Persuasive Speakology Transcript

Copyright Influence Mastery Inc.
Persuasive Speakology - Module 1

Welcome to Persuasive Speakology with me, Paul Mascetta. Super
excited as always, to deliver this training to you. I'm excited to
deliver this training specifically because I sat down with my team.
And we pored through surveys and research and documentation
and emails and feedback that we got from customers all through
the years. And I wanted to create something that would solve the
problem that we found was running rampant. And it was evident in
all the feedback that we got from our customers, and from our
email subscribers. And that was the root cause of their lack of
ability to be influential and persuasive started with a lack of
confidence, a lack of belief in themselves. A lack of not having the
knowledge or the techniques or strategies all encompassed under
one roof when it comes to speaking persuasively.

And so really, my goal with this program was to create something
completely different. To create a new language of sorts. A language
that you could adopt, and integrate into your life that would take
you from being a shy, introverted, nervous person who has trouble
articulating their thoughts, who has trouble speaking in front of
groups of people, who has trouble getting out what they need to get
out in order to be successful in life. And take that person and
transform them into a complete master when it comes to the use of
words to persuade other people.

And so what we boiled this down to what we were able to determine
would work best is a five-part method. And when you utilize this
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five-part method that makes up what we call Persuasive

Speakology, you now have a resource that you can turn to, in
negotiations, in sales environments, in casual conversations, in
public speeches, where you're almost treating this like a profession.
You are a professional persuasive speaker, so to speak. And so the
five-part method consists of first, triggering emotions.

And we'll get into this in module one, but the main premise behind
this is that humans are primarily emotional creatures. We would
like to think that we're logical, that we scrutinize, and that we
always make the best possible decisions based on intellectual
review. But the truth of the matter is, that we make most of our
decisions based on emotion. And then we use logic later to justify
those decisions. And even the most logical decisions, even the most
seemingly logical decisions are still backed by emotion. And so the
logical decision to not jump in front of a moving truck is still an
emotional decision because it's backed by the emotion of fear, the
fear of death.

The second part is to captivate the mind because even though we
are primarily emotional creatures, we do utilize the left side of the
brain, we do utilize our intellect. And so to be truly persuasive, you
have to be able to appeal to both. You have to be able to trigger
emotion in people, but you also have to be able to captivate the
mind. And so what I want you to think about is, as I said, because
we primarily use emotion first and then logic second. We want to be
able to trigger that emotion, but then captivate the mind in such a
way, that after the person has an interaction with you, whether it's
a one on one interaction, or in a group of a million people, we want
them to also have something that was intellectually appealing to
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them, so that they can justify their decision to comply with you, to
buy from you, to believe in what you're asking them to believe, to
do what you're asking them to do, etc.

Then the third part of the method is to assess the landscape. And so
I tell people all the time that even though when we talk about the
principles of influence, persuasion, the human mind, and
psychology, even though they're timeless principles. Because the
thoughts and behaviors of human beings haven't changed since the
dawn of time, and they're not going to change anytime soon. There
are certain variables that dictate how successful we can be when we
utilize a certain set of tactics, strategies, or techniques. And the
three main variables are circumstance, environment, and situation.

And so when we go to an environment, you communicate
differently with people at a funeral than you do at a wedding. You
communicate differently with your best friend than you do with
your boss. And so if you were to use a certain technique to persuade
someone, you-- Even though that specific technique is designed to
get a certain result, it might not be the best technique to use based
on the situation environment or the circumstance. And so in part
three of the method, we assess the landscape. We assess the
different types of environments and situations where you would be
utilizing the techniques and strategies and when to use them in
those particular times, which ones work best.

Next part is to merge with the audience. And so what that really
means is that regardless of how good you are triggering emotion,
how good you are captivating the mind, how good you are at public
speaking, negotiating, selling; the fact of the matter is, if you
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cannot merge with your audience and become one with them,
chances are all of that other stuff doesn't matter. And I always circle
back to something that I heard from Tony Robbins years ago. He
said people are persuaded by people that they like, and people that
they want to be like. And so merging with the audience is just
simply connecting with them in a way where they feel safe,
comfortable, and engaged around you.

And then the last part of the method is to influence behavior. Is to
then take everything that we've learned and put it all together and
then influence the thoughts and behaviors of others, to do what we
want them to do. To believe in what we want them to believe. To
launch a movement. To motivate them. To do whatever it is that we
want to do with our words.

So, let's move right into part one, which is triggering emotion. And
so we start with the psychology behind effective speaking. So, first,
I want to talk to you a little bit about what works and what doesn't
work. Emotions move people, to persuade others, and to influence
them to take action or transform you, as a speaker, must appeal to
their emotions. Now, even if you have data to support your cause,
the data will be meaningless to people unless you can wrap it up in
words that will stir their emotions and engage their spirits.

And so let's just say your message was being backed by data. So,
let's say that you were selling a microphone. I'm recording this on a
Yeti blue microphone, I bought it on Amazon. I went through tons
of microphones throughout the years, and I found this to be the
best one. It's a USB microphone, which means it plugs right into the
computer, it was about 100 bucks. It's got a couple of different
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settings on it. But what I like most about it is that when you choose
one of the settings in the back of the microphone, what it does is it
enables the microphone to pick up your voice based on the direction
that it's coming in. So, rather than picking up every single thing,
every single sound that's in the room, it picks up just my voice
based on the direction that it's going to.

Now let's say I was selling this microphone, and I wanted to present
data. And my data was that 85% of customers said that they prefer
this microphone because of the directional feature. That's good,
that's fine. That's good supportive data that ultimately supports my
argument. But if I were to instead just go back and tell you a story
about how years ago I bought a different microphone, and I created
the best product under the sun. And when I finished recording, I
realized that the microphone picked up every sound in the room.
And so regardless of how good the product was, the customers
didn't like it because of the sound quality. Which one of those is
going to resonate with you more? The second one, okay. Just
because I have data that supports my cause, my argument, my
speech doesn't necessarily mean that the message is going to stick
with people, because I haven't touched any emotions.

But if I talk about the emotion of the customers not being happy. If I
talk about my frustration, with the fact that I spent hours on end,
creating this one product and thought it was the best possible thing
I could create, only to find out that I wasted all that time because
the microphone wasn't good. When I talk about those types of
emotions, I can resonate with you a lot better. Words create
emotion. So, we need emotion, right, we need to trigger emotion
and words create emotion. Right? If I tell you that I think you are
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unintelligent, not good-looking, and a poor excuse for a human

being; how's that gonna make you feel? What kind of emotions? Is
that going to stir up in you? I don't think any of that by the way.
Conversely, if I were to tell you that I think that you're extremely
intelligent, that I think you're good looking, that I think you're
well-read. How does that make you feel? See, words have the ability
to create emotions in people.

Churchill was one of the world's greatest speakers. Now, he actually
had a stutter but he used it to his advantage by pausing and letting
it out before a keyword or vital phrase to provoke an emotional
response. He would use unusual words that were clear within the
context of a sentence, and grab his audience's attentions and
emotions. And so he used this stammer pause to take a familiar
phrase and lend it grandeur. So, here, he does it with a
Shakespearean reference where he says, “Let us, therefore, brace
ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves to our duties that if
the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for 1,000 years, they
will say, this was our finest hour.” And so, just by changing the way
that he's speaking, right. The words are important too, but just by
changing the way that he's speaking, he's evoking that emotion of
pride and seriousness, and faithfulness to his country.

Emotional impact equals power. Those who have mastered using
emotional triggers in their speeches, use historical anecdotes,
biblical and poetry, quotes or lyrics from emotional and
inspirational song lyrics. An inspiring example from Martin Luther
King was, “When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from
every village, and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we
will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black
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men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics
will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro
spiritual, Free at last, Free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free
at last.” Notice also the repetition that Churchill and King put into
these remarks. Repeating something in a slightly different way,
helps your listeners to assimilate your intent.

Now, human beings make judgments about other human beings
quickly. And these judgments are not necessarily logical. They are
based primarily on emotions. I mean, think about that. If you make
a snap subconscious judgment about somebody within the first
seven seconds of meeting them, which, that's what the statistics
tell us. It can't possibly be logical because you haven't had enough
time to know that person to make and formulate a logical opinion
about them. So, it can only be based on emotions. We follow leaders.
As a presenter, you're automatically thought of as an authority on a
subject the audience expects you to lead. But you will quickly lose
favor if you don't own that spirit of leadership from the start. And I
talk a lot about the Milgram controversial experiments which show
that it's very difficult for most people to resist authority. You can
use these findings to your own advantage.

And so basically, what the Milgram experiments told us, was, a
bunch of people were presented with the presence of an authority.
And the authority told the people that were participating in the test
or in the experiment to administer electrical shocks to people. And,
of course, the electrical shock mechanism wasn't really turned on.
It was fake, it was staged. But really, the premise of the experiment
was to see if these people would administer shocks that they knew
would ultimately be lethal, or could potentially be lethal, simply
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because the authority told them to. And what we found was that
they absolutely would.

And so what this tells us is that authority is extremely important.
You know, when you go to the doctor, and you don't feel so good,
what happens? You go to the doctor, you make an appointment for
three o'clock, they don't see you until 3:30. And then you wait in the
waiting room, in the exam room for another half an hour. So, the
doctor comes in an hour later. He examines you, he tells you you got
a sore throat, he writes you a script he sends you on your way. What
do you do? You go, you leave, you fill your script, you take your
medicine. You don't get mad at the doctor for making you wait an
hour, you don't question if he or she knows what they're talking
about. You just accept what they tell you. Right? Unless it's a
life-threatening disease that requires a second opinion, you are just
going to listen to the doctor. And that is because human beings are
hard-wired to listen to and obey authorities. And so it's your job to
start to adopt and adapt who you are, and take on the role of a
leader.

We read people quickly. We read people within a split second and we
pay attention to body movement as well as vocal tone. The past 15
years of psychological research clearly indicates that people made
an unconscious judgment within one second, as Malcolm Gladwell
explains in his book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.
The way that you stand with confidence, and the way that you
modulate your speech, as well as the warmth of your tone all make
a difference to whether people will let you have access to their
emotions. And I want you to think about this because as I said,
when we first started, really what this program is designed to do is
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to make you a professional. It's to transform you into a shy,

nervous, novice person who can never seem to gather their
thoughts. Or maybe that's not your issue. Maybe you can gather
your thoughts, but you have a problem getting them out. Or maybe
you're just not simply paying attention to all of these different facts
that you're now learning. Well, think about the advantage that
you're going to have over the average and poor communicators of
the world who don't pay attention to any of this stuff.

As I tell people all the time, there are three different types of
communicators: poor, average, and master. Poor communicators
only think about themselves, only see the world through their eyes,
get quickly offended, expect everyone to think the way they do. Are
not cognizant at all of other people's feelings or how they should be
communicating with other people. Average communicators do a
little better, they can build rapport and environments that are easy
to build rapport in. They are able to see the world through the eyes
of other people. They are somewhat vigilant in how they
communicate with other people. And then we have master
communicators. Master communicators can create rapport with
anyone in any type of environment. They can reduce and reverse
resistance. They can win arguments, they can win negotiations,
they can close, they can sell. And that's because those people are
very well aware of all of these different things that I'm sharing with
you now. They are professional speakers and professional
persuasion masters, for lack of a better term.

We sync with others. We simulate the emotions of others as we
listen to them. We also sync the patterns of our brains when
listening to another person speak. Two emotions that are highly
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contagious are nervousness and enthusiasm. So, if you're nervous,

your listeners’ going to quickly pick up on this. But if your talk is
filled with vitality and enthusiasm, your audience will feel the
inspiration. So, I want you to think about that for a second. Both of
them are equally as contagious. But you as the master
communicator have the choice and the power to determine which
one you want to use and which one you want to become contagious.
Which one do you want to infect other people with, enthusiasm or
anxiety?

So, now let's talk about how the brain actually processes
information. Because we talked about persuasive speakology, we
talked about the language of persuasion, we talked about triggering
emotion, we talked about captivating the mind. And really, all we're
doing is transferring information. Information from within us to
other people. And we do that verbally and non-verbally. So, how
does the brain actually processed that? Well, many models of how
the brain functions simply are not correct. For example, there are a
wealth of studies that show memories are not stored in individual
cells. Large areas of the brain become active when triggering
memories or emotional experiences, whether they are pleasurable
or painful.

In a study of plane crash survivors, Brian Levine, a
neuropsychologist at the University of Toronto, recalling the plane
crash lit up five or six areas of the brain. So, again, many studies
show that memories are not stored in individual cells. The large
areas of the brain become active when we trigger memories or
emotional experiences. The brain is also not a computer. Many
people think that the human brain is a computer. But really, that's
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not correct. Even though we are certainly capable of logical thought

and problem-solving, the brain is an organ that responds to
sensory stimuli. It then connects those stimuli to a deeply personal
emotional response. For example, if you and I both attend the
concert, and we're both listening to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony,
the way that your brain reacts and processes that information will
not be exactly the same as mine does. So, this is where the objective
becomes subjective.

You know, if you put an apple in the front of a room in front of 20
people, each person would perceive that apple slightly differently
even though we all know it’s an apple. We know it’s red, we know
what it tastes like, we know it's a fruit. It's an apple, it's a pretty
objective thing. Yet, because we all perceive the world in a different
way, it actually becomes a subjective thing. Perception is reality.
The brain responds to stories to create emotions. So, your goal as
the speaker is to find a way to touch people's emotions. If you want
to inspire them to take action, then you want them to feel
inspiration. If you want them to feel empowered, then you have to
find a way to communicate that sense of power to them. There are
some universal stories and patterns that can accomplish this goal.
Even though each person will process your words, your story, your
metaphors, slightly differently.

For example, most of us as children were told the story of Pinocchio
when we were young. All of us interpreted and stored the memories
of that story differently. But today, it's common for people to make
the motion of touching their noses when they're saying something
that they feel isn't true. It's a tell of that universal story. Using your
brain takes energy. Our brains require a huge amount of energy to
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function. Think about how you feel first thing in the morning when
you're asked to solve a difficult problem. My response is usually
slow down, I haven't had my coffee yet. And so really what's going
on is problem-solving involves use of the conscious mind. And we
don't use our conscious mind all day. When you concentrate on a
problem or you make a decision, then you're using the conscious
mind. But our brains would get exhausted if we had to do this all the
time.

Also, depending on what you're doing, it can be somewhat of a slow
process. So, your unconscious mind takes over and handles the
majority of the workload. So, one way that our brains solve this
problem is by putting actions and learn patterns on autopilot. So,
for example, when you first learn to drive a car, you had to think
about how to turn the steering wheel or how to park, or how to hit
the gas or the brake so that the car doesn't jerk back and forth. But
now that you've driven for years, your conscious mind doesn't have
to work to drive at all, unless you're jarred by something that you
don't expect, right?

So, if you've been driving for over a year, when you get in your car
and start driving, chances are you're not thinking about anything
that has to do with the function of driving at all. I mean, unless
you're in a new state and maybe you’re seeing some scenery that
you've never seen before. Nothing about the car driving experience
itself is probably even coming to your conscious mind. The entire
process is taking place, unconsciously, you are functioning
completely on autopilot until someone runs a stop sign and almost
crashes into you, then you snap and instantly start using the
conscious mind. So, really, the point of what I'm trying to tell you
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here is that human beings function primarily most of the time,

unconsciously. And then we utilize the conscious mind when we
feel it's required to do so.

So, the subconscious mind is the iceberg below the surface. So, once
something is learned or process, it no longer needs to be part of the
conscious mind on a daily basis. You know, psychologists have a
word for us human beings. We’re called cognitive misers, meaning
that we do not like to expend our cognitive resources. And so one
way of preserving them is, once we learn something, and it's
processed, we say to ourselves, okay, this no longer has to utilize
space in our conscious mind. We can now put it into the
unconscious mind. And so you'll slip in and out of a conscious state
at many times throughout the day. Surprising as it may seem as
much as 95% of our behavior, reactions, and actions on a daily
basis happen at this subconscious level.

The subconscious is emotionally charged. So, the subconscious
mind also stores our experiences, knowledge, and memories, which
are all labeled with the feelings and emotions we experience during
those sensory events. Our subconscious minds use patterns. And
these patterns in our minds are how we attach meaning to new
people, objects or events. Over time, this is how our attitudes
develop. We can reprogram our subconscious minds through things
like hypnosis, and self-hypnosis.

But the bottom line is, we are functioning most of the time using
our subconscious mind, and we are assigning meanings to people,
objects, and events completely subconsciously without even
realizing it. And so you as an influencer, you as a master speaker,
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you as a master of influence, and persuasion, have to know that

every single thing that comes out of your body or your physical
appearance is going to be subconsciously processed and labeled by
your audience. Which is fine because we're going to learn how to
utilize that to our advantage. But for now, I just want you to
remember that fact. That wraps up Module One, I'll see you in
Module Two.
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Welcome to Module Two of Persuasive Speakology. In this module,
we're going to talk about something that may seem on the surface
to not be very important. But I can tell you from research and from
years of working with people that it is extremely important. And it's
really about the inner game that you have when it comes to
speaking persuasively. It's about getting your head together. To
master anything in life takes research, dedication, and study. Once
you obtain that expertise, it's a question of feeling comfortable in
your own skin, and allowing that expression of yourself to come
forward with no negative self-talking impeding your progress.
Remember, that the opponent within your head is more of an
obstacle to your success than the audiences’. So, prepare yourself
well. But when the moment arrives to speak, stay in the moment
and act without hesitation, and without second-guessing yourself.

So, let's talk about some influence principles. First three, are
reciprocity, commitment, and consistency, and social proof. And so
what these tell us is that if someone does us a favor, we tend to
support them in turn. So, that's how the law of reciprocity works. It
tells us that if somebody does something good for us, we tend to
want to return the favor. Think about the last time you got a
Christmas card from somebody, and you realize that you didn't
send one to them. Kind of makes you feel a little yucky. Second is
commitment and consistency, which tells us that we have an
inherent need to be consistent with our own self-image. And social
proof tells us that we’re more likely to do things if we can witness
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others doing the same. And we don't like to miss out when there's a
buzz about something.

Second set of influence principles are liking authority and scarcity.
Now, what these principles tell us is that we are predisposed to be
influenced or align ourselves with people that we like. As I said
when I quoted Tony Robbins, we are more likely to be persuaded by
people that we like, and people that we want to be like. So, think
about the difference between someone that you can't stand, maybe
a co-worker, or a relative that you wish you were related to, an old
friend. Somebody that you really just don't have much of a liking
for asking you to do them a favor, versus your best friend asking
you to do them a favor, right? You're more likely to do the favor for
the person that you actually like. Second is that speakers should
present themselves as authorities in order to influence others. We
talked briefly about the Milgram experiments and about how people
are more likely to comply and less likely to resist in the presence of
an authority. I actually created a whole course called the authority
code because it's that important.

And then the last principle is scarcity, which tells us that as
something becomes less available, we tend to want it more.
Diamonds. Diamonds are, “a rare type of jewel.” Well, I gotta tell
you, I've been on this planet for 38 years, and I still have not seen a
shortage of diamonds anywhere. And so my guess is that some guy
many moons ago, figured out how this scarcity thing works. And he
decided to tell people that diamonds are rare, and it's stuck. And
people to this day will pay more money for diamonds than they will
for other types of jewels because they are perceived to be rare. This
not only works with physical items, it works with human beings.
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Think about how things are when two people meet for the first time
in the dating arena. They meet, they go out on a date, they hit it off,
they text back and forth, they call each other. And all of a sudden,
one person suddenly becomes less available. What happens? I
mean, this has happened to me, it's happened to the best of us, it's
happened to all of us. What happens is you start to desire that
person more as they become less available.

Persuasion techniques are like a blueprint. Anyone can learn the
power and the proper persuasion techniques to influence, persuade,
and get others to comply in business and in life. But the measure of
how successful you will be in making others remember your
message, as well as repeat it to others is going to be based on how
effective your delivery is. That delivery is largely based on your
speaking persona, and how effectively you master the following six
persuasion power lovers. Now, this is one of those things that
makes persuasive speakology different than anything else that I've
created. Because I've never really talked about the six power
persuasion levers in one single context. I've talked about them
sporadically, but never in one single context. And they are
extremely important because these power levers are ultimately
going to dictate how successful you are in using persuasion and
influence techniques.

So, effective speaking requires that you create a persona that will
leave your audience with a favorable impression of you, as well as
the topic and message you wish to share. So, ask yourself these
questions for areas in which you can improve. What is your
awareness level? This is the first power lever is your awareness
level. In order to be persuasive, you need to establish rapport with
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others. How in alignment are you with the beliefs, thoughts, and
values of your audience? How well do you know their wishes,
desires, and perhaps most importantly, their feelings? Listen
carefully to others and ask probing questions in order to get the
inner core of what others are seeking. Then deliver it to them, or
wrap up your message in the language and aesthetics needed to
connect to your audience his deepest emotions. So, awareness is the
first power lover. How aware are you of the other person's feelings,
thoughts, desires, beliefs, whether it's a single individual or a mass
audience of a million people? How aware are you of what's going on
within them?

Second is your authenticity. Now, most people have an internal
measurement mechanism for genuineness or a BS meter. They
sense whether someone has their best interests at heart or if they
don't. Now, if they feel for any reason that the person isn't
authentic, they immediately tune out that message. Be
introspective. Do you care about your audience? Do you really want
them to be successful? Perhaps even more successful than you are.
If you don't feel secure, or authentic in what you're offering, you
may want to consider offering something else. A product or service
you believe in will make your true authentic self shine. Now, a lot of
times I see people screw this up because they sway too far to one
side. There are two sides to this coin. There's the authentic self, and
there's the persuasive self. So, the authentic self is who you are. It's
who you are as a human being. It's who you’ve been for the
however many years you've been on this earth. It's the way you
think, what you like to eat, what your beliefs are, the way you dress,
the way you carry yourself, what your beliefs and opinions are on
world matters, etc. That's your authentic self, that's who you are.
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And then there's the persuasive self. The persuasive self is the
fine-tuned version of that authentic self that will most effectively
resonate with the audience to accomplish the task at hand. A lot of
times people are either way too far on the left, on the authentic
side, and they're keeping it too real, almost. Or they're too far to the
other side trying to be too persuasive. And so let me explain what I
mean by that. There's a mantra that I see all over social media about
keeping it real and being yourself and acting who you are by nature,
and I get that. But if you sway too far to the authentic self, and it's
not conducive to what the persuasive self should be doing, you're
not going to persuade people. And so the example that I give all the
time as many years ago, I was running a fitness club. I had 50
people working for me. It was a big, huge operation in midtown
Manhattan. And I had a guy come in and he applied for a job as a
housekeeper. He came in for an interview. And he showed up to the
interview wearing a white t-shirt, a pair of shorts, and sneakers.
And when I sat down to talk to this guy, I realized he was a very
intelligent guy, very well-spoken, very articulate. We had a lot of
the same things in common and he knew how to do the job. So, by
all means, he should have gotten the job.

But when I asked him why you showed up to the job interview in
sneakers and shorts, he said, “Well, I was so confident in my ability
to get the job that I knew that you would see past the way that I was
dressed and hired me anyway.” And boy, was he wrong. He made a
big mistake. He came in too authentic. He came in, and for the sake
of being authentic, and being who he was, he lacked the tools that
he needed to be his persuasive self to persuade me to hire him. And
so I didn't hire him because what I realized is that he doesn't
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understand certain social norms. Or he doesn't understand context,

environment, and circumstance. And that when you show up to a
job interview, regardless of what kind of a job you're applying for,
you should be wearing dress pants, and a dress down shirt, maybe a
tie, maybe a suit jacket.

Some would say maybe you don't have to go that far. But the point
is that he was swayed way too far, to the side of authenticity, and
not to the side of being persuasive. And so what you have to find is
that happy medium, where you're able to merge who you are, by
nature, your authentic self, with the best version, the most
fine-tuned version of you, that will ultimately accomplish the task
at hand, which is persuading other people.

Next is your authority. Again, authority is super, super important.
Of all of the laws of persuasion, I often say that authority is the
most powerful because it's the only one that doesn't require you
have to do anything per se to elicit a response. So, with reciprocity,
you got to give something to get something. With liking, you have
to do things to make people like you. With scarcity, you have to take
things away in order for them to want them. But with authority,
you're not really doing anything. You're creating an image and a
persona of yourself that causes people to comply with you simply
from being in your presence.

And so if I, for whatever reason had to abandon every single
influence, and persuasion law, or best practice or principle, and I
could only use one, it would be authority, that's how important it is.
And so the way that you stand and deliver your message is going to
give your audience a feeling of whether you know your subject or
20
you don't. Do you own the stage? Do you use words that are
powerful and stir people's emotions? Do you have a commanding
presence? Does your voice have a richness and resonance? Do you
use gestures and pauses to give your message emphasis? All of
these things are important factors in whether your audience
perceives that you are an authority on your subject.

Next one, is your aptitude. So, the way that I want you to think
about this is your authority is about your perceived knowledge and
expertise. But your aptitude is about your actual knowledge and
expertise that you have on a particular subject. So, no one knows
everything about their subject. But it's important to work toward
mastery in an area if it's going to be your life's work. That means
you work every day to add expertise, credibility, and knowledge in
the topics that will make up the core of your message. When you're
truly knowledgeable about a particular subject, it shines out like
rays from the sun. So, again, authority is about your perceived
knowledge and expertise. And your aptitude is about your actual
expertise and knowledge.

And so the example that I give is that you could be the greatest
lawyer on the block. You could know everything about case law, you
could have graduated from Harvard Law School. But if you can't
convince a judge or jury or at the very least your clients that you are
that good, you will likely fail to the attorney who may be less
qualified that can demonstrate that, perceive the knowledge and
expertise. And so what I want you to realize is that perceived
knowledge and expertise and actual knowledge and expertise are
two very different things. Both of which are essential, though.
Because if you don't have actual knowledge and expertise, but
21
you've cultivated such a high level of authority that people believe

that you do. Ultimately, you're going to turn out to be a fraud and
that's not good either. So, you have to have both of them.

Next is your adaptive ability. So, being an effective speaker is all
about flexibility. You need to be attuned to your audience. Whether
it's one person, a small group of people, or thousands. You'll
receive verbal feedback, as well as feedback from people's attitudes
and body movements. Your success is going to be somewhat
dependent on how adaptable you are to their feedback. Can you
easily and smoothly shift your presentation to be more in
alignment with your audience's feedback?

Next is your articulative ability. How masterful are you at
articulating your message? Do you have command over the English
language? Do you choose your words carefully? Do your words
convey action and vitality? Do you make an effort to add new,
interesting specific words to your vocabulary? Can you adapt the
vocabulary you're using based on the receptiveness or level of the
audience? For example, if you were using and giving a scientific
speech, you would prepare it differently for a group of colleagues
than you would for a mainstream layperson. So, again, you could
have all this knowledge inside of you that you want to get out to the
world. But your way of getting it out to the world is largely going to
be dependent on your articulative ability.

There are many different potential hooks that you can use to start
your speaking presentation. The most important thing is to find
hooks that you feel comfortable with. If you feel comfortable, then
the hook will become a natural part of your speaking persona and
22
not something you just tacked on to get attention. So, this is a little
trick and a little technique that I like to share with people where
let's just say you were fishing, right? You cast the line out into the
water, and then you have the bait which is attached to the hook.
And the hook ultimately captures the fish and brings them to you.
Well, using a hook to communicate your ideas is a very powerful
way to get people drawn in just like the fish. So, what I want to
share with you are three different potential hooks.

First, you can make an outrageous claim, because that ultimately
gets people's attention. But then you have to back it up with a story
or data that's presented in an interesting unique way. Second, is to
tell a story. People remember stories, and they have the potential to
touch people's emotions, which as we said, is very important.
That's the first part of this entire process. Or show a video that's
relevant to the topics at hand. You could also ask some questions to
get people thinking and lead them to a hypnotic state. Set up an
expectation of what people can expect from your presentation, and
what the takeaway will be. Show them an interesting object that will
pique their curiosity. You could also use a quote or adapt a quote
and connect it with the topics in your speech. Begin with, “Imagine
if you could…” and connect this with the topics you'll discuss, to get
your audience to engage their thinking. You can also reference an
event such as an important moment in history that connects to
your talk.

In addition to all the power levers that you need to create an
effective speaking persona, you also need to offer the audience
something new and exciting. Novelty grabs interest and attention.
Our brains are hard-wired to look for something new. It's these
23
new items, something that appears delicious that makes us curious

to know more. Begin with a base of novelty and create a style that's
uniquely yours and can be branded as part of your presentation
persona. So, circling back to what I told you in the earlier module
about how we function primarily using the subconscious mind, and
then the conscious mind gets engaged every once in a while.

