 let's do it. How do you create the perfect elevator pitch for your idea? Do you have an idea that you want to get out into the world but you don't know how to pitch it? Or someone says, what do you do? And then you tell them and they look at you with a blank stare because I didn't understand a word that you said. Well, you've got to create the perfect elevator pitch. You've got to make it so simple and so compelling that the recipient of your pitch just gets it and wants to invest or wants to help or gets enthusiastic, gets excited about it. Whether that be an investor or someone who you're hiring or someone that you want to do business with, it must be compelling. So today we're going to talk about creating the perfect elevator pitch for your idea. To help us do that, I've brought in Josh Muchio, who is the host of the pitch podcast, which is going into season two in January of 2017. It was a big breakout podcast in 2016. Josh Muchio, how are you doing? Great to have you here. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it, James. Before we get into some practical steps here on how to create the perfect elevator pitch, just tell our listener of you a little bit about you and the pitch podcast for the person who hasn't listened to it. Yeah, well, it all started, I guess, while I was in school. I didn't realize it at the time, but I pitched for my senior project, a business idea to school, but my business professor put together a panel of investors from the area. So it was a lot like Shark Tank. And I pitched my first business idea there. And I didn't think anything would have come of it, but that ended up becoming my first business. And, you know, as a, after I ended up selling that business three years later, I look back and it's funny. I didn't really mean to, but it's all of a sudden, I've created a business where I facilitate this whole Shark Tank thing for other companies to get their ideas off the ground. And I'm making a long story, very, very short. But yeah, so now that's, that's what I'm doing with the show. We've been doing it for about a year. We've had 40 companies, about 40 companies come on, but in the existing version of the show, there's no investment being made. It's just feedback or thoughts, or if I were to invest. And I mean, personally, I've come to despise our current format. So don't tell the lovely folks who have come on before that. It's just so aggravating because we want to be that Shark Tank feel where investors are actually putting money on the line. And we finally, have worked up to the place where we recorded season two last October. And now here in January, we're coming live with the season two and real investments are happening. So essentially, you have these startups that come with no money, no capital, no, just an idea. And they pitch it in front of investment capital firms to raise money so they can launch their business an idea. Is that the, is that the long and the short of it? Kind of what they do on Shark Tank, the TV show, Mark Cuban and all these other guys who are the sharks, I guess. But you're doing it on the podcast. Is that correct? Exactly. And we record in a similar situation like Shark Tank would be for five investors in a room and then a founder standing in front of them, standing up, pitching their idea. Now we don't publish the video, we're focused more on the audio, which changes the format significantly. But what you can expect from our show is that it's going to really go a lot deeper on some of the things that they'll tend to just gloss over on Shark Tank. But we don't make it so nerdy that newbie, that we leave newbies behind. We try to keep everybody, bring everybody along. So creating a perfect elevator pitch is obviously vital for people who come on your show if they're going to get capital to be able to launch their idea. It's being able to communicate what your idea is, what it will do, and how it will benefit the investor is crucial. It's the difference between getting money and not getting money, right? It's crucial to launching and not launch. Well, and it's so many things. I mean, it's not just the message of what you're saying, it's really how you're saying it. And I'm sure this is something you can resonate with because it's that way across so much of life, right? Let's say you're literally in an investor opportunity and you're in an elevator and they ask, oh, hey, so what do you do? And that opportunity, if you aren't kind of excited and happy about what you're talking about, happy to be telling about your business, it doesn't matter how good it is, what you're saying is it's not going to go over well. It's not going to be memorable. So that's like, you know, a super basic thing you can do is just be excited about what you're building. Do you recall a time when you were asked what do you do or you were put in a situation where you kind of had a moment or a conversation or 10 seconds to be able to accurately and succinctly describe what it is that you do and you blew it and that you completely messed it up? Do you recall a time like that? You know, I can't recall any specific times, but I mean, it's, it's happened a bunch for sure. I think the, I think the problem is our mind immediately goes to probably the most recent interaction we've had with that thing. And we can tend to get right into like the nitty gritty details. And you almost have to have like, okay, this is my blanket statement that I have memorized. Like for our show, it's like, we're the Shark Tank podcast, we bring on companies, they get funded. And, you know, everybody has a great time on our show and we have some really exciting moments that happen on air. And usually that's intriguing enough, just