MI Rewind: The Soulful Art of Persuasion w/ Jason Harris

0:00You're listening to TIP. On today's show, we're resharing some of the older episodes that are my favorites for a few reasons. One, we get a bunch of new listeners each week, so new listeners may not have heard this episode before. Two, even if you've been listening for a while, you may have missed this episode when it originally came out. Or three, even if you've heard it before, it can be a great episode to learn from again. If you've already heard this episode or you're not interested in hearing it, feel free to just skip it. There's no harm in that. And you can pick up with our new episodes next week.

0:30That's all I had for you for this new intro. Everything going forward is going to be from the original episode. I hope you guys enjoy it. And 11 habits and the habits can be worked on and learned. Habits really are learned behaviors. There's something that you practice enough over time and something you believe in that they become part of who you are. They become part of your sort of subconsciousness, but that takes work and practice.

0:58On today's show, I chat with Jason Harris about what it means to be an influencer, the four principles for being a master influencer. And when I say influencer, I don't necessarily mean social media influencer. You'll see what Jason means when he talks about a quote unquote influencer. We talk about how personal character is more important than facts and arguments when it comes to persuasion, all the ways empathy plays into business, and a bunch more. Jason Harris is the co-founder and CEO of the award-winning creative advertising agency Mechanism, co-founder of the Creative Alliance, and author of the national bestseller, The Soulful Art of Persuasion.

1:37Harris works closely with brands through a blend of creativity and performance, which is an approach they call soul plus science. Under his leadership, Mechanism was ranked by the FV Index as a top 10 most effective independent agency in the United States. Mechanism has also been named to Ad Age's Agency A list and twice to their best places to work. Harris has been named in the top 10 most influential social impact leaders, the 4 A's list of 100 people who make advertising great, and most recently was named a Campaign US 40 over 40 honoree for his noteworthy contributions to the advertising and marketing industry.

2:18While this episode isn't related specifically to stock investing or personal finance, I challenge you guys to think about these concepts and how you can apply them to investing your career, your side hustles, or your business. I hope you guys enjoy this conversation. You're listening to Millennial Investing by the Investors Podcast Network, where your host, Robert Leonard, interviews successful entrepreneurs, business leaders, and investors to help educate and inspire the millennial generation.

2:56Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Millennial Investing Podcast. I'm your host, Robert Leonard. And with me today, I have Jason Harris. Jason, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Great to be here, Robert. Tell us a bit about yourself and how you got to where you are today. Okay. I grew up as a small town boy in Fairfax County, Virginia. And I was raised by two academics. Both my parents were teachers and they were real heavy bookworms. And I have a sister who sort of followed the same path. And I was always a bit of a black sheep in the family. I wanted to go out and explore and experience things.

3:38And I wasn't the most, I'm an avid reader now, but at the time I wasn't. And so I sort of always felt a little different than the way, the environment that I was raised in and always wanted to explore. And I got really into when I was young, I run an advertising agency called Mechanism. And I knew at a pretty young age that I wanted to do something in the myth-making branded world because I really love music. And so for me, my passions were kind of music. And through music, I really learned the power of imagery and branding and what that means. And so I slowly, between that and watching a lot lot of commercials.

4:24I really, pretty young age, like 13, 14, I realized that I was either going to pursue a path in performing in music or go into the world of advertising because it felt like a business job that was semi-artistic. And so I was very fortunate because I think a lot of happiness in life is derived from what you spend a large majority of your time on and doing. And that fortunately or unfortunately happens to be your career, the career path you take. And so I always knew that that's what I was going to go one of those two ways. And I was in a lot of bands when I was younger. And I realized pretty quickly that I was good, but not great.

5:08And my skills were not set up for a long-term musical career. And I switched ever since I got out of school, kind of worked my way through the advertising world. Always had an entrepreneurial bug inside. And so this is my second company that I started in the advertising space and about 15 years into this one. So yeah, that's a little bit of my story. I want to dive for a second into what exactly a marketing agency does, because I think that word of marketing agency or digital marketing agencies get thrown around a lot, but I'm not sure that people listening know exactly what a marketing agency does.

