The Art of Persuasion: Mastering Influence in Life

Persuasion is the essential skill for success in the 21st century, enabling mutual benefit and personal growth.

### The Art of Persuasion: Mastering Influence in the 21st Century
* 🗣 Persuasion is identified as the **greatest skill of the 21st century**, distinct from manipulation, and is a **vital part of daily life** that many engage in **unconsciously**.
* 🤔 The process of persuasion involves **consciously selling one's worldview and beliefs** to others, which can lead to **mutual benefits** rather than selfish outcomes.
* 💪 To achieve personal goals, individuals must learn to **persuade others for attention, resources, and power**, as those with influence are often **more successful in society**.
* 🧠 Understanding that power and influence are not inherently bad, but can be **misused when pursued unconsciously**, is crucial for ethical persuasion.
* 📈 The decisions made throughout life shape one's reality, and being aware of the **long-term impact of those decisions** is essential for **personal growth and success**.
* 📝 The video outlines practical frameworks for effective persuasion, such as the **pyramid principle**, which emphasizes **starting with a conclusion** and supporting it with **key arguments**.
* 🔍 The importance of **tailoring communication to the audience’s level of awareness** is highlighted, ensuring that persuasive messages **resonate and are understood**.
* 📚 Finally, the video introduces tools and frameworks for organizing thoughts and ideas, emphasizing the **significance of structured thinking** in crafting **persuasive content**.

All right. We're going to get straight into it. Persuasion is the greatest skill of the 21st century. No, persuasion is not manipulation. There are two separate words. No, persuasion is not unethical. If it were, then you would be the most unethical person on the planet. Because you persuade every day, but it's unconscious to you. So at that point, it's considered manipulation. What I mean by that really quick is that you are selling everyone on your worldview, your identity, your beliefs every single day. And you feel threatened when people challenge your beliefs, and then you have the emotional response that makes you want to defend yourself. So you are persuading. But if it's unconscious to you, then you're manipulating. So we're here to learn how to persuade consciously. That way, you can benefit yourself to get what you want, and you can benefit others by giving them what they want. It's mutual benefit versus selfish benefit. When you're trying to convince your friends

to do something with you. You're using persuasion. When you're presenting an argument for why people should work with you, you're using persuasion. You're trying to get what you want out of life. You are playing the game of life. If you weren't, you probably wouldn't be alive. You don't have a choice to get what you want. You need to persuade people to give you attention, resources, money, and most of all, power. The only people who did well and do well in society are those who had power and influence. They are the people who work to acquire the resources necessary to achieve their goals, become valuable, and generate wealth. There has never been a time in history when we average or mindless people weren't treated like cattle. Be careful of your mind trying to hijack your thoughts right now and make you a slave to the ideas. Others that don't have the life you want to live programmed into your head. Status, power, and influence are not bad.

Everyone has them. You have some degree of status, power, influence right now, and everyone is trying to get those things. They become bad things when done for unconscious reasons. What that means is that they become bad if you don't understand the big picture overarching impact of your pursuit for power and persuasion. This entire video could be completely negative, but if it has a positive impact on your life because of that, does that make it a bad thing? On that point, here's a side lesson for just making better decisions in general, because your entire life is determined by the decisions you make right now. The decisions you made in the past got you to where you are. It's all decisions. You will probably have to do things throughout your life that others perceive as bad, shallow, or superficial because they don't understand the big picture. They can't see what you see. They criticize you now and praise you later. If you were deciding whether or not you should make a decision.

Zoom out and attempt to think through all possible scenarios it could create. As I've said before, one stock can be down while the index fund is up. You can have a cheap meal and still be healthy. Most just get neurotic over the cheat meal, especially if they're super healthy, and that just makes them even more unhealthy than just having the cheat meal. And even if that decision turns out to be a mistake. Welcome to being human. That's the only way you can make a better decision the next time. Indecision, stagnation, and not pursuing something greater is the most bad decision of them all. Back to the point. If you want to be perceived as valuable, you need to generate power. You need to have power. You need to have influence. You need to have some form of status. If your strategy for success is being nice and noble and spiritual, you will be pushed aside by mean people and they will have more of an impact than you.

