Marketing Secrets with Russell Brunson - What I Learned About Sales From the "Wolf of Wall Street", Jordan Belfort | #Sales - Ep. 42

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

I’ve learned a lot about sales over the years… but this conversation with Jordan Belfort blew me away. In this episode of The Russell Brunson Show, I sit down with the one and only Wolf of Wall Street to talk about closing, conviction, and what it really takes to become a world-class communicator. This isn’t about outdated sales scripts or shady persuasion tactics. It’s about mastering human behavior, asking the right questions, and building real certainty in yourself and your offer. Jordan shares how he developed the Straight Line System, how he rebuilt his life after hitting rock bottom, and what entrepreneurs need to understand if they want to increase conversions without selling their soul. Key Highlights: The Straight Line System explained and how it works in any industry Why sales is about control, certainty, and connection How to frame your product so people want to say yes The three things every buyer must feel before they’ll convert Why tonal shifts matter more than your words The difference between average closers and those who make millions How to train your brain to believe in your offer at the deepest level Jordan is one of the sharpest minds I’ve ever met when it comes to sales and influence. If you’ve ever struggled to get people across the finish line or wondered why your pitch isn’t landing, this episode will help you close the gap. Let’s get into it! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://sellingonline.com/podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://clickfunnels.com/podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Special thanks to our sponsors: NordVPN: EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://nordvpn.com/secrets⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! Northwest Registered Agent: Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠northwestregisteredagent.com/russell⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to start your business with Northwest Registered Agent. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions: Get a $100 credit on your next campaign at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn.com/CLICKS⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Rocket Money: Cancel unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠RocketMoney.com/RUSSELL⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Indeed: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job’s visibility at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Indeed.com/clicks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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This is the Russell Brunson show. What's up everybody? Welcome back to the show. I'm excited today to talk to somebody who I actually first found out about this person. I actually was kind of crazy, I looked on my Amazon. So September 11th, 2010, I bought a book called The Wolf of Wall Street. And then shortly afterwards I bought another book, I think it's called, Part Two Catching The Wolf of Wall Street? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So this is before, I want to tell you, I knew who you were before the movie came out, because I was reading both, I read both these books. I was actually, it was a time my business, I was struggling and we were flying around trying to figure out like, what our next step was, what we're going to do. And someone recommended I read this book, actually listen to it. I listened to the audio book and I listened to part two and I was like mesmerized for like, I don't even know, you know, four or

five weeks of this story that made no sense. It was crazy. It was ups and it was just like one of the most fascinating stories I'd ever heard. Obviously, a lot of you guys now have probably seen the movie so you understand at least most of the story. But anyway, ever since then I've had a chance to get to know Jordan and watch behind the scenes what he's doing. I had a chance to go through his straight line self persuasion course, a bunch of other stuff

and just excited to have him here because we're always talking about marketing and sales and there's a few people that understand both of those like Jordan Belfort. So thanks man for jumping on the podcast. I appreciate you. My pleasure, my pleasure. When did you actually write the books?

I'm curious, like when I... Yeah, so I originally wrote the books. I went to jail in like 2004, 2003 actually, and got out in 2005. So when I was in jail, I taught myself to write. I started like, I was studying a book called Bonfire of the Vanities, and I model, I believe modeling, so I modeled the book that I thought was amazing,

right? And you know, put in my 10,000 hours when I got out, you know, I said, what am I going to do? I said, well, let me just write this book and really, you know, think I need to ever finish it. And, you know, I started doing it and like I'd show the pages to people and everyone loved it, you know, and by the time I got to page 30, 30 you know it was sold to Random House for a huge amount of money you know and I was like are these guys crazy I mean like I don't even think I could finish the book you know you know but you've written books it's not it's not easy it's hard I don't post writers I write myself right so although nowadays I guess I could have AI right from there help me right but back then there was no way all right so I

wrote the book took me a year and I literally locked myself away. And I think this is what some people don't get about success is that like, you know, when you have to do something, number one, I put in massive work studying, learning how to write. And that was an integral step to writing a book. I said, they'll try to write,

but they haven't put in the time to teach themselves the actual skill, right? So I really put the time in teaching myself the skill and then a year like locked away 18 hours a day just writing and writing and at the end of the day I wrote a thousand actually 1100 pages went through like seven edits and what came out of it was the wolf the book the wolf of wall street and you know very quickly um you know within before it was even released, it became a bidding war in Hollywood between Leo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt. And okay, so Leo, he brought in Scorsese to direct and the rest, as they say, is history.

That's crazy. When did the second book, did you write that right afterwards? Was that after the, when did that come in? Yeah, after I wrote the first book and it was sold to Leo and Marty, you know, ran that because you got to do part two, they had an option, right? So they exercised the option and started writing the book too. You know, the really interesting thing about The Wolf of Wall Street is that it was green lit in 2007, the first time, right?

And you know, I wrote the book, then again, Terry Winter adapted the screenplay in 2006. Everyone loved it. Like, it was amazing, right? And the book was slated to come out in like November of 2007. Right? What happened was the script was great. Warner Brothers loved it.

