Pitch Anything: Mastering the Art of Persuasion PDF

would enjoy working with you?” So what have I done in such a statement? I’ve delivered the prize frame, and the basic elements include 1. I have one of the better deals in the market. 2. I am choosy about who I work with. 3. It seems like I could work with you, but really, I need to know mor...

would enjoy working with you?” So what have I done in such a statement? I’ve delivered the prize frame, and the basic elements include 1. I have one of the better deals in the market. 2. I am choosy about who I work with. 3. It seems like I could work with you, but really, I need to know more. 4. Please start giving me some materials on yourself. 5. I still need to figure out if we would work well together and be good partners. 6. What did your last business partners say about you? 7. When things go sideways in a deal, how do you handle it? 8. My existing partners are choosy. The prize frame is a hot cognition that signals the target’s croc brain that you are strong, you are not needy, and you are not going to supplicate for a deal. Dr. Robert Zajonc, writing in The American Psychologist, describes the importance of these hot cognitions and the importance of these emotional processes. He suggests, for example, that it’s not really important for us to know if someone has just said, “You are a friend” or “You are a fiend.” What you really need to know is whether the statement was made with affection or contempt. Whether the word was friend or fiend is the cold part of the message. It doesn’t matter. Affection or contempt is the hot part. Researchers found that 22 times as much information is given in the hot part of the message. Unlike some of the other frames, the prize frame relies a great deal on how strong your conviction is. In the pattern noted earlier, I’ve given you the external formula for the prize frame—which is what you say to the target. However, the prize frame doesn’t come only from words that you say. It’s how you’re organized internally. Here’s the internal pattern, the words you say to yourself to fully activate and deploy the prize frame: I am the prize. You are trying to impress me. You are trying to win my approval. Over time, as you get good at this stuff, you’ll begin to see that the prize frame does not rely on words and explanations. It’s more about the strength of your convictions about who or what is the prize. Hot Cognition 3: The Time Frame When I was selling a deal called Geomark to Boeing, I used this version of the time frame: “Guys, my company, Geomark, is a great deal, and you can’t bluff me about what you are thinking; I know you agree. Consider the situation we’re in. We are here for a third meeting at your corporate headquarters. Right now I’m looking at your team: four Boeing executives, three engineers, and two of your consultants. Why are you here in force? Because you love the deal. And you should love it. The deal is hot, that’s no secret, and I’ve never used this fact to pressure you, but we can’t ignore it either. For this reason, we have all got to make a decision about the deal in the next week. Why one week? This time constraint is not under my control; it’s the market working. It’s harsh but true: We have to decide by July 18 if you’re in or out.” The effect of time on decision making has been researched for 100 years, and nothing has changed about human nature in that time: In nearly all instances, the addition of time pressure to a decision-making event reduces decision quality. It is true, for instance, that you can get someone to buy a car more easily if you tell him that the sale ends at the end of the day. Why does this strategy work so well? There’s a scarcity bias in the brain, and potential loss of a deal triggers fear. But just because imposing scarcity works well isn’t a recommendation to use it—we don’t want to taint our deal with the whiff of cheap 1980’s sales tactics. We want the target to see us as a professional agent. To trust us. So I tend not to use much time pressure at all. Extreme time pressure feels forced and cutrate. But the truth is that time is a factor in every deal. You have to find the right balance between fairness and pressure and set a real time constraint. Here’s the time frame pattern you can use and follow: “Guys, nobody likes time pressure. I don’t like it, and you don’t like it. No one does. But good deals with strong fundamentals are like an Amtrak train, or more like a deal train. They stop at the station, pick up investors, and have a set departure time. And when it’s time—the train has to leave the station. “You have plenty of time to decide if you like me—and if you want this deal. If you don’t love it, there’s no way you should do it; we all know that. “But this deal is bigger than me, or you or any one person; the deal is going ahead. There’s a critical path, a real timeline that everyone has to work with. So we need to decide by the 15th.” That’s it. You don’t have to do any more. With just that simple pattern, the time constraint is set. You don’t have to be overt or aggressive with time pressure. Every single person knows what you’re talking about when you say the train is leaving the station at such and such date and time. Hot Cognition 4: The Moral Authority Frame Robert Zajonc, the thought leader on hot cognitions, once wrote, “We evaluate each other constantly, we evaluate each others’ behaviors and we evaluate the motives and consequences of that behavior.” And this, of course, is the key to the reason we stack frames. Because we are going to be evaluated no matter what happens and what we do, let’s get the evaluation we want, something Zajonc calls wanting. So, while it’s tempting to get caught up in the best way to explain the financial mumbo-jumbo and how to best demo our products, the heart of the matter is that you have to do what it takes to create this wanting. There may be other factors that contribute to our effectiveness in the pitch, but certainly one of the most important is getting this wanting to happen. How is it done? To create a desire in the target’s mind and to go on from the pitch to the hookpoint, every presenter has to use hot cognitions to create wanting and desire. Until a wanting evaluation is in the target’s croc brain, the information you are giving is largely being ignored or at least not making a big impression. Now that we’ve gone through prize frames, intrigue frames, and time frames and their uses, here is another example that will deepen your understanding of how to use frames to create hot cognitions and wanting. The Morality Frame in Practice The most powerful politicians in the world have people underneath them who will do exactly what they are told. Each has phalanx of subordinates who do his or her bidding. Take the president of the United States. If he orders a precision air strike on a clandestine enemy stronghold, a succession of people underneath him will execute his order, all the way down to the pilot in the F-22. The president can lead us into a war or, with a few pen strokes, sign a bill that will affect millions. His frame, in most of his encounters, is stronger than that of nearly any opposition. The president, like many other world leaders, isn’t used to being told what to do. Think about what one has to go through just to become president, how many personal attacks you suffer, and the constant political reframing of things you have said. Once president, though, you may have one of the most sophisticated and strongest frames in modern history. Yet there is one person whose direction the president will follow, almost blindly. When David Scheiner says to Barack Obama, turn around and take your clothes off—he does it without question. In every social situation, there are basic, human, hardwired functions. Let’s call them ritual elements of social interaction. Every person navigates the world through social encounters. In each further contact with other people, as we have been discussing, each person brings a frame, which is a viewpoint or perspective. It doesn’t matter if the person intends to bring a frame, he always will find that he has done so. All social encounters are framed. In light of this, when we think about it, not only do physicians such as Dr. David Scheiner tell us what to do, their frame is so powerful that we are nearly helpless in its presence. In fact, the doctor frame may be the most powerful frame in the world. Really? The most powerful frame in the world? Let’s explore. If we want to stay alive, we all follow our doctor’s orders. And we have deep respect for the medical profession. Physicians, cardiologists, radiologists, internists, and surgeons—these are people who can save our life or the life of a loved one. So we have an embedded script that we follow when we deal with medical professionals. When the surgeon stands, we sit. If the surgeon waves his hand toward the table, we go sit on it, uncomfortably trying to cover up private areas. Literally, when the surgeon does anything, we are programmed to react. We react to the surgeon automatically. He doesn’t react to us. We obey him. The surgeon only nods appreciatively when we say something but doesn’t react. The consulting surgeon wears whatever he wants, sometimes a nice suit, other times comfortable-looking casual clothes, whereas at the same time we are dressed in a generic green gown, sans underwear, that signifies our low situational status. If we were seen anywhere in public in this ridiculous gown, it would cause us emotional scarring. The surgeon is wealthy, and has all the accoutrements of status: a prestigious degree, a respected position, and an expertise that took nearly 20 years to acquire, and he literally has the power to determine life or death. We are hardwired to follow this script. Most of us, but not all of us. Certainly not Mother Teresa. In December 1991, Mother Teresa entered Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation in La Jolla, California, where she was treated for bacterial pneumonia and heart problems. With such a notable world figure under their care, doctors and surgeons rushed in to meet her. And frames collided. The doctor’s frame has three rules:  Rule 1: Do what I say. Rule 2: Defer to my expertise. Rule 3: Accept my conclusions about life (and death). However, when encountering Mother Teresa, the doctors found a person who did not follow the script or fall into the frame. Here was Mother Teresa’s frame: 1. Material wealth is worth nothing. 2. Life and death isn’t critical. 3. Help the downtrodden. 4. A rich man is less likely to enter the kingdom of heaven than a camel is to pass through the eye of a needle. Her frame is not powered by wealth or expertise—instead, by a high moral authority: Help the downtrodden! Life and death isn’t critical! As doctor after doctor met with Mother Teresa, their strong frames collapsed like a series of dominoes. She did not react to their status or their control over life and death. After all, even death was not one of her primary concerns, and she had often ignored doctors’ orders in the past. And as they fell into her frame, something remarkable happened: These doctors could not impress her. Their power frame was disrupted. This is why she so easily convinced American doctors to do something that they hadn’t previously considered. Before coming to La Jolla—an affluent seaside community in north San Diego, Mother Teresa had visited Tijuana, a city across the U.S.