Psychology of Marketing Using Dopamine, Emotions, and Curiosity to Sell

This talk, I just wrote it very recently, but it's pretty neat. It's called we're basically Drug Dealers. How to Use Curiosity and Emotion to Boost Dopamine and Sell More of Anything to Anyone. And it's about that. It's about dopamine. I was trying to think about these commonalities and go on almost like a neuroscience level of why is it that when I write some copy and some leads, I really communicate some ways that it works really well and sometimes it doesn't. And I think I've kind of figured it out a big part of it. So we're going to look at two sales letters that I wrote for the same client and they have very different openings. And we're going to go through the headline and some of the lead from each one and we'll go from there. And these are two letters. Some of you may have seen them, they're from a few years back, but. And they're for their health. And they're a little bit aggressive because I was a little bit more naughty back then and stuff. But like, don't take that and be like, this won't. I promise you this talk is relevant to everybody because it's really about the dopamine cycle that we're going to be talking about primarily here. So don't let the copy be like, oh, I can tune out, because he's talking about health stuff. I promise you these are just being used for illustration purposes. And this will be relevant to every single person. All right, sales letter number one. Like a time capsule in a bottle. New stem cell breakthrough doesn't just pause the aging process, it rewinds it. Imagine going back in time to when you were the healthiest, sharpest, most radiant version of yourself than staying that way for the rest of your life. It's not science fiction, it's the power of stem cell science. Keep reading this report to see why experts believe this is the closest we'll ever get to a real life fountain of youth. Plus the remarkable story of how 22 Nobel Prize winning scientists came together to get this discovery to the public. And why, even though a list celebrities and pro athletes have been paying however much, $100,000 per year for this youth preserving breakthrough. You can try it today for pennies. So that's sort of the lengthy headline. And then I'm going to go through the first two to three slides of the lead. My font's really small on the thing here, so I'm going to have to read it off this. But dear friend, did you Ever bury a time capsule as a kid? If you were to dig it up today, you'd find a snapshot of what your life was like when you were young. Well, what I want to tell you about today is being referred to by many health experts as a time capsule in a bottle because it represents the latest breakthrough in ethical stem cell science. Something that comes in the form of a single, tiny and easy to swallow pillow. And each time you take one of these time capsules, it sends your body on a journey back in time. So you start to look and feel like you did when you were young. In fact, right now, even as you read this, people across the road are tapping into the newest advances in stem cell science. And they're surprised to discover that aching, screaming joints are suddenly soothed and calmed as the pain they've dealt with for years vanishes before their eyes. Physically, they become the very picture of youth with dewy, radiant, glowing skin. They often experience wrinkles around their eyes under their chin, on the sides of their mouth appearing to be diminished. They see new hair sprouting up from their head with a full, glossy sheen. Sometimes they even need to change their shampoo and conditioner. And they find that their nails grow faster, thicker, and healthier than at any point in their life. And while these changes to their physical appearance may seem astounding, they barely scratch the surface of what's possible, of what the latest advances in stem cell science can do. Kind of keeps going for me. I'm going to do one more this whole slide, too. You see, the reason why stem cells are considered the most important an anti aging breakthrough in all of science and medicine is because these miraculous little cells are a blank slate. They can travel virtually anywhere in your body and where there's been damage, then immediately start to help repair that damage. And the most beautiful thing about stem cells is that they don't care how or why that damage happened in the first place. They don't care if your heart is weak due to a lifetime of bad habits like an unhealthy diet or smoking, or if your skin is wrinkled and covered with dark spots because you never wore sunscreen as a kid, or. Or if old age has worn your joints to the bone with no cartilage left, or if your high blood sugar or failing kidneys or something genetic or if it was your. I don't know, or something genetic that you were unlucky enough to be born with. Stem cells don't care about anything except helping you feel better. Okay, so that's lead number one. Now I'm looking at sales letter lead number two. And again, I promise this is not just about sales letters and it's not about health. And this will be applicable to everybody. All right, number two, program to die. Spanish scientists uncover a hidden death clock that's ticking away inside your cells, then shock the road. After realizing it can be rewound up to 27 years, a first of its kind human trial confirms it. Getting old is now a choice. Keep reading to see how Spanish scientists found a natural way to reverse the age of our cells by 8.5 years on average and up to 27 years in some cases. It works in less than 12 months. The lead scientists studying under 2 of the world's most famous Nobel Prize winning biologists. And while this breakthrough was originally only available to Hollywood celebrities and mega rich businessmen who paid upward of $1.4 million to access it, today you can try it for free. And that's the headline again. Here's the start of the lead for this dear