So, going back to the example that I gave about driving. You're
driving on the highway, you're about two hours into the trip, you're
thinking about what you're going to do when you reach your
destination. Let's say you're driving to a casino. You're thinking
about whether you're going to play roulette, whether you're going
to play blackjack, what time you're going to get there, if the line is
going to be long to check in, right? You're thinking about all these
different things except the task at hand which is driving. And then
suddenly a deer runs onto the highway and you have to instantly
react, figure out how far the deer is from you, what direction it's
going, and how you need to slow the car down in such a way that
you don't hit other cars or crash into the deer.

So, what's happened here is your subconscious mind was making
you work and function on autopilot. And then all of a sudden, an
event takes place, which suddenly activates your conscious mind.
Well, that deer that came out onto the highway is the same exact
thing and serves the same exact purpose as using novelty when you
speak to people. Because when you get in front of a group of people,
chances are they're going to be functioning like you on that
highway, completely on a subconscious level. You need to bring the
deer into the equation to shock them on some level and grab their
interest. And so that's exactly how novelty works. It activates that
24
conscious part of the mind where we need people to be in order for

them to be truly engaged.

People also want knowledge. Your audience is going to crave
knowledge just as they would a cool drink in the desert, even if they
only have a very mild interest in the topic you're presenting. If you
can teach or present something new that relates to their everyday
lives, you'll accomplish your goals. Because what you've done is
given them a conversational piece. You've given them something
that they can remember, that they could potentially bring up in a
conversation, on a date, at a social environment, or a get-together
and talk about it. People love knowledge, and they love to show
other people that they've acquired knowledge.

Novelty, again, is super important. Learning something new
actually activates the same addictive reward sections of the brain
that are active when doing drugs, or gambling. Learning new things
gives you a buzz that's helpful instead of harmful to your brain.
Even data needs a soul. So, even statistics and mathematical data,
some of the most boring information in the world can be presented
in a novel fashion. TED Talks, I talk about them all the time. You can
Google them, you can go on YouTube. They are some of the most
highly viewed speeches in the world. Some of these YouTube videos
have five to 10 million, some of them even more views. And what I
love about TED Talks is that each one of them is limited to only 18
minutes. So, when you get a chance, Google or YouTube TED Talks.

One of the most well regarded TED speakers is Hans Rosling. He
tracks global health in connection to poverty. Now, instead of
providing bland statistics to his audience, he provided his
25
information in an animated morphing sequence. While the

information was playing on-screen, he called out the changes from
country to country as if he were broadcasting a sporting event. The
audience was intrigued and the information stuck. Why? Because he
presented his information in a novel way that caused every person
in there to remember exactly what he was talking about.

26

Welcome to Module Three. In this module, we're going to talk about
using your voice as a persuasive tool. Now, in the module after this,
we're going to talk about what you say. But in this module, really
what we're going to focus on is how you say things, how you utilize
your voice. Think of the best speaker that you've ever heard. Their
tone of voice was engaging. Their tone of voice gave you a feeling of
authority and an in-depth experience. They spoke with passion and
enthusiasm, but it was measured through their speech. They
paused here and there for emphasis, as they told you an exciting
story.

So, let's first talk about tonality. Your tone is like a map. We've all
heard speakers who speak in a dull, same-sounding monotone
voice. To engage your listeners, you need to put on some passion
and some enthusiasm into your voice. The voice throughout your
speech should be like a topographical map, some highs and some
lows based on the information you're offering. Or based on the
place you are at within your story. When you're authentic, and
when you have a presence of authority, these characteristics should
flow naturally from your voice. Don't be afraid to project and fill the
room with your presence. Strive for voice improvement. Not
everyone can have a radio quality voice. But anyone can improve
their voice by practicing.

One exercise you can do is to hum. Halfway through, start speaking,
and it will get a feeling for how to improve your voice quality so it
has more resonance. Knowing your material inside and out will give
27
you a feeling of confidence and enhance your tone so you can come
across as relaxed instead of nervous. One of the things I tell people
all the time is that competence leads to confidence. The more
competent you are in a particular area, subject or topic, the more
confident you're gonna be when you are speaking about it to other
people. Because you're not going to be so worried about if what
you're saying is correct. You're not going to be worried about if you
get challenged, or asked a question about something that you don't
have the answer to. When you've done your homework on
something, and you know your stuff inside out, the only logical
result is that you will be more confident about it. So, always
remember that competence leads to confidence.

Now, let's talk about the pace. When you're making a presentation
to just one person or a group of people, it's important to get a sense
of their natural pace of speaking, there's a huge difference from
region to region in terms of people's natural speaking pace. From
country to country, this is true as well. So, to establish rapport, you
want to do as the Romans do. Meaning, when in Rome, do as the
Romans do. So, you want to again be able to adapt your pace based
on what you picked up in the awareness stage of those six levers
that I mentioned before. Because if you're not aware at all, at how
the other person speaks, or how that group of people speaks, then
ultimately, you're not going to be able to adapt. So, again, step one
is being aware of the pace that they use so that you can then adapt
your pace to theirs. Most established speakers know that their pace
should be similar to a conversation they're having with someone
over dinner.

28
Brian Stevenson, another well known TED presenter speaks at a

little over 190 words a minute. Tony Robbins, the famous
motivational coach speaks at a high energy 240 words per minute,
almost as fast as an auctioneer. Kissinger, Secretary of State during
the Nixon administration was a brilliant man, but an incredibly
boring speaker, who spoke at a snail's pace of 90 words per minute.
So, find your sweet spot.

Pausing for emphasis is very important. Don't be afraid to pace
your speech. Most people who want to speak very quickly can seem
less confident. A pace that's too fast is associated with a burst of
adrenaline. So, you may appear nervous instead of confident like
Tony Robbins. And remember, those types of emotions are
contagious. When you pause, it seems like a long time. But for the
listeners, appropriate pauses, help them assimilate what you're
saying. So, they can anticipate what you're going to say next.

The volume of your voice. The volume that you use when speaking
makes a great deal of difference in the perception of your talk. If
you're too quiet, people will perceive that you're not confident.
What you want to find is optimal volume. A speaker who is speaking
at an adequate level can be heard by the audience, but only if the
listeners are paying careful, focused attention. There's quite a
difference between adequate volume and optimal volume. At the
optimal level, your audience can easily hear and understand every
confident word that you say.

You know, I teach Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to children. I do it mainly for
fun. I don't get paid to do it. It's something that I enjoy doing. I am
a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu purple belt. It's something that's a very
29
important part of my life. I truly and honestly believe in my heart,

the best form of self-defense on the planet. I won't get into a whole
speech on why I think that is, but it's something that I enjoy doing.
And there's another guy at the school who's a more talented
Grappler than I am. And so what I mean by that is we’re both purple
belts, but he got his purple belt, probably a year before I did. He's
been training a lot longer than I have. And when we spar, meaning,
when we roll or when we engage in combat to test our skills, he
always gets the better of me. And he was an assistant coach long
before I came.

And I started out as an assistant coach until eventually, I was given
my own class. And he was very upset about the fact that I was given
a class before him. And so we went to the owner of the school and
he made an argument stating that he has more experience than me,
and he's been around longer, and he's been an assistant coach
longer. And the owner of the school had to be blunt with him and
tell him that there are two aspects of teaching. There's the technical
side of teaching, where you have to know what you're talking about.
You have to make sure that the techniques that you're teaching
people are the correct techniques. And then there's the way that you
run the class, the way that you project your voice, the way that you
carry yourself so that people will actually absorb everything that
you are saying.

And after she had that conversation with him, he understood that
he ultimately was not the best person for that job because he was a
very shy, introverted person. When he speaks, he speaks very low.
The kids-- It's hard enough to keep children engaged between the
ages of four and eight years old. If you're not constantly doing
30
things to get their attention, like the first thing I'll do is ask them if
they want to play a game. And of course, every one of them raises
their hands. And so then I set the expectation of what they need to
do during the class. If they want to play the game at the end. I
constantly switch things up to keep them engaged. I use a lot of
analogies and stories when explaining things to them so that it
resonates with them in a way that they can understand. He doesn't
do any of that stuff.

Now, this is not about me, patting myself on the back saying what a
better coach I am. Because he's clearly a better Grappler than I am.
He gets the best of me every time we train together. I've never
tapped this guy once and he taps me all the time. But there's
something to be said about just knowing and having information,
and then having the ability to deliver that information in a way that
engages people. So, it's very important. And volume is one of the
key parts that unfortunately he's missing. He can't seem to
overcome that barrier of projecting his voice.

Then there's overpowering volume, which I have to admit
sometimes I've been accused of but I try to be cognizant of the
environment. But the bottom line is that volume is overpowering. If
you come off too strong, you're going to turn people off. What you
want to do is get optimal volume before you reach overpowering.
This is sometimes a fine line. And because speakers fear becoming
overpowering, they don't strive for optimal. But you have to strive
for optimal no matter what.

Then there's breathing. And so what you want to do is focus on
measured breathing. A measured pace of breathing so that you can
31
speak clearly and project from your diaphragm for resonance.

That's a very important aspect to a successful speaking style.

Posture also affects breathing. Posture makes a huge difference in
how effectively you're breathing as you're giving a speech. If you're
standing straight and tall and breathing in deeply, your voice is
going to have more richness and confidence. You also want to speak
on the breath. And so what that means is that you take in your full
breath as you begin to speak. You should have enough air to get
through your full sentence and take in a full breath before you begin
the next sentence.

So, now let's talk about some case studies. Some good and some
bad. So, here's a good one. Another TED Talk. Dr. Jill was explaining
the changes in teenage brains. And she used the speed and volume
of her voice to demonstrate the way hormones make teens’ brains
crazy. Because she sped up and slowed down her voice, she
demonstrated what she was talking about, and used her voice in a
creative way to do it.

And another good one, how to speak so that people want to listen.
Speaking Consultant, Julian Treasure who I happen to be a big fan
of does a demonstration showing that some people talk through the
noses, others from their voice boxes, and still others talk from deep
in the chest. And this last voice is the one that gives a deeper, richer
tone that conveys authority and purpose.

Now, when Jim Roddy, President of Jamison Publishing interviewed
John Dudenhoeffer for a recruiting job, he liked everything about
him, except his voice. Dudenhoeffer’s low key deliberate tone
32
worked well when he was an Air Force trainer. He had to loosen up
and put some vitality into his voice to work in the corporate world.
He practiced and was soon able to let his natural personality out,
thereby, garnering a top sales job. So, again, how you speak your
pace, your breathing, your tonality, and your volume are super,
super important.

You know, just as listening to music. If you hear a song that you
really like, but it's being played either too low, or someone sped it
up or slowed it down. It's not going to have the same effect as it
does if it was played at its natural speed at a volume that you're
really like. Same as if someone woke you up out of a dead sleep
blasting that song at top volume. Even though you like the song, the
way that the song is being played is going to have a negative effect
on you. And so this is exactly what I want you to keep in mind when
it comes to your voice.
33

Welcome back. So, in the last module, we covered the way that you
speak. We cover pace, tonality, and breathing. Different things that
you can do with your voice to change the way that it's perceived and
to change the way that it sounds. So, going back to the example that
I gave about listening to your favorite song, right. If you were
listening to your favorite song, but it was either being played too
loud, too low, too fast, or too slow, you wouldn't enjoy it as much as
you would if it was being played at the right speed at the right
volume.

Well, what we're going to talk about here is what makes up that
song, the ingredients in your speech, in your words. We're going to
talk about power, gestures, and words. So, gestures, what are they
and why are they important? Well, gesturing and speaking are very
tightly connected. If you make a video of yourself speaking, and you
cover your face with a post-it note, you can focus on the way you
use gestures. Gestures help you emphasize key points. Using
gestures will help your voice be natural and expressive. No one can
speak in a monotone voice when using gestures, because they
naturally emphasize the most important words and ideas.

Even now, as I'm sitting here, delivering this training and recording
this, I'm sitting in a room by myself, I'm in front of my computer
with my microphone. There's nobody watching me. But as I'm
paying attention, I have my hands out in front of me. And I'm
gesturing as if I was speaking to an audience. Because I know and
I'm aware of the effect that it will have on my voice. Your hands
34
instinctively know which words are worthy of emphasis. However,

practice will give your gestures muscle memory. Just like an athlete
prepares for a performance. A golfer practices their golf swing over
and over until they can perform it without thinking. We've all seen
talks where we can see the person's brain gears shifting as they
decide which gesture to use next.

Once your gestures are established by practicing, the thinking part
disappears, and they become a flowing muscle memory. Imagine,
how it would sound if you were singing in a concert hall, and the
conductor conducted the music in one-fifth of the time it would
usually take. Again, similar to the analogy I gave you before. At this
sped-up pace, would you enjoy the concert? Well, the same is true
with gestures. You can't speak slowly if you're gesturing quickly. To
slow down your speech, slow down your gestures. Words and
gestures have a physical as well as a mental connection, you want
your words and presentation to have some weight. So, be slow,
smooth, and expansive at the very beginning of the presentation to
order and make a strong impression on the audience.

The beginning of your presentation is very important. Practice the
first few sentences and the gestures, you want to use to emphasize
key points. And this really circles back to a body language lesson.
And body language is really what we're talking about here. That's
what gestures come down to. And what I tell people is that the body
and specifically, the hands and the arms are just an extension of
what's going on in the brain. And so one of the reasons why we're
able to detect deception from people when they're communicating
with us is when we see a disconnect between what the person's
saying with their mouth, and what they're doing with their body.
35
Because since the brain, excuse me, since the arms and the hands
specifically are an extension of what's going on in the brain, the
two of them have to be congruent with each other.

When there is incongruency, other people can detect this. Now, for
people that don't study body language and don't study
communication and gesturing, sometimes if you're communicating
with somebody, you just sense that they're lying. You just sense
that something is off. Well, what you're sensing is that whole wired
ability that is engulfed in each one of us, which tells us when
somebody is not being authentic, when there's a disconnect
between their body language and their verbal language. So, it's
ultra-important that you as a presenter, as a master influencer, as a
master speaker, understand how important your gestures are when
you're communicating. Because if you're not aware and cognizant
of what's going on, your audience could perceive you as being
dishonest, anxious, or nervous.

No one gestures all the time during a speech. And all people are
often uncertain where to place their hands. It's best to put your
hands in what I call the ready position, which is in front of you at
your waistline as if you are going to open a book. Your gestures will
flow most naturally from this position. Research has shown that
your audience won't even notice where you've placed your hands
throughout your speech if you use this position. If it gets
uncomfortable, you can use the secret handshake position where
you hold your thumb. It's useful to imagine that you have a shelf in
front of you. You can place your question to the audience on the
shelf or you can use both sides of the shelf to express opposites.

36
There are three types of gestures that are used in regular

conversation: give, chop, and show. With give, you’re offering the
audience a question to consider. Your hands are palm up and
extended. With chopped, your speaking emphatically to get your
point across to your listeners. Your hands are sideways as if you
were chopping something. With show, you're literally
demonstrating something to the audience, as if you were
demonstrating her left hand held one child's pigtail and her right
held the second child belt buckle.

And now I want to talk to you about the NLP Milton Model, which is
super effective when communicating with people. So, the Milton
Model is not precisely what Milton Erickson used to use with his
clients. So, Milton Erickson is known as the father of modern
hypnotherapy. He was one of the three people that Richard Bandler
and John Grinder, the developers of NLP studied because he was a
master communicator. And one of the reasons they studied him was
because he had a very different approach with his clients. Instead of
using a direct approach and telling them you will go into a trance,
he used a very indirect approach. So, he didn't bark orders or
commands at people. And he felt that doing this would cause them
to be a lot less resistant to what he wanted them to do. And it turns
out he was right because he was able to achieve results with his
clients that other people simply could not.

Now, really what this turned out to be as it pertains to NLP is a
language pattern code that Grinder and Bandler established from
their studies of Erickson's work. So, Milton use something called
artfully vague language chunks. And what he would do is use a very
general way of speaking. And the purpose of Milton's use of vague
37
language was to give the subject the context for taking charge of his
or her own beneficial change. The Milton Model is basically two
statements: what unspecified and how unspecified. The purpose of
being vague on purpose is to allow your subject, the broadest range
of creativity to fill in, to delete, to add, to distort, or to generalize
for themselves.

So, an example of deletion is to remove what is or isn't relevant to
the outcome. So, the presenter or the listener says, as you make
sense of this on your own timeline. To generalize, it is to learn and
to classify. Where you would say something like you're able to
discover new ways. And to distort is a way of saying, or a way of
creatively developing and shifting meanings where you say, I know
that you're becoming more interested.

Now, the metamodel is the complete opposite of the Milton Model.
So, instead of working on general and vague levels, we now work on
specific levels. So, the metamodel offers you a way to help others by
listening carefully to the wording that they're using. When people
communicate using deletions, generalizations, and distortions,
they're giving you clues to their inner programming. And you can
use these clues to ask the proper questions to determine their
limiting beliefs, or their opinions, or their desires, or really,
whatever else is going on in their mind. So, remember that the NLP
method chunks to more specific. It's basically two statements: what
specifically, and how specifically. And the idea is to build rapport
through the use of vague hypnotic words and conversation to
achieve a specific outcome.

38
Now, when we talk about deletions, generalizations, and

distortions, we're talking about something that both you do, I do,
and everyone in the world does, again, as a way of preserving
cognitive resources. And so we do that by deleting certain
information from a statement, by generalizing, or distorting. And
so a perfect example of a generalization is if my wife asked me to
pick up milk on my way home from the office, and I forget. And
when I get home, she says, “You never listen to what I tell you to
do. Or you always forget to bring home the milk.” So, she's
generalizing the entire situation.

So, an example of deletion and its companion question is when
someone says, “He's better than I am.” And you say, “In what way
are they better than you?” Or if a person generalizes? And they say,
“I can't, it just is impossible.” You say, “What specifically is
preventing you? What would be different if you could and it was
possible. Or a distortion, where someone says, “She made me feel
terrible.” And you say, “What exactly did she do that made you feel
that way? Can you imagine how good you could feel about yourself?
If no matter what anyone said or did you still felt comfortable in
your own skin? What would you need to do to get to that point?”

Substituting words, phrases, and statements with multiple
meanings gives you the opportunity to communicate on more than
one level. Which again, this is something that separates master
communicators from average and poor communicators. Vague
universal statements put your audience in a state of agreement with
you. So, for example, if you said something like we all have fears
that we don't want to admit to others or ourselves, this statement is
vague, but it's a statement that's universal. It doesn't specify the
39
fears, or even what types of fears we're talking about. Instead, as
soon as the audience hears that statement, their mind drifts into
their own fears, and they can't help but agree with you, because it's
a general statement that almost everyone has experienced.

You can also use words that tap the subconscious. Words like
explore, discover, imagine, suppose pleasure, wonder, and curious
can have different meanings depending on their context. For
example, if you say to an audience, imagine how you would feel if
you were going on vacation for six weeks. Each person in the
audience will start feeling and thinking about different things and
assign their own meaning to the vague statement. Some people
would think about the beach. Some people would think about the
casino. Some people would think about the pool. Some people
would think about the restaurants. Some people would think about
theme parks. It really all depends on what their version or their
definition of a vacation is.

You can also use words that spark feelings. Meanings can be
sparked or activated unconsciously. So, for example, if you wanted
to give the feeling of quickness, you could use words like running,
racing, sprinting, or hurrying even though you're not really talking
about speed. If you wanted to express the attainment of lofty goals,
you could use flight words like soaring to new heights.

So, now let's talk about again, some more case studies, some good
and some bad, and a story that will explain the use of vague
language and can be seen as a symbolic representation of the
Milton Model. There was once a small boy who played a drum until
his parents and neighbors were driven mad. When his parents tried
40
to take the drum away from him, he screamed so loudly that they
were afraid the neighbors would think they were killing him. They
had given him the drum as a gift, but they never thought it would
become an obsession. They consulted with some therapists to see
what could be done to reason with the child so that they can have
some peace and quiet.

The first therapist told the boy that if he continued to bang the
drum, he would destroy his hearing and blow his eardrums out. The
child was too young to understand this so it had no effect. The
second told him that the drum should only be used on certain
special days. This also had no effect. The third therapist gave the
parent earplugs and advised them to buy earplugs for the
neighbors. This helped for a limited time. The fourth therapist had
the child listen to meditation tapes to ease his staccato nature and
make him more placid. This worked for a while, but eventually, the
child went back to his old ways. Finally, the parents were told about
a new therapist who had performed miracles with other children.
When he arrived at their house, they were shocked that this
therapist was so young. In fact, he only looked about 10 years older
than their child.

However, their parents were desperate so they allowed him to
observe the child's behavior. The young therapist walked three
times around the child and observed his behavior closely. He went
out to his car and came back with a hammer and a chisel. He
squatted down next to the boy before speaking to him. Then he
handed him the hammer and the chisel and he said, “Do you ever
wonder what's inside the drum?”

41
So, here's the conclusion. A hammer and a chisel are powerful and
so are words. You can use vague words such as wonder to help
others solve their own problems or guide them to do so. Milton
believed that everyone can crack open the drum of their inner
selves to solve their own problems. That wraps up this module. I'll
see you in the next one.

42

Welcome back. So, now we are in the second part of the four-part
method which makes up Persuasive Speakology, which is to
captivate the mind. So, remember, in the first part, in the first
couple of modules, we talked about the fact that we first need to
trigger emotion. Because human beings are primarily emotional
creatures. But we also use our minds and we use logic to justify our
behaviors, our decisions, and our beliefs. And so that's why we need
to appeal to both.

And so we begin with module five with some of the best-known
ways that I know of any way to captivate the mind. And we're going
to use a specialized combination of techniques. And the first set of
techniques that we're going to utilize come from the world of NLP,
or Neuro-linguistic Programming. Which the best way that I can
describe that to people is a blueprint to the mind. It's really a map
that helps us understand the way people think and behave. Now, as
you can imagine, this is very valuable when it comes to the world of
influence and persuasion. Because once you know how people think
and behave, you can then tailor your pitch, your presentation, your
opinions, your speeches, whatever to how those people think and
behave to get the best possible outcome.

Now, there are four basic pillars of NLP that you can come back to
each time you prepare a presentation, a speech, a pitch, or really
any type of communication with someone else. These techniques
43
can be used to connect with the audience as well as to ensure that

you get the outcomes you're striving for whether you're presenting
to one person, or 1,000 people.

So, we begin with rapport. So, you want to begin to build a
relationship with your audience as soon as you engage them. A
second way that you can use rapport is to build rapport between
your conscious mind and your subconscious mind so that you can
achieve optimal performance. You also want to appeal to the
audience's senses in order to engage their emotions. Our deeply
emotional experiences come through our senses. You want the
audience to have the experience of seeing, hearing, touching their
way through the stories and metaphors that you're going to present
to them.

And so I'm sure you've been in a situation where maybe you walked
into a restaurant, and you smelled something. Maybe it was a food,
maybe it was bread baking, and suddenly you got transported back
to your childhood when your grandmother used to cook that same
dish, or bake that same type of bread. Or maybe it's the first spring
day after a brutal winter and you go outside and you feel that
slightly warmer breeze than you normally do. And suddenly you get
transported back to a time when you were young, during spring. Or
maybe you hear a song that takes you back to your childhood or
takes you back to an important event, maybe the first date that you
went out on with your significant other.

And so what's really happening is you're recalling memories, which
are striking up emotions within you. But the gateway to these
memories, for lack of a better term, is through the senses. We
44
experience the world through our senses. Through what we see,

what we hear, what we smell, and what we touch. And so it's
important that when you speak to people, you create vivid pictures
that enable them to virtually use all of those senses. Because the
more sensory awareness you can build into your communication
strategies the more emotion you can evoke in people; the more
memorable, the more engaging your presentation becomes.

You also want to think about what you want the audience to get
from your presentation. What emotions do you want them to feel?
What actions do you want them to take? What new concepts do you
want them to remember when your talk is over and they're driving
home? Again, something that separates master communicators
from poor and average ones. So, poor communicators never think
about this stuff. This is not even on their radar. Their mind doesn't
even function on this frequency where they're thinking about what
they want people to get out of what they say to them, or their
communication with them. They're not even thinking that far
ahead, because they're so wrapped up in their own world.

Average communicators can think about this kind of stuff, but they
don't put enough thought into it. They may think about it on a very
surface level. Like, well, I want my audience to get motivated, but
they don't go deeper. They don't say, well, what emotions do I want
them to feel. And by the way, when we talk about emotions, it's not
always positive emotions that we need to evoke in people.
Sometimes we have to evoke a few negative emotions in people. Or
sometimes we have to utilize the emotion of shock, to get people's
attention.

45
Now, ultimately, it's my experience that when you use negative

emotions to engage people, you ultimately want to lead them to a
positive emotion and to a positive outcome. Otherwise, when they
recall their interaction with you, it's always going to be something
bad that happened to them. That's how they're going to remember
it. But just like in a movie, when you watch a really good thriller or a
really good drama, there's different emotions that the writer wants
to take you through. There’s a point in the movie where they want
to bring you into a state of suspense. And then there's a part of the
movie where they want to bring you into a state of sadness. Maybe
someone gets kidnapped, maybe someone passes away. And then
they want to bring you to a place where you feel closure and
happiness and experience positive emotions. These are things that
you need to think very carefully about.

So, for example, if let's say my goal in writing a speech, a
presentation, or it's just simply communicating an idea to someone
had to do with losing weight. And that wasn't my ultimate goal was
to motivate them to buy my product to lose weight. Well, that's very
surface-level thinking, I have to get a little bit deeper and say, Well,
what emotions do I want them to feel? Well, at first, I want them to
feel the emotion of shame. I want them to feel the emotion of
embarrassment. I want them to feel the emotion of pain. And I
don't mean to sound cruel. But statistically speaking, people
ultimately make decisions, if we were to generalize and sum it up
into two things, there are two main reasons why people make
decisions. It's either to avoid pain or to gain pleasure. And
statistically speaking, people will actually do more to avoid pain
than they will to gain pleasure.

46
And so sometimes, when you're talking about something like

weight loss, you have to be real, and you have to zone in on those
real feelings, you can't avoid them. People that want to lose weight
experience shame. They experience embarrassment. They
experience fear of being made fun of when they walk on the beach
with their shirt off or in their bathing suit. So, we have to utilize
those emotions. We have to tap into those emotions. But then we
have to provide a solution. We have to provide a light at the end of a
tunnel. We have to provide a method or a formula or something
that's ultimately going to give them hope and bring them to a better
place where they experience happiness, and joy. But again, these
are the types of things that you need to think of very, very closely.

You also want to utilize behavioral flexibility. So, if you observe that
the audience isn't moving in the direction of your desired outcome,
you need to be flexible enough to use something else in your
repertoire. Pay attention to the behavior of your audience so you
can get a feeling or a gauge of how your message is being received.
And again, this goes back to the six persuasion power levers that we
talked about in an earlier module. Your adaptive ability, your ability
to gauge what is going on with the audience, how engaged they are,
how involved they are, how interested they are, and then being able
to pivot and change and adapt your presentation to get the more
desired outcome.

Now, I want you to think about all the speakers you've ever heard in
your lifetime. How many of them were engaging? How many were
so inspirational that you never forgot what they said? How many
launched you into action so that you were able to get unstuck?
What's preventing you from becoming the best speaker possible?
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There's just one person preventing you from becoming that

inspirational speaker, and that person is you.

Inspirational speakers don't focus on themselves and their own
anxieties or self-doubts. They don't worry about whether the
audience admires them or not. They're too busy making sure that
they provide the audience with something that's new, educational,
and entertaining. In other words, they care less about being
admired than they do about the nuggets of gold that they provide to
the audience to take home with them. Inspirational speakers turn
their focus away from themselves and turn it to the welfare of the
audience. The audience can intuitively sense this caring, but only if
the speaker is authentic.

Again, circling back to the persuasion power lovers Authenticity is
extremely important. Because the moment people sense that you're
not being authentic, it's almost like you're insulting their
intelligence. And instead of being engaged in your message, they're
too worried about or they're too busy trying to figure out what it is
about you, that they're sensing is off, that they're sensing is not an
alignment, that they're sensing is not being authentic. So,
essentially, what you're doing is you're destroying any type of
power or impact that your message would have.

