Daniel Levis Interviews Blair Warren
Daniel Levis Interviews Blair Warren
Daniel Levis Interviews Blair Warren
Daniel:
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Blair Warren:
Daniel:
Okay, Blair, so our listeners can put some context around our
discussion, I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about what led
you to write this book and why you refer to these ideas as The
Forbidden Keys to Persuasion?
Blair Warren:
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Uh-oh.
Blair Warren:
And I remember watching this and it was just so sad, and I was so
confused, and all of a sudden I thought to myself, wait a minute.
How did this cult leader, Marshall Applewhite, get people to
willingly take their lives for him, and my friend cant sell
insurance to people that would be in their own best interest?
And I thought what is going on here and I had never pondered that
question before. Once I got that question in my head, I really
wanted to figure out what it was these guys were doing that would
make these people do these bizarre things, when most of us cant
get we cant sell insurance, we cant get our kids to take out the
trash.
Its a totally different world and I wanted to know what the secrets
were.
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
Yeah. Like I said, once I got that question in my head, I just had to
find out the answer and research it, and that just led to a complete
discovery. But what was interesting was once I started telling
people what I was doing, I had people saying theres nothing that
you can learn from these people that would be of any value to the
rest of us.
What theyre doing has got to be sinister. Its got to be illegal.
How else can you explain the power they can exert over people?
And I thought, well, thats interesting. As I looked into it, I came
away with a very different understanding of what was going on.
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But given the fear people had and the concern people had about the
tactics, thats where I came up with the phrase Forbidden Keys to
Persuasion. Theyre not forbidden by law or anything like that, but
theyre forbidden by they have a social stigma to them. Were
not supposed to use these things, if that makes sense.
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
Okay. Well, the first thing that I came away with after studying
this material was the secrets that are being used arent as shocking
as most people would think. That where a lot of the power is
coming from is not super secret techniques but its a very clear
understanding of human nature.
The people that use these tactics truly understand what makes us
tick and they arent ashamed to use that knowledge, and so what I
typically say is that if you dont have an honest assessment of
human nature, youre gonna have a lot of trouble influencing it. So
I call these truths the ugly truths because theyre things that we
dont want to think about.
They may be true for other people but theyre certainly not true for
me. Theyre not true for you. Theyre not true for the people I
love. And my belief is theyre true for everyone, so of the two
ugly truths, the first one is we are all manipulators, every one of us.
We tend to think that only other people manipulate. We persuade.
We influence. Bad people manipulate.
The truth is we all manipulate. Any time you want to push
yourself into a situation or meet another person and influence their
behavior, change their behavior, that is manipulation and you
cannot not manipulate. Simply being present in the room changes
the dynamic of the room.
The way you speak to people changes the way theyre going to
behave, so we are always manipulating. We are always
influencing and theres no way around it, and the reason its
important to admit that is that if we dont admit it, were less
effective persuaders because we live in this fantasy land that I
wont manipulate people.
I would never do such a thing, so what I will do is I will tend to
talk to peoples logical minds, try to convince people in rational
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Blair Warren:
No, no. The people that are following the cult leader. Okay.
Theyre given a story. Theyre given a context in which to do
these behaviors and they make complete sense given that context.
Given our context, given our moral understanding of things, it
doesnt make sense so we sit back and were shocked.
One of the things that several of the people that were familiar with
Heavens Gate reported was that these people werent taking their
own lives. They were going to the next level. Thats the way they
saw it. They did not see it as suicide. They saw it as going to the
next level.
And if the next level, if you truly believe that and you believe the
next level is better than this level, you cant get there fast enough
and so it makes complete sense given their sense of morality, their
values, their understanding. So thats our second ugly truth is that
our sense of morality tends to unconsciously change how we
perceive people and therefore changes how we interact with them.
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Daniel:
Blair Warren:
Daniel:
Yeah, and I think its just such a shocking thing that people dont
even want to go near it. They dont want to understand it. They
just want to forget it, in other words, and what youre saying is that
the concepts, the coercive concepts, or persuasive concepts, or
influence concepts were really very down to earth kinds of things
that happened throughout society on a number of different levels.
