Late Dave Lakhani on the Art of Persuasion, Human Psychology & Advertising Effectively

The best persuaders change behaviors, not minds. Persuasion doesn't mean to manipulate. Intention is everything. If it isn't in the best interest of the person you're persuading, you probably shouldn't do it.

Hello everyone. Welcome to this special episode of the Conscious Creator Show. So this is a difficult intro to record and You'll see in a moment why. Our guest is Dave Lakani, who is widely or was widely known as a pronunciation expert. And I met at a conference called Baby Bathwater, which you've probably heard me mention a few times. Dave unexpectedly passed away in December or November of last year. And we actually recorded this episode around April of 2020, around the COVID pandemic when we were working on a project Around that, and this is a really unique episode because after ten years in marketing, I think there's there's very few people where like I meet. I'm like, okay, I'm going to learn something about marketing from you. And in this conversation, and and you'll see as you hear it, Dave completely changed my mind on my views on marketing persuasion, and really like how to go from push to pull marketing. Dave's had like 30-plus years in persuasion marketing and just has been an expert who's worked with a bunch of companies, Fortune 500, worked with people like Jay Abraham and all of that, just legends in the field. And I distinctly remember thinking while we were having this conversation, wait, are you really like just going to allow us to share all of this for free? And he did because Dave was someone who relentlessly cared about learning, teaching, and just helping others. I also want to like give ethical warning here because a lot of the ideas that we talk about in this conversation, especially when we talk about the hero's journey and how it relates to marketing, are really, really powerful. This is sort of the stuff that gets shared behind like $10,000-$20,000 masterminds and never really is like released for public because It is very powerful. So if you're listening to it, I hope you use this for good and not for evil, because again, these ideas are very, very powerful. And I want to end this intro with a note that BB Bathwater actually shared a few months ago. Dave was at the last event that they hosted, and here I'm going to read the note that they sent. Sadly, that event was also the last time we were able to see our friend and longtime member Dave Lakani in person. We lost Dave unexpectedly in November, and it has hit a lot of us especially hard. Dave was no stranger to adversity, and he would tell us to toughen up and move on. So we are. So please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with none other than the incredibly generous persuader, teacher, and just an amazing human being and much missed Dave Lucchini.

When we're talking about persuasion, when we're talking about influence, and when we're talking about What people want from life, and, and I can connect anything back to these 3 things. People want 3 things: they want to get laid, they want to get paid, and they want to live forever, right?

Mm-hmm.

Those are the only 3 things that people want, right? If they can, if they can procreate, have sex, have fun, right? They want that. They want to get paid, right? Everybody wants enough money, whatever that enough is for them, and they want to live forever. And so when you start thinking about that, you've got to really think about it in the sense that what, what is that? What are these core drivers that I'm driving at? So, you know, when you think about a movement, you have to think about, you know, there has to be some sense of, you know, that exchange of chemistry in it that makes people, you know, you know, we often say that, like, you know, that really good ideas feel like having sex, right?

Mm-hmm.

They have, it's just, it's that intensity around the emotional content of it. And if you do it right, right, you can get paid for it, right? Big ideas get big money. And then all of those things help you live forever, right?

Yeah.

So, living forever doesn't necessarily mean physically. There are a lot of people who die well too young who live on for generations, right? And so, people who are, that's what we're really trying to do. We're trying to live on through our children. We're trying to live on through our ideas. We want our ideas to continue. And our hope at some level, if whichever one of these drivers are for you, if that's that's it, like to live forever, is that, you know, that's the reason that people write books. It's the reason they make movies. They're hoping that long after they're gone, somebody will discover this idea and they'll pick up that mantle or they'll share it and then you live forever. There's this idea in Mexican culture of the 3 deaths. And the 3 deaths are, the first death is when you become aware that you will die, right?

Mm-hmm.

That first moment that you have the awareness that at some point in my life, you know, some point I'm going to die. The second death is literal death, right? And that literal death is when you die and they put you in the ground or, you know, cremate you, whatever you do, whatever your choice is along those lines. And then the third death is the last time someone says your name. And so, you know, that's what people are trying to avoid in this live forever thing, is there ever being a last time that someone says your name. They know they can't, at least now, outwit physical death, but they're doing that. So you understand what people's driving passions are, what their driving need is, and then you push in that direction. So the question is then, so why—

I have a question on that, uh, because I love the part about like live forever, right? Because it relates to people putting their name on buildings and everything. Um, let's say like we take something like, um, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge or whatever, um, and it was like widely shared by everyone. What was sort of the core driver that got people to share it with and do it and share it with their friends and stuff like things, things that like, quote unquote, like go viral.

Yeah. So it's, it's that same idea though around living forever, right? Like they're doing something, it's got a lot of cachet around it. Like really famous people are doing it. It's the closest you can ever get to being like Beyoncé or being like, you know, your favorite movie actor or whatever. You can do what they're doing. So you're like them and there's that deep connection and then you take it on and you want to be cool like them. So you get your friends to do it too. And then it's perpetual, right? And it takes off in a big, big way. Not everyone ever will, right? Like if it were that simple, everybody would do it. But it has to be a unique combination of things. And at the end of the day, the getting paid part in that was that they were raising a lot of money for charity, right? So somebody was getting paid for it. And so what you have to look at is not just why did people agree to pour a bucket of ice water over their head and that kind of thing, but it's also like, what was the outcome of them doing that? And it was to drive tremendous awareness For that. Do you remember who the Ice Bucket Challenge was for?

ALS research.

Yeah, ALS, right? But most people, if you ask them today, can't remember, right? They remember the Ice Bucket Challenge, but they don't remember who it was for. And that's dangerous, right? It can be— it can take on such a big life of its own that you forget what the core message was. Dangerous for ALS, not dangerous for anyone else, right? Because so many— because it's too easy to co-opt the Ice Bucket Challenge and switch it to another charity. If somebody lets that get out of memory too far.

Yeah, like someone else could start their own, right?

Or take advantage of it while it's happening, right? So you've got to make sure that—

Are there examples that come to mind of like maybe there's like a movement or a message that started and then someone else co-opted it while it was going on and made it their own?

There's a lot of examples in, you know, if you look at religion and this will be highly debatable, so, you know, People will definitely write you and tell you I'm wrong, but I'm not. And it's that, you know, like, so Mormonism didn't come from the Prophet Joseph Smith, right? Mormonism came from the Freemasons. And so most of their ceremony, most of their ideology, most of their iconography comes from the Freemasons, right? They will say that's not true and that Joseph Smith was never a Freemason, but it's well documented that he was. And that's— he took those ideas from the Masons. If you look at ideas in business, right? And so you take something You know, you take something like, um, take something like that becomes a verb like Xeroxing, right? So Xerox should have owned copying, right? But they don't now. So the idea of copying grew, but Xerox owns what you do, they just don't own the market, right? So, you know, so you say, you know, like people would say, I'm going to Xerox this. They don't say it as much anymore, right? But it's—

Right.

But for 20, 30 years, right? It was in mass market. Like, that's what you did. You didn't make copies, you Xeroxed something.

Mm-hmm.

And the same thing with like, even when you look at something like creativity, right? So Apple owned creativity forever, but now it's being co-opted to some extent by Microsoft Surface, right? They're showing, they're demonstrating like you can be just as creative, you can do all these things. And Apple is not doubling down on that whole sense of creativity.

