Robert Cialdini: 6 Beginner Influence Mistakes to Avoid

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 one of my breakthrough blueprint events. And she was 30 years old, young, you know, bright young, you know, go getter marketer. And in that moment I realized, you know, 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 zoom here are, you know, 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 intent 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.

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 illicit use of those principles so that people could 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.

Mm.

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 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 were pattern that it's just. It's almost like an autopilot thing. When somebody is presented with this, with into 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 and 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 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. 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 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, 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 or 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 when 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, 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 or who are choosing or have been choosing. Our recommended step forward.

Robert, what year before you continue, 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 it 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 hyper vigilant 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, the situations that I get into and I see how influences that work in my life too. And I'll share a couple of stories with you as we go on, but please, 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, 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.

I was going to ask you about. So now this is exciting that you got to the point. These, 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 and 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.

Yes.

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.

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 joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there. According to the new thing that you've done, you have added a seventh universal principle which is so appropriate for our theme of connection, for the theme of this Genius Network meeting. What is that seventh principle and how does it apply to Genius Network members?

Okay, that's a good question. And it's a differentiator for the new edition as opposed to the other editions. I should just name the six principles and then go on to the seventh. But the principles are reciprocation. People say yes to those they owe. So if we go first with benefits, advantages, information, they give that back to us in terms of benefits and advantages in return. Liking. Nobody's surprised that we prefer to say yes to those we know and like. But there are two very simple things we can do to highlight and enhance the rapport that people feel with us. One is to point to genuine similarities. Another is to give genuine compliments. Third principle is social proof. It's a term that we coined back in 1984 in their first edition. Now people use the term all the time, and it means that people want to follow the lead of their peers. What those around them, like them, have been doing or are doing reduces their uncertainty as to what they should do in that situation. If we can give them evidence like that, they will significantly more likely say yes to the request that accompanies that evidence. Fourth is authority. And you know, the people want to also want to reduce their uncertainty by following the lead of the experts in a situation. Again, if we can give them evidence that there are expert voices that are aligned with the proposal or the request that we are, we are making of them, they will more likely say yes. Next principle is commitment and consistency. People want to be consistent with what they have already said or done. If we can show them how what we have to offer is congruent with the commitments that they've already made, especially in public, especially in front of us, we significantly, once more increase the probabilities that they will say yes to that proposal. Scarcity is the sixth principle. The idea that people want more of those things they can have less of. And if we can honestly show them that what we have is scarce, rare, dwindling in availability to them gives them something unique that they can't get elsewhere, they pile in to the offers that we make under those circumstances. And now we come to the seventh principle. It's what I'm calling unity for a communicator. If as a communicator we can arrange for people to see us as sharing membership in a group, an important group that they use to define themselves, that they use to identify who they are, all influence barriers come down to us. They just come down, right? Because inside those we groups, people trust us more, they cooperate with us more, they believe us more, and for the bottom line, they say yes to us significantly more often. They comply with our requests, proposals and recommendations significantly more often. And this is different from similarity inside the liking principle, where if we see that we have similar tastes or preferences or style orientations to other people, that causes us to like them more and that's, that's successful. This isn't similarity like that. This is similarity of membership in a category, a group that we use to define ourselves. Let me give you an example from a study that was done on a college campus. Researchers took a young woman, college age student, young woman, put her on a very heavily trafficked spot on campus and asked her to request donations for a legitimate charity from students who were passing by. And she got some results from that, she got some contributions. But she was able to more than double contributions by adding one more sentence to the request. It was, I'm a student here too. I'm of you, I'm one of you. And all the barriers came down. And these college students who don't have a lot of money were 250% more likely to reach into their wallets or purses and make a contribution. Let me give you a personal example of how this works, where you can identify an existing category in which you exist with somebody else. And simply raising that commonality to consciousness makes all the difference. A while ago I had a project that I needed to complete by the end of the. The next day I had to submit the project. And as I was reading through the final draft of my report that was going to request that the project be approved and funded, I noticed there was a section in the report that wasn't really Compelling. I didn't have the evidence I needed to make that case in a convincing way. But I knew I had a colleague, Tim, let's call him Tim, it's not his real name. Who did have the data like that because he had done an experiment the year before that, provided that evidence. And so I sent him an email. I said, tim, I'm going to call you in a few minutes, but I want to put you on alert that I have this need for some data that you have in your archives. I have this problem. I have this report due tomorrow, I need it today. Could you go into your archives? I'm going to ask you if you can go in, take the data out, get it into a form that I can use, and send it across to me today. So I sent that and then waited a few minutes and I called him. Now, I have to tell you, Tim was renowned in my psychology department for being a sour, irascible guy, a difficult guy. This is a difficult guy. So when I called him, he answered the phone, he said, hello, Bob. I know why you're calling, and the answer is no. You say you have deadlines, I have deadlines. You say you need to have this done by the end of the day. I have things that have to be done by the end of the day. I can't just respond to every time you need something because you have poor time management skills. No. The answer is no. Before I read the research on unity, here's what I would have said to Tim. Come on, Tim, I really need this. I have this thing. It needs the data that you have, and it also is due tomorrow. He had already said no to that. Instead, here's what I said. Come on, Tim. We've been members of the same psychology department now for 12 years. I had the information that afternoon because I reminded him of a connection that we had. I know that the title of this meeting is Connection. This was a we connection. This was a connection that we used to define who we were, identify ourselves. And those things have massive power to move people in our direction. So let's. So I know we'll probably come back to this in some of your questions about how you actually do this to harness the power of unity. But I'll leave it at that at this point.

Here's the problem. We live in a high saturation world. This is, I think, in the last two, two and a half years, even ever more so, a problem. Seth Godin predicted this 22, 23 years ago, right? That the Internet was going to change everything about how People consume about how people learn that we are so saturated.

With.