that line right there where people will then ask, okay, so is it really like Shark Tank, you know, blah, blah, blah, and you can, you can tell more, more after that. But really the goal is to kind of create some intrigue with that first comment. Because really, yeah, you want engagement from whoever he is you're talking to. Well, just before we get into the, you know, how you should craft the perfect pitch, how do we make sure that we don't craft the worst kind of pitch? Like, what's an example of a pitch gone wrong? So a really, I mean, there's so many ways a pitch could go wrong. But I think that the number one way is people get really, they get, they get too excited and too nervous about the pitch that they become their own worst enemy, right? So they know it's a big deal. And I think you just got to go into it and just relax and have a good time with it. But, you know, the number one mistake people go into is they talk details of the product, they talk features, they talk features, features, features, and really, you don't want to talk features, you want to talk kind of overview, like what's exciting about what you're building, what's the broader vision? Like, have you seen, you know, Elon Musk or like, well, let's, let's, let's say, you know, Steve Jobs back in the day, like such a good presenter. And yeah, they would go through the details of the product. But really Steve's job was to like cast the vision for how amazing Apple is and how their 10 year vision is going to be incredible. And you kind of want to do that on a micro scale. So yeah, so Steve Jobs, the best example I can use of him was when you came up with the iPod, it was a thousand songs in your pocket. Yep. That's it. That's it. That's the benefit. That's not a feature. That's not like, oh, we've got a 24 gigabyte product that enables you to put in the songs and it sits into a little device. Yeah, we got this crazy scroll wheel. Like, they're features. The benefit is it's a thousand songs in your pocket. My, to use an example of my own business, my Swanee's blue light blocking glasses on our front, on our homepage, the first words that you see is sleep better. We help people sleep better. So we don't say, oh, the glasses have got spring hinges and acetate and these, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but their features, benefits are what the hell they do for the customer. And that is they help you sleep better in turn helps you lose weight, which in turn makes you look better and have less wrinkles and makes you happier. They're all benefits. So where people get in wrong in all kinds of sales is that they bang on and on and on and on about features. No one gives a shit. They don't care. What have you done for me lately? What does it do? It's like, when you see these car, car commercials now, I mean, if they throw in a few benefits there, like, like for the real car enthusiasts, they talk about the engine size and like the braking system and they're thrown a few technical terms. But for the most part, what are the cars doing? They're driving around in the mountains and showing freedom. They're going around windy hills and like they're going over rugged terrain. And it's like they're going on these big open rows. It's freedom, baby. It's the feeling of freedom. That's what they're selling. They spend that message so many that like they've skinned that cat 10,000 times. You know, right? It's like bottom line. If they were to, you know, we get you from A to B, but that's so boring. They have to find a way that we get you from A to B better than anybody else. Right. Here's the thing. If I was going to sell a hairdryer, right? If I was going to sell a hairdryer or a hair curler, let's use an example of a hair curler. Okay. To a, to a woman, right? To a 20-something or a 20-something woman. I wouldn't, I would not say, Hey, I've got this amazing hair curler. It's incredible. It's heated, heated at 100 degrees and it goes through your hair and it makes your hair really curly and you look really good and blah, blah, blah, right? I would sell, Hey, you know, there's this, this amazing new device that's come out and all the Hollywood celebrities are using it now. And if you use this device, you are going to turn men's heads. But if you use this device, you're going to walk down the street and guys are just going to look at you. And when you walk into a bar and I club or you're walking down the street, you're going to notice that people are just looking at you and admiring you. Yeah, you're going to stand out. Yeah. And then you say, it's a hair, it's a hair curler. And then you say, here's the hair curl. So that's an example of going, leading with benefits rather than features. It's not like, here's my hair hair curler by this hair curler. It's, you want to look sexy. You want to, you want guys to like turn their heads. You want to be like the objects of people's desire. You want to feel amazing and look amazing. Here's the hairdryer. Here's the hair curler. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and there are so many similarities between what you will do in marketing and what you do when you pitch your product. I think that the second thing that you really have to understand is you got to know your audience going in, no matter where you're pitching somebody. So we'll pretend we're in the elevator. So loosely, you're kind of one, you know, one sentence statement can be the same for investors, for coworkers, for friends. But then when you say, you know, kind of next is really telling about how well you know who you're actually talking to. You know, most people ask me about how do you pitch investors specifically? And I think you do have to start with the problem and the solution. Start at the most basic premise of what your product is, because that should be clear enough that they'll understand it and then understand the opportunity of what you're building. But then next, you really do have to sell them on kind of the the income opportunity for them. See, as an investor, you're always looking at, okay, I can give this person money, but are they going to be able to give me 10x, 15x, 20x in my return? And if it's not a big, big exit, they won't invest. Most investors specifically in venture. So that's the other big thing. And that's kind of the where you have to really finesse it is really showing the opportunity of what you're building, what it could look like, you know, five, 10 years down the road. Yeah. So bad ways don't get too excited and nervous and don't talk features, talk, talk benefits. Don't talk about the future product, talk about the benefits. Now the good way then we're talking about how to create the perfect elevator pitch for your idea. What you seem to be saying is to start off with you state the problem. And then you illustrate how your product or your service is the solution. Correct? Yeah. So let's do an example of that then. Maybe we can do an example of one that you've already seen that didn't state the problem and then the solution, or we can just come up with our own one now. Have you got an example we can use? I do have a really good one. So like Airbnb, there's book rooms with locals rather than hotels. And you instantly get like, oh, so it's like a hotel, but I can book with locals. So it's super, super simple. That's kind of like your one sentence pitch. But I think you do have to start with that before you go into the problem. Let's see. I don't have the rest of their pitch up to see kind of what they went into for the problem right after that. If they were investor pitch, I would, I'm just going to imagine, but you know, if I'm Airbnb, you would say, you've got all this unused capacity, people, you know, they have rooms available in their homes, and they would love to rent them out, but they just don't because they don't realize how easy it is. Well, with Airbnb, we make that super, super easy. People can make some extra money on the side. And then if you're traveling, it's really wonderful to, you know, get out of your, these big hotels and find a unique spot to spend some time in the community with the people living there. And like that makes sense. People are going to get that. So let's go over that one more time, because what you did initially was state the problem. So just say the first sentence again, it doesn't have to be identical, but just roughly the first thing that you gave was state the problem. So the problem is, well, okay, so the problem is people have all this unused capacity in their home, but they don't use it. They don't know they have it. They don't know that they could give it away and make money off of it, right? So they're leaving money on the table. Yeah. Okay, great. So there's a problem, right? There's stating the problem. People have got that. Oh, you're right. Well, I have a two bedroom apartment. I'm only in one room. I've got the spare room with just some goods with some like spare stuff in there. I could be renting that out at $100 or not. I could maybe make $1,500 a month extra if I put someone in there. Okay, great. So you started the problem. And then the solution, if you want to finish the sentence, then like provide the solution. Yeah, so Airbnb is a marketplace. There's an app that you can use. You can download, you know, and in 45 minutes, you take some pictures. You can have your room listed and somebody could book the room tonight or this weekend or whatever. And of course, you've kind of got in a marketplace, you've got two sides of it. So it kind of depends on which side you're selling. Yeah, great. So there you go. There's a great example. So state the problem and provide the solution. So I can imagine how people might get that wrong. Let's pretend that we're a really poor Airbnb. Let's just say we're Airbnb. We're just starting out. And we don't know how to pitch because we haven't listened to Josh, Mochio, and James want to talk about how to pitch. You want me to do a bad pitch? Yeah, I want you to do a bad, I want you to pretend you're Airbnb. And I want you to do a bad pitch. That's really hard. All right. So, but you know what, I know it's really hard because you know how to do a good pitch. But guess what? It's really easy for people to do a really bad pitch. Yeah, absolutely right. I mean, okay. So if I were, I mean, I could start off right the bad and be like really, really nervous about what I'm talking about. And I wouldn't be able to communicate well, but let's just pretend it's just the messaging side of things because I don't know how to play nervous. We've got this app and like what you can do is you can open it up. You can take pictures of your home and then you can post a room for sale and it lists all of the, so like you can scroll up and down on your phone and see the different listings and then people can pay you from there. And we also have a feature where you can feature your listing higher than everybody else so you get more bookings. Yeah, that's good. So that's good. Yeah, because I'm more, I'm like, I'm kind of getting it, but I'm not really. So that's the problem, right? So in all types of marketing and all types of persuasion in all types of communication, you want to speak in a way that makes it so easy for the person you're talking to to just get it. So the reptilian part of our human brain, okay? That's the part that understands food, sex, shit and see a flight or fight, right? That's what