Right.

In the sense that the, you know, that the wild ones are the people, you know, who are using Apple. They need to double back down on that and quit trying to just necessarily be for, you know, for the business and for everything else. They need to go back to that core of true believers or someone else like Microsoft will co-opt it. So there's lots of examples of that, though.

So in the next section, we're going to talk about the rise of Donald Trump. And not the politics of it, but really just analyzing it from the lens of influence and persuasion. So here's Dave.

So why does he get so much traction? Well, you know, the answer is he's an authoritarian leader, right? And he is somebody who— he's also, if you look at Hoffer's model, right, The True Believer. And by the way, if anybody wonders when I keep referring back to this, if you're a marketer or if you're somebody trying to build a movement or if you're somebody who's interested in persuasion and you haven't read The True Believer by Eric Hoffer, You need to buy that book. It's a very small book and read it right away. It's just a— it's a complete exploration of how movements form and grow. And it's a very simple book. It's called The True Believer. I think it probably— and it's— you can see it's not very thick, right? It doesn't take long to read, but it's an exceptional breakdown of how movements grow.

So I'm going to order this tonight.

Yeah. If you haven't read it, it's absolutely vital that you do. And so he's an authoritarian leader, though, but he's also in Hoffer's model. He's the fanatic, right? Trump is not. So there's, there's men of words and then there's the fanatics and then there's powerful men of action. And that's an arc that happens. Right. So as it's growing, you need the men of words at the top. You need the fanatics who then break their breaking systems going for power. And then at the end, you need the the wise men of action who then take the doctrine and the dogma, separate it, and they make it palatable to the masses. And the movement really grows. Well, Trump is the— he's an authoritarian leader, right? And he is also the fanatic. He's breaking things. He's— and he's telling you he's going to do it. And then he does it. All right. And so he disrupts the order of everything. And then he tells a powerful story in a predictable format. Trump is the master of this, right? Telling this powerful story in a predictive format. He breaks key elements down into easily remembered and understood soundbites. I'm gonna make America great again. He makes it even simpler than that and takes away I'm going to, just make America great again, right? And then he speaks with and stirs great emotion, right? He doesn't care if he's factually correct. He only cares if he gets an emotional reaction.

Mm-hmm.

And he's completely bulletproof and impenetrable. He speaks at about a third to 5th grade level, right? Anybody can understand him. There is nobody who doesn't understand him. He appeals to the psychological position of an aging population. He speaks directly into a group of people who are getting old, who are feeling like they're about to lose, who are, you know, feel like everything they worked so hard for is going to be taken away, right? It's being taken away by these, you know, these young whippersnappers that just can't know what they're doing or thinking. And he leverages logical fallacies and cognitive bias to make his messages easier to digest, right? So he— so there's a—

Can you give an example of the way maybe he does it or someone else does this one?

So yeah, so confirmation bias is a really big one. X equals Y and I can see it because I believe it, right? So if I, you know, if it's Ford versus Chevy, right, you know, and if I, if I like Chevys, right, I can find 1,000 examples of everybody who's got broken down, beat up Fords. They never work. They hated them. All those kinds of things. And the minute I drive by and somebody points out, look, there's another Ford on the side of the road, right? It's like, yep, confirmation bias. When he points out things like, you know, we've moved American manufacturing offshore and that's cost us millions of jobs, right?

Mm-hmm.

Everybody knows somebody who was displaced. Everybody has heard about things being made in China. There's always been this underlying sort of sense of it's not good if it's not made in the US. And that got pushed in a big way away. So he leverages those kinds of things, right?

Mm-hmm.

And so, you know, he makes straw man arguments all the time. That's, you know, a logical fallacy. A straw man argument is a logical fallacy. He makes straw man arguments all the time. He connects the wrong things to the wrong things and makes it sound right, and people buy into it very easily. So there's that. He exists— he exhibits a consistent authoritarian persona at all times, right? Even during the coronavirus crisis, you know, he says, I have the authority to do whatever I want to do, basically. You know, if I want to do it, I will. Right. And so forget about, you know, that states have many, many rights that he can't overcome. Right. Our Constitution is set up that way. He exhibits the authoritarian rule that says he can do whatever he wants, whether he's right or he's wrong. It doesn't matter. He says he can. Right. And then he repeats his simplest core messages with relentless consistency. Right. And relentless frequency. It's never about— I mean, like, there will never be a time he doesn't talk about making America great again, right? So simple core messages that people can take on, reinforces it at every opportunity. He just drills it in and in and in. He's a— he has a masterful use of his low-level language that people can understand, that they can pass on, and they can demonstrate. You know, the fake media, the fake media, the fake media, right? Like everything is fake, fake, fake, fake, fake, right? Anything that is against him, right? So he just, with relentless, relentless frequency, he does it over and over again. So here are a few rules of persuasion to keep in mind as we continue this process. Number 1, in persuasion and influence, every move has a specific purpose or we don't do it, period. So if you don't have a strategy, an overall strategy with a tactical implementation of that strategy, don't do it because you will just— you're just doing things for the purpose of doing them. And it's like playing, you know, it's like playing a slot machine. You get all the cherries sometimes, but only sometimes, right? When you have a real strategy, you're playing chess and you end up owning the whole board.

And one thing I'll add on that is, um, if you look online right now, so many people are just giving people tactics like post on social media or do this or do this, and no one really sort of goes to a level above and like, what is actually the strategy behind all of these things, right?

Because people are just looking for that one thing, right? Like, that's the crack cocaine of marketing. It's the crack cocaine of crack cocaine of content development, right? It's just give me the one thing, the magic pill, right? So I used to do this when I do talks and I still do it. I just haven't done this particular thing in a long time. So I would, I would tape a red sugar pill under people's chairs in my audience. And I would say, listen, here's the thing. You're going to take this pill and you're going to swallow it. Within 6 to 7 minutes, you're going to have the most insane burning sensation in your stomach. You are going to probably have seizures. You're going— your eyes will roll back in your head. You will vomit. You'll probably defecate on yourself. You'll definitely urinate on yourself. You'll have cramps that make you feel like your bones are going to break, and it's going to last for about 6 to 7 minutes. At the end of 6 or 7 minutes, if you do that, you'll be able to make $20 million. You'll be able to make $1 million. In 24 hours. So how many of you will take the pill? More than 50% of the people said yes, right? And they're like, yeah, I'll do it right now, right? I'm willing to do that, right? Like, people are irrational. They don't make good decisions. So we're, you know, it's like, it's really important that, you know, if you just give people— that's what they're looking for, right? They're looking for that red pill. They're looking for the, this, you know, the magic bullet. That will let them do that. And that's what tactics seem like, you know, like, oh, if I just learn how to do this one thing, right? If I just learn how to do this one thing, it's going to make all the difference in the world. But that one thing only makes the difference in the one thing that it makes a difference in, right? It doesn't make a difference in the whole thing if you don't have a strategy, if you don't have an overarching strategy. You know, it's sort of like, it's sort of like the, you know, the Dutch boy with the thumb in the dike, right? So if you pull your thumb out, And you stick it into a different hole, water comes out of this one, right? And so you're missing the whole opportunity if you don't plug all the holes. So that's what tactics are. There's nothing wrong with tactics, right? Like, you need to know them, but you need to have enough of them that they can, they can equal a comprehensive strategy. So words have real meaning and consequences, and use yours carefully. Same with emotions. Know what emotion that you're trying to get from people and understand the words that you're sharing with them. Pick your words very carefully. As a content creator, I'm sure you know this, like you have to be very conscientious about your words.

