TSP001 | Charlene Miller – Transcription

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John Livesay:
Hey everybody and welcome back to The Successful Pitch. This is your host John Livesay. Today’s guest is Charlene Miller and she’s got tons of energy and great insights about the importance of building the right team to get investors to say yes to your offer as she said, “It’s not about the horse, it’s about the jockey.” So, if the horse is the idea, you don’t want to bet on the horse, you want to bet on the jockey, because the horse can change, the idea can change, but you need a good jockey who can take a great idea and get it across the finish line and if you or people on your team have serial entrepreneur in your background, investors love that because it shows you know how to pivot, you have perseverance, and most importantly, you have passion.

So, we’re going to do that in today’s talk. I was on the phone today with a client and we were talking about the importance of his team and how they’ve worked together before and how we need to bring that passion and perseverance to the front of the pitch so that investors know who they’re investing with. That’s really a key source to getting investors to say yes to you. At the end of the podcast, I’ll give you a link that you can get my three mistakes to avoid while you’re pitching PDF absolutely free. Thanks and enjoy the talk.

Thank you for joining us today on The Successful Pitch. This is John Livesay your host, today we’re thrilled to have Charlene Miller who is the Managing Director of Global Directors, LLC. She has an amazing story to talk about, not only does she raise money, but she raises it faster than anyone else I have ever heard of or met in my life. She is such an interesting person that there’s a book being made on her life. She told me that she’s only one email away from 80% of anybody in the world. So, she has connections like no body’s business. She can find CEOs, board of directors, and money, so I know our audience is going to love hearing from Charlene Miller. Welcome!

Charlene Miller:
Yes, thank you. Nice to meet you John and I love the fact that you live in Hancock Park, because one day we will meet. I have the greatest story from Hancock Park. I’m in Greenwich, Connecticut. I have an office, I work for (#2:30?). I’m a member of the Metropolitan Club, one of the first female members ever, so I used the Metropolitan Club throughout the world and I guess you know my background. I’m the member of the committee of 200 women. I’m no longer YPO, because at 49 they kick you out, so I’m now a member of World Presidents’ Organization, also I was a member of the US Counsel on Competitiveness, which is one of the most important organizations in the world. It’s out of Washington, DC. Www.compete.org will get you to Deborah Wince-Smith. I have some very good bio-tech, nano-tech also lawyer geniuses who needed to get front of the department of defense in 10 days with new technology and she arranged it.

John:
Wow. That’s impressive. Can you tell us a little about your background and how did you get to be so successful and what motivated you to get involved with technology?

Charlene:
Well, first of all, let me tell you I am a few months away from 69.

John:
What?!

Charlene:
Yes!

John:
Amazing. I love it. You got your pulse on the zeitgeist.

Charlene:
So, I’ve had a lot of experience. I have been commuting to Asia from the age of 23 on. I was the gross margin queen for a company called (#3:50?) and Company, which I was a Bloomingdales and (#3:54?) and Company and it was probably one of the highest quality stores in the world. So, at age 23 they gave (#4:01?) shot and put me on a first class ticket on Pan Am and Pan Am, we used to get off in Anchorage and get coffee while they refueled. I actually have spent more time in Narita than most people have ever spent. So, I remember passing my Christmas cards to someone I met at Narita as I was going to Hong Kong and they were going back to New York. Anyway, as a buyer for (#4:30?), I traveled to six countries twice a year in Europe and Asia, so I have spent globally a tremoudmos amount of time throughout the world whether it be Tunis, Tunisia, Egypt, my best friend, one of my best friends took 26 of her most dysfunctional family and friends to Egypt for a holiday at Christmas and Misty is brilliant. She is one that got in front of the defense department in 10 days and she rented the entire Cairo Museum for the 26 of us one evening.

John:
Wow, that’s an exclusive experience.