it is. Like think of an alligator or a crocodile, right? It's just rolling around. It's just thinking, right, I want to have sex. I want to kill and eat. I'm hungry. I'm hungry. There's someone who's, who is, signifies danger. I'm running the hell away from that. Right? That's, we all humans have that, right? We've got that reptilian part of the brain. So when you are marketing or when you're pitching or when you're persuading, you want to hit the reptilian part of the brain so they don't even have to think. You want it to make it want to make it so easy that people don't have to think, which is why when Steve Jobs said a thousand songs in your pocket, people get that. That makes sense, right? Right. And in general, the less you say the better, the less you say the better. But the way that you were doing it then in the, in the poor way, I had to think, right? The person would have to think, oh, hang on. What? Let me, I kind of get it. All right. But now I'm getting out of that reptilian part of the brain. I'm getting into that. I think they call it the prefrontal courts. I'm going to mess it up. Prefrontal cortex sounds like a thing. Yeah. Let me just, brings a bell, three, four, three portal cortex. Here we go. Which is the cerebral cortex, which covers the front part of the frontal lobe. Now that that's developed in humans only in the last like 10,000 years, like our, our ability to rationale and think and do all that kind of stuff. But that's what separates us from the Gators per se. Correct. Exactly. So what we want to do is we want to hit the back part of the human brain where it's just like, we don't have to think I got it. That's why I like in marketing, if you can use one or two syllables in a word, like sleep and better is good. But if you go like, like, if you say it illuminates the room, that's not as good as that. It's saying it lights up the room. You see what I mean? Like lights up illuminate. So illuminate has got four syllables to it, but lights up the room is like, you know, one word, one syllable words, right? Yeah. So it's not just like a one, a first grade reading level. It's also like counting syllables. Yeah, for sure. Like, yeah, I mean, that's, I mean, in general, more syllables is harder to read, but it doesn't sound as good. Think of McDonald's. What's McDonald's slogan? I'm loving it. Yeah, I'm loving it. We want to get to that, right? I understand. What's Coca-Cola? Coca-Cola is the, there's changed. Some of you was recently telling me about what their old one was, and it was classic. It was happiness or something. Something was, something happy. Yeah. People get that open happiness. Yeah. So just simple. Apple is so simple, right? Apple simple. I mean, well, I've tried to do that with my product to sleep better, teaching people how to sleep better. People understand that, right? With my 30 day no alcohol challenges, I teach, I help people reduce or quit alcohol. Is there any confusion there? I don't think there's any confusion. It's, it's simple. So, but with your Airbnb version, it was like, huh? What? Yep. Okay. So that's great. So we've stated the problem. We provided this solution. Now we've got to focus on what it means for the potential investor, right? Like for the person who ultimately is going to decide whether they're going to give you money or, or not. So let's get into that. We're talking to Josh Muccio, who's the host of the pitch podcast. If you haven't listened to it, make sure you go into iTunes and subscribe and listen to it. Season two is coming out 2017. So what do we do? What do we say to try and make the investor see the potential of investing in the, in the, in the idea? So you've set the hook with the problem. And if it's a problem that the investor understands, they're going to get it and they're going to be excited about it. But then you need to sell them on why you're the team to really execute on this. So now we're kind of transitioning from, you know, this maybe doesn't happen in an elevator. Maybe this happens on a stage. Maybe it's a coffee meeting with an investor. This is kind of the more in-depth side of things. And at this point, you have to sell why you're the one to build this team. And, but at the same time, it shouldn't just be a monologue. So you've set the hook. Well, when they come into the meeting, they're going to have questions about the product. They're going to have questions about your vision. They're going to want to know about your team. If you're building something for a big enough market, it's, they're going to know pretty quickly whether it's something they're interested in. And then at that point, it's just due diligence, which is just rigorous. But, you know, you really can't optimize for some of these really deeper things. You either know your business and really know your customers or you don't. And when they're digging into you and really trying to understand things and poking holes in your theories, that's, like, the truth is going to come out at that point. And like, there's really not much we can do to help you there. But, you know, it kind of depends on what we're optimizing for. Are we optimizing for a pitch on a stage? Are we optimizing for, you know, a short elevator pitch or, you know, the sit down? Yeah. So if we're doing, let's just say, let's just say we're optimizing for on the stage and you're literally talking to investors. So how do we talk in, how do we, how do we pitch them after we've stated the problem and the solution and what your product does? Yeah, absolutely. So right then you're going to go into the team, which a lot of people do team wrong. They start naming the people on their team. You know, so CTO we've got blah, blah, blah. Really