The purpose of public speaking is very basic. It's to influence the
audience. As you become a masterful speaker, you'll be in tune with
your audience's responses, and you'll become flexible enough to
adjust yourself to get the responses that you want. The topics and
information that you want to present are definitely important.
However, your audience will never remember that information,
48
unless you present it in an inspirational way. So, the presentation

has to be entertaining and brimming with novelty, as well as
providing an education for the audience. These two E's, education
and entertainment must be in balance for your talk to establish
rapport with the audience, as well as to achieve your desired
outcome.

As a public speaker, you are in the edutainment business, which is
basically emerged between education and entertainment. If you're
not able to balance these two, you'll never be great at public
speaking. Think about being stuck in a classroom with a teacher
who was boring or sitting in a business management meeting with
someone who droned on about information, but wasn't able to
communicate it in an interesting way. You felt imprisoned. You
don't want your audience to feel that way. You have an important
opportunity to give your audience good feelings. If the topic is
appropriate, give them an opportunity to have as much fun as well
as provide them with information that could potentially change
their lives for the better.

Now, I have to be honest. There isn't a gene for charisma. Charisma
for many people isn't natural. More people have a fear of public
speaking than all other phobias combined. In fact, I think it was
Jerry Seinfeld, who said that, because people have more of a phobia
for public speaking than death, they would actually fear being at the
podium giving the eulogy than actually being in the coffin. But
here's the reality. The fear can be overcome if you concentrate more
on the audience and their needs instead of your own. You can learn
to be charismatic and you can also learn to enhance and improve
your charismatic qualities.
49

One way to do this is to think of your voice as a musical instrument.
This has been very, very helpful for me. No matter how
uncomfortable you may be with the sound of your own voice, your
voice is perceived differently by the audience. You can vary it in
tone, pace, rhythm, depth, and richness. By doing this, you're
appealing to the way that the audience perceives you through the
sound of your voice. You know, I used to struggle with this. When I
first got into the business of teaching people influence, persuasion,
human communication, I used to get a lot of feedback from people
that I had too much of an East Coast Brooklyn accent, for lack of a
better term.

And so when I started creating video trainings, I used to-- By the
way, that feedback that I was getting was neither positive or
negative. It was just simply an objective observation, but I
internalized it as something negative. And so then what I would do
is I would try to create these videos and I would try to change the
sound of my voice to sound less abrasive and less East Coast like for
lack of a better term. And when I did that, nothing but bad things
happened. So, the first thing that happened was I started getting
feedback from people saying that they missed the way that I spoke
naturally. The second thing that happened is I was breaking my
own rules. I was breaking the actual laws that I was teaching
people, the laws that I was learning, right.

One of the most important laws that I learned, one of the most
important power levers, one of the most important principles that I
learned was to be authentic. And yet, when I was changing my
voice, I wasn't being authentic. And the audience senses that. And
50
you sense that. Because when you're not being yourself, or when
you're trying too hard to be something that you're not, or when
you're deviating too much from who you are as a person, what
happens is, you start to feel this imbalance within and it shows
when you speak to people. And so I immediately turned around. I
completely turned everything around, and I embraced who I was.
And one of the most important lessons that I learned when it comes
to influential communication, when it comes to marketing, when it
comes to presenting yourself, when it comes to selling is that you
always want to present something different. You don't want to be
the same as everyone else.

So, if people out there are looking for the Ph.D. Professor type of
person, to teach them about influence and persuasion, I'm not their
guy. I'm the guy who basically has spent the past 20 years
researching what works in the real world. And how I deliver it is
how I deliver it. That's who I am as a person. And ultimately, most
people have come to appreciate it, so embrace who you are by
nature.

Now, learning and applying NLP techniques can help you in a
couple of different ways. Three of them specifically are your
persona. NLP techniques show you how to feel confident and
project authority no matter which group of people you're speaking
to. Purpose. NLP Techniques show you how to make the purpose of
your presentation as transparent to the audience as possible. And
NLP techniques show you how to use language to touch the minds
and more importantly, the hearts of your audience.

51
Now, before your presentation, first thing I want you to do is

visualize. I want you to use visualization to picture yourself giving a
very successful inspirational speech. Use visual, auditory, and
kinesthetic words in your visualization to make it as real as possible
for yourself. Think how you felt another time in your life when you
felt incredibly successful, and then anchor those feelings to this
visualization. If you have a deep-seated fear of public speaking, ask
an NLP coach to perform a fast phobia cure to desensitize that
memory.

How do you want to appear to the audience? Do you want to be
laughing, jovial, with dry wit like Bill Murray? Do you want to
display the mastery of language and wisdom of Winston Churchill?
Do you want to be filled with energy and big ideas like Tony
Robbins? No matter which demeanor you adopt, you can show
authority and confidence in your presentation.

Next thing you want to do is chunk your information. So, prepare a
diagram to show you how you will chunk your information.
Remember that the Milton Model chunks up to general ideas,
stories and metaphors chunk across. The metamodel which is the
reverse of the Milton Model from NLP chunks down to specific
ideas. People assimilate ideas from these three methods. So, if you
have all three in your presentation, you'll be able to appeal to the
cognitive style of everyone in the audience.

You also want to focus on the audience. What are their needs and
desires? Why are they coming to hear your speech? How would you
educate and entertain them? Consider organizing your information
using the format system. The why. The imaginative. The learner
52
wants to know why in order to make connections. The what. The

abstract sequential learner wants to know what to learn so that they
can create ideas. Then there's the how. The concrete sequential
learner wants to know how to apply what they've learned. And then
the if. The abstract random learner wants to figure out what they
need to learn, and how to learn it to modify it for their own unique
situation.

If your audience remembers only one or two things from your
message in speech, what do you want them to remember? And
again, what feeling do you want them to have when they leave the
room? Make sure that you use visual, auditory, and kinesthetic
descriptions, to engage the emotions of your audience. Add
appropriate personal stories, metaphors, and analogies that take
your audience on a journey to their final destination.

During your presentation, always establish rapport by pacing,
pacing, pacing, and then leading. Which means you want to stay on
pace with whatever they're doing. Their body movements, their
breathing, their speech patterns, and then slowly begin to lead
them. It's like if you're in a race, and your car was on a racetrack, I
want you to think about if they were in a car in front of you, you
would first want to align your car, you'd want to come from behind
and align your car up with them, so that you're equal to them on the
race track, and then slowly merge ahead. You also want to show
authority and credibility with your gestures, tone, and body
movements.

You can use spatial anchoring to take control of the stage. Divide
the stage into areas for speaking, answering questions, telling
53
stories, imparting technical information, or sharing something

lighthearted or a joke. Your audience will then associate that area
on the stage, and they will be primed to engage in the type of
information you offer. When you're in that location. It will also help
keep you focused and organized as well.

You want to adjust your presentation. Again, going back to adaptive
ability. Pay attention to the body language and the verbal cues that
your audience gives you. We've all sat through presentations where
the speaker seemed completely oblivious to how the audience was
receiving their talk. Don't be an inside speaker bubble. Pay
attention and adjust your tone to make sure that it's a page-turner
so that your audience's attention doesn't wane.

Use logical levels model. Which basically means to speak from the
heart about something that you care passionately about. Use the
logical levels model to help you get to the very core of why it's
important to you and how to communicate it to the audience so
they grasp and feel the emotions related to what's important. And
ask yourself these questions: How do I make a difference? Why am I
here and why am I giving this speech? Why do I even care about
this? What would I like my contributions to others to be? And how
would I like to be remembered if I was no longer here?

54

Welcome back to Module Six of Persuasive Speakology. Now, this is
an interesting module because when it comes to persuasion, there
are a number of different techniques and strategies that you can
use. Now, some of them are easily identifiable. Others are not so
easily identifiable. And that's why I call them The Hidden
Persuaders. They’re techniques and strategies that you utilize, or
that can be utilized, but are not so obvious to the naked eye.

And so, for example, if we utilize scarcity. Meaning, we limit
something, we take something away, we set an expiration date on
something, it's obvious that that's a technique and strategy that's
being used to increase compliance, it's easily identifiable. But
things like confidence and charisma aren't as easily identifiable. So,
when a person is confident and charismatic, and as a result of those
two things, becomes persuasive, we perceive them to just be
naturally persuasive. It's not that we're able to easily identify the
fact that they are confident and charismatic, which makes them so
persuasive. And so that's what makes these two things extremely
powerful.

Now, despite what you may think, these skills can be learned even if
they don't feel natural to you. So, when I mentioned these two
words a lot of times to certain coaching clients who may be shy,
introverted, non-charismatic people, so to speak, they freak out a
little bit. And they think, well, that's not me, it's not who I am as a
person, it doesn't feel natural to me. What I want to let you know is
that our nonverbal behavior shapes what others think of our
55
confidence level. And so how you project yourself non verbally, how
you carry yourself, your body language, is going to determine how
people feel about you, and how they make judgments about you. But
here's what's more interesting. It also shapes our own feelings
about ourselves.

So, for example, Social Psychologist Amy Cuddy has shown that if
we practice power movements, that will eventually change our
perception of ourselves. So, stretch out, lift your arms, and own the
space that you're in. Our minds change our bodies, but our bodies
also change our minds. So, adopt power poses in private for a few
minutes each day, and it can change your level of confidence and
your life. If you haven't seen Amy's TED talk, I would highly
recommend that you check it out. It's got a couple of million views.
I'm a big fan of it. So, if you just go to YouTube, and type in Amy
Cuddy TED Talk.

What I found most interesting about her talk, and we're going to
actually talk about this in later modules is the power of novelty. The
power of presenting something new that the brain hasn't seen or
heard before, that's how you catch people's attention. That's how
you engage them. And that's how you keep them talking about what
you present it to them long after you've even made your
presentation. And Amy did that exceptionally well in her TED Talk.
Because for people that study human psychology, influence,
persuasion, human behavior, they understand the power of body
language, and the effect that it has on other people. Most people in
the world of influence and persuasion talk about that stuff. But
what most people do not talk about is the impact that it has on
ourselves.
56

So, the mind and body are very interconnected. And as I just said,
our minds change our bodies, but our bodies can also change our
minds. And Amy was one of the first people to actually talk about
that, which made her presentation different than everyone else's.
So, she didn't change the psychological facts about body language,
right? Because you can't change those. Those are time tested and
proven to work for years and years and years so you can't change
that. But you can change the context of the conversation, which is
exactly what she did. You also don't want to accept failure.
Confident people truly believe that the failures in their lives can
point the way to significant improvement. They also believe that
failures are just temporary setbacks. They don't allow negative
self-talk to keep them from their dreams and goals. They assess a
situation and they figure out, they ask themselves, what can I do
next? How can I make this work? And they figure out a solution.
And this is something that is proven in my personal life to help me
time and time and time again.

Last night, I was out with a couple of friends, we went out to dinner.
And I have this one friend who's in the jewelry business. And
there's two aspects of his business. One involves a one on one
interaction with very high-level customers that come in and they
buy diamonds from him. They meet with him in his private office,
and they buy very expensive diamonds from him. The second part
of his business is his online business. And we went out to dinner
last night, and he said, “You know, my online business is down
90% from last year.” Now, this is a guy that I care about, I consider
him a close friend. We had picked them up from his brand new
house that he just purchased two years ago. His wife was outside
57
with their two beautiful children. And so when you have a friend
that's that close to you, when you see their family and their house,
and you know that they got bills to pay. And they’re telling you that
their business is down 90%, me as a person, I want to try to help
him.

So, I started asking him questions to determine if maybe I could
figure out where something went wrong in his business. So, he
explained to me that in August of last year, he was up 90%,
compared to August of this year. And so I started asking him
questions like, was your traffic different? Was the amount of
visitors different? Was the product features, the product catalog
different? What was different? What did you change? And so once
we got through with those questions, we determined that the
majority of his traffic was coming from SEO traffic. So, SEO traffic
means that people organically find your website. So, they type in,
for example, diamond ring with a skull on it, and your website
comes up number one in the search rankings. Well, that changed
this year. And so Google changed its algorithm and he was no
longer number one in search engine optimization in Google
rankings.

So, I asked him about paid advertising. So, now we're switching the
context of the conversation. We're going from people finding you
organically to now you paying advertising dollars to get people to
your website. And his immediate answer to me was, “That never
works.” And I sat there shocked. And I said, “Really?” And he said it
with such passion and conviction that I knew immediately that he
had a very, very, very strong belief system that coincides with the
past. He's hooked on the past. He's hooked on last year. He's
58
hooked on the way things used to be. And so at that point, I have to
ask myself a question. Do I want to continue this conversation and
now try to convince him to think otherwise? Or do I want to just let
it go? And so I could tell by the way that he said it, I made that the
determination at that point that I was just going to let the
conversation go because I don't want to be that guy who's giving
unsolicited advice and telling people how to run their business.

So, I kept my mouth shut, and I let it go. And he stayed silent for
about 15 seconds. And then he said to me, “Well, what would you
recommend?” So, now he opened up the line of communication
again. And so I started talking to him about why SEO by itself is not
a healthy way to run a business for the exact reason of why his
business is hurting now. Because if you place all your eggs in one
basket, and that basket is SEO, and Google changes its algorithm,
you instantly lose your business. Whereas if you utilize paid
advertising, and you know all your key metrics, and you know how
much you can pay to acquire a customer, now it's simple
mathematics, you know how much money you can spend to acquire
a customer and still make money. And he didn't want to hear any of
it.

And so the point of this example that I'm giving you is that he was
accepting failure. Like his business was down 90% from last year.
And he's accepting that by not asking the question of, what can I do
differently? Or how can I make paid advertising work? And so that's
a key differentiator between the way he thinks and the way I think.
And I'm not saying that the way I think is better than him or that
I'm smarter than him. But what I will say is that I think that the way
that I think serves me better than the way he thinks. I am a ‘how
59
can person’. So, when somebody presents something new to me

that I haven't tried before, if I try something and it fails, I'll say,
well, how can I make it work? Or how can I make it different this
time? Or how can I make it work for me? He was just writing it off,
dismissing it, and basically accepting a 90% failure in his business
this year.

I don't want you to become one of those people. I don't want you to
look at the failures in your life. And let that write the narrative of
who you are as a person now. I want you to think in terms of
options. I want you to think in terms of failures are just lessons that
will teach you how to pivot and how to navigate. You also want to
become an expert. You want to master your chosen topic and field
and continually work towards self-improvement. Because when
you know your topic, back and forth, left and right, it gives you a
feeling of confidence to be able to communicate about it effectively.
Lifelong learning should be a part of your daily mantra.

And so again, circling back to last night's conversation, this friend
of mine, we know each other from the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu circuit. We
both trained Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He's been training a lot longer than
I have. He’s a lot better than I am, and is a lot more intelligent than
I am when it comes to the philosophy and the mechanics of
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. And so anytime we've ever gotten into a debate
about that, he's clearly mastered that topic more than I have. And
he exudes confidence when he speaks about it. However, last night,
in the middle of our conversation, when I was determining some
things that maybe he could improve on, when I asked him how
many products he has on his website, he told me over 100. And my
years of research in consumer psychology tells me that the more
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options you offer a person, the less likely they are to buy anything
because options confuse people.

And so I told him that, my suggestion would be instead of having
100 products on your website, to identify your top three to five
selling products, and make standalone dedicated pages, sales pages
that sell only that particular product. That way, you can increase
your conversions and acquire more customers. And then you can
remarket to those customers down the road and build your
business. But you can't build that business if you don't first acquire
the customers. And you're going to have a problem acquiring the
customers if you're sending traffic to a page with hundreds of
products on it because years of consumer psychology tells us that
the more options you offer, the less people are likely to buy. Well,
again, he refuted that. But then I have to start citing case studies
and examples.

And what I'm trying to tell you is that I've mastered this topic. And
it's not because I'm talented or I'm super intelligent or educated or
any of those things. It's just because I've put in the work. I've put in
20 years of studying consumer psychology, human psychology,
human behavior, how people are influenced, how they're
persuaded, what makes them say yes. And so if we're going to get
into a debate about that, you best believe that I can go all night and
I can give you proof of why what I'm saying to you is correct and
right. And so I would urge you to do the same exact thing. Become
an expert in your topic and in your field.

There are also certain key strategies that you can employ to become
more charismatic and once you practice these strategies, they
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should become like a second skin. So, first one is mastering

metaphors, similes, and analogies. Three of my go-to tactics for
persuading other people. So, for example, in one of his speeches,
Martin Luther King compared the 1960s civil rights situation that
African Americans were experiencing to getting a bad check which
gets sent back due to insufficient funds. The audience members
quickly understood what he was communicating. Because
metaphors give us the ability to change the context of a message so
that it's understood more clearly.

You also want to use well thought out personal stories and
anecdotes just as I have, just very recently in this module. In his
2008 speech, a more perfect union then senator and presidential
hopeful President Obama tied his own family history, a
multicultural background, and his campaign for the presidency to
the American motto, ‘Out of many, We are one.’

You want to use clearly defined contrasts. Contrast is incredibly
effective to your audience because it's a one-two punch of passion,
backed by reason. One of the most famous uses of contrast is
Kennedy's quote, “Don't ask what your country can do for you. Ask
what you can do for your country.” The questions that you ask
people, and the list that you provide them can bring people up to a
higher state where they can envision the future and take action to
bring it about. So, you want to ask rhetorical questions that get your
audience thinking. Can you imagine a future where no one goes to
bed hungry? Can you imagine mankind transforming Mars into a
second Earth? Can you imagine how much more confident and
charismatic you'll feel after you complete this course?

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You also want to use three part lists. Now, this technique is based
on the fact that people tend to remember things that are presented
to them in this way. Three part lists can be announced or they can
fly under the radar, but will still be picked up subliminally by your
audience. So, a few famous examples are “Government of the
people, by the people, and for the people.” “This is not the end. It's
not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the
beginning.” Veni, vidi, vici. “I came, I saw, I conquered.”

You want to express moral convictions, don't be afraid to do this
when appropriate. So, who wouldn't be stirred by Patrick Henry's
give me liberty or give me death, or FDR’s he only thing we have to
fear is fear itself. If you're passionate, if you're educated, if you
believe in it, express moral conviction.

Now, you want to meet people where they are, but then bring them
up to the next level. So, to do that, you first have to acknowledge
their thoughts and feelings, but then bridge the gap to a higher
level of inspiration and positive action. So, you want to reflect on
your audience's sentiments, then pause and then move forward. So,
for example, after a disappointing sales quarter, the manager of a
sales team wanted her people to regroup. Here's what she said, “We
all feel disappointed and unmotivated. There have been sleepless
nights and tensions within the team. We feel that success has
slipped from our hands. However, this is a temporary setback. And
before we leave this room, we're going to construct a plan with
everyone's best ideas for getting back on track.”

So, she starts where they are now, empathizes with them, connects
with them, lets them know that she understands where they're
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coming from. She's on their wavelength. But then moves them

away from that to where she wants them to be. If you don't do that,
if you instead just jump into where you want people to be, they're
going to sense a disconnect from you. They're going to feel that you
can't relate to them. And so instead of sitting there and absorbing
your message, they're then going to try to figure out every reason
why they disagree with your message or why your message doesn't
make sense.

Don't be afraid to set high goals. Gandhi said that if the country
banded together in their goal, and their single-minded focus, the
British occupation of India would end without bloodshed. Many
thought that that goal was impossible to achieve. Project
confidence that the high goals you set will be achieved. In a sense,
you're stating what will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Gandhi
continue to project confidence regarding the previously stated goal
by saying India will wrench with non-violence her Liberty from
unwilling hands.

You also want to utilize power thoughts and power movements.
Charismatic and confident people are not afraid to let their physical
bodies and voices reflect their powerful thoughts. You want to use
an animated voice when speaking. Display your inner core of
vitality. If you're not energetic, the audience is going to sense this
and respond accordingly. Don't be afraid to convey your message
with facial expressions. You won't have to think about this too
much if you're actually present in the moment, and focusing on the
core message you want to communicate. It'll be natural, just as if
you were having a conversation with your best friend.

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You want to use power gestures. Use gestures or movement to give

you presence on stage and emphasize your key points. Cross
Country Skier Janine Shepherd’s life and career potential was
almost destroyed when she was in a severe accident. She delivered a
TED talk after she recovered, and she used five different chairs to
provide a visual metaphor for the chapters of her life after the
accident. She moved from chair to chair as she delivered the talk.

To me, that's absolute genius, genius that she did that. Because not
only did she utilize the power of the metaphor, which completely
reframes the context and makes it easy to understand. But every
time she moves into a new chair, she engages the audience in a
different way. And she almost resets their mind. It's almost like the
stages of a play. Like every time the curtain reopens, and another
scene takes place, you now switch your frame of mind. Well, you
could think of each chair as a different scene in her story. And she
did that by utilizing her body and what she had available to her on
the stage. Very smart. Very impressive. You should do the same. I'll
see you in the next module.
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Welcome to Module Seven of Persuasive Speakology. And so in this
module, we are going to get into some persuasion techniques. Now,
before I start, I want to talk about this concept of shaping your
audience's perception.

And so the way that I usually explain this to people is if you were
going to take a really, really hot shower, you know, you want to
loosen up your muscles, you want to, you know, open up your
pores, you want to take the hottest possible shower that you can
take. Would you turn that shower temperature as hot as you can get
it and just jump into the shower? Or would you get into the shower
on a slightly warmer temperature and then slowly increase the
temperature until you get it to your desired heat level? Well,
obviously, you would choose the second option. Because if you
choose the first option, what's going to happen is when you jump
into that shower, you're going to get burned. And you're going to
experience a shock that isn't going to be too pleasant.

And so a lot of times what I see with people that are attempting to
persuade other people, is they do the same thing. They throw the
audience into either an ice-cold shower or a piping hot shower, and
they shock them with something unpleasant. So, instead of just
launching into a pitch to get your audience to comply with a specific
action, you can instead alter their perception by changing the lens
with which they are viewing a particular situation. By priming the
audience in this way you influence how they will perceive your
request or your message.
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So, you can prime people's mindsets by introducing words or
images that have universal associations. For example, in an
experiment, people were introduced to words that related to the
elderly. And when they got up to leave, they walked more slowly
than usual. In another experiment, people were exposed to two
logos, Apple's, and IBM's. Apple is associated with creativity. The
group that saw Apple's logo first found more creative uses for a
brick than the group that was primed with IBM's logo.

All judgments that people make are based on comparisons. If you
can influence those comparisons in your speech presentations,
then you can influence their compliance on the request or actions
you want them to take. So, for example, let's say your goal is to get
people to sign up for your course, after your speaking presentation.
Offer them two or three options. Option A is a one-hour
consultation for $150. Option B, the course in its entirety $295. Or
Option C, the one-hour consultation plus the course for 295. Now,
presenting the options in this way will increase your chances of
having more people select option C since when option B and option
C are compared, option C is the obvious choice.

The way that you describe a person, an event, or an item makes a
major difference in how your audience will perceive the same. So,
for example, if you describe a person as cold, aloof, and
self-serving, before introducing them to someone, the person
you're introducing will react in a certain way toward the person
you're introducing them to because it's how their expectation has
been set. However, you might choose to describe that same person
as warm, friendly, and fun. The person then being introduced will
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have a completely different attitude toward the person you're

introducing based on your description. Your description will make a
difference in how the parties behave toward one another.

Another example is to make sure you put the positive descriptions
at the beginning of a list. If you describe someone with their
positive traits first, that list will be perceived differently than a list
where the negative traits are listed first. You want to work toward
attitudes that are congruent. So, suppose you are asked to persuade
others that a very boring exercise was actually interesting. Studies
have shown that if you're only given $1 as a reward to do so, you
have to change your attitude toward the exercise yourself in order
to convince someone else that it's fun. However, if you're given a
more substantial reward, you'll convince the person based on that,
but will not change your attitude since you're doing so for the
reward only. So, it explains your incongruence over feeling that it's
boring but making it seem interesting to someone else.

There's a strong association between the mind and the body. We
covered that in the last module. Most of the time we think about the
mind influencing the body. But sometimes consciously or
unconsciously, your body has an impact on your mental state. So,
for example, if you're giving a speech and can elicit head nods from
the audience, they will transform and transition into an agreeable
and possibly pliable state of mind. Another example is when you're
feeling nervous or insecure before a presentation, you can help
alleviate your fears by sitting or standing upright. That will help
you feel more empowered.

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You know, I have bad posture, I know that. I have something that's
called internal rotation, which means that my shoulders rotate
forward causing my posture to be broken down. Now, because my
posture is this way, that's the way that I feel more comfortable
sitting and standing. But I know through all the research and all the
studies that I've basically spent the past 20 years of my life
determining that people will perceive me as less confident and less
intelligent if I walk around slouched. Conversely, I will feel less
confident about myself if I hold that position.

And so I usually catch myself doing it in the morning when I'm
walking my dog. So, I usually wake up at 06:30 in the morning, and
the first thing I do is I walk my dog. And as I'm walking him, I will
find myself in this kind of hunched over slouched position, and I
immediately stop it and I roll my shoulders back, and I straighten
up my back, and I change my posture. Because in the morning, I
actually do a couple of different things. So, the first thing I do when
I walk my dog is I say a morning prayer where I'm just basically
thanking God for everything that I've been given. I don't really ask
for anything, I just give thanks.

And I have some affirmations that I run through my mind that it's
going to be a good day, that I'm smart, that I'm intelligent, that my
business is thriving, that opportunities, luck, and resources attract
themselves to me, things like that. And so it's important when you
state affirmations to yourself, not to turn this into a
self-improvement program or go off on a law of attraction tangent.
But when you're stating these affirmations to yourself, you have to
actually believe and feel that they are real and that it's going to
happen. And so I know that I have to change my physical state,
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from a weak one to a strong one. That's a very important part of my
day. If I'm doing all this work to make sure my day starts correctly,
right, I'm saying the right things to myself, I'm waking up early,
I'm exercising, I'm eating the right foods. I also have to get my
body into a strong positive state. Otherwise, it's going to counteract
everything else that I'm doing. And so body language is one of the
most effective ways to do that.

I also want to give you a couple of strategies to form consistency in
behavior. If it's your goal to get people to form or adopt a particular
attitude, you should guide them to display behavior that matches
with that attitude. So, for example, if people who were asked to put
a small sign in their yard that said be a safe driver were more likely
to say yes when they were requested to display a much larger sign
with a similar message. This technique, which is essentially getting
a foot in the door was popularized by Robert Cialdini, the guy who
wrote the book I nfluence who over the past 30 years has taught us
how people are influenced and persuaded. Consistency is a very
powerful thing.

Micro commitments play into this. If you can get people to make
smaller commitments that really don't involve much, you're kind
of building them up to make larger commitments where more
things are at stake. And we use this in marketing. If you've been on
my email list for any number of years or any amount of time, it's
very likely that you came onto the email list because I offered you
something of value for free. Well, after you commit to giving your
email address, I will then make you a small low dollar offer for
something else that's very valuable, but for a very cheap price,
usually seven to 10 bucks. And then from there, if you say yes to
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that, I'll offer you some of my more premium, more expensive

products. Well, what I'm doing is slowly building the customer up
to make bigger purchases for more valuable products and services.
A sales pitch that asks people how are you feeling tonight and gives
them a chance to respond with a good or fine helps them to
maintain an attitude when you ask for the sale since they don't
want to appear incongruent with their earlier response.

You also want to spark social pressure and repeat your message.
Social rejection is a very powerful thing. In fact, social rejection and
physical pain share the same circuitry in the brain. In other words,
social rejection hurts. So, in your speech presentations, if you want
to encourage or discourage a specific type of behavior, it works best
to point the norm in the direction of the behavior, that would be a
desirable outcome. For example, if you're giving a speech where
you're trying to get college students not to drink alcohol,
demonstrate or persuade them that most students drink safely. You
also want to discover and offer similarities. Whether it's one person
you're trying to persuade to do something or an entire group.
Emphasizing your similarity to that person or people can greatly
enhance your ability to establish rapport, and subsequently to
persuade. Because similarities are so powerful, you can also mimic
your audience's nonverbal behavior to establish rapport.

There was a case study done years ago that tested the power of
similarity. And surveys were mailed to people. And basically, a
survey was put in an envelope and people were asked to fill out the
survey and return it. Well, when the people receive the survey, from
a name that was similar to theirs, so Bob Smith, receives a letter
from Rob Smith, or Bob Schmidt, a name that's similar to his,
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statistically that person was more than - 50% more likely to return
the survey. What's interesting is that when the surveys were
completed, not one single person who sent back the survey cited the
similarity in the name as the reason why they sent it back. Right?