-Mexican border where poverty is severe. It was there she learned of the huge disparity between the United States and Mexico, between Tijuana and La Jolla, between the haves and the have-nots. So, as these doctors fell over themselves to visit her, she sensed a tremendous opportunity. She asked the doctors what they were doing to give back. And then she asked them if they had ever seen the medical facilities, a mere 25 miles away, in Tijuana. Most of them said no. She then asked each doctor to add his or her name to a signup sheet outside her room, pledging to donate time and resources to help mobile medical clinics in Tijuana. The doctors, who were used to having the dominant frame, couldn’t impress Mother Teresa with any of the usual trappings of success. They could only do it by pledging their time and expertise to her cause. When it was time for her to leave the hospital, after 20 days at Scripps, Mother Teresa had imposed her frame on the richest, smartest, best- educated, and highest social class in southern California, and this was evidenced by the sheer number of doctors who had pledged their time to help out in Tijuana. And the doctors? Without any noticeable effort, their frames had been shaken, broken, and disrupted. With the high-status surgeon power frame disrupted, Mother Teresa’s frame took over. According to the Los Angeles Times, “On January 16, 1992, Mother Teresa of Calcutta was released from the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation hospital, after securing a pledge from doctors and nurses to set up a volunteer network of mobile medical clinics to serve the poor of Tijuana.” When asked whether she was going to take better care of herself, she replied, “Oh, sure.” Reality Is Waiting to Be Framed A hot cognition—or a series of hot cognitions—is a fast method for getting the target’s croc brain to want you and your big idea. But this is not a ‘sales technique. Stacking frames is not going to work, in my opinion, if you view it as just another type of sales tactic. Those old-fashioned sales techniques are about chasing the neocortex with features and benefits and rational explanations. “Selling” tempts you to do the three things I dislike the most: (1) supplicate; (2) make rational appeals to the neocortex, and (3) ask invasive questions. Hot cognitions, on the other hand, do not hit the target like a sales technique. Hot cognitions are primal. Whenever there’s a rush of excitement, it’s hard to get the neocortex to do any work at all. To protect us from potential physical or social threat, the croc brain hijacks brain function. No analysis gets done. As a result, it’s much easier and natural to react to what’s hot and vivid and moving right in front of us. Hot cognitions are unavoidable. You might be able to control the expression of emotion, but there’s no way you can get out of the path of having and experiencing it. Hot cognitions tend to be instant and enduring. Do you like the movie you just watched? Do you like the new model of Ford Mustang? Do you like eating snails? You never sat down to analyze these things; they’re obviously hot cognitions—you got a sense of these things the moment you encountered them. Hot versus Cold Cognition Maybe the best way to define hot versus cold cognition is to compare it to chocolate and spinach. You know the cold, hard facts. Spinach is good for you, it has lots of nutrients, and you should be eating more of it. But when offered a piece of chocolate instead, you go for it. The acid test of whether your pitch goes well will be: Does the target want to buy your stuff, be a part of your team, or invest in your idea? How much thinking about your presentation does your target need before he or she forms a preference about it? How “fully and completely” must an idea be presented and thought about, and how much rational analysis needs to be completed before the target decides: “good” or “bad”? I argue here that as you approach the end of your pitch, you don’t need to wait for an evaluation, or the target will wander off into a cold cognition process and think about you: did we like him, did we like his deal? Instead, stack the four frames, trigger hot cognitions, and create the instant evaluation that ought to be wanting. If hot cognitions targeted at the croc brain are so powerful, why do most people make presentations in the cold cognition style targeted to the neocortex? Here’s why I think people go this way: Our faculties of reason tell us that the neocortex is way smarter than the croc brain. We think that if we create a message in our own smart neocortex, it should be sent to the target’s neocortex, which will do a better job of understanding the pitch. It makes sense to think this way because the neocortex really is an insanely capable problem solver. It has awesome language and math and creative abilities. It’s a Swiss Army knife of mental ability. By contrast, if the neocortex is like a Swiss Army knife, then the croc brain is a like a rubber mallet—best for simple jobs only. It works on only a few emotions, and those are very limited in scope and range. The croc brain almost seems too simple to “get” our smart ideas. We think, Who are we going to trust this decision to, the target’s infinitely capable neocortex or the emotional and simplistic croc brain? Our intuition tells us to trust the neocortex. But that’s not the right choice. Let’s return to the essential idea from Chapter 1: No pitch or message is going to get to the logic center of the other person’s brain without passing through the survival filters of the crocodile brain system first. And because of the way we evolved, those filters make pitching anything extremely difficult. By this point, you know what I’m going to say next: Focus your energy on getting the target’s croc brain to want your product. Because, at best, no matter how much you try to sell to the neo-cortex—it can only “like” your idea. A hot cognition is the inner certainty of “knowing” something that comes through feeling it. A cold cognition is the certainty of “knowing” something is good or bad by having evaluated it.  As we’ve said before, hot cognitions are extremely fast. Hot cognitions develop through the ancient brain structures—the brain stem and the midbrain—our croc brain. Cold cognitions are analytical and develop in the neocortex. Cold cognitions are calculated and take time to suggest a solution—this is how the neocortex goes about its business—it aggregates information over time and solves problems. You’ve heard the expression, “Just give me the cold, hard facts?” This is what is meant by a cold cognition, the labor-intensive processing of facts through a decision matrix. You can trigger a hot cognition instantly, but cold cognition can take hours or days. Most presentations are set up to take the target down the path of a cold cognition. They try to justify the big idea with facts and information. Hot cognitions encode value. It’s the anticipation of a large financial gain that is emotionally compelling to the target. Actually receiving it is not nearly as exciting. As one researcher noted, “The human brain acquired its reward-reinforcement system for food, drink, ornaments, and other items of cultural value long before money was discovered.” The brain thinks of money as it does of food, ornaments, and drugs and records the utility that can be collected by using it only indirectly. There’s no cash register or balance sheet up there. George Soros once wrote: “The philosophers of the Enlightenment put their faith in reason; … and they expected reason to provide a full and accurate picture of reality. Reason was supposed to work like a searchlight, illuminating a reality that lay there, passively awaiting discovery.” As we have been discussing, reality isn’t waiting to be discovered—it’s waiting to be framed. By stacking four frames quickly one after the other, you can achieve the hot cognition in the target—helping the target to discover a wanting. Yet, once the frame stacking is complete, we’ve got the target’s attention for about another 30 seconds. And it still can all go wrong. We have to find, in that brief time, a way to translate the target’s desire into action. But how? What do you do now?  Chapter 6 Eradicating Neediness Over the years, I have faced a lot of rejection. And the disturbing thing about rejection is that you never really get used to it. It’s natural and even unavoidable to feel disappointment when you get a “No.” We all do. What’s certain is that none of us like being rejected. We want to avoid it. In high-stakes situations, we’re nearly always anxious about it. As businesspeople, friends, neighbors and citizens, we believe that when we need something from another person, there is a thin line of empathy that runs through all human hearts. We believe that we’ll be treated well by others just because. But there isn’t, and we won’t. So we nearly always become anxious and needy. Showing signs of neediness is about the worst thing you can do to your pitch. It’s incredibly bad for frame control. It erodes status. It freezes your hot cognitions. It topples your frame stacks. If you talk to investment bankers, the pros that make million dollar decisions almost daily, they’ll tell you—validation-seeking behavior (neediness) is the number one deal killer. Four Pitches, No Room for Mistakes Twelve years ago, I was trying to raise money for a technology company that I had also invested in. The company was quickly burning through cash. I needed to find a big-time investor, so each day I’d make up to 50 calls to leading venture-capital (VC) firms. I talked to a lot of receptionists and secretaries, and I got a lot of voice-mail action. But nobody was excited enough to return my call. My company had a great idea, but it was difficult to explain over the phone. I needed face time to explain it, so I was desperate to simply land a meeting. I continued to be persistent, and the following week, I got a few people to pick up and tried to pitch them by phone. That didn’t go well. Bill Reichert at Garage Technology Ventures told me, “I have no idea why anyone would want to build it, use it, or invest in it.” Ron Fisher, at Softbank VC said, “Do yourself a favor, son. Try a different idea.” I reached Vinod Khosla at VC firm Kleiner Perkins, and he quickly transferred me to his analyst; an obvious dead end. I was getting nothing but rejections from the largest VC firms in North America. I questioned whether I should continue. It was a constant battle in my mind, press on or give up? But I’d passed the point of no return. It sounds simple, but no greater truth exists in business today: Persistence pays. So I persisted. Eventually, I was able to get four big pitches lined up with top-tier VC firms. But setting a meeting is just step one of a two-step process. You have to impress and persuade, or you go home with nothing, which I was getting good at—the going home with nothing part, that is. This was a confidence killer—I knew I was good at pitching, but for some reason, my pitches were failing. And now, I was in big trouble. I’m embarrassed to say it, but it’s a matter of public record (UCLA’s Anderson School of Management uses a case study on this deal in its MBA program), I had less than $1,000 in my account, and my company was down to one final pitch, one last chance with a major VC firm, before the cash ran out and our doors closed for good. I tried to develop a theory to explain what was going wrong—but I came up with nothing. I had a lot of self-doubt. What was I doing wrong? There must be something. Rather than make the same mistakes again in my final pitch, I decided to regroup and reorganize myself. A bit humbled, I went back to my former employer to speak with the senior partner, Peter. Peter was another master of the universe type, and I had helped him put together a number of big deals that had made him a lot of money. If anyone would help me, it would be Peter. I shut his office door and sat down, unsure if he was going to help or just lecture me. After I thanked him for seeing me, he said, “Oren, I’ve watched your career very carefully, and while I see flashes of brilliance, you know I’ve also identified plenty of problems over the years.” “Right,” I said, bracing for the lecture that was to come. “You’re just inconsistent,” he went on. “Sometimes you’re fantastic. Other times you let us down. We were always unsure which Oren we were going to get on what day.” I really wanted to defend myself, but I knew that nodding my head and staying quiet was the best approach—for now. “Let’s go back,” he continued. “Two years ago, you seemed invincible. You had just helped us close Somatex, the most profitable deal in our history.” How