Blair Warren:
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The truth of the matter is often maybe there was something you
could have done. There was a need that was going unfulfilled that
that group met and its often as simple as that.
Daniel:
Thats a very positive spin to put on it. It really is. Now you say
there are three thought tendencies that we have hardwired into our
psyches that literally force effective persuaders to approach us with
ulterior motives, and certainly in the example of the cult situation,
thats absolutely true.
What do you mean by that statement, though, in a general, broader
context, in the context of everyday life? What do you mean by
persuaders having to approach the people that they want to
influence with ulterior motives?
Blair Warren:
The biggest thing is and this sounds very obvious once its
pointed out but it is not obvious to the person whos out there
beating their brains in trying to persuade and influence people and
not getting results, and it has to do with resistance. We resist. We
resist constantly.
One of the examples I used in the book is just a very simple
experiment that if you stand before somebody and lift your hands
up, put your palms out in front of you toward them and ask them to
do the same, you push your palms together and then gently begin
to push at them.
What they will do every time Ive ever done it is they push back.
They didnt plan to. They dont necessarily want to. They do
because its a reaction. Theyre simply pushing back when they
feel pressure. People resist and because we resist, we have to deal
with that and get around it.
The three tendencies that I point out in Forbidden Keys are the first
one is that people resist unwelcome attempts to persuade them. It
sounds very obvious and yet so many people completely ignore it.
They go straight in. Their pitch is obvious. Theyre appealing to
logic. Theyre too direct and they get resistance, and then theyre
surprised because their pitch made total sense. Why didnt they
buy? It made sense. They needed it. I covered all the bases and
yet they didnt buy. Why? Because they resist. People resist.
The truth is, and now that I look at it, we resist even welcome
attempts to persuade us. Think about people who go to smoking
clinics to stop smoking, or go to weight loss clinics, if they go to a
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Thats so beautiful. Thats like the I guess the film maxim show
dont tell, right? If you show somebody something, you totally
bypass their BS detector.
Blair Warren:
Yeah, because its they are coming to their own conclusion about it
as opposed to being told. Its like they say in writing, its show
dont tell. Why is that in copy writing thats even important?
Joe Sugarman has pointed out in some of his books that when
people when you give people enough information to draw their
own conclusion, not only are they more committed to that
conclusion, but it also makes them more invested in your message.
They are no longer passively taking in information.
Theyre helping participate in the message, and creating the
message, and are more involved with it, and that cant happen if
you simply come straight out and tell people things directly.
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
Well, Lustig was a conman who was who did many things. One
of the things he was doing in the story I tell in the book is he had a
scam where he pretended to be a government official who was
trying to sell the Eiffel Tower for scrap.
No one had heard this because he said the government didnt want
to make an announcement that the tower was gonna be sold, but it
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had to be sold for scrap and he was looking for buyers. So he goes
out, he finds several people. He presents them documentation. He
gets some bids and at the last minute, one of the the win bidder
starts to get suspicious about Lustig.
Is he real? Is this legitimate? Ive never heard about this on the
news? Whats going on here? Lustig knows that this is going on
and he has to communicate to the person that he is legitimate.
Hes already showed him his credentials but the guys doubt has
been raised, so what does he do?
What he does is he asks the guy well, actually he begins to tell
him about his financial woes. He begins to talk about how as a
government official he doesnt make enough money. He wishes
there was a way to make some money on the side, and all of a
sudden his victim realizes, wait a minute.
This guys asking me for a bribe and who asks for bribes?
Government officials. This guy
Daniel:
Especially in France.
Blair Warren:
Whats that?
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
One of the things that I have read or studied is looking for keys,
triggers, secrets to get into the human mind. Everybody has come
up with their classifications of what these are.
One of the most famous is Abraham Maslow who created his
hierarchy of needs. He divided human needs up into five levels.