you need to start naming accomplishments of you, of members of your team. It doesn't even actually matter their name. Unless, you know, their name is like somebody that, you know, everybody in the room is going to recognize. In general, you want to talk about this. So investors are going to love it if you say so. This person on our team has a past exit. This person has shown that they can execute at a CTO role. And this person has absolutely crushed it in sales at these two or three companies. And we've got them on our team because they're excited about what we're building. So I mean, that's kind of the closer that you're going to have. Sometimes, you know, people will talk about the market size if it's not obvious. A lot of times lately, I'm seeing more and more pitches where people don't talk about the market size because they're solving a problem, you know, like Airbnb, for example, if you're building competition for Airbnb, people know there's a market there for, you know, secondary, but what is the market called there secondary living or something like that? Okay. I always find as well, a lot of too many people, when they're pitching you, they try to, like, talk about what they want as opposed to what the investor wants. So I know on my websites for my various businesses, I start off by writing things in there and I'm talking to one person, right? I'm talking and I'm using the word you a lot, like you, why owe you. So when someone reads it, they feel like I'm speaking to that person. Nobody really cares what you want. They only care what they want. They only care what you want as it relates to them, right? Because everybody in this world is selfish. Everyone will not necessarily selfish, but everyone else is always thinking about themselves first. And that's fair enough. That's just human nature. Well, especially in business. Yeah. So an incorrect way to pitch someone would be after you've, you know, after you've successfully done the right thing, which is here's the problem, here's the solution. The next problem would be I want to raise $1 million so we can get this, get this product out to the masses and we can help all of these amazing people. Yeah. Now, now that's what you will ultimately do once you get the million dollars. And that's a great thing that you will help people. But the listener is going either on a subconscious or a conscious level, I don't give a shit what you want. I only care how that's going to affect me. So a better version is here's how your investment of a million dollars will give you a two times or three times return on investment. And in the process, uh, have you inspiring millions of people around the world to sleep better or help making people's lives a lot easier? So we've inserted the word you. So we've changed it from I want to raise a million dollars so we can do this to, um, here's how your investment of a million dollars will make you $3 million and you will be able to inspire and help thousands of people in the process because sorry, go ahead. I was going to say you can tweak it a little bit when you're pitching to investors because, um, a really good investor or a really good founder uses the leverage that they have. And your best leverage is, well, it depends on the situation, but I see there's a leverage that every founder has they don't often use. And that's that leverage of choice in that when you close, you know, something where you say like, we're looking for investors who care about X, Y and Z. So, you know, if it's, you know, finance in Africa, for example, you know, if you care about, um, you know, bringing financial stability to third world countries or, you know, whatever it is that's kind of like the heartstring of what you're building, come talk to us on something like that, where you're, you're specifying that you're looking for a particular type of person. Yes, it does exclude some people, um, but a really successful founder or someone who's smart, um, is going to look for specific investors. And investors in general like that because, uh, if they're the only smart money and everybody else is dumb money, uh, it's not going to be not likely to be a good outcome for them. So that would be maybe one tweak, I would say, of that specific to investors. Have you found, uh, there's any correlation between someone who's like really pushing hard and trying to sell their company as opposed to just saying, Hey, here's my company. And then letting them make up the, the mind, because a lot of sales people in general get this wrong. They try to sell, sell, sell, whereas, whereas good salesmen don't sell at all. They present their idea, they present their product and then the, the recipient of their pitch sells themself. Yes. So I've got some really good examples of this. So, so I've never coached somebody that's been really, really bad, uh, because in general it just doesn't never happen, which was fine. This was great. But I often get pitched by people who want to come on the show and, uh, especially recently on season two, we've, we've had some crazies, man. I'm trying to find one in an email that I think it's okay if I read. I have no idea if you want to hear it or not, but let's do it. All right. So, uh, I don't know if you can edit this stuff out in post, but I got to do an inbox search here. That's all right. You do that and I'll, uh, I'll keep talking. We're talking to Josh Muccio on how to create the perfect elevator pitch for your idea. While you're finding that, I'm going to do a little Snapchat recording here. Make sure you follow me on Snapchat for behind the scenes. I'm going to do it. Say hello, Josh. Hello. This is Josh Muccio from the pitch podcast who I'm interviewing on the