90% Of Businesses Fail In Their First Year, Here's Why! ft. Dr. Benjamin Hard & Dr. Robert Cialdini

I'm going to start with just showing you 2 quick pictures. So I'm going to flash a lot of things at you. You're not going to actually be able to see a lot. But then the main things I actually want you to see are actually the things in red. So 7% and 15%. So I'm going to explain those pictures in a minute. The question is how. So what I'm going to cover in this talk is how to create a frame, how to actually Have the people who are watching your messages or experiencing your material, being in an environment like this, how to put the correct lenses on them. That's actually what Robert Cialdini's work is all about. And then ultimately, how to get people to make big decisions. How to make people, or get people, to take action. That's basically what this is all about. And I actually— Gina, I'm pretty sure that this is the wrong set of slides. I'm pretty confident this is the wrong set of slides. Anyways, that's me and Joel practicing this. I gave this talk at 100K about a month ago, and so I decided to reshare it. Anyways, we'll start with Robert Cialdini. So here are some of the quotes. He said, there's a critical insight for those who want to learn to be more influential. The best persuaders become so through pre-suasion, the process of arranging for recipients to be receptive to a message before they encounter it. To persuade optimally, then, it is necessary to pre-suade optimally. But how? In part, the answer involves an essential but poorly appreciated tenet of all communication. So this is the key: what we present first changes what people experience. So what we present first changes the way people experience what we present to them next. That's the key. It's all about creating the context and And then when you create the context, you shape everything. So I'm gonna just share with you one of my favorite psychological studies. This is a really funny study. You can look it up if you want. It's called Mind Over Milkshake. And so, as you can see in the picture, basically there was 2 groups. One group was given a milkshake that they were said was very healthy. Low fat, gluten-free, all those things, 104 calories. The other group was told that the milkshake that they were drinking was indulgent. Totally filled with brownies, all sorts of stuff, 600 calories. The truth is that both of them were the exact same milkshake. This was all about framing. What the psychologists did is they ended up testing the people's blood and kind of the biological response of what happened after people took these milkshakes, and basically what it showed is that people had different physiological responses based on the framing of what they thought. You know, there's a lot of interesting kind of like the more stuff that Jamie Hope would understand kind of component of all that stuff. But basically the idea is that your framing not only influences your insights and your, like, your mindset, it literally influences your biology. So now I'm going to talk about how I've applied that principle to webinars recently.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video, and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description, or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can simply go to joesfreebook.com.

And you can get a copy there.

So this is a video that people land on when they come to my webinars, and basically what I say when people come to this video is I actually tell them that I don't want them to watch my webinar. I tell them that it would be a waste of time for them to watch my 60-minute training if they don't have the right perspective. I would rather them not consume more information. They already consume so much information online. It's gonna be a wasted 60 minutes, both my wasted 60 minutes and their wasted 60 minutes If they do not have the right perspective. And so when they click that registration button, I say, if you really want to watch this webinar, I want you to watch it from the right perspective. And so I've put together a 7-minute video that's going to help you get into the right perspective. It's one of the things that Joe says, it's one of the things that Robert Cialdini says. You have to have the right mindset and the right setting, set and setting, in order to have a transformational experience. That's actually true of therapy as well. Joe said it. He said people go to therapy not for information, They go for an experience. And so, if you want people to have the right experience, they have to have the right perspective because you've got to create the right context. And so, basically what then happens is when people click the registration button, they go through this pre-webinar training. It's 7 minutes long. They watch it and I just teach them a bunch of stuff that I'm going to already teach them in the webinar. But one of the things I do at the very end is— and I don't see a clock either. I'll give you a second. On a 10-minute thing. So hopefully I'm not going too far overboard. But anyways, at the end of the training, I tell— I make an offer, essentially a tripwire offer. I offer them a $7 journaling course. And one of the things I say is, if you buy this course— you don't have to buy this course in order to watch the webinar. You've actually already registered for the webinar. But if you buy this course, 2 things are going to happen. You're going to be able to go through a few exercises that are going to help you have a much more powerful experience with the webinar. But also by spending $7 on this thing— we good? Good? By spending $7 on this journaling course, you're also going to be invested. So this is one of the things that Joe says. Let's see here. Joe Polish, PhD. He says if they don't pay, they don't pay attention. So one of the things I actually say at the end of that 7-minute thing is I say, look, you don't have to buy this, but if you do buy it, you're gonna have a completely different mindset for the webinar. It's only $7 to buy this journaling course, but it's essentially like buying a ticket. And if you're more invested, you're gonna have far more commitment, and you're gonna have a different lens. And that $7 lens could be worth a lot of money to you. It's just like why we pay $25,000 to be in this room. The information we get in this room is valuable in a lot of ways because we're so invested financially. It puts on a different set of lenses and commitments And so I just, I literally explain all this to them. And one of the things as part of the pre-suasion principles is that you're striving to align their identity with what they're trying to accomplish. And obviously you're striving to have part of that be that they're making a decision that you're trying to help them make. You're trying— and so that's actually one of the things that Dan Sullivan says. That's what marketing is and selling is that you're helping people get intellectually, you know, interested or stimulated and emotionally committed to making a decision. And so this is just all part of training their identity. And really what the context is that you're creating is their future self. You're creating a context that they already want. It's their future self. And so they're coming at it from that perspective. And so these are all just things that I say, you know, in a lot kind of quicker stream in that 7-minute video. And so over a 6— this was without it. Over a 6-month period of time, and it's a very similar funnel. I made that much money on a funnel selling a particular online course by just adding— and these are 2 separate webinars— but by adding the $7 offer. So you can see the $7 offer and then the thing down below it. I've actually sold probably 4,000 or 5,000 of the journaling course, which is $7. But what happened is that the conversion rate of the actual thing I'm selling, which is an online course between $500 and $1,000, that conversion rate almost doubled on the sales page. Because you can test the sales page. You can see how much people, when they land on a sales page— so before, the sales page conversion rate was 7%. That was the first picture I showed you. The conversion rate on the same sales page, essentially, little tweaks but not really, is now 12%— actually, no, it's 15%. So the conversion rate on the sales page doubled. By adding in this pre-suasion component. And it happened for a few reasons. One is because far more of the people who are at the webinar now actually paid to be at the webinar. Thousands of people have now paid $7 to watch the webinar that used to be free. Those people are far more likely to buy the program. But also, for me, who's someone who wanted to give material that was useful, I wanted them to have the right perspective. I wanted them to have the right perspective, the right lenses, so that when they watched the webinar, it was a transformational experience. Not just them consuming more information. This is the sales page. Pretty much the same thing as it was before. Another kind of very important principle that I've learned about pre-suasion, that this is something that has fundamentally improved the program. So I've had thousands of people go through this online program that I sell. It's a year-long experience. And one of the things that I've learned after having thousands of people go through it is that, you know, a lot of people— I actually have far lower like refund rates than typical. But when people join a program like mine, and even if they join Genius Network, there's a lot of new information that they have to gather in order to be successful in that new environment. So when I give them this new online course, they've— a lot of the feedback we got was that people felt overwhelmed. People were like, there's so much information, I don't know if I can apply it all. And so what we then did is we built an onboarding program. So my program's called AMP, and so what we did is we designed an AMP warm-up program. There's about 300 people in it right now. And actually, a lot of the former people who have been in AMP for like 6 months who are floundering, we put them back in this program. And essentially what this onboarding prep program is, is there's a video at the beginning and I say— this is after they've bought my program. I say, you actually can't have access to my program— or not my program, but you can't have access to AMP, what you purchased, until after you go through this prep program. This is a buffer. And essentially I explain to them the core mindsets, the core things that they need to understand in order to be successful with the thing that they just bought. And they actually have to accomplish a few requirements in order to actually get access to what they bought. And by doing this, by creating this AMP warm-up program, and it's essentially like a buffer, it has— I mean, our refunds are so low, but people are so happy because when they walk in, They're no longer overwhelmed. They can take this program at whatever pace they want. And that's one thing I tell them about. You take this at whatever pace you want. The fastest you can do it is in 2 weeks if you're really a rock star. And then once people actually get into the program that they bought, they have such better results, not only because they worked for it, but because now they're ready for it. They've got the right mindset for it. They've actually got— they actually know how to do it rather than just jumping onto a rocket ship. So this is the thing that me and Joe actually have been working on. Joe filmed an onboarding process. He spent 3 hours filming some of the most amazing stuff, helping people to, when they join Genius Network, prep their mindset so that once they come to these meetings, they know exactly how to execute at the highest level. So I'm now gonna finish, but these are the 2 pictures, 7% versus 15%. The difference was pre-suasion.