friend. Scientists at the prestigious National Cancer Research Institute in Spain didn't set out to find the secret to human immortality. Instead, they were trying to answer a simple why do some animals have such longer lifespans than others? They knew it didn't have anything to do with the animal size, because while bowhead whales routinely live to over 200 years of age, humpback whales, which are almost exactly the same size, only lived to be about 50 years old. Plus, if being larger meant you live longer, then how do you explain the fact that hand sized quahog clams routinely live to a ripe age of 500? Tiny sea urchins regularly live to be over 250 years of age, yet on average, humans only live to be 79. Even more perplexing to the researchers, how do you explain the so called immortal jellyfish? A type of jellyfish that thrives in the waters of the Mediterranean Pacific and has been found to age in reverse, giving it the title of the only known animal on earth that can live forever? We humans have always been told that living to 140, 170 or even 200 is nothing but fantasy. Yet when the Spanish scientists turned their eyes to the natural world, they couldn't help but notice that dozens of animals that routinely live three, five, and even seven times longer than humans do. They couldn't help but wonder to themselves, is the secret to immortality buried inside their cells? They didn't know it at first, but in their quest to answer this question, the team would end up making the discovery of a lifetime by uncovering A hidden death clock that's hidden inside the cells of every animal on earth, including humans, along with a completely unexpected way to physically rewind this death clock by up to 27 years in some documented cases. The top doctor at Harvard University has already said that this breakthrough represents a remarkable reversal of many of the signs and symptoms of aging. And he's far from alone in his excitement. Okay, so which of the two letters do you think crushed it, letter one or letter two? Raise your hand if you think it was letter one, and then raise your hand if you think it was letter two. A lot more people think letter two. So, trick question. They both crushed it. Both crushed it? Really crushed it did really, really, really well. Yeah, the old hidden death clock. Right. But they're both very different. Sales letter one is really driven by emotion, and then sales letter two is really driven by curiosity. Right. And so I want to kind of talk about, well, are there commonalities there? Why is it that they both work and things of that nature? But first, I'm gonna sip some Pellegrino. This talk is sponsored by. Yes, Drink and Pellegrino. So, because I thought about this more, and I realized that really, the only two factors inherent in any great piece of persuasion, and this is true of copy, but really also video content, all kinds of different content, even conversations, sales conversations, really, these are the only two things I think is emotionality and curiosity. They're the two most important by far, at a very minimum. So let's talk about them in turn. First, let's talk about emotion. Has anyone here heard of Dr. Paul Ekman before or online? In the chat, couple people have. Cool. Basically, he's a pioneer in the area of neuroscience research and emotion. They actually call it, I think, was it affective emotions is the neuroscience term for it. He says that there's seven universal human emotions. Anger, contempt, disgust, enjoyment, fear, sadness, and surprise. And then he says that these emotions occur in response to some kind of stimulus. Actual, imagined are relived. So things like a physical event, a social interaction, remembering or imagining an event, talking about, thinking about, or physically reenacting a past emotional experience. So we've got seven emotions, and they occur because of a stimulus. It makes some sense here. So if we go back to lead number one and the idea of burying a time capsule as a kid and digging it up today and seeing a snapshot of what life was like when you were young, what we're really doing with this lead is we're getting emotions to occur. We're getting them to remember or Imagine a distant event, one from their childhood. And really what we're doing is we're invoking nostalgia. That's the huge thing we're doing with that lead. The reason I like that lead from the beginning, the client had kind of argued with me about it. And this idea of a time capsule in a bottle, does that make sense? And I'm like, it does. Because really, everyone of a certain age and the demographic for these offers is both, you know, 50 plus, whatever, really 60 plus in a lot of cases is they probably did this. They probably buried a time capsule when they were a kid. And then it makes them think about their childhood immediately. It makes them think about, you know, maybe they can remember the grass or it was a sunny day, or they're with their parents or their teachers or their friends. We're immediately taken into a totally different emotional state. And one thing I don't have in this talk, but I brought it up recently, I'll say it here now, is I think a lot of what we're doing as marketers, persuasive communicators in general, is we always talk about conversions being converting a prospect to a buyer, a lead to a buyer, or a lead to an opt in. But really what I'm starting to realize in my journey as a marketer and persuader is that we're converting emotions first. Really. It's like emotional conversion happens. And if you convert them emotionally, then you convert them physically into them, point out their credit card and buying or taking action. So in this case, it's nostalgia. Unless you think that nostalgia only works for aggressive sales copy, I invite you to consider the movie up. Who here's ever seen the movie up? Keep your hand up. If you cry during the first five minutes of the movie up. If you haven't seen the movie up before, the first five minutes will