I mean, just messages, but most of them, it's, you know, it's been estimated that we see between 30 and 90,000 marketing messages a day. Remember the first time I heard that, I thought, well, that's ridiculous. We don't see that. And then I realized, well, my, you know, my computer says Microsoft on it is focus right on my. My thing here. I've got burgers, bagels on my coff. We probably do, if not tens of thousands, right? We're continually saturated by information and by choices. People are overwhelmed, they're skeptical and they're cynical. And here's the problem with that. The subconscious mind, which really is the number one player when it comes to getting people to buy things. It takes the path of least resistance. If given two options and one is easier or quicker or, you know, has less resistance, the unconscious mind will tend to pick that one. And this is where a lot of people's procrastination comes from, right? Is people set up situations where the easier thing to do is to not do what they have to do. And the unconscious mind will always influence you in that direction. The result is this. These days, people's default answer is just no. It is literally the easiest thing a person can say. And it really doesn't matter how good your intentions are or how good your product or your service is. The fact is that most people will probably reject you, especially if you're only trying to sell to the conscious mind, which is what most business owners and marketers do. So the solution is to learn how to ethically influence and persuade people you interact with. Really, I think all business is about influence and persuasion, but more importantly, it's that word, ethical, right? And so we do this by learning how to speak directly to the subconscious mind. This is something I've been fascinated with now for 24 years. And I've dedicated really my whole life to this. Now, people used to think that in order to speak to the subconscious mind, you had to have a pendulum or a hypno disc, and you had to have a person with spooky eyes that would look at you and, you know, speak in a soft voice like, you know, what was the old Taco Bell dog, right? You're getting very hungry if you remember the Taco Bell hypnosis commercial. And the fact is that's not true, right? Formal hypnosis or formal trance is something that is very useful when it comes to doing change work. If you need to quit smoking, lose weight, drop a bad Habit, gain, a good habit, let go of fears, any of that kind of stuff. Formal trance is great for that. But in 1951, Milton Erickson, who was one of the greatest psychiatrists on the face of the earth, he was also a hypnotist, he sort of made the announcement that you don't need formal trance to speak to somebody's subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is always listening as long as you know how to speak to it. Right? Now, usually when I bring this kind of stuff up, people go, wait a minute, hang on. You're talking about like, you know, digging into people's minds. And isn't this all just manipulation? Aren't you trying to force people to do things against their will? Well, the fact is this, if we look up the definition of to manipulate, it's a transitive verb, and the definition essentially is to move, especially in a skillful manner. I think all language moves people. Sometimes it moves people elegantly, sometimes it moves people sloppily, sometimes it barely moves people. But really, when we communicate with people, we're trying to move them in one way or another. We're trying to move them from one state to another state, from one decision to another decision, from maybe where they are physically in one place to another place, right? We're always trying to move people when we speak. And wouldn't it be great to do that in a skillful manner rather than what most people do, which is, you know, most people, they learn most of their language between 5 and 8 years old in terms of learning how to speak. Most of that you learn between like 5 and 8 years old. And then beyond that, the only thing we tend to do to add to our language is just to learn vocabulary, just to learn new words. Most people don't actually invest time in learning how to skillfully use language, which is a very powerful skill.

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 joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

But here's the thing. Manipulation isn't the issue, right? What really is the issue is intent. What is a person's intent when using these words, right? When people talk about the word manipulation, usually what they're talking about is a win lose situation. So I think when it comes down to it, when it comes to influence and persuasion, especially intention and integrity is a big part of it. And this is why the ethical part of influence and persuasion is so important. Can these techniques be used to create a win lose situation or what we might call a manipulation of other people? Of course they can. But all language can do that. Right? You don't need, you don't even need skill to manipulate people. Just a black heart. There are people who manipulate all the time just with the English language. Right. It doesn't even necessarily require skills. So here's the thing, the challenge with creating win lose situations and there are unfortunately there are people out there who use neuro linguistic programming and win lose ways. Most of us know what their reputation is. Unfortunately they've kind of dirtied the reputation of neuro linguistic programming where there is a lot of positive that you can take from that. The challenge with creating when loose situations is you may get them to say yes but then they never trust you again. Now I've been in this business that I'm in right now transform destiny for 22 years. I have people who've been buying from me for nearly that long right from to me. And I'm passionate about what I do. I didn't get into business to make money. I got in the business because I love what I do. I go down these rabbit holes and I, I'm compelled to do this. It's my purpose and then money's the result of it. But there are some people who are, you know, primarily money driven and they try to use these kinds of tactics and techniques but they backfire because you know that person will only ever buy from you once and will probably poison other people to not buy. Right. It's not influence, it's just tricking people. So real influence creates relationships that thrive and flourishes and as both parties, for both parties as they grow. And I would even stretch that to say that I think that real influence is leadership. If you truly. And Joe's a great example of this. Right. Joe went through his recovery and got well himself and now he helps other people recover. Can you imagine if a person was still stuck in their addiction and charging other people to help them not be addicted. Right. It doesn't work well. And that's not to say that it can't work. And that's not to say that there aren't some people who are, you know, pretenders. We were talking about imposter syndrome. I always find it funny that the people who should feel imposter syndrome don't and all the people who are really the good, genuine, kind people who really can help people are the ones that feel imposter syndrome. Right. I think that the true influence is about leadership. Right? So that means walking your talk, believing in what you sell. And that of course goes even further into making you a more influential person. When you are fully in 100% congruent behind what you're selling, that makes other people want to follow. So really, in essence, ethical influence makes you an excellent communicator. So if you look at the mind, there's a lot of misconceptions about the conscious mind, subconscious mind. A lot of people say we only think with 10% of our mind. It's actually nowhere near that. If you look at the research, and a lot of this comes from Mihaly Cziksiks and the Haley, the conscious mind actually only makes up 0.006% of the mind. It's 6/1000 of 1% of the mind. The conscious mind is the other 99.994%. The conscious mind is logical and analytical, which is how a lot of people try to sell and market. Whereas the unconscious mind, or subconscious mind is emotional, organic. The conscious mind is in charge of accepting or rejecting what it encounters, whereas the subconscious mind is in charge of desire. The problem with trying to sell to the conscious mind is this conscious mind is like one of those funny guards that you see if you've ever been to England and you've been to Buckingham palace, you get the guards, by the way, don't ever touch them, they're badasses. They will kick your ass hard. Other than that, they won't look at you or, or move. But they have permission if you touch them, to really mess you up. The conscious mind is kind of like one of those guards. It's standing guard outside the gate and it's the gatekeeper, it's the guard that you see at the Royal Palace. Its job is to filter out the environment and to keep out suggestions. That's really the job of the conscious mind, right? The intention is supposed to be a good thing, but often it's not. Very often it's our conscious mind that prevents us from achieving what we want in our own lives, from taking that chance and falling in love, or from buying the thing that we know is going to help us from starting a business or whatever it is. A lot of times it's the conscious mind that gets in the way and rejects the wrong things. And so what we have to do, we have to learn how to bypass that gatekeeper. And if you do, you have access to the vast majority of the mind that's in charge of desire, which is where all buying decisions are made. And there are people who go, what if I'm B2B, what if I'm selling to corporations? Well, you're still selling to a human. Somebody said this at the last, the last genius network mastermind, which is, you know, it's still H2H. It doesn't matter if it's B2B or B2C or anything else like that. If you're selling to another human being. Desire is always part of the equation. Now it may not be the desire of oh, I want this fancy car, but it may be the desire of I want to make this good purchase decision so that I get praise from my boss and other people think that, you know, I'm a good worker. So there's always desire as part of the part of the equation. So accessing and communicating with subconscious mind is the key to great marketing and sales. And really the number one thing is desire. It's the driving factor in all sales and marketing. So what I'm going to present to you now, I'm going to kind of go meta on influence. Instead of giving you language patterns, I want to teach you how to think about what you say so that you can choose the language patterns that you probably already know. And this will help you in your copywriting and face to face sales and your relationships. My first, by the way, guinea pigs when it came to hypnosis and NLP were my kids, right? My son was five, my daughter was three. And you know, using this in my everyday life was how I really began to start to get good at it before I ever even introduced it into business.

