EP488: Bas Wouters - Influence Online

It brought me business success, but it also brought me personal success because I think in personal life and more people say yes to you, it's also nice. We are overwhelmed with information and things we need to process. I walk outside on the street and I see a beautiful Lamborghini car. Well boss, that's a great car, buy it. Well maybe boss, it's not so good for your bank account. And so far I didn't bought this Lamborghini, but what if I bought it? Oh that's a stupid idea and what did you do boss? That's the biggest mistake of your life. Plus you worked so hard and you deserved it because that car was always your dream. And that's what we call confirmation bias. We confirm our actions. We need a systematic approach that we can use our full brain power. And we provide that systematic approach. And now we can come up with persuasive strategies. Welcome to the Thought Leader Revolution with Nikki Baloo. Join the revolution. There's never been a better time in history to speak your truth, find your freedom and make your fortune. Each week we interview the world's top thought leaders and learn the secrets of how they build a six to seven figure practice. This episode has been brought to you by eCircleAcademy.com, the proven system to add six to seven figures a year to your thought leader practice. Welcome to another exciting episode of the podcast, the Thought Leader Revolution. I'm your host Nikki Baloo. And boy we have an exciting guest lined up for you today. A few weeks ago we had the legendary doctor Robert Chaldeini, author of the seminal book, influenced the psychology of persuasion and the founder of the Chaldeini Institute as a guest on the show. Well today we've got his business partner, the one, the only, the inimitable, Bazz Wouter's. Welcome to the show, Bazz. Yeah, Nikki, great to be here. Great to have you here. So, Bazz, the folks that listen to the show tend to be entrepreneurs and business people, society's greatest heroes from my point of view. The ones with a vision to go after their dreams and to make them come alive. And they come and listen to the show because they want to learn not so much from me because I'm here every week but from you as our guest expert, your special brand of expertise that has allowed you to create such a fantastic level of success in your business. But before they can do that and open themselves to you, they got to get to know you. So tell us your story. How'd you get to be the great Bazz Wouter's. Thank you, Nikki. Yes, what's my story? So I've been an entrepreneur all my life. I actually started in the financial industry and we saw mortgages, insurances, live insurance. And I quickly realized persuasion was a big deal in those conversations. So I started to study already persuasion and the science of influence and I was able at one moment very early in my career to start training out of financial planners and we could realize that we were developing you by upgraded revenue by 500%. And then I talked and I was beginning 20s and I bought my first house and there was a newly constructed house. So I needed to buy a kitchen for in the house and I realized I come from the Netherlands and I realized in Germany where the same kitchens were cheaper and they had a better service level. And I started doing there. I brought those kitchens from Germany to the Netherlands and then we were one of the first that really starts regenerating online in that industry in the Netherlands at that time. And then I got really interesting online marketing and especially in online influence because you had these big established companies of course and I had to compete with a much smaller business because we were started at that moment. So I started studying testing everything and I was able to grow this business when I sold it to 25 million dollars or 25 million euros revenue approximately a year. And in that journey I learned a lot. So when I sold it in 2016 I was 32 and I wanted to do two things. First I wanted to invest in real estate to have a bit of a retirement plan. And second I wanted to build another business. But I wanted what I like was helping people making them better in influence because I knew how much it brought me. It brought me business success but it also brought me personal success because I think when in personal life and more people say yes to you it's also nice. So then I applied to become one of Dr. Chaldeen's certified trainers and they were very selective so I said that's great because then it scares if I pass and I said what's that one and they said you have to come to the US which I obviously did and in 2016 I became one of now 12 certified trainers in the world. And in 2020 I published my book online influence. It's not only Dr. Chaldeen's principal connecting it to online but it's a more comprehensive model of behavior design. How you design the desired behavior in an online setting. I published a book, Dr. Chaldeen read it, loved it and endorsed it. And at the same time Dr. Chaldeen was thinking of his legacy. How can I reach more people and go fit here of course. So doing things online became more prominent and in that journey November 2021 he asked me do you want to be my successor legacy builder and business partner. And obviously I said yes. So that's in a nutshell where I came from and where I learned a lot about the science and the power of the scientific persuasion. You know I've been taking some notes and I'm fastened you sent me a copy of your book. Thank you very much. I just received it. It's going to get read this year for sure. I'm actually quite fascinated by it for a number of reasons. One is I'm a huge fan of Dr. Chaldeen's work. It has truly been an honor to have him come and be a part of my humble podcast. I really am fascinated by the longevity of those principles in action because we're living in a time. I'm a lot of people that are able to publish their views self publishing has become huge people can go