The Russell Brunson Show - The Oren Klaff Method for Conversation Control and High Stakes Pitching | #Success - Ep. 92

Episode Date: December 1, 2025

In this episode of The Russell Brunson Show, I sit down with Oren Klaff, author of Pitch Anything and one of the most fascinating minds in the world of high stakes dealmaking.  Before we even got into the frameworks, Oren told the wild story of how he bought and built a full scale Apollo spacecraft replica for his office and why it instantly changed the way people engage with him. From there, we dug into the psychology that drives billion dollar negotiations, why most entrepreneurs lose deals before they ever begin, and how status, power, and certainty shape every meaningful business interaction.  If you have ever felt intimidated pitching someone with more money, more experience, or more authority, this conversation is going to flip the way you see negotiations forever. Key Highlights: ◼️Why status determines everything in a negotiation and why lowering the other side’s status is often more effective than raising your own ◼️The small behaviors that instantly reveal whether someone is serious and how to call them out without losing the deal ◼️The archetypes you will face in every big deal including the final boss, the consigliere, the analyst, and the law firm ◼️How to raise stakes so decisions happen now instead of drifting into endless follow up ◼️The simple closing question Oren uses that bypasses pressure and gets people to reveal what they actually want This conversation is a masterclass in understanding power, status, and human behavior inside real negotiations. Oren is operating in a world where he is pitching billion dollar funds, founders, and private equity groups, yet every principle applies to anyone selling, pitching, or persuading at any level.  Once you see how people behave when they feel powerful and how quickly everything shifts when you level the status field, you will never approach a deal the same way again. If you want to learn more from Oren, you can find his work at https://orenklaff.com. ◼️If you’ve got a product, offer, service… or idea… I’ll show you how to sell it (the RIGHT way) Register for my next event →⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://sellingonline.com/podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ◼️Still don’t have a funnel? ClickFunnels gives you the exact tools (and templates) to launch TODAY → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://clickfunnels.com/podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

get no frills delivered shop the same in-store prices online and enjoy unlimited delivery with pc express pass get your first year for 250 a month learn more at pceexpress dot ca do you have a funnel but it's not converting the problem 99.9% of the time is that your funnel is good but you suck at selling if you want to learn how to sell so your funnels will actually convert then get a ticket to my next selling online event by going to sellingonline.com slash podcast. That's sellingonline.com slash podcast. This is the Russell Brunson show. What's up, everyone?

This is Russell. Welcome back to the show. Today I'm excited to have someone who I first found out about him. I don't know how long ago you wrote the original book, Pitch Anything, but I found this book, read it and loved it. And that was a couple, again, a few years back. And I hadn't, like, connected with you or personally, this is the first time actually we just met a few minutes ago, which has been really, really fun.

And then about two or three weeks ago, I had my big inner circle meeting. And one of my friends, Peter Swain was here. And you probably don't know this, but for my audience, they know I collect old books and things were building a museum, everything. And he's like, do you know, do you know, Orrin Klaff? And I'm like, I'm quite aware of him for sure. And he's like, he just collected or he just got the something from the moon landing. And I was like, what are you talking about?

And then he sent me a picture of it. and I was like, I have to meet this guy personally now because that is cooler than anything I bought and I bought some really, really cool stuff. So I would love it if we start there so that I can know this story or what it is and just because it's the most insane thing ever. So in essence, you know, you see a car here.

This place was filled with like 18 cars, right? One thing I'd like to add is, you know, I'm sort of, I, you know, my podcast is the game of money. I pitch for money. I live my life around money. but if you give me any of it, I hate it, right? And I will just buy cars. So this place was filled with cars.

We did a lot of media. And I just felt like this is a lot of Instagram feeling, you know, car marketing. You know, here, me, buy my Cobra, me by my M4, you know, we buy this. I'm like, what, how can we rise above that? And there's nothing better than, you know, space. Like I love airplanes, you know, I'm trying to travel, but there's nothing better than space. And so then we built a replica of the lunar, the return lander, the Columbia, so the Apollo 13 Columbia lander. And then we outfit it and here's the inside of it, inside spaceship.

