How in the world do you actually get people to do something? How do you persuade them to take action to buy your stuff, to sign you up, to hire you, to do whatever it is? 

 

Right now, we have children that are in the dating and marriage age. How do you get someone to agree to go on a date with you and to marry you? You might not be in that situation, but all of us as writers, we have this question in our mind about “how do we actually persuade people to do something?”

 

 I am so excited to share with you a very simple model that I call the “human persuasion model.” 

 

Now, look. I just barely got done doing the first session of a new program, not even released yet. I have got a live core group, a beta group that I am doing, a charter group. If you want to go, where do you want to call it? I have got a small group of people that I am walking through this. It is a brand new program I have developed. This program is called “Profit” and it talks about high leverage marketing secrets. It allows you as a writer to understand how a marketing system and funnel works. It allows you also as the writer to understand how a marketing funnel and process work on a bigger scale. 

 

So think about this, if a client comes to you and says, “Hey, will you do an email for me?” Then you can look at that email and you can see where it fits in the bigger picture. 

 

You can say, “Well it looks like you need an email, a landing page, an opt-in page, the sales letter,” and whatever. You expand your opportunity horizon, expand your ability to do stuff. 

 

So that is why I am putting this program together — so that you can have your vision expanded, and so you can see dozens more opportunities. 

 

I have told the story many times. I had a client come to me one time, they had $500. That was it. They only had $500 to spend – no more – and they needed a couple of emails written. I looked at what they were doing and I saw this process here and I knew how to persuade them, because I understood this human persuasion model that I will talk with you about in just a minute. 

 

I understood the bigger marketing picture of what was going on. So I said, “Sure, I am happy to do the $500 project, the couple of emails.”

You know what… because I understood opportunity awareness and the bigger picture and how the cells funnel work, I was able to become a consultant for them and a writer for them and I took that $500 and turned it into a quarter of a million dollars. 

 

Now, that is a pretty good upsell, right? I have done that over and over and over again. I had one client who said that they would like me to help change up some of their content on their site. They were a Dutch company that had translated their own copy in English and was selling mostly to a US market. 

 

Now, they asked me basically to Americanize their content, which I did. You know, the initial project was less than $1,000. But, because I understood the bigger picture, because I understood these high leverage marketing secrets, and understood what they were doing with that content – with their web pages, sales letters, op-in forms, and  videos – because I understood all that. I was able to take that small little project for less than $1000 and migrate that to a retainer gig for five thousand dollars a month, plus commissions on stuff that we did later. 

 

I did that for years. That was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars for me as well. So I just thought you know, I am putting this program together. I am not going to walk you through the whole thing. Obviously, it is a multi-part course, but it is going to go into a deep dive of high leverage marketing secrets. 

 

But today, what I wanted to do is to give you the foundation for how all of it works, the foundation for everything there, and just walk you through some basics about how to get people to take action. 

 

Since I literally just finished this, you can see right here, this is the page that I walked them through. I went through each one of these different segments right here and talked about it. That is the basic, high-leverage model, and the program does a deep dive into them and gives understanding. 

 

But if the foundation of all of it, every single one of the steps, is based on this human persuasion model right now, right here. 

 

What is the psychology of getting people to take action? How should you be writing your stuff? What key emotional triggers and drivers to purchase? What buttons should you be pushing inside their heart and inside their head? Let us walk through it. Again, since I have already filled this in because I just did this with my other class, I am just going to point stuff out. You get a sneak peek into it, you have got to read it. It probably would not make a lot of sense until I give some details and some explanation on it. 

 

There is a lot of stuff here. We are going to go through really fast. Grab a pencil and a paper and a notepad or grab your Apple Pencil, whatever it is. You grab something to make notes with, because we are going to go through this fast. 

 

This could transform the way that you write. It could transform the way that you think about persuasion. It could transform the way that you consult your clients. It can transform so much stuff like it has for me. So here it is. Here is the answer to the question about how you get people to take action. Here we go. 

 

Step number one: you have to fire what is called their R-A-S trigger inside their brain. R-A-S trigger. 

 

You maybe have heard me talk about this before but the RAS stands for the reticular activating system. This is the part of your brain that controls attention. 

 

What do you pay attention to in our noisy busy congested world? What do you pay attention to? I discovered this when I was driving down the freeway in St. Louis, and there were high-rises and billboards and cars, and we were in a van. Children were chattering and talking and all this stuff was going on. 

 

In the middle of all that, here I am driving down the road in the middle of all that noise and that confusion, all that data and all that stuff going on. All of a sudden, my head turns and focuses on this sign on the side of the road. 

 

It was not even a big sign. It was a small sign and it focuses on this sign and the sign says Town and Country city limits, population 12800, whatever the number was. 

 

I am doing 70, 75 miles an hour so I look over at that. My eyes focus into it, my whole brain gives attention to it and then gone. It is like zoom, gone. 

