Persuasion and Compliance in 2022
Not long ago, The NYT uncovered the fact that various governments are giving bucket loads of money to research institutions in Washington D.C. so the researchers will find results that support various spending projects by the U.S. government.
Why give it to researchers?
Many people believe researchers, instantly quote what someone who said they read their study seemingly repeated, and believe that research is always from an independent, thinking, and scientific mind. But that’s not the case.
First people almost never read a study. I know of less than 3 people in my circle of friends that actually read research.
Those that do are aware that a lot of it is garbage research. (A lot of it is really well done and valuable as well.)
I don’t like the idea of people buying influence any more than I do using influence to do that which is not in the great interest of your client, or the general benefit of the unit (the girl, the family, the office, the company), you are serving.
Here’s how I like to influence…
I like to be able to control as many variables as possible and get the most specific outcome I want.
Example:
A friend had a meltdown today. A meltdown is an expression of all negative emotions present at the same time which more often than not triggers someone ending up in a fetal position or depending on the context and environment, yep…an absolute turnaround in a matter of minutes.
Specifically. It’s going to require two parts love, three parts manipulation.
Imagine meltdown and then continue.
“Hey what’s up?”
“Kev, life just sucks, I’m out of control, my Dad is disappointed in me and hates me, my husband bought an expensive screwdriver set and we’re sitting here with nothing, my family abandoned me when I needed them most, I have no money, my rent is 3 weeks past due, my car is broke and I’m seriously depressed.”
Meltdown increases as things are itemized, obviously.
Now STOP:
Most people say, “oh it’s not all that bad,” (which is deadly to the human psyche and judgment machine in the brain – the person is MELTING DOWN LIKE CHERNOBYL) or “everything will be all right,” (gotta love positive thinking for idiots…people who don’t want to work towards an outcome) or “how can I help?” (intuitively seems smart but it’s a MELT-DOWN not a DRIP-DOWN.)
What to do?
Break state.
I kissed my friend once on the forehead as she lost water weight in tears at a rate of about three ounces per minute. I gave her a decent sized hug, but not for too long, because this is what everyone else would do – everyone else screws up meltdowns, stopping after the hug, and… well, screws it up for the rest of us in the situation later. We have to do it right.
PICK SOMETHING to solve quickly. ONE THING. Change the 8 TRACKS to track.
“So your Dad hates you?”
“Well no, but he’s constantly judging me when I don’t meet his expectations.”
“Got it.”
“Your dad isn’t exactly in a great frame of mind in general, and lately has been sort of a mess – true?”
She nods.
“OK so, here’s the deal. You can’t use your Dad’s current judgment of your life experience and decisions as a guide post, true?”
Nods her head.
“TRUE?”
Nods head harder. I’m mostly sold.
“So you obviously are needing someone to understand your experience or tell you that you are screwing up or doing something well…someone who is not B.S.ing you. So here’s what we’re going to do. (Time doesn’t permit 8 hours of therapy). We’re going to have me be your judge of character, decision making (because I don’t have enough to do), general sanity… and life experience for the next 30 days. If you start to flip out, you call me or come to me, deal? (Flip out?!??! Yes, flip out.)”
“Can I tell you what I think? (Always wait for permission.) You’re actually doing fairly well. (NOT GREAT, NOT WELL) You aren’t setting the world on fire, but you are above neutral and more than half the world is behind you. So your Dad is wrong about the things you told me and someday soon he’ll be back in his normal neurotic space at which point you can revert to dealing with your family as your personal judge until you decide you need to be your own judge. Cool?”
“Next, your husband is not a terrible guy and he loves you, true?”
Head nod.
“So the screw driver set. OK, he probably didn’t need to buy the set, but he didn’t ask you to pick it up, which I suspect would have led to different conversations, so the dude was making choices that may not have been perfect, true?”
Head nod.
“Not perfect, but not totally insane…. OK, so you call him and say this, ‘I’m sorry I blew on you about the screwdriver set. I’M SORRY.'” (NOTHING ELSE – JUST THE SCREWDRIVER SET. Your friend only screwed up…on the screw-driver). As soon as you are done you say, ‘gotta run, love you.’ and get off the phone and talk to me.”
What’s going to happen is this. She will call the husband. The husband is flipping out because he doesn’t know what the hell is happening. She apologizes about ONE THING. EVERYONE can apologize about the TINIEST thing of 10 things…. And then he will apologize for not asking her first. Then, she will tell him that he was doing his best and she appreciates it. He will tell her that she’s beautiful and he loves her. The call will last 20 minutes instead of the two because once ONE PERSON says they are sorry, the other person will as well, and the world will be substantially better shortly.
If you say, “call your hubby and talk to him, he’s smart…” well, he’s not. He’s a husband. He’s an idiot (normal husband) and he won’t get the scripting right if we don’t get him the right cue line. And of course you can’t tell your friend this, but you know it.
A half hour later they will have nailed the MELTDOWN ELIMINATION.
You weren’t stopping an argument (a creative discussion), but stopping a meltdown – and there is a big difference. (Usually they go together but you can’t count on it.)
And they will live happily ever after for at least 2 – 5 weeks at which point another meltdown will occur, probably the husband and probably because of something stupid. You can’t save the world but you can INFLUENCE the outcome of a person’s life.
And you thought an Influencer was the cute girl on Instagram.
eh…
That is how I want people to change minds.
Now look at some proven and also new ways to change minds and gain compliance at a deep and profound level.
Legend Point: Words are one and only one small tool to change minds. The DELIVERY method, the context, the environment, identification with another are all huge factors in whether you can successfully change another person’s mind.
“You are brilliant…”
Ten years ago, an author wrote a book and then went out and sold that book.
