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Sunday, Oct 12 , 2008 , 8:11 PM Dear Friend,It’s a great day here in Los Angeles. I’m not sure where you are right now, but you’re probably reading this on a computer monitor somewhere. Perhaps you’re reading this at home. Or maybe you’re at work. As you are sitting down and reading these characters on a screen, I invite you to take a mental break from what you were doing for the next five minutes or so. In front of the computer with your feet on the ground, feel free to take a nice deep breath and just allow yourself to relax and really pay attention, because I have something very important to tell you.Something that may very well change your life.First, I’d like to share a personal story with you.Just last week, I was thinking about what my life was like before I knew anything about persuasion.I was a medical student then — about 25 years old. Life was alright. I was healthy and reasonably happy. Had some friends. Got lots of exercise. Lived in a beautiful part of the world with a mellow climate. The first few tiers of the Maslow pyramid of human needs — food, shelter, clothing — were just hunky-dory.However, I’d never been the kind of person who was satisfied with just ‘alright.’ And there were at least two parts of my life that left something to be desired.The first was social. ‘Mediocre’ is the first word that comes to mind when I think of my dating life at that time. ‘Painful’ is a close second. Actually, to tell you the truth, my dating life hardly even existed before I found out about the art and science of persuasion.It’s not like there weren’t eligible women around. Far from it. I was a student on the campus of a major university, and I was constantly surrounded by intelligent, beautiful, single women. Every day.Unfortunately, even though I was around them, I did not know the first thing to do to bring them into my life in a romantic way. And even when I did make a little bit of progress, more often than not, I would screw things up sooner rather than later.Have you ever had a similar experience? Do you know what I’m talking about? Having something so tantalizingly close, yet so far out of reach at the same time.Let me give you an example. It was the first month of classes. I remember Debbie, the tall, athletic, brilliant, sweet and absolutely stunning classmate of mine who gladly accepted my invitation to go see a play.After the play we were sitting in her car for a long time, just talking and enjoying each others’ company. And, after a while of nothing else happening, things got awkward and we both went back home to our respective apartments.That was my first and last date with Debbie. And then there were 3.9 more years of hanging around her knowing that I had blown my chance. Can you feel my pain? The women out there reading this can probably understand me, too. You don’t have to be a guy to know what that kind of failure feels like.Then there were Stephanie, Anna, and Danielle. All of them were seriously cute and very smart — undergrads at my campus. Danielle in particular was a stunner — blonde, curvy, 10,000 watt smile.At some point, each one of them ended up at my place watching a movie with me. Curled up on the couch together after a nice dinner, glass of wine in hand, no one else around.And you know what happened with them? NOTHING. And I mean absolutely nothing. Not even a simple make-out session.Dating was the first area of pain. The second was my work.As a med student — the lowest organism in the medical hierarchy, somewhere above an amoeba but below a mollusk — I was getting pushed around. My superiors were making ridiculous demands, and their treatment of me was piss-poor in spite of my working hard around the clock.What was going on? Why did I spend all this time putting up with being frustrated?In retrospect, the problem was clear. For starters, I didn’t know how to ask for what I wanted. I felt disempowered and didn’t stand up for myself.The fact is that I had spent all of my life not really knowing how to ask for what I wanted. Most of us were raised to be polite, and to be overly considerate of the feelings of others. We weren’t supposed to be pushy, or demanding. And nobody had really taught us anything about persuasion — what my colleague Dave Lakhani calls “the art of getting what you want.”But then — breakthrough.Towards the end of my third year, a friend re-introduced me to the science of persuasion. And I thought, ‘Hmm, now this is actually interesting.’ This second time around, I actually paid attention.I started to read all the hypnosis and NLP books I could get my hands on. I practiced with my buddy. I listened to tapes. I took classes. I got certified as an NLP Master Practitioner. And a Clinical Hypnotherapist.It was about the same time that I started studying Eastern philosophy, particularly Taoism. I finally bought the book The Tao of Pooh. And then, The Te of Piglet. And the mother lode, the Tao Te Ching.There were some interesting parallels between these two completely disparate fields of knowledge. Neurolinguistic programming (NLP) and persuasion on the one hand, and ancient Eastern wisdom on the other. But it shouldn’t surprise you that effective systems often converge upon the same truths.And that’s when things started to really turn aroundI bailed from a medical career because I had new tools to figure out what I wanted and how to get it — versus just getting stuck in the inertia of default settings.With the kind of backup you get from empowering tools like that, you can afford to take a gamble. I did, and I haven’t looked back. Oh yeah, and my dating life got better, too. A lot better. Suddenly, I had options. You know what the difference is between hoping for lightning to strike, versus knowing that you can go out there and make things happen for you? And what can give you the ability to do this? In a word — persuasion.Perhaps some of these things have happened to you before, too…What we’re offering here is a solution — to problems you know you’ve had, and to ones you didn’t even know you could solve because you thought, hey, that’s just the way things are. We’re here to tell you that there is a better way. Maybe some of these scenarios will sound familiar to you. They do to me, because all of them have happened to me, sometimes on dozens of occasions: You see someone you’d like to meet at a gathering, but never get around to meeting that person. You wonder for months “What if…” You meet someone really interesting but don’t get contact information and kick yourself for weeks afterwards for losing the opportunity You have a very enthusiastic first social or business meeting with someone, but when you follow up, the person is lukewarm to your approach and the whole thing fizzles, and you never figure out why You’ve got a great business proposal for someone and you just know it would be a perfect fit for both of you, but the proposal falls deaf on their ears. You are fully qualified for a job, and the company says they’re very excited about your candidacy. But somehow the interview is flat, and they give the job to someone else, and you’re not quite sure why. You are fully deserving of a raise, but don’t have a clue about how to ask for it. You languish for months at the same old salary, hoping for lightning to strike and have the boss offer the raise to you first. Never happens. You are offered a raise, but don’t think it’s actually commensurate with your contributions. You don’t ask for anything more, say “Thank you” and seethe inside for the rest of the year. Your relationship partner makes some demands on you that you don’t find entirely palatable. You go along with them anyway and then feel trapped, eventually leading to your breaking up. You want something from your relationship partner — could be financial, sexual, a request for more time, anything — but are too afraid of being turned down to even bring it up. When you do bring it up, your request gets flatly rejected. You simmer in dissatisfaction. You’ve got a crazy, brilliant idea that needs backing, but nobody seems to listen. After a litany of rejections, you shelve it and go back to your humdrum existence, frustrated and disillusioned. What all of these scenarios have in common is frustration — of potential, of opportunity, of connection, of togetherness, of wealth and abundance. And frankly, I got tired of being frustrated. Perhaps you are, too.Sure, sometimes opportunities still slip through the cracks — that’s just life. But a lot of great things that have happened in my life in the last ten years would have never happened without these skills. I could have never turned a chance encounter on the street into a fulfilling long-term relationship without the right tools. Nor could I have landed a job with the world’s #1 management consulting firm after going through 11 interviews. Or gotten one of the 12 spots at a super-selective Master’s program at Cambridge. Your success in this world occurs at the human interface. Whether in business or social life, you’re constantly selling yourself or your ideas. Which is why I want to bring you a set of solutions to make you damn good at it. I call it The Tao of Persuasion. The Tao of Persuasion — What it is and what it isn’tThe Tao of Persuasion is a course on how to get what you want out of life, socially or career-wise.There are three big things about the Tao of Persuasion that distinguish it from other persuasion-related courses. The first is that it’s empirically-based. That means it’s about observing how the world works, and then using those principles towards achieving your goal. In a word, practical.This is not about theory or fancy ideas that you will never use. This is about how things work on the ground. Every idea is tested and proven, over and over again.You will never have to worry about whether a technique is effective or not, because we’ve already done that homework for you. It’s as if Consumer Reports designed the course curriculum for you.Which brings us to the second feature of the Tao of Persuasion course: usefulness, which is a close cousin of practicality.Something is practical if it’s proven to work. It’s useful if it actually gets used.For example, a gigantic, 60-pound toolbox may have a lot of cool wrenches and sockets in it, but how often are you going to lug that thing