You know, I mean, you've already given several here. One of my questions was, if someone is an entrepreneur or business owner listening to this, what techniques or strategies What other strategies could they utilize to better persuade in their business? I mean, what you just said is amazing.

Let me give you another one because I love this one. It's one word, changing one word persuasively. Suppose you want to co-create with your customer base your new line of products or services, or you want to ask them about how to best improve what you have for new models and so on. This is— this co-creation, it's the biggest thing right now in marketing. What we typically do is to ask people for their feedback, ask for their— for that information by saying, could you provide us with your opinion on this topic? It's a mistake because researchers have found that when you ask for someone's opinion, that person takes a half step back. back from you, a separating step, and they go inside themselves for the answer.

Interesting.

If instead of asking for their opinion, you ask for their advice, they take a half step towards you.

Wow.

And you've created a partnership, teamwork, collaborative frame in their mind. And here's what the research shows. Now, when they encounter your products or services or your brand, they're more supportive of it because they feel more a part of it. They feel a merged identity with it because they've moved into that identity with you by providing advice instead of an opinion.

I love it.

I love it.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video, and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description, or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can simply go to joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there. So one, one method of approach is repelling, the other is attracting, right? And so it reminds me of the quotes, people support what they help to create. And the other is, if you let them plan the fight, they don't fight the plan. And I utilize that with my team in my own company by having everyone do teamwork together. But you just gave me a whole nother way of thinking about it, framing it.

In fact, what I like— there's a quote, people don't sink the boats they're riding in, right?

Yeah, yeah.

If you can get them to see them as part of your Enterprise.

It's your—

it's both of your boat now. You're both riding in that boat. They're not going to torpedo it.

Yeah.

So that's because, you know, one of the things that I have always thought of in marketing, and I learned this from studying sales copy and persuasive words, when you're not having the advantage of being face-to-face with someone and you have to use words to persuade. And so part of it is the communication, how you say it, the frequency of it, the usefulness of it. And I've always thought, you know, the number one thing to do with clients is to bond and how to bond with them. And anything that breaks that bond is not good. And alignment is critical. Like in business, the way that I— my new marketing book which is coming out, currently titled Joe's Marketing Book, and we're crowdsourcing different titles, although everyone seems to love the title Joe's Marketing Book.

Yeah.

months is, um, it's all about ELF. You can have an ELF business, which is easy, lucrative, and fun, or you can have a HALF business, which is hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating. And I think learning persuasion is going to give you an ELF business, because if you don't utilize what you have researched and proven and studied, then to do anything other than what you're saying is hard, annoying, sometimes lucrative, and frustrating.

Right.

And so I look at like any sort of thing that I can do that's going to give me a greater advantage, that is going to get a better result, to not only study it, learn it, and apply it is just idiotic. And now in some cases you can't fix stupid, so some people, they just don't get it. However, knowing that there is knowledge out there, knowing there is a method that will improve things is critical, and I only want to align myself with people that are aligned with with me. And I think the greatest joy of using persuasion and getting someone into a better position to make their lives better is if they wanted to go along with it.

Right.

It wasn't like trickery.

It wasn't manipulation. Although sometimes you persuade people into directions that they don't want to go, but it's actually good for them. So you can argue that you're doing them a favor. However, anything that can be set up to just, you know, I think people love to be sold. They hate to be pressured. And if you do things in a certain way, When anyone is really, you know, conscientious and cares about us and gets us into something to exchange our money or our time or our energy for something and it actually helps you and you like it, that feels good. Everyone loves that.

Everybody feels good about that.

Yeah.

And so they, they want to continue to do business the next round and the round after that.

Exactly, because, you know, the most expensive Business cost is client acquisition, and once you've already done that, everything, you know, it's— I've always— I always think of it as it's a lot harder to create momentum than it is to maintain it. You know, like every once in a while I'll run into you guys at the gym because you work out consistently.

Right.

And the thing is, if you just did that, oh, every 3 months I'm gonna go work out and do a really great workout, it just doesn't work that way. And I think what you teach is kind of the same way. These are just ongoing practices that if you put them into place, your business, your connection, your quality of clientele, your joy of how you do things just increases.

So, so this is great.

About blogs and internet, it sounds like direct marketing, something in somebody's mailbox, is just as legit in 2015 as it ever has ever been.

Yeah, good idea, right? Yeah, well, yeah, I will even say this. Like, there's 3 things you need in order to sell something. You need a product or service. So think of your art here as your product or your service, okay? If someone's going to commission you to do something, you're going to go set something up in their home like a sculpture or whatever. It's not just art, but it's actually logistically involved. So, you know, everyone has a product or service. You have a sales pitch, which is your marketing message or what you say about it, what you call call it, and then a delivery system. What most people do is they focus on what it is that they sell and how do we tell people about it. Do we have a blog? Do we use Twitter? Do we use Facebook? Do we use search engines? Do we use direct mail? Do we use TV? Do we use radio? Do we use referrals? Do we use billboards? There are a bazillion people in the world that are happy to take your money to deliver advertising or information about it, but if you have a lousy pitch, then you, you could have a great product or service, but how— so part of it is you have to have all 3 of those sort of things together. So to go back to direct mail, I love direct mail because for one, it's totally under the radar. Secondly, like I said earlier, there's less noise in people's mailboxes today. I mean, how many of you got more mail 15 years ago than you do today? Like a ton. Like hardly anyone does good direct mail anymore. And I, I mean, we make a fortune with direct mail because we have no competitors there. Like if you're a single guy and you're going to go to a club, like let's say like no positioning whatsoever. Okay, you know, like the thing I said earlier, if you're a guy and you're single and— how many single women do we have in the room that's willing to admit it? Okay, let's— can I use you as an example?

Okay.

Now if Jossie's like at, you know, I'm someone that— and I like tap on her shoulder and say, Jossie, I'd like to sleep with you. And she— now, and she's never met me before, like first off, it's going to creep her the hell out. She should probably call the cops. I'm probably going to get slapped. Unless it's some famous person or someone that Jossie really already knows about, the chances of that being a good approach are pretty much slim to none. But that's how a lot of people actually do the marketing. They go into an environment where it's super, like tons of people, but in direct mail, you're like the only one there. You're the only one there in the club. So the chances are much better and it gives you an opportunity. But here's the thing though. I'm not even— see, how many of you actually have sold things to people while you've been here? How many of you have sold at least, say, 10 pieces of art while you've been here? Okay. So those 10 people, if you send them a letter saying thank you, or you send them a picture and you drive them to your blog, or you drive them to your podcast, or you drive them to whatever you have online, then you can develop And nurture that relationship with people. So part of my thing is you want to build a database, and you want to— or you want to go to people that can even endorse you. See, what Susan is doing for all of you here is she's taking all kinds of different artists, and she does all of the marketing for you to bring them to this location. But your job here is— and the reason, of course, she wants a guy like me to come up and babble about my marketing stuff to you— is to actually— reframe how you think about your capabilities of selling because anything that you learn is really built around capabilities. If you want to make $1 million a year, you're not going to make $1 million a year with $50,000 a year capabilities. You got to have $1 million a year capabilities. Whenever I read a book or I listen to an audio, and believe me, I invest a lot of time. I've read over 1,000 books. I've got a few of my team members here. I've got my assistant Eunice back there. I've got Rochelle. Rochelle's been with me for like 8 years. Eunice has been with me for 10 years. I would encourage you to hire someone. How many of you have employees? Okay. How many of you have no employees whatsoever? Okay, I think this is the artist's curse too. But again, some of you, that's just not your world, and you don't wanna have employees, and you just operate better that way. So this is not like I think you need to do this sort of thing. Treat this like a 12-step group. Take what you like and leave the rest. What an employee is, an employee is a behavior rental agreement. I have my video guy, Rakeem, back here who's amazing, and Chelsea, who's amazing. They're videotaping this thing. I'm renting their behavior right now. I pay them money to show up and take their capabilities of creating video, and they're going to videotape this. Since I'm speaking in front of a group of people, I want to repurpose this stuff. I want to have it captured. If any of you want to watch this again, if you actually liked anything I had to say, we'll make this video available to you so you can watch it again, whatever. The thing is, when someone hires me, they're renting my behavior. When someone's hiring you to do art, they're renting your behavior. In your highest and best use of your time, your skills are worth a lot of money. How much you actually get paid has everything to do with mentally how much value you put on yourself. When you put a price tag on a piece of art, The real sales job that you need to do, my core message here, the biggest sales job you need to do is not to all the people that are just going to look at your art or potentially could buy art from you. The number one sales job you have to do is what? Who do you have to sell?

