The Science of Getting People to Say Yes (Ethically)

In this episode of Imperfect Marketing, I sit down with Patrick Van Der Burght, a Cialdini Certified Trainer and expert in ethical persuasion. We explore how understanding the psychology of decision-making can transform the way we approach marketing, sales, and communication.

Patrick shares how discovering the science behind persuasion helped him move from struggling sales results to becoming a trusted authority on ethical influence. 

We discuss:

How People Actually Make Decisions

• Why most decisions happen subconsciously
• The difference between intuitive thinking and logical thinking
• How short attention spans affect modern marketing

The Seven Principles of Persuasion

• Reciprocity, liking, unity, and social proof
• Authority, consistency, and scarcity
• Why these principles work across cultures and industries

Practical Persuasion Strategies

• How testimonials and social proof influence buyers
• Why framing messages around avoiding loss can be more persuasive
• The surprising power of leading with a weakness

Key Takeaways for Marketers

• Ethical persuasion builds trust and long-term relationships
• Small language changes can dramatically increase results
• Understanding human psychology makes marketing more effective

Whether you're in marketing, sales, or leadership, this episode reveals how small shifts in messaging can lead to stronger influence and better outcomes.

Connect with Patrick:
Website: https://ethicalpersuasion.com.au/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ethicalpersuasion/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-van-der-burght/

Looking to leverage AI? Want better results? Want to think about what you want to leverage?

Check and see how I am using it for FREE on YouTube.

From "Holy cow, it can do that?" to "Wait, how does this work again?" – I've got all your AI curiosities covered. It's the perfect after-podcast snack for your tech-hungry brain.

Watch here

Transcript

Welcome To Imperfect Marketing

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Hi, I'm Kendra Corman. If you're a coach, consultant, or marketer, you know marketing is far from a perfect science. And that's why this show is called Imperfect Marketing. Join me and my guests as we explore how to grow your business with marketing tips and, of course, lessons learned along the way. Hello and welcome back to another episode of Imperfect Marketing. I'm your host, Kendra Corman, and I'm really excited today to be joined by Patrick. Patrick has been teaching ethical persuasion since 2000. He's a founding member of the Caldini Institute. Um, he's a Caldini certified trainer and coach and an author of the book, How to Hear Yes More Often, which I think we all, that's our goal, right? In marketing and sales. He's gonna share some insights on the science of ethical persuasion with us. Pretty cool background. And I love the fact that I say that marketing is an imperfect science, but you're in the science of actually making the science part of it, right? So talk to me, how did you get into this?

SPEAKER_01 1:34

How do I get into it? Well, I was uh I was a sales rep selling scuba diving equipment uh a long time ago. And uh I was very happy in the role I had because well, I was a scuba diver, I was a dive instructor, and so I was working with people that liked the activities that I did. And and of course we'd go diving all the time. But I wasn't for the amount of effort I was putting in, I and I don't want to sound arrogant, but I I felt like I wasn't really getting the returns that that amount of effort should have produced. And so I always wanted to be better and you know, getting more market share within my retailer stores and so on, but I didn't want to lie, cheat, or deceive either. And I I do feel felt a lot of my colleagues or competitors were were doing that to get them to sign deals that I didn't really need and all that. I was looking for solutions. And uh, you know, as I say, when the student's ready, the master appears, um, my boss at the time um had a uh business coach come in to help him with some strategies to increase their business. And to make a long story short, um, the business coach started training us, sales reps, to be sort of business coaches to help our retailers grow their business. Because if we could double their business, then we would double with them. And so that was great. And this business coach, uh John McDonald's, I hope he's still around. He used to be a business partner of uh Jay Abraham. He was lending me, you know, uh educational series, right? CDs, cassette tapes, and those things used to be expensive. I remember paying$1,200 for a 12 CD set from Brian Tracy, right? You can get that stuff so inexpensive now. And he lent me a set cassette tapes from this event called Mind Capture, which happened in Los Angeles. And Dr. Robert Cialdini had two cassettes in there about the science of persuasion, and I just loved it. And at that time I was confronted with a challenge with my work. I had taken on an additional brand. This was a dry diving suit for those who don't scuba dive. A dry diving suit steals on your neck and your wrists, keeps you dry. You wear underneath it whatever you need for the temperature of the water. A little more tricky to dive with, but gorgeous equipment. And this was Australian made because I'm based in Melbourne in Australia. And this was honestly the best suit of that type I'd ever dived in. And I'd been in the military and dived in the Netherlands where I'm originally from. And so I was all excited. And I'm marching into my retailers with this suit. And I said, Ah, I've picked up representation for hot and dry. That's what they're called, and they're still around. And uh they laughed at me. What's going on? I said, Well, it's nice you've picked up wet and steamy, but we're not touching that again. And I'm like, What's going on? And so now I figure out that last year they had this problem, they had this inner membrane material that's supposed to keep you dry, and the whole thing delaminated last year, and every single suit had to be replaced. And I didn't know that, right? I just saw the end new product and I was I was really excited about it. So, yeah, faced with being laughed, I mean, they liked me, they already knew me, but they were laughing at me in the sort of like, we're not touching that again. That was exactly the time when I was trying to figure this Dr. Cialdini stuff out. And I was lucky that this business coach was there to sort of handhold me, because often when we try and go through this ourselves, we're not sure we're doing it right, and then we end up not doing anything. And so I looked at the science and I looked at what I had available in the situation. And anyway, I won't go into the details, but the punchline was that um after 18 months from being laughed at in the store, we were market leader. Um, and that without lying, cheating, or deceiving anybody, and uh yeah, I just I I love the science. I love the fact that you don't have to lie or cheat, and it is exceedingly effective. And so I've always enjoyed sharing this with other people, and that's why I'm thankful to you, Kendra, for giving us this uh this platform to reach your audience. I remember listening to this stuff and going, Are you serious? Is this how it works? And is this how simple it is? And I love seeing that in an audience, like when I do a keynote or a workshop. And uh of course, we can't see everybody's uh everybody's eyes today, but I imagine those listening to it as we go progress through this, their eyes will get a little bit bigger as they're absorbing what we're sharing. So um, if that's the case, please leave a review or a comment on Kendra's um social media and and on the podcast and let us know that you got something from this.

