Daniel Levis Interviews Blair Warren

Daniel Levis interviews Blair Warren
Daniel:
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Welcome to another edition of Advanced Secrets of Human Nature

and Applied Psychology: How to Sell what the Mind Buys. My
guest today is Blair Warren. Blair is a television and video
producer, a writer, marketing consultant, and voracious student of
human nature.
He is the author of The Forbidden Keys to Persuasion, The One
Sentence Persuasion Course, The No Nonsense Guide to
Enlightenment, and is currently working with Dr. Kevin Hogan on
The Book on Spin: The Art of Turning Almost Anything to Your
Advantage.
And we are going to peel back the onion, so to speak, on Blairs
Forbidden Keys to Persuasion with a view to creating increased
online sales and profits.
But you should really listen to this with a view to using these
strategies in any and every business communication medium
youre involved with, print, direct mail, employee
communications, business negotiations, and joint ventures,
anywhere where you need to quickly and easily influence someone
to do some thing.
So Blair, welcome to the call. I am so excited to have you.
Blair Warren:
Well, thank you, Daniel. Im glad to be here.
Daniel:
Okay, Blair, so our listeners can put some context around our
discussion, I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about what led
you to write this book and why you refer to these ideas as The
Forbidden Keys to Persuasion?
Blair Warren:
Okay. Well, for as long as I can remember, I have been interested

in human nature, gosh, going back to my teens, studying all the
self-help books, got into psychology, got into philosophy. Shortly
thereafter, I got interested in persuasion and influence and have
been ever since.
In 1997, there was a day that everything kind of changed for me,
and I looked at persuasion and influence very differently. And on
that day, a couple of different things happened. The first thing is I
had a lunch with a friend of mine. Hes an insurance salesman.
Were sitting there talking. He was complaining about how much
trouble he was having selling insurance.
Copyright, Levis International Marketing, all rights reserved
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He was saying how everybody needed it. It was a good product.

He had a good company. His rates were competitive and yet he
couldnt sell something to people that they clearly needed and that
would be good for them. And I remember kind of shaking my
head and thinking, well, those are the breaks and sometimes things
are tough.
Well, later that night I get home, turn on the news, and that was the
night of the Heavens Gate cult suicides. I dont know if you
remember those. 39 people took their lives thinking they were
gonna go on a spaceship behind the Hale-Bopp comet. They were
involved in this cult.
Daniel:
Uh-oh.
Blair Warren:
And I remember watching this and it was just so sad, and I was so
confused, and all of a sudden I thought to myself, wait a minute.
How did this cult leader, Marshall Applewhite, get people to
willingly take their lives for him, and my friend cant sell
insurance to people that would be in their own best interest?
And I thought what is going on here and I had never pondered that
question before. Once I got that question in my head, I really
wanted to figure out what it was these guys were doing that would
make these people do these bizarre things, when most of us cant
get we cant sell insurance, we cant get our kids to take out the
trash.
Its a totally different world and I wanted to know what the secrets
were.
Daniel:
So that was kind of the call to adventure for you?
Blair Warren:
Yeah. Like I said, once I got that question in my head, I just had to
find out the answer and research it, and that just led to a complete
discovery. But what was interesting was once I started telling
people what I was doing, I had people saying theres nothing that
you can learn from these people that would be of any value to the
rest of us.
What theyre doing has got to be sinister. Its got to be illegal.
How else can you explain the power they can exert over people?
And I thought, well, thats interesting. As I looked into it, I came
away with a very different understanding of what was going on.
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But given the fear people had and the concern people had about the
tactics, thats where I came up with the phrase Forbidden Keys to
Persuasion. Theyre not forbidden by law or anything like that, but
theyre forbidden by they have a social stigma to them. Were
not supposed to use these things, if that makes sense.
Daniel:
It absolutely does and in Forbidden Keys, you refer to two ugly

truths about human nature that few people acknowledge about their
own behavior. What are those ugly truths? Im sure that really
will help us understand the concept of Forbidden Keys.
Blair Warren:
Okay. Well, the first thing that I came away with after studying
this material was the secrets that are being used arent as shocking
as most people would think. That where a lot of the power is
coming from is not super secret techniques but its a very clear
understanding of human nature.
The people that use these tactics truly understand what makes us
tick and they arent ashamed to use that knowledge, and so what I
typically say is that if you dont have an honest assessment of
human nature, youre gonna have a lot of trouble influencing it. So
I call these truths the ugly truths because theyre things that we
dont want to think about.
They may be true for other people but theyre certainly not true for
me. Theyre not true for you. Theyre not true for the people I
love. And my belief is theyre true for everyone, so of the two
ugly truths, the first one is we are all manipulators, every one of us.
We tend to think that only other people manipulate. We persuade.
We influence. Bad people manipulate.
The truth is we all manipulate. Any time you want to push
yourself into a situation or meet another person and influence their
behavior, change their behavior, that is manipulation and you
cannot not manipulate. Simply being present in the room changes
the dynamic of the room.
The way you speak to people changes the way theyre going to
behave, so we are always manipulating. We are always
influencing and theres no way around it, and the reason its
important to admit that is that if we dont admit it, were less
effective persuaders because we live in this fantasy land that I
wont manipulate people.
I would never do such a thing, so what I will do is I will tend to
talk to peoples logical minds, try to convince people in rational
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ways because thats the ethical way to do it. So but if you

realize that, no, you cant help but manipulate people. You cant
help it.
All you can do is be honest about what youre doing and try to do
it in the most ethical way you can with the best intentions at heart.
The second ugly truth is that our sense of morality changes the way
that we understand other people. It changes the way we see them
and therefore it changes the way we interact with them, and what I
mean by that is when we look at people take the Heavens Gate
cult example. When we look at them, we are shocked at that
behavior.
That shock comes from us imposing our morality on them. Given
our sense of morality, what they did doesnt make any sense so
were shocked. People dont take their lives and yet they did and
they did it willingly, so were shocked. And why are we shocked?
Because were applying our morals to them.
If we can look at the situation from their perspective and
understand what was in their head, what was in their heart that was
driving their behavior, it would make complete sense.
Daniel:
Now whose behavior? Are you talking about the manipulators or

the manipulated?
Blair Warren:
No, no. The people that are following the cult leader. Okay.
Theyre given a story. Theyre given a context in which to do
these behaviors and they make complete sense given that context.
Given our context, given our moral understanding of things, it
doesnt make sense so we sit back and were shocked.
One of the things that several of the people that were familiar with
Heavens Gate reported was that these people werent taking their
own lives. They were going to the next level. Thats the way they
saw it. They did not see it as suicide. They saw it as going to the
next level.
And if the next level, if you truly believe that and you believe the
next level is better than this level, you cant get there fast enough
and so it makes complete sense given their sense of morality, their
values, their understanding. So thats our second ugly truth is that
our sense of morality tends to unconsciously change how we
perceive people and therefore changes how we interact with them.
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Daniel:
Its almost like a different frame or a different set of glasses that

youre viewing the world through.
Blair Warren:
Yeah, I think so. If we look out at any situation and if youre

shocked, if Im shocked, if anyone is shocked at other behavior,
its easy to go, well, theyre crazy. Theres something wrong with
those people. Theyre insane.
And my belief is that thats true in a very small percentage of the
situations. That its more than likely that they have a completely
different understanding of reality, of values, and if we can just
understand them, then we will completely be able to understand
what they did, whats making them do what they do.
It doesnt mean we agree with them. It simply means we now
understand whats driving them. Now we have a chance at
influencing them as opposed to pointing a finger at them and
saying you guys are crazy.
Daniel:
Yeah, and I think its just such a shocking thing that people dont
even want to go near it. They dont want to understand it. They
just want to forget it, in other words, and what youre saying is that
the concepts, the coercive concepts, or persuasive concepts, or
influence concepts were really very down to earth kinds of things
that happened throughout society on a number of different levels.
Blair Warren:
Well, yeah, absolutely. As I would look at these tactics and the