have you sobbing. I remember seeing it with a girl I was dating at the time I was in college, and I'm like, crying, and I'm like, oh, my God, I'm a second or third date with this girl and I'm crying to a kid's movie five minutes in, like. But then she was crying too, so I was like, all right, we're good. If you haven't seen Upstairs, you watch the first, like, five to seven minutes of it, right? And the reason you cry in the first five minutes of the movie up. And sorry, spoiler. The wife dies, but she dies in the first five minutes. Whoopsie. But it's not because she dies, it's because you're taking through the entire emotional journey from nostalgia and fond memories of childhood. It starts with the main characters, or not really some of the characters as children, but all the way through the rest of their lives. So the realities of adulthood, the inevitabilities of getting old, the potentialities of becoming sick and dying before achieving all of your dreams. It's like a Disney or Pixar movie that does all this in the first seven minutes. It's crazy, but that's like the journey. And it's a nostalgia in this whole journey. Right. So this is. You're emotionally being manipulated, but you don't mind, you're pleased that you're being manipulated. So if we go back to nostalgia of time Capsule in a Bottle, I think if we're Talking about these seven universal emotions from Dr. Paul Ekman, what are the ones that we're really looking at here? I think there's enjoyment, surprise and sadness. So enjoyment because they're thinking about a moment in their life that they likely remember fondly. Like I said, we're evoking a time of wonder, of possibility, of good health, when the road was open to them, because we talked about that in the lead too. You were young, you didn't have a care on the road. Surprised because it's unlikely they expected to get on the sentimental journey when they clicked on the ad or opened the email or whatever, and suddenly they were eating the same. There's a surprise element to it as well. And then there's sadness because this time is lost, or it's in the past, or it's out of reach. And thinking about this time capsule from when they were a kid, it may bring back bigger thoughts and have them thinking of their parents or friends or people who may not be with them anymore. It may make them think of their hometown and how it's changed. There's a heavy degree of nostalgia here, which is this blend of sweetness and sorrow. So we're doing all that with a simple image of a time capsule in a bottle and thinking back to when they were a kid. And then it's worth noting that the lead corresponds with the sort of emotional stimuluses that Dr. Paul Ekman talks about as well. So there's a physical event, we're burying the time capsule. There's a social interaction. Like I mentioned before, it was probably done with school or a church or with friends or with teachers or with parents. You're remembering the actual event, you're thinking back to the physical event, and then you're talking about or thinking about physically reenacting the past emotional experience. So you're going so far back, it's evoking nostalgia that almost has you feeling like you were there. If you really think back to it, it's the same reason music and smells and things like that can happen. And if you wonder why you love songs from when you were like a teenager, like the, you know, depending on your era, it can be these pop songs or whatever it is, it's because basically from the age of 12 to 19, your brain's got some of the highest levels of dopamine it's ever going to have. And so when you hear these songs, they're flooding your brain with dopamine. And so then when you hear those songs later on in life, the dopamine kind of comes flooding back. There's like a trigger there. And so that's where nostalgia and dopamine are really clearly linked. I'm going to get into that more right here. So keying in on nostalgia, here's what experts have to say. This is from some study. I promise you this is real and legit. Every time nostalgia is experienced, a part of the brain is activated. The performance and activity of the brain's reward systems and memory systems are altered through stimulation. This includes the hippocampus, responsible for long term memory and factual details of episodic memories, as well as the brain's reward system. When the reward systems in the brain are triggered, a chemical known as dopamine is released. Researchers have led experiments using MRI scans to reveal that when nostalgia is felt, there's a close link between the release of dopamine and memories in the hippocampus. So lots of sciencey stuff. We'll break it down in a minute. Let's keep going for a second. The dopamine deposits itself directly in the hippocampus, thereby activating the dopamine system in the hippocampus. The result is a significant improvement in the ability to remember specific memories and details. This justifies how, when humans reward themselves at a particular time, they're able to remember that specific memory and information reasonably better. For example, if you scored an A on an exam and you took your friends out as a treat, you're more likely to remember the memory even years later, versus if there was no tangible reward involved. And then I think that's my own note on dopamine. It's not just about feeling good, but it's about more alertness and attention as well. So why is that all important? Why does that matter? Why are we talking about the hippocampus during the beginning of our copy accelerator event. Well, this is a very complex way of looking at it, but nostalgia, like dopamine, pleasure, heightened state of cognitive arousal, better attention, more motivation. All that stuff's happening through nostalgia. And it's not just nostalgia, really. Dopamine is released during the experiencing of all human emotions. Dopamine is released. I'm missing endearing from that. So really, it's like emotion equals dopamine equals