So we have meetings in there. Really, in terms of closing, everybody wants to get in there when you have an event, right? They want to get inside the spaceship. How many people actually fit inside of there? About eight. So it's larger than you think. But the, the, the way. way you get in there is you sign your paperwork that's the hook at the end if you sign it then you can come in here and celebrate this facility here is it's free to get in it's a million dollars to get out the spaceship i think elevated you know i started aging as we were talking about and the spaceship just elevated it out of cars and you know hey check me and my cars out and i

actually don't like to do cars for that reason but the spaceship is so cool and you know everybody loves space and um is it built the same dimensions of the of what actually went to space back in there how does that work exact same dimensions okay that's so it's very unique you think about everyone's a lot of people have lambos a lot of people have planes now but you're the only one with uh space spacecraft whatever you call it we were talking about being competitive if everyone on instagram gets a spaceship i will i will go further right so you're saying like test me right yeah it's 500 spaceships showing up on instagram and every sales guy has got one i will i don't know but you're buying the moon we're going to go to the moon

right that's too cool that's too cool well um man so cool uh it's been fun getting to know you just prior to to jump you on to a lot of commonalities and our personalities and things like that um and before we're talking about like what to focus this podcast interview on i was telling you like our our core entrepreneurs anyone to like the startup phase of a business of a business to, you know, 10 to 20 million dollars. And you brought something that was really fascinating, was just like, okay, these people are dealing with bigger fish, bigger people, could be looking for bankers or other things. A lot of times you get in these power positions that are hard. You're trying to pitch something or create a deal or get a loan or get investor

or whatever the thing might be. And it can be hard. And you come from a different world of selling than I do. Like what I do is one to many, me in front of a thousand people at time. And there's ways we sell. But your structure and is different. and there's a lot of similarities actually when I read your book the first time I was like wow that's interesting how many similarities of like how I look at selling one to many versus how you're doing it but

I'd love to go deep into that just to help our entrepreneurs who are in that situation where they're trying to move up the ladder and like to feel more confident more comfortable and know what to actually do 100% I think I've listened to a quick interview that you did with I can't remember his name he has like one letter

in his name like G or something like that but a sales guy and he's one and you're one to many right i'm kind of one to one but at supersized like the guy's i deal with one billion dollars they have 300 million dollars they they're they're coming with so much power right and and before we're getting in that i believe uh and i'm interested in your reflection on it like you know that guy was very good at selling whoever you had on you mr g or g or yeah dengee so you know he's very good at like selling directly to like couples and everything like that you're good at one to many you know i'm i'm okay at those those big tickets you know

million dollars 300 million dollars whatever it is i feel like whatever that wound so like everybody got wounded at some point by money and then a few of us over corrected by like 9000 percent and that's what you're good at right by your overcorrection i bet it i bet it you interview the guys in sales and you look way back and you go, because I'm good at money, but as I told it, I don't care about it, right? I just love the W. And so what happened is I was in a company and we grew too rapidly, really before there was a lot of venture capital and there was no money. And so we went out and we had a great company. Today, that company would have raised $50 million in a minute because there's so much, but I couldn't find money anywhere for a

software company in like 1991, you know, because it wasn't a lot of capital and private equity. And ultimately, that created a wound in me that I couldn't find money for a good company. And then I just overcorrected by being great at walking into funds, kicking the door down, and saying, no, you sit down, right? No, stop. Right? And just getting frame control over them and getting the people who normally scale, other people, scared of me.

And that is what I like to give the 10 and $15 million guys from being on the front lines of doing that, maybe to my own detriment many, many times. And I'm giving an example. I get on up, and everybody should start doing this immediately until everybody's doing it. It doesn't work anymore. But I get on the phone with billionaires

or guys managing billion dollar funds all the time. guess what they do every single time they come late right why because they're busy um because they can because you know they're packed too much stuff in their day whatever the case is they always come you know so i'm looking for 10 million dollars and they're running a 300 million or three billion dollar fund or there are three billion dollars you can guarantee they will come late three minutes late, five minutes late, eight minutes late, whatever it is. I always go, John, are you here for the 1007 call? We want me to catch you up on what has happened up to now. And every single executive, banker, private equity guy, money managed in America, knows the value of time.

It's the value system that we are all in alignment with. So when you call them out on the inability, to be professional with time, they will always say, I'm sorry. So that is the right way to start a call. If you're a $10 million guy talking to a $300 million guy with them apologizing to you. Because what happens is, as you know from the book, there's this status imbalance. And I don't know how status works in the selling that you do.