James Swannick show podcast right now. There we go. We just did a little podcast interrupt. We're, we're doing a little shout out. Uh, let me know whenever you've got, uh, we've got your thing. There's some great books actually on selling and persuasion, um, out there, which I'll recommend as Josh is finding, uh, his notes there. Um, um, uh, lead with a story is a good one, which just talks about how you, you, you, um, weave story telling into your pitch. Um, there's another one, uh, is it, is it, what's his name? Ironcloth on pitch anything? What's the author's name? I feel bad because I introduced him on stage a couple of years ago. Ironcloth. There you go. I had it right. Ironcloth, um, who's raised about a billion dollars in Silicon Valley and it's a book called pitch anything and it will teach you, um, how to present, how to pitch your idea, how to secure funding. Uh, very, uh, interesting man, very knowledgeable. Um, in persuasion in general, um, anything by Zig Ziggler, um, Grant Cardone, amazing. Yeah. Zig Ziggler has an amazing book. There's a, there's another book, um, uh, Grant Cardone. Uh, Sarah, can you just grab, I'm just yelling out to my assistant here. Could you grab me my, my James's sales book folder right there please? It's just underneath my coffee table. Thank you. So, well, Josh, this is my, this is my own sales book here that I use. I sold about two and a half million dollars with the programs over the phone last year, um, which is in itself a, a kind of a pitch. It's not an, it's not a pitch trying to get raise investment, but it's a pitch inspiring people to take action into various programs. And so I've basically just collected like a whole lot of my, of really, really good notes from books that I've read, like pitch anything from Zig Ziggler for Grant Cardone from Tai Lopez, from having conversations with you just like this, from doing my own experiments in terms of, and so sometimes when I'm on the phone, I'll just pull this out, James's sales book, and I'll, and I'll sort of go through the list just to remind myself to help people. How valuable is that thing to you now? I mean, I guess you could say it's two and a half million dollars worth of value. I would think so. Yeah. At least, but, and more, I mean, if you look, look at it over a lifetime, it would probably be, you know, tens, it could, I mean, it depends on 41. Now let's see how I am at 60. It might be tens of millions of dollars. Who knows? But my dad was the king of that, putting stuff on his mirror every time he woke up in the morning, inspirational stuff. He was cutting and pasting everything, man. Awesome. Do you do something similar? You know, I don't. I'm so, I'm such a digital guy. I just don't have paper out and, but I kind of wish I want to develop a habit. I just haven't. How old are you? If you don't mind me asking. I don't mind. I'm 29 right now. 29. So yeah, I'm 41. Maybe it's a little, maybe in my, my era, because I'm 12 years older than you. Maybe my year is still stuck in the writing things down and sticking things on boards. Did you, uh, did you ever like wait lift or try to be a body bodybuilder? Yeah. Yeah. My dad would paste his head on like Arnold Schwarzenegger and some of these other guys and post. Really? Yeah, that's smart. I've actually just been doing it. I've actually just been doing a vision board where I print out imagery and stick it on a big, big cardboard thing and look at it every day and things like that. But, uh, I digress. All right. Have you got your notes there? You want to? I do. Okay. So this one's really bad and, and, uh, we will not name names. Um, but somebody reached out recently and said, Hey, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm an inventor and I have, I'm seeking an investor that will believe in my product. I have a functional prototype of my product. My product is a multi-billion dollar product. Yes, that's billion with a B to answer your question. I decided to join in because I'm looking for an investor to take my product to the second level and get a percentage of my company. And, uh, then he proceeds to tell me that he's been stalking the shark tank crew for months now. So this was a really, you know, this was a tip right off the bat. You know, of course he's saying there is nothing for you to lose to have me on your show. Um, I want the investors to give me a chance. I will surprise them with my product. Anyway, I can't wait. So he understands the opportunity thing, you know, with, I've got a multi-billion dollar product, but boy does he know how to take it too far. And nothing screams, I am desperate and yeah, I don't actually have anything of value than, than that type of email. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I met, I met a guy once about a year ago who came, came to a seminar or a mastermind that I was, I was emceeing. Ty Lopez was, was hosting a business builder meeting and, um, you know, people had paid to come and, and network and do a mastermind. And I was the emcee and I was facilitating all the conversation in the room. And there was a guy there who turned up, he was all excited beforehand. He's like, I can't wait to get there. I can't wait to mingle in the room. I have this billion dollar idea. It's incredible. It's amazing. And he got there and he wouldn't tell anyone what he's billion dollar idea. Oh gosh. Like he would just auto, I don't want to share it. It's too, it's too big. I'm just looking at, I'm like, oh my God, like here's the thing that I learned. I mean, and I learned this from Ty, Ty really banged this into my head. You want to share your idea. You want to share your idea with lots of people. The chances that someone is actually going to steal