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Blair Warren:
Yeah, Ive actually heard people that are trying to write copy and
theyll say, There. Ive got my headline. Now Ive got their
attention. Great. And then they go on trying to make their
argument and Im thinking, wait a minute. Thats the first step.
Youve got your attention.
Now you have to keep it and thats something that has to go from
beginning to end or else youve lost them. So attention and
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interest is not just a step. It laces the entire message if its going to
be effective.
Daniel:
Right. Heres a little off the wall question. The second and third
lessons in your course are titled The Mechanics of Mind Control,
Parts 1 and 2. Now I want to ask you why didnt you use the
ulterior motive theory to bypass our blinders and natural resistance
to the title like that?
Blair Warren:
Daniel:
Well, we talked about how when were talking about cults and
mind control theres a lot of negative connotation around that, so
you chose to title a part of your course The Mechanics of Mind
Control. Its very
Blair Warren:
Its dark.
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
I did that for the same reason I called the course The Forbidden
Keys to Persuasion. I wanted to create a contrast to what people
are used to hearing and I wanted to create a sense of foreboding
and danger, if you will.
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
Daniel:
Yeah.
Blair Warren:
But its also it will create interest if you tell people that. Its one of
those things that they go, well, I want to hear more.
Daniel:
Its almost like when youre a little kid and your parents tell you
dont look in the cupboard. Whats the first thing youre going to
do?
Blair Warren:
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Daniel:
Blair Warren:
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was about a husband and wife and the husband is trying to get his
wifes money, I believe. She was wealthy and he wants to get her
institutionalized so he can have her money.
Well, one way he does it is he tries to convince her that shes
insane and tries to convince other people that shes insane. Well,
the way he does that is this takes place, I guess, at the turn of the
century when they have they dont have electric lights but they
have gas lights in their house. So one of the ways he would do it is
he would literally have the lights would be adjusted.
They would go up and they would go down and he would have
people doing this for him and the wife would say, Whats going
on with the lights? And he would say, What do you mean?
Theyre fine. But she would see the lights dimming and
brightening and he wouldnt react to it, so she ended up thinking
that she was going insane.
He did a number of other things, too, but the gaslighting, that was
actually where the term came from. So what he was doing is he
was getting her to rely on him and question her own ability to
discern reality.
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
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One of the biggest ones that I pointed out in the book is what I call
scapegoating. We want certain things in our lives. That is true but
we also dont want to be responsible for some of the problems in
our lives. Theres a couple of television commercials that have
been out for years now.
One is for weight loss. Youll hear a commercial say something
like if youre overweight it may not be your fault. It may be your
metabolism. Okay, so if were overweight and we want to lose
weight, weve tried this diet, weve tried that diet, and whatever.
We get lost.
We stop paying attention to diets because we know they dont
work and all of a sudden heres a commercial thats not just
promising us weight loss. Its promising us relief from
responsibility for our being overweight in the first place. Okay, so
theyre giving us a scapegoat. If youre overweight, it may not be
your fault at all. It may just be your metabolism.
Theres a similar commercial for depression medication that says if
youre depressed, it may not be your fault either. It may be a
chemical imbalance in your brain. Thats a very attractive thing to
people who have this need or this shame for their behavior.
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
Daniel:
Now you identify seven very common hidden addictions. Can you
explain a couple of the most powerful ones in a little more detail?
Blair Warren:
Well, the one I just mentioned I think is probably one of the most
powerful ones, the scapegoating. I had a friend who was a
landscaper and he had told me that when he would go out and look
at peoples yards and give them an estimate on what it would take
to do the yard, he would close so many sales, etc.
But he came to the conclusion that people didnt just want their
yards fixed. They didnt want their yards to look nice. They
wanted to be given a scapegoat for why their yards looked bad in
the first place. We dont want to go, well, Im just lazy. I didnt
take care of my yard.
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Blair Warren:
What? Yeah, there you go. He can solve their problems but hes
not going to hold them responsible for their problems, and thats a
completely different mindset then, yes, I can solve your problems.