Today you write a book, and you sell a book, and then you sell a Kindle Book. More time, more work. More works competing with your work.
Does the publisher want to sell the book or the Kindle version? Does the publisher want to make the digital sale or shoot for the hard cover?
To say the world is changing faster than a Genny Z can ghost a Genny X is an understatement.
Culture in general, and technology in myriads of evolutions and revolutions, are shifting many of the elements of influential communication.
“Kevin, I just moved and I realized how much I appreciate my Kindle. It’s a lot easier to move books and reading material on a Kindle than it is the ones you have to pack in all those boxes.”
Half of all book sales in 2022 are old school real life books. The other half of book sales are digital, typically Kindle, with plenty of exceptions.
This is so true of so many transactions in life. What influences decisions today is not the same matrix it was a decade ago.
Other things are changing in what persuades.
Color influences. Nuances of color schemes shift our thinking today in a different way than they did a decade ago, but major color groups like primary colors continue to have predictable impact on people.
Influence is in part about understanding EVERYTHING in your environment. You begin to find out why everything works the way it does. The person who understands what is really happening around them is the person who will be the most influential and of course, successful. An influencer must understand context, environment, and humans far better than everyone else, or you’re just another hamster in a hamster wheel.
Example:
The Strip and even downtown is a unique example of “living influence.” The environment changes from hotel to hotel in a dramatic fashion that is matched nowhere on this planet.
Environment changes perceptions. Environment changes memory. Environment changes how you and I are influenced… and colors imprint images into the mind in unique ways.
Stop.
A big part of life is doing things that are the same every single day. MOST behavior is simply replicated hour after hour, day after day, week after week, year after year. How do you influence in an autopilot life?
Las Vegas creates a different life experience. You have so much unfamiliar stimuli that you are hypnotized by the environment.
Now that’s interesting from the perspective of influence. Consider this…
If YOU owned a casino, you would want the people entering the space to stay as long as possible. Unlike a restaurant where you generally have an upper limit on what can be spent in 2 hours, a casino still has an upper limit, but it is a much higher upper limit. In other words – if $200 is your bill for two people in two hours, that’s a lot different than a $2,000 limit for two hours. I’ve always liked business models that engender long-term relationships.
And because of the law of large numbers, the longer people stay the more likely the entity with the most money is to win all of the money. That just means that the casino can endure a longer streak of you winning, than you can endure longer streaks of the casino beating you. And this is true for people who count cards and actually hold a per hand advantage over the casino. All this means that you are going to make a lot of money in any business where you control variables.
There are literally only a dozen tables in all of Las Vegas where the rules are in my favor to the point in which I have an advantage if I count cards and play every hand mathematically. And yet, because the casino has an endless bank, even with an advantage, it’s very, very hard to beat the casino at blackjack. I looked the other day at my casino records and Vegas beat me in 2012, 2013 and 2014. Terrible. But… I beat Vegas every year from 2015 – 2019. I didn’t play during covid. We’ll see what happens this year.
Color’s a big part of Las Vegas. Color schemes are created in such a way as to draw attention from a visitor and direct their behavior.
The research on how various colors change minds and alter behavior is quite remarkable.
Change the context…
Different colored walls change the behavior of students. Certain colors cause grades to rise. Other colors cause kids to be more happy or induce sadness. The same colors that trigger students to improve academically don’t make them happier.
Primary colors always take me to Star Trek. Star Trek influenced the world. Part of the influence was in the stories. A big part was the libertarian philosophy. Some was in the scripting that generated dramatic identification. Some was in the characters. Some was more subtle…
Influence: A Context Impact
When I was at the Wynn Hotel last week, I was looking around at some truly beautiful creations, and my mind flew straight to Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek; because Star Trek is colors. Bold blues, greens, reds, yellows.
That triggered another thought about how almost everything in Star Trek has since materialized.
One thing about the Sci-Fi future which is happening right now in 2022 is that people are losing much of their individual identity as they post pictures of themselves with E.T. like shaped heads and the ears and nose of animals…and, while that will continue, there is also backlash against that.
Some people want to be recognized as unique and colorful individuals themselves.
Of course many other people often, but NOT ALWAYS, want to blend into the woodwork.
Those two pieces of the “yes” puzzle are of megalithic importance.
It whizzes past everyone and it’s hard to imagine selling, marketing or being very persuasive without an understanding of this.
Imagine if all the walls on Star Trek were a uniform color. In Roddenberry’s world, everything is colorful.
All of those differentiating color schemes help make up for the lack of “stuff.” There is no clutter in the Roddenberry future. There is nothing but the simplest of wall decorations. Furnishings are minimalistic. People’s identity is “crew member” which eventually influenced two generations of people like Steve Jobs, because we all became part of the crew. It was easy to fit in. And then in 40 years pretty much everything that was Sci-Fi in Star Trek is in use today.
But individual identity?
The new persuasion “techniques” of compliance require you wire into another person’s identity. Write that down and turn the page.
How Does Your Stuff Influence?
Look around your house, your office, from where you sit.
You have stuff. Even clutter.
Look at the stuff on your shelf units or decorations. What is all that stuff, anyway?
A few years ago I wrote a detailed article about what the offices of some seriously successful people look like. You’d probably be surprised to know that most of the working spaces of great minds was pretty darned cluttered.
For our purpose today, I’m more interested with the interests of all the surroundings on the people in the immediate area.
You can tell a lot about people by what they have around them. Where you live, how you live, and what is in the immediate vicinity all influence you.
I live in an 8,000 square foot home. The housekeeper says it’s like cleaning “a hotel.”
The great room (whatever that means) is as big as the first house I lived in with a family of 7 when I was a kid. Having grown up in a shoe box, you learn to get everything done in a very small space.