attention equals motivation. That's actually a very important kind of equation, or not even really an equation. I'm not a math major, guys. Copywriter, philosophy major. But really, emotion leads to dopamine, which leads to attention, which leads to motivation. Now maybe, hopefully, you're starting to think about how that could be important to us as marketers and persuaders, because ultimately, we want somebody to be attentive to our message, and we want them to be motivated to take action. Right? And so dopamine is like the neurochemical thing that's happening, but it starts with emotion. And that's why I'm doing this work that I'm doing in emotional response marketing and why I honestly believe what we're living in. And I'm gonna write a book about this, and I should probably trademark this phrase, but the emotion economy, and not just the experience economy, because I think, like, the top people we've heard about the experience economy, but experiences are underlined by emotion. And really, like, if you look at people and how they wear their hearts on their sleeves and you look at people's comments and, like, how they want to, like, really shout out, like, their feelings and be outraged. Right, the outrage economy, too. But really, I think it's really emotion. Like, we're dealing in emotions. And I think that's only going to continue to be heightened because of more individualization and more people just feeling like they have a voice and having a voice because of social media, Web3, and other platforms. All right, so we'll come back to motions shortly, but let's go back to sales letter number two for a second here. Are you guys following this? Is this good so far? Is it making sense? Yeah. Okay. Just making sure. I'm not like, rossi, you're like, what the heck is he talking about? Okay, cool. So in this one, we've got the whole scientists at the prestigious National Cancer Research Institute in Spain that they didn't set out to find the secret to human immortality. They were trying to answer this question, why do some animals have such longer lives than others? And we kind of have a lot of riddles here, right? There's not size related, because, like, that's an objection you might have right away. Well, you know, like, big animals die faster. They're not kind of like giraffes or elephants. But it's like, well, no, that's not true. Bowhead whales are giant. They live 200 years. Humpback whales are huge, and they only live to be 50. So why is there this discrepancy in that? Why is it that little clams and urchins are living for hundreds of years, but humans are only living to be 79? So what we're doing with this lead is obviously we're getting curiosity to occur. We are slamming their brains with riddles, and we're creating an itch that needs to be scratched. And let's talk about the neuroscience behind curiosity, because really, these are the two types of leads or openings that I've always had success with was curiosity and emotionality. But let's talk about curiosity here. So here's what the Encyclopedia Britannica, which is presumably a credible source, says about the process of becoming curious. This isn't like the encyclopedia entry. It's a whole long article they have. When something piques your curiosity, say an interesting fact or an unexpected noise in the other room, your brain enters into what's called the curiosity state. First, the parts of the brain that are sensitive to unpleasant conditions light up. This shows that you are slightly uncomfortable because you recognize you are lacking certain knowledge. Then the parts of your brain responsible for learning and memory kick into high gear so you can learn and remember what you've learned more efficiently. It's at this point that you are primed to begin your search for answers. And when you actually begin learning new facts in your curiosity state, something even more interesting than heightened memory happens. Your reward circuitry kicks in. Hmm, that's interesting. We were just talking about the reward circuitry and dopamine. That's right. Your brain rewards you for being curious and for pursuing that curiosity. Researchers have determined that dopamine, the brain's reward chemical, is intricately linked to the brain's curiosity state. When you explore and satisfy your curiosity, your brain floods your body with dopamine, which makes you feel happier. This reward mechanism increases the likelihood that you'll try and satisfy your curiosity again in the future. Back to lead number two. You can see it. Tons of curiosity here. I'm not going to reread it for a third time. Tons of curiosity here, so. But notice in that lead, we don't give them the answer they don't get all the dopamine, right. But we do give them the tingly promise of dopamine. We get their dopamine juices flowing a little bit by starting to tease them. And I can call it the cocaine effect, which really, if you know what cocaine does, is essentially it floods your brain with dopamine. But as someone who was like a cokehead in his late teens and early twenties, I can tell you that the anticipation of getting cocaine is actually almost better and more heightening and arousal has a more heightened arousal state than the actual cocaine itself. The cocaine is almost like a letdown. It's the anticipation of getting the cocaine seriously, because you're like, I'm going to get it. You're all excited. And they've done studies on that. Just the idea for an addict of if they know that they're going to be getting the reward or the hit, the whole circuitry starts kicking in and they start getting dopamine then and there. And then the actual snooter is just whatever. But the same thing's happening with our lead. And we tease them with curiosity especially. And yeah, you get a little taste, but you still want the whole damn bag. And it keeps you reading, watching, engaging with the copy. Now leaving the road of snooters and returning to good old Encyclopedia Britannica. They