And if you let yourself get pushed aside and the mean people take over, you aren't as spiritual as you think you are. Because spirituality is being a part of something greater than yourself and, in a sense, taking responsibility for that thing and the outcome of that thing. Then going off to the woods and meditating and finding God could be a good thing for a short period of time, or however long it takes to actually get there. But then when you come back and reintegrate with society or just choose to do that from the very beginning, you can see where I'm going with this. The people who virtue signal that power games are bad are playing their own power game, one that is selfish, one that lacks contribution to humanity. When that self deceives into doing nothing but preaching about how others should change, distracting them from looking in the mirror. After talking with a lot of you recently in DMs or just emails, I've started to narrow down why you're actually here.

I talk about business. I talk about lifestyle design and productivity and writing and all of these different things. But what separates me? It's weird to talk about myself this way, but what separates me, what makes people want to watch these videos over someone else's, is that I do try to make them a bit deeper, less superficial than the others, right? I want my work and therefore your work to have meaning. I want you to feel a sense of control over your life. And the same goes for me. I just teach the things that I've achieved and want to achieve, and a lot of people resonate with those specific things that I personally want to achieve. So you want work you enjoy. You want a meaningful lifestyle. But guess what? In order to achieve those things, you need a certain degree of power and status. You need people who pay you for your work. So the people that have a bad relationship with money. Good luck getting what you want.

If you're not okay with making money that is going to hurt your life so much until you finally shed that limiting belief. You also need people to listen to what you have to say. You need a sense of control over the lifestyle you create. You need to persuade more than just people, but reality itself to conspire in your favor. Creating your ideal life is persuading reality. You can't force reality. You can't deceive reality, but you can persuade it. And that's a sign of truth that you can find through experience. The other thing is that you just inherently know that you need to persuade people in order to get what you want. The only thing stopping you is just the belief that were programed into your head by people who haven't done what you want to do in life, and you give too much attention to them. Without even knowing it, it's unconscious. But that's enough of understanding why power and persuasion and other things and influence and status are important.

If that just doesn't make sense to you yet, the rest of this isn't going to help you because I want to teach you how to actually persuade people so you can get what you want. So, that's what we're going to do: practical steps to actually start persuading today. Structured thinking is very important, and I say that because I want to handle an objection early. A lot of people, when they take my writing course or they're in the cortex community or just in general, when I talk to them on calls or I go on podcasts or other things, and people ask questions. A lot of the time, the question goes along these lines: what if I don't want to use a framework? What if I want to be authentic? What if I want to write whatever I want? And note here is that I teach writing, but you can persuade with more than just writing, like speaking or even design in many cases. But writing usually comes before speaking or it enhances your speaking.

So, we're just going to talk about writing because that's the other thing is you are a writer. You text people probably more than you talk to them on the phone or you talk to them in real life. You email people, you do whatever your job entails you to do, and a lot of that is probably writing unless you're doing physical manual labor. So, my answer to people not wanting to use structured ways of thinking is this: do it. Write what you want, but organize your writing into a framework until you understand what makes writing impactful. The thing here is that people say, I want to write whatever I want, but you understand that another person is on the other side of your persuasion or your writing. If they don't see that as valuable and your mind makes sense of words and writing in a specific structure, you're going to fall a bit short there. Next is that frameworks don't hurt creativity. They enhance it. You can only be creative when you have a goal,

something to be creative towards and limitations that force creativity like a framework. Building a business in four hours a day without sacrificing your health and relationships demands more creativity than building a business by giving up everything else in your life. So when people tell you that something's impossible, it's just because they aren't creative enough to actually achieve that impossible thing. Of course, some things are impossible, but you get what I mean. And the next thing is that you are using a framework already. It's called your mind and how you were programmed to think. The thing is, it's unconscious and clearly unimpactful, or else you would have the things you want in life. So write what you want or speak how you want, like you've been doing, and keep getting the results you've been getting. Humans make sense of the world in stories they plug. Any idea or information they come across into their mind is sense-making machine that attempts to see how that information is relevant toward their goals and past experiences.

