Forces of Irrationality
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Introduction
Welcome to Forces of Irrationality. This module discusses the discipline of rationality &
reason. As a human, you are burdened with a number of unconscious psychological forces
that prevent you from achieving success with client acquisition.
These forces make you more likely to take action that directly or indirectly stops you from
getting clients. You need to be aware of them. Warning: this video might offend you.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious it will rule your life and you will call it fate”
-
Carl Jung
The Decision Sum
🚪🚶🏼
Understand: where you are now with your exact client acquisition state is simply the result of
all the decisions you’ve ever made to do with client acquisition. If the quality of your decision
making ability is good, you’re more likely to succeed. It’s not rocket science.
Most people don’t know how to make decisions because they’ve never been taught how.
The easiest way to improve your decision making ability is not to try and make good
decisions. It’s just trying to not make bad ones.
There are 7 forces you have in your Psyche that, if not addressed, will lead to you making
poor decisions around client acquisition. If we address these, we can become more rational.
Reason & Rationality
💭🧐
Reason: ‘the power of the mind to think, understand and form judgements logically’
Rationality: ‘the quality of being based on or in accordance with reason or logic’
If you’re rational & reason well, you’ll be right and make the ‘right’ decision more often.
A decision is ‘right’ when making it leads us to take an action that helps us achieve the goal.
The first step towards rationality is awareness, that’s what this video is for.
How do we become rational & able to reason better? Inversion. We simply focus on how to
not be irrational, or reason poorly.
If you don’t make the wrong decision, you will make the right one.
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Force 1/7: Bias
🌳🍎
Bias means to ‘lean towards’ or have a pre-disposed inclination towards something, or away
from something. A bias is like a magnet, an attractor. If you have a bias towards something,
you will attract & experience more of that thing. If you bias against something, you will repel
& reduce experience of that thing.
A Bias has a Psychological gravitational pull.
Rule: you can’t develop a bias for something without developing a bias against something
else. Biases are polarising by nature.
Mental inertia: If a human is biased towards something, their psychology will continue to
evolve in that direction. The stronger the bias becomes, the more of something the bias
attracts or repels, meaning the stronger the bias becomes (feedback loop).
Why Biases are a problem:
A bias polarises you towards a certain way of doing something until the only way you can do
that thing is the way the bias has set. When it’s time to adapt or change, someone with a
bias will struggle, or reject the change as ‘not me’.
If you’re biased to think ‘Charlie is the best in the industry when it comes to client
acquisition’, you will attract more information and experiences to confirm that.
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Example:
I once had a client who was biased towards not seeming ‘spammy’. She was biased to think
that all cold emails, regardless of the quality of them, were going to be seen as ‘spam’. This
led to her being irrational and making decisions that were not conducive to client acquisition.
Even after I explained that she purchased from us after receiving the same cold email, she
still insisted on it being spam and that it was ‘against her way of doing things’.
Example:
I was talking to a salesperson who was biased towards the idea that if someone wants to
think about it, they’re never going to buy on the call. His bias stated that if someone wanted
to think, they weren’t properly ‘qualified’ and to push them would be a mistake. Because of
this bias, he didn’t make an effort to handle objections when this situation arose. Even when
I told him to try, he didn’t try very hard (because of his bias) to just re-confirmed bias.
Example:
I was reviewing a piece of email copy from a client who was biased towards long-form
copywriting. He was biased to think that people wouldn’t respond to short form copy and that
more detail = more response. I corrected him by showing him our data from short-form, but
he rejected the data and started trying to re-confirm his bias saying ‘yeah but that’s your
niche’. He had no evidence to support his bias (in fact, the opposite, as his long form copy
was not working), but it was so unconsciously strong that he refused to part with it.
Example:
We took on a client who was biased towards maintaining a deluded self image of being good
at sales. He blamed everything under the sun for why calls wouldn’t close, as his bias was
‘I’m good at sales’. This one manifests heavily in people who have a lot of ‘experience’. Over
time we corrected the bias but it took some doing.
