12 "occult psychology" tricks I used to sell $100mm

I'm going to show you every dark psychology trick that I've used to sell over $100 million worth of stuff with words. And I promise that over the next few minutes, I'm going to share more insightful marketing than you've seen in any paid course that you have ever taken. And in fact, things I will show in here are stuff that you will not see anywhere else. And I'm going to literally prove it to you by the end of this video, beyond a shadow of a doubt, where you will feel that what I'm saying is actually true. So I want you to test me on this. Number one, the paradigm flip. Everybody focuses on selling using claims, while the actual winners know how to sell using insight. That's because when you flip your prospect's paradigm of the world, when you create a set of beliefs and turn them into concrete opposites, then you can present your stance as a fundamental shift in the way that you look at the world, which is thousands of times more exciting and engaging than a mere more of the same but better approach. This is similar to Gestalt theory, which where you can look at an object and flip it in your mind over and over and over. Only this time you're doing this on a larger, more abstract scale by shifting entire belief systems. Listen. People are bored by incremental micro improvements. They want drama, insight and perspective. This is something that they crave. So when you present your ideas as a fundamentally new pattern of seeing the world, you create insane engagement. Now notice I said present your ideas. The truth is as if there are very few real paradigm shifting thoughts. Mostly what we think. And our new ideas are something that's been thought before in the past, but that doesn't actually matter because what matters is how you present your stance as a they say but I say break in their mental paradigm. For 99% of people it's going to slip right past them. For example, you could say most men obsess over attracting women, while real players focus on consensus. Because when you own the group's attention, attraction becomes inevitable. And this isn't about pre selection or social game. Those are still about trying to attract women. But consensus doesn't even care what she thinks. Yet it works better than anything else. You see what happened there? They focus on direct attraction, but we focus on group consensus. Even though these concepts actually overlap when you analyze them. And even though this idea of consensus is probably not that much different than social gaming, the paradigm flip creates such a strong emotional divide that your audience literally can't help but align with this new perspective, it's not about being 100% logically accurate. It's about being emotionally true. So how can you present your product or service as not just different, but built on a fundamentally new paradigm shift in how you see the world? Now, let me be honest. I may have made a mistake by including this next one because you might think that it's one of the weaker psychological triggers that are out there. It's hardly using some hidden dark psychology or an ultra secret manipulation tactic. In fact, it's actually embarrassingly simple. Reveal your weaknesses. Just admit when you're wrong and imperfect. See, there's this weird thing in psychology called the Prafal effect, where scientists showed a video of a guy who's this perfect specimen. He can answer jeopardy like questions with 92% accuracy, he has perfect grades, well spoken, he's got everything going for him. But they showed two different videos to two sets of people. One where this guy spilled coffee all over himself and another where he didn't. And guess which version people liked more? Exactly. The coffee spilling guy won their hearts. Because we all know that showing vulnerability actually makes you more likable, not less. I mean, people are annoying as hell, but someone who could admit their flaws, someone who can say, yes, I screwed that up, they become instantly more relatable, more trustworthy, more human. And this works especially well when you position yourself as someone who is worse than your prospects, but still able to actually succeed in the long run. Now, there's a lot of nuance to this, like timing, context, strategy, how much to reveal. But the core principle is the same. Strategic vulnerability builds trust. It leverages the pratfall effect, the liking principle, and attribution bias. Whatever you want to call it, it doesn't matter. It works. So ask yourself, what strategic vulnerability can you provide in your market that builds instant likability? Short question. If someone walks into a car dealership, they're obviously looking to buy a car, right? Exactly. Which means that if you're here watching this video, then obviously you want to increase your ability to sell, correct? Good. Now pay attention, because this trick is probably the most important and subtle on this list. Micro commitments. This is a technique that leverages three cognitive biases. The sunk cost fallacy, the consistency bias, and the commitment bias. They all revolve around the same principle. When someone takes a small action, they're more likely to take bigger actions of the same kind. The famous ad man, Joseph Sugarman called this idea getting the head nodded. And even the Chinese used it for wartime propaganda, where they start by getting POWs to admit hey, no country is perfect and slowly escalate those claims until these prisoners were basically making full radio confessions, which is wild. So in your marketing this means get small yeses so the next one becomes easier. Every micro commitment you get builds more momentum, and every agreement you get brings them closer to the sale. So whether