The Greatest Skill Of The 21st Century (The Top 1% Exploit This)

the greatest skill of the 21st century is not email marketing it is not graphic design it is not web design it is not artificial intelligence it is not personal branding it is not videography or photography or video editing or photo editing it is the base layer of all of the skills that I just mentioned so the greatest skill of the 21st century is persuasive communication but that doesn't make sense when I just say persuasive communication and nobody really tells you to learn that specific skill instead they tell you to learn things like copywriting or marketing

or sales they're all somewhat synonymous but I want you to understand the framework the structure of how all of those things work and how they impact human psychology because why are we learning skills in the first place it's to give value and therefore acquire value so that exchange between two individuals means that you have to understand the other individual if value is perception and other people can't perceive what you have to offer as valuable then you're not going to get the value that you want to receive and in most cases that is going to be

money so if you do not know how to persuade or understand the psychology of the person you're trying to exchange value with whether it's in a relationship or just in business whether you're approaching someone at a bar or you're approaching someone in the DMS it's all the same thing you have cultivated value to offer you need to persuade the other person to see that value so that they can give you the value that you want in return and in the context that we talk about a lot for like online writing or becoming a Creator or

starting a onep person business persuasive communication comes into play in everything if with your writing it has to be persuasive if you want it to be shared if it's not persuasive it's not going to resonate or be seen as valuable to other people so that they exchange the value of them sharing the content that's what you want from them when you're posting content right and when you're posting let's say a landing page or literally anything that you post online whether it's a DM or even a text to a friend or a tweet that you post

or an Instagram post or a YouTube video or whatever it has to follow a general persuasive structure and just as a bonus there is a PDF link to the PDF in the description that goes over my 10 commandments of Engagement that's Commandments and 32 post structures that you can emulate if you want to increase the power of your writing there's no pitch in there there's no nothing is just download the PDF use it have it open alongside while you write content or literally anything so let let's finally dive in people don't remember what you say

they remember how you make them feel this is worth repeating humans are emotional beings not logical 99% of the population have not developed themselves to the point of being free from or in control of their ego that is the foundation of capturing and holding attention poking your reader ego you can feed it or make them feel good or you can starve it or make them feel bad if you can take people on an emotional journey of love hate excitement deceit calmness and any other emotion that eventually ends in a benefit for their life you have

mastered the art of content creation life is story song is story the universe or Universe one song architecture music plant life and everything else follow the universal principles of highs and lows creation and destruction growth and death Etc humans make sense of the world in stories your job is to use the power of word to make people feel something stories mimic the natural highs and lows of emotion I have an entire chapter dedicated to the universe which is very big picture understanding of what truth is in my book The Art of focus and then every

other chapter that's one of the primary chapters that helps you frame business and the the new economy how to acquire skills how to understand yourself how to reinvent yourself it all mimics Universal patterns and once you understand that you master yourself and then you can Master the world so if you want to pre-order the book go to the first link in the description the keepsake box is still live and there are only 2,000 copies of that that we are printing before the paperback goes out early next year so if you want to be the first

to read it you get instant access to the digital version when you do pre-order the keepsake box so we understand the importance and kind of how to persuade by mimicking the patterns of the universe the highs and lows the emotions that give people meaning and feeling in this life because if you if you're just happy all the time this is why happiness is kind of a false metric to pursue is because when you're happy all the time that's that's not happiness like you're just kind of stuck there it's normal equilibrium homeostasis eventually it balances out

to what is normal or boring so if you're at this level of Happiness all the time then your Baseline increases to that and you are no longer happy so you have to pursue more and more and more that's all to say that human understanding is based on the highs and lows of life and we need to understand how to bake that into whatever we write speak or communicate to another person in Life or business so as you're scrolling on social media this is a great way to learn is rather than consuming information research information so

when you're scrolling try to understand okay what caught my attention why am I still reading this how are they holding my attention try to pay attention to these 10 Commandments on the timeline as you were scrolling so that you can notice them pattern recognition helps with learning you'll feel that increase in dopamine you'll be like oh that's what Dan was talking about okay I'm going to remember that and use it in my own content creation or writing or speaking so there are many ways to capture attention but I've found these to be the most replicable