Example:
When I started building client acquisition systems, I was biased to believe it would work with
enough iteration and scientific testing. Because of this, when the systems didn’t perform I
was biased to think that I just needed to run more tests.
Biases can be a force for good or for bad, when it comes to client acquisition. If you’re
biased to think your systems will work, you’re more likely to get results than if you think they
won’t, but only if you caveat your positive bias with something so you don’t become deluded.
Action step: list 10 biases you have that are negatively affecting your ability to acquire
clients.
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Force 2/7: Emotion
🥳😞
Emotion is the #1 enemy of client acquisition. It’s the reason most people fail.
Here’s the issue:
-
You have your current situation in business, in the now.
You have a goal, which is your desired situation in business, in the future.
Both of your states, the now, and the future, create strong emotions.
State now: pain, desperation, suffering, unhappiness, fear, anxiety, panic, sadness, hate.
State future: pleasure, freedom, joy, happiness, confidence, love, over-the-moonness.
To bridge the gap between now -> later, you need to solve the problem of client acquisition.
So what?
Your entire emotional condition (and technically, life) hinges on client acquisition. This
means, emotionally, you are EXTREMELY sensitive to things that happen to or in your client
acquisition systems & processes.
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Entrepreneurs that are trying to grow are more emotionally sensitive to client acquisition than
almost anything else in their business. It’s because of this they find it so hard.
The more emotionally sensitive you are to client acquisition, the more irrational you’re going
to be. Thus, the more mistakes you’re going to make.
In Iterative Darwinian Acquisition, we recall that the scientific method is the only way to
achieve success in client acquisition. This requires testing, patience and emotional control.
You can build two types of client acquisition system:
1. Successful: built with slow, methodical, logical, thoughtful, deliberate change.
2. Failing: built with erratic, impulsive, illogical, sudden, chaotic, accidental change.
The only difference between 1) and 2) is that person 1) operates with rationality, not emotion.
You must learn to control your emotions and do the following when a Hypothesis fails:
-
Sit with and face the distressing emotions created by your ‘now’ state
Resist the temptation of the pleasurable emotions created by your ‘future’ state
Why emotions are a problem:
Understand: Emotions are not the problem. It’s what they encourage that is the problem.
Emotion originates from the word ‘emovere’ in latin, which means to move. Emotions
encourage ‘movement’, (in other words, action).
Almost all emotions cloud your judgement and encourage us to make decisions, and
therefore take actions that aren’t right.
Positive emotions are just as destructive as negative ones if not controlled.
Common emotions that interfere with client acquisition are (this is not a definitive list):
Anger, fear, confidence, surprise, sadness, happiness, joy, excitement, hopelessness,
anxious, panicked, stressed, bitter, insulted, frustrated, delighted, bored, annoyed, envy, etc.
2 Rules:
-
Never make a decision around client acquisition when an emotion is present
(especially a strong one, the stronger it is, the longer you need to wait)
-
Always make changes for your client acquisition systems based on data, not
emotion. It does not matter how you ‘feel’ or ‘hope’
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You need to learn to watch and observe your emotions. You can do this via meditation, 20
minutes every day, just watching your breath. It’s made me a ton of money!
Examples
I was making $50k/mo in my agency and saw a competitor making $100k/mo. I got envious
and mad and started booking sales calls to listen to their systems to try and copy them,
when my own systems were in KPI and would’ve got me to $100k/mo in 4-6 months if I just
waited (I later realised this and they did lol).
One of my clients was panicking on a coaching call because he hadn’t received any replies
from his cold emails in the last 4 days (he usually received 1-2 a day). He was stressed and
had blown the whole thing out of proportion and started proposing changes to the system
and offer. I told him that we need to let regression to the mean do its thing. During the
coaching call he got 3 replies. No joke.