this is in your copy, in your funnel, in your content, or in your offer, start by getting them to say yes. Start by getting small micro commitments and you will ultimately increase your selling power. So ask yourself, where can you start to include and embed these micro commitments in your copy? Now, this next one I'm going to share might seem basic at first, and maybe you even think that it's boring and obvious. But I know that for those who truly understand the inner mechanics of psychology will instantly recognize just how powerful this next one is. Preemptive clauses. These are all about reading your market's mind while they consume your content. It's about making educated guesses about what they're thinking or feeling. Maybe they're skeptical. Maybe they've heard similar promises before. Maybe they're wondering if this really works. When you call out what your market is thinking and get it right, which chances are you probably will, you create an almost instant connection because they feel understood. They feel like you're literally inside their head. And guess what? Even if you miss this, sometimes simply adding words like maybe or probably or likely gives you a little bit of wiggle room when you're playing this guessing game. This is essentially a form of cold reading, or where you make more general statements that are likely to be true but carry significant psychological impact. You're making a gambit at building rapport, and what's so powerful is that you can do this when you're talking about ideas that might cause resistance in your prospect's mind. For example, you could say this might seem complicated, or maybe you're skeptical, et cetera, et cetera. By doing this, you're also tapping into something called the inoculation effect, whereby voicing potential objections early, you prevent those thoughts from derailing you later. This is the same way that a vaccine could prevent some sort of virus. Small doses of objections prevent bigger resistance down the road. You probably don't know this, but there are three types of status, or more specifically, three types of relationships that people have to status. First are the status chasers. These are the people that are desperately climbing corporate ladders, chasing followers, hunting for validation everywhere. They're always playing by someone else's rules. Second are these status hackers this is where most people stop. These are the people who think they figured it out. They've studied psychology and learned social dynamics. They got a copy of 48 Laws of Power sitting on their dusty ass bookshelf. But they're still owned by the same status game. They're just playing a slightly smarter version of someone else's game. Then there's the highest form, which is the form that almost nobody talks about, because exposing it would expose the whole house of cards. And these are the status engineers. These are the people who don't play the status game. They architect their own status game. And by the way, if you want to learn more about status games, you can read this book by Will Storr, where he breaks it all down for you. Now, here's the thing about status engineers. They understand that you do not have to play by existing rules. In fact, it's stupid to do. So. Instead of playing anyone else's status game, just create your new one. This is what I call position engineering. And once you see it, you cannot unsee it. The whole idea is that you create a new status game that positions your belief and your product and service at the hierarchy of it. If you look at this example with companies like Airbnb, where they basically flipped fancy hotels into becoming these tourist traps, while Airbnbs were more like living like a local is a new kind of status game. You could look at Yeti, where they transformed a $20 cooler into a $400 status symbol. You could look at Apple versus Mac over and over and over again. The whole idea, the mechanics behind this are deceptively simple. Figure out what the current status game is. Figure out what kind of status game would set your product, your service, or your beliefs at the top, and then redefine and articulate what that new status game is. There's some details in how you actually go about this, but once you do, it is insanely powerful. So ask yourself, what new rules or status game can you set up in your own marketing? Okay, now, when most gurus will spend literally 10 minutes explaining, I'm going to break it down in 30 to 60 seconds. Most marketers think they understand pricing, or if they do, they drastically overcomplicate it. But in reality, it is dead simple. The brain does not know what anything should cost. We were not using dollars and cents and pesos and yen all the way back in Paleolithic Siberia. We only know what things cost in relation to each other. So anchor your price to something incredibly high, and your actual price feels way more palatable. This is called price anchoring. When Williams Sonoma couldn't sell their $275 bread maker, they stuck another one right next to it in their catalog. Priced at $429. Who the fuck knows what a bread maker is supposed to cost? Nobody. But in that catalog, $275 felt like a bargain. Same product, same price, same different contexts. Now, you can price anchor in a corny way by saying, hey, you won't have to pay $500 or even $100 or $7. Truth be told, I still use this in my copy because it still works. But there are way more sophisticated ways to leverage this price anchoring effect. You can anchor the price of time, for example, or you could anchor the price of effort. You can also use something called downscaling, where instead of anchoring the value of your product to something insanely expensive, you actually anchor anchor the price or the cost to