The Hollywood Story Framework That Closes Deals

0:00Hey everybody, how's it going? My name is Andres Figueira and I'm going to be your host for the day. This show is brought to you by The Global Talent Company. We're helping fast-growing teams hire exceptional remote talent from Argentina, South Africa, and beyond. And we're also connecting companies with world-class professionals who bring skill, reliability, and global perspective to every role. So if your team's looking to grow with proven remote talent, head on over to theglobaltalent.co and check out how we can help. And today with me here, I'm speaking with Mari Rogo, CEO of RIP Media Group, a company that's speeding your sales cycle with video, content, and sales pitches that will make you shine.

0:38So, Mari, it's a pleasure to have you on the show. How are you doing? I'm fantastic. Thank you for being here with me and I appreciate that intro. You nailed it. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. And Maury, just so that we can get the audience a bit more in context into who you are and what your company does, would you be able to provide a bit of your background and just put us in a bit more context in that? Of course, of course. So for 30 years, I was seeing the same problem. I was in high tech for 15 years. I was in Hollywood for 15 years. And, you know, now we moved to Miami. So now I'm in another international city.

1:14And what I saw is the same problem. And that is when you can't differentiate yourself, if you're not unique in some way, customer gets confused, customer buys the only option, the cheapest thing. And that means most companies are losing out on all their value. They're not selling it. They're not sharing it. People don't understand what they do because, especially in high tech or biotech or things that are more complex, they keep focusing on the features and the little things that they built and they grade their special sauce, but they're not telling it the right way. That special sauce is incredibly important.

1:47You tell it the wrong way or at the wrong time, you lose. So I've been fixing that problem for, you know, a couple of decades now. Wow. Wow. Wow. And in terms of fixing that problem, are you fixing it for a certain type of company or industry or are you helping everybody out? It's funny. So it's everybody now, but it really started off really focused. So I was in high tech. I worked for a company that we sold to Cisco. And it was one of those where we showed up, you know, did a 90 minute presentation trying to get the right people in the room. And I'm not kidding. I mean, it was like an 80 point PowerPoint or 80 slide PowerPoint.

2:20And I said, can I can I adjust this? Can I have permission? I was young then. Right. So yeah, so I got it down to six slides. I told a story at the beginning that blended everything together. And then I just started asking questions, finding the needs, find the pain, find the challenges. And I had a couple of sales managers come to one of my pitches that was at a huge bank, one of our largest banks now in America. So it's a bank of America. It was Bank of America. Okay. So it was Bank of America. And so when we left there, it went really well. And I'm the youngest guy on the team. They said, we liked how you did that.

2:55How about coming in, you know, training the rest of us, training the rest of the team on how you did that so we can get right to the core of it. Said, oh, that's great. And so I became the guy that was, well, let me put the really great slides together, but here's how you tell the story. It's not just the slides. It's not the deck. It's the things you're saying. Start with a punch. End with something like, it's, you know, your story will decide whether you thrive or you die. so you start with the punch you end with the punch then you move to the next and you keep doing that you know start with that tell a little story end with a punch so there's techniques i put together and i put all these together and there's 11 core stories that companies need to tell so that they can get their customers to buy right and so what am i really saying you get that core now and you can actually load it if it's done well you can load it into a couple different ais and get those stories back out for top of funnel where you get more companies coming in.

3:53Middle of funnel, and this is huge, this is really where I'm hired a lot of the time, is we're getting people in, but we're losing them. They're ghosting us. They're going somewhere else because they're not delivering value. And if you deliver the right value, all of a sudden price doesn't become a factor. You can actually charge more because you're delivering more value in your, not just your pitch, your stories, but what your product does, but it's the transformation story that matters. And then it's bottom close more deals and then get recurring revenue, build a community, and that's how to go.

4:25So interesting, right? And so, so you asked me the question, so it's been high tech companies, biotech companies, real complex, but now I'm actually helping, for example, I mean, there's been hundreds, but now I'm helping a company that's a, it's an association and they are not doing the best job possible building that community. I'm like, huh, community, This is exactly like bottom of the funnel. You need to be telling these stories. You need to build your channel. That's your city president, your chapter presidents. Have them tell the story, give them the right tools, give them the most value, and then we grow it.

