Yad

The 7th pillar of influence

by

Fair warning: the following post contains some sexual, politically incorrect references. It might offend some people.

It’s ok to click away. But if you insist on reading, here goes:

A hairy English man named Yad once shared the story of an out-of-body experience. It wasn’t his experience, actually. Rather, it was the girl he was with who had this strange thing happen to her.

Now in case you don’t know, Yad is one of the world’s great masters of stopping a girl on the street, in broad daylight, completely sober, to chat for a minute and ask for her phone number.

Well, most of the time, Yad asks for the number. Sometimes, he pushes it, and asks the girl on a mini-date right away.

That’s what happened in this case. Except, the mini-date went well, and turned into a maxi-date. In fact, even though they had just met on the street a few hours earlier, Yad and this girl wound up back home in the evening, and found themselves in bed together. And that’s when the out-of-body experience supposedly happened.

You see, the girl was amazed by Yad’s seemingly irresistable confidence at every step of the way, from approaching her on the street, to asking her out, to moving her from bar to bar, and now getting her naked and in bed.

She was wondering how much further this would go, and whether she was really willing to sleep with a guy she had just met on the street only hours earlier.

In the end, she said something like, “We were having sex, but at the same time I felt like I was just having this out-of-body experience, floating around above the bed, watching all this unfold and asking myself, ‘Who is this guy and how is he so relaxed about this whole thing?'”

Well, I’m not here to plug Yad or his pickup skills today. Instead, I want to talk about the 7th pillar of influence.

You might already know something about the first 6 pillars. They were identified and written up by Robert Cialdini in his book Influence. These are the 6 golden rules that  persuaders of all stripes supposedly use — stuff like reciprocity, liking, social proof, etc.

But I believe there is another big pillar of influence that Cialdini left out. It’s in the story above. My guess is that it also drives about 90% of Internet traffic today. And according to famous copywriter Gary Halbert, it might even be the #1 reason that people buy stuff from advertisements.

Have you got it yet? Here’s a hint. It’s the common thread in all of the following headlines:

“Grains puffed to 8 times normal size”

“Its reputation and its odor precede it”

“The amazing money-making secret of a desperate nerd from Ohio”

“Why whales got so big”

I’m sure by now you have it so I’ll stop teasing. That 7th (and possibly most important) pillar is plain old, tried and true…

Curiosity.

Yep, curiosity. Curiosity can drive clicks. It can sell products. And as you can read in the story above, it can even get a girl to sleep with a hairy English man only hours after he’s met her.

Yad on a good day

Which is all good, but how do you go about creating curiosity? Good question. And it’s something that I plan to answer in detail. But not today. If you want to get my take on it, you might want to sign up to my daily email newsletter.

Why you should ride the void like Indiana Jones

by

Stepping out into the void

“You must believe, boy”
— Indiana Jones’s dad

There’s a scene in the 3rd Indiana Jones movie where Indy has to take a leap of faith.

His father has been shot, and the only way to save him is to retrieve the Holy Grail, which cures and heals all.

Only one problem.

The Holy Grail is on the other side of an enormous rocky chasm.

There’s no bridge.

No way across.

“No man can jump this,” says Indy.

And then he realizes what he has to do.

So he takes a deep breath. Closes his eyes. And steps out into the void.

.

.

.

.

.

.

And yet he doesn’t fall.

Instead, he has stepped onto an invisible bridge, which, now that he’s stepped onto it, actually becomes visible, and leads him to the Grail. Father saved, evil guy defeated, the end.

I thought of this scene because I am trying to illustrate (to myself) and important copywriting lesson I heard today.

It came from David “world’s greatest copywriting coach” Garfinkel.

David was talking about the 6 main reasons that keep good copywriters from becoming great.

The first of these, however, is not limited to copywriting. In a nutshell, David is saying this first reason that holds copywriters back is a lack of confidence.

This might not sound like a great revelation, and in fact, it isn’t.

It’s what David said next that matters.

“How do you develop confidence?”

Successes can help.

So can failures, if you learn from them.

But according to David, neither of these is really the key to developing true confidence.

Instead, he says that confidence comes from knowing that you can deal with the inevitable setbacks that you will come across in any complex project. In other words, trusting that you will be able to problem-solve when the need arises.

I think the invisible bridge is a good metaphor for this.

The first time, it simply requires a leap of faith (that’s when you throw yourself into a situation without certainty that you will succeed).

From then on however, the bridge becomes visible, and you know that you can succeed — you have confidence — because success ultimately comes from handling real-life situations in real time.

And like I said, this isn’t limited to copywriting only.

It applies to any situation in which you need confidence.

For example, I’ve heard similar advice from pick-up coaches.

The RSD guys have a popular mantra, “You are enough.” To me, this  is ultimately about trusting that you’ll be able to handle yourself in the moment.

And daygame master Yad teaches something similar, except he phrases it as, “You have to learn to ride the void.” In other words, get comfortable with the tension of running out of things to say, because that’s when the best things happen.

So why ride the void?

The same reason why Indiana takes the leap of faith.

Because the Holy Grail is on the other side.