You know, you sort of have a very humble, you know, you got your Unabomber sweatshirt on and everything. But in the environments that I go into, it is critical to lower the status of the fund, the high net worth guy, the big guy coming in late, shooting big guns, because nobody's going to buy from you when they feel like they are higher status than you are. So I think what a lot of people do is they focus on raising their own status. but that is that is folly because you haven't been in that environment you know you're walking into a bank you're walking in a private equity group you're dealing with venture capital you're just dealing with the mark Cuban high net worth individual rather than trying to make yourself look good in an environment that you're not familiar with like imagine you and I go into a katana nightclub

in Los Angeles like tonight Friday night right we're just like two you know 45 plus year old guys walking in there, right? And, and there's just, there's, there's, there's, there's no way we're going to, you know, get into cool, right? Because it's just, we're not going to, we're not going to figure out that environment and be cool in that environment. And that's the same challenge. You're not going to make your stuff look good in an environment or in a, in a situation you have no experiencing. So, so rather than raising your status, lower theirs. And it's easy to do. A lot of, so a lot of time, so I'll do it on time. a lot of times they've got a billion dollar guy will come on the phone and I'll go he's like hey yeah sorry I'm a few minutes late I'm like okay um and then first thing I'll say is I'm confused

the things I see on your website are really confusing for all the things you said in the email and come so I'm here to try and reconcile what I see uh on the website and what you're saying in media because I'm confused and billionaires hate that right when they're sending out confusing messages about their business. So I'll always find something where they're out of integrity or out of their value system. I'll say, look, you know, I saw a perfect example, Luke Nosek at Founders Fund, right? So Founders Fund, I'll give you a better example. I want to try to answer your question. I'll try to land a plane here. Guy Kawasaki ran a small venture firm in Silicon Valley called Garage Ventures. and we go there to pitch a deal with one of my clients. And he goes, I really like this company.

You know, it's amazing. We'd be very interesting in it. But, you know, we'd like to see the revenue more seasoned. We'd like to see faster scaling in the, you know, in the customer growth. We'd like to see more seasoning in the management team. I'd like to see just a little bit more of a mature business before we could get involved. And I go, it's literally called Garage Ventures. Change your name.

Okay? Do not have my client drive here across town or fly up and talk to them out of integrity. It says garage ventures. If the client had scaling revenue, if it had more seasoned management team, if they have predictable user growth, it wouldn't be here to be a goddamn Bank of America. Name yourself correctly. Oh, I'm so sorry. Yeah.

So not to be angry, but I think the important thing. is to have the courage to call out an imbalance in people's value system. They say one thing, do another, call it out. I give you one more example and turn it back over to you. And I want people running five, eight, ten million dollar companies to be able to do this. You get on a call with investors or, you know, big partner or whatever. There's two or three of them on there. And ultimately, there'll be one of them going like this.

this. And I'll just go, who's that guy? And I go, that's our CFO. I go, listen. Are you guys are we're, this call is 20 minutes long? Are you able to focus on this call for 20 minutes? All right. Because, because it's one thing my 11 year old knows, my 12 year old knows is people are in their best behavior in the first meeting because they're trying to attract you. We're trying to I track them, right? And I go, if you guys can't come to the call authentically, interested, listening with people that are focused for 20 minutes, I don't even know how to start a relationship with you.

Teach me how to work with you. And two things will happen if it's authentic. They will know, like, yeah, you don't come to a call and, you know, start texting, you know, on a serious financial discussion. and then we'll go, I'm sorry, right? Let's just all focus. We had a call. We're closing a deal.

We're a little bit distracted, but let's focus now. Or they'll say, what's the big deal? That's sort of normal course of business, right? And then, and now you know, not people that care enough to say, we booked a 20 minute call, three of us are here, we're going to listen and focus, and it's just, There's just not a deal here. And so these are the things that are less top of funnel, but I would call just above mid funnel, right?

So you pitch, you get somebody in, have a conversation with them, and then you've got to get some status balance where they don't perceive themselves to be more important, more valuable, more cashed up, and more powerful than you. Does that make sense? Yeah, 100%. It's really interesting because we do the one in many selling, we talk a lot,

same to a lot about status and how, you know, when you're, even when you're selling something from stage and you've got people, you know, by default of them buying something, their status is going to go down,

but they're hoping for an increased status later, right? So it's like, we're using that in the buying process, like one to many a lot of times. I try to figure out how to, how to keep that status profile so that they, by investing,

they're not feeling like a decrease in status. They're feeling like, there's a temporary decrease. My bank count goes down, but the, the potential, increase in status is worth it. Therefore, I'm going to, I'm willing to invest in this thing and try to buy the stuff. But I've never thought about it from a negotiation standpoint. And I think

what you said is dead right. It's harder to increase your own status other than you bragging about yourself, which is never like a nice thing. I can't stand if people come on. Let me tell you how great I am versus that way is a sneaky like a backdoor I've never thought about is like to decrease and try to level out the status from there. Does it typically happen like a one-time thing? Is this something like as you're doing multiple calls and meetings? Like you're resetting this continually, or is the first one kind of set the tone for the relationship, usually? So what happens is, uh, I think I repeat it until it's under control. Now, you can go the other way.