4:58Now we're growing. And it's only been a couple months, but I transformed everything. Their website's completely new and different. I did that in about 35 days. I generated 50 videos for them that are exactly on point to what each of those cities need for their audience. because if you're in Tennessee and you've got Colossus and Colossus 2 being built by Elon Musk, you know, for Grok, you know, you're telling a different story than if you're in Austin, Texas, right? Or if you're in Hollywood, California, right? So they all have to be different. So my team is, you know, it's me with this sort of major strategy and the techniques and I have, it's a much smaller team than it used to be.

5:39I used to have 30 people. Now I have a handful, but every one has command of a couple AI tools that they use to create. So it's, you know, now I've literally got a team of a couple AI agents and multiple people. So it's a very different look than even two years ago. Wow, that's crazy. But I'm loving how then the fact of what I feel the core of your businesses and what you've managed to do is help brands repurpose the story they're telling because it's all about the narrative. and you're noticing the issues there happen with how they're telling their story then. Oh, yeah. And so what happens, usually at first, if they're pitching and they're going out and they're trying to raise capital, right?

6:18They're trying to raise funds. They need a million, three million, five million. They're really good then. It's usually pretty tight. We certainly help out with companies in that stage. But what happens over the next months and years, you start interacting with clients and this one wants this and this one wants this. And then your engineering team and your product manager right they're all saying well we're building this for this and this and this and so these slides and these decks and these conversations slowly turn into this whole feature list what we do why we're so cool and the customer is saying i don't care why you know how much stuff you have in there what's it going to do for me with them like just pretend wifm is on their forehead what's in it for me?

7:04Tell me what's in it for me. Am I going to transform my business? Do I get to watch my daughter's soccer game because I'm not stuck at work because your software platform is working for me? You know, like tell me the result for me. And people just, you know, every company out there, large to small, they forget this over time. And sure, you know, we're listening to customers, listening to product team, listening to engineering, listening to your developers. It's a lot of hats, but you got to remember that story that matters to the customer. it's all about the customer of course now and now that you're framing it in this way i do understand that that companies they usually get a bit too in depth with the technical jargon and that's where they lose people because it's talking about all the specific new attributes that they have and it's just a bunch of i don't want to say nonsense because the people who understand they appreciate it but the normal consumer or customer is not uh such a savvy person with every specific detail that's in this new software or whatever service that the company may be selling so that is super cool man being able to relay the story in the customer's perspective i think it it has a lot of value and you're actually as i'm hearing you speak i'm remembering for example the apple keynotes i've seen for example i was gonna bring that up that's so great andres yeah go man go um i'm remembering that and it's how yeah we applied this new feature and it's helped this person have more time when you said go watch my daughter soccer it's like yeah this person now has the ability to spend time with his grandkids and that is something that is invaluable because he can do it through facetime so nobody cares about how much bandwidth facetime has how many people you can talk to but it's the story of yeah this guy is now much more connected to his family thanks to that so let me let me two things let me yes and you which is a hollywood thing like an improv thing.

8:53So yes, and see things. One is, let me ask your audience and you, and again, if we were live chat right now, it'd be great to have this. Who is the inventor, right? Who is the inventor of the MP3 player, the original MP3? Can you throw out a guess? I have no, wait, was it Steve Jobs? I'm not even sure. It is not. It was 10 years earlier that you are right in that. That's the story we all remember. Because he came out there, and here's the difference. Here's the example. Everybody's saying, we have 32 megabytes. We have the capacity for 400 megabytes. We have the, and again, by the way, it was megabytes back then.

9:31How ridiculous, right? But he came out there, and he's like, with this thing, you can walk around with a thousand songs in your pocket. And people are like, I get it. I want a thousand songs in my pocket. I've got my playlist. I've got the one that my girlfriend made for me in college. I still want to listen to that, you know, whatever it is. And so he made it real, relatable. He made it easy to understand. It's short and simple. It's KISS, right? Keep it short and simple. And it's a thousand songs in your pocket where everybody else is talking features. They're not even talking benefits. He killed it.

