How To Articulate Yourself Persuasively
3 steps to getting anything you want (ethically)
You have already been persuaded by 100 different things today by the time you’ve read this.
It just wasn’t conscious to you.
Not everybody you know is worth listening to.
Sorry not sorry.
People follow your content and subscribe to you for two reasons:
To hear your perspective (not any-old information they could get from AI)
They believe your perspective can change their life for the better
Like many of you, I hated school for a lot of reasons. One of them being if a teacher said anything, I believed they were 100% right. Because, you know... I needed the grades.
I’ve been writing one newsletter a week for just over a year now. And with each one, I am trying to capture attention so I can persuade people of the profound ideas I have to say, so they can benefit like I have.
The almost 70k audience across two platforms is the by-product. So this works, if you stick with it.
Was I a great conformist?
Oh yeah. I am a very agreeable person.
It was only when I became an adult myself that I really started... questioning some things.
Persuasion is unavoidable. It bleeds across everything you do in your life.
Everybody is doing it.
Everything you do and say (or don’t do and don’t say) persuades people to help you get what you want. Your worldview, your beliefs, your ideas, everything about you as it appears to others... judging books by their covers, really.
And persuasion is ethical when there’s mutual benefit.
Did you know that you will never be handed anything in life, and that you actually have to persuade people to give you what you want?
If you want to become more persuasive in your own life, perhaps online, leading to more people reading your work and subscribing because of it, you need trust.
You need to persuade people to trust you.
So in this essay, I want to give you a three-step framework to help you become more persuasive.
Let’s ruffle a few feathers. That’s what harsh truths are for.
Skip if you hate self-promotion
Early-bird pricing for The Profound Writer is ending July 21st.
It teaches my writing/content system that I used to cultivate an audience of almost 70k subs across two platforms in just one year of writing online (starting as a complete beginner).
And also earn 1-2k per month on top of my day job, become a Substack bestseller in less than four months, and continue to grow by 200-500 email subs each day.
All by writing for 30-60 minutes each morning, and posting one of these newsletters each week.
It’s an evolving course. 6 modules, 3 more on the way. End-of-module feedback surveys, module/lesson/AI prompt requests. Prompts that don’t write anything or think for you, with all the AI-ness stripped away from them (they can only give observations and ask you questions).
Again: Early-bird pricing ends July 21st.
It’s 50% off right now, so save yourself the money before you can’t.
Consider enrolling before early-bird disappears
P.S. If you have any questions, shoot me a DM or an email. I’m here to help in any way I can.
I - Most people are blind to persuasion already
Talk to someone about themselves and they’ll listen for hours. - Dale Carnegie
The best way to persuade somebody to do something is to make them want to do it.
Common sense, right?
Well common sense ain’t so common for a reason.
The mind is a goal-setting machine.
A want is a goal that your mind perceives as beneficial.
This can be conscious or unconscious to you.
There’s a huge difference between a perceived want (your feelings, the words you speak) and an actual want (your actions). Always pay attention to what people are doing. Not what they say they are doing.
Most people will spend the majority of their life doing things they believe they don’t want to do. In reality, they do want these things. It happens a lot more than you might think. Context is important. So let’s go through some specific examples.
People will work 40 hours per week for sixty years at a job they hate, but still do it, because they want to.
Yes, you might say you hate your job. But that’s a perceived want.
You feel like you hate your boss. You always say you will be handing in your notice. But you keep showing up for years and years because what you actually want is survival (income, identity, certainty/order that creates feeling of safety).
When you’re in a relationship, your “significant” other (hopefully) says that they love doing things with you.
But look at what they do.
They’re not doing everything you want to do on the weekends. Or see every place you want to explore while on travelling around Italy for the summer. Or watching what only you want to watch on Netflix.
If the relationship wasn’t benefiting them via life enjoyment, sexual companionship, safety in a tribe, comfort and certainty and so forth, guess what?
They would leave you. If they had the common sense that ain’t so common.
All those people who do “follow-for-follow” say they’re helping you grow by subscribing, but they’re not doing what matters, which is reading your content.
That is why people subscribe to you, no? Persuasive, engaging, and enjoyable content that helps people, right?
