← Travis Makes Money
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- [00:00]
Forbes Riley
If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H VAC and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
- [00:30]
Travis
You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by gohighlevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet. Just go to gohighlevel.com travis what's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Travis Makes Money podcast where it's our mission to help you all make some more money. Today on the show, I am talking to the one and only Dr. Forbes Riley. She's a globally recognized authority in communication, sales and personal performance known as the queen of Pig Pitch. She's generated over $2.5 billion in sales reaching viewers across 80 plus countries through live TV and is a sought after speaker with two TEDx talks. And she's also a bestselling author, TV personality, award winning coach has empowered millions to sharpen their message, build unshakable confidence and close deals one pitch at a time. She's got a new book out, Pitch secrets A to Z. How to increase your influence, impact and income. Super excited to have her here in studio with me today. Forbes. What's up? Welcome.
- [01:25]
Forbes Riley
I'm loving the green. I'm thinking Forbes makes money.
- [01:27]
Travis
Thank you. Yeah, well you do, you do make money.
- [01:30]
Forbes Riley
I've managed to do that my entire life.
- [01:31]
Travis
Yeah, somehow. Somehow and apparently in a lot of different ways besides just selling stuff on tv.
- [01:37]
Forbes Riley
Right? Oh, in fact, I never wanted to sell stuff. I never wanted to sell stuff at all. You know, I just talked about being a salesman. That is not. In fact, I'm anti salesperson because I grew up with no money. I grew up with a dad who was, he was an inventor, he was a magician and he was an engineer and completely antisocial. And then my mother, both second generation immigrant Ukrainians, was a bit of a hoarder and a stay at home mom and a little overweight, very overweight. And we had a very insulated little life. And so that would have been just fine except when I was in elementary school, I went off to school and apparently my teeth went in all different directions. I don't know if My parents didn't notice. I think that was unusual. My mother did. They took, you know, they take a mold of your mouth. She saved it from 1968. I still have stuff.
- [02:15]
Travis
Oh, really?
- [02:16]
Forbes Riley
Oh, yeah. No, when you're a hoarder, you don't get rid of stuff.
- [02:18]
Travis
That's crazy.
- [02:19]
Forbes Riley
But they slapped me in braces for eight years of my life. Do you have kids?
- [02:22]
Travis
Eight years is a long time. I do have kids. Two of them.
- [02:25]
Forbes Riley
Can you imagine, like, taking away their sunshine? I mean, that's what it. And I don't think anybody realized it when they did it, but not only was like a full set of braces and the rubber bands, but they put this thing in my mouth called a tongue thruster because I used to lick my lips. I guess that's what pushed my teeth out. And. Should I talk like this? I talk like this for triage as a little girl. Jesus. And no one could understand a single word that I said. And so it's been really interesting because my career has been incredibly eclectic. National radio host, host of the Laugh Factory, hosted the X Games, actress, Broadway soap operas. I just didn't. New movie, by the way. And at some point, somebody said, well, Forbes, you're all over the place. Like, what do you do? And I. And I said about three decades ago, I said, I think I just communicate. And they were like, that's not really a thing. I'm like, what I think it is.
- [03:05]
Travis
It's not a thing. Traditionally, maybe, but you can make it a thing.
- [03:08]
Forbes Riley
Because I. You know what's funny? When you're that kind of a loner, you don't talk to a lot of people. You don't listen to people. Good, bad or indifferent. If I was going to do something stupid, I had nobody to tell me not to. Yeah. My parents just kept looking at me going, why? Why do you want to do it? Like, just because. Okay, fine, go. I went up to Europe for six months with a backpack and my. I was 20 years old. I graduated high school year early, and get this. I graduated college with two degrees in three years. I was like, weirdly, what degrees? One in political science, the minor, history, the other communications with a minor in performing arts. But that communication was more like being an actress. And partly it was because I couldn't stand being in school. I was up. I went to the University of Rochester, which is. They measure snow in feet, not inches. And I'm a water girl. I mean, I've had three since I've been an adult. I live in New York. I Live in la. I live in Florida. Just gimme water. Don't know. And don't make me have to break my credit card on the windshield when it's freaking snowing. So I wanted to get out and I. And I. It's a beautiful story, actually, because. So I go to, wow, where do I start? So let's go back to kid not being able to communicate. And I had to point a lot. I had to not get what I wanted a lot. And I watched other people gossip and waste words. And it wasn't until I was speaking on stage legitimately. And, you know, you go back going, why? Why am I doing this? Why am I compelled to want to do this? And I went back to that moment and thought you couldn't talk. You couldn't talk for years. And so now you can't shut me up. But I'll let you ask a question.
- [04:37]
Travis
No, I'm interested in the backpacking story you started telling. You said you were, graduated college early and then took off where she was.
- [04:43]
Forbes Riley
Well, here's what's funny, is that I was gonna be a lawyer. When you grow up where I am, you had two choices. Apparently the guidance counselors knew nothing about advertising. Certainly not podcasting back then. But you were a doctor or lawyer, if you were smart. You don't like blood, there's your choice.
- [04:55]
Travis
Yeah, right.