and practical with number eight being the most potent commandment number one is number three my Lord number one is specific numbers using numbers in Your Hooks headlines or tweets will make people stop to see what the numbers relate to these can be in the form of one statistics like there are 7 billion people on this Earth two dollar amounts like Apple's new $1,175 iPhone has this new feature three metrics like I sent 322 cold emails or after 293 days blah blah blah four lists so seven bad habits that are preventing you from blah blah blah

the more specific a number is the more it catches people's attention and if you can't make a number Super specific like in your headline or in a hook it's okay don't stress it there this is only one tactic of many you're supposed to use these as tools like in your tool box that you piece together into something that is persuasive and attention grabbing so here's one example and this was actually a thread that led to a lot of people joining my masterclass digital economics when it launched so this is the hook of a thread how

I turn one piece of content per week into a $ 45,2 se5 a month creative income and 340,000 followers in 2 hours a day in five simple steps so you can see the specific numbers obviously there number two is pattern interrupts a pattern interrupt is something that breaks people out of their normal conditioned patterns if someone is scrolling on social media and is used to a lot of political commentary a well-formatted list tweet will make them stop their scroll most of the things in this list of Commandments are pattern interrupts number three is the negativity

bias the human brain is wired to notice and pay attention to negativity like this is why you find yourself trapped in the comments or on Reddit just going down this feed of drama it's because that's what we're most attracted to it's why we watch scary movies on Halloween today is Halloween I'm going to watch a scary movie there's probably a lot to do with survival baked into this and us paying attention to things that threaten our survival which is usually negative and since humans survive on a conceptual level and survive the identity that we attach

to or consider who we are which we're not an idea but that's what we do and so once that idea of who we are is threatened we feel threatened I also talk about that in my book so if you're trying to say something positive a lot of people do this in headlines or YouTube video titles Etc spin it as a negative so instead of saying you're going to achieve great things change it to you will never hit rock bottom again the second is a lot more potent because it's more negative but the message is the

same right this doesn't mean that you need to change your entire YouTube video to be absolutely negative it's a way of catching attention so that people see the value you have to offer for something that is overwhelmingly positive number four is a group call out so this one's simple is just call out the specific person that you're talking to so examples like if you were in your 20s calling all creators coaches and Freelancers and fathers are a gift to humankind even if your audience doesn't fall into the specific group you're are calling out it will

allow them to pick a side and compare themselves to what you were saying so in this post I talked about bodybuilders and even if they don't consider themselves one it helps paint a picture of what they can relate to so the Tweet was a bodybuilder is happier than the average person when eating Bland chicken and rice every day because he is progressing towards a meaningful goal things that are often boring and monotonous become enjoyable when you have a reason to pursue fulfillment over pleasure if someone talks about being a father I can still relate because

maybe I'll be one one day but it's still going to attract more fathers it's just a better way to capture attention rather than talking to everyone but you're not really alienating anyone right when you Niche down smart you're not necessarily alienating people from your Niche instead you're just making what you say more potent and Rel so all of these can be used when you're actually promoting something like if you're promoting a product or a service or something this is one of those things that is very potent is just calling out who your product is for

number five is the problem call out so if you're if you're in digital economics or like in any of my courses or um just have listen to anything I talk about relating to marketing and sales I'm so big on pains and benefits people always come back to me and they're like man I really need to remind myself to just remember pains and benefits or problems and benefits whatever it is because pains and problems that people are experiencing when you talk about them it makes the people aware of them right A lot of people aren't walking

around with their problems just top of mind they're distracted they're scrolling on their phone but if they're not getting anywhere in life and that's kind of just lower in their subconscious mind and you bring it to their conscious mind and you understand the levels of awareness in marketing where your job in order to sell a product or service or make any kind of money or even catch attention you have to hit on a problem make people aware of it make people aware of a solution make people aware of how that solution benefits their lives over

the course of either a landing page or a Year's worth of content or a YouTube video or whatever it may be until they're ready to buy your product you create customers by educating them on their problems how to solve it and you providing a better solution or a more streamlined efficient and aggregated solution and so here's just an example by the way all of these tweets that I listed are very high engaging like these are tweets that I Cur curated because they did so well so this is me calling out a pain point of helping