Because the people listening to this, like how do you connect with people in a way that would be more beneficial and valuable? So look, what can we teach them? Yeah, there's connecting and then there's connecting. Since we're talking about narcissists, there are people that connect by conning people, right? And the people that become my true inner circle friends or I look at people that are more powerful, how do they treat people that are less powerful than them most? I know quite a few billionaires personally and many I've met in addiction recovery. No one would even know that I know them. And I fortunately joined a high profile group for people with sexual addiction in the year 2000 that could not. And there were Academy Award winning actors and actresses and because NBA players, NFL players, musicians, politicians, clergy, I mean people that were well known but they couldn't go out and just admit that they were struggling with this sort of thing that has even the sound of a lot of shame attached to it. But I want to talk about sexual addiction. I publicly talk about it because for years I never did. And then once I started doing it, I would have people, a lot of high level entrepreneurs and CEOs, men and women that started coming up to me and just thanking me for how valuable it was. And a lot of people that have gotten help as a result of doing it. So it is one of the most shameful sort of things that I've ever dealt with of this sexual addiction sort of thing. But I wanted to define it and describe it. How do we get there from teaching people what's in it for them? Because connection is if you are not connected with yourself, you're going to be disconnected with other people. So this is about masturbation. The first for you? It might be. No, this is. Dave.

No.

The reason your team set this interview up today, even though me and you kind of did it, but they were supportive, is this is an intervention. We need to talk about. We need to talk about your masturbation problem because, like, there is a mass. Do you know there are studies out of Europe that the average person over the age of 13 years old, and this was from going several years ago, watches at least an hour a day of hardcore pornography. An hour a day in some parts of Europe. I don't know what it is now, and there's probably just France, those guys. But here's the thing. Think about the only thing, even though there's new studies, that they always come. I mean, there's so much we've learned about addiction and about the brain in the last 10 years. It's unbelievable. All the dopamine stuff.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, and if you like, sexual imagery makes the brain light up massively. And the only thing that I think makes it light up quicker is crystal meth, which Nazi Germany actually invented in 1932. Yeah, that's what powered Hitler. Yeah, yeah, Hitler was. I mean, I would make the case that I can explain the pandemic through the lens of addiction, which is a whole nother. We can come to that if you want. But the thing with sexual stuff, let me point it this way. And what it has to do with connection, what it has to do with power, what it has to do with influence, everything is influenced on the Internet by porn. That's what they built the Internet for. Of course, the first streaming videos were pornography companies. The first 900 numbers were pornography companies. And if you show monkey butts to monkeys, their brains light up. So pornography is highly arousing and highly addictive, and the brain lights up when it sees it. So for people to just. They can make jokes about it, and it's much easier to make jokes about things that are difficult to talk about. That's why people make jokes like monkey butts or masturbation or whatever. But the thing is, there are. They've tried to do studies with universities and college students of what would happen if they don't masturbate for, like, you know, 30 days or for 60 days. I did that for a whole year and tried and published a blog. But you're a guy that's a weirdo and will be willing to take pictures, publish the data. I didn't do pictures. No, no, no. But I'm saying you're a freaking biohacker. You do all these things, but they can't hardly ever even find enough people that won't do it to do studies. Do you know how hard it is to go 30 days without ejaculating? It's like running a marathon. Yeah, it's really hard. Well, so how does that correlate to addiction? Okay, now think about this. Let's go back to those young people that are watching pornography. They've never held hands with someone. They've never kissed. They're watching everything through a computer. How are they even to know what love is? When my mom died when I was four and my father never remarried, and I was raped and molested as a kid and paid money to not say anything, do you think I had a sort of an experience of love as an intimate act of love and oneness? It was something you do to get off. It was something that would you ever know because it's not in your world. Right? So to go out into the world and try to connect with others when you're disconnected or you're using some other means of stimulation and you're supposed to deeply connect. So you're either communicating with someone, you're connecting, or you're trying to escape. That's what I write about in the book. So you're saying that porn is actually disconnecting people because of its effect on the brain, thus the need to write what's in it for them? It's a book about how to connect to people. Well, yeah. The reason that. What's in it for them? Well, first off the line, the sentence, the question. What's in it for them? Is to take the focus off of you and what you want and think about what the other I think like genius networking is, you know, nine genius networking principles is the subtitle. In order to have a genius network. A genius network is a group of people that have skills and capabilities or something. It could be fun. It doesn't have to be for business, but it usually has to do with people that have some knowledge or wisdom and some capability. Like you have a genius network. Right? You're part of my group, but you also have, if you want to get in better physical shape as an example. And like you have to think of who are eight people in my life? Do I need a nutritionist? Do I need a trainer? Do I need a yoga instructor? Do I need a massage therapist? Do I need a breath coach? You know, whatever. Yeah, the team that supports you. The team that supports you. So in order to have a genius network, not just go out and do networking and meet people, I'm not telling people to just like networking is like this old archaic sounding word. It's a waste of time anyway if you're just meeting random people without any intent and just swapping business cards and maybe we can help each other someday. That doesn't feel like it's a very productive activity if you don't know who's in the room. Okay, so like on social media, you often see a lot of people that will go out and they'll take pictures with famous people that they don't even know and then they will write up a post with a picture of them and they will say, this person's really great and I really appreciate everything that they've done and all that. And what I call it is giving credit to credentialize. You give credit to someone to credentialize yourself with them as someone able to give credit.

Right.