Yourself.

Yourself, exactly. If you cannot sell yourself, you're going to do a really piss-poor job of selling someone else. Like Joe mentioned this earlier, there's 2 things in business that I don't think you should ever delegate. You shouldn't delegate the Checkbook unless you wanna get ripped off, unless you have real good measures. And I had one CEO in the past that cost me $2.5 million in losses because of a very bad decision that he made. And if you let someone else— if you don't count the cookies in the cookie jar, some people may take the cookies. So don't delegate the checkbook and don't delegate the marketing. Some people are waiting to be discovered. Well, I'm so good. Let me have someone else and come and do the marketing. And honestly, it happens every once in a while. You see the Justin Biebers of the world that get a great agent, and like him or not, Justin Bieber worked his ass off in the very beginning. Some people do get discovered, but talentless people rarely get discovered and get lucky. But it's so rare that people get discovered that I wouldn't rely on it as a strategy. So you have to get yourself discovered. You have to really position yourself. You really have to it up. So do a sales job on yourself. And this will not happen overnight, but what I would encourage you to do is— the number one reason people don't do well with marketing, and I have worked with tens of thousands of people in the world of marketing, the people that don't do well are the ones that don't have a marketing mindset. They don't appreciate it, they don't respect it, and they have some historical experience with selling and marketing like the used car salesman that didn't care about them, but used high-pressure techniques to try to sell them. See, people love to be sold, they hate to be pressured. When you are selling art here to people and they really fall in love with your work and they're giving you money, it's not even occurring in their mind that you're selling them. When you see someone totally interested in something, ask them, you know, what do you like about it? How does that make you feel? People make decisions based on emotion. And of course you all know that, you're artists. I mean, you already know that. I'll tell you one thing that I taught a— this is so weird. I don't even know why this stuff— see, I'm so ADD that this crap just comes into my head. I was in a bar many, many years ago with a friend of mine. She wasn't my girlfriend though. She was female, but she wasn't a girlfriend. And we were sitting there and some girl had this bucket of roses and she said, would you like to buy a rose? And I said, I go, no, I don't even like her. She's annoying as hell, but thank you. And she's like, oh. And I go, no. I go, she's just my friend. It's not my girlfriend, so I'm not gonna buy her a rose. And I go, however, I go, do you want me to tell you how to sell all these roses tonight?

Yeah.

And she's like, yeah. And I go, if you do this, I swear it'll work, but it's gonna put pressure and guilt on people. She's like, yeah, tell me. So I go, don't go up and say, would you like to buy a rose? If the guy is with a woman, say, would you like to tell her how much you love her? And she goes, well, what if he doesn't love her? What's the first date? Well, I said, well, just say something like, would you like to show her how much of a good time you're having? If you go up to a guy and you say, would you like to show her how much you love her? I mean, and if the guy doesn't buy her a rose, he looks like a total jackass. Like, how could he not do that, right? So I just say this to her very just kind of not even really professional.

I just—

like I just said it to you now. I didn't even— it wasn't very articulate. I just kind of said that. But the girl grasped that, oh, I just got to ask a question that links the buying of a rose to how he's feeling with his date or his wife. She came back to me an hour later. She was sold every rose, something like 30 roses. She goes, oh my God, that was the best line ever. Thank you so much. I sold them all. That's so awesome. It changed her life. I then proceeded to share that with about 5 other rose girls over the next whatever period of time.

What has changed today? Because when you said when you were growing up, everyone trusted each other. You go to the butcher. Now today, a lot of people shop and they never have any interaction with anyone. This is all, you know, socialization, I think, has become really damaged. You know, so again, to go back to the COVID example for clearing the skies, oh my God, think about the isolation and the loneliness and the depression and the suicide.

Yeah.

So whenever you, you know, build a plane, you create a plane, you create a plane crash. That quote from, I think, the 1800s, you build a ship, you've created shipwrecks, right?

Yeah. And nothing, nothing, nothing gets created without consequence. Right. Cause and effect. Right. So I would add to Dan's definition, you know, selling is the process of, you know, intellectually converting someone to an idea. that is good for them, you know, maybe it's also valid to say that is good for them, is good for their soul.

Yeah.

There needs to be an internal qualifier, right? So I don't— and take, you know, climate change, which is just this thing I'm working on for March to help out. But I don't think we should be pursuing a green line at the cost of humanity. But we need to find the line that works where we operate together. Right.

Yes.

And I think some of the things that have really shifted in sales and selling and transparency is a really, really big deal. We're living in a world now. People used to buy products and services, right? And, you know, if you think about it, when I was growing up, you know, I left school in 1978. You bought products. You kind of didn't buy from personalities. My world was not occupied by influencers and thought leaders, quote unquote, which I think is the most commoditized term on the planet right now today.

Thought leader?

I am actively telling people, stop calling yourself a thought leader.

I love hearing you say that because I say any idiot can come up with a thought.

Result leaders I like way better than thought leaders.

Well, I've actually got a whole model and I'm kind of in— I mean, in the interest of time, maybe I don't need to walk through the model, but if you think about 4 levels, right? The world of marketing once upon a time said, just turn your thing into a product. Great, but you become a vendor and you're going to be price-based. So then in order to kind of get premium, people said, oh, authority-based marketing, right? Content.

Right.

Become a thought leader. To be a thought leader, you need 2 things. You need an original thought and you need followers. If you're missing either of those, you're not a thought leader. So if you've got a LinkedIn post with 2 people looking at it, calling yourself a thought leader, like forget it.

Right.

And it's because those people exist, thought leader is a commoditized term.

Yeah.

So the next level up is you become a hero to your client and your client goes, okay, I come to you for strength. Right. And that's valid. But if you're going to sell from thought leadership or being the hero, you've got to sell on ego. I'm a thought leader. I'm a hero. So in the late '70s when I left school, no one sold on ego. They sold on product and company reputation. And it was all of that quite pressure-based insurance salesperson style thing. And so as time went on, we've kind of moved into this world where people know a lot about the thing they're buying.

Right.

They do want to find out more. But there's 2 things that everybody's buying and we're all actually selling the same thing. Everybody wants to win in the context of the problem they're trying to solve. Like, no one wants to buy average. Hey, I want to buy a new car. Do you have an average car to sell me? That's nonsense, right? Like, I want to get help with my business. Do you have an average solution to help me? I just want to scale averagely. No, everyone wants to win. They don't want to admit it, but they actually want to hang around with their buddies and go, I've got the best business out of all of us.

Totally. Yeah.

But the second thing everybody wants to buy is they want to be made safe. And I call that buyer safety, right? And I've got a whole model around buyer safety, the 5 stages of buyer safety. in the marketing and sales funnel, right? You've got to offer 5 levels of safety and in a sequence as you move through. But the thing is, people actually don't want to have to be safe. So people want to smoke and drink and not wear personal protective equipment in industrial environments. They want to drive fast and do stupid things. They don't actually want to be safe, but they want someone or something else to make them safe. And so they want the government to make them safe. I want somebody else to solve the climate problem. so that I'm okay, but I don't want to have to do anything, right? Or I want somebody else to regulate or promise me something that's going to make me safe, right? And so a big challenge for business today is the 2 things you're selling is I'm going to help you win and I'm going to make you safe. If you buy from us, we can guarantee you that green line because we've walked hundreds, if not thousands of people along there. We know the gates to go through. And the only thing that's going to take you off that line is if you behave your way off the line. And if you do, I'm going to call you and go, you're not behaving on a Green Line way. And then you'll make a choice.

Yeah.

And if you don't want to get back on the Green Line, we're probably not going to hang out together anymore. Right? Or if you jump to the Green Line and I don't see the first movements, I'm probably going to say, I don't think you're a Green Line client. And the model once again does the heavy lifting because Everyone actually knows that model is true. If you clean your teeth, you're on the green line, great teeth to the end of life. If you don't, they fall out of your head. It's just that simple. Don't maintain your car, it's going to break down. Maintain your car, it'll last for years. And so we're constantly moving through that tension. And so if I actually— but the level above hero, there's an interesting level above hero if I can just close that loop. Then I'm going to come back to company genius.

Great.

Okay.

