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Last weekend I drove four hours to Charlotte to see Zach Bryan and Caamp with some friends.
Somewhere around hour two I put on a My First Million episode featuring Oz Pearlman - world's #1 mentalist, former Wall Street analyst, America's Got Talent finalist. My wife was immediately hooked. By the time we got to Charlotte we had moved on to his Diary of a CEO conversation and listened to the whole thing.
Everything Oz did during his come up was dependent on convincing a complete stranger to stop, engage, and say yes. His learnings and lessons can be applied to everything from sales to dating.
The three things worth stealing are below.
The Briefing
Stories you should know
My take: a coffee shop in Minnesota gave their best recipe to 400 competitors and turned them into a distribution network. No ad spend. No sales team. Just a product worth sharing and the confidence to let it go. Most companies treat their best ideas like trade secrets. Little Joy treated theirs like a channel strategy.
My take: Elon is suing OpenAI for abandoning its nonprofit mission and enriching themselves off technology that was supposed to benefit humanity. Then, under cross-examination, he admits xAI trained on OpenAI's own models. His defense: "everyone does it." You can't make this up.
How to Sell like Oz the Mentalist
Here is the link to the full conversation - skip to 6 minutes.
1.Prepare for Everything
At 14, Oz talked his way into restaurant gigs doing magic. He got shooed away from tables constantly until he realized the trick wasn't the trick. It was the approach.
"I prepare in advance for what will work, what won't work, and all the troubleshoots in between. Plan A, B, C, D — all the way to Z."
Before your next call, identify the one thing this prospect could say that would completely blow it up. Figure out your answer to that scenario first.
❌ "What if they ask about pricing?"
✅ "What if they say they just signed with a competitor?"
2. Tease the Good News
Oz never opens with "Do you want to see a magic trick?" (most people said no).
Instead he goes with: "Did you hear what's going on tonight? It's your lucky day."
Same energy, no off-ramp. The question is open-ended, positive, and creates a gap they need to close. There's nothing to say no to.
❌ "This is a cold call but it’s well researched - got 5 minutes?"
✅ "Glad I caught you - I've been working with a couple companies in your space. Have you heard our name?”
3. Lead with the Wow
Oz is clear about one thing. The intro only buys you the room.
"Now you better have your A game. I better have a trick that's going to blow them away."
There's nothing worse than getting on a demo excited to see the product and watching the rep spend the first 5 minutes showing you how data gets imported”
Nobody buys a house because the pipes are clean. You don't start with the plumbing. You start with the view.
❌ Login screen. Settings menu. "So this is how data gets injested."
✅ Open with the dashboard they'd actually care about — the end result, fully built, looking exactly like what their world looks like when it gets better.
Until next Thursday,
TG
P.S. I reply to all emails