Well, it's just you coming up with a way to try now, at the end of the day, it's not like a mortal sin or anything. I mean, whatever, if you want it. But the point is going and meeting famous people does not result in you having a successful life. You have to bring something to the dance party other than just your phone and snap a picture. What I was saying is the people that are more powerful, how do they treat people that are less powerful, powerful than them? Do they say thank you when someone opens up the door? Are they nice to servers? And how do they treat their team? So if you really want to know who someone is, it's not what they who they are on stage, it's not the books that they write, it's not their social media posts, it's who they are. When that shit's, when the camera's not on, how do they treat their team? And so the people that become my true friends are, you know, how are they with their families if they have families, how are they with just normal people? Are they always kissing up to more famous people in order to curry favor sort of thing? And I wanted, and I can't leave all the sexual addiction stuff without defining intimacy because then it'll make this make sense. So my favorite definition of intimacy that I ever heard was given to me by this 80 year old gay man who I never met in person. I have a friend named Tim who I met in recovery in 2003. We talk about it publicly now. His name's Tim Ringgold. He wrote a book called Sonic Recovery.

Great guy.

He's a music therapist and stuff and just awesome dude. And he's been through hell. He had his 18 month year old daughter died and he now, you know, he does grief workshops. He sat with hundreds of people on their deathbeds and played music to them. And he's just an amazing dude. And he's like, you got to meet this guy, talk to him. He's great about intimacy. Well, just about addiction. And this guy devotes his time to people that have sex, sexual addiction. And when someone hears sexual addiction, they immediately think, oh, masturbation, porn, affairs, whatever. But a lot of almost all addictions are binging and purging. It's either excess or deprivation. A big part of sexual addiction is the inability to be sexual or be sexual with someone you care about. So you can, that's. And so there's different forms, there's a lot of different fetishes, there's a lot of different ways that people express sexuality, but it's an arousal template. And we live in a world that puts out a lot of toxic messaging around sex and around relationships. And so he said intimacy is a mutual exploration of a shared safe place. Abuse is anything that takes away the safe place. And addictions are what we do to make ourselves feel good when we don't have a safe place. So if you don't feel safe in the world because you've been abused or you've been abandoned or you've experienced, experienced something or witnessed something, you're not going to feel safe. And if you don't feel safe in the world, you will do things when you don't feel safe. And we are now sitting in a world where there's been global trauma As a result of two years of isolation, of bullshit that's been fed to people by individuals that are in power, that are lying through their teeth, of companies that are doing all. I mean, it's toxic. And to think that we're not going to be in a world right now with a lot of relationship problems, especially young people. Imagine dating right now for the first time as a young person. What sort of model? I am dating right now, but not as. No, no, but I'm saying as a young. Like, I hated dating as a young person when there wasn't all this shit going on in the world because I was no good at it. Right. I can't even imagine. How would you ever go about it? Well, part of it is the ability to read energy. The ability is find. Who do you feel safe with? Part of it is dealing with your own shit. Because I wrote a book on connecting with people, but it's really a book on connecting with yourself. It's a book on. It's not just a capability book, it's a character book. And I hope that this book will take the givers of the world to be more empowered, better boundaried givers and protect themselves from the narcissists and from the abusers. Because the world really needs people like that right now. The world will. And if you can be the best, most empowered, most useful giver with the ability to discern who to develop relationships and who to stay away from. What are the landmines? What's the kryptonite? You're just going to get. You're going to meet greater people and you'll be better protected. And that's part of my goal. So then talk to me about this. We mentioned earlier that you had a narcissist who did some traumatic business stuff. I just had another one. I've had about three major experiences with people like that who just about wrecked some of my companies. And I don't know that I'm any better equipped to spot them now than I was before. What did you change after your most recent experience in your own practice to have those boundaries where you could not let the narcissists attach their tentacles to you? Well, for one, I had to look at how did I allow myself to help this person in the first place? So this. I know what it was. Remember when I got completely thrown off earlier?

Yeah.

I was talking about games people play. Right. Okay. And I was talking about. I have some friends, most of them women. But men and women both say this when they're single and they've been in a relationship where they've been hurt and there's been some pain from. And they'll say something along the lines of, you know, I want to meet someone that doesn't play any games. And it's like, well, unfortunately, humans play games because if you could just. If we were all a planet of trusting individuals and there weren't all these demonic personalities out there and I think most people are good. So when I say the same, let me not be. It only takes like one bad one to take advantage of the good ones. And then you think everyone sucks. But so, so the line that I was going to say, and I'll come back to it, is whoever cares the least controls the relationship. And that's true when you're dealing with manipulative, intimidating, power hungry people. If whoever cares the least controls relationship. And there's something about humans where if someone doesn't approve of you, you want them to approve of you.

You.

It's this childhood thing of please validate me. And so part of it is we oftentimes. And when I say we, I'm talking about myself, right? And I do believe this because I've, I've done the reps, I've done the work with a lot of people and I've gotten a lot of agreement on this. And I've had, I've sat, I've been through more therapy and I. More groups than most people. You've done the work with a capital W. Yeah, I've done a lot. And in no way, shape or form do I ever want to pretend like I've transcended all this. I'm a flawed human. I'm always working on stuff. I mean, it's a daily sort of activity. I mean, everyone thinks they're right. And it takes a lot of awareness to realize that sometimes you think you're right and you're totally wrong. So the thing is, unless you're with a deep, bonded, caring person where you don't need to play, when someone says I don't want to play games, what they're really saying is I don't want to get hurt. Because if you could play, play games and win all day long, assuming you like playing a game, that you're not abusing someone, you play games all day long. It's fun to play games that you win. What people are really saying is, I don't want to lose, I don't want to be hurt. So when those things happen, the first chapter of what's in it for them is to be a Pain, Detective. And so because I believe most bonding is made when you can resonate and you can connect on either some sort of mutual suffering or the ability to have empathy for pain, and you're able to step into that relationship and first relate to it and then actually help to either eliminate it, reduce it, or sit with it. Because you don't want to handicap your kids by making their life too easy. You know, even though I say that without having children, but the metaphor is, you know, you don't want to take away the gift of someone's pain if it is something they need to learn and need to sit through. But at the same time, if someone's really suffering and you can transform that suffering and you can bring some sunshine into the darkness, you're going to really create value for people.

I recently have done my own research on your beautiful premise of reason why, and I want to ask you why.

You think humans are so much more.

Willing to follow a leader or a.

Marketer when you give them the reason why.

It's amazing.

My clients, they might be misbehaving or.

Not following my rules if I'm running.

A big event, which I did last.

Week, and I give them the reason.

Why, and it's magic. So I just wanted you to talk a little bit about reason why. It's been so effective for me as a business owner with employees, employees with clients. As a marketer, you give people the reason why.

