Pre-suasion: Make someone more likely to agree with what you're about to ask them

There was something that was true, that we had a relationship, a long term relationship, but it wasn't at the top of his consciousness. It wasn't the thing that was aligning his subsequent behavior until I brought it to top of mind. We're relationship partners, Don, for 10 years. And inside relationships, you say?

Yes.

Well, yeah, let's talk about that because my next question is what is the premise of pre swindler? So let's go into how does persuasion differ from or enhance persuasion? I guess.

Yeah.

In the book Influence, I talked about.

What you should put into a message to increase the likelihood that people would want it, would try to acquire it. That thing that you're talking about, your offer, pre suasion, is about what you should say or do in the moment before you deliver that message to make people attuned to the strengths of that message, to make them inclined toward, open, to receptive to the thing about your message that is its strongest element, the thing that will make it wise for them to say yes. Because that's the essence of what it is that you are offering.

Well, that is such an important concept that if someone was able to do that 5%, 10% more effectively, not just twice as good, but just little incremental things, that would make a huge shift. But if you did it five or ten times more effectively, that would change your life, that would change the entire game. And so this is a way, like Joel Weldon, who is one of my friends, we had been speaking about him previously, before the cameras started rolling, he made this comment about how to introduce a speaker as an example. And if you're going to go up on stage, if you have a beautiful piece of art and you duct tape it to the wall, it's going to look a certain way. But if you put it in a nice frame, it's different. And ever since I heard that, I've always thought about how you frame anything has a lot to do with how it occurs to people, how they like it, how they buy into it. And then here you come out with pre suasion, which is an entire study of how you frame things. I want to do it justice because it's way beyond just framing things. There's a whole lot more into it. So what I'd love to have you do is talk about the scientific research around pre suasion so that people realize this is not just a really bright professor's opinion about how to set up the sale, setting up the request. This is like you have done some serious research on it. So I think People would really appreciate this at a much deeper level if they knew how hard you have worked on this. So if you could talk about that.

Well, there are some, some literatures in academic behavioral science about priming, about framing, about positioning, about anchoring. That all came together for me in terms of what they were implying about.

How you.

Amplify the, the effect of your message. It's by what you do before you send that message. And it involves creating engagement, creating a focus in your audience on some aspect that they're yet to experience. They haven't encountered it yet. You just make them open and receptive to it before they ever encounter it. That's the idea. Let me give you an example. Suppose you want to sell somebody something that's new or you want to bring them in. And you know that people hang back when they've got something that's new. They haven't yet tried it, they're unfamiliar, they don't like getting out of their comfort zone. But you've got this thing and it's really great. How do you. Here's a study. Researchers went up to people on the street, said, we have a new soft drink. It's untried, nobody's ever encountered it before. Would you be willing to give us your email address right now and we'll send you the information that will allow you to get this new product. Now that's a risky thing to do. Somebody comes up to you unbidden, unsolicited, right? Unknown, ask for your email address. That's a risky thing. Only 30% of the people were willing to do that. Under those circumstances, even that sounds to me like a lot. Right, but there are risk takers among us. For another sample of people, the researcher walked up and said, excuse me, do you consider yourself an adventurous person? People thought for a minute and they went on a particular memory track for times that they were adventurous because adventure was the question that they were now engaged in. And we've all experienced. Almost Everybody said yes, 98% of the.

People said yes just by planting that seed of getting them to focus on where their brain goes.

And now instead of 30% giving them their email address when they were later told about this new product, 75.6% provide that risky chancy thing.

That's fascinating. It's almost like the study you did with Hari Krishna's in influence where someone would go up and put the flower on their collar in airports. And it was more difficult for someone to step away than reach in their pocket and pull out a dollar and give them Donation, walk away and then throw the.

What do you do first?

Yeah, so I mean, like the way that I look at that piece of information, which is again, so incredibly valuable by how you direct the brain to think about something before you then ask them for what you really want. So if a single person, if a guy was afraid of going up to a woman and asking for her email or asking for a phone number, if they said, are you adventurous? And just plant that and say, oh, by the way, would you like to go on a date? You've just probably, in this case, tripled your chances of getting a yes.

Here's a piece of research that shows how you can increase that even more. A study done in France, researchers had an attractive young man walk up to young women who were by themselves strolling through a shopping mall. And he stopped them and said, I wonder if you could give me your phone number so I can call you for a date later. Another risky thing to do. And indeed, only 13.5% of the time did he get a phone number. If he did that. This is an attractive guy, though they. They got an actor, a matinee idol kind of looking guy.

That's part of persuasion also, Right?

But even that, only 13.5, unless he asked in front of a particular kind of shop. And it doubled, almost doubled, to 24% success. A flower shop. In the environment of flowers, women are put in mind of romance. And now romance is more important than risk. Wow. Where do you put people first?

So the environment has everything to do with.

It can be a word that you use like adventurous. It can be a setting that you arrange, or it can be an image that you provide on your website.

Right.

Wow. Let me give you an example of the image.

You can talk about these examples for the next week and I would love them all because they're fantastic.

A study done with an online furniture store. They sell sofas. They sent half of the visitors to their site to a landing page that had as its background wallpaper fluffy clouds. The other half they sent to a landing page that had as its background wallpaper coins, pennies. Now, they then track what happens to those visitors who were randomly sent to one or the other place with different images. The first thing they can counter is an image of clouds or an image of coins. Those who experience the clouds rated comfort as the most important feature for them to decide on a sofa. They then searched the site for information about comfort and they preferred to buy more comfortable sofas. Those who got pennies rated cost as the most important feature for determining Their choice. They searched for price related information and they preferred to buy inexpensive furniture. And not one of them recognized they were asked afterwards. So do you think the clouds made a difference? Not one of them believed that the clouds or the coins made any difference. This stuff flies under the radar totally.