Why Ethics Protects Your Brand

SPEAKER_00 6:13

Thank you for doing my job for me too, because I usually mention that all at the end um once they stop listening. But um, no, I think that that's a really great. I think I love that story. I love the part of getting yes more often without lying and deceiving, because I think that that I think that there has been just such a push for getting the sale for the sale's sake. I mean, I've I've said this before on on this podcast. If I got a dollar for every time someone was, for lack of a better phrase, screwed over by another marketing agency and that they took a bunch of their money and didn't deliver anything good or didn't set those reasonable expectations, uh like I would be retired and own my own private island. It's definitely a balance, right? When you're trying to work with people, um, but there is, you know, I always say marketing is part art and part science. There is an art to the branding and pieces, but there is a lot of lot more science that goes behind it that I don't think people realize. So why don't you tell us a little bit about the science of human decision making? Like what goes into it and how can we leverage it?

System 1 Vs System 2 Decisions

SPEAKER_01 7:22

And maybe just before we touch on that, you you touched on something which I think is exceedingly important, ethics. Right? If we more than ever before, if we do the wrong thing by people, right? If we get found out for creating scarcity where there wasn't any, for pushing people into a sale, for manipulating people, even with what I think too many business owners think is a little lie doesn't hurt anybody. The consequences of being found out for unethical behavior have never been larger than they are now, right? With social media, you can literally destroy a personal and a company brand within a day. And when people figure you out for what you've done, the result is credibility craters, right? People do not return and they'll tell as many people as they can about the experience they had with you. And there's no need to do any for this any of that if you just learn the science, which isn't really that hard to understand. So let me try and lift the veil a little bit on that now. So what I'd love to explain to you is the seven principles of persuasion, and they are universal because they work in all cultures, in all languages and all countries, which is more and more important because it's, I mean, our cultures are intermixed, but it's also much easier to do business with people in other countries. So I'll get to that and hopefully I'll be able to share some insights that you, you know, as in your audience, can use immediately to profit from. But before I go there, I think it's important that we cover how decisions are actually made. So I'm gonna lean on the work of a doctor or professor, Daniel Kahneman, who died in 2024. Um, he won a Nobel Prize in 2002 in economics, which was a little bit surprising because he was a professor in psychology and behavioral science. I mean, normally you win an Nobel Prize for making an extraordinary contribution to that field. So we could wonder, well, what did he figure out in behavioral economics and behavioral science that had such an impact on economics? Well, a lot of his work was on decision making, and decisions shape economics. So that's where the link is. But he largely won the Nobel Prize for figuring out that a popular belief that old economics had was not correct. Old economics thought that human beings are logical, rational creatures, and we for therefore use logic and reason to formulate our decisions. And Daniel Kahneman proved that that's incorrect. So let me try and explain uh what he figured out. So he says that when it comes to decision making, the human brain, your brain, your audience's brain, has two parts system one and system two. System one is let's say the intuitive part of the brain, and system two is the logical, rational part of the brain. System one, the intuitive brain, is fast, works basically all the time, and it works outside of our conscious control. It therefore works automatically and basically always runs in the background, and it works largely on shortcuts, rules of thumb that we've learned uh have value for us. Give you an example of a rule of thumb: expensive equals good. Right? If I'm in a hardware store looking to buy a front door for my house, I know nothing about timber, glass, paint, varnish, door construction, you know, I'm gonna have to make a decision about which door to buy. And well, I could go to the library, I could start reading books, I could go and do workshops, but I don't have the time for that. So somewhere in the back of my head, my subconscious might go, hang on a second, expensive equals good. So if we just spend a little bit more money on this door, chances are that we'll get something that's better, lasts longer, better suited to purpose. And you know what? That's exactly what will happen. You will probably be right because it's right. Most of the time, when you spend more money on something, you get something that's better, lasts longer, better suited to purpose. Now, of course, it doesn't work all the time, right? Sometimes you buy something that's more expensive and it's still rubbish, right? But most of the time it works. And so the rule, expensive equals good, affords us a shortcut to a quicker decision. And so there's a number of those shortcuts. And so another one that we're very familiar with as business owners is if a lot of other people are doing it, it must be the right thing to do. Right? This is why most of us, I hope, are now collecting online reviews and testimonials. Right? Online shoppers, 98% of online shoppers say that detailed online reviews are an important factor when deciding what and where to buy. And so if you've gotten to the party that you figure it out, the testimonials are important and you should do not do without. I applaud you. But I'm also happy to tell you that testimonials is only one little part of what the single principle of social proof has to offer. And there's so many other dynamics that you're not using. And there's six other principles that are equally powerful that you're probably not using or using incorrectly. All right, so system one, shortcuts, right? System two then is a logical part of the brain. So that works slowly, costs a lot of energy to run. Daniel Kahneman calls it the lazy controller. It doesn't actually want to engage. It's quite happy for system one to suggest or make decisions, and as long as the no red flags go up, it's happy to go with that. Costs a lot of energy to run system two. But system two, we need that to make complex decisions, you know, to compare options like comparing to washing machines, for example. So it's good that we have that as well, but it costs a lot of energy and time to run. There's a caveat with system two as well. It requires our attention, right? Parking system one, sorry, system one can drive a car on an empty road. You know, when you come home and you can't remember what turnoff you took, just because you were not driving. System one was on subconscious, automatic. But system two, that's what you use when you're trying to park in a tight parking spot, right? We know if we're not paying attention, that's not gonna turn out so well, right? So system two relies on our attention span. And so here comes the the the clanger. Daniel Kahneman demonstrates back in 2002 that 90, 9.0, 90% of our decisions are made by system one, not system two. Later research says that that's now 95%. And so here is the problem. And the reason this is happening, by the way, is the shortening of our attention span, right? Our attention span used to be 20 minutes in the 80s. Kendra, do you have any idea what the attention span of the famous goldfish is supposed to be?

SPEAKER_00 14:33

I think it's eight seconds, right? Oh, very close. Nine seconds. Oh, nine seconds.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