It's like a magic to their brain about decision making.

So if you could speak to that.

I would love it.

People need reasons before they act. There's a good evolutionary account of that. We don't want to see ourselves as moving about in some sort of impulsive, spontaneous way. We want to see ourselves as having a rationale for what we do that's consistent with our self concept. So if we give people a reason, and sometimes the reason why we give them can be nonsense, but they still move if there is a reason offered in addition to a recommendation itself, we have to give them that justification for it. And it satisfies that primal need to move forward only if you have a strong reason to undertake that step.

Right?

Yes.

Mr. Tim Larton. Hi.

Hello, Tim.

Obviously, Scott Adams is a huge fan of yours. Read his book Think Bigly and read everything you've done without getting political. I just think it's really interesting, the.

Influence that was used on both sides.

And what's currently being used and how a lot of it is literally bypassing facts, bypassing things. From a marketing standpoint, it's Very interesting.

It can be misused, obviously. What's your opinion, a on the current.

State of influencing people via, you know, the political situation that we have going on right now? And then also, do you agree with Adams on how he looked at Trump's use of persuasion techniques during the campaign?

You know, I think Trump was very effective in his use of, especially using the principle of social proof that we've just talked about. For example, before he would begin a rally during his campaign, he would tell the television camera, turn around. Now, Donald Trump is not known for taking the focus off himself, Right. But he knew enough to say, turn around, look at the crowd. And that legitimized him. He was an outsider. But if all these people were here now in an act of what I'm going to call pre suasion, he had pre suaded the television audience, not his physical audience, the television audience, to say, this guy is worth listening to. Look at all these people who are here listening to him. And I think that he was entitled to that if indeed he had that kind of ability to bring in that many people. There was a need for change that was afoot, in fact, in that election, in the last 100 years, when one political party has had the presidency for two terms, in 80% of the next election, the other party takes the presidency. It was a change election. It was a change election. He was the candidate of change. Hillary Clinton was the continuity candidate. So he knew that if he could establish himself with legitimacy, a lot of people want to listen to his vision of change. He was going to get not just the people, people in that room, but he was going to get a lot of the viewers to say, okay, this guy is worth listening to at this point. Yeah. Yes, hello.

So not really a question, but testimonial for you is I was at the meeting in Tempe when you spoke, and we got your persuasion book and we had a small business issue. It wasn't a giant thing, but it was something that was significant enough that.

I was like, I have to find a solution.

So simply by using your information in.

The subject line of the email, I said, let's work together to find a solution.

And it worked.

And it worked great. Yeah, it's amazing how many opportunities go unemployed when we fail to recognize that persuasion is not just about the merits of our case. It's not about what we say or do inside our message. It's also what we say or do in the moment before we send the message that puts people in a frame of mind that is aligned with the message they are yet to encounter. I got an email from a guy. He said he was. He had two sons who were Boy Scouts. He sent me a picture of the three of them and he said, we were trying to sell popcorn to support the Boy Scouts outside of supermarkets. We had set up a table. You know, you've probably seen these things. And as people came out, we would say to them, excuse me, would you like to buy some popcorn? It would support the Boy Scouts. Well, if they wanted popcorn, they would have bought some already. But the question, do you want to buy some popcorn? Focused them on whether they wanted popcorn.

Right.

He said, then we read your book and we changed the question to do you want to support the Boy Scouts? You could do so by buying some popcorn. We went from 15% to 75% purchase. And he said the people who didn't buy the popcorn would give us money anyway. They said, we don't really want any popcorn, but we want to support. So where do you focus people first? That's the thing that will come to importance in their mind because what's focal is seen as more important to us because we are paying attention to it. So as communicators, the key to pre suasion is to focus people's attention on a concept that they're yet to encounter. But they will, when they experience your message now they've been readied for it and they will be more sympathetic to it.

Yes, Arianna, this is an ethical consideration.

And I'm curious, when you're trying to.

Persuade or influence someone, is there any limit to how much emotion you use to persuade or influence? Is there any heuristic you would recommend about adjusting that?

You know, I don't think the issue is emotion. If I want to be, if I want something, one cue that I have is how emotionally I desire that thing. So I'm not going to say that, just that because it's emotional, it's off limits. Here's what I would say.

I guess what I'm asking is, is.

There any limit to the amount of.

Emotion you bring into the influence?

Influence or to the persuasive conversation?

Just as much as.

Yeah, I mean, can you just bring as much as you can to get the outcome you want or do you check the outcome along some value set?

Yeah. So here's what I would say. Emotion is one way people decide what to do, Right? If we just come in there and get them emotional and then lead them in the direction of this product or idea, then I have some problem with that. But if we Decide ahead of time what we have is valuable to them. If we know that they will increase their outcomes as a result of the merits of the case, not the emotions supporting it, then I'm okay with getting them excited about this because they're still going in the direction of a properly made decision based on the merits, not the emotions. Got it, thank you.

The question is around when you said you were, you know, you woke up in the hospital and they told you you weren't going to walk away and you had acceptance. Do you. It's a two part question. Number one is do you believe the reason you were able to recover was because you accepted it? And then second is, I'm guessing you had that mindset going in where a.

Lot of people aren't going to have.

That type of mindset. So what would you say is something people could do if they woke up in that situation? They didn't have that type of mindset.

Yeah, yeah. Thank you for those questions. So the first question, I already forgot it. Say it again.

It's do you believe that because of your mindset?

Oh, the mindset, yeah, yeah, yes. And by the way, I do have brain damage from the accident, so that the struggle is real.

Well, the acceptance, you said I accepted it and I find that difficult. Personally, I'd love to know, is that why you believe you recovered?