could I forget? Without me, that deal would have died. Guys got rich on that deal, thanks to me. “I remember it,” I said. “You were a few deals away from becoming a partner.” Becoming a partner, the most coveted position at any investment bank, had indeed been within my grasp. I’d also landed a sweet deal with Hershey’s that made the firm over $1 million. And my work helped the firm to close several other big deals. The competition could only watch in awe and envy as we put together a great run. “You were strong and confident and acing deals that we really liked,” Peter said, “But. …” His voice trailed off. I’m sure he was still disappointed and hurt that I had abruptly left the firm, seduced by the promise of the Internet. “I’m sorry,” I told him. “But I’m here because I’m in dire straits. I have one more chance, or this whole thing is going to implode.” He looked at me and nodded. For the next hour, I replayed the three failed VC meetings while Peter asked me questions. Eventually, his eyebrows lifted, he smiled, and he broke into a laugh. He stopped me midsentence. “I know why you seem to have lost your edge,” he said. “Why?” I asked. He allowed the moment to build and finally said, “Because you’re out there, on your own, and you know there’s no safety net. Son, you’re going to these meetings … needy.” I snapped to attention. Of course. Classic validation-seeking behavior. Signals of desperation. No investor wants to work with a needy company run by an entrepreneur who is almost out of cash! Sure, the investor knows you need money, but giving a hint of need-iness or any sign of desperation, plainly put, is like saying, “I’m holding a bomb that could go off at any minute.” Everyone will respond by going on the defensive. Their first reaction is—Run! Self-protection is an unconscious reaction that comes from the crocodile brain. This is the critical lesson of my failed pitches and the key to understanding why otherwise good deals can fail to impress the target. Neediness triggers fear and uncertainty, causing the target’s croc brain to take over—but not in a good way. Its goal is to prevent further threat by effectively blocking out the higher-level brain, which likes to debate and consider and analyze. No time for that. Threats require immediate action. Neediness is a signal of threat. If you display neediness, it is perceived as just the kind of threat that the crocodile brain wants to avoid. Neediness results in avoidance. I knew that Peter was right, and I listened carefully as he gave me advice on eliminating neediness. And although my situation was desperate, he told me to “Get some game.” In other words, find some source of inner strength, confidence, and poise. Easy to say. Hard to do. When pitches work well, we tend to believe that it was our great idea that impressed the target. Or that our sublime explanation of the big idea was impressive and convincing. However, when pitches fail, we see it through a different lens. In such cases, we believe that the problem lies with the target, not us. We believe that the target somehow couldn’t see the value of the big idea or that he was the wrong target. But pitches can fail for reasons that are hidden from view. I thought back to my previous pitch, the third of the three failures. A VC group in Silicon Valley was interested in my deal. During my call, the representative said, “Your executive summary was good, we like your idea, and under the right leadership, this could become a large company and eventually go public. We’d like you to come up Tuesday to pitch the partnership.”  I made plans to fly north and thought that this was my big break. When we got there, though, the circumstances felt familiar. I’d been in this position before. It was just another one-hour meeting in an anonymous office building overlooking a freeway. The conference room looked virtually the same as every other one I had pitched in: black leather chairs, a long conference table, a whiteboard, and an easel. Thinking back on those days, if there’s anything that reminds me of deal making, it’s the acrid whiff of dry-erase markers. In 1999, no deal could be pitched properly without extensive—and highly abstract— whiteboard diagrams. Now, when I was pitching, I spoke clearly and made my points elegantly. I maintained eye contact with the targets, exuding calm confidence. My voice rose and fell with dramatic timbre as I drew a chart on their whiteboard so artistic that, had it been preserved, it would today be hanging in the modern art hall of the Getty Museum. Before I knew it, 30 minutes had gone by. Although I felt that there was much more to say, the targets were glancing at their watches. I knew it was time to wrap up, and with nearly perfect comedic timing, I delivered a joke, and laughter filled the room. I’d nailed the pitch. Now I found myself in that awkward two-minute period that every presenter must face after finishing his or her pitch. This is a dangerous beta trap and the easiest time to screw things up. Here is where small mistakes are amplified into deal killers. Slight missteps can erase all the good work you’ve done in the last 20 minutes. And it’s unnerving because there’s always an unspoken directive: You need something from the target. Money. So, during the end of that third pitch, in front of some of the best venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, I became anxious and needy while I explained:We need a lot of your money, and we need it fast. At that point, I realized how high the stakes were. If these people said no, it would be my third rejection in a row. And the company would have almost no options left. I felt scared and anxious. I said things like:  “Do you still think it’s a good deal?” “So, what do think?” “We can sign a deal right away if you want us to.” This is the purest form of validation seeking and the most lethal form of neediness. And that was the end of that opportunity. Just that fast, the target’s excitement turned to fear and anxiety. And of course, I failed to get a term sheet or an investment offer. Why It’s Important to Eradicate Neediness Plain and simple, neediness equals weakness. Broadcasting weakness by seeking validation is often a death sentence. This may sound harsh, but it is true. Neediness—displaying so-called validation-seeking behaviors— will affect all social interactions dramatically. It is almost redundant to criticize the concept of validation seeking any further. Simply put, there’s almost no way to get through the postpitch time period if you are needy. Let’s define validation seeking and neediness and talk about how to get through the two-minute beta trap or any other point where you might be showing neediness. What Causes Neediness? You can tell when you are losing your audience because their growing discomfort is easy to read. They glance at their watches, turn their bodies away from you, cough nervously, and/or close the folder they had been leafing through. There are lots of outward signs. When you notice that audience members are uncomfortable, you feel yourself losing the deal. Your anxiety and insecurity start turning into fear, and you begin falling into acceptance-seeking behaviors.  The experience of feeling disappointment creates problems that need to be considered carefully. When we feel even a touch of disappointment, our first reflexive reaction is to cure it by seeking validation, which, of course, broadcasts neediness to the audience. Now our brain is subconsciously thinking, “If I can just get them to agree to do the deal with me, everything will be okay.” This is what our brain wants to relieve the stress and fear caused by rejection. If we are lucky and the target decides to give us the deal, all is well again. We instantly feel better, our anxiety fades, our heart-rate returns to normal, and we feel in control. However, in the panic moment caused by that flash of disappointment, we couldn’t help but signal neediness to our target. Chances are good that he noticed it and will not respond by giving us what we want. What happens then? Further rejection poses the threat for an emotional catastrophe. In practice, here is how we fall into validation-seeking behaviors: 1. When we want something that only the target can give us (money, an order, a job,) we set the stage for neediness. 2. When we need cooperation from the target and can’t get it, it’s frustrating and causes us anxiety. And audiences, at some point, always become uncooperative. Audience members turn their attention elsewhere—usually by texting, scanning e-mail, or taking phone calls. They allow interruptions by people coming in and out of the meeting room. Or they cut us short—before we’ve made our key points. 3. Neediness is created inside of us when we firmly believe that the target can make us feel good by accepting our pitch and by saying “Yes.” When we set ourselves up to need the target to accept us, we have trapped ourselves. The more we want the target’s desired behavior to occur, the more neediness we broadcast, and the less  likely the target is to give us what we want. It’s a downward spiral. 4. Finally, validation-seeking behaviors are triggered in us when the target seems uninterested in our pitch, begins to withdraw, or shifts his or her attention to something else. At that moment, we have a natural fear response, and the potential for an involuntary expression of neediness is high. Fear and anxiety are emotions that are both natural and reflexive, and they are very difficult to manage. Even the most common social rituals are loaded with situations that can trip us up, so you really need to pay attention to avoid outward signs of neediness—a reaction that surrenders your status and frame dominance. Counteract Your Validation-Seeking Behaviors One dramatic way to eradicate neediness involves going into every social interaction with a strong time frame that you are prepared to use at any moment. This frame communicates, loudly and clearly, that you are needed somewhere else. But this is just a part of a broader, more comprehensive solution to eradicating neediness. Here’s the basic formula: 1. Want nothing. 2. Focus only on things you do well. 3. Announce your intention to leave the social encounter. Executing these three steps will calm down the fear circuitry in your own brain. Your increased heart rate, perspiration, rapid breathing, and anxiety will subside slowly. Once under control, you’ll impress others and make them actually come after you. Most important, the willingness to withdraw demonstrates a self-control, strength, and confidence that most targets will greatly admire. To better appreciate the importance of controlling validation-seeking behaviors, let’s take a closer look at the way others have solved this problem. In the film The Tao of Steve , the lead character, Dex, also employs the withdrawal technique to maintain a high status in social situations. This technique is part of a larger Taoist philosophy that Dex uses to guide his life. Dex is an elementary school teacher’s assistant who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with several roommates. He has a huge belly, he smokes pot, and his wild, unkempt look is the opposite of Madison Avenue’s image of the American male. Looking at Dex from the outside, you’d assume that he is not a social success. But surprisingly, the opposite is true. Dex is a practitioner of the Taoist philosophy, but with an ingenious twist (which I’ll explain in a moment). Taoism is an Eastern philosophical and religious tradition that originated in China around 500 B.C. It is based on the writings of the philosopher Lao-Tsu. As in Buddhism, there is a heavy emphasis on connecting with the universe and controlling your desires. In the movie, Dex has developed his own derivative version of the Tao that draws its inspiration from popular culture. He calls it the “Tao of Steve”—named for three guys named Steve who embody all the coolness and social poise that Dex is seeking. The three Steves are Steve McQueen, Steve Austin, and Steve McGarrett. McQueen, the so-called King of