare that you're pitching to a single person. It happens. It does happen. But oftentimes you're pitching to more than one person. And one of the things is the dynamic in a room is that when you ask a question, it's like, okay, the focus is sort of pulled on you for a second. And so you're more invested in the outcome of someone answering your question. So what that means is, let's say I have a bunch of information I want to give.

Rather than just give all the information, what I would rather do is give some of the information, sort of leave my audience to want to ask me questions. Now, another reason that's important, A, they're more invested if they ask questions, and B, you want involvement. That one of the things they talk about with psychology is there's two types of things. There is what we call one-way addressability, which is I talk, you listen.

And you have no involvement. I'm just talking, you listen. The second is what they call two-way addressability, where I talk, you talk. And you have no involvement. I'm just talking, you listen. The second is what they call two-way addressability, where I talk, you talk, and there's a dialogue back and forth between us. Well, which one is more compelling? The two-way addressability, because you are involved.

And so one of the things about pitching is, if you can, what you want to do is you want to make a rapport between you and the people you're pitching to. In general, one of the things I learned is the more that the people you're pitching to talk, usually the better you're doing. Now, that might seem counterintuitive to some people. Like, oh, I'm trying to pitch an idea. I want to use all the time pitching my idea.

I want to use all the time pitching my idea. But the answer actually is, if the people I'm pitching to are talking some of the time, that means what they're doing is getting involved in the conversation. They're putting some skin in the game. And what that means is, they're more likely to be involved. Okay, now here's another real important thing. Not only do you want them to talk, you need to listen to what they're saying. So one of the other valuable things about getting the people you're pitching to to talk is they're going to give you valuable clues about what they want. Like one of the tricky things

about, now normally by the way, so there's, I'm going to talk about preparation in a second. One of the things to do when preparing is as much information as you can get up front about what they want, the better. Because your job is to sell them something they want. Well, the more you understand what they want, the easier things go. You know, when I look back to my Hollywood days, when I was pitching, for example, you know, I had some great pitches and I had some bad pitches. And that usually the pitches that went bad were I would start pitching something and then halfway into my pitch they go, well, like for example, I once pitched the show Home Improvement with Tim Allen from long ago.

I once pitched the Home Improvement. The show had just started. The show was just going on the air. And so the way it works when you're doing a TV pitch is you pitch episodes. Normally what would happen is they would say, we'd like you to pitch anywhere from six to ten episodes. I always took the maximum just because I don't know what they're going to like and dislike, and I always want to maximize opportunities.

One of the things you do when you're pitching is you have to be flexible in your pitch because they might not want exactly what you want. For example, so I'm pitching to Home Improvement, brand new show, and all I know about the show is, I think they had sent me one or maybe I read the pilot script. I mean, there wasn't even shows in the area. I couldn't watch the show.

So I think they sent me a few scripts. So I read some of the early scripts to get a sense of who the characters were and stuff and I knew it was a Tim Allen show so all my stories were about Tim Allen for those that don't know Home Improvement it's a comedy with a husband, wife and kids, a husband, wife

and three kids but it was a Tim Allen show so I made 10 stories about Tim Allen so in the middle of pitch one you go yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, a Tim story. We were more interested in some wife stories. So what happened was, they kind of, like me, it started like, oh, it's about Tim Allen, and they made a bunch of Tim Allen shows, and they realized what they wanted was, oh, they were kind of looking for some

shows about the wife. Now, had anybody told me that, had I found that out, I could have pitched stories about the wife. So instead, what I had to do is take all the stories I already had made, which were more about Tim Allen, and say, okay, how can I play up aspects of the story to feel like I was giving her more time?

But I had to do that on the, like, as I was pitching. I wasn't practicing that. We'll get to practicing in a second. But had I learned more going in, had I had a better idea of what they wanted. So one of the things that's really important is gather as much information about your pitch before you give the pitch. And what you will find, by the way, is most people, they want you to succeed in your pitch. they want you to succeed in your pitch.