The problem with being the hero or even claiming thought leadership is you have to sell on ego. I'm going to rescue you. And that makes your client a victim. So what's the level above hero? And Luke Skywalker had Yoda. Every hero has a sage. And the sage is often smaller and physically weaker, but they're full of wisdom. And so Yoda said to Luke, pick up your lightsaber and come at me. Now I'm not a Star Wars fan, but I remember this scene. And Luke picked up his lightsaber and Yoda had his lightsaber and he's kind of batting Luke away a bit. And Luke's going, but master, I'll hurt you. And Yoda goes, no, no, just come at me. And he flicks Luke's lightsaber away a few times and eventually Luke gets angry and he's coming at him full bore. And Yoda just shuts his eyes with the lightsaber and flicks it away. And Luke goes, I don't understand what happened. He goes, It's the Force, Luke. The hero has— the sage has 3 qualities. And I would challenge everybody to market and think about this as they market. The sage has this profound genius behind what they do. And I'll circle back to that company genius model and finish it in a minute. They have a level of wisdom that the client knows that they're experiencing that they haven't experienced elsewhere. They have a way of talking about it and thinking about it that they're not hearing from other people. So they have profound genius. The sage has what I call powerful calm. When they come into the presence of this sage, so this is someone speaking from stage or one-to-one. Now, this is not about no hype, it's about the right energy. Because you can have calming energy just as much as you can have hyping energy, and they both have their place, right? But the sage has this powerful calm. People come into their presence, they just go, I just need to hear you talk. Like the sound of your voice, what you're talking about, just the things you say, they just make me feel safe. And I know what you're talking about is going to let me win. And then they have the ability of what I call practical simplicity. They can package the most complex things into little parcels of clarity, which I call models. I mean, if the 2 most important systems in a business are the system for thinking— so every business is only as good as the idea on which it's built and the quality of the thinking of the leaders in the business— and then the ability to influence people. So the system for thinking and influence. To influence staff to work hard, customers to buy from you, regulators to let you operate, suppliers to serve you, and so on. Banks to lend you money, investors to invest. You get those 2 systems right, just about everything else works out. And so I went on the search for, is there a system for thinking and influence? And then I realized it's these visual models that I draw. Because the first thing the models do is extract much deeper thinking and conversation about things just like this silly little model with a red and a green line has extracted out of us around climate change and a whole bunch of other stuff.

Right.

They are frameworks for thinking that allow you to go deeper and deeper and deeper. I mean, for my Inner Circle client group, I take a business book every month and I summarize it into a model. Even if it didn't have a model in the book, it just takes the book to a deeper level. So the models, first of all, stimulate this internal aligned depth of thinking and discernment and consideration because it forces you to kind of Well, what happens if you really go up that path?

Right.

And then it leaves behind this artifact for influence that summarizes all of the thinking that went into it. I used to get hired by the government. They say, we're going to put 200 people in a room that are at war with each other over an issue, but they're universally— they're unified in their hatred for us as government. And you've got 2 hours to get them to agree on this thing. And I have a reputation for doing that, but I realized magical things happen at the 3/4 mark. So I used to do ultra-distance running until my knees blew out, like 100-kilometer runs and stuff like that.

Wow.

And most people fall out of the 42K marathon at 32K. Most people fall out of the 88K Comrades in South Africa at 63K. You know, the performance curve is the 80/20 curve, right? Everyone says only do the 20% that gives you 80% of the result. That's a denial that the 80% was building foundation. You can't just turn up for the Olympic Games for the last 20% and win the gold medal. My nephew's a 2-time Paralympian. You've got to do the 4 years of training that is the 80% just to get to go.

Right.

So the way most people talk about the 80/20 rule is fundamentally wrong. You've got to do the foundational work of the 80% to get the exponential lift that occurs in the 20%. That tipping point is the 3/4 mark. So most people step out at about the 3/4 mark because they've just spent 80% of their time doing the work that's going to give them the uplift in the last 20%. Someone else comes in, picks up a business, let's say, that someone sold. It's poised right on the exponential part of the curve and away they go, right? And they look like heroes.

And I love the way you explain that too, because I mean, I've actually seen you talk about foundation and acceleration. And what's funny is for years, I mean, I started Genius Network in 2007, and prior to that, I had my first coaching group. I started in 1998, so I've been I've been at it for a while, and I've looked at like the three-year framework. You know, first year foundation, second year growth, third year acceleration.

Yeah.

And a lot of people come in with the expectation that I want to fly into flying.

Yeah.

And they and they just don't. And so I think in what you just said, you know, the way most people use the 80/20 model is fundamentally wrong.

Yeah.

So there's a lot of things that are fundamentally wrong. And I think what you have brought, what you bring to the table is, I mean, most people suck at marketing. I mean, like, when you're talking about hate, I Love Marketing, my I Love Marketing podcast, right, which this interview will go on, I originally started that when I bought the website, uh, when I registered the website I Hate Marketing. And I actually bought I Love Marketing because someone already owned it, but they were not doing anything with the name, and I turned it into the podcast. But my original thinking was, how many people hate marketing? Not because marketing's good or bad, it could be either, as you explained. It's just they don't know how to use it. They don't know. So I think a lot of the resistance to explaining anything is they— we just don't know how to explain it.

Correct.

And I mean, and as I'm going through this, it's interesting how much of the this evokes in me and how much conversation I wanna have with you after, just with what you started here.

Yeah.

But the beauty of that is you get people into it really quickly. You make the distinctions, you show people how to have ahas. And ultimately, for me, I only wanna accelerate things that I truly feel are gonna expand humanity, not contract it. My number one thing, like, even with all my marketing skills, my main thing is I wanna change the global conversation about how people view and treat addicts with compassion instead of judgment. and find the best forms of treatment that have efficacy and share it with the world. And I need to have a business and means and mechanisms and money in order to do the things there. And I wanna utilize your model for explaining how complex addiction is.

Yeah.

Like addiction, I think, is one of the greatest global problems on the planet.

Absolutely.

And it's complex. It's very hard to explain. And so, you know, as much as I, you know, I'll just tell you, As much as my agenda that I have here of learning about marketing and sharing it with people, there's things that I think are really damn important for me and that I wanna share with the world, that I wanna get out there. And a lot of them have nothing to do with money motivation. As a matter of fact, I spend money in order to spend as much time as I do away from business, 'cause I, for one, it helps me. It helps me in my own recovery. I think it really matters. And so, I see incredible significance in what it is that you have learned how to do and how you explain it.

We're going to talk about purchase here, right? The most important motivating factors in a purchase, but really it's any kind of influence. It could be a negotiation. It could be if you want somebody to do a favor for you or donate to a charity. It doesn't necessarily have to be a monetary purchase or even a monetary thing, but the most motivating factors, and I'm going to go from the least motivating to the most motivating.

are these.

Number 1, the least motivating factor that will get a person to buy from you is what will they have or get from buying your product or service? Now, the unfortunate thing, this is what most small business owners talk about, what most marketers talk about. Buy my product and you'll get this. Buy my product and you'll have this. I coach a lot of coaches, and a lot of these coaches will put out a high-ticket program. They want to charge 15 grand for it. And then people go, well, tell me about your program. And they go, well, you're going to get 52 calls and you're going to get 12 home study courses and you're going to get a login and a password to a private— and you're going to get a community. And people talk about what they're going to get. And that is by far the least motivating factor. Now, I'm not saying to leave that out because, you know, we've all heard the phrase that a buyer will buy on emotion And then what? Back it up later by influence. We just— by logic. We do justify by logic. So you wanna make sure that you have that information somewhere. You can't just sell people empty packages and not tell them what's in it. But it's certainly not the thing you wanna lead with, right? It's the follow-up information, and usually even the information that people will go back to after they've made a purchase when they wanna justify it. But overall, this is something that's outside the person. It's, it's an external thing. You know, very often we talk about features and benefits. This is the features. It's the things they're going to get or the things they're going to have. Now, as we go through these, what I like to call the layers of the mind, we go deeper and deeper into the mind and each layer becomes more influential because not only does it become more influential on its own, but it also trickles to the other layers. So the second layer of influence is what will your product do or what will they do with the product. This is what we call the level of behavior, right? What is it going to do for them? What will they do with it? How will they act when they have the product or service? Okay, again, this is something that commonly you'll find in copywriting. Now the interesting thing about it is this: if you have— let's say you have a home study course or something like that, or a book that you're selling, or could be a product or service— whatever it does for them or whatever they do with it will allow them to have or get things. So this is what I'm talking about, the trickle-down effect, right? Each layer we go deeper actually influences all of the other layers. So when we talk about what will it do for them, now that starts to imply that they will have or get something from it, because behaviors get us results. Okay, now the next layer that we can get into where we go deeper into the mind is now what will your product achieve for them? or what will they achieve with it? What will it unlock for them that was not possible before?

Right?