them feel better you feel terrible because your subconscious knows that you could be doing better I actually ended up turning this into a thread the other day and it got like 20,000 likes on Twitter which is pretty dang good for Twitter so that just goes to show that it does catch attention and it does work number six is potential benefit so this is the opposite where problem is is more potent because of the negativity bias that we talked about but potential benefit you have to create the transfer when you're selling a transformation you talk about

where they are now and where they're going to be and then the Curiosity gap between those two makes them want to learn more from you on how to achieve that transformation so uh potential benefit like in a YouTube video thumbnail when you have like a before picture of a fitness transformation and an after picture of a fitness transformation those are very attention grabbing and make people want to click and watch because they're like okay how did he achieve that I relate to that I want that potential benefit I'm going to watch this video because it's

going to show me how he did it now number seven seventh commandment of Engagement or attention capture is social proof so again social proof is authoritative and implies an information Gap or a curiosity Gap when you flex your results or credentials people automatically assume that you know more than them they will take your content more seriously and read to find the information they are missing this works a 100 times better when it's not viewed as a flex I'm sure we all have that negative connotation or negative feeling when we see something on like YouTube where

it's like I made a billion dollars in a day here's how I did it well that's actually not that bad but there's ones that are more like cocky right you can feel it you know what I'm talking about here so Justin Welsh in my eyes is the current king of this of like the humble Flex so here's a post from him sometimes you need to ask people to buy your product if you don't you're missing out on 12x days simple as that and then you just has a screenshot of his Revenue with a thing at

the top so you use social proof to illustrate a point point that you're trying to make number eight by far the most important one is confidence and conviction you can create highly impactful posts with confidence alone it allows other aspects of attention grabbing to fall into place you are right about everything at this very point in time in relation to your goals Visions beliefs values and everything else that forms your perspective of reality this is what you're doing when you're writing or creating content you're painting a picture of your perspective and what you believe right

now and if you're so wishy-washy in all these beliefs and goals and values of yours then one it's safe to say that you're not really making any progress you don't trust yourself and you aren't taking action in alignment with your goals but aside from that your job is to have confidence and convictions in your beliefs and a credible or clear argument to back them up if you have to back them up this is the thing is if you have a certain perspective and it's not educated you haven't learned and created your own philosophy or worldview

just through education of studying smart people outside of the school through self-education online and following leaders and then filtering their ideas and seeing what is true to you or not then that's step one you have to do that like just for General quality of life or to not be a clone of someone else or of society everyone is on social media to be told what to do in a confident way nobody is secure in their actions choices and beliefs they are looking for someone to confirm them with confidence and give them the clarity to act

so this is a life hack all around is that one you're uncertain in a lot of things so are other people like it's okay to be confident and if you're presented with uh feedback or an argument that challenges your worldview and you agree with it then be okay with that change it's like boom change it right there okay I'll do better next time what is there to do but by like restricting yourself from saying what you believe you're restricting yourself from progress because you're just not certain in the actions that you're going to take and

you're never going to like fail forward you're never going to be confident enough to just go in and make the mistake and learn right so if you aren't confident right now in the beliefs that you have it's going to be very difficult to become more confident in the future and actually be able to learn more so here are some tools you can use to sound more confident one is eliminate words that imply uncertainty two speak in absolutes when possible three exaggerate your point to add energy of course do not abuse these for the sake of

Engagement so rather than saying it may be wise if someone developed their skill set say it is crucial that everyone on planet Earth develops their skill set just by being confident my words flow clearer and the writing is more impactful and the thing here is is like oh what if you're putting out false information well at least it's confident to the point of allowing giving someone else certainty to act like if I'm just wishy-washy all day my content isn't doing anything if I'm angry and I'm exaggerating a point and I'm being very direct with what