That, for example, hearing pitches, especially hearing a lot of pitches, isn't all that fun. And the goal of, the reason that you hear pitches is you need to get a good idea. So the faster you get that good idea, the happier you are.

Sitting in a room hearing many, many people pitch is not particularly fun. So anytime you're being called in to pitch, fundamentally, I mean, there are exceptions, but most of the time, they want you to succeed because they want a good idea and they want to be done with it. And if you give them a good idea, maybe they don't have to listen to any more pitches.

So, the people listening to you want you to succeed. The vast majority of the time, they do want you to succeed. What that means is you can ask questions up front. You can make sure you understand what they want. Some people get very nervous that they don't want to ask too many questions. But the thing they're missing is what the people want in the pitch is you to be successful.

They want a good pitch because what makes their life easier is you give them a good idea. But if you pitch a bad idea because you don't understand what they need or just pitch a good idea but in the wrong area, you're not doing them any good. So do make sure that you get as much information going in. Also, while you're pitching to them, they're going to talk to you. Like I said, you want to encourage them to talk to you, but don't gloss over what they're saying. The way I like to think of it is, you are trying to give the performance of your lifetime, right? And I used to do improvisation when I was in school.

And one of the fun things about improvisation is, you don't know exactly what you're going to do. The audience is going to give you stuff. But a lot of people would say, well, okay, how do you rehearse that? You can't rehearse that. No, no, no. We had rehearsal every week.

And the reason is you wanted to learn rapport with your fellow improvers and you wanted to get a base of understanding of sort of how to handle things. Sometimes, by the way, you'd even come up with funny things that you kind of stock away that, oh, if I'm ever in the right situation with the right place, this is a funny idea. Now, with improv, you never know where or what you're going to do, so you can't sort of plan exactly like that, but there is a lot. Practice is important. We'll get

to practice in a second, but practice is important. The key point I want to make here, though, is you want to get the people you're pitching to to interact with you. They're going to talk. What they say is valuable information. And another thing that people seem to worry about is there's nothing wrong within the pitch of asking a question, you asking a question. There's nothing wrong with you not being sure of something and saying and asking something. A lot of times people, one of the biggest

mistakes I think people make with pitches is that they don't understand the goal of the pitch. And the goal of the pitch, they don't understand that the persons they're talking to are their allies in them succeeding, not their enemies. You're not fighting against the people you're pitching to. You're working with the people you're pitching to.

So it is okay to interact with them. You want to interact with them. You want to listen to them. You want to ask questions. You want to understand what they want, you know. And part of a good pitch is you want them to sort of, you want them to get excited. You want them, you want your excitement to be infectious so that they get excited.

And you want them to get invested in the thing you're pitching. You want them excited by the thing you're pitching. And a big way to do that is, anytime you're pitching something, the people you're pitching to are experts on the thing. That's why you're pitching to them. Back in Hollywood, I was pitching to a staff that writes the show. Well, they know the show better than I do.

They make the show. They know better than I do. So one of the things that will happen, this is a very common thing, is when you're pitching to somebody, they will start sort of what I call workshopping the idea. And what that means is they'll start going, oh, well, what if, and you can watch them start to figure out how to apply the ideas you've given them. That is a really good sign. That means that they're trying to say, okay, I like elements of your idea. How can we incorporate that in what we do? Don't talk over that. Don't interrupt that.

don't talk over that don't interrupt that let them have that processing and don't shut down them doing that there's a tendency one of the things that happens a lot when you're pitching is you have a mindset of here's what I'm pitching

and then they'll say oh what if don't shut down the what if your job is to adapt to what they're saying and if they say something. And if they say something, I mean, if they're fundamentally violating the essence of what you're pitching, you can say it. I'm not saying you have to accept anything they say. But really think about what they're saying and when they sort of workshop it, think about the areas they're talking about. And what you want to do when they're workshopping, when they're thinking about how to apply it,

is give them material that helps them. Not fight them, not stop them, not talk over them. Give them material that helps them. Okay, so let's get into the practice part of it. So one of the things about doing a pitch is you want to rehearse what you're doing. Before I used to pitch, back in my Hollywood days, I would spend days and days practicing. Like, one of the things that was, one of the things I would do is,

I did not use any material from memory. I did not use cards. I memorized everything. And the reason I was able to memorize everything is, I just did it again and again and again. I would practice. And the reason I would practice is, I want to know my material cold.

