How to rewrite the story in the minds of your customers, your friends, your family, and maybe even your spouse. On today’s episode Russell talks about his ability to tell stories that trump other people’s and that’s how he’s been able to sell everything. Here are some of the amazing things you will hear in this episode:

-- Find out why storytelling is so important to getting people to rewrite their own stories and believe your truth.

-- Find out what the difference is between better story telling and one upping someone else’s story.

-- And see why practicing better story telling in all aspects of your life will help you be a better story teller with your business.

So listen here to find out how you can become a better story teller, to trump your customer’s story.

And this is true to anything, if you want to convince them to come to a movie and they’re like, ‘I don’t know if I want to see that movie.” Then you tell them a story about, “This is why.” And if your story is better than theirs, they’ll be like, “Alright cool. That does sound good. Let’s go to the movie.” Or let’s say, you’re going out to eat, and they want to go somewhere and you want to go somewhere. And they want to go to their place and they have a story in their head about why they want to go there, or why they don’t want to go to where you want to go.  So then you have to tell a story that trumps their story. If your story trumps theirs, they will rewrite their story and they’ll come with you.

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-- DotComSecrets: Get a free copy of the "Underground Playbook For Growing Your Company Online With Sales Funnels."

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-- ​Traffic Secrets: Get a free copy of the "Underground Playbook For Filling Your Websites And Funnels With Your Dream Customers.

What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I am so excited to have you guys here today. Today I want to talk about stories and how your story is to trump your customer’s story.

Alright everybody, I am working on a project, a top secret product. Well it’s not that secret, I tell everybody everything on Instagram and Facebook and social and podcasts. But other than that, it’s completely secret. But we are doing an event this summer for families and I’m really excited for it.

It’s anyone in our Two Comma Club X coaching program, they get to bring their kids and themselves to an event that I’m doing called unlock the secrets, it’s going to be a three day event. So I’ve been working on it, at the same time as working on my Traffic Secrets book, at the same time I’m trying to run Clickfunnels. There’s so much stuff. Plus summer started like three days ago so I’m trying to keep my kids at home and trying to keep them engaged and not bored. It’s a lot, it’s like I’m juggling a million things. The kids come to the office every five minutes like, “Dad, we want more snacks, more treats.” And then they want to go play, and it’s a lot. It’s a lot.

Anyway, for all you guys that don’t have kids yet, it adds like a whole other dimension that is insane. But anyway, I digress. So I am working on the unlocking secrets event and it’s really fun because I have to make this event engaging enough for kids to be engaged, but stimulating enough for adults to be stimulated. So it’s kind of this weird, fun, exciting balance. Hopefully I don’t screw it up. And if I do, there’ll be 1500 people there to watch me crash and burn. But if I do a good job it will be my, what do they call that, my Holland’s opus, your Mr. Opus, I don’t know what it’s called, your thing.

So my goal is to do this event once a year, so hopefully it turns out good this first time around. So I’m really excited for it. But anyway, that’s what I’m working on. And one of the activities and exercises I’m working on is as I go into storytelling, because obviously lots of times I go deep and I talk about story and webinar and your origin story and your vehicle of false internal beliefs, external beliefs, all the stories and all sorts of stuff. And if you boil it down to selling 101, it all comes down to figuring out what is your customer’s false belief? What’s the story they’re currently telling themselves? And then you have to figure out a story that trumps theirs. And if your story is better than theirs, it will rewrite their story and your truth will become their truth, and then they’ll follow you to the end of the world.

And this is true to anything, if you want to convince them to come to a movie and they’re like, ‘I don’t know if I want to see that movie.” Then you tell them a story about, “This is why.” And if your story is better than theirs, they’ll be like, “Alright cool. That does sound good. Let’s go to the movie.” Or let’s say, you’re going out to eat, and they want to go somewhere and you want to go somewhere. And they want to go to their place and they have a story in their head about why they want to go there, or why they don’t want to go to where you want to go. So then you have to tell a story that trumps their story. If your story trumps theirs, they will rewrite their story and they’ll come with you.

So that’s the whole game. It’s funny because I was listening to Myron Golden speak at one of the Two comma club x coaching events and he was talking about selling versus persuading. He’s like, “Selling is when..” I’m going to totally mess up his analogy, but selling is where you’re trying to get somebody to do something for your reasons, where persuading is getting them to do something for their reasons.

So the core foundational principle of persuasion is story telling. How do I tell a story that gets them to change their story? And that’s kind of the game. It was interesting, as I think I told you guys a while ago, I was at this mastermind in Puerto Rico with a whole bunch of guys. And one of the guys who was there runs arguably one of the biggest health companies that nobody’s ever heard of. I don’t know his exact sales, but my understanding and my guestimates are it’s more than half a billion dollars a year.

And the guy who owns the company is one of the best copywriters ever and it was interesting because as he was talking about his company he said, “You know what we do as a company is there’s a story that people believe, and it was either the government gave them this story, or the school system or whatever gave them this story to believe. Our job is to come in to rewrite their story. So we have a book or a product that is different, it’s different core fundamentals than what society as a whole believes. So our goal is to become the best story tellers in the world. So we tell a story that trumps their story, so in their mind it actually rewrites the story to be, where your story becomes their story.” Does that make sense?