Well, you know, it almost makes you question all of the things. Not almost. It does. I mean for me, the things of find a need and fill it. Find a want and fill it. Where you literally direct people to where you want them to go. In some cases by just the setup, I mean like it's almost, it's almost like people are thinking they know what they're looking for. But what you're showing here is no, you're helping them to look.

This is a great insight, Joe, because there's an old saying, tell me what you're paying attention to and I'll tell you who you are. In other words, if you're always watching espn, you're probably a sports fan. If you're always getting gourmet magazines, you're probably a foodie, that sort of thing. Here's what the newest behavioral science says. What you're paying attention to doesn't just reveal who you are, it makes you who you are in that moment. The guys in France could make those women romantics in the moment after they passed a flower shop, but not a bakery, because flowers are associated with romance, not cheese. Danish, right?

Here's a croissant. Can I have your email?

No.

Right. That's why if you've got a date, you don't send the young woman a box of Krispy Kreme.

Right, right, right.

You send flowers.

All right, so what is the thing that is the essence of your message? You create attention to that concept before you send your message and people are attuned to it.

That's so good. It is honestly so good. 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 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 pre suasively. So 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. And 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 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 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. So one method of approach is repelling, the other is, is attracting. And so it reminds me of the quotes. People support what they help to create. And the others, 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 other way of thinking about framing it.

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

Yeah.

If you can get them to see them as part of your enterprise, it's both of your boat now. You're both riding in that boat. They're not going to torpedo it.

Yeah. 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, it'll be out in a few months, is 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. 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 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. 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, it doesn't even occur to them that anyone's selling. When anyone is really 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. And so they want to continue to do business the next round and the round after that.

Exactly. Because the most expensive business cost is client acquisition. And once you've already done that, I always think of it as it's. It's a lot harder to create momentum than it is to maintain it. Every once in a while, I'll run into you guys at the gym because you work out consistently. The thing is, if you just did that every three months, I'm going to go work out and do a really great workout. It doesn't work that way. 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 this is great. Well, you've already covered some of this, but I'm going to go a little more specific. So what specific steps could someone listening to this take to better persuade or prepare the moment or moments before the message is delivered that you've not shared?

So let's take a step back and.

Provide a general approach.

It is to focus your attention on on your message. What is the strength of your message? What is the strongest element of it? The thing that if people say yes to it, makes it most wise for them to say yes so that they will benefit. What is it? Identify that thing and then reverse engineer the persuasion process to the moment before you describe that thing so that you've aligned people's consciousness and their sense of who they are with the strength of that message. We just saw. You could make me a comfort oriented buyer. You could make me a cost oriented buyer, depending on what you put first. If you put fluffy clouds or coins in the background of your landing page, I become that person. Now, if you know that and comfort is the strength of your product, you've got me. I'm going to rate that as important, I'm going to search for it and I'm going to use it to determine how to behave.

Well, I'm not sure if it's in the second chapter or third chapter in your book. You talk about playing French music or German music. Explain that, Seth.

So there's a study that shows that if a wine shop owner plays German music for a particular time of the day, people buy more German vintages. If he plays French French music, they buy more French vids because they're put in a German or a French state of mind. And now they're going to behave in ways that are aligned with that state of mind that's been installed by something as background based as the music that they're hearing on the PA system.

I always listen for words that you say because it leaves so many strategic clues on what to do installed. So if you sit and think like, okay, I want to sell more of my thing here. What do I need to install in order to set it up? In order to do that?

Let me give you an example.

It's just worked for me. I've got a colleague who I've worked with for a long time over in the psychology department where I'm housed, and I needed a big favor from him and I sent him an email and I said, don, I'm working on a project. I don't have the information I need in my files, but I know you have it in your files. I'm going to call you later to get that information. I would really appreciate it.

I just planted that seed.

So I called him up, he said, bob, I know why you're calling. I can't help you. I'm swamped right now. I know you've got this project with a time limit, but I've got projects with time limits too. I'd like to be able to help, but I can't this time. Sorry. So I didn't say to him, but Don, I'd really appreciate it if you could help me with this one. It would mean a lot to me. I said, don, you know, we've been in the same department now for 10 years. I really wish you could help me with this. It would be mean a lot to me. I created a framework of unity. I had the information that afternoon.

So what happened in his head? I mean, explain what went down.

There was something that was true, that we had a relationship, a long term relationship, but it wasn't at the top of his consciousness. It wasn't the thing that was aligning his subsequent behavior until I brought it to top of mind. We're relationship partners, Don, for 10 years. And inside relationships you say yes to people. I just moved it from somewhere at midbrain to top of mind and it made the difference. So what did I. I didn't install the relationship, I installed a focus on that relationship that was now the thing that he was paying attention to. And what you're paying attention to in that moment changes who you are. He became a relationship oriented respondent, not a selfish respondent about his own issues.

Right, right.

You know, you have a real power to where these sort of things could be used in very manipulative ways. And for the time that I've known you, I mean, I would like to think in the same way, you know, our relationship. I've never overly asked for anything. You've not either. You've always approached us. You're very cognizant of the ethical use of persuasion. And you know, this is filled with literally a ninja assassin methodologies if used in the wrong way and incredible human betterment methodologies on the other side. What is your advice for the people out there about the proper care and feeding of others utilizing persuasion once you learn what is in persuasion? Because this is, I mean you literally teach people how to get what they want.