- [04:56]
Forbes Riley
But I wanted to play a lawyer on tv. So all the time that I was very antisocial, I watched a lot of television. You can't win at 60s TV trivia. I know it all, from F Troop to Brady Bunch to my family, all of them. And that's all I wanted. And when I got to college as this lawyer thing, I'm like, I don't like to read that much. I want to play a lawyer. I want to be Perry Mason. And that seemed like a very odd reach. Nobody, my world was doing that. They were there on Attract. And I said, this is just. Something's not right here. Now here's the weird thing. In high school, we did six plays a year. Plays and musicals. And, you know, the roles that I got, I got chorus and Townsperson Number three. I never had a name. I never really had much to do at all on stage, but I was always there, like, rooting everybody on and also thinking that how come they don't know who you are? Which is really slightly debilitating. It's like you would audition and you just wouldn't get it. Mostly because I couldn't sing. They did a lot of musicals. Okay, fast forward to College and my senior year, I auditioned for the school play. It was Shakespeare's as yous Like It. It's the biggest role that Shakespeare wrote for a woman. Two and a half hours on stage. She's manipulative, she's funny, she's amazing. I auditioned. I go to see what the characters are. I'm like, okay, which townsperson am I going to play this time? And my name's not there. And this little shy, insecure girl said, you know what? It was a joke. You're not supposed to be an actress. You didn't even make, like, the bottom of the heap until I looked, because I wasn't at the bottom. My name was at the top, and it was that character. And I thought, oh, they've made a mistake. And I went to. The professor's name was David Richmond. And I said, hey, what's going on here? Why would you choose me? And he said, you're my ideal Rosalind. And I'm like, excuse me. And he started to tell me all the things that only I had seen inside of me for my whole life. And he laid them all out, and he says, I want you. You know the crazy thing about him? He was 100, legally blind. He couldn't see anything. Wow. See, people used to see my. I had a broken nose for a while. I had crooked teeth. I had frizzy hair. I was overweight. He didn't see any of that. He saw who I was. The show was a hit. And based on that, I called my parents and I said, guys, I know we've taken out lots and lots and lots of loans, but I'm gonna go off to New York to be an actress. And you could just hear crickets. Yeah, they didn't. Well, but they didn't say no. Yeah. But they were like, we can't help you. Yeah. And I'm like, I think I got
- [07:09]
Travis
this sort of, like, good luck. But there's nothing we can do to
- [07:12]
Forbes Riley
do about that financially. We'll tap them out of everything. And I go off and I go to my very first audition, and I land the lead in a movie called Splatter University.
- [07:20]
Travis
No way.
- [07:21]
Forbes Riley
Yeah. To this day, it has its own Facebook page, its own little cult following. It's an 80s slasher film, and I star in the movie. And then I went on to star in my second audition. I got. That was a rock and roll musical, and I got my SAG card, and then I ended up on Broadway with Christopher Reeve. And then I ended up doing soap operas. Now, during all of this time I was plagued. And as a. Do you have a daughter at all? Okay, I was plagued with that. I was chunky when I was growing up. If you weren't skinny, you were fat. I was standing next to Julianne Moore and Meg Ryan on the soap opera as the World Turns. That's how far back I go. Right. They were complete unknowns, but they were little toothpicks. Now, does this book look fat to you? No. Well. But it does look fat next to this cam, right? That was me. I wasn't fat normal. I was just like, a little average. Well, they made me nuts. Now, the irony of that is I live by a model called Life Happens for you, not to you. And I ended up making millions in the health and fitness industry because of my obsession with dieting food and working out and all those things that. That. That should never have gotten there. But, you know, I'm in the National Fitness hall of Fame because of that.
- [08:23]
Travis
Yeah. How did that transition come about? You're doing acting and soap operas where, like, what, did you start with the products or did you start with coaching or training or what?
- [08:32]
Forbes Riley
No, no, I didn't start like anybody else. That's why I wrote a book about this, because I'm not like anyone else you ever met. And I come from New York. We used to talk like this. That's even more embarrassing. No, I have no desire to sell anything. I've never been in retail. In fact, there's kind of a funny thing that's going to come out a lot. But in my tw know, you have to. You heard, like, actors being waitress. Waitresses. Well, I sucked at waitressing. Like, really sucked at it. So I started a company. Company was called Strip O Gram. And I delivered, in my time, 10,000 singing and stripping telegrams in New York City. Yeah. The goal right now is to make 10,000. 10,000 for 10 years. I could do 12, 15 in a weekend. And no cell phones. I did this all on a beeper and a payphone. I once got audited because I put down, like, $5,000 worth of quarters and I had no receipt in a pay ph. And they're like, well, who are you? And I'm like, well, there's the beeper thing and there's this. And that was about punking men. I had three rules then. I had no sex, no nudity, no touching. But I could embarrass you to no end. So, for example, if it was happening today, your wife might have hired me and made a fake book about all this and said, I was this and this. And who knows what would have happened? Something to embarrass you. Your engineer would have been in on it, your audience would have loved it. And at some point it would go, happy birthday, Travis. And then I had like 18 layers of clothes on. And so I did that in between all of my acting, which is crazy. And that's all I wanted to be. If I could just been Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock's career, I would have been. You'd never. I would have been just fine. I'd been an actress.
- [09:59]
Travis
Yeah.
- [10:00]
Forbes Riley
But one day I moved out to Los Angeles in my early 30s and I walked into an audition, there was a camera, did a little piece of paper that said, sell me this pen. I have never sold anything in my life, nor do I want to now. Go back to my dad is this inventor. I grew up in my dad's garage because he. What does your dad do for a living?
- [10:20]
Travis
A real estate agent.
- [10:21]
Forbes Riley
Okay, so that makes sense. That's a job that everyone can understand. No one can understand. My dad, he at one point made a go kart out of a half a garbage can, a lawnmower engine and paper machine. It looked like the Batmobile and went four miles an hour. Yeah. We were the family at the end of the block. They were like, what is he doing now? Things would often explode out of our roof. And he had a medicine. Oh, get this. He had a medicine cabinet. We had a very small house. And so you know how you have your little glass doors and it's just like that deep? Right. Well, there were four of us. So he discovered that the medicine cabinet went all the way into the attic. So when you open the doors, he put a four foot round, lazy Susan, three tier high. When you open the door, you could just see that one piece and then you would turn it and then you would turn. I mean, this is a massive invention. But at one point, there's an opening in this and the whole center was empty. I was such a dork. And my house was so small. I would crawl with a flashlight up over the sink into my medicine cabinet because it was big enough for me to sit up and take my dog with me. And I would read my books and be alone. Now, Harry Potter is the onlybody that you've ever heard of, like who grew up inside of a stairwell. That's part of my background. I know. Try to describe in school who you are to other people.
