9 Harsh Truths No One Wants To Admit - Shaan Puri - #1163

Chris Williamson (0:00)

People of the UK and Ireland, I'm coming to you live. Imagine that, me on stage in your city. Dublin is completely sold out, but everywhere else has got limited tickets left, and you can get yours now at chriswilliamson.live. This is a custom-built live show. I absolutely adore it. I've spent over a year working on it. So if you're a fan of everything Modern Wisdom, come and see me on stage this October around the UK and Ireland, chriswilliamson.live. The economy is just smart people paying beautiful people to promote stuff to insecure people.

Shaan Puri (0:26)

This episode is brought to you by the American Association of Modern Wisdom. I mean, isn't it, right? Like once you see it, you kind of can't unsee it. But, you know, I don't know, I just kind of observed that one day, that a lot of the way the world works is it was a small group of people who have some sort of idea or an agenda. And by the way, this is not always nefarious. They just might, maybe they believe that this product is really great or that this way of living is really great.

But the way we transmit that to society is this weird food chain, it's like if aliens came and observed this ecosystem, how these animals work, it seems like the sort of smart ones seem to somehow bribe the beautiful, attractive ones with the big feathers. And then they're tapping into some fear in the general pop, in gen pop. And so, you know, then you go through life, you listen to some commercials, you watch some ads, you see what's going on, and you can kind of work backwards from that. And by the way, this is actually good business advice, too. And again, if your intentions are good, I think it's useful to use this advice, which is, somebody said this, they were like, you know, you sell a mother safety. Like, you know, mom's number one fear is like the well-being of their child. So like, if you're selling a mother, you know, something, you should sell the safety of their children.

If it's a woman, you might want to sell her beauty or, you know, youth. If you're selling a man, you want to sell him status. And so like, you know, you've been a club promoter. You know, how do you get somebody to buy a table? How do you get somebody to buy a bottle that they know, if you walk across the street, it's $50, and they have to buy it for 500 here because you're selling them status, power, importance. And so you kind of have to know what root insecurity someone has if you want to pull on their strongest lever.

Chris Williamson (2:18)

Makes the economy sound very predatory to basically be this fear engine diagnosing and then attacking each person's individual vulnerability.

Shaan Puri (2:27)

Well, the world is sort of predatory. You go on Instagram, follow like nature is metal.

You go see what animals do to each other. I would say, I think it is a bit foolish to see the world as you think it should be versus as it is. So I think by default, you view the world as it is, and then you get to decide with your agency, if you want to shift it towards what you view as a better world, how you think it should operate more like. But you're not going to get very far if you don't understand human nature.

If you don't understand what's going to make people move and what's going to make people behave in a certain way. I think there's a great marketer, Gary Halpert. I don't know if you've ever seen this guy, but you can go watch his old school videos on YouTube. Anybody who wants to learn marketing, don't read the modern stuff, go read the guys who could sell things through direct mail, like postcard, and they would drive millions of dollars. These guys understood something about human nature. And he said to a room of marketers, never has more money been lost than selling somebody what they should want versus what they do want. And so-

Chris Williamson (3:30)

Oh, that's great.

Shaan Puri (3:31)

You have to meet people where they are. What do they want? And how do you frame your offer, the benefits, the product that you believe improves their lives in such a way that it resonates with what they do want?

Half business advice, half just people advice, right?

Chris Williamson (3:46)

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I suppose the argument would be you are pushing people toward the thing which isn't necessarily best for them but is simply sort of playing to their most base instincts. But you go, well, okay, do you want me to run an unsuccessful but virtuous business?