The System I Use to Make People Actually Listen | Ep 921

0:00We got 32.7 million views on YouTube this month. month, here's how. So I posted 35 ,000 pieces of content this year. We did a$100 million book launch for$100 million money models in 72 hours or three days. We did over$100 million in sales, 105 point something or 6 million to be exact. And the issue that most people struggle with is that you're making not enough content, number one, and the types of content that you're making are not attracting the types of customers you want. And so the promise that I have for you today is that I will show you a framework that I have called SPCL, like special if you want, but it's how to build influence rather than how to get as many views as possible or anything like that.

0:39All right. But it's a four-part framework. Special is how you can remember it, SPCL. And I want to break down each of the four components for you so that you can think about how you want to approach making content. All right. And building a brand in general. And so I also share this because I am not somebody who naturally, like some people just naturally have that like taste and, you know, brand knowledge and like have cool factor for, like I, I'm not that way. Like I'm not naturally that way. I'm not artistic. I'm really not creative, but I will work hard. And so I'm going to share the stuff that I've learned so that you can, hopefully if you just have work ethic, you can model it.

1:15Okay. So SPCL, what do these actually stand for? All right. So number one is status. And this is why you hear me talk about proof so much. But how do you define status from an operational perspective? For those of you who are new to the channel, I like to operationalize things, meaning like I like to look at objective reality and describe how you would see with your eyes rather than try and put a whole bunch of like emotional words around stuff. Because these are like that type of language is what confused me for a very long time when I was coming up. And it was only after I started defining things by what I could see, what I could observe, did reality feel like sharper, more crisp to me, and my ability to predict what was going to happen next increased by a lot.

1:52And so this is why I talk in this way. So how do I find status? So status is someone who controls reinforcers in a given environment. So that's a little bit fancy word. But fundamentally, if you control the good stuff that people want, then you will have status no matter what it is. And so the simplest example I have is if you go to a bar, and it's a busy bar, and there's a bartender, and you have to get the bartender's attention in order to get a drink or booze, that guy in that moment has status. He controls the scarce resource, right? But if that guy walks out of the bar, no longer controlling that scarce resource, he does not have the same status or even close to it, right?

2:31Like outside of the bar, he's not getting tips every single five seconds when he like moves his hands a little bit and like says something nice, right? People aren't waving money at him as he walks in the street. Of course not, right? But it's because he has status in one condition and he doesn't have another. Now, what's interesting about all four of these elements I'm going to break down, they all can work independently, but the idea is that you want all four to be stacked together. And this is what gives you the most influence, right? So, like, any of these four on their own would give you influence.

2:58Like, that bartender, if he just has that, he would have some level of influence. And I'll give you a different example of this. You know, if a kid inherits money, right, they're going to have status, right? Like, if you have money, even if you didn't earn it, even if you didn't anything, thing, if you have money, you will have some degree of status because you control something other people want, period. That's how it works, all right? But would that kid who has money have the same status as a kid who has money who also gave you, you know, 10 different crypto coin picks that all popped off, right?

3:34Well, if he gave you 10 different picks and you followed them and they all popped off, you would for sure, like, think about it, like, how much more influence would that person have over them saying, hey, you should put money in this, or hey, you should give me money for X, Y, Z, or whatever it is. Obviously, I'm talking money because I'm a business person first, but think about how much more influence version two would have with just two of those things versus version one, right? That's the difference, but if you have all four, that's when you get, you become super sad. One of my classic examples, which leads us to P, which is power, so status is number one, so you control scarce resources.

4:07Power is number two. I would say if I had to only pick one, I would pick power, and I'll explain why. So power comes from something in the behavioral dynamics world called say-do correspondence. What that means is if I say something, and then you do it, and then a good thing occurs, a reinforcing event happens afterwards, you are more likely to comply with a following request. So said differently. I give you the example of the guy who says, hey, here's 10 stock picks, you buy them, and then a good thing happens. right? The thing goes up. Great. That person now has power. So that person has status and power, which is why they are more influential than the trust fund kid who just has money, right?