around, just in case something comes up?On the other hand, my handy-dandy Victorinox Swiss Army Knife fits on my keychain and has gotten me out of hundreds of jams. I’ve even repaired my car with it. Incredibly useful, because it gets used. A weeklong course in neurolinguistic programming will set you back a good 2500 bucks and 7 days of your life, and give you hundreds of snippets of technique — some of which you may never use.Why? Because there are too many of them. And they are out of context.That’s the 60-pound toolbox. I’m offering the Swiss Army Knife of persuasion, geared towards eminently practical application. It costs less, is more portable, and will have a bigger overall impact on your quality of life. Especially when it comes to dating and business.The third distinguishing feature of the Tao of Persuasion is that it’s integrity-centered.Some people are wary of words like persuasion and think that it’s just about being sneaky and underhanded. And to learn about it deliberately — or worse, using its techniques — is just a form of trickery.Relax, everybody. Persuasion is merely a tool. In itself, it’s neutral. Like a hammer, you can use it to build a beautiful cabinet — or to smash in people’s windows.Here at the Tao of Persuasion, we prefer that you use persuasion towards ends that are win-win in the long term. Not just because it’s the nice thing to do (frankly, the Tao Te Ching is not very big on niceness — it’s a lot more about getting stuff done), but because by natural and spiritual law, it’s just more effective.And we want you to be really, really effective. Because that’s what empowerment is all about. Time to UnlearnLook — if you’re like me, then you spent most of your youth being taught how to be polite. Don’t be pushy. Don’t be demanding. Don’t bother people.Now we’re all for basic etiquette. But please — it’s about time to banish all that wimpy, indecisive nonsense that passes for politeness and start to ask for what you truly deserve in life.I don’t know if you will always receive when you ask. But I’m pretty sure that if you don’t ask for what you want in this life, you’re pretty much guaranteed not to get it.How much time you have spent on this Earth I do not know. But chances are that, whoever you are, you have not fulfilled your true potential yet.Part of that can be blamed on not having grasped opportunities when they came your way. And maybe that opportunity passed you by because you didn’t know how to get what you wanted.That’s because you either didn’t ask for what you wanted, or asked for it in the wrong way. So you weren’t able to get that plum work project. To get that raise. To get on that team. To get into that school. To get the date with that girl or guy. To get the best deal for that car. To close the sale.Our mission: No more half-assed livingFrankly, I’m tired of seeing smart, talented, capable people like yourself living like this. I used to live like that, and it was no fun.And my mission here at Elite Commmunications is to bring you the absolute best practical educational material anywhere in the world to empower you and help you live an even more fulfilling life. And to do it in the context of integrity so you can use it full-blast with all the force of your being.What you have to realize is that, first and foremost, I am a teacher.And these tools have been so amazingly transformative and empowering for me that I almost feel guilty hoarding them for so long. I really believe everybody should have a hold of them.How the course works and what you’ll get out of itSo I’ve designed The Tao of Persuasion teleseminar series to teach you persuasion in the way you would want it taught: a set of proven, practical tools that you can and will use — and use with integrity.The course is designed to be a general one on persuasion. However, we will draw upon a lot of examples from the social realm and business. In the meantime, you’re welcome to use the tools for any outcome you choose.These are the tools you can use to get the date. Have fun on the date. Have a second and third date, and have even more fun on those.Ace the interview. Get the job. Get the raise on the job. Or raise money for your company. Close the sale. Multiply your closing rate severalfold.Because what makes you feel like a million bucks is getting stuff done. That feeling of empowerment that comes when you get results.So what I’ve done is that I’ve taken a lot of information that’s out there, from psychology, neuroscience, Eastern wisdom, neurolinguistic programming, marketing, sales, copywriting, negotiation, linguistics, hypnosis, and my own experience.I chewed on it for a decade or so, picked the best stuff, and put it in a practical format to deliver to you. The result is the Tao of Persuasion Home Study Course, which is a complete recording of the teleseminar series by the same name.Course StructureThere are seven main modules in which we cover the basics of persuasion. Included are: Rapport. How to make a rapid connection with another person that will serve as a foundation of trust in your interactions. Presuppositions. How to discern and use the hidden part of language that persuades at the level of