You can raise your own status, right? And I'll give you a couple of ways I do that. I go, hey guys, um, welcome. By the way, uh, so I have to deal with a lot of people just don't know, having read pitch anything, don't know, aren't online and everything like that. And then they're, uh, now, well, now today I'll be like, wait, are you Warren Clough? So I'll get a lot of that. We're just on a call.

So I will go, hey, Russell, good news. You can go home today and tell your family that you've met a genuine C-level celebrity. And don't like that. And then I'll go, listen, I'm going to walk you through this really quickly. You know, just, you know, understand. I want you understand when we had this big bay door just recently installed here so my ego could fit in the door, right? And so I'm going to walk you through this.

I'm going to give you an opportunity to reflect. And at the end of the call, we're going to decide, is this, you know, are we a good fit for each other or is a hail fellow well met? And by the way, if I can get to that in three minutes, great. If it takes a full 20, you know, that'll be a long time. Are you ready to roll? So that, you could get there where you do raise your status above people. But you have to let them know, you have to let them know, you're in the hands of a professional. I do this all the time, right?

You are now at Disneyland. You bought a ticket, right? You're going to see the exhibits. At the end of the day, there's, you know, I'll tell you when you're at lunch, you know, when lunchtime, you'll buy, you know, $18 bottle of water, the $26 hot dog. And that's how it goes. And you're in the hands of a professional on a professional tour. You know, like, have you been to Universal Studios? You know, shark jumps out and, like, you know, and you're on the tour.

I'm the guide. I'll let you know when the tour is over and where the tip jar is. Are you ready? We're going to begin now. So it's okay to raise your status if there's a sense that you're in the hands of a professional. If you are a beginner and feeling your way through it and everything, then you've got to pull them down to where you are. But the middle ground is the worst.

I'd love to hear your opinion on that. Again, I'm a little bit more, but like either pull them down or you go up, but to just leave this status or this gap, you know, I really love photography. And for me, you're either zoomed in super close and capturing people's face or you're zoomed out and capturing the environment. But like these midshots where it's like, you know, there's people and it's just, it's nothing. thing so you're either all in on your status or you're pulling them down but the gap in the middle to me is a is a no man's land yeah i feel that um i'm not someone who usually does negotiate you know people my team to do that but people eventually get through gatekeepers to me

and um feeling it from that side where you can you know on my side within 20 seconds or so the decision's been made you know what i mean and it's interesting because a lot of times it is that or i'm like i'm in fact i remember the very very very first time I'd moved to a new area and I went to church the first time and this guy came to me and he was like a financial planner and he was like he knew I was successful and so of course he wants me to invest and within talking about two or three minutes I was like I'm not going to give my money to a financial planner who makes less money than me and he tried for months to try to do it and I was just like like you haven't managed your own money to get the spot where you

know what I mean it's like I had that really quickly thing where had he had you come in and and figured out a way to position it correctly or to get the status where even it's not his, maybe it's his clients, some other version, it would have opened, it probably could reopen the door, kept the door from shutting versus very quickly, I was just like, there's a mismatch here. And like, I, you know, I work with people that work with different people. You know what I mean? Like, anyway, it's, it's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So the status is so important that there has to be that alignment that, that you guys are on the same level. What, what happens is I don't want to get too much into like evolutionary biology, but when somebody feels they have

more power than you, and this is why I'm so keyed in on power, right? And I'm not keyed in on getting my own power. My joy is taking power away from people, so we are on a level playing field. And that's what wrestling does, right? It strips you. That's what sports does. You know, when you go to a college campus, it's amazing because everything outside of that. the campus, you know, I grew up on a University of Illinois, as I said, University of Wisconsin, University of Delaware. And when you go on a college campus, especially in the sports part, all like the society stuff strips away, and there's just a purity of academia and sports. The commercialism and the financial purposes, you know, fall away, and you're just there

for the competition and the relationship and the purity of the, the community of the, you know, of it. And I feel like when that's what I enjoy is taking the power away from the other side and now we're on level playing field and we can actually talk about the business without the social overlay. So I want to take that away from people so they don't have it to use. I give an example. A good investor mine was in a big negotiation, $30 million contract, right? Everybody signed off on it. I have this this archetype. I like to name all the archetypes in deals, right? And they have this type called the final boss. If anybody's played video games, right? So you're playing a video game. You're like, oh, yeah, I'm on level 30. Like,

I'm really winning. I might even get to the end of the game. And then, like, outcome Shiva. Ah! It just threw like 19 fireballs, you know, 11 of them hit you. And you're like, what? I just lost like a thousand lives in one second. And it took me two years to bail out. Like, that is not fair. You know, the final boss, and, you know, and you're like playing that level, you know, over and over and over. So the final boss will always come out. So they're in this $30 million a deal.

