The Larry King Story | The Power of a Great Sales Hook - Dean Graziosi

If you're someone that has a business, wants to start a business, wants to scale a business, if we don't know how to ethically persuade or ethically influence, or let's say it, ethically market and sell, and a lot of times we're just dreaming. You know, I love to talk about marketing and sales because that's how we get to move the needle. That's how we change the world. And I'll always say this, that whatever it is that you're gonna use this strategy on that I'm going to share today. It is that powerful. Promise me it's something that does good for the world. Promise me it's something that really you love and know that it's of service. And I say that maybe you're thinking, oh, that's too hokey, but it's really not. Because, listen, you could be in whatever industry, but if you're supplying something people need, from a house to online training, to a book, to coaching, to the booking, you know, to the brick and mortar building down the street or business down the street or a restaurant, all of it serves people. But I always say, if you're selling gambling to someone with a gambling issue or drugs to someone with a drug problem or drugs in general, of course that's an extreme. Then don't use this. I mean it. It's that powerful. And I want to tell you, selling, influence, persuasion, whatever you want to call it, it goes to a whole new level when you really love what you do. So I tell some people, if you love what you do, awesome. If you kind of love it, then do what you can for the company you work with, the company you want to start, the company you own to take what you deliver and take it to the next level. Like, double down on the love, double down on the service, double down on the commitment to your clients. Tony talks about this so much. Is make an irresistible offer, something that truly changes people's lives. And then when you have that feeling, selling's not selling anymore. Selling is service. Because if you don't get your product, your new product, or the product you currently have, or if someone doesn't promote you, then maybe someone else is gonna get that sale or get that position that doesn't deserve it and won't do it as good as you do. Think when you can put a framework around something, it gives you a different lens. When you love what you do, it's a disservice for someone not to promote you. It's a disservice for you not to start the company and sell, it's a disservice for you not to scale the company that you have. If you are providing something people need and you care and you love and you have a great product or a service or you are the person in that position, if you're not doing it, you're doing a disservice to the company, to the product, to the service, to your employees, to the growth, to your family, all of it. Because let me just ask you something. Without sales in a company, are you stressed or happy? Right? Are you stressed or happy? Can you afford to expand? Can you afford to hire the right people? Without sales in your company, can you grow and donate the money you want to donate? Hire the people you want to hire, Take care of your family? You can't. We must sell. So we have to reframe selling, right? I shared this probably a couple times before. Without these strategies, sometimes you have a dream, you have a goal, you have a desire. But why the hell are you missing out? Why are you not getting the promotion? Why haven't you started the company? Why isn't your company scaling? When somebody that's not as good as you, who doesn't care as much as you company is going through the roof, it's because the lack of selling qualifications, the lack of ability to get people to say yes, right? What did I say? Feel the Dreams with Kevin Costner. Great movie. The slogan through the whole movie was if you build it, they will come, right? And that for him was magical because if he built a baseball field in the middle of his cornfield on his farm, his passed away father, his deceased father would come and visit him and they'd make amends. Perfect for a movie. But if you build it, they will not come to your business. It doesn't matter how good your service is, doesn't matter how great your book is, doesn't matter how good your food is, doesn't matter good. The products or the things that you sell or the coaching that you deliver, they won't come on their own. They'll go someplace else as someone who's better at marketing and that person might not serve them at the level you do. I talk about this again. I'm really pre framing as you can tell because I'm giving you the secret sauce here. But I want it to land. I don't want anybody to go, oh, that's selling. I going to wait. Because you know what you do when it comes around selling or marketing, when it's time to start scale or get that promotion you desire you go, oh, I need to do that. You know what? And then you go to work. When it gets to scaling your company or starting or getting the promotion or, you know, growing, if you're a little hesitant