Charlene:
Yes, her husband actually reads hieroglyphics, he’s brilliant. So, we’ve been there many, many times and the trip was a riot. Wendy Richards who is a dear friend of mine in Sausalito, one of the top five or, let’s see, five or 50 women in London, in England, have lost her husband, and she came on the trip with me and she was on crutches and she did better than I did going to all these private tombs that we were brought to and the women I know are, let me give you an example, Wendy went to Stanford graduate school, her mother went to Stanford graduate school, and her grandmother went to Stanford graduate school.

John:
Wow. That’s a lot of legacy.

Charlene:
Right, right. So, we’re dear friends. Let’s talk about how to raise a million dollars in 90 days.

John:
Yes, people definitely want to know about that.

Charlene:
That’s the easy part. I can actually raise it faster today. That was about 10 years ago. Two bioinformatics gene sequencing scientists approached me, I was coming in from New Hampshire, going to Boston to connect and a Tom Tang sat next to me and he was discussing the issue with his search engine because when you search, when you – bioinformatic gene sequencing spends a lot of time searching and they came up with a new search technology with the prototype. The only reason I took it on was because Tom Tang worked for Lewis Gruber, the guy who reads hieroglyphics and is brilliant.

John:
Got it. Let me just stop you right there, because I think what you have described is such an important point for our listeners, which is developing your network is such a key to success in raising money. Would you agree?

Charlene:
Since I know everybody, yes. I can raise it very quickly.

John:
Right, but one of the reasons you can raise money so fast is you have this incredible life experience and this ability to connect with people and be warm and I think so many tech CEOs isolate themselves and I’m constantly advising people that you must get out and network and connect with people, because you never know who you’re going to meet and how they’re going to help you. Is that your experience?

Charlene:
What happens is people get hyper focused on what their doing and they don’t look at the big picture.

John:
Yes.

Charlene:
I have a very difficult, Joe Shu, he’s in Kyoto and his brother is Dr. Shu and Greenwich, Connecticut,. He’s an acupuncturist. He wants Joe to sign an agreement and have me raise money for them and put board of advisers, board of directors, but Dr. Shu in Kyoto is so stubborn, he is a brilliant CTO, he has been the chief engineer for Nintendo for years, subsequently their 52 billion or something, I don’t remember what he said, he also manages the Foxconn factory. He has no concept of business. He’s the most difficult man I have ever come a crossed because people have called him from all over the world to tell him that they should retain me or just even buy me a ticket to meet with him. This is the most difficult man, he’s brilliant sometimes and he surrounds himself with all these scientists. He knows his business plan is horrible. I have senator Larry Pressler look at it and say, “Oh my God, look at this business plan.” I’ve got lots of people around the people who want to invest, but he’s so stubborn, he wants to hear from somebody I’m going to invest before he retains me. That’s illegal as Misty, who’s Lewis Gruber’s wife would say, “There’s good money and there’s bad money.”

John:
Tell us what that means.

Charlene:
Well, there’s bad money. There’s a lot of people who come in and put money in your company and basically screw you. That’s the nicest word I could use.

John:
Right.

Charlene:
It’s bad money because they come in and take over your technology and before you know it, you’re gone.

John:
That’s such an important point Charlene. I just want to take a minute for the listeners to digest that because you have to be very discerning about who you invite into your world, into your company and your culture, and it’s not just the money, it’s are they a fit with you, so you’re selling yourself and you’re as much deciding whether – they’re selling you as much as you are selling yourself. So, it’s a mutual thing. It’s not a one-way street where you’re just asking for money from anybody. It has to be the right fit. Would you agree?

Charlene:
Absolutely and what I do is – I’m highly analytical and very strategic and I put good money. Let’s in case talk about this Dr. Shu 3G United, which is a company that has a horrible business plan. They have ten million that the Chinese government has given them, so they’re all about technology, but what they need is advisers, four advisers with marketing, who some of the top marketing people in the world, top sales, people that can actually participate as advisers and take the roles of the senior leaders, so in the company that I raised a million dollars for in 90 days, I had Karen Riley and I had all these terrific people who understood what this guy would hoped to find in five years and this accelerated their growth.