And the final boss comes out. They've got, you know, a letter of intent. They've got a definitive agreement. Everything gets signed up. The final boss that, and the, this archetype, the final boss, you never heard of them. Nobody ever mentioned them before. You know, he's hiding behind the door. And all of a sudden, hey, what's going on here?

Like, I got to sell that guy now. We've been doing this for a long time. What do you mean what's going on here? He's like, yeah, I'm like, CEO of the company, you know, I'm the founder, right? And like, so, so, yeah, we, in order to do this contract, you know, we would need 15% off. And so my buddy calls me, like, what do we do? Like, the founder, we didn't even know he existed, you know, I didn't know his name. He just showed up.

And he's asking for 15% discount. I go, we have to do it. Like, we need this contract. I go, go back in there, and this is the playbook. You say, you know, whatever's the, Hermon, look, I understand. Like, this goofy thing works for you. You come in the last minute. We need 15% off.

There's a couple of things going on here. It works. It's goofy. You've made a lot of money in the past, right? But, like, we've been working with your team for eight weeks. We have 60 hours in this contract. everything's ready to go. So one of two things is happening in here. One, this is a goofy thing you do. It usually works. It's not working here. Okay. There's no 15% discount. You want three percent off, whatever. Or this is the real you. And you actually show up at the last minute and demand with nobody even having met you or talked to before, 15% off. And if that is, we're out of here. Because we will see that all the time. And this is, we will see that all the time. And this is, is who you really are and we would never work with somebody who believes that's the right

way to do business which is it and that takes all their power away because if they come back and go right it is a riskless move because if they go this is us we will we will show up at the last minute ask for 15% off constantly negotiating ankle biting you and be a pestilence on the margin of your business, then you know these, while it's a, I can sell this account, it's a horrible account to have to live with. If the account tells you, I am a horrible account to your face, you have to believe them.

And so this is how you strip people's power away, is you create this nakedness in which you say you are either this or you are this and you have to tell me which one it is. And you can literally say, and here's the line that will lean you into this. Yogi Berra said when you come to a fork in the road, take it. And this is that fork in the road. You are going to tell us who you really are and then we're going to make a decision if we're going to provide this value, this account, this deal, you know, this whatever, to you.

And that is the ultimate transition is when you let them know, based on something they're going to tell you about their integrity, their values, you are now going to make a decision about them. Does that make sense in any way? That's so fascinating. you're basically putting him in a not a corner but like yeah the two options and both are good for you only one is ends up being good for them here's a great one i think there's there's two such easy lines in this high stakes one so the stakes is important the problem with guys at five six eight, $10 million is they don't raise the stakes high enough.

When the stakes aren't high enough, we were talking about consequences, you know, a proxy for stakes. When the stakes aren't high enough, no decision is going to be made. And they're going to go, hey, yeah, this is really interesting. I'm going to show it up, you know, to my partner, the team. We'll take a look at it, get back to you if we have any questions. And then they're gone, right? You haven't be able to set another, oh, well, we should set another meeting.

Yeah, we'll get back to you. We're not really ready to set a meeting right now. I'll show it to the committee. We'll get back to you. And then you're just, are you, you know, checking for an update, checking in, wanting to do another call. Like you have no controls. Your job is to raise the stakes high enough where you can authentically say, you know, kiss or kill.

Let's figure out whether we should move. You don't have to sign the contract or do the deal or whatever, but is there enough here where we're going to move to the next step? or hail fellow well met, should we let each other go? And if you, if there's status alignment, if you have value, if they have a problem and you've correctly made them feel the pain, then they're not, and you're a high functioning, high processing person, they're not going to want to let you go.

so so what what you want them to feel is like listen russell you have this problem i didn't create this problem we we don't have the problem you have over here we solve it and it's not just that you have it kind of as bad as it can get so if it gets any worse under your direction or whoever's helping you even we would not want to help you out too hard too high friction too high cost so you're sort of at this teetering edge where we would even consider helping you let's figure out in this last dying glimmer of hope that you have that you could get someone like us to help you out if it makes sense for me to jump in and fix all these problems that you have created for yourself and and that's where they need to get you.