on social media and the internet and they can say whatever the heck they want think about it. There's very few limitations and there's people out there that are saying I know this and you should do that and here's what I've noticed most of these people are good at speaking but not good at thinking and not good at processing and coming up with frameworks that work and stand the test of time. Dr. Chaldeen's work has stood the test of time. So the fact that he has chosen to work with you kudos I think that's incredible. It is a testament to your character your success your desire your hunger to bring the power of Dr. Chaldeen's thought leadership to the world. And it's also a testament to your own individual thought leadership because obviously you've thought about these principles and applying them to the world of online influence. But it also shows I think people listening to the show that you got to be careful who you listen to and the thought leader isn't an influencer even though I know it's a play on the word influence influencers are people that are good at putting out messages. They don't necessarily have the right message thought leaders like Dr. Chaldeen and yourself have thought about the issues and they put out solutions to real problems. I would like for you to comment on what I've just said. Please. Yeah fantastic. I intend to agree on most of it and especially what you say the practical application we put out their frameworks that you can use and stand the test of time. It's maybe interesting for listeners to understand why this is stand why they stand the test of time and then I go actually to a Nobel Prize winner a behavioral scientist called Dr. Daniel Kanemon probably your of him. Nicky sure and he did research and if it comes to decision making he proved that actually in our brain we have two brains and we call them system one system two and this is highly important. Because this is the foundation why they stand the test of time and not only stand the test of time that it's actually increasing how much the power of these principles system one he called is our fast unconscious brain. That acts on shortcuts for example if something is more expensive probably it's better or if everybody does it it must be a good idea. Although that's our own because it's over obviously not always true when expensive that expensive things are better or if everybody does the certain behavior that is good idea to follow that behavior. But most of the times is so it's arrow pro but most of the time system one is right then we have system two irrational brain. This cost us effort to use this because we use all our thinking power. Although that system is able to compare all the options and then make the right decision. Now, old economics always claimed, "The human being is a rational creature when it comes to important decisions in this language it would use system 2." Daniel Carman proved them wrong. In 2002, approximately 90% of all decisions are made with system 1, the system that is triggered on shortcuts. There's already scientific evidence that it's 95% and you see already research that it's increasing to 98%. Why is this? Because we are overwhelmed with information and things we need to process. So we have to lean on system 1 to make those decisions. And when Daniel Carman was asked, "Great, you have won a Nobel Prize, but now we all are curious how to influence system 1." Actually, Daniel Carman says, "System 1 runs the show. That's the one you want to move." He said, "Go talk to Dr. Robert Chaldeini because these principles are the fundamental shortcuts that you trigger." And many people say to me, "Arabia, boss, but that's for basic decisions." No, it's not only for basic decisions. I always give the example buying a house. That's one of the biggest decisions you make in your life. But probably how that goes is you go on the internet, you know, the area you want to live, you want an apartment or a house, how big, how many bedrooms, bathrooms you want. That's all very rational. But now it comes when you make the decision, you go view these houses and then you hear the clichés. It was a bit too expensive, but I fell in love with the house. I totally had to buy it. That's not making a decision rationally. So when it comes, we need some rationality. Although the decision trigger to say yes to your request, it comes often from system 1. And these principles function as decision triggers. And that's why they not only stand the test of time, but we lean more and more on system 1. It's also increasing in how powerful they are. Please say more. I'm really liking this. Great. I can talk to you. Yeah, yeah. So when you dive into these principles, what is fascinating as well that system 1 in my book, I compare it to a child of seven. So we advise to prune people to make a request online specifically talk child of seven. So short language asked one thing at one time. Make it emotional. It's attracted to emotion. So these are basic advices that I can give on talking to system 1. But an interesting thing is if you compare those two things, system 1 will never grow up. It will always stay a child of seven. Let's say for example, I walk outside on the street and I see a beautiful Lamborghini car. Yeah. That system 1 maybe says to me, well, boss, that's a great car by it. A system of two functions like the handbrake in this metaphor and they said, well, maybe boss is not so good for your bank account. And so far, I didn't bought this one with Jeannie. But what if I bought it? Then system 2 would not say the system one, oh, that's a stupid idea. And what did you do boss? We would tell ourselves slight other language. I would say, boss, you work so hard and you deserve that because that car was always your dream. And that's what we call confirmation by it. And that's why I made the comparison. So system 1 will also always be that child of seven. But the problem in our brain is this child of seven makes 95% of all our decisions, including