5:47I know I didn't for a while. So I'd love to hear from you. What exactly is a marketing agency? What do you guys do on a day-to-day basis? So if you look at the marketing industry, it's really all-encompassing. So marketing can be working at a brand like, I don't know, Nike or Ben & Jerry's or whatever brand you can think of. They're going to have a marketing department and that marketing department is responsible for the brand and all the work that they put out there. And then for the agencies that support, they get hired by brands. There's different parts of marketing. So there's PR firms that are responsible for getting those brands in the press.

6:29There's experiential firms that are responsible for what happens out in the world, whether it's a Ben & Jerry's event or concert or a Nike soccer camp. They're going to be responsible for working with the brand to bring the experiences out there into life. There's social media-specific agencies that just worry about how the brand appears on the social platforms. There's media that will do the media buying and planning. So there's a lot of different types of companies in the space. What we do as an advertising agency is we really focus on working with the brand to create the strategy, what they're going to stand for in the world, and then the creative ideas that the brand puts out there.

7:15We'll help develop them and produce them and then put them out. So we're sort of a mid-sized advertising agency. So we have a lot of the marketing components underneath us. So we have a social media-specific team. We have a production team. We do media buying and planning. But really what we're known for is taking a brand and trying to create a three-year plan of what the brand, the soul of the brand is, why the brand exists, and then how it comes to life out in the world. So creating actual ad commercials, digital content, but really creating the stuff that people see. Why does a company that has a marketing department need a marketing agency?

7:59Well, they don't necessarily need one. And some companies certainly do all of the things that I sort of covered in-house, so under their roof. But what happens is typically a brand, like a brand that we work on, say Peloton, they have a pretty big in-house team. There's so many functions to marketing, whether it's customer retention, it's running their profiles, it's what the interface looks like when you ride a Peloton, the actual interaction. It's how you get customers through the customer acquisition funnel. They'll usually be with a really big size brand. There'll be too much work for any one group to handle.

8:47A brand like that might have several outside firms plus their in-house department. So they don't necessarily need outside agencies. They can do it on their own. But what an outside agency brings is the perspective of the customer and the consumer. So I always think brands need that outside perspective. They need that outside agency who isn't in our workings of a company. They're not worried about the politics or who reports to who or where the idea came from. They're really just looking at the brand as if they were a consumer using that product or service. So they have an outside perspective that's very valuable for brands.

9:29Because as you know, if you're working somewhere, you get really caught up in the inner workings and you're sort of in a bubble and you need that outside perspective for some fresh thinking. Yeah. It's interesting because I've always wondered why big companies do that in higher marketing agencies. Peloton is a great example. I've seen Coca-Cola does it. So I've always kind of just wondered, these are some of the massive companies. I just never understood why it was needed, but everything you just explained is great. Yeah. A lot of companies don't. They don't always need it, but I find it incredibly valuable.

10:04When I look at my own agency, we hired an outside firm to build our website, for example. And the reason why is they'll interview stakeholders that might have different opinions and they'll sort of take that feedback and then propose ideas. And then we can evaluate those ideas instead of us just building it in-house with our team. And so even as an advertising agency that has those capabilities, we still use other firms to do some of our work. One of the things you're personally passionate about teaching people is how to be a master influencer. In today's day and age, when people hear the word influencer, they think of social media influencers.

10:47What do you mean when you say influencer? So the way I use it, master influencer is somebody who is persuasive and influential in their sphere, whether that's their work sphere, their personal sphere, but in their little life ecosystem, someone that holds a lot of weight and can influence people. So I'm using it in the classical sense, not the creator sense of the word. You also have four principles for being a master influencer. Tell us what each of those are, and then break them down for us. So the book, The Soulful Art of Persuasion is really made up of four principles and 11 habits, and the habits can be worked on and learned.

11:37Habits really are learned behaviors. There's something that you practice enough over time and something you believe in that they become part of who you are. They become part of your sort of subconsciousness, but that takes work and practice. And those habits are built on four principles that I believe in, both for business success and for personal growth. And principle number one is to break them down like at the base level is original. And that's really the idea of being yourself because everyone else has already taken. It's about putting your true self out there and showing the world who you are.