Nine seconds for the goal. Very good. Um, our attention span is now seven seconds. We've been beaten by the goldfish, right? And it's not that we can't sit there, watch Netflix for three hours and be happy as Larry, right? It is how quickly are we distracted? And the easiest example is our phones, right? You need to make a call, you take that thing off light mode, you unlock it. Um, and then there's 34 apps that pop up asking you to make a decision if you want to interact with them. Goodness, you might open one, right? Now, this message, that message, link here, video there. 20 minutes later, you put the phone down and you go, what did I pick that thing up for? Right? Oh, yeah. You didn't even last seven seconds. Two seconds, you were gone. Here is our problem. When we're thinking about how am I going to convince the other party about what I'm proposing, right? And so this is, of course, immensely important in marketing, as it is in advertising, as it is in sales, as it is in customer service, HR, PR, right? Wherever we're trying to achieve a goal where other people are in the middle or we need our their cooperation, we are dependent on our persuasive abilities. So when we're thinking how am I going to convince the other party to go along with what I'm suggesting, I'm using conscious thought. And that's system two. And so when I come up with reasons why someone should listen to me, I'm using conscious thought, which is system two. And system two tends to come up with the types of information that require or need system two in the other person to process that information. And they don't have the time for that anymore. And so when we come up with all these logical, rational reasons, as in, oh, it's good for the environment, you know, you'll save money, all wonderful reasons, but they don't contain information that system one can go, hey, shortcut, this is probably good enough for me. Let's go this direction. Instead, we are actually causing more uncertainty in our audience. They push back, they push away from you, you and your wonderful decision or your wonderful proposal, which is great value and genuinely good for them. They decide not to decide. And so I would argue, and I tell my students this all the time in a given period of time, you might send out or you know, make, let's say, a thousand proposals, right? And again, that can be sales, can be marketing, can be lead generating, could be talking to your suppliers, could be getting your kids to try and clean up their room or do their homework, right? You'd make a thousand proposals and you get a certain amount of yeses. You get a lot more no's, as in that didn't go along with you. We would argue that those no's, a large percentage of those weren't actually no's. They were indecision. People decided not to decide because you made it too hard for them. So what we need to do, we need to use our system two, our full brain power, to come up with the pieces of information that allow system one in their audience's brain to make a decision. And then big things can happen. That ratio of 5% to 95% in terms of system one, system two decisions, that's not a bad indicator of what might actually happen when you start talking to that part of the brain that's actually in charge of 95% of the decisions. Did that make sense so far?

SPEAKER_00 18:13

Yeah, it does. Because I've definitely done the driving down the road piece and not remember how I got home.