things that they were doing, Im thinking, oh, my God. These are
things that we all do. We just dont realize that were doing them
and that if someone pointed them out to us, they might cause us to
shiver for a moment.
If you think about it, cults exist for a reason, okay? They exist
because they fulfill some human need. Theyve been around for
thousands of years. Theyre going to continue to be around and
theyre around because, again, they fulfill some human need.
They are fulfilling needs that these people are not getting met in
their daily lives and so its easy for us to look if we lose someone
to a cult or to one of these groups, its easy to go, well, there was
something wrong with them or the group had some kind of super
secret powers that pulled them in and theres nothing we could
have done.
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The truth of the matter is often maybe there was something you
could have done. There was a need that was going unfulfilled that
that group met and its often as simple as that.
Daniel:
Thats a very positive spin to put on it. It really is. Now you say
there are three thought tendencies that we have hardwired into our
psyches that literally force effective persuaders to approach us with
ulterior motives, and certainly in the example of the cult situation,
thats absolutely true.
What do you mean by that statement, though, in a general, broader
context, in the context of everyday life? What do you mean by
persuaders having to approach the people that they want to
influence with ulterior motives?
Blair Warren:
The biggest thing is and this sounds very obvious once its
pointed out but it is not obvious to the person whos out there
beating their brains in trying to persuade and influence people and
not getting results, and it has to do with resistance. We resist. We
resist constantly.
One of the examples I used in the book is just a very simple
experiment that if you stand before somebody and lift your hands
up, put your palms out in front of you toward them and ask them to
do the same, you push your palms together and then gently begin
to push at them.
What they will do every time Ive ever done it is they push back.
They didnt plan to. They dont necessarily want to. They do
because its a reaction. Theyre simply pushing back when they
feel pressure. People resist and because we resist, we have to deal
with that and get around it.
The three tendencies that I point out in Forbidden Keys are the first
one is that people resist unwelcome attempts to persuade them. It
sounds very obvious and yet so many people completely ignore it.
They go straight in. Their pitch is obvious. Theyre appealing to
logic. Theyre too direct and they get resistance, and then theyre
surprised because their pitch made total sense. Why didnt they
buy? It made sense. They needed it. I covered all the bases and
yet they didnt buy. Why? Because they resist. People resist.
The truth is, and now that I look at it, we resist even welcome
attempts to persuade us. Think about people who go to smoking
clinics to stop smoking, or go to weight loss clinics, if they go to a
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therapist. Theyre going in begging to be changed. They still

resist, so people resist. Thats No. 1.
The second one is, and this is, again, its obvious when you point it
out. Its not obvious when youre trying to persuade people and
not getting results. The second tendency is people cannot resist
what they cant detect. If they dont sense any pressure they are
not gonna resist it, so the whole point is to come at people and try
to influence them in ways that do not get their defenses up.
The third tendency is that people sometimes believe what theyre
told but they never doubt what they conclude. So when we try to
tell people things, oftentimes were just too direct. We say things
directly and if you can lead people to come to their own
conclusion, they will never doubt that conclusion, whereas they
may doubt and likely will doubt what you tell them directly.
Daniel:
Thats so beautiful. Thats like the I guess the film maxim show
dont tell, right? If you show somebody something, you totally
bypass their BS detector.
Blair Warren:
Yeah, because its they are coming to their own conclusion about it
as opposed to being told. Its like they say in writing, its show
dont tell. Why is that in copy writing thats even important?
Joe Sugarman has pointed out in some of his books that when
people when you give people enough information to draw their
own conclusion, not only are they more committed to that
conclusion, but it also makes them more invested in your message.
They are no longer passively taking in information.
Theyre helping participate in the message, and creating the
message, and are more involved with it, and that cant happen if
you simply come straight out and tell people things directly.
Daniel:
Give us an example. You tell a wonderful story about Victor

Lustig. Tell them the story of Victor Lustig and how he showed
instead of telling. I lover that story.
Blair Warren:
Well, Lustig was a conman who was who did many things. One
of the things he was doing in the story I tell in the book is he had a
scam where he pretended to be a government official who was
trying to sell the Eiffel Tower for scrap.
No one had heard this because he said the government didnt want
to make an announcement that the tower was gonna be sold, but it
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had to be sold for scrap and he was looking for buyers. So he goes
out, he finds several people. He presents them documentation. He
gets some bids and at the last minute, one of the the win bidder
starts to get suspicious about Lustig.
Is he real? Is this legitimate? Ive never heard about this on the
news? Whats going on here? Lustig knows that this is going on
and he has to communicate to the person that he is legitimate.
Hes already showed him his credentials but the guys doubt has
been raised, so what does he do?
What he does is he asks the guy well, actually he begins to tell
him about his financial woes. He begins to talk about how as a
government official he doesnt make enough money. He wishes
there was a way to make some money on the side, and all of a
sudden his victim realizes, wait a minute.
This guys asking me for a bribe and who asks for bribes?
Government officials. This guy
Daniel:
Especially in France.
Blair Warren:
Whats that?
Daniel:
Especially in France at the time.
Blair Warren:
This guy must be legitimate because hes asking me for a bribe.

So he ends up going through with the deal. The whole point was
as opposed to saying, look, I realize you may have some doubts.
Let me show you my credentials again. Let me tell you all the
reasons that Im legitimate.
He simply engaged in a behavior that led his victim to come to the
conclusion that he was authentic and legitimate.
Daniel:
Thats such a beautiful example. Now you say there is a secret

trap door to the human mind and that the most adept persuaders
use this trap door to bypass our defenses. Where is it and how do
we open it?
Blair Warren:
One of the things that I have read or studied is looking for keys,
triggers, secrets to get into the human mind. Everybody has come
up with their classifications of what these are.
One of the most famous is Abraham Maslow who created his
hierarchy of needs. He divided human needs up into five levels.
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We have our physiological needs. We have our needs for safety,

and our social needs, our self-needs, and at the highest level we
have our self-actualizing needs.
And Ive always loved that and Ive always thought that really
gave a lot of insight into human nature, and yet I couldnt apply it
to what I saw in daily life and make any sense out of what I was
seeing which led me to think that maybe there was something else
going on. Obviously those are all needs and we do tend to go out
and fulfill those needs.
But I think theres something else going on and theres a quote by
the writer Colin Wilson that really sums it up and he says, All
human beings share a common craving to escape the narrowness of
their lives, the suffocation of their immediate surroundings. In
other words, theyre looking for something to become mentally
engaged in.
Theyre trying to alleviate their boredom, and so what I say the
Achilles heel of the human mind, the trap door of the human mind,
is our need for mental engagement. And its really something that,
again, when you point it out it seems obvious. We dont tend to
think about it.
And when I say mental engagement, theres a professor of
psychiatry, Dr. Ronald Simons, who wrote a book called Boo, and
it was all about what he called the startle reflex, or he also called it
the tension capture, which is how I refer to it in Forbidden Keys.
And he talks about when a person experiences this startle reflex,
when they have their attention captured by something.
It doesnt matter what it is, anything. Something captures our
attention. Four different things can happen to our behavior without
our being aware of it and the four things he pointed out are the first
one is paralysis. We stop. Literally we stop and we have to pay
attention to what it was that caught our attention.
The second thing is we tend to approach whatever it was that
caught our attention. We tend to move toward it. And the third
thing is we tend to match the behavior of what has caught our
attention. We tend to conform to it. And the final thing is is we
tend to become obedient to it. So its not something a matter of,
hey, Ive got your attention. Let me give you my sales pitch.
The very act of capturing someones attention holds them toward
you in a very powerful way and that the problem is as we like to
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believe were rational beings. The trouble is that attention capture

is something that you cant you never know when its happened
to you. You can only know after the fact and thats another reason
that makes it so powerful.
In the book I give an example of if you went to a movie theater and
you were gonna sit down and watch a film, and I handed you a
little button before you did and I said, look, heres what I want you
to do. As you watch this movie, theres gonna be a point where
you become totally absorbed in the movie.
It might be in 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, but at some point
you become lost in the movie and youre just sucked in completely
to the movie. What I want to know is how long does it take for
that to happen? So I want you to hold this button and the moment
that you become fully engaged in the movie, I want you to press
the button.
And then my question is, well, how long would it take you to press
the button? The answer is youd never press the button because by
the time you are fully engaged in the movie, you have forgotten
about the button. You will only realize that your attention has
been captured after your attention has been released and moved to
something else.
So its a very serious, very powerful concept that people tend to
just blow off. They go, oh, well we need to get peoples attention.
Well, of course. Everyone knows that. Well, why and what are
the ramifications of that and how important is it to try to capture
someones attention and hold onto it throughout the entire duration
of the persuasion process?
Daniel:
Thats kind of the definition of interest. Interest is sustained

attention and every copy writer knows that attention, interest,
desire, action, and its that interest is so important. When you
understand that its simply sustained attention, you cast a whole
new light on your efforts to persuade.
Blair Warren:
Yeah, Ive actually heard people that are trying to write copy and
theyll say, There. Ive got my headline. Now Ive got their
attention. Great. And then they go on trying to make their
argument and Im thinking, wait a minute. Thats the first step.
Youve got your attention.
Now you have to keep it and thats something that has to go from
beginning to end or else youve lost them. So attention and
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interest is not just a step. It laces the entire message if its going to
be effective.
Daniel:
Right. Heres a little off the wall question. The second and third
lessons in your course are titled The Mechanics of Mind Control,
Parts 1 and 2. Now I want to ask you why didnt you use the
ulterior motive theory to bypass our blinders and natural resistance
to the title like that?
Blair Warren:
Im not sure I understand the question.
Daniel:
Well, we talked about how when were talking about cults and
mind control theres a lot of negative connotation around that, so
you chose to title a part of your course The Mechanics of Mind
Control. Its very
Blair Warren:
Its dark.
Daniel:
Its dark, yeah, absolutely, so why did you choose an ulterior

motive to kind of ease us into that?
Blair Warren:
I did that for the same reason I called the course The Forbidden
Keys to Persuasion. I wanted to create a contrast to what people
are used to hearing and I wanted to create a sense of foreboding
and danger, if you will.
Daniel:
Prurient interest is really what it is.
Blair Warren:
Absolutely, yeah. I could have called it something else, The