something relatively small. You can say, this will only cost you $1.36 per day. Or, hey, you could do this in five minutes per day. Or hey, it's the same effort you spend sending a slack message to your team, etc. Etc. The point is, you can anchor high or downscale and anchor low. And remember, price typically comes not only in money, but also time and effort. So ask yourself, what can you price anchor to that is high value? Or what could you price anchor to using downscaling to make your product or service seem inexpensive, easy to do, and very, very fast. Look, your business is losing a lot of money right now. And not just a little, a lot. In fact, based on the numbers I'm about to show you, if you're not using this next technique, you are probably making half of what you should be. Think about that. If you're doing $10,000 months, there's likely another $10,000 that's vanishing out the door. At $50,000, it could be an extra $50,000 clicking away. You get the point. The reason? The technique I'm about to share isn't actually anything fancy. In fact, it's something that you and almost every other marketer or business owner also already knows. It's just that it's so simple, they fail to really grapple with the implications. This is what's called loss leverage. There is a proven psychological fact of humans, which is that we are twice as motivated to avoid losing something as we are to gain something new. Let me say that again. So it really sinks in. Loss is 150 to 200% more impactful than equivalent gains this means that you could potentially double your selling power simply by switching what you're promising to people as a gain to to what they're losing by avoiding. And it may not be obvious, it may take some work to figure this out. But in every single case, for every single market possible, it is possible to flip the game to a loss. So do not make the mistake of not using this and ask yourself what potential promises or gains in my marketing could I flip to being losses? When it comes to marketing and copy, you have a choice in who you learn from. You can learn from the gurus who are experts at marketing themselves, or you can learn from the craftsmen who are good at actually marketing in general. This is a very, very important distinction. Most of the people teaching copy and teaching marketing are not there because they are the best at their craft. They're there because they go the farthest when it comes to marketing themselves. Yes, that takes some actual skill, but it does not compare at all to the actual skill of marketing real products. For example, most people selling marketing or copywriting are selling money for money, which is probably the easiest sell you could possibly make. But they would not know how to sell a health product or a relationship program or some sort of intangible personal development. That's where the actual real skill comes into play. And that's when you need some of these more advanced techniques that I'm sharing in this video. One of those is what I call decision polarization. Here's how it works. You create two distinct futures or choices in your prospect's mind. Choice A, where they take your action which will lead them to paradise. Or choice B, where they don't do this and it will lead them to your own marketing hell. And here's the thing that most people miss. You don't just use this in feature pacing sections. You use this polarization at the beginning of your ads, at every single word choice that you make throughout the funnel, even in your content, you're constantly reinforcing two parallel realities. Because here's something about human psychology that's important to know. Humans love binaries. They crave clear choices. They love stark contrast. And a craftsman know this. The real persuaders, human use this. So it's very, very important for you to do the same thing. Ask yourself what decisions, what polarity can you create in your own marketing to make your choice way more impactful? Speaking of which, there are also only two types of marketers that are out there. There's those who understand the true basis of proof and those who don't see Most people think that proof is about metrics, testimonials, case studies, scientific studies. But that's not actually the case because the foundation of proof is actually embedded in the story of expertise and status that you create. Think about this. A white lab coat carries more proof and trust than a scientific study that you quote from Harvard University. A private jet is always going to symbolize that this person has money muscles equal fitness expert. Being surrounded by women equals you're a dating expert. Having a PhD equals you're intelligent. These are the mental shortcut that everyone uses, including your markets. These are the instance authority triggers and the status symbols that do the heavy lifting. So if you want to understand how to do this, if you want to truly stand out and separate yourself, you have to know how to identify and use these patterns. And you can be subtle about it, you should be subtle about it, but this is actually how to play the game at the highest level. The only question that remains is what kind of marketer do you want to be? Because it is simple. The mind is a connection making machine, which means it's always looking for reasons, which is why one little word can change everything. And this is one of our last points, because this one is simple. Because use this word or you can use equivalent words like which means or which is why when you use these words, you create a chain of belief, like mental dominoes that fall perfectly, perfectly into place. Each because is another reason to believe. Each which means builds more conviction. And each which is why seals