For me, I treasured my space. I also became very attached to some of the “stuff” in the environment, probably because we had so little stuff. I didn’t know it at the time of course, but two pieces of furniture from my childhood are still in my house today. The dining room table and a hutch. My first step dad had made both before he died.
Memories, good and bad, get attached to stuff.
Most people who have homes like mine have $20,000 dining room sets.
I’ve got a dining room table that I couldn’t get $20 for. I never really notice it, but when people come to visit who haven’t been here before, they notice. No one ever says, “hey you have a million dollar house, why don’t you have a table that you could actually sell at a garage sale in the city.”
To me, it’s the most important stuff in the house…and I have some stuff that I consider pretty cool.
That table influences my behavior. It triggers “family” and “love” and “decisions that matter” in my mind. Take the table and hutch away and you change performance, attitudes, behaviors, thoughts, emotions.
The very idea of replacing the table and hutch is something difficult to entertain.
Family means a lot to me, and…
Stuff triggers a big part of who you are as a person.
Throw it away, and it changes your behavior, attitudes and emotions. Place it on the other side of the room… and it changes you. It changes everyone who works or lives there. Some changes are good, and some are not so good, but do understand that it changes.
That table is a daily reminder that family is first.
Adding Stuff Influences
Add one child (an object) to a family of 6, and the dynamics change.
Add a dog and that object (the dog) changes the environment and everyone’s interactions toward everyone else.
“You take the dog out, it was your damn idea to get the THING.”
Objects (stuff/people) in the environment that are available (you are able to immediately observe them) CHANGE YOU. They INFLUENCE you.
As you think about stuff – everything that occupies space and that is available to you – you begin to understand influence in a dynamic fashion.
Identity Forms Around Your Stuff
When I was a kid, I collected coins. We had nothing, so I would work and save money. I’d ask to look through people’s change and ask if I could trade a Lincoln Memorial penny for a Wheat back penny. I knew someday the one would be worth more than the other, and the person with a pocketful of change had money they were going to spend today or they’d be saving it. This was the first of two coin collections I had stolen when I was a kid. The first when I was 12, the second when I was 15. In both cases, I had put everything I earned into the collections to save for college. In those collections, I developed part of an identity. A person who would save for the future. A person who recognized the value of having something to survive with when everything else in life goes wrong.
But, as time went on other parts of an identity formed. When people have things taken from them, they tend to:
a) Replicate that behavioral experience in the future.
and
b) They tend to develop generalized beliefs about people when part of their identity is taken from them.
If people are a victim of crime X, they tend to become a victim AGAIN in the future.
You and I change and influence the world around us, as well.
Stuff… your relationship to stuff, the significance of stuff – changes your beliefs, your attitudes, ideas, and behaviors. It changes your trust level, your caring level, and changes how you make decisions.
Step Two – The smallest of changes, whether in a room, a scene, or in the New Compliance Technique, can cut compliance in HALF or DOUBLE “yes.” Write down, “Little Additions” and “Their Stuff.”
Influence: Stuff and Availability
Bring their past into the present?
STUFF INFLUENCES when it is AVAILABLE.
Objects influence dramatically.
Think about the teenager (like me when I was 17). I was HAPPY to be off to college. I was tired of the responsibility of being the eldest of 5 siblings in the home. 15 years of that role had worn thin, and that caused massive friction between my Mom and my Self.
For a year, I had “threatened Mom” that I was leaving as soon as I could get to college. (Hee hee…this is so damn cute in retrospect.)
I was out the door. 17 years old.
My cousin took me to Vegas after I graduated. I played blackjack for 10 minutes until I figured I’d get carded. I went to the Folies Bergère at the Tropicana and watched 40 of the most beautiful women I had ever watched be more elegant than I ever had imagined. (Do experiences influence future experiences?!)
Then, University of Wisconsin. HA! “Freedom.”
I hated it.
I’d never seen so much alcohol and so many drugs in my life – and I grew up in Chicago.
I couldn’t study, I could rarely think because the dorm was so loud.
And the guy in the room next door played all the music that would eventually drive me from the dorm….back home.
Why?
It was familiar at home. All of the stuff made sense to the brain. The objects in the house….the dog, my family, the odd smells of home.
You can only be so productive in 96 square feet, which was my half of the dorm room.
But, there was more to it than space alone. It was my roommate’s music, which could have been a lot “worse” (it was actually great for people who liked it, of course) and his stuff in my field of view just didn’t work for me. I wasn’t a cowboy, didn’t know anything about everything he knew about. The influences were all a disaster. Everything changed and I didn’t adapt. But, I also had an out. I could go home. Had that option not been there, I’d have been in a different life situation.
What You See Influences You
I suspect you are like me in this respect:
I have books in book cases all over the house. The only ones that really influence me are the ones I read or the ones I have in my line of vision most of the time.
If those books weren’t there, behavior would change. Attitudes, emotions, ideas….they all change.
Your stuff influences you.
Imagine that your walls are blank. Nothing there. Just empty walls.
How do you feel inside?
Just imagine yourself taking down everything and setting it in a storage room.
You change. You feel empty. Things LOOK disturbing. It’s uncomfortable, it’s unfamiliar and you want to fix the problem.
Remember that, and we’ll come back to it.
Write down, “Bringing the Past into the Present can = SECURITY.” Then turn the page.
Giving and Getting Stuff
Experiences are stuff because they too get coded into your memory just like your stuff does. In fact, sometimes experiences are more important than stuff in influencing your Self and others.
When you give stuff (or experience things with) to other people, it definitely influences them and who they are as well as how they will behave.
It’s Christmas.