12:18And every place that you show up or that you appear, you bring that authentic self. It's really about knowing yourself and being a true original. Principle two is generous. And that's really kind of creating and cultivating a sense of gratitude and recognizing that every interaction you have with someone can result in something great. and it's about giving things away freely, whether it's your time, your money, your connections, your resources, but it's about giving things away at every interaction, which makes things come back to you with compound interest by sort of having that belief. The third is empathetic, which is pretty obvious, but it's about understanding, developing a natural curiosity for other people and really learning from other people and trying to understand the other person on a more deeper level.

13:17And then soulfulness is this idea of becoming inspirational and striving to be inspirational by finding something you believe in and giving back to make the world a better place. And that makes you an inspirational person because you have this other element to you that isn't just about your happiness or your wealth or your power or your sphere of influence. And so putting those together, it's really about being yourself, becoming a generous person, understanding other people, and then trying to be an inspiration by doing something greater than yourself. Those are four principles that I personally live by.

13:58That's what the book is based on. And I think it leads to more influence and it leads to success in business and in your personal world. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. Even Einstein had blind spots. That's why modern science is built on the idea of peer review. Investing may be more art than science, but that doesn't make peer feedback any less valuable. The tricky thing is finding qualified people who are interested and willing to help vet your investment ideas. That's why we built the intrinsic value community. It's a place to connect, share ideas, learn, and get feedback.

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17:00And for a limited time, you can use code stocks15 for a 15 % discount at checkout. All right, back to the show. You also say that persuasion isn't about facts and arguments, rather that it's all about personal character. What do you mean by this? And why can't you just convince someone with a fact-based argument? That's a great question. I think often people respond not just to the information, but they respond to the person who's providing that information. It's about personal character. And I think what persuades people, the substance of what's being said is important, but the person saying it is even more important.

17:42So when you exhibit these behaviors, you build trust with other people, you become more influential, therefore you become more persuasive. And I think you've seen this, of course, in your own world, when somebody might ask you for a favor or something that you need, based on all your experiences or interactions with that person, you understand that, okay, I'm going to do this for this person, or I'm going to agree with this person because I know who they are and I trust their personal character. On the flip side, someone who has exhibited behaviors that aren't necessarily positive or productive, whatever their facts are, you're not going to buy it and you're going to not say yes.

18:29It's funny you mentioned it's not just about what we say because I remember growing up, my dad used to say that to me all the time. He said, it's not what you say, it's how you say it. And I probably was told that a million times as a kid. It's not what you said, it's how you said it. I didn't think my dad realized that he was talking about this psychological concept of what you just explained. Did that sink in with you? Yeah. I mean, it's impacted me ever since I was a kid to today. That's awesome. Well, yeah. Your dad knew what he was talking about. I don't think he realized he knew, but he did.

19:03It's that famous idea of people don't remember what you said, they remember how you make them feel. And that's a big part of it. And you make them feel that way by exhibiting these characteristics. We talked about empathy as one of, or being empathetic as one of your four principles. But empathy is a word that I think has been more popularized by Gary Vee lately, at least it seems. But when he first started talking about it, I personally thought I knew what he meant. And it ended up that I really actually didn't have the right definition in my head. And I also really didn't understand how it related to business.

19:38If you can talk to us about the ways that empathy plays a role in business and persuasion. Sure. Let me ask you a question. What was your preconceived idea of empathy? I honestly don't quite remember exactly what it was. I do remember listening to his podcast one day and a light bulb went off and I was just like, wow, I was thinking about this wrong this whole time. This is actually what he means versus what I was thinking at the time. Yeah, so empathy really is about, I mean, at a base level, it's putting yourself in the other person's shoes, right? That's like, you've heard that before. But at the base level, that's trying to understand someone else's viewpoint and being able to put yourself and see the world through their eyes so that you have a better understanding of them.

20:29It's not agreeing with someone or just trying to help someone out or anything like that. It's really learning and putting yourself in someone else's sort of shoes. And it develops a better understanding of the motivations behind that person, which allows you to make a deeper connection. Then just say digging into your views and feeling like it's an us versus them mentality. And there's three ways that I talk about being more empathetic. And the first is to try to make it about the other person and really learning more about them than judging them and really going from small talk into real conversations about who they are and understanding the other person.