Another way to show that your idea is good is when you waver in your idea, when you have to think about it, anytime that you have to stop, in some level you're showing weakness in your idea. Like, well, my idea's not good enough that I remember all of it. You know what I'm saying? That you want to be super polished. And, and, this is important.

You want to be prepared for more than you're planning to pitch. A pitching is not just I talk. A pitching is I talk and they ask questions. So one of the things that's going to happen is, and by the way, hope they ask questions. If you pitch and they go, thank you very much, usually that's not a good sign. You want them, because if they ask questions, that means they want to know more. That's a good sign. But you have to be prepared to answer their questions. So when I say practice, I'm not just talking about the words you're saying. Yes, practice that. But I'm also talking about you have to sort of know the material well enough.

I actually say practice with somebody who can ask you questions. Somebody that knows the material well enough to ask you questions. That's not always possible, but you can do it. And the reason you want somebody else asking you questions is you want someone else asking you something that you may or may not have thought of. That one of the things, and here's why, I consider my improv training to be a really, really good skill when it comes to pitching. And the reason is, one of the things you learn when you do improvisation is, since you don't

know what you're doing ahead of time, is to sort of follow the flow of what's going on. For example, if I do something and make the audience laugh, I go, oh, that made them laugh. I'm trying to make them laugh. Okay, I should steer in that direction. That's something they find funny. If I sort of play a joke or something and it doesn't really get a response,

I have to learn, oh, okay, that wasn't really working. Maybe I want to try, you know, maybe I want to approach a different area rather than that. You know, your audience as a performer is always giving you clues to what they like. There's different ways they do it. In performance, there's more, you know, laughing and applause and, you know, and gasps and things. In pitching, it's a little more about them sort of taking your idea and then trying to understand your idea. The reason they ask questions usually is they want to understand the context of it. I mean, the reason they ask questions is usually one of two things.

Either they're unsure of something, so they want clarification, or they're trying to see if they can adapt your thing to their thing. And so they're sort of asking questions about, well, could blah, blah, blah, you know. So here's another thing about improv. There's a thing you learn early in improv called yes and. And what yes and means is that whatever your partner or partners are doing the improv, you go along with it. You don't shoot it down. What you don't want to do is someone go, oh look, there's a mime and you go, that's not

a mime because what happens is you're now shutting them down. They have an idea. So what you want to do improv is you want to build on the idea. So you want to say, yes, there's a mime and he's got a machine gun, you know, and you want to sort of take the premise that they're giving you and build on it. Don't shoot it down. So the reason that's so important is in a pitch, there's a lot of yes ending that goes on. That what you want to do is you want them, you want, as they talk and suggest things, you want to find places where you can take what they're suggesting and build on it.

Now, that doesn't mean, in a pitch, you necessarily have to accept everything. If what they're saying doesn't follow what you're doing, it's okay to say, no, no, you know, say, no, I was thinking this. But you also, one of the things I learned is, so there's something called soft language. What soft language means is, there's hard language and soft language. Hard language means I know what I want.

I'm very exacting on what I want. You know, you need to do this. It's hard language. There's no doubt in what I'm thinking. Soft language means that there's some wiggle room in it. Well, I think this. I believe that. To the best of my knowledge, you want to be hard when you're pitching your idea.