John:
So, can you give us an example of one of the keys to getting investors to say is they understand easily what they’re investing in?

Charlene;
No body will invest in a company that doesn’t have management and knows what they’re doing. You’ve got so many scientists floating around with great ideas, patented or unpatented, it doesn’t matter, they’re all ideas, they need desperately to understand that there’s quality. Forget the idea. It has nothing to do with the idea. Great ideas, forget it.

John:
Dime a dozen.

Charlene:
Oh, there’s a million great ideas. People have got to understand I mortgaged my house for a $100,000. When I started the first private label clothing company in America.

John:
That’s commitment.

Charlene:
Well, it’s not very much, is it? I made a million dollars in 18 months.

John:
And how did you do that?

Charlene:
If you don’t have a commitment to your business and if you take no risk, then you should not even try to be in business. Go back to doing whatever you want to do in your life.

John:
That’s so valuable information. If you don’t have a commitment to yourself, how can you possibly ask anybody else to commit to you, is that it?

Charlene:
Exactly and if you can’t retain me and pay me – what I do with young companies is I put it over 12 months, 24 months. I work with them so I understand their cash flow better than they do. So, I understand, you know, I’ve built a very successful company. I understand P&L, I understand everything financially about a young company. I’ve done a number of young companies myself and in fact you need to have some risk. If you don’t believe in your company and take some risk, why would you ask other people to put money in?

John:
Exactly. You must put your own sweat equity and your own money in before you can ask anybody else to put money in.

Charlene:
If you’re Chinese, the wife holds the strings and absolutely, the answer is the wife. They hold the strings and if people aren’t willing, if they’ve got a great idea and they’re not with Tom Tang and Infoville, I made them put $50,000, which was not easy to get, in a bank account, Bank of America, and as I said in 90 days I raised a million dollars, but in 18 months or 14 months, I brought in 8 million dollars.

John:
So, let me just recap that. You were able to raise a million dollars for this company in 90 days and then from there it got such traction and growth that you were able to get another 8 million in less than 14 months.

Charlene:
Correct.

John:
That’s an incredible story. What do you attribute that incredible amount of money coming in so fast? Was it traction, was it the right theme? Did you go back to the original investors?

Charlene:
No, what I did was the very first board of directors I did was a company called Digital Insight. I put in four directors. The first one I put in Mike Hallman. Mike was the former president of Microsoft. He said no three times and one hellscalabasas. So, I met him on the airport, he was on the board of Fujitsu, had just come in from San Francisco. My son was a BASIC securities, so I started sending him all and they thought John Dorman walked on water, so did the Chairman of Oracle.

John:
Oh yeah, Ellison?

Charlene:
Yes and he lives in Santa Barbara so I knew him quite well. So, net net end of the story with John Dorman is that not only once I had Mike Hallman from Microsoft I knew I could get anybody I wanted. Mike Splinter who was sent at Intel went on to become Chairman of Applied Materials. We actually asked him to step off of the board because he couldn’t attend the meetings because with Intel he was traveling too much and he left Intel because he knew he would never be CEO and of course now he’s Chairman of Intel. So, then I put on a couple of other people and in 18 months they had an exit, this was a 100 million dollar company. John Jarve had just stepped off the board, Menlo Ventures, what do you think the company was acquired by intuit? Who do you think sat on the intuit board?

John:
That would be someone you placed is my guess.

Charlene:
Mike Hallman, the former president of Microsoft.

John:
Right.

Charlene:
1.4 billion dollars. So, it’s all about strategy. Marketing is strategy and I knew of course that he sat on the Intuit board.

John:
So, let’s just recap. You were able to get all that money that fast because A) you had amazing connects. B) you had a strategy and C) you had not just a vision, but a road map to get there and you basically acted like the producer to get all this traction going. Is that an accurate description of your success story?

Charlene:
That’s an accurate decision and if you ever seen Grey Gardens.