You got a gift one year from someone who acquired the gift for free, like a promotional item.
That changes your behavior and emotions about your Self and it changes how you feel about the other person. It changes the relationship.
They got the calendar from the insurance guy for free…and then you got it at Christmas. The meaning behind the message is potent. No wonder the influence is so great.
Meanwhile, another person got you precisely what you would have bought your Self had you had the money and felt it would be OK to buy it for your Self.
You identify with that person. That person gets you. They read you. They actually care.
You feel very differently toward this person. You feel differently about your Self, as well. You behave differently once you have X when you didn’t have X before, and you like X.
The promotional item got tossed. It wouldn’t have, had the person been destitute, of course. But that isn’t generally the case. Ultimately, you were an after thought in one situation. In the other, the person took time to think about you, who you are, and what you like.
The Stuff You Save Influences
The stuff you save says a lot about what influences you.
I’ve saved a lot of little things over the years. The dining room table and the hutch are bold statements in one sense. Everyone sees them. There is a story in each. The little things show what influences as well. One thing I’ve saved is many letters and a few birthday cards from people who really mattered at a specific time. Or perhaps I’ve saved something someone signed who I cared about.
Why?
All of those things prove something to the brain…a self worth trigger. At some time you mattered to someone. Everyone hangs on to something. What is that for the people you communicate with?
It can be many things, but if you didn’t have those things, you would behave differently.
Availability and Triggers
Today, you have your computer and it has all your files on it.
Most all of what is on your computer is not “available.” You can’t immediately see it.
You have to click to get it. It can never trigger you or influence you, only you can trigger it. If you are like most people you almost never will.
Triggers are generally gifts to the Self. Triggers get you up and moving.
Triggers help you make money. Triggers cause the impulse to act by asking the girl for a date.
Are there fewer triggers available in your environment?
LEGEND POINT: If there are fewer triggers available in your environment, then the introduction of a new trigger plays a greater role than it would have, say, a decade ago.
Being on someone’s Coffee Table today is easily worth double what it was one decade ago.
Your name in front of someone’s desk or table means far more today because there are fewer books, magazines, and calendars out there to trigger you. That means, when something with your name or connection is in front of someone else, the influence of that item is dramatically greater.
Write this down: The personal “touch” is becoming more important.
(And this is particularly in The New Compliance Trigger.)
Influence: Personalization
LEGEND POINT: Most everyone has “connections” and they are triggered by things that are personalized or individualized.
What do you open first when you get the mail?
The handwritten envelope or the envelope that had your name spelled incorrectly?
Of course.
How many handwritten envelopes do you see each week?
Not too many?
That is likely to mean that in most cases they become more valuable because fewer are available.
If ANYTHING of significance is in that envelope, the contents are likely to stick around longer on the counter than if it was computer generated.
Within understanding that personalized and individualized objects or hints of personalization can matter a great deal, consider just HOW that might look in the influencing someone.
Three years ago, the Harvard Business Review asked me to write about something unique that no one knew about in influence. There were a dozen ideas that came to mind but without question, this one is worth revisiting.
The Post-it Note Influences More Than You Think
A couple of years ago I started studying various personalized and individualized objects. It turns out I wasn’t the only person who was interested in this influential gold mine.
You heard me talk about this at Boot Camp.
You’ve seen the sticky notes. Post-it Notes. They’re all over my counter. “Pick up this.” “Do that.” “Get this.”
They are more important and urgent than lists to attend to because they irritate the brain.
They take up space where it should be clean or look more uniform with the environment.
The brain wouldn’t fill in a Post-it note on the quick sweep of the room so when it sees the Post-it note, it would prefer that it NOT BE THERE.
Why? Because the way we tell ourselves to get stuff done meets with different results, depending on the medium we use to tell ourselves. You also know that how you tell OTHER PEOPLE to do something changes the results you are going to achieve.
FACT: The exact information in a webinar vs. a book will cause different behaviors.
FACT: The exact information in a webinar vs. a salesletter gets different sales results.
FACT: The exact information written on a birthday card gets different results than when a handwritten letter is used with the exact same words.
FACT: The YouTube video with the exact same message as the segment that appeared on TV will have dramatically different behavioral results on the person.
The MEDIUM matters far more than most anyone can guess.
Post-It Notes are goofy and they don’t match the environment in any way. They are a nuisance.
That means a Post-It Note gets attention.
That means it gets priority.
The Post-it note influences.
Randy Garner of Sam Houston State University (Huntsville) did a brilliant series of studies on Post-It Notes and just how influential “they” are.
(The astute obviously generalizes this to concepts and not just a yellow Post-It note, right?!)
Garner knows that marketers and salespeople need people to act. You need people to do stuff you want them to do NOW. Getting people to comply with anything that requires effort is extremely valuable to you and me.
Write this down: Go buy Post It Notes…TODAY.
Here’s what Garner did.
He found out whether a Post It Note…with nothing written on it… influences.
Study One: Does the Post-it Note Really Influence?
In one study, he sent surveys by mail to a group of 150 professors. They would receive the following:
Group 1: A survey with a post-it note attached asking for the return of the completed survey.
Group 2: A survey with the same handwritten message on the cover letter instead of an attached post it note.
Group 3: A survey with cover letter, but no handwritten message.
What happened?
Group 1 recipients returned in 76% of cases.
Group 2 48%
Group 3 36%
How would you like to DOUBLE the results you get in pretty much anything you want?
For a number of reasons, The Post-It Note is a goldmine. Garner nailed it before anyone else.
But it goes beyond “results,”; this is about understanding WHY the Post-It Note works so well. It represents MANY powerful behavioral triggers all in one little object.
- It doesn’t match the environment. The brain hates it.