Mm-hmm.

You have to be thoughtful about what you're saying. And then, um, we want to be sure that you know that people's behaviors are their beliefs. So people often say, how do you know what people believe? You know, because people say one thing and they do another. Well, what they're doing is what they believe. So people's behaviors are their beliefs, and they also predict what people will do. The best persuaders change behaviors, not minds. Minds are too malleable. Behaviors and beliefs are not. Once people believe something, once they've, you know, they've created a behavior over and over and over again, it's very, very difficult for them to get out of that process. I'll give you a really good example from myself. I have a swimming pool in my yard. I've had the same guy cleaning my pool and, you know, like Servicing my pool in the winter and then opening it up in the summer. And every year I tell him the same thing, don't dump all this crap in my yard and leave it for me to clean up. Like, clean it up. I don't want all the leaves and all this stuff. Like, I don't want a big pile of that stuff. Clean it up. He never does. I clean it up, I get pissed off, and then, you know, I'm angry and I'm like, I'm not going to use him again, right?

Mm-hmm.

Well, so this year I finally held myself to my commitment to not use him again. So I didn't use him to close my pool and I wasn't going to use him to open it. So I called a couple of people and, you know, it was getting to the point where nobody was getting back to me and there was lots going on and that kind of thing. Like, ah crap, I guess I'm gonna have to use this guy again. And so because it was easier that than finding somebody new, right? It was just like, well, I'm sure I can call him and he'll do it. Now, as it turns out, he was kind of a jackass when I called him, so I'm not using him anyway. So he's, he sort of find his own death blow there, but Mm-hmm. Or his own death warrant, right? So I just won't use him now. And I ended up finding somebody else and that's it. But my initial reaction was not to use somebody different, it was to go back to him the minute there was a bit of friction, right? I'm very, very easy to go back to my old behavior and to go back to my old belief that this guy was good enough. And I was also willing to accept the pain of him not doing what I want in order to have the comfort of knowing I could swim in my pool. Right. So you have to think about this very carefully. So you have— you can't change people's minds enough, but you can change their behaviors. And so when we start talking about, you know, like user experience and all of those things, that's changing behavior over time. And it's vital and critical and you have to do it. Persuasion doesn't mean to manipulate. Intention is everything. If it isn't in the best interest of the person you're persuading, you probably shouldn't do it. Now, there's a few exceptions to that rule, right? If my child was a drug addict and I knew they were going to die, I would lie, whatever it took to get them into treatment, right? That's a different kind of situation, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about, you know, thinking about how you get a consumer to make a decision and buy something from you. And so that's what we're really talking about. So you meet people where they're at and you move them forward from there, right? People are where they're at and you move them forward from there. And when we talk in a little bit, we're going to talk about The Hero's Journey. And this is the everyday world in the Hero's Journey, right? It's the beginning of the quest. And the problem with it is, is that people start with where people want to be, right? So they'll say, wouldn't you like to have X, Y, and Z, right?

Mm-hmm.

That, that's certainly what they want, but you need to meet them where they're at. So you start by saying, have you ever had the experience of this? Wouldn't you like to have that, right? But if you don't meet them where they're at and start them where they're at, it just doesn't seem possible. Yeah, I'd like a Lambo, but you know what?

I—

that's not even in the realm of possibility for me. Well, it's not that it's not in the realm of possibility, but it's not— it's just not something that I personally want.

Mm-hmm.

But if you try and pound that into me, like, don't you know, like, you'd be a better person, you'd be more likable, you'd be all of these things, right, if you had that. Like, I just don't care, right? So meet them where they're at. Now, if you want to move me to a Lambo, you're like, look, I know you can buy whatever kind of car you want, you know, and you probably don't know this thing about Lamborghinis. I might be interested then. I might at least read the next thing or watch a little bit further or get engaged in some way. So meet people where they're at, move them from there.

So as you're hearing this, one of the things I was very curious about is like, how do you really learn how to read people because it's such an important skill. And, uh, if you're dealing with someone in person, how do you spot lies? Uh, so here's, uh, Dave on that.

All right, how to spot lies in person and in copy. And this is an important skill for everyone. And, you know, it's also an important skill for you to make sure that you're not doing it. Even better than most biological detection of lying is a technique called linguistic text analysis. Right. So here's the thing that happens when people lie. They carefully minimize self-reference, right? They don't try and talk about themselves very much. And so when we're talking about, you know, when we're talking about things, we tend to say, you know, oh, this thing happened to me and I did that and then that thing happened, right?

We can do that.

But they'll talk like about the third person. They'll talk about it in a distant way. They tend to process thoughts and expressions through use of negative language. Right. So instead of, you know, they'll, they'll, they'll make everything negative and they'll process thoughts about things when you confront them about it through negative language. Oh, no, that's wrong. That's not right. That person is like this. That thing is that, right. They tend to create stories or lies in the simplest forms because complex lies are difficult to create on the spot with success. Right. So they're not. So if you really want to know somebody is lying, get them to tell you, you know, say, get them— you'll ask them like 3 questions. Tell me more about that. Now tell me a little bit more about that. Now tell me a little bit more. Or have them tell the story backwards. Start at the end and tell me to the beginning.

Mm-hmm.

That's very complicated to do, right? Unless you actually were there and did the thing, right? So you get them to do that. So convoluted phrasing and detail is also a general indication of not being truthful. So, and it's especially true in copy, right? When things are convoluted in content, when people are convoluted, when it's You know, stuff that's not verifiable, that it's really difficult to understand or explain, they probably can't. They could either just be repeating somebody else and taking it on as their own, or they may be making the whole thing up. So that's a quick view on how to spot a liar. So I want to talk about the hero's journey because the hero's journey is one of the best tools for creating a movement. It's one of the best tools for creating persuasion, and it's one of the most easily accepted methodologies that people don't think about, right? So when you talk about subliminal persuasion or any of those things, you're really talking about what are the ways in which people can't identify what you're doing as a tactic or a technique, right? So in sales, there used to be this whole thing around closing, like, you know, you turn the contact around, you slide it toward them, you hand them the pen, right? There's like this whole thing. And, you know, there's all these little closing techniques, but if If people can identify it, they can easily defend against it. So what we're really trying to do is help defend against it, right? We're helping get that done. So that's— so we'll use this in the context of the hero's journey, and we're going to dig into that a little bit deeper. So the goal of the hero's journey is to make your customer heroic, not you.

Right.

It's not about you. It's about the customer. You have to have them step into this new reality and become a part of it and see themselves as the hero of the journey. You have your own journey, but this isn't where it shows up.

Mm-hmm.

