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exclaims, then clarifies. “Not you drink. You and I drink.” Sully grins. “Sometimes I have to tell myself, ‘Turn it off, stop pitching.’”

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Sullivan’s travels Sullivan got his start peddling the Amazing Washmatic and other gadgets in his native England, then wheedled his way to America. He pitched his way through the continental U.S., working conventions, county fairs, home shows and flea markets. On his best day, he sold 750 Super Chamois Mops, one every 20 seconds, and grossed $15,000. In 1993, Sully and his Swedish partner headed to Florida seeking “the first beach we could find.” That turned out to be Clearwater. Within a few days, the guy with infomercial dreams happened to drive by HSN. He saw it as fate. In six months, he scored his first pitch session on the channel. Enter Billy Mays. On the road, Sully and the alpha-pitchman had become casual friends and rivals, but it was at HSN that they formed an alliance. Mays acted as the primary talent and Sully took on the role of producer/director and occasional talent. In ’99, they cut their first spot for OxiClean at the studios of Tampa’s WEDU in just seven hours, having written the script

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R BEHIND

THE SCENES

SULLY’S FAVORITE DEMOS The “demo” is the part of a Direct Response TV commercial, be it 30 minutes or 30 seconds, that provides the “wow” factor. Sullivan says he can spend hours cooking up the perfect demonstration that impresses, or even amazes, viewers, while also establishing a product’s usefulness. Here are a few of his favorites: RR Set himself on fire and put it out to demonstrate Cold Fire, a fire extinguishing agent RR Worked next to an 800-pound grizzly bear to show it could not break into a Fridge Locker RR Had the inventor cut an old car in half with a DualSaw during the course of an infomercial RR Billy Mays tossing a scoop of OxiClean into a big tub filled with laundry and seeing the water turn from black to white (“That demo always warms my heart.”)

on a plane flight the night before. “This was before OxiClean was a household name, so they gave us 30K and a [percentage] point to shoot it,” Sully recounts. “We had no idea we had Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’ on our hands.” Other hit products quickly followed and before long, he says, “I couldn’t get to the bank quick enough.” In 2009, with Billy and Sully among the world’s top pitchmen, they collaborated with Thom Beers, the reality TV kingpin behind “Deadliest Catch” and “Ice Road Truckers,” on “Pitchmen,” which became an out-of-the-box hit for The Discovery Channel. The program glimpsed inside the warp-speed world of

product development and high-volume selling; it derived its soul from the affectionately prickly relationship between the two stars. In June 2009, Mays died of a heart attack at age 50. Sully was devastated, but the show went on. He moved more frequently in front of the camera, and his rep as pitchman supreme continues to grow. “I get people saying to me, ‘Oh, you can sell anything; you can sell ice cream to Eskimos,’” Sully says, then shrugs. “I don’t want to sell ice cream to Eskimos. I’ll sell a heater to an Eskimo. I want the customer to have a great experience. I want them to come up to me on the street and tell me they like my products.”