So now we start getting into that level of possibilities. What are the possibilities for them once they buy your product or service? What are they going to achieve with it? Are they going to, like, you know, for example, for us, we sell neurolinguistic programming certification courses. So they will be able to achieve certification. They will get their diploma. They will achieve that. It will unlock for them the ability to see clients. Right? Now, once that's unlocked, guess what? They're going to see clients and then that will give them results. And so, this is kind of that trickle, you could call it trickle-back effect if you want to, right? And so, but the more important thing to talk about, the more important thing to highlight is what are they gonna achieve that's going to imply that they'll do something and then imply that they will get results.

All right?

Now, at this point, we're talking about, you know, people's, what I like to call their potential at this point. We're actually unlocking potential for people. And you know, the thing is, when it comes to behaviors and what things people have, people are mostly conscious of those things. When it comes to our potential, we're starting to get to that level where there's a lot of unconscious potential that people don't realize they have. And that you can help them get, you can help them achieve with that kind of whatever it is that you give them, right? So we're now starting to tap deeper and deeper and deeper into the unconscious mind. Now the next layer, we're starting to get to the ninja stuff now.

Right?

As we go deeper in the unconscious mind, we find that the next layer is what will your product or service help people think, think differently, or help people know, right? What are the beliefs that they're going to walk away with? This is the kind of stuff that most people don't really get into when it comes to selling a product or service. You know, they're so consumed with here's what you're going to get. But really, the fact is most people, when they buy a product or service in some way, especially if you're in any kind of a personal development industry or education industry or masterminds or coaching or anything like that, what people really want and need is the new belief systems, right? The new beliefs that go along with what the transformation is that your product or service brings, right? I look at all of— we own 3 businesses and I look at all of our businesses as transformation. Where is that person when they come to you and where do they want to be at the end? There's a bridge there, that most people don't know how to build that bridge on their own. That's why they're looking for you. That's why. And it doesn't matter what you sell, right? There's something that they want that they don't have in their life, and you are the bridge to get there. Now, even if you're doing something like selling clothes, for example, why does a person buy a high-end suit, right? They don't buy a high-end suit because it has a certain number of buttons and these many pockets and, you know, this many double breasts or whatever, right? Very often when a person puts on a suit, There's a transformation that's happening when they do that, right? About beliefs about themselves and how they present themselves when they go forward. So that's the next layer is what is your problem? What is your program or service or product going to have them thinking or knowing by the time that they're done consuming it? That's very, very powerful. Now, as we go deeper into the unconscious mind, the next layer is this. How is your product or service going to make them feel? We're now at the level— in NLP, we call this the level of values, right? Values— if I could give a really quick definition of values, because I could go deep, I could speak for days on values. Values are deep unconscious desires that we have. They're drivers of our life. You know, most people, if you look at them in their life and you go, why did you do that? Most people will look back at you and go, I don't know, for most of the stuff they do in their life. I love to ask people questions like, why did you get into the career that you're in? And a lot of people are like, they don't have a reason. why they're in the career. It's just, I went to college and they made me pick a major and then I got this job. A lot of people just sort of coast through life. But really, when it comes down to it, the things that drive us, especially if you have something you're passionate about, like I have a friend, Ruben, who every morning at 4 o'clock in the morning, he's in the gym. One of the only few days that he missed in the gym, he was one of the very first people to get coronavirus in Orange County. He was the first recorded case, I think, in Orange County, California. And he was in the hospital for a week. They put him on a ventilator, almost killed him, and he missed like 10 days in the gym. And he was kicking himself. He was so upset with himself that he missed his days in the gym. It was almost more important than him even having coronavirus, right? Because he has deep values, a value system around working out and around his body. He feels like his body's a temple, whereas other people that don't have that value in them, they can try and get themselves to do the gym or to have the body that they want, but without that deeper inner programming, they don't get there, right? And this is one of the reasons why so many people will make goals and then not achieve them, because, you know, their values are out of alignment. One of the most important things, and this is something that we do when we do our avatar work, is discovering what the values are of your ideal client, right? What are the things that drive them? Now, values, they tend to be feely words. They tend to be One word, whereas beliefs can be sentences, whole sentences, and even whole books can be written about beliefs. Values are a little simpler. They tend to be one word. If you ask a person what's important to you about your career, they're going to give you words like reward, passion, integrity, drive, right? They have these kind of one-word— we call them semantically packed words in NLP because even though they're one word, there's feeling behind them. There's a lot of emotion behind these words. And one of the best things you can do is find out what those words are for your client. Easiest way to do that, by the way, is to sit down with a bunch of your clients and ask them the question, what's important to you about blank? Okay, and whatever the blank is, is what you provide as a product or service and program. What's important to you about your career? What's important to you about your health? What's important to you about your relationships?

Right?

And then ask them that question over and over and over again. What'll happen is they'll run out. They'll get to a point where they go, that's all I can think of. Maybe they give you 5 or 6. They go, that's it, that's all I can think of. But they're never really empty yet. There's just more in the unconscious mind they have to dig up again. So just keep asking, what's important to you about blank? What else? What else? What else? And then a few more will come out and then they'll go, I think that's it. And their mind will go blank again. And then a few more will come out. By the time you've run out 3 times, you've really got their collection of usually the top 10 or 12 values. of things that are important to them. Then what I like to do is I like to go, which one is most important of all these ones that you see here? Which one's the most important? Then of all the rest of them, which one's the second most? Of all the rest of them, what are the third most? And get them in order. And what you'll find is that your ideal client avatar will have a collection of values that are— they'll obviously not all have the same values. Every person is different and unique in their own way, but there will be clusters of those values that are common to all of your avatar. Those words are the ones that are going to drive people, right? Those are the ones that are going to get people to that point of desire. Whereas what they have is just like, oh, that's interesting information, right? Or what they're going to do with it. We really want to move people to that point of desire. So, a lot of times, if I'm working with small business owners, a lot of times one of the top desires or one of the top values that small business owners have is freedom. So it's funny that like I can sell a copywriting course, which is all about writing, you know, creative words. But what I'm really talking to people about is the freedom that they want, because the fact that they can't get their message across to people and get them to say yes is robbing them of their freedom, right? So find out what those words are. This takes research. This isn't one of those things where you just snap your finger, you know instantly what to say. That's why I said I'm going meta today. I'm not going to give you— I'm not going to give you the pickup lines. But I want to give you a way of thinking about how you use your language and the different layers of language and which ones are more powerful. How a person is going to feel by using your product or service or program is far more motivating to them versus what they're going to get or what they're going to do. Right now, as powerful as that is, and that alone will, you know, light your copy on fire and, you know, your negotiations and everything else will just absolutely amplify it. But it's not the deepest we can go. There's one more layer deep that we can go. It is the most powerful function of the unconscious mind, and it is this: it's identity. Who will they be, or who will they become by using your product or service? This is the, the deepest function of the unconscious mind. Joseph Campbell famously said that I am are the most powerful words in the universe, for what you put after them shape your destiny. This is really the core. And the thing is, it's, it's one of those things that is so unconscious to most people. Sometimes you have to dig this out of people, right? And this is why I say you're not just going to snap your fingers, know what to say. You've got to do your research on your avatar and your ideal clients. But who do they desire to become? Or the other question is, who do they desire to not be anymore? Right now, all of these layers that I've given you here, right? Which is the have, the do, the unlocking or the achieving, the thinking or believing, the values and emotions, and the be and become. One of the important things to point out is that every motivation that a person has can come from 2 different directions. Every motivation a person can have can come from 2 directions, right? There's one direction is what we call toward motivation. This is where a person decides what it is that they want in their life. Let's say this person says, you know what? I want to be fit and I want to be healthy. Person, wherever they are on the spectrum, they decide what they want, they set their sights on it, and they move in that direction. That's called toward motivation because the person moves towards what they want. The second kind of motivation is away motivation. This is where a person gets sick of or decides that they don't want something. I don't want to be fat anymore. I don't want to be sick. And they move away from that, that, that motivation. Now, interestingly enough, notice that both motivations move in the same direction.

Right?