10:07And so with that, I started really paying more attention. I was like, maybe there's a bit of a science to what I'm doing here. It's not just art. so I started putting down and this is when I moved to Hollywood actually I had all this in the back of my mind I was kind of putting this together to be a book and then in Hollywood I started doing script reads with like my movie posters are over there I could twist the camera but one of the one of the best ones one of the best examples everybody knows is the Dark Knight the the Bat yeah Batman so again not not mine but I was working with the producer and the owner of the Batman franchise so So he was talking about how every scene needs to move people forward in the story.

10:48And I was like, that's the same as a presentation. That's the same as a pitch when you're going to raise capital. So, huh, what else? And so I'm learning, I'm learning, I'm going through scripts. And I boiled it down to every scene. And this now means in our world, right, the business world, every commercial, every social media post, every slide needs to have one of these elements. Exactly. It's emotion. What are the main emotions people buy? Is it sexy? Does it sizzle? Is it touching? Can I go watch my daughter's soccer game? Or am I stuck at work? No, I want them to spend quality time with her.

11:23Is it you? Unique. Totally unlike everybody else in my market, right? I stand apart because I'm so different. Or I'm doing something funny when they're going with fear, right? And I said those two because I said, S-T-U, can I be funny? Can we make this humorous at all? Can I bring a smile out? That's great. We all want to smile. And then fear, fear of missing out or lack of security. Big one. Think about insurance companies. Allstate, they're all doing what they used to do was just pure fear. Now it's fear with funny, right? So, but if you can mix it in with, because there's now hundreds that we can buy, for example, but who's standing out?

12:02So I call it the stuff. What's the stuff in your campaign and people don't know, right? Well, is it sexy, touching, unique, funny, or deliver fear? What are you delivering? What's the stuff? And then you go, okay, do I even have a brand voice? Can we be funny? Can we, right? So that's kind of where we start. Let's start with some emotion. What can people feel by watching your commercial or when you talk to them? I feel you're placing companies to have like an identity crisis when they speak to you so they understand what they're missing. It's like, do you know who you are? They're like, not really.

12:36Let me tell you then.

12:41Well, all my clients, they're fantastic. I appreciate them. But yeah, I wouldn't be there. You know, this is great. And the fact is when it gets really tough, some days are pretty tough. It's like, hey, if they didn't have a problem, I wouldn't be making a living. If the customer didn't have a problem, if it was easy, they'd never call me. Exactly. And you're also, I imagine, from the way you're telling me, you frame it so excellently. And it's the fact that you're able to pinpoint what they're missing. And companies, they can't be prideful about this. They need to be humble and understand that there is a gap there and that they can be better and that they can work on that.

13:19So that's the value I feel that is added. And that is amazing, man. And I also heard now when you were explaining to me a bit about The Dark Knight and everything, you're writing a book about this then, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. So it's, it's been, so it's, it's all these lessons. So it's all the lessons, what I'm going to call frameworks. So it's, and I just, I just finally came up with the name. I had a couple of different ones, but now it's just unique. Your story can be your superpower, right? Like your story can be your superpower because I've got clients. It's really, it's kind of cool because I was in, you know, kind of superhero movies.

13:54I was pitching with the writer of Iron Man to, you know, to Sony and this, it was, there's some really fun stories. from my Hollywood days. But again, I, you know, it was that work there and people don't realize it takes 10 years to get a movie or a slate of movies, you know, funded, created, casted, in production, through production, post-production, the whole way through. And that timeline is, it's too long for me. It's like, I need something. It's, you know, clients fast. So I just know my timeline. So I thought, huh, I'm doing these movies. I'm going to love doing the trailer. I'm going to love putting the promo package and the marketing package together.

14:41And then it, it hit me. Wait, my spot is the marketing. Let me sell this movie. You know, let me get out there. And then once I did that, anyway, sorry, enough about me, but you were asking about the, about the client. So yeah, the book, you're asking about the book. So unique. How are you unique? So one, one way is most people go in, like, let's, let's pretend we're into one of these, you know, one of these, uh, what do they call those things where everybody gets together? You know, there's 20 people in a room and like, tell me about yourself. And the insurance person stands on, I do life and health.

