YouTube video (Daniel Fazio) arguing that in business outcomes often cluster at cognitive extremes: both very high-IQ and very low-IQ people can reach similar successful actions because different justifications lead to the same behavior. Fazio uses the meme of an IQ (normal) distribution and gives concrete marketing examples—creating video sales letters (VSLs), using vertical TikTok-style VSLs for TikTok traffic, and a recruiting-offer wording fix—to show how either extreme arrives at effective, simple solutions while average people overthink and delay. The takeaway: avoid the indecisive center by simplifying decisions (become much more decisive/simple or much more analytical).
Chapters
Have you ever come across somebody so stupid, with so much money and such a good life that you cannot even conceptualize how somebody so mentally deficient could be so successful in what seems like every regard? Like how is this right? And you look at billionaires and multi millionaires and it typically works out to be that normally they are either hyper intelligent or a complete fucking idiot. And there's basically no one in the center. Like there's no one of average intel. You're either completely stupid or an absolute genius. Because if you have found this to be correct in your own, like in your own life, like I have, I'm going to explain what exactly is happening here in this video. And the best way for me to facilitate this is through a meme. So I don't know if you've all seen this meme before, but this is, this is a depiction. Like you gotta, you got a Jedi looking cool dude over here and you got some not intelligent dude over here. And then you got this guy like the average intelligence who's just upset and crying, right? So this is an IQ distribution called a normal distribution. Most people are at 100 IQ, that is the average. And then you got like hypergeniuses at like 130 plus. And then you got like really not intelligent fuckers below 70, right? Though it seems like everyone with all of the money is at 70 or below or 130 and above, right? So, so, but before I go back to this, I'm going to explain this concept, right? So, so I tell people that if you're running an agency or a B2B business or any kind of form of an offer where you're, where you are selling your stuff to other businesses, like a service business, that you should have a video sales letter on your website. What is a video sales letter? It's, it's a video that shows you and it explains what your offer is, right? So I tell people to do this and they come back with excuses like, well, I don't know what to say in the BSL or I don't know, I don't have the right filming. It's all a bunch of fucking nonsense. And everyone who just gets their VSL out follows instructions. They start getting their results, like significantly better results than they've ever got before because now they have a vsl. Normally they are either over here on the right side or they're over here on the left side. Because what happens is the people on the left side and the people on the right side come to the same conclusions. That's what makes the utter idiots so smart is that the justification for what they do is different, but it results in the same action. So they do, they end up doing the same inputs that get results. So like the guy on the left says, I'll just film a quick video explaining what I do. And the guy on the right is, I'll just film a quick video explaining what I do. And the guy in the center is, I have to get the perfect scripting and the camera set up and the lighting and the descript approved by copywriter and an editor for the hook grade and 20 to 30 takes and it's a bunch of nonsense. And, and they lolly gag and, and, and do all these mental gymnastics and just delay making a VSL for like three months and it's three less months of significantly better results. So they're just relegated to utter mediocrity for the rest of their life, right? So like here's, here's what you understand, right? The, the justifications for why you do something end up being the same. Like it is possible to be so stupid that your decisions just loop back around over to the high. Like you could be so fucking stupid. You are bordering on the edge of genius. Like this is what this happens. Now I'm going to, I'm going to give you another example here. So I was in a conversation with, with, with this girl, she's launching like a, like her own course and she's like coming up with funnels and whatnot. And she was asking me, so I was telling her she should have a VSL on her site. And she goes, and she goes, well, how do you, how do you do like the video editing and film it like that with like the side by side. And she's like, I only know how to edit reels in like Instagram Reels and TikTok. Like that's all I know how to do. Which reminded me of a conversation I had with a TikTok with a dude who runs a TikTok agency. And he was telling me he was running split tests. And the split test he was running, he was sending TikTok ads to a sales page with a VSL. And the split test he made was a normal VSL, like horizontal. Like the video you're watching right now, it's horizontal versus a VSL that was vertical and edited to be