We do everything for the benefit of ourselves. And that includes helping others.
I do not believe that’s a bad or a cynical thing.
Once you really think about it, it’s actually the secret to living a great life.
When two sides benefit, regardless if it’s done consciously or unconsciously, it’s persuasion.
When one side benefits at the conscious (or unconscious) expense of the other, it’s manipulation.
Manipulation just means managing information.
You manipulate information every time you learn something, by thinking about it, in your working memory until it gets stored into your long term memory.
Persuasion is beneficial manipulation.
It is not hidden or one sided.
Pure manipulation is hidden in words (not actions) and benefits just the person doing the manipulating.
Lifting weights twice a week benefits just yourself first. But then it ripples outward.
You eat better. You spend money on food differently. You treat people better, because we judge others based on what we lack in ourselves. You get sick less, which might mean one less hospital bed being taken from somebody who needs it for reasons outside their control.
Benefits ripple outward like a stone thrown in a lake.
People do everything they do because from their perspective (this is important), they believe they will benefit.
Your goal, then, is to persuade other people of a more beneficial perspective than the one they currently have.
Of which, was likely implanted inside their brain involuntarily by society, older generations, social institutions, governments etc.
I can’t think of many benefits now that would come from studying 8 hours a day.
So how do you do it? Be more persuasive? Isn’t that a wee bit... unethical?
Nope.
Nobody wants to read content that isn’t persuasive. It’s not engaging to read.
II - Fact + Benefit
There are unlimited ways of perceiving any person, situation, or problem. If you stand for everything you stand for nothing. Since, if you treat every perspective as equally valid, then what perspective do you really have?
The brain hates uncertainty like we have said. So it comes down to choosing the best perspective for the context (the problem, want, or goal in front of you).
Not every way of seeing something is optimal, or high leverage. And not every way is true.
Some quote-unquote beneficial perspectives are lies (a lie is a manipulation of the truth).
All of this sounds very... abstract. And you’d be right to think that.
Why am I saying it to you, then?
There are facts, then there are benefits of facts.
Glorious. Such a profound idea!
Everyone starts out with equal access to the facts. It’s how you use them, so, what you extract, and what you do with what benefits you’ve extracted, that matters.
Yes, this is the skill we call persuasion.
The brighter side is always there. Maybe you’re just not seeing it.
Or you haven’t tried finding it.
I want you to start paying attention. But to everything. And look for the benefits.
People believe what they are already looking for. You see what you aim at. If all you’re searching for online are the dangers of eating red meat, what do you think you’ll see?
What if you searched for the benefits?
What if you asked AI to tell you how great your writing is?
What if you asked it to tell you the opposite?
(warning: you need little ego to survive such a process)
Think about red cars and all you’ll see on a motorway are red cars...
I need not explain further.
Perspectives are not equal.
BUT.
Some are more beneficial than others.
Let’s get into the framework now.
This is how you can become more persuasive.
III - How to be more persuasive
Step 1: Perspectives
What perspective do you want to persuade people of?
A loyal audience doesn’t appear overnight thanks to a single piece of content. Same with building muscle in the gym, or the city of Rome... and also new perspectives.
A perspective is cultivated. Slowly.
Like how all good things take time, but only if you do the right type of effort, in the right areas, toward the right ends. Punching a brick wall with your bare hands for 3 years will never be as effective as the sledgehammer alternative, no matter how “good” you feel will do it.
My point:
Water any new perspective to make it grow, by giving it your attention.
You’re not going to see the benefits of writing online until you do enough long-form posts, consistently, before you start getting subscribers and nice emails from people aged between 14-70+ all around the globe.
Or until your thinking becomes deeper, and you can feel your mind stretching itself beyond its limits more and more each week, unlike it ever has before.
Same applies to persuading other people of new perspectives.
It takes consistent exposure to see the benefits.
Especially if your advice can help them achieve a goal, or succeed at solving a problem with your perspective you have given them.
Step 2: Facts + Benefits
The most important trick to be happy is to realize that happiness is a choice that you make and a skill set that you develop. You choose to be happy, and then you work at it. It’s just like building muscles. - Naval
Think about the perspective you want to persuade people with.