- It gets attention first because of #1.
- It is PERSONALIZED. (Difference between Group 2 and Group 3)
- It is personalized to the point of an afterthought. (Difference between 1 and 2)
- Ultimately, it is ONE PERSON communicating with ANOTHER IMPORTANT PERSON. Almost as if it is a favor or special request.
Study Two: Is There Magic in a Little Post-it Note?
Garner has found the goldmine, but wants to see if there is magic in the Post-It Note that we might not be able to explain but regardless would be incredibly valuable.
He’s going to send a group in Study 2 a BLANK Post-It Note attached to one of the groups.
Group 1 A survey with a post it Note message.
Group 2 A survey with a BLANK Post-It Note attached.
Group 3 A survey with NO Post-It Note.
Now what happens in this second study?
Group 1 (roughly the same packaging as Group 1 in the first study) 69% returned.
Group 2 43% returned with a BLANK Post-It Note
Group 3 34% returned with NO Post-It Note
There MIGHT be a little magic in the actual Post-It Note, but the reality is …probably not. This is about Identity. The person sending the survey is PERSONALLY asking me in a SPECIAL way (not just writing on the survey) to help him out.
Dr. Garner could easily have stopped here, but there is more to this than Ultimate Compliance.
Study Three: Does the Post-it Note Influence Speed of Compliance?
How FAST would people get back a follow-up survey if there was a Post-It Note attached AND how MUCH information would the person being surveyed return with that Post-It Note there vs. a group of faculty with no Post-It Note?
Group 1 64% returned the packet in a SASE.
Group 2 42% returned the packet. (Similar to study 2 Group 3)
Group 1 returned their SASE and survey an average of about 4 days.
Group 2 returned their SASE and survey in an average of about 5 1/2 days.
and!
Group 1 sent significantly more comments and answered other open ended questions with more words than did Group 2.
That’s where most University research stops.
What makes Garner’s special is that he wants to demonstrate whether this only aids compliance in simpler requests, or if the effect carries to more involved tasks.
Study Four: Does a Personalized Post-it Note Create Even More Magic?
Garner sends 90 participants a long survey and 90 a short survey (one half the size).
Each group was subdivided into 3 smaller groups.
Group A received a Post-It Note request.
Group B received a PERSONALIZED Post-It Note request with the person’s name on it as well as “thank you” and Garner’s initials at the bottom of the sticky note.
Group C received NO Post-It Note
What happened?
Post-It Note / Personalized Note / No Note
Long Version 40% / 67% / 13%
Short Version 70% / 77% / 33%
It appears that if the task is simple, the simple Post-It Note request needs no further personalization. The effect is strong and significant in both experimental conditions.
But, when the task is more involved, the Personalized Note was significantly more effective than the simple standard Post-It Note request.
Use Caution: Post-it Note Influence is Covert Influence
In follow-up conversations, recipients often reported either not remembering the post-it note or that it wasn’t important to them.
Garner’s research is a landmark series of studies in influence. Subtle influence can cause compliance if you use the correct triggers. And to use the correct triggers means you have to think about what matters in influence.
Influence is power. Pure and simple. Be wise when you implement that power.
Answer: Availability is Key to Action
I wanted the book, Invisible Influence to be something special. Whenever I’m working on something that is a top priority I cover the FLOOR with papers.
I had 1000++ square feet covered in the lower level with research papers, articles I’ve written, press releases from persuasion research, ideas for the book.
My problem of course was to whittle down 4000 pages and hone in on the most useful, coolest stuff without writing a “potpourri” book with 50 chapters that are 3 pages each. (Maybe I’ll do that next time.)
Once I put the clutter away, the amount of writing I did each day dramatically reduced. When I could walk the path it was easy because I looked at the titles and picked and chose what people need to know. But when you clean up, it’s a lot more difficult. This is why a lot of authors pin pages to their walls. Putting it on a computer is not efficient or helpful.
Legend Point: You need the stimulus AVAILABLE.
That is a key concept. YOU want to be on THEIR Coffee Table. Being on their Kindle doesn’t do you diddly.
But we’ll come there next time.
The pages on the floor trigger ideas, combinations of ideas, overviews of available knowledge. Without the trigger, there is no ACTION.
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Being wealthy comes down to a decision and a choice.
Having what you deserve in life is your selection when you arrive at the vending machine.
During this unique 11 week E-course, you’ll take at least one step up the pyramid of life. By the time you have completed the course, if you choose, you’ll find yourself already having completed the single most difficult piece of wealth building. When you complete the course, you will have a proven plan and a unique guide to make sure you do exactly what you are supposed to do!
It’s fun, it’s exciting, it’s intense, and whether you are a millionaire today or you will be starting from scratch, this experience will show you the way, simplify your life, give you more joy and give you the pleasure of watching your new pile of gold grow each day.
There’s all kinds of neat little blueprints to building wealth out there.
I’ve seen most of them. I suppose in a perfect world some could work.
But when I sat down and looked at the bestselling plans to see what was missing and why so many people were disappointed, it was obvious that what was needed was a REAL system.
System implies algorithm. Algorithm implies step by step predictability and completion.
Some programs I checked out were grounded in silliness. “If you get a 12% return on your money per year then you….”
Here’s the thing…THAT is NOT going to happen. I’ve met perhaps a handful of people who know the truth about investing.
Ready?
The stock market, after taxes, dividends, inflation and transaction costs will not return more than 5% against inflation over the next decade.
The stock market is very cyclical and predictably so.
It’s highly unlikely the markets will return even 5% by the end of the decade.
Wealth accumulation is not about investing in stocks or bonds.
You’ll learn the truth about if and when in this course…but now is not the time for either.