So the goal of persuasion is to have the person or people come to their own most logical conclusion, which happens to be one you share. It should leave them feeling blissful, in charge, and powerful for having made the decision that they made. That's the important thing to remember. You really want them to feel superpowered. You want them to feel great about the decision that they've made, and you want them to feel like, you know what, this is— I couldn't have made a better decision because I made this decision. I'm in charge of things. It was— I came to this on my own, right? So then, you know, when you think about the hero's journey overall, I want to just kind of walk through the different steps. So the first is the ordinary world. We talked about that a little bit. The ordinary world is where people live every day. You know, this was— if you think about Fight Club, for example, or The Matrix, right? This is them being in their, in their office, sitting there, you know, Doing their TPS reports, right? They're just grinding it out every day. Then the call to adventure— something's different, something happens, right? Something goes wrong. They cross the threshold, the situation changes. And then there's the road of trials, and this is search for answers, right? People are trying to figure out like what's going on. There's the innermost cave where they find the answer, and there's usually a— there's either a metaphorical death or a literal death, and then a rebirth at that point. You know, the first death and rebirth. And there's a meeting of a mentor, somebody that teaches them something. And this is like in movies, but this is important because we'll talk about it. So then there's death and resurrection, taking and becoming. The road back where they find— where they face their final battle, their ultimate challenge. And that's where big change and the real results happen. And then finally there's the return with elixir. And in customer speak, we talk about that as customer evangelism. That's when people come back and they have to spread this message. everyone else. They have to share it with everybody who will listen whether they want to or not, right? And that becomes the ordinary world for that person. So let's talk about the— Go ahead.

When you said that, it sort of connected something for me, which is if you look at the concept of like people wanting to make things go viral, really what you're doing is one person's going through the hero's journey enough to the point where they become that evangelist and basically get people they know to go through the journey. And that's what creates virality in a sense, right?

That's exactly right. Because people, you know, like they can't wait to share this message with somebody else because they had such a brilliant breakthrough themselves.

Right.

They've been struggling with something their whole lives. They have this brilliant breakthrough themselves and now they're like, oh my God, I have to tell everybody. And it's not that they just start telling random people on the street. They tell other people just like them. who are having the same problems, who want to come to the same solution. And those people get, you know, those are the— and then that momentum builds, right? It builds and builds, and then people— that's how things become viral.

So I'm curious, like, how— because, and again, this is pressing for, like, the project we're working on— when you see things, like, especially with the internet, like, get shared so fast, right? Because I would have thought, like, to really take someone through their journey, it would have to be, like, for Maybe like a longer period of time. So what is it like when someone watches like a few-minute-long video that they end up doing that? What is it about that?

On this whole process, right? I mean, this process doesn't have to be done in a year, right? That's different than building like a cult of customers. That takes a long time. Moving people emotionally through this process doesn't take very long at all. Like, you can do it in a minute or 2-minute video.

Interesting.

Or you can do it in a 30-minute video, right? But you can take them through this whole process. But it's this whole thing of just like meeting them where they're at, showing them the problem, you know, having them come to a conclusion that they hadn't thought of before, that breakthrough, being their mentor, and then, you know, show them where they're going to have resistance, right? And how to get through that resistance and then have them get a result from it, right? Where they can go back and go, oh my God, they gave me the idea. I did that thing and it worked for me, right? Then that's what turns them into the evangelist and they can't stop sharing. And you can do that in, you know, in a simple idea in a minute or 2. You can do it in an hour, hour and a half in video. You can do it in 5 to 10 minutes in a talk, right?

Mm-hmm.

So it really is that, but you also are trying to layer on emotion in this, right? You're trying to get people engaged in this and you want to move them through a series of emotions as you do this as well so that they have that sense of You know, curiosity and surprise and a sense of like, you know, a depth of soul searching and then coming out of that with something new and somebody to show them the way. And then, you know, breaking through one of their challenges and having that feeling of being heroic, like I fought this battle and I won, right? That's, that's the important part. And that's what makes people share it. So let's talk about it from a marketer standpoint, because this is really what you're asking about.

Mm-hmm.

So the call to adventure that something is wrong is that's discovery, testing, and questioning the ordinary, right? It's taking a look at those things that you're doing on a daily basis, right? The things that you're challenged by, the things that, you know, that nag you and that really challenge your, you know, your way of being and thinking and getting things done. And then you start crossing the threshold and you do that by you ask deep dive questions like, what would happen if, or Bringing them to awareness around this thing that they didn't know existed before. Do you know that there are other content creators who are able to, within a day to 2 days at any given moment, be able to create a movement that moves millions and millions of people predictably?

Right.

So then you're like, well, what is that? I wanna know what that's like. I wanna understand it. And then it's the road of trials, the search for answers. So you start asking them more questions. One of the things, this is a place where things like a quiz funnel works really well, right? You ask them questions and each one of the questions is designed to pull them deeper and deeper and deeper and out the other side, like they want an answer, right? They need that answer because it's gonna give them this thing that they've never had before. Then the innermost cave is that emotional conversation and it's where we present the offer, right? So people either convert and become buyers, they convert and they become, you know, the people who are gonna follow you further, or they reject, they reject it altogether, right?

Mm-hmm.

It just dies and that's the end of it. It doesn't go any further. But if you do it very, very well, even if they don't buy, they'll buy into the idea and they'll move to the next step, which is death and resurrection. And that's when they buy or they don't buy. And then the road back is they start consuming and they deepen their learning, they deepen their belief, they become true believers about the product or the service that you sell or the organization that you're growing or those kinds of things. And this is where most marketers fail. Right, we talk about user experience and all of that, but when we're talking about our products and services, we don't teach people in this moment how to consume them. We don't teach them how to use them. We don't teach them and tell them what they should be doing and how often. We don't give them cues and triggers for doing this thing that we want them to do over and over again. So if you don't have strong consumption strategies on the road back, then you can get the sale and you can get people to be happy about it for a while. But what you do is you open the door for all of your competitors, right? Anybody who can provide the product in that moment that's similar enough to yours, people will buy yours. Then, then they only make a decision by price alone, right? Because there's nothing unique. They haven't bought in in all that way. So this is where you really curate belief and you curate your community and you build that depth. And then finally, the return to the elixir for the marketer is that, you know, it's working when these people start telling you their story, when they give you testimonials and endorsements.

Mm-hmm.

Start sharing your stuff, right? That's— those are the people who are the evangelists. Those are the people that you're watching for that you wanna push up outside and give them more power, give them more access, give them reasons why so that they'll tell this story more and more and more, make them, you know, much more engaged and valuable inside your community.

So the step before that where you talked about like deepening in the learning, And actually, let me, let me say this before, which is, well, we're looking at like the way you've contextualized the hero's journey from 5 different perspectives. It's absolutely mind-blowing. Like the way I'm looking, I'm like, this is insane. And my mind's firing. So the question I had was like, in the deepening part, what would be like, how would you do that? You can maybe share that with an example. Yeah.

Yeah, so a great way of doing that is once people buy something, you know, oftentimes we start trying to sell them the very next thing, right? Okay, you bought this now, and I'm not saying you shouldn't put people through like an upsell chain and that kind of thing. Like, that's important to do and all of that when you're selling things, especially if it's e-commerce and that.

Mm-hmm.