Yes, it's dynamite. And dynamite can be used to build a bridge or blow up a bridge right between people. So Joe, we've been friends for a long time and the reason we've been friends for a long time is what you said, that we share values. And the reason I've liked interacting with you over that time is that your ethical approach, you take an ethical approach to this. So here's why I am recommending that people who understand the pre suasive strategies that are available to them only use them in ethical ways. We've just completed a research program where we find that those organizations that use influence attempts in dishonest, deceptive, unethical ways produce two big damages to their viability. The first is there are some people inside the organization who are just not comfortable with the unethicality and they are stressed by it and they try to leave. They don't do very well on the job because of that stress. They try to leave. When they do leave, you get all these turnover costs that are associated with that big cost. But here's the one that was most interesting to me. When those people who are stressed by the deception leave, who remains is those people who are comfortable with dishonesty and cheating. And they're going to cheat you.

Wow.

They're the ones who are going to steal equipment. They're the ones who are going to run these under the table deals with vendors and partners and suppliers. They're the ones who are going to pad their expense accounts. Count on it. They've been selected for. They've been selected for. You've pulled the viper under your coat.

Yeah, exactly. You know, that says a lot about people that have toxic cultures and are toxic in general and cannot. And then they have a worldview that everyone's out to screw them because that's just their, their frame of how they view the world. I mean, I've always like the saying I said earlier, be nice to the people you meet on the way up. They're the same people you meet on the way down. And that I heard Dan Sullivan say this years ago and I've said it to so many people because I'm constantly trying to reinforce this to people, is that money earned ethically is a byproduct of value creation. And if you're going to go out and ask people to give you money, you better damn well give them value because it takes a lifetime to build a reputation. And like you said with social proof, the one thing I do like about it is it makes it much harder for scumbags to exist for as long as they were able to. Because now it's out in the open.

It's out there.

Yeah.

Which is great. 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.

Well, I'll tell you something, this is an interesting thing. We talk about 25 years that like it was yesterday, because it feels like yesterday that we were at the Wigwam having dinner with Evan and Bobette and hanging out. But I had an experience a couple of summers ago. I had somebody come to, to one of my breakthrough blueprint events. And she was 30 years old, bright, young, go getter marketer. And in that moment I realized she was born in 1990 is when she was born. And I thought, wow, we've got a whole new generation. I bet a lot of the people that are listening, that's even on the Zoom here are 30ish type of people who weren't around when the first, when Influence first came out. So I think it'd be good if you could maybe tell a little bit about the background of your work because it's been kind of defined your life's work since then.

Well, as your very gracious introduction suggested, I started out as a traditionally trained and traditionally practicing academic doing research on my college campus with college sophomores pretty much as the students in laboratory settings and recognized there was something missing there. And I needed to get away from those academic constraints into the environment where the influence wars are being waged every day. After all, we're always either sending out influence appeals or receiving influence appeals of one sort or another every day. And there are certain people who know how to do this because their economic livelihoods depend on using the influence process properly and effectively. And it seemed to me that those professions, sales, management, recruiting, fundraising, marketing, advertising and so on, those were the people who really knew what I should be focusing my, my, my thinking on. So I began to invit. I began to infiltrate their training programs with disguised identity, disguised intention to learn what they had done that produced yes from people regularly. And I spent two and a half years in that undercover activity to learn something beyond the college campus where I.

Had been studying this process.

And I remember you saying how it was initially because you wanted to learn about these things, not to be a practitioner of them, but to protect yourself from them or to help people protect themselves from the sort of illicit use of these, of those principles. So recognize them.

Exactly. Recognize, resist, deflect, defend. But it turned out soon after the publication of Influence that a lot of people were interested, besides that, in harnessing the process in ethical ways, in morally responsible ways, to move people into positive choices that they could make that they were hesitant to make. They were sitting on the fence, they just were dithering. They weren't thinking through what exactly the costs and benefits might be. The merits of one's case were simply not being presented to them in an optimal way. And so they wanted to know about optimization of the persuasion process for that reason as well.

That's what I found when I first started studying it. Like I've always told you, from the moment I read your book, just the understanding, it was like having a pair of 3D glasses all of a sudden that you see the mechanisms that are at work and why things are turning out the way they are. And this kind of underlying understanding of influence has really helped me in applying the marketing principles then that you can overlay on top of that, when you've got an understanding of why people are reacting, how our brains are responding to things. And one of the greatest phrases that you used in the description is that when these are presented, they trigger this click whir pattern that it's just. It's almost like an autopilot thing. When somebody is presented with this, with, under the right circumstances, one of the elements of influence, it's almost like instinctual. We can't even. It's not a. They're not reasoning or thinking it. It's just happening automatically.

And you know the thing about the click that you were talking about, the thing that triggers their response, it can be a very small thing. I like the metaphor of a light switch. Suppose you were in charge of lighting a stadium, you know, for a night match or game of some sort or another. And you're down in the bowels of the stadium and there's a switch that you just flick and suddenly everything is illuminated. All of a sudden things are possible that weren't possible before. It didn't take a lot of strength or effort or time on your part. You just had to know how to locate that switch. And then it's just a little bit of effort. And all of the power that's stored in, in the, in the power system of that, of that arena flows because of that small thing you did. It goes against the rule of proportionality.

There's a belief that in order to.

Get big effects, we need to do big things to change people in substantial ways. It's just not true. There are big power sources inside people. And our job is to locate the switch that flicks them on that then drives their behavior.