Daniel:
The really beauty of that though, too, is that it bonds the two. It
bonds the buyer and the seller together against the common enemy,
right? Lets work together to overcome these damn grubs.
Blair Warren:
Thats right.
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
Thats true. It puts you on their side and so they you have
fulfilled this need. The whole idea that we are going to be held
responsible for the problems in our lives is really threatening to a
lot of people and so we want to know. We may go to therapy
because we have guilt or whatever and a therapist may tell us,
look, its not your fault. You didnt do this.
And thats what we want to hear oftentimes and when we hear it,
its like music and we dont necessarily know thats what we went
for, but once we are given that scapegoat, once we are given that
relief, we respond to it and were drawn to the person who gave it
to us. So really the scapegoating is probably the biggest one.
Another one I like is that people need to feel a sense of power. I
dont know if you have kids but if you go to Toys R Us or a toy
store, they often sell a little car seat that the kids can sit in and itll
have a fake steering wheel on the top. Well, we had one for my
little daughter. Well, now shes 20, but when she was a kid we had
one of those and, oh, she loved it.
Shed sit in her car seat and hold on to that steering wheel like she
was driving the car. And why did she like it? I think cause she
had a sense of control. If were in a roller coaster, we hold on to
the rail and we pull and we may pull to one side if were going too
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Blair Warren:
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Blair Warren:
Exactly.
Daniel:
Now you teach that forbidden persuasion in your book is a lot like
hypnosis. What do you mean by that?
Blair Warren:
Daniel:
Well, there was one section in the book where you said that
forbidden persuasion is a lot like hypnosis.
Blair Warren:
Daniel:
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Blair Warren:
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
Yes.
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
Exactly. There are times when you can do that and you can do it
temporarily. Now cults will do it for months. Were gonna go and
live in Waco, and stockpile guns and weapons, and have a cult.
But in everyday life, typically people go home at night. They go
out for lunch. They take telephone calls.
You cant isolate them to the degree a cult can and yet isolation is
still an extremely important element in persuasion. And it still can
be done in everyday life and it doesnt have to be by physically
isolating them, although as you pointed out, that can happen.
Another way to do it is to do what I call psychological isolation,
which is simply minimizing distractions on their part, minimizing
outside influences, and the goal there is to become a dominant
presence in their mind.
Theres a number of ways to do that but one reason thats so
important there was a commercial that was out years ago about
how to get your kids to not do drugs, and it started out with a kid
sitting on the corner of his bed playing a saxophone and hes just
playing it. You dont even know what this commercial is for and
this kids just going wild playing the saxophone.
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So guess what? The recruit goes out into the world and thats
exactly what they hear. Their parents, their family, their friends
say, What are you doing? Why are you getting involved in that
group?
So the cult has predicted the future. They knew what would
happen. They knew that this person would get resistance from his
family and friends. The cult predicted it. The person thinks the
cult is brilliant, the cult leader is brilliant because he predicted the
future, and it isolates him from his family.
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
Daniel:
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Daniel:
Blair Warren:
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
Exactly.
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
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Blair Warren:
Well, I would think so, yeah. That goes back to people want to be
right. If theyre going to be wrong, they want to have a reason that
theyre wrong. Look, I understand you feel this way. Its
completely understandable you would or that you think this way.
Its understandable you would because of this. Its not because
youre stupid. Its because of this over here. You were misled.
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
Daniel:
Yeah, its almost like you look at the legal profession or you look
at the medical profession. They have their own language and
unless youre a lawyer you dont understand it and you are
automatically intimidated. They have funny looking clothes that
sets them above and beyond mere mortals, so thats really another
form of the craft, right?
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Blair Warren:
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I didnt understand the subject and I had a professor that told me,
he came in one day and he says he looked at my papers and he
says, You really have a talent for this. And I thought to myself
what? What do you mean? He said, No, you really have a talent
for this kind of work.
And it completely changed my attitude for the rest of my college
career because he had pointed out something to me that I didnt see
myself, so and I gave his words more credibility than mine. My
thought was Im no good at this. He was telling me I was and he
had more credibility.