So, yes, I believe very much in the mind body connection. And to elaborate a little bit on the story of when that happened, the doctors came in a week after I was in a coma for six days out of the coma and every day I was talking to psychiatrists and physical therapists and occupational therapist and the doctors called my parents in a week after I was out of the coma and they said, we're concerned with Hal. We believe that he is in denial because every time we talk to him, he's always smiling and laughing and telling jokes and making us laugh and he pretends to be happy. And they said that's not normal. That's not normal for an accident victim that's being told he's never going to walk again. They go, he's just delusional or he's in denial. And ultimately I wasn't. I then explained to them, no, no, no, I accept all the things I can't change. So I can't change this. So I'm genuinely choosing to be happy over the fact that I'm still alive and all these other things. The other thing that I did is I said, look, I know the doc. I told my dad, I said, I know the doctors say I won't walk again, but that's only their opinion. That's their best guess. I said I'm committed to walking again no matter what. There's no other option. And yet simultaneously, I know that there's another option. I might not walk again. So it's this interesting kind of dichotomy where I went. But until proven otherwise, I am putting all of my energy, mental, emotional energy, into walking again. I think about it all the time. I pray about it all the time. I visualize it all the time. I. I tell my friend that it's going to happen all the time. And if it doesn't, well, then I can't change it and I'll be at peace. So, again, most people, I think they want a sure bet, right? And so it's like, well, the doctor said I won't walk again, so I can't invest energy in believing I will or I'll set myself up for disappointment. It's like, that's not the only option. You could actually put all your energy into walking again. And, by the way, apply this to anything. Put all your energy and expectation into what you want while simultaneously accepting the possibility that it might not work out as planned. And maybe that's for the best in the end. Who knows? But, so the point is, a week after that conversation, the doctors called. They came into our room with X rays that I had just taken that that morning. And they said, we don't know how to explain this, Hal, but your body is healing so fast that you're ready to take your first step in therapy today. And even for me, I was blown away. I was thinking I was like a year away from that, right? And this was three weeks after I was found dead, after my femur broke in half, my pelvis broke in three places. And I don't have a graph to show you. Like, look at how my positive expectation and my healing paralleled each other. Like, I don't have that graph. I just have the anecdotal evidence. But here is just one more piece that brings it home, is just under five years ago, I was diagnosed with a very rare, aggressive form of cancer. And I was given a 20 to 30% chance of surviving. It was leukemia, so it was blood cancers through my whole body. And it was a 20 to 30% survival rate. And the day that I was diagnosed with cancer, and the doctors told me, you have a 20% to 30% chance of surviving, which if you flip that, it's a 70 to 80% chance you are dying. And you're leaving your wife and your kids without a dad. Right. And of course that crossed my mind, but when my wife was out of town, I had to call her and tell her over the phone my diagnosis. And she's bawling her eyes out. And I said, sweetheart, I know you're scared, but I want you to know I'm not scared at all. In my mind, there is a 100% chance that I will be in the 20 to 30% of the people that survive this cancer. To me, there is no other option. And I will be the happiest and the most grateful I have ever been while I figure this out and I figure out how to heal. And so again, I don't have a graph that shows the correlation. Right. But I was in remission within a month. The doctors once again were like, we can't explain this. And so having it happen multiple times, I just really do believe, and I know it's a long answer to your question, but I believe so much from my own personal experience on multiple occasions, the car accident, the cancer and even others, the mind, body connection, and that we create our reality. Mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually, we create our reality. So I hope that's helpful. And then. I'm sorry, the second. Oh, the second question was how do you help somebody to kind of get there if they didn't have that background?

Yeah. Maybe a tactic or some way, even if it's picking up a book or something to get you in that space.

Where if you are laid up, you.

Know you're going to have that wherewithal to look at it from a different perspective.

Yeah. So what did you say?

The Miracle Morning book is a good place to start.

So it is. I'd be biased to say it, but. But it is. But, but here, I guess here's the point. And you actually said it. It's. It's sharing a resource from a third party, typically that is very influential. So. Right. Meaning that if you try to tell somebody that you know and that knows you how to think differently. Right. Usually we all know how that goes. Right. It's usually like in one ear, out the other, like, blah, blah, blah, I'm not hearing you. And so, for example, I. Whether it's a book that you've read or like, I have my keynote. My keynote is on YouTube. So if you type in Hal Elrod, the Miracle Morning Keynote, that's kind of an easy way where someone, because a lot of people don't read and they're not going to get through the whole Book if you just send them a video like that, right? And the video, it shows pictures of me in the hospital, in a coma, pictures of my car wreck. So it's pretty impactful, it's funny, it's intense, it's dramatic, it's right. And you get that lesson about the five minute rule and the can't change it. Like all of that is in there. And so again, I know it's like self promotional, but I'm just saying that that would be. I would share that video and go, hey, look, this guy went through something horrific and he had this mindset that allowed him to defy the logic of doctors and heal and be happy the whole way. Right? So that's an example. And again, if you can find that video or other videos that you could send to anybody and get them to watch it, that could shift their mindset. I think that's one of the best ways to do it. Rather than us trying to, no matter what we say, they're going to view us in a certain light. And that may or may not limit our influence on those people.

Love it.

Love it, man. I'm gonna actually find that video and share it at our next team meeting. So appreciate you.

Thank you.

Thank you, brother.

Gina did put the link in the chat to your movie as well. So before there's any problems in your.

Life, go ahead and watch that and.