So you can write whatever you want. But what's the purpose of your writing or persuading to get what you want? In other words, if there isn't someone on the other end of your writing, it can't really be persuasive, can it? Now you will be using the methods that we talk about in almost everything you do in your social posts, newsletters, and landing pages, in your networking and sales calls or DMs, in your relationships. When attempting to make a decision, especially in your marketing and promotion of your work or products. Be intentional going forward. When we learn these things, use them, and practice them as much as you can. So first, the pyramid principle. This is how we're going to set the scene for almost anything. Persuasion. Think of this as a meta framework for any other framework. So you're going to use the pyramid principle, or at least start using it as like training wheels. In everything I'm talking about tweets, I'm talking about newsletters,

everything, how you speak to other people, everything. Here's how you do it. Here's the pyramid. Principle one. Start with your answer, conclusion, or big idea to prove your conclusion with three plus key arguments. Three support your arguments with facts, data, anecdotes, quotes, etc. from a big picture lens, this is how all of my videos are created. Now the question is does that make me inauthentic for not just creating or speaking chaotically and probably not making as much sense, or helping you guys as much? Or does that framework give me a vessel to accurately distribute my thoughts or articulate my thoughts? You can notice that I often start with the point that I want to argue at the start of the video, and this one I just straight up said persuasion is the greatest skill of the 21st century. That's my point. And now throughout this video, I'm backing it up with key points and arguments. And usually in a lot of my newsletters or videos,

I include quotes from books I use, my own tweets, and I use others' tweets that I find that support the argument. A lot of other people use scientific literature or studies, so if you want to be more persuasive, we're going to talk about how to use Cortex. And we're actually going to go over a tutorial for Cortex later in the video. But you need some kind of swipe file or just a database to save your Kindle highlights, or save a tweet that you find, or save a scientific study link, or just your ideas in general that back up your arguments. I have my own template for creating these videos and my newsletters inside of Cortex, which I'll show you how to create, but that's how I flesh out how my ideas are going to be persuasive. Also, I'll be updating to our writer when Cortex actually launches throughout September to the end of September and early November and October. So if you want those things and you just want to start learning how to write persuasively right now, check out to our writer.

the links in the description. Now, why does the pyramid principle work? First, the reader knows immediately whether it's relevant to them or not, whether they should continue reading. Then they can follow your logic for how you got to the conclusion. And with the pyramid principle, it's just simple, and it's easy to replicate in almost everything you do. So if you just practice this with every single thing that you write, you'll eventually get pretty dang good at persuasion. State your point. Explain why, and back it up. Now let's go over a few frameworks that I personally use. So the way that I use these is I use the pyramid principle first, where I have what I want to explain, I explain why, and I back it up. These help me. It's like another layer of how I can organize my thoughts. This is going to save you a ton of pain. This will make writing pretty dang easily for you. I like starting with a pain point or problem.

in everything that I write, or any video that I create. If I have a pain point or problem that I can target, then the writing flows pretty easily. Sometimes you get blocked. Of course, that's just what happens when you write. But when you start with the problem, it's usually pretty easy to come up with the point that you want to state and start backing it up with the pain points and illustrating and so on, so forth will understand this. A pain point or problem reframes the situation nicely and qualifies the reader. When someone becomes aware of a pain point their mind related to a goal in their life, sparking a desire to learn more and helping them know if my writing is for them or not, then the ones who stay want a solution. And if my solution is good enough, they're more likely to stick around and invest in the further value I offer. Remember, humans make sense of the world in stories. Stories usually start with a problem that foreshadows a goal or outcome.

This makes your mind start filling in the blanks of that story and wanting to continue reading to see if it was right. So here's a few frameworks that I use, and they increase in difficulty to pull off, but we'll start with the simple one that can be used in social posts, or even the start of a long-form piece, or even the entire long-form piece, like a video or something else of that nature. And then the later ones can be used for longer-form videos or something like a landing page or something of that nature. If you just start with the first one that we're going to talk about right now, try making a video out of it. Try writing a tweet out of it. Try writing a newsletter out of it. It's very simple. So the first framework is the P framework. Pain and process. I'll say it should be P and P and P framework. I'm not that immature. I don't think so. It's pretty simple, is just state the pain point or problem.

and then show them how to overcome it step by step. So an example as a tweet is if you're tired all the time, which is the pain point, stop scrolling at midnight, fix your shitty nutrition, go on walks, move your body, become obsessed with a new interest. That's the process. You're tired because you're trapped in a routine that has the outcome of being tired. That is actually a pretty good last line. Am I need to actually post on? The thing here is that it's usually wise to wrap up a tweet in some form of conclusion, right? A lot of people skip this step. So for tweet writing or post writing, because you can go look at my Instagram. That's just all my tweets. I grow on any platform. I say tweets as like synonymous with any social post because I write. So with that, it usually the last sentence is that thing that locks in the engagement or makes people want to like, share or comment.