 

I thought, “What’s the deal? Why did I pay attention to that sign? You know, all the other things I could have paid attention to, why that sign?”

 

I did a bunch of research and a bunch of studies on this, and I found out that as human beings, we all have this database inside of our brain that says, “this is important to pay attention to.” 

So why did the sign that said “Town and Country,” grab my attention? It grabbed my attention specifically because I was driving a Town & Country minivan! The words ‘town and country’ registered in my brain as being important, and my brain unconsciously forced me to give attention to that sign because it was important to me. 

 

Now, think about this. What if every headline you wrote, what if every video you did, what if every conversation you had, did that, and you could grab people’s attention; you could get them to listen to you? Your emails, your headlines. What if all of that stuff immediately and consistently grabbed people’s attention? 

 

Well, I am telling you, you can do that by hijacking their very own brain by talking about things that are automatically already important to them. 

 

That is where the human persuasion starts. If you don’t have their attention, you don’t have anything. You can’t even start a conversation. How can you persuade them if you can’t even get their attention? 

 

The vast majority of writers out there sending out emails, posting blogs that go into oblivion, the sales letters, the videos, any. It just goes into oblivion. It disappears. It is like, “Oh, where did it go?” 

 

Well, it didn’t go anywhere because it did not grab the target audience’s attention. It did not fire up the RAS trigger. That is step number one. 

 

Now, once you have their attention, every human being, you, me, every human being, the Chinese, Japanese, Russians, Ethiopians, the Americans, the Brazilians, whoever, anybody on the planet. If you are a 98.6 degrees fahrenheit and breathing, and you are part of the human race, then the very first thing you do once somebody has your attention – or something has your attention – is you ask three specific questions. 

 

You do it instantly, subconsciously just like that. In fact, it is reported that when somebody hears, sees, or experiences of some kind of data input, then you and I make a judgment about these questions within less than a second. Usually, it is within 40 milliseconds. 

 

We begin making assessments and judgments on these questions. Then we continue to ask these questions and ask these questions. So what are the questions? 

 

The first question is, “Is it safe? If I do this, eat this smell this, touch this, go vacation by this thing, will it keep me at 98.6 and breathing? Will I still be able to be alive? Will I be able to be safe?” 

 

Now, you are asking that because we have a prime directive to stay safe. You have to stay at 98.6 and breathe; it is essential. 

 

The second question is, “Will it help me grow? Will this help me become better? Will I get benefits from this?” 

 

Look, we have a prime directive inside of us as human beings to grow and to become better and to do more and to have more. That is why you are watching this video because somebody somewhere said, “Hey, I am going to figure out technology that has videos, and they can store the videos and play them later and transmit them around the world.” 

 

You see we are not monkeys or dogs or horses or cats; we are not comfortable just living and staying safe and living by instinct. We have to do something, right? 

 

Edmund Hillary, when he climbed Mount Everest, people said to him, “Why are you climbing Mount Everest?” He said because it is there. Why do we go to the moon? Because it is there. It is a challenge. We want to conquer, we want to expand. We want to figure stuff out. That is the prime directive inside of our brains. So we have to grow. 

 

So if you write something and it grabs somebody’s attention, and they feel like they are comfortable and I will keep them safe, that I am not going to die from reading your stuff. 

 

But, it does not offer them any benefits. It does not show how they can grow. It does not show they can add excitement, joy, happiness, or whatever it is into their lives. Then guess what? They will cancel the conversation and discussion. They won’t want to talk to you anymore. 

 

So, number three. The third question is belonging. The number one buying emotion is significance. “Will this help me belong to something bigger than myself? Will this help me feel more important to my fellow human beings? Will this help me to be someone significant? Will I belong more to the human race? Will I belong more to my tribe?” 

 

We want to belong. The number one buying emotion, the number one persuasion emotion is significance; to belong and to be seen as somebody important to other people. 

 

Does your product, does your service, the stuff that you are writing, does it help your clients feel like they can belong, grow, and stay safe?

 

Now, we ask these three questions, all of us asked these three questions. Every single time you do anything, you are asking these questions over and over and over and over again. 

 

If any time the answer is “no” on any of these, then you immediately hit the eject button, and you are gone. So are your readers, so are your clients, and so are their customers. Gone, daddy gone, they are gone. 

 

You have to answer these three questions appropriately and effectively inside your copy. 

 

This is why – just on a little note – one of the most powerful things you can do is to sit down and say what are three reasons why someone would buy from me or hire me as a writer. 

 

What are three reasons why somebody would not buy from me or would not hire me as a writer? When you know those two things, then you have the answer to these questions. 

 

Then you can put that into your copy, and answer your questions, and resolve their concerns before they come up – and then you can persuade them. 

 

Now, the framework behind this whole thing is four major touchpoints. So the framework is absolutely vital again. Let me give you some quick explanation then we will wrap up. 

 

So number one, do they trust you? 