It can be a belief. Your solution to a problem. A want, goal, or desire you have.
Write down as many facts about that perspective you can think of.
And no. You’re not allowed to use AI for this. You can use your brain for once because you use Claude enough.
Life is facts because physics is harsh.
Everyone starts out equally with the facts. The grass is going to be green whether you like it or not. So are you going to like it or hate it?
Once you have at least 50 facts, start writing down one benefit for each fact.
Positives and benefits are always there. I want you to start paying attention to them. But like your life depended on it.
Like a hawk. At everything. Observe something and look for the benefits of it. Literally anything. Reading a book. Lifting weights. Writing an essay. Writing online. Starting a personal brand. Learning a high-value skill. Staring at a wall.
Even quote-unquote “bad” things.
For years I hated the idea of drinking. I never liked it. I never felt good after doing it and I still do. Probably the greatest comedian alive right now (imo) Jimmy Carr once said, this is a profound one:
The risk to your liver is as nothing compared to the risk of social isolation.
You could write down more than 50 facts.
100, 200, 300...
It will teach you to think rationally (which I’ve heard is pretty important) and also to see the brighter side of things.
Persuasion aside, this is why happiness is a choice to an extent.
Use pen and paper.
C’mon. It won’t kill you.
Looking at screens day and night meaninglessly definitely might.
Step 3: Transmission
Reading a Profound Ideas newsletter on how to be more persuasive is nothing compared to going out and getting feedback from reality.
You need to do.
You need to live life in the arena.
You need feedback.
Without it, how else are you going to improve toward eventually achieving the thing that you want?
Persuasion is proven through feedback alone, not books, studying, or thinking about persuasion.
By actually being fucking persuasive.
I recommend that you write. Specifically, under a personal brand.
Why?
Well, your family and friends will always tell you your writing is great. That is, until we introduce the harsh reality that is social media.
If you can’t attract people to your brand, are you really that persuasive? What about getting people to engage? Subscribe? Leave a comment? Let alone read your full long-form post? What about getting people to trust you and therefore pay you?
Then what about AI making writing obsolete?
Here’s a fact: AI is not nothing, and almost everyone is using it to write and create content.
Here’s one benefit within that fact: If everyone is doing in, where is the value? AI writing stands out like a purple elephant sitting inside a Starbucks. So, if you use AI to write for you, wouldn’t you expect to get the same results as everyone else also using AI to write for them?
Check out The Profound Writer if you want a writing system that uses AI in the right areas. And please, for the love of god, stop using AI to write and think for you.
IV - Summary
To recap because even my own head is melted writing this one, but in the best way possible:
Persuasion cannot be avoided - Everything you do, say, and don’t do and don’t say, is persuading everyone around you of your value as a person (sorry)
Perceived want (words, feelings) and actual want (actions) are different - Pay attention to what people do, not what they say... if you could excuse the AI sounding “it’s not this it’s that” phrasing
Persuasion is mutually beneficial - It is honest, two-sided, and you can see it in people’s actions. Nothing is being hidden.
Manipulation is the opposite - It benefits the person doing the manipulating, and it gets hidden behind words
Everyone has access to the same facts - How you see the benefits of them is what makes you persuasive
You see what you’re looking for - Attention determines which perspectives you can see and eventually start believing
Step 1: Perspectives - A new perspective is cultivated slowly, through giving it your attention consistently
Step 2: Facts + Benefits - Write down the facts of the perspective you want to persuade with, then think of a benefit for each fact
Step 3: Transmission - Persuasion is proven through feedback from reality. Theory only takes you so far. Write content and let social media give you your feedback
Thank you to everyone who has enrolled in The Profound Writer. The responses have been overwhelming in the best way imaginable.
Early-bird ends July 21st.
Save yourself the money if you’re considering enrolling. I’ll stop being annoying and salesly after July 21st. You’ll just have to deal with me until then.
I’ll have another one of newsletters out in a few days. I’ve a lot of profound ideas to share with you legends.
- Craig :)
The most persuasive people are the ones who have thought deeply enough to explain something simply, without hiding behind complexity or even AI. Clear communication begins long before we speak, with clear thinking.