Leo loved it. Mari loved it. And then the writers strike it. Remember the writers strike it, right? And they couldn Marty loved it. And then the writers strike hit. Remember the writers strike hit, right? And they couldn't polish it. So the window closed, I was freaking devastated. I'm like, oh, I was this close. They had written the sound stages, right?

And they went and did Shutter Island instead. And then it took about four more years for five more years for the stars to realign because Marty's very slow, right? And I was in this torturous period but the interesting thing is this is that as bad as it was What it forced me to do was to adapt I had to do something to make money the GFC hit in 2008 So no one was paying you for anything. So I started going on doing speak free speeches, right? I start teaching sales to straight line by the time the movie came around again in 2011

I'd made a ton of money. I was rich again, right from speaking and teaching the straight line And when Leo came to my house, like say hey great news I'm gonna come over already the first time he came to my house. I was in a little tiny one bedroom apartment I'm gonna mention in the water. He's like what the hell happened to you and I told the story I show him a video of me was at the Frank Kern event. I showed him this video of me speaking, he's like, Marty is gonna go crazy with this, he's gonna love it. Sends it to Marty, they ended up rewriting

the whole third act of the movie and turned it into a comeback story. Because originally, it ended with me going to jail, there was no comeback, you get it? And it made it with, you know, they added on a commercial of me teaching the straight line, sell me this pen. So it made it a much better movie and obviously paved the way when it came out for me and you know, blew up my business. So it's really bad things happen, but if you work hard, you make the best of them, you know?

Yeah, it's very interesting. In the second book, I think at the very end you were talking about, because you were, were you cellmates with Cheech Chong, or one of them, I can't remember exactly. Tommy Chong, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, because it was fast, I was finishing the book, I got that spot, and then you start talking about, you're writing the book,

and you're finding your voice for the book, and I was like, and then, then it ends, right? And I remember, I was like, oh my gosh, like, I've been sucked into these books for the last, and again, I respect great writing, so you, you, you write really well. But I was, I was sucked into this thing, and then it was kind of cool, you telling the story at the end.

But I think one of the, anyway, I'm sure you know this or you thought about this, but one of the things I think was most powerful about the way you wrote that was fascinating to me was, a lot of times I get into books, and there's all these characters, and I get stuck by, I forget, who's that character, is that character?

And you brought characters into the book, right? And then you would give them a nickname, like the Mormon, or the this, or the this. And I'm Mormon too, so every time you brought the characters into the book, right? And then you would like give them a nickname, like the Mormon or the this or the this. I'm Mormon too, so like every time you brought the Mormon, like I had a picture, like I could picture exactly that dude flawlessly in my head. Like, and I understood how he would react to the situation, but because you took the name away

and like synced it to like a, like a stereotype or art, whatever it's called, like it just made- I just tried to describe the characters really deeply and then gave them a nickname, right? So like, you know, it's like one of the mistakes people make when they write is they tend to under describe people locations. They get the richness is in the description, you know, because on the other is it it's words on a page. So you have to paint a picture, right? And I think that just to say, you went there, he went there, he went there and he walked in the room and he saw this type of couch, the walls, and he felt like this, you get

it? So it's really getting very deep and taking time to bring scenes to life. And I think that's really all things that we know, whether it's on landing pages, no, there's taking the time to make it really interesting and cool. So it's not just something that's like, you know, bland and generic. I think it goes to all types of marketing. Yeah, it takes them on a journey. I talked about it before with people, like when you're trying to tell a story or write a copy or anything, like getting into the feelings of

the characters, what makes the feelings of the reader like pop out, right? Because then they can emphasize versus most people are like, he walked in the room, it was hot versus like his palms were sweating, like, you know, whatever, like going deeper, what like you're talking about the feelings, which I think you did, yeah, such a good job in that book. Anyway, I haven't read it since, since you know, whenever that was 15 years ago. So I always wanna go back and read, dive into them.

Now, the movie was based on the first book. We talked about what the second book was, cause it's an interesting part of the story. I don't think most people, you know, a lot of people obviously have seen the movie wherever, but the second part I thought was, the second book was because it's an interesting part of the story. I don't think most people, you know, a lot of people obviously have seen the movie wherever but the second part I thought was the second book was very interesting because it was more like almost you dealing with the like the aftermath of it all. Yeah, we talked about kind of what that was for those who would be interested because I think a lot of people even I'm sure you get this on, you know, people

there's the controversial side of you. It's like there's also this other side that that's interesting. I think that, you know, listen, that whole life I lived, it looked fun. It was fun. I won't deny it was fun. Right? But and I don't have any regrets in the sense that of course, I wish people never lost money and stuff like that. But you know, you can't look back at your life and live with regret because everyone makes mistakes. The idea is to learn and grow and get better. But I think there's a time when you know when your life is literally imploding in every single way. You know losing your family, your money, your reputation, ultimately your freedom. And you know you end up going to jail. You're the lowest, you know that's where the losers of the world go. And it's very easy for you to feel like you you know, I'm a loser versus maybe I did some

things wrong that temporarily put me in the loser column, but I am not a loser. Right. But for me, like, you know, it was about re-examining my values. Like, you know, like here's a great example. Like if you would have asked me when I was 25 years old, you know, what's the purpose of business? Why go into business? To make a shit ton of money.