So, this all happens on a subconscious level. People are not
consciously sitting there and analyzing you and saying, “Wow, this
person seems very similar to me. So, let me agree with what he or
she is saying.” It's not happening on that level. It's happening on a
deep, subconscious level. But statistics and studies have shown us
that people are more likely to comply with people that they feel
similar to. Or that they feel like they have a lot in common with. So,
you want to try to identify those things and express them while you
speak.

You want to use numerous exposures and de-emphasize negative
messages. Repetitions are very powerful, because they increase a
cognitive response called cognitive fluency. In other words, if
something or someone or an image is repeated, often even if it's
flashed before us, and we're not consciously picking it up, it
becomes more familiar to us. And that familiarity means we can
process it more quickly. The speed at which we process information
also increases whether we like the information or not. If we can
process something quickly due to repeated exposure, we tend to
like it more. So, to de-emphasize the negative aspects of a message
that you know your audience will find objectionable, you can
desensitize it by habituating it.

This technique is most effective if one, you can introduce the
changes in very tiny gradual increments so that they're not overtly
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noticed. And secondly, that your audience can't make a side by side
comparison. Thirdly, that the audience isn't expecting changes to
occur. And fourth, that you combine whatever's unfavorable or
unpleasant with something that is favorable or pleasant.

There are two ways that an individual makes a judgment about a
particular issue. They use a type of systematic processing for
decisions that are important and a type of heuristic processing for a
decision that's not as critical. With systematic processing, the
individual will be influenced by the quality of the content. He or she
will evaluate the content step by step. On the other hand, heuristic
processing is a quick judgment that is often swayed by a massive
amount of information that shows support, the way the message is
presented, or the aesthetics of the message. The rapport with the
presenter in terms of his or her attractiveness, confidence, and
expertise.

So, I usually tell people that there are two ways. The other way that
I explained this is the way that we process information. There's the
central way of processing information and the peripheral. So, there
are two different routes that we take; the central route and the
peripheral route. So, during the central route, we're talking about
systematic processing. This is when the person is scrutinizing
everything that you're putting before them and making a logical
decision based on the quality of the content itself. During the
peripheral route, they're not doing that. They're instead using
these heuristics. They're using these mental shortcuts, which is a
way of filtering lots of information. So, instead, they utilize these
mental shortcuts and they look for support. They look for things in
the way that the message is being presented. And they also look for
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the rapport that they have with the person presenting the message
to make a decision about the content itself.

So, to ensure that someone is going to judge your message
regarding systematic processing, provide them with some caffeine.
Enhance the aesthetics of the message with your graphics or other
visually appealing presentation. State your request in an unusual
way. Enhance the personal relevance aspect of your message. In
other words, why is your message of particular importance to that
specific audience? You can enhance personal relevance of the
message. By using you frequently throughout your message. You
can tell a story to engage your audience in a more personal way that
will touch their emotions. You can also use rhetorical questions that
will guide them into asking themselves deeper questions.

So, if you instead want your subject to judge your message using
heuristic processing, so now you want them to take the peripheral
route, there are also things that you can do to increase that
likelihood. Surprisingly, if you increase the complexity of your
message by using difficult to read font. Or something else that
makes it more complicated for the subject to process, they will
equate it with the uniqueness of your offer and also consider your
offer more valuable. If you want your subject to make a quicker
decision, you can do something to put your subject in a good mood.
When we're in a good mood, we tend to be more optimistic about
decision making.

Next, you want to refine your message. So, you'll encounter
situations where you won't be able to change someone's evaluation
style, right? In the world of human communication, there are
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different variables that come into play: circumstance, environment,

situation, personality type, context. What happened to the person
five minutes before they met you or they began interacting with
you, right? Not all techniques aren't going to work all of the time.
But you can still refine your message to achieve the best results. If
you know that your audience is likely to use systematic processing,
then you can construct your message accordingly. The same is true
for heuristic processing.

For systematic processing, present a two-sided argument with just
a little negative information so it doesn't appear that your
argument is too one-sided. This is how you appeal to their logic.
You also make your arguments sequenced properly. Position your
strongest arguments first and last because these are the ones that
are going to be most readily remembered. Weak arguments should
go in the middle. For heuristic processing, your audience will be
swayed by your attractiveness as well as your authority. They will
also be persuaded by the amount of information you present.
Present more. Present your information in an aesthetically pleasing
manner and give a justification for your message.

You also want to position yourself for success. So, if you position
your message close to another positive message, it will influence
your audience's perception. For example, placing an advertisement
for your book after an interview with a bestselling author is going
to make your book perceived in a bestseller light. Even though the
audience knows that your book may or may not have been a
bestseller, subliminally, they will have seen bestseller previously,
and it will lead to an association with your book.

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Now, when behavior is reinforced, we tend to continue it. When it's

punished, we avoid it. So, we want to use this to our advantage and
keep the flow going to maintain their compliance. So, you definitely
want to offer appropriate incentives. Large monetary incentives can
sometimes backfire because people tend to choke when they get
worried about losing the potential cash. You need to price such an
incentive so that it's not so high as to cause anxiety. When people
are seeking a large external reward, they feel that they're
performing the requested action just to obtain the reward. This is
called extrinsic motivation. However, they're performing the
task-- If they're performing the task for a small amount of money
or no money, they develop the attitude that they're performing the
action because it's congruent with their own beliefs, which is
intrinsic motivation. Which is way more powerful than extrinsic
motivation. Social incentives such as small gifts, praise, or positive
feedback are more effective if you want to keep the relationships
social instead of business.

Use limitations. When we perceive that something's being limited,
we want to reclaim the freedom to have it, right? This is the law of
scarcity. As something becomes less available, we tend to want it
more. It's the reason why scarcity works in advertising. If
something is scarce, we tend to place a higher value on it.
Sometimes when people are offered many different options, it
tends to overwhelm them, instead of making it easier for them to
select as I talked about, in the example in an earlier module with
the conversation I was having with my friend whose business is
down. If you offer people too many options, statistically speaking,
they are less likely to make a decision, less likely to comply, less
likely to buy, less likely to be persuaded. You can avoid this problem
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by organizing the different options into category. So, to solicit a

quicker decision, you can limit the amount of time the subject has
to choose an option.

You want to create quality connections. And you can create the
associations that you want your audience to have with your product
or services. For example, advertisers sometimes present their
products as fun sports events. The feeling of fun and excitement
gets transferred from the event to the way the audience feels about
the product.

Use metaphors to quickly bring your audience to the mindset you
want them to have. For example, things that are associated with up
are thought of as good. Advertising at the top of a page puts the
product or service in a better light than the same ad at the bottom
of a page. If you want to communicate about something new in your
speech presentations, use metaphors to compare it to something
that your audience is already familiar with. It will make it easier for
them to understand as well as heighten their trust in you. So,
circling back to the beginning of this module, where I talked about
shaping perception, I gave the example of the shower. So, if I was to
just jump right in and start explaining that; you may or may not
understand the concept of shaping someone's perception of
warming them up to you. But because I gave the analogy of the
shower, it's a lot easier to assimilate.

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Welcome to Module Eight of Persuasive Speakology, where we are
going to talk about what I call the trifecta of power when it comes to
persuasion. And the reason why I call this the trifecta of power was
because if you were to skip every other module in this program, but
instead just learn these three things, you would still be leaps and
bounds ahead of the average person who doesn't know how to use
these things correctly.

Now, speaking of people that don't know how to use things
correctly when it comes to persuasion, I want to ask you a question.
The question is, what do you think the number one reason is why
people fail when it comes to communicating with others? Think
about that for a second, what is the number one reason people fail
when it comes to effectively communicating with others? So, the
reason is because we've been robbed of the education of
communication. This isn't something that you learn in high school
or college. You learn everything else but this stuff. Imagine this.
You're stranded on a remote island. Doesn't matter how you got
there. You're there, you're scared, you're uncertain. Suddenly, a
man comes out from the forest. He introduces himself and tells you
he's been on the island for 15 years. The bad news, he still hasn't
figured out how to get off the island. But the good news is he knows
how to survive. He actually knows how to live like a king in being
stranded on remote island terms.

So, he invites you to have a bite to eat. He lights a fire, he pulls out a
giant fish on a stick. He roast it over the fire for 10 minutes. He lays
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it out on a big banana leaf. And he finishes it with some fresh

squeezed lime juice. He even garnishes it with some type of fresh
herbs. You take a bite, it's pure bliss. It's like a flavor bomb
exploded in your mouth. It's better than any fish you've had in any
seafood restaurant. Simply amazing. You can't believe how good
this fish tastes. Now, he tells you that he can teach you exactly how
to make fish just like this. He'll show you how to scale it. He'll show
you how to get it on the stick without ripping it apart. He'll tell you
exactly how long you need to cook it for it to come out absolutely
perfect. He'll even show you were to find the limes and the herbs.
Sounds great.

So, when do we go fishing you ask? Well, I don't teach people the
fishing part. That's something you need to figure out on your own.
You're standing there puzzled. Why would this guy show me
everything except the most important part? Without the fish, then
everything else he shows me is worthless. Well, guess what? That's
exactly how the game of life is currently set up. You get an
education so you can get a job, but you don't learn how to persuade
the boss to hire you. You learn a skill so you can be paid to utilize
that skill, but you don't learn how to communicate that you have
that skill. You learn to be a good partner who cares for others, but
you don't learn the skills needed to persuade someone to go out on
a date with you. You learn to become an entrepreneur so you can
make a living on your own terms, but you don't learn how to
influence the people in your market to become customers.

So, think about that for a second. The most important education
that you should receive in life, the education of effective
communication isn't taught to you. Instead, you're left to figure
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that part out on your own, just as if you were back on that deserted
island. And because of that, most of what you probably think in
terms of communicating effectively doesn't. And so what I just
shared with you is an excerpt from what I call an Indoctrination
Email. So, an indoctrination email is an email that someone gets
when they first subscribe to my email list. And it basically
indoctrinates them into the world of Paul Mascetta influence
persuasion, hypnotic language, body language negotiation, NLP,
etc. And so what I'm doing when I give that analogy, is I'm
explaining the importance of getting an education when it comes to
influence and persuasion. Sure, I could sit there and I can cite off
case studies, and talk about all sorts of logical reasons why you
should do it. But instead, I just give an analogy. And then the
analogy is that when it comes to the game of life, we're given
everything that we need. We're given all the tools that we need,
with the exception of the ability of getting people to buy into the
fact that we actually have those skills.

So, another example that I give us, you can be the greatest lawyer
on the block. You could know everything there is to know about case
law. You could graduate from Harvard Law School. But if you can't
effectively communicate that to a judge, a jury, or at least your
clients, you will likely fail to the lesser educated lawyer who can
communicate effectively. And so these three things that I'm going
to share with you here, storytelling metaphors, and analogies are
the three most effective ways that you can do that. So, your
presentations are going to be far more effective in capturing
people's emotions if you use storytelling metaphors and analogies
to wrap up your messages.

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Now, the very first thing that you need to do is capture attention,
right? You have to capture your audience's attention and their focus
within the first 30 seconds of your presentation. You know, rule
number one in any kind of communication is to capture attention.
Because without attention, there is no communication. You're
talking to yourself. So, again, the example that I just gave you, I
could have sat there and gave you all sorts of logical reasons why
you should educate yourself when it comes to influence and
persuasion. But instead, I used an analogy.

Well, another thing you can use is a story. Now, stories are
oftentimes the easiest and most effective form of communication.
The reason why is the human mind is hard-wired for story. We've
been hearing stories since the dawn of time. 200,000 years ago,
men were catching prey with their bare hands. This was
time-consuming and required a lot of energy, not to mention the
threat of injury or death. So, one day, some guy figures out that he
could set a trap and catch an animal instead of chasing it with a
spear. He creates a booby trap and goes to sleep. He wakes up the
next morning and finds a little rabbit in the trap. Rabbit stew it is.
What does he do next? He goes to his tribe, and he tells them the
story. I was out hunting, I saw a spider web with a bunch of bugs
trapped in it. So, I thought to myself, if spiders can use traps so can
humans. I got to thinking. I found a rock. I held it up with two
sticks. I put a piece of fruit under it and tied it to the stick. The plan
was simple. The animal takes the fruit, the rock falls on it. It worked
like a charm. And when I woke up, I found this rabbit. Best part, I
caught it while I was asleep. The trap did all the work.

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You see what he did? He told a story. And so did I once again. Stories
are the oldest form of teaching. And that's why the Hollywood
industry generates billions of dollars each year. It's because we
cannot resist a good story. So, anytime you can take your message
and wrap it up in a story, what you've done is you've created a
method where people will remember what you're saying, they'll
engage in what you're saying, and they won't resist in your
persuasive speech. So, don't bore your audience with introductory
comments. Instead, engage their hearts, minds, and emotions with
a story. Work the other information into the rest of your
presentation in small bites.

Since the earliest days of mankind, as I just mentioned, our brains
have used stories to remember and learn. We're hardwired to listen
to remember, and react emotionally to stories. A well designed and
masterfully presented story takes your listeners on an imaginary
journey where you want to take them. This gives you, the speaker,
the golden opportunity to convey a message or teach a lesson
without preaching. Now, conflict is what drives a story. So, don't be
afraid to share stories that are personal to you. Your audience is
going to be captivated when you offer them a story that has a
dramatic conflict. The more dynamic the conflict is, the more
engaged your audience will be. To evaluate whether your story is
working to achieve your goals, judge its elements to determine
whether it touches on the primary emotions. Get your audience
curious. Tell the story in a way that makes your audience curious as
to what happens next. If your story has strong conflict, the
audience will be moving ahead mentally to determine what the
outcome will be.

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Now again, the two analogies that I just gave you, secondly with the
caveman, and the first one about how we, as a human race were
robbed of the education of effective communication are really all
part of this big storytelling email sequence that I use, where I tell
multiple stories to demonstrate points. And usually, at the end of
each email, I will ask a question, or I will create something called an
open loop. So, an open loop is basically a cliffhanger. It's when you
create something but then you don't fulfill on it. You don't provide
the answer. So, what I will do is at the end of each of these emails,
I'll create a cliffhanger, which causes the person to want to open up
the next email. So, I'm utilizing the curiosity in that aspect with the
stories.

You also want to use sensory details. So, again, if we go back to that
caveman example I just gave you, I talked a lot about how the fish
tasted, and what it looked like, what the preparation of the fish look
like. So, be specific so that your audience can experience the
different sensory experiences and imagine the characters. These
types of details keep your story alive to the audience. Visual,
auditory smell, taste, and touch, that's what you want to think
about. What do you want them to see, hear, smell, taste, and touch?
How do these experiences make them feel either emotionally or
physically?

Clarity and consciousness are important. So, even if you will be
providing a big description, work to make your descriptions concise
and on point. You want to be specific, and consistent. For example,
saying that he was taller than everyone else in class is not as
effective as saying he was 18 inches taller than everyone else.
Specificity leads and really reinforces credibility. You want to
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provide a visual picture of the characters. With your words, paint a

picture of how the characters look and act. You want to provide
interesting details. By providing interesting details, you can paint a
picture with your words that gives them a feeling for each
character. Each character should provoke strong emotions.

And as you're telling your story, make sure the audience can feel
how each character is experiencing the sensory experiences in the
story. You do this by providing sensory details. What the scene
looked like, what the weather felt like, what the food smelled like,
what the food tasted like, what songs were playing in the
background. Make sure to show versus tell. So, compare these two
descriptions. She found her boss to be intimidating. When her boss
towered over her, his command soared out like blazing hot steam
from a hot steam engine. See, two different things. In one aspect,
we're telling and the other one, we're showing.

When to use a story, a metaphor, or an analogy. So, these are all
three different things. I usually like to start with a story. If I can
find a real true story, preferably that involved me to demonstrate a
point, and that story has conflict and drama. You know, I almost
lost my life in a serious car accident in 2003. I utilize that story a lot
because it involves a lot of drama and conflict and it's a true story, I
will do that. Or I will use a story about someone else. If I don't have
a story. I will utilize an analogy like I did. I use two analogies in the
very beginning of this module. And metaphors I want you to think
of are kinds of things that you can sprinkle throughout both a story
and an analogy. They can also stand on their own. But they are
things that you can sprinkle throughout your analogy to make them
spicier. And I'm actually using a metaphor right there. I'm
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comparing it to something that you would sprinkle over a dish or in

a food to make it taste better.

So, a story has a beginning, a high point where there is conflict, a
solution to that conflict, and an end. Use stories when you want to
teach or get a very important message across. A metaphor is a
bridge between the new and the familiar. It's a term or phrase
that's applied to something to suggest a resemblance. Would you
rather set up an appointment to go to the dentist or to a smile
stylist? In other words, here the word stylist is being used to equate
dentistry with fashion. An analogy is a comparison between two
things that are quite different and unrelated.

So, again, in the two analogies that I gave you before, to
demonstrate the power of the story, I linked it to the caveman era,
and catching prey, right? Two very different things. And in the first
analogy, I linked to the robbery essentially, that we've all
experienced of not getting the education that we need when it
comes to effective communication to that of being stranded on a
deserted island. So, I take two things that are quite different, and I
merged them together. That's how you use an analogy. “A good
speech should be like a woman's skirt; long enough to cover the
subject and short enough to create interest.” That's one of my
favorite ones from Churchill. That wraps up this module. I'll see you
in…

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Welcome back. We are now in the third part of the five-part
Persuasive Speakology method, which is called assessing the
landscape. Now, so far we've covered different techniques and
strategies. But here's where we begin to change a little bit and
deviate from what you may or may not have been taught in the past
about communication skills. Here's what where I believe this
program becomes a game-changer. Because knowing what to say,
and how to say it are very important, but also knowing when to say
it. So, knowing which environment circumstance, or situation is the
correct one to execute a certain technique or strategy is extremely
important.

So, we begin with Module Nine. And the first area that we're going
to cover is public speaking. So, when beginning the process of
finding speaking opportunities, set aside an entire day just for
prospecting. In order to find speaking gigs you want, you need to
ask yourself very specific questions. And you want to go from
general to specific. How do I find gigs to how do I speak at colleges?
From how do I speak at colleges to how do I speak at Harvard? The
more specific you can get about the message that you want to
present, and the type of audience you want to speak to, the more
clear you'll be about how to network appropriately to get there.

So, put yourself in the frame of mind where you can see speaking
opportunities everywhere you look. Begin by connecting with
people who can hire you to speak and seek out names of events so
that you can connect with the right people. If you don't already
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have it, investigate and purchase a good package of CRM software

so you can keep track of all leads.

So, let's begin with businesses both national and local. Most cities
have magazines and newspapers that are devoted to business news.
You can begin by checking out the publications events page. Contact
the organizations that have listings there, and pitch them your
presentation. Business networking groups, such as LeTip, Local
Business Network, and Business Networking International are also
good resources to put the word out that you're interested in public
speaking opportunities. You also want to contact leaders. If you're
interested in going national with your business topic, pitch your
presentation to a corporate headquarters of a local branch of a
company. You can do research at LeadershipDirectories.com to find
businesses, nonprofit, legal, and government leaders to contact.

Now, before we go any further and I'll get into this a little bit later.
When we first begin with public speaking, there are a couple of
things that I want you to understand. First of all, fear of public
speaking is widely recognized as the number one fear among
human beings. People fear it more than death. So, I think it was
Jerry Seinfeld who said, if that's statistically true, then people are
actually more afraid of delivering a eulogy than being in the coffin.
Right? So, fear of public speaking is a big one. So, assuming, I'm
assuming one of two things. That either you've overcome your fear
of public speaking or you intend to overcome your fear of public
speaking so that you can utilize the techniques in this program to
become better at it. Or you have no interest in public speaking.
You're using these techniques for negotiations, sales
environments, social engagement, things of that nature, and you
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don't have any interest in public speaking. So, if you don't have any
interest in public speaking, then you can skip this part of the
program.

But if you do, then I would urge you, especially if you've never done
public speaking before, that you want to start out with small gigs
that don't require a ton of work, or a ton of time, or a ton of effort
to be put into the actual speech. And you should be prepared,
especially if you've never done this before to speak at public events
at least 10 times before you ever get paid a single dollar to do so. So,
essentially, what I'm saying is that you need to start out speaking
for free. Because what you want to do is you want to create a
reputation that precedes itself. That you deliver real value at your
speaking events. And in the beginning, the fact of the matter is that
you're kind of on a value ladder, right? And so the people that
provide the most value that are at the top of the ladder are the
people that get paid lots of money.

People like Anthony Robbins, people like Gary Vaynerchuk. These
are the people that get five to six figures to deliver a half-hour
speech, right? Because they've proven that they and they've - and
they've demonstrated that they provide tremendous value. So,
they're at the top of the value ladder. When you're just starting out,
you're at the bottom of the value ladder. And the only way to get up
the value ladder is to demonstrate and prove that you deliver
exceptional value in your speeches. The problem is, you're never
going to get the opportunity to do that if you're trying to charge
from the very beginning. So, you have to be prepared to again,
speak at least at a very minimum. I'm talking about bare-bones
minimum 10 times for free. And then if you're really exceptional at
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what you do, and you start to create a reputation for yourself, then
maybe you can start charging. But in the beginning, you gotta be
ready to demonstrate your value for free, so that you can climb up
that value ladder.

The next spot or the next couple of places that you want to look at
are educational institutions and schools. So, there are colleges,
universities, state schools, technical schools, and high schools
all-around your local area. Students in all fields and at all levels
need inspirational messages. So, these are very good places to start.
You also want to go from university to community. At universities
and colleges, you can contact a professor or department head to
offer a forum or presentation on a subject that's relevant to you and
to the educator’s special interest groups. Invite the larger
community as well so that you can make valuable contacts for other
talks. If you're interested in speaking at colleges, the National
Association for Campus Activities and the Association for the
Promotion of Campus Activities are both organizations that offer
opportunities for speaking. Speakers that get hired have a very
heavy emphasis on wrapping their educational messages in an
entertaining package.

You also want to go to local associations, clubs, and special interest
groups. Every city has organizations and clubs such as Kiwanis,
Lions Club, the Chamber of Commerce, and Rotary that meet
regularly and need speakers. If your topic is appropriate to these
groups, contact the programming chair to offer a presentation.
Don't hesitate to tap your friends, neighbors, and colleagues to
approach them about connecting you with these local
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organizations. Attend your local Chamber of Commerce meeting to

get contacts for other local associations that need speakers.

You also want to focus on special interests. So, do you have hobbies
or special talents that would match with a special interest group?
Do you build robots in your spare time, or know how to create a
quilt? Maybe you love to take photographs or have traveled to an
exotic place. There are a special interest groups that cater to all
different topics and interests. Seek them out and offer them
something that's fun, but also educational. I have a good friend who
is a chiropractor, and I met him through Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. We
both train at the same Jiu-Jitsu Academy. And this guy's a super
nice guy and he's also super smart. And so what happens in
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is because it's a very physical type of activity, it's
grappling, it's wrestling, a lot of guys get injured. They pull muscles
in their neck, they may pull muscles in their legs, they may strain
themselves, hurt themselves. And so he does massage. Besides his
chiropractic practice, he also does massage and he helps people.
And so he's picked up a few different clients from the Jiu-Jitsu
Academy because naturally, they'll come to him and say, “Hey,
Doc, you know, I pulled a muscle in my neck the other day. What do
you think I should do?” And then he'll help them and then
eventually, he may get them as a massage client. Well, now he's
worked it out to a point where he gives speeches at the Academy.
And he gives people tips and advice on how to prevent themselves
from getting hurt by doing proper stretching before they train, and
things of that nature. So, what he's done is he's combined his hobby
or his special talent with a specific interest group. But at the same
time, is now speaking about his area of expertise. And he's creating
value, and making money in the process.
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TEDx and TED. If you don't know, I'm a very big fan of TED Talks. If
you don't know what they are just Google TED Talks. You'll be taken
to their YouTube channel. And what I love most about them is that
these are some of the most highly viewed speeches that range from
anything. They could range from world hunger, to weather
conditions, to self-improvement, to body language, to music. And
so what they do, these TED Talks, they feature experts in any given
field. They're only limited to 18 minutes of talk time, which is great
because you're never put in a situation where someone's droning
on and on and on more than 18 minutes. What's also great about the
18-minute factor is that it forces the speaker to condense their
absolute most vital best information in that specific speech. So,
obviously, if you can get into this arena or into this area, your
message is going to be received by a lot of people.

So, if you don't know exactly what TED is, it began in 1984, for
short speeches on technology, entertainment, and design. But as I
said, today, it covers everything from new frontier science topics,
to trending business, and pressing global issues. TED is a national
as well as a global stage. In 2009, the TED franchise launched a
regional version of their national program called TEDx. So, if you're
just starting as a speaker, it makes sense to begin regionally, and
then become established before pitching to the national event. To
get booked, at a TEDx conference, first research future TEDx
events, then research the process of application. Some events have
open call, some don't. Number three, dovetail into the event’s
theme. Next, make sure you're easy to find. You can make contact
through a connection or through a proposal. But another way to be
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very active is in social media in your field so that you can be found.
Five, focus on the value that you can give to others.

So, when we talk about social media, I mean, social media can be
such a powerful tool, if you use it correctly. For me, YouTube has
always been my favorite channel, if you will, or my favorite segue
into social media. I'm very comfortable on video. I like YouTube. I
like the way that their algorithm works. I like the way that their
marketing works. And most of all, like I said, I'm just comfortable
getting in front of a camera. I think at this point, I have close to
12,000 YouTube subscribers. I can't tell you how many
opportunities have come my way because of my YouTube channel.
People come across my videos, certain videos that I have, I've
gotten close to 100,000 views. And then what happens is those
videos become suggested videos, to videos with similar topics.

So, for example, if I shoot a video on how to use hypnotic language
to reduce resistance, and that video starts to get a lot of views, it'll
be chained together with similar videos that also have a lot of use.
So, now I'm able to open up and gain exposure to an audience that I
would not have necessarily gotten exposure to before. I've gotten
LinkedIn invitations. I've gotten speaking gigs. I've gotten
invitations to come and deliver speeches at people's places of
employment, essentially to train their teams. So, the more of
yourself that you put out there in social media, it doesn't have to be
YouTube. It can be Facebook. I'm just using YouTube as an example
because in the context of this conversation, we're talking about
speaking. But the more you put yourself out there again, the more
value you provide, the more likely you are to get speaking gigs
without really even trying.
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Next, we have conferences, trade associations, trade shows, and
other special events. There are over 17,000 state, regional, and
national trade associations in the US alone. They all have speaking
opportunities. Columbia books offers useful directories in both
print and online form for tracking down these leads. Three such
directories are The National and Professional Trade Association
Directory, and The Directory of Association Meeting Planners, and
Directory of Corporate Meeting Planners. There are a number of
online conference directories where you can customize a profile
and potential events will be sent to your email for review. You can
check out A
llConferences.com and C
onferize.com.

Another valuable resource is EventsinAmerica.com for finding
potential trade shows, and conferences for your presentation.
Meeting planner magazines also offer information that can be
mined for contacts, and events. I'll give you a perfect example of
this. I have a number of different businesses. But this business is a
digital publishing business where we teach people, strategies, and
techniques that improve their communication skills specifically
designed around influence and persuasion. Well, there are two sides
to my business. There's the teaching aspect of the business. And
then there's the marketing aspect of the business. So, the teaching
aspect of the business is what I'm doing right now. The training,
the tips, techniques, strategies, the delivery of the training
information. The marketing aspect of the business is everything
that leads up to this point. It's everything that leads a prospect
down the path of becoming a customer.

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Well, every year in August, there's a company by the name of

Clickbank. Which Clickbank is an online marketplace, that allows
people like me who create products and trainings to merge with
people that don't have products and trainings, but they have an
audience. And so they'll come to the marketplace to look for
valuable products and services that they can market to their
audience because they don't have those types of products to
market. And so every year, Clickbank holds a huge conference here
in New York. And I started going probably close to eight years ago.
And as I started making connections there, I started realizing that a
lot of the marketers that I was meeting there really didn't
understand how the world of influence and persuasion worked.

And so I started actually getting clients from these trade shows.
Simply because this person would have a product, and they would
be trying to sell the product in a video. But they couldn't tell good
stories or they couldn't use an analogy or they kept using vocal
fillers. And when I would point these things out to them and
provide a little bit of constructive criticism to them and some
feedback to them. I eventually wound up getting clients and then
that led to speaking gigs where I began to teach marketers how to
better communicate their marketing messages. So, trade shows,
definitely another valuable area to investigate. That wraps up this
module. I'll see you in the next one.