But what you want to do at that same time is like, once they've made that purchase, right, once, once that process is complete, then you want to start teaching them how to use the product. So instead of putting them into another sales funnel, Put them into an educational funnel. Hey, did you know that, you know, Bob used this product in this way and got this result? Here's how to do it. Here's his favorite recipe. Here's his favorite technique. Here's his favorite thing, right? You start educating people about other ways they can do it, and you start introducing them to other people who are doing these things. Oh, did you know that we have a private Facebook community that now you're qualified to join if you would like, right?

Mm-hmm.

And you give them the opportunity, but, you know, and there's lots of ways of managing that, but you give them the opportunity to become more of that. And you educate them in meaningful ways, you also start to share their experiences and their learnings, right?

Mm-hmm.

And so you get more and more information from them that way, and you create an experience that's unexpected and so good that they couldn't imagine not doing business with you. So it's giving them that little extra. It's making it, it's making it reasonable for them to want to be a part of something versus not. And, you know, obviously people will say, well, That doesn't work with screws, right? It just doesn't work with screws. You can't, you can't afford to invest in these people. And I just say, I disagree, right? If you buy my box of screws from my internet site or my retail store, you know what, I'm going to start educating you about screws and what a good decision you made. Like, when you're using these screws, here's to know how not to overtighten them. Here's how to know which wood you can use it in and which wood you can't use it in. Here's how people are doing unique things. Oh, by the way, here's something funny about screws. Here's the world's biggest screw sculpture. Look at this guy. He's made 10,000 sculptures out of screws. Look at this. Isn't this crazy? You know what I mean? Like, you just, you start educating and getting engaged in this process and deepen their learning about what's possible. And when you do that, then they start asking more questions like, well, tell me more. What else could I do? Oh, well, you know, if you're going to use these screws, you want to do that thing. We also have this other thing. a drill that has this special driver that allows you to use screws in this way, right? So now you're starting to gently expand them across your brand, but they're willing to do it because they know so much more. They're like, yeah, of course it makes sense to buy this specialized driver because I wanna get the best use out of my screw. I don't care what the thing is, you can figure that part out.

Right.

And it doesn't matter how small it is. And let's face it, Email doesn't cost anything. Social media doesn't cost anything relatively, right? So you can educate people along these lines in a meaningful way at very low cost but with very high engagement. So think about that when you're doing it.

And I would say, like, if you're a product creator and an entrepreneur, if you just look at the slide and like spend like 20 minutes maybe just like writing down things you could do for each of those, these different things that you've shown, Your relationship with your customer will change.

It'll change dramatically overnight.

Now let's look at things actually from a very, very tactical standpoint.

So let's look at it from the advertiser's journey, right? We looked at it from a marketer around spreading message. Now let's look at the actual tactical application of that spreading of the message. So the call to adventure content, right? Like people are in their ordinary world, they're scrolling Instagram, they're looking at blog posts, they're Googling, right? They find some content or they see something on social media or they see some native ad or they see some article in traditional media that causes them to go, huh, that's interesting. That's different, right?

Mm-hmm.

So then they start looking even deeper, right? And they cross the threshold, they look deeper, and then they start seeing the paid traffic. They see the remarketing, they see surveys, they sign up for email, right? They start getting emails about this thing. And then the search for answers, that's search engine marketing. It's again, native. It's content, it's public relations, it's remarketing, right? They're searching for answers and they're seeing over and over again the answer, right? Your ads are the answer to the problem that they're having. And then they get there to, you know, death and the innermost cave. They're at that place of searching for an answer. And it's things like webinars again and content, more email, more, you know, more AdWords and more Facebook ads. It's that deep, you know, pushing them deeper into your content. This is where SEO goes too, right? This is where you're pulling them deeper and deeper and deeper into content. Mm-hmm. And then the death and resurrection, that's when they decide to make the buying decision, right? Or they don't, right? So this is abandoned carts. This is all of those things. And on the buying side, it's upsells, cross-sells, downsells, contests. It's all those kinds of things that people engage in when they're happily buying or they just happily purchased. But if they didn't, you want to give them plenty of opportunity. So here's one of the great things. When you look at, you know, a lot of, a lot of us marketers Especially online, use pop-ups, right? And so like people leaving, you use an exit pop and you'll give a discount or you'll say, you know, do you want to join my newsletter or something like that? It's very easy to say no to that, right? It's a lot more difficult, and this has some site speed implications at times, but it's a lot more difficult though to not, you know, like if you pop up a video, right? And you say, wait, before you go, let me just talk to you about this one thing, right?

Mm-hmm.

and you start talking to them, having a conversation with them, you're much more likely to get a conversion from that than you are to just saying, sign up for my newsletter or try and get this lead magnet or that kind of thing. Have a personal conversation with them, right?

Mm-hmm.

One of the things that we do now is if we can, if we can get people's information, if they abandon cart, we'll send them a live video, right? So using something like Drift or BombBomb or one of those, Video platforms, send them a live video in that moment. Now you can't do this obviously in the same way if you're getting 100,000 sales a day, but when your numbers are smaller, there's other ways to do it at scale, but this is a much more grassroots sort of thing, right?

Yeah.

So if you abandon cart, I immediately see that you abandoned cart, and now I send you a BombBomb video, right? Or I send you a Drift video, and it's a GIF of me talking You know, I might even write your name on a piece of white paper and say, you know, hey, I just wanna talk to you real quick, you know, open up, right?

Right.

And people do, and it's a personal message to them. And then on the side, if you use Drift, for example, it's a chat, right? And so then they can instantly start chatting with you. Like, you, you, you can do so many things in this place, right, to make people feel completely engaged. Same thing if they buy, right? You send them a video saying thank you and they see it's from a real person and it's got their name, it's personalized, all that kind of thing. People are like, who does that? Right? Like, who does? And here's the thing, like everybody have heard of these kinds of tactics, but only very, very, very small percentage of people actually do the hard work of doing them. But that's how you get that deep mindshare. So then the road back, that's remarketing emails, direct mail inserts in your boxes. It's again, you know, email is a big, big piece of that. Piece of this. It's that ongoing connection, that education and content plays a big role here. It's 100 things, right? And then the return with the elixir, the evangelism, again, it's email, it's webinars, it's direct sales, it's events, right? Online or off. It's the kind of things that you do that you invite a small group of people, right? We're having a roundtable, we're having a retreat, we're having a special thing that you can get. It's the closed-door employee sale. It's whatever it is, right, that you can do That's only for those evangelists to make them feel even more empowered and more desired. And it's also for the people who are just about to become evangelists, right? Those people who are right on that cusp, invite them into the inner circle, and that's where you make that really happen.

I love this. Again, this is sort of like contextualizing what in marketing world, like, people use as funnels, which is just like this short triangle into the hero's journey framework. One of the things I see, and maybe I think maybe that's coming on the next slide, is things like email and remarketing are multiple points, right? So how do you figure out what you're saying in those or at different points of this?