So you usually want to have that there. You can't become like very dogmatic about these frameworks that I'm giving you. You kind of have to paint between the lines. And for something like a tweet, adding on that last line conclusion is something good. If you're just like, if you can't think for yourself and you're just like, Oh, I need to stick to these frameworks, the framework, the paint and process framework, I can only have the pain point in the process. I don't know if I can add another sentence to the end. Dude. Come on. Yes. You can't just try one post where you're testing things out isn't going to ruin your life. The other thing here is that the more unique you can get with your process, so your steps for overcoming the pain point, the better. The way that I like to do this is to just choose a pain point or find a high-performing topic, like look at a YouTube video.

that's doing really well, and to create my own, start with a pain point and then don't even watch the video. Don't don't go with the simple solution that everyone's already talked about. Think it through. What is step one, two, three, four, or five that actually helps people overcome the pain point? What are what is a unique way to do that? And if you want to make it even more powerful, name that process. So something like the one person business or the four-hour workday, something that can be tied to you. So that you get the authority for it. Now the second framework is S. Oh, and the O is optional which is problem amplify solution offer. And then the offer part really only comes into play if you're actually promoting something or you're selling something. So with this one you start with the pain point as you did last time. This can be 1 or 2 sentences and then next you amplify it.

So you illustrate how that pain point is impacting someone's life. Like how being tired can make your husband or wife think something is wrong, and little problems start springing up out of nowhere, or how you aren't able to perform when trying to build your side hustle. Will it ever work? Or how when you get home from work, all you want to do is lie down and eat junk food? And that obviously isn't helping you. So the more descriptive and relatable you can get, the better. With this. With amplifying the pain point or problem, this becomes a lot easier if you use a personal experience to illustrate the problem. So if you've watched my videos on becoming the niche or how you are the niche, or how the most profitable niches you, you understand that you can use your own experience for your marketing. You can dig into your past experiences and use those pain points as topic ideas, or just a way to illustrate or amplify the pain point. If you dig into a situation

where you were dealing with that pain point becomes a lot easier to actually relate with people. You weren't just making things up. And then the solution part of this. So your problem amplify solution solution is just the step-by-step process or just giving a solution. It could be one sentence if it only takes one sentence and then the offer. So, so often is when you are going to link like a free download or a product or a service or whatever it is, or your website or blog, you kind of just link that thing and frame it to act as a further solution. Now, the third one that we're not going to go too deep into is Pastor Pastore, which stands for Problem Amplify story testimony Offer response. So these are best used in something like a newsletter or a landing page. This is usually like sales copywriting. So I would say like a newsletter where you're promoting or launching something or a landing page where you're selling a product or service.

So you start with a problem, and then you amplify it, and then you tell a story. This can be a personal story, or a client story, or just a success story, or even a story, an anecdote you found online that actually backs up your point. And then testimony is proof. It's showing proof that they can achieve the same thing. So whether that's testimonials from another person or just further data and facts, that can work. And then the offer is breaking down your offer. So if you go to any one of my landing pages, you can pretty much scroll down to the offer section. And that's where I show what's inside the actual program. So since I have courses, it's usually going over what's inside each module and how that benefits you. So for the offer, it's like, what are the features, and what are the benefits of those features. So in to our writer, you get the to our content ecosystem. And the benefit of that is that you can batch write 23 posts in two hours a week.

The next thing I want to talk about here is experimenting with frameworks. The best way to learn persuasion is to one research, writing and speaking frameworks to write them down next to each other. Three practice them in the real world for notice patterns between them, and then five break the rules, frameworks, systems, and most education are training wheels. They're things to experiment with. Education and advice and frameworks and other things aren't meant to be like become an attached part of your identity. They should be used as lenses from which you view specific situations that those lenses help with. So most people will read one of my newsletters, or watch one of my videos, or watch other people's videos, or read their content, or whatever it may be, and they see a novel solution or like, oh wow, that's going to solve my problem for good, like the keto diet or the ancestral diet or something else. And then they make an identity out of it and potentially start posting about it, further solidifying that identity.