- [11:30]
Travis
Yeah, right.
- [11:31]
Forbes Riley
So there's a pen on the desk and said, sell me this pen. And I remember thinking, do something different. Yeah. Now the only other thing I did that's different is I grew up as a magician in my spare time.
- [11:41]
Travis
Yeah.
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Forbes Riley
My dad was an amateur and he made me do magic tricks. In fact, David Copperfield was one of his friends. It was kind of ironic. Yeah. And magic was all for boys. No girls doing magic at all. So it was a very. I was, I was asked to be the assistant. I got cut in half. I had doves appear and all kind of stuff. But I had a dream that says, you know, you can do this. I then wanted to be a game show host. Guess what? No female game show host. When I was growing up. Like, where am I supposed to fit in here? So when the pen day happened, I looked at the camera and I said, funny thing about pens. I was 15 and a half when I went off to college. I was so insecure and lonely that my mother would write me these long hand notes in pen. I'd raced to the mailbox to get them and I realized that a pen like this can touch somebody's heart. I put the pen down and I went, that was stupid. And Jake of Body by Jake, do you remember him?
- [12:28]
Travis
I don't think so, actually.
- [12:29]
Forbes Riley
Oh, right here. Come to page whatever. That's one reason I wrote the book is. Come here. Actually turn to page 24 for a second. Well, because it's kind of funny for your viewers to see there's Jake, A bodied by Jake. And you may be too young to know that, but when he started, he started his own 24 hour cable health club. But you've got Kim Kardashian in here. You know that she started doing an infomercial for me.
- [12:48]
Travis
Oh, really?
- [12:49]
Forbes Riley
From a steam iron? Yes. And then there's Mario Lopez and Montel Williams and Richard Simmons. They all did infomercials. And I was one of the only co hosts because it wasn't a female thing. And so the thing with the pen, he walks out and he's just started a 20. I know this sounds so funny because it's such history, but he started a 24 hour network on cable television. It was called Fit TV. The first part was the healthy living tips with Tammy Lee Webb through do aerobics, then food tips, then a workout tip, and then the last 15 minutes of the hour, every hour, 24 times a day was selling. And guess who that was there? He literally. I remember. Cause we just talked about.
- [13:29]
Travis
They were looking for basically an infomercial host.
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Forbes Riley
No, but infomercials hadn't been born yet. Sure, sure.
- [13:34]
Travis
But I'm saying essentially, that's what the. The, the gig that they were auditioning for was. Somebody who can control the presence on camera, but also get people to buy something.
- [13:42]
Forbes Riley
Yes. The funny thing was no one was doing that.
- [13:47]
Travis
Yeah.
- [13:48]
Forbes Riley
So when Jake said, you're going to do this, I'm like, do what? Where was the onboarding? Where's the training?
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Travis
Right.
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Forbes Riley
He said, look, here's. I mean, give me any product at all, he said, and sell it. And that is how I came up with my entire system. I don't sell or promote products the way anybody else does. I did that job for five years, 1500 different products.
- [14:06]
Travis
Wow.
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Forbes Riley
Everybody came on our network because it was free for you to come on. And then Fox bought us in 1993 for $500 million. And then infomercials.
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Travis
And I know Fox bought the network.
- [14:16]
Forbes Riley
Bought the entire network. Fiction. And we. They actually. They killed it. They didn't keep it going. And around that time, and I know you've met my friend Kevin Harrington, who's the forward in the book, infomercials started to happen. I know Kevin talked about seeing snow late at night. And I'd met a couple of people who were said, you know, there's something out here. And all of a sudden, they, again, don't have a female to host this. I ended up hosting 197 of them.
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Travis
Wow.
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Forbes Riley
In fact, that's the funny thing about A to Z. If you go to that page and hear in the book, that is all the infomercial I hosted.
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Travis
Geez.
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Forbes Riley
I know. And it's kind of funny because I start reading them as a joke and it comes out something like AB and Thyrolar AB Rocker Abs of Steel, Absolo Abtronics Advocal Aerobed Age Fit all the way down to Zach and Danny's Coffee Roaster, zmay Skincare Line, and Zoo Books.
- [14:58]
Travis
So quite literally A to Z.
- [15:00]
Forbes Riley
Literally A to Z. Is that funny?
- [15:02]
Travis
Yeah.
- [15:03]
Forbes Riley
That was one of the impetuses behind writing it because it all happened a little bit of a blur.
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Travis
Yeah.
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Forbes Riley
And then now infomercials are no longer.
- [15:10]
Travis
So then you. You basically sold so many products that eventually you just said, why don't I make my own product? Or how did the. How did the product come along for yourself?
- [15:19]
Forbes Riley
I was just, please hire me as an actress. I don't know what. I'm literally doing this job and I'm loving it because I would get free products. And as a kid who didn't grow up with any money, I had an entire gym laid out to me, I like that more than getting paid. This is so cool.
- [15:33]
Travis
Perks.