The Seven Persuasion Principles Explained

SPEAKER_01 18:20

I'll uh I'll move on to the principles, shall I? Yeah, please. So the principles of persuasion, which were coined by Dr. Robert Cialdini. Um, Dr. Cialdini is now past 80. He wrote this book, Influence, the psychology of persuasion, which is typically ranked as the number one, you know, sort of timeless read for business owners. Again this year, Forbes on their, you know, uh the list of the top 10 books, timeless reads for business owners, it was at number one. Again, it should absolutely be in your library, but it doesn't per se teach you how to use it, right? It's very hard to learn skills from just theory. But this book basically explains the psychology of how people make decisions and how that relates to these principles that Dr. Cialdini identified. The word social proof we all know. You know that word because of Dr. Cialdini. He came up with it. Before that, it was called consensus, which you know was a little harder to understand. Social proof actually came from Dr. Cialdini. So the seven principles, as I said, they work in all cultures, all languages. All of these words you've heard before. The danger is that you might go, oh yeah, I've heard that before. Right? Yeah, I know how that works. But chances are, if I look at your marketing or your website, you're hardly using any of it, or you're using it the wrong way around. So it's actually actively working against you because people don't have enough understanding of it. All right, so reciprocity is one. We feel obligated to give back the same type of behavior that's first given to us. And in the context of compliance, we agree more with people who we feel we owe something to. And so in business, we've taken that in, oh, okay, we got to give people stuff. Well, that's in essence correct, but a lot of businesses do get that wrong. Uh, great example is the is the free downloadable ebook, right? Oh, we have a wonderful ebook for you. I like your lead generator. Just put your name and your email address in, we'll send you the download link, our gift to you. Nice try. That's not gonna activate reciprocity. Right? Reciprocity is activated by a gift. A gift is something that's given without a requirement needing to be met. So when I ask you name or an email address first, then I'll send you the download link. It's not a gift, it's a reward. And the audience experiences it as such. I'm not saying that a downloadable e-book is a bad lead generator. What I'm saying is if you think that's going to activate a reciprocity, you're completely missing the boat. How could you change that? Just to put a little tip in there, you could still have a downloadable ebook, but you might also have a checklist. You know, here are the 15 reasons that you should not fail to do if you're trying to get your finances organized by the time you retired or whatever industry you're in, right? And then that checklist, you just make that available, just right-click and download. No, no need for an email address. Right? Now it's a gift. Now the the emotional bank account of, hey, you were kind to me, that bank account is out of balance. And you know, we want to make sure that we we put that back into balance. So next time when you come with a request, hey, we've got this wonderful webinar on, come join us. The fact that that reciprocity is now in the mix will help to see you see more people register for your webinar, for example. Liking. We like people that are like us, we like people who like us, and we like people who like us and say so. Right? We can talk about that that one principle for hours, but to give you a little tip. So we like people that like us and say so. That is means compliments, right? In a way, we're suckers for compliment. If we compliment some someone on on anything and we want it to be genuine, that's a quick way to get somebody to like you more. And relationship building is of course important because you can try and urge people to buy or urge people to contact you, but if the relationship isn't there, it's a lot, lot harder. And research shows by building a strong relationship, you can easily be