When starting, one of the first cold emails I sent received an extremely negative response. I
got angry, sad, confused & panicked and stopped sending cold emails, changing my entire
copy and taking 2 weeks to pluck the courage up to send again. Never change an entire
system based on the opinion of a select few people.
Force 3/7: Belief
💭🙁
The main bottleneck entrepreneurs face don’t exist in their business. They exist in their mind
first as beliefs, then they manifest in their business.
It’s extremely likely that you have limiting beliefs in your head to do with client acquisition.
Beliefs restrict, constrain & limit you. Human beings can do pretty much anything, as long as
it’s within the laws of nature & physics, and within the comprehension of their belief system.
If you have had negative experiences with client acquisition I guarantee you have limiting
negative beliefs to do with it.
A belief is a perceived statement of truth about something or the way the world works.
To explain this, I’m going to use a PDF:
The Outreach Epiphany.pdf (linked here)
Action item: list out everything you believe to be true about client acquisition.
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Force 4/7: Ego
🥇🏆
In client acquisition, ego is the enemy.
Rule: never take anything personally when it comes to client acquisition.
In client acquisition you are going to be dealing with people. Some people aren’t very nice,
and they can do weird unexplainable things that might upset, offend, anger or annoy you.
It pays incredible dividends to never take anything personally when trying to build a
business.
The best way to win an argument is to avoid one. If you do need to ‘argue’, detach your ego
and remove ‘yourself’ from the conversation.
Why it’s a problem:
We’re in business to solve people’s problems and make money. When dealing with people
who we want to become clients, that should be our focus. The second a sales conversation
or email chain diverts from these focuses, and on to protecting & defending the ego, the
opportunity is dead in the water.
It doesn't matter how intolerable or offensive a prospect may seem, it’s imperative you stand
your frame and do not stoop to their level.
Examples:
I once was on a sales call with a guy who was extremely rude. He said ‘why would I buy
from you when you have a weird accent and aren’t very persuasive’. What I should have
done at that point was end the call and walk away, but instead I got offended by his opinions
and fired back with some snarky comment about something he’d told me in his business. Big
mistake. We bickered for about 5 minutes before I decided enough was enough and left the
call. I took the offended energy into the next 4 calls and they all went to shit, and I found out
later that day that the guy emailed 4 of my clients telling them I was a disaster and should
not be trusted. If you win in the argument, you lose in business.
Ages ago I sent a cold email to someone in the gym niche. I received a nasty reply. I replied
with a similar nasty tone and he posted it on his FB page (we had mutual friends), but
cropped out his reply making my reply seem totally out of proportion.
One of my clients was tagged in a post by a disgruntled customer telling his Linkedin
audience how awful my client was. My client had drafted a whole response to put in the
comments and it was a little aggressive. I told him to not comment anything, he’s glad I did.
YouTube comments used to offend me until I realised they’re just words from useless people
with nothing better to do with their lives than personally insult others to make themselves feel
good.
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Also, don't do things how you want to do them, do them based on best practices. Accept that
if you’re new to something, your way won’t be the right or best way.
Force 5/7: Resistance
🕸 😵‍💫
Resistance is an internal sensation that prevents you from taking action on client acquisition.
It’s the emotion you feel or sensation you experience when you sit down to work, but ‘can’t’.
Resistance is an enemy to client acquisition and operates with 7 principles:
-
Principle 1: There is an enemy working against you, resistance. It’s intelligent,
malevolent and nasty.
-
Principle 2: The enemy is relentless. It aims to kill your desired reality & quash all
your hopes and dreams.
-
Principle 3: The enemy is produced by a fragment of you. It’s inside you, and it
comes from you.
-
Principle 4: You are not the enemy. It’s a force of nature produced by you, but you
can’t help it. Just like a pulse.
-
Principle 5: You must duel yourself. You are the knight & the dragon. War is
inevitable. The knight must win.
-
Principle 6: Goals come first, resistance comes second. There cannot be a shadow
without an object and the sun.
-
Principle 7: Resistance can be overcome with pain, love and assistance (the
opposite of resistance). It’s beatable.