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Welcome back to Module 10 of Persuasive Speakology. We're now
going to talk about sales environments. One of the largest events of
the year in most corporations is a huge public speaking
opportunity. You could step up to the plate in your company by
offering to do a presentation to train sales representatives.

Now, in my experience, there are two kinds of people in the world.
There are people that love sales. And there are people that hate
sales. And the people that love sales have their days when they hate
sales. And it's usually the days that they're not making any sales.
And believe me, I went through that roller coaster, many a time in
my life, because I was in sales for many years. Those days, when
sales are coming in like crazy, you feel like you're on top of the
world. And when you're striking out left and right and not making
any sales, you feel like an absolute loser. But the one thing that I
can always say truthfully and wholeheartedly about selling is that if
you can sell, and if you're good at selling, you'll never be out of a
job. There's always an opportunity. Because as long as you can sell
and you bring that value to the table, companies are always going to
want you because they always want good salespeople. And good
salespeople are hard to find.

Well, let me tell you what's even harder to find. What's even harder
to find is someone that can not only sell but can train other people
to sell. See, in my experience, I've also come across two types of
people within the sales arena. People that are really good at selling,
or people that are really good at training other people to sell. But
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very seldomly, did I ever come across someone that was actually
great at both. Someone that could train and motivate salespeople to
perform at their peak level, but also wasn't afraid to get down and
dirty into the trenches and close someone if they needed to. So, if
you can become that person, you basically magnify your value by
100 because you now become one of the rarest types of people in the
sales world.

So, what you want to start with is pre-training. You want to align
the sales training methods that you will use to the corporation's
strategies, mission, and goals, right? You don't want to be teaching
people or utilizing methods that directly contradict what the
company stands for. Because then you're going to run into a
problem. Second thing is you want to have the right mindset. Sales
training shouldn't be just a once a year event. If you plan
strategically, you can keep your team striving for improvement
throughout the year. Three, you want to evaluate where your buyers
or clients are. Has there been a shift in their perspective throughout
the year? Ask yourself that important question again. What value do
we bring to our customers?

The time that sales reps spend in a room listening to your
presentation is valuable time that they are taking out of the field.
So, you want to make the presentation and the training that you
present relevant and actionable. And by all means, make it
inspiring, they need to have the motivation in order to go out and
sell. The challenge is to unlock the expert knowledge from subject
matter experts in your organization. Or in other organizations and
package it in a clear concise manner so that reps can become
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smooth in sharing this information with customers in their

conversations.

After the training, you want to leverage technology to keep your
message alive as you communicate with reps throughout the year.
Short video clips where you present key strategies once a week is
just one way to do this. Plan a communications campaign that uses
different ways to reach the reps through ongoing webinars, social
networking, and lunch presentations. These are all opportunities
for getting your message across. If you work in a corporation, or
you have your own business, weekly sales management meetings
are an opportunity to speak and spire your team to action.

So, there are three keys to reinforcing successful sales strategies
with your team. First is consistency. Weekly meetings shouldn't
just be something that you and your team phone in. If you plan a
consistent meeting, every week, you'll be prepared as the sales
manager to offer valuable information to your team. It also sets up
the expectation that the salespeople need to be accountable weekly.
In addition, it's a forum for sharing valuable field information.

You know, one of the most important things about consistency,
first of all, if we go back to the laws of persuasion are the laws of
influence that we spoke about in the beginning of the program. One
of them is commitment and consistency. So, people like to be
consistent in their thoughts and in their actions. And when I was a
salesperson, before I became a sales manager, I was a salesperson.
And a lot of times, the sales managers in my corporation would be
like a rotating door. We would have a new sales manager every
couple of months. Why? Going back to the reason that I told you
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before. Most of the sales managers that were coming in were just
former salespeople. They knew how to sell themselves, but they
didn't know how to motivate other people to sell.

Fortunately, for me, I never really needed anybody to motivate me
to sell because I would just look at my rent, know that my rent bill
was due every month. And that was motivation enough for me to
make sure that I was selling. And so when I would see these
managers come and go, I would almost sit and laugh and wonder,
oh, how long is this guy going to last? I'll give him a month. I'll give
him a week. And let me tell you, one of the biggest key indicators
that a sales manager would not last long, is inconsistency. So, once
I saw that a manager was becoming inconsistent in his behavior, or
in his words, I knew for a fact that they wouldn't last long.

So, for instance, the new sales manager comes in, they give you the
rah-rah speech, they talk about how they're going to implement
new techniques and strategies. How they're going to meet with us
every single morning to make sure that we're on track. How we're
going to have a special kind of meeting every week, and then
another kind of meeting every month. And then slowly, but surely,
none of those things start to happen. Right? The meeting that
you're supposed to have at 09:30 in the morning doesn't happen
because the sales manager is tied up doing something else. Or the
monthly meeting that was supposed to happen doesn't happen
because they went on vacation. And so what starts to happen is
inconsistency slowly creeps its way in. And then the salespeople
begin to lose respect for the manager, because they see that the
manager is not someone with integrity.

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And I'm not saying that the manager is a liar. But they're not being
consistent in their actions or in what they say they're going to do.
So, it's essentially an extremely important that you be consistent in
everything that you say you're going to do. You want to have a
standard agenda. Peer pressure works. It's been psychologically
proven. Make sure the reps report on what they sold during the
week. Also, have them discuss their processes throughout the week
in terms of customer interactions. What went well, what didn't.
Next on the agenda is what's in the pipeline. Is there enough in the
sales funnel, to make or exceed the quota. Make a note of lessons
learned and inspirational stories. If there's time left, train on new
selling skills.

But when we talk about peer pressure, what we're really talking
about is the power of commitment and the power of public
commitment. So, people, again, circling back to the laws of
influence, commitment, and consistency. People do not like to fall
short on their commitments, right? That's something that's
frowned upon in the general world. People that commit to doing
something and then back out of it are not highly respected people.
And so because most people understand that, once you get a person
to make a commitment, they're generally going to want to follow
through on that commitment.

Now, when they make that commitment publicly, in front of other
people, they're 10 times more likely to want to follow through on
that commitment. And so when I talk about the concept of peer
pressure, really, what I'm talking about, is having all of your
salespeople together in one place, each making public
99
commitments and each talking about their success stories, and

what they need help with.

Sales meetings become boring and drone on because they're not
designed for interaction. So, don't concentrate on lack of sales.
Instead, concentrate on having the reps do interactive exercises
where they can train their sales muscles. Ask yourself the question,
is there something I can offer today that will help the reps sell more
or keep customers happier. If you concentrate on this and offer it
weekly, you'll yield the results. Use your speaking abilities to train,
assist, and inspire.

There are many different opportunities to sell by speaking to
groups of potential clients instead of to individual clients. So, what
we want to talk about here are presentations to clients in groups,
right, versus the one on one interaction where you're sitting across
the desk from someone. So, there are a couple of key things that you
need to do. First, before the presentation, try to meet people in the
group you're presenting to ahead of time so you can establish
rapport with as many individuals as possible. If you can find out
who the final decision-makers are, it's useful as you can tailor your
presentation accordingly. You can give those decision-makers
some extra attention. But do it in a subtle manner, so that you don't
alienate others who may be a help in making the sale. Try to find
out if there are any pressing concerns or issues on their minds so
that you can address them in your presentation.

Now, this circles back to something that I've been teaching for
years called the GRIPS Method. If you own my program, Maverick
Persuasion or you've been with me for any length of time, you've
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probably heard me talk about the GRIPS Method. And so what the
grips method is, is simply a five-step process for effectively
influencing people. So, the G stands for gather intelligence, the R
stands for reduce resistance, the I stands for initiate control, the P
stands for Position yourself, and then the S stands for sustain your
position.

Well, the very first part of that process is to gather intelligence. And
so when I talk about gathering intelligence, it's exactly what I'm
talking about here before the presentation. It is trying to learn
about the people that you're going to be making your presentation
to, especially with decision-makers. And then if possible, getting to
know them on a personal level before you make the presentation.
Why? Because statistically speaking, that person, well, every single
person that you're presenting to, is going to make a rapid
subconscious decision and a judgement about you within the first
four to seven seconds of meeting you. So, if you don't meet any of
them beforehand and you just come on stage, they're going to make
those decisions about you. And unfortunately, when you're on
stage, because it's a one-sided communication situation where
you're really the only one doing the talking in the beginning, you
don't really have an opportunity to ask questions. And then based
on the answers to those questions, create the best possible scenario
for them forming a good judgment about you in their mind.

So, let me explain what I mean by that. Scenario number one, when
you don't meet anybody before the presentation is you get on stage,
or you get in the middle of the room, and you start presenting to a
group of people. And every single person in that group makes that
rapid subconscious decision about you. Within seven seconds, they
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cross-reference you with everyone else that they've ever met in
their life. And then they try to file you into a draw that matches
somebody that they've met before. And they make a decision about
you. Because if they're comparing you to somebody that they had a
good experience with, then they're going to generally look at you as
a good person. If, however, they make a connection between you
and somebody that they've had an unpleasant experience with in
the past, they're going to make a bad judgment about you. And
because you're up there speaking, and it's not an interactive
conversation as of yet. You're kind of just left out there to the
wolves. They're just making these judgments about you.

If however, you go to scenario number two, where you meet up with
the people ahead of time, maybe a half-hour, an hour before you
make the presentation, so that when they make that subconscious
decision about you because it's going to happen no matter what,
right? It's going to happen, whether you meet them before or
whether you're giving the presentation live. In both cases, they're
going to make these decisions about you. But the differences in
scenario number two, you have the opportunity to make it an
interactive conversation. So, in scenario number two, let's say you
meet two or three people that are going to be part of the group. And
they're making their rapid subconscious decisions about you.

You can also start an interactive conversation with them by asking
them how long they've been with the company, where they live,
what their commute is like, what made them come to the company,
if they have a wife, if they have children. And you can then start
utilizing the answers to these questions to create rapport with
them. And then what happens is, if you create a strong enough
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rapport with them, the subconscious decision that they made about
you earlier, if it was a bad one, the rapport will start to override
that. And what they'll begin to say to themselves is, maybe this guy
isn't so bad, after all. So, it's essential that you try to meet people in
the group that you're presenting to ahead of time so that you can
establish rapport with them, especially the decision-makers.

During the presentation, make sure that you refer to the problems
and issues of the group and show how what you're offering is going
to solve their problems or fulfill their needs. And as you describe
the benefits of your products and services, make sure you use the
VAK model as much as possible: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.
You want to appeal to everyone in the audience, and most
importantly, engage their emotions. So, circling back to the world
of NLP, the VAK model tells us that generally speaking, people
make sense of the world in three different ways. They either use
their eyes or what they see, those are visual people. There are
people that make sense of the world using their ears or based on the
way they hear things. And then there are people that make
decisions based on the way things feel to them.

Now while it's true that we all use a combination of these things at
times, the reality is that most of us have a default leading one that
we use most of the time. And so you want to be able to appeal to all
three, as people in the group are going to be utilizing one more than
the other. After the presentation, if possible, get the group
participants to provide you with feedback. Engage them in
conversation and pay careful attention to their responses. Active
listening is just as important as speaking.

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Shareholder or investor presentations. These are some of the most

important sales presentations since they can potentially make or
break your reputation in the marketplace. Many people believe that
investors’ minds are only tuned into data and facts. But that's not
true at all. Research shows that this type of information accounts
for no more than 10% of stock volatility. If you wrap your data up in
a soft information narrative, a story it will be more engaging for
shareholders to listen to. So, think of the numbers and facts as the
ingredients of a delicious meal that you're serving to your
shareholders. Those are only the elements. Without the chef's
magic, it will never be a memorable meal. So, provide the investors
with a story narrative about your company and its future. Relate
your achievements to real people and current events. Right?

How many times have you eaten something? It used to happen to
me all the time with my grandmother. She would make something,
it would be so delicious, I would ask her for the recipe. But I could
never ever make it taste the way she did. And I did everything to the
T. I followed every single element of the recipe to the T, but I still
couldn't replicate it. Why? Because she had her own unique magical
touch. The same is true here. When you're communicating numbers
and facts, they should only be used as elements that support the
magical touch, which is the narrative or the story.

A potential way to strategize is to use the bucket method. And this is
developed by Carmine Gallo, who I'm a very big fan of. He wrote a
couple of books, one called T
he Storyteller’s Secret, another one
called T
alk Like TED, and then another one called The Presentation
Secrets of Steve Jobs. And Carmine is an absolute master when it
comes to communication skills. And so his bucket method works
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like this. You first identify questions that you think are going to be
asked. Then you categorize the questions into top categories such
as competition or industry. Then you divide the categories among
your Annual General Meeting team. Then you create broad answers
for every category of questions. And then, during the meeting when
questions are being asked, you listen for trigger words that align
with a category. Then you look the questioner in the eye, and you
answer the question confidently.

So, what this does is, it's just really a super effective way to prepare
to answer questions. Because the reality is, if you can't answer a
question effectively and efficiently and with confidence, people lose
respect for you. This is a rock-solid, airtight way to make sure that
you're prepared to answer any and all types of questions.

One-on-one sales. So, everything we do in life has an element of
sales to it, all right. You need to sell yourself, your products, and
your services. You need to sell your teenager on why it's important
to call in if he's late. You need to sell your spouse on the idea that
it's time to take a vacation. You need to sell your ideas and your
causes to get buy-in from others. So, one thing that we want to
remember is that people make emotional decisions. So, many
people think that selling the features and benefits of a product or
service is what's going to convince someone to buy. But the reality
is that people make decisions for emotional reasons that are largely
subliminal. Speaking and selling is about appealing to emotions, in
direct and indirect ways.

So, the two most important words in sales, according to Jeffrey
Gitomer's Little Red Book of Selling. The first of them is you. Have
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you ever tried to buy a car but couldn't stand the salesperson who
was trying to sell it to you? You may have driven a considerable
distance until you found a salesperson that you could talk to before
you brought up the very same car that you were looking at when
you're at the previous dealership. People want to like the people
they buy from. As a salesperson, that means you need to establish
rapport first. Sell yourself first with your speaking skills and
demeanor.

You need to get at the why. The second most important word is
why. It's going to take a skill set to get at the real reason why
someone is looking or not looking to buy something. People don't
buy for your reasons. They buy for their reasons. However,
sometimes those reasons aren't obvious. And sometimes people
will go to huge extremes to cover up the real reason because they
may be embarrassed about it. So, you need to ask three to four
probing questions before you get at the real reason why.

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Welcome back to Module 11 of Persuasive Speakology. This module,
we're going to cover negotiations. Now, I have a little confession to
make. I used to absolutely hate negotiations, hated them. And the
reason why I hated them was because I'm generally not a combative
person. The only time I really will get into a heated debate with
someone is if I'm extremely close to them, and I feel comfortable
around them. Or if I'm truly passionate about the topic that we're
debating about. And so negotiations are like debates on some level.
Only most of the time, they involve time, money, or resources.

And there's just something about a negotiation that just used to
really rub me the wrong way. I hated getting into these situations
where I felt like I was fighting with people to get something out of
them, or to prevent them from getting something out of me. And it
just made me feel very slimy afterwards. But when the negotiation
was over I would feel even worse because I would always feel like I
got the short end of the stick. I would always feel like I never really
came out on top in the negotiation. Until I started studying
negotiation strategies and techniques and putting them to work.
And so just like anything else, once you start learning something,
and you put it to work, and you actually achieve a result with it, you
get a lot more comfortable with it. And so that's why I felt it was
essential for me to include a module on negotiations in this
program.

So, even if you're not an arbitrator, there are opportunities for
speaking up to negotiate at work, and at home. So, scenario number
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one, negotiating to get agreement between two arguing parties. A

key factor in getting people to understand and see the other
person's point of view is getting them to be more open-minded. In
fact, all types of negotiations depend on this ability to prime people
into a mindset that is more open-minded. How many times does
this happen to you? How many times have you found yourself in a
situation where you suddenly need to negotiate an agreement
between two friends, two coworkers, two family members? Really,
what it all boils down to is getting each of those people to see things
a little differently.

So, in stage one, you can get both parties to adopt a more
open-minded attitude by offering an example where someone was
closed off to an idea or an attitude, but they change their mind. So,
in other words, you prime an open-minded attitude. So, you
present the story that I'm about to share with you or something
that is appropriate to the situation. So, in stage two, we have two
neighbors that were fighting because the first neighbor was tired of
listening to the second neighbor practicing his music late at night.
Then the second neighbor invited him to listen to his practice
sessions, and the first neighbors started to feel more open-minded
to listening to the music at night. The result was that the second
neighbor agreed to keep his sessions to a time period.

Once this example is presented, or something more appropriate to
your particular negotiation, the fighting parties will be primed to be
more open-minded in their unique situation. Because just like
classic storytelling, excuse me, tells us is that when we share a little
analogy, or a little story about somebody or somebody else, when
we hear it, we can't help but imagine ourselves in that story or in
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the scenario. So, the two people in the party will begin to identify
with the two people in the scenario or the analogy that you give
them.

How about negotiating to get a higher salary for a startup job? It's
getting more and more difficult not to reveal your salary before
someone makes you a job offer. However, it's an essential part of
the deal in ensuring that you get the salary that you want. So, first
things first, let the potential employer make the first offer when
you're at the end of the job interviewing process until that point,
salary should not be discussed. Use what I call the four-second stall.
When the employer makes the offer, repeat the number, and then
stay silent for a few seconds. This will put some pressure on the
employer to revise the offer. Just make sure you have a thoughtful
pensive look on your face instead of an annoyed look.

Make a counteroffer. If the employer doesn't come back with an
offer that's workable for you then make a counteroffer. But be sure
it's based on the homework that you've already done about the
market, the company, and what you bring to the table. Once the
employer has said yes to your counteroffer, negotiate for additional
benefits, such as extra vacation, or a company car.

Now, this was a big problem that I used to have with negotiating. I
like to think of myself as a very fair person. And so I don't like to
make statements that make me appear as an unfair person. But one
of the key rules in negotiating and any smart negotiator knows this
is that you have to give yourself some breathing room when you
negotiate. So, you have to absolutely start with a number that is
either higher or lower than you're willing to pay or willing to be
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paid. So, that you can sooner or later reveal the real number. So, if
your bottom line number, let's say for selling something is $100.
You have to start at 150, 175, 200, depending on the context,
depending on what you're selling, but you do have to start at a
higher point. And because I never really wanted to insult anybody,
and I wanted to, you know, feel like I was giving the best possible
offer and being fair, I would give my best possible offer right out of
the gate. And I would never leave myself any breathing room.

And so when you deal with a person that is a good negotiator that
understands the concept of breathing room, which I often did,
because they gave themselves breathing room, and I didn't. That's
the reason why most of the time, I would walk away from the
negotiation with the short end of the stick. So, you have to utilize
breathing room. And within that breathing room is where you make
your counteroffer. And I want you to realize that if you're dealing
with a smart negotiator, such as an employer, the employer has
probably created breathing room for themselves. So, that first offer
that they made you, they've probably created some breathing room
and are prepared to accept a reasonable counter offer, if you make
it.

Timing is everything when negotiating a raise after working at a
company for a while. Have you closed a valuable contract for your
company recently? Have you saved your company money? Have you
received a great yearly evaluation? These are the times when you
should put your speaking skills to use and ask your boss for a raise.
Remember, the recency factor, that people often remember things
that happen to them recently. And so if you do something valuable
for the company today, but then ask for a raise in 90 days, the value
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that you added to the table, unfortunately, lost most of its potency
by the time you ask for the raise. So, maybe even if your good deed
or value proposition took place at a time when you weren't due for a
raise, you should still bring it up at that point and have it
documented so that you can revisit it when it is time to evaluate for
a raise.

But I remember reading a case study many, many years ago that has
to do with influence and persuasion. And I forgot what the exact
case study was. But what the case study showed was that when
people do favors for each other an amazing thing happens. So, if
one person does somebody a favor in exchange for another favor,
and they don't get the favor back from that person. So, you have
Person A who does a favor for Person B and then Person B is
supposed to do a favor back for Person A. So, let's say it's lending
money. This is a classic example. So, I lend money to my good
friend John. And my good friend John has to pay me back the
money, but he doesn't pay me back the money.

An amazing thing is said to happen psychologically between these
two people as time goes on. So, as time goes on, the favor actually
becomes more important to the person who did the favor, and less
important to the person who received the favor. And this is very
similar to what happens when you are negotiating to get more
salary. If you close a valuable contract, if you save the company
money, if you get a really good evaluation, if you do something
amazing, but you don't strike while the iron is hot and ask for the
higher raise at that point. What's gonna happen is as time goes on,
it's gonna become more important to you, but less important to the
person who's in the position to actually give you that raise.
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You also got to know your value. So, review online sources like
PayScale and Glassdoor to get a sense of your worth to the company
at the level you are today. If you've been in an organization for a
while, they may not realize the professional growth you've attained
while you've been there. You have to speak up and toot your own
horn a little bit in a nice way to let people know your
accomplishments. Praising others in an authentic way shines on
you as well. You also want to use speaking opportunities to network
within and outside your company. Keep in touch with potential
mentors, who can help you as you gain influence and salary.

Negotiating to buy a house. Most of us have been there or probably
will be there at some point in our lives. I know I have. And
sometimes speaking up can mean the difference between whether
you're able to get the house of your dreams or not. An older couple
was looking to sell their family home. The home had over 30 years
of memories in it. They had started there as a young couple and
raised their children there. The husband was ill and his wife was
caring for him. It was an emotional and difficult decision for them
to leave their home, which they loved. Their home was in a hot
market, and they knew they would sell quickly. Instead of making
them feel good, this was actually making the decision harder. The
home was already paid for and they were interested in getting a
good price. But it wasn't the only factor in terms of selling their
home.

Within a week they had five offers on the home. In talking with
their real estate agent, they've discovered that most of the people
who wanted to buy their home were actually planning to remodel it
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immediately, or even worse, tear it down. This was deeply

disturbing to them. And they actually considered taking it off the
market. On the other side of the negotiation, only one couple had
the consideration to ask about the sellers to find out what was
happening with them. They were a young couple with two small
children and the third baby on the way. Their offer was close to the
lowest and they love the home and really wanted it. They prepared a
video presentation to tell the sellers their story and to explain to
them how much they love the home and wanted to give care. They
got the home even though their offer was one of the lower ones. The
sellers cried when they left but they felt good that their home would
have another loving family.

Now, this circles back to what I told you in the very first module of
this program. And that is that people are emotional first and logical
second. We make decisions primarily based on emotion and then we
use logic to justify our decisions. Well, what this couple that was
buying the house did a very good job of is uncovering the emotion,
the emotional reason why the sellers were selling the house. And
then they tapped into that emotion, and they were able to buy the
house even though they made the lowest offer.

Negotiating with kids. Kids, and especially teenagers, I know this
myself. I have two kids. I have one that will be a teenager next year,
can be very difficult subjects for negotiation. Some parents believe
that negotiation isn't needed and you should just lay down the law.
But if you want to maintain good relationships with your children,
negotiation is a better strategy. Sit next to them to get information.
If you're trying to get your child or your teenager to talk to you,
studies have shown that a side by side sitting position works better
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than across the table from each other. Work to find out the
motivation as to why your child wants or feels they need
something. Getting something sometimes means giving something
else up.

So, let's say your preteen wants to play for a soccer team that
travels. That's going to tap your wallet and your time and you don't
feel that they need another activity on their already full list. So,
instead of saying a firm no, ask them why it's important and get a
feeling for their commitment. Then find out what on their list
they're willing to sacrifice. Even if they're not happy with the final
result that they had to give up something to get what they wanted,
end with a hug or a smile so that you reinforce your emotional
connection.

Be willing to put the smelly fish on the table. Every good negotiator
establishes authority while maintaining good relationships with
their opponents. A business negotiator once said, “Collaboration is
as they say, in Denmark, the willingness to put smelly fish on the
table.” Your 10-year-old wants the same privileges as your
15-year-old. Instead of offering her a watered-down swap, which
isn't what she wants you to say. Instead, you should just say your
sister didn't get that privilege until she was 14 and neither will you.
Just make sure to keep those privileges and when you reward them
straight because the kids will remember. That wraps up this
module. I'll see you in the next one.

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Welcome back. We are now in Module 12 of Persuasive Speakology.
And the next landscape that we're going to talk about our video
presentations. Listen, I hate to break the news to you, but we are
living in the age of technology.

And so nowadays it is faster and easier to share your content, your
opinions, your expertise, your level of training, whatever it might
be. It's easier, it's faster and easier to share that content. And it's
expected. So, if you are in a position where you are selling, where
you are a public speaker, where you're a trusted advisor, a guru,
someone that other people look to, for advice, and that advice
involves you speaking about it, you should absolutely be using
video to do that. Because nowadays, as I say, there's no hiding from
anyone.

You know, years ago, you could teach people stuff and you could
hide behind a computer. But nowadays, people want to know that
you're a real person, they want to see you. They expect you to be out
there just like everyone else is. And so you should definitely start to
get used to exploring, utilizing video presentations, for your
persuasive speeches.

There are several ways that you can use LinkedIn as a springboard
for offering your speaking presentation via video. YouTube video
links that were shared on LinkedIn resulted in a 75% higher share
rate than other types of content. Videos used on LinkedIn should be
less about promotion, and more about establishing yourself as a
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thought leader. The videos you share should be business focused,

that's LinkedIn. But you know what, in the context of this
conversation, here's what I want to say. Anytime you are putting a
video out there, really, whether it's LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook,
Instagram, the video should always be less about promotion, and
more about establishing yourself as a thought leader.

Now, if you've been on my email list, any amount of time, you know
that I do a lot of promoting. I do a lot of promoting my own
products. But the reason why I promote my products so much,
there's a couple of reasons. Number one, I really believe in them. I
believe it's part of my mission in life is to create the most cohesive
and robust training platform for communication skills that exists. I
basically want to be the Udemy for communication strategies and
skills. And so again, part of my life's mission is to create as many
training programs to help people as I can. Because there really is no
one size fits all solution when it comes to communication skills.
When we talk about human communication, we're dealing with two
very unpredictable things, humans and communication.

So, to say that there's this one size fits all solution that solves
everyone's problems, and turns you into a master communicator is
really a false belief. The fact of the matter is that you have to get
skilled and trained in many areas of communication. This program
that I'm delivering to you right now, I believe will probably be the
best one on verbal communication. But there's a whole other aspect
of communication that involves nonverbal communication. So,
even this program is not the end all be all solution when it comes to
improving your communication skills.

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And since I've put in so much time, money, energy, and resources
into creating these programs, you better believe that I am going to
promote them. Because number one, I'm confident in them.
Number two, I know they can help people. Number three, I offer
them at a fair price. Most importantly, number four, I have a ton of
free training videos that I offer on my YouTube channel. And so
while I may do heavy promotion on my email list, you can access a
lot of my material absolutely free before you decide to buy
anything. It's one thing when your salesy you're promoting stuff
and you're never giving anything away for free. It's another thing
when you balance that out. In the context of giving video
presentations and sharing content, they should be less about
promotion. There's a time to promote and there's a time to give free
quality content.

You also can do a short post and share a link to your presentation
video that goes back to YouTube or your website. What I like to do is
I like to upload my videos to YouTube, and then embed the YouTube
video on my website. Because that way, I get the best of both
worlds. I get the love from YouTube because I'm sharing quality
content on YouTube. But because the video is embedded on my
website, when I send traffic to the video, they're going to both
YouTube and to my website and they have an opportunity to explore
the website and maybe buy something else from me. You can also
add a demo video to your personal profile. I have this on my
YouTube channel. It's basically an introduction video that explains
what it is that you stand for, what it is that you teach, and how it
can help people.

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You can also do long-form posts. So, when you write long form
posts or content on LinkedIn, you can embed videos directly into
your post. Currently, LinkedIn supports embedded videos from
YouTube, Getty, Vimeo, TED, and live stream.

Courses. If you enjoy creating content for specific audiences, you
can create your own course using video presentations as a major
component. One of the advantages of courses is that you can edit
your presentation and it works for you while you're doing
something else. If you're careful with your planning, you can create
modular pieces that can be put together for different types of
courses. And so that's exactly what I am doing here. I'm creating
this course using nothing more. I mean, aside from the time that
was spent researching with my team, everything that we were
going to be putting into this course. But in terms of the actual nuts
and bolts of creating it, I'm using Keynote, which is basically
Apple's version of the slideshow presentation software. And I am
using a Yeti blue microphone, which I paid 100 bucks for on
Amazon, and I'm using a laptop computer, a MacBook Air. But you
could realistically use any computer.

