Queen of Pitch, with Forbes Riley

Two years, I was in braces for eight years of my life. And not only braces, but they put this thing in my mouth. I'm interested in memory, chocolate dress. For two years, they

bolted it to the top of my mouth. I couldn't talk. What came out of that is that my father, who built a printing press, he was standing on the printing press, and he slipped, and he tore off the whole front of his left hand, and that would send him to the hospital for 15 operations over three years while we were in high school, my family was completely broke because of this. My mother turns to me when we kiddo we have no money for college, which is the only dream that I really had.

What do I do? Well, there's a beauty pageant in town, and what happened was my father's doctor looked at my mom and me and our situation and said, I'm going to fix your daughter's nose. And I got kind of cute, and I entered this pageant locally in a hand me down bridesmaids dress, and I won. There were 500 girls when I walked into that room and I said to my dad, one of these girls going to be on TV, and it's going to be me. And I learned a

lot. I learned about people's opinions about you, but I also learned about insane perseverance and his idea the law of attraction, and I've taken that throughout my entire life. And when people say you can't do it, all I hear is the word go. At some point after college, my went to college to be a lawyer. I graduated in three years with two degrees, like I was weirdly smart, but I also just want to get out of school. I wanted to be an actress, because that's all I

had when I was growing up, was movies and TV and books. I'm gonna figure this out. I didn't have a whole lot of help. I didn't have any inheritance. I didn't sleep my way or marry my way, anywhere I did it. I was on a soap opera called As the World Turns with Julianne Moore and Meg Ryan. They were both my co stars. I wanted to be on Broadway, and I discover I can control this. And I opened, and I'm 26 years old. I opened an

agency. I got stationary, I got a voice answering service. Back then it was a woman, not even a machine, and I hired a woman named Lindsay Maxwell. And Lindsay was the manager for Forbes, Riley, and she was freaking brilliant, because she knew all the things about Forbes because I was her, and I would get on the phone and pretend, and I booked commercials and movies because I was my only client.

this pen. No one is interested in buying a pen at that moment. They don't even know what you're talking about. I have a whole formula. If I'm going to sell the pen, I'm never going to talk about it. I'm going to say something like, you know when I this is what I did. This is what I said. I don't even know back then, how I knew this? I looked at the pen, I said, disappoint my mom. When I went off to college, I was I skipped a year

high school. I was 15 and a half years old, and I was really nervous and shy and very insecure, traveling away from home, and my mother would write me handwritten notes. Every day. I'd race to the mailbox to get them, and I realized a pen like this can reach out and touch somebody's heart. I did that, and I expected to leave because I thought it was kind of silly, right? I silly, right? Well, Jake of body by Jake walks out from behind the camera, grabs my face and says, you're going to

make me a lot of money. And I'm like, dude, okay, if you'd think back 30 years ago, cable TV had just started. I did that job for five years. We made so much money that Jake sold it to Fox for $500 million in 1993 and what happened was infomercials came along, and there were no girls who sold who sold anything. That's not what they did on TV, right? Men were carnival barkers, and that is when the infomercial industry started. I was one of the pioneers. I was one of the first

females, like you said. I'd done almost 200 Infomercials. I was at the right place, at the right time with the weirdest talent. I don't know if you know this, but I'm the original host of the X Games.

to your club. Here's what I noticed. I think I can offer you a way to do something different. And I went down there, and I created game shows from that. I came back to New York, and now I had a new idea. I wanted to ski. I opened up the newspaper, and there's a little thing that says Club Med style show person looking to work for a company called ski, whatever it was, he view. And I applied because the job had nothing to do with skiing, and I knew that it had to do with creating a bar party

at four o'clock in the afternoon to entertain people. All I know is it was a crazy thing that I created. And one day, ESPN, two hears about this and makes a little half hour special out of all the things that we're doing, because we also had an outdoor snow volleyball game. It was a big production. Then next year, they call me out of the blue, I know nothing about sports, and they said, Hi, this is ESPN. We'd like to offer you $75,000 for two weeks. Two weeks to host the X Games on ESPN. And I'm

like, Mike, why are you calling me? And the X Games was launching. There was no X Games, so I didn't even know what I was getting involved in, and they hired me. But you know what? I did that job for six years. Then I worked for nine more years doing a dog game show for them and doing the great outdoor games. And I guess I was right that I maybe said to myself, you belong on TV. You'd be great doing that. Here's the thing about the work that I do, is that you can do a commercial in

two days. There are 365 days in a year. I could do 10 commercials, three movies, four episodic TV shows, and still only get up to June. And so you're like, wow, we saw you all over the place, and you were doing all of these things. That's very different than a typical job. I just kept going from experience to experience, and we've been trying to have a baby. It wasn't working, and I rolled the dice and said, Let's

do in vitro. And I got blessed with two twins. And so now I give birth to twins at 42 my kids are now 22 and they both run my company, so I must have done something right in all of that crazy you have, because I will tell you, I enjoy my kids very much. I'm in business with them. I travel with them. I love them so very much. So I traveled a lot around the world, worked on QVC and home shopping and sold products. And then at some point, while I was overseas, I found a spin gym, a handheld