Resistance as a force takes many different forms. There are 30 forms of resistance I’ve
defined and I guarantee plenty of them manifest in you when you sit down to do the work:
Fear: Most common - not working because you’re afraid of what happens if you do.
Instant Gratification: Not working because you want / expect instant gratification.
Doubt: Not working because you have doubts about yourself, or that it’s even possible.
Anxiety: Not working because it makes you feel nervous, anxious or uncomfortable.
Rationalisation: Not working because you’ve rationalised not to do it.
Learning: Not working because you want to ‘learn more’ about it first.
Research: Not working because you want to ‘do some more research’ first.
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Comfort: Not working because you feel comfortable right now
Perfection: Not working because you want everything to be perfect before starting.
Waiting: Not working because you would rather wait to see if things change.
Justifying: Not working because you’ve justified it.
Warped Priority: Not working because you think you should be working on something else.
Distraction: Not working because ‘that thing’ keeps distracting you.
Support: Not working because you don’t have ‘the support’ or an accountability partner.
Feeling Vulnerable: Not working because it makes you feel vulnerable or exposed.
Addiction: Not working because you’re addicted to something other than working.
Criticism: Not working because you’ve criticised others that do work
Denial: Not working because you’re in denial - refusing to see and accept the truth.
Drama: Not working because you’re drawn to, create or move to drama in your personal life.
Procrastination: Not working because you’re putting it off til’ tomorrow.
Self-Love: Not working because it makes you feel stupid and a bit of self-hatred.
Self-loathing: Not working because you hate yourself & don’t feel as if you deserve results
Identity Trap: Not working because working would not be ‘me’
Routine: Not working because ‘you didn’t have your latte, or ‘you didn’t sleep very well’
Entitlement: Not working because you’re entitled to not & work is beneath you.
Judging: Not working because you’re too busy judging people that are.
Burnout: Not working because you think you’re too burned out to work.
Opinions: Not working because someone told you not to, to take a day off etc.
Uncertainty: Not working because you’re not sure how.
Pain Avoidance: Not working because work hurts, man.
Example
When starting Imperium I was responsible for cold messaging. Every day resistance would
manifest in one way making me feel a negative emotion to stop me from taking action. Every
time this happened I would open my phone and send 3 more cold messages. I built a habit
to meet resistance with instant action (even at 3AM). Eventually resistance caved in to me.
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Force 6/7: Experience
👴🏼 ⌛️
Most business owners let their past experiences with client acquisition predict their future
ones.
Experience is, in my opinion, bullshit (to a degree). I don’t care if someone has 20+ years of
experience, if their method and paradigm isn’t up to date with the last 2 months, they won’t
win. What worked 20 years ago doesn’t work now, and experience often hinders more than
helps in business.
Remember: whatever experiences you’ve had in the past about client acquisition were
probably not created out of sound practices with systems thinking & the scientific method.
If you sent 150 emails and got no responses that doesn’t mean that ‘in your experience’ cold
email doesn’t work. It means you send 150 emails and they didn’t get responses, and we
can’t afford to draw beliefs and conclusions from isolated events with poor practice.
I can’t tell you how many people have joined our Program and ruined their results because
they were acting on ‘past experience’.
The simple truth is that if your experience was able to get you results, you’d have solved the
problem and wouldn’t need any help, so we can’t have you relying on it to make decisions.
I’m not telling you to scrap everything you’ve ever learned or know based on your time in
business and your market, I'm just telling you to not let it close your mind to new ideas and
methods that ‘in your experience’ don’t work.
Examples
I had a client who had a negative experience with courses and client acquisition coaching.
She purchased, albeit slightly reluctantly. She then dove into 3 videos in the program and
declared the whole thing bad based ‘on my experience with other courses’. This is irrational.