And from there, they eventually get hurt because they're stuck defending this identity of theirs, and they don't realize that the way to actually make progress and be healthier, or make more money or see progress in business, health, relationships, whatever it is, you have to shed that ideology and pursue something that is actually relevant to your situation right now. Now, a lot of people then say, well, okay, what's the point of advice? What's the point of frameworks? What's the point of education? And it's to give you something that you can experiment with and find your own way of doing things, and then you continuously pass that down in like this continuous flow of information that helps people grow and evolve. And if you're a creator or you're an educator like I am, I personally think it's a great idea to not only preface but include the advice to think critically and not be dogmatic and be open-minded most of the time relating to the advice they give.

So I can talk about the one-person business model and how I think that's the best for this type of person. But overall, there's obviously different steps and paths that people can take. So back to the point of learning persuasion to learn persuasion, research and write down 5 to 10 frameworks to try in your post conversations, newsletters, and the rest. Then drop the frameworks and use the principles that made them work in the first place to become a persuasive person at any time. You can find frameworks and writing and communication and persuasion frameworks online just by searching them. You can ask ChatGPT, Hey, give me ten copywriting persuasion frameworks, and then just try them out. Also, I've created my own. It's called the API framework. That's the main one that I teach in to our writer. So if that's something that interests you, check the link in the description for to our writer mentor, monetization, or digital economics. They're all kind of intertwined.

Now the last tip here is to know who you're talking to. Your words will only persuade if you are speaking to someone who perceives your words as valuable. If you're speaking high-level gibberish about a topic you're knowledgeable about, a beginner will not care about what you have to say. It's hard for them to relate or understand. So we can solve this problem by just understanding the five levels of awareness. I've talked about this multiple times in the past, but it's absolutely necessary for you to know. I would say that the five levels of awareness come before the pyramid principle, and the pyramid principle is like applied to everything. So applying this first level, one is unaware. They're unaware of their problem and how it is hurting their quality of life. So focus on pain points here. This could be in your social media posts or just the start of a newsletter. Level two is problem aware, so they're aware of the problem but don't know how to solve it.

So, you focus on the impact of those pain points. This is where amplifying the problem comes into play. Level three is solution aware. So, they're aware of their problem and know there is a solution, education, or knowledge to solve it. So, focus on actual advice. Focus on giving the solution. The process. Level four is product aware, so they're aware of their problem and know there's a streamlined path or system to solve it. So, focus on your unique way of doing things. Level five is most aware, where they are ready to change. They just need the right reason to act. So, focus on covering different angles and say one thing 1000 different ways. Now, you can start to see the impact of writing frameworks in general and the ones that we went over, where you start with the pain point, then you go over the process, and in some of them, you promote your offer or you give a potential solution. You can raise people up this entire level of awareness to the point of buying a product.

in your landing pages or something like a newsletter, but in something like a tweet or social media post, you kind of sprinkle these in here and there. You want to focus like 80% on level one through three. So problem awareness or unaware. So making them aware of the problem problem where and then solution aware. So pretty much just pain points and solutions. That's the majority of your content. And then further in newsletters and products and free downloads you're raising them up the entire ladder so to say. Now let's talk about how I write persuasively, because I want to give you like an actual process that you can use to start writing a framework, something that you can fill out. And for this, I'm going to show you inside of cortex. I'm including this at the end of the video, because this is the first time we're actually showing cortex in kind of tutorial format, but we're going to slowly ramp that up. So for those who stick around

or have stuck around, you kind of get a treat here and a head start on other people. But of course, you can technically use any note-taking or writing software for this. You can recreate what we're going to go over in those things. But, we've kind of built Cortex for this reason. Now, Cortex isn't out yet, so if you want early access, join the waitlist. You can go to cortex TKO or just click the link in the description, sign up for the waitlist, and then you'll get an email when it's time to sign up. And yes, there's a free tier. So, to start this process off, we need four things. And by process, I mean like how we're actually going to start writing something that's persuasive like a newsletter. First, you need a topic to write about, preferably something that performs well. So, find a topic that works on social media and use this process to make it your own.

What I mean by that is just go and search your favorite accounts on social media. Find an idea, one of theirs that you want to make your own so that you can use to start writing about it. Just can be any tweet you want that you would see yourself writing about under your brand. The next thing is an idea dump. You need this to get all of your ideas out and jot down new ones. When they come to you. You won't have all of your ideas at once. Next is an outline page to organize all of your ideas in a persuasive, impactful, and attention-grabbing way. This is where most of your writing happens. And then last a draft page to string together your ideas and outlines. This shouldn't take long, as the work is already done from your outlines and your ideas. So let's dive into cortex. All right. Welcome to my screen. I haven't I don't think I've ever done a screen recording. So this is cool a first time.

But I want to show you the first look at Cortex on my channel. And to just show you my writing process as a whole. So typically, I want to show you first how I write and what my writing process looks like. So this is the video that you're watching right now where we're on this section about how I write about what I love persuasively. You can see in the newsletter version I just have a picture of Cortex, but this is what it looks like. So this is my draft page, and then my outline page is over here. So this is the navigator. Pretty simple straightforward. You have folders. You have documents. My favorites up here. So I just pin the outline and newsletter or content that I'm writing each week. And then we have a cool feature called panes. So this is what a pane looks like. You can open multiple things in a pane. I'll show you how we do that. But in general, I have the topic that I want to write about.

I have my idea dump. I have my outline page. This is my outline page. And if we scroll through here, you can see how I set it up. So there's these little things called elements. You can create as many elements as you want custom. And it's great for building out templates or just organizing your writing. You can do so much with this. So with students, you can have theorems, you can have definitions, you can link to specific elements. So if you've used a second brain before and you understand connections, you can link to elements in and of themselves. So you can think of elements as a sub-note or an atomic note. And they will have a title field. And yeah, just works well for creating a template. So I duplicate this every week, I change the title based on what I want to write about, add categories or keywords. These are called tags. So what I do or what these do is if I want to find more ideas to include in my writing,

I can just click one of these, and I can see all of the documents that have that specific tag in it, and then I can search further inside of it if I actually want to. But then I can go through these, I can look, I can see them like a preview of them. I can go down through them. And if I push see this button right here, Option enter. So let's go. And then it opens up in a pain. Right. So this is the pain system. You can navigate through these right here. I'm going to close this for now because I'm wasting time showing you around cortex. But that's what tags do. So you tag documents so that you can find them whenever you want. These are called connections. So they're backlink to documents within your cortex. So I can just go through these really quick. I can see, okay. Have some ideas here that I can include. Oh, another connection, okay. I can dive deeper into this.

So the more you keep up with connections and tags, the more connected your second brain becomes. You can see here I have writing tips. You can scroll through and open all of my writing tips, but let's close that. That's tags connections. If you want to learn how I take notes and other things. When cortex launches in early September 1st, get on the waitlist to get that early access. But throughout September, November, we're we're going to have a free community, and then it will have a free second brain course. So you'll learn you'll one get templates like these, and two, you'll learn how to take notes. You'll learn how to do everything. So in my outlines for when I'm writing, I have organization. I have a little brain dump I write about, I write out the topics I want to write about. I could actually tag these if I wanted to. I write out potential hooks, so I research YouTube.

in my past videos and tweets and other things to figure out. Okay, what should I actually name this, and what should I include in the hook? I have connections, so I can search through ideas to use them to write, because writing isn't. You don't do it from a blank page. You do it from ideas that you've already stored and want to piece together. So, elements and documents and connections are like building blocks for your writing. So, if you don't know what to write, it's because you haven't taken down enough notes. You haven't captured enough ideas. You haven't written enough before that allow you to write about something new. Then I have a research element, so I embed tweets and other things in here. This one's pretty scarce this week; I only had one, but when you see me mention tweets in my newsletters or videos, I usually research those beforehand, and I include them here so I can reference them. Then I ask questions. But getting into the meat of the actual persuasion aspect is

I come through and fill this out according to the topic. So I write down problems related to the topic. I write down goals, so the opposite of a problem. I write down personal experiences, I write down examples, and then I write down a process, right? So you can think of this as a problem and amplify, and then a solution. And I use all of these to create a key points element that I use to write about. And with elements, you can also open those in a pain. And I could close this one if I wanted to and just see this. All right, here now the next big thing that we need to go over, or not really, is capture. So our capture feature, I think, is really cool, and it will only get cooler when you open up capture. Mine's already connected, but let's take away the connection, and you can see that this is just like pretty much texting ideas to yourself. So you have a main inbox, and we're going to change this a tad bit, the UI of it.

But you can tag, and you can connect captures. Other apps can't do this, and rarely do they. With second brains and connections being like the main feature that allows you to keep track of all ideas. You can do that with short captures now because most of writing, when I write and when people I talk to write, they usually have a document that they write at their computer. And then throughout the week, or even when they're writing a book, they capture ideas on their phone, and they're just like, met. They're not. They're scattered ideas. Right. That's cortexes. And the entire thing is turned scattered ideas into articulate writing. So you have an outline, you have a draft. And then each week I go, and I just jot down ideas as they come so I can tag them. So as an example, I have a tweet idea tag. And this filters all of my tweet ideas that I've written down so I can go and write about these.

And the next thing is that you can. So, the greatest skill of the 21st century. So, these are all of my captures related to the document or the newsletter that I'm writing right now, or that this video is. So, I have all of my captures here. I can open up my outline if I want, and now I can reference both of these. I can drag this to make one bigger or smaller, and this is just how I write. I have all of my ideas right here. I write it right. I have my key points, I have my outline, I have my ideas that I want to create, that I can write down throughout the week and easily organize. Because most people just use a running Apple Notes and aren't able to find their ideas even though they think they do. It's just the simplest place to write it down. So, our capture feature on mobile is the one thing that we're going to make easy for people to write down. So, that's pretty much it.

But just for the sake of being in cortex and me wanting to explain it all is you can go in here to the command menu or press command K to search. Our search feature is pretty robust. So if I have an element over here like key points or problem or whatever it may be, let's say that I want to start off a newsletter with a problem. Then I can just search for a problem. There it is. Wait, where was it? Problem element. You need to fix that a bit. It's a tiny little bug, but I can see where all of my problem elements are. And then I can look deeper into this if I want to search within the elements themselves. So think of if you have an element that is just posts or tweet ideas or whatever else. Like if you use metal cast in notes, you can have permanent notes, literature notes, you can even have blank elements at where we're developing that. So if I'm not a note taker, I can come through my newsletter.

and I can just highlight all of the parts that I want, would want to turn into elements, because you can search for elements, and you can connect elements, and you can put tags within elements. Let's say I want to turn this into an element. Then it's a sub note. And my note-taking is done with my writing. So most writers don't like taking fleshed-out notes. They can just turn their writing into broken-apart notes. Now, the last thing that I'll talk about while we're here is just library. So library right now we integrate with Readwise. And so this connects all of your books and sources and other things, whether you highlight something on a web page and clip it or highlight from Kindle or bookmark a tweet, it saves almost everything. And these can be connected to and tagged as well. Another thing is that we have a PDF reader, but we're working on an Epub reader and an article reader so you can highlight things from within them.

This has been taking a good amount of time to load, but that will be fixed. So, just wanted to show you that there are a few little bugs that we're polishing up before the actual soft launch and actual launch, but overall very fast. My almost 1300 document workspace is faster than a ten document notion workspace. So, big plus for us. Mobile apps coming in, desktop apps coming, just all coming. We'll have a public roadmap available as well. Let's see what else I had to go over. Okay. We went over that. Bring some hooks. Yeah. So, the outline is used for both newsletter YouTube titles. I can break them out into tweets, etc., etc.. Another thing with like the concept element and the process element. So, if we open my outline again, we come down here. Usually, I have a concept element and then a process element to brainstorm those things. But my best videos, like the one-person business, How to Productize yourself, is just the concept and process elements in my outlines.

So usually, it's like I choose a topic to write about, and then I frame it according to the best ideas that I fleshed out in my outline. So we'll just go over this and read this word for word and then lead you into the next or what comes next, I would suppose. So to recap what you should do to start practicing your persuasion is to one. Accept that you need power and status to break out of the hierarchy. Someone more powerful than you put you in. You use the pyramid principle as a starting point. So you state your point. Argue. You argue your point and back up your point. One thing here is with connections and like meta documents, I call them meta documents is that I have the pyramid principle right here, and it's in everything. I have it in my template, my outline template, so I can open it at any time and just remind myself, okay, here's what I need to do then. Then I can search through writing tips, hooks, persuasion, etc.