I'm saying then I give people the confidence in their own lives to go and make mistakes and learn from them if they blame me for them making a mistake in life life then I don't know that's just like that's just a bad like outlook on life in general is blaming other people for the mistakes you made rather than seeing that you made a mistake and that's one of the best things you can do in life so here's an example of me being confident in what I'm saying the greatest skill one can develop is decreasing the

time between idea and execution so this tweet surprisingly got a lot of controversy because people were just like that's not the greatest skill this is the greatest skill and so I think it's funny that I'm including the title of this as the greatest skill of the 21st century because it it's the point across like I could rant all day about metaphorical versus literal interpretation of life and how it'll change your life in many ways than one because people read literally and they're like it just like makes their brain explode for some reason but if you

interpret metaphorically and understand the essence of what I'm trying to say and understand that I'm adding impact by saying it that way you don't take it literally you're not like oh this is the greatest skill so this is the only skill that I'm going to learn and how do you even learn that skill decreasing the gap between idea and execution you get the point that's the exact thing is getting the point getting the point will change your life like Words point to something they aren't the words themselves so here's another example which is a bit

more extreme but this one has just worked time and time again for me because it's relatable and the people that get it they get it how to get ahead of 99% of people go quiet for 3 months laser in on one big goal self-educate like mad apply everything you learn fail as much as possible every month take a break and have some fun birst of intensity are how you blow past everyone else so this brings me a lot of followers on all platforms when I like integrate this occasionally I actually had like that's my most

popular video on YouTube and then right after everyone just swiped the title and used it to get millions of views so whatever if if you want to use the title just do the same thing how to get ahead of 99% of people and be unoriginal I'm just kidding it doesn't really matter that much it's kind of the name of the game so number nine is active voice active voice implies that there is a story it eases people into what you were saying passive voice is often boring and gives away the mini story too early there's

no anticipation that makes people want to figure out what happened next when you're practicing writing posts look up an article on active voice and use it to edit until you get the hang of it this also helps with being perceived as confident number 10 is warnings and cautionary advice so what should people be looking out for when they're trying to achieve something preferably within your brand or worldview cuz your brand has goals you're obviously like if you're selling a product or you have a service then there's a goal behind that that you're leading people towards

or else you wouldn't attract followers if you weren't a leader so can you warn them about something that they're going to encounter as they're trying to reach where you are now so this is best Illustrated with a tweet that I wrote that also got a lot of Engagement but I hit on a high engaging topic like dopamine and warn them of another Hot Topic so this sparked a lot of controversy I'm assuming you can guess why but let's just read the Tweet be careful telling people about your goals it releases dopamine similar to achieving them

skip the instant gratification go go quiet and build so if I were to come back and just like listen to my own advice of when I'm given feedback from being confident and refining my worldview what I would say or what I would go back to rewrite this tweet as or at least add Nuance to it would be don't tell people about your goals tell people about what you're doing it's like what if you don't tell people about your goals and then no one can help you well what I'm saying here is one you're missing the

point what I'm saying here is that most people tell people about their goals and then they do nothing about it they aren't doing anything so if you tell people about what you're doing then you can still work with people people can still help you etc etc see through the literal interpretation of words here get the point so those are the Ten Commandments and now we need to understand what holds attention cuz we captured attention now we need to hold it once the Curiosity Loop is open the Mind feels committed to figuring out the rest of

the story that is what holds attention crafting a compelling story stories are layers of metaphors Concepts perspectives and experiences that take people on a journey people want to understand the entire story they want to know what came before during and after any given argument from capturing attention but I also want to say here that a story is also metaphorical a story is not uh I woke up this morning and then I went to make coffee and then I got on like it's not just a string of things what I'm talking about here is structure structure

versus content in all of this structure of a story is highs and lows you're walking people through problem like think of it like the story where it's setting problem rising action climax uh falling action resolution and you can paint a picture of that that's what a landing page is a landing page is a story even if it's just like education on like oh how to start a copyrighting business it's all guiding people through a story with problems benefits Solutions purpose path priority another chapter in my book that's a universal principle or you can think of

it as goal what people want to achieve and uh things associate CED with that the benefits problem where people are now and what how it's ruining their lives and then path in between or system or plan how are they going to reach the next step that's a story so the there's two things you need to understand about this one is just structure we aren't in high school anymore long professional paragraphs don't matter and reduce readability especially on X or social media people log on to that platform to escape the professional world so how do you

improve the structure of all of your content first is bullet l so use numbers lists and other tactics that help you break apart what you were saying these lists create a story in themselves second is line breaks so use LINE breaks whenever possible but don't just add line breaks for the sake of it be creative use LINE breaks to emphasize specific sentences and help your writing flow three is starting short and concise so use shorter sentences or paragraphs at the start of your content capture attention with short and Punchy statements then let loose and get