the deal. You probably know about the famous fact study whereby simply adding the word because to a request to cut in line increased compliance by a ton, even when the reason didn't make sense. Like I just need to cut because I need to make copy. Simply using the word because carries that much impact. Here's another example. You could say you're tired all day because your sleep hormones are broken, which means your body can't rest properly, or which is why you wake up exhausted. See that your mind cannot help but follow the logic, even if what you're communicating is kind of flimsy, because that's just how we're wired. Which means you can use words like because or which means or which is why in almost any market and which is why you'd be crazy not to try it. Now, at the beginning of this video, I said that this would be more powerful than any paid marketing training that you've ever taken. And I said that I was going to prove that to you. And I actually did that for a reason, because boldest sells. Making strong, needle moving claims, taking controversial stances, and putting yourself out there will always generate more attention and engagement. Of course you want to be thoughtful about this. Risk is risky for a reason. So you probably want to engineer your risk or your upside is way higher than your downside and where the perception of the actual risk you're taking seems stronger than it is. And again, that's why I started this video with such a bold claim. Because marketing is a game of managing and holding attention. And in fact, the simple fact that you're still here watching this video, in a sea of endless possible YouTube videos you could be watching shows that by definition, this video managed to catch and hold your attention. That is my proof that these work. Because think about it, you could be on TikTok, you could be on Instagram, you could be doing literally anything else, but you're not. You're here with me. So this is literally only proof you need that these methods. I'm sharing work because you may or may not have noticed, but I actually used every single technique I explained in this video in order to help you to keep watching it. And I encourage you to actually go back and watch if you don't believe me. So again, by the simple fact that you're here watching, something must be working right? And in fact, I'm actually using the last and final technique right now, which I call the mental bind. This is where you create a situation that forces your prospect to prove your point, no matter how they react. You set up a scenario where their very response, whether positive or negative, proves whatever you're claiming. Just like I did a moment ago. You. You could say things like, hey, you wouldn't still be reading this if you didn't know it was possible, or hey, the fact that you're resistant shows maybe there's something there worth looking at. Okay, so let's back up for a second and be real. There's probably a bunch of reasons why you're still watching this. Maybe you hate me, maybe you're calling bullshit, maybe you're just bored and habizan in the background. But here's what's wild about these mental binds. None of those reasons actually matter. When you use a mental bind, you're playing a can't lose game. Because people who are genuinely interested, they only get more engaged by these mental binds. And people who are watching for other reasons, well, they're pretty easy to convince and start to think, hey, wait, I am still watching. So maybe this guy's onto something. Meanwhile, the skeptics, well, they were skeptical anyway, so you're not going to be able to lose. That's the power of these techniques in one sided conversations like copy or even a video like this. Now look, if you're sitting there thinking damn, all of this sounds pretty manipulative. Good. I mean I literally titled this video A Cold Mind Tricks or whatever the fuck. I ended up titling it because here's the truth. The human mind has bugs and weaknesses. That's just the facts. You can pretend that away all you want, or you could be a moralistic nerd who just refuses to play in that kind of sandbox, but it does not change the facts or the stakes of the game. Let me be clear. I don't believe marketing should be about manipulation or control or dark psychology or even these occult tricks. But I do believe that marketing is about working with the human mind, which means understanding his biases, its logical fallacies and its predictable patterns. So in my opinion, and again, this is just my opinion, if you are a marketer or a business owner, then it is your highest ethical and professional obligation to 1. Understand these techniques so deeply that they do not work on you. 2. Use these techniques to buy up market and mind share from people who would otherwise exploit your market nefariously. 3. Get sophisticated enough with these techniques to both use and diffuse them at the same time. This means that you use these techniques while simultaneously calling yourself out for using them the same way that I did in this video. Because when you master that balance, it becomes the most refreshing kind of marketing possible. And when you demonstrate these techniques and explain them in real time while taking the pressure of calling yourself out, you create so much trust, rapport and engagement with your market. Which again, if you've been paying attention exactly what I try to do in this video and you can agree or disagree whether I did a good job. In fact, comment below and let me know what you think. Also comment below and tell me what other kind of videos you want to see, what other topics you'd like me to delve into. Again, thank you so much as always for your time and attention. We'll see you in the next video.