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Forbes Riley
Yeah. And I love products. And then as infomercials came out, I got hired to do those. People 1 recognized the skill that I had. But at that Moment, QVC and HSN also happened. So now you've got these live 24 hour platforms where you can sell and not just here, but in Canada, in Italy, in Germany, in the uk. And I remember what happened. I was working with at Jake and somebody, one of the products we had on Jake, it was a hair retardant which made it slow the growth of your hair. But Forbes Riley is such a dork. I couldn't say the word retard on camera and not laugh. It makes your hair stupid. It's retarded. They did not think that was funny. It was also called Biodepolis. So get this. I go out to QVC my very first time and QVC is a cavernous. Like this is a nice compact studio. It is massive ceilings. There's like eight cameras. They're all robotic. So there's nobody. And you have to figure out which light is red to talk to them. I just meet the co host. They don't really tell you what to do. And I'm pitching this Biodepolis product to her. She doesn't like it. I don't know what I'm talking about. I leave that building, which is somewhere in Pennsylvania and said, okay, qvc. I'm never doing this again. This is insanity.
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Travis
Yeah.
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Forbes Riley
I come a couple years later, one of my girls from Jake's thing calls and says, would you be willing to do a fitness product? You're really good at fitness. I'm like, yeah, but I'm not a fit girl. In fact, I wore these jackets because I was a little chunky and so I just covered up my body. But I could talk better than the girls who could show their abs. So she said, yeah, we got this elliptical glider called an orbitrack. She said, the girl doing it is making $70,000 a year pitching this product six times. And I'm like 70 divided by. Oh, really? All right. I could as an actress, I could go fly over, do your little thing. If I went out the first time, I ended up tripling what she made.
- [17:20]
Travis
Wow.
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Forbes Riley
So now I'm a struggling actress who just made $210,000 by accident. And I'm like, this is cool.
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Travis
Yeah.
- [17:28]
Forbes Riley
And so I would fly out a lot to do that. Then I would fly over to London and all of a sudden I'm still acting I did a lot of nighttime TV series. I did the Practice. I did 24. I have a really nice three episodes on that. It just. I didn't become. Well, I did have a series regular at some point, and then we did the pilot. I loved this character. And as it went to series, we had kind of a me too thing happen with myself and some of the models. And I ended up getting fired, which was really sad. And at that moment, I just had two beautiful little babies. My kids were about 3 years old, and 6 months after I gave birth to my twins, I'd been raising a little boy from South Central for 12 years. He was best man at my wedding, and he was walking from a haircut to church on a Sunday. Kid walked up behind him and killed him. And my wedding photo was on the COVID of the LA Times. And you know how you just see those shootings and you can't imagine what it's like? Yeah, I lived it. I lived a murder trial for three years. And so in between all of this, it's like, okay, I'm raising two babies. I'm flying around, literally, to Pennsylvania. And at one point I said to the guys at qvc, I said, I don't want to do just fitness. I'm like, I don't know if you know this, but I'm not even fit. I'm like, I can just talk about fitness. I know it sounds weird, but I, you know, I, at that point, had already done the Jacqueline Juicer. So I'm juicing, and I love different skincare products and hair care, and I love falling in love with products. And they said to me, we don't do that here. You have to stay in your category. So excuse me, I said, but at hsn, Suzanne Somers was doing a whole lot of categories. I want to be like her. And they said, great, go there. And I did. And that was in Florida, and it was wonderful. So about the time the baby's about four or five years old, I picked up everything from la. After I lost the series, I thought, I guess I'm not just supposed to be an actress, which broke my heart, because I've also done stage plays, and I really love what I do, but I got a sense that the universe wanted me to do something else. So I went out there, moved right next to hsn, was very happy to do that, have these two babies. Marriage is having its own issues, and at some point, I just hit rock bottom. I know exactly what it was, by
- [19:31]
Travis
the way, mentally or.
- [19:33]
Forbes Riley
Well, I was now selling stuff. Not Happily married, raising two babies. And, like, none of this was what I set out to do. Where's the me in all of this? And I was the breadwinner. And so this was really odd. I made a vow to myself. I said three things. One more, no more nudity in movies. Do you wanna know which ones I. No, I'm just kidding. Come on. That was a good tease, right? He's, like, so serious and don't sell any product that you don't love. And I was like, okay. So I made that vow to myself. I don't know if you've ever done that, where you, like, put your stake in the ground. Said, I'm not gonna do this. Shortly after that, though, there's a thing called a Today special on home shopping that means you're on Live for 24 hours. You can make up to a million dollars a day. I sold. I've sold that much. But you can probably make about fifty to a hundred thousand in a day. And so one of my contacts called and said, do you want to do this in the uk? And I was like, yeah, I could use the money. And then they sent the product to me. And the product was a really cheap manual treadmill. And it was horrible. I put this thing together and I thought, this is just dreadful. But I gave my word, and I'm a big believer in integrity. So I said, okay. And here's the funny story. I don't tell this a lot, by the way. I went over to London. It's midnight when you launch your product. I went on with this product and it bombed. And the first time in my entire career, I bombed on tv. And I'm like, wow. And I'm like, you're doing something you said you don't want to do. Then I go on at one o' clock and I bomb even worse. And then a guy walks in, and this is where the world got a little crazy. Well, first, to be really honest, I kind of got down on my knees and I was like, I don't get it. I got two kids. I've lost Dexter. I don't know what to do. None of it looks like what I thought I'd be doing. I need some help. And then, as if on cue, guy walks in to the green room. It's one o' clock in the morning in London with a silver something like this. And I said, what's that? And he said, oh, this is an office de stressor. I said, really? I said, what is it? And I pulled on it, and it didn't do anything. And I thought, well, that's really stupid. And I gave it back to him. And he goes on tv, I'm the only one in the green room. And he sells like, he sells pretty well. And I thought, what am I missing here? He comes back into the green room and it turns out you have to wind this thing. You have to give it a tug and release. And you felt it. And it's kind of magical because it spins. Well, here's where the story doesn't make any sense. I spin this and I will swear on my kids lives that I saw a vision of my own life. And I thought, oh, my God. I said, how do I get this? He said, well, you can have this one. I said, no, no, tell me about the company. Which, by the way, I'd never even mentioned the word company before. I was just like a blue collar worker. I'm happy to do whatever. And he says, you know, funny you should say that. He said, I'm a corporate magician and I'd like to go back. I know. That's the look on my face too. He said, I've been doing this for five years. I've sold a hundred thousand. He said, I want to be doing it anymore. He said, if you could sell 25,000 of these in the first year, I'll give you the company. You give me a small percentage back. I go home and I'm on fire. And I'm like, oh my God, I got the coolest thing ever. And I sit, my kids are swimming.