Cool, rode an antihero persona to become the highest-paid actor of his generation. His roles in movies such as the Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, and Bullitt won him a legion of female admirers and also cemented his reputation as a “man’s man.” Steve McGarrett (Jack Lord) was the detective in charge of the elite crime unit on the popular 1960s show Hawaii Five-O. He was a no- nonsense, dedicated investigator who always stayed one step ahead of the bad guys. Steve Austin (Lee Majors) was the bionic man in the 1970s hit, The Six Million Dollar Man. Austin was a former astronaut who survived an experimental plane crash. He was rebuilt with bionic parts and became an operative for a covert government agency. All three were noted for being cool without really trying. The actors helped convey this feeling by maintaining poise in pressure situations. They never got flustered, even with the bad guys closing in. Dex believed that the three Steves attracted admirers not because they had cool cars or bionic legs, but rather because they understood the three main rules of the Tao: Eliminate your desires. It’s not necessary to want things. Sometimes you have to let them come to you. Be excellent in the presence of others. Show people one thing that you are very good at. Withdraw. At a crucial moment, when people are expecting you to come after them, pull away. The Tao of Steve is the perfect philosophy to use when you finish your pitch. Use it to stifle the urge to seek approval from your audience. People want what they can’t have. So, when you finish your pitch, deny your audience. Start to pull away. In so doing, you banish insecurity and trigger a powerful prizing effect on your audience. They will come to you. The Final Pitch Now, finally, it was the day of my fourth and final pitch. Six months ago, I had hundreds of thousands in my bank account. Now I had $468, enough for half of a payment on my Porsche, and that was if I didn’t pay rent or eat. Nevertheless, in my head, I ran a constant audio loop: I don’t need these people; they need me. I am the prize. I stood in front of Enterprise Partners, the largest VC firm south of Silicon Valley. It was nearly 4 p.m., and the people inside were ready to go home. I needed to electrify them, light up the room, and most important, I needed to forget that this was do or die. If they sensed any desperation, my partner and I would go home busted. This was my last chance. I walked into a room of tired-looking investors. They’d been hearing pitches all day; none of them even bothered to say hello. It was unnerving. They asked me a series of hostile questions. They wondered aloud if the market was big enough or if there was too much competition already. One of them actually laughed at our idea. And to make matters worse, the partner who brought us through the door (sponsored us, so to speak) questioned whether we should even be an Internet company, instead, suggesting that we settle on making PC software, which was the equivalent of saying, I no longer support this deal. But none of that mattered. I delivered the knock-down, drag-out, bare- knuckled superpitch. Exactly 20 minutes of hardcore finance in a sexy Internet wrapper. At the end, I continued with my plan to run the prize frame and qualify them. I made three points. Here’s what I told the Enterprise investors: 1. This deal will be fully subscribed in the next 14 days. 2. We don’t need VC money, but we want a big name on our cap sheet that will strengthen our initial public offering (IPO) registration. 3. I think you guys are interesting, but are you really the right investor? We need to know more about you and the relationships and brand value your firm can bring to our deal.  That was it. I was totally spent. At that moment, I couldn’t muster enough mental power or energy to do anything but sit still and be silent. Now it was my turn to be the stone-faced gnome. I just sat there, with no trace of validation-seeking behavior, no neediness, waiting for them to react to me. To my surprise, they fully engaged with me and in minutes had committed to the deal. They wanted what I had. I’d redeemed myself with a great opening and finished the pitch with confidence and poise, and the whole thing came together perfectly. We sat in the room for another hour and discussed all the variables. We came up with a huge $14 million valuation—$6 million more than I had expected. Yes, my bank account had dwindled to $468, but the next day, Enterprise Partners officially agreed to invest. And a few days later, they wired $2.1 million into my account. I remember going to the ATM and getting a balance slip so that I could see the $2.1 million printed on it. Thirty days later, Enterprise completed the financing with an additional $4 million. Despite the difficulties and hard work, going after a deal is a thrill. Sure, I do it because I want the results—the loan, the job, the money, the deal … whatever. But that’s not the only reason. I chase these things because the adventure excites me. All deal makers know: There’s a king- of-the-world moment when we close a deal that is never forgotten. It’s the satisfaction of preparing for a high-stakes meeting, giving a mouth- watering pitch, and with a chest full of confidence, getting the deal. Over time, I would have had many fewer of these moments if I had not learned: Never be needy!  Chapter 7 Case Study: The Airport Deal This is the story of a pitch so massive and so high stakes that in order to tell it properly, I’ll need to tell you what happened in the months leading up to the day of the pitch. There is perhaps no other single deal I’ve ever been involved with that better demonstrates the ideas at the core of my method and why it works. If you find that the story borders on the cinematic at times, well, that’s what it was like to be there, and that’s what it’s like when you’re playing with hundreds of millions and there’s so much at stake. Let’s begin. I was 100 miles away from Los Angeles and in no hurry to return to the city. I had a very good reason, too: Business was dead. The collapse of the U.S. economy had seized the credit markets, freezing deals for more than a year. After pitching nearly nonstop for more than five years, I found myself with nothing to pitch—literally nothing. This lack of action was frustrating because at heart, I like the adrenaline rush that comes from playing this game. That’s why I do it. I get the same adrenaline rush from action sports as I do in a boardroom—where I’ve raised more than $400 million. Then it all went away—Poof!—as the economy soured and the deal window shut. It was clear, after a full year, that it wasn’t going to return to normal—for a long time. That’s why I’d decided to get away—from all of it. The deal business had been very good to me, and I was in a position to do anything I wanted. I told friends, colleagues, everyone that I was done. “I’m hanging up my guns,” I said. And now I was due for some serious downtime in the middle of nowhere to figure out what I’d be doing next in life. A one-week vacation to the Anza-Borrego Desert had turned into two, and I was enjoying all that the tiny town of Ocotillio Wells had to offer—which wasn’t much. It was a Monday in December, a dry 78 degrees, and most of the weekend guests had now retreated from this outpost in southern California on the east end of the Salton Sea. The solitude felt good. Most of my day was spent mountain biking and relaxing on a mesa. I snapped pictures of the sun as it settled behind a bluff. Life was good. And I was oblivious to the fact that someone was desperately trying to reach me. A Monster Deal Across the mountain range that separates the high desert from the coast, in Los Angeles, Sam Greenberg was that someone. He sat in his office, frustrated, wondering what it would take to get in touch with me. I had pretty much made myself unreachable—my phone had been switched off, my e-mail autoresponder was switched on, and almost no one knew where I was staying. Greenberg had a deal on the table, a big deal—10 figures, $1 billion. He wanted me to be his point man, just like the way things were before the economy collapsed. Greenberg was a man of action. He kept a private jet at Palomar Airport—not as a luxury item but as a tool to get to deals faster than the next guy. He would find me, get the plane in the air, and get me back to work. At least that was his plan, and it served his purpose. An acquaintance finally spilled my hotel information, and Greenberg left a short message on the hotel answering machine. “I’ve got a monster deal,” he said in a loud voice. “Call me, today. ASAP.” Three hours later, I entered my hotel room and saw the red light flashing—so much for privacy. Who needs to reach me that badly? Only a handful of people knew how to get in touch. I listened to Greenberg’s message, alternately ignoring it and then wondering about it. No. After 10 years of nonstop deal making, I’d sworn off deals. I’d sworn off the industry. No. I was resolute, but I owed Greenberg enough to call him back and tell him as much. When he answered the phone, my first word was “No.” “I haven’t even told you the deal,” Greenberg said.  Greenberg had a natural gift of persuasion and typically got what he wanted, but this time I was sure I wanted no part of it. “My answer is still no,” I said. “Just listen to me for one minute,” Greenberg demanded. “It’s not going to matter,” I said. “I’ve seen about every deal out there —it’s a wasteland.” Greenberg told me about a deal right in our backyard. Davis Field, a regional airport on the outskirts of Los Angeles, was being rechristened as a large private fixed-base operator (FBO) as a relief valve for the overflowing Los Angeles air space and would need a whopping $1 billion raised to finance the effort. “You can’t turn this one down,” Greenberg bellowed. “This is not some shopping center. This is a friggin’ airport!” “Sounds great, but I can’t do it,” I said. “I’m out of the game.” After three or four expletives, Greenberg tried another approach. “That’s fine. I got someone else lined up anyway, so …” His voice trailed off. After a long pause, I took the bait. “Who?” “Barnes.” “Oh, please.” “He can pull it off,” Greenberg said. “And on your end, I guess we’ll just chalk it up to a missed opportunity. You’re gonna kick yourself.” Greenberg indeed had another guy lined up, but everyone knew that Paul Barnes was not exactly “the best.” Greenberg decided to stop his pursuit—for now. “Have fun sticking your head in the sand while we’re doing a monster deal,” he added in closing. Then he hung up, not even waiting for a response. I laughed and thought about the call. Over the years, I’d become hardwired to analyze every pitch to find out what worked and what didn’t. Greenberg’s pitch meant there was just one deal in a dead market, and that was no reason to unretire. I called the front desk and asked the clerk to hold all calls. Two weeks went by, and sure enough—Paul Barnes did not perform as expected. Sure, he was confident and had a great analytical mind, but he couldn’t think on his feet. If circumstances changed or things got off plan, he spooked easily. When Greenberg suddenly asked him to fly to Chicago on a red-eye for a meeting, Barnes begged off. “I need a few days to prepare,” he said. One of the things my business associates know about me is this: I would go anywhere, anytime to make a deal happen. If a flight was canceled, I’d drive. No cars? I’d take a bus. And after all these years, Greenberg trusted me. He wouldn’t think twice about making a strategy change based on my recommendations. So Greenberg was worried. He had two months to prepare the pitch for the airport selection committee—not just a presentation, but a full-pitch package, complete with a detailed financial analysis and strategy. He knew I could deliver a real face melter of a pitch, a compelling and dramatic story that explained everything. Why now, why us, critical path, upside, downside, and competitive advantage. All stuff that I’d done hundreds of times. After Barnes proved