Like I said in the beginning of the module. Nowadays it is faster and
easier to share video content with people than it has ever been
before. And it will only get easier and faster. I happen to love
creating courses. It's the one part of my business that I absolutely
love more than anything else more than the research. More than
the marketing. More than the design. More than figuring out
customer lifetime value and acquisition costs. I love sitting down
and actually delivering the value through the courses that my team
and I work hard to ensure are there to help people.
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You can offer your courses on sites like Udemy, Teachable,
LearnWorlds Skillshare, CourseCraft, or Thinkific. It takes time to
research these platforms to discover which might work best for the
type of audience who wants and needs your materials. On your own
website. If you're already driving traffic to your own website, you
can offer your course as a package with video presentations.

So, again, the difference between these two things I would say is me
personally, I would probably never share my courses on something
like Udemy or Skillshare, or any of those platforms. Simply because
those platforms are designed to connect you with people who are
interested in your courses. And you pay heavily for that. I think I
read on Udemy that the average teacher on Udemy earns about
$8,000 a year. And for me, that's just not sustainable. I can make a
lot more money than that selling the products on my own website
because I know how to drive traffic to my own website. But if you're
just starting out, and you aren't a marketing expert and you don't
know how to drive traffic to your website just yet, you can definitely
start with a platform like Udemy or Teachable or LearnWorlds just
to get your content in front of people until you are able to drive your
own traffic.

You can also use video at least two ways from this location. You can
offer an introductory promotional video as well as offer a video
course package that customers can purchase, and either download
directly after purchase or you can ship to them. Webinars.
Communication is always enhanced when you see and are able to
connect with the speaker. Online tools like GoToWebinar or
Webinar Jam, give you the ability to integrate video into your
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presentation so that you can connect with 100 people or more.

Visual cues and body language help the audience stay connected to
you, the presenter. Video helps you to humanize the online
experience. So, if you're a CEO, or a corporation or a leading
manager, using video within GoToWebinar enhances your message.
Employees can connect with you, even if they work remotely. It's an
easy, effective, and personal way to ensure that everyone on your
team understands the mission and helps the workforce and
leadership bond over distance.

If you want to demo a product or show a mind map or other quick
hand-drawn diagrams as you're presenting, a video works very well
for this. A presentation is so much more engaging for the audience
when they can hear you, see you, and see your thought process with
a diagram or a demo. In addition to the data you're presenting in
the context of an analysis, update or other important corporate
briefing, a short face view video with an introduction is an excellent
way to engender the trust needed for a successful analyst update.

YouTube in Skype. Going right back to YouTube. So, really the
difference between the two is most of YouTube is recorded. You can
do live videos on YouTube now. But most people utilize YouTube for
pre-recorded stuff. And Skype, which is utilized for live stuff are
ways to use video to further your presentation presence and
business goals. YouTube is a great place to offer demo videos of the
types of presentations you can make. It offers a very simple way for
you to connect with potential clients and convince them to hire you
for a booking, to sell products, to sell consultations, to sell
coaching, whatever it might be.

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Informational videos. Creating a YouTube channel with content

gives you the opportunity to connect with meeting planners who
may hire you to speak and also gives you the opportunity to gain
followers and students who need and want the information you
have to offer. Skype presentations. Skype is another way that you
can offer a small group of presentations that are live and allow for
questions and answers from your audience. I've done that many a
time. I've done Skype presentations with as much as 30 people on
one call presenting to them. It's very effective. And I recommend
both YouTube and Skype.

So, circling back to what I said before about the difference between
having your videos on your own website or on your own platform.
So, again, you would want to use a platform if you're not able to
drive traffic or you're not comfortable driving traffic just yet. But if
you're ready to drive traffic, you can drive traffic from YouTube
descriptions to a sales page. So, you can accomplish this by asking a
series of questions that lead people to click on what you have to
offer. And nowadays, YouTube's got some very advanced
technology that enables you to provide some content in a video, and
then create a little image that pops up in the video at any given
time, you can decide what the best time is for that image to pop up.
And once that image pops up, if a person clicks on it, it will then
divert them from YouTube to wherever you want to send them to.

So, for example, if you have an opening statement such as want to
learn the secret to XY Z, and your audience has to click to show
more, it puts them in a frame of mind where they've identified
themselves as a person who wants to know the secret. So, they've
raised their hand and they've said yes, I'm interested in learning
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more about what it is that you have to offer. When they've clicked
on the button, it's a behavior that reinforces their behavior is
consistent with their attitude. Remember, one of the laws of
influence is commitment and consistency. Then later in the
description, it could say want to learn how and XYZ. And this gives
the audience a chance to once again display their behavior by
clicking the button a second time. The more you can guide them to
reinforce their behavior, the more chances you have to persuade
them to purchase what you have to sell. That wraps up this module.
I'll see you in the next one.
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Welcome back. We are now in the fourth part of the Persuasive
Speakology method. And in this part, we're going to talk about
merging with the audience. Now, this is super, super important
because you could do everything right. You can make great videos,
you can use all different influence, techniques and strategies, all
types of tonality, and pacing and volume techniques. But if the
audience doesn't feel connected with you, it all goes out the
window. And so merging with the audience is really a deal maker or
a deal-breaker when it comes to your ability to speak persuasively.

And so we begin with Module 13. We're going to talk about the
basics. And most of this is going to be in the context of public
speaking, speaking to a group of people. But really, you can apply
this to one-on-one situations, sales situations, negotiation
situations, or just about any other context or situation that involves
you having to speak persuasively. So, jump right in, and ask your
audience hypnotic questions. Provide a quote, tell them a story, or
give them something interesting to look at to get their emotions
involved before you give more background data. If you feel
comfortable offering something that's funny, and it relates to your
topic, go for it. You need to grab their attention in the first two to
three minutes to achieve maximum success. Very, very important.

During a TED talk in 2009, Bill Gates released mosquitoes into the
audience to drive home the dangers that children face around the
world because of malaria. It was funny. I remember watching that
one. He opened it up and he let them go when he told everybody
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that those mosquitoes were infected with malaria, when in fact they
weren't. But he did a damn good job of capturing their attention. Dr.
Jill, who's a neuroanatomist, brought a real human brain to her
talk. Many people were disgusted and squirmed in their seats, but at
the same time, they were fascinated.

In 1984, Steve Jobs offered the first Macintosh computer to his
audience, a group of 2,500 employees, analysts, and media. After
discussing the product, he told the audience that everything he'd
shown them was in the bag on the table. He walked into the middle
of the stage where there was a black canvas bag and took out the
Macintosh SE. He inserted a floppy disk and then walked away. The
Macintosh showed images and type something that had never been
seen on a computer before. The final wow was when Macintosh
spoke for itself. It told a joke about IBM and the crowd roared with
laughter and excitement. Jobs was visibly moved at the audience's
reaction. The audience was left with never trust a computer you
can't lift.

You also want to prime their mindset, you want to give them
guidelines on what you're going to tell them in your presentation,
then make the presentation, then summarize so they'll know what
the most important takeaways are. This is a time tested three-part
formula called Aristotle's Triptych. But it doesn't have to be
formulaic in the way that you do it. So, first, you tell them what
you're going to tell them. So, what do you want to say? What does
your audience needs to hear? Too many presenters focus on the
first question, but not the second. Right? They focus too much on
what they want to say and not as much as what the audience needs
to hear. And that's again, another reason why I love the TED Talks.
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Because TED Talks force you to deliver your speech in 18 minutes.

And so when you're left with that kind of a deadline, you really have
to figure out what the audience needs to hear. You have to
determine what exactly it is that they need to hear to move them.
And so that moves you more away from the presentation being
about what you want to say, and moves it closer to what the
audience needs to hear.

Convey your message using stories that inspire and instruct. Give
them something memorable and new to think about and act upon.
It’s said that when the human brain receives new information or
learns something new, the same neurons light up that light up
when we experience senses of euphoria. And so the human brain
loves to learn and teach new things to people. Then you want to tell
them what you told them. Wrap up your key points again, so your
audience has a party favor to take home with them. Again, you want
to offer them something new. Strive to offer the audience a new way
of looking at something that they've never thought of before.
Novelty will help them remember what your message was about.

Now, if you are legitimately teaching something, or talking about
something that no one has ever heard of before, then
congratulations. Because you're a pioneer and you've basically
struck gold. But the truth of the matter is unless you're Mark
Zuckerberg, or Steve Jobs, or somebody that's revolutionizing the
way that we do something, chances are, what you're talking about,
or what you teach, or the context of your conversation is already
been heard before. So, an easy way to make it novel is to think about
connecting it to something unrelated. That is the best way to create
novelty is to create two seemingly unrelated ideas. And I do this
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when I teach people about hypnotic language, and when I teach

people about communication skills. But I use it for hypnotic
language specifically. And what I do is I always draw upon an
analogy.

And I gave you that analogy earlier in the program, about the man
who teaches you everything you need to know about fishing, except
how to catch the fish, which is the most important part, right. And
so the analogy there is that in this thing called life, we learn all
these different skill sets. Except the skill set of effective
communication, which in my opinion, is the most important skill
set. Because if you don't have that skill set, you can't convey that
you have all of the other skill sets. You can't convey that you bring
value to the table. You can't convey that you're worth what you
think you're worth if you can't communicate that effectively. And
so what I did was I connected this topic of human communication
to the topic of fishing. Two completely unrelated and different
ideas, but it enables me to create novelty.

Seth Godin is a popular blogger, world-class marketer, and author.
In explaining why new marketing ideas are important, he used a
story about driving down the road and seeing cows in a field. Cows
are boring, cows are invisible. But if suddenly, you saw a completely
purple cow, you take notice. The brain needs to be jostled awake.
Seth went on to use his idea of a purple cow for a book about new
marketing ideas. So, again, and I talked about this in an earlier
module. The brain is a cognitive miser. It likes to preserve its
resources for important things. And so most of the time, it focuses
on autopilot. However, when you present it with something new
that it hasn't seen before, it instantly shifts from autopilot to
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engaged. And so that's how you engage people by presenting

something absolutely new to them.

Again, if you were driving on a highway that you've driven on 1,000
times, and you're making that drive and it's a two-hour drive and
you're focused on, you know, you're not focused on the road, you're
not thinking about how fast you're going, you're not thinking about
the car, you're not thinking about how hard you're stepping on the
gas, right? That's all happening automatically. It's on autopilot.
However, if a deer suddenly jumped out into the middle of the
highway, your focus would then shift right back on to the task at
hand. Why? Because something new was presented.

Edi Rama provided his audience with a unique solution for
changing crime-ridden areas. He was the mayor of Toronto, the
capital city of Albania. It was a great depressing city that was filled
with garbage and derelict buildings. As soon as he was elected in
2000, he hired painters to chase away the grim years of isolating
communist rule by painting the outsides of the buildings in bright,
beautiful colors. Crime immediately dropped and people began
investing energy in beautifying their homes in the city. Rama
offered his audience a new way to fight crime with beautiful colors
of paint.

In 2013 Stuart Brand, who's a professional futurist offered this bold
prediction to his audience. Biotech is accelerating at a pace that is
four times speedier than digital technology. He predicted that we'll
soon see extinct animals brought back to life. He said, “We will get
woolly mammoths back.” His statement blew up on social media.

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Your audience is going to find stories, metaphors, and narratives

much more memorable than just data. Even investors only want to
hear hard data about 10% of the time. Without the story, there's no
emotional component. And touching people's hearts is important.
Stories are data with a soul. There's a metaphor for you. Stories
carry significance. The website, S
ignificantObjects.com was an
experiment, The founders bought junk, and had writers write
stories about the items. The stories gave the objects a huge uptick in
value when they were resold on eBay. The takeaway is that your
message which is much more valuable than these objects will have
even more value when it's wrapped up in a story.

Remember, classic, classic influence and persuasion from the Greek
philosopher Aristotle who talked about ethos, logos, and pathos.
Aristotle broke communication into those three areas. Ethos is the
credibility you bring with your achievements, position, and
experience. Logos is persuading others with hard facts and data.
And pathos is the art of appealing to people's emotions. Voted one
of the most persuasive talks on Ted Bryan Stevenson's talk breaks
down to 65%, pathos, 25%, logos, and 10% ethos. So, one of the
most persuasive talks on TED was delivered by a man who was
utilizing 65% of his speech was tapping into people's emotions.

Experiments at the Neuroscience Institute at Princeton have shown
that when people are engaged in a story, they sync up with the
speaker in what has been described as a brain to brain coupling. So,
if you want to establish rapport with your audience, you need to
master storytelling. Imagine that. Imagine, if you could couple your
brain with the brain or the brains of your listeners or your
audience? Well, it doesn't get much more objective than the
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Neuroscience Institute at Princeton. And what they've shown and

are able to prove, is that if you want to establish rapport with your
audience, master storytelling.

Did you know that TED Talks are only 18 minutes long? You
probably know by now, because I've said it over and over again.
People's attention spans have gotten shorter and shorter. This time
span is long enough to get your message out there, but short
enough to avoid having your audience lose their focus. Video clips
online need to be even shorter. Make your presentation short and
dynamic and go out on a high note that leaves your listeners
wanting more. Remember that listening and assimilating
information is very hard work for the brain. So, begin by organizing
your presentation into three chunks of information.

It's been shown that most people can't integrate more than three
chunks of information that are presented to them in a 15 to
18-minute span. Here's what's interesting. If you were to look at
every single video, or audio in this program, you will notice that
none of them go past 30 minutes, and most of them are between 15
and 25 minutes long. There's a reason why I do that. The reason is
because I know that if I delivered this training, which I think
altogether is probably about five hours or six hours worth of
content, if I just delivered that over six modules and each one being
an hour long, the reality is I would probably lose you, right?

And so even though, let's just say you decided to listen to the whole
program in one day, which most people aren't going to do that, but
let's just say you did. You would say well, what's the difference if
you just listen to it all in one shot verses through these 20 audio
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modules or video modules? Well, each audio and video module has
an introduction and it also has a closing. It also has an intro video
and a video that goes at the end of the module. So, that forces the
brain to have to take a break, right? You have to stop this video, you
have to go and find the next video and replay it. And that gives your
brain a chance to reset.

I learned this from another expert marketer many many, many,
many years ago, when I started creating online programs. I wanted
to create these hour, two-hour-long video training modules. And
he told me, “Paul, it's a waste of time. People have short attention
spans. Break your stuff up into 15 to 25-minute content and deliver
it that way.” And what's interesting is this. I've also went back and
watched a lot of my YouTube videos. And what I found is that even
what I believe to be my best YouTube videos where I'm delivering
the best possible content, the average watch rate is still around 10
minutes. And so I no longer make my YouTube videos longer than
10 to 15-20 minutes at the absolute most.

So, step one is to draft a headline that's Twitter-friendly. So,
challenge yourself to explain your key ID or message in 140
characters or less. The shorter and more specific, the better. The
next step is to support your headline with three major messages.
You can use a message map to organize your talk. Dr. Jill, a popular
presenter at TED divided one of her talks, a stroke of insight into
three sections. Brain circuitry, the day of the stroke, the insight
gained from the experience, and the impact on her life. Steve Jobs
gave a famous 2005 commencement speech about do what you love
that can be mapped out on a diagram in three pieces. His early
experiences, love and loss, and facing death.
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Step three, reinforce the major messages of your talk with three
bullet points that provide a trigger for the story or anecdote you will
tell to support that message. For example, under the Steve Jobs talk
for love and loss, the stories he told were about Apple garage, fired
from Apple, returned to Apple. Your entire message map for your
talk should fit on one page.
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Welcome to Module 14 of Persuasive Speakology. So, in this
module, we're going to talk about something very interesting.
We're going to talk about how you address individuals while
speaking to groups of people. And so this can be a tricky one.
Because as I said, in an earlier module, people make rapid
subconscious decisions about you, within the first four to six
seconds of meeting you.

And then after that, they start to make conscious decisions about
you. They start to make actual judgments about you. And so
whenever you present to people, whenever you speak to people,
whenever you try to sell something, when you try to pitch
something, whether it be an idea, a product, a service, you have to
always be cognizant of the fact that people are going to judge you
consciously and subconsciously. And that's why you utilize
techniques and strategies that have been proven to enable you to
bring your best foot forward and make the best possible impression
on them.

With that being said, everyone's mental map of the world is
different. And so I always circle back to a classic NLP
presupposition when I talk about mental maps. And so the way that
I explain it is this, if you were looking at a map, whether it's a
physical map on a piece of paper, or you were looking at a GPS
system, what you would see is imagery. You would see a virtual
representation of that particular location. But if you visited that
actual location, you would notice that that territory is different
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than what you see on the map, right? The map is just a visual
representation of the actual territory. And so the classic NLP
presupposition that we have to always keep in mind is that the map
is not the territory. And so what that means is that the territory is
life. The territory is reality. The territory is everything around us as
human beings.

But the truth of the matter is that each person's representation of
that reality, each person's mental map of that reality is different.
And so if you put an apple in front of a room of 20 people, it said
that each person would perceive that apple slightly differently.
Now, an apple is a pretty objective thing. It's a fruit, it's red, we
know what it tastes like, we know what it feels like. Most of us have
eaten one at some point in our life. Yet, every single person in the
room would perceive that apple slightly differently. And an apple
was a very objective thing.

Well, you can imagine how differently people perceive things that
are more subjective. Things like opinions, things like tone of voice,
things like beliefs, things like the way you project yourself. And so
the point is that in this program, my goal is to give you the tools,
techniques, and strategies that you need to become the best version
of your persuasive self when speaking to other people. Yet, when
you speak to groups of people, there's a caveat. And the caveat is
that because each person has a different mental map of the world,
each one of those people is going to perceive you slightly
differently. Some may perceive you as confident, others may
perceive you as fake, phony. Because that's just how our minds
operate.

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And so that's exactly what I want to cover in this module. How do
we address groups of people as individuals, so that we have the best
possible outcome? Every individual is different. And yet, we can all
be categorized by learning styles, the way we take in sensory
information, ethnicity, social level, gender, and age. By being
sensitive to these differences and similarities, you can address
individuals even though you are speaking to a group. So, you want
to cater your presentation to the types of learning styles with these
tactics and techniques.

First, we talk about visual learners. So, they prefer to see
information and visualize relationships between ideas. These
people need charts and infographics, make your presentation very
visual. Show the relationships among the various points in a visual
way. You don't have to use charts and infographics. You can use
physical objects as well. Physical objects can be very impactful to
people who are visual learners.

Auditory learners prefer to hear information rather than reading it
or seeing it in visual display. So, you want to give them ways to
recite the information out loud, or give them a chance to repeat key
points back to you by asking questions and calling for audience
answers. You can use music and your tone of voice. Those are going
to be your best tools for gaining advantage.

The next is kinesthetic learners who learn best by doing things.
They are hands-on experiential learners. So, get them to move
around and demonstrate an experience. Role-playing works very
well for these kinds of people. Ask them to write things down so
that they'll remember. You always want to use the VAK Model, the
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visual, auditory kinesthetic model. So, by offering words and

experiences that trigger the three major ways that people take in
sensory information, you can make your stories and information
more accessible and memorable to all types of people.

Stacy Kramer began her talk with a photograph of a blue gift wrap
box from Tiffany's. Then she said, what's inside this box is a small
gift that'll change your life forever. It'll bring your family and
friends closer to you and help you recalibrate what's most
important in your life. Then she said that she was sure the audience
was wondering by now whether they could buy this amazing gift on
Amazon or whether it had the Apple logo on it. As the audience was
wondering, she then started to display a package with a biohazard
on it. And a photograph where she showed the scar that was the
evidence of her gift, which had been a cancerous brain tumor.
Extremely powerful, visual concepts in this presentation.

These types of visual representations in a presentation are going to
engage visual learners, are going to captivate attention, and are
going to further be able to then direct attention. Film critic Roger
Ebert lost his voice to cancer, but this didn't stop him from giving a
presentation. He used a computer voice called Alex and his wife,
Dean Ornish, and John Hunter. All presented different sections of
Ebert's talk. The four different voices made for an emotional
experience, as well as one that resonated for those who take in
information primarily in an auditory manner.

Dr. Elliott Crane, who's a pediatrician as well as an anesthesiologist
showed a remarkable demonstration in his talk. His goal was to
explain to the audience how children's medical conditions
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sometimes translate into chronic burning pain. He began by

stroking his arm with a feather. Then he pulled out a blowtorch and
placed it near his arm and said, imagine how your life would be if I
stroke you're wrong with this feather. But what you felt instead was
your arm being scorched by this blowtorch.

So, I want you to start thinking about how you can utilize similar
analogies and examples in your presentations. I want you to start
thinking about having three different versions of your
presentation, three different analogies, three different stories, or
combining all of these different elements into one analogy or one
story. Because the reality is while all of us utilize multiple
representational systems, we all gravitate towards one default one
that we use most of the time. And if you are strictly presenting in a
visual way, you're going to alienate the kinesthetic and auditory
people. And the same is true if you do that with any other
representational system.

If you're giving a presentation in another country, or to an audience
where there are many different ethnicities, you need to adapt your
talk for that audience. So, remember that English may not be the
first language for someone or all of your audience members.
Connect your sentences from one to the other with transitional
phases so that your audience can understand your train of thought.
Move with your message, make sure that your gestures say the
same thing as your message at the same time. If not, listeners may
not be able to track what you're saying easily. It would be like
watching a television screen and then listening to just the audio on
another television.

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So, I talked about this in an earlier module where I said that it's
very easy to pinpoint someone who's being dishonest. Because
when someone's being dishonest, there's a disconnect between
their nonverbal language and their verbal language. So, there's a
disconnect between what they're doing with their body, and what's
actually coming out of their mouth. And that's because the body is
just an extension of the brain. And so if you're saying something,
that's not true, your brain knows that it's not true. So, the body
can't help but signal that there's a disconnect. And so if your
gestures are not in alignment with what your words are saying, or
with what you are saying, your audience is going to sense a
disconnect.

Now, they might not necessarily think that you're lying to them or
being dishonest with them, but they are going to experience some
sort of a disconnect. And when the disconnect happens, you've now
moved them from listening and being engaged and persuaded by
what you're telling them to trying to figure out where the
disconnect is. That's not what you want them to be doing.

You also want to use universal metaphors. Whichever metaphors
you use need to be relevant across cultures. For example, a traffic
jam, a great meal, or a lesson in school might be universal. But
certain sports metaphors, like a homerun or a double play may not
make sense at all to people who have never experienced baseball in
their life.

Men and women. You need to treat this delicately. Now listen, I
realized that some of you may be thinking that doing these types of
things makes you biased. Or it makes you prejudice. Or it makes you
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make predetermine judgments about people. But the reality is that

the master communicator understands that not only does everyone
perceive things differently. But different groups of people perceive
things differently. And so it's important that you understand that
the different ways that groups of people interpret information so
that you can adapt your presentation.

A new manager was speaking to a group of employees on his first
day. He was a well-known publishing executive had an excellent
reputation at Silicon Valley. As he described the process of stripping
away the old processes at the company and being open to creating
new ones. He said the employees would need to take a peek under
the kimono. The women, especially the Asian women, visibly
shifted in their seats when he used this metaphor. The takeaway, be
careful not to use metaphors that can offend others.

Listen, there are hundreds of millions of different metaphors that
you can use. If for any reason you sense that someone in the group
may be offended, or may not understand the metaphor, simply go
to a new one. If you look, you'll find many more different types of
metaphors that you can use that are universal, it's not hard.

In 2013 Microsoft keynote presentation on its newest Xbox One
event at an E three gaming event. During that keynote presentation,
the male employee was playing a game called Killer Instinct against
a female gamer who was struggling to play the game. He taunted
her by saying that she played like a girl and then proceeded to make
a rape joke by saying here we go, just let it happen. It'll be over
soon. The Microsoft company had to apologize for its employee's
unscripted speech. I would imagine that this guy was immediately
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terminated after he did that. And this just displays a complete lack
of awareness in a communication skill. This is the epitome of a poor
communicator.

Remember, I always talk about the three types of communicators,
poor communicators, average communicators, master
communicators. This is the epitome, a prime example of a poor
communicator. Poor communicators only have the ability to see the
world through their map. So, circling back to that presupposition
that the map is not the territory. If I were to sum up the one main
difference between poor, average, and master communicators, it's
the ability to see the world through other people's territories or
through their maps rather. To see the territory through other
people's maps. To see the world through the lens that other people
see it through. Poor people cannot do that. Average people can do it
to some extent. Master communicators can do it elegantly.

And so a poor communicator never takes the time to think about
how somebody else might interpret what they're saying. They don't
really even care. They just say what they say. They don't have a
filter. If you get offended, it's your problem. And so that's not
something that you want to be. Remember, our goal is to always
strive to be the master communicator.

Women are not the only ones that can be alienated in an audience.
Men can be too. Women speaking to predominantly female
audience have to be careful about what they say when there are a
few scattered men in the audience. There's always that landmine of
mentioning something that is more of a stereotype than real data.

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Age also makes a difference. So, you need to ask yourself, are your
audience members close to your age? Or are they 20 years younger?
Make sure you tailor your talk to the age of your audience. If your
audience is of all different ages, try to stick with references that
they can all relate to. You want to think about the baby boom era,
you want to think about Generation X, you want to think about
millennials. You also want to think about Generation Z, the digital
natives, a fragmented society of those with birth dates, from 1997
to 2012. They've had a lifelong use of technology for
communication. So, you want to be cognizant of all of these
different things when you speak to groups of people.

You also want to think about the motivational triggers that impact
these people. So, each generation has its own set of motivational
triggers. For example, it's well known that most millennials are
very socially conscious and tend to favor businesses that have
philanthropy as part of their model. Every generation has its own
slang terms that reinforce its social identity. Review the language
you plan to use closely to ensure that everyone will understand
what you are communicating.

Technological influences. Suppose you use the term
communication skills in your presentation, a baby boomer may
think this means formal writing and speaking abilities. But
someone in their 20s hears that same phrase, they may be thinking
about emailing and texting. Again, be cognizant of the groups of
people that you speak to and tailor your presentation the best way
you can.

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Welcome to Module 15. In this module, we're going to talk about
picking up cues. So, you can always listen to your audience. Even if
they are not actively talking or speaking to you. They are constantly
sending you out signals that are letting you know whether or not
they're connected to you, or whether they are disconnected to you.
And, again, because our goal is to always be the master
communicator, the master communicator understands these
different cues, is able to identify them, and most importantly, is
able to pivot when they sense that they need to.

So, the first thing you want to do is observe body language. So, as I
mentioned before, the body is nothing more than an extension of
the mind. So, if you really want to tell if someone is connecting with
you, or if you're connecting with them, rather, you need to look at
their body language, because body language doesn't lie. And it
seems to move almost like one giant organism.

So, the first thing you want to look for is cohesion of movement.
When the audience is fully engaged in what you're saying, their
physical movements are generally in sync. On the other hand, if you
see people shifting around, playing with notepads, or phones, or
with their eyes cast down, you should heed these clues. Your talk is
not resonating, and they're not engaged. You know, one of the
things I always tell people in a simple conversation is that when I'm
speaking to somebody, and they look away from me or turn their
head, I immediately know that they're no longer interested in what
I'm talking about. And so at that point, I have two options. I can
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either wrap up the conversation if it's just a casual talk that I'm
having with them. Or if there's a point that needs to be made. I then
decide how I'm going to pivot, capture their attention again, drive
home the point, and then wrap up the conversation.

The cohesion of sound. So, there should also be a cohesion of sound.
You can think of sound as a bell curve. There will always be some
outliers. But the majority of your audience should be responding to
your major points. Like, great jokes, interesting stories, rhetorical
questions, with some responding sounds in unison. In a speaking
bootcamp, the trainers had the audience put on blindfolds. They
were given drums and drumsticks and then asked to beat the drums
in sync with each other. At the start, they were hopelessly out of
sync. But after a while, even without seeing each other, they were
able to get in rhythm with one another. When the rhythm changed,
they were able to adapt as well. When groups are changed, they
respond in unison.

Listen to the sounds that the audience makes. Depending on the
forum for your talk, the sounds an audience makes while you're
speaking, or while there are downtimes can provide you with clues
as to the effectiveness of your talk, question and answer sessions
provide information for sound and vocal feedback as well.

I'll tell you an interesting story. Way back in the day before, I was in
the business of training people with communication skills. I worked
for a fitness company, a pretty big one. And I worked in a Midtown
Manhattan location. I had about 50 employees working for me. And
I was operating a $5 million dollar a year operation. We had about
3,000 gym members. Most of them were corporate members. We
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were in midtown Manhattan. And we also had a lot of corporate

accounts. So, when a corporate account is when a corporation gets a
discounted membership for its employees in exchange for signing
up a minimum amount of members.