say the idea that our brains reward us for learning actually lines up with the hypothesis that curiosity helped our early human ancestors survive. Think about the usefulness of a stone tool or boat. Humans needed to understand the environment and manipulate it in order to survive. Whether it meant knowing the best routes to flank animals on a hunt, where the best caves were for shelter, or how to find edible plants and berries, Curiosity about the environment led to better survival. Our most curious ancestors had an advantage over those who weren't curious. Over thousands of years, only the most curious people reproduced, leading to the characteristic curiosity of modern day humans. And one more, I think one or two more of these slides, but they're worth going through. They go on to talk about there being two types of curiosity. I actually think this is pretty important as well. The first is called epistemic curiosity, where they say, have you ever gone down a rabbit hole of link clicking on the Internet? If you're a copywriter doing research, you're like, yep, I definitely have Argonne. So obsessed with a favorite book or TV show that you had to research everything you could about it. That's epistemic curiosity, the drive to eliminate information gaps and learn new explicit information. When you feel that thirst to acquire new knowledge. Your brain actually responds as if you're thirsty or hungry. That's where the areas sensitive to unpleasant conditions light up. And that's why it feels so great to satisfy your curiosity. Thanks. Dopamine. That's their cute little ad and not mine. And the second type is called empathetic curiosity. They say the second type of curiosity you might find yourself expressing is empathetic curiosity. Human life is built on relationships and interactions between people, and empathetic curiosity is the drive to know more about what other people think and feel. When you're comfortable or when you're in comfortable social situations, your curiosity state is especially pleasurable, according to research. And again, that's when your dopamine releases in the highest levels. Empathetic curiosity, huh? That's interesting. Because obviously, empathy equals the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. So really empathetic curiosity is emotional curiosity. And it's a pretty powerful blend to me. We talked about emotion in the first lead, curiosity in the second lead. When we blend them together, that's pretty powerful. And here's another really interesting point I want to make. They mention how the research shows that the time when someone is in a comfortable environment is when their curiosity state is the most pleasurable and dopamine is being released at the highest level. Well, this is why when we're selling, whether physically or verbally or whatever it is in the written word, our language, cadence and verbiage should mirror that of our prospect and audience, right? We've always heard that if you're writing a sales copy, you talk about how you want to really understand the spokesperson and be able to relay, like, you know, hey, I'm just like you. Or someone, like, someone close to me is just like you. Here's what they were going through. And you want the prospect to be able to be like, wow, yeah, they really get me. They really understand me. Because once that happens and they're starting to feel like the person understands them and they feel more comfortable, right? If they feel more comfortable, then they're gonna be in a more pleasurable state as far as dopamine. But it's why if your voice doesn't match your audience, you're in trouble. It's why in sales, like in phone sales or in person sales, they teach stuff like mirroring, right? Like, you mirror people's body language. You match the cadence of their voice. If they have a hush tone, you have a hush tone. If they're really excited, you're really excited. You mirror them. So the Reason you're doing that, a huge part of it is just straight up dopamine. Because they're gonna be more comfortable. And if they're more comfortable, it's more pleasurable. And if it's more pleasurable, there's more attention. If there's more attention, they're more open and motivated to actually taking action. Pretty crazy, this dopamine stuff, right? So it's about building rapport. But what is rapport besides getting the other person to feel comfortable with you? And when your prospect or audience trusts you, like I said, it's pleasurable to them and they start getting dopamine. And guess what the implication here is that if you were to, if they were to stop listening to your message, then that dopamine would go away. Right. It's almost like taking the bag of cocaine back. Sorry, no more. Right. People don't like that. I've done a lot of cocaine. People don't like going, no, gotta go, guys. See you all tomorrow. They're like, no, you can't leave till 4 or 5 in the morning. Terrible, dark places. Dark, terrible places in my life. Decades ago. Decades ago. But just at least 15 years, decade and a half ago. Been a while. But it's the physical antithesis of pleasure, right? It's displeasure. Something that they want to avoid. Humans run. We may be motivated by displeasure. We're also motivated by a fear of loss more than we're motivated by a fear of reward or gain. And so literally, just like if you're giving them this pleasure and this dopamine and they're gonna click away and it's gonna take away that pleasure and dopamine, they don't wanna click away. And we know from anything with sales that the longer you have somebody with you, the more probability you have of making the sale. When Jason comes up after me and talks about webinars and he'll do like four hour webinars, it's like, you know, the reason he's able to do that probably on some level is because of the whole dopamine process that's going on in people's brains. If they click away, they're gonna lose out on this potential reward. So hopefully you guys are picking up what