But when somebody else pitches an idea or an offshoot of your idea that isn't something that you've thought through or something that you're familiar with, you want to be soft with it, meaning you want to sort of give language that doesn't go, absolutely, let's do that, but you also don't give language of, sort of, that's a bad idea. So you want to be hard in your language when you're selling and soft when you're responsive

and listening to people talk to you. That you, one of the things in general you want to do is you don't want to insult the people you're pitching to. I mean, good general, by the way, which means if they say something that doesn't, because here's the common thing. You have an idea and then someone pitches a horrible idea to go with your idea. Usually what you want to do is what you call, so it's what's called redirecting. to do is what you call, so it's what's called redirecting. It's a skill also from acting in improv is somebody says something and that's not the thing you want to do. That's another trick they teach us when you do, in media training you learn this, that somebody says

something and you're like, that's not really what I want. What you do is you find a way to connect that to something you do want and then you redirect like, that's not really what I want. What you do is you find a way to connect that to something you do want, and then you redirect it from that thing to the new thing. So you're like, here's my great idea for a mime police detective. And they're like, oh, he works in narcotics?

And you're like, I didn't want to work in narcotics. And you go, you know, that's interesting that you're talking about where he works. Because there's a lot of different possibilities, I think, of where he might be able to work. You know, one of the ideas that I thought was really interesting, and so you sort of segue, so you take their idea, you acknowledge the idea, you don't shoot the idea down, but you segue to something where you then can talk about the thing you want to do. In general, by the way, you want to practice, you want to have an idea of questions.

Now, here's another thing. If somebody gives you an idea that fundamentally contradicts your idea, you should not make up material that you're not familiar with, that you're not familiar with, that you're not comfortable with. Now, one of the things you want to do is you want to be very familiar with your material so that you can, on the spot, sort of talk about it, talk about ideas you've not thought through all the way.

But be careful not, don't go down avenues that you don't believe in just because somebody is saying them. That is a very dangerous place to be. That someone goes, oh, how about blah, blah, blah. Don't go, yeah, if you don't honestly believe, yeah, that's a great idea. If you like their idea, that is fine. So collaboration is when they say something,

oh, how about, and then you go, yeah, and, and you add something to it. That is cool when you can sort of create something that's a great experience because now you're building something with them. The key, though, to remember is don't, don't,

you have to have an essence of what you're selling. So this is the big final idea, by the way, is part of salesmanship is communication. And you need to understand at every different level what it is you're selling. So the way I like to think of it is you're doing a pitch. Here's what I'd like. Have a one word answer to what you're selling. Have a one word answer to what you're selling.

Have a one sentence answer to what you're selling. Have a two sentence answer to what you're selling. Have a paragraph answer to what you're selling. What I mean there is, know what you're selling in, you have to be able to get bare bones to it. And the reason I get you down to one word is that you really need to know the essence.

What's important? What is it that you're doing? So, for example, I'll use a magic example for this. So, I had a pitch, Ixalan Ixalan started as this vampire conquistador world, sort of a Mesoamerican

set that sort of had the sort of invaders from the other continent that were coming to the New World. We literally were vampires, blood-thrinking vampires. And so the idea was originally there was the main conflict was between, you know, the people from the Old World coming to the New World and people of the New World. And we really wanted to have more factions going on. And so what happened during the course of the design

is we added in pirates and dinosaurs. And I knew when I had to go pitch this that there's a lot going on in the set. That the set had a lot of cool things going on. But the thing that I wanted, the thing that I knew would sell the set, that would get people most excited was pirates and dinosaurs they were two things that I know the audience

would be asking for pirates we had done a little bit but never particularly well and dinosaurs once again we'd done one or two cars but they're both ideas that we really hadn't ever done no one could really build a deck around them we were delivering something that I knew the audience wanted that I knew was exciting.

And there's a lot going on in the world. And when I get to the paragraph sentence, there's more to the world than pirates and dinosaurs. But when I have to figure out what I'm selling, I needed to get to the crux of it. And usually when I say the one word idea, it can be one to three words, but it had to be something that's punchy and quick.

And so, for example, one of the things I said when I was pitching this idea, one of the first things I said is pirates and dinosaurs. That's a little trick sometimes when you're pitching. If you know the crux of what you're saying is you start with the absolute crux. Like, what? And then you go, look, you know, magic's never done pirates before and never done dinosaurs. It has never done them as a selling point of a set.