15:14And you're like, Oh my God, why am I standing here? And then if somebody stands up and says on your way out of here, you're driving home, you spill the coffee on your lap and you crash into a school bus. You want to make sure that every one of those kids and your family is taken care of. I sell insurance and I'm here to protect your family. That hit home and I'm not even being sold on insurance. I'm like, I need insurance now. Right. I don't even, I don't, I don't sell insurance, but that's what I, so I did have a client and that's why I said, look, can we switch this story? Because what you're doing right now, you're losing everybody.

15:49By the time you're done with your one minute, they're already scrolling on their phone. Like, what am I going to say when it's my turn? and at the networking meeting, that's what I was saying. So that became his elevator pitch and that became the website and that became the story that he would tell. So that's the elevator pitch. So that's the very first, your intro. So you need that intro story, your elevator pitch. Then you need the stories that move people through the sales cycle. And that's what the book is all about. So it's examples of my clients, some that aren't, some that aren't my clients, but they just, Apple does an amazing job, right?

16:23I've worked with Microsoft. I have to work with LinkedIn. I haven't worked with Apple, but they do an amazing job. So I put examples from Apple in the book. And so what are the best doing? How can you tell the right story at the right time to the right audience to get them to the next step? And I mean the right time, like you don't want to, they land on your website and you're like, sign up for our, get a demo. No, man, I do not want to spend an hour with your inside sales rep. I'm just looking around. Give me something of value. So I know I should stay. Of course. Like when you go into a store and then the store click comes right up to you and he's like, what do you need?

17:00And I'm like, I'm just browsing. Please leave me alone. Give me a second and I'll reach out if I need you. Oh my goodness. Exactly. It's exactly the same. It's exactly that. So don't attack the people. It's the wrong time. And Maury, when is this book coming out? Because like I'm hearing you and I'm like, I want to read this. I want to know. Thank you. Thank you. It's in its final version right now. I'm sending out to a couple, frankly, I'm sending it out to a couple of CEOs to get their forward. Right. So, you know, read it. I've helped them before. I'd like them to do the, you know, the forward, the first, the first paragraphs of the book, and then it's ready to go.

17:35It'll be out. You know, I'm being told to wait for the first of the year, but I really want it out before the holidays really kick in. So. Oh, that is so cool, man. And I love how you're, You've been able to really detail and outline what your process is because I know a lot of people who are hell of sales rep and are excellent with marketing and all that, but they aren't able to actually describe how what they do and why it works. And you seem to be very on top of what's been working for you, what hasn't. And going from tech to Hollywood to even being the author of this, you have a lot of experience, man.

18:13And in terms of another campaign that has really worked well for you, I understand the insurance one that you told me. Do you have any other examples of stuff like that? Because I just love your punchlines, man. They really hit home. Thanks. Thank you. Honestly, I'm not saying this because it's an exaggeration. There literally are hundreds. So here, I'll give you – again, the insurance company one, there's a bunch there. that we usually don't work with companies that small, honestly. That was just, I was literally there. I'm like, I can't let this person keep doing that. Let me talk to him. So let's say, let's say high tech.

18:54So high tech company, they're going out and they're raising capital. And this was, oh, this was, this is a great one. So I can't say the name, but they ended up raising, after we work with them, they ended up getting a commit for$10 million. Okay. And so the before and the after, okay. day of the before, you know, there's like some interest, you know, maybe you could help us, maybe not. Let's, let me just kind of see what you're putting out there in the world. Let me just see your pitch. So I couldn't understand it. I mean, it was all the classic stuff. It was the classic slides, like here's this, you know, market opportunity.

19:26The slides had just text all over them and it was completely confusing. And, you know, there's the future of this. Again, I get You have to have some vision. You have to have, here's the future. Here's the future. But if everything is the future, then what do you have now? Like, what's an investor thinking, am I, have I put money into this? Of course, it's all an assumption if you just have plans for the future. Exactly. There's got to be something now. Can we sell something now? And then we build on top of it. So I revamped their whole deck. And I'm thinking of this one because he just sent me a testimonial video, which is very, very touching to me because he said, before we talk to you, we had pitched, I think it was dozens of times.