So anyway, I’m sharing this because the activity I’m going to do with the kids is going to be really, really fun, and I’m not sure exactly how it’s going to work, but basically it’s going to be like, okay you get a partner, and your partner wants to go see this movie. You have to tell them a story about why they should come see your movie instead, what’s the reason? And you have to tell a good story. Why do you want to see this story? So it comes downs to this art of telling a better story.

And then we’re going to do an activity where it’s like, your friend wants to go to McDonalds, you want to go to Burger King, why? Tell them a story why it would be better for them to go with you.

And not every time are you going to be able to convince somebody. If we could I would have 100% closure to my webinars, which would be insane, I would be a multi-trillionaire because I would just tell stories to convince everybody all the time. But you know, if you get 3, 5%, 10% of the people who hear their story to shift their story, that’s when you build a multi-million dollar a year business. So we have to become better at telling stories.

So what I want to give to you guys for today, for this podcast is start thinking through this. Just start thinking in your everyday situations. Look at your spouse or your kids or your coworkers, or your friends or something. Start looking at the opportunities where they want to do something and it’s different from what you want to do. And then this is the time for you to start flexing that muscle, start building it out, start working it out. Say okay, “They want to go see this movie, I want to go see this movie.”

Or date night. My wife wants to go here, I want to go here. So how do I tell the story about what I want to do? And let me try to tell it in a way that inspires and motivates and persuades her or him or whatever to change their beliefs and to follow you. And the more you practice that, the better for you.

So that’s kind of my goal for you guys to start looking at that. What’s the story someone’s telling themselves and how can you come in and trump it. And I’m not talking about one upping their story. You guys all know those people, the one uppers, where you tell a story and you’re like, “This one time I went and swam 30 miles and I did it in an hour and a half and it was really, really cool. I’m really proud of myself.” And they’re like, “I swam 35 and I did it in 40 minutes.” You’re like, “Alright. You’re a jerk.” That’s a one upper right, and that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about a one upper.

I’m talking about them saying, “Hey, today I would really love to just stay in and watch TV because I’m tired and I don’t really want to go out.” And you in your mind are like, “I really want to go out. I have this plan.” So it’s coming back and saying, “Cool, we can do that, or I was envisioning, I think it would be super, super cool. Imagine this, we get a sitter for the kids, we call so and so, she comes over and she’s going to watch the kids and we can leave. And I thought it might be fun to dress up a little bit, because normally we don’t. So kind of dress up and then when we go to the, we’ll have a chance to drive downtown. And just visualize driving downtown and seeing all the lights, and seeing all the things, see all the people. And I’d love to get restaurants, get a thing here…” you describing that, explaining how amazing it is.

“And after that we’d go to see a show. There’s the dueling pianos downtown, we could go listen to them for a while. And then I think it’d be fun to go on a late night walk and just look at the moon and the stars. It’d be super awesome. So that’s what I kind of visualized. Or we could stay home. What would you rather do?” And if you tell the story right, they’re in the middle of this thing and they’re envisioning like, “Oh my gosh, that would be cool. And the pianos would be super fun. And the kids would be taken care of from the babysitter. That could be romantic.”

And that story alone would give them the motivation and the energy to be like, “Yeah, you know what, let’s not just stay home and do nothing. That does sound amazing.” And all the sudden, boom, it rewrote their story and now I persuaded them to do what they really wanted to do anyway.

So there is the game my friends. Story trumping. I was trying to think of the right title for this podcast and story trumping sounds cool, but then there’s going to be something, someone’s going to get Donald Trump and someone’s going to get mad at me. “Ugh, you talked about Trump.” I’m like, no, I’m trying to trump, I’m trying to one up, but I don’t want to be a one upper either. That’s…there you go. There’s my dilemma for what to name this one.

Anyway, I hope that helps you guys. Start practicing that in your everyday lives. Start looking at the stories that your friends, your family members, your customers are telling yourself, and then start building that muscle. Start practicing just telling better stories. And again, you’re not going to win every single time, but the more you practice, the better you’ll become and the better you’ll become at persuading people. Because persuasion in my mind is all about understanding the story they’re telling themselves, and telling the new story that’s more exciting, it’s better and gets them to rewrite their story and believe your truth.

That’s all it is. That’s how I built Clickfunnels, that’s how I sold everything. That’s how I sold ketones, that’s how we sold, basically everything in my life is all about that, it’s me really becoming clear, what’s the story their telling them, what’s the story I have in my life or that I can look at and research and find, that’s going to trump their story? And I’m going to tell it in a way that inspires them and makes them be like, “Oh my gosh, you’re right. That does sound way better. I’m in. Let’s go.”

So that’s the homework assignment for you guys today. That’s all I got. I’m going to go in. I got a fun day of writing and working and all sorts of stuff today. So I’m going to go get it done, then I’m going to go play with my kids tonight. So with that said, thanks you guys and we’ll talk to you all soon. Bye.