John:
I have.

Charlene:
Oh, my nephew, Michael Sucsy wrote and directed it and lived with me while he was writing it.

John:
Wow, what an amazing story that was. Alright, now, I want to ask you a few more questions while we’re fortunate enough to have you as a guest on the show. What advice would you give a startup that’s creating a pitch deck, so they can make sure they can cover everything that as an investor or the investors that you know would want to see.

Charlene:
Okay, let me back up one second. Okay, when I built (#17:05?), I first put the four board of advisers and the board of directors simultaneously. I do everything very fast. Now, I operated out of Ellen Hancock’s 12 million dollar house in Los Altos Hill, because these Chinese guys absolutely, you know they worked in a place we’re not going to raise money, then I switched, we hired Pillsbury Winthrop and Mike Halloran, we started using his offices, his conference rooms and they did the patent work and Mike said that was the fastest money he’s ever seen raised.

So, when I did Infoville after Digital Insight and I don’t remember how many years, the president by the way of the new CEO of Digital Insight was a gentlemen who was the former president of America Express and his name will come to me and I went down to see him and asked him if I could do more work, he said this is very best board of directors I ever had. Now, this was my first board of directors, so everybody exited with millions who was on that board. So, when I started the Infoville deep dive company with the two Chinese bio-tech guys, John Dorman said, “You know, I don’t do early stage things,” came down he said, “Would you do me a favor, could I invest half a million dollars? And I would like to be Chairman.” He subsequently Greg (#18:36?) invested two million, John invested at least two million, and then all that other money came in.

John:
Wow.

Charlene:
He said, “Do me a favor, I would like to invest $500,000.” It was a new search technology. So, I came out of the clothing industry, I never knew anything about search, but I will tell you that when I interviewed the head of Oracle’s search department, he said, “You know a lot about search.”

John:
It’s interesting isn’t it to get someone’s perspective. We don’t think we know something and then we all know more than we think we do, I think.

Charlene:
Right, I always say, excuse me, I’m really not – He said, “You would floor me!” It was very, very funny. As far as young companies are concerned and their pitch, don’t do a pitch without talking to me.

John:
Got it. Yes.

Charlene:
Let me, retain me in some form, because I legal can not go out and raise money and put in management without – it would be bad money. As I said, I can raise money so fast and this poor company 3G United, I probably have three million dollars of people wanting to invest and this guy, Mr. Dr. Shu will not sign the agreement. I even have the president and founder of YPO-WPO in Tokyo call him and speak to him.

John:
So, what I’m hearing you say is that one of the key things before you go pitch is the need to collaborate with experts like you.

Charlene:
Absolutely.

John:
To make sure that you’re not making mistakes and that you’re not making bad money and that you have the right people on your board, is that accurate?

Charlene:
Yeah. The pitch doesn’t matter because people don’t look at the technology, they look at who’s associated with the company.

John:
Right, so the pitch itself probably matters but the content of what you’re focusing on is who’s on your team is more important than the idea, that’s what I hear you’re saying.

Charlene:
Absolutely. People invest in people, they don’t invest in ideas.

John:
That’s your tag line right there. People invest in people, they don’t invest in ideas and so many tech CEOs that I work with they want to explain to somebody how something works instead of what problem it solves in the market place.

Charlene:
Exactly.

John:
And it’s a great quote, “No body cares about what you have to say until they know you care about them.” Right?

Charlene:
Other thing I do is I run, I haven’t done it for the last year, because I have been very busy, but I am back into running and it can be done virtually throughout the world, meetings, physical and virtual, with young CEOs and put them all in the same room and let them share ideas. So, the gentleman who is currently the CEO of Match.com, he was in our group. We had so many fabulous guys. A lot of them from Silicon Valley and commute in, but I put people together. When you put people together, they share ideas, now, I charged to run that, but it’s not very much.

John:
It’s a mastermind, right? It sounds like.