4:52And so to the same degree, for many of you who are trying to make content, one, it's like, okay, status, I want to demonstrate that I control a scarce resource that some people might want, right? And so what makes this a little bit more muddied is that sometimes one event can check multiple boxes. And so I'll give you a simple example. So this, you know, two weekends ago, or whatever, whatever, or three weekends ago, when we launched the book, we did 100 million plus in sales, right? That in and of itself, me having money from the event gives me status. Me saying, hey, you can launch stuff in this way.

5:28See, I'm going to skip ahead. Gives me credibility, right? Because I show that I have an event. I have something that has happened as a result of me doing it. That gives me third party credibility. There's something that you can observe with your eyes, right? The reason that my ads do well when I have my$10 million building behind me is like, oh, well, that's hard to fake, right? And so you have credibility there. And so one event, like selling a company, can give you money. It can give you credibility. And then if I give people directions on how they can do things that are similar, and then good things happen, then all of a sudden you get power.

5:59And then the last is likeness. I know I'm skipping around, but hey, we're having a good time, all right? And so credibility is number three. and I'm going to go in more detail on all these. All right? And then likeness. So what's likeness? So likeness is that you see some, this is some people say relatability. This can be both psychological in terms of you share similar values with this person. You like their vibe, whatever you want to say, right? You like their behavior set in it. And that behavior set matches to people who have been positive in your life in the past. Or they literally just look like you, right?

6:31So like Layla and I could talk about the exact same stuff, but she's a girl. And so she's going to have more chicks who follow her than me. This is not like a girl. This is not super inviting for a lot of women. And for the few ladies who do follow me, I appreciate you. I really do. But I have like an 89 % male audience. And so maybe it's because of the topic. But I would think, you know, at my onset, I think, oh, it's because I talk about money and I talk about business. That's why I have a more male audience. But Layla, I think, is like 54 % female. And so, and she talks about almost exclusively money and business.

7:01Obviously, she talks about some mindset stuff too. but I say this to say, okay, if we have these four things and these are the things that create influence and I would define influence as high likelihood of compliance with requests, okay? So what does that mean? So if I say, hey, grab my new book or I say, hey, come to this webinar or hey, I'm going live, like come check it out or hey, you should come to a workshop, whatever it is, right? You make some sort of solicitation and it could be like or subscribe, it doesn't matter. Like there's levels of how cool big of an ask something is and if anybody's played like a video game, It's like you have a role for Dungeons & Dragons, and it depends on how charas matter, how much influence you have, how high of a role, or how low of a role, rather, you'd need in order to be successful with the request.

7:44And so if you want to stack that stat for you, then if you want to min-max your influence, if you will, then you want to stack all four of these things. You're like, okay, I think I'm following with this. So how does this relate to content? So first off, starting from the back, likeness, I think so much more of it is just like, just be you. I don't think, I don't think there's any, there's zero ROI in trying to be or act in a way that is different than who you are. And I like, it's, it's a relatively trite message, but like most people are NPCs. Most people say pre-recorded scripts. They, they look at like the four different outfit, you know, combinations that exist for different kind of mental stereotypes.

8:29It's like, oh yeah, guy who loves barbecue and craft beers. Oh yeah, that's that archetype. I'm just gonna be that archetype. Or you've got like hipster bro who likes hipster shit, right? Or you've got, you know, like just bro, right? You've got just like stir bro. And people, someone put me in that status, but I also like for a few years was wearing like sandals that looked like really weird. And I wore those and that was not bro-y at all, but I wore them because they were super comfortable and I didn't have to wear socks, which is a big thing for me. Anyways, the point is, I think what makes you unique is if you actually lean into the nuances that make you you and actually have a way to defend why you do what you do.

9:05Because most people don't even think about why they do what they do. And if you do things and you don't know why, it's because you're following someone else's directions for your life rather than your own. Weird, like real. And so, so much of us have been programmed by people earlier in our lives. And I say programmed as though we were like machines, but think about it like this. What person do you think in your life, highest likelihood, has super high max status, power, credibility, and likeness? I'll wait. Who do you think has the highest, has these maxed out earlier on in your life? It's your parents, right?