get to, and that's how you get the stakes. So now you can say, you know, a decision is being made in this meeting to either take one more step forward or to knock off. And you got to get there and that decision shouldn't be a 50-50 flip of the coin. It should really be that if they choose to go away, it's because you were in control of that decision. And that is right. And that is really the right thing to have happened and also I'm sure you've felt this in your own life deals come back around just because you know it's like you you let it go and it truly loved you will come like whatever it will come back right but if you hold your integrity and you hold your values and you hold your stakes high and it goes away they will cogitate on it and they will come

back around, right? And, and so that's what I mean by, you know, raising the stakes and making somebody to choose a path forward. It's interesting, too, because it's coming back, we talked about earlier, right? The final boss is coming in with this increased status to be able to come back and, you know, force you to go do the thing and you're switching it back around and be like, if you do this, you just decrease your status directly or, you know, so it's, it's, it's interesting. Do you look at all the negotiations through that status inbound? Is that the core thing that you're doing throughout? I mean, I don't know there's a lot of other stuff, but it's such a fascinating thing.

I started going down this road. I'm evolutionary. If somebody feels that they are higher status to you have more power, a couple of things happen. One, they only see you at a surface level. Number two, they take risks around you. They would not take with someone of their own position and status. And number three, they, so, So the sea at a surface level, they take risks around you and they really are sort of negotiate, you know, they operate from this.

You never get anything you don't ask for. Right. And so they ask and ask and ask. And, you know, even if even if they watch you go down to where they know you have no margin, it's okay with them. right you and i as colleagues or same status i would have no joy if we did a deal together we did a conference together we did a book together whatever if i made all the money you made none right it would bring me no joy um but when somebody feels more powerful than you they uh take no effort to protect your position so they're okay with it being the economics being hugely imbalanced

and so that's why you have to correct the status they see you at a surface level level. They don't care about your family, your debt, your company, you know, whatever. It's purely transactional. They take risks around you. They wouldn't take. And they are, again, purely transactional. They don't care if they make 100 and you make zero. When I say they'll take risks around you, it's as simple as, you know, they're just, you know, if you see somebody checking their phone while you're in a meeting with them, right, that is a risky behavior. Because if you walked into Bank of America to get a hundred million dollar you know financing you know and we're meeting with the with the committee that determines you know financing and they're sitting there and

ask you some questions you're not going hold on i'm i'm doing a couple's massage later i just wanted to see if they have a time available you're like oh i'm so sorry you're like how to turn your phone off right so so um you that's what i mean they would take risks around you right he's not slapping you on the butt and saying you know hey you know but but they that is why you need that status balance between you so they don't have this evolutionary sort of power surge over you that's cool do you have a training we go through all the different archetypes of all the different people in the deals you have to be here's out the final boss what are the rest of them yes i do so so there i'll tell you some of the other archetypes that are in every deal right

It's the conciliary, you know, the guy who doesn't have a role. It's most of the people listening here will know that person as the wife, right? So, so a lot of times, you know, we'll hear, oh, you know, my wife, you know, is an expert in this. But there's the third party who's not in the business. All right. And so the wife is a good proxy for that. But it's really like a real person. It's like the CPA or their best friend from college, right?

And it's always somebody who has like a little overlap on your business, enough to be dangerous, you know, has an opinion. So they'll bring that person in. And the reason that person is an archetype, the only way they can make themselves look good is by making you look bad. Right? And so you've got to reframe that guy and get him out. And that's challenging because usually that's a personal relationship because they're not

in the business, but it's like my buddy, my college buddy, my most trust of friend, you know, my a guy who did a deal with you know whatever uh so that's an archetype that always shows up another one is the analyst the analyst as you can imagine the analyst cannot rise within the organization um by by finding good things about the deal right that's you're like they're just doing their job the only way they can rise in the organization is by finding bad things about the deal so your So we talk about status. I think it's really interesting. As you're doing a deal, I don't want to get too much into dealmaking.

I know that's not, you know, really your topic. But entrepreneurs and guys at that $10 million company level, when they go to make a deal, there's an analyst. And so they know the most about the company or the subject. So they'll answer the analyst questions. And then there'll be a chief marketing officer, whatever, on the other side. And like, who knows more about marketing than the $10 million founder? So he'll answer these questions.