Mechanics of Influencing People, or etc., but The Mechanics of
Mind Control, which I think is a completely accurate statement,
its edgy, and it will grab peoples attention, and thats really why.
And at this point, once they have read that, theyre no longer a
buyer. Theyve bought the book. Does that make sense?
Daniel:
Yeah.
Blair Warren:
But its also it will create interest if you tell people that. Its one of
those things that they go, well, I want to hear more.
Daniel:
Its almost like when youre a little kid and your parents tell you
dont look in the cupboard. Whats the first thing youre going to
do?
Blair Warren:
Thats right, exactly.
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Daniel:
Well, you talk about The Mechanics of Mind Control, so lets

talk about that a little bit. Can you give us the basic mechanisms
that cults use to control their followers?
Blair Warren:
Okay. This is another area where there have been hundreds of

books, probably thousands of articles written on this, and there are
many great theories as to whats going on. People have broken it
down into many different steps. What my purpose was as I studied
this material is I wanted to simplify it and understand it in a way
that I could apply it.
So I wasnt trying to be published in an academic journal or to
discover the ultimate truth. I was trying to look at it and find ways,
levers if you will, that I can extract and use in my daily life.
So what I did as I looked at it I divided it I saw three different
areas where the cults really excelled in grabbing people, bringing
them in, and there are three ways that we can even apply in our
own lives in ethical ways, and its really a three-step process. The
first step is that these, the cults and its not just cults. Its anyone
whos a charismatic leader, a very persuasive individual.
You will find this, people doing this, these three steps. The first
one is that theyre meeting a need that isnt being met by others.
Like I said earlier, if you lose a family member to a cult its easy to
attribute it to they have a psychological problem or the cult has
some magic powers that we dont have, and its rarely that.
Its usually that these are people who have needs that are
unfulfilled, going unfulfilled in their daily lives, and the cults have
a chance to meet them and they do. So thats really the first step.
Theyre meeting needs that arent being met by other people.
I actually call them hidden addictions in the book and well get
into that, but theyre meeting these needs that we really dont even
know we have oftentimes.
The second thing they do is once theyve met these needs, they
isolate the individuals. Cults typically do it physically but theres
also psychological isolation and really what theyre doing is
minimizing distractions, reducing outside influence so that they
can maintain their control.
The final thing they do is what I call gaslighting. They gaslight the
people, and gaslighting is a term that came from a film, gosh, I
think it was in the 1940s and it was actually called Gaslight and it
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was about a husband and wife and the husband is trying to get his
wifes money, I believe. She was wealthy and he wants to get her
institutionalized so he can have her money.
Well, one way he does it is he tries to convince her that shes
insane and tries to convince other people that shes insane. Well,
the way he does that is this takes place, I guess, at the turn of the
century when they have they dont have electric lights but they
have gas lights in their house. So one of the ways he would do it is
he would literally have the lights would be adjusted.
They would go up and they would go down and he would have
people doing this for him and the wife would say, Whats going
on with the lights? And he would say, What do you mean?
Theyre fine. But she would see the lights dimming and
brightening and he wouldnt react to it, so she ended up thinking
that she was going insane.
He did a number of other things, too, but the gaslighting, that was
actually where the term came from. So what he was doing is he
was getting her to rely on him and question her own ability to
discern reality.
Daniel:
Hes basically opening up a cleft in her mind so that he could take

her where he needed to go. We used to call that FUD when I was
in corporate sales, fear, uncertainty, and doubt, and you sow that in
the clients mind and they become malleable.
So lets go back to the hidden addictions. I love that term. Lets
talk about how these addictions drive our behavior and this is
really without our conscious awareness. Its a very important
distinction. Can you explain why these hidden addictions are just
so powerful over people?
Blair Warren:
I called them hidden addictions for a reason and theyre addictions

in the sense that once we have the opportunity to indulge them we
cant seem to get enough. So theyre addictions in that sense.
They are hidden in the sense that we rarely pay any attention to
them. We tend to think were above them. We wouldnt fall for
things like that so theyre not worthy of our attention.
So as we go out into the world and we go about our daily lives and
were trying to fulfill our needs, whether theyre the needs Maslow
identified or whatever it happens to be, were going along and all
of a sudden we have a chance to fulfill one of our needs or one of
our needs may be taken away from us. We suddenly react to that.
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One of the biggest ones that I pointed out in the book is what I call
scapegoating. We want certain things in our lives. That is true but
we also dont want to be responsible for some of the problems in
our lives. Theres a couple of television commercials that have
been out for years now.
One is for weight loss. Youll hear a commercial say something
like if youre overweight it may not be your fault. It may be your
metabolism. Okay, so if were overweight and we want to lose
weight, weve tried this diet, weve tried that diet, and whatever.
We get lost.
We stop paying attention to diets because we know they dont
work and all of a sudden heres a commercial thats not just
promising us weight loss. Its promising us relief from
responsibility for our being overweight in the first place. Okay, so
theyre giving us a scapegoat. If youre overweight, it may not be
your fault at all. It may just be your metabolism.
Theres a similar commercial for depression medication that says if
youre depressed, it may not be your fault either. It may be a
chemical imbalance in your brain. Thats a very attractive thing to
people who have this need or this shame for their behavior.
Daniel:
They need to be right.
Blair Warren:
Well, they need to be right. They dont want to be held

responsible but these are things they dont want to admit to
themselves. But the moment someone offers them this chance to
have this need fulfilled, theyre drawn in that direction.
Daniel:
Now you identify seven very common hidden addictions. Can you
explain a couple of the most powerful ones in a little more detail?
Blair Warren:
Well, the one I just mentioned I think is probably one of the most
powerful ones, the scapegoating. I had a friend who was a
landscaper and he had told me that when he would go out and look
at peoples yards and give them an estimate on what it would take
to do the yard, he would close so many sales, etc.
But he came to the conclusion that people didnt just want their
yards fixed. They didnt want their yards to look nice. They
wanted to be given a scapegoat for why their yards looked bad in
the first place. We dont want to go, well, Im just lazy. I didnt
take care of my yard.
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So what he would say and if he showed up and the grass wouldnt

grow or the trees wouldnt grow, he would say, This is a very
common thing in this part of the country. This soil is bad, or
whatever, and the people would be drawn to that because hes not
blaming them for their problems. He can solve their problems.
Daniel:
Its the grubs.
Blair Warren:
What? Yeah, there you go. He can solve their problems but hes
not going to hold them responsible for their problems, and thats a
completely different mindset then, yes, I can solve your problems.
Daniel:
The really beauty of that though, too, is that it bonds the two. It
bonds the buyer and the seller together against the common enemy,
right? Lets work together to overcome these damn grubs.
Blair Warren:
Thats right.
Daniel:
Thats probably a lousy example, but
Blair Warren:
Thats true. It puts you on their side and so they you have
fulfilled this need. The whole idea that we are going to be held
responsible for the problems in our lives is really threatening to a
lot of people and so we want to know. We may go to therapy
because we have guilt or whatever and a therapist may tell us,
look, its not your fault. You didnt do this.
And thats what we want to hear oftentimes and when we hear it,
its like music and we dont necessarily know thats what we went
for, but once we are given that scapegoat, once we are given that
relief, we respond to it and were drawn to the person who gave it
to us. So really the scapegoating is probably the biggest one.
Another one I like is that people need to feel a sense of power. I
dont know if you have kids but if you go to Toys R Us or a toy
store, they often sell a little car seat that the kids can sit in and itll
have a fake steering wheel on the top. Well, we had one for my
little daughter. Well, now shes 20, but when she was a kid we had
one of those and, oh, she loved it.
Shed sit in her car seat and hold on to that steering wheel like she
was driving the car. And why did she like it? I think cause she
had a sense of control. If were in a roller coaster, we hold on to
the rail and we pull and we may pull to one side if were going too
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far to one side. We pull to try to counteract. Were not doing

anything but we feel like we are.
We want that sense of control and so if we feel, like I said earlier,
we feel pressure, one of the ways to get rid of that pressure is to
assure people that youre not pressuring them at all. I watched
some DVDs the other day of a persuasion seminar and a number of
people were speaking.
And one of the things that was common in all of them, they ended
up doing a little pitch at the end of each of their presentations
selling their materials, but one thing that was common amongst all
of them was they all made the same claim at the end. They said
heres the deal. Heres what Im selling and take it or leave it.
It makes no difference to me. I dont need your money. Im fine
without it. In other words, its completely your choice so Im
giving the power back to you and now you can choose whether to
buy it or not. We want to have a sense of power. We dont want
to feel helpless and thats one of the best ways that they can do it is
to give them back that sense of power.
One thing cults will do is they stress the element of choice with
people who join the cult. They dont simply say join, and come on
in, and youre a part of it. They really sit them down. They say,
look, if youre gonna do this this really has to be your choice and
we dont want to pressure you.
The reason theyre doing it isnt cause theyre nice people. Its
because they know that if the commitment is not made out of free
choice, its not gonna be a commitment very long. So choice is a
big thing which goes back to power, and so youre giving that
person a sense of power and they respond to that.
Daniel:
Thats a really great, great insight. Give us one more hidden

addiction. Tease us a little bit.
Blair Warren:
Okay, Im sorry. Im losing my glasses here. I guess the final one