I'm putting down. I checked in a minute ago, so you don't have to all go like, yeah, but I think you are right. So good. Yeah. Okay, good. Great. Okay, some few more notes on dopamine and emotions and curiosity. I'm probably going to end this talk a little bit early, but that's Fine, we'll figure it out. First is like, this is why paradoxical questions in your marketing and copy are so effective. So there's the French paradox, there's the pimsleur method paradox, and there's the varying lifespans paradox that I just mentioned before. So French paradox was like the classic one of why is it that French people are smoking cigarettes, drinking tons of wine, eating fatty rich foods, and yet they have some of the lowest instances of obesity, of heart disease of anybody in the world? This is this classic thing. And it was like, well, because the wine has resveratrol in it and it's actually really good for you. And that's why there's. The pimsleur method is Dan Reuteman's business that was like a nine figure company. Chris Haddad wrote the letter for him for it. And the paradoxical question was, why is it so easy for a child to learn a new language, but so difficult for an adult to learn a new language? And the answer is, well, children learn in this very intuitive way by listening. As we get older, we get told that we need to practice speaking the language all of the time. And so if you actually want to learn a language, you should learn like a child does by listening. We created this pimsleur approach that does that. Buy the product. And then the varying lifespan paradox, right? Why do some animals live for 200 or for hundreds of years and some humans don't? And it's basically because of what's inside of our cells and telomeres and all this other stuff. And so buy our product and you know, it's. That product, by the way, wasn't like they did like real double bind studies on it where it does increase the telomere length inside of cells, which corresponds to like longer like cellular life. That doesn't mean you're actually live forever or whatever. But there was some really good science behind it. But that was another paradox. So that's why paradoxical questions are so powerful, right? There's curiosity, but there's also kind of emotionality in these questions too. If you think about it, the French paradox almost has like a jealousy component to it. Like, why are they able to have all the fun, have their wine and drink it too? And over here in the US I can't. Right? The pimsleur thing, there's actually some nostalgia. Like you think about being a kid and learning languages, you think back to childhood. And then the animal lifespan paradox. I mean, there's a fear of getting old, there's a fear of dying. So there's some emotionality inside of these paradoxical questions as well. But paradoxical questions are a great way to stop somebody, get their attention, pique their curiosity, and get them to the state very quickly. Another important point about curiosity is this is why unique mechanisms are so important. So most of you in this room probably know about unique mechanisms, and maybe you've heard about it from Copy Accelerator, the RNBC method, whatever it is. Right? But basically, I'll come back to them in a second. But I want to remind you of this part, right? You know, unique mechanisms. Again, I know a lot of you know this, but if you don't, there's basically a unique mechanism behind the problem and the solution. The unique mechanism behind the problem explains the one missing part and why your prospect, or whoever it is you're talking to hasn't gotten the outcome that they want to get yet, you know, based on whatever their pain point or thing that they want is. And then the solution is, like, what? Well, if you just add in that 1%, you should be able to get to that outcome. So, for example, there's a million examples I could use, really. But basically, maybe you're trying to lose weight, and it's like there's some hormone in the gut and no one's ever. Scientists just discovered it. This hormone regulates your metabolism, but you have less of it as you get older. And that's why you haven't really been able to lose weight. And you're like, oh, okay, that's why. But it could also be for business, for. For golf or for phone sales. I mean, there's any kind of unlimited mechanisms here. Perfect. I know we went through this, right? But basically, you're lacking knowledge. And then the part of your brain responsible for learning and memory kick into high gear so you can learn and remember what you've learned. At that point, you're primed to begin your search for answers. And when you actually begin learning new facts in your curiosity state something even more interesting than high memory happens. Your reward circuitry kicks in. All right, so going back to mechanisms, right? This is the part where you actually begin learning new facts and the reward circuitry is kicking in. And really, the dopamine journey reflects the logic behind a well crafted sales message in general, let me explain how this works, including the dopamine part with mechanisms here in the lead or opening. We're teasing them, we're creating curiosity, promising that we'll resolve that conflict from a neuroscience perspective. Their brain's getting uncomfortable, but also excited. Dopamine is starting to flow. That's our lead, our opening, whatever, and I've got a few examples at the end. But if you look at people who do a lot of content like lead gen ads, YouTube ads, Facebook ads, things like that, I'll tell you, the first three to five seconds is by far the most important. You've got to hook them in. But what does the hook really mean? Usually it's curiosity or it's emotion, but that's why it's so important. That's your boom. Get the dopamine going. You've got three to five seconds to get dopamine flowing. And right. So with increased activation in the brain's reward system, there's better attention and increased ability and desire