product. But I looked at this crazy product in the middle of the night when the gentleman showed it to me on set at home shopping, and I said, this is a fitness product. He said, Oh, no, no, no, no. It's an office de stressor. It's like a fidget spinner. I said, No, no, I know fitness. This is the greatest fitness thing I've ever seen. I said, Tell me about the company. He said, Look. He said, I don't want to do I don't want to do the company anymore. I've been doing it for five years, not

made a lot of money. I'll give it to you. If you sell 25,000 in the first year, give me a small percentage. It's yours. I wrote manuals and books, and, I mean, I went nuts, and then I manufactured them, and then I went on home shopping, and I went on a TV series, and I've sold 3 million of these things, and I could have created an entire empire, but when COVID kind of hit, I stopped manufacturing China for a while, and my daughter came downstairs at 17 and said to me, I'm going

to build you a company. I've watched you get screwed over online. Mom, you suck at it. You're not good at the digital thing. You're just, let me build your company. I'm like, but you're 17. She's like, okay, Mom, let me show you something, because I used to take her with me everywhere. My son stayed more at home. She traveled and she met all my friends, like Les Brown and Joe Theismann, the NFL football player. And she said, Mom, I've been building websites and coding and YouTube channels

for all of your friends. And she showed me her bank account and had six figures in it. And I'm like, where did you get this money? She said, You're the only one who doesn't believe in me. I'm like, well, because I thought you were just my daughter, I didn't know that you're going to be a business partner. She said, Mom, if you give me three weeks, we're gonna put you online. And give me a year, I'll make you a million dollars the first night I go live, I do my very first

webinar. I do my first webinar with 25 people in the room, and I sell my training for $1,000 I have a four week course on how to pitch. I wake up the next morning and I look at the account I have to call her, and I'm like, I don't understand this yesterday, and for the last three years, this account that I've been playing with had $0 in it today. It says K, what does the K stand for? So what do you mean? I said, it says 25k said, Mom, you made $25,000 last night. You sold 25 people in the

room. You sold. You closed 100% in the room. We did that four times in a row. We had a six figure business in four weeks. And five years later, we have 47,000 students.

start with the product. You start with an assumption of, well, you know what you're selling. You look at an assumption, what is that person's biggest problem, given what my solution is, and you orchestrate it in a very specific way to get a yes. She said, Mom, this whole thing that you teach about pitching, we've traveled around the world. We do very well so, but if you don't teach other people this system what you know, you won't have a legacy. And that's what we built the company on.

Schwarzenegger's mentor. He literally started fitness, and no one knows who he is. So if Jack LaLanne doesn't have a legacy, you and I don't stand a chance. And I truly believe that on some level, that us fighting for a legacy is not the right thing to do. The legacy needs to be here while you're on earth. How many people can you impact? How profound is your life and

how happy are you? Because I do really, truly believe that about 10 minutes after you're gone, the only people who care about you after the people look on Facebook is the people who loved you, whose lives you touched.

after he's gone, because he will no longer be teaching. And a lot of his teachings, he's got books, and it's great, and people will write, you know, he was also on television and a couple of movies, they'll remember him, but short of him as a coach, how many coaches are you going to remember? So I just don't think that people this is me, focus on the here and now. Focus on who you touch and what you do, because that is your

legacy. Your legacy is how many people you help, you impact, and how happy you are in this life.

people are selling all over the place. I do not think I'm going to jump on that bandwagon, because that's a young person's game. I spent 30 years doing home shopping. I was very well produced, and it was beautiful and fun, and I made a lot of money doing that. Beyond that, I've got a bunch of movies coming out. I still love being an actress. I have an action packed Western, I have a documentary that I just got asked to do, and I'm just going to enjoy the ride, because I am

65 years old and that. And I don't know about how you feel, but there's a little bit of a tick tock. You know, when you were in your early 30s, 40s, going this little time thing about having a child, and now there's, how much fun Can I have? How much How can I enjoy? I mean, I'm in love with my second husband, and I'm having the time of my life. People say Forbes, you know, what do you want? What's your future look

like? What is your five years? I'm like, my five years is to wake up with this man every morning and still be healthy enough to enjoy it. He is a bodybuilder. I have no desire to be a bodybuilder. But then something happened last year. He'd said, there's a bodybuilding competition in our hometown. And I said, You know what, I'm 64 years old, but you

know what, I'm going to go for it? And I did, and I ended up on stage, and I ended up with a medal, and I ended up with the next chapter of Forbes Riley's life.

called Pitch secrets masterclass. I teach it every Sunday. I teach it to real estate professionals, to lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs, teenagers and when you can articulate and communicate, what you do to get a yes from someone else. I promise you your life changes forever. This thing about pitching. Training. It's not sales training. It's just getting Yeah, so Gary, watch this. If I said to you, Hey, you want to see something cool, what are you going to say? Yes, see,

my dad taught me as a magician. There's things that you do and you set people up to take certain actions. Imagine when you're doing a deal that you already know what someone's going to say, because you've been training on assumptions, on what that person looks like, feels like, and is more likely to do. You know how you show up. You know what you're offering

has value. You don't over talk it. And when you connect all of these dots, and I love teaching teams, we do a lot of that go to pitch secrets with an S masterclass.com and you'll be blown away. The system works. It's not about you being a genius or you being the best. McDonald's exists because of a system. A lot of things that are successful in legacy outlive the person because they were systematized, and that is the only way that effectiveness runs well.