I would say is that people need to be right and thats a big one. It
sounds obvious and we dont think we need it. Well, heck, I dont
need to be right. I can just say what I say and if people believe me,
they believe me, and if they dont, they dont.
But the moment someone contradicts us, the moment someone
tries to correct us, all of a sudden our dander gets raised and we
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want to be right. So one of the first things in sales theyll teach

you the feel, felt, found formula.
Someone comes in and they have a problem, theyre upset or they
have doubt, whatever, and the salesman will say, I know exactly
how you feel. I felt the same way but when I looked into it, I
found this. And what theyre doing, theyre allowing the person
to be right and yet theyre still correcting them.
But if you say, Look, I know you have doubts but you shouldnt.
You shouldnt have any doubts and let me tell you why. Youve
lost already because you have contradicted them and youve made
them wrong.
Daniel:
So the resistance factor.
Blair Warren:
Exactly.
Daniel:
Now you teach that forbidden persuasion in your book is a lot like
hypnosis. What do you mean by that?
Blair Warren:
In what respect? Im not sure which part of the book youre

referring to.
Daniel:
Well, there was one section in the book where you said that
forbidden persuasion is a lot like hypnosis.
Blair Warren:
Okay, right. I understand. That goes back to the attention capture

factor. In hypnosis, one of the biggest things is getting the
persons attention and keeping it focused, and in that sense, I made
the comment that attention capture, if thats all you could do was
hold peoples attention, keep their attention from drifting, they will
be drawn to you.
As I mentioned earlier, Dr. Simons four elements, that we are
drawn to those people. We tend to mimic them. We tend to obey
them and these are all elements of attention capture. Nothing else
has to come into play. Logic doesnt have to. Your argument
doesnt necessarily have to make sense.
You just have to capture their attention and hold onto it, which is
very much like a hypnotic trance.
Daniel:
I think it goes back to your second tendency, as well, that people

cant resist what they cant detect.
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Blair Warren:
Exactly. Theyre simply engaged and theres no reason for them to

go anywhere else. Why? Because this is engaging them mentally.
Their needs are being met at the moment. This is exciting.
Theyre not going anywhere.
Daniel:
Yeah. The whole idea is to bypass the conscious awareness,

communicate directly with the subconscious.
Blair Warren:
Yes.
Daniel:
Okay, so weve uncovered and fed someones hidden addictions.

The second mechanism that you mentioned a few minutes ago was
isolation and I think we can all visualize the physical isolation that
cults inflict on their victims, but how does isolation play out in
regular everyday life and persuasion?
Blair Warren:
Well, obviously in everyday life, we are not going to have the

opportunity to grab our subject and take them away, whisk them
away, and physically isolate them.
Daniel:
Ill give you an example of where it does happen, when you go to

buy a car.
Blair Warren:
Exactly. There are times when you can do that and you can do it
temporarily. Now cults will do it for months. Were gonna go and
live in Waco, and stockpile guns and weapons, and have a cult.
But in everyday life, typically people go home at night. They go
out for lunch. They take telephone calls.
You cant isolate them to the degree a cult can and yet isolation is
still an extremely important element in persuasion. And it still can
be done in everyday life and it doesnt have to be by physically
isolating them, although as you pointed out, that can happen.
Another way to do it is to do what I call psychological isolation,
which is simply minimizing distractions on their part, minimizing
outside influences, and the goal there is to become a dominant
presence in their mind.
Theres a number of ways to do that but one reason thats so
important there was a commercial that was out years ago about
how to get your kids to not do drugs, and it started out with a kid
sitting on the corner of his bed playing a saxophone and hes just
playing it. You dont even know what this commercial is for and
this kids just going wild playing the saxophone.
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At the very end, it said, Studies have shown that it is impossible

for a child to smoke marijuana while theyre playing a saxophone.
The whole point was that kid was occupied. That kid was isolated
from outside influences and thats how the parents could influence
that kids behavior, by isolating him. Okay?
So one way you do that mentally well, theres a number of ways
to do it, psychological ways to isolate people. One of them is
through shared experiences. The more shared experiences you
have with a person by definition the more isolated they are from
other people. Those experiences also live in memory, in the future,
so that again, its reducing outside influences.
Another way to do it is what I call predicting the future.
Hypnotists will do this oftentimes. They will give a post hypnotic
suggestion and they will say something like tomorrow or the next
day as you go out into the world youre going to see something
red.
And when you see that something red thats gonna trigger a
thought, and youre gonna remember this session, and youre
gonna remember the things that Ive told you, and theyre gonna
become fresh for you again. So the hypnotist is predicting the
future. He doesnt know what red thing the person will see but
typically in any given day we all see red things.
We all see blue things, black things, whatever. He could predict
anything, but the point is by predicting the future, once that person
is out there in the world living his life or her life and sees
something red, guess what? The hypnotist and his suggestions are
now live once again in the mind and that person is in a sense
isolated from all other outside influences at that moment.
Cults do that to great effect. They will take a convert, bring them
in, and they will tell them something like this. Your parents or
your family is not theyre not gonna like your involvement in this
group and let me tell you why. When you get home, theyre gonna
probably tell you youve made a mistake. You shouldnt be
involved in the group.
And the reason theyre doing that is cause they dont want to lose
you. They want to hold onto you. They want to control you, so
you watch. When you get home, when you get back out there,
youre gonna hear all these people tell you all these things and
were gonna tell you what they mean. They mean that these
people dont have your best interest at heart.
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So guess what? The recruit goes out into the world and thats
exactly what they hear. Their parents, their family, their friends
say, What are you doing? Why are you getting involved in that
group?
So the cult has predicted the future. They knew what would
happen. They knew that this person would get resistance from his
family and friends. The cult predicted it. The person thinks the
cult is brilliant, the cult leader is brilliant because he predicted the
future, and it isolates him from his family.
Daniel:
It also gives a suggestion as to what to think when it does happen.
Blair Warren:
Absolutely, so heres whats gonna happen and heres what it

means when it does.
Daniel:
What other methods do cults use to isolate their followers

psychologically from external influence?
Blair Warren:
Another powerful way is that they foster and maintain secrets

among the members, so there will be secret knowledge. There will
be doctrine that only the insiders can know and theyll have their
own language, their own vocabulary, and all of these things shut
other people out.
The people that do not know that language, that do not know those
secrets, are defined as outsiders and therefore this bond is formed
with the leaders. This happens in all kinds of groups. Clubs get
together, even just little fraternity clubs, or college campus clubs,
or whoever.
People get together and they tend to create their own vocabulary
and they tend to have their own shared experiences, their own
secrets. These are things that bond the people. Its not nefarious.
Its simply the mechanics of whats going on but what it tends to
do is it tends to create an us-them mentality between the group and
outsiders.
Daniel:
Going back to the term you mentioned earlier, gaslighting, so

gaslightings goal then is to get someone to see reality in strange
new ways, casting doubt on things theyve come to accept as truth.
Uncertainty then tends to regress that person into what Id call a
childlike state where they will willingly transfer authority to a
persuader.
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Now give our listeners a couple of methods for accomplishing this

gaslighting effect.
Blair Warren:
Heres one. It sounds more nefarious than it is but I heard a

consultant one time use the phrase the strategy that this person
used was to cut off their legs and then stress the importance of
walking. And what he meant by this was he would go into a
potential client and begin to ask them questions. These were
questions that should be pretty basic to a business.
What is your five-year plan or what is your plan for this, or that, or
the other thing? But these were also things that he knew the
person couldnt answer because they hadnt done it. So what he
would do is he would cut off their legs, he would go in and ask
them questions they should be able to answer and couldnt.
Then he would tell them why it was important that they should be
able to answer those questions. So what he meant by cutting off
their legs and then stressing the importance of walking, so he
would go in and gaslight them.
They might be fairly confident in their business. Theyre just
looking for some help. He would go in and clearly show them,
look, these are some very basic things that you dont understand
and I do, therefore you need to listen to me. Dont trust yourself so
much. Listen to me. Im the one who has the answers.
Daniel:
But if he had of said that, he would have created immediate

resistance.
Blair Warren:
Exactly, so what he has to do is go in and genuinely ask these

questions out of concern and can you tell me this? Can you tell me
that? Do you have a plan for this? What are your strategies for
that? And then through the course of the questioning, the person
realizes, wow, these are things Ive never covered.
Daniel:
Yeah, classic example of indirection and hypnotic communication.