to learn. So now in that lead, by doing curiosity, emotionality, we have them actually paying more attention to us and our message and they want to learn more. That's a good state for our prospect to be in. But the lead, that's why the lead, everyone's like, always, which part of a sales letter or sales messaging should I focus on? You know, like, should I, oh, I think I could do some stuff down here. And it's like, nope, every time up here. Because if you can change this, that's how you get them to come down here. Right? Like your whole sales message is like a funnel. And so the most eyeballs are up here. The most attention is going to be up here. If you do it right versus down here, you're going to be losing people no matter what. But the better your messaging is, the more curiosity and emotion there is up here, the more people will make it down here. Versus if you've got no emotionality or curiosity, it's like this. And you're not going to make as many sales. That's literally what the difference between conversions is, is why it's your lead and your opening. And that's true both in person or through sales copy. Right. And if we throw some emotion into our leader opening, well, even more dopamine is being activated and their focus and attention levels are even higher. So that's why blending curiosity and emotion is so important and crucial. Then in our classic kind of sales letter structure, but also ads and other messaging as well, usually we move into the background story. That's the part where the spokesperson or the speaker or the brand shares a little bit about who they are in their journey. And the journey should usually be reflective to our audience. Hey, I was just like you. I was struggling with this problem as well. I used to have terrible nights of sleep. I tried every solution. I felt like a zombie in the morning. I was irritable with my kids. Can you relate? Maybe you feel the same way. So we're doing that part and we're building rapport. We're making them feel comfortable with us. And the more comfortable they are, the more their dopamine levels are going up, their curiosity and basically it's more pleasurable. The state becomes more pleasurable because they're more comfortable. Like we already established. Right, okay. Then we go into our unique mechanism of the problem and the solution. So usually we kind of first heighten it. We're like, well, it wasn't this. It wasn't this. There's more curiosity in our mechanism. And then we actually get into, like, how they discovered this missing 1% of the problem. And this is the teaching part, but. Right. This is why you don't teach at the beginning in the lead. People make this mistake early on and also literally all over the place again, even on presentations, pitches, whatever it is, where they go into teaching mode right away. The reason that's a mistake is because the brain's not primed for teaching yet. Right. The brain wants to learn, but you have to get them in the state. There's a sequence of events here. And so this is why we want to actually wait until the mechanism to really do the teaching, to teach them about, hey, here's what's going on in your brain. Here's what's happening, like, you know, whatever it is. To be most receptive to a new paradigm, we first need to get the dopamine flowing through curiosity and emotion. Then we need to build rapport, which I have spelled as rapport, but rapport. And then we teach, and the teaching is us resolving their curiosity by showing them what the solution is. There's a payoff, and according to neuroscience, that's where the levels are going to be super high as far as dopamine goes. And then lastly, we get to the close. But what are we really doing in the close? Well, we're future pacing them. We want the prospect to envision life with versus without the product. We contrast a state of lacking versus a state of fulfillment. We want their dopamine to waver when they think about pain, then skyrocket when they think about pleasure. We want them to think that our product, service, solution will bring them that pleasure. We want a strong association so that when they buy whatever we're selling, they're literally saying yes to dopamine as much as they are saying yes to our product and also going Back to the takeaway thing. If they were to say no to our product and say no to our message, there's immediate fear that the dopamine goes away and they go back to their current state, which is a state that is less pleasurable, less heightened, less focused, less alert, less in flow than is our state, state of pleasure. And saying yes and buying, we want buying to be. And it's the same reason why the upsell stuff that we teach that Jay de Bolt first kind of brought up and that Justin turned into his Olaf thing about really reaffirming the purchase and the upsell. Right? The reason you do that is because you want to keep the state pleasurable because now they're in the upsell and people will be like, hey, you spot great. Hey, I'm going to sell you something else. And what Jayda Bolt talked about in one of our copycar events many years ago, but it's really worked well. And then Justin does a pull off and is being like, you fucking bought. You're amazing. And going on for like a couple hundred words like, you, you're so smart. Oh my God, you're the smart. And then because you're really, really, you want to keep the energy level high and the dopamine going up. And so by doing that right then like, then you can go into your. But there is one problem here. I'm gonna help you. Oh God. The dopamine might go away. No, it doesn't have to. Just buy the subcell as well. Okay, thank God. All right. I'm still getting my dopamine. You know, and another note on that. Right. So the, the reward mechanism increases the likelihood that you'll try and satisfy your curiosity again in the future. So what does that really mean? Well, in addition to what I just said about upsells, one other thing I would try to add is