21:20The second is seeking out collaborations. So really joining forces with other people, both in your personal life and in your work life, but trying to understand how to work together and collaborate with people from a diverse set of backgrounds and different areas of expertise or different beliefs. The third is seeing the world through commonalities and not differences and trying to find the common ground and where you cross and where you share things and really approaching each person that you encounter as an equal. It's really seeing everyone, no matter where they sit on the financial spectrum or where they sit in the worldview, but approaching everyone with the same sort of lens and making everyone unequal.

22:12And the thing that I always fall back on is this idea that humans all have 99.9 % of the same DNA. So if you think of how similar we all are in every part of the world, there's that 0.1 % that makes us all unique and different. Obviously, we all develop differently. But that shows you that the human condition is a shared one, and we all are way more alike than we are different. even though the world and the media tries to point out all of our differences, which of course, there are differences. But at the heart of it, as humans, we're all incredibly similar. When we were walking through your four principles, you mentioned that you also have 11 habits.

22:57And I want to walk through those and talk about how those 11 habits will help people become authentically persuasive. We can take them one by one, talk through them, but let's work our way down the list of all 11 of your habits. All right, let's do the deep dive. All right, go ahead, kick it off. All right, so the first idea is to be yourself. And the way you work on being yourself is really by understanding, you know, having a journal and understanding your value system and what your set of beliefs are and putting those down. And I think we all kind of have a sense of it, but we never really write those down.

23:40And when you do that, it forces you to coherently express what your belief system is. So having a belief system, sort of number one, looking at role models in your life, whether they're local role models, family role models, or famous role models, and understanding why you feel like they're role models, what appeals to you about them, and understanding how that makes up who you are and your uniqueness and your characteristics, understanding the music you like, the books you love, the movies you like, and why and what represents you in those things that you are drawn to. And so it's really at base understanding who you are.

24:24And once you understand who you are, you have the opportunity to be yourself because you're not trying to figure out who you are. You really have that core value system of who you are. That's one. The second is really learning to be a great storyteller. And I think when you want to be influential or persuasive, and you want to make a point of view to an audience or to someone in your sphere or at work, you need to be able to connect with them emotionally and with something that's sticky, something that's memorable. So understanding how to tell stories are really important. And those can be familiar stories that everybody knows.

25:05Those can be unique stories that have happened to you in your life. Or those could be famous stories pulled from pop culture entertainment. But having a collection of stories to make your point at any given time, that's really important. The third one, rather, is this idea of letting go of short-term transactional thinking, but trying to build relationships by being yourself and not putting pressure on relationships because you need something out of them, but playing the long game and focusing on building your network, building long-term relationships over time. And so this idea of never be closing, as we hear always be closing all the time, it's switching your brain to be thinking that you're never closing, no deal that goes sideways is ever over because you've developed a relationship with that client or that person.

25:59And so it's always thinking about long-term. Don't let relationships drop to zero. You're always expanding your network and you're always keeping in touch with people that will benefit you in numerous ways throughout your career. And so that's sort of the basis of being original and being yourself. The next one's generous. There's three here that I'd like to follow. Number one is trying to give something away at every interaction. Whenever you cross paths with someone, trying to leave them a little bit better off than they were before they met up with you and encountered you. That could be giving away advice, time, can even be a gift.

26:41But I always think about when I'm interacting with people, what value can I give this other person. And I know that when I do that, it will come back to me. And you're trying to not do it because you want something out of it. But you know that in the universe, by being generous in spirit and giving things away, you will be more successful over time. And it's sort of that personal character that we talked about in your dad's expression of, it's how you say it, it's what you do. It's how you make people feel. And that's a good way to build a lot of goodwill. The second under generous is practicing positivity.

27:20So cultivating your idea of the good things in life and gratitude and recognizing that every interaction can result in a new connection or something great down the road. But it's having this optimistic spirit, which you can habitually train yourself to be a positive person, believe it or not. The third is showing respect. There was this Harvard study on, they surveyed like 10 ,000 workers and they asked the most important thing for them in their quality of life on the job. And it wasn't money or being promoted or having a fancy title. It was that they were respected. And when you show other people respect, by being as present as you can, admitting when you make a mistake, being sincere, you're showing respect and you're taking other people seriously.