exactly like a tick tock. So you'd get the TikTok ad, you click the ad, you go to a page and the VSL is another tick tock. And he goes, doing that Sending them to a VSL with the tick tock. As the VSL worked so profoundly better than the other one, it was just an overall winning split test. And we only do that now for TikTok traffic. And I was like, that's interesting because you could only ever come to that conclusion or even think to test that if you were either a genius or absolutely. You had to be one of those in order to even conceive of that as a, as an available option. Right? And I'm not saying the girl is dumb. She's not, she's actually very smart. But she's not smart in conversion rate optimization because she's never done it before. So she's just unaware of like the best practices. So you have to you, in order to even think of putting a vertical video as the vsl, you had to be really smart with conversion rate optimization or no nothing about it at all, right? Same exact, it results in the same exact action. So the justification for the smart person is understanding that these people are arriving from a vertical video. Let me just invoke continuity. And that should result in a increasing conversions. If you were profoundly stupid, you would say, well, this is all I know how to do. So I'm just going to do that because it's going to be much simpler. If you were in the center, you'd be like, oh no, let me just make a different horizontal video, different justifications on the, on the tail ends. But it results in the same action that you can be so stupid you're bordering on the edge of genius. Right? So I'll give you another one. We, we were running an offer. It was a placement offer. We would, we would place, we would recruit, place and train commission based cold emailers inside of people's businesses, right? So there was an issue with this. So, so, so this is a recruiting offer, right? If you know how recruiters work, there is a fee for the recruiting service. That's how this works. However, the headline in the entire premise, they see we will place a commission based cold emailer inside of your business. So they see commission only and they throw an absolute fucking hissy fit when they become aware of the fact that there is a recruiting fee, right? So there was a conversation and it was, it was, it was around, we got to change the vsl. Like the whole positioning of this, like it's got to be chip. But, but I didn't want to change the VSL because the VSL was so good. I was like, I'm gonna be as absolutely stupid as I can possibly be. In this situation, like I'm gonna try to be so profoundly dumb that I'm bordering on the edge of genius. So what did I do to solve this problem? I go, it was a VSL and then a button to submit an application. And just under the button I go, I put, I put, this is a recruiting offer and there's an upfront fee. It took me like 10 seconds to put it on there. And it solved the problem immediately. It was done. Never had that issue again with people under the, the, the, the concept though, I have to pay up front and throw it. It worked. So, and I was, I was running cold traffic to this on YouTube ads and it was, it was booking like a hundred dollar calls, which is like really good. And when I put that in there, the cost per call did not go up. It stayed the same. It had no impact on conversions. I was like, this is so funny. Like it was so stupid that it turned out to be absolutely brilliant. And this is a theme in life. Sometimes you're thinking about something or you're thinking about excuses of something and, and you, you, you come up with these justifications to do this and this and this. And sometimes you just gotta tune your IQ either up 30 points or down 30 points and you can go either way. So if you don't think of yourself as a genius or if you don't think you're smart, just try to, just try to become actively more dumb. And you will probably arrive at the same conclusions as the genius otherwise would. And it kind of makes me think of like, if you ever go out with like a particular kind of dude who will go out and talk to every single girl. And like, if you're in the center of the IQ bell curve, if you're, if you're at 100 IQ, you might be like, bro, how do you do that? And the answer on either fringe of the bell curve is going to be, oh, she was pretty. I wanted to talk to her. Like, that's it. Like, the genius might go like deeper into it. You might go, well, the more girls you talk to, it's just more traffic and resulting like higher probability of, of you getting a girlfriend or whatever your end desired end goal is. And the idiot would just be, oh, she was pretty. I wanted to talk to her. Different justification, same action, same result. They both win. Guy Hunter IQ in the center is relegated to absolute misery forever. Right? So, so my advice to you is to either become considerably more intelligent or considerably more stupid. Like, you gotta go either way. Just don't be in the center. And that's it for me today. You should go watch this video. You should subscribe. And that's it for me today. There's links in the description. Go check that out, too. All right, Bye. I love you.