other decisions. So when it comes to persuasion, we often try to use very rational arguments to persuade somebody. But those will trigger system 2. We need to persuade with these shortcuts, with these principles that we define. And then we get more yeses, then more people move in other direction. So when it comes to therefore, I think that's one add that maybe it's interesting. Normally, let's say if you want to make an approach, use all your brain power. So system 2 on each system to intense to come up with a strategy that will trigger system 2 in the other's person's mind. And that's the mistake. We need a systematic approach that we can use our full brain power system 2. But if that systematic approach comes up with solutions that will trigger system 1 in the other person's mind. We teach what is the situations, what signals are you getting? People don't answer your phone. They don't act on it. They keep improving your suggestions. We can connect all those signals to a set of principles. And through these principles, we can teach you how to activate them and how to amplify the fact. I like it. I like it. I like it. I think that's a fundamental shift in thinking when you make persuasion approaches. And that's not only for lead generational vinyl sales conversations. It also has to do attracting the best talent. Being a better leader. It's all where you need people to follow you and move in your direction. It supplies almost to any conversation you have during the day. Especially as an entrepreneur. You need to get a lot of yeses to get your business built and keep on going. Yeah, you do need a lot of yeses to get your business built and keep on going. So let me let me ask you some questions in the form of a little bit of a hypothetical case study about some of the things that I'm working on myself. Because I think this is a great way to illustrate this for people. So right now, inside of my, there are two main projects that I'm involved with. One is inside of our business, e-circle academy, where we. What we do is we work with entrepreneurs and founders to help them scale their businesses through the use of thought leadership. And through commercializing thought leadership in a nutshell. This is in a nutshell what we do. Our clients have been folks that are coaches and consultants that have basically themselves and maybe one staff member, you know, they're under. Typically under 300,000 dollars a year in business. Their vision is to make a half a million, a million, two million. That would be thrilled. The second group of people are entrepreneurs. Who have a vision, who have a like a 10 million dollar plus company, but they want to grow to 100 million a billion. These are those hard chargers. And they are starting to see that thought leadership. By some CEOs, people like Elon Musk, people like Patrick that David of the entertainment is allowing them to rapidly scale, attract the best talent and attract investors and get rid of a Trishon and attract media. So these are our two sets of clients. So give me a short synopsis of the best way for us to be reaching these people using system one rather than system two, but because we teach thought leadership part of our mistake is we speak in very system two like language. As a thought leader, that's indeed you often use jargon and jargon is not it's a double edge short with jargon. You actually show your expertise, your authority. We connect that to the principle of authority. Although you lose you lose, unlike ability. People cannot always follow you so they can great idea as a thought leader is yes, you use that jargon but always explain it easy and easy language what you really mean. Then then some advice and I think that's for the people that are on tree on the K right now, but also for the 10 million you had clients in the past and obviously one more clients and. There are a lot of thought leaders out of now a lot of people want to be the common coach, a trainer that's rapidly increased in the last 10 years. Big time. So what you see there. There's a uncertainty in the people who's going to buy these programs because they are bombarded with a lot of programs and they don't know what should I use. Then a big tip what I can give is when you see the signals you know that the market is uncertain. We refer to two principles. The principle of social proof and the principle of authority and let me give you a word. Let me give you a listen as a tip on each of those principles. One will be an online tip and social proof. We know it all over the internet reviews obviously and again dad a lot of people sort of power. and then fake reviews became a real business. We strongly argue against it, always be ethical, that's very important, because it backfires. But if you have clients of your data and you then can define the desired behavior, and that could be by a causal line, but that also could be filling in a form, for example. So to design behavior, step one is to define what is the desired behavior. Then in our case, say, it's filling in a contact form. Now social proof, close to the button, you can write what most people did, or how many people did, and I'm going to share a tip how to make the most powerful social proof sentences. It needs to meet three criteria. The first is write as your audience, similar others as your audience, and give you an example, there was from a makeup studio, where we did a case, NYX makeup studio, and below the button, they had no sentence. Then they tested two sentences, such, and the first one, 71 beauties, have viewed this product today. An increase of 33% in transactions. But then they tested 71 beauties, have purchased this product today. Change one word from view to the product, a 100% increase in transactions. Because the first second criteria, so they wrote 71 beauties, if you come to a makeup studio, you probably want to feel a little bit of beauty, so they didn't have that correct. Then have purchased, the second criteria