to sales. A little hesitant, not even a lot. You'd rather work on something that fills your soul. Oh, you know, I'll redesign the COVID I'll play with the logo. I'll go talk to the team. Let me get the spreadsheet going. Let me get my to do list done. Let me go work on this department or that department. So if there's a little apprehension to selling, we kind of. Our subconscious goes, oh, yeah, let's get to that tomorrow, but let's work on this stuff. Something that currently lights you up. What I want you to do is feel lit up when you work on sales because it's serving people at the highest level. If you don't get someone's credit card, if they don't buy from you, how do you serve them? You are here because you want to serve through your heart. And I want to tell you, why do you think Tony's company grows so well? I've been blessed for incredible growth. And look at some of the people who are out there serving and giving from their heart. They don't feel like they're selling or being sold to, right? When you love something, you're not being sold to, I want to put you in a frame right now going, okay, I need to learn persuasion. I need to learn influence, and I want to do it ethically through my heart. The things that allowed me to serve people at the highest level, the things that allowed people to take action, because I can't help someone if they don't take action. Listen, when my last book. My previous book was Millionaire Success Habits, I had ads everywhere, and they were just going nonstop. You may have seen them for years. And so many times I meet someone like, oh, my God, Dean, you know, if somebody reads the book, I get to change their life, right? And friends would be like, oh, dude, I see your book ad everywhere. Do you think you're playing it too much? I'm like, what does that mean? Is there too many people that I should be trying to help? Like, what kind of thought process is that? Am I playing the ads too much? What person should I not help? That book. There's no way to get rich in that book overnight. That book is a compilation of what I've used over 30 years. My habits to start 13 companies, to be in the be married to the girl of my dreams. Like everything I've done to get here. After screwing up royally and making horrible mistakes, what are the habits I use to get there? Who doesn't need that book? Everybody does. So should I not market so much so some people don't get offended? Hell, no. I can't serve someone. I can't help them with new habits unless they read the book. I'm gonna push that book as hard as I can. We're almost. We're probably there now. We're close to a million copies. I got to impact a million people's lives in a positive way because I push, not because I was like, oh, I'm just going to write this book. I'm going to write it, and they will come. No, they won't. You go to Barnes and Noble, walk in the bookstore here in America. You walk in, you see hundreds of thousands of books. 80% of them don't sell over 100 copies. Take that thought process. You know how much time and effort and energy goes into writing a book? Oh, my God. It's crazy. Okay, so now that we got the framework of knowing to sell, here's what it is. Hook, story, close. Now, let's break down here. Let's go to the whiteboard here. Let's break this down, and we're going to call this the hook. If you want a better word, this is your stop sign. Okay, so I'll go back over to that in a minute, Scott. But what most people do. So I'm going to look. Have this through the lens, through the lens of a video, right? So how many videos are you guys seeing on a regular basis? Every day in your Facebook feed, in your Instagram feed, on YouTube, the ads pop up over and over. Some are annoying, right? The majority might be annoying, but some you watch for a second and you go, I'm not going to click away on that one. I want to see what. I want to see what this one is in a sea of black shirts. How are the only one. How are you the only one that's in a red shirt that you go, oh, why is that one different? I'm going to click on that. How when someone's going through. I mean, I believe in today's world. Look at. My phone's an inch away. Like, you go to an airport and everybody's like. Or swiping up, swiping up. Like, this is like, kids in 100 years now, people are going to walk around like, what's wrong with your arm? Oh, I just. It's just a habit. I don't know how to stop it, right? So people are going 100 miles an hour. How do you go like this? How would someone stop? You go, oh, wait, I'm going to watch this one. That's to me what the hook is. That's the grabber. That's the stop sign. And it's not about being cheesy. A hook. You ready for this? A hook is about entering conversations already going on in the mind of your future or current client. Write that down. You are entering where they are. You are talking about their goals or you're talking about something they're afraid of. Okay, again, could this be coworkers, boss, startup scaling? We need to lean in and we need to know our clients. But isn't that