Charlene:
Absolutely and I will understand. It doesn’t matter what business you’re in, I can do neuroscience, I can do health care, I can do technology, I can do retailing. It doesn’t matter what the area is. It takes me about an hour to understand nuclear physics.

John:
For you maybe.

Charlene:
Yeah, no, honestly.

John:
But again, we have to be able to explain something complicated like neurophysics in a simple easy way that investors who aren’t neurophysicists can understand the potential and that seems to me to be your sweet spot and one of your areas of your expertise and that what makes you so value.

Charlene:
Legal bio-tech nano-tech. Health care, Ellen sits on the, has been on the Aetna board for a 100 years. She’s on the Colgate board, she makes more money at Colgate and there isn’t a university. You’ve got kids in China whose parents want these kids to come to America and pay a fortune and I can do that. I have, whether it’s Cambridge, Jim Rogers..

John:
Tell us a little bit about Jim Rogers. Tell the listeners who that is with the bow tie and a little bit about Jim Rogers, because it’s such a common name.

Charlene:
So, well, Jim Rogers is very famous. He originally was a partner in the Quantum Fund. He hates George Soros. He retired at age 30. He came from a relatively poor family, so he went to Yale on a full scholarship, Cambridge on a full scholarship. He holds a cup Henley, he was the guy who yelled at everybody, that would be Jimmy Short. I walked in a room somewhere and he fell in love with me, because I’m short. I recently as I said, I just, he paid for a week, it was like $3,000-4,000 for me to stay there for a week so that he could see me, professing that I was his first love.

Anyway, he’s now married to Paige and he’s got two girls and he moved from New York to Singapore because he saw the destruction and demise of America. A lot of people, a lot of wealthy people that I know, democrat or republicans, have moved assets abroad. Jim said the dollar will be strong until June and then you want all your money in Rupees if you want to make a lot of money. He’s never been wrong. He’s been early, but he’s never been wrong. Do you want me to show you a picture of him? I’ve got a book.

John:
I saw him online, the bow tie, I just wanted our listeners to have a framework of how interesting he is and his success story. Before I let you go, would you mind sharing with us, because China is such a big market for everything now, right, the potential is huge there for obviously if you’re selling something to get consumers in China to use it, but I am interested for our listeners to know maybe think the only source of investors are here in the US. If someone wanted to work with you to get investors from China to invest in their company, what are the Chinese investors looking for that’s different than the US investors, if at all different?

Charlene:
Really not that different. The Chinese investors have lots of money. You gotta be careful again. The Chinese are not to be trusted. I’m sorry. Got to understand that they will take every nickle from you. I am almost 69. I’ve been commuting to China since the age of 23, you do the math.

John:
That’s a lot of years.

Charlene:
So, I was the first Gweilo on the first to havel and dove into Peking, excuse me, Canton. The first trade festival and I remember going there and the only thing that were tires, there were industrial things, and I stated Chairman Chiang Kai-Shek’s home and we had frogs in our showers. In life you have to have a sense of humor.

John:
Absolutely.

Charlene:
If you don’t have a sense of humor, then check out early, because I dealt with things you would never believe.

John:
That’s great advice for the startup entrepreneurs is they have to be able to roll with the punches and you’re going to come with some bumps in the road and how you deal with that is the key to whether you make it or not, right?

Charlene:
Absolutely and you got to have, if you can’t laugh at yourself and at things, when everything goes wrong, have a brownie and relax.

John:
Would you say that humor is the secret to weapon to being able to persevere?

Charlene:
I think humor and good sex.

John:
Oh, great, nice. That’s a great formula. I love that. Well, I can’t imagine with that kind of advice that you’re not fully booked all the time, because who doesn’t want those two things? Is there any books that you would recommend for startups to read?

Charlene:
Well, I’m just looking at all the signed books I have. Jim Rogers’s Street Smarts. Misty’s new book that’s been a best seller, Geekonomics. NO, I think they should contact me.

John:
Contact you, okay. Do you have a blog or what’s the best way for our listeners to contact you?