Then there'll be a CFO. Who knows the spreadsheet and the financials and the bank better than the founder? So he'll answer. So this guy's like Bugs Bunny, you know, running around playing every position, you know, like pitching the ball, batting the ball, outfilling the ball. You don't look like a real organization when you're the one running around talking to the analyst, talking to the marketing guy, talking to the CFO, talking to the CEO, talking to the consult. so the way to deal with that is you get your analyst even if it's hired even to borrow a position

to deal with their analyst right and make that guy and tie him up right getting like grapple him up and you know get him in a hold and just get high friction around that analyst so he's not rampantly running freeing the deal trying to make himself feel better does that does that make sense that so you've got the archetype of the analyst uh when i say doesn't make sense i you know I don't know. I don't have a chip to see how well you're understanding it. I get it. You're very experienced and you don't color with crayons.

But I just, I want to make sure. It's thinking. So there's the analyst. There's a consuliary. There's the final boss. Like those are the, and then there's the law firm, right? And the law firm is they're, they're not trying to make themselves look good or bad.

They're just trying to bill ours. Yes. I know, man. So what will happen is the worst thing in the world is to let your law firm and their law firm run one wild and free together, right? Because your law firm's goal is to take care of you, make sure you don't do a bad deal, you know, but their job is to bill hours, right? The law firm on the other side, who knows what control? So you can get a, you can get a $50,000 thing. quickly hit a million dollar in legal bills with the law firm. So the law firm is an archetype.

And they, what they want to do is they want to find issues that are non-issues and explore them, get a legal wrapper around them. And so if you're a little bit in experience, your law firms say, yeah, you know, compliance, you know, compliance around hiring in California, you know, is an issue. And we should take a look at this in terms of the number of 1099 versus W2. you have, you know, we should get an opinion over from, you know, our HR. You're like, yeah, we better get an opinion on that. Right. So the legal, the analyst, the final boss, the consularity are like the four archetypes.

You know, you're going to hit in the deal. And so I think you have to look for those and go, how can I pre-frame and get ahead of these guys before, you know, your, what will happen? missile command in a deal what will happen at some point there's just too many things coming at you right you're trying to drop bombs on all them in real time and you're just like ah you know i i hit the reset it wipes the screen but they only let you hit that reset three times every while you're hitting the reset and just the bombs keep coming and you lose all your cities and the deal's over so you want to figure out who these characters are ahead of time and get get a a don't you know get a dome over them uh as quick as you can so cool so fascinating this has been

a fun conversation man way different than i think i was expecting and super fascinating so hopefully i'd be unhelpful like i want to like i said i want to be helpful to people are facing these things i'm gonna like like me you know um i guess the quick takeaway is you you should definitely try sorry i didn't mean to interrupt you but i want to just you should definitely try when these guys show up late. You go, hey, Jim, are you here for the 10.07 call? Your instincts will be like, I have never said anything so rude in my life. What will happen is, this is the only thing I'm here. I'm sorry. I had whatever reason and you go, all right, let's, you know, let's get it

going now. So try that. It's amazing. And you'll start to feel the place. of status, the shift, the playing status with people, and then definitely hold people accountable for their weird behaviors they should not be having, you know, bringing to the table. A lot of times I'll do that with their background on the Zoom call because my background, like I have a $2 million, you know, investment in this place, of a spaceship, right? And I will, you know, and there's a, you know, a 40-foot LED wall, you know, so if I go here, my laptop, laptop wall. There you are. Oh, there is.

There's a 40-foot LED wall there. And so, you know, have enough, what happened to me, you know, have enough status there that when they have a weird background, you know, if it's a fund or a big business you're doing it, and they're like, where are, are you calling me from a coffee shop? Like, seriously, do you want to, you should, how about we just reschedule? Oh, car calls. If you're in your office and they're taking the call from your car, don't do it. Just go, are you in your car? Right. It's like, why don't we reschedule to a time where you're in your office, I'm in my office,

and we can talk seriously. Another one, I just strongly recommend you try it. anybody listening in this can do that. Why would you do that? Just run your numbers. Like how many calls with people in a car have actually, I mean, I would ask this to you have gone somewhere. Rarely, if ever.

And I think about when I take calls from the car, usually not someone's not as a serious either. I'm like, oh, are you in the car right now? Hey, well, got to go. I'll follow up with you, I promise. My favorite thing to do is if that becomes an issue, and I'm the car, I just go, I'm on a landline.

They're like, can see you're in a car, and they're like, you are? So I go, are you paying attention? I'm in my car. And I just said, I'm on a landline. And you asked me, are you? Like, oh, you think there's like a 40-mile fiber optic cable dragging? I'm like, what is going on here? Right?