unsuitable for the situation, Greenberg realized that he needed me. Greenberg Goes to Borrego Springs Greenberg’s Legacy 600 landed at the alarmingly tiny runway in Borrego Springs before 10 a.m., and within 15 minutes, he was in a car, headed to the Borrego Valley Inn. I’d agreed to meet him at noon in the hotel lobby. It was nearly 10 years earlier that Greenberg had listened to one of my pitches and tried to hire me on the spot. I turned him down, saying I wasn’t for hire, but we went on to partner up eventually. Together we made a lot of deals that propelled Greenberg Capital into a premiere position in the financial markets. Now, the team had disbanded, and no deals were happening. At 11:54 a.m., he approached the lobby. This was classic Sam Greenberg, who, like the legendary Carthaginian commander Hannibal, would either find a way or make one. This guy would not fly back without pushing our relationship to the brink. This was just the way he worked. Shortly after 11:30 a.m., I thought about possible scenarios. Was there anything Sam could say to sway me? Not likely. Was the deal economy coming back any time soon? Also not likely. There was a certain peace I had now, away from the rat race, not tied down by phones and e-mails. And I didn’t miss the grind. Not at all. It was getting close to noon. I headed to the lobby. Sam was there, dressed casually, sitting on a blue vinyl couch. Both of us were uncomfortable at first—as if meeting for the first time—we both had our game faces on. “You know I can’t let the plane idle on the runway for too long, so pack up and let’s head back,” Greenberg said with a straight face. Ahhh, the time frame—it would need to be dealt with. “At this altitude, after your 25-minute short hop, that jet can idle for three and a half hours in 98 degree heat with a half tank of fuel,” I said, cracking Greenberg’s power frame in half with the stronger expert frame. “And I’m hungry. It’s your turn to buy lunch.” Greenberg countered the expert frame with a prize frame. “You’ve never made as much money as you have working with me,” he calmly replied. “Look at you—you’re leaning forward, hanging on every word I say. You’re practicality drooling. That’s how much you want this deal. It’s almost sad.” “Ah, you’re throwing a prize frame at me! I taught you too much!” I said, easily handling Greenberg’s reframe. “Look, we could do this all afternoon. Forget it. Let’s go eat. You’re still buying. Follow me.” On the way to the sandwich shop, we continued to frame and reframe and deframe about who would buy a $20 lunch, even though Greenberg’s fueled, piloted, and fully staffed jet was on the runway burning $8,400 an hour. “Let’s get back to doing what we always do,” Greenberg said, continuing the conversation at the restaurant. “Market says that’s a bad idea,” I replied. This was probably an anticipated objection. He decided to challenge me. Chide me a bit. “Why exactly did you come here?” he asked. “You just ran away. You left because you lost your edge,” Greenberg continued. “There was a point where I thought you might be one of the best,” he said. “Now, the only thing next to your name will be … quitter.” That one made me clench my teeth. I stood up and gave him a long stare. I was ready to walk away right there. “You’re mad because I’m right,” he said. “Maybe you’ll come back with me and prove me wrong. You can’t hang out and be a hippie—or whatever you call this—the rest of your life.” I could feel his neediness, and it was clear that I had the upper hand, for the moment. But you never have that upper hand long with Greenberg. “Give me a minute to think about it,” I told him. The $1 billion figure for this deal was off the charts—I’d been accustomed to pitching deals in the $30 million range. This would be the biggest deal I’d ever put together. And it was only falling into my wheelhouse because the bad economy had sent everyone else scrambling. The fact that Greenberg had flown out to the middle of the desert also gave me a sense of importance—and a notion that loyalty still existed in the cutthroat world of investment banking. “Let’s talk about this,” I said finally, looking across at Greenberg. “What exactly are you offering if I get back in the game?” Greenberg’s eyes lit up. The bullying had worked. He now had a hookpoint. It was time to take advantage. For the next 15 minutes, he explained the deal, pitched it actually, and laid out my role in the big picture. Then he closed the deal and sealed it, giving me some reasonable terms and a rare handshake. Little did I know that Greenberg had withheld a key piece of information—there was a competitor in this pitch—a big competitor. Preparing the Big Pitch The next day, back in Los Angeles, Greenberg and I got together at Greenberg’s high-rise office to discuss an action plan. It was Wednesday. Greenberg came to the meeting knowing that he’d have to mention the competitor. But he waited until the end of the meeting and then sprung it on me. “Did I mention that Goldhammer is pitching the deal, too?” Greenberg asked. I almost spit up my coffee. “What?!” “Yeah, they have a team on it,” Greenberg said. “Relax. It’s nobody we can’t take down.” “You knew that when you flew out, and you didn’t tell me?” “What does it matter?” Greenberg said, trying to play it down. “It matters because they beat us most of the time,” I said. “Goldhammer is Goldhammer. They have 10 times the resources, and they have the Goldhammer pedigree.” “That’s why I got you, so we could beat them,” Greenberg said. “No,” I said. “You didn’t disclose this, and if you had, I wouldn’t have come. I’ll go toe to toe with anyone, but this is not a fair fight.” I was seething. Greenberg had purposely withheld this information, and now I felt betrayed. We were up against Goldhammer, who would throw 12 to 15 people at the effort against our 6. But the potential rewards certainly made the effort worth it. If we won the pitch and actually raised the $1 billion for the airport over a period of five years, Greenberg Capital would reap more than $25 million in fees. Of that, I would take 30 percent. So I had a lot to prove, a lot at stake, and a lot to gain. All I had to do was take down Goldhammer and my old arch-rival Timothy Chance. Meanwhile at Goldhammer The Goldhammer office in Los Angeles occupies the entire twelfth floor of a gorgeous downtown skyscraper with a view all the way across Hollywood to the Pacific. The floor is decorated throughout with touches from the Orient—a jade dragon, ornate vases, and Japanese flower arrangements. I’d tangled with Goldhammer before, so I’d been in that office. I could picture in my head exactly how the company’s planning session against my team was going. This is how I envisioned it: Inside the main conference room, seven people would be gathered to discuss a big deal—a monster deal, the airport deal. The discussion would be led by Bill Miner, a second-generation investment banker who had been hand picked by Goldhammer corporate to lead the Los Angeles office. It was Miner who had chosen the Far East motif for the office, and Miner often quoted his favorite book, Sun Tzu’s Art of War. After briefing everyone on the background of the airport, he would turn his attention to the competitors—us. “There are three or four of the usual suspects involved,” he would say. “But the wildcard is Greenberg Capital.” This name would be familiar to all of them—we were local, and occasionally, Goldhammer and Greenberg would cross paths. Goldhammer’s top pitch guy, Timothy Chance, would be quietly listening. He knew us and had worked with me for a few months in the 1990s. Since then, we had clashed several times. Three years ago, at a funding conference, Chance and I had exchanged words and had to be separated. In the end, I imagined that Chance and Miner would look at each other, both knowing that this was the biggest pitch of the year—the one that bonuses would rest on. And it would be the one deal that would let the industry know who was best. Strategy Sessions and Research The first meeting at Greenberg Capital was a strategy session. Sam Greenberg, Rob McFarlen, and I sat in a conference room, and Greenberg delegated the various responsibilities. The pitch was a risk for all parties —the legal fees alone would be nearly $40,000. And the final bill for all the soft costs would be close to $100,000. McFarlen and I began the long and arduous task of running numbers on the deal. McFarlen was a quantitative analyst, and he knew the types of financial models that were needed. I had the role of putting together the big picture and the storyline—and I would be the one to actually make the presentation. Greenberg would pay the bills and make sure that everything was tracking to his liking. A few hours later, we took a break for lunch and started talking about Goldhammer. “I’m wondering if they are gonna bring in Timothy Chance.” Greenberg said. “I hope so,” I said. “He’s the best they have, and the good news is that I know how his mind works.” “What do you think, Rob?” Greenberg asked. McFarlen had a conflict of interest because he freelanced for Goldhammer as well. He shrugged. “My job is just to run numbers, not to pick sides.” “Go ahead. You can say it,” I told him. “Timothy is as good as they get,” McFarlen said. “Superpolished. But I’m sure you are, too.” Greenberg watched me wince and smiled to himself. I’d taught him frame control, and now he was using it on me. Nice. This was typical Greenberg, always playing the game, trying to get people to work beyond their limits. “You know what I think,” I said. “If they do bring in Timothy, it will make things difficult. He’s good.” We were making progress on the financing structure of the deal. We’d done research on comparable deals worldwide and felt that we had a good finance strategy in place with a track record to back it up. We also confirmed that, indeed, Timothy Chance would be making the pitch on behalf of Goldhammer. This provided a jolt of adrenaline that helped me through the late nights of preparation. Over the years, I’d been obsessed with putting together a method to the madness of presenting and closing deals. I’d developed the concept of neurofinance, perused scholarly journals, interviewed professors and researchers, and even set up experiments with executives to gauge their reactions to various pitching styles. However, all this research, as well as the 10,000 hours I spent on the subject, would do nobody any good unless it really worked. And it was clear that this $1 billion airport pitch would be the ultimate test of what I had learned and, if Greenberg Capital won, the ultimate confirmation of my methods. Middle of January The daily rhythm of work, the rhapsody of ticking things off the to-do list, the grind of crunching numbers—these things were giving me a sense of purpose and a daily jolt of exhilaration. I didn’t tell Greenberg, but I’d been bored out there in the desert. Yeah, hot sand feels good on your toes, but if you’re used to being a gunslinger, there’s nothing like being in a live deal. McFarlen had come over to my home to discuss the latest numbers, and I was explaining this very thing—the thrill of the deal. “In a sense, it’s very gladiator-oriented,” I said. “You have to kill—or be killed. And if you do go down if you fail, the spectators, the people you’re pitching, often experience perverse joy.” McFarlen nodded. I was always giving him vivid and clarifying metaphors, but McFarlen wasn’t wired to really pay attention to all that. He was an introvert, who only broke out of quiet mode to defend his financial analysis. He was a numbers guy with a low-key personality. “Who is Goldhammer using to run these numbers?” I asked. “If you know.” “They are doing it in-house, so it’ll be Brandon Caldwell,” McFarlen replied. “Can he do what you do?” I asked. “What do I do?” McFarlen wondered. “You make magic out of the mundane,” I said. “No,” McFarlen said. “Caldwell can’t do … what I do. Not with the short timeline.” And this was the most bravado that I could pull out of McFarlen. In McFarlen and me, Greenberg had