I would have said the more the better. You go into business? To make a shit ton of money. That's what I said. The more the better. You go into business to get rich, to make money. But in truth, that's not really what business is about. Business is about delivering value, monetizing value. In other words, a business exists to take something of value

and then to deliver that value to people in a cost effective way. Okay, in a cost effective way. So in other words, the idea is you have so much valuable if the businesses run poorly, by the time you're done delivering it, you haven't made it cost you more to deliver it than actually that you know that you get who your best buyers are, having something that's massively valued, message to market match, and then running the business in a way that allows you to essentially make the sale, deliver the value to someone, and at the end of the day, you make money. And by the way, that's what it's supposed to be.

I want to think that when I'm running a successful business, if I make $10, they would have paid 50. They feel like they got $50 in value. And that's the sort of mentality, right, that's gonna lead you to make great decisions in pricing and marketing and just features, benefits, right, versus saying, how do I just maximize and make the most money

I possibly can, regardless of whether they get a fair shake or not? So it's a really, really problematic when you go into business thinking I'm just doing it to get rich. Of course you wanna get rich, why not? Money's great, I love money, right? But the idea is the purpose of the business itself

is to monetize value. And I learned that lesson the hard way and it's very difficult to change your values except if you get slaughtered in life. Like it takes something takes a severe insult where you say, you know what, I need to re-examine my values because obviously I got something wrong here because I know I'm really talented. I know I'm really great at what I do, but somehow I ended up with nothing and have to start over.

What's wrong with my strategy? What's wrong with my values? And the answer was, is I had some bankrupt values back then. It was all about how much can I make every single day, ask myself that question. How do I make more? with my strategy, what's wrong with my values? And the answer was, is I had some bankrupt values back then. It was all about how much can I make every single day, ask myself that question, how do I make more, how do I make more? Not a great way to live.

So nowadays when I do anything, I'm always thinking, okay, how do I give more value to people? Because I know how to run a business. If I give more value, I'll make more money automatically. So it's a kind of a shift in perspective and I think it's really powerful. That's really interesting. It's very powerful.

When, like, do you remember like when, like was it something conscious you're like, okay, I think through these values or was something more just over time as you started doing those things kind of came to light or how did that transition, you know what I mean? I think part of it had to do with, you know, a desire for instant gratification. You know, I mean? How did that happen? A lot of it had to do with, you know, a desire for instant gratification.

You know, it's really problematic for people in business. And I think when I was young, I really had this desire to be making the money now. I wanted it to happen now. And the truth is, and I've learned just through writing, is that very often good things, things that are really valuable, take a lot of time. They take time. It's not easy. So I had to teach myself to write. I put in those,

you know, proverbial 10,000 hours I put in a year of my life and it took me another year to write the book, you know, but then I watched what happened because of all that hard work putting in the time delaying my Gratification right and then watched how it rebuilt a life that I would have never dreamed possible Money success fame the whole thing right because of a massive hard work, and I kind of realized it So you know and really from that moment forward it was like this idea that I would never engage in a transaction Where I thought I'd make money and others would lose. Does that mean everything I do is always great? No, I make mistakes, but never intentionally.

Like I would never go and do a deal and think that someone would lose and I would make money. I'll give you an example. I can't tell you, you can imagine how many people have approached me to do a wolf meme coin. I can make $50 million tomorrow, 50 easily, probably 100 million dollars on a Jordan Belfort Wolf meme coin. But I would never do it because I know at the end of the day that I'll make 50 so what they're going to lose 50. So I just won't do it. I'd love to have an extra 50. But what's the point in this? And the idea is that when I engage in any transaction right now, I'll always say, okay, well,

what am I, what's the value I'm giving here? And if I can give massive value, I'll do the transaction, but not if I can't. So if I come with a meme coin idea that provides value, then you're in? Just kidding. I don't think that's possible. But listen, there's nothing wrong with meme coins.

There's nothing wrong with meme coins if you wanna speculate and make meme coins. But the idea that I would have a supply of a hundred million or billion meme coins, and it would shut up and I'd dump my meme coins, I mean, no thank you, I just don't want to do it. I just don't want to be part of it. You know, there's no amount of money that you could give me, no amount that I want to do it.

You know, not who I am. Yeah, for sure. If you've been following me for any amount of time, you know, I always talk about as you're growing and scaling your company, the most important thing is finding the who, not the how. Who is the person that can help you drive more traffic? Who is the person that could be your CEO? Who is the person that could build your funnels? Understanding the who will dramatically speed up the growing and the scaling of your company. Now, the best place to find the who's who can help

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Just go to Indeed.com slash CLICKS right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash clicks. Terms and conditions apply. Are you hiring? Indeed is all you need. All right, Funnel Hackers, let's have some fun for a second. One of the hardest parts about B2B marketing isn't getting attention. It's getting the right attention. I'm sure you know what I mean.

Isn't it a pain when you see the weirdest ads showing up in your feed, ads for things you know you would never use in a million years, and you start thinking that person is wasting so much money targeting me for a product or service I will never use. And here's the thing. Those companies probably thought that they were marketing perfectly, but they were wasting money because they didn't get their targeting right. And that's why LinkedIn ads is such a game changer.