9:42It's your parents. So think about all four of these elements. Status. Do your parents control scarce resources, things you want? They've got money. And they've got toys that they can buy you. They've got food. They act like they control your shelter. They control what room you live in. They control if there's other people in the room. Like they have huge amounts of status in your life because they control all the scarcest resources, all the things you want. And also to the degree for each of these SPCL, these are not binaries. So don't think like, oh, I have status. I don't have status. It's to what degree do you have status, right?

10:13Like if somebody's got more money than you, they might have some status. If you've got$1 and somebody's got 10 grand, they got more status than you, right? But if someone's a billionaire, they have way more status than the guy who's 10 ,000, right? Okay. So again, think not in binaries, yes or no, but thinking continuums. So the next one is, think about your parents. Power. How many reinforcement cycles do you assume that your parents had from the time you were born? And when I say reinforcement cycles, it means like they said, do this, you did that thing, and then a good thing happened. Now, you might be like, ah, I hate my dad, or hate my mom, or whatever your thing is.

10:46I don't really care. That doesn't matter for this purpose. The idea is that they probably said, don't go in the street or don't do that. And you avoided a bad thing or do this. And then a good thing happened, right? You tied your shoes the first time you put the two bunny ears together. You tied your shoes. A good thing happened. They fought. You followed their directions. Think about how many times a parent has given you directions and you followed them and a bad thing was avoided or a good thing happened. Many. And so it makes sense that not only do they have a lot of status, they have a lot of power.

11:13Okay. What else do they have? Credibility. Now this is one where I think parents sometimes might lack compared to the other things. Now, if you have a parent who also has credibility in that specific realm of whatever it is that they're talking about, then you have even more influence on you, right? And then finally, for parents, are they like you? Yeah, they literally look like you, right? And oftentimes, they share similar values to you, to a degree. Obviously, some people just go polar opposite from their parents. That's fine, but I'm talking in sweeping generalities for most people, right?

11:45And so this should at least explain or break down, like, why do parents have so much power over us? How do they have so much influence over our behaviors, even when you don't even, and here's the really kooky part about this. You might not even want to listen to your parents. You might not even like your parents, but you can still feel that you have to, like, resist their requests because you are so programmed based on these elements of behavior to comply with their requests, all right? And so then the idea is, how do we take these four elements, right? And then how do we reverse engineer these into the content that we have so that we can build up true influence?

12:26Like, and again, we're defining influence as the likelihood of a compliance with a request, right? And that likelihood will depend on the nature of the request and how much your SPCL is in relation to that thing, right? If I was giving out fashion tips, I probably don't have a lot of credibility for fashion tips, right? I don't know if I control any scarce resources around fashion. I have no fashion hookups. I probably haven't given anyone specific fashion tips. I have no third-party anything for credibility for it, and you probably don't look like me. And so I probably would have very low influence.

13:03And so these things are not, I mean, to some degree they can generalize as you go up and up and up, but you have more influence in domain specificity, right? So of course, there's some things that will generalize over time. This is why people go to their hairstylist and they'll listen to them for relationship advice. It's like, how does this person who cuts my hair have anything? Like, why would I trust them in any way on relationship advice or on a stock pick? But the thing is, is that there is some degree that generalizes, but it's obviously gonna be way more domain specific to whatever their thing is, right?

13:31So hopefully this makes some sense for you guys. Okay, so if we know these are the four things, status, power, credibility, likeness, then for each of these things, we want to demonstrate that we control scarce resources. And so for me, like at the very beginning, if you think about what the intro was, right? So I said we did 32.7 million views, and we did over 105 point something million dollars in sales for the book launch in 72 hours. And so that's me demonstrating status. I have these things, right? Then, power. So what I'm going to do in this video is I'm going to break down four things you can follow.

