How This Hollywood Producer's Billion-Dollar Storytelling Framework Can 10X Your Speaking Skills

4 steps to communicating persuasively with clarity and power

Brant Pinvidic and his “3-Minute Rule” book – designing the arc of a story. Author montage.

In the last edition of “Upstream, Full-Stack,” we talked about the importance of managing your “Optics,” the soft skills at the core of your “brand.”

In this edition, we’ll dig more deeply into a simple framework for saying less, and getting more.

I learned this method while training under Hope Gurion in Teresa Torres’ “ProductTalk” Academy in Defining Outcomes (which I highly recommend), and it continues to be transformative for not just my speaking and presentation skills, but for all my communication.

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Meet Brant Pinvidic

After thrashing for three weeks on their biggest-ever pitch, writing hundreds of Post-It notes, Hollywood producer Brant Pinvidic had a sudden realization:

“The wall was filled with everything I wanted to say, but I had to find just what needed to be said.”

Despite countless hours brainstorming and crafting their message, Brant was about to toss out most of it and meet with the head of ABC Television.

And it would all come down to a 5-minute pitch that would determine their future.

Brant’s head of production was speechless:

“You’re going over there with nothing? No paper, no PowerPoint, no budget, no outline, no logo, no episode breakdown. What are you going to even say?”

Brant had worked his way up from modest beginnings in Canada and was starting to achieve success in his producing career, but his pitches had frequently been hit-or-miss.

Now, with everything on the line, he strode into the studio head’s office and spoke just 9 sentences.

An hour later, Brant and his production company had a deal to produce the first season of “Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition.”

The breakthrough

Brant had always had a decent win rate, but this realization was at the core of his new approach:

“I wanted to explain it all. I wanted to show how much I knew, how much work I had done, how smart I was. I was trying to sell instead of conveying information. I wasn’t letting the ideas do the work. I wasn’t telling a story.”

By learning to say less, and focusing more on the story, Brant ended up closing far more, going on to produce such TV hits as The Biggest Loser, Bar Rescue, and Master Chef.

He would eventually use his framework to sell more than three hundred TV projects and fifty TV series to generate a billion dollars in revenue.

The 3-Minute Rule

The key lies in getting people hooked, and saying everything that has to be said in just 3 minutes.

To do this, the WHAC storytelling framework is broken down into four parts:

• What is It?

• How Does it Work?

• Are you Sure?

• Can You Do It?

Let’s dig into each part below

What is It?

The core of your story lasts the longest, at about ninety seconds.

Your goal with this section is to get people to understand you and the compelling idea. To do this effectively, you’ll need to take advantage of the power of the Feynman Technique, which focused on true understanding as the ability to explain the most complex ideas as one would to a six year-old.

You’ll summarize clearly what your ask is.

How Does it work?

The next-longest part of your story, at about sixty seconds, is your time to share the most important mechanics and details of how you’ll be able to deliver on your offer, approach, or process.

This is your opportunity to show why you’re passionate about your story, how you’re different, and why you believe it’s actually possible.

It’s also the opportunity to share why you would choose this approach over any other.

Are You Sure?

You’ve now got your audience thinking.

In about 20 seconds, you’ll back up your core concept claims with facts and figures. What data, numbers, or logos do we have to share?

In this section, you can share how you know there’s a need for this, the potential market value, and how it’s actually possible to pull off.

Can You Do It?

Finally, in the final 10 seconds, you’ll proactively address your audience’s skepticism.

What in your experience and background have prepared you for this?

Why have others failed in the past, and why you can and will succeed now.

You network, connections, and teams that will help you bring this to life.

The WHAC “Story Arc”

The 4 components of the WHAC framework make up the 3 key parts of the “story arc”:

Conceptualize— What is it and how does it work? The “heart” of your presentation. (About 90 seconds.)

Contextualize—Are you sure? Is this true, is it real, is it right? (About a minute.)

Actualize—Can you do it? Could this actually happen the way it’s being described? (30 seconds)

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The WHAC Framework in Action

The WHAC storytelling framework has been used in everything from pitching movies, TV shows, to tech, petroleum exploration, and financial products.

Just as importantly, it can be used to both up-level your virtual presentation skills, as well as help educators more effectively capture and hold their student’s attention and teach persuasively.

In this way, you accomplish more, more effectively, all with less than 10 PowerPoint slides in within less than 3 minutes.

Check out Brant’s website for more information, including more about his book, “The 3-Minute Rule.”

The book does a great job taking you through the process of capturing all the ideas for your story on a series of Post-Its, organizing them across the four W-H-A-C dimensions, and outlining and crafting the pitch of your life.

Also check out this great article Brant wrote in Forbes outlining his “3-Minute Rule.”

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Insider Tip: This entire newsletter began as a Mind Map, then laid out using the WHAC framework outline structure.

If you have a big pitch coming up and want to chat about the process, reply to this email and let me know how I can help.

Until next time,

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