Now I'm going to ask you. So when Joe Polish and I did our first I Love Marketing conference, it's all about our eight profit activators. And he asked me A question that was just funny because he asked me, do I know all the eight profit activators? Like without looking. And I'm going to ask you, just for fun of the. To just maybe quickly name what the six elements of influence are so we can set the context for what we're talking about here.

Sure. Would you prefer that I just label them and how they work or give an example?

Let's just kind of name them first and then we'll pick kind of. And go through some of them because we've got so many stories. Yeah.

So the first is the rule of reciprocation. People want to say yes to those people who have given to them first, done a favor, a service provided a gift. People want to give back. So you go into a room where you want to be more influential. Your first question should not be who.

Can help me here?

It should be whom can I help here? Whose circumstances can I elevate? Whose outcomes can I increase? They will stand on the balls of their feet wanting to do the same for you. Next principle is liking. Nobody's surprised that we prefer to say yes to those we like. But there are two small things we can do that substantially enhance the feeling of rapport that people feel with us. And one is to point out genuine similarities and the other is to give genuine compliments or praise as warranted. Next principle is social proof. This is a term, by the way, that's used, we coined it back in with the first edition. Influence. Social proof didn't exist before. I'm so glad because I was thinking of using people proof. Right. What's happened with social media now?

Yeah.

Think about social media. I'm so glad that I use the term social proof, where the fact that a lot of other people are doing something, especially people like us, is the proof that we should do it too. It's not fact based proofs, it's not scientific proof, it's not logical proof, it's social proof. So that's the other thing, simply letting people know of the others who are around them, like them, them who are choosing or have been choosing. Our recommended step forward.

Robert, what year before you say what year did the first book come out?

The first book came out in 1984.

Okay. So this was well before anything with the Internet. I mean, it was really okay because I was turned onto it in 1996, as you know, so already been out for 12 years. But that was just at the very beginning of the Internet. So I'm sorry for interrupting your train, but.

No, no, that's Exactly. The people say to me, you know, Bobby, your book is called the Bible of Digital Commerce. There wasn't digital commerce. How did you see, how, how did you foresee this? How did you look forward and see this 40 years, 35 years later?

Yeah.

And it was by looking back, right. At what were the factors that have always driven behavior in our species. Look back at the evidence to be able to predict how we as a.

Species will behave in the future.

Yeah. Love it. Okay, so social proof then. Carry on.

Next is authority. If we're uncertain about something, one way to reduce our uncertainty is to see what the experts are saying and what they are doing. And if we have expertise, we have to be sure that the people who we're trying to move in our direction are properly informed of that before we ever try to influence them. Next principle is the principle of scarcity. Right. People want more of those things they can have less of. It's just the way we are.

Right.

So things that are rare, scarce, dwindling in availability. If we properly inform people of those characteristics, they get a little crazy.

I'll tell you what, that's the absolute truth. I've got some. I'm. I'm hypervigilant of what's going on in my world because I'm. I'm aware of all of these things. And so I always kind of observe the situations that I get into and I see how influences at work in my life too. And I'll share a couple of stories with you as we go on, but please continue. Yeah.

Then the next principle is commitment and consistency. People want to be consistent with what they have already said or done, especially in our presence, especially publicly. They don't want to say one thing, do another, or misspeak by saying one thing and then contradicting it the next time. They want to be congruent with what they have already made a commitment to. So asking people to take very small steps in our direction causes them to be much more likely to want to continue to take steps, even outsized steps, in our direction in the future. And then finally there's a new principle.

That's what I was going to ask you about. So now this is exciting that you got to the point. That's masterwork of the six. And then in revisiting now, you've discovered a final. A new one.

Yes.

And I'm calling it unity.

I love that.

But it has to do really with membership in a particular group.

Yes.

Right.

A tribe, some in group that defines us. And if a communicator can arrange for us to see him or her as inside that group, one of us. All the influence barriers come down for that communicator. We say yes to those people. We cooperate with them, we believe them, we trust them. Those people who are of us become people who we want to favor and follow.

Real quickie, I guess. I mean, I'm a writer. I'm a writer of fiction and nonfiction. And maybe the one thing that would stand out to somebody meeting me for the first time is that it took me, like, more than 30 years from the time I first quit a job to try to write until I actually had a book published. So I'm sort of the poster child for having no talent, but, you know, hammering and hammering away and finally getting, you know, good enough to crack something through. So there is life after 50. And that's. That's. I guess that's what I would say is sort of a nutshell version of my story.

Well, here's one thing, too. You both are the. You're the same age right now at the time we're doing this. You're both 78 years old. And Dan, I think before we started recording, you said that is. Who's six months older?

Yeah, I. I think, Stephen, if I remember, you're November of 43, right?

Yeah, September, actually.

Yeah, it was September of 43. And I may have. I. I was born two weeks before Normandy, before the Normandy. Normandy invasion. So I was born right at the, you know, the last year of the Second World War. And that had a lot of influence. I mean, I would say that being born at that time has been very, very influential. Influential. And I don't know if you found that, too, because all the adults that you were surrounded with for, you know, like, the first. My teen, right through my teenage years had, you know, some of them had World War I experience. They had the Great Depression experience. They had Second World War experience. And it was a big deal, you know, I mean, you could tell that really big things had happened in the. And were happening right when you were born.

Yeah. Could you elaborate a little bit on that, Dan, why you feel like that was a big influence on you?

Well, I tell people, you know, when I was born, Stalin was alive, Hitler was alive. You know, Mussolini was still. I think Mussolini was dead when I was born, but I think he was alive when you were born. And then you had. Churchill was alive, Roosevelt was alive. And then you had all these great military people, the army, the Navy and everything. And I said. And there were just such momentous forces unleashed during that four or five year period which really remade the world. I mean, we're living in the world that's more or less still a consequence of what happened 75 years ago.