LinkedIn isn't your everyday social platform. This is where over one billion professionals, people who are already thinking about business are hanging out and their targeting options are unreal. You can target by job title, industry, company size, role, skills, revenue level, seniority, literally laser focus to the decision makers who can actually buy what you're selling. It's like having a magic filter for your perfect customer. And if you're serious about growing your business and you don't want to keep paying to show people ads who will never buy, then you have to get on LinkedIn.

Here's the best part. LinkedIn will even give you $100 credit on your next campaign so you can try it yourself. Just go to linkedin.com slash clicks. That's linkedin.com slash CLICKS. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads. Okay, I want to transition a little bit. So after I read the books initially, then again, I love books, I love stuff, then I started diving into everything you're doing and I think, I don't know when you'd come out

with Straight Line Persuasion course, but I found it, bought it, got a copy of it, started listening to it. So many good things, but there's one thing I wanted you to talk about because, so I teach our audience, most of our people coming through are building funnels, but they're also like doing one to many selling, so webinars, challenges, things like that, and there's a million different things I teach them,

but there's one thing that you taught your phone sales guys that I thought was interesting, that's very applicable to people who are speaking other ways. And you went deep into tonality, which I wouldn't even know how to go for more than like 20 seconds teaching tonality, but I think there's like an hour long DVD

or something of you just going deep into that. Would you explain the tonality and how that works on the phone and then we can kind of liken that to how people can use that when they're speaking in other situations, you know? All right, well it also works tonality on paper. In other words, when you're writing copy in a funnel, there's tonality there and it's based on punctuation

and pacing and ellipses and highlighting something or using an italicies. You could put tonality and that's what I learned to do when I wrote is creating language patterns and punctuating things in a certain way, even misspelling certain words, creating tonality on paper. Right? But let's get to it verbally, right? Because it's really tonality is like this is really the secret weapon of influence.

And what happens is, is that what happens is that there are different ways that we communicate. One is the words that we say. This is basic NLP stuff. I'm sure you studied it. Another is body language. And then there's tonality, the way in which you say things. Now, on the phone, body language collapses into tonality.

They can't really see you. But based on how you sound, they'll make a mental image of you. They'll imagine what you look like, right? So, for example, there are some people, like myself, naturally, I have perfect tonality. That's born that way. And I'm not the only person,

there's many people that have perfect tonality when it comes to sales. Because there's tonality in regular communication, like you're talking to a friend or telling a story. Then there's what I call goal oriented communication, meaning there's a specific outcome in mind. You're trying to persuade someone, trying to achieve a goal, right? So when you're dealing with goal oriented communication, the rules change somewhat, right? And the first thing is, is that you want wanna be perceived a certain way.

I always say sharp as a tack, enthusiastic as hell, and an expert in your field. You wanna be perceived that way, why? Because what it chunks up to is people will say you're a person worth listening to, because you can help them achieve their goals. We wanted to seek out experts to help us achieve our goals, solve our problems, we need additions. This was yay big, right?

So the million dollar question is you know, well, how long do you have you have four seconds? It's instant It's an unconscious reaction a gut reaction, right? So if you have four seconds to do it How that's the million dollar question is it through the words you say? Well, what could you say in four seconds? Hey I'm sure I'm just a fact, I'm sure I'm an expert. I'm an expert. People are like, what the? All right, there is no words, right? Now you could say the wrong words, hi, I'm Amor, nice to meet you.

But right, but it doesn't come with the words, right? The way you do it is through tonality. And when you're in person and body language, but let's talk about tonality on the phone, right? So for, let me give you a quick example. So you're a salesperson, you're on the telephone, right? And you said it's someone you're cold calling or not just cold, but you're a salesperson, you're on the telephone, right? And you said it's when you're cold calling, or even not just cold, but you're calling back a lead

that you have that, you know, answer and add on Facebook. Say, hi, this is Jordan Belfort, calling from XYZ company in New York. How are you today? Now, I would never do that. By the time you have it, they're like, oh my God, another sale, call me, why the hell did I fricking do this?

Who the hell is this frin' Jordan Belfort? I'm like, and they already hate you, right? But when I would say, hey, I would say, hey, are Jordan Belfort calling from XYZ Company in New York? How you doin'? They're like, who, what? I'm phrasing things that are declaratives,

but I'm stating them like questions. So when you say, hey, is Jordan Belfort? You're like, who, wait, do I know Jordan Belfort? Wait, I'm stating them like questions. So you say, hey, is Jordan Belfort? You're like, who? Wait, do I know Jordan Belfort? Wait, I'm supposed to, and my mother told me when I was five that I'm not supposed to forget people's names. And all of a sudden, they start to process,

try to keep up with the inference of the tonality. I say, from a XYZ company? They're like, do I know XYZ company? By phrasing this as a question, you send their mind into search mode. And then you're like, in New York? mind into search mode and they like in New York They say how you doing today now, I don't say how are you today? How are you today means you know that I know that I know that you know

I don't give a shit how you're doing today It's the perfunctory greeting that humans give each other how you doing today screw you right, but I say how you doing today And they're like whoa he really wants to know and they're like, whoa, he really wants to know. And they're like, okay, I'm like, right now, if you call, you filled out a form and I lower my voice and I apply scarcity of information. So what's happening is here is every time you apply a tonality, the person who's listening hears extra words that are unspoken, you're not saying the words, but they're hearing. Like I say, how you doing today? He's saying, well, he really wants to know. They hear those words. They process those words unconsciously. When I say, hey, is