This is something that I think is commonly misunderstood about toward and away motivation, is that they both move in the same direction. Now, when it comes to coaching and motivation, away motivation tends to have very unstable results. It tends to get very yo-yo. You know, most diets don't fail because of the biology and the chemistry of the diet. Most diets fail because of the motivation, because instead of wanting to be healthy, people want to not be fat. And that's where the yo-yo diet comes from. It has nothing to do with the diet itself, right? But when it comes to influence, what we have to realize is that most people need both of these, right? Now, each person has a personality type. We call it motivation direction in NLP, where as a person, they will tend to be more motivated toward what they want or more motivated away from what they don't want. In my estimation, about 85% of people in the world are away motivated. And this is, you know, if you've ever been through personal development, I've been working on myself since I was 12. I've been heavily working on myself for the last 24 years since I learned hypnosis and NLP. I had a really interesting thing happen for me where as a copywriter, my copy stopped converting. I would write copy for people and be like, why isn't anybody buying this? And I realized one day because I had gotten rid of all my stuff, I released all my negative emotions from the past with NLP. I released all my limiting beliefs. I mean, there's still ones that pop up from time to time, but most of them— I'm always a work in progress, but I had cleaned up most of the negative stuff that had happened in my past. And therefore, I became a very toward-motivated person. And so, I was writing copy that was all rainbows, butterflies, and unicorns, and nobody would buy anything. And one of the things I realized was that I was missing the away motivation. Now, an interesting thing happens is that we do get a lot of people, especially in the spiritual space and the coaching space, they go, I don't like to use deadlines. I don't like to use away motivation. That's— it just doesn't seem— seems icky, you know. But the fact is, you know, if I was going to go to China and do a deal in China, I would do my damnedest to learn some Chinese before I go there, right? If I'm going to speak to people in another country, I am going to do my best to communicate with them. I'm not going to expect them to communicate with me. The same thing is true when it comes to motivation direction.

Right?

It doesn't matter if you're a toward motivated person. It doesn't matter if you don't like deadlines and talking negative. If that is what is going to get people to buy because that's the language they speak, we have to speak it.

Right?

Now, the most powerful form of influence actually has both. We call it a propulsion system where you combine away motivation usually first and then give them some hope and then give them toward motivation at the end, right? That's usually when I write my copy, I start with the doom and gloom, agitate the problem at the top, and then there's hope. And then we start moving in a toward direction, but we definitely have to have that away motivation in there for 85% of people. So all of these layers, and I'll leave this up here for a second, you can do a screenshot. These are all the layers that I just gave you. All of these can be used in either a toward or an away motivation. So with results, what are they going to have when they get— you could also talk about what they're not going to have anymore, what they're not going to get anymore. With behaviors, what are they going to do? How are they going to act? You could also say what they're not going to do anymore. how they're not going to act, right? Capabilities. What is it going to achieve, unlock, but also what's it going to prevent them from doing? With beliefs, it's the positive beliefs they could accept, but also the negative beliefs they're going to let go of. With emotions, what emotions will they feel, but also what emotions will you prevent them from feeling again? And then with identity, who are they going to become, but also who are they leaving behind, right? By using your product or service. It's, you know, especially in personal development, The whole reason I got into hypnosis and NLP— I didn't want to do this as a business. I was a computer programmer. I got into it because I was sick of who I was. I literally didn't love myself. I didn't like myself. I just wanted to become the person I wanted to be so that I didn't hate myself anymore. You know, that, that was, that was my first inkling. I always tell people I was my first client, you know, when I got into this business. And then when I worked on myself and I saw the results, I just became infected with helping other people get those same results as well.

Hello. Hi.

So we have talked about a lot about marketing, some of the best marketing ideas on the planet in this room, but we all know that if we don't bring people to a decision, no transformation happens. The difference that we really all wanna make on the planet doesn't actually get made until people decide yes or no. So what if in the next 10 minutes you could learn how to bring people to a decision on the spot, regardless of what industry you're in, in any situation? That's what we're up to. The biggest question I get is, Lisa, how have you, from home, with 2 toddlers in tow, created a company, still from home, that's made the Inc. 500 list of fastest growing companies 2 years in a row? The first year, number 169. Well, this is how I've done it. This is my model. I call it Lisa's 7-Figure Love Your Life Blueprint, because while I'm completely committed to my purpose and Entrepreneurs, heart-centered entrepreneurs, being able to make a difference, making irresistible offers, bringing people to a decision, I'm also committed to my lifestyle. Anybody else?

Yes.

Awesome. So as you see, the arrows all point to the irresistible offer. Everything in our business is built backwards. It's reverse engineered. We don't do anything without building it with the end in mind, the end being that point of decision, the real moment of transformation in your business. So whether it's high-ticket selling, a one-on-one conversation, possibly in office or on the phone, or you're speaking, this could be live teleseminars or webinars, or online promotion and delivery, the irresistible offer needs to be the starting place. And that's why we're gonna work on that together today. I call this the sales conversion machine. And if you're feeling tired or you're spending a lot of, too much money on your marketing that's not paying off, This is what's missing, the sales conversion machine. So you ready to dive into irresistible offers?

Yes.

Who wants to know how to make them? It's easier than you think. Here we go. So first of all, I do have to say, I know I have some skeptics. I know JJ was one of the people, JJ Virgin, that brings a lot of people here to Genius Network, a lot of health professionals in the world and in this room. So I want you to know that if you're feeling like your industry might be one where an irresistible offer wouldn't apply because maybe you'd never hand out an order form, you can't imagine asking someone for a credit card on the spot, that JJ was actually now my best friend, but in 2009, one of the biggest skeptics of all. She was driving from Los Angeles to San Diego to do a talk for 12 doctors. She listened to a CD we had on making irresistible offers. JJ, when she hears something, she implements quickly. That's why she's so successful, right? So she went there, made her irresistible offer to these 12 doctors about installing her health system in their office so they could add a cash element. Guess what? They didn't just— they weren't just interested, they wanted to try it for themselves. JJ held her ground and said, you know what? I can't do it with less than 15 people in the program. They called their spouses, they called their office managers. Before she left, she had closed 15 out of 12, 125% of the room. So I wanna invite you, before we dive into how to make an irresistible offer, instead of sitting there wondering, can this work for me, which is a very closed position, I wanna invite you to do what they're teaching in my kids' elementary school right now. Growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. Anybody else's kid's learning that? I love it. Anyway, I wanna invite you to just write down this question as we're going through this. How can this work for me? How can this work in my industry? And you will have illuminations in the next 6 minutes. So first of all, what is an offer? Before we talk about irresistible, what is an offer? What am I talking about in the first place? So an offer is made up of 2 parts. Very simply put, there is the transformation that you provide, that unique outcome that is uniquely yours to bring to the market, combined with the way you provide it. We call that your service delivery. For example, Joe's service delivery is we pick 3 2-day weekends out of the year. That's how he provides the unique transformation of incredible networking and incredible marketing. You guys get it? So, here's the trick with offers. Think of it as the 90/10 rule, yet another application for the 90/10 rule. You always wanna focus 90% of your energy, your copy, your words, your enthusiasm, on the outcome or the transformation that you provide, and only 10% on the service delivery, on how you provide it. One of the biggest mistakes that we make, we're heart-centered, we put so much love into everything we do, is we swap those. offer, and the next thing you know, we're talking about the 6 50-minute calls, and the 10 in-office appointments, and the 3-day seminar that goes from 8 AM to midnight, and, you know, 27 hours of learning. Used to work, but people are so overwhelmed these days that we're actually shooting ourselves in the foot with that method. So, if you just swap the ratio, 90/10, 90 on the service delivery, I'm sorry, 90 on your outcome or transformation, 10% on the service delivery, I could step off the stage and you would all have a big increase in sales conversion right now, I promise. Here's an easy way to remember it. They are buying the destination, not the plane. So stop selling the plane. And I know you love the plane, it took a lot of hours to build it, but they don't care. They want the destination. Stay focused there. So why make an offer? This was brought up earlier. I wholeheartedly agree. It's a disservice not to make an offer. Now, we all know it's a disservice because there's people who need us. We open the realm of possibility by talking about their financial future, their legacy, fill in what you do, right? We open that, but when we don't make an offer, they don't get to step into it. They don't get to say yes to themselves. They don't get that new possibility to become a reality for them. But here's the part that we're missing, okay? The real disservice. When you're out there doing all the wonderful marketing that we all do, And you're not making an offer, please don't shoot the messenger. You are doing the heavy lifting for your competition. And that's why we have 25-year veterans in this room that really should be owning their market space, and the 6-month newbies, the guys who just started out, they're coming in and getting the business, 'cause you're educating the market, and they're making irresistible offers. So let's fix that. Let me show you the mechanics, exactly how to make your offers irresistible. It's quick, it's easy, but don't mistake it, it's very powerful. So you want to break your offers down always into 3 parts. Okay? The first part we call the main dish. The main dish is just the main way that you deliver that transformation or outcome that you provide. So if it's a 3-day seminar, a 90-day plan, some— an ebook, something online, however you deliver it, that's your main dish. The next we call bonuses. Now, this is where we start to go from offer to irresistible offer. And I've got a couple rules around bonuses. Here they are. They need to be few, as in 1 or 2, maybe 3, and tightly related. So the bonus should actually have something to do with the offer. The person who paid money for the offer, for the main dish, they should want to pay money also for the bonus. And then they get it free at that point. It makes a huge difference, and it can pop sales that you are working hard and following up to ad nauseam to be on-the-spot sales. Again, in any industry. In our business, with our Speak to Sell Virtual Bootcamp, we know that the next problem our clients will have is how to get booked. So the bonus is our Get Booked Toolkit. When people realize that, they jump in right away. And the third one is limiters, and this is where people are losing the most sales and the most time. Limiters, there's really 2 main limiters. Easy to remember, powerful to apply. Time. So the limiter of time, whether you are speaking on a stage and you wanna have people run to the back of the room and the time is this break only, or maybe you're in a corporate environment and, you know, they tell you that it's gonna be about 30 days, And you suggest that if they could get back to you by Friday before you were to book your next trip out to their area, you'd actually add on an additional half day to train their staff, a $5,000 value. Just let you know. You'd be shocked how much red tape gets passed when you just add that limiter of time in any situation. And the other, quantity. So whether you are selling your new health program and you say, the first people that grab this program, we're gonna Put a pedometer on you right now so you can start tracking your steps and enjoying that transformation today, right? You want to have quantity, whether it's the number of appointments you can take in a week, something real that you create. Time, quantity, you can also combine those. So the bottom line is, if you wanna make a difference in the world, which I know we all do, and you wanna make great money doing it, you wanna sell without being pushy or salesy, Structure is what gives you freedom and confidence to make your offers and make the difference you were made for.