Yeah, it goes back to this, you know, it goes back to this other idea is, you know, what are they questioning, right? Ask like, what are the things in the ordinary world that they're questioning? So you're going to ask that, you know, you're gonna send them content that addresses What their question identifies, what their question then addresses. Same thing when you ask deep dive questions, like it's based on that knowledge of what is the thing that they're looking for by asking that question and asking more questions to get them closer. Road of Trials, the quiz, you know, like here, take this quiz to find out who you are. And then they have to either agree or disagree, right? You start having emotional conversations. This is where avatars really play a role, right? So having that conversation with that person. And then you're asking them to buy. It's a direct solicitation to buy this thing. Here's the presentation of my offer, right? Could be a video sales letter, could be long-form copy. It could just be simply, hey, here's the thing, here's the price, here's a 3-word description or a 3-sentence description. And then on the road back, again, you know, you're looking at what did they need to know to fall in love with this thing, right? So if you think about it, this, this road back thing, right, there's If you go on a date with a girl, and I'm just saying a girl because I date women, and so that's, you know, and I'm in a relationship with somebody for 10 years, but that's my orientation. So, you know, you date a girl and you go on the first date, right? You really love this girl. You're like, oh my God, this might be the one, right? So imagine if you went on that date and you said she might be the one, and then you didn't really talk to her that much anymore.

Right?

Like sit around and waited for her to reach out to you. Now what's happening on the other side of that? Like her insecurities are kicking in. She's like, why isn't he calling? Why isn't he doing all these things? Blah blah blah blah blah. Right? And so if you do nothing, she goes on to the next guy. Right? And then you go, well, why didn't she like me? Why didn't she do this thing? Right? So that's what this is. You have to think about it along those those contexts. Right? So what would you do instead? Well, oh, I'm gonna. I'm going to text her the next day and I'm going to say, hey, look, I really enjoyed that dinner. Can we, you know, can you hop on the phone? I'd love to talk to you for a few minutes about this thing that we talked about last night. You start building that relationship, but you're also subtly, you know, saying, you know, I'm a better guy than all the other guys, right? Like, you need to know this about me. And once you know that, oh, and if we do this other thing, like, let's go on a roller coaster ride because that would be fun, right? And I'm going to tie some emotion into that. I'm going to make it really exciting, right? And that's what you're doing here. So those are the kind of conversations that you're having there. And then, you know, in the return with the elixir part, you're telling your story via testimonials, right? You're asking people, tell me what was good about this experience for you. Tell me what was good about that thing. Tell me what you love about this so that I can share that information with everybody else. Right. And that's what you're talking to about them. Like, what is your experience? That's what you're asking.

Yep.

So then one more look at this, an application of persuasion. Right. So the call to adventure, question their reality, right? Point it out, then question it. Have you ever wondered if, right? So you've probably experienced X. Have you ever wondered about Y?

And that meets them where they're at, like you were saying before. Yep.

Meets them where they're at and it stimulates a little bit of curiosity. Well, no, I haven't thought about that. Or yeah, I've thought about that a bunch. Like what's, you know, that drives me insane. Then you cross the threshold. Create intense curiosity. Is it possible that— or to frame, right? Is it possible that X, or is it possible to Y? And you set that frame. Is this possible? In the road of trials, the search for answers, you leverage authority and expert status, right? So this is the meeting with the mentor piece, right? So I am telling you, like, there are people who can do this thing. Here's one. I'm one, you know, and then you give them something like a explanation at the end of the quiz of what their avatar is. Are you, you know, are you, do you, you know, what kind of an entrepreneur are you? What kind of a content creator are you? What kind of a Disney princess are you? Right. And so then they go inside and they go, oh my God, that, that really describes me. If you've identified these people well, you've identified your avatar as well. They go inside and they're like, yeah, this is who I am. And that you appeal to their emotions. Like, this is what's happening to you, right? This is what's happened to you. This is the path you're on, right? And that's the lead-in to death, right? And then the rebirth is you leverage cognitive bias, right? You give them the things that say confirmation bias, for example, saying you've probably seen this and that means that, right? And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I believe in. You're giving them social proof that says the things that they already know are true and look at what other people are doing. And, you know, so monkey see, monkey do, right?

Mm-hmm.

Here's what other people are doing and the results they're getting. Don't you wish you got those results? And that's that moment of where they say, yeah, I really want those results. What's the delay? You know, what's the thing? What's the lever I need to pull? Well, the lever you need to pull is just buy the thing, whatever it is. And so you reward their intelligent decision and you set an experience expectation there. So when people buy, the most important thing that you can do when they buy is set an expectation of what happens next, what they're going to experience. You know what the placebo effect is, I'm sure, right?

Mm-hmm. Okay.

So oftentimes with the placebo effect, you're— and just for people who don't know, the placebo effect is giving someone like a sugar pill, for example, and telling them it's going to have the same effect as an actual drug and seeing what the efficacy of the sugar pill is compared to the drug. Oftentimes you'll find that they're very similar. Sometimes you'll find that sugar pill does better. Sometimes you'll find that it doesn't do anything at all. And so then that's when you know you have an efficacious drug. versus people just imagining something's going to happen. But there's also something that happens too in placebo effect. If once you know, let's just say that it's like 50/50, right? Like the people get, they take the sugar pill or they take the drug and they get the same effect. But if you tell them what you tell them with the sugar pill when they take the drug, like you're going to experience all of these things and you can increase the efficacy of the drug by 25%, right now, you know something different, right? We can make the drug even more effective by telling people what to expect. Same thing with your sales, right? So if you know that people are, you know, 50/50, but you tell them like, you'll expect this, here's what's going to happen next, what you're doing is you're setting up things that you know will happen for sure, right? So that when people see it, they're like, yep, I'm getting exactly the result that I knew I would have.

And the person told me that I would have.

Yeah, they told me that I would have it. And look, it's happening for me, just like they said. Finally, it's working for me. And then you deepen that learning, you create beliefs around it. Like, look, this means that, you know, and the more you do this, the better you become X, Y, and Z, and then you drop love bombs on them all the time. You tell them how smart they are, how successful they are, how great they're doing at this, you know, on this path. You're just, you're really making them feel like they're part of something special and that you personally or somebody, the company, whatever it is, is paying deep attention to them and noticing what they're doing, right? Because that's, you know, when you go, when you go to the true believer model, which again, when we're talking about building movements, there's a belief that you can't ever do it on your own. Right. It's not— it's, you know, the true believers are not independents. They're not people who imagine that they, you know, through rugged individualism can accomplish anything. What these people believe instead is that they're worthless and that true meaning can only come from another group. Right. And we're not trying to make people feel worthless here. But what we're trying to do is we're trying to identify those people to move into that evangelism stage of people who feel like they're more successful because They're part of this movement, that they're part of this group, that they're part of this tribe, that they're part of this community, right? We want them to move into that role, feel like this is super meaningful for me, right? So it— and so they, they don't attribute their success to themselves. They attribute it to the fact that they have the tool or the tactic or the thing that they bought, right? It makes it better, which is exactly why, you know, golfers have— you only need one set of golf clubs, and you really only need a few tees, and you need a few balls, and, you know, some shoes and a glove maybe, right? But check any golf bag. I've got 17 different gloves for different conditions. I have, you know, my— I have 4 different putters, I have 3 different wedges, and I've got, you know, 2 drivers because I'm trying to figure out, you know, like, they just buy more and more and more.

Mm-hmm.

Giving them all the good reasons to buy it, right? And so those are the— those are the people, like, when you, you know, you sort of see them show up with a small Vehicle full of clubs and stuff they have to make a decision about when they take it out of the car to go play golf. Those are your evangelists. Those are the people who will buy more of what you have. And they'll do— and they tell your story for you. They give you the testimonials again. And that's, you know, that's how you apply that. You take those things and you reinforce all the other stages of the hero's journey by making that person heroic. Look what this person is doing. Look how smart they are.

