— How to Persuade Like a Magician —

This was the second episode of a podcast I started that I ended up not continuing.

Instead, I launched the best product in the history of marketing: the daily audios with OURS.

Still, the episode is brilliant and will show you the worst mistake in the history of marketing that a huge NBA team made, and how you're probably doing it without realizing it.

Enjoy it, apply it, and keep moving forward.

Rafael DaVentys

— Transcript —

Hello my friend. Welcome to episode number two of this podcast.

This second episode is called How to Persuade Like a Magician, and you're going to understand it perfectly with an amazing story that happened in India.

But before that, a brief introduction for new people.

I'm Rafael DaVentys, I hope you're doing great.

By the end of this episode, I think that you're going to think a lot about how you think about yourself and the other person when you're trying to persuade, or sell something.

I also have a feeling that with this episode, I'm gonna "make some friends", but there is no problem. We're here to play.

Thing is, I don't know if you know that India is where public transportation is used the most in the world. To be exact, the railway system.

We're talking about 24 million people, who on a daily basis, are using that transportation there.

Okay. What do you think is the problem with this?

Well, how the hell are you going to ask 24 million people for the tickets. I mean, it's impossible to control the access of that many people. Impossible.

So, what happened?

What happened was that almost half of them, around 48%, didn't pay. Because of what I just told you, since it is impossible to control that, people were like:

"I'm not gonna pay. They're not gonna do anything about it."

What could you do to fix this problem?

To make people pay?

Do you have something in mind?

I don't know if you had something in mind, but I can tell you that the government fixed this problem.

How?

They started to think about solutions. You know, if instead of thinking they had chosen to hire a standard marketing agency, they would have started with shitty solutions like hiring some well-known actors, making some advertisements, saying how important this is for the country, and crap like that.

And what do you think would have happened?

They would have spent millions and millions of dollars to get no results. That's the reality.

Why?

Because when you do something like that, you aren't thinking about them.

You're thinking about yourself, about your problem. And you always have to think about the other person to communicate well, to sell, and to persuade.

So, what did they do instead?

They did something infinitely smarter.

They thought about them, and started asking themselves:

"What do these people like?"

They started to think about them, about how they felt when they entered the train with that crowd of people. They started to put themselves in their shoes. In their minds, they started to be like these 24 million people.

And then, and only then, they discovered something amazing: that Indians love playing the lottery. It's the place in the world where they play the most. They just love it.

And the solution then was simple but brilliant. With every ticket they bought, they were going to receive a lottery ticket. They promoted buying the ticket by giving them something that they really wanted.

Well, pay attention to the results.

They invested one and a half million dollars, and they got more than 650 million dollars back.

We're talking about the fact that more than 50% of the people who didn't pay started to pay. Simply with the solution that every time they bought a ticket, they would receive a lottery participation (were you already know, the possibility of winning was almost zero).

See the difference between thinking about solutions when you are in your head and thinking of solutions when you actually are putting yourself in their shoes?

Becoming like them?

And giving them what they really want?

The biggest lesson here is that if you actually want to persuade, to communicate in an effective way, you can never forget about what the other person wants.

The moment you forget about it, the moment that you're thinking about yourself, you are going to lose almost all your effectiveness in persuading.

This lesson, I can assure you, is something that you can apply to every aspect of your life.

Of course, getting out of your head and start to think like others requires effort. But like everything in life, whatever it is worth it, requires some kind of effort.

In fact, I have another lesson I shared with my list some time ago regarding this topic. About a person I know worth several tens of millions of dollars, who had a problem regarding a membership he sold, and that he founf some people were unable to access.

Since he is a brilliant person, just by thinking about these people, about how they felt and thought when they were joining the membership, he could solve the problem and make a few million dollars with that.

The most valuable information, like the case I just explained, stays inside my community, with the people who join my daily email list.

It is free, just like this podcast, the same way that unsubscribing from it is also free.

The thing is that I really recommend that you join so you can see emails like the one I just described, and that will help you a lot for sure.

You can join it at Ventys.io.

And just to end the podcast, if you know a person who might find this interesting and helpful (and I'm not kidding that I really can't think of someone who wouldn't receive value from starting to think about the other person before trying to persuade them), send them the link to this episode.

Tell him or her:

"Listen to this cocky guy. Look at this link."

And that's it, and nothing more.

Until next Sunday.

Hope you have a great day.