Ep 350: Power of Persuasion

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As a leader, your power of persuasion is critical. Why do I say that?

Because you’re going to help someone build their dream, or you’re going to get people to join you in building your dream. Persuasion is not talking someone into doing something they don’t want to do. That’s manipulation. Persuasion is presenting a compelling vision, argument, idea in such a way that when someone else hears it, they want to join you more than they want to do it maybe themselves or do it with someone else.

Maybe it’s a fancy word for selling, but you’ve been doing it your whole life. When I was in elementary school, people would decide what we were going to do at recess, and I had the ability to persuade them to play kickball instead of tag. Your ability to communicate in such a way that people around you follow your vision and your ideas is very powerful.

How good are you at persuading people? Can you cast a vision? Do you speak in a compelling way?

I’m involved in nearly all interviews at my company at the higher level. Why? I want to share with them what I see the next year, what I see the next five years. I’m persuading. I’m pre-persuading because I know somebody’s going to offer them a job because they’re talented.

Let me take you through my timeline of my career and just demonstrate to you the power in persuasion.

I have partnered with two people when I was under the age of 30, both people that I previously worked for. They then came to work with me in my startups. Why? They would tell you that I had energy, confidence, and a proven track record of success. 

I had a friend that was interviewing for a job up in Philadelphia, and you had to memorize a four-page script, and I got my friend to allow me to do the job interview because he was never going to memorize it. And he gave me the job interview. I persuaded him to give me the job interview and I got the job made over a quarter of a million dollars and it gave me seed money for one of my start-ups. I knew he was never going to do it.

Within a year, I got the person in charge of me to give me a larger area. I asked, “Why don’t you just give me the whole state?”. I said:  Look what I did in three months. What do you think I can do in a year? What do you think I can do in two years? I eventually built it to 23 areas and went to more homes than the Sunday edition of the Washington Post. That was persuasion.

Then I had to recruit publishers for these 20-some cities. I persuaded them to join me. I couldn’t offer them one penny and didn’t pay them one penny. They were going to quit whatever they were doing and start a business, and the only money they made was the money they brought in. How did I persuade them. I told them: You can do it. I’m going to train you, I’m going to come here the first week, we’re going to go in the businesses, I’m going to show you exactly how I did it, my area. I only worked with one publisher at a time. You’re it, you’re going to be my total focus for the next 90 days, we’re going to get this off the ground. I’ve never ever not had a publisher produce a direct mail magazine under me. That was my pitch.

I had never worked with a publisher who did not get their first magazine off the ground because my method was to work with one publisher at a time. That was my compelling pitch. And that’s why I was a regional publisher of the year every year that I was there.

I started a startup company within home improvement space. I don’t know the difference between two screwdrivers, but I recruited contractors to come work for a company where the owner knew nothing about contracting. Well, how did I do that? I persuaded them that I understood marketing. The number one fear that every contractor has is two things: they’re going to work and not get paid, so I showed them my track record…and number two is that they’re going to sit home over the winter, and I said, That will never happen. Marketing, trust me. That’s my thing. I shown them my magazine. I recruited them, and now, it’s a multi-million dollar company.

Over the years, I’ve recruited more than more than 10 business partners. I’ve gotten people to leave either their jobs or something they were thinking about doing to join me on my entrepreneurial journey. How? I told them together, the two of us, we’re going to do something incredible. It should be a win-win for both people, and this is where I say we don’t manipulate. I would say Steve Balmer was very glad that he was the 30th employee. Not a founder, but the 30th employee of Microsoft. It worked out pretty well for him.

I’ve done many real estate deals with no money. Well, how do you do that? Well, I found the deal and then recruited the players. I found the property at a right price. I own a contracting company which can do the remodeling. I just need somebody to put the money up. So I did that initially. That’s how I did real estate deals with no money. Finally, I got banks to buy in on my ideas and that they would give me great lines of credit and favorable loans.