more curiosity in the opening as well. Honestly, it's something you have to play with. But if that's the emotional state that they're in already of high heightened dopamine and wanting to keep that going, then I would kind of try and hit them even with my emails. If I want to sell them more stuff quickly, I would hit them with emails very quickly that are high levels of curiosity, high levels of emotion and, and things like that. Trying to cross sell them more stuff. I wouldn't wait till tomorrow. I'd have emails coming out like today within 30 minutes or 20 minutes or 15 minutes of them purchasing because they're in that state. We make that mistake of like, oh, well, they just bought, so I'll try to send them again in a couple of days. It's like they just bought is the best time for them to buy more stuff. So like sending the meals right away is a really good idea. And having curiosity and emotionality. So a couple quick examples here, like just an action. I mean, look like Gundrymd. They're actually the kings of these with their Facebook ads and YouTube ads. So, you know, don't buy apples before watching this gut. Health expert Dr. Stephen Gundry is revealing why certain types of apples may be causing serious issues of digestion and weight. Don't eat honey crisp apples before watching this. Very simple. But there's curiosity, right? They're so good. If you go through Facebook ads library and go through their ads, they're just like curiosity galore. Here's another one from them, right? Is gluten the main problem? The number of Americans eating gluten free has tripled since 2009. But is gluten free the best way for better health? Nutritional expert Dr. Gundry reveals the answer. There's a little image curiosity. That's all they do. They deal in curiosity. This is one from Stansberry Research. So it says one company is well positioned to, I guess they doubled up position, but well positioned to ride the tailwinds of the pandemic. It's not in the headlines like Pfizer Moderna, but it has done as much for folks through the pandemic as any company. And you've got sort of like this image there and you're not exactly sure what's going on. And the vaccine juggernaut, the vaccine juggernauts rely on this company. So it's all curiosity. I don't know if Brian's in the room. Brian, are you in the room from it? Skinny. He was supposed to be here, but he's not. But hey, glad to have you here. It's skinny. I was going to say for Brian, he could probably add a little more curiosity because Brian's, they have an awesome company. They basically create this pasta that it's what, like 9 calories, 0 net carbs, gluten free. And it tastes like actually like pasta. So it's a really cool brand. They just raised like several million dollars through the 100 million mastermind that I'm a part of. Brian's a really great dude. But they have their ad, do you like eating pasta? But carbs are bad, right? Then they kind of go into educating right away. Well, that's because when you eat carbs, it Spikes your blood sugar. When your blood sugar spikes, it forces your body to store fat. However, if there were so the ads, like, fine, but if I were them, what I would test is sort of being like, but carbs are bad, right? Well, not all carbs are kind of tease curiosity around carbs and make somebody watch the video to see the answer instead of trying to educate so much. So I wanted to show that as an example of. I'm not saying it's a bad ad. It could just potentially be a cool thing to test is to see if, like, you did less educating and made it more curiosity driven. How would that impact the performance of the ad? Alex from Mosey. Right, so let's look at content marketing. It's not like I said, this is not just about, like, supplements or anything else, right? Like, if you look at all of his stuff, like, it's all like, how. How would you invest 25k to make 1 million? Reverse psychology hack to close more deals. I spent $120,000 for four phone calls of Grant Cardone. Right. All of his stuff there is, like, always is about curiosity, which makes sense. That's what all of your content marketing should really look like. Even me with my reels. One thing I noticed here is if you look at these are just like, from my Instagram from, like, other day. Which, by the way, if you're not, like, if you do personal brand stuff and you're not doing reels, like, I don't. You're crazy. Because, like, even for me, I have less than 100,000 followers. But my videos are, you know, that one got 40. Now it's probably at 42, 43,000. And then. But my average is probably about 4 to 6,000 per video I put out every day. But one thing I'm doing is I put closed captions on, but I'm actually trying to pick thumbnails where it's hard to see. Like, you're trying to understand. You don't quite know what I'm trying to say there. So you have to click it to watch it. So I didn't realize this until after. So even family. I work so I can support family, be with family, have. But you're like, wait, what? Like, where's he going with that? Versus some of them, like, to me, ego's not the enemy. Is okay, but some of them, I think I'm actually too clear of my captions. So I'm actually trying to pick captions now in my reels that are, like, incomplete or, like, people need to figure out, wait, what is he trying to say? And they click on it. And you can see that some of the other ones, too, that have a lot of views, like, even scotch plus cooking plus music equals this. And this is just me drunk dancing and pointing at tequila and steak. It's like 10,000 views. So I'm like, all right, cool. You know, because it's curiosity, and actually, I'm doing pretty good on timing. But basically, in summary, I think the idea you can remember is emotional curiosity here. And to put it another way, we're basically just drug dealers, but, you know, we're selling. Our drugs are words and persuasion and content and imagery and communication. But we're playing with dopamine, and it says, it's got.