Players have been asking for pirates. Players have been asking for dinosaurs. You know, we found a way to mix them into this cool world, blah, blah, blah. And you really want to know when you're pitching something, what is the crux of what you are pitching? You want to know, like I said,

you want one to three words. You want sort of, it's this. There's a thing they call the three beat in Hollywood, where what you do is you take two popular things, and you say, blank meets blank. So the idea is, it's like this popular exciting things that were successful, and this popular exciting sexual, but mixed together in a way that's brand new.

You know, that's a real common Hollywood thing. To sort of say, it has these qualities that were proven successes, but mixed in a way that people have not seen before. So it has, it's not risky, yet it's new. It's safe, but new and exciting.

Trying to, anyway, a lot of times what you want to do is you want to sort of pare down your idea. And the reason that I say that's so important is sometimes you literally will say the words in the meeting. You don't always. But knowing what's important to your idea, what the crux of the idea is, helps you when you're selling the idea. Helps you when you're communicating the idea. Because one of the things that can happen is if you're not centered in your idea, if you don't know what you are selling, you

will drift. You will move. What I mean by that is, let's say what your set's really about is thing A, but you're not aware that really thing A is the core of what you're selling. You can get caught in the weeds about B or C or D, and if the other person gets excited, they can start taking your idea and going in the wrong direction. You know, sometimes what will happen is what to you is a minor detail gets picked up and it's excited by the people you're pitching to. Now you want to listen to them and hear why that idea is exciting to them.

But you've got to be careful not to sort of let the idea drift to what the idea isn't. You know, you don't want to hear about, oh, there's a pirate. Oh, pirates are awesome. You know, or parrots. There's pirates. There's, oh, there's a pirate. Oh, pirates are awesome. Or there's a pirate, so there's a parrot. He's a parrot. Pirates are awesome. Ooh, is that all about parrots? It's maybe not all about parrots.

Yeah, it'll be a parrot. Pirates and parrots go together. But really, really, it's more about pirates than it's about parrots. And you want to understand that so things don't drift. A big part about pitching, it's sort of one of my themes today, is a lot of pitching comes from having, understanding your material. And I can't really explain this one enough,

you know, or stress this one enough, is the best pitches come from an idea that you truly, truly feel excited by with the preparation put into it that you understand the crux of the idea and you understand what you're trying to do and you are able to explore areas you didn't prepare because when they ask about something, you know the material backwards and forwards. Good pitches, like I said, preparation is super important.

So I'm just moving to work. So let me sum this up. You're going to pitch your ideas. Number one, excitement. Do not pitch an idea that you do not love. You know, people will read when you're not excited by your own idea. Find ideas you love. Pitch things you love. Pitch things you love.

Pitch things that excite you. So number one, excitement. Number two, preparation. You have to prepare for a pitch. You have to know your material cold. You have to understand your material cold. You have to know exactly what you're pitching. You have to know the details well enough.

One thing I didn't get into, but it's also important is it's not that you need lots of details, but it's important to have a few really exacting details in your pitch because part of what connects people to the ideas is seeing it come to form.

So one of the things that's really good when you're pitching is have a few details. Like I said, you don't need lots of details, but a few really on-the-nose perfect details

so people can see how it could be sort of put together. The third thing is cooperation. Do not think of you and the people you're pitching to, don't think of it as an adversarial role. Don't think of yourself as being separated. You are coming together to work together to make something. Whenever you are pitching, the people you're pitching to fundamentally want you to succeed. It's less work for them.

Your success is their success. So if you get them invested and get them involved, which is good because it'll just make them more excited, and then listen to what they say, involve what they say. Don't violate any fundamental of what your thing's about. Don't make up things that you haven't really thought through. But work with them. You know, when they have ideas, they're the ones you're selling to. So getting them invested and involved increases your chances of you being successful in your pitch.

Okay, guys? Excitement, preparation, cooperation. Those are the three big things of awesome pitching. So anyway, I'm now at work. So we all know what that means. I mean, this is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time.

Bye-bye.