Honest to goodness, most of what is out there might be well intended but the teaching is so airy fairy that no one could actually do anything with what they learn. There were a few exceptions. There were some “methods” that simply wouldn’t and couldn’t work. They were disturbing approaches to securing a sound future. I wasn’t sure which I liked less.
When you were born, there was no Life Instruction Manual. There was also no Wealth Accumulation Manual and to date there never has been…until now.
Aside from being immensely valuable, you’re about to experience the most valuable system you’ll ever use. It’s fun which means you’ll use it every single day!
You’ve heard of going from 0 to 60 in 8 seconds in reference to a car, right?
Have you ever heard of going from starting with $1,000,000 in debt only to become a millionaire?
Someone wrote that about me and while it’s technically correct…there’s more to the story than numbers.
You probably know a bit of my story. Here is the thumbnail in three paragraphs:
I was raised in Chicago by a darn good Mom. Our family moved between poor, can’t get any poorer and lower class depending on whether Mom was married or not at the time…whether someone had just died or was dying in a hospital or yes when there were not one but TWO hospital beds in our tiny home.
Life was often nothing short of emotionally brutal. Our neighborhood was not violent although one guy did burn down the entire high school that was attended by 1600 people. (OK, that was a little distressing.)
Everyone that grew up in that child packed neighborhood had choices in life. They could choose to live a lower income bracket life when they got older. They could choose to live a middle class life when they got older. They could choose to live with an upper class income bracket when they got older.
It was and still is a choice.
I have no idea what your life experience was as a kid. I hope it was fantastic! Our experience was unusual. We were not only poor but we had the largest unforeseen debt load of anyone you’ve ever known. It was absolutely not anyone’s fault or “choice.” We didn’t have any money to spend. There were no credit cards. My first step dad spent the better part of 5 years in and out of the hospital accumulating debt that exceeded one million dollars. How does hospital debt get so big? Once you exceed a lifetime limit, the insurance doesn’t pay out benefits. It’s a long story with a lot of instructive experiences that I’ll save for the course.
As you grow up, it becomes pretty obvious you can choose to live in poverty your entire life, make minor changes or make major changes.
I don’t know about you, but I hated being poor. I wasn’t afraid of it because I lived it for a decade. When I was 11, the Boy Scouts brought a Thanksgiving turkey and old clothes. Some fit, some didn’t, all got worn, “better than not having any at all,” was indeed the correct answer.
“It makes no difference where you begin. Got a job? Don’t? Have debt? Don’t? It just doesn’t matter. Where you are going is 100% your decision.”
Today in America, 18% of people in the upper income bracket today were in the bottom 1/3 income brackets one decade ago.
You can know those kind of numbers will continue. It’s inspiring.
What caused 18% of people to leave living in lower income brackets to living a more fulfilling and rewarding life?
It won’t be because they got lucky.
It won’t be because someone gave them a job.
It won’t be because the government cut them a check.
It will be because they chose to change their life situation.
Period.
Some people want you to believe that if you were or even if you are poor today, for some wild reason you are destined to remain there forever as if someone is stopping people from living their dreams. That is not only untrue, it’s a dangerous belief.
In the Wealth Creation and Accumulation System E Course you’ll be exposed to a new world.
There are no courses on wealth accumulation or wealth psychology offered in high school. There is no “playbook.”
Then when you get to college…there are no courses offered on the psychology of wealth accumulation. In the last 4 years, we’ve learned more about wealth accumulation at the research level and the face to face in the real world level than we knew the previous hundred years combined.
And things have changed so dramatically in the last decade that the playing field doesn’t even look the same.
If you went to college you probably went so that when you got out, you’d be able to “get a job.” And one thing is for sure, if you graduated from college you had a huge advantage over those who didn’t graduate from college. A college graduate earns about 1.5 times what a non graduate earns.
Ultimately that dollar figure will almost always be enough to “get by,” and will do nothing toward growing wealth.
To be clear, about 90% of households in the U.S. regardless of their income have no chance at accumulating wealth without making the changes itemized in this system. Paradoxically almost every one of those households has the actual ability to live a wealth life.
It seems ridiculous to think that someone earning $85,000 per year doesn’t have a better “chance at wealth” as someone earning $50,000 per year. It’s counter-intuitive but they simply don’t. The person at $65,000 annual income is living paycheck to paycheck in about 80% of families. The same is true, surprisingly enough for households earning $100,000 per year!
It’s no wonder people get off to a terribly slow start in life. It’s no wonder people get on a Hamster Wheel and stay there for decades. It’s tragic and heartbreaking.
Very little about having wealth is intuitive.
Today something like 40,000,000 people in the USA are on food stamps.
I remember the one and only time we used food stamps when I was a kid. I was about 7 years old and we went shopping. My Mom had three kids, no husband, no full time job, no resources and she broke down and took money from the government…for two weeks.
She was so disgusted that we never used them again. She’d earn her own money and not take that which was earned by someone else. She got a full time job instead. Thank God she made that decision or I might have been a very different person today.
“Your psychological programming needs to be changed to move beyond where you are today.”
Your money memory is a very important part of your programming, just as it is mine. Those early experiences with money shaped your beliefs, attitudes and behaviors around money.
Most of those beliefs, attitudes and behaviors are dysfunctional and need REPAIR.
I know because it took a long time to unplug the vast majority of those programs which were a life disaster. Unfortunately, one category of sabotaging money memory is enough to erase any opportunity at growing wealth.
I’d like to suggest to you that three things comprise wealth. Time, Money and Love.
Had I not had a Mom who loved me, again, my life would have been very different. Once you have food, water and shelter, love and time become very important.