Mm-hmm.

they are, look how successful they are, and you're not yet, but you can be, right? So that's the promise. And then there's the emotional amplification of persuasion, right? This is the, this is the part that people really forget to do. And this— so, so I want to talk about, um, you know, when people have phobias for a second. Like, nobody gets a phobia of a snake or a spider Through repetitive conditioning. Look, here's a spider, here's a snake, here's a spider, here's a snake. And then 6 years later, all of a sudden you wake up one day and you're like, oh, I'm afraid of snakes. That's not how it works, right? What works is when you turn around the corner of your house and there's a rattlesnake standing there and you almost step on it. Bam. Now you're scared.

Yeah, it's instant, actually, right?

It's instant. It's instantaneous, right? That emotion is heightened It's crossed with opportunity. There's this thing that could have happened. Our imagination goes crazy. Like everything looks like a snake now. Every stick, every shadow, everything, right? We see snakes where we go. We have dreams about snakes and it just intensifies the effect. That emotional conditioning around this is what we have to do. We have to heighten that emotion enough that people tie your ideas into this emotional state that they have. And when they do that, that's when persuasion really happens. So in the call to adventure, what we're trying to do is point out You know, like, listen, you know, in the ordinary world, you're just pointing out what's ordinary, right? You know, this is that thing you do. But in the call to adventure, you're pointing out danger or curiosity. You're trying to increase that sense that something bad is going to happen or something which only makes you curious, like what bad thing will happen. Or you're trying to point out curiosity so people go, tell me more.

Mm-hmm.

Then you cross the threshold, the situation changes. You're trying to intensify their curiosity. You're also setting them up for the beginnings of feelings of FOMO, fear of missing out, right? Like the sense like, oh, if I don't do this thing, like I could miss out on this opportunity. Maybe this is the thing that was going to make that final difference in my golf swing, right? And then it's a little bit of egotism, right? You're taking advantage of their ego drive. Like, you know, you might not be qualified, for example. So this is where takeaway selling happens. You know, you may not be qualified if you're not able to do this, and their ego kicks in and they're like, I'll show you. Right. I'll prove to you that you're wrong and I'm right.

And scarcity and stuff too, right here.

Yeah. All of those things fit in right there. And then the road of trials, right? And the search for answers. So then it's pain, right? It's really, really amping up the pain. And, you know, people will do more to get out of pain than they will to get into pleasure, right? They just want pain to end and they want pleasure to begin, right? So they will, they'll move towards that. me against the world, right? You're setting up that sense of like, look, it's you against the world, man. You've been trying to get this thing to work for so long. You've been trying to make this thing happen for so long. And, you know, every— everything conspires against you. It's all these reasons that you don't know why. By the way, this is why people believe in the Illuminati and they believe in all kinds of things, right? It's that it's, you know, it's me against the world. It's why they, you know, like the people who believe in the deep state believe in the deep state. That's why that people, you know, who believe in whatever— pick your political side. Like there's a thousand different examples of this. There's 1,000 different religious examples, all of these things, right? So whatever people believe in, and I don't care what you believe in, I don't have a horse or a dog in that fight, but whatever you want. But it's this whole sense of me against the world. But there's hope, right? If you understand this, if you get it, like if you're like me, you'll know because I did this thing too, right? There's hope. You can, you can get this.

I've been there.

Or yeah, yeah. And there, you can get there. Like I'm here to help you get there. I'm your mentor, right? This is the mentoring phase. And so I'm here to help. Then it's the innermost cave, and it's like taking them into that dark place where they say, I don't know, do I do this? Well, then it's the aha. It's like when you present them with this opportunity where they just get it, right? They're like, oh my God, that finally makes so much sense. That thing that you've offered, it's the big payoff, right? And it's desire. Then they want it, and you amplify the desire. Imagine all the things that will happen when What will your life look like if all of those kinds of things, amplifying that desire and then that sense of knowing that this is the truth. You know it's true because of this, right? You know it's true because of that. How will you be when you have this and how will you know when it's true? Well, I'll have these, right? What will that mean to you? Well, it'll mean this, right? You're amplifying that desire and that sense of knowing. You're also amplifying the sense of pain a little bit. Like they want to get out of it now. Like, how do I do it? The way to do it is to buy something. So relief comes through buying. There's the relief of buying this and now I can be safe. Now I can go back to, you know, like getting the results that I wanted and being successful. It's all about safety and security because now I have this thing. And it's also about the sense of fear of missing out again, right? Like I don't, I don't have to worry about fear of missing out or if I'm going to abandon Scarcity, fear of missing out, all those things. Like, I could lose this opportunity and then I'm going to be back in that same vicious cycle again, right? Still not get the results that I wanted or all these things. The road back, change in results, is actualization, right? It's top of the— it's the top of Maslow's hierarchy, self-actualization, right? People get the result they wanted, they start living their best life, they're getting their best results, they're having success, they're doing all the things they haven't been able to do before. They feel blissful. And because you're sharing with them all of the things that they will be noticing that will make them feel even better and telling them how other people feel, they begin to feel that way themselves and they feel content. They made a good decision, right? They made the best decision they could ever make. And that feels great. And then they return— those people that return with the elixir, you remind them how intelligent they are. You're so smart because you did this thing. You're getting these results because you— We're able to do something other people weren't. You took this just a little bit further. It's us versus them. You know, there are a lot of people who buy this product and do nothing at all with it. And you know what, if you do nothing at all with it, you're never going to get a result. But you did something different, right? You did something like I did. We did this together. We did this thing. We're smarter than other people, right? That sense of superiority, like, look, we're better off, right? I want to become the leader in the movement. I want to go out and show you. I want to make you proud of me.

Mm-hmm.

Because we want to be superior together. And by the way, anytime that you make any assessment of any other person, it's some sense of feeling superior to another person.

Right.

You know, whether it is like feeling superior to another person or just feeling superior because you have a better golf club or a nicer car or whatever it is, you know what I mean? It's that sense of like, I'm a little bit better than you. Right. And I'm not making any judgment about that. It is what it is. Right.

So, and what this is cool is like if you layer this emotional amplification stuff on all the other stuff you showed, it becomes that much more powerful, right? And creates a deeper relationship.

And each one of these can have like its own complete story, but there's a bunch of stories that every marketer has to tell. There has to be an original, an origin story. There has to be a proof story, an us versus them story, an overcoming objection story, a death and rebirth. story, right? It needs to be a salvation story, that sense of like having found the truth. A future experiences story, right? So, you know, if you think about NLP, neuro-linguistic programming, future pacing is one of the things they always do. How will this be 20 years from now, 5 years from now, 6 weeks from now? You're having people imagine how they'll be in the future doing the thing that they're using, doing whatever it is that they've just bought. And the elixir story, like, you know, the excitement of people coming back to tell you what their experience was. And you amplifying that experience for other people to see, right? You make them heroes, right? That's the hero— that's the hero's journey, right? That's the person becoming the hero. The truth— there's a lot of context, but only one story ever that your prospect goes on a journey and returns triumphant, right? That's the whole purpose of this— on a journey and they return triumphant, a hero. And they can— they return triumphant and they're a hero, and it compels others that are also seeking the truth, right? When they see other people doing this, this is social proof. Proof, right? Because they want that same result. They want that same feeling of doing good, right?