Yeah. Although today I'm sure the names you just rattled off, you know, 20 year old kids are going, who? Who? Churchill, Stalin, who?

Yeah, who do they? Yeah, what's their band? What's the name of their band?

Well, I mean, so look, both of you were in the military, so Stephen, you're a Marine and Dan was in the Army. I mean how. I would love to hear how that influenced who you are today. I mean, you always talk about Stephen in your books, how the. How Marines. And I've never been in the military, so I can only speak to my friends that are and you know, just observation how Marines literally are trained or love to suffer. And so this is the thing that.

I sort of apply to, to being a writer, being an entrepreneur, being in any in the arts. It's like the Marine Corps and the people Marines are going to get pissed off at me when they hear this. But the Marine Corps is not like the Special Forces or the Navy SEALs in the sense that you have to pass some amazing. You have to swim, you know, five miles and you know, carry a thousand pound log or anything like that. Pretty much if you can breathe, if you have a pulse, you know, you're in the Marine Corps. But what makes the Marines elite, in my opinion, is that Marines take tremendous pride in suffering more than any other branch of the service. Like, if there's like the shittiest assignment, you know, the worst possible enemy that you're up against. If any other outfit gets that assignment other than Marines, Marines are really pissed off. It's like we want to go in there where it's the worst. And if you think about the episodes in Marine Corps history that the Marines take the most pride in, they're not like tremendous victories, they're places where the Marines just suffered the most. You know, Tarawa, Khe Sanh, things like that. That's what they take pride in. So I feel like as a writer or an artist or an entrepreneur, you gotta have that attitude too, because you're gonna get the hell beat out of you over and over and over again. And you just have to somehow kind of, you know, embrace the suck, as they say, and not let it get to you.

How old were you when you went in the Marines?

I think I was 21 or something like that.

Yeah, well, you're an old guy. They like the 18 and 19 year olds yeah, they like the ones who think they're immortal.

Yes.

I was drafted right at the beginning of Vietnam. So I. It started in April of 65. That was the Gulf of Tonkin. The, you know, the. What was given as the reason for starting. Starting the most ugliest war in American history. And so I got my draft notice and what they were doing is that they just went 25 years down. And, you know, I was 20, so, 45. I was 65, I was 21. And if I hadn't been drafted, I wouldn't have. I wouldn't have, you know, I wouldn't have enlisted. But when I got there, so it's only two years and, and I got to basic training and I just heard people talking about, boy, this is a waste of two years and everything else. And I said, I am totally not going to waste these next two years. I'm going to get. I'm going to squeeze every bit of value as I possibly can.

And long story, you were thinking like you're thinking now. Yeah.

And long story short, in about. So that was. I went in in June of 65, and then I, I ended up in South Korea. So I was in South Korea, and within about eight months, I was now the entertainment coordinator for half of South Korea for the USO shows and everything. It was just as the other rule was, never volunteer for anything. And I said, wow, if nobody volunteers for anything, I wonder what happens to the person who volunteers for everything. And doors just open up because most of the army people, you know, they're lifers, you know, the sergeants, the officers, and when that draftee comes in, he's really excited and really enthusiastic, and they just knock themselves out to open doors for you and give you opportunities. And I was sorry when my, you know, my time came up and I put on five plays. You know, I was a theater major in college.

Let me interrupt you, Dan. Can you tell a story about Frank Sinatra doesn't move pianos? Because.

Yeah, well, he.

A million times quoting you.

Yeah, Frank Sinatra, you know, the, the, you know, during wartime, the USO brings famous people. You know, they bring Bob Hope and, you know, they bring all sorts of people. Korea was a backwater. So we didn't really get the. We didn't really get the, you know, the main. We got mostly the never wass and the has beens, but they were better than you were, so they could entertain you. And. But I had a guy who worked with me in the entertainment center, and he had worked with Frank Sinatra. He had been on crew with Frank Sinatra. And he said to me one day, he said, he says, the first thing you notice about Frank Sinatra, Frank Sinatra does not move pianos. He's got a team that comes ahead of him. He's got a team that does everything. And he says, you have to understand that's why people want to get to the top, so they can just do what they do. They don't have to do all the. They don't have to do all the crap. It's like Major League Baseball. The biggest reason why a lot of people want to get to Major League Baseball is they. They don't have to do their own laundry anymore.

Yeah.

So. But I mean, out of that came your idea of unique ability. Right. That you've really taken and run with it for years and years. And it's been. Was so helpful to me when I heard, you know, Joe's interview with you years ago, and you were talking about unique ability, which I'll give you the super short version of it, is that as an entrepreneur, your job really is to find out the one thing that you do well and then delegate everything else. You know, and when I was, I wrote a book about the, The Israeli Arab War of 1967, the Six Day War, and if you remember, the great Israeli general Moshe Dayan was kind of the genius of that era. And one of his axioms was, I never want to do anything that somebody else can do. If there's anybody else in the organization below me, some colonel, some general, and they can do it, let them do it. I want to do only what I know how to do, which is at the super top, top, top of the, of the food chain.

Can I ask you a question about that? I find. I'm 78, and every quarter I find something that I've been doing for 15 years. And I said, I don't know why I'm doing this. There's got to be somebody who can do this better. So it's like peeling an onion. You know, you think you're down to the core, but there's another. There's another layer below it. So I, you know, I. And I don't know if you got the book, My Plan for living to 156.

No, I didn't.