The idea of being wealthy never was important to me until 1994. I certainly never wanted or even considered the notion of being “rich.” I didn’t see the point.
At that point you could see that the United States was going the way of Japan. We (as a nation) had been great and we were going to start a slide that 30 years from that point was going to be ugly. Political parties started buying votes with promises of “free money.”
One of my few strengths as a person was math, particularly statistics and probability. I ran the math and I got very concerned that living a “normal life” wouldn’t be a normal life for the duration of my life. It was obvious that carrying on as I was would actually go backward over time. And that is precisely what happened.
I started researching various options and developed an approach to building wealth that relied on thinking. It took several years before a track record was established.
Got a track record?
Here’s one page of that record:
At the turn of the 21st century, “the economy” had gotten much worse. Pretty much all the nations in the world were printing a lot of counterfeit money which meant that money wasn’t going to be worth what it was for the previous three centuries. By the mid-2000’s I had put myself in a financial position that was sensible and I began to encourage people who read my work to buy gold. At the time, gold was $450 per ounce. I had begun buying gold not long before that.
Financial advisers wrote emails to me every day telling me I was wrong. But they lived in a very small world. They based their thinking on a set of principles and beliefs instilled by their industry that no longer matched what was happening in the world. I told thousands of them they needed to get their clients in gold. Eventually the markets had their crash and it was time to rebalance any investments back into the markets.
It did just that.
You’re going to see a similar experience in the next year.
I’ll show you how to navigate your way through this mess.
Meanwhile in that 2007 – 2009 period, what happened was most Americans went into a tailspin. They lost their ability to move out of their homes because they had mortgages that were bigger than what their house was worth or what they had paid for it…and they had no wealth. Middle-class America rolled the dice that a box of wood would go up in value. It made no sense. People really believed that a house was an investment. It’s not. It is a store of value. It will always be worth something, but you can’t count on it to go up in value. That’s just silly.
What I gained from this course is simply beyond what I can express through words… the required ‘push’, a lot of confidence, wiping out a lot of fears from me that I could not bring forth and explain,
identifying a few damaging personal weaknesses I developed over the years running on the wheel, re-assurances on a lot of flashes of thought which I firmly believed were true –
but got buried as I could not gather evidence to support those and a lot of insights that no one else would have ever shared with me. And a unique feedback I can give –
I am based in India, a few time zones and culturally different – but what you have shared is absolutely true for us.
I consider this a turning point in my life. Thank you once again!"
Gold shot up from $450 to $1200. Some of my readers would email me saying “Thank you” over and over and over. They watched $100,000 turn into $300,000 in less than 7 years.
Obviously today gold is at $2000. That would make the hypothetical gold investment worth even more in 2024. My how the skeptics no longer have anything to say.
12 years and my goodness, how things changed. But gold is like everything else, it doesn’t just go straight up. Since then it’s predictably bounced around between 1200 and 2000. And it probably will be in a “trending upward range” for the next couple of years.
Now $450,000 is not “rich.” And I’m not saying I single-handedly helped people get rich overnight. That just isn’t right. I simply showed people how to save their financial lives and secure themselves and those they love while the people who didn’t take the time to learn about wealth and money started slipping off the cliff.
You can only save the people who listen. Most people were stuck in a 20th-century model trying to make decisions in the 21st century. The world had changed. They wanted to be right. “They believed” in nonsense, they were taught and they went down the tubes.
Today the financial advisers are paying close attention.
People who followed the plan built stepping stones to wealth. Everyone else lost…a lot.
There is very good news, however.
“Don’t let anyone kid you: Building wealth in this decade is VERY DIFFERENT but NO MORE difficult than it was in 2008 or 2004 or 1994.”
You simply want to let it happen much faster than you would have 10 years ago.
And fear not. There are no stocks to buy. There is nothing “risky” that needs to be done. Quite the opposite. This is the new paradigm of building wealth, NOT investing. If you have some cool investing plan that has been in your family for 10 or 20 years, have at it. It won’t interfere. Your financial planner’s job is secure though you might want to teach her what you learn so she doesn’t go broke along with everyone else. If she follows her own advice….
Your life is impacted by world events. The economy is impacted by world events. But growing wealth is a pretty basic life function that anyone can do in spite of world events.
At NO TIME IN HISTORY has crisis or disaster stopped individuals who understood what was going on, from growing wealth and securing their future. 1000 years ago, no one invested in stock markets and wealth was built through good times and bad.
The last 10 years have brought more variables to the table that have to be accounted for and incorporated into the Wealth Equation.
Fortunately, there is an equation.
“Think about it. Do you have any idea what the right answer is to these questions?”
Do you know if you should be buying a house in 2024? Wait until 2025? Interest rates are 7 percent! Want to know where they will be next year?
Do you know if you should be leaving your job for another?
Do you know if you should buy gold or stocks or commodities or futures or anything else?
Do you know what allows you to grow wealth like those in the upper-income bracket?
Most people don’t have the answer to those questions. They’ll never learn the answer to those questions. And there is a sad reason this is the case. We’ll talk about this in depth during the 10 Week E-Course.
And there are cut and dried and answers to all of those questions.
The big picture is now scripted.
You can build wealth or you can fall off the cliff. It’s all a choice.
But keep in perspective that money, or what money buys is more about the quality of life for the rest of your life than it is about skyscrapers and personal jets.
Time.
Love.
Money.
You really need all three to have a life you deserve.
And when you do you have all three, you have REAL WEALTH.
The answer to “how do I build wealth” is pretty simple, but the execution requires finesse. There is absolutely a small number of approaches that are right and a monstrous set that are wrong.
And without wealth, access to time, love and money, you could survive but you will barely be alive.