 

Can you really deliver on the promise? If you say this is safe, and it will help you grow and you are going to belong and have significance if they see that, do they trust that you can deliver on this? Do they trust that? Do they believe that? Do they trust that they will get the end benefits, that they actually will grow and that they will belong, and that they will stay safe? Do they trust that? 

 

So trust is everything. Here is an inside pro tip. Trust is always based on similarities. If you and I are similar, you are going to naturally think about trusting me more. Okay, so that is really an important point. 

 

Number two is confidence. People say to me all the time, “Oh Joshua, I know you can be a successful writer because you have got all this experience and you are so good at speaking and you got these great writing skills, and you have got these rugged good looks and this great big huge muscles and you have this amazing wife and this great family. Like of course, it is going to work for you and feels that I do it all the time, right? But I do not know if it is going to work for me.”

 

Do you relate to this? Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever wondered if this is real? “Come on. I know that all these other people are doing this, that are successful freelance writers and making bank. But I do not know if it will actually work for me. I just do not know.” 

 

So if you have a question or confidence at any point, then you will opt out of the persuasion process. You will say, “I just am not sure that it is for me.”

 

A lot of people have a question of confidence. They do not know. They believe that it is possible. They trust. But they are not sure that it can work for them. You have clients who are thinking the same thing. 

 

You know, “Can I really afford you as a writer?” They have got customers thinking about the same thing. “Will this really be effective for me?” Right? I am different, I am unique, I am whatever and you have to answer this question in the persuasion process. 

 

Finally, the last one is leadership. So once people trust you, they know they will be safe, that they will grow, and then they have belonged, they have answered all these other elements right here. 

 

They know that this is legit and they feel comfortable with this. But a lot of times people then step out of the conversation and they do not tell people what to do next. 

 

You’ve got to tell people what to do next, because most of us are conditioned to wait for someone to tell us what to do. Not because we are sloths or we are idiots or whatever. It is just because this is the society and the world that we live in. 

 

So if you do not provide leadership and tell them exactly what to do, then they probably would not do it. That is why we call this leadership. Because you are leading out, you are pointing the way. 

 

You are like, “Hey, look, what are we going to do?” (I say this to my clients all the time.) “Hey, so, here is what I think we should do next -” and then I fill in the blank. “Here is what I think we should do next. Why don’t I put together a proposal for you? I will send that off to you and give you a couple of days to review it. You review it, get it back to me. In the meantime. I am going to start doing some research. How does that sound?” 

 

I have given them a step-by-step roadmap. They know exactly what we are doing next. There is nothing ambiguous about it. They know what the program, what the process is. RAS triggers, grab their attention, make sure they are safe, help them to grow, show them that they belong, and that they are going to be significant. 

 

Instill trust in them through social proof and proof points. Help them to feel confident also through social proofing, giving them examples of how other people like them were able to get the benefits. We are able to belong, be able to stay safe, etcetera. 

 

Then show them exactly what to do. Something like, click on the button below, fill out this form, use your credit card, go here, do this. Give them leadership, give them a clear understanding of what they should do next. 

 

If you will follow this human persuasion model right here my friend, then your writing will dramatically increase in its persuasion power. Your ability to land clients will dramatically increase. Your people will be excited to want to work with you when you follow this model and implement these steps. 

 

Then you will not have any trouble in terms of whatever your hopes and dreams are. Your relationships are going to get better. Your health is to get better. Pretty much every factor in your life goes up when you have leadership ability and ability to persuade people to work with you, to follow you, to hire you, to buy from you, to be friends with you, to fall in love with you, to marry you, whatever it is. 

 

When you have the ability to persuade, every factor in life goes up. Every key indicator in life goes up. I want you to have that. So put this to use, make the best of it. 

 

You know what, if you think that you might like to know more about this high leverage leadership process and my upcoming new profit program, then you search around for it, we will give you some more information. Get this stuff. It is really, really powerful. 

 

So the next step for you is to start seeing the world through these eyes. See what catches your attention. See what you need to do to develop trust, how you need to help people feel safe, and to grow into belonging and have confidence. 

 

Then, think clearly about what the next steps needed to be. If you do that, you will dramatically improve your overall lifestyle. Just be aware of life. It is such a different level. 

 

So what should you do next now that you have seen this? What should you do next? Well, you should go deeper into the conversation. 

 

I have got a number of programs, my flagship program called RISE. If you are not part of that, it is time to do that. By the way, RISE people, get this as part of the program, the whole new program, you get part of it. So there is The RISE Program, there is a Persuasive Writing program. I go into in-depth detail about how to take this model right here and implement it into your writing. 

 

So how do you translate this into writing? Not just in the market but into writing? How do you translate this into writing? We go into lots of details. So go check out one of those programs and if you are not on board with this yet, it is time. It is time to grow, to become more, to have more, to do more, to be more, to stop living in fear and stress about what is going on out there, and to start focusing on and achieving your dream. 

 

So hope you will check it out, go find the resources and let us grow together. Talk to you soon. Bye now.