And so before I became a manager, I was a corporate sales
representative. And a lot of times I would have to go visit these
corporations, meet with the HR directors, make sure we kept the
rapport going, the connection going on, keep up to date on new
members, etc. Well, every once in a while, we would do these events
where we would go on-site with a personal trainer when we would
take people's body fat. So, we would bring something called fat
calipers which enable you to determine what somebody's body fat
number is, percentage is. And then we would also offer them a free
personal training session.

Well, I had a friend at the time, who was in the digital publishing
business of health. So, he did exactly what I'm doing now with you.
But instead of training people on communication training
strategies, he was offering strategies on staying healthy naturally.
So, he was in the digital publishing business of natural health. So,
he would offer people all different types of tips and techniques to
lower their blood pressure naturally, lower their cholesterol
naturally. He actually wrote a book called T
he Blood Pressure Miracle,
which teaches you how to lower your blood pressure naturally.

And so I brought him with me to one of these events, because I
thought it would be the perfect canvas for him to offer his services
and also provide some real value to these people. And so he went on
and on and on talking about the importance of avoiding medicine
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and pharmaceutical grade stuff to put in your body, and was

teaching the audience how to treat ailments naturally. And so as he
was speaking to them I was watching their reactions. And most of
them were squirming in their seats, and looking at each other as if
to be in complete disbelief, and almost insulted and offended by
what he was saying.

And then the HR manager looked up at me and she started giving
me the cutthroat signal like in other words, he needs to wrap up his
presentation. And I thought to myself, like, what is it that he's
saying that is offending these people so bad. And then I realized
that we were at a pharmaceutical company. And so here's my
friend, basically, going against everything that they stand for with
his presentation. And at the time, I was not a master communicator
and I was not cognizant of the environment that we were in. But I
did begin to observe and take note that the audience was reacting
negatively to what he was saying. I just didn't know why. I had
completely forgotten where we were. I was so fixated on the fact
that we were at a corporate event. But I wasn't actually thinking of
the type of corporation we were in. So, the bottom line is that when
things start going wrong, or where there's a disconnect, you will
notice it among the audience, and you will see it in groups and
numbers of people.

You'll notice their sounds, it would be unusual, even within the
context of a lecture situation to not hear any sounds in the
audience. At the beginning of your talk, it's natural for people to
shift a little or to stop whispering to the person next to them. But
after you're talking and they're engaged, you can expect to hear
some sounds from them. No sound might mean that there's no
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engagement. On the other hand, if you're talking about something

extremely serious, you would definitely expect the audience to be
silent for that part of your presentation. However, if you show them
something very shocking, you might hear audible gasps. It's all
about appropriate reactions. It's all about context. If you're eliciting
the reaction you want and the audience's in unison, most sounds
will happen at the same time.

If your talk isn't a formal lecture style, but allows for more audience
participation, you could tell right away if your message is getting
through by asking direct questions, and getting responses from the
audience. Teachers use this daily to see if their students are awake.
As I said in an earlier module, I teach Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to children
between the ages of six and nine years old. And I do this constantly
with them. The minute after we warm up, after we do some drills,
after we move around a little bit, about 15 minutes into the class
when I'm ready to teach them a technique, I quiz them and I asked
them if they remember what I taught them last week. I ask them if
they can name four basic positions in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I ask them
if they can name three different submissions in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Because I want to constantly make sure I have their attention and
their feedback.

You also want to scan people's faces. Do they appear open-minded
and receptive? Just keep in mind that you can't use facial
expressions by themselves to judge receptiveness. They're not
always the best indicator. A raised eyebrow can mean the person's
interested. But it can also mean that they're skeptical. So, again,
you want to pay attention to clusters of gestures, and context. When
people are listening intently, they look at the speaker, scan the
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audience to see if people are watching you in unison, or if it seems

that their eyes are not locked with yours. Eye contact is the very
first indicator that you're losing people.

Are people responding key with appropriate expressions depending
on the nature of your talk? When people are receptive, their heads
are generally either straight or tilted slightly with foreheads back
and chins pointed up just slightly. If you're talking about something
upbeat, are people smiling? If you're talking about a sad or a
heartfelt topic, are people empathetic? Are their eyes a little
watery? So, a lot of times, when I teach my kids in Brazilian
Jiu-Jitsu, sometimes I'll make a joke. But it might not necessarily
be a joke that the children can understand, but more a joke that the
parents can understand. So, sometimes if they're tired, I'll say
something like, do we need to get these kids a cup of coffee? Do we
got to get them a macchiato from Starbucks? And sometimes the
kids get it. But most of the time I'm gauging the parents to see if the
parents are listening and paying attention to everything that I'm
saying.

Are there questions or comments and are they relevant? So,
depending on the style of talk or presentation you're giving, you
may have the opportunity to allow audience members to ask you
questions. In a Q&A session when participants ask detailed
on-point questions about the topics or message you've presented,
it's one of the best indicators that they got tremendous value from
your talk. In Q&A sessions, there maybe one or two people who ask
questions that are way out of left field. It doesn't mean that they
didn't hear or didn't understand your message, it might mean that
they have a hidden agenda. Some audience participants like QA,
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because they think they can make themselves look smarter, or
make you look dumber. Either way, if their questions are not on
point, they usually just make themselves look dumber. So, don't
worry about it.

No matter what happens in a Q&A session, always try to bring their
questions and your answers back to the main points you presented
in your talk, so that you don't get side railed and deviate from the
topic at hand. You also want to get direct feedback. So, if you can do
it in a comfortable way, get direct feedback after your presentation
by having your audience members fill out an evaluation form. Have
the audience respond on a sliding scale to these statements or to
ones that are more appropriate. The speaker got my attention right
away. The speaker gave me something of value for my professional
life. The speaker stimulated and maintained interest. My questions
were answered. I'll remember this presentation and received
long-lasting value from it.

Then continue with these three essay questions which you can use
to improve your presentation. What was the highlight of this
presentation? What takeaway will stay with you? What was the low
point? Is there anything you wish the speaker had done differently?
Is there any other topic you wish the speaker had a dress that they
did not?
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Welcome to Module 16, where we are going to talk about damage
control, what to do when things go wrong. So, no matter what you
do, sometimes things go wrong. This is just a part of life. So,
remember that even Olympic ice skaters sometimes fall and have to
get up. When you're going through hell keep going.

So, it's not just seniors who lose their train of thought. It happens
to everyone, it can be very unnerving. And the trick is to remain
calm. In the past, when I would lose my train of thought, it would
ultimately turn into a vicious cycle. And what would happen is, I
would lose my train of thought. And then because I lost my train of
thought, I'm trying to remember what I was thinking about. And in
the process of trying to remember what I was thinking about, I'm
trying to remain calm, and I'm worried too much about how the
audience or the person that I'm speaking to is perceiving me. And
then I lose my train of thought again. And so it can become a very
vicious cycle if you begin to let your nerves get the best of you. So,
don't freeze.

In some informal context, you can ask the audience, where was I,
and use it as an opportunity to see if they're listening. Remember
that you can always get the train back on track. Remain calm. Just
start a new sentence and move on to the next point. You don't really
need to bring attention to it. Sometimes it helps to bring the
audience back to the three main themes of your talk. By the time
you do that, it may reorient you as to where you were before the
momentary lapse. Drink some water. This is going to give you a
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second to pause and regroup. Sometimes changing your position or

gestures on stage will give you a few seconds. And the physical shift
will act as a memory jogger as well. Many speakers use a chin
scratch, and a thoughtful look to pause and give themselves a few
seconds to regroup. It's almost like it's a mental reset. So, the shift
in body movement helps you reset your mental state and get back to
where you were.

Depending on the format of the presentation, sometimes an event
will happen that will shorten the time you have to give your
presentation. So, maybe the previous speaker went over their time
period, maybe there's a blizzard, and the conference is going to be
cut short. But the bottom line is you're in this situation where
you've now run out of time. What do you do? Flexibility is key. If
you have your presentation prepared at different time increments
ahead of time, you'll be able to easily adjust. So, if you were
supposed to give a 40-minute presentation, but you only have half
that time, you can quickly adjust if you've prepared for this
likelihood in advance. The message map discussed earlier really
helps with this. So, stick to your three main points. Just do one
bullet for each point instead of three.

If you mark these on your message map: must know, should know,
nice to know; you can quickly see on one sheet, how to modify your
talk to fit the time available. If you plan on using PowerPoint or
other presentation software, make sure you practice to the point
where you're very smooth with it. So, you can hide slides or skip
over them rapidly and still maintain the continuity of your talk. I
can't stress this enough. If you use PowerPoint or Keynote like I'm
using in this presentation, you got to know what you're doing. You
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don't want to rely on somebody else to have to operate that

software for you. Because if you start running out of time, you're
only going to run out of more time when you try to enlist the help of
someone else. And you're going to look like you don't have all your
ducks in order. So, you gotta make sure you're an expert at the
software.

Let's say your equipment or your computer crashes. So, you're
making a presentation and all of your notes and all the information
is on that computer. This can happen in the best of circumstances.
But you can minimize the impact if you plan in advance. So, first
off, have a printout. If you've planned well, you'll have a copy of
your slides, or the message map of your presentation, so that you
can still proceed without visuals. So, I'll give you a great example of
this. In some of my programs, my earlier programs, where I used to
shoot talking head videos, in some of them, I used to use a
teleprompter. I don't really like to use the teleprompter. But in
certain cases, my team and I felt that it was the appropriate thing to
do.

And so one time, I was giving this really good video, this amazing
video, I was in the zone, I was feeling great, and the teleprompter
went out. And so we fixed it, we put the teleprompter back on, we
got it working. I'm not sure what happened. I don't know if the
battery died, or we ran out of space on the mechanism or whatever
it was. But I could not get back into that rhythm that I was initially
in before the teleprompter went out on me. I was just in a zone. You
know, sometimes you're in a zone where you can gather your
thoughts really fast, you can articulate things, you can tell stories,
and everything is just kind of flowing at ease. And sometimes
150
you're not. And I broke that flow state when the teleprompter shut
down on me. And so I said, “You know what? I don't ever want that
to happen again.” So, what we did as a backup, was we put bullet
points of the transcription on index cards. And we surrounded the
studio with them, around the camera around the lights, you know,
within view of the camera. So, if I needed to look at a bullet point
really quick on an index card, it wasn't so far away that I was
deviating from the camera.

So, once again, about six months later, the same thing happened,
the teleprompter went out. But this time, I had these little index
cards with bullet points very close to the camera. And I was able to
use those to get myself back on track. But the point of the story is
that eventually I just stopped using the teleprompter and I found it
easier to just use the index cards. And I'll give you two reasons why.
The first one is, even though I do fairly well with the teleprompter, I
don't make a lot of mistakes with it. The truth of the matter is that
you always come across more sincere when you're not using a
teleprompter. The caveat is you have to actually know your stuff. If
you don't know your stuff, and you're trying to just go off the top of
your head. And you're using a lot of vocal fillers like ums and ahhs.
And it seems like you just don't really know what you're talking
about, yes, you're gonna run into a problem, you need a
teleprompter.

But if you know your content inside out, while the teleprompter
may make you appear flawless, having a natural conversation with
somebody always feels better. And for me, that's what the bullet
points do. And that's the reason why I do a lot of my teaching and
my presentations in the format that I'm using here. I mean, what I
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have on the computer screen here in this presentation is nothing

but a bunch of bullet points. You know, we used to write books,
textbooks worth of material. And I said, “You know what? If we
could just break that down into bullet points that I can read and
elaborate on, I think that would sound a lot more genuine. I think
the listener would enjoy it more because it's more of a
conversational tone.”

But here's the thing. It also enabled me to learn my material. To be
able to better elaborate on my material. To give analogies on my
material. To give examples about my material. To provide stories
about my material. So, the point is this. If you do that, and get into
the habit of doing that, when your slides fail or your computer
crashes, or you have an equipment meltdown, you'll still be able to
continue delivering on your presentation with analogies, stories, or
metaphors because you've already trained yourself to do it without
visuals. Ask for help. Even if you don't know how to fix whatever
went wrong, it's still best to ask for help. Let someone else do it and
keep your speech on track.

Use gestures and stage positioning. Use your well-practiced
gestures and specific positioning on stage. You can still get your
points across without the use of the visuals or other information
your equipment was supposed to display. Let's say your day hasn't
started well. Your alarm didn't go off and you're late getting ready.
You forgot your materials or your laptop at home. There's an
accident on the freeway. Plan ahead to prevent these incidences
from derailing your talk. Extra commute time. Always allow for
extra time in your commute. Even if you're running late, even if you
plan enough, you'll make it there. I always make this a stickler. I am
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a stickler for being on time. Always make sure you have extra
commute time.

Email slides or other notes. Send your notes to someone else or to
your office so if needed, they can be sent back to you at a moment's
notice. Pack a printed copy or use what I consider to be the greatest
development in the history of my generation, Google Documents. I
absolutely love Google Documents. Sometimes when I tell
non-tech-savvy people about Google Documents, they get scared
off and are like, “Oh, my God, what is that? How do I use it?” So,
simple to use. All you have to do is open up a Google account. You
could start with a Gmail account, JohnDoe@gmail.com.

And then, once you open up your Google account, in the top
right-hand corner next to your picture, if you have one, you'll see a
series of dots. I think it's about - or little squares, actually. I think
there's about nine or 12 of them up there. And when you click on
that, it opens up all of your Google applications. So, any application
that you use from Google will be there. So, YouTube will be there,
your Google Calendar will be there. But most importantly, your
Google Documents will be there.

And so what Google Documents enable you to do, they're just like
Word Documents, but they're dynamic and they're always with you.
So, what that means is I used to write stuff in a Word Document or
in a Pages document years ago. And I would write it down at my
house and then if I needed it at my office, I would have to email it to
myself. Well, what Google Documents allows you to do is access
those documents from any device at any time. So, you create the
document at home, the document is the same when you get to work.
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Everything is done via the cloud. So, everything is uploaded to the

cloud, and it stays there and the information is updated
dynamically. So, if you update something from your home office,
but then you need to, again, reopen it on your phone or at your
regular office, all of the updated information will be there. I
absolutely love Google Documents. I think it's the greatest thing
ever created.

As a side note, I even use it as a way to store all my ideas. You know,
most of my great ideas come to me late at night when I'm laying
down in bed. And I sleep with my phone right next to me on my
night table because I have it set to set my alarm to go off in the
morning. And sometimes a great idea will come to me. And I've
learned that if a great idea comes to you, you gotta write it down.
You have to absolutely write it down because you will forget it. No
matter how great of an idea you think it is, at some point, you'll
forget about it. And so I don't want to get up out of my bed and start
writing down ideas. I don't want to have to keep track of the paper
and I don't want to get up and go to my computer. So, I reach over
and open Google Documents on my phone. And I actually have a
folder called great ideas. And I just type them in there, put my
phone down, and in the morning when I want to revisit them, they
are there. So, you can always put your slides or your notes on a
Google Document. And if something goes wrong, boom, just pop
open your phone and they're right there. You don't have to worry
about emailing them, you don't have to worry about finding them.
They are always with you.

Keep your sense of humor. If you want to be a full-time presenter,
you gotta get used to this. You gotta learn how to take things in
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stride. You got to learn how to see the humor things. Things will
happen and over time, you'll come up with ways to handle any
situation with ease. Your current disaster may make for a great
story for a future talk.

The rambling question or the impossible question. So, you've heard
these before during a Q&A session. One of the participants stands
up and spends two to three minutes with a preamble before asking
their question. If you've done a great job with your presentation,
you're even more likely to get an impossible question. How do you
deal with an impossible question?

So, is it X or Y? Rephrase what you think you heard and interrupt
the person if necessary, to guide them into being more concise.
Provide two alternatives so the person chooses before you proceed
to answer. If the person seems to be wandering, you can politely ask
them to rethink the question and come back to them. Most
members of the audience dislike when someone does this. So, if you
handle it with charm, most people will be pleased. Don't be afraid to
say, I don't know. Take down the question and follow up by sending
an email, or posting the response on your blog, or on your Facebook
page, your YouTube channel, or any way that you can
re-communicate with these people. This gives you an other
opportunity to interact with them,

Offer the question to the audience. Now, depending on the group of
participants, there may be someone who can respond and provide
quality information. You may risk your authority by doing this, but
depending on the circumstances, it might be a way to interact with
the audience and be of service to them, which is ultimately your
155
goal. Remember that even speakers who know everything can't

answer this question. What is a question that you can ask speakers
who know everything they can't answer? And also remember that
these are going to be few and far in between. If you truly are an
expert, an authority on your particular topic and you know what
you're talking about, chances are you're going to be able to answer
95% of the questions that come your way. This is what you use for
damage control in the instances where you can't do that. That
wraps up this module. I'll see you in the next one.
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Welcome back to the fifth and final part of the Persuasive
Speakology Method. So, in these last few modules, we are going to
talk about influencing thoughts and behavior, right. So, we're going
to take everything that we've learned and we're going to break it
down into a couple of different contexts, where ultimately, you will
be influencing the thoughts and behaviors of others.

So, in this module, we're going to first cover educating others. So,
in order to educate, you have to make people aware. Sometimes to
do this in a way that makes them sit up and take notice, you need to
violate their expectations. This is a method of presenting
something to them in a new way. It makes what you're trying to
influence memorable. Remember what I said in an earlier module
that the brain loves novelty. The brain loves learning new
information, and then passing that information on to other people.
So, the key is to either teach something new, or to teach something
that they know already, but in a completely different way.

Bill Gates in 2015, he drank a glass of water that had you been
human feces five minutes earlier. The water had gone through a
machine that converted sewage to clean, drinkable water. I mean, it
doesn't really get more memorable than that people are going to
instantly be engaged, their attention is easily and instantly
captured. It's easy to demonstrate the point that's coming after
that, and people are going to want to share that. So, he doesn't need
publicity. He did this to educate and make people aware that 2.5
billion people around the world don't have clean drinking water.
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Over 700,000 children die each year because they don't have clear
water. He was able to influence his audience to take action and
participate in solving this problem by developing a plan to get these
machines where they are needed most.

By violating his audience's expectations and drinking water that
was formerly feces, Gates was able to generate publicity, gain
attention, and get people to take action for his worthy cause. It
worked because the human brain is attentive to novelty. As I said
before, human brain loves novelty. It said that the same neurons
are fired in the human brain, when we learn something, as when we
experience extreme pleasure. So, people like to learn stuff.

Second thing is that novelty gains attention. As I said before, the
human mind functions on autopilot most of the time, it's a
cognitive miser, doesn't like to utilize most of its resources. It saves
the resources for the more important things. Well, how does it
decide whether or not something is important? If it comes across a
piece of information, it subconsciously cross-references it with
similar information that's come across it before. If it decides that
it's the same, then it files it as irrelevant because it's been there
before. Right? You don't need to read a book on how to learn how to
ride a bike if you've done it before. But the minute something new is
introduced, and it can't be filed away into the “Yes, I've heard this
before category,” the brain wakes up and becomes attentive.

A group of experts in deterring terrorism were discussing what
needed to be done to make a United States city more secure. They
were preparing a presentation to take two local officials. In
preparing their presentation, one of the photos they had decided to
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present was a photo of a rusty broken lock. The lock had been found
on the entrance to a power plant. Instead of just showing that
photo. They brought rusty locks with them and placed them on the
roundtable where they were having the discussion. Audience
members passed the rusty worn-out locks around. At the end of the
presentation as they gave feedback on the speech, state officials
said those locks made an impression on us. They were moved to
take action and improve their infrastructure, not because of a well
presented slide, but instead because the speakers violated their
expectations with rusty locks.

In 2009, John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco was introducing a new
type of technology his company offered called TelePresence to an
audience of Indian entrepreneurs and businessmen. Chambers
began to explain the product which is a series of high definition
monitors and cameras designed so that people can experience
meetings as if they're in the same room, even though they're 1000s
of miles away from each other. He mentioned his vice president of
video, Martin Debir. On cue, Martin appeared on stage and took his
place next to John. Except that Martin wasn't really there. He was
over 14,000 miles away. The two men proceeded to continue the
presentation while Chambers was on stage, and Martin was on
telepresence. They discuss the possibilities for face-to-face
collaboration over long distances for industry and healthcare. The
goal was sales, but also to educate others on how technology can
make distance between people disappear. Amazing.

A lightbulb moment helped Sara Blakely turn a $98 pair of pants
into an empire. Sara had a pair of $98 white pants in her closet for
eight months. Every time she tried them on she didn't like what she
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saw. None of the traditional undergarments gave her a smooth line

in these pants. In desperation, she took a pair of pantyhose and cut
off the feet. It worked and she knew she had a potential business.
She was selling fax machines at the time and wanted to turn her
idea into a business. People thought she was crazy. But her father,
who had taught her that failure meant you were trying new things,
believed in her. She patented her idea herself and moved forward.
Sara picked up the phone and placed a cold call to the Neiman
Marcus buyer in the Dallas office.

She left her Atlanta apartment with a red backpack that contained
her samples. Once there, the buyer gave her 10 minutes to make her
pitch. After a few minutes Sara could see that the buyer wasn't
engaged or interested. That's when the light bulb moment
happened in inspiration struck. She dragged the buyer into the
ladies room and proceeded to put on her product and demonstrated
for herself. The buyer agreed to try out the product in seven stores.
She had sold her first 3,000 pairs of Spanx.

Fast forward 12 years later, and Sara Blakely is the youngest
self-made woman billionaire. Thanks to violating expectations,
Sara was able to educate the buyer at Neiman Marcus and get her
product into the stores. Eventually, she sold over 10 million pairs of
Spanx making women all over the world more confident in the
slacks of their choice. This true story has all the elements that can
inspire and educate others. It has struggle, conflict, and the
ultimate successful resolution.

Danny Meyer, founder of some of my favorite restaurants, Union
Square Cafe, and of course, the Shake Shack. If you've ever been to
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New York City in the spring or the summer, you will see lines
hundreds of feet long of people getting their lunch at Shake Shack.
Danny Meyer is always looking for new ways to tell stories in his
presentations that will educate his employees and participants on
what consumer service really means.

Someone can be taught how to set a table with a flair, but
developing a high HQ, hospitality quotient, isn't as easy to do
because it requires flexibility and attention to details. So, he used
this story in one of his presentations. Meyer was on a business trip
to Florida. When he got to his hotel, he was exhausted. He just
wanted to order a cheeseburger and watch his hometown Cardinals
play the San Francisco Giants. He went down to the lobby bar and
ordered his meal. The Jets vs. Patriot pregame was on but no one
was in the bar. So, the waiter switched the channel for him. He was
enjoying the Cardinals game but after several bites of his burger,
the television switched back to the Jets vs. Patriots.

When the waiter came back, he noticed that the game had been
switched. Meyer said it was okay. He would take his burger to the
lobby bar in the hotel. But the waiter said no, that's not fair. You
were here first. Then the waiter said let me fix this for you. The
waiter came back with the remote control, switched the channel
and handed the batteries to Meyer. Meyer told his audience that the
burger wasn't superior, but that he would never forget those
batteries and the experience of customer service he received.
Through his storytelling and presentations, Meyer is able to create
high HQ, culture among his employees. Not only do his employees
learn and adopt his attitude, they're also motivated to teach it to
others.
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So, really the key here is you want to violate people's expectations.
You want to give them the complete opposite of whatever they were
expecting, provide something novel, gain their attention, tell great
stories and connect with them emotionally. I'll see you in the next
module.
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Welcome to Module 18 of Persuasive Speakology. So, in this
module, we're going to talk about simplifying the complex. And so,
in these last few modules, really what we're talking about is your
ability to provide value in some way, shape or form, using
persuasive speech. So, in the last module, I gave you some case
studies of people that provided value in the form of education,
which is very powerful. Because when you can educate people, and
show them something valuable, or provide them with something
that they didn't know before, and you can do it in a way where it
becomes memorable, then you essentially touch their lives forever.

I mean, how many of us have been in a classroom with a boring
teacher or a boring professor, that drones on and on and on about a
very important topic that we probably should be learning. But we're
probably not learning it and probably not absorbing it as best as we
can, because they're just doing a poor job of communicating it.
Versus that special teacher, that's able to leave us with their
imprint and their legacy of how good they were at communicating
the value and what they needed to talk about. And so we covered, in
the last module, how to do that by educating people.

And now, I want to talk about something that might not be so
obvious to you, but is extremely valuable. And it's kind of what I
pride myself on. When I got into this business of teaching people
communication strategies, I remember one night I was having
dinner with a friend of mine. And he said to me, what exactly do you
do? And I was explaining to him that I own a digital publishing
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company, and we publish training programs that teach people how

to improve their communication skills. And he said something to
me to the effect of, “What can I learn from you that I can't learn in a
book?” And I said to him, “Absolutely nothing. Every single thing
that I teach people can be found in a book somewhere. Every single
thing.” And so he said, “So, then why do people pay for your
training programs?”

And I said well, essentially, it's two things. It's my ability to merge
patterns and formulas together from different bodies of knowledge.
So, how to take the body of knowledge regarding hypnotic
language, for example, which is typically used in a clinical setting
to hypnotize somebody, how to take that, and show somebody how
to use it in business settings, or social settings, or how to do that
with NLP. Or how to take a formula from a number of different - or
how to take pieces of a number of different disciplines, and then
bring them together as a formula, like I'm doing in this program.

And so the other part of it is what I believe to be my ability to do
exactly what I'm going to teach you in this module, which is to
simplify the complex. I firmly believe, again, that you could be
teaching and sharing with people, the greatest information in the
world. But if you're doing it in a way that they can't understand,
then you're not really serving them. And so the ability to take a
complex subject and break it down into the simplest form so that
people can understand and apply it, to me, is one of the most
valuable things that you can do for somebody. So, again, one of the
most difficult things to do is to simplify complex ideas, and then
package them in a way that's easy to understand. So, your initial
presentation should be Twitter worthy. The question is, can you
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figure out a concise, clear message of your mission in 140

characters or less?

The founder of Virgin Airlines, Richard Branson says, “Can you
write it on the back of an envelope? If not, it's rubbish.” So, you
should be able to communicate your idea, your pitch, your
presentation. Whatever it may be, you should be able to
communicate that as simply and as easily as possible, without
having to drone on and on and on about what it means. So, when
Richard was growing up, he had dyslexia. At that time, no one really
understood what dyslexia was. But Richard couldn't read and he
was always in trouble in school. Later, reflecting back on his
experiences thus far, he reframed his life story. He discovered later
that many influential leaders had dyslexia; Einstein, Edison, Da
Vinci, Disney. He dropped out of school at the age of 15. But he's
convinced that his dyslexia gave him an advantage. He learned how
to make complicated ideas simpler, and communicate them
concisely.

Here's a story he presents about his first business venture. When he
was still attending boarding school in England, Richard came up
with an idea. He wanted to start a magazine called Student. The
magazine was going to showcase campaigns against bullying and
corporate punishment. But he had several problems in getting his
idea off the ground. He had to persuade advertisers to sponsor him,
and he had yet to publish an issue. He also didn't have a phone in
his room because the headmaster wouldn't allow it. Branson's
Solution was to go to a payphone to pitch his idea to sponsors. He
had to persuade them in less than five minutes, because if he didn't,
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the operator would come back on the line and interrupt his pitch,
which would destroy his credibility.

Branson feels that this forever changed the way he thought about
communication. He believes, and so do I, that complexity is your
enemy. Any fool can make something complicated, but it takes a lot
of work to make something that's complicated simple. Branson's
communication style, clear, concise language that uses ordinary
languages at the core of his mastery of how to influence others. And
I'll tell you what, before I got into the business of training people on
communication strategies, I was a copywriter, a professional
copywriter. And essentially, my job was to write the words on a
page that sold people's products. Write the words that make the
person take out their credit card and purchase the product.

And one of the earliest lessons that I learned in copywriting from
the great Gary Halbert, who's widely recognized as arguably the
greatest copywriter of our time, Gary said that it's not what you
write, it's how you write it. And so a lot of times, it's not about
using fancy words or jargon, complicated sentences, or even having
the best punctuation. It's more about the actual message. And using
simple, easy to understand language is your best friend when
writing sales copy. It's also your best friend, when communicating
with people in person. There's really the only difference between
writing copy and communicating in person is that one's on paper,
and one's done face-to-face.