Why? Because he was pointing out certain traits in my work that I
hadnt seen. In other words, he gaslighted me. He made me trust
his words more than my own.
Daniel:
Yeah. When were writing copy for health copy, and natural
cures, and so forth, one of my favorite blinding flashes of the
obvious is that the product that Im selling, unlike all of these other
superficial things that simply address the symptoms, we go straight
to the cause and thats such a blinding flash of the obvious.
Once they see that, its intuitively correct and what else am I
missing here? It kind of draws them right into your narrative.
Blair Warren:
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
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Okay? When I first heard that joke, what was so funny was we
all laughed. Thats interesting. Yeah, its funny. What was funny
about it? Whats funny and what makes the joke work is what the
comedian doesnt say.
The comedian says, My grandmothers been walking three miles
a day every day for the last five years. What we do as an
audience is we add the rest of the picture. We picture that shes
out there in her Nikes, and shes got her jogging suit on, and shes
walking every day, and thats what we picture. The comedian
never said that, okay?
He allowed us to think that thought and we had to think that
thought or the punch line wouldnt work. So the comedian
structured the joke to where we would have the thought that we
needed to have and we did it, not him. We did. We added that and
thats what made the joke work.
So he literally put a thought into our mind that wasnt there before
and made us think it was our own.
Daniel:
Very much like your example of the consultant earlier on, right?
Blair Warren:
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
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Blair Warren:
Thats right, and so another good example, again, going back to the
copy writer, Joe Sugarman. He made a point about every once in a
while in your copy it can be a good idea to include a technical
phrase that nobody else will understand. And he had people say,
Well, Joe, why are you doing that? Why are you putting in a
phrase that nobody would understand?
And the reason he would do it is he would communicate to people,
look, Im an expert. If I know what this phrase means and you
dont even know how to pronounce the phrase at all or youve
never seen it before, what does that do?
That makes me an expert and yet I didnt have to say, Im an
expert. I simply dropped a phrase that people didnt know, or he
did in this case, and people would make the assumption, wow, this
guy knows what hes talking about. And if they make that
assumption, that conclusion on their own, they are not gonna doubt
that conclusion.
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
Yes. Anything that will allow the other person to come to their
own conclusion is what I would call psychological ventriloquism.
Now a lot of people say that you cant control what another
persons gonna think, okay? Its not possible. And in a sense,
thats very true.
Okay, you can tell a joke and the joke will fall flat. You can argue
against your self-interest and the persons still not gonna come to
the conclusion that you are an honest person. But the truth is it
happens more often than not and if you have greater skill, you can
make it happen more often than most people can.
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Jokes only work when they work because the audience will share
and come to a common conclusion about what the comedian is
trying to say. If the audience didnt come to the same conclusion
that the comedian was trying to get them to come to, they wouldnt
laugh so comedy wouldnt work.
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
I would say two things. One is you have to test. Theres simply
no way around it, okay? Jay Leno is famous for going out and
testing jokes before he will ever tell somebody a joke. Before hell
actually do it live on television or before a major audience, he will
go out and test them in nightclubs.
Theres a wonderful movie called Comedian with Jerry Seinfeld. I
dont know if youve seen it but its all about what its like to be a
stand up comic. And it shows Jerry Seinfeld going out and trying
brand new jokes in these little bars that he just shows up one night
for open mic and does a set, and most of the jokes dont even
work.
Well, the next night he crafts them and does them differently, gets
a little bit more laugh. Then he does it again, gets a little bit more
laughs until he perfects it. Then he will do it for his HBO special.
Then hell do it for the massive crowds but he wont do it until
hes tested and perfected the joke.
And I think its the same thing with copy writers and its gonna be
the same thing with persuasion. Youve got to test. We can make
the assumption that we think this is gonna work but until weve
tried it, and we need to try it in low-stakes environments if we can
and we need to try it numerous times until were getting the result
we want.
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Blair Warren:
Um-hum, absolutely.
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Daniel:
Blair Warren:
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Frequently, its where they draw their attention, isnt it? Theyre
drawing your attention to where you shouldnt be looking if you
want to figure out whats really going on.