indeed lined up two very skilled professionals. But Greenberg was no slouch either. He was a math whiz, and when I was just starting in the business, I looked up to Greenberg as my pitching mentor. This little team certainly had the talent and the experience. We just had a lot to overcome to bring the airport deal home. The Client Simon Jeffries owned the airport deal. He had worked for years to get all the pieces in place. Jeffries and Greenberg had known each other for more than a decade, and from time to time, they’d see each other in development circles. Now Jeffries was in an alpha status position. He was the guy who would hear the Goldhammer and Greenberg pitches and ultimately decide who would get a contract to raise $1 billion for the new airport. Interestingly, while Chance was probably doing tons of research on Jeffries, I did none. I was not interested in building so-called deep rapport —a personal connection with my audience. My research had shown that the small talk at the beginning of a pitch typically was fruitless. People who make million- and billion-dollar decisions don’t care where you play golf or whether you had trouble finding a parking spot. I had learned this early on and avoided the deep- rapport trap that many pitchmen step into. I would be focused, instead, on a unique theme and storyline. A compelling human drama. On paper, the proposed JetPark Airport is a beauty. A renowned architect had designed a 1,000-acre metropolis built around the famous Davis Field runway, which extends nearly 7,000 feet. The plans included restaurants, shopping, and amenities. Most of the buildings—now just renderings—would be multistory glass-and-steel monoliths. No detail had been spared. The revamped airport was expected to help southern California deal with a staggering rise in air traffic (an estimated 30 million passengers will fly out of LAX in 2010 alone). The airport also would service smaller aircraft and provide quality office space for businesses that support the aviation industry. All told, the airport was expected to bring 10,000 jobs and and to have an economic impact of $2.2 billion. Getting funding, therefore—this was serious business. Southern California needed the new airport. The new airport needed money. And both Greenberg and Goldhammer needed to win. Nine Days Before the Big Pitch McFarlen was working 16-hour days reconfiguring the deal structure. Today, I was working with a graphic designer on creating a visual “face- melter” to accompany my pitch. I wanted the visuals for the presentation to pop and shock. I also was working on the elements of “the story.” Some of my friends were Hollywood screenwriters, and they had beat it into me: Every pitch should tell a story. “There’s gotta be an intrigue hook,” I told McFarlen. “If the shark in Jaws has a GPS beacon on it, and you know where it is all the time, then there’s no drama, and the story is not interesting.” I was now reframing the entire campaign to include a human element. Sometimes deals are done strictly on numbers—but not this time. This time, it was about people. McFarlen nodded and got back to his numbers. The Day of the Pitch Arrives At 2:52 p.m. on pitch day, I saw Tim Chance entering the building a few steps ahead of me. In the main building lobby, I went over the pitch again in my head. The plan was to focus on the Hollywood story aspect—to talk about the people I’d met in Spring Hill, the community where the airport was located. I felt certain that neither Tim Chance nor anyone else at his firm had ever set foot in Spring Hill before. As I made my way up the elevator to the ninth floor, I had a quiet confidence in my pitch strategy. The financial structure was solid, and Greenberg Capital had a strong track record to stand on, but the story I’d prepared had something stronger. A human angle that was compelling.  Simon Jeffries’ office covers 3,000 square feet of prime Los Angeles office space. I walked into the reception area and saw Chance tapping out a text. We made eye contact, and I arched my eyebrows—my way of saying hello—and turned to the receptionist. “The Greenberg team is here,” I said, grinning. “Go ahead and have a seat,” she said. There were six chairs in this beta-trapped lobby. Rather than sit, I tried to provoke Chance a little (“You texting headquarters for last minute advice?”), but he wasn’t in the mood to talk. He knew this was frame control in action. Anything he said would be framed, deframed, reframed, and flipped. “Good luck,” Chance said, and looked back down at his iPhone. Jeffries eventually entered the reception area and shook hands with me and then Chance. “Okay, gentleman, come this way,” he said. He led us down a long hallway into a conference room. “Have a seat,” he said. Chance and I exchanged an uneasy look. Jeffries excused himself, and as soon as he was out of earshot, Chance said, “We’re pitching in front of each other? You’ve gotta be kidding me.” Perfect. “This happens all the time,” I said. “You should get out and pitch more.” What Jeffries probably knew was that if he listened to both of us pitch, on our terms, he’d get our rehearsed efforts. If he was going to trust either of us to raise $1 billion, he wanted to see how we reacted when things didn’t go as planned. Just then, a third pitchman entered. He was from a firm in London. This thing was going to be even more competitive than I’d anticipated. Anatomy of a Pitch Two months ago, I’d begun sizing up Goldhammer and wondering how I could get an advantage. Both teams would be working from the same information, so what would make the difference? It was a puzzle to solve, with the winner earning the opportunity to raise $1 billion and getting a $25 million payday. Despite the stakes, I’d rewired my mind to think about it as “just another pitch” so I wouldn’t feel all the pressure or do anything desperate when the moment came. Easy to say, but difficult to do. How do you spend weeks or months working on a big presentation and not be anxious about it? I had to invert my own psychology because, as human beings, we are all hardwired to be emotional about important social encounters. What worked for me were the three rules of eradicating neediness: 1. Eliminate your desires. It’s not necessary to want things. Sometimes you have to let them come to you. 2. Be excellent in the presence of others. Show people one thing that you are very good at. 3. Withdraw. At a crucial moment, when people are expecting you to come after them, pull away. If I could not eliminate my desire to win while preparing, then the team likely would seem needy and desperate on the day of the pitch. If I could not be excellent at pitching just one simple idea, then the competition would win because they were, on average, stronger. If I didn’t have the nerve to withdraw at the right time, then I would just end up chasing the deal—and therefore losing it. I knew that this had become a simple game involving the four pitch phases, and I should just have fun playing it. Toward that end, the first task for the team was to understand the mind-set of Simon Jeffries. I had to tune my pitch message to Jeffries’ crocodile brain.  First, I had to hit the right tone. In fact, this would be a formal affair. Jeffries had been dealing with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for several years. That experience surely would have set the “fun- dial” to low—these guys wouldn’t be used to free-wheeling humor and high energy. Jeffries also was working with city, state, and federal agencies, so I would have to show a certain serious, respectful tone. But a “serious” tone, doesn’t mean somber. Having fun with the pitch was absolutely critical. If the presentation isn’t fun for the person giving it, then everyone else becomes anxious. And because there’s no way to fake “having fun,” I would really have to be enjoying myself. That in itself would eliminate desire. Second, I had to get the frame right. This can be explained quite simply: The competition would make this about money and profits. They were sure to frame this deal as a “money-making opportunity.” That’s what they always did. What was being overlooked by these Wall Street types is that Simon Jeffries is not the head of just any old development company. He was head of a company that was about to redevelop one of the most historically significant airport runways in southern California. Jeffries would want to be known as the man who saved Davis Field when others couldn’t. This redevelopment plan had been tried many times before—and failed. Jeffries would be building an airport on 1,000 acres of southern California land, land with a history dating back to the 1920s. This didn’t have to be a deal about money. Instead, it could be about something bigger, something that tapped into the human desire to be the alpha in a social situation. The brain is wired to do things to achieve status, not money. And within that notion, the big idea was born. This deal was about legacy. This deal was about building a legacy from a piece of American history. Simon Jeffries wanted to be remembered for doing something important. That is desire working, not greed. In this realization, the hard work was done. All I had to do was tune my pitch to this desire and be part of the plan by which Jefferies could secure his legacy. Third, I had to hit the buttons that produce hot cognitions with a sledgehammer. All the hours logged on Sam Greenberg’s plane had made an impression. Jets are intoxicating, plain and simple. They are pure hot cognition. Jeffries and the committee were deeply involved in the aviation business. They either owned planes or worked with them. Two were pilots themselves. When presenting to someone who loves jet aircraft, hitting hot buttons is almost too easy. You just show lots of visuals of jets. Any product that your target consciously or subconsciously believes will enhance his social image will get his brain hot with desire. Show the brain something that society values, and you won’t just be hitting hot buttons, you’ll be stomping on them. Dopamine will pour into the reward structure of the brain, and the emotion of pleasure will rise fast. It’s the same reward structure that’s involved in the response to recreational drugs. When most people enter a social interaction that involves something like a Ferrari; a Rolex; beautiful ornaments; a Renoir, a Cezanne, a Titian, or a de Kooning; a pedigreed Rottweiler; a beachfront mansion; or as in this case, a private jet, their hot cognitions fire like crazy. They anticipate desire and rewards, and it feels good to them. This is why I planned to show Jeffries and the committee large poster boards covered with “aviation porn.” Every few minutes, I’d flip around a new posterboard—each with an increasingly provocative photo of a beautiful jet taking off, landing, or doing a high-bank turn. In other presentations, when pitching derivatives or abstract financial instruments, it was much harder to hit the target’s hot buttons visually, but with this deal, the jet narrative would make it easy. I knew if I could just make it to the final selection, it would come down to Goldhammer and us. They had the deepest bench, the best track record, and the most influence. The inventory of their strengths was awesome. In the preceding 10 years, they had trounced us whenever they went after the same target. And there is no doubt that they would be discounting us because of our small size. I’d personally raised $400 million. But those guys? Goldhammer was doing billions. As the presentation began to take shape, I built it around the four phases:  Phase 1: Frame control, grab status, introduce the big idea. Phase 2: Explain the problem/solution and our special advantage. Phase 3: Offer the deal. Phase 4: Stack frames for hot cognition. There was a deeper problem than just the competition. Simon Jeffries and the committee were natural alphas. During the pitch, they would be vocal, disruptive, and distracting. If I didn’t seize the status and control the frame, these guys certainly would. At any point, if my pitch slowed to a crawl, they would jump in and try to assert their alpha status. They’d demand to know, “How do you plan to do that specifically?” or “Where’d you get those figures?” or “How much will such-and-such cost?” To keep them out of this detective mode, I would need to constantly deploy push/pulls. This would keep them either rocked back on their heels or leaning forward and intrigued to know more. They wouldn’t have time to become cold and analytical. They wouldn’t be able to disrupt the frame. They would always be in my frame, reacting to me. I would have to seize star power status early. Prepitch Thoughts Here’s what was running through my head at the last minute: 1. Get the tone right, frame myself as the alpha, seize status, and hit their hot buttons. 