Hes saying one thing and without even realizing, theyre
construing it as meaning something else.
Blair Warren:
Exactly.
Daniel:
Thats a great example.
Blair Warren:
Another way that people will do that is we touched on it earlier

is that professions and groups of people will create their own
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language and vocabularies. They also create processes that they

use. My wife is an accountant and she will ask me certain things
or mention certain forms that have to be filled out and processes
that have to be done and it just blows my mind.
And so all I can do is simply turn everything over to her because I
dont understand what sounds like gibberish to me and yet its
something that shes completely comfortable with. So if I start to
profess to know something about finances and the money in the
household, it doesnt take her long to put me in my place.
She can ask me a couple of questions and it becomes very clear
that I dont understand things as clearly as she does. Therefore,
Im now reliant on her.
Daniel:
Do you think theres any danger in a sales situation making

somebody feel inferior? I mean theres got to be some delicacy
involved with this technique, no?
Blair Warren:
Well, I would think so, yeah. That goes back to people want to be
right. If theyre going to be wrong, they want to have a reason that
theyre wrong. Look, I understand you feel this way. Its
completely understandable you would or that you think this way.
Its understandable you would because of this. Its not because
youre stupid. Its because of this over here. You were misled.
Daniel:
Anybody else in your shoes would think the same thing.
Blair Warren:
Exactly, so you have to its a balancing act. One of the neatest

things, I saw a quote recently from the book Catcher in the Rye
and the main character had said something that really captures the
whole essence of gaslighting. And he said, All you have to do is
say something nobody understands and theyll practically do
anything you want them to.
I just think theres so much to that. In persuasion, oftentimes they
talk about authority and authority is in a sense gaslighting.
Gaslighting the way I look at it is its an indirect way of
establishing authority over another person.
Daniel:
Yeah, its almost like you look at the legal profession or you look
at the medical profession. They have their own language and
unless youre a lawyer you dont understand it and you are
automatically intimidated. They have funny looking clothes that
sets them above and beyond mere mortals, so thats really another
form of the craft, right?
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Blair Warren:
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Right, absolutely. In gaslighting, another way to look at it is if you

point out what I call pointing out the invisible is another way
actually that people can gaslight. If you point out something thats
invisible that somebody should have known but they didnt know.
For example, I once did something called the EST training 20something years ago. Now I believe its called Landmark Forum,
but its one of those human potential seminars where you go get
locked in a room for a couple of weekends, dont let you go to the
bathroom, that kind of thing. I dont know if thats still the case
with Landmark but it was back when I took EST.
But the way they would start it is people would come in, and the
seminar would start, and they would have all these agreements that
you had to keep if you were gonna take the training. There would
be no talking in the room unless this happened. No one would go
to the bathroom unless this. No one would bring a watch into the
room.
Nobody would do whatever and they had all these restrictions.
Well, you couldnt follow them and they knew this. They would
give you so many restrictions that you just couldnt live up to them
and people wouldnt. People would talk, and joke, and they would
talk between themselves when they shouldnt.
Well, at some point during the seminar early on they would say,
Look, earlier we gave you these simple requirements, these
simple restrictions, and not one of you could follow them. Now
you want to know why your life doesnt work. Im gonna tell you
your life doesnt work because you cant keep your agreements.
And you sit there and when youre the person that didnt keep your
agreement, you tend to go, oh, my God. This persons right. All I
was asked to do was not talk or not do this and I failed. Oh, my
God. This person has pointed out something to me that is now
obvious but I didnt see it. I better listen to what this person has to
say.
So by pointing out the invisible, by pointing out something that
should have been obvious that wasnt, they gained credibility.
This can also be used in a very powerful way. Years ago when I
was in college, I remember I was taking some computer courses. I
thought I was doing terrible.
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I didnt understand the subject and I had a professor that told me,
he came in one day and he says he looked at my papers and he
says, You really have a talent for this. And I thought to myself
what? What do you mean? He said, No, you really have a talent
for this kind of work.
And it completely changed my attitude for the rest of my college
career because he had pointed out something to me that I didnt see
myself, so and I gave his words more credibility than mine. My
thought was Im no good at this. He was telling me I was and he
had more credibility.
Why? Because he was pointing out certain traits in my work that I
hadnt seen. In other words, he gaslighted me. He made me trust
his words more than my own.
Daniel:
Yeah. When were writing copy for health copy, and natural
cures, and so forth, one of my favorite blinding flashes of the
obvious is that the product that Im selling, unlike all of these other
superficial things that simply address the symptoms, we go straight
to the cause and thats such a blinding flash of the obvious.
Once they see that, its intuitively correct and what else am I
missing here? It kind of draws them right into your narrative.
Blair Warren:
Right. Thats a good point.
Daniel:
Now in Forbidden Keys, you teach psychological ventriloquism.

Thats quite a mouthful. What is that?
Blair Warren:
Psychological ventriloquism is really a way of dealing with our

three tendencies that I mentioned earlier about resistance. That if
people do resist to the degree that I suggest, how do we get around
it? Well, ventriloquism by itself is we all know someones
throwing their voice into something else, so make the dummy look
like the dummys talking but Im really the one doing it.
What psychological ventriloquism is is a phrase that I coined to
demonstrate or to describe the process of throwing thoughts into
another persons mind and making them think they had them for
themselves. So one of the best examples is through jokes. One of
the jokes I point out in my book is a joke that goes something like
this.
My grandmothers been walking three miles a day every day for
the last five years and now we dont know where the hell she is.
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Okay? When I first heard that joke, what was so funny was we
all laughed. Thats interesting. Yeah, its funny. What was funny
about it? Whats funny and what makes the joke work is what the
comedian doesnt say.
The comedian says, My grandmothers been walking three miles
a day every day for the last five years. What we do as an
audience is we add the rest of the picture. We picture that shes
out there in her Nikes, and shes got her jogging suit on, and shes
walking every day, and thats what we picture. The comedian
never said that, okay?
He allowed us to think that thought and we had to think that
thought or the punch line wouldnt work. So the comedian
structured the joke to where we would have the thought that we
needed to have and we did it, not him. We did. We added that and
thats what made the joke work.
So he literally put a thought into our mind that wasnt there before
and made us think it was our own.
Daniel:
Very much like your example of the consultant earlier on, right?
Blair Warren:
Exactly, by his asking those questions, he leads the person to

believe, uh-oh, Im worse off than I thought and this person knows
more than I do. In a business sense, Robert Sheldine, one of the
persuasion gurus out there, one of the biggest guys in the field, he
makes a point about arguing against our own self-interest.
One of the most persuasive things that we can do is argue against
our own self-interest. Now what I mentioned earlier with the
persuasion guys at the seminar. Look, you can take my package
or leave it. It makes no difference to me. That builds credibility
for that person.
When a person argues against their self-interest, what does it do?
It makes us trust them. We have the thought this person is
trustworthy but thats not what the persons telling us. The
persons simply arguing against their own self-interest. Look,
maybe you dont really need to buy this, or maybe you dont need
to buy the expensive model, or maybe whatever.
Daniel:
Or, This product isnt perfect.
Blair Warren:
Yeah, This product has some problems, or whatever. When a

person does that, we add the next thought which is, wow, this is
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unusual. This person must be trustworthy. They are making it to

where we will have that thought. Whether theyre doing it
consciously or not, theyre inducing us to have that thought and
now we will act on it.
As I said earlier, we sometimes believe what were told but we
never doubt what we conclude.
Daniel:
Right, show dont tell.
Blair Warren:
Thats right, and so another good example, again, going back to the
copy writer, Joe Sugarman. He made a point about every once in a
while in your copy it can be a good idea to include a technical
phrase that nobody else will understand. And he had people say,
Well, Joe, why are you doing that? Why are you putting in a
phrase that nobody would understand?
And the reason he would do it is he would communicate to people,
look, Im an expert. If I know what this phrase means and you
dont even know how to pronounce the phrase at all or youve
never seen it before, what does that do?
That makes me an expert and yet I didnt have to say, Im an
expert. I simply dropped a phrase that people didnt know, or he
did in this case, and people would make the assumption, wow, this
guy knows what hes talking about. And if they make that
assumption, that conclusion on their own, they are not gonna doubt
that conclusion.
Daniel:
So another word for psychological ventriloquism is indirection,