creative with how your sentences flow four is just break apart sentences so use parentheses and M dashes over commas this sentence is too long open parenthesis until I make people want to know what are in these parentheses close parenthesis I use this all the time in my content and in my YouTube titles I use parentheses a lot cuz it's it's okay what's next I broke it down so it's more readable so here's an example of all of the above in a hook most people suck at DMS Hi how are you please follow back will probably

get you blocked more than it gets responses let me make DMS easy for you in seven steps okay I didn't include parenthesis there but I could have put in seven steps in parenthesis number two is novel perspectives this novel perspectives requires you to get the bulk of your ideas from long form newsletters articles podcasts books Etc or talks short form it's more difficult to actually create a novel perspective because it's so short you're not getting the entire perspective novelty increases dopamine levels in the the brain and it brings more clarity to an idea that has

been talked about over and over if you're getting all of your content from Twitter while trying to grow on Twitter you will probably end up with the same perspective as everyone else metaphors personal experiences and creating new Concepts is how you achieve this so I was reading an article and I learned about how a glass of water creates an acre of fog and I'm like that's a unique perspective how can I tie this into what I'm doing cuz it had nothing to do with like mindfulness or business or uh human potential the things that I

talk about but I wrote this tweet the amount of water needed to create an acre of fog is one drinking glass remember this the next time your mind is fogged with worry but in reality the problem is as insignificant as a glass of water content consumption or research is as important as creation you need you need a a research of 100 to create a content of one so that's how you hold attention but what creates engagement remember people don't remember what you say they remember how you make them feel Alan Watts may have been an

alcoholic in his later years and died because of it although in the art of focus Community someone brought up that that may be a scop or he thinks it's a scop I could very well see that so who knows if alen Watts was actually an alcoholic but regardless of if he is or not his work has changed my life for good I'm not going to eliminate or or restrict myself from listening to his message just because he may be a person with values that don't align with mine when the message can truly change the way

I see the world this is another thing I mean I'm similar in a lot of ways there's like people that I don't really like and I don't consume their content but this is a good reminder for all of us that even the people like that we don't like their click baity titles or thumbnails or whatever we're missing out like by not watching them we're missing out on so much information that could radically change our lives if the one idea that would change our lives was in those videos and we watched it so Food For Thought

back tal and w is that I may remember some quotes of his but the reason I remember them is because of the clarity they gave me the feeling of having zero worries in the world when I want to experience that again I throw on in Alan watt's lecture you are but a humble messenger of a life-changing message so the first thing that creates engagement is the feelings that come from education or learning learning something new or gaining Clarity on some aspect of your life raises dopamine levels in the brain you create clarity through novel perspectives

metaphors stories personal experiences and other parts of your life that will help others understand what you're saying speaking of those things those are actually elements in our corote system for cortex the app is not out yet the software is not done but we're going to revolutionize writing and creating for the entire Creator economy by making this so seamless this entire process your job is to make sense to a specific group of people you do this by sharing how certain topics make sense to you that's it you read something oh okay I I get that I

like that idea how does it make sense to me I'm going to share that with other people simple as that the second thing that creates engagement is the feeling that comes from inspiration inspiration is different from motivation you're helping people connect the dots on their own giving them the clarity to make their own decisions and change their behavior people feel good when they think they came up with the answer themselves but will still attribute that feeling to you the third thing that creates engagement is the feeling that comes with entertainment can you throw in a

joke meme or interesting point of view when you watch a movie you are entertained through humor drama emotional parts of the story and battles that spark excitement in you entertainment education and inspiration are the main goals of your content that's what you are as a content creator is a mixture of an Entertainer an educator and an inspiring person so that's it for this one I hope you enjoyed it this one was very practical but you have to actually practice the theory so remember the PDF is available to download in the description also the art of

focus keepsake box or just the art of focus book in general uh both available Link in the description if you want to learn how to write online and build your social media or just a personal brand or one person business however you want to frame it they're all the same thing everyone writes everyone needs to communicate value everyone wants to do their own thing so if you want to do that regardless of whether it's like labeled as a social media influencer or not just write online if you want to do that to our writer the

course Link in the description other cool stuff check all it out thanks for watching peace