I’ve just awakened from a hypnotic trance.
I spent the last 16 minutes watching a video of a fridge repairman from Alabama disassembling a failed fridge compressor.
As my hypnotic trance cleared, I began to marvel at this mystery.
After all, I don’t have a fridge compressor to fix. And I’m not looking for DIY advice.
In fact, I have zero interest in fridges or handymanism. I wasn’t familiar with 95% of the technical terms the fridge guy was using. I really could gain nothing practical or pleasurable from his 16-minute video.
So why did I watch it, with rapt attention, from beginning to end?
Perhaps, you say, I was just looking to waste time instead of writing this email.
I certainly do like to waste time instead of working. But why not waste time doing something I like, like reading the New Yorker, or watching some Bill Burr on YouTube?
No, it wasn’t that.
But perhaps, you say again, I just enjoy feeling smug and right.
After all, the dead fridge compressor was from 2009. And the fridge repair guy specializes in maintaining long-running, old fridges that go back to the 1940s. So maybe I was just looking for confirmation of my belief that old is good and new is worthless.
Maybe. But if that’s the case, why did I have to watch the video, and all 16 minutes of it? I mean, the video’s title gave me all I really needed to feel smug:
“Declining quality of consumer-grade products – 2009 fridge compressor autopsy…”
So no, it can’t be that.
But perhaps I just wanted to share something cool with a friend.
Even though I have no interest in handymanism, I do have a friend who is into it. I wanted to forward him this video, and maybe, you say, I just wanted to make sure it was worthwhile.
But that doesn’t hold water either. After all, this video popped up on a news aggregator I frequent, where it got 2-3x the usual number of upvotes. That’s a lot of tacit endorsement of quality. And I could tell within just the first minute or two that my friend might find this video interesting, and that I should send him the link.
So why did I myself watch the entire thing?
In trying to figure out the answer to this puzzle, I jumped back to a critical point in the video at minute 5:54.
The fridge guy has just tested whether the compressor failed because of electrical failure. No, it turns out, it wasn’t electrical.
So he decides to cut open the locked-up compressor and see what’s going on inside. As soon as he cuts the compressor open, the motor moves freely, and is no longer locked up.
The fridge guy is in wonder.
“I don’t understand at all,” he says. He decides to try to power the compressor up again. “My guess is it still won’t start.”
“Aha!” I said. “I get it now!”
Because I realized what was going on. I realized why I had been sucked into this video so hypnotically.
It was the structure of the way the fridge guy was doing his compressor autopsy.
He was using the exact same structure I read about once. A very smart and influential professor of persuasion spelled out this structure in a book, and he said it’s the best way to present any new information and teach anyone anything.
I don’t know if the fridge repair guy had been secretly reading the work of this professor of persuasion.
But I do know that if you’re trying to teach anybody anything, whether in person, in your courses, or just in your marketing, then this structure is super valuable.
It makes it so people actually want to consume your material. They will even want to consume it all the way to the end (just look at me and that 16-minute fridge video).
This structure also makes it so the info you are teaching sticks in people’s heads. That way, they are more likely to use it, profit from it, and become grateful students and customers for life.
And this structure even makes it so people experience an “Aha moment,” just like I did. When that happens, people feel compelled to share their enthusiasm with others, just like I am doing now with you right now.
You might be curious about this structure and who this professor of persuasion is.
Well, I will tell you the guy’s name is Robert Cialdini. He is famous for writing the book Influence. But the structure I’m talking about is not described in Influence.
Instead, it’s described in another of Cialdini’s books, Pre-Suasion.
Now, if you read Daniel Throssell’s emails, you might know that Daniel advises people to skip Pre-Suasion. He even calls it the worst copywriting book he has ever read.
I don’t agree.
Because in Chapter 6 of Pre-Suasion, Cialdini spells out the exact structure I’ve been telling you about. Plus he gives you an example from his own teaching.
This is some hard-core how-to. And if you ever want to get information into people’s heads, and make it stick there, for their benefit as well as your own, you might find this how-to information very valuable.
In case you want it: