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Charisma Hacking 101: Mastering Your Unique Style with McCall Jones

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Episode Recap:

I had the pleasure of sitting down with McCall Jones, founder of Charisma Hacking, and together we dove deep into a topic every entrepreneur struggles with: how to be your authentic self on camera. McCall has a powerful framework that makes it easier for anyone to present with confidence, without trying to mimic people like Tony Robbins or Gary Vee. If you’ve ever felt awkward or out of place while speaking or presenting or when making a video, this episode is for you.

McCall shares how understanding your unique "charisma type" helps you stay true to yourself while still connecting with your audience. We also talked about how storytelling—when done right—can increase the value of what you’re offering. Whether you’re speaking on stage, on a Facebook Live, or filming ads, knowing how to tap into your charisma can make all the difference in your results.

Key Highlights:

  • Discovering Your Charisma Type: Find the style that fits you, so you no longer feel fake or uncomfortable in front of a camera.
  • Emotionally Engaging Stories: Learn how to tell stories that spark connection and inspire action.
  • The Power of Staying "On Center": Avoid looking inauthentic by aligning with your natural charisma type.
  • Real-World Examples: We discuss my own struggles with pitching and how McCall's feedback helped me avoid common pitfalls.
  • Charisma Styles Broken Down: Learn the distinctions between different charisma types like Excite, Roar, and Charm—and how to find your own.

This conversation is packed with insights to help you unlock the power of authenticity and storytelling in your business. Tune in now to transform how you present and connect with your audience!

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Best Quote:

"Oh, if you tell the right story, it makes selling fun and it actually doesn't feel pitchy. It feels the opposite."

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Transcript:

Russell Brunson:
What's up, everybody? This is Russell. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today, I've got a special guest. We just finished an interview. I'm so excited. And this interview is on the back of us doing a three-day event together. But during this interview, we talk about three really unique things. Number one is how to figure out the right Charisma Type for you so you don't feel stupid and uncomfortable and inauthentic on camera. Number two, we talked about how to tell your stories in a way to get people to have emotion and to move versus just people telling stories that are really boring. And number three, how to increase the value of everything you're selling by using a very specific type of story. That's what we covered in this interview. I hope you guys love it. Enjoy it. It's a really fun interview with McCall Jones. Let's jump right into the podcast.

In the last decade, I went from being a startup entrepreneur to selling over $1 billion of my own products and services online. This show is going to show you how to start, grow, and scale a business online. My name is Russell Brunson and welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. All right guys, I am so excited for what you are about to experience today. We just got done finishing another one of our Selling Online Events. And this time, I brought in a special guest speaker over the last three days and she's amazing. First off, you're going to find that out, but she brought something really unique. You notice I only had one other guest speaker. If you've been to any of the Selling Online Events, if not by the way, go get your ticket, sellingonline.com, for the next one we do. But this is an event we do once a month. It's one of my favorite events ever, teaching people how to create a one-to-many presentation.

And the guest I brought here spoke, I don't know, three or four times. Four times during the event. And a lot of you guys may not even know who she is yet, and I want to introduce you to her. She's somebody who came into the ClickFunnels world out of Funnel Hacking LIVE, not knowing she was there helping, supporting someone in her family who was speaking on stage and then kind of fell into our culture. And she's developed this really cool process to help entrepreneurs who are nervous about being on stage or presenting. Or maybe they come and you see someone like me or Tony Robbins or Gary Vee and you try to be them and you feel like an idiot. How many of you guys feel that way sometimes? She created a whole science to teach people how to actually be themselves, be like... I hate that, it's kind of cheesy, be authentic. People talk about that, but actually how to do that in a really cool way. Her name is McCall Jones, the founder of Charisma Hacking. McCall, how are you doing today?

McCall Jones:
Hey, thanks for having me. I'm so excited.

Russell:
I'm excited to have you here. It's been so much fun hanging out the last couple of days.

McCall:
Oh, my gosh. If you guys are not registered for Selling Online, all of the cameras, it was so much fun. You got to come to the next one. There you go.

Russell:
It's so fun. Yeah. It's the first deep dive we've ever done. How to do one in many presentations, the perfect webinar. I've done little things, but it was the first one. But I want to step back first because I've had you now, I have her come to Boise every month, it seems like, for something. But the first time I had you come up, you came to the Think and Grow Rich Challenge because I was trying to teach people how you can think and grow rich. Some of the biggest false beliefs people have is like, "Well, I can't do it because I'm not Russell." And so you came and you taught people what Charisma Hacking is, and I'd love to lead with that. What is the science that you put together called Charisma Hacking? How does it work? How did you discover it? And let's walk through that first.

McCall:
Yeah, of course. So Charisma Hacking, basically, the foundation of it is that charisma looks different for different people. A lot of times, when people think about charisma, they think it looks a certain way. It's usually somebody that they follow or somebody in their lives that they're like, "That person is charismatic." Our entire foundation breaks that. It says, "Well, charisma looks different." And you actually know this. Even you and Gary Vee, you're completely different, equally as charismatic, but completely different. You use different tactics.

Russell:
I'm a little more charismatic than him, right?

McCall:
You're way more charismatic than Gary Vee. That's what I meant. But you use different tactics, basically, to get people to pay attention to you. So yeah, we started this process with just coaching people one-on-one, basically just teaching them how to be themselves. I grew up as a performer and I learned how to be in front of people and how to be myself all the time. So I sat next to this woman at the very first Funnel Hacking LIVE that I went to, and she was just complaining how nobody was clicking on her Facebook ads and nobody was staying to the end of her webinar. So nobody was even seeing her pitch. And she went on and I had never heard of somebody spending $25,000 on anything at this point. I was a voice teacher.

Russell:
Brand new to the world.

McCall:
I was like, "Oh, my gosh, $25,000." I almost fainted. She's like, "I just spent my last $25,000 on this agency to help me with my Facebook ads and my webinar, but it's not working." And obviously, I was drawing things out of her and I don't know if you can tell, but I like to make friends. So I'm asking her questions and she's like, "I'm just not being myself. All these people in my life see the very best version of me. I'm playful. Can't you tell?" And I'm like, "Yeah, you're so playful." She's like, I'm so boring on video. And I don't know what's happening.

Russell:
Camera comes on and she freezes. Yeah.

McCall:
Exactly. She turns into a completely different person. So I thought, I was like, "Oh, you know what? I think I can help her, but I don't know anything about internet marketing." I sat there and I was like, "Who am I? What am I supposed to do?" And then you literally got on stage 10 minutes later, I'd never heard of you before. The fog goes. And I'm like, "What is happening?" And you get on stage and you said, "If you have something that's going to change someone's life, it's your moral responsibility to give it to them." In this moment, I feel like I'm struck by lightning because once again, I had never heard of somebody spending $25,000 on anything. And I'm like, "That's a life-changing amount of money." If I can help her, I think I have to try. So I told her, I was like, "I think I can help you. I'll totally do it for free. I want to see if this works."

So I started just working with her very intuitively at first, just making her herself. She was trying to be very serious. She saw a lot of women in business that she didn't think she could be taken seriously if she was energetic and fun. All of these women that she was trying to model were very much like this. So I started coaching her, and four calls in, not only did she come alive on video, but we 12Xed her click-through rate on our Facebook ads and we 3Xed conversion rate on our webinar. And it was all just by making her herself. So this whole concept was born and every client that came in, I realized that I was coaching them really uniquely because charisma looks different for different people where she was trying to be serious and she wasn't.

I'd have somebody else come on and they would be cringey. I don't know if I want to use that word, but they would be like, "Oh, my gosh, this is..." And I'm like, "You got to stop that. What's happening?" Because they were charismatic in a different way. So I started developing all these tactics for all these different clients and we tried to put it into a group program. Basically what happened is people would come in and I was like, how do I make more money and make more impact? These results are insane that we're getting for people. Let's bring them all together.

And I would coach somebody one-on-one in front of the group. We're like, "That's the best way to do this." I would give them a tactic like, "Be more serious. What are you doing? You're being kind of cringey". And 1/3 of the group would take that tactic, they'd run with it and amazing things would happen, were like, "This is working." 1/3 of the group would do it and nothing would happen. And then about 1/3 of the group would do it and it would bomb. And we're like, "Charisma is not a group thing, man. We can't do this at scale. We just have to do it one-on-one." And my husband, who is my co-founder and so brilliant-

Russell:
He's pretty smart. I ask him a lot.

McCall:
He's so smart, he's so smart. But he literally just listened to my coaching calls for two weeks and he brought in a stack of notes on my desk and he just slammed a man and he's like, "There are patterns here. There's something cool that we could create here." So we took all this data and we basically said, "What tactics work for somebody like Russell? How would I get this person a result if I coach them individually? And what tactics would sabotage him?" And the more I went through it, the more patterns we saw and it created this system that literally makes you, I also don't like the word authentic, but it makes you authentic in an instant because it shows you exactly like, "Oh, am I okay if I'm serious? Oh great, I can be myself. Oh, am I supposed to be more like Russell? Okay, great." It gives you people to model and it's helped people be really successful.

Russell:
It's really cool. It's funny, when I first started speaking and obviously, during the event I showed clips of me of my very first time speaking, but I was the same way, this is a business event, I need to wear a shirt and a tie and this is how business people present. And I'd do that and then I would talk too fast. People were like: "you talk too fast." I'm like, "Oh." So I would try to talk slower and then I would get confused because I don't know how to... All these different things. And it took me years to feel comfortable in my own skin. And I think what you're doing is speeding that up for people.

And I love to talk about because there's different, you now have different categories for the different Charisma Styles, and so the only one I remember off the top of my head, because we've been going through a three-day event. One I remember is my own, which I'm an Excite, right? Because I’m excited, the way I sell things, I freak out, and people get excited with me. They're like, "I don't even know why I'm excited, but Russell's excited, therefore, I'm excited." So that's what I am, an Excite. I'm curious, those who are watching or listening, if you are an Excite when you talk, you just get people excited. Let me know if that's you, because then, you're the coolest person in the world.

McCall:
You have the good ones, right?

Russell:
Yeah. But then you can model me. But the thing you said was so powerful during the event was just the fact that if you're not an Excite and you try to be Russell, you're going to feel awkward, you're going to feel uncomfortable. And so what are all the different categories you can identify? Because I love to have people kind of self identify, "Oh, that's me or that's me." I want to know what they are.

McCall:
Yeah, of course. So we think of your charisma as three different categories that come together. It's basically the fun part of you, the empathetic part of you, and the in charge part of you. You can think of times when you would use each one of those. So when you're on stage and you're like, "Oh, I'm at the beginning of my presentation. I would use the fun part. When I'm talking about pain and I'm telling stories, I would use the empathetic part. And when I'm pitching, I would, yes, bring in both of those, but also, I would totally use in charge part." So the first thing we do is we separate it out and we say, "Okay, one of them is called entertainment, compassion, and authority." So once we understand that, we can say, "Okay, well, each one of those now has categories within it. You sell a certain way, I sell a different way."

And Alex Hormozi or Gary Vee, they sell a different way to both of us. The same way that you get people to connect with you, that's compassion. So we talk about entertainment, which is what you said, you want to think about how you get people to pay attention to you, they're the most different when they're at their highest level of energy. So think when you are freaking out, what does it look like? So the first one we have is called Amaze. And Dave Woodward, who was the CEO of ClickFunnels, he was the stereotypical Amaze. It all feels very bright, right.

Russell:
I got chills. I got chills.

McCall:
Yeah, I got chills, right? It feels very bright, it feels very bubbly, almost whimsical. Then we have Excite, which is you, which is very like, "Oh, my gosh, it's very intense."

Russell:
I'm so excited.

McCall:
"I'm so excited." The third one is Charm. So if you think of like a Ryan Reynolds character, the way that he gets people to pay attention to him is he's very playful. It's all the witty jokes and the playful banter like that. Then we have Perform, which is like me. I don't know if you notice as we're going through, my eyebrows will move up and down so many times.

Russell:
You're very animated.

McCall:
It's all very theatrical, for sure. And then we have Impress, which is more like a Brené Brown. Brené Brown would really get your attention by leaning into the words, things like that. And then we have Roar, which is like Gary Vee. Mark Cuban's also a Roar. We're like the way they get attention... Tony Robbins, right? They literally roar. So as you think about it, you're like, "Okay, if I get people to pay attention to me like this, I'm probably like a Russell." If that's your first instinct when something exciting happens, you're probably like a Dave Woodward or a Lin-Manuel Miranda or a Paul Rudd, which Amaze. If all of a sudden, you get put into a situation and you start this playful, witty banter, you're probably a Charm like Ryan Reynolds.

If all of a sudden, your eyebrows move more than they should and everything feels very theatrical like a Robin Williams, you're a Perform like me. If when you need people to pay attention, this is your first instinct, you're probably an Impress. And then if when you talk even at a lower level, it kind of sounds like this, you're probably a Roar. So we go through that and we just say, "Well, which one are you?" And then who are the people who have the same category as you, so that you can model them? We also have Compassion, we also have Authority. We can go into those too if you want, but the entertainment ones are the easiest ones to see of saying like, "Okay, I totally get that."

Russell:
Yeah, let's do all the other ones. That'd be cool.

McCall:
Yeah, let's do it. Okay, cool. I'll talk about my thing, fine. So when we get to Compassion, remember that they all work together. So when we get to Compassion, there are three different Compassion styles. Once again, this is the empathetic part of your charisma. So we have Steady, we have Fix and we have Mirror. So if you imagine you have been stabbed in the leg and you have three friends with you and they all deeply care about you, equal levels, there's no good and bad, only right and wrong for every person, and that's super important. So we say, "Okay, they all care about me." But they're all going to react to you in a different way. So a Steady, you get stabbed in the leg with a knife and a Steady is like, "Oh, my gosh, I'm going to hold your hand. I'm going to make sure that you're okay." It's very soft and emotions focused.

A Fix goes up to you and they're like, "You got stabbed in the leg. That knife is insane." They're definitely responding appropriately. They're very analytical and they're very context-based. And then Mirror is me, which is very reactions based. It's all about the facial expressions and making sure that you're matching intensity. So as we look at it, we think that Steadies are internal pain, Fixes are external pain like a behavior situation, and a Mirror kind of does both of those things, but mostly they think in thoughts and inner dialogue. So I use this example, my sister-in-law, Catherine, has another one of my sister-in-laws, Emily, who lives with her, who has Lyme disease, and Emily, the Lyme disease is brutal. I don't know if you've had any experiences with that, but it's pretty brutal for Emily specifically, and Emily sometimes is just she's going through a lot.

So people will call Catherine to update her on Emily. They're like, "How's Emily today? What's she going through?" It's very similar because our audience members or our customers are like Emily and we are like Catherine. That will come in in a minute. So if we think, okay, Emily's on the couch, she feels like she's dying. She's at a level 10 pain. Somebody calls Catherine and say, "How's Emily?" If Catherine says, "Oh, she's not doing very good, but she's okay.", Emily's going to be like, "I'm literally dying on the couch." So if Catherine, as a Steady, who's soft and emotions focused says, "Emily really feels really depressed, she feels really sad. All these things happening in her body, oh, man, she's really discouraged today.", she would be a Steady.

If somebody called Catherine and they said, "Update me on Emily." and she was a Fix, she would give events. She would say, "Emily hasn't gotten out of bed until 3:00. She had a really hard time getting up last night. She hasn't slept in three days." There are all these external things. If she was a Mirror, then people that called her to update them on Emily, she would be like, "Oh, my gosh, Emily is dying." It would be all about the reactions. So if you think of all three of those, it depends on the intensity level of pain that the person feels, how much they describe it, basically. Does that make sense?

Russell:
Yep, sure.

McCall:
So we have Entertainment, we have Compassion, which mostly is in storytelling. You have to make sure you know it in storytelling. And then we have our Authority. Our Authority style is how we move people to action. So you focus on frameworks. You're what's called a Light or Light the Path.

Your whole job is light the path. If you can convince somebody like, "Oh, my gosh, get on this bus." If you get on this bus, you're going to get to where you want to go. Use the path, use the framework. I'm a Lift, so I say, "Okay, I'm going to lift the person. I think my client should be in the driver's seat. I should be in the passenger seat. I'm going to give them directions, but I'm going to show them that they're capable of succeeding." It's very warm authority.

And then Alex Hormozi or Gary Vee or Mark Cuban and Tony Robbins, they are all Lead Authority.

So they say lead the way. So they say, "I'm in the driver's seat. I know all the shortcuts. I just need you to get in the car and here we go." So they feel very geeky, obsessed, like, "Oh, my gosh, this is so amazing.", process focused, is Light. Lift is very warm. And saying like, "Okay, we got this." And a Lead is very direct, they're very straightforward, and they're like, no, "Let's move forward. I'm in the driver's seat."

Russell:
I said epiphany myself. I've been working on these social things and I've been trying to do the Mark Cuban, like the Leader one, and that's not me. Why didn't you tell me this a month ago? That would save me so many things.

McCall:
I'm so sorry.

Russell:
So for me, so walk back in mind, so I'm the one that's sliding the way. So if I'm doing a YouTube video teaching a process, it's not like, "Let me show you the thing." It's shifting around.

McCall:
So you said something to me, I don't know if it's... I've been up here a lot in the last little bit, but you said something to me where you said the framework is the savior, right? Never be the savior.

And your frameworks, the more you geek out about the process, the more excited other people get about the process. The geekiness is the thing that moves people in your case. So any process that you're talking about, so you obsess over the thing and it shines the light on the path for sure.

Russell:
Whoa, okay. That just shifted so many things in my head, so thank you for that.

McCall:
Yeah, it's all about what's the start?

Russell:
Yeah. I'm hoping all you guys listening to this got like… as she was going through, I know that's a lot of stuff. This is like-

McCall:
It's so much.

Russell:
... five years of your life put into this whole frameworks. That's all the core parts of the framework. Understanding where you fit is the key though, right? Because then again, you can then model other people who are similar or you can see... And everyone's got different strengths and weaknesses. There's things that like, okay, because this is brutally positive, but sometimes it's negative and if you know that, it can protect you as well, right?

McCall:
Yeah. The entire point of Charisma Hacking is first, charisma looks different for different people, and second, there are no good or bad Charisma Styles, only and wrong for every person. So when you use the right one, amazing things happen. And just when you use the wrong one, that's when you look cringey or awkward or inauthentic or you look inexperienced, things like that, or condescending. All these things happen, especially when people get on camera or on stage, just because you're using the wrong one. That's it.

Russell:
Can I give you an example of that that you told me actually?

McCall:
Yes, I'm excited.

Russell:
So I was working on a funnel and I wanted to nail... It was a very important one to me, so I wanted to nail it. So I pre-scripted out the VSO, which I don't normally do. Normally, I have a direction I'm going. This time, I scripted it out. I was trying to learn the lines and memorize it, and I remember filming it. We filmed 1,000 times so I can nail the lines and say them correctly, and if you read them, the copy was flawless. It was the perfect thing for me to say, but then when I was doing it, I was trying to remember it. I was doing the things and the video was beautiful. I looked awesome, great on the page, everything, but it wasn't converting that well.

I didn't tell anybody this, and I don't know if you remember this, you messaged me and you're like, "Hey, I saw the video on the page and you are out of your charisma's type. How's it converting for you?" And I was like, "How does she know?" I was like, "Oh, it's doing pretty good. What are you talking about?" You're like, "Well, normally, you're this way and you're doing this on the thing." And you showed me a whole video breaking it down. I was like, "Oh, my gosh, I had no idea." I have the best copy, the best script, everything I could dream of. I spent a lot of time writing that script, make it flawless, all the words, all the beats, all the everything, but because I performed it the wrong way, it didn't convert well. And I didn't even know it. Because for me, it's just like I thought I was just... I was just doing the script, the word's the most important thing, and by not doing it correctly my way, then that's what messed it up. It's so interesting.

McCall:
Yeah. I think this might blow your mind. Why not? A lot of times, people think charisma is energy.

And it's really what messes people up because charisma is actually not energy. Charisma is emotions. So a lot of times what happens is not only are people choosing the wrong Charisma Type or wrong Charisma Style, but then when it's not working, they think, "Well, the thing I need is just more energy." You know what I mean? And with this ad, I don't know if you remember which ad it was, but with this ad, you had a lot of energy and it was fantastic. So that's where most people get tripped up, because they're like, "It has energy. The copy's good. I could not add more energy to this. I don't know what's off."

And what they don't realize is that, oh, it's the wrong kind of energy and it makes it not work emotionally. Your emotions control your charisma, and then your charisma controls other people's emotions. So if the emotion is off, it can start to look like that, right? Really high energy. Because I remember, it was high energy, great copy was awesome, but it just felt like maybe a little bit aggressive or it felt things that you just aren't.

Russell:
My face. I think a lot of it was like, normally, I'm excited, you can see my... It's all... And I was going through the lines saying it, but I'm not like... I'm actually excited about something, I'm freaking out.

And I think people couldn't feel that or see that or... Anyway, that was fascinating for me to see that. Especially someone who I've been doing this for a long, long time and I still miss it sometimes. You know what I mean?

McCall:
Yeah. I think it's really-

Russell:
It's just cool.

McCall:
... interesting too. I think, so we have audience data based on this of when you're out of your styles, what happens? So when you model the wrong person, how are you perceived? So in this very specific ad, first off, the audacity of me to be like, "Hey, how's your ad converting? Oh, your charisma? Woof." That is so rude, first off, so I apologize, but second, you as an Excite, all you were trying to do in that video is you were trying to be more like Tony Robbins, right? You were trying to be more like a Roar. And every Excite, we have these things called false face consequence keys, but every single Excite, every person in your position who would model Tony Robbins would look the exact same way. It's just a little bit aggressive or abrasive, not bad necessarily, right? High energy, amazing, but just a little bit sharper than you are naturally, it just looks a little bit off.

And audiences can feel it. They also don't know why, by the way. Nobody right now watches the video and thinks, "Oh, my gosh, that person's totally out of their Charisma Style." Someday.
Someday it'll be awesome.

Russell:
They just feel it.

McCall:
But they just think something's just a little off. Your charisma controls their emotions, so they just think, "I'm not feeling it." And they leave, right? That's the drop-off rates that happen.

Russell:
Such an interesting, interesting thing. It's cool because you came into our world and you brought something so unique, right? Because you're a performer, you're an actor, you're all sorts of stuff.

McCall:
Crazy. Yeah.

Russell:
I always tell my friends, "My friend, McCall, she was in High School Musical part 2." And they're like, "What?" Because that's such a big, it's a legit movie versus... But you were able to bring that... The world be brought over there and apply it to the entrepreneur space. And again, it's helped me, it's helped so many other people. That's why you've spoken like 2,500 times at our event, because I see everyone struggles with that. So many people come to our world and they want to perform, they want to be able to speak, they want to be able to sell, and then they get up stage or get on a stage or virtual stage or Facebook Live and they feel so uncomfortable and it's just like, "Ah."

And it's funny, because I always tell people, if you publish every single day for a year, in a year from now, you'll be financially free. And the reason is because the thought is you keep doing it eventually until you actually start doing it the way you would, right? It's like the first time, I'm very nervous, "Hi, I'm live." And the second time, I'm a little less. And then eventually, it's just like you get into yourself. But if you can figure out how to do it faster, knowing, "Okay, what am I actually?" You guys, do you still have a quiz that helps people fear what they do?

McCall:
100%.

Russell:
Would you like to pitch the quiz so people can go take it?

McCall:
Okay, fine. If you go to charisma.style, not.com, charisma.style, there's no opt-in, no nothing, it's just we use it for all of our events. Yeah, it'll tell you what your Charisma Styles are.

Russell:
That's really cool. That way, then you know who to model. And don't model Russell because you'll feel stupid or model... So yeah, whatever it might be.

McCall:
Can I simplify it for a minute too?

Russell:
Yeah.

McCall:
So we teach Charisma Styles and we say, "You have to be yourself." That's basically the premise of Charisma Styles. You can do it if you are yourself. There's a second framework that we teach that's so simple that actually helps people use Charisma Styles, and it's just what we call the Charisma Loop. So we say, "Okay, there are four steps to the Charisma Loop. You at your very best are your center, you're on-center." Anytime you are doing something like you did in the ad, just when you are inauthentic or you look and you're like, "Something's off. I hate this.", you're not on-center, you are off-center. Every single time that happens, you don't do that for no reason. It's happened because it's caused by a trigger. So we have a little arrow that always points to it where you think, "Oh, my gosh, I'm too much. I'm too excitable, so I'm going to take my excitement out and be a little bit less than that." and suddenly, you're off-center.

Or for me, if my center is really goofy, I am told or I believe or something like, "Oh, I'm too goofy." So I take the goofy out and suddenly, I'm off-center, which remember, audiences can always tell when you're off-center, even though they don't say, "You're out of your Charisma Styles." We just remove something and then from there, we just say, "Oh, well, what's the bridge? What's the bridge to get from off-center back to center?" So if we know who we are, this is the process of finding your voice, where people are watching it and they're getting there with reps. We just shortcut the process, but they're getting there with reps where they say, "Who am I? Who am I actually?

With your Charisma Styles, or even we have people just make a list of things that are attributes of themselves. Once they know who they are, they say, "Wait, people like me in real life. This false belief that I have that I can't do this is actually wrong." Or they're like, "People won't like me because people already like me." Then when they find they're off-center and they say, "Okay, I'm just going to watch this video." And instead of being like, "Stupid, stupid, it's off." They just find one thing that is missing. They're like, "Oh, I'm goofy. The goofy is not there. Oh, wow." What do I think caused that goofy? Oh, I think I'm being self-conscious because I just watched Brené Brown, she wasn't goofy. Oh, what do I do?"

And then we get back to the center by saying, "I actually am enough. Let me find somebody just like me who's goofy that I think is really smart that I think is crushing it and it'll bring me back to my center." It's just all about knowing who you are and knowing what to do with the reps is the thing that shortcuts the whole process.

Russell:
Thinking back about my journey on this, learning how to speak, and I remember I still get this today all the time, "Russell, you talk too fast. Russell, you're slurring your words." And people tell me that. And for a long time, it froze me up. I'm like, "I don't want to do this." I remember going to events where I was learning how to speak initially. I was in my shirt and tie and I'm on stage doing it. And a lot of events back then, they would have the audience give feedback on the speakers and they'd give you, at the end as a gift, like, "Here's your speaker feedback form." I'm like, "Oh, thanks." So I’d get those, I’d go to the hotel room, I'm reading, I'm just crying. "Russell talks too fast. I don't understand 1/3 of the words he was saying." Just ripping on me. I was just like, "These people hate me."

Because what they do is people see something and they want to critique it, and a lot of times, they're critiquing the thing that makes you magic because they don't talk too fast and whatever.

And so for me, it was always hard. So then I would try to talk slower and I would try to enunciate my words clear, but then I lose the Excite because I cannot be excited talking about... I got to be like this freaking out to bring me back into it. And then the thing that freed me was actually Dan Kennedy. So Dan Kennedy, I was listening to one of his public speaking courses or something like that, and he told a story about, someone had asked him what he does with the feedback forms after he speaks. And he was like, "Oh, I take them all and I walk over to the garbage can and I throw them in." He's like, "The only thing that matters to me are the people if they voted with their credit cards or not. That's the only opinion I care about, is if they bought with their credit card."

And when he said that, I was so free. I'm like, "I don't care if I talk too... I talk too fast, I get it, but I'm not going to stop. I'm going to be me. And then if I sell more than the other people than I actually want, I don't want their feedback, I want their money. That's what we're going for." And so then, that became the thing. And I remember watching speakers, they all get our speaker forms. I would start throwing mine away and then I would look at the order forms, my order form's bigger. And then I say, "Okay, I can lean into that."

Then I felt comfortable. And then now, when people all the time and they're like, "Russell, you talk fast." "I know, I know. I'm going to try to slow down." But I don't. I don't want to. It's like Tony Robbins, if you guys don't know, if you ever have Tony speak at one of your events, the room has to be, I think, 63 degrees before he'll speak. Hotels don't go to 63. So we had to pay an extra 50 or 60 grand to have an external cooling thing put outside. So before he speaks, everyone clears for lunch. We have this air pumped into the room to cool it down. And so it's funny, when you see Tony on stage, he'll almost always, and they're like, "Why is it so cold? Someone turn the heat back on." Just get everyone to stop saying that. He forced it to be that temperature when he showed up. You know what I mean?

McCall:
I love that.

Russell:
And same thing for me like, "Oh, I'm going to try to talk slower for you guys because I really want to." It's like, never going to try to slow down.

McCall:
So one of my very favorite things that you have said, I have watched every single one of your videos. I watch everything you do twice. The first one is for the content and the second one's for the charisma. Because you're so good at what you do that sometimes, I know you know most of what you do, but sometimes I watch it and I'm like, "I don't know if he knows what he's doing. This is incredible." And then I just steal it and then I send you a Voxer and I'm like, "Did you know you just did this? It's crazy." But your talking fast, you're like, "Oh, I'm talking so fast because I'm excited. And when I get excited, I talk faster." And it makes people feel like they're coming along the journey with you.

The other thing too is too fast, it's like, too fast for who? You know what I mean? The first time I saw it, I didn't think you were talking too fast. The speed, because you're in Excite, the speed increase the energy, increase the emotions, and all the people who are voting with their credit card are agreeing. They're like, "No, I like it fast. I like it fast. It makes it feel like it's alive." Every single thing that you do has this aliveness about it that would be completely taken away if you had to talk slowly. Do things like this.

Russell:
And let's just say I did talk slowly when I sold and somebody signed up and they bought my course inside the members area, I'm back to normal Russell. And they're like... And they freak out and they want their money back. I want to offend people with my charisma up front so that people who want to learn from me are going to show up and the other ones are gone.

McCall:
100%. I love it.

Russell:
So okay, I want to switch a little bit. So this event that you've been focusing on with me for the last three days is the Selling Online Event. And so yes, we talked about charisma, but we started shifting some other things. That's one of the reasons why I wanted you here for this, and I'm sure hopefully you'll be back for the next one. So those who... If you missed this one, come back to sellingonline.com, go get your tickets. It's the cheapest 100 bucks you'll ever spend for a three-day event with us going deep into this.

But this came from, obviously, your core business is doing the charisma stuff, but then you're also speaking and selling and doing your own things. And so you messaged me a couple times, again, "Russell, I just watched another one of your presentations. You realize you did this..." All these different things. I would love to talk about that, just some of the things that you were aware of that people, that I missed a lot of times other people were missing that we can talk about just to give people ideas of what you were teaching about during Selling Online because you went for four presentations being like, "No, Russell said this, but he don't know that he did this." And you broke it down to the point where I was like, "That is insane. I didn't even know I was doing that." So cool. So I'd love to talk about some of the patterns and things you saw and, I guess, honestly, how you discovered them. That’d be interesting.

McCall:
Yeah, totally. So the way that I think about charisma once again is just emotions. So the thing I pay attention to the most, if anybody wanted to charisma hack you, you just look at what you're making people feel and then how you're doing it. And that was every single presentation were just different ways that you were making people feel stuff. Me, specifically, me watching it and being like, "Why do I want to throw my credit card at his face right now? How can I make other people throw credit cards at my face right now?" So two of the presentations that I gave were all about these four emotions that you make people feel every presentation. And there were things that I was leaving out, and then as soon as I saw you do it, I realized not only was I leaving them out, but all my clients were leaving them out too, or we do them in the wrong order or all these things.

So every single presentation, you made people feel like, "I need this, I want this, I can do this, and this is valuable." You would always do it. The specific ways that you would do it, going into the specific tactics, so the first thing that we talked about was the way that you tell an Epiphany Bridge.

You lay it out so perfectly that the only thing that people are missing is the charisma. But it's like stories are all about emotion, and if your charisma doesn't match, then you're not going to make them feel the emotion and then your stories are empty. So when you tell your Epiphany Bridge story, there are very specific emotional charisma things that you do. So the first one we call fear the dinosaur, you want to imagine that somebody is chasing or a dinosaur is chasing one of your customers. So the first thing you really do is you dive into pain.

If somebody shows up, if somebody just happens to be like, "I'm going to sign up for this thing. I didn't even read the copy, whatever." In the first 10 minutes of any presentation you're giving, all of a sudden, somebody thinks, "Whoa, I am in pain that I didn't even know I was in. Am I standing in a swamp? Am I actually being chased by a dinosaur?" You make them see the pain first, and you do that by diving into that pain. A lot of times, people will minimize the pain or they'll skip it altogether, right? The next thing you do is we call it visualize the beach. You really, really, really paint out the picture of what it looks like to succeed with ways that you have, with ways that your clients have.

And then the last one is called babyproof the bridge where you make people feel like I can do this.

The Epiphany Bridge that they're supposed to cross is like, "Oh, yeah, okay, that's the thing that's going to change everything." But people have to feel like, "Oh, I could actually take those steps and I could succeed with that." So every single thing that you're doing is just, you're diving into the emotions in really specific ways. You are describing the emotions, and then you're matching the intensity of those emotions. Everything that you do, we use this B-E-S-T framework. So if you're trying to tell a story, you have to make sure that you hit four points. If you don't hit these four points, you're not diving into the emotion enough. It's B-E-S-T. So it's behavior. When they were in pain, what were they doing? E is emotions. When they're in pain, what do they feel? S is situation.

When they were in pain, what was happening? And then T is thoughts. When they were in pain, what were they thinking?

The exact same thing is true for the visualize the beach or what do they actually want? What do they want to be able to do, right? B, behavior, what do they want to be able to feel? What do they want to actually happen? And then what do they want to be able to think? You do this all the time, and you do it in pitching, you do it in every story that you tell. We focus really heavily on the Epiphany Bridge, but your storytelling is so awesome.

And I don't know if you know how awesome it is, but Tanner and I have heard you tell these stories before, even at Selling Online and we're taking notes and we're just like, "Oh, my gosh, this is crazy." You get new ahas because of how you can make people feel things. I truly think... I know sales is your number one superpower, but I think the reason why is because you are a master of emotions. You make people feel things. I saw this happen at Funnel Hacking LIVE too, where anytime there was a technical presentation, the last Funnel Hacking LIVE, they were talking about the new amazing thing that's coming to ClickFunnels 2.0 called Frameworks, and they would dive in and they'd be like, "Okay."

Russell:
Technical, technical.

McCall:
Technical, technical, which you need. They're explaining something, but then you would sense it and you'd be like, "Are you guys seeing this? If he drops the line, are you guys seeing this? You're about to see it and feel it."

Russell:
Insert story.

McCall:
Exactly. Insert story, insert emotion. And it was like, all of a sudden, technical, technical, which we need. They did an awesome job, but technical, technical, technical. "Are you guys seeing this?" And you're like, "Am I seeing it?"

Russell:
What am I missing?

McCall:
Yeah, exactly. It's like, "What am I missing?" You just help people focus on things. So yeah, with the emotions, you got to frame out the pain and you got to make sure that it's intense. It's the same thing with Emily. If you're like, "This person was kind of sad and then this happened." They're going to be like, "That's not me." She's going to feel completely invalidated laying on the couch as Catherine saying, "Oh, my gosh. She's fine." Then she's like, "I'm dying." So you just match the intensity really well. The same thing as desires. A lot of people feel like talking about what they've accomplished may feel like bragging, when you do it in such a way that people can imagine themselves in your shoes. You're excited about it, so they're excited about it. It's really cool.

Russell:
It's cool. I actually know how I learned this. Let me tell you-

McCall:
Oh, my gosh.

Russell:
You may have seen this video, but maybe not. So man, if I rewind, this is pre ClickFunnels. I was in a spot where I was burnt out of my business rage. I quit and everything, and my buddy, Dagan Smith, reached out to me. Dagan, it kills me that he hasn't done online for the last decade. So no one knows who he is, but one of the best storytellers ever. And he kind of re-sparked my excitement. We started calling each other on the phone, talking about stuff, and I remember he started talking about story selling initially, and he told me something really cool. He's like, "When most people tell a story, they talk about the facts." And he's like, "If you want to become a good storyteller, watch how film does it or watch how really good books are." He's like, "If someone's a really good..." The best authors, let's say, Harry Potter or whatever, the best books, he's like, "They'll spend 20, 30 pages describing the scene, what it looks like, and the smell and the mustiness and the..."

And so do you have the context? And then you walk in the room and it’s not like, and then the people saw them talk. It's like, what were they thinking? What were they feeling? And he's like, "You read those books and because of the way they describe everything, it puts you in a situation and now they're 25, 30 pages in, and then they have the one line, then you deliver." But all that pre-work to get there, and they said in film, you watch the same thing. They throw the scene and the colors and the music, all this feeling. In fact, he told me, he's like, "If you watch X-Men, watch this scene in X-Men where Magneto's in the Nazi concentration camp as a little kid, watch the feeling on someone's face." And so I remember I watched it. In fact, I've showed it at a bunch of events, that clip. And you watch it and you watch the pain in their face and their eyes and the things. Now, he's like, "When you tell your stories, don't just tell the facts." He's like, "You have to paint that whole thing."

And so that's how I learned from him. So I started coming in, I'm like, "Okay, so let me tell this story. The first thing I'm thinking is the situation." I need to put context. My wife and I, we had the very first house we ever had. It was this blue duplex with purple doors. It was 450 bucks a month, but it was the only thing we could afford at the time. It was one bedroom, it was so… I'm setting the scene. Then I come in and it's like, I was sitting there… and then you said the BEST, it's-

McCall:
Behavior, emotion, situation, thoughts.

Russell:
Okay. Yeah. So for me, it's emotion, thoughts ones I focus on a lot. Yeah, the emotion's like, so I’m not going to say, my wife and I had a conversation. Instead, I'm like, I was so nervous to tell her this. I remember sitting there, my palms were sweating. I had this pit in my stomach growing. You just felt that before. It's like you had that sickness. And so sorry, explaining how I was feeling. And then by default, we're humans, we're empathetic humans. So I start telling I'm feeling it. Instantly, you start feeling that, right? And so you start feeling that. And then how it was, I think I was thinking about this and then what of this? I take them down the rabbit trail of what are my thoughts? And they're like, and then where I'm going, they start thinking the same thing and all of a sudden, within a few minutes, they're in the situation and they're having this weird situation happening.

McCall:
I'm in the house.

Russell:
And then I tell the story, and then my goal always is never to tell them, "Here's the epiphany. And the epiphany I had was this." It's to tell them the story and then leave it off and then hope that they get the same thing I had. That's the big secret. But it's thinking about things that I... You're telling stories. It's not just the facts. It's telling in a way that creates the context that puts them in there where all of the sudden they're experiencing with you. And so-

McCall:
Yeah, it's literally just all about emotions. It's all emotions. It's so good. Yeah, I know. I break down every single thing that you do always. So yeah, it's like even the actions, how you paint the same... They do this in sign language a lot where they actually frame out where things are. And I've heard you talk about this before where if it's the table in the back of the room and you keep going back to the same thing, but framing out the scene, you'll be like, "Oh, and it was over here." So people can actually see it. So cool.

Russell:
This is such a fun game. Don't you love it?

McCall:
I know. So fun.

Russell:
It's like we're making movies, but we're not, but it's so cool. Okay, and one last thing. You talked about this today, actually, during the Selling Online Event, which is so cool. So again, not that we're pitching this, but you guys should totally be here. It's like the best thing we do.

McCall:
We are absolutely pitching this. This is going to change your life. Come to it. 100%.

Russell:
It's so cool. So during the event, I teach people the perfect webinar. I teach it. Anyway, I'm super proud of myself. I think I have the most simple ever where it's like, those type of people are like, "I finally understand it." It was super simple. And then I talked about the stack and the clothes. Here's the offer and here's what you do. And walk through everything. And then I had you come on stage and teach a process. And it's fun because I can't remember if it was a year ago, six months ago when you messaged me like, "Russell, did you realize every single time you do a stack close, you do the exact same thing?" I was like, "No." You're like, "Yeah, I just watched." I can’t remember...

"I watched 100 of you pitching and every single time, you do the same thing. Are you aware of this?" I'm like, "No, I'm not. What is it?" And you told me, and I know that it was a long session during the event, but we give people a glimpse of what that is because I think that they understand that it's one of the things that makes the selling part of the presentation actually fun as opposed to this scary thing where now I have to sell something and freaks people out.

McCall:
So I did this because I needed it for myself. I felt like I'm a pretty charismatic person, hence the name Charisma Hacking. But I just kept getting awkward. And the stack for me felt really repetitive and it just felt boring. And I know that something magical happens when you start to pitch. So I was just looking for why. My stuff wasn't converting like I wanted, and I was like, "Russell's does.

What am I going to look for?" So I just watched all of your videos and I literally was like, okay... Or all of your pitches, and I just looked for the magic sauce of what is he doing that I am not doing? Because I'm following the framework, what am I missing? And you kept doing this thing. Every item of your stack, you would add the same kind of story where I had heard story sell, right?

You say that a lot. Heard a lot of people say that. But it was the first time it really clicked for me of like, "Oh, if you tell the right story, it makes selling fun and it actually doesn't feel pitchy. It feels the opposite." So I call it replication cost stories. Oh, my gosh. It's what would be the cost of somebody trying to replicate your offer without you? It's also like we're always trying to make our things look valuable.

Obviously, if you're pitching something, you want people to think that it's really valuable, but with the stories that you were telling, it's the reason why people wanted your thing. So before you would get to every single item of your stack, you would introduce it with a story that walked through one of four things. So the first one is trial and error. So you'd be like, "Oh, my gosh. Okay, for this item, we have the TV. And it's like, in order to build this TV, I went through trial and error. I bought 29 million different TVs before I found the one that would play this thing exactly the way that I wanted to."

So it's basically seeding in their mind. If you want to skip and not have to buy all those TVs, you should just buy my thing. So trial and error. The next one is time and effort, and it's like how much time or effort have you actually put in and invested in your own products? The next one is money invested. And then the final one is unique authority and experience. So trial and error, the time that you did it at Selling Online, it's like, I have done the perfect webinar, or I've done this many selling presentations and I've bombed this many times. And they're like, "Oh." And you're like, "But..."

Russell:
For me to replicate, I'd have to bomb that many times.

McCall:
I have to bomb that many times. And then time and effort, you were like, "Okay, I've gathered every single tactic under the sun for you in one very specific area so that you don't have to spend the time and effort to go and replicate all those things." Or you're like, "Listen, I'm going to give you two decades of stuff in one day. You just need 20 years of experience. Isn't that easy?" And then with money invested, my very favorite one that you've done, there's two of them, so the first one, you spent a million and a half dollars, which is crazy on a book to give it to people for free, where people are like, "Oh, I could either spend a million and a half dollars, or I could sign it for this thing and get it from Russell."

Or the next one you did was Geru, right? You did this in your it was One Funnel Away challenge, and you were like, "Oh, man, I went to the guy that owned Geru, and I was like, 'Hey, can you give it to my people for free?' And he was like, 'No.' Which makes sense because it was a business." And you're like, ah, and then there were licenses that were 2 to $300, which in their minds, they're like, "Oh, okay, I'd have to pay for this on my own, 2 to $300."

And you're like, "You wouldn't give it to anybody for free. So I bought the company. I bought the company, and I'm going to give it to you guys for free." So now, not only are they like, "Oh, okay the license to buy it myself was 2 to $300, or I'd have to buy the company now because Russell owns it.

We're just going to give it to me for free." And the last one is unique authority. So this is usually things that you've done that nobody else has done. You've broken a world record for Selling Online in 90 minutes, which is insane, right? You're a New York Times best-selling author. So many different things.

Russell:
You were on High School Musical part 2, no else can do that.

McCall:
She was in High School Musical. So it's all these different things. So each stack item needs one replication cost story. You cannot move forward with the stack without the replication cost story.

Otherwise, they're going to be like, "Okay." If you're like, "Okay, I have this TV, it's really cool. Yeah, I have this framework, you're going to love it." You know what I mean? People are just like, "Why would I pay a $1,000 for that framework?" But when you're like, "This is how I created it, here are all the trial and error that I went through." It's really cool.

Russell:
It's cool too because it's not like you do all four of those for everything part of stack. You probably rotate. So one's an authority, one's a this, one's a that. And so it becomes, like you said, now you're just telling stories while you're making the offer and it makes it fun and exciting and it's exciting for the audience versus when most people pitch, you see people standing up and walking out of the room. It's like, "Oh, here comes the pitch." Versus what I'm doing or you're doing, it's like I feel like I'm still at the party. This is so much fun.

McCall:
It also feels super behind the scenes, which people love too. They're like, "Oh, my gosh, I have an inside look on what was happening." which is awesome.

Russell:
Yeah, everyone too. Anyway, man, so cool. Well, thank you for being on the podcast. Thank you even more for being here for the last three days for Selling Online Event, which is so much fun. And I appreciate all the stuff you're doing. I know you've helped our audience, our group of people so many times. You've spoken in Funnel Hacking LIVE about two times now, I don't really know, two or three times.

McCall:
Two live, one breakout rooms. Something like that.

Russell:
Yeah. So I appreciate you always coming and serving. I think what you have is so valuable for people. So those who are in this world and they want to be speakers or sell or whatever that might be, and they want more information about where to give you money and do all this stuff, where should they go to do all that?

McCall:
Yes. Charismahacking.com. Charismahacking.com, you'll always see the latest thing that we're doing. And yeah, we can help you with all of those things, emotions, charisma, get on video.

Russell:
It's so awesome.

McCall:
I love it.

Russell:
Well, I love what you do and I love that all the people we've helped inside of our community. So I hope everyone else gets a ton of value from this. If you guys enjoyed this podcast, this episode, let us know. My number one love language is physical touch. I wish I could give you a hug, but number two is words of affirmation. So you guys want to let us know how we fell. What's your love language? Do you know?

McCall:
We don't hate it. I don't know what my love language is. I'm one of those people who's like, "It's all four."

Russell:
I need them all.

McCall:
I like this, I like affirmations, physical touch, all that stuff.

Russell:
Okay, so send her gifts and affirmations. Let us know in the comments. We'll appreciate it a lot. But I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. I did. Thank you so much. And those who want to see me and McCall live for the next Selling Online Event coming up in a Funnel near you, go to sellingonline.com. For 100 bucks, you get three days. This isn't a cheap, one hour long challenge.

This is three days of 8 to 10 hour days going deep.

McCall:
You also teach things the way that I've never seen you teach them before, which... And it's so good.

Russell:
We've simplified it to the spot where it's like... Yeah, if you guys ever want to learn how to sell, this is the place to be. It's way fun. So thanks for being here. Thank you so much and we'll see you guys all on the next episode. Thanks, everybody.

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