I once told a client that cold calling might work in his niche. He insisted that ‘in his
experience’ cold calling doesn’t work. When asked why he couldn’t give a tangible answer. I
asked for data and metrics and averages to demonstrate it doesn’t work. He couldn’t even
recall which scripts he used, or what methods, or tonality, he used. He just remembered
making cold calls for 3-4 days, getting no meetings and declaring it as ineffective. Irrational.
We had a client who was running Facebook ads to a VSL. Her funnel wasn’t converting, and
upon investigation we found she wasn’t using practices taught in the Program, instead she
made it up herself because ‘in her experience’ whenever she tries to model someone else’s
funnel, it doesn’t work. When asked why, she explained that 3 years ago she tried to copy a
e-book funnel and got no conversions. Irrational.
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Force 7/7: Projection
🪞👀
Human beings are mirrors. What this means is that when looking at someone else, they’ll
see parts of themselves psychologically. This is called projection and is a devastating force
of irrationality that screws over many people trying to acquire clients.
Projection is where you take one of your qualities or beliefs, and assume that other people
you’re dealing with share the quality or belief in question. This is a natural thing done by 99%
of humans on the planet. We assume people see the world the same way we see it.
Projection becomes an issue when you begin thinking people will act and behave a certain
way just because you act and behave that certain way.
Projection also creates fear and paralyses you.
This is because of fear of judgement.
Many people are worried and anxious about client acquisition because they fear that people
will judge them for trying to do it.
The only way to have a fear of judgement is to be actively judging other people for that thing
internally in your own life.
For example:
If I’m afraid to make a salesy VSL because I might come off as ‘snake oil salesman-y’, that’s
because I’ve watched other people’s salesy VSL’s and judged them for being ‘snake oil
salesmen’.
If i’m afraid to make a cold call because someone might judge me for sounding nervous,
that’s because other people have cold called me and I’ve judged them for sounding nervous.
Your internal world reflects your external world just like a mirror.
The fastest way to eradicate a fear of judgement is to stop judging other people for the thing
you’re afraid of being judged for. Write out some of your judgments right now.
Examples (projection)
One of my clients was really struggling to close people on the first call. Upon inspection we
realised that he would never close or buy on the first call, so he assumed that others would
not. Because of this he didn’t have conviction in himself during the objection handling phase,
because if the shoe was on the other foot, no objection rebuttal under the sun would
convince him to buy.
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People often write copy they would want to read, instead of writing what their prospect wants
to read. They pick words and phrases based on what makes them tick and is
understandable to them. They assume that the people in their niche think the same way they
do, and end up dead in the water because of this.
When I was starting my YouTube channel, I assumed people wouldn’t respond to flashy
thumbnails & clickbaiting titles because I personally hate flashy thumbnails & clickbaiting
titles (I still do by the way). This led to me being irrational and making suboptimal decisions
for the YouTube channel. The same thing happened when getting an editor. I preferred
watching content without cuts and editing, but it turned out that most people don’t. Silly me!
Examples (judgement mirror)
A client of mine was terrified to ask emotional sales questions because he thought the
prospects would judge him for doing it. We established this was because if he was asked
these questions, he’d personally feel uncomfortable answering because he understands the
intention of the person asking (to make him emotional so he will buy), and he judges them
for doing this as he thinks it’s manipulative. Because of this, he was projecting his judgement
onto his prospects and this interfered with his ability to close.
I used to be afraid of asking people to subscribe, like and comment on my YouTube videos
because I used to judge people for doing it thinking it was desperate. Therefore I didn’t ask
because I thought other people would think I'm being desperate. Then I realised it, stopped
judging people who did it and the fear went away :)
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Summary
-
📑
🚪🚶🏼
💭🧐
🌳🍎
🥳😞
💭🙁
🥇🏆
🕸 😵‍💫
👴🏼 ⌛️
🪞👀
The Decision Sum
Reason & Rationality
Force 1/7: Bias
Force 2/7: Emotion
Force 3/7: Belief
Force 4/7: Ego
Force 5/7: Resistance
Force 6/7: Experience
Force 7/7: Projection
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