Jordan Belfort like what? Do I know Jordan Belfort? So what happens is instead of them narrating against you, like when you speak to someone, you're listening and you're saying, what is this guy? Who is this idiot? They're narrating against you, their own own internal monologue or your tonality is so rich that they just try to keep up and Figure out all the extra words they're hearing in those first five seconds, right? If you do this, right? They'll be like Oh good. I'm doing good. They're so confusing It's like you know, it's no just spinning wheel of death is in a computer, right? When you overload the RAM of a computer, the random access, the wheel starts to spin. It can't process anymore. What's

happening is the human mind brain has got two two parts. There's the conscious mind and unconscious mind. Conscious mind is what you're focusing on. It has very limited processing power. You can only see so much. The rest gets deleted and goes to your unconscious mind, which is based on patterns of behavior, to all the patterns that we know. We know what experts are supposed to look like and sound like, and we know what they don't sound like

and look like, right? So what happens is when I start layering on all these tonalities throughout an entire presentation, I'm always switching and layering on, what's happening is I'm in control of their unconscious, their monologue, and the spinning wheel of death that it overloaded with extra words.

So what happens is it defaults to their unconscious mind and I hit a pattern that says, wow, this guy sounds like an expert. I'm supposed to let experts control the conversation because I defer to experts because they can help me solve my problems. So by sounding like an expert and by hitting that pattern and overwhelming their ability to understand

all the way to tonalities, you're instantly taking control of a conversation. Okay, and that's the first step of straight line communication is take immediate control the conversation Right and the way you do it is to do some tonality in certain words And then once you do that, you don't use that control to talk talk talk talk. You start asking questions and You ask questions in certain tonalities. I'm not gonna say so how much you own your credit cards

They'll say screw you say so how much do you own your credit cards? Right? But you every question has got its own best tonality. So as you go through a sales presentation, you're applying, there are 10 core tonalities. You're applying them as strategic points in the sale. And when you do it right, it just sounds amazing. People listening, they're, wow, that guy sounds good. Wow, he's an expert.

That's why Leo sounded so good when he was pitching on the phone in the Wolf of Wall Street. I taught him how to sound amazing on the phone. Those were certain tonalities he was using, and he was speeding up, slowing down, all this sort of stuff, right? And here's the thing, you say, wow, this is really complicated.

No, it's not. It's the easiest thing to learn. Because here's the deal. Every human being has used all 10 of these tonalities at some point in their life. They just use them when they really felt that way. Like you really felt empathetic and you felt sincere and I'm really sorry. We've all used that. We've all been absolutely certain about it. I'm so certain. We possess the ability. But the question is, do you apply them at the right time for goal-oriented communication? Once you start learning how to do it and rewire your brain, it just opens up the spigot and

your brain starts to do it automatically. So it's one of the easier things I teach people and it's incredibly powerful. So cool. Off the top of your head, can you riff off with the 10 tonalities? I already know there are 10 now. Now I'm curious. Let's start with certainty, scarcity, right? You have certainty, scarcity, you have the reasonable man, you have utter sincerity, right? You have phrasing it to clatter like a question, you have the I really want to know tonality, you have hypothetical tonality.

Well, how many is that? Or seven. That's seven, okay. What else is it? I'll quiz you without warning. I'll quiz you, yeah. Yeah, there's 10 of them all together. Let's see, Reasonable Man, Other Sincerity, whatever.

You can look them up on the website. Oh, by the way, yeah. Ask Chad GBT. Let me give you an example, by the way. So when I close, I would say to you, Bill, you've given me one shot. You've given me one shot. You give me one shot. That's like certainty, right?

You just give me one shot and believe me, you're going to be very, very impressed. Sound fair enough. So that's three tonalities in one. It's the, it's absolute certainty into our sincerity into the reasonable men. Sound fair enough. I'm reasonable. There's something called implied obviousness. That's number eight, by the way, I'll get there eventually. The truth is I've been so busy with other companies, I haven't been really focusing on it that much, but they're a tenant

and they're really powerful. When you use them the right way, it's like, you know, it makes it much easy to close. It really does, incredibly. So cool. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. I think that was one that just had such a profound impact on me. And again, incredibly. So cool. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. I think that was one that just had such a profound impact on me. And again, I don't do phone sales, but I'm doing reels on Facebook and Instagram. I'm doing webinar, like the same concepts are working, right? Even if you're not speaking like on the phone, it's the same things like, you know, Instagram, we got three seconds to get them to stop the scroll. So same principles are there that's going to keep someone from hanging up the phone, you know?

I'll give you one better. Even like on a sales letter, right? Even the way you construct things where some things are in bold type, some things are a little bit less, then you have the story and you break it up, you ask for the order, then you keep going. Those of you might have a place to click here

and you keep selling more, right? And when you do a video, and there's a video on a lot of these landing pages, right? You know, how do you sound on the video? Are you keeping someone's attention? Are you engaging? Do you sound like listen? Do you sound like an expert? Do you sound sincere? Do you sound like someone that you'd want to actually have either meant to you? So when you would trust when you'd want to buy from at least find out more about it either meant to you, someone you would trust, someone you'd want to buy from, or at least find out more about it. So, and you know, and you say, watch, you could say, do you sound sincere?