twice more effective or persuasive or successful than without it. Um, so that's the principle of liking. Um, again, uh happy to go deeper if you like, or we can do another episode on this another time. Unity was introduced last uh in 2015. Unity is often confused with liking. Liking is, let's say, more about similarities. What do I have in common with you? Unity is about a feeling of belonging to the same community. If we can describe ourselves and the other person as we, then we feel part of a group and we have favoritism within that group. And you can have that with the next board members you're talking to, but not if you don't have it, don't do any homework. So we got to figure out if we have things in common with people, if we're part of that same community, and then let that come up in conversation. Also, co-creation falls under unity. Very powerful. Then social proof, we talked about already. People follow the actions of others, especially when the others are numerous, when they are similar to us, and when we are uncertain. Those are the amplifiers that are in the situation. So, you know, the restaurant example, you're walking through the city looking for a place to eat. You and your partner want to have a romantic dinner, you see an empty restaurant, you see a half-filled restaurant. Which one do you go into? Well, the half-filled restaurant. You don't go in, yeah, you don't go into the empty one. But then as you approach the restaurant, now you see that everybody in that restaurant is um, uh, I don't know, I'm a motorcycle rider. Uh, they're all motorcycle riders, all in their leathers, helmets on the table. And so whilst there's people in the restaurant, they're not really like you, right? And so you might actually change your mind because the similarity is now missing, right? So there's all these little caveats there. What can I give you for um for social proof? We talked about testimonials. Detailed testimonials and reviews are more powerful than you know, sort of small testimonials. And when you ask somebody, hey, could you leave a testimonial for us? Ask them to put some details in there. And interestingly enough, if the testimonial says that something happened today, that in the reader's eye makes it even more persuasive, right? As in today we had dinner at this restaurant and da-da-da-da-da, whole story comes after. So I think it's perfectly ethical to ask people, say, would you mind leaving a review and would you mind mentioning that you were with us today? Authority. We follow the advice of people who have superior knowledge or wisdom on a particular topic. And that makes perfect sense because we can't know everything. And so if there's somebody in the room or in the situation that knows more about something than we do, then it makes sense to follow their advice. Now, the tricky thing is that all your listeners, they're all authorities in their own field, but you cannot sing your own praises once you're face to face with someone. You can't meet someone and go, let me tell you the 35 reasons why you should listen to me today, right? Because the subconscious, system one, and the other person is going to go, you're full of yourself, right? You lose on authority and you lose on likings. You can't introduce yourself. Um so we must arrange for other people to do that for us. Um, so you know, you might, you know, if you're one colleague talks to a client, you're about to handball somebody over, you would be detectives of influence if everybody in the office knew genuinely the credentials of other people in the office so you could introduce people with thoughtful details. Okay, I'm gonna hand you over to Michael, because Michael, you know what we're talking about, that's his expertise. He's been with our company for 17 years, he's won multiple awards and he's helped thousands of people, just like you, to achieve this thing that we're talking about. Right now, Michael, right, his authority is much higher because he can't say those things when he's face to face. And if he tries, it backfires. All right. Hope we're getting something helpful out of this.

SPEAKER_00 26:35

Oh, yeah, definitely.