the unconscious. Vocal control. The quality of your voice is a big determinant of your persuasion power. Learn how to use it with maximal effectiveness. Values and Criteria. Learn about your own and others’ unconscious motivators and how they fit in an overall paradigm of persuasion.Written persuasion. How to be convincing even when you’re not there.Decision Strategies. These define the large-scale structure of persuasion which encompasses the other components. Synthesis. Develop your own persuasion toolkit using the above elements. Each module is about 2 hours long. Each contains a 30-minute vocal training session by the renowned voice coach Bob Corff.We conclude some of the modules with a 10-15 minute hypnotic integration session in which the day’s lesson will be summarized and locked in. As a side benefit, you’ll go on your merry way and feel relaxed, energized and just plain fantastic.For each module, there will be required and recommended reading. You will also have some written exercises to do and occasional audios and videos to go over before a class session.Each module is transcribed with a full transcript included along with the audio CDs. That way, you don’t miss a thing we say, and you can review the material at your own pace, makes notes and highlight the parts you find most useful.Most of the material will is taught by myself. If there was someone who could do a better job on a module, I brought him in. And if I brought him, you’d better believe he’s awesome at what he does.Here are some of the things you’re going to get out of the course:The Be-Do-Have approach to persuasion. True success comes not from doing something, but from being someone. You’ll know how to be the persuader and not just a reciter of techniques.You’re most effective when you operate with your own values, not against them. Learn how to figure out what those values are and then leverage them for even greater success.My teacher used to say that within rapport, everything is possible; outside of it, nothing is possible. Get a thorough grounding in the art and science of rapport so you know you can establish it within seconds, every time. This part alone may be worth the entire tuition.The best way to sell someone on something is to be sold on it yourself first. Get hypnosis-based techniques for putting yourself in that frame of absolute, unstoppable certainty that can move mountains.Whether you want a phone number or a raise, there are good ways of asking for things — and then there are better ways. Learn the ways to ask for what you want that give you the best chance of getting what you want .Most people don’t know that they have a handful of unconscious mental programs that are running your life. This is one little-known technique that can absolutely supercharge both your persuasion power and your ability to get stuff done. I was amazed when I first learned this one, and you will be, too.You tend to get what you want a lot more frequently when you actually know what you want. Learn the proper techniques for establishing powerful outcomes that move you towards them relentlessly.Most people without persuasion training focus on the content of an exchange. You’ll learn how to discern, think, talk and write in terms of process. This is the one distinction that separates the good persuaders from the truly great.The Tao is all about getting out your own way. How to make your persuasion maximally effective by working with your own values and integrity.The cornerstone of all persuasion is pacing and leading. This one technique alone will multiply your persuasion power severalfold, and you’ll practice this so many times that it will become second nature to you like you’re a natural-born hypnotist.The best way to handle objections is the Taoist way — before they come up. How to do your homework such that the path to persuasion is clear and level.To succeed in persuasion, you must have an outcome. To reach the outcome, you must be detached from it. The tao of resolving this seeming paradox and supercharging your success — in every area of life.The covert power of embedded commands and the science behind how they work. A potent but overlooked technique that you are going to master to astonishing effect.Written persuasion is both similar to and different from real-time, in-person persuasion. Learn the key points that work particularly well in a written context. This stuff is absolutely essential for job applications and is exactly what sends your online dating success through the roof.We all have overall strategies for making decisions. Learn the super-advanced, borderline sneaky method for deciphering a person’s strategy and then feeding it back for maximum impact. Master this technique, and you’ll be in the top 1% of all persuaders.No one technique works alone. Learn how to combine different techniques in the most effective manner so they pack a wallop that gets results.To get phenomenal results, you don’t have to use every technique in the book. How to synthesize all of this knowledge and turn it into two or three protocols that become your own mini-Swiss Army knife of persuasion — and get results that will almost seem like magic.