Let's try and get you to focus. And so that is what I'm saying, like call out the little behaviors that, are show that this is not serious. And so I don't want to have this spin off in a direction that's not helpful for your people, but start to notice that status imbalance. Start to notice the little behaviors that show this is not a serious call. And I would just add, I'll add one thing that's very different from, I think, my business and yours, I feel like I'm talking over you now,

but it's just sparking in my head. So in my business, we talk to people to raise money. So they're on the other side going, we have money. If you're in an $8 million, $10 million, $15 million business, and you're talking to people about money,

they don't have, eight out of 10 people don't have any money. But they will say that they do. Because when you walk, I would say this, Like, let's see. So I'm going to ask you what you do and you're going to say you're a fireman, okay? Hey, Russell, what do you do?

I'm a fireman. Oh, really? What municipality are you in? In Boise. Oh, Boise? Okay. Are you drive the truck? You're in dispatch.

Like, are you in search and rescue? Or like, do you have a dog? What? Search and rescue. That sounds cool. Yeah. What's your engine number? 43.

Yeah, so you're, like, looking up into the left, you have no, right? So if you say you're a fireman or you say you're a policeman or you say you're a college professor, there's breadcrumbs that I can follow just as a layman, you know, really far back, right? So now go ahead and ask me what I do? Orrin, what do you do? I'm a fund manager. Oh, how big is your fund? $500 million.

Okay, what's the last three deals you did? You know, we're working on some stuff. This is a continuation fund that we're doing. doing. So, you know, I was at Yahoo for a while and we did some stuff there. And, uh, you know, this is a, this is a new fund that we're established. We're doing some AI, uh, things, you know, and we expected 46% IRA for our next five years. Okay. So it's 500 money you actually have in the fund now that's so that you're projecting to try to grow to. Yeah, I mean, we have it. You know, we've got, we've got an investor base, um, that's committed. Mm-hmm. Do you want to write me a check

for half of that? I'm just kidding. I don't know. So, right, it's like, when you don't, you don't Like, you don't know how to interrogate. So what you have is all these, you know, you have, do you know, Bridger? Yeah. Yeah. So Bridger, you know, Bridger and I, I'm guilty of it, are training, you know, these legions of people, the run around going, I'm a fund manager, right? They haven't read, to your point, they haven't raised, you see, I brushed off that question

so easily. Yeah. Where's your money? They're committed. They're committed. They're committed. So you have these legions of people running around going, I'm, I'm a, an investor, I have a fund. Why? Because they get into the good rooms for free, right? They get the

free IPAs, the free shrimp, you know, the wine, the invites to the thing. They talk to serious people and they're just circulating in that world, really having no money. So as you're talking to people, you know, there's just, there's just eight out of ten people we talked about money. You're in the process of raising money. I feel like they can have access money because what they'll do is they'll take your deal, right? They'll package it with some other deals and they'll go, hey, and they'll go try and then promote themselves to some money to try and really be a broker. But they won't say I'm a broker. They'll say, I have a fund. And so the status, the importance of status is to break through that and call people out who are saying we have money when they don't.

And so that's why you have to be good at this is to get through the facade, you know, that people are, I'm sure that's a lot of your work, you know, one to many as well. You know, it's getting through this facade that people are projecting behind it and see what's really going on. So, in fact, my clothes is as complicated as pitch anything is and the stuff we talked about are really simple, right, which is Russell, you can tell me what's really going on there. the other one is once you can get past there and you sense it like there there's really you know the ability to do a transaction the only close that I have is this is what should we be doing together and that's it and if you get this far down the road they will tell you in the, you know, can I get the contract over to you? The clothes is, what should we be doing together?

And then they'll go, what's next? What's next step? So if you do all the pre-work and the framing and get the status right, get the stake's high, get the choice is correct, then the close is so simple, in my experience. I love it, man. That was really, that was a master class on all that stuff. I love it. I hope there's enough, I mean, you know, not,

I hope there's enough morsels there that people can actually just go on and try that. Nobody's going to spit in your face. Nobody's going to say, what are you talking about? Just start to play with it. And you'll go, because Peter, I've taught this to Peter, and he'd come back, giddy. He's like, it works.

Because people are people. Yeah. If people want to, like, learn more from you. or like what's the best place books or what's best place to plug in for people to study with you and learn more if you really want to get good at all this stuff go to russell bronson.com

that's the guy who really knows what he's doing. Thank you. But if that site is down and not take any more subscribers then go to Tony Robbins and if Tony Robbins is down then go, damn it, I'm going to have to go to my third choice and go to Ornclaff.com.

Orncliffe.com. Yeah, that's it. So, hey, I know you had a 15-minute time limit and we went over, but thank you for. And that's so good to get to know you better and learn from you. So I really enjoyed the time. So it's a great way to lean to the weekend. I appreciate it. Thank you.