Scarcity And Loss Framed Language

SPEAKER_01 26:36

Yeah, okay, cool. Uh, consistency is then let's say the sixth principle. So people want to stay true to past actions and behaviors and statements that they've made in the past if what's in front of them is logically consistent to continue. Um, you must have had a clever friend who wants to get drag you along on some activity, let's say mountain biking or something on Sunday, and uh they go uh, you know, and they tell you on Fridays, hey, uh, do you consider yourself an adventurous type of person? And most people think they're adventurous, right? More than the average. And also most people think they're creative. And um your friend will go, oh, yeah, I'm so adventurous, I'm I'm really adventurous. Great. Wonderful. I'm going on a mountain bike ride on Sunday. You want to come, right? It's it's like you put your foot in it now, right? Because you just made the statement that you're adventurous, and to go on a mountain bike ride is logically consistent with that. So it's harder to say no. And so, what we want to do in business, we want to create opportunities for our clients to reveal what's important to them so that when you then come with your proposal later, and you, and I think that's highly ethical, you make sure that that proposal matches everything that's valuable to them, that they said themselves. When you remind them and say, listen, based on our initial discussion, you said that this was important, that was important, and this was very crucial. Now, I think we've got all this cover in this proposal. Let me explain it to you. Right? Now again, it makes it harder to say yes. But if we fail to let people reveal what's important to them, make those initial statements, then we're bungling that away, as Dr. Cialdini would say. All right, and last principle, principle of scarcity, which I'm sure we're all familiar with. So we value things more when they are less available. There was a uh a study that they done that asked people to taste a cookie. The cookie was the same cookie, right? And so half of the people were asked to take one cookie out of a jar which had two of those cookies in it. And the other half of the audience, they were asked to take the same cookie out of a same glass jar that had 10 cookies in it. The people that took the cookie out of the jar that just had two cookies in it thought it was a better quality cookie, it was able to fetch a higher price, it had a higher quality. Everything was considered more valuable. Fun insight is that scarcity does not change our experience of the thing. The cookies in both cases, they tasted the same. They didn't taste any better because they were less of it, but they were perceived to be more valuable. So we have to, of course, let people know when there's natural scarcity in the situation. And uh a big uh giveaway I can give to your clients or your your listeners is that look at your own language that you're using in your marketing, in your brochures, on your website. When we talk about what people tend to benefit from what it is we have to offer with our product or service, we have a terrible habit of explaining to people what they stand to gain, right? In terms of a car, you get this car, you'll get there faster, it'll be better for the environment, and you save money. Right? All logical, rational reasons why, you know, this might make sense to you, right? It doesn't appeal to system one, but they're logical, rational reasons. But they are gain language. This is what you get more if you make this decision. Where research shows we can easily be twice as persuasive by changing that into an avoidance of loss language. So instead of saying you'll get there faster, it is well, you'll get there slower. Instead of saying it's better for the environment, you'll have a bigger negative impact on the environment if you don't get this car, right? And saves you money. If you don't get this car, it's gonna cost you money. Right. So by making these language changes, again, we can have a big, powerful impact on the outcomes. And uh, as you can figure out from all these examples, to make these changes doesn't cost anything. It's just changes in language.

Biggest Lesson And Trust Building

SPEAKER_00 31:10

Wow. I mean, it's just it's so, so powerful. I think that again, this goes back to the fact that marketing is part art and part science, right? The science behind it is understanding how the brain works and how those systems that you were talking about work, which is just yeah, it's hugely, hugely powerful. Thank you so much for sharing all of this with me, Patrick. I really appreciate it. Before I let you go though, I do have to ask you the question that I ask all of my guests. And that is that this show is called Imperfect Marketing. Marketing is anything but a perfect science. So, what has been your biggest marketing lesson learned along the way?

SPEAKER_01 31:48

Well, for me, as I sort of explained in the beginning, it was actually bumping into this science. I I didn't need to work the, you know, as hard as I was, as inefficient as I was, when I could just change little things in my communication to have a much bigger impact. If you ask for a single thing, it's so hard to uh so hard to pick. But I guess in that situation with the dry suits, what I was facing is that, you know, I had uh an audience that liked me, but didn't want to have a bar of this this product that I was offering. And so I had to convince them that, you know, things are different now. And so I took um a leap of uh what is it, uh, a leaf out of the principle of authority. And that is that if you mention a weakness against your own self-interest, you instantly establish yourself as a trustworthy source of information. And um, and so I use that with my once I figured out I had this problem, when I went into a retailer, I would lead with, I know you might have heard of this brand and the disaster that it went through last year, right? Which nobody wants to put their partners through, but they've learned from this situation and have now gone back to the original manufacturer of the inner memb inner member membrane material. And, you know, this is the best dry diving suit that's available in the Australian, possibly the world market. And so by leading with the weakness and using that hinge word but, which is not magical in itself, could be the word however, you change the focus to the positive. And now what comes after the weakness is more believed than it otherwise would be. So that is one thing that I've always very much appreciated, and it's it's it's magical. That's by the way, how you know L'Oreal, the cosmetics brand, uh, their USP is you're worth it, right? And it came from we're worth it. And before that, the original was we're expensive, but worth it. All three mean exactly the same thing and have the same impact. Um, that was responsible for a 300% increasing market share for L'Oreal.

Rate Subscribe And Closing

SPEAKER_00 33:57

Well, thank you again, Patrick, for all of your wonderful insights and the science behind what it is that we should be doing the right way, right? If we spent just a little bit of time thinking about how the brain works, I appreciate it. I know whoever's listening or watching, you definitely learned something today. And so if you got something out of this, that would be really great if you would rate and subscribe wherever you're listening or watching. Until next time, have a great rest of your day.