communicating ways that imply a conclusion versus overtly stating
it, such as in storytelling, or the use of metaphor and analogy. Is
that correct?
Blair Warren:
Yes. Anything that will allow the other person to come to their
own conclusion is what I would call psychological ventriloquism.
Now a lot of people say that you cant control what another
persons gonna think, okay? Its not possible. And in a sense,
thats very true.
Okay, you can tell a joke and the joke will fall flat. You can argue
against your self-interest and the persons still not gonna come to
the conclusion that you are an honest person. But the truth is it
happens more often than not and if you have greater skill, you can
make it happen more often than most people can.
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Jokes only work when they work because the audience will share
and come to a common conclusion about what the comedian is
trying to say. If the audience didnt come to the same conclusion
that the comedian was trying to get them to come to, they wouldnt
laugh so comedy wouldnt work.
Daniel:
I think you bring up an extremely important point that the whole

indirection thing is a real skill. Now I see a lot of attempts at
indirection that go horribly wrong, overly creative ad agency ads
that many people look at these ads and they just dont get it, and it
doesnt leave people with a compulsion to buy the product.
Situations where from a practical perspective, maybe a really
strong direct attack would have been much stronger. How can
persuaders minimize the odds of missing the mark with their
attempts at using indirection to plant thoughts in peoples minds?
How do we know what information is best said and which
information is best implied?
Blair Warren:
I would say two things. One is you have to test. Theres simply
no way around it, okay? Jay Leno is famous for going out and
testing jokes before he will ever tell somebody a joke. Before hell
actually do it live on television or before a major audience, he will
go out and test them in nightclubs.
Theres a wonderful movie called Comedian with Jerry Seinfeld. I
dont know if youve seen it but its all about what its like to be a
stand up comic. And it shows Jerry Seinfeld going out and trying
brand new jokes in these little bars that he just shows up one night
for open mic and does a set, and most of the jokes dont even
work.
Well, the next night he crafts them and does them differently, gets
a little bit more laugh. Then he does it again, gets a little bit more
laughs until he perfects it. Then he will do it for his HBO special.
Then hell do it for the massive crowds but he wont do it until
hes tested and perfected the joke.
And I think its the same thing with copy writers and its gonna be
the same thing with persuasion. Youve got to test. We can make
the assumption that we think this is gonna work but until weve
tried it, and we need to try it in low-stakes environments if we can
and we need to try it numerous times until were getting the result
we want.
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So that would be the first step is how to do it is youre gonna have

to test. But the second point is, well, when do you do it and when
do you not?
And I believe the biggest thing is if you have a point that you want
to make that you know your audience is going to likely resist or
doubt if told directly, then you really want to say it indirectly. I
often make the point that the best way to say something is often
not to say it at all. Its to convey it.
So you dont want to tell somebody, Look, Im a trustworthy
person. Really, you can trust me. Why? Trust is something you
have to earn. You cant just tell someone, Look, trust me. I
mean you can. You can tell them but thats not gonna make them
trust you.
Whereas like I said earlier, arguing against your own self-interest
will cause them to draw that conclusion many times and they will
trust you. If they draw that conclusion, they will trust you not
because you told them to but because you led them to. So there are
certain things you can say.
Our companys been in business so many years. My degree is in
this field. There are certain things that you can come right out
and say. Theyre not controversial. Theyre not likely to be
disputed and those can be said. For efficiency, we dont have to
artfully have every aspect of our message be indirect, but the
biggies are really things we need to consider.
Whenever theres a sticking point, whenever theres something
thats likely to be disputed or resisted, thats really where you want
to apply some of these concepts.
Daniel:
And very often we are in that situation. In the marketing world,

you look at your sales funnel, for example, and people coming into
the top of the sales funnel, they dont know you. Theyre gonna be
much more resistant to your efforts to persuade them and sell them
your products and services, so therefore indirection would be the
order of the day.
People down at the bottom of the funnel, they already trust you.
They already believe what you have to say. Theyve probably
already bought your products before. In many cases, indirection
just gets in the way.
Blair Warren:
Um-hum, absolutely.
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Daniel:
What are some of the best ways for persuaders to learn

psychological ventriloquism?
Blair Warren:
The best way that I know is to not study persuasion materials,

okay, to learn this point. Instead of studying actually persuasion
materials, study persuasive materials. And some of the most
persuasive materials out there when it comes to indirection comes
from the field of entertainment.
If you will study I mentioned comedians several times. Jokes
and comedians, the way they work, will teach you more about
indirection than almost anything else. If you can listen to a joke,
you know when the punch line is coming, okay? If you can pause,
youre watching with a TiVo or DVR, pause the show right before
the punch line is delivered and ask yourself what has happened?
What assumptions am I making? What conclusions is he making
me come to thats gonna make this punch line funny? Its
extremely difficult to do but its a great way to question and you
get to listen to the language and then you push play. You listen to
the punch line and you go now I see what he did. I see the
conclusion he led me to come to.
Another way is watching movies. Movies are famous for this. We
talked earlier about screenwriting, I believe, before the call, and
the whole idea of show dont tell. When you watch a movie, if you
imagine at the bottom of the screen there was a caption. Okay, its
not there but if it was and it said, This is the part where.
Okay, so somebody walks into the room and the director wants you
to know this person is suspicious, okay, but they cant come right
out and say that. They have to somehow convey it so theyll do it
through dress, or dialog, or lighting, or camera angle.
Theres many different ways that they will make you come to a
conclusion that this is a person thats suspicious, or that this is a
person whos a good person, or maybe this is the killer, or maybe
its all indirection in that sense and its what makes us get engaged
in the film and participate in the film.
Because were not just passively taking it in. Were actually
helping create the content based on what theyre leading us to
believe.
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So magicians are another great way. Magic, a lot of magic,

conjuring magic, works because the magician gets us to draw false
conclusions that are only revealed once the magic happens. Okay,
they hide a card, or they take your card, or they tear it into a
million little bits and all of a sudden your card appears on the
ceiling, okay?
Thats not really your card, or maybe it is your card, but the point
is magic didnt really happen. What really happened is you were
led to draw a false conclusion and now youre being shown the
results of that. Now you dont know how they did it. Thats where
the magic comes in.
Daniel:
Frequently, its where they draw their attention, isnt it? Theyre
drawing your attention to where you shouldnt be looking if you
want to figure out whats really going on.
Blair Warren:
Yeah. A lot of it is literal misdirection, as youre saying, but

theres also simply a magician, youll hear the phrase, Nothing up
my sleeve. Well, you dont really hear the magician say that
because thats too direct. Cause that may draw suspicion. Wait
a minute. Let me see both sleeves. Turn around. I want to see the
back.
But if the magician simply opens his hands, wipes them gently
together as if hes brushing off the palms, he doesnt have to say,
My hands are empty. He just showed you his hands were empty
and you drew the conclusion.
Now they may or may not have been, but by engaging in that
behavior, you drew the conclusion that they were empty so later
when you reconstruct the magic for someone and say, The
magician did this. His hands were completely empty and the next
thing you knew, this happened. Well, the phrase, his hands were
completely empty, he didnt tell you that.
He did something that led you to believe that, if hes any good.
You drew the conclusion which made the magic possible, so it was
an indirect communication on his part. So psychological
ventriloquism, its such a subtlety and the reason that I think
movies, magicians, and comics, and jokes are so important to study
is thats the very basis of how they work.
Riddles work the same way. If you give someone a riddle, what
misleads us is we make false assumptions about things based on
the riddle, and if the riddle confuses us, how many times have you
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heard a riddle when you heard the answer and you went, Oh, God.
Its so obvious. It wasnt obvious five seconds ago when you
didnt have the answer. Now it is.
Whats the one I think I mentioned in the book? What mammals
can jump higher than a house? The answer is all mammals cause
houses cant jump, which sounds very obvious once you hear the
punch line but before you hear the punch line, it confuses many
people.
And theyre going, oh, my God. What mammals can jump higher
than a house? A house can be 20 feet high, 30 feet high. Gee,
what mammal can jump that high? We get confused. Why?
Because were making an assumption and we dont even know we
made it. Now the person that constructed the riddle knows that we
made it cause they designed it that way.
Daniel:
Yeah, they know that we will make it.
Blair Warren:
Absolutely, and if we didnt make the assumption, it wouldnt

work. Anyway, go ahead.
Daniel:
No, a lot of the stuff that people that listen to this are doing is copy
writing, and how do you see this relationship between
entertainment as being a great place to look at sources of masterful
psychological ventriloquism, how does that relate to the actual
screenplay, if youve ever seen a screenplay, the way that a
screenplay is written?
Blair Warren:
Im not sure what the question is.
Daniel:
Is there something we can learn from a screenplay? Every great