is, describe the desired behavior, and the desired behavior for you. So that was purchased, purchased these items. So that's the second criteria. And the third criteria, use exact numbers. They build trust. So not 70 beauties, but 71 beauties. And with those sentences, this structure, you can write very powerful sentences, knowing what your clients previously did. And by bringing that over to awareness, now we trigger one of those short cuts in system one. Ah, if people like me get exactly this, and it's also a trustworthy number, now I'm willing to move forward in that direction. So I would definitely recommend social proof to your audience and authority. So let's get right right now. We have this group of coaches and consultants in smaller businesses like that. And let's say we want them to, the action we want them to take is to get on a calendar to have a conversation with a member of the team about, is this the right move for them to make to sign up for this program that we have? So what we would want to say to them in a short email is, hey, so and so, this has been an interesting year for a lot of clients just like you, many of our clients have found. The recession has affected their business and their growth has slowed down. Can you relate? But clients who have taken this approach, this little known approach that we use, 15 of them or 13 of them have applied this over a two month period they've managed to increase their income by 218% or whatever the number is. That was, we'd say something like that. If you would like to find out if this can work for you, click on this button, something around those lines. Exactly, that language and then also be specific. So what did people after receiving the email, a humble 10, 3 people booked a calendar meeting with me? This fine, exactly the desired behavior. And in this case, it will be booked the calendar meeting. Because like I said to it, if you talk, that's why I like the comparison of a child of seven. You have to give clear direction on what to do, put on your pajamas, brush your teeth, finish your dinner. That's how you talk to a child of seven. You give instructive language. And if I compare system one to a child of seven, that's why I say define exactly the desired behavior. Because bringing that to awareness, connecting it with social proof, then system one has like an automatic move forward. It acts on it. And they do what you define to do. And it doesn't need to think. You want to lower the mental effort. The less mental efforts, the more conversion you will see, especially in an online environment. So the biggest tip is meet all these three criteria. - What is the definition, like those beauties in the makeup studio? It's entrepreneurs in the top leader industry. That's probably your client. Then you define what is the desired behavior. It is booked a calendar, booked a meeting with me. - Book a meeting with the desired behavior. - And then the amount, and obviously it needs to be true, but you can just look back how many meetings you had scheduled for the last month or year or two years. And the higher the number, the better. And that's how you can structure these sentences. And that's what is interesting about persuasion, in my opinion, it's about a subtle nuances that have a massive impact. We call those small bigs. Small changes, big outcomes, like I refer to those dead case. They doubled the revenue with changing a word. Actually they tripled their income from 33% plus 33 to plus 100. That's an increase of 300%. And they changed only the word view, view the product or purchase the product. And this is what the power of influence can do for you, if you understand them and have a systematic approach, a proven framework. - I'll tell you something, Baz, this is absolutely fantastic from my perspective. It is, it's actually genius. I like to think of myself as a very good writer because I've published 10 of my own books and I actually have at least two more that are coming out. And what I've started to understand is that we are with a few minor tweaks able to absolutely shift this and make it something truly special that will convert far more powerfully. So we wanna say this, the beginning of the short paragraph should be, this email has specifically been written for small business owners that are really looking to grow their business, right? To small business owners of under, say under a million, in this case, they're really looking to grow their business. - It's fine as specific as possible. So people can relate, that's me. - Yeah, yeah, under a million dollars. And what we want to do is we want them to book a, and what we want to do is we want you to be able to grow your business using this phenomenal methodology and the way to do it is by booking a calendar appointment with one of our strategists. And in the last two weeks, we've managed to book an additional 13 appointments with business owners just like you and here's the link. Boom, I wanna give them a try. That's so much less complicated than the crap that I've been writing. (laughing) - I don't believe you wrote crap. Otherwise you didn't build what you built, Nikki. - Oh no, but you're gonna say what I'm saying. It's gonna take us from this size to this size, just to make it simple. And I also have been writing these wonderful words in these wonderful emails for CEOs. And the emails are, you know, two, three short paragraphs long, but I could do the same thing. (laughing) Yeah, you can, this principle is always applicable. That's the beauty of these principles. They are universal, they work all over the world with every human being. It's like how we are pre-programmed with decision making. And then you, for example, could add in your case, okay, this email was sent to 3000 people, for example, and people have some scarcity feeling. Okay, a lot of people are booking these links. I understand, Nikki cannot have 3000 meetings in a week. He sent his email to 3000 people. Perhaps I should ask quick. Or