2. Deploy a big idea that is human and captures the theme of “building a legacy.” 3. Keep it captivating with visuals that resonate.  4. Create hot cognitions. Make Jeffries and the committee want the idea before they even know the details. The plan was to have a 20-minute high-temperature conversation with the targets’ croc brains. The goal was to achieve a pitch full of hot cognitions. I believe that if two equally skilled people pitch the same idea and one tunes it to the neocortex and the other tunes it to the crocodile brain, you have two very different results. I had tuned my pitch for the targets’ croc brains and was ready to start. The Presentation I’d been preparing for over two months, and now, with Chance watching, I stood up to address Jeffries and his committee. Speaking slowly, I began: “There is a tremendous responsibility for all of us today. This is a decision not about who is the most charming or the most skilled in finance but instead about who has the right ideas that can raise $1 billion for Davis Field. Others have tried this kind of thing before and failed, so it’s not that the best man should win or that the best team should win, but instead, the best ideas should triumph today. This runway has served the United States of America in World War II and hosted squadrons of B-17 bombers and other fighter planes that took part in the Pacific campaigns. Today, we are not talking about building a shopping center or strip mall or motel. We are building an airport, and we are doing it on hallowed ground. This has to be done right.” It was critical to get the frame right at the beginning. And because Goldhammer definitely would open by highlighting their size, experience, and track record, I had to pick a frame that minimized their strengths and focused the lens of attention on ours. This is why I chose the best idea frame. In other words, I was telling the targets that they should forget about picking a bidder with size and power. Instead, they should focus on the quality of ideas. We could not compete on size and power against the others, but if I changed the frame, if my big idea frame was stronger than Goldhammer’s, then we could still win. I’d also cranked up the tension, injecting norepinephrine into their brains by saying, “This is hallowed ground.” In other words, a screw-up would have serious consequences. If had I hit the tone just right, then a strong frame would be in place. The next task was to reframe the competition: “We are honored to be competing against two other great firms today. I know each of them could serve you well because they have large teams, multiple offices, legions of young, energetic researchers, and the best- paid analysts in the world, and when working a deal, these firms spare no expense to tackle the job.” This was my way of saying that Goldhammer and the group from London were big, bloated corporations with too many people, many of them young and inexperienced. With this statement, I had reframed the competition as young, overstaffed, worried about their fees, and generally overweight. This fit the general image that dogged Wall Street banks in the media and would be an easy idea to convey. I knew that Goldhammer’s Tim Chance would have to invest much of his precious time digging the company out of that frame. Chance recognized what I’d just done, and it’s no wonder he was scowling. Things had started well for us. “Simon, the vast majority of people you have met in the last three months have told you that the market is flat and that nothing has changed for some time. But if you start challenging the way these folks are thinking, you can start to see this market through a different lens—the lens we use. Let me explain. Three market forces that we follow very carefully have formed an important market window that we can step through—if we time it right. We don’t think the window stays open for long, but if we do this now, we can go get $1 billion from investors faster than any other deal out there. Here’s our analysis of the way markets are moving:  “Social factors. Everyone is tired of investment bankers getting fat off these deals with no risk, so we have to be more transparent on fees. “Economic factors. For deals that are transparent, where the bankers and consultants are willing to risk alongside investors, there’s a glut of investor money in the market now. $5 billion more than last quarter. “Technology factors. If we go green and make the buildings LEED- certified, I know a government agency that will get us a 10 percent reduction in taxes. “I know this is news to you, but this is how the market is moving, and these three forces are important to our strategy. Again, we have a short market window to step through. If we fight against these forces, we will struggle. If we hit it right, though, we’ll be one of the few deals that gets through this small market window.” This was the three-market-forces pattern that I had long endorsed. Simple and straightforward. I wasn’t going to start selling and promoting before I was done framing. That would be a mistake. By doing it this way, I would show the targets how the market was moving. This would work because the mind is not a camera; it is a machine dedicated to observing motion and predicting what will happen next. I continued: “Before going into my plan in any detail, let me tell you what we recognized some time ago. This project is more than an airport upgrade or an airport relaunch. It is a legacy you will leave behind. You will have your names written in history, and you we will be judged by generations to come by what you build here.” I had issued a challenge to the committee. Done this way, it creates a dopamine and norepinephrine kick at the same time. In other words, they would feel the twin pull of desire and tension. “Simon, Jeff, Jim [I addressed the committee by their first names], I know you need to find investors for this airport as fast as possible, and I appreciate how questioning conventional wisdom is hard to do when time is tight. But today we are going to ask you to question how things have always been done because lately, the ‘usual’ way of doing these deals turns out to be wrong or wide off the mark or both. “There are too many similar, me-too deals in this market. Right now, unless you are different in your approach from all the others, you will be wasting time and money. “That’s why our big idea is different from all the other plans, as you’ll see. [I flipped around a few big posterboards with the theme and logotype boldly printed.] “As you can see, our theme is ‘Invest in an American Legacy.’ “Our plan gives plenty of profit to investors but also gives them a chance to be part of an amazing story. Unlike the other bidders here today, who will just be telling the potential investors a profit-and-loss story, we plan to tell the investors a wonderful story about an airport that has a rich aviation history. “The combination of the ‘American Legacy’ theme with our financial plan will work best in the market. Our approach will raise $1 billion faster and more easily. Our big idea delivers a better velocity of capital and more certainty that you will get the money you need. We are going to set our sights high, to literally become heroes by protecting—not destroying—a piece of aviation history and get $1 billion at the same time.” This was my classic big idea introduction pattern. Why would this kind of introduction for the big idea work here? There are three basic truths about the brain and decision making that went into it. First, the most basic working principle of the brain is: Decisions of wanting something are not conscious. Second, the opportunity to gain a social reward, such as becoming a “hero,” is even more enticing than making money. Third, you can flood the target’s brain with dopamine by focusing on three ideas: (1) the idea of social rewards, (2) the idea of becoming a “hero,” and (3) the idea of making a lot of money. The purpose? Ignite desire. Now, at this point of the pitch, I’d served the committee’s crocodile brains the right cocktail of dopamine (desire) and norepinephrine (tension), and I was free to proceed with the boring stuff: the numbers. By creating a frame that focused the attention of the targets on what we were good at, I’d put some distance between ourselves and Goldhammer. Being different also creates novelty. And that gets the dopamine injectors in the brain flowing. Traditional pitches often start out, “We worked really hard to come up with a great plan. …” But my approach takes two steps back and then goes three steps forward. It begins by saying: “Things have changed out there in the market [and the normal approach isn’t going to work],” and it ends up by saying, “There is a better way that is different from the others,” and “It’s different because it isn’t just cold, hard numbers. It has a human story to it.” The other groups probably would do precisely the wrong thing: Focus a huge amount of time on their wonderful résumés. They would all be using the same theme, only the details would be different, relying on clichés, framing themselves as a “full-service firm” that caters to clients and provides the “highest levels of integrity, service, and quality.” There is nothing gained with that old, ineffective way, so why waste the time? Doesn’t everyone just assume that you’re going to provide service and quality? Over the next five minutes, I gave highlights of the budget and what timeline I could deliver on. If I could not pitch the full plan in five minutes, then the last two months would become a very expensive waste of time and money. In preparing for this day, the difficulty was knowing what to take out of the pitch without stripping away the richness and complexity of the idea. But I felt that I would have a better chance of success with fewer cold, hard details, the kind that switch the brains of the targets into analytical mode. The length of the Pitch also was of paramount importance. During a rehearsal a month earlier, the pitch came in at more than 55 minutes. Too long. So I started hacking. I edited three minutes from the total, then another two minutes, and so on. With each new rehearsal, I removed details that lacked intrigue or hot cognition. As recently as one week before the presentation, I was still working on making the pitch hotter, shaving away distracting details while keeping the core message. So now, here I was, pushing through the budget and the financing details in about five minutes. It was the coldest part of the pitch. Soon, I would deliver the four-frame hot cognition stack—which would heat things up. But first a quick push/pull: “Is this plan bold? Well, we can certainly debate if my numbers are 5 percent too high or 3 percent too low, but there is no doubt the big idea is bold. We think that boldness is important. And if you don’t like bold plans, then there’s a real possibility that we are not right for each other because my team would always be working quickly in an entrepreneurial way, and you always would be responding like a big corporation—slow and methodical. And how could that ever work? So I’m okay with the notion that our plan is too bold and that we aren’t right for each other.” I was employing the classic push part of the push/pull pattern, which challenged the targets and amplified