Do you trust me? And do you want to, you know, buy from me and think I'm an expert? You're like, get the hell out of here. Versus if you sound sincere, can you trust me? Like the way you phrase things is part of, but it's how the tonality that you apply either moves someone emotionally or doesn't. And if you're monotone, you people will tune out and they'll change the page. They'll click off the page. It's really important. Yeah, so good.

So cool. Thanks for sharing that. Now we explain, so straight line persuasion. We explain what that actually means. Cause you're tied to the entire sale. I love for people to understand that and we can talk about some of the pieces to keep someone on a straight line.

Yeah, so basically the idea of straight line persuasion is that essentially every sale's the same. That doesn't mean everyone has the same needs and values and pain points. What it means is that there are certain core elements that must line up in a prospect's mind before you have any chance of closing them, right? And three of those things are called the three 10s.

We call them the 10s because imagine a one to 10 on a continuum of certainty. Like 10 means someone's absolutely certain and a one means they're absolutely uncertain. Like 10 they think is the best thing in the world. Best things is sliced bread. Let's use click funnels. People that they before they sign up for click funnels,

they think that click funnels is the absolute greatest platform in the world. They just they love it. That's a 10, right? A one would be it's the biggest piece of crap in the world. It sucks. I would never use it. It's like it's buggy. It doesn't no one clicks on it. It's ugly. It's hard to piece of crap in the world. It sucks. I would never use it. It's like it's buggy.

It doesn't know when clicks on it. It's ugly. It's hard to use. Right. Ten means it's the greatest thing in the world. So here's a question. If you want someone to subscribe to clicks for us, where do you want them on that scale? As close to a ten is possible or as close to one as possible? Ten. Ten. Right.

OK, so let's say that you get someone to attend and they're thinking that, right? Question is, will they subscribe, yes or no? That people, oh, of course, well, the answer is not yes. It's not no, it's maybe. What if the person who's selling them ClickFunnels, or even you, by the way, let's say they don't trust you, the owner of ClickFunnels,

or the person that's trying to sell them, you think the person is gonna steal my data. I I can't trust them they're gonna lie to me that I'm gonna get bad customer so it's not enough that you love a product you have to also trust the person who's selling you the product the salesperson right so in that continuing for the salesperson a one to a ten and ten means oh my god I love this salesperson the most trustworthy sales person the world. They took the time to answer my questions They're honest. They're forthright. They gave great explanations And I just I would let them watch my kids and watch my bag. Yeah

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Terms and conditions apply. Visit bmo.com slash VI Porter to learn more. So let's say you love a product, but that you're a one for the salesperson. Will you buy? No way. If you love it that much you'll find someone else to sell it to. You'll find the product somewhere else, right? So it's not enough to love just a product. You also have to trust the person selling you. That's the second ten. The third ten would be the company that stands behind the product. In other words, there's a company that's gonna have to deliver customer service,

that's gonna have to be with the long-term. What's their reputation? Their reputation for being honest or dealing unfairly with people. So in other words, those three core elements, right? If any one of those things is low on the scale, good luck trying to close someone. Now they're not going to say, Russell, I don't trust you.

That's not what they say. That's kind of in your face. So what people say is, huh, sounds good. Let me think about it. Oh yeah, let me call you back. Oh, it's a bad time of year right now. I don't have enough money. You get hit with common objections.

When people are uncertain, when they ask with making a buying decision and they're uncertain about it, they'll say, let me think about it. Let me call you back. So objections are essentially smoke screens for uncertainty. Now, sometimes they can be real like no money. Sometimes people literally have no money, which is why when I'm training salespeople, we will qualify them financially. If possible, you always wanna qualify people financially to make sure you're speaking to someone that if they like it, if it makes sense to them,

if you get them certain, can they afford it? If you don't do that, what's the point? You're wasting their time and yours, right? You tell them, oh, this amazing thing, it's so great. And you didn't even ask if they could afford it. They're like, it sounds good, but I'm broke. What's the point of that, right? So there's sort of these rules about,

what questions do you ask? And this is all done on a line. So in other words, there's an open, there's a close. And the idea is that the sale has like the five points. There's the, in the first four seconds, you need to take control of that conversation by sounding like an expert and that's using the right tonality and some basic words Right, then you want to essentially immediately? Transition to more of a consultative side where you start asking questions. We call that gathering intelligence

Right, you don't want to just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, right? God gave you two ears and one mouth. You want to listen twice as much as you talk. So you want to ask questions, gather intelligence, identify needs, values, pain points. Right? And as you're doing that, you're like, uh-huh, mm-hmm. You keep your building massive rapport by asking questions using the right tonalities and also how you listen. Are you a robot? They ask, uh-huh. Okay.