pretty easy? We need to know what our client's fears are, and we gotta write those down. And we need to know what our client's desires are. Write that down. Right, you already know, because in most cases, your client is probably you of five or 10 or 20 years ago and why you're part of this company, right? Or started this company. So we need to enter conversations already going on in the mind of our clients. That's number one. Number two, write this down. I'm not here for any other reason but to serve you. This isn't something I dreamed up. This is 30 years at this. People buy from you. And people will learn from you when they feel understood, not when they just understand you. People will buy from you. People will learn from you when they feel understood, not when they understand you. If you've ever watched a presentation of someone and you thought they were awesome, rock star, you're listening. You don't really take notes, and you get done and you're like, man, they're pretty cool. That was cool. Next speaker. Then all of a sudden. Did you ever have a speaker go up on stage, maybe you never heard of them before? And you're like, oh, my God. And your pen cannot go fast enough. You're like, oh, my God. Yes. Oh, my God, that's me. Oh, my God. Wait. Oh, shh. Could you say that again? Oh, my God. Can I get the replay of this? And your pen is flying and you can't go any faster. That person allowed you to feel understood. The first person allowed you to understand him or her. She was a badass. She did great things. Bravo. But you didn't change anything because you didn't feel like they got you. They were in a different field. They had different resources. They were different. But remember, when you feel understood, that's the person you want to do business with, right? That's the person that makes the difference. So the difference is, do you want to be the person that's understood by your clients, or do you want to be the person that makes your future clients feel understood? Live inside the mind of your prospect or future client, answer their sentences, let them feel understood, and you will win 1000% of the time. Right? Think about that. So when it comes to the hook, this is where, for me, it's where most of my time goes. So many people are good at the story. That's the most videos you see right now. You see people really good at their story about where they came from, how they got the experience, what they're doing, why they're great. Why should you work at them? But you never see it because the first couple sentences didn't lock you in. It didn't go, oh, stop, sign breaks. I'm watching. That's why the hook is so important. I obsess over the hook. Larry King, who just recently passed, he's someone who changed my life over a decade ago, didn't know it. He was on tv. He was doing an interview with Joel Osteen. And Joel is there talking about his latest book. And they're going back and forth, and Joel was with his wife Victoria and Larry King, and they're going back and forth. And Larry's interviewed. Right. If you're young, maybe you don't know Larry King or the impact he had. Maybe you know him as an older guy, but this is a guy that interviewed everybody. Like, I think his first interview was Jesus, and he interviewed everybody since. Right? I'm being silly, but he goes back to presidents before Reagan and like, every president, Gorbachev, Russia, like, everybody from anybody and everybody from Madonna to Lady Gaga to all of them, Prince, some of the best interviews ever. Anyway, I digress. So I'm watching him interview Joel Osteen, and Joel's talking about his book. And Larry King looks at Joel Osteen and says, joel, I'm Jewish. I don't believe Jesus is the son of God. Am I going to hell? And I was like, oh, like, I wanted to dive under the table. How does a. How does a Christian pastor answer that? I'm like, I don't like uncomfortableness either. So I'm like, oh, my God. But at the same time, Joel had an amazing answer. He's like, you know, Larry, I haven't. I'm not going to judge you. That's not my. And I'm sure some, like, hardcore Christians Are like, no, no, you got to. But whatever. I didn't judge it and I'm not judging it now. I just remember. I just remember feeling. My response was, oh, my God, right this very moment. Could you imagine if Larry looked at the camera and said, gotta love Joel Osteen. If you'd like to get his new book, call the number below or go to the website below rather than back then. This is probably 12 years ago, maybe 13 years ago, people had to go, in most cases, drive to a store. Amazon wasn't what it is now. They had to like, okay, now I gotta go online or I gotta drive to a Borders or Barnes and Noble and go pick up the book. Ah. Could you imagine if it was just like, call the number below or click the link, you know, go to the website below. Larry changed my life because it made me. I had a book out at the time that was just getting done on how to invest in a down real estate market, right? So I said, I'm gonna do a Larry King like show. I'm gonna