- [22:30]
Travis
This is the guy who invented the product.
- [22:31]
Forbes Riley
No, well, here's the funny thing. The Chinese invented this 2000 years ago.
- [22:35]
Travis
Okay?
- [22:36]
Forbes Riley
This is a guy, the guy who invented it in Germany. Not quite sure how all that worked. I have the patent, my own patent on it, but I have all of their original drawings and patents and all the things they sought out to get, but they're all long gone from the whole experience. I guess they just gave it to him. And my timing was amazing because I'd never made a bid for any company before and there was no IP with it. And so I'm sitting here going, you know, all right, I understand muscles. This is definitely my tricep. Although it looks like a bicep. Here's my bicep, here's my abs, here's my lats, here's my. This. Oh, God, my. Oh, it does abs, it does legs. And I'm writing all summer long. My kids are swimming. I'm sitting in the bleachers watching them all summer long. And I'M literally getting a download of every exercise that this thing can do, and it's massive. And I am, like, in heaven. And there's the crazy part. I made a couple of them. I gave it to one of my girlfriends for Christmas that year, and she literally looked at me and said, well, that's nice, but I would never use it. And she gave it back to me. Now, to all my inventors out there, I probably should have just packed it up and said, if one person doesn't like it, they must be right.
- [23:34]
Travis
Yeah, totally.
- [23:35]
Forbes Riley
I didn't do that. And the funny thing about it, and it's in this book, is that there was a new TV series launching called Pitchmen, all about inventions. And Anthony Sullivan, who did OxiClean, along with Billy Mays, were the two hosts of that. And I'd heard about this program. I'd heard that my name was in the mix when it was at A and E to be one of the hosts. There would be three hosts. One girl, two guys. That seems kind of cool. Discovery picked it up, said, we don't need a girl. We just want the two of you. And they'd said to me, well, here's the other funny thing is, I didn't pitch them. I went to. There's an Oscars of infomercials every year, and I've won lots of times. I've won best host, best Presenter, best infomercial. And I would always go, that particular year. I had won three awards, so I was a big deal. I land. And the funny thing is, I put this in my pocket. I don't know why. I had no marketing plan. I'd never marketed anything on my own. I just fell in love with it. I had no idea what I was gonna do. But I remember I got down on my knees and I asked for some guidance. So I had it in my pocket. I walk into this convention and someone comes up to me with a camera. I said, hey, you've worked with Billy and Sully. Can you give us a sound bite? I'm like, for what? Oh, well, they're doing a new TV series called Pitch Men. Oh. Oh, that's good. And so I gave them the conversation. And then the cameraman looked at me and this is the one sentence that changed my life. He said, what are you working on now? I was like, well, you know, funny you should ask. Yes, that's exactly. It literally was like the universe queued him up to ask me that at that moment. And I'm like, I've got this. This thing. He Taught tries it. He's like, you have to show Sully. And I'm like, sully sells soap. I show Sully. He loves it. I show it to Billy. He loves it. The next thing I know, the three of us are. They say, yes, you're gonna be on the show. You got five months to make this work, whatever that is. And I was already in the development stages, so now I've got these people watching me do the development and filming everything. We're sitting in New York and AJ Cubani, who's the guy who created the SC&ON TV logo, it's him, Billy, me, and Sully. And I'm like, this is like the royalty of infomercials. And then AJ Says, I don't like it. And I said, you know what? Excuse me. I went and got his receptionist. I said, come here, play with this for a second. She's like, aj, this is the coolest thing ever. You're, like, missing out on this. I said, I know you don't get it, but women will get it.
- [25:49]
Travis
Exactly. Yeah.
- [25:50]
Forbes Riley
Long story short, it's not for you. Yeah, it was interesting. Long story short, Pitchman aired, and it was the worst experience of my life because, well, reality television isn't reality. I didn't know that. They literally voiced over things to make me look bad, which I don't really need help to look bad, thank you very much. It's pretty challenging enough, but at one point, we were shooting the workout videos, and then they wanted me to shoot a little piece to camera, and it said, hey, tomorrow morning is knocking. Stock your fridge now. How about a creamy mocha frappuccino drink? Or a sweet vanilla smooth caramel, maybe? Or white chocolate mocha? Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks Frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or Crypto's trillion dollar swings, there's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story.