tension. Now it was time to back off. I had a lot going on here, drawing on the techniques and research that had consumed me for more than a decade. No matter what kind of soft touch I had, this was still a form of selling, I was trying to get the targets to decide in my favor, trying to take control. And to my targets, this was a form of stress and pressure. Humans behave a certain way when they are put under this kind of pressure. At a basic level, in a target’s croc brain, there’s a feeling that you are taking away his or her automony. A threat response could be triggered. The push would counter this problem, giving the targets the opportunity to make a pressure-free decision. Because the human brain evolved in response to stressors over thousands of years, humans are constantly attuned, at the level of the croc brain, to the ways social encounters threaten their capacity for choice. This is one of my guiding theories: The slightest perception that you are taking away free will (scientists call this reducing the autonomy of choice) will trigger a threat response. After letting the croc brain know that it didn’t have its back against the wall, it was time to complete the other half of the push/pull pattern:  “But then again, if this did work out, our forces could combine to become something great. Imagine, your aviation experience and passion combined with our strategy and financial know-how. Almost like some kind of superpower, when we focus our gaze on any individual investor, he would just explode with desire!” I then returned to the idea of status. The brain is always assessing how social encounters either enhance or diminish its status. Yet, at this point, all the competitors had higher global status than we did. There was no way around that. They had more wealth, more popularity, and more power—the three measures of status. So I needed some local star power, and I needed it fast. “Look, in all seriousness, we love this project.” I started flipping over heavy posterboards that were set around the room. These were big, physical, real-world boards, about ½ inch thick each. Unlike a PowerPoint slide, which would just disappear, these would remain, adding a certain concrete feeling of reality to the whole pitch. “And I know how difficult it is not to choose Goldhammer or the London team, sitting here with us. How great are those guys? Is there anything they can’t do with all that youthful energy and those amazing bespoke suits? But one thing I would have to ask them: How much do they know about Spring Hill pickup football?” This was a novelty play that would keep attention high. But it was risky, because if you are going to go off on a tangent—it had better be good. “There’s a reason I ask, because the full story of Davis Field and why the previous attempts to build a new airport here failed cannot be fully told until you meet Joe Ramirez.” I had indeed met an auto mechanic named Joe Ramirez while doing my research on the airport deal. He was tall, with wavy hair and a prematurely graying goatee. Now, here he was, striding across the room dressed as if he was going to church. You can imagine how a mechanic would have been received by the committee, in the middle of a pitch for a $1 billion contract. Nobody expected this. Clearly, he was not here to explain financial plans or flight intervals. I urged him to take his time and speak from the heart. The clock was ticking, but this moment was too rich to be rushed. Joe moved in front of the lectern and pulled from his pocket a folded piece of notebook paper. He read aloud his prepared comments: “I grew up in Spring Hill. It’s been my home since my father came here from Dallas, Texas. As a kid, there wasn’t much to do. We didn’t have the mall and the theaters and the skateboard park. But what we did have was a football field. It was at the airport, here [he pointed to a place on the map, just adjacent the runway]. Every Saturday and Sunday we played football there. Two or three games would be going all the time. This place was easy for everyone to get to, and some of my best memories growing up happened right here. But in 1997, nobody knows why, the city paved the field. It’s been an empty parking lot since that day. If there’s anything you can do. …” You could clearly see the emotion in Joe’s face; you’d have to have been either a robot or from an alien planet not to be moved yourself. When Joe said that the city had paved his football field into an unused parking lot, there was a certain heaviness in the room. Heightened states of emotion create strong memories. Where were you when such-and-such famous person died? It’s easy to remember. The parts of the brain where memories are stored needs to distinguish between significant experiences and those which carry less importance. This was one such moment. While it is hard to define emotion specifically, what is not hard is to show its effect on cognition and decision making. Emotions are how we encode things of value and how we link events to our memory. If it is true that emotional intensity creates a moment where attention is high and encoding is high and where desire could be created, I would not get a better opportunity to create “wanting” from the committee. I thanked Ramirez and stepped back to the front of the room. “Simon, committee … You see, we can look at the numbers behind this deal all day long: 24 percent of this, 15 percent of that, $100 million for solar panels, $100 million for construction of just one terminal. One billion dollars. It’s all just numbers. We have all been thinking of this airport as if it is a purely financial transaction. As if this is a 7,000-foot runway in some kind of cyberspace. What I realized just 30 days ago, and what has been forgotten in all our desire to design it and build it and profit from it, is that this airport isn’t in cyberspace and it’s no longer 1948 when this runway was in the middle of nowhere. What I’m saying is, 50 years ago, Spring Hill was populated by fewer than 1,000 people, who were probably outnumbered by the jackrabbits. Now, 115,000 people live here. Think about that. We are deciding in this room, 50 miles away from the site, what will be done with 1,000 acres of land in the middle of a community.” With this, I put the morality frame into play. It would be hard for the other groups to find a higher set of values to champion than protecting a community of more than 100,000 souls. This frame is so basic, so tied to the workings of the social animal, that it had to be deployed. This was the right moment. Next, the time frame would be used: “I have to finish in five minutes, so I don’t have the time right now to introduce you to the 37 other friends of mine who live in Spring Hill. You see, I’ve been living there for the last few weeks in a cool little hotel on Main and 19th Street. I’ve played pickup football in a dirt field outside town. That’s where I met Joe. So I can tell you that this is an amazing community that will support us if we play fair and support them as well.” Emotion in the room was peaking. Simon Jeffries couldn’t hold off any longer. He was already leaning forward in his seat almost past the edge. “You lived there? You know all these people?” Jeffries asked. What had been a formal pitch was now becoming a casual conversation. “They’re your friends, and you know their names?” “I’m good with names,” I said. “And those people all had something important to say about this project.” “This is why our plan includes an athletic park to return to Joe and the community the football field he loved so much growing up. We also want a young aviators’ center added to the build. With $1 billion, this is a rich project, and we can afford it. We’ll pay for it ourselves. Here are the plans.”  I flipped around another posterboard. Now it was becoming like a game show. “Are you sure that you want to commit to these things?” Jeffries asked. “How can we not do it?” I said. “You can’t just pull value out of a community. You have to put value back in.” Following the principles of seized status, I would now redistribute some of the alpha status and frame control I was holding to some of the other players: “And the park plans with the restoration of the historic football field are complete. They’re not just part of my theory. These are real plans. We completed the engineering specifications, and I want them to be part of any plan that goes forward. Five minutes ago we e-mailed these plans to everyone in this room. No matter what happens with our bid, whether you choose us or not, we want the football field to be restored.” I flipped around the final display boards with their beautiful, evocative visuals of aircraft overhead and kids playing football and proud community members holding their arms in an open embrace. These were all big-picture visuals meant to stoke the fires of hot cognitions. For a closing statement, I would bring it all together. Time frame. Prize frame. Intrigue. Morality frame. Push. Pull. Desire. Tension. It was a fireworks finale of frame collisions: “Committee, the only thing worse than an idea you hate is an idea you just ‘like.’ When you only ‘like’ an idea, then you are still unsure about it. Imagine getting married to someone you only ‘liked.’ It would seem cold. If I were sitting where you are, what would be important to me? I might think, if we don’t love this idea of ‘American Legacy,’ then we have to throw these guys out of here right now. “And that would be okay with me because it would be the right thing to do. And by the same measure, if you only ‘like’ us, then you also must throw us out. And I’m totally okay with that, too. Because we could not possible work with you if you didn’t love our big idea. We believe in the big idea that strongly. “Right now, as we are sitting here, the terminal paint at Davis Field is peeling, the old observation deck is rotting, and a local park has been paved over. Almost everything about Davis Field Municipal Airport shows age and neglect. It is a place that by almost every appearance has been left behind in time. “But time should not leave this place behind. The war in the Pacific was fought from this field. Bomber squadrons had thousands of movements here. Men left this field to fight for our country, and for some, it was the last patch of American soil they ever touched. “So if you love the idea of an American Legacy and you want Joe Ramirez’s kids to be able to play on that field, and you want to be known as the capitalists who built a legacy for the ages, then we are the right team to pick today because we know how to do this better than anyone else. But we are not going to do this for you. We will have to do it together with you. When you feel that the time is right, I encourage you to come to our office and talk over how we can make that happen.” The prize frame can be boiled down to one thing: Withdrawal. At a crucial moment, when the committee was expecting me to come after them, I pulled away. I remembered what was once written in the US Air Force Training Manual, “It is generally inadvisable to eject directly over the area you have just bombed.” Strictly following that advice, it was time to leave. In the course of my many pitches, I discovered that people won’t do what you tell them to. They must feel as if they have free will to make their own decisions. They won’t even know what to do unless you have created primary basic and inescapable emotions for them to react to. They can’t encode your pitch into their memory without strong rushes of dopamine and norepinephrine, resulting in the twin forces of desire and tension. In that moment, everyone realized that Greenberg’s little company of six people (plus seven consultants) had a chance to win against the biggest and best in the financial industry. I had built from scratch a pitch that worked in a market where nothing worked. That’s when I realized that this was the most exciting 20 minutes in my career of pitching deals. The Competition Strikes Back Tim Chance was up next, and as expected, his presentation was polished, practiced, and predictable. He