20:07After you revamped our deck, we got a commit for $10 million. And so I took the hour and I boiled it down to about 17 minutes. And I gave them what I call the unicorn story. The unicorn story is, you know, in a sense, if anybody's listening, wants to know this, the unicorn story is, and when you're doing a pitch, the unicorn means the companies that got billion dollar valuations. If you're a billion dollar valuation, you're called a unicorn. So what did they do to pitch? And it's, there is a major problem in the world and it is coming for you. There will be winners and there's going to be losers.

20:48And you put a couple examples out there. There are some special ways, a special path, certain technology that will get you and everybody else to the winner's table. Here's an example. Here are three wise, why you need it, why you need it now, why you need it from us. And here are our next steps together. Are you interested? Yes. Tell us more. Great. Then you can get into the details, you know, the financials, this and this. That story is so compelling. People lean in. What is that? I'm in. They're not getting the same deck that they saw 50 times, 100 times before. So that unicorn pitch is a really, really helpful.

21:31And that was a big win that's very, very recent. You know, my whole philosophy is give value, put so much out there. And there's a great, a great philosophy, which is basically put so much out there that's free, but people will hire you to implement. You know, a lot of people will read and go implement on their own. A lot of people read and say, this is great, but I need some help. You know what I mean? I'm already taxed. I'm already wearing seven hats and kind of, you know, that kind of thing. But this one was like so close to me that I keep thinking, should I put everything out there? I mean, this is a lot of info.

22:05This is what I get paid to do. And I'm just running down the path of, I'm going to give all this value for$20. And then if there's a few people out there that say, yeah, and we need your help, I'm right here to help out. That's beautiful, man. Because in a way, you're giving back to all the community and everybody who's willing to learn on their own. And once you learn from the teacher, they'll want to keep learning from you, I feel. It's like, I'll read your book and I'll be, I still have questions. I'm going to hit Maury up and just see what he tells me if I have this query, if I want to go this way.

22:37So I feel it will be an excellent business decision for you. And Maury, you mentioned then that you had about 30 people before with you in your group, but now it's slimmed down because you're leveraging AI and different AI agents to optimize the work your employees do and everything. Would you be able to exactly tell us how many people you have working under you right now or helping you out? And specifically, I'm also curious into how you're leveraging the AI, if you're using a specific LLM or personalized ones you created, because if that's agents, I imagine it goes that way. I'm just curious in all that aspect.

23:13Absolutely. So we had 30 people and I say 30 because that was the 30 full time. And then I had about another 20 contractors at that time. So this is just, you know, I'm kind of looking at the, you know, what year is it? You know, seven, seven to 10 years ago. And so a couple of things happened. So we were really growing fast. And I, you know, I, it was at the, at the beginning, I was like, I'd like to get to a, to a million in revenue. That was the goal. Let me get to a million in revenue. and I also had a philosophy which is OGP, only good people. I only want good people working with me and I mean good from the heart.

23:51They can be fantastically creative, fantastic producers, but if they're the bad apple that spoils everybody else or they're arrogant or they're, I don't want them. I just don't want those folks around. So I put a good group of people together that were passionate and loved this. So we got the 30 people. we got oh this was this was really cool so um that million dollars was hit in the first quarter of that year so it was it was great it was amazing it was really amazing that was the goal for the whole year and then i looked because we were just so busy and um so that way that was amazing thing so it was a million dollars for the first quarter yeah thank you thank you it was truly very exciting So then it was, you know, we were going to have a baby.

24:39And then do I want to keep traveling around like this? I want to change things a bit. And it wasn't all like at once. I'm like, oh, this is good. I want to continue on. So we grew further. But I knew how many hours I was putting in and how much I'd be away from the, you know, how much I'd be away from, you know, my home. And I didn't want that for this baby that was on the way. I want to be the dad that's there. So I said, how can I change things? How can I adjust? And that's when I actually switched from, we're creating all this content to let me help people and let me teach people how to do it.

25:08And we'll do these pieces and we'll teach you how to do the rest. So it was kind of this combination piece. So then it became, well, I don't need, you know, seven producers and, you know, five developers and five editors. Basically, this is the breakdown, if I remember right. You know, roughly four or five sales and sales, you know, that kind of a thing. I mean, it was that kind of breakdown. And so breaking it down to now, again, this last two years is a huge change. And what I did is I started asking people if they'd be okay being a contractor or part-time because the needs were less and less as I started going down this new path, but the tools started to skyrocket.