Blair Warren:
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heard a riddle when you heard the answer and you went, Oh, God.
Its so obvious. It wasnt obvious five seconds ago when you
didnt have the answer. Now it is.
Whats the one I think I mentioned in the book? What mammals
can jump higher than a house? The answer is all mammals cause
houses cant jump, which sounds very obvious once you hear the
punch line but before you hear the punch line, it confuses many
people.
And theyre going, oh, my God. What mammals can jump higher
than a house? A house can be 20 feet high, 30 feet high. Gee,
what mammal can jump that high? We get confused. Why?
Because were making an assumption and we dont even know we
made it. Now the person that constructed the riddle knows that we
made it cause they designed it that way.
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
Daniel:
No, a lot of the stuff that people that listen to this are doing is copy
writing, and how do you see this relationship between
entertainment as being a great place to look at sources of masterful
psychological ventriloquism, how does that relate to the actual
screenplay, if youve ever seen a screenplay, the way that a
screenplay is written?
Blair Warren:
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
Yeah, I would think so. One of the examples that I used in the
book was a screenplay that I dont know if it was ever produced
but it was written by Raymond Chandler. And he described a
scene on an elevator with a husband a very short scene, and he
said a husband and wife are on an elevator. Elevator door opens.
A woman walks in.
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Man takes off his hat and the elevator door closes. Well, the whole
point of that scene was that a lot is being said well, back up. A
lot is being conveyed that isnt being said.
The viewer will watch that movie, theyll watch that scene, and
theyll come to the conclusion that the man cares more about what
the young woman getting on the elevator thinks than he cares
about what his own wife thinks.
Daniel:
From there, we can assume all kinds of other things, like the
marriage is bad.
Blair Warren:
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
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You talk about something called a God complex as being the most
fundamental tool in the persuaders arsenal. Can you explain that?
Blair Warren:
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The cult leaders and these con men, they literally one of the ways
they get their power is through their sense of focus, their
commitment to what theyre doing. They know exactly what they
want to do. Cult leaders know theyre not going to be able to
convert everybody. Theres gonna be people who join their cult
and most people will not. It doesnt matter to the cult leader.
Both of those people are very valuable to the cult and to the cult
leader. If the person joins the cult, the cult leader wins. If a person
doesnt join, the cult leader wins. Well, how does he win? He
wins because he now has an enemy to point his current followers
to and say, look, these are people who do not have our best interest
at heart. This is why we must stick together.
So the cult leader, in that sense, when theyre recruiting, theyre
really playing a game they cant lose. If they recruit the guy, they
win. If they dont, they win.
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
Absolutely.
Daniel:
Or if youre writing copy, you have to have that same sort of take
it or leave it attitude, right? Youve got to be able to take it away
from them.
Blair Warren:
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Quick kind of aside question that just popped into my mind. What
hidden addictions do you think Barack Obama is feeding for the
American people?
Blair Warren:
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
Oh, yeah, I think so. I think he was very confident. He was clear
about his communication. Again, McCain had to go through a
two-step process. People werent generally afraid of Barack, and
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so I mean Im sure some people were, but the real fear wasnt
there, so he had to go in and highlight things whether they were
legitimate or not. It makes no difference.
People werent aware of certain associations that Barack had, or
may, or may not have had, but McCain had to bring that to
peoples awareness so he had to create the fear, then promise to
protect people from it, which is a two-step process.
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
Oh, I think so. I rarely saw him get rattled at anything. He seemed
to be very on point at all times. During debates when McCain
would try to say something, if you noticed, Barack would just kind
of laugh it off. This is something as if, Ive heard this before.
This is nothing to me. Lets move on. And it was go ahead.
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
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what our strong points are, what our weak points are, and its very
easy to believe that other people know them, too, and because we
do. Weve heard it.
Weve given the pitch so were gonna go out and tell people the
way things are, the way that we see things, the way that we want
them to see our pitch, as opposed to going, wait a minute. I really
need to start from where they are. I need to understand what they
believe, what they think, what things might lead them to make
certain assumptions.