- [26:46]
Travis
Subscribe now@bloomberg.com
- [26:51]
Forbes Riley
the chest, it's the best. Which also already sounds so artificial for me, anyway. No, no, no. You have to do this. Forbes, like, okay, for the chest, it's the best for $29.99. Okay, the for the chest is the best for $19.99. Then it was on the screen for the $9.99. And I said to the guys, I said, look, I've got a little agreement with the guy back in England until it's all mine that I can't undercut the price any lower than 19. With that, all the cameras start turning towards me, and they're like, Sully starts screaming. He's like, well, if you can't do it, the entire shoot is scrapped if we ever have to sell this off. And I'm like, why are you all yelling at me? Like, it got very weird. Like, I felt like I got set up, but I was already in the middle of it. And then they took out a cheap plastic version of a spin jam, and they put that in my hand, and I said, well, I would never. I would never put my name on a piece of cheap plastic crap that you're selling for 9.99. Well, somehow America saw. Edit, Edit. I would never sell anything for 9.99. And so people on YouTube like, oh, she's a greedy bitch. I'd be happy to just sell anything on tv. And I'm like, well, I didn't say that.
- [27:52]
Travis
Yeah, right.
- [27:52]
Forbes Riley
Then there was one other moment, which I thought was really adorable. We go into one of the creative meetings, and I brought in, like, eight supermodels. One of them looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger. And everybody's doing something because everyone thinks it's just for arms. The whole room walk. They're all doing different exercises. We're having a blast. The voiceover that you hear on Pitch Men, says Forbes, Riley doesn't know when to stop pitching. The guys already like what she's doing, but she just doesn't give up. And I'm like, no, that's not what was happening. And at the end of it, they told me to go home. It would never work. I then took it on home shopping, and I've sold a million dollars a day of this. So much for people telling you what will and won't work. And then the full circle. There was a moment, and I know you've had Kevin Harrington on the show. My daughter was little, and she was interviewing Kevin, and she said, can you tell me something about my mom? I don't know? And Kevin looked at the camera. He said, you know, there's a funny moment. He says, your mom went up against some pretty big guys, and they tried to destroy her. And she came out on top. And so I love that piece of videotape because no one else really acknowledged how hard that was. And at the end of the day, I have a beautiful product, and I'm very happy with it.
- [28:58]
Travis
And you got the company.
- [28:59]
Forbes Riley
I do. It's all my company. Yes, I do. I own 100% of spin, Jim. I Also own the trademark. It's kind of funny to watch. Watch. All the life lessons that I learned I now take into working with lots of other people. So then one more fast forward. So I'm doing whatever Spin Jim. I'm doing home shopping. I'm living there, raising two babies. And then Covid hit. Remember that? Yeah. What were you doing?
- [29:22]
Travis
What were you doing during COVID What was. Not much because it. I literally started a, like, live events company.
- [29:29]
Forbes Riley
Oh, no.
- [29:30]
Travis
Maybe four months before. So we. We were literally. We were hosting international retreats. And, yeah, that got shut down pretty immediately. And then I started a software company after that.
- [29:42]
Forbes Riley
So. So the crazy thing was home shopping, by the way, started filming from our homes, which I thought was really cool because one of my big product was a trampoline. So now I'm, you know, tramping up and down on my trampoline, and I'm spin Jimming. And it was fine for a little while. And then the beautiful love of my life was in a horrible motorcycle accident. And so he's a top bodybuilder. And now we're sitting in a wheelchair for six months, and I'm not quite sure what we're doing. And my daughter. And this is where the story makes kind of a goofy movie. You ever see the movie Joy? Joy Mangano? Is this Jennifer Lawrence?
- [30:12]
Travis
I don't think so.
- [30:12]
Forbes Riley
It's fun to watch. She's a young woman, not unlike me, from Long Island, New York, whose dad's an inventor who takes a product onto home shopping, played by Bradley Cooper. And what happens? This is the part of my movie that doesn't make any sense. My kids are juniors. The twins, boy, girl doing homework upstairs. My daughter comes downstairs, said, mommy, what are you working on? And I said, nothing. And she literally said, my mom's doing nothing. She said, how about we build a company? And I'm like, oh, little girl, that's nice. I said, why don't you just get a B in English, okay? And she looks at me. She said, mom, can I just share something with you? I'm like, yeah. You know, all those events that you take me to and all things. I've been working with your friends. I've built Joe Theisman, the NFL football player, and Les Brown. I built some of their YouTube channels, their website, and they paid me. And here's my bank account of six figures. And I'm like, where did you get this money?
- [31:04]
Travis
Yeah.
- [31:04]
Forbes Riley
She's like, mom, you're the only one who doesn't believe in me. And I'm like, no, that's not true. I'm the only one who wants you to be in English. What are you doing? And she said, I code. I write funnels. I do this and I do that. And she said, I've been making money for a while now. And I'm like, huh? Really? And so she sat me down and said, how about I make us a million dollars in a year, otherwise you don't have to work with me. And I swear I'm looking at this kid like you're looking at me going, huh? How old are your kids?
- [31:29]
Travis
5 and 6.
- [31:30]
Forbes Riley
I want you to imagine fast forward a little bit. One of your kids turns you and said, let me make you a million dollars. You're like, okay. So she said, mom. Then she said something interesting because I had never been been challenged. She said, you have to focus. You can either do your fitness product or we teach how you pitch, because I know you love doing that. And I had a small class that I was doing. I said, why do I have to choose? She said, mom, if you don't focus. And I'm like, these are lessons I teach. I got this kid telling me this. And I very begrudgingly said, you know what? I'll put Spin Jim on the side because it's manufactured in China. Probably not a good time to go visit China. Yeah. I said, let's focus on pitching. But I can't teach anyone to pitch. I can just do it. I can give them their pitch because at that point I got hired by a lot of companies to write their pitch for them. Sure. And she said, can I share something with you that maybe you don't know? And I'm like, still looking at this kid going, what?
- [32:16]
Travis
How old is she at this time?