Steve Jobs was a master of taking complicated ideas and putting
them into accessible simple ideas that people could understand and
relate to. Look at the devices. I mean, when he unveiled the iPad,
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which I think was in 2010. I mean, if you rip this thing open, you
know, the complexity of what makes it function and do all of the
different things that it does is pretty wild. But on the surface, if you
look at it, what does it have? It has the central button on the
bottom. It has the power button at the top. I think it has a lock
button and a volume button. That's it. So, aside from
communicating complex things into simple ideas, he also believed
in simplicity when it came to ease of use. He wanted people to be
able to use his devices easily and not get overwhelmed and get
confused. He knew that most people have no idea what five
gigabytes means. They can't get their arms around it.

In 2001, he crafted one sentence about Apple's new product that
told a complete story. When he launched Apple's first mp3 player,
the now famous iPod, he described it simply to his audience. He
said that five gigabytes was equal to 1,000 songs. But the reality is
that there were other mp3 players already selling on the market
that could hold this many songs. But no company had a product
that was the tiny, portable size of the iPod. He completed the story
when he said that the iPod was 1,000 songs in your pocket. What an
amazing metaphor. Apple has sold over 400 million iPods to date.
Jobs once said, you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to
make it simple. But it's worth it in the end, because once you get
there, you can move mountains.

You might not know the name Jorge Mario Bergoglio, but he's one
of the most sought after presenters on the planet today. That is the
birth name of Pope Francis. During his visit to the Philippines in
2015, over 6 million people congregated to see him and hear him
speak. Pope Francis delivers his message with humility and
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compassion. He also follows the rule of three to lend simplicity to

his message and make his talks accessible to multicultural
audiences. Pope Francis uses the rule of three in many of his
presentations.

Here's an excerpt where he used a striking metaphor in addition to
the rule of three, “God created the world as a beautiful garden. Man
has disfigured that natural beauty with social structures that
perpetuate poverty, ignorance, and corruption.” Three things:
poverty, ignorance, and corruption. Think about the many times
that the rule of three has had an influence on your ability to
remember something important. People think using patterns. And
it's been shown that three to seven items is all we can hold in our
random access memory, or RAM. Three is the smallest number that
displays a pattern. Here are some quick examples, lights, camera,
action, ready, set, go, turn on, tune in, drop out.

In fact, if you look at the PDF version of all of these slides that came
with the program, you'll see that I follow a pattern. And the pattern
is that each module usually has five main topics that I talked about.
And within each of those topics, there are three main bullet points.
And again, circling back to what I said in an earlier module about
the length of the videos and the audios, we don't go pass, usually
pass 25 minutes because we know that the average person is going
to get bored and is going to need an attention reset. The same is
true with communicating the information to people. Which is why I
keep the bullet points limited to three and I keep the main points in
each module is limited to five main parts. Life, liberty and
happiness. That's another one. Of the people, by the people, for the
people. The rule of three offers three major benefits. One, a simple
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template to create your presentation. Two, it simplifies your

message so it'll be accessible and memorable. And three, it leads to
the ultimate goal of all persuasion, which is to motivate people to
act now.

An industrial construction equipment company revised its
presentations and won an $875 million contract. Industrial
construction equipment is huge. Some cranes weigh as much as 15
million pounds, the equivalent of 80 space shuttles. There was a
small company in this field that wanted to grow into a larger
company. But something was holding them back from achieving
their goals. They had fallen prey to a disease known as the Text
Heavy PowerPoint. They had so much text and data in their
PowerPoint presentation that it was weighing down their message.

It was in the time period after 2008. And the company was
desperately trying to attract new business. That's when the
marketing director suggested that they simplify their message. He
took their 72 slide PowerPoint deck and replaced it with 30 of them
with photo rich slides that told their story with less than 10 words
each. Some of their former slides had over 200 words on them,
which made them documents that were pretending to be slides. An
example of a new slide was a picture of the moon with the number
240,000. The narrator would then say we've installed more than
240,000 miles of pipe. That's enough pipe to route heating oil to
the moon.

Now, what's amazing about this change is that because all human
beings think the same, not only is your audience going to receive
this better, and remember it more, so are you the presenter.
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Because it's going to have the same impact on your brain. So, when
you see that picture, you're going to instantly remember what your
point was, rather than trying to remember what the words on the
slide were. They offered their revised presentation to a large oil
firm and secured an $875 million contract. When asked why they
hired the company, one of the oil executives said, “Their
presentation made me see new possibilities. It was the type of
thinking that I want to invest in.” The takeaway is to use visual
storytelling to simplify your message.

Charles Michael Yim, nets the biggest deal in shark tanks history $1
million from all five sharks with a simple explanation of a
complicated product. Yim had been an entrepreneur since the age of
six, and he learned a lot before he founded the company, and the
product that he would pitch to Shark Tank. His product was a breath
analysis platform. It was essentially a non-invasive way to obtain
data on the clinical state of an individual by analyzing the organic
compounds in their breath. However, Yim didn't tell the shark
investors any of this. In fact, his presentation wasn't technical at
all. Yim began by giving the sharks a glass of wine, and giving them
a hypnotic suggestion to imagine how you would feel at a get
together or sports event where you've had some food and a few
drinks. You're ready to go home, but you're not sure if you're fit to
drive.

He then pulled out a police size breathalyzer. After they had that
picture in their minds. He pulled out the breathometer, the first
breathalyzer that can fit in your pocket. He demonstrated how to
plug the small device into a smartphone, and then use an app to test
your breath by blowing into the device. Yim's device and his simple,
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effective presentation landed him a deal. He also landed a later

investment deal with Richard Branson on the strength of his simple
message. He won this chance from 2,000 original entrance who
wanted the opportunity to pitch Branson. Since then, there have
been some rough roads regarding his claims. But the company has
now pivoted and is using their highly technical analyzing device to
analyze breath for other types of health and wellness.
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Welcome to Module 19. So, as I said, these last few modules, really,
what we're going over are ways to provide value to people. Ways to
educate them, ways to make complex topics simple, and easy for
them to understand. And in this module, we're going to talk about
motivating others. Again, a very, very, very powerful ability to have.
I mean, when I think about motivating others, Tony Robbins is the
guy that always comes to mind. And Grant Cardone, also on a lesser
scale, some of you may know him, also comes to mind.

What's interesting is that Tony Robbins says that he doesn't like to
be called a motivational speaker. In fact, he prefers to call himself
the why guy. The guy that wants to understand why you do certain
things so that he can then help change your behavior to get the
results that you need and want in life. And I like that. But the reality
is that no matter what Tony wants to call himself, Tony is a master
at motivating others. We all need motivation on a daily basis to
succeed in life. When you speak from the heart at the right time,
whether it's to one person or to many; you can provide the
inspiration that's needed for people to weather the storm they are
experiencing. Many people who have been highly successful in life
have had very rough or humble beginnings.

As I said before, Richard Branson has dyslexia and was a poor
student. Steve Jobs, was the son of two college students who gave
him up for adoption. Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks was
born in a housing authority in the Bronx. Susie Orman's father
raised chickens for a living. Milton Erickson had polio in his youth
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and had to teach himself to walk again. These highly successful

people have been able to reframe their stories, and become the hero
who has overcome adversity to become a better version of
themselves.

What's interesting is, again, I told you in an earlier module, that I
teach Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, but I also train Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Meaning that I actively take classes from the person who was above
me in terms of the pecking order and ranking. And I actively train
for three to four times a week. I'm a purple belt, which is considered
a medium expert. Meaning, I could open up a Jiu-Jitsu school if I
wanted to, and teach the techniques to other people. Well, one of
the greatest things or the best experiences that I can tell you,
Jiu-Jitsu is a very physical sport or a very physical activity. You
sweat a lot, your heart races a lot, you're in close contact, grappling
and wrestling with people, and it's very competitive. But one of the
greatest parts of it is not necessarily how well you do in the
combative situation, but who you can actually help.

And so the other night, I was having a talk with two people that are
under me in the pecking order. So, there's only five belts in
Jiu-Jitsu. There's white belt, blue belt, purple belt, brown belt, black
belt. And so I was talking with two blue belts, who are probably
about three, two to three years behind me in terms of their
experience. And one of them has an issue with his leg. He has some
sort of a handicap with his leg. I think one of them is shorter than
the other and it causes him to walk with a very awkward walk, so to
speak. And when he first joined, he was very apprehensive and
nervous about how this disability, for lack of a better word, was
going to affect him.
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And what I told him was that in 2003, I was involved in a serious car
accident, where I basically broke my right hip. I dislocated my right
hip, to the point that my leg was basically laying next to my body
inside my skin, of course, but it was laying next to my body. And so
I had to have two surgeries on my hip. I had to have an extensive
rehabilitation process. And if you've ever watched Jiu-Jitsu, the
hips are probably the part of the body that you use the most. And so
I have the same reservations and apprehension when I first started
that he had. I used to tell myself, I'll never be really good at this, my
hips weren't designed for it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But as time has went on, again, this is not to turn this into a
self-help program, I really begin to study the topic of
neuroplasticity. And what neuroplasticity is, is the science of the
brain, forming new neural pathways based on the way that we
communicate with the brain. So, what scientific research is now
finding is that the brain basically changes itself, based on the way
that you speak to it. So, you have two options when you speak to
yourself. You can either speak negatively, or you can speak
positively. And so what I learned was I began to train myself to
eliminate negative words from my vocabulary. I practice
affirmations every single morning when I walk my dog. I say all
positive things to myself. I've paid very close attention to the way
that I speak about things when I'm communicating with other
people. I don't use words like I can't, or that's impossible. I replaced
them with things like it's challenging, so on and so forth.

And so anyway, to make a long story short, what I did was I changed
the story that I used to tell myself about my hip. I used to tell myself
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that my hip was going to debilitate me and prevent me from really

advancing in Jiu-Jitsu. And now the story that I tell myself is that
I'm the only person in the entire Academy that has this issue with
my hip. And yet still, I'm able to train three to four times a week.
And still, I was able to earn the rank of purple belt. So, I changed
something that I thought was making me different in a bad way
into something that makes me special. And so I told this young man
who has this issue with his leg that that's what he needed to do. He
needed to change the story that he was telling himself about this
debilitating, or for what he was perceiving as a debilitating
circumstance.

Right next to him was another young man who just lost his sister
two weeks ago. And he was at the Academy two days after she
passed away training. And I said you have to change the story that
you tell yourself. Tell yourself that you're the only person in the
entire Academy that has this issue with your leg yet, you're training
all the time. Just like this young man is the only person in the entire
Academy who lost a loved one and still made it to class three days
later. So, it's important to change the story that you tell yourself so
that you can become the best version of yourself.

John F. Kennedy overcame a sickly constitution to become a hero
during World War Two. As a child, Kennedy was very sick and stuck
in bed for long periods of time. When in the infirmary of his school,
he read everything he could get his hands on. He especially loved
reading about heroes. He saw himself playing the part of the hero in
the tales of King author. In 1943, Kennedy was commanding a PT
boat on patrol. An enemy destroyer rammed into the boat and it was
split in half. Two men of the crew of 13 were killed instantly. One
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man was very critically injured and would not have lived had he had
been left to swim to shore on his own. Kennedy took a strap from
the life jacket the man was wearing and grasped it between his
teeth. He swam for four hours with his crewmate in tow to a tiny
island that was 70 yards wide. Kennedy survived the battles of
World War Two to become president. The man he saved lived until
he was 84 years old. So, imagine telling this story to a child in a
hospital bed, knowing that someone else who was sickly was able to
overcome that and become stronger is a powerful motivator.
Inspiration is just as powerful as medicine. Inspiration can help
someone overcome sickness.

Dr. Rich Guerra is a cardiologist at Walnut Hill Medical Center in the
center of Dallas, Texas. Walnut Hill isn't just any hospital. Their
health and wellness model involves the level of customer service
you would find at a Ritz Carlton or a Disney Resort. In order to get
his employees to understand the level of customer service needed
and expected there, and to motivate them to make it a part of their
DNA, he presents this story. Imagine you're living in medieval
times. You're traveling down a dusty rocky road and you see a man
with a sledgehammer breaking up rocks. When you ask, “What are
you doing?” He replies, “I'm breaking up rocks.” You continue a
few miles and you see a second man doing the same type of work.
When you ask, “What are you doing?” He replies, “I'm making a
living.”

A few hours later you come across a third man. Even though you
feel very tired and leg wary from traveling, something about this
man makes you feel better. He seems different than the other two
even though he's doing the same thing. When you ask, “What are
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you doing?” He smiles, look skyward, and then replies, “I'm

building a cathedral.” After telling this story, Guerra links it to the
customer service level that Walnut Hill is seeking. His job is to
motivate people to see that everything that they do is building the
cathedral.

Steve Wynn, the CEO of Wynn Resorts asked a very simple question
and got over 12,000 of his employees motivated. It had been a
standard practice at their weekly meetings for department
managers to meet with those who are reporting to them. For
example, the restaurant managers would convene with the waiter,
chefs, and line cooks who report it to them. At the beginning, these
meetings were simply informational. But then one day, Wynn asked
the managers to include this question, “Does anyone have a great
customer service experience they would like to share?” It sparked a
customer service tsunami.

At the first of the Wynn customer experience meetings, a bellman
shared this story. A married couple checked into one of the hotels
but the wife panicked because she realized that she left her
husband's diabetic medicines, including his critical insulin at
home. They needed the medicine at 07:00 AM the next morning.
The bellman asked if anyone was at their house and the woman said
the housekeeper would be there. The bellman took the information
and told her he would take care of it.

The bellman called his brother who lived in Encino, not far from the
couple's Pacific Palisades house. His brother picked up the bag of
medicines from the housekeeper. The bellman got permission from
a supervisor, drove to Encino, picked up the bag, and it was at the
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hotel for the customer at 07:00 AM. Do you think that the
customers will remember the marble and hand-woven carpets in
the hotel? That doesn't mean anything to them. But the bellman’s
customer service is priceless. Wynn believes that if employees are
being treated fairly in their jobs, the next thing they desire is to feel
that their jobs have meaning. They want to be celebrated. Positive
self-esteem is one of the most powerful forces for motivation on
the planet.

Herb Kelleher and Rollin King hatched the idea for Southwest
Airlines on the back of a napkin in 1966. From the very beginning,
Herb felt that if you ain't got culture, you ain't got shit. Part of
Herb’s over the top commitment to Southwest corporate culture
was to put his employees first, his customers second, and his
shareholders third. When a reporter who was interviewing Kelleher
asked him why it seemed impossible for competitors to emulate
Southwest’s success. He spoke up and told this story about the
importance of corporate culture and power of people to make a
difference. The difficulty for them is the cultural aspect of
Southwest. The United Shuttle went after our business in Oakland.
They had lots of advantages, including First Class seats, global
frequent flyer program, and a $30 million advertising campaign.
But, I have 1,000s of letters in my office that say something like, “I
tried them, but I like your people more so I’m back.” The takeaway,
successful leaders use their speaking and management skills to
create and motivate an award-winning culture. Publicly sharing
those stories inspires and motivates people to provide the best
customer service possible, and to enjoy their work at a very high
level. Their work has meaning and that meaning resonates with
their emotions and souls.
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Winston Churchill. As a young man of 29, Churchill was thought to
be senile. In one of his first speeches, he completely lost his train of
thought and was silent for nearly three minutes. After this fiasco,
many would have remained silent forever. But instead, Churchill
promised himself that he would become so practiced and natural at
speaking, that it would never happen again. To this day, the entire
world benefited from Churchill's decision. History has almost
forgotten that the British almost made a deal with Adolf Hitler.
Through a series of inspirational speeches, Churchill changed the
tide of history and helped the British people understand the
consequences of allowing the evil of the Nazi Empire to march
forward. As the British were beaten down by the Nazis, he
continued to speak to the British people to keep their spirits up
during that dark time. At a critical time during the Battle of Britain,
all available British aircraft were in the air attempting to prevent
the Nazis from getting close to London.

Churchill sat in his car with his military secretary as he gazed at the
Battle overhead. He told his secretary not to disturb him and he
remained quiet for a full five minutes. He was very moved by what
he was witnessing. He then wrote down this thought to share with
the British people in a later speech. “Never in the field of human
conflict has so much been owed by so many to few. The so much
stood for the priceless freedom, liberty, and democracy of the
British lands, and those of their allies. But so many represented the
population of Britain as well as the countries that Hitler had
invaded, if not the entire free world. For so few signified the brave
British pilots, many of whom died defending that liberty.” The
takeaway is that inspirational speakers are able to motivate large
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numbers of people and ignite the emotions needed to take action

with the fewest words possible. A final quote from Churchill, “Short
words are best.”
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Welcome to Module 20. So, in this module, we're going to talk about
launching a movement. Great speakers know how to ignite
emotions with their speeches. And only emotions have the power to
start a movement.

We come full circle here as we talked about in the beginning of the
program when we talked about capturing the emotion. And I told
you from the very beginning, that people are emotional, first, and
logical second. Meaning, that we make most of our decisions based
on emotion, and then we use logic to justify those decisions. And I
want you to think about all of the big movements in the world.
Movements of love, movements of hate, movements of war,
movements of change, where do they come from? They come from
people that are driven and overwhelmed with emotion.

In 1963, Clarence Jones was Martin Luther King's speechwriter. But
the most powerful speech that King ever gave, was it read word for
word from Clarence's draft. As the crowd at the Washington Mall
increased over a quarter of a million people, King began his speech.
As Clarence heard the first paragraph he was pleased that King has
read his words line by line. Perhaps he was finally learning how
King's mind worked. Clarence often felt that he built the walls of
the house, but King found the way to furnish that house so it felt
like a home. King was just settling in to his favorite chair.

Everything was going smoothly from Clarence's words until the
great gospel singer, Mahalia Jackson yelled out at King, “Tell him
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about the dream, Martin.” Clarence realized at that moment, that

King would set aside the prepared remarks. The audience was about
to receive a spiritual gift as if they were a congregation in a church.
King then proceeded to say, “I have a dream…” That sentence and
much of what King said in the rest of the speech was improvised.
King was a master of improvisation because he had spent over
5,000 hours preparing and practicing his speeches. The takeaway,
great speakers, and storytellers are made, not born. Great speakers
know how to ignite the emotional fire that sparks a movement.
They have practiced creating the kindling from narrative, sensory
words, analogy, and metaphor.

Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In speech started a movement. As Chief
Operating Officer of Facebook. Sheryl works all day with facts and
figures. However, it was her three-year-old daughter, pleading
with her to stay home that caused the [unclear 03:12] she learned to
share with others. To prepare for her TED talk in 2010, Sheryl
amassed an Everest high stack of statistics. However, right before
she left on our trip, her toddler grabbed her leg and begged her not
to leave. She confided to a friend that she was having trouble
focusing on the speech she was supposed to give because she
realized that she didn't have all the problems figured out herself. It
was hard to make a choice to lean in when it came to your own
career. Her friend persuaded her to share her story about her
daughter. “If you really want women to get serious about
leadership roles, you can't sugarcoat how difficult it is,” her friend
said.

So, Sheryl followed that advice although she found it difficult to
share something that was so personal with the audience. Especially
182
since it was in conflict with the advice she was giving women about
leadership roles. After telling the story about her daughter, Sheryl
gave the women three pieces of guidance. Sit at the table, make
your partner a real partner. Don't leave before you leave. Sheryl
meant that many women stay by the sidelines in business instead of
taking an active part. Even in homes where the husband and wife
both have careers, women do twice as much housework and three
times as much child-rearing. Also, women are more apt to leave
their heads and hearts way before they actually leave their jobs.
Which essentially means they're not engaged in pursuing
leadership opportunities. The takeaway? You don't move
mountains with an Everest of data, you do it by sharing personal
stories from the heart. Much debate followed Sheryl's talk and the
Lean In Philosophy became a movement with women everywhere,
sharing their difficulties in rising to the top and coming up with
strategies to do so.

Pooja Sankar came from a traditional Indian background. She is the
founder of Piazza, an online platform for students to share so they
can overcome their shyness and get help as they are trying to learn.
Educated at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology in India,
Pooja had earned one of the 2,000 students spots out of 2 million
applicants. She was talented and smart even though there had been
a cultural pressure for her to follow a strictly traditional path of
becoming a wife and mother. She found that she had to overcome
her shyness in order to, her mostly male colleagues and college
professors questions about the material so that she could progress
in her studies.

183
After graduating from Stanford University, she began an online

platform called Piazza that helps students talk among themselves
and their professors for the purpose of accelerating their learning.
It was the forum she wished she had as she was studying to become
a software engineer. Inspired by Sheryl Sandberg while working at
Facebook, Pooja made a success out of her business and started a
movement of a different style of communication among students
and their instructors using Piazza. By giving talks and sharing the
emotional story of overcoming her shyness, she's built awareness
and expanded the reach of Piazza, which is now used by 1,000s of
students and professors. She's received over $15 million in funding
from investors who believe in her startup.

Malala Yousafzai. Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani advocate for girls'
education. The Taliban tried to silence her, but they didn't succeed.
As a 15-year-old girl tried to attend school in Pakistan in 2012, two
masked men stopped her school bus and asked for her by her name.
They wanted to kill her because she was speaking up for the right of
girls to become educated. They shot her three times. Miraculously,
she survived their assault. That girl was Malala. One year after the
attack that almost took her life, Malala stood in front of the United
Nations to increase awareness around the world of the plight of
millions of girls who are not allowed to receive an education. Her
speech and subsequent best-selling book, I Am Malala started a
movement. In 2014, Malala received the Nobel Peace Prize. She is
the youngest person who's ever received it. 16 million young girls
around the world are denied access to an education. Malala's story
of tragedy and ultimate triumph has inspired people around the
world with the desire to take action on this important issue.

184
John Lasseter loved the Disney Company until they fired him. Then
his life came full circle. John Lasseter filled notepads upon notepads
with sketches when he was a boy. As a teenager, he read The Art of
Animation that told the history of Disney's animators. He worked
hard to become an animator at Disney. He was in his 20s when he
got a job there. John saw the potential in computer animation and
tried to present it to his boss and colleagues at Disney. Then, there
was the day that one of his supervisors said to him, “John, we don't
want to hear about your ideas. Just do what you're told.” When he
talks about that day, John's I still get watery. John was fired from
Disney. He was heartbroken. But he still loved animation, so he
didn't give up.

Fast forward to 1983, John got a position at Lucasfilm’s computer
division, where they were developing computer animation
technology. In 1986, Steve Jobs bought the division and established
it as an independent company called Pixar. John had to pitch an idea
for a story to Steve. It was a short film called ThinkToy. Jobs
listened, but he stared off as if he was looking into the future. At the
end of the meeting, Jobs looked directly into John's eyes and said,
“John, make it great.” ThinkToy won an Academy Award for Best
Animated Short, and became an inspiration for all of Pixar's
subsequent films. After a rocky relationship between the two
companies for several years, the Disney Company changed their
mind about the ideas percolating Pixar. Disney eventually bought
Pixar, where Lasseter is now Chief Creative Officer of both Disney
and Pixar. Those three words of advice from Jobs forever resonated
in Lasseter's ears as he was inspired to make every frame in every
film great. Lasseter's work. And the work of his team at Pixar
launched an entirely new industry that has brought joy to families
185
around the world. When he gives advice to young artists, John

Lasseter says, “Your voice is worthwhile, have faith in it.”

And so really, what I want to leave you with here is, I said in the
beginning of the program, that my goal when I created this was to
take someone who may be shy, introverted, quiet, anxious, and not
necessarily have any attributes of a persuasive speaker, and turn
them into a master of persuasive speaking. And so what I want you
to realize is that the reason why I told you a lot of these stories, at
the end of the program, is because I really want to drive home the
point that while some master communicators are born, most
master communicators are made. And really, my point in telling
you that is that, just like everything else in life, there are certain
people that are born with talents and abilities that far exceed the
average person. Things come a little bit easier to them. They're
“naturals”. They don't have to work as hard as everyone else. But,
for the majority of other people, just like every other aspect in life,
if you put your mind to it, if you work, if you study, if you put in the
time, it's going to pay off.

I'll leave you with one last Jiu-Jitsu analogy. So, as I was talking to
my friend who I mentioned earlier in the module, who has this
issue with his leg about training, he said to me, “Man, I didn't have
a good night tonight.” And I said, “Well, what happened?” And he
said, “I really got beat up.” And so in Jiu-Jitsu, there's a lot of
grappling going on, and your goal is to submit your training
partner. Your goal is to get your training partner to tap out. And you
do that with either chokeholds or joint locks. And in the beginning,
if you've never trained Jiu-Jitsu before, you do a lot of tapping. A,
because you don't know how to defend certain submissions, and B,
186
because since you have nothing to compare it to, you don't really
know what your resistance level is when somebody puts a
submission on you. So, you tap pretty fast. All of us go through it.
And he asked me how he can get better. And I said, “The only way
that you can get better is you just have to keep coming.”

And so what I explained to him is that when you train Jiu-Jitsu, it's
like you're starting a savings account. And every time you show up
to class, and every time you train, it's like you make a small deposit
into that savings account. And while it may not seem on the surface,
that that savings account is growing at a rapid rate. If you just set it
and forget it and keep saving and keep making deposits, one day,
you're going to have a huge savings account that you're now going
to be able to make withdrawals from if you need to.

And so my point was that if you keep investing the time in bettering
yourself at Jiu-Jitsu, one day, you're going to have the ability and
the skill set to draw upon to actually submit somebody else, or to
defend from being submitted, or to elevate your skill level. And so
the same is true with everything that I taught you in this program.
If you really want to become a master of persuasive speech, you
have to keep studying, you have to put in the work, and you have to
make those deposits into your communication education, for lack
of a better term. So, don't give up. Keep studying, keep practicing,
and keep getting better. I wish you the best.

Paul Mascetta
influenceacademy.net

187

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Copyright Influence Mastery Inc.

Persuasive Speakology - Module 1

five-part method that makes up what we call Persuasive

unintelligent, not good-looking, and a poor excuse for a human

to make you a professional. It's to transform you into a shy,

contagious are nervousness and enthusiasm. So, if you're nervous,

not correct. Even though we are certainly capable of logical thought

here is that human beings function primarily most of the time,

you as a master of influence, and persuasion, have to know that

Persuasive Speakology - Module 2

understand certain social norms. Or he doesn't understand context,

you've cultivated such a high level of authority that people believe

new items, something that appears delicious that makes us curious

conscious part of the mind where we need people to be in order for

information in an animated morphing sequence. While the

Persuasive Speakology - Module 3

Brian Stevenson, another well known TED presenter speaks at a

important part of my life. I truly and honestly believe in my heart,

speak clearly and project from your diaphragm for resonance.

Persuasive Speakology - Module 4

instinctively know which words are worthy of emphasis. However,

There are three types of gestures that are used in regular

Now, when we talk about deletions, generalizations, and

Persuasive Speakology - Module 5

can be used to connect with the audience as well as to ensure that

experience the world through our senses. Through what we see,

Now, ultimately, it's my experience that when you use negative

And so sometimes, when you're talking about something like

There's just one person preventing you from becoming that

unless you present it in an inspirational way. So, the presentation

Now, before your presentation, first thing I want you to do is

wants to know why in order to make connections. The what. The

stories, imparting technical information, or sharing something

Persuasive Speakology - Module 6

can person’. So, when somebody presents something new to me

should become like a second skin. So, first one is mastering

coming from. She's on their wavelength. But then moves them

You want to use power gestures. Use gestures or movement to give

Persuasive Speakology - Module 7

have a completely different attitude toward the person you're

that, I'll offer you some of my more premium, more expensive

different variables that come into play: circumstance, environment,

Now, when behavior is reinforced, we tend to continue it. When it's

by organizing the different options into category. So, to solicit a

Persuasive Speakology - Module 8

it out on a big banana leaf. And he finishes it with some fresh

provide a visual picture of the characters. With your words, paint a

comparing it to something that you would sprinkle over a dish or in

Persuasive Speakology - Module 9

have it, investigate and purchase a good package of CRM software

organizations. Attend your local Chamber of Commerce meeting to

Well, every year in August, there's a company by the name of

Persuasive Speakology - Module 10

smooth in sharing this information with customers in their

commitments and each talking about their success stories, and

Shareholder or investor presentations. These are some of the most

Persuasive Speakology - Module 11

one, negotiating to get agreement between two arguing parties. A

immediately, or even worse, tear it down. This was deeply

Persuasive Speakology - Module 12

thought leader. The videos you share should be business focused,

presentation so that you can connect with 100 people or more.

Informational videos. Creating a YouTube channel with content