that way I know how to write, or I can remind myself of how to write. Well, another one is just my co-ism document. So, I have all of my categories. I have all of the processes and concepts that I've come up with earlier. This takes some time to set up, but I link to all of these documents. So, whenever I want to get back on track with my philosophy or include one part of it in my newsletters, because that's a major part of building a personal brand, is I refer to my co-ism document, and I scroll through here, I open things up, I pull ideas from them. Boom bada bing. Many of you know the one-person business model, the value creator, the most profitable niche is you, etc., etc. So, continuing on, use copywriting content or use a copywriting content or persuasion framework to structure your writing, speaking, or video scripts. Create an outline first based on that framework. Have a place

to capture your ideas because the best ideas won't come to you when you try to brainstorm them all. So when you're filling out your outline, not all of your ideas are going to come to you. So that's why we have capture and you being able to write those on your phone. And then after that, start your draft and just string together your ideas, then post it so you can get data and improve. But if you want a few places to start in terms of like, okay, where do I post my writing, where do I start growing? Check out my video. The video is how to build an audience with zero followers. And then in the description of this video, there's the one person foundations mini course, which is free. And then if you want a paid course that has my other courses in it or just to view my other courses, those are also in the description for learning high-income skills, learning all about online business, etc. etc. So that's it for this video.

I hope you enjoyed this. Eventually, I'll include templates in these videos, but for now, we're just in the early stages of cortex, so hope you enjoyed it. Thank you for watching.

Learning Persuasion Will Change Your Life (Full Guide)

Dan Koe

Persuasion is a vital skill in the 21st century, distinct from manipulation and often unconscious.

Everyone persuades others daily, aiming for mutual benefit, power, and resources.

To achieve a meaningful lifestyle and work you enjoy, a certain degree of power and status is necessary.

The Power of Persuasion in Creating Your Ideal Life

Persuading reality and others is crucial for creating the lifestyle you want.

Limiting beliefs and unconscious programming can hinder your ability to persuade effectively.

Using structured frameworks in writing and communication can enhance creativity and impact, making your efforts more persuasive.

Cortex is a tool for saving quotes, tweets, and scientific studies to support persuasive arguments.

The pyramid principle is an effective writing strategy, helping readers understand relevance and follow logical reasoning.

Starting with a pain point or problem can make writing flow easier and engage readers by sparking their desire for a solution.

Effective Frameworks for Overcoming Pain Points

Problem Identification: Clearly define the pain point you or others are experiencing.

Understand its impact on daily life or work.

Amplify the Pain: Illustrate the consequences of not addressing this issue.

Use vivid language to convey the emotional and practical toll it takes.

Share Personal Experience: Relate a personal story or anecdote that resonates with the pain point.

This builds connection and trust with your audience.

Solution Presentation: Introduce a clear and actionable solution to the pain point.

Highlight how this solution can alleviate the issues discussed.

Offer for Further Assistance: Provide an optional offer for additional support, such as a consultation, resource guide, or community access, to encourage further engagement.

Method, individuals can effectively navigate their challenges and find a path to progress.

Mastering Persuasion for One-Person Businesses

The one-person business model is ideal for those seeking flexibility and independence.

Learning and applying persuasion frameworks can enhance communication and influence.

Understanding the five levels of awareness is crucial for effectively addressing your audience's needs and guiding them towards a solution.

I'm sharing my writing process using Cortex, highlighting its features like folders, documents, and panes for organization.

The tool allows me to create custom elements, tag documents for easy retrieval, and establish connections for a more integrated second brain.

I'm offering early access to Cortex and a free community with a second brain course to help others learn effective writing and note-taking.

The capture feature allows users to text ideas to themselves, tag and connect captures, and organize scattered thoughts into articulate writing.

It offers a robust search function to easily find and reference key points, problems, and other elements.

The integration with Readwise and the upcoming PDF and Epub readers will further enhance the user's ability to save and highlight important information from various sources.

Updates on the Workspace and Content Creation

The workspace is experiencing minor bugs but is overall faster than competitors, with mobile and desktop apps on the way.

The outline feature is used for various content formats, and the creator emphasizes the importance of the concept and process elements in brainstorming.

Key tips for practicing persuasion include accepting the need for power, using the pyramid principle, and capturing ideas effectively.