movie started as a screenplay, right? So if we want to write
indirectly, if we want to cause people to have thoughts without
telling them to have those thoughts, are screenplays a good thing to
study?
Blair Warren:
Yeah, I would think so. One of the examples that I used in the
book was a screenplay that I dont know if it was ever produced
but it was written by Raymond Chandler. And he described a
scene on an elevator with a husband a very short scene, and he
said a husband and wife are on an elevator. Elevator door opens.
A woman walks in.
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Man takes off his hat and the elevator door closes. Well, the whole
point of that scene was that a lot is being said well, back up. A
lot is being conveyed that isnt being said.
The viewer will watch that movie, theyll watch that scene, and
theyll come to the conclusion that the man cares more about what
the young woman getting on the elevator thinks than he cares
about what his own wife thinks.
Daniel:
From there, we can assume all kinds of other things, like the
marriage is bad.
Blair Warren:
Oh, right. Exactly, the marriage is bad. The guys got a

wandering eye, whatever, but all of these things are things that we
brought to the table. We added it to the scene. The screenwriter
didnt add it. The screenwriter created a circumstance to where we
would add those things and he knew what we would add, okay?
So thats a form of indirection.
So yeah, I think screenplays are great. I think films in and of
themselves. If you simply watch a movie, oftentimes if you
remember the movie The Sixth Sense, these movies where theres a
real plot twist in the end. Oftentimes when you get to the end
youre going, wait a minute. How did I not see that coming? How
did I not see that?
And you want to watch the movie again and go, there was a clue.
Thats how he got me to think this person was alive, or dead, or
whatever it was. If you go back and thats how the magic happens.
Theyre leading us to believe things that are not necessarily true.
Daniel:
You remind me of a fantastic quote from Milton Erickson. Milton

Erickson advised his students to read a really good book
backwards. First the last chapter first, then the second to last
chapter, then the third to last, and as you go from chapter to
chapter to speculate about what happened in the previous chapter.
What an exercise.
Blair Warren:
I like that. Thats interesting cause whats interesting with all of

these stories, and jokes, and films, theyre really streamlined for
our consumption. Theyre not a rambling conversation. They are
designed to create an effect on the viewer or on the reader.
And so theyre really the value when you watch one or when you
read a screenplay, you read a story, listen to a comedy show, the
ratio of indirection to direction is just extreme compared to
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everyday life. So thats why I really think thats a great place to

learn it, plus it forces you to learn it as opposed to simply listening
to somebody explain it to you.
So when you listen to the joke, and you pull it apart, and you see
what makes it work, thats really a lesson that no one can ever take
away from you, that you cant get by simply reading it off of a
page.
Daniel:
You talk about something called a God complex as being the most
fundamental tool in the persuaders arsenal. Can you explain that?
Blair Warren:
A God complex as I used it in Forbidden Keys is its really a

mindset that you develop in yourself. It is a mindset in which you
cannot lose, so youre playing a game you cant lose. Whatever
the situation is, you cannot lose and you cannot be distracted. That
youre so focused on the goal that you cant be distracted and you
cant lose.
Well, one way that you cannot lose is you define and you
determine what the possible outcomes are upfront, and you make
peace with each of them, and then you commit to living with
certain results. One of the examples I use is one of my clients told
me about a phone call that he got on. He had been trying to close a
deal with a guy forever. The guy would not commit to the deal.
My client ends up saying to himself in his own mind, he said Im
gonna call this person one last time and theres only two ways the
conversations gonna end, and he knows this because hes
determined it upfront.
The conversation is gonna end with either the client accepting the
deal and agreeing to the terms and accepting the deal or the clients
gonna hang up on him because he will not give up otherwise. He
made peace with both of those outcomes. He said this has gone on
long enough. When I hang up this phone, I will move on to the
next thing, so I cannot lose this game.
I either get the deal or I clean something else off my plate. And
when he came from that mentality, its a mentality that youre
literally playing a game you cannot lose. Both outcomes are
completely acceptable to him. He will only accept one of the two
outcomes and it gives him an extreme amount of confidence and it
allows him to be very focused and very direct in what hes doing.
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The cult leaders and these con men, they literally one of the ways
they get their power is through their sense of focus, their
commitment to what theyre doing. They know exactly what they
want to do. Cult leaders know theyre not going to be able to
convert everybody. Theres gonna be people who join their cult
and most people will not. It doesnt matter to the cult leader.
Both of those people are very valuable to the cult and to the cult
leader. If the person joins the cult, the cult leader wins. If a person
doesnt join, the cult leader wins. Well, how does he win? He
wins because he now has an enemy to point his current followers
to and say, look, these are people who do not have our best interest
at heart. This is why we must stick together.
So the cult leader, in that sense, when theyre recruiting, theyre
really playing a game they cant lose. If they recruit the guy, they
win. If they dont, they win.
Daniel:
Yeah, its like if youre trying to sell something you have to be

able to walk away from the deal or youre not gonna be
convincing.
Blair Warren:
Absolutely.
Daniel:
Or if youre writing copy, you have to have that same sort of take
it or leave it attitude, right? Youve got to be able to take it away
from them.
Blair Warren:
Absolutely. I think thats an incredible thing. If you communicate

that youve got to have it, you wont get it. Like we talked about
earlier, they resist. Whether they know why theyre doing it or
not, they will resist. Like I said earlier, that persuasion seminar
where everybody basically said, Look, take it or leave it. It really
makes no difference to me.
And it was a very powerful way and I dont know if it was true or
not, but it certainly came across as true and it made it much easier
for people to step up and buy the product without feeling pressured
to do so.
So another thing with the God complex, what it does is when you
have that kind of mentality, you have this sense of focus. You
know exactly what youre going for. Youre going for that person
to say yes or no, and whatever the predetermined outcomes are that
youve accepted and that youre willing to live with, you know
what youre going for.
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And what that allows you to do is focus tremendously on the

person that youre dealing with. So one of the things if you studied
the cult literature, one thing youll hear over and over again from
followers when theyre asked, Why were you so drawn to this
person? What was it about them?
And you will often hear this. The person made me feel like I was
the most important person in the world. When I was with them,
they were completely focused on me and Ive never had that level
of attention from anyone else in my life.
I was reading just yesterday that Bill Clinton had that same affect
on people, that when he would shake peoples hands in line that he
could look at a person, and shake their hand, and that people would
often come away going, oh, my God. He looked at me. He really,
really looked at me. For 45 seconds I was the most important
person in the world, and theyre drawn to that.
Daniel:
Quick kind of aside question that just popped into my mind. What
hidden addictions do you think Barack Obama is feeding for the
American people?
Blair Warren:
Well, the biggest thing is a sense of hope. Given our economic

situation, and the wars, and all that, it doesnt take a genius to
know that we need something needs to change. The question is
what? Well, he was very good at communicating a sense of hope
to people, far more than McCain.
McCain, especially toward the end of the race, he was simply
pandering to the fear, trying to fan the fear, which I think was a big
mistake. If people were already afraid, then easing their fears is a
great thing. But he had to first create the fear of what Barack
Obama might do and then try to alleviate the fear by saying,
Look, I wont do those things. Ill protect you from those things.
So he had a two-step process. For Barack, people were already
afraid. People were already afraid. Theyre already concerned.
All he has to do is say, I will fix it. Change, and hope, and I will
fix it. And its a message that resonated.
Daniel:
He was certainly very charismatic, thats for sure.
Blair Warren:
Oh, yeah, I think so. I think he was very confident. He was clear
about his communication. Again, McCain had to go through a
two-step process. People werent generally afraid of Barack, and
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so I mean Im sure some people were, but the real fear wasnt
there, so he had to go in and highlight things whether they were
legitimate or not. It makes no difference.
People werent aware of certain associations that Barack had, or
may, or may not have had, but McCain had to bring that to
peoples awareness so he had to create the fear, then promise to
protect people from it, which is a two-step process.
Daniel:
Yeah, I mean he certainly came out with a tremendous

disadvantage. I think the point that Im trying to make is the God
complex that you described, certainly Barack Obama had that in
spades.
Blair Warren:
Oh, I think so. I rarely saw him get rattled at anything. He seemed
to be very on point at all times. During debates when McCain
would try to say something, if you noticed, Barack would just kind
of laugh it off. This is something as if, Ive heard this before.
This is nothing to me. Lets move on. And it was go ahead.
Daniel:
No, you teach something in Forbidden Keys called contextual

message design and analysis. Now whats that?
Blair Warren:
That is really a fancy term for a structured way of creating and

