Alex Hormozi explains a persuasive sales tactic he calls a "damaging admission": state negative facts or shortcomings first, then use the word "but" to amplify a following positive claim. He demonstrates the technique with multiple examples (Gym Launch reviews, a dating anecdote, and the Viagra ad), argues the tactic increases believability and trust by showing integrity, and recommends using it in copy and sales conversations.
Chapters
What's going on, everyone? Really pumped to tell you one of my strongest and most powerful tactics in persuasion that allows you to use integrity to increase the trust in your prospects by owning all of your deficiencies with a single statement. Alright. So many times if you're thinking about how you're selling someone, the degree to which they will buy is directly correlated with how much they trust you. Especially in a B2B scenario where if I said, hey, for every dollar you give me, you'll make 10 back. If someone truly believed that, then every single person would buy from me. Right? Because there's no logical reason not to. So underpinning that is whether they believe me or not. And that could be within the context whether they believe in themselves versus the system versus the world. There's other sub beliefs there. But fundamentally, if those three things are aligned and they truly believe in their core, then they're going to buy. Which is the same reason that when you have a referral that gets on the phone with you, it's so easy to close them because the person who referred them has already imbued you with trust, they've already vouched for you. And so the person comes in with sky high trust and really just, you just need to get out of their way so they can make the purchase. And so I learned this tactic from Eminem in 8 mile and you can see it at work and I'll give you a couple of prominent examples, but it's using the word but. Alright? And this is the concept of damaging admission, which is probably my single favorite technique to use in persuasion because it allows me to be even more honest than I otherwise would be. And in a world of like charlatans where people are always making huge promises and making huge claims and never kind of being real and authentic with people, you stick out like a sore thumb in a good way. Right? And so let me give you a statement really quickly and then we're going to, I'm going to show you how to, how to reverse it in order to make it more persuasive. So let's say I said I'm going to make you, you're going to make a ton of money if you work with me, but it's going to be a ton of work. There's going to be hundreds of hours of videos you're going to have to go through. There's five hours a day that you're going to have to spend to execute each of the things that I'm going to tell you to do. What happens is in that statement, I directed your attention to all of the things that you're going to have to do right now. If you noticed it was positive statement, but negative statement. Now if you reverse these things and go negative statement, but, positive statement, the but acts as an amplifier for the second half. Let's try it on. Listen, if you sign up for gym launch or you sign up to work with me, you're going to have to go through hundreds of hours of videos. You're going to have to take five hours a day, you know, to work and do these things. But you're going to make more money than you've ever made in your life. The thing is that but and then the statement when I say something negative. If I was on a date, for example, and I was trying to persuade a young lady, you know, back in the day, before I was married, I might say something like, listen, you know, sometimes I have a temper, I can be short at times. I don't have a ton of time, get dedicated to a relationship right now because my business is taking up the majority of my time. But I'm absolutely fantastic in bed, right? If I said something like that, the thing is, is the more negatives I can say in the beginning, the more believable the thing that I say right afterwards is, right? And so if I own all of my negatives, which is why I love this, because be truthful in the things that you're saying that are negative and the more true they are and the more damaging they are, the more believable the thing that comes after the sentence, alright? And so the way to use but, because everything that happens here after the word but is amplified and everything that is before the word but is diminished. So the good thing is you can actually control where your prospect's attention is going. So this is where we're, where we're directing them is after the word but. And so I do this sometimes, you know, the word because is actually really similar too to this in a different way. I'll use it in another video. But if I say something really horrible, I'm trying to think of something else. Let's see here. I'm really hard to live with. I absolutely do no house chores whatsoever. But whatever I say right now is something that you're going to believe, right? And so when you use this to your advantage and you weave this into your copy, especially as you get closer to your call to actions, people will believe you. And fundamentally, this is what will make your copy so much more persuasive, right? Like for for example, Gym Launch has tons of 1 star reviews. We also have, but we also have thousands of five stars. The question is whether you want to eat at a restaurant that has 4.7 stars with 3,000 ratings or you would eat at a place that has 5 stars with 19. I would rather eat the 4.7 star same thing which you buy on Amazon because the damaging admissions, the reviews that are negative give credence to, to the things that are positive. So let me give you a really famous example that Viagra had. And some of you guys may know this commercial, but it's literally it crushed for them, right? Some of you guys may remember that they had a warning label at the end of their advertisements that said if an erection lasts longer than four hours, you know, must contact a medical, you know, professional, right? And so the beauty is there was a genuine risk, right? But in making the risk, they amplified the power of the product. Every single guy heard that warning and was like, I could have an erection for four hours, like sign me up, right? And so it'd be like the same thing as saying like, you know, warning, you know, when you sign up and start working with Jim Launch, you're gonna massively increase your tax burden, alright? So like we are not liable for the amount of taxes that you're gonna have to pay as a result of the amount of money we're gonna make, right? So it's the negative consequence of the positive that amplifies the believability of the statement. If we're warning people that the extreme adverse effects of the result that we're promising in an extreme fashion, then it makes the underlying believability of whether or not they're going to achieve it seem assumed, right? And then it makes the entire set of sentences or the preceding argument more persuasive and believable. And so ultimately, this is one of my favorite persuasion tactics and I love it because it's so based in integrity, right? You're just saying all of the things that someone is going to find out eventually. You might as well use those things to increase the persuasiveness of your argument, right? And so I wanted to leave this with you. I hope you found it valuable. Keep being awesome. Try it in your copy. Try it when you're presenting something in a sales presentation and I guarantee you you will have a prospect who believes you much more and is more likely to buy. So lots of love and I'll catch you on the flip side. Bye.