Oh, I gotta send that to you.

Send that to me.

Yeah. And I just, in May, I just hit halfway. I just hit the halfway mark. So I said, okay. So My life is two stages. First 78 years, I just completed 78 years, and that's R&D. Next 78 years. Now I get Real serious, you know. But it's all about unique ability. And, like, when I write my little books, I have nine other team members who are part of the process of producing the books.

Oh, really?

Yeah. I don't write them. I create outlines and I'm interviewed by someone, but I'm a copywriter, and we can talk about that. Stephen, the one thing that advertising teaches you, that no other form of writing will teach you, that you write to 6 inches and you write to 30 seconds, and you write to, you know, you write to a minute. And so when I do the book, I know exactly how many pages is going to be in it. I know exactly how many chapters. I know there's going to be two pages in cartoons, and every one of them. So I know right off the bat. And so I can outline each of the four pages and. But I can talk for a half hour. But the writer, when they get the transcript, they got to put that into four pages.

Okay, Andy, we have a few more minutes. So, Andy Ash asked this question. What spiritual disciplines, if any, do you use or have that influence your relationships or connections?

Oh, that must be Fadin.

The Buddha, the marketing Buddha.

Is that for me?

I think that's for either one of you. What spiritual disciplines, if any, do you use?

Okay, so I'll be totally honest. I struggle, you know, this 10. I struggle with the spiritual formality of religion. I definitely believe in a higher power. I don't know what it is. I don't know what it looks like. I don't know what I call it. There's something greater than ourselves. And honestly, as I get older, I'm finding myself literally becoming more and more in touch with that. But I used to say that I'm an agnostic until the plane starts shaking, and then I'm praying with the best of them.

That's right.

I find it fascinating, this whole, like, you must see so many different people, Timothy, in your program, that you're people from different. And I always find it curious, very curious about the things that. What is not sort of remarkable or different is someone who grew up in a Muslim country, who is a devout Muslim and is following that path to the highest level, or a young man from Utah following that path to the. The eyes, the levels, too. What's really fascinating to me is, is would it almost be the opposite of that, that someone from a Muslim background or from another thing that has sort of. I had sort of conversations with this, with my mom, that because we had a cousin who was sort of starting to go into Buddhism and she was very, like, thinking, oh, how can he go so far astray? You know, like, that's not. Wasn't our, like, you know, Christian back, you know, story sort of thing on the thing that. That's an unusual thing for someone from this. From our family to go down that. That path. And I said to my mom, I said, you've got to understand that. It felt like you, to my mom would. If. If you were born in a Muslim country or in a Buddhist country, you would be the best Buddhist that you could be, because you're the equivalent of that here in the way you grew up. You absorbed that, you took that on, but you didn't go and investigate all of the possibilities and land on this one as the true source. It's just kind of. It's a fascinating backdrop to look at the way people make choices.

Yeah, very good. What spiritual disciplines used to have influenced your relationship or connections? You know, for me, if I may.

Add, well, you're the most qualified among us.

I don't know. I don't know if that's the case at all. But for me, just personal experience when I look at people. So I've done a lot of pastoral counseling. I've led congregations before. There's crisis, there's difficulty, you know, and in business, you know, for 40 years, you know, you meet a lot of people. I think. I think it's a spiritual discipline to look at people as. As who they. Who they are, their potential. I look at them as children of God. So when I look at schwa, and I say, now, swa is out there. He's a child of God. That affects my. The way that I feel about schwa and my relationship or my connection with schwa. So it's like, where. Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? But that's a simple thing that. That I could go on for hours. But I just add that when. When. When we look at people that way, it kind of changes, though. You know, we become more patient, there's more emotional intelligence, there's more kindness, there's more love. And I think that those are key to. To having a good connections. So that's what I would add.

It's fascinating. There's so much depth to this whole topic.

Yeah, we could go deep on that one. Do we have time for one more question?

Okay.

Okay, then.

We do want to make sure that we give Dr. Patty a chance to tell people where we can start and go down this path, because I think it's such a fruitful One, let's do.

This question and then Dean, you can take it from there with Dr. Patty Ann. That is great. So, Suki Munch. I said that perfectly. I'm sure. I'm an empath. I tend to leave myself the very last and get great satisfaction from others. Success. I want my success. What would you recommend to work on? That's kind of deep.

I think I'll say something first because you may be able to amplify this. Dr. Pattyan, that. That sounds like one of the things that, that Jordan Peterson was talking about when he says treat yourself like someone you're responsible for. That we're often so much. It's so easy for us to want the best and to give the most to help others, but to not afford ourselves that same level of what we're capable of for others. Do you think that's maybe what he's saying there? That sounds like some. That sounds like that would be how that advice may be deployed in a situation like this.

I think when, when you're emotionally intelligent, right. You come from a place of abundance. So somebody else's success, you basking that like you're as happy for them as you would be for yourself. But the mistake a lot of women make, I would say, is that they're the last on their list and they never get to the last on their list. So make sure, you know, you can't pour from an empty cup. So just be careful that you're not sacrificing your potential for the potential of others because it's also a gift for people that respect you and care about you and love you to see you succeed. Right. The people that care about me, the people love me. They love. They love my success as I love theirs. So it's not a zero sum game. If that's helpful. Just make sure you're not falling into the trap of being a little bit of a martyr. Just be careful with that.

That's it. I love it. Well, this has been fascinating. I love everything about our conversation here. I think we had a great. I think it's very valuable the things that we've started the, the dialogue about here. Where would be a good spot for people to start if they want to go learn more about you and more about what your, your suggestions for us would be if we want to go deeper.