evaluating persuasive messages. One of the biggest things Ive
found in doing this kind of work is that theres really not a
structured way to do it and formulas dont tend to work really well,
I have found, whether its for copy writing or for anything.
Formulas, they have their place obviously, but its hard to generate
something truly revolutionary, truly powerful by simply following
a step-by-step formula. So what this whole process, contextual
message design and analysis, was designed to do is to provide a
person a way to say, hey, look. Heres what I want to
communicate. Heres the result I want to generate.
How do I use these principles in Forbidden Keys? How do I use
indirection? How do I do this specifically with my particular
product, with my particular service, with my pitch? The other
thing it does is it gives people a sense of distance from their
message, which I have found is probably one of the biggest things.
Its one reason people really find a lot of value in consultants.
They find a lot of value in having a third party listen to them, to
bounce ideas off of, because we tend to get too close to our
messages. We know exactly what we have. We know exactly
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what our strong points are, what our weak points are, and its very
easy to believe that other people know them, too, and because we
do. Weve heard it.
Weve given the pitch so were gonna go out and tell people the
way things are, the way that we see things, the way that we want
them to see our pitch, as opposed to going, wait a minute. I really
need to start from where they are. I need to understand what they
believe, what they think, what things might lead them to make
certain assumptions.
So youre really trying to understand the whole context of the
message in a structured way, and thats what contextual message
design and analysis was, or is.
Daniel:
Great, bring some structure around it, some tools to apply all these
wonderful principles, cause they really are difficult to kind of
reign in when you need them, arent they?
Blair Warren:
They can be. Theyre difficult to say this is how it works in a

general way, okay, but if youre given a specific instance, you can
tend to find ways to apply them. Its not like heres a statement
and go out and make this statement to people and you will
persuade them. It doesnt work in that way.
Indirection, trying to lead people to draw certain conclusions, it
depends on what the original message is. It depends on what the
goal is. It depends on the person youre speaking to.
Theres a lot of factors involved so that was the whole point of that
process was to really give some structure to it and lead people to
ask questions and consider aspects of the situation that they
wouldnt ordinarily consider.
Daniel:
Right. In other words, to consider the context.
Blair Warren:
Exactly.
Daniel:
Speaking of kind of getting a handle on all this stuff and making it

practical on a day-to-day, day in, day out level, if I were to ask you
to kind of boil influence down to its essence and give our listeners
just one single technique they can use to become instantly more
convincing and persuasive.
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If not a single technique, a strategy, a single strategy they can use

to become instantly more convincing and persuasive, what would
that be?
Blair Warren:
I did a report that I called the The One Sentence Persuasion

Course, and the whole purpose of the course was to take all of
these principles, everything Id ever learned about persuasion, and
try to distill it into the shortest possible space to where its
something that people could remember, and hold on to, and apply.
And so this report, it can be you can get it free online, but again,
its called The One Sentence Persuasion Course, and Ill give
you the one sentence cause thats really the gist. And if you can
remember this, its not a sentence that you say to people. Its not
something you repeat and tell.
Its simply a sentence that you remember and when youre in a
persuasion situation and youre trying to influence another person,
you remember this sentence. You can pick it apart and you can
find the aspect or aspects that apply to the situation youre in. And
the sentence is 27 words and here it is.
People will do anything for those who encourage their dreams,
justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their suspicions, and
help them throw rocks at their enemies. And theres five aspects
to that sentence and if you break it down, theres almost any
persuasion situation will be based around one or more of those
aspects.
You could see it in politics. People encourage their dreams.
Barack Obama did that far better than McCain did. He was
encouraging their dreams. We can create a better country. We
can all come together. Look at all the great things that we can do.
Daniel:
He certainly justified their faults, too, didnt he?
Blair Warren:
He justified their failures, absolutely. How can anybody get

ahead with this president, with this administration? Look at all the
things that are going against you. So he justified their failures.
He allayed their fears. I know things are tough but were gonna
make it.
Each of these elements, theyre not something you necessarily use
as a recipe but theyre elements to the persuasive communication
that need to be there. You dont have to use all five every time.
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Sometimes all five can be a distraction. The message would lose

focus.
But these are elements that when people are given the opportunity
to have these needs met, to have these concerns addressed, they
respond to them. The last one people always ask me about,
throwing rocks at their enemies. People are always, Oh, I like all
of it but that. I dont like that one.
Daniel:
Thats one of the most powerful ones.
Blair Warren:
It truly is. Its one of those things that when we are in a struggle,
when were fighting for something or were wrestling with a
problem, what do we want? We want someone on our side. We
just do. Political leaders, the whole political process that we just
witnessed in the United States was throwing rocks at our enemies.
Daniel:
Vengeance.
Blair Warren:
Its back and forth, and look at those people over there, and they
want to get you, and I want to save you, and yes. It was literally
throwing rocks back and forth figuratively throwing the rocks,
hopefully, not literally, but the interesting thing is I tell people,
look. Its true. It can be used in a very terrible way. Wars are
started like that and fought in that very same manner.
But we can use that same principle, helping them throw rocks at
their enemies, without ever harming another human being or even
directing the animosity toward another human being. An enemy
doesnt have to be a human being. An enemy can simply be a
human condition.
As I said earlier, it could be your metabolism. If youre
overweight, the enemy is your metabolism and I will help you fight
that. The enemy might be your brain chemistry if you suffer from
depression and I will help you fight that enemy. Well go get that
enemy, okay, because the enemy is the cause of your problems and
I can help you solve that.
So its a very seductive thing and it doesnt have to be human
against human. It can simply be an outside force. Right now one
of our enemies is the economics of the world. The economics are
the problem. We will go out and help you fix them.
Daniel:
A great example of this concept is that hoax back in the 40s, The
War of the Worlds. They came on the radio and announced that
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the Martians were landing and all of a sudden peace broke out all
over the world.
Blair Warren:
Yeah. Well, I just think this really is a sentence that almost every
time Im gonna call someone, or write a letter, or anything, I really
I remember this sentence and I try to figure out what are the
elements that are at play in this situation. For example, justifying
someones failures. It can be an extremely powerful thing but its
only powerful if someone is struggling with failure.
You know what Im saying?
Daniel:
You dont make these things up.
Blair Warren:
Right. You look into the situation. You find out whats going on
here. When I say that we want to encourage their dreams, well
people go, Well, duh. Thats obvious. Well, if its obvious, how
come we lose family members to cults? How come people will go
and join, I dont know, some marketing company thats a fraud?
Because they told them, Look, your dreams can come true. We
can help you. You can do this. And what did that person hear
from their family members? Go out and get a real job. Give up
those dreams. I remember as a kid I wanted to be a rock star and
I remember being told over and over, Youre never gonna be a
rock star.
It hurt because I had my dreams and who was I attracted to? I was
attracted to my friends who would say, You could do that. I
could see you doing that, yeah. So these were people who had
influence over me whereas the people who had my best interest at
heart, were crapping on my dreams.
So we tend to do that. We look at loved ones and we say, Look,
youve got to be realistic here. Youre not gonna be a novelist or
youre not gonna be an actress. Youre not gonna be an astronaut,
or whatever. You need to get real. And it hurts, whether or not
its true. Im not saying we can all have our dreams met and we
can all achieve our dreams.
What Im saying is is that we all have them and that the people
who indulge them and encourage us to have them and if
somebody in our family has some dream and we know they cant
do it, you still dont want to say, You cant do it. What you want
to try to do is encourage the dream.
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Its great that you want to do that. Maybe that can lead you to
something else or you can do these other things. You can do these
things that have to do with that field. So you dont just crap on it
and thats what we tend to do, and thats why encouraging peoples
dreams can be so powerful.
Daniel:
I just love that pneumonic EJACT. Encourage their dreams, justify

their failures, assuage their fears, confirm their suspicions, and
help them throw rocks at their enemies. EJACT. Thats just
phenomenal.
Okay, last question, Blair. For anyone listening to this whos been
intrigued by our discussion, what can they do to get more of Blair
Warren?
Blair Warren:
They can simply go to BlairWarren.com and my blog is there.

Theres several hundred articles on every kind of topic from
enlightenment, to persuasion, to humor. Theres all kinds of
writings. Theyll find links to Forbidden Keys. Theyll find a free
download for the The One Sentence Persuasion Course, which
they can download as a PDF.
All kinds of material there and they can get more information on
how to contact me, as well.
Daniel:
Thats great. Blair, I want to thank you for stopping by and

sharing with us today. Your insights are tremendous and I truly
enjoyed speaking with you.
Blair Warren:
Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
Daniel:
For all you listening, thanks for joining me for another edition of
Advanced Secrets of Human Nature and Applied Psychology:
How to Sell What the Mind Buys. Until next time, good selling.
[End of Audio]
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Daniel Levis Interviews Blair Warren

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Daniel Levis Interviews Blair Warren

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Daniel Levis interviews Blair Warren

Welcome to another edition of Advanced Secrets of Human Nature

Well, thank you, Daniel. Im glad to be here.

Okay. Well, for as long as I can remember, I have been interested

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