hire someone to interview me and I'm going to just talk about how to. How to shift your mindset and your principles and invest in real estate on the way down. And I'm gonna do it just like that. A real interview. No teleprompters, no pre scripted, just real. I did it. And that infomercial changed my life. My business quadrupled. Because people love the down and dirty real, right? So fast forward, Larry King doesn't know that that interview changed my business, changed my life. Ten years, 12 years later, a mutual friend introduced Larry and I. I tell Larry King the whole story over dinner. He's telling me the most funny stories. He had me cracking up with his history in the world. And I said, do you want to do an infomercial together? He said, yes. How cool is that? I get to do an interview infomercial with Larry King on my new book, Millionaire Success Habits, right? I am stoked. I'm out of my mind, excited. So why am I telling you this long story? I promise. This is about teaching, right? Because I want to emphasize the power of the hook. So what do I do? I want. I have Larry King interviewing me. I want to make it look just like his old shows when he interviewed Madonna and Prince and Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton and every other president and all of it. And Larry King used to start off his shows by saying, tonight, I'm Larry King. I'm here with my guest Madonna. And she's done da da da da da da, and da da da da da da. And tonight we're going to talk about her new album. So I transcribed that. I said, I'm going to make mine. I throw out everything I'm telling you about the hook. I throw out 20 years of experience of having the top infomercial and videos and all the things that I've been blessed to do in my life. I throw that all out the window. My ego takes over and I want to make it like the other Larry King shows. So I write this hook, the open of Larry King. We built the Larry King set. We get the Larry King microphone. We get in the studio like this. And Larry King looks to the camera. I'm sitting with him. I'm a little nervous, all excited to do this interview with him. And Larry King looks at the camera and goes, tonight I'm here with my guest, Dean Graziosi. He's a multiple New York Times best selling author. He's done this, that, this. He's a multiple, multiple millionaire and multi millionaire and he's this and that and family man. And tonight we're going to talk about his new book, Millionaire success habits. And da da da da da. And we go on and we do this great rant back and forth interview. I'm so stoked. This guy that changed my life and I look up to him, I do this interview, we put it out. It's a bomb. Doesn't work, doesn't convert. Amazing book. I'm like, what do you mean? How could this not work? So I try to tweak it and adjust it and I'm looking at it and look, I can't figure it out. And then one day it hits me and I'm like, oh my God, what's wrong with me? The hook sucked. People, who wants to. Does anybody actually want to see an infomercial? No. Right? So I have to be so compelling in that first sentence or two that it puts the brakes on. It's the stop sign. It's the red shirt amongst black shirts. It's the person who's scrolling 200 miles an hour that stops and goes, I'm watching this and all of a sudden I looked at it and I'm like, duh, you fool. You did what everybody does. You went into your ego of, I've been in business for 37 years and I've done this and I've done that and no one cares. It's not about me, it's about you. It's about them. It's about getting them to stop so I can serve them and help them to get this book in their hands. I look at it, I'm like, duh. I leave the show exactly the same. But I asked Larry to fly back in. I got to do the first part of the show over. Would you do that, Larry? He's so sweet. He jumps on a plane, he comes to my studio, we sit down, and I changed the first two sentences of the infomercial. And it went on to be a monster. One of the biggest infomercial hits ever. And can I tell you the difference? First one. Tonight I'm here with my guest, Dean Graziosi. He's a multiple New York Times best selling author, started 13 companies. He's a multimillionaire, Good family man. Tonight we're talking about his new book, Da da da. How do you feel? Maybe you'd watch maybe like, who the hell is Dean Graziosi? Maybe you like me now, but then if you didn't know me, you'd be like, who's this guy? And who gives a crap, right? And I changed it to this. Larry King starts. He's sitting in the studio like this. The camera goes on. It's just Larry King, direct the camera. And Larry says this. Have you ever in your adult life looked in the mirror and thought to yourself, wow, I thought I'd be further ahead by now. Ha. If you have, you're not alone. Hi, I'm Larry King, and tonight I'm here with my guest, Dean Graziosi, and he's going to share the strategies that he's learned to cover that one thing to make sure you lean into your full potential. And we're also going to talk about his book, which one would you stop for.