- [32:17]
Forbes Riley
17. She's a junior in high school. And she says, you do the same thing all the time. Excuse me, I am a genius at pitching. She said, yeah, funny thing about that. I've been. She's a system girl. I've been watching your infomercials, and I've been watching episodes of Fit tv. Do you know you do the same thing over and over again? I'm like, no, I don't. She's like, yes, you do. Let me show it to you. And we broke it out into this eight step formula, and then we started pitching everything in the house to each other. And everything worked with this, this, this formula. I thought, oh, my God, this is crazy. I never looked at it that way. She said, here's what I want you to do. And I'd never done A webinar I didn't really understand. I watched my friends do webinars.
- [32:51]
Travis
Sure.
- [32:51]
Forbes Riley
I watched them call me. Tai Lopez and Russell, all friends called and said, you know, how do we take infomercial formats and put it on Internet? Can you what you did a lot of what's in this book. And that's how the video sales letter happened. It's a combination of what we used to do on infomercials. Anthony Morrison's another big one. He went from having best selling book series to being one of the top digital marketers of all time. Because he understood how to influence persuade through a TV camera basically. And so we had our first webinar, had 25 people on it. I had a thousand dollar product. I created a four month training with me live. Okay, let's go for it. And I had clickfunnels for three years. I used to pay my $97 a month. Then I paid my 297. I had a lot of pretty funnels. I never attached one of them to a. I never launched any of them. I didn't know how. And I had paid money. That was the thing that she noticed too. I paid two different agencies to help me and neither one did ultimately. And so she saw me quote unquote get screwed over and waste money. And that's where her energy's like, mom, look, I'm gonna save you is what she was saying. I'm like, okay. So I go and do this on a Wednesday night and she calls me and said I, I called him the next morning. I said, what does the K stand for? So what do you mean? I said, well it's been said, it says 0 for like 3 years and now it says 25k. What does the K stand for? She said, mom, you sold all 25 people in that room a thousand dollar product. You made $25,000 last night. And I'm like, excuse me, can we do that again?
- [34:12]
Travis
Yeah.
- [34:13]
Forbes Riley
And here's the funny thing. You know what four times 25 is? It's a hundred. That means we had a six figure business in four weeks. Nine months later we're walking across Russell's stage getting a two comma club award. Cause our one funnel made a million dollars. Turns out that she is a genius at systems. She became the CEO of our company for two years it was just us and one VA. We now have a team of like 20 all over the world doing a million dollars a month. And what we're doing is we're teaching people. She's taking all the things that her mom knew how to do for all of these years. And we have 128,000 students.
- [34:44]
Travis
That's awesome. Love that.
- [34:46]
Forbes Riley
Makes money.
- [34:47]
Travis
So she's still working with you on that entire business?
- [34:50]
Forbes Riley
She's the CEO.
- [34:51]
Travis
She runs the whole thing.
- [34:52]
Forbes Riley
She does. She runs my business and she also runs her brother's business, which is a software business agency called gsd. It stands for Get Shit Done. And then we've gone on to again, part of the movie. You're like, doesn't this movie sound a little too coincidental? So then I said, seven years ago, I want to do a TED Talk. I want to talk about pitching. And I applied locally to Tampa, and they called me and I'm like, oh, they called me to tell me they don't want me. I'm sorry, what? They said, yeah, we called you because you're not allowed to pitch on a TEDx stage. And I said, no, I'm not going to pitch. I'm going to teach pitching. And they're like, you know, we've seen you in commercial, girl. You're going to sell something. And I thought, okay, thank you very much. They're probably right. I might have seven years ago, might
- [35:32]
Travis
have sold something just habitually. Yeah. Just kind of just kicked in at the end.
- [35:36]
Forbes Riley
I know, you're right. You're right. And now. But so I reorganized my pitch this January, and I got five offers. And the first offer, and this is a really fun story, the first offer was in St. Pete, my hometown. And I called my daughter and I said, you know, why don't you call the organizer? You grew up here. She just moved here. Offer whatever help you can to make this a great event for your mom. But while you're on the phone now, this is really funny. When she was eight years old, she saw something and saved my company a lot of money. Because she came in as a kid, we were all adults sitting around the table trying to figure something out. We all knew the rules of the game. She didn't. Her suggestion was the only one that worked. And I said to her, every company needs a kid. Every company needs somebody that's that out of the box thinking. And so we used to noodle around, going one day we should write that book. And we would talk about it, but we never did anything formal. I said, why don't you pitch the organizer your every company needs a kid's speech? She's like, there is no speech. I said, I know. She said, mom, you have to fill out an application. I said, great. I said McKenna, go get a no, because there's no way she's gonna say yes. You know this. What's the word? Just pitch her. Anyway. Yeah, 38 minutes later, she calls me and she's like, well, so I'm on the phone giving out whatever I can help. And I talked to her about this and I pitched just the way we pitch everything. And guess what? She said applications are closed, but that I have the power to make you a speaker. She was the closing speaker at the St. Pete TEDx, the only one to get a standing ovation. That's awesome. And even though you can't pitch on a TEDx stage, when she got off, she got six offers for paid keynotes. So we talk about her being my oldest and youngest student. I mean, this stuff is lethal. If you really want to get ahead and understand how to get yeses, this is the way to do it.
- [37:13]
Travis
Forbes, I really love the story. There's a bunch of. I've known about your stuff for quite some time, but there's a bunch of pieces of the story that I did not even piece together until we sat down and talked about this today. So I appreciate you so much for coming on the show. Pitch Secrets. A to Z. Literally A to Z. Pick up a copy of this book if you sell anything, which most people listening to this show are selling something. So pick up a copy of Forbes new book. And then where else can people go to get more from you and what you guys are working on now?
- [37:37]
Forbes Riley
Every Sunday since COVID hit, I go live on a masterclass.
- [37:41]
Travis
Great.