Charlene:
Well, Brooke (#27:22?) is my marketing director. LinkedIn.

John:
Charlene Miller on LinkedIn.

Charlene:
Yeah, www.globaldirectors.com

John:
Got it and what would be your ideal client? Who do you like to work with? What should they have ready? Should they have an idea, should they have a team, should they have a prototype? What’s the best stage?

Charlene:
It helps us if they have a prototype, but in all due respect the Infoville/deep dive company had a prototype, but it wasn’t working. It doesn’t matter what stage. I do great with companies that 500 million dollars. I do great with companies, well, let me tell you about Betfair of London. Do you know what Betfair is?

John:
I don’t.

Charlene:
The largest gaming company. They’re the bookie and they went public and they were worth, I can’t tell you how much, but I moved Mathias Entenmann, they needed a GM and I moved him and his wife from Palo Alto, she’s a psychiatrists, he had twins, and moved them to London and he ended up with a million dollars cash com and he’s German and the thing that held up his taking the job as he would not accept British healthcare. He wanted German and he finally got it and I placed a number of people at Betfair and the company was outrageously successful. As a matter of fact I think there is a, if you look at my testimonials on my website, you will see the testimonials from some of these people, I couldn’t get everyone, because we actually only started the website on December 1st.

John:
Of last year?

Charlene:
Of this year.

John:
Okay, three months ago.

Charlene:
Yep and so, because I stopped and I was in the antique business and now I went back to this. I did the MamaBear/PapaBear app.

John:
Tell us what that is.

Charlene:
MamaBear/PapaBear app it’s an app on your phone where it actually manages all your children’s connectivity as far as how fast they drive and also what they’re watching, everything to do with an app for your child.

John:
Got it.

Charlene:
You know, what they’re watching. Anything they’re doing on the web so that’s MamaBear. Not only did I find her in three months, 90 days, but they wrote her a check for two million dollars immediately afterwards. She came with a full team and these guys were blown away.

John:
So, they were impressed with her product, her team, and there wasn’t a need in the market place.

Charlene:
Her team and that’s the first..

John:
It’s all about the team.

Charlene:
And everyone was, she walked in with a full team and this was the first real CEO job. She was CEO divisions. I mean, you could look her up, Suzanne Horton and I have still only met her once. Met Tom Cardy once and met Steve, who’s Chairman of the company, once, because everybody is too busy.

John:
Well, that’s the other big takeaway is that investors are so busy, you need to have as many things checked off that they need to see starting with the right team, the right concept, and a vision with the road map to get there and someone like you to take them so that they – and the connections to people who are looking for good money.

Charlene:
They might not have the right road map and they might not have the right strategy. If it’s very early they normally do not.

John:
Right.

Charlene:
But, they think they do.

John:
Sure, but you can help them not only refine that strategy, but put them in touch with the right people who would be good money versus bad money.
Charlene:
I release people, I surround them once they sign a letter that we agree to go forward, I take a small and depending upon the stage, I can take anywhere from $100,000 to $10,000 and I’ve even taken $5,000 as a retainer and then every month they pay me. It depends upon the company. I have money throughout the world. Hussein Nasreddin is a good friend of mine. His palace in Tangier is larger than Steve Forbes, who I know quite well.

John:
Wow, well clearly Charlene you have an amazing amount of experience, contacts, and a proven tract record that is up there with anyone I ever read about or met, so it’s been a huge honor to have you on the show today The Successful Pitch. Again, for those people who are savvy enough to want to reach out to Charlene, you can go to Charlene Miller on LinkedIn, you can go to her company’s website GlobalDirectors.com to connect with her and find out more about what she does, how she can help you with your strategy and of course the ultimate, how can she raise money for you, the good money, and how she can do it fast. Charlene it’s been a pleasure. Thank you so much for joining us.

Charlene:
Thank you. It’s been a pleasure. I hope to meet you soon.

John:
Thank you.

Charlene:
Take care.