Okay, so great. Thank you. I didn't even think about that. And thank you so much for the opportunity. I really, I really hope this is valuable. I really am passionate about this stuff because to me, it really is all about people, but I think people can link in with me. And the. What I'm really excited about is I will be starting a mastermind for entrepreneurs in committed relationships, but I haven't rolled that out yet, But I just started my podcast.

Nice.

I would love for people to subscribe to my podcast, and it's called the Trust Doctor. Enriching significant relationships in your life. So be on the lookout for that.

Today I'm going to talk about how to become a key person of influence, because I actually figured out I had been doing this for a long time, but when I met a bunch of the other sharks, and there's now 10 of us, and each one of these, you're going to see some new ones. John Paul DiGiorio on the end there, and Steve Tisch. This year coming out, Jeff Foxworthy was a shark for a season. I did three seasons, 175 segments. I learned a lot from these sharks, learned that they were key people of influence in their industry. And so I said, you know what? Let me write down how I became a key person in my industry. And it was really kind of simple when you think about it. It's the old 9010 rules. 10% of the people make 90% of the income. But actually, really, today, it's almost 2% of the people are making 98% of the income. So, you know, that's, you know, this middle 10% actually have 90, but it's. It's now becoming even closer to a 98.2percent ratio. So there's five things that I say that you need in order to become this key person of influence. We're going to go into each one of these very shortly today because of the time constraints, but get a perfect pitch, publish your ideas, productize your value, raise your profile, and also then seek great partnerships. And I think that's one of the reasons why. Why many of us are here today is to seek great partnership. So the perfect pitch, I have a formula I use for this. T's, please, and C's are the three steps of that. And the guy that gave me the most unbelievable perfect pitch the first time I realized it, his name was Arnold Morris, and he was at the Philadelphia home show with the knife. He's cutting through a Coca Cola can, then a hammerhead and a muffler. And then he said, it's so powerful, this knife, that it can still cut to a tomato, and you can read the Sunday newspaper through it. This was called the Ginsu knife. I said, arnold, that pitch you just gave, I'm going to put it on tv, take a camera, capture it and take it to millions. Because he'd only been taking it to 10 people at a time for 30 years. He had a perfect pitch. But I said, let's take it to the masses. That was the perfect pitch. Not somebody like this that came on Shark Tank and couldn't even talk. Okay, so that makes a bad pitch when you cry. All right. In fact, you know, when I got done with Arnold, we went back to the Philadelphia home show and watched this. Billy Mays, I'd like to introduce to you the washmatic International. It's the only washing system in the.

World that works directly.

Direct from a bucket. Who cares? All right, all right. That was not a good pitch. All right. That was Billy's first infomercial. God bless him. I did that infomercial. Fortunately, I didn't lose a lot of money, but I learned early on you need to create a perfect pitch. And here is Billy's last infomercial.

The dual saw is no ordinary saw. It uses counter rotating technology to cut through all types of material with unmatched.

Safety, speed and precision. It's a process that took eight years.

And cost millions of dollars to develop.

