One of the main concepts on this blog is to ignore what people say and focus on what they do. It is a lot easier to understand the concept vs. applying the concept as people can be quite convincing. They cry, yell, complain, jump up and down and yet their actions rarely line up with what they are saying/yelling. The good news is that you will be forced to learn this if you develop any sales skills (online or in person). So we’ll outline various ways to avoid the noise and focus on the actions/implied messages that are being sent in every day interactions.
Everyone Wants a Short Cut: This is a stone cold fact. If you’ve worked in affiliate marketing in the past or present, you will know with certainty that everyone is looking for a shortcut. No one wants to get better at anything. They “hope” they get better. Hope is not a good strategy for anything: sports, business, dating etc. Hope is just the admission of failure since the person is unwilling to change their actions.
Once you realize this, you will no longer waste your time trying to tell people the truth. It is better to help the average person justify their faults (rationalize) and encourage them to keep fighting even if they aren’t doing anything to improve their situation.
The above doesn’t sound great. Your average person (who will fail) will make an excuse like “I don’t want to sell like that! I have principles”. Well no one said the product has to be bad. The point is that you have to sell with extreme amounts of emotion. Logic is next to worthless if you’re selling a product to the masses. It barely even works on people in the top 5% in terms of IQ. So. The answer is to create a product that works… And… to sell it as if you’re talking to the lowest end of the IQ curve.
The general population does not have internal motivation. They are more interested in being entertained and “chilling” with other people who won’t go anywhere. Therefore, they always want the short cut and they want it sold in an exciting manner. If you attempt to sell with logic and without emotion, the losses you incur will force you to quickly realize the above. Short cuts and hype are significantly better sales tools compared to logical things such as more effort = more rewards. Make everything appear to be more entertaining vs. educational, hence why movies are more popular than books. So on and so forth. If it sounds long/difficult like anything meaningful in life, you’ve done a terrible job with your pitch.
Convergence of Like Minds: Over a long time frame, the successful people and unsuccessful people end up hanging out together. That said… there are many situations where you’ll be in a room with both groups. And. This will be short lived. In particular, if you’re placed into a public school. If you’re in a public school, by some force of nature, the people who end up as life’s winners will be able to contact one another. The ones who end up failing constantly talk about their “past” and how they “used to be good” despite having no tangible results to show from their past success.
How does this apply to following what they do? Well… before you invest time in someone, figure out who they hang out with and what they are doing with their free time. If they are spending their time with the wrong groups, they will end up being dragged down by the low quality they surround themselves with. This is why most people who end up making it from poor backgrounds have higher levels of independence. They realized that the surrounding environment was horrible and isolated themselves from negative influences. A good way to flush out people with potential is their ability to cut ties with bad influences and simply move on (closing the door and never looking back).
Complaints on Value: This is probably the biggest tell. If someone complains that the “rich are getting richer” or that “XYZ person is overpaid” what they are really saying is that they think they deserve more.
Now the only person who thinks he deserves more is the person that isn’t at the top of his game. Why? Well, if you’re at or the near the top you’re generating a large amount of revenue and profit. So you’re not going to be upset about disparity.
Now how do we apply this one to following what people do? Again. We ignore what they are saying and focus on what actions it leads to. This tells you if they are future winners or future life long losers.
You watch how the person attempts to generate income. It’s really that simple. If the person continues to simply complain, this means he’s not going to make the next step. There are two strategies: 1) create another income stream or 2) generate more profits in his current profession. There are situations where #2 becomes near impossible (rare) and there is *no* situation where you cannot create another form of income.
Therefore, if someone complains about the disparity in pay and what “they think they are worth” you simply have to ask what their strategy is to fix it. If they don’t say “start a second form of income” then you know you’re talking to someone who will be mediocre over the long-term. If there was an interest in improvement, they would focus on solutions instead of emotional responses “I deserve more” is not an answer. No matter how compelling their argument is, words don’t mean anything relative to what their actions/solutions are.
“I’m a Good Person”: This is usually the exact phrase used by someone who isn’t a good person. In fact, any time someone says they are “XYZ” and it cannot be verified, you should have alarm bells go off. If someone is XYZ they wouldn’t need to prove it with words or bring it up at all. Have you ever met someone who was a good at anything and brought it up within the first 1-2 hours of meeting you? Unlikely. Selling yourself on second 1 usually only occurs in work environments, rarely in a social setting.
Instead of building perceptions based on what other people say, you should instead build up their character traits by their actions. There are a lot of people who are rough on the outside but their actions are fair and balanced. That’s a lot better than the outwardly happy go lucky person who would sell his kids to the highest bidder (dead beat dads/moms for example). Being outwardly nice doesn’t mean much relative to actions taken as that shows where their real values are.
Polls and Opinions: These are rarely good indicators of value. Why? People will answer polls based on how they feel. For example, if you poll the average person, they will tell you that iPhones are too expensive. Apple is making too much money off the phone, etc. Then… They go out and buy the newest model every year or two like clockwork. If they really believed that the phones were too expensive, the number of phones sold would decline every year.
Similarly, if you poll people about changes to a product, they are always going to say it’s too expensive and it should deliver even more value. You can see this thought process from failures and losers who say “if i was rich i would give away all my hobby products for free!”. This makes no sense at all for anyone with even one day of business experience. You have to charge something and ideally more because if you don’t people will not use it. Generally speaking, if you give something away for free, it won’t even be used or looked at. Therefore, never take polls directed at the general population seriously.
Opinions are the same, especially when the topic of dating comes up. When someone complains that girls/guys are “terrible”… they are really saying that they are terrible decision makers. There are seven billion people in the world and if you cannot find anyone who matches your standards you’re certainly the problem. This is the main reason why we killed all dating questions/advice. It attracts complainers and losers. We don’t know any socially competent people with money that struggle in the dating category. The ones that are rich and socially strange just need to go out more and stop being insecure about rejection. If you can succeed in the financial world, succeeding in the dating world is 100 times easier unless you’re physically handicapped in some way or have extremely problematic social skills.
“I care about XYZ”: This is another good one. People who claim to care about a particular cause… and yet their actions do not line up at all. People who care about climate change but then fly private constantly. People who claim to care about societal change and go to marches only to live in a gated community far away from the inner city. People who claim that they care about their health and yet they drink every day and make it up with “2 miles of extra walking”.
We’d go back to the same phrase we stated earlier. Most people “hope” they get better, they don’t actually “want” to get better. This same line of thinking applies to things they “care” about. Most of the time people hope things will change but don’t actually want to make personal life changes to make it a reality.
Some Concluding Remarks: Hopefully these examples have created stark contrasts to some interactions you’ve had in the past 6-12 months. It’s extremely easy to be fooled by adamant people. It will happen to you and we’re sure it will happen to us in the future as well. No one shoots 100%.
That said, take a look at their actions along with their word choices. Their actions = the real answer.
For fun we’ll leave you with one other hint. If you find that someone gives you a high amount of descriptive language, they are usually fooling you. This is why women are generally better liars than men. They give a lot of details to make it seem like something really happened (or didn’t). Men are wired to be more direct and to the point. So if you find that a male is attempting to describe every detail of his day or his work or his background, he’s typically a leech. You should say “that’s impressive!” and then try to back pedal your way out of the conversation.
Keep it simple. Focus on their actions. Words mean nothing as they require no effort at all.
If you have good examples of actions directly conflicting with words/stated beliefs please leave them in the comments.