act quick, sorry. And now you're combining these principles and they can even strengthen each other. - Yeah. This is brilliant. I really like it. I really, really like it. Baz, you're, you know, You are a pretty brilliant man and I believe what you're doing with Dr. Chaudhini is God's work because it's helping people become more effective at ethical persuasion and it's also helping good people succeed. Our world is a better world when entrepreneurs succeed, when entrepreneurs get to grow their businesses, they create more economic activity, they create more jobs, they create better lives for their clients and obviously they create a better life for themselves and their children and their families and they create an example for others to look at and go, "If he can do it, I can do it." You know what I mean? Completely agree and that's what we're all about helping those people. As Wouters, you are a man of depth, a man of intelligence and a man of action who's created incredible things. What I would like to do with your permission is I would actually like to bring you back to look at doing a series of episodes with you. Maybe for the next little while, if you're up for it once a month, I'd like to have a conversation with you, build it out. I'm going to send you obviously the links when the episodes are out but we'll send you a couple of clips and I think we can sit down and think through some of the topics you want to bring out and bring them to other people with your permission. I'd like to also introduce you to a couple of other podcast hosts that have podcasts that are going out to entrepreneurs. I think that would be valuable for them and for you as well. And we ought to do the series with you. I think together we can make a lot of impact. Good, we really could. Let's do it, man. Let's do it. I agree right now. Done. And I will introduce you to there are three hosts. I want to introduce you to as well. Then I think you should go on their shows. So if you know with your permission, I'll introduce you to them offline. They're good people. You can trust me on this. You're not fake. Yeah, I would love that, Nicky. Thank you a lot. Yeah. And of course, we've been talking offline about doing some collaborative work together. So I'm very excited to do that work with you and we'll end this episode in a moment or two and we'll set up a time to do all of that. But we like to end the episode by doing the following. First of all, do you want to participate in the programs that you and the Chaldeen Institute put together? Where do they go to do that? First, foremost. And go to chaldeenie.com and they see a few options. We have the ethical influence practitioner. That's where you learn influence. But if you think I want to coach mental other people and learning influence, we have the professional program. So it depends if they want to learn it. To build their business, I would advise a practitioner program. They say, wow, I have clients and I want to train and coach them in influence. Go for the professional program. For the bigger clients, you're now describing previously with $10 million plus revenue. We have also team training certified agencies. So they will see those programs on chaldeenie.com. Excellent. We're going to make sure that all of that's available to people. And like I said to you, you've been very gracious to me in a previous meeting and said, Nikki, I want to have you do one of these and I'm excited. So let's get that process rolling to move in. As you know, I'm a fan of this work. I think it's very important. And I believe it can be tied into the thought leader work we're doing very nicely. And I will really want to team up with you in both regards to do that. But now we want to end off with three powerful bullet point expert action steps. These are your best three pieces of advice for my listener to take on, to take their business to the next level in bullet point format. What do you say? I would say start learning this. Start understanding the science of influence. Second, notice systematic approach. Join us. And three, you lose this framework to everything you do in your life. I promise you, if you take those three taps, start learning this right away. You will be more successful as a professional and you will be happier as a person. Not because I'm selling this. I left it. To your life and business. I'm writing these down for myself as well. I really think this is fantastic. God bless you. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. We're going to put all this in the show notes and stick around for one more minute when we're done and away we go. I'm happy to be in there. No, it's an honor to have you here, man. As Walters is the real deal. He and I are like brothers from another mother now. We've become good friends. I strongly recommend that you go check out chaldini.com and that you look into the programs that they're offering. And let's get that ball rolling for you. It'll make a big difference for you. And make sure that if you got value from this episode, that you give us a like or rating a review and you also share it with somebody in your community that could benefit from this. Because this is an important episode. This is the type of episode that I call all steak no sizzle. Well, maybe a little bit of sizzle, but all steak, you know what I mean? And that's the kind of episode you as a listener want to dig into, take notes on and move forward in. Bazz, thanks for coming on the show, brother. It was great being here. You bet. And that wraps up another exciting episode. To podcast the thought leader revolution, to find out more about today's incredible guests, the one only Bazz routers, please go to thethoughtleaderrevolution.com or wherever you happen to listen to this episode be it iTunes, Stitcher or Spotify. Until next time, goodbye. This episode has been brought to you by eCircleAcademy.com, the proven system to add six to seven figures a year to your thought leader practice.