your idea is so minuscule that you shouldn't even worry about it. You want to get feedback from people. You want people to critique. You want people to criticize. You want people to do all of those things because only then can you get the feedback to go out there and make it. Well, and that's how you get the open doors too. You share an idea that somebody is also excited about and there's an open door. There's an opportunity there for investment, you know, partnership, whatever. If you don't share it, that opportunity never presents itself. And also a lot of times when people launch a business, it ends up being something completely different than what you started out hoping it would be in the first place. I'll give you the best example ever. It's called YouTube. Do you know the story of YouTube? I don't know. It was something else in the beginning. You know what? Maybe I do. It started off with a couple guys as a dating feature on an online dating site. So instead of guys writing their profile, they would do a video profile of themselves and say, hi, I'm James. I'm 25 and blah, blah, blah. But what happened was is that the guys were so undesirable or many of the guys are so undesirable that the women started sharing the videos of these guys making fun of them. And so all of a sudden the guys are like, oh, this is interesting. People are now sharing these videos. Maybe we should just create a site where that enables people to upload a video and just share it really easily. And then there you go, YouTube. Well, that explains all the trolls and haters you get on YouTube comments. It hasn't gone far from its beginnings. I'm just kidding. The point is, I can't tell you how many times people say it like I asked them about their business and say, oh, I can't tell you, mate. You know, hold that secret. And I look at them and I just cringe inside. It happened like a month ago. I was at the crunch gym on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood and I ran into a guy that I've met a few times at various events. And he goes, hey, man, how are you doing? I'm great, man. How are you doing? Great. I said, what are you up to? He goes, oh, yeah, I'm selling products on, on Amazon now and we're crushing it. I go, mate, that's amazing. What are the products? He's like, oh, can't tell, can't tell you mate, you know, like, what do you mean you can't tell you? Well, you know, I just got to keep that, keep that secret. And I was like, I was, I tried not to get, I tried not to get angry, but I actually personally offended. Yeah. I was personally offended because I thought, well, first of all, I felt bad for the guy because he should have shared it because I run an Amazon business and I could have shared what I know and he could have shared what I know and we could have helped one another maybe. And yeah, I could have introduced into people that would have helped his business. So I felt bad for him, but I also felt slighted because he's by virtue of the fact that he's trying to not to, to keep that information from me, he's implying that I would steal his idea that I would actually take his idea and steal it and somehow be a competitor, which is a, and for anyone to think that I would do that kind of pissed me off. And I'm sure if I told my mother in Australia, she'd be equally obsessed. So this person's a friend? No, not a friend. He's just someone I'm friendly with. It's an acquaintance. You know, I've run into him a few times, an acquaintance. That's it. If anything, him telling you would keep you from doing that thing because you're like, well, you know, if he's a good friend and you care about the relationship, you're not going to Well, I told him, I said, listen, I said, listen, just so you know what you just did, I think is going to hold you back in business. And I think you should, what did he say? He said, oh, I come from a different school of thought. I was coached by someone who's doing like millions of dollars. And he said, never to share any of the Intel, never to share it with people. And so I'm not sharing it. Who is this guy? Would you share that? I don't know. I don't know who the guy is. But anyway, I mean, listen, listen, just because I say what I think doesn't mean that I'm right in every occasion, right? But here's what I feel. Yes, based on the context of our conversation, Josh, if you're the listener or the viewer, you have an idea, and you think it's a billion dollar idea, wouldn't it make sense to share it with a lot of people? Don't say that. Just a big idea. Don't say billion dollar idea, because that makes people's eyes roll. Right. See that it probably means you don't know. Right. And get it out there and just get feedback. Because without feedback, you're not going to have a good business. Absolutely. Well, and there's something else that makes me think about my first business, I regrettably built the whole thing in a silo. And I didn't have any co-founders. I chose not to have any investors besides those folks that first invested me in the very beginning. And I paid them off fairly quickly. So anyway, so I just remember there were several times where I felt like I was not satisfied in what I had built. And maybe that was part of the reason why I ended up selling it three years later. But I don't know, I think there's a lesson there. I mean, for me, the second time around building the pitch, I've had a very, I've had a focus from the beginning to bring in as many people as I can from the start, which works out really well for podcasting. And I don't know, it's quite a bit more enjoyable than my last business because of that. But I suppose there's others that maybe do better by themselves. I don't know. Let's summarize