Uh-huh. Or you, uh-huh. Mm-hmm. I understand. Oh, yeah, I understand. When you start showing the emotion, I understand you. I feel your pain. Sometimes people will answer something and I'll then take it further and sort of clarify

their own answer, show my command of the subject. And like, exactly, that's how I feel. That's what's going on. So this whole question, this whole questioning, this data, it's such a crucial part of selling. Because if you do this right, but at the time you've asked all the questions you need to ask, which means you've identified their needs, their values, whatever it might be, whatever the industry is, right?

But at the time you're done, they should be saying, wow, this guy's good. He really cares. Man, this guy was thorough. He gets me. He understands me. Not just like he asked me three questions, he's going to close the hell out of me, right? So sometimes people don't ask enough questions. You need to ask not too many questions, but you want to ask the right amount of questions so you fully understand

the picture. And then when you've done asking those questions, next step is they will, Jim, Jill, John, you know, based on what you said to me, this program is a perfect fit for you. Let me show you why. Now, if it is a perfect fit, if it's not, if you can't help them say, you know, honestly, based on what you said, it's not really right for you. I don't want to waste your time. I think you should might send them somewhere else if you can't help them. Like this idea, there's a transition here. You don't want to take everyone down the straight line to the end because why?

If they're not financially qualified, if your product's not going to really help them, if they're better off somewhere, all you do is waste your time, waste the client's time and you have a bad experience and give your company a bad name. So there's this transition point where you, after you ask all the questions, say, well, is this person right for my product? Can I help them? And if the answer hopefully is yes, then you just say, well, listen, based on what you said to me, this is a perfect, not based on what you said to me, this is a perfect fit for you. Let me say, now, Jim, based on what you said to me. This is a perfect fit for you. Let me say now jim based on what you said to me

This is a perfect fit for you. Let me tell you why You're like great Say now and then i'm now in the main body of my presentation where I start essentially Naming a feature, but then expounding on the benefit Handling it to them and i'm not going to go too crazy. I'm going to go to the three, four key things. And then when I'm done, I'll explain the process and say, now getting started is very simple. Now give them a simple way to get started. It's a question of doing X, Y, Z. And believe me, Jim, the only problem you'll have is you didn't do this six months ago because you'd already have all the benefits. Sound fair enough? And then I shut up.

Right now they get us looking that what can they say they can say yes they could say no or they could say maybe and maybe is a catch-all for all the common objections what else could they say they say yes no maybe or ask you a question right so if they hit you with an objection right then I'm gonna go about this is now it's called the back half of the straight line where I start overcoming objections in a very low pressure, very effective way called looping, where you actually essentially take the common objection and you answer it and you use it as a, you don't just answer an objection and then close and try

to close. That's, that's a fool's errand. Why? Because objections are smoke screens. So if you say to me, I want to think about it, and I say, listen, you don't really need to think about it. I know you're busy, but you'll go back to your busy life. You'll decide against it. Just give me one shot, believe me. But the truth is the reason you said you wanted to think about it is you were uncertain

about making, you didn't know enough about the product yet. You weren't sure it was the right decision. In other words, whether it was the first 10, second, or third was something you were uncertain of. So I'm not gonna simply just answer an objection and then try to close you. I'm gonna answer an objection and then loop back and essentially pick up where I left off

and start building more certainty for each of the three 10s. It's like essentially constructing a house, right? You don't do it all at once. The first thing is you put up the frame. You frame the house, right? You don't do it all at once. The first thing is you put up the frame. You frame the house, right? Then I ask for the order. You don't buy, great. I go back, I put the drywall on.

I install some electronics, right? I do it again. You don't buy, maybe you're a little bit more certain. I loop back and synapse it, because loop back again, now I put on the roof, I put on some nice decorations. So each time I'm looping that back

and building more and more certainty. And eventually, if you get someone certain enough, in a way that's not offensive to them, right, they're going to cross over this thing called their action threshold, which is, you know, how certain does any one individual need to be before they say, you know, and I'll take action, I'm ready to go. Right. And it differs for every person. In other words, there's people like me. I'm a sucker. I buy stuff. I am really easy to sell to.

I really am. Right. So what does that mean? My beliefs are such that my best decisions are made quickly. I trust generally. The glass is half full. That's me. My dad, may he rest in peace, he was the exact opposite.

He was the toughest, not the kind of crack. He hated salespeople, right? Didn't trust anybody, right? He called them Mad Max, right? So what does that mean? Well, I have what's called a low action threshold, meaning I don't gotta be that certain. I gotta be like a 777.

Like I'm not gonna do it if I'm full, because I'm not gonna buy something I think is gonna to be that certain. I got to be like a 777. Like I'm not going to do it if I'm full because I'm not going to buy something I think is going to make my life worse. But if I'm reasonably certainly ask, throw it, I'll buy. Right? If it's not that much, man, why not? Right? My dad had to be a 10, 10, 10 and damn sure of it.

Right? So that you start running into these two different types of people and that's why sometimes when you're trying to close something like, God, they sound really certain that's still not buying. Why? I know they still not buying. Why? I know they got the money. Why?

They have a very high action threshold. So there are strategies we use with the straight lines that actually help lower someone's action threshold. For example, one is a guarantee, money back guarantee. Lowest action threshold. It allows someone to process it. What's the worst? Because everyone's saying, what's the worst thing that possibly happens?