Have the resources ready. There's my buddy Tom Bilyeu, who has like a podcast. He spoke at last year's Genius Network annual event. He did an interview with Dr. Drew and he talked about change. And the great thing about it is that what Dr. Drew, who may write the foreword to our book that I've got coming out, the Miracle Morning for Addiction Recovery on doing with Hal Elrod and Anna David. So that book will be out next year. And one of the things that he talks about is disgust. So on the wall here is one of my favorite quotes, which is, be willing to destroy anything in your life that is not excellent. And the thing about that is in order to change something, you have pre contemplation, you have contemplation, you have execution, and then you have maintenance. And being willing to destroy anything in your life that is not excellent requires you first to think about it and to contemplate it. And then you have to actually do something. And then once you do something, you have to maintain that something. And so in order to change, the difficult thing with change is not just doing it, it's maintaining it. And so what's always funny to Me is all the New Year's resolutions that people make. And I was talking about this before we started the meeting in our conference room back there. And that you have people that will make goals and going to eat better. And they do for either a few days, few hours, a few weeks. I'm going to join the gym. I'm going to get a gym membership. I'm going to start working out. I'm going to do this thing in my relationship. I'm going to do this thing with my kids or whatever. And then as most human beings, they just stop and they don't maintain it. What I would encourage you to look at is what disgusts you so fucking much right now, that you're like, I'm just so done with this now. You're going to have to contemplate that. You're going to have to think about that. But if you get yourself now, the difference between disgust and shame, though, is that disgust, you're just kind of disgusted with it. Shame, though, you're not going to be motivated with shame because that's. I'm a bad person. And that's the thing that I've learned with being an addict is addiction thrives on shame. Addiction has an appetite for destruction. Addiction will actually make you do bad things. Disgust may cause you to change. And if you are just okay with it, you know, you're probably not going to do much. So if you really want to affect change now, one of the best ways to do that is to put yourself around people that are doing great shit, because then it forces you to look at. Well, you know, they seem to be capable. I mean, one of the biggest motivators for me was when I was a deb bro carpet cleaner, living off credit cards. There's this guy who works. This guy went to high school with, who's working for a guy in Mesa, Arizona, who's an alcoholic that treated his. And I feel bad because he's an alcoholic. I mean, addiction comes out of pain and hurt people, hurt others. And this guy was a really bad person, but he had made $600,000 the previous year. And here I am working my ass off, going broke. That disgusted me. I'm like, what the hell? You know, what is the deal? What does this guy know that I don't? And so it's all how you use it. I mean, your whole life is just a series of raw material sitting around waiting for you to put the ingredients together and produce a certain result. And be it good habits, bad habits. I think everyone has habits. And if you wake up in the morning and you wake up late and you eat two Egg McMuffins and you smoke ten cigarettes and you guzzle four cups of coffee and you kick your dog and you yell at your spouse and you just go around being an asshole. You've just developed really good habits of doing that if you do it every single day, right? So. So winners find ways to win, losers find ways to lose. And so wherever you're winning in life, you're winning because of the way you're putting together. It's the formula. You have a winning formula. And if you're losing, then you need to change that, discard that, abandon that, do something with it, surround yourself with other people. So the whole concept of moonshots and multipliers is how do you actually embed into your brain? So to go back to Michael. Michael. But I'd love to ask you this. How does one best. Let me do a setup here. Now we have a whole book here. And I'll forget if I don't do this. So here's a book. All right. Now this book is filled with Genius Network members talking about their moonshot buy one. And it doesn't just say what's your moonshot? It says, what is your best business decision? Your best business decision. What is the one thing you feel accounts for your success? And how might every Genius Network member benefit from it? What is the biggest tangible performance enhancing, addition, modification and replacement activity or approach you've discovered and added to your model or marketing in the last year? Who are your current business heroes and non business heroes? What are three things you do differently or better than your competitors that drive your business success? And how might everyone in Genius Network utilize any or every one of those advantages? And what is the single best piece of business and non business advice you've ever received? And how did it alter your past? So we ask these questions to all these really bright people and it's freaking phenomenal. Now when you read this stuff, you actually will probably get inspired. You will probably learn things, you will discover some things. You'll probably. And they give book recommendations. What are the most impactful books? This is 100 bucks. All the money we're going to put into Artists for Addicts and Genius Recovery. So it'll go into my recovery Moonshot, if anyone wants one. These are 100 bucks that requires though you to actually influence yourself. So my question to you is, given resources, tools, recipes, how does one influence themselves most effectively?

Okay, so it's a loaded question. How we influence ourselves every one of us first off, knows how to do it. We influence ourselves all the time. No matter what, we're always influencing ourselves. If we were influencing ourselves, as simple as answering ourselves, the question, should I buy that book or not? Is that a good question?

We can influence ourselves in this particular context. That's of part.

Okay, that's perfect.

Okay.

So the. I'm getting set up right now.

Okay.

So the.

And by the way, we can disregard the book entirely and just.

Yeah, either way, if we were going to. We'll talk the book real quick and then we'll just throw an idea. Because I believe this will. This will make a difference for you. Number one is instantly inside of your brain when somebody asks you to buy something or whenever you're planning on doing something else, instantly your brain has a chemical reaction that goes off. Series of chemicals that go off. And also pictures start to show up inside of your brain. So one of the ways to influence ourselves is I teach some hit class. It's a very, very simple technique. It's understanding what state that you need to be in. And I don't mean like Tony Robbins, get yourself in state. I mean literally what state that you need to be in to pull off what it is that you need. A lot of folks don't realize that whenever you're selling something to another person, I'll put it in the context of them and then I'm going to turn it on you really quickly. Is the whole purpose of selling or anything is to educate people that it's okay to make a decision and to take down their guard and put them literally, find that neural pathway that they've made a decision before, whether they were on an aisle when they were a kid. Like, my daughter did this to me today. She influenced me to buy a dog. I bought a dog today. I told myself I'd never buy a dog. But she looked at me and she said something to me that triggered something in me. Abandonment issue. And she found something in me that I don't even really knew I had. And she said simply to me, I'm gonna share this in selling and you guys can use any way you want. And then I'm gonna talk about influencing yourselves. She said, wouldn't it be nice that when I come home from school, there's a five year old. Okay, wouldn't it be nice when I come home from school that Tara's gonna be going to college soon and you're at work still doing what you do, that I have somebody to play with and I know I'm probably Not gonna get a dog from Santa, but it would be nice. I bought a dog today. Okay. And I spent an hour and a half. I spent six hours online and on the phone and calling interesting people from places called paradise, Pennsylvania. Okay. Which doesn't seem like paradise at all. Side note, what my daughter did is she put me in that state of mind. So if you want to influence yourself to change a habit or anything else you do, you're never going to change it with thinking about the habit that you want to add. So this is why with addiction, I do work with a lot of people with addictions and different types of things. So let's say you want to get in better shape or you want to get yourself to pick up the phone more or do your market or do your moonshot or anything. The first thing you have to ask yourself is what state of mind do I need to be in? So exercise for most people. We'll just start with language real quick. Exercise for most people is something that are working out for me was equated to something I talk about doing that I know that I'm capable of doing that I really don't do that is also linked to insecurity and something I'll quit. How many of you know what I'm talking about? Okay, so what I did is I instantly changed the language on it. And by changing the languages, and this happened two years ago when I met Joe from Spartan Races. I stopped working out. I haven't worked out in two years. But I train on a regular basis. By changing the language of what it is that you do, instantly creates a new neural pathway. This is what Joe teaches in marketing. I said, let him teach marketing and everything else. I want to teach it for the brain. Marketing how to market to ourselves. So stop trying to get yourself to save money and start looking at it from a different. Like I have. I build a second business that's my financial portfolio. So instead of saving money, I build a second business that I donate money to and I loan money to it on a regular basis. So I loan money to a second business which is almost bigger than my regular business, which is my financial thing. So the first thing I'll say I'm not going to go into a long term on this is change the language to something which then will change the meaning and changes the neural pathway in the brain. Did that make sense? Did that answer your question? So for instance, a lot of people say they have like I watch the dating guys do this. Is anyone in the dating world here? Anybody want a Date. Okay, I'm not offering. But the dating guys tell people they have this approach anxiety so they could sell them books. Approach anxiety just means that you don't take relationships seriously. So if you got serious about relationships, that word seriously changes things. And I tell most people, like you put the word seriously in a context of you really don't take your business seriously. You're not bad at marketing and you're not bad at sales. You don't take your business seriously. If you did, you would find the time to get around the money to get around the people and do what needs to be get done. So that's my three second version of that whole thing. So if you want the book, which you probably do because there's at least three to five ideas, there's at least one billionaire in that book, right? Okay, there's at least one billionaire you can get a book recommendation or two from. If you want the book and I have it and I've read it, I wish I was in it. I forgot to put myself in it. But if you want it, you really have to ask yourself, like, how would you get yourself to get it? Like, what would be the person, like the person you want to be with? They already have the book. Or would you have to really talk yourself into or out of it? So that's the long story short. Does that answer your question?