- [37:42]
Forbes Riley
And I love. It's free. So you're, you know, I love your audience to come. It's called Pitch Secrets Training.
- [37:46]
Travis
Pitch Secrets Training.
- [37:47]
Forbes Riley
Yep. We have about 1 to 3,000 people who show up every week. And I not only teach what I do, but I'll flip pitches because we're on zoom. I'll interact with as many people as I can. It's about giving away great value and just making people's dreams come true. You know, it's funny. McKenna and I just went to the E Commerce convention. Do you know how much money people are making now?
- [38:08]
Travis
A lot.
- [38:08]
Forbes Riley
Like something just. Well, by the way, HSN died. Hsn, the stock plummeted. QVC bought them a couple of years ago. They had a huge, many, many acre campus in Florida. They just shut all of that down, which doesn't make sense to me because E Commerce is now like the biggest thing ever and they were the first to market. But because they're a big machine, they're a little slow and moving.
- [38:30]
Travis
Right.
- [38:30]
Forbes Riley
And I think they didn't kind of jump on the TikTok Live, Amazon Live, Walmart live.
- [38:35]
Travis
Gary Vee's very bullish on live social shopping right now.
- [38:38]
Forbes Riley
Oh, my gosh. I've been listening to him, but I didn't really get it until this last weekend. When you've got everyone that I met, minimum, a hundred dollars a month, a million dollars a month. I met a gentleman who sells screen doors and umbrellas, a hundred million dollars last year. And you're like, what a girl who sells jeans was at 20 million. Part of me is sitting going, I missed something. Because in my day, I feel like my grandmother, you had to have a gatekeeper.
- [39:02]
Travis
Yeah, right, exactly.
- [39:03]
Forbes Riley
And they didn't let you on with products. I pitched all kind of things that they. Now, your phone is your gateway. And the crazy thing is you don't need an audience. So TikTok is a really funny algorithm. If your thing is doing well and people responding to it, they will push it out whether you got an audience or not.
- [39:18]
Travis
That's right.
- [39:19]
Forbes Riley
I didn't know that. And if you're somebody listening, I think everyone should have a side hustle anyway.
- [39:24]
Travis
Yeah, agreed.
- [39:26]
Forbes Riley
This is one of the ways to do it now. You combine that with. How do you pitch to camera? What a winning combination that would be, don't you think?
- [39:32]
Travis
No kidding. Yeah. Like I said, it's not just coming from you. It's. A lot of people are talking about this right now. Live social shopping is going to be taken over, I think, in the last. In the next few years. It's. It's basically just. It's the TikTok iFoodation of QVC is what it is, you know.
- [39:47]
Forbes Riley
Yes. Because. And that's how I always felt about products. I loved QVC for that reason, or the concept of it. Because if you walk into a department store, there's lots of clothes hanging there. You have to pitch yourself, do I want the white shirt? Do I want the blue shirt? Do I want the ruffles? Right. It's all in your own head. The cool thing about home shopping is that there's somebody telling you the features and benefits of a product and telling stories about why you'd want it. And I love watching products come to life. I just. Having done now several thousand products, I just think it's wonderful. But somebody just called me the godmother of TikTok shop better than the grandmother. But I understand that having done as many products as I have, and I did it before the UCG thing. People would send me products my entire career. I love doing that. Now all of a sudden, the UCG thing, they send it and they expect you to make your own and edit your own and upload your own. And I don't. Where's my team?
- [40:34]
Travis
Yeah, exactly. And they don't pay you much for UGC stuff.
- [40:38]
Forbes Riley
No.
- [40:38]
Travis
Yeah, we turn down a lot of UGC stuff now.
- [40:41]
Forbes Riley
Well, you know, but then the question is, do you want to take the risk and have inventory? And that is one of the things that I'm watching people do now. I've had inventory for my spin gym. I understand that's not. That's a whole nother person in your company, though. My advice here is don't do this all alone. You'll make yourself nuts.
- [40:55]
Travis
Yeah. And just start with the base level of just creating an account and trying to sell something on one of these platforms.
- [41:02]
Forbes Riley
Well, the best part, though, is UC Gene. You know what's great about it? You don't own the product, so you only have to work on your pitch.
- [41:08]
Travis
Yeah, right. That's what, that's what I mean. It's like you just, you. You work on one skill set at a time, and then we can move into other skill sets. You don't have to build a distribution engine and ship products and own and have inventory. And you don't have to do any of that right now. Just get on, create an account, pick up this book, and learn how to sell a product that's somebody else's. Make some commissions, pockets of money, and then you can start doing your own thing later on.
- [41:31]
Forbes Riley
So I've worked with a lot of coaches and throughout this growing period of last six years, and I do find one of the biggest mistakes that people make is thinking they need their own product, their own course, their own training. This is my method. If you've never sold anything, my biggest advice is not really in here, but sell somebody else's product. We used to call it affiliate marketing. It's not only can you make money, but you understand the skills and your feelings aren't hurt when somebody says, no, I don't like it. It's not yours. Because when you give birth to your own baby, you may be so beautiful.
- [42:02]
Travis
Right?
- [42:02]
Forbes Riley
Well.
- [42:02]
Travis
And you have another skill that you can use to sell the thing that you just created, right? Yeah. Forbes, fascinating conversation. I appreciate you so much. Pitch Secrets A to Z. Go pick up a copy of this book and thank me later.
- [42:14]
Forbes Riley
Forbes.
- [42:14]
Travis
I appreciate you for coming on. Everybody else listening. Remember, money only solves your money. Problems, but it's easier to solve the rest of your problems when you got money in the bank. So let's start there. Here on the Travis Makes Money podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Catch you next time. Peace.