A question everyone asks themselves before they buy. Well, if I can cash in my money back guarantee, I guess it's really not that much risk. So they start to process it, it lowers their action threshold. Another way is to just say to them, hey, what's the worst that can happen? Let's say you buy, it doesn't work,

you put it out there, right? Well, you cash in your guarantee, you won't lose a penny. It's not gonna put you in the poorhouse, am I right? They'll say, no. No, I guess not, right? Exactly, but on the upside, if this is even half as good as I think it is, and you get X benefit and this benefit

in six months from now, you're feeling better, looking better, feeling, and then I future pace them, which is what people like my dad never do. People with low, with high access, they never look at the upside. And future pace them paint the upside and as I do that that they're Experiencing what someone like me like a low action. I always think all I do this a little work out great So essentially I'm using a language to hijack their strategy of running negative movies About about their buying decisions and I essentially hijacked that movie paint the positive pictures

They never do for themselves and then I go into a closely and John you give me one shot and believe me You know, you're gonna be so glad you did this Does that sound fair enough and you shut up and by the way when you do that, right it works really really well That is such a good map of the entire straight line right there, that was amazing. You know? Ah, so cool. One tonality I forgot, but other than that, everything's great, you know?

I'll add that in the show notes, we'll put them all in. So cool, man, I appreciate this. Okay, one last question and I'll let you go, because I know you're busy. But I know also you're working on, you know, I know you're in the forefront of this. Do you think that like, in the future, I know people are testing out different AI sales tools

and things like that, like, you know, when you built your company initially, you trained a whole bunch of salespeople to go through this process and how to just speak tonality. Do you think AIs can get the spot where someday it could replace humans to actually do a lot of this type of closing? So I actually do have a company

that's working on that right now, and it's been going incredibly well. We're still in stealth mode, so I really can't talk about it, because it's not ready to scale yet. But I think the answer is yes, but I don't think it really replaces all salespeople, okay? I think certainly it's gonna replace some salespeople, okay?

But I think there's always gonna be a need for a great salesperson that really, you know, that knows how to build long-term relationships with people, not just clothes, but I have an AI that's so good at closing. It's like me in an AI. It's like me, it sells like me. It doesn't sound like my voice, but it sounds like it uses my tonalities.

We have our own voice. But again, you know, I'm taking this technology very carefully, very slowly, because you know, you gotta just make sure that, you know, one of our own voice. But again, I'm taking this technology very carefully, very slowly, because you gotta just make sure that, one of the things that you know this, I'm sure you went through this in the beginning of ClickFunnels, that it's not enough to have an amazing platform.

You have to be able to onboard everybody correctly. And if you can't onboard people and they start having bad customer service experiences, it causes a big problem. So we have some very, very big clients using the system right now. They're getting incredible 50 X returns. But, you know, we're about, we're about three months away from being able to

really scale it, you know, where we can have like almost not quite touchless onboarding, but touchless to the point where, you know, you don't got to call costs, let's say the AI itself can help you do everything. It will be, you speak to the AI and not someone there. AI will be doing it for you. But it's really powerful. I think that it's not just in sales. It's gonna change everything.

I'm sure you're already infusing AI into your platform. Sure you are. Powerful technology. I love it. I use it every day. I taught myself to code. Believe it or not. Yeah, and it's incredible.

And I would say everybody that's watching this should really get yourself up on how to use it. Yeah, and it's incredible. And I think I would say everybody that's watching this should really get yourself up on how to use it. It just takes one person and makes them into five or 10. It's a multiplier. So I don't think it replaces everybody, but certainly there's gonna be pressure on sales for sure and many other industries as well to be at the top of your game.

Yeah, no, but I agree. It's exciting time to be alive and playing and testing all these different things out. And like you said, if you're not using your business, that's crazy. Like we add AI in the front of our ticketing system and dropped our tickets by like 60, 70% where AI is answering questions.

And then people can't get past that, it goes back to normal human. But like that, you know, it's such a straight, it's such a, like a good barrier, just chaos and support, you know, that AI is able to handle for us. And that's just one use case, you know, it's pretty cool. And I think also that, you know, with AI, you know, it never gets sick, it never comes in late. It can do it in every language if you need it to.

It's amazing. It's really stable up or down. It's like it's got a lot of benefits. So it's a, and as good as my AI is today, it's the worst it will ever be. Yeah. It's like, it's got a lot of benefits. So it's, and as good as my AISA, it's the worst it will ever be. It gets better every day. Yeah, so cool. Well, thanks, Matt.

I appreciate you spending time with me today and my audience and sharing this stuff. I think everything you're sharing is applicable. We have a lot of people who run phone teams in our community, but also, I think all these things are applicable if you're doing a webinar or a challenge or like all these, the principles of persuasion

and speaking and selling and resolving concerns, like it, you can use the same things in all these different places. And I think it's super valuable. So I appreciate you spending time. And I wanna tell everyone who's seen the movie but not read the book, they should go read the book, part one and part two.

I think it'll give you a different perspective of you. And it's really fun. And I said, it's, you did a great job writing those books as well. So. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks man. Always appreciate you. those books as well. So. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks man.

Always appreciate it. Take care. Bye. Bye. Bye. Now, obviously if you want to sell stuff online, you're gonna need a good funnel. But if you want a great funnel,

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