what we've gone over here, Josh, how to create the perfect elevator pitch. So the bad way, don't get excited, don't get nervous, don't talk about all the, sorry, the bad way is to get too excited and to get nervous. Yeah, I mean, it's actually okay to be excited about your product and to have energy about it. The problem is when you get so excited that you stumble over your words and like, you know, live in the moment, be happy about what you're building. That's the kind of thing. Don't talk too much about the features of the product, only talk about the benefits. Yeah, definitely. And in general, shorter is better. And just learn to shut up. People tend to read people's silence as, oh, I need to start to continue talking. It's probably because they're thinking about what you said. And if you shut up, and a lot of them to think some more, they'll ask a question. An answer to a question is much better than you telling them that answer without them asking it. I like that. I just shut up. I let the polls, let that sink in. I let the silence sink in a little bit. Good way, state the problem and provide the solution. Yep. Usually, that segues so nicely into your product, too. To say, you know, here's the problem, here's what we're facing. So what if, you know, there was a place where you could go and, you know, find places to stay in unique communities, you know, all over the world and stay with locals, you know, that sort of thing. Well, that's what we built, a mobile app that does just that. All of a sudden, you've like, you don't even have to talk about features. People get it. So that's a nice segue is problem right into problem and the solution is the classic pitch. I would add in there always just a reminder to try to hit the reptilian part of the brain, make things really, really simple. Try to don't try to use fancy words. Try to use very simple one, two, syllable words. So people don't have to think they don't have doesn't have to hit that the front part of the brain. It hits the back part of the brain where they just understand it. Focusing on what it means for the investor in a way as well, like using the word you a lot, Y O U, as opposed to I want to can also be beneficial in certain circumstances. There was something else that you said on that, Josh, I think. Yeah, I think so when you focus on, so kind of at your closing pitch, it's really important to focus on it is important to focus on what you are looking for in a person, especially if this is a demo day pitch, describing your ideal investor, because that's your leverage as a founder is who you choose to be on your team. And you want to be selective. Some of the best founders I've seen are like ruthless in how they pick their investors and all of a sudden it gets investors kind of fighting over this person, which is a really good place to be in. Yeah, I like that. Okay. And anything else just to wrap that up? I think we've done a nice review there, but is there anything any closing? Ramon, you know, I don't think so. I think I like I think like keeping some things simple, you know, obviously, everybody's business has something unique. You know, in general, there's there's four different types of pitches. But the most common one that people have is a story pitch. You're pitching the vision of what you're building. You know, that's in general, that's what most investors are looking at. And so they're looking at you your track record. And the team you're putting together is the biggest thing. And the other thing to keep in mind, this goes back to the whole idea, you know, not being afraid to share your idea with people is ideas are worth almost nothing. But teams that can execute on ideas are worth billions. That's something that's worth billions, you know. So building a team that people can trust in, and if you have to do that pivot down the road, people that's, that's what investors are investing in is people not really a specific business because you aren't tied to that business. Yeah, that's so true. Ideas are worth nothing, really. I mean, it's not that worth nothing, but they're worth very little. It's the executing execution of the ideas that that's worth everything. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you very much. Just Muccio, who's the host of the pitch podcast. If you go into iTunes and subscribe to the pitch, you'll be able to listen to that in 2017. The one with the scripted lettering. Cool. And the scripted lettering. All right. And where else can we find info about you, Josh? We're at thepitch.fm and then I'm on Twitter and Facebook at Josh Muccio. See if you can spell that. M-U-C-C-I-O. Hey, there you go. I should be one of those spelling bees. If you enjoyed this episode, please do leave a review and take a screenshot of the review that you leave and email it to me at James at jameswanick.com and post a question that you have for me and I will personally respond to it. I love reviews. Reviews help the show. I love reviews too. Yes, Josh loves reviews as well. You're beating me right now in reviews. Who knows at the time that this airs, but so far you're winning. Well, okay. We're not really in competition. In the end, it's just a race with yourself, Josh. Good on you, mate. Remember to, if you're listening to this on the podcast, you can watch a video version on my YouTube channel, which is James Swanick. If you're watching this on YouTube, subscribe to the James Swanick show podcast and you can listen to this. I'm on Instagram and Snapchat at James Swanick. Josh, it's been a real pleasure talking to you today, mate. Thanks very much. You as well. Thank you so much, James. And to the viewer and the listener, I will catch you on the next one. See y'all.