Mm-hmm.

So talk about framing, because, you know, we hear people say frame, but frame control is really controlling the most dominant emotion in the interaction, right? So you're setting it up and you're saying, listen, I'm in control of this thing. Each stage of your story is framed, and you have to control the emotion in the frame. What do I want people to feel? How do I want them to think? What is it that I want them to do in this step? If you control the most dominant emotion, you control the person or the group, right? So if you understand that overriding thing that they want, right, and you control it, then you— and you control it not in a negative manipulative way. You control it in the sense that you ultimately want to be able to help people think about what it is that they want and how they can get it and how you're connected deeply to that thing, right? So that's frame and frame control. This could— I could talk for a whole day about frame control, but this is a big piece of it.

All right, so, uh, and I just wanted to check in on time because I know we're coming towards the end. You still there?

Yeah, I'm here. No, I thought you were checking on time. Sorry, I misunderstood.

I just want to make sure you were good on time in terms of—

Yeah, no, I'm good. So we're almost done anyway. So that's, that's okay. Sorry, I misunderstood. So this is a company that I work with that's a professional employer organization. So they, they help you do all of your human resources, payroll, benefits administration, all of that. And so the call to adventure for them was, have you ever said, I love my business but not the employees? You know?

Mm-hmm.

And if you're an honest business owner, like managing people on a daily basis, especially if you're an entrepreneur and a visionary, like that's not the thing. You've said this, like, I love my business but I hate my employees. I hate dealing with all that stuff, right?

Mm-hmm.

So there's that piece, right? So that's the call to adventure. Something is wrong, right? Everyday world is, oh my God, I hate dealing with Employees are a headache. I have to deal with all the stuff I don't understand, I don't know, right? It's called adventures. Anybody ever said that to you? I love my business but hate my employees. Then you cross the threshold and the situation changes. Have you ever fired an employee, paid a fine for payroll or work comp, you know, worried about Obamacare? Have you ever worried about it? People like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know. And then the road of trials. How do I run my business without employees? Who could help me do that?

Mm-hmm.

And then you introduce to them this new idea called co-employment. So somebody's responsible for the day-to-day operations of the company. You get to give them direction and and tell them what to do, but everybody else is responsible for that backend part. Somebody— it's away from you. You don't even have to think about it. The innermost cave: discover a PEO, give up responsibility and liability, co-employment. And so then once you understand that, you're like on the other side of it saying, that's great. What is it? Well, I feel incredible relief, loss of liability. I get full HR and benefits department without hiring staff. This is amazing, right? And then you move on from there, the road back. Changing results, deliver the experience, add additional free services. They get EAP programs, they get a gym exclusive, they get exclusive free benefits. And then you just tell them over and over and over again what they did. You've given them all those things. And then the employees do the rest of the work telling their other employees, like, or their other friends, like, oh, you're not part of this thing? Look at all this stuff that I get.

Right.

And thankful to their employer for doing all of this, right? And then the return of the elixir is you simply reinforce what we've done. Like, look what we gave you. Look at these benefits you're getting. Isn't this amazing? Right? You reinforce it and reinforce it. They're like, oh my gosh, you know, this is so good. I can't tell you how relieved I am to not have to do these things. Right? So here was the result. It went from $4 million in 2011 to $56 million in 2015. Right? Twice on the Inc. 500 list just for making a simple decision like that. Right? Now, I'm not going to keep going through like in deep detail all this. Like, here's another example of how this works, and that's not really as relevant as— let's talk about how to create your own story, right? Let's talk about this. So the ordinary world, describe it, right? This is the process for doing this. The call to adventure, what was missing? Crossing the threshold, what changes? Road of trials, what are the problems that they have to solve? Innermost cave, what truth do they discover? What do they learn there? Death and resurrection lead them to a clear conclusion, right? What is it they have to do? Buy your product. And then the return. How should they expect change? What do they— what are they— what will they expect is going to happen now that they have your product or your service? And then finally, what do they need to hear and do next? That's the elixir, right? That's the ultimate opportunity there, right? What do they need to hear and do next? In order to help you spread this message, reduce your cost of acquisition, to build a bigger following, to engage people in a meaningful way outside of you doing it and sending that word-of-mouth marketing back that we all love, right? That's where that happens.

What would be an example of that and someone who's done it really well?

Of the elixir?

Right.

Apple. You know, Apple constantly, you know, they're constantly rewarding you with special Apple events. special Apple opportunities, special access, all of those kind of things, right? Like, they do it really, really well. Another company that does it— trying to think of some other, like, lower, lower-level companies.

Like, if you're sort of like an independent creator entrepreneur, but like not like the resources of Apple, right? Like, how do you do this?

So the way you do it is, you know, what do they need to hear and do next is that you recognize those people, like you get in conversation with Right. You actually have literal conversations and you do the thing I was talking about, like with video, for example, and you reward those people for their actions and for their, for their, their connection with you and their willingness to stay engaged and be involved with you. Right. You give them, you give them reinforcement and you give them all of the things that they need in order to be able to feel good about what they've just done. And so that's how you do it. And then you just ask them for things. Hey, listen, I noticed this thing that you did so well. Would you be willing to give me a short little video about how you did it and what it's been to you since you've done it? Right? You just ask them for that and then you share it. It's that simple, but you exalt them for their willingness.

Actually, Justin, that's such a great idea because what you're doing is if you want more content to create, you're getting your audience to create the content for you by rewarding them and featuring them. Exactly.

And that's— but that's making them heroic, right? That's what you're doing, making them the hero. It's not about you, right? Like, oh, all I did was provide you with this little service or this little product, right? You downplay yourself, you upplay that person for being the hero. Like, you were so smart, you were so good, you're the person who's out there slaying giants.

Perfect. As you know, one of the questions we always ask is, um, what are some of your favorite book recommendations for to dive deeper into this topic. So here's Dave on his favorite books regarding persuasion and marketing.

So the last thing that we've got here, these are just, you know, like some books that I think everybody should read, and that will definitely help you better understand this whole process. There's a lot to read. You don't have to read everything. If you read one book, only read The True Believer, like I said. If you haven't read like Robert Cialdini's Influence book, you should read that. There's this dude named Dave Lucani, you should probably read his book called Persuasion: The Art of Getting What You Want. 48 Laws of Power: The Art of Seduction, like most people haven't read those books by Robert Greene. Powerful, powerful books, read them.

Perfect, and we'll have all of that linked up.

Awesome.

I'm gonna record an intro for this separately, but I just wanna say this now too, which is I've been in marketing for 10+ years now and There are like those moments that happen when you go, oh, I just learned something crazy new. And like, it's— this has been one of those. It's just, it's been amazing for someone who's been in marketing for that long. So I'm sure if someone's starting out or has been more on the creation side and does not understand the business and marketing side, which is a lot of independent creators and artists, this is probably some of the best 2 hours of content.

Well, thanks very much. I appreciate that. So meaningful to me. I really, really appreciate you, uh, having me on and letting me share this with your audience. And I hope, um, beyond hope that love grows.

Thank you.