Imagine tomorrow you see an ad for a magical job opportunity:
“$6k a month, only requiring 3-4 hours of work every week.”
The job is with a new video game company. The work is easy. You can do it successfully as long as you have the digital skills of somebody born after 1980.
Plus you can work whenever you like, wherever you like, as much or as little as you like. All you need is your phone. And if you want to work more and make as much as $10k or $15k a month, that’s fine too.
There will be a presentation, the ad tells you, at the local Cheesecake Factory this Friday. Anybody interested can get all the info there.
So on Friday, you show up to the Cheesecake Factory, both hopeful and cautious.
“What’s the worst that can happen,” you tell yourself. “If it’s some sort of scam, I’ll just up and leave. But if it’s for real, it could be life-changing.”
A dozen other people are there with you. Soon enough the presenter arrives. He chats to everyone for a few minutes. Funny enough, it turns out his sister went to the same college you went to.
“But it’s too noisy here,” the guy announces. “We’ll actually go to go to a different location where the presentation will be held.”
So you all load onto a bus. And that’s when the ride really gets going.
If you’re wondering why I’m painting this picture, it’s because situations like this happen for real. Bob Cialdini once told his own personal experience of it.
He got on the bus. And he and the others interested in the opportunity got taken from one town… to another… and back. It took many hours, and they never got a chance to up and leave until it was over.
To help them make the right decision, the bus was covered with inspirational posters. Eye of the Tiger kept playing over and over. Meanwhile, the presenter pitched the amazingness of his pyramid scheme, while the bus bounced and rumbled along the highway at 55 mph.
Result:
Except for Cialdini, who had a little bit of self-defense thanks to his knowledge of persuasion techniques, everybody else signed on for the pyramid scheme.
My point is that a controlled, live selling environment, particularly one that lasts for hours or days, and one where you can’t leave… well… it can sell anything.
So if you are looking to get rich in the pyramid scheme business, it’s time to invest in a bus.
But what if you’re not selling pyramid schemes? And what if you do your business online?
It might seem hopeless. How can you control people’s environment… how can you keep them from leaving… how can you break them down… unless you can physically isolate them?
It might seem hopeless. But social factors are working in your favor. And I’m not even talking about the corona lockdowns, though those certainly help.
The real thing is we all carry our own Eye-Of-The-Tiger bus in our pockets these days. We allow it to create a completely controlled and engrossing environment for us. We take it with us wherever we go, even to small, isolated spaces like the toilet.
And in case you think I’m trying to make a joke, I’m not.
For the past year or so, I’ve been watching Ben Settle promote his build-your-own-mobile-marketing-app business.
I thought it’s stupid. Because I myself refuse to install anything on my phone except Google Maps and this thing that helps you identify trees. And even those have all the notifications turned off.
But I will eventually break down. That’s how the world is moving.
So if you are looking to get rich in any business, it might be time to invest in a mobile app. One with lots of notifications and an inspirational poster background. If I’m right, this is the future of break-em-down selling… and it can help you sell anything.
Meanwhile, the best you can do is get people onto your email newsletter. I’ve got one here. It’s not the same as a bus… so I have to compensate by being entertaining and informative.