I want everyone to write something down early on because some of these questions are— I'm going to point back to this. Uh, Dean, uh, Jackson has this great line where he says, and, and I'd like everyone to write this down, and many of you have heard it if you're, uh, have been listening to I Love Marketing because we've said it a lot, uh, but a compelling offer is 10 times more powerful than a convincing argument. A compelling offer is 10 times more powerful than a convincing argument. And Dean, I'm going to ask you to elaborate on that in a bit. I'll say it one more time. A compelling offer is 10 times more powerful than a convincing argument. And when you're trying to convince people to buy versus having something that's just compelling, it's a completely different thing. And the analogy that I've used probably a couple dozen times over the last decade on I Love Marketing episodes. I would always make this analogy, and never in a million years did I think it would ever become true, where I said if you had— if the world supply of toilet paper evaporated, and many of you remember me saying this, I've been saying it for 20 years. I would say this when I used to use overheads, overhead projectors that were plastic before PowerPoint existed. And I would say, you know, to these carpet cleaners, you know, why do you want to learn marketing? Why do you want to learn how to write advertising? Why do you want to learn emotional copy and create scarcity and have powerful offers and the sense of, you know, urgency and deadlines and all of these different things that we would utilize in marketing, testimonials and social proof? I said, if you have a— if the world supply of toilet paper evaporated and you had a garage full of toilet paper, you don't need you know, to have a brilliant sales letter or, you know, in this particular, you don't need a social media following, you don't need to be an influencer. You can literally get a cardboard sign and say, I've got, you know, toilet paper, $50 a roll, and people would buy it from you because you got supply and demand on your side and humans need toilet paper, which by the way, I think was invented in the late 1800s. I don't know what the hell they did before then, but nonetheless. So, And then, it actually happened. There became a toilet paper shortage and then, you got supply and demand on your side. So, if you're in a business where you have supply and demand on your side and that's what actually happened, now you got to look at, that's a DOS issue. Dangers, opportunities, and strengths could be taken to toilet paper.

Okay.

Oh my God, we aren't gonna have any toilet paper. That's a danger. Opportunity, let's go get it. And so, the thing is, you can apply this psychology in anything because marketing is really applied psychology. It's what you say, And who you say it to. And so, Dean, so many of the questions we were asked, if people just had a compelling offer, it would solve so much of their issues. But you have to have the best, you know, the best message in the world is useless if you shout it to deaf ears. And as Gary Halbert would say, only the hungriest fish are going to snap at the crappiest bait. So, what is a compelling offer? How does someone create it? Because everyone listening, if they had that, it would give them an unfair advantage or just an advantage. So speak to that, Dean.

Well, part of it is like, that's the birth of this concept of more cheese, less whiskers, that you're looking at what is it that your prospects, your clients, your target audience, what is it that they want? What are the people in that audience? What are they compelled by? What are they seeking out? And there's nothing as powerful as tapping into the jet stream of personal compulsion that they're moving towards something. You know, I would say like, you don't have to, you don't have to convince a mouse to try some cheese. The mouse is seeking it out at all times. It said, you know, you just need to put some out and it'll come and seek it out and find it. And so often one of the things that we have, that we battle with, is trying to convince people that they need to buy your stuff, that they need to, you know, to give your stuff a try. And so often, if you can just make an offer that lets them experience something for themselves. That is so much more powerful than convincing them intellectually that something that would be worth giving a try, because then they still have to take that hurdle of taking a chance on it. And so we use it all the time. I mean, this is a concept that, you know, goes all the way back. I was reading about this years ago about Cyrus McCormick, the guy who invented the reaper. In the 1800s, it was—

Explain what a reaper is.

Yeah, I was going to say a mechanical reaper for farming that was the precursor to all these combines and all these farm equipment that we have now. It was really the first mechanized farming tool, and it allowed one farmer to do the work of 14 men, but the machine was expensive. And the farmers couldn't afford it, so he came up with the idea of— he had no problem convincing them that this was going to be the right thing, they just couldn't, couldn't pay for it. So he decided what he would do is he would offer the Reaper to the farmers for the season, use it for the season, and then pay me. from the harvest. And that paved the way to allow the reaper to spread all over the country. And it was credited as being one of the 3 greatest, most important things in the 1800s, along with the telephone and the railroad. The reaper allowed us to advance as a industrial, that into the industrial age where people were able to move out of the fields and into the factories. So we became able to build stuff, but that wouldn't have happened without the compelling offer, the compelling offer of, I know this machine's going to help make me more money, and that if I can pay for it, with the money that this is going to help me make in the future, even better. So that's a— whenever you can give somebody an opportunity to do something that is going to, uh, that they'll be able to pay for in the future, that's amazing. If you have something that— if you have something that somebody's going to use again and again and again, um, that you Giving somebody the first experience of it that's going to convince them that this is the right thing, that it's as good as you say it's going to be, that they have that— well, we call it that confirmation moment— that they experience something and it's as great as they were hoping it was going to be. Now you've got them easily for the rest of their days of buying that. And so, you know, you go— that goes all the way back to Claude Hopkins, you know, was introducing the idea of canned beans, pre-prepared beans that were precooked in a can that you just heat and serve. And that was like, that was un— you know, unimaginable. When that was happening, everybody felt like you had to make your own beans. The housewives took great pride in all the effort that it took to properly, you know, bake the beans and to make sure that they were soft and not gassy and not all of these things. So what Claude did, he knew it would be a tough thing to convince housewives that beans would be as good in a can as they are when you bake them at home. And he decided in the advertising to give everybody the chance to try baked beans in a can. He ran ads and said, here's— take this ad into your grocer. I've set aside cases of these beans for you, and I'm going to buy you a can of these beans to try for yourself. You're not going to pay any money. Just take this ad, go in there and let me buy for you the beans. And they would go in and they would try them and then they would be hooked for life. And that would kickstart the, uh, that would kickstart the, the bean industry going that way. And so you start to think that His realization that I have used as one of the core go-to foundational things that I use all the time, it made me aware that sometimes it's less expensive to get somebody a result than it is to convince them to give you money to get that result. So in the bean situation, it was less expensive to compel somebody to let you buy them a can of beans to try them so that they could be convinced that they are the best beans that they've ever tasted and become an ongoing customer, then it would take so much more money through advertising to convince you that the beans are as good, and you buy the beans to convince yourself. That's been one of the foundational things that has been the key to a lot of the successes that I've had. And so I'm always— it always seems so simple when you've probably heard me say that again and again, that, you know, sometimes it's less expensive to get the result for someone than it is to convince them. To give you money to get this.

Yeah.

And that, and that pretty much is a compelling offer. And I mean, if someone really understands the psychology of what you just explained, or that alone can change the entire positioning of what they do and how they do it. Because, you know, marketing is really positioning. It's really how you set it up. And, you know, Shannon, did you want to say anything about DOS or anything in particular or any, or just, you know, Tell a dirty joke? I mean, whatever you're into.

No, that's more Steve's territory than mine.

Okay.

Apparently he's not wearing pants, just saying. The thing about DOS that's really interesting when you're asking about people's dangers, their opportunities, and their strengths is that you have to be willing to ask questions you don't know the answer to. And I think that's where a lot of people get stuck. Often we're used to asking, I'm going to say somewhat formulaic questions where we think we know. And this is one where you really have to suspend your own self-interest and really just listen. You know, Collaborative Way talks about generous listening and just knowing that you don't know the answers. But frankly, those are by far the most interesting conversations. And out of that, you'll understand what's most important to them, helping them summarize that, reflecting it back to them. They're, they're going to find that conversation with you almost one of the most impactful, best conversations they've had. We also tend to put a future-based question around it called the R factor, which is part of the Dan Sullivan question.

Yeah.

And right now, people's timeframes are different. Normally, we ask a 3-year base question, but it could be, you know, a year from now or 90 days from now, what have you. But, you know, relative to that future, what are you worried about? What are you excited about? And what are you confident about? Because those are the emotions. You know, the whole thing about, you know, a compelling argument is, you know, it has to be something where it's going to hit them at their heart, not just their head. And DOS is— sorry, DOS is definitely the best way to do that because they're all emotion-based questions. What are you worried about? What are you excited about? And what are you confident about? But I, now is what you, the point you made earlier, people's DOS has changed, and assuming that we know what it is means that we're probably for sure gonna be wickedly tone deaf in what we're offering them.

Yeah.

And when you actually get current with people's DOS, which is what a lot of coach clients know to do, they're just having incredibly rich conversations and new possibilities are opening up, new ways of value creation. It's kind of spectacular, but it makes sense. It means flipping from what you already know to what you don't know and being comfortable in creating that conversational opportunity for people. So that's what I would say to add, Joe.

That's awesome.

I will just admit right up front, 10 minutes has got me nervous. I don't do nervous on stage, but here I am.

Okay.

So let's see, what are we at? Let's try this one. Okay. Yeah. The next half trillion dollars. Well, that was mine. So do you ever notice when Apple launches a product and people just— you're anticipating that, you're excited about that, the market's just talking about it, and everyone's just— they're counting down. It's all about anticipation. It's when is that product going to get released? People line up outside the stores, right? This guy, first in line for iPhone 5.

Woohoo!

You know, put that in his But you get these lines outside of the Apple stores. You ever notice how— I am an internet marketer. I sell stuff online. Sometimes servers crash. Well, the iPhone, I think it was the 4, the Apple site crashed. I'm like, okay, if Apple's site can crash, my site can crash. I'm good with that. But they do— what do they do? They do tens, hundreds of millions of dollars immediately right off the bat. From, you know, from zero to 100 miles an hour, right away. So I've wondered, how can we do that? How can we do that in this room? You know, we don't have those resources. We don't have their branding. We don't have their advertising. We don't have their teams. How can we do that? So for 18 years, I've been working on how we can do it. But actually, that's bullshit because 18 years ago, I was a stay-at-home dad and I was like, I was just desperate to make some kind of money to try to impact my family in some way. So I started publishing. I started publishing online. This is 1996. So back then, like my first email went out to everyone I knew with an email address. That was like 17 people, but it gradually grew from there and it grew this platform. Okay. I grew this platform. Anyone out here have a platform? You've got an email list. You've got a social media following. Are you guys just not willing to raise your arms or what? Thank you. Okay. So I, so I gradually built up this platform. I did what they now call content marketing. So I published and, and then I got to this point, well, maybe I can actually sell something to these people, but I was, Actually, we have born closers. Are there— we got closers in the room? Raise your hand proudly if you're a closer. So we've got some closers, right? You guys know what I'm talking about. You know how to sell. Unfortunately, I'm not one of you. I don't have that sales gene. So I had this little platform that was growing up and I was like, how can I sell something to them? And I was terrified. I was actually terrified to ask for the order. I was terrified to ask for the order. So, and that actually, that little thing allowed me to sort of invent this process that has made all the difference. Because what I did was I romanced my people. I romanced my followers. And then I asked for the sale. I built relationship first. And even for the closers out there, you all do that, right? You all build relationship. But now in this day and age, we're able to do that In a way we never could before. We have the speed of communication, the interactivity that we've never had before. So I tweaked this and I tweaked this. I did my first launch. Some of you heard the story that did $1,650. That was enough to make me do backflips. I was— $1,650 changed everything with that first launch. But then I got better. I instantly knew I could get better at it and I did get better and I got better. Here's a photo. I put this in a book, but I've never really made this one public. That's actually me. I am at my kitchen table and I'm in a bathrobe and this was not staged. This is actually when I did a launch. This is the first 6-figure launch I did. It was $106,000 in a single week I did. I think like while I was sitting there for an hour, you know, we did $28,000 in sales. And this is, that was like unbelievable life-changing money for me. So I gradually got better and better and better. And then in 2008, In 2005, I started teaching it. My students and clients have now done $500 million in sales. In fact, it's way beyond that, but that's the number I feel safe saying publicly. I've got clients that have done tens and even one that's done $100 million in sales. So what I wanted to share with you is basically what I've learned. And you know what's funny is I was thinking about like, I did just roll out this book. Okay, there it is. In fact, there's a book. It's in all your bags. We I there's a you know I bought one for each of you, and we rolled that thing out. And I was talking to Paul O'Callaghan, and he's like, "Yeah, dude, I think you're I think the title of your talk you should just go up there and say this shit works." Because I came in as completely unknown author, and and boom! It was like up to number one. In fact, what happened was the first. The first week the New York Times decided not to put me on the list even though I had the sales. And so then we doubled down and I had several conversations with my good friend Brendan Burchard and came up with a strategy how we were going to come back and sell even more the next week. And then we were able to put it up to number 1. There's the proof's in the pudding. That was a screenshot. I got to print that one out and put it on the wall. So how do you do this? It all comes down to 3 things: sequences, stories, and triggers. And so sequences, you can't ever— there's so much noise in the market now that to gather someone's attention, you have to put your material into a sequence that tells your story. Then your story just— it's almost like what I call the sideways sales letter. We used to have these long form sales letters and they worked really, really well. Now they don't work as well. So I took that 10-page sales letter, I turned it sideways into a 10-day process. And now you do very much the same thing you do in a sales letter, but now you do it over a series of pre-launch content, of value videos. We typically do this now with videos that build over time. And then the triggers are simply things like we all use all the time. Authority, reciprocity, scarcity. And in those 3 videos, they allow you to deploy those triggers. And you build up this anticipation just the way Apple does. And you get this situation where people are like, they cannot wait to buy. They absolutely cannot wait to buy. So you want to know how— you want to see— this is obviously very, very compressed, what I just gave you. That's normally the first 2 and a half days of my 3 3-day event. So do you— anyone want, in 3 minutes, anyone want to see that sequence for the book?

Yeah.

Because the book was— is a little bit different. And are they— can we put this on camera? So what we did was we had an offer for the book and basically we were selling it for $7. It was actually free with shipping and handling. Okay. We give the book away for $7, so we're gonna put a B here for the book. Someone comes in to buy and they get an instant upsell, okay. So this is, this is a one-time offer, OTO, and this is for $197, okay. I would have liked to say I got 8 or 10% conversion, but we got about a 7% conversion on that, okay. But that at a $200 product, that means that everyone coming in and getting a free book is worth $14 right off the bat. Now the key here, the really important thing is that in doing this, it allows you to incentivize partners to mail for you. Because all of a sudden I can pay commissions. And I got to give a shout out. Brendon Burchard is the one, you know, Brendon in 2011 I think bought my product and he's taken it and did really well, but then he morphed it And he came up with this process. So basically book for $7 to upsell for $197. And then either way, whether they take the upsell or not, then they go into my PLF product and that's at $19.97. And the conversion for there is around 1.7%. You can do the math on that, but it comes out pretty well. But what we do is basically now So now I've got partners, lots and lots of partners driving into the book, driving traffic into the book saying, hey, go check out Jeff's book and get it free with shipping and handling for $7. $10, they'll ship it anywhere in the world if you're outside the US. I'm able to pay partners commission on this one-click upsell and I'm also paying them commission down here. Boy, that writing is— nothing like a time deadline to take your writing all to hell. But in any case, that's how I sold 41,000 books in just a couple weeks' timeframe. That's how we put it on number 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. So remember, your marketing— Joe talked about this in his little introduction. Your marketing has to tell a story. Nothing captures people's attention like a story does.

Stories win.

And when you deploy that story over a 10-day timeframe and you give 3 great value videos that define the opportunity, define the journey, define how your prospects' lives are going to transform, then when you land them on your sales video, they don't even need to watch that entire sales video. They are ready to buy.

Okay.

I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that'll be useful and awesome, click here.

Go ahead. They're over here.

Do it now.

Come on.

Thank you.

Watch them.