So youre really trying to understand the whole context of the
message in a structured way, and thats what contextual message
design and analysis was, or is.
Daniel:
Great, bring some structure around it, some tools to apply all these
wonderful principles, cause they really are difficult to kind of
reign in when you need them, arent they?
Blair Warren:
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
Exactly.
Daniel:
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Daniel:
Blair Warren:
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Blair Warren:
It truly is. Its one of those things that when we are in a struggle,
when were fighting for something or were wrestling with a
problem, what do we want? We want someone on our side. We
just do. Political leaders, the whole political process that we just
witnessed in the United States was throwing rocks at our enemies.
Daniel:
Vengeance.
Blair Warren:
Its back and forth, and look at those people over there, and they
want to get you, and I want to save you, and yes. It was literally
throwing rocks back and forth figuratively throwing the rocks,
hopefully, not literally, but the interesting thing is I tell people,
look. Its true. It can be used in a very terrible way. Wars are
started like that and fought in that very same manner.
But we can use that same principle, helping them throw rocks at
their enemies, without ever harming another human being or even
directing the animosity toward another human being. An enemy
doesnt have to be a human being. An enemy can simply be a
human condition.
As I said earlier, it could be your metabolism. If youre
overweight, the enemy is your metabolism and I will help you fight
that. The enemy might be your brain chemistry if you suffer from
depression and I will help you fight that enemy. Well go get that
enemy, okay, because the enemy is the cause of your problems and
I can help you solve that.
So its a very seductive thing and it doesnt have to be human
against human. It can simply be an outside force. Right now one
of our enemies is the economics of the world. The economics are
the problem. We will go out and help you fix them.
Daniel:
A great example of this concept is that hoax back in the 40s, The
War of the Worlds. They came on the radio and announced that
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the Martians were landing and all of a sudden peace broke out all
over the world.
Blair Warren:
Yeah. Well, I just think this really is a sentence that almost every
time Im gonna call someone, or write a letter, or anything, I really
I remember this sentence and I try to figure out what are the
elements that are at play in this situation. For example, justifying
someones failures. It can be an extremely powerful thing but its
only powerful if someone is struggling with failure.
You know what Im saying?
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
Right. You look into the situation. You find out whats going on
here. When I say that we want to encourage their dreams, well
people go, Well, duh. Thats obvious. Well, if its obvious, how
come we lose family members to cults? How come people will go
and join, I dont know, some marketing company thats a fraud?
Because they told them, Look, your dreams can come true. We
can help you. You can do this. And what did that person hear
from their family members? Go out and get a real job. Give up
those dreams. I remember as a kid I wanted to be a rock star and
I remember being told over and over, Youre never gonna be a
rock star.
It hurt because I had my dreams and who was I attracted to? I was
attracted to my friends who would say, You could do that. I
could see you doing that, yeah. So these were people who had
influence over me whereas the people who had my best interest at
heart, were crapping on my dreams.
So we tend to do that. We look at loved ones and we say, Look,
youve got to be realistic here. Youre not gonna be a novelist or
youre not gonna be an actress. Youre not gonna be an astronaut,
or whatever. You need to get real. And it hurts, whether or not
its true. Im not saying we can all have our dreams met and we
can all achieve our dreams.
What Im saying is is that we all have them and that the people
who indulge them and encourage us to have them and if
somebody in our family has some dream and we know they cant
do it, you still dont want to say, You cant do it. What you want
to try to do is encourage the dream.
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Its great that you want to do that. Maybe that can lead you to
something else or you can do these other things. You can do these
things that have to do with that field. So you dont just crap on it
and thats what we tend to do, and thats why encouraging peoples
dreams can be so powerful.
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
Daniel:
Blair Warren:
Daniel:
For all you listening, thanks for joining me for another edition of
Advanced Secrets of Human Nature and Applied Psychology:
How to Sell What the Mind Buys. Until next time, good selling.
[End of Audio]
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