She Sold $2.5B on TV — How She Built a Million-Dollar Business

Key Takeaways

- Dr. Forbes Riley generated more than $2.5 billion in sales across three decades of appearing on home shopping networks like QVC and HSN.

- She says that pitching starts with the listener’s problem, not a product or origin story.

- Her success on QVC and HSN came from treating pitching as relationship‑building, constantly adjusting to real‑time feedback and focusing on making viewers feel seen.

Dr. Forbes Riley built her career in front of the camera, turning products into must-haves and generating more than $2.5 billion in cumulative sales. Over the course of three decades, she became a fixture on home shopping networks like QVC and HSN and the driving force behind 197 infomercials, mastering the psychology of what makes people say yes and pull out their credit cards to buy a product.

In 2020, at the height of her success, Riley made an unexpected pivot. She stepped away from selling products to teach the one skill that powered every deal she had ever closed: how to pitch.

What began as a bet on herself quickly gained traction. Riley launched the Ultimate Pitch Academy and scaled it to $1 million in revenue within nine months. Today, the business generates millions of dollars a month. She trains a wide range of clients, from entrepreneurs and executives to stay-at-home moms, on how to communicate. In total, more than 100,000 people have gone through her programs, all learning a skill Riley says is at the core of every success story: the ability to sell an idea.

The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and concision.

Pictured and credited: Forbes Riley

A 30-year career and the birth of infomercials

How did you generate $2.5 billion in sales?

It’s cumulative over about 30 years, through a combination of home shopping and infomercials. I helped pioneer the infomercial industry after starting out as a TV actress on shows like 24 and The Practice. That evolved into projects like the George Foreman Grill, which sold hundreds of millions of dollars.

How did you actually get into pitching on TV?

I walked into an audition as an actress and saw a pen on the desk with a note that said, “Sell me this pen.” I thought it was stupid because I hadn’t grown up with money and selling made me uncomfortable. So I told a story about my mother writing me longhand letters when I went to college at 15 and how a pen could touch someone’s heart. Jake Steinfeld, who created Fitness Plus, one of the first 24-hour cable networks where the last 15 minutes of every hour were dedicated to selling health and wellness products, came out from behind the camera, grabbed my face and basically said, “You’re going to be a star.”

Why do people call you the “godmother of TikTok Shop”?

On Fitness Plus, I hosted one product after another—ab machines, tooth whiteners, bread makers, roller skates, you name it—and over five years, I pitched about 1,500 different products. That network sold for $500 million in 1993, and a lot of what people now call influencer marketing is built on that format we created back then.

The ultimate pitch formula

What is your “Ultimate Pitch Formula”?

It’s an eight‑step formula I’ve developed over decades, which I now teach in a four‑week training I run every month. It includes concepts like the “hub,” “assumptions,” “relatability,” the “springboard story,” and especially a tool I call the “question flip.”

What exactly is the “question flip?”

It means you start by identifying someone else’s pain or desire, then ask a question you already know they’re likely to answer “yes” to. For a weight‑loss doctor, instead of pitching the product, you might say, “If you’ve been hearing about fast Ozempic‑style weight loss, are you willing to trade bone density and long‑term health for speed?” Most people say no; then you offer an all‑natural, side‑effect‑free 30‑day solution and ask if that’s interesting. Once they say yes, you have permission to talk about your solution.

Where does someone actually start when crafting a pitch?

You don’t start by writing the pitch — that’s the end. First, you go through the “hub”: why you’re in business, what the business actually is, what it sells, whether it’s a product or a service, who the competition is, and what value the listener gets. Only after that do you decide who you’re pitching—consumer, investor, media, etc.—because each of those requires a different pitch.

You talk a lot about “assumptions.” Aren’t we told not to assume?

We’re told not to voice assumptions, but you must make them internally. When I pitch you, I notice your hair, glasses, background, clothes, and I make educated assumptions that may or may not be true. If I don’t, I sound like a cardboard billboard — generic and forgettable.

Can you give an example of using assumptions and relatability in a pitch?

If I’m pitching SpinGym, a handheld fitness product I created, to a woman on Zoom, I might say, “As a woman, when winter’s over and we take our sweaters off, pick your