Wealth in one way, is like an Oasis…
It is yours and it is there to serve you when you need it. And like reaching the Oasis, you start out in the middle of nowhere and only those who get to The Oasis will drink the cool water.
I don’t want to sound all serious about wealth. It has it’s fun side too.
Wealth also has some perks to it.
Wealth isn’t about the limo, although I do like the limo.
It’s not about the Penthouse Suite…but it is sweet. (I rarely use the jacuzzi, but I like the VIP service and special treatment.)
It’s not about getting paid to travel to all kinds of exotic places in the world, although that’s pretty cool.
For me personally, wealth is about safety, security, peace of mind, never having to worry about what life will be like next year, 5 years from now, 15 years from now, 25 years from now, 35 years from now. It’s taken care of. Not exactly exciting stuff to think about. But for me, it solves a myriad of problems.
Wealth allows some people the ability to party nonstop.
Wealth allows some people to have hot cars and hit all the hot bars.
Wealth allows some people to be socialites and the center of the attention.
Here’s the thing. If you earn it, do what you want and live how you choose.
Today it’s hard to think of an argument to not make it a big Life Priority.
There are plenty of “roads to wealth,” now you can actually take your pick…
About 1 in 10 of the wealthy simply inherit it. That’s good for them. It did nothing for you and me.
9 in 10 who choose to be wealthy secured themselves in predictable ways. And there really are a few predictable ways people become wealthy. The last 20 years have given us more opportunities than ever.
It’s such a paradox. There have never been more ways to achieve wealth.
It’s really important to know which of those ways are a) best for you and b) going to be easiest and ecological, going forward.
The Comprehensive Wealth Accumulation Method
The Wealth Accumulation Program helps you to work with a tool called The Wealth Matrix where you see how Money, Time and Love interweave into this thing called life. In the end, you see what actions to take when to take them, how to measure your results and ultimately have what you want.
This course will guide you so you can begin the step by step process of breaking away from the chains that bind people to the past and the status quo and begin living an exciting, hopeful, abundant future.
Perhaps you sell products and services, or maybe you work at a good old-fashioned “job.” That is all history. You may or may not choose to make adjustments. There’s lots of right answers and many times more wrong ones. You’ll see them all play out in the game at lightning speed.
In just 11 weeks, with the assistance of the course, I’ll guide you through a method of safely and securely creating shifts in your life.
Abundance and financial freedom are predictable commodities.
By taking advantage of the little known but very important, Price’s Law, I’ll show you how you can virtually assure yourself any result you desire in any field or niche. Price’s Law makes wealth accumulation as predictable as the eventual arrival of a plane en route to a destination.
You’ll literally be able to look at yourself and say, “Ah, in order to get what I want, I simply to do this.” And you don’t have to guess. It’s all laid out for you.
I’m just like you. I had to learn the hard way. The very hard way. I looked at every “opportunity” (scam) and bought into more than a few. It got old quickly.
I changed my approach.
I started studying the DIFFERENCES between people who grow wealth and those who don’t. I found what most of the serious students of the affluent have found. Most of the things reported in pop psychology books and magazines don’t make much difference in achievement…in greatness…in wealth.
You learn what you NEVER learn in college!
The fact is that there’s a LOT of stuff both the affluent and the poor (and everyone in between) do. This was a huge distinction and one that caused me to really scramble about a decade ago. The difference in what I thought was real vs. what IS real was the difference of millions of dollars.
If you really want to achieve Personal Financial Freedom, the freedom from bills and living paycheck to paycheck…you can be quite sure it will happen.
Everything you learn in this course will be…
a) tangible.
b) something YOU can actually DO.
c) take work but not slavery.
d) vehicles that I’ve taken and can vouch for their safety.
Wealth is Best Generated with VERY Small Risks
I’m pretty risk averse….OK, VERY risk averse.
The first decision you make is to not make stupid decisions.
The second decision you make it to MOVE NOW. I’ve done what I have set out to do by of having a really good playbook, being smart enough to do things I find interesting or things I actually LIKE to do, and yes, recognizing and getting past limitations. (Ex. I don’t look like Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise)
If you’re looking to emulate the extremes of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, this is the wrong place for you.
If you would like to live an abundant life where you achieve Financial Freedom…Personal Freedom, then here is the place. You will be given the keys. All you have to do is turn the keys in the ignition and “go.”
It’s an eight-week process. It’s fascinating, introspective, you REALLY learn about YOU. You’ll find out how you ended up where you are. You’ll find out exactly how to get where you want to go.
The approach I’ve developed for you is unique and it is special in that it accounts for personal significance and meaning in the equation of growing a life of abundance.
Life without meaning has no point. You’ll find out in The Wealth Accumulation System that you can have most of what you want in life. You can have almost anything you choose and you want to choose with what is really going to give you your best life possible.
You may not “have it all,” but you will be, do and have those things you’ve always wanted.
Ten weeks where you’ll apply what you learn and create pathways to financial freedom in your life!
Question:
If I could show you how to create the life you desired, adopt the mindset of the wealthy, and literally give you a step-by-step handbook to manifest your life filled with abundance — would you be interested?
And what happens when you put this system into practice after the course is completed??
Legend Point: You will know exactly what to do, step by step. Your Wealth Matrix keeps you on course and moving forward at all times.
The Comprehensive Wealth Creation and Accumulation System is a wonderful experience, and if you register today you will not pay $10,000 which is what many, many seminars that purport to offer a wealth building system charge. The Comprehensive Wealth Accumulation System is $2,997.
But you can pre-register now and save!
For this ONE TIME ONLY introductory offering of The Wealth Accumulation Course, you get in for only $1777.
You can use any credit card or Pay Pal.
Reserve Your Spot Now!
