Doug Hall, Master Inventor, best-selling author, and TV personality

Empathy is not a checkbox, it’s the difference between making or losing a sale.

In episode 6 of the Pitch Masters Podcast, I had the privilege of interviewing yet another one of my heroes, Master Inventor, best-selling author, TV personality and serial entrepreneur, Doug Hall. If you don’t know Doug, then I would HIGHLY recommend his books, especially Jumpstart Your Business Brain – a literal instruction manual for coming up with big ideas, road-testing them for maximum confidence, and then pitching them in a winning formula.

Doug is extremely well-known in the entrepreneurial world. His career began as a chemical engineer before he moved into the world of marketing, achieving notable success at Proctor & Gamble where he shipped a record 9 products in 6 months, and promised clients 30 viable product ideas in 30 days. To put this into context, P&G’s expected product development cycle was 1 in 3 months. 

In 1986, Doug founded the Eureka! Ranch, a converted mansion that has hosted the biggest brands on the planet; Nike, Pepsi, AMEX, Disney…you name it. Some of the biggest and most successful ideas in the history of product development were conceived, evolved, and shipped under Doug’s guidance – and this is no fluke. Doug and the team have developed a robust system that is essentially guaranteed to find the next big thing. 

Importantly, Doug’s methods don’t stop at conception. No big idea is worth a dollar without a means to sell it, and Doug Hall is a true Pitch Master. He’s been a judge on Amercian Inventor and Backyard Inventors where he has been on the receiving end of innumerable pitches, and helped many more win significant investments. 

Here’s a clip from the podcast where Doug tells me a story that exemplifies the necessity of finding empathy – I think it’s worth 2 minutes of your life. If our audience doesn’t RELATE to what we’re selling, then there’s no way that they’re ever going to buy. We must understand our customers, their needs, and their challenges, and we must show our audience – whether that’s prospects or investors – exactly what it feels like to be in the customer’s shoes. If we can achieve this, then the sale is in the bag.

Check out episode 6 of the Pitch Masters Podcast on your favourite streaming platform, or visit pitchguy.co.uk for more information and download links. The podcast is 100% FREE, and 100% AD-FREE (no blue ticks either), so I’d encourage you to take advantage of Doug’s incredibly generous offer to feature – it will change the way that you think about ideas and how to sell them.

In a wide-ranging episode, Doug talks about his unique system for coming up with ideas, why he gets senior people to say dumb things, the blueprint for a winning pitch, how to tap into your subconscious, judging some of the best and worst pitches on TV, and creating custom bourbon in under 5 minutes.

Oh, and there’s a little message of thanks at the beginning to all of my listeners from around the world – I’m just blown away by all of the support that I had. THANK YOU. Let me know what you think!