SNM129: Perception vs Reality (All the Power is in Your Hands)

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perception versus reality. You have all the power in your hand on today's episode. Today's episode is brought to you by Social Pilot. The social media and marketing tool for bloggers and small businesses joined over 20,000 social media pros at serve. No master dot com Backslash social pilot today Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now then you've come to the right place. Welcome to serve no master podcast where you learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by best selling author Jonathan Green. Now here's your host. I couldn't wait to share this less with you right now. I'm outside. It is pouring rain and there's a dog won't stop barking. So a secured the occasional bark in the background. It's not my dog. I apologize, but I just want to get this out there. I've been struggling with the weather for the last few weeks. As you know, it's the rainy season here. It's raining all the time, and we're really hard to get these episodes out to you despite the background noise challenge. That's my biggest limitation is the background noise and the fact that I've been a little bit sick, but I couldn't wait to get this to. I'm standing here on my deck. I'm actually in the water. My feet are soaking wet. But this is an important lesson to really understand the difference. The idea for this one of my core concepts, comes from a Sun Zu quote. There's a sudden zoo quote that is, comes in the art of war. All warfare is based on deception, and we just changed two of those words. It becomes more powerful and very modern. All business is based on perception. So changed warfare to business and deception of perception, because the way we view the world affects how we react to it. When you can change how other people perceive you, anything becomes possible. And I'm gonna take you through how authoring perception make you a lot money really quick. In the 19 eighties, when I was growing up, I was born in 1980. I used to see a lot of television commercials late at night where there's a guy standing in front of a boat with two blood ladies in bikinis, and he was talking about making money, usually by buying and selling land or buying and selling houses. And he would say, Come down to the Marriott by the airport this weekend and I'll teach you my whole system And that's kind of my first exposure to direct marketing that I remember. There may have been other things as well. That's one that I really remember, where we went from, a commercial to meeting a person to buying kind of training product. And the reason this work, the reason people would see those and go is because we see a guy with a boat. Two women that are pretty must be rich. Of course, the boat was probably rented. The two women were models, of course, but he was able to manipulate perception to rent a boat for a photo shoot. And two models for the day probably cost him for the whole day back in the eighties, less than $200. But we see a millionaire. When we see those things, there's ways we can affect perception and because we see him is richer than he is. We're more like to trust someone, and that core concept hasn't changed that much Now we've slightly changed the way we message things. If we see the exact same imagery now, it seems a little bit cheesy or hokey, but doesn't have to be that different. To be effective, understanding what works on us will help you understand. We'll work on your customers, followers, fans and potential clients to these days. The world is filled with something called The 30 came 1,000,000 there