14:09And if you follow these things, you're going to be more likely to get people who are going to comply with your future requests. And so that means that they're not just going to watch your video, but they're going to be more likely to, one, watch the next video. And if you have any kind of call to action in the video, whatever level of call to action that is for you, whether it's subscribe or like or share or buy something that's small or set up a call or whatever it is that you sell, then this is going to be second right like that you'll you'll have included that in your content so then credibility is going to be the third party stuff so the reason that i had at my launch for example i had guinness i had to pay those judges i had to pay three judges 24 hours to be on site was because i wanted to validate that the the books that we did and the revenue that we generated was legit right so i had a third party that most people respect as like a legitimate corporation that their entire business is based on trust that they validate and verify proof that these records are broken.

15:06And so that gives credibility. And then with respect to the video, status and credibility can seem similar, but because so commonly the things are linked, what I mean is like, if I say I just have money, I will have some status. But with relation to what this video is about, the credibility component will be more around the views that we're able to generate and the sales that we were able to generate from having content. And so money generically gives status. The credibility around the specific that I'm describing, which is like how do you build influence inside of a video or a personal brand, that's going to be, that's the third, that's kind of like the objective proof.

15:45Does that make sense? Hopefully that's, I'm separating these for you. One is generic status. The other is going to be specific to whatever we're describing, all right? Now, the likeness piece, like I said earlier, is just you being you. I'll be real with you. I honestly hate making YouTube videos. And what I mean that is like staring at a camera and having like prompts to solicit me to say stuff. Like I will do it because I have a relatively high pain tolerance and I'll do what is required to get what I want. But like I'm going all in on this. So if you guys are like, what's Alex's kind of like media strategy for the future?

16:22I'm focusing on two words. You can write this down. Live, interactive. There's the two things that is describing the ACQ 3.0 or Mosey Media 3.0 vision for what's going forward. That is what I'm focusing on. And I'll tell you a story of why I think this is so interesting. So I had a conversation with a mega influencer, I don't think you would mind, with Mr. Beast a few weeks ago. And we were talking about kind of like the future of media and content. And so one of the things that he was talking about was the soccer game that came up that they do like UK versus US. And I've never watched the game, but you might have seen some like YouTube videos about it.

17:02So what ends up happening is that they have all these different celebrities or influencers from different platforms, right? And so starting from the lowest, the lowest people on this little totem pole, they would walk out in the stadium. And this became the kind of the de facto like measuring stick for who had the most cool points, right? These are the A-listers. This is your typical celebs from movies and 90s and the 2000s or whatever. People recognize because they're celebs, but they don't have huge... I guess they have some media presence, but it's more like traditional media. The level of applause for these guys was almost nothing.

17:37Barely anyone cared. Then the next level that came up was the shorts. The shorts creators. This is your only TikTokers or people who only make reels, but only short videos, okay? And so they had a little bit more applause on the applause-o-meter compared to the A-listers. Then, then the long-form guys came out. And this is when the audience got way rowdier. All right, so this is your podcasters, your YouTubers, the people who make long-form pieces of content. And I'm going to pause here for a second to kind of like highlight why I think this is. So I don't think there's anything wrong with shorts.

18:18We make tons of shorts. But I see the purpose of shorts as many times a way to get someone to watch a long, right? They watch a couple shorts and then think, okay, this guy seems legit or this gal seems legit. I'm going to risk my time because that's the risk. They're making an investment, right? You're making an investment today. I'm going to risk them to get a good return on this, right? And so shorts then lead to longs. But let me show you the difference from an influence perspective. How many reinforcing cycles do you think you can have in 30 seconds compared to two hours? It's like not even close, right?

18:50And so if someone watched two one-hour pieces of content for me, period, okay? Two one-hour pieces, 120 minutes. For me to get that same level of exposure and kind of cycles of reinforcing with a prospect, right? And they were only consuming shorts, right? Let's say my average short, let's say 15 for math's sake. Okay, so let's say it's 15 seconds. So that means it's four shorts per minute. So if I have 120 minutes for longs, I have to do, someone would have to watch 480 shorts to have the same level of exposure as watching two hours with me. And think about how important this is. Like, what were the things that people said, like this was the, quote, podcast election, right?