That's a perfect pitch. $100 million in sales. God bless Billy Mays. His family still gets a royalty to this day now that he's passed away a few years ago, but that when he passed away. 62 products on television when he died. God bless him. So, yeah, there's other people we can talk about. Lazo Freeman, a personal trainer over in the uk, came to us and I said, what's your perfect pitch, Lazo? I get a kick from motivating individuals to be the best they can be. That sounds a little bit generic to me. Not a great pitch, but this is what we turned it into. I only do exclusive radical 12 week body transformations with business leaders, celebrities and public figures who achieve amazing things, works at work, but ordinary things naked. Okay, how about that one? All right. This guy has a 12 week waiting list now for people that want to use his services. That's what I call a perfect pitch. And by the way, you should have a 32nd perfect pitch. A 62nd, a 92nd, 122nd. You never know when and who you might have to make that pitch to. T's please and C's publish now. There's a lot of people here. I've seen a lot of people have their own books already. So yes, having a book is great. I had my own book and that helped me get on Shark Tank. Actually, I can talk a little bit about that afterwards maybe, but books and blogs and newsletters, trade journals, newspaper articles, magazines, publishing creates credibility. And without a doubt, I know there's, I see folks here that go on the Today show. We know who we are here and things like this. So everybody knows they need to get the publishing credibility because, you know, you keep your customers. If you have a newsletter that comes out, you get new customers. We talked about credibility. You stand out from the competition, you enhance your reputation as an expert, you build your brand. And it has a longer shelf life than other marketing because you can give your book out, your newsletter continuity, you can do clubs, et cetera. So, yes, publishing is very, very powerful. And this lady, Hadi Hassan, she was a struggling female plumber. And she said, what can I do? You know, I don't know, what do you have for me? I said, well, let's come up with something. We've now published over 350 books for people through our organization now. And what we did with Hadi is we said the Joy of Plumbing. And that book now has taken off. It's a best seller over in the uk. This book has positioned her. Now she started her own association. She does radio talk shows, television shows. She's got a 16 DVD set of DVDs that she sells on an ongoing basis. And she now is a rock star. Plus, so publishing has put her into a whole new league. Third step, productize. Because a product never sleeps. I have friends that are chiropractors, doctors, lawyers. They can't bill while they're sleeping, all right? So I say, you've got to productize your assets. We live in a global idea economy right now, and productizing is what it's all about. In fact, when I met Tony Little, he was a bodybuilder, personal trainer. All right, look at Tony. He looks a little different today, but Tony Little, I said, how do you make money, Tony? I get $40 an hour. I start at 5 o' clock in the morning and I work people out all day long. So at the end of the day, he made a couple hundred, 500 bucks maybe if he had 10, 12 sessions like Tony. How can we unpack your unvaluable. You're valuable. I he said, Kevin, he said, what I do, I can target train women primarily if they got a little bit of arm fat here, Love handles, glutes, you name it, I target train them. I said, boom. Okay, brought him into the studio. We shot six one hour DVDs, created the target training DVD. Set. Here it is. $300 million in sales for Tony Little. He was getting a check for about a million dollars a month actually at one time. So this was all by productizing his valuable ip, Tony's done billions. We went on to do the Gazelle with Tony Little, which actually has now done over $1 billion in sales by productizing. Here's another guy, Jack Lalanne. He's a healthy old fitness guru. Another guy that's passed away, God bless him. But I said, Jack, he hadn't made any money. This is about 20 some years ago. And I said, what do you do to stay so healthy? I drink juice every day. Ok, Jack, here it is. We're going to make you now a healthy and wealthy old Fitness Guru. Okay, $1 billion in juicer sales. Jack Lalanne, unpack your valuable IP. Fourth thing. Profile. Raise your profile. So important, you know. Let's talk about the evolution of the industry. It took radio 38 years to get to 50 million people. Took television 13 years. The Internet four years. IPod three years. Facebook two years. But guess what? This guy, he did it in six months to a billion people. Psy. Okay, the Gangnam guy, this guy just blew the market away because what did he do? He didn't use the old media. A few channels broadcasting to millions. He used new media, which is millions of channels broadcasting to a few. And that is the new big. Small is the new big. Big companies have a harder time competing against you because just like this right here, I have a 35,000 square foot studio. I shoot my infomercials. I can shoot the same quality on this little iPhone that I do in my studio. And that's where we're going with this because here's a guy, Phil Gere, 810 million views. What mattered to me today, Michelle Phan, 580 million views. She gets seven figure sponsorships from companies that pay her to show how to put makeup on for Asian girls. And Jenna Marbles. Over a billion views. How to trick people into thinking you're good looking. So you know who would want me on tv? A lot of people say, well, if a blanket with arms can become a TV sensation, so can you. The Snuggie. $400 million in sales. 26 million units. Last thing, partnerships. And I'm out of time, so I'm just going to wrap it up here. I went to Guthy Ranker. They do beauty, I do hard goods. I said, let's form a venture. We'll take people that come to you with hard good products, bring them into the venture people come to me with beauty products. We formed a 50:50 joint venture, very successful. Everybody in this room has the ability to partner, just like invent help, which helps inventors. They come to us. We have a program where we line up 7,000 companies to invest in inventors ideas. And that's because we have engineers, we have manufacturing companies, we have every kind of company that can help an inventor with his idea. It's all about partnerships. And that's what everybody hears here today, this week to do.

Joe, let me answer this question right here from Mario. How do you keep everything still interesting this for me, Joe. How do you keep everything interesting to you when you've said it 10,000 times before? But you know, it's life changing to the newest person hearing it for the first time, you know. And then we'll take the questions that people have here. You know, the, the interesting thing about that is most of the things that I say I haven't said 10,000 times. And I always say them differently. And if I ever get bored with it, I actually, there's so many things people that have listened to. You know what I, I've been teaching marketing stuff since, gosh, for 28 years now. And I, and I really first Learned Marketing in 1992. So I'm 30 years of doing this stuff because I 54 years old right now. And if I get bored with it or I don't like it anymore, I, I frankly just quit talking about it. I mean there's stuff that I used to talk about that I just kind of was done with. And then I started another chapter. And over the years I've gone into different areas of interest and stuff. So I always have to keep things elf for me. But I went and saw Elton John on Friday night. On Friday night there were two shows here in Phoenix. We're talking like 30, 40, 000 people at each one. And they were sold out. It was insanely packed. And I was like, how many freaking times is this guy saying rocket man? You know, like, is he, he's 75 years old, is he bored out of his mind? And it was a great show. It was an amazing show. And I had met Elton John years ago. He was at Elton John Oscar party. And I went up and talked to him and Katy Perry when they were having dinner. And that was in 2013. And it's like the same shit that he's been singing over and over again. But I'll tell you, I don't know. I don't know if he just loves It. But I remember saying to Sheree, my girlfriend, I was like, God, I mean, I wonder if he's just bored out of his mind of singing the same song. But, you know, it's interesting to be asked the same thing, because to me, it doesn't seem I always give a different twist on it. And the beauty of a riff list. I've never been able to give a signature talk. I admire my speaker friends that can give the same exact talk over and over again. I've never been able to do it. I've tried. I can't. My brain is too distractible. I'm too add. And I just go into many different tangents, and so I cannot keep to a script. So some people, I think, work well off of that. I certainly do not. But the thing that keeps it interesting to answer the question is I always go deeper with it. And the beauty of writing this book is I really had to think about things that I what I do and try to explain how I do them. And so my book is a bit of a capability book and strategy book on things that I do, but it's really designed to be a character book. I hope that it helps people really think about what they do and how they do it and why and who they invest their time, attention, money, and effort and energy with. And my marketing friends are like, what are you hoping to get out of the book? What are you trying to sell? Are you trying to sell Genius Network? And I'm like, I actually wrote a book so that 100 years from now, when I'm long gone, hopefully people are still reading it. It's not a book designed to pitch people. Does it talk about Genius Network? Yes. Is it designed as a sales letter? No, it's not. I mean, I have other books for that. And so anyway, that's my response to that. Okay, I hope you found that video awesome and useful.

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