Yeah, that's great.

So change your language, literally. Find a different word. And stop trying to diet too, because that's a crappy word. Start becoming aware of what you eat and I guarantee you'll lose weight.

Well, here's, this is something that you know, when we have a guest like you for a show like this, we put out promotional materials to tell, come to listen, and here's just a taste of what you're going to get. And we use these things we call fascinations and teasers that are going to bring people in. Now this is the one I've been waiting to ask you. Yes. How can someone become a better leader, a better influencer, and a better lover? I know this is the one everybody came here for. So we've been salting the communication, we've been getting to this point, and now the big, the payoff.

Well, here's the secret that I believe and I've been yet to be convinced that I'm wrong. You have to start backwards.

Okay?

Start first to be a better lover in your home. Be a better communicator with your loved one, whoever your partner is, your spouse, your kids. But let's just go with spouse or a partner, if you can. So I believe you have only so much bandwidth in your brain. And I'm just going to go off of my experience. This is just what I felt and how I came up with this idea was obviously, I came from not just one divorce, but both of my parents have been divorced twice. And so I've seen that. Right. And so when I got into the. You asked earlier, like, kind of, what was that pivot moment? The real pivot moment for me was when I decided to get married to my wife and we both sat down and I've known her since I was five, so we've. We've literally known each other whole lives. She saw what my parents went through and what I went through, but we sat down and said, how are we not going to do that? Right. Like, my parents taught me a lot of things not to do, which I'm so grateful for. Right. It was very traumatic as a kid, but I joke with my parents at this point all the time. I've made a ton of money off of your divorce, so thank you. Like a good thing. But I. So we sat down and we said, what are the systems, literally systems and processes we're going to put into our relationship so that doesn't happen? What are our core values that go beyond. I'll be honest with you, you know, or, you know, we love each other, so we started creating those. Well, as a entrepreneur, you've got a lot of stuff going on in your head. You only have bandwidth for so much. We talked about frustration, overwhelmed. Well, that's where it comes from. If I'm not happy in my relationship, it is the underlining factor. Everything else I do. If I had a fight with my wife in the morning, and I'm sorry, while you guys talk about this enough in Genius Network, this isn't a big shock, but excuse my. For everybody, if I haven't had sex with my wife in over a week and we just had an argument, I go to the office and the underlying things going on in my brain that's taking up bandwidth. Even if I say, well, my office is my escape place or this is where I keep my focus, it's there. It underlines everything I do. If I'm not happy with my wife and I go to work, something small is going to piss me off with my team members, something small is going to annoy me with a client. And so if I'm not happy there, then it affects everything else. So the opposite has to be true as well. So if I'm Happy in my relationship. If I'm focused on creating a better relationship between my wife and my kids, then I'm going to not have to. That frees up so much more bandwidth to be creative, to be focused, to be in flow, to be attentive, to be present. And so if I can master that, then I can go and master this over here. And so I would start with lover. So focus on lover again. I'll go back to that saying, there's nothing will no success outside the home will compensate for failure in it. My first and most important relationship is that with my spouse. Even my kids know this. Since my kids were little, I would sit them down and say, I love you. I would die for you. I'd do anything for you. But your mom is number one. You will never divide us because, like now I'm an empty nester and it's just the two of us. So I needed to make sure that that was good for the rest of my life. Right. Like I go to the end with her, not you. Like you're going to find somebody else abandoned me. So that is the first piece. Then when it comes to all the other things, it makes it so much easier if you're living that space. I can in integrity, walk into one of these offices and say, I am here to help you have a better relationship with yourself first, then your team members and then your patients, while yourself includes your spouse or your loved one or your partner. And so I can walk in integrity and say that. And they take me seriously. I talk freely about how much I enjoy and love my wife. I talk about also where I'm an idiot in my relationship, but I'm working on it. Like we used to start off, we used to have marriage seminars that we would do that were based on, therefore hiring entrepreneurs. And I would start off every single one. I'd stand up on stage and I'd say, how many of you guys want to hear about the fight Shannon and I had last night? Or how many guys want to hear about our most recent argument? And the reason is because we're like normal people. We argue, but we understand the power of that. So if I can focus on lover, then I can focus on relationship when it comes to my influence and then leadership, it. It's just a backwards scenario.

That's fascinating. That's good. So then. And then you mentioned then taking that and kind of now shifting it outward to your relationship with your. With your clients, with your. Yeah. So, yeah. What's some.

As a leader, I. So one of the core Values I have in my relationship is radical transparency. Okay, we don't have honesty. We have radical transparency. And my business ownership, I say the same thing with my business owner. So the first thing you have to be is be a hundred percent authentic with who you are, authentic with your team members and love them enough to say no or to say goodbye. So what I mean by that is there's a lot of people that hold on to people in their businesses, employers, as employees, because they feel bad because they, you know, deep down that person's a good person.

Oh, yeah.

They've been here so long.

Yeah.

However, they're not being honest and they're not being in integrity with that person. This is that. This is the test. I always say I do this from this stage. I say, doctors, if you walk in in the morning and you see Sally and Sally walks by you and you say, good morning, Sally, and she says, good morning, doctor. And you think in your head, man, I wish you had quit, that is your cue that you're out of integrity and you need to let her go. It's not that she's doing anything wrong. Maybe Sally does want to come to work 10 minutes late. Maybe Sally does like the drama. Maybe Sally is somebody who is insubordinate. That doesn't make Sally wrong. And that's what we do as leaders, is we tend to make them wrong. But true leadership is saying, huh, you know what? They're not wrong for wanting those things. I want to help them not want those things, but they're not wrong. They're just not the right fit for our business or we're not the right fit for them, so we love them into another job and love them enough to say goodbye. That starts. That's where all leadership starts, is that authenticity of that. And then you can build upon empathy. You can build upon having a good vision and culture for your business. But if you can't be authentic and real and create that safe environment, then it's never going to be, never going to work out the way you want.

Okay. I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead, you're over here. Do it now. Come on. Thank you. Watch them.