19:30This one that just happened. Trump went on, and I don't care about the politics behind it, but I do care about influence and persuasion. And so, like, why is it that the, I think, I think, my opinion, The two podcasts that I think really nudged this election, my opinion, is the Trump three-hour-plus podcast that he did with Rogan, like a week or whatever it was before November. I think that was a huge influential event. And I think Elon getting on Tucker Carlson and doing that interview. I think those two interviews were some of the interviews that really nudged the election. And again, I don't care who you voted for.

20:06It doesn't matter to me. I just, again, I think about this from marketing persuasion. and so because of that audiences who were not sure got to spend three hours with a presidential candidate and as a result it just nudged some of them in the direction to ultimately vote now back to our little story so A-listers have almost no applause, shorts have slight applause, longs have legit applause, then the live streamers

20:32when the live streamers came out it was like the entire auditorium or stadium or arena erupted and when I heard that, it was such a visual example of just like, I mean, we have this saying, which is like butts in seats, right? Like some of you guys who are watching this have some level of following or you make some sort of content, whatever. And some of you guys who don't, like you might as well get started, right? But if you just make a bunch of like meme content, right? You demonstrate almost none of these things, right? You demonstrate no status. you give no people any directions on what to do, so they get no positive results as a result in their life as it relates to whatever domain they care about.

21:17You're not demonstrating any kind of credibility. And maybe you have some element of likeness. That one you might have. Some element of likeness that might come from a meme sort of content, right? And so what happens is some of you guys are chasing views when what I think you want is you want to have prospects who are more likely to comply with a future request, right? And so we need to change our behavior to maximize the likelihood that occurs. And so in looking at this thing, this is why I'm telling you, like showing my cards, I'm going to be doing more live streams. And I think it's also, and this is me like outside of SPCL, but I think like meta themes overall, is that I think that the internet will always move towards truth.

21:58And so I think the A-listers, everything's super curated, everything's super polished, it's photoshopped, it's scripted, right? And as you move closer this way, it's raw-er. You have a three-hour podcast. They're not scripted, or most of them aren't. Streaming, it's like, yeah, we're live. I can't do anything. We're live. And so this idea of how can we approximate the rawest reality of you, us hanging out, and actually going through this stuff, I think that is what will unlock the most influence, as long as you are still including these SPCL elements into it. And I think that's the marriage, right?

22:39How do I do SPCL and do it as many times as I possibly can? That's the idea. And so live streaming provides that opportunity. Now, let's also think about this from a context of volume, right? So whether you like them or not, Rogan, tremendous influence, right? To the same degree, PBD, tremendous influence. Dave Ramsey, tremendous influence. What is it that these guys have in common, right? What is it they have in common? they're putting out hours of content every single day. So you guys want to hear something a little bit mind-blowing? So I said earlier that we have 35 ,000 pieces of content, right?

23:14Now, I hear plenty of times, there's tons of$1 million businesses, $2 million businesses, things like that. They put out one piece of content a day, right? And there's nothing wrong with that. That's 365 pieces of content a year. And if you think about the size of acquisition.com in terms of our revenue, compared to somebody who's doing$1 or$2 million a year, and they're doing 365 pieces of content, we're just quite literally doing 100 times more. That's it. Like, we're literally just doing 100 times the volume. And as a result of that 100 times the volume, what do you think's happening? We get 100 times the prospect.

23:48People want to try and, like, outsmart themselves in thinking that they can, like, not do the work that's required. But it's actually far more linear than you would expect. So, like, we just know that it's like one out of 10, you know, shorts is going to go, is going to be a 2 or 3x outlier. We just know what that math looks like. Same thing for longs. And so it's like, how do I just jam as much into that input-output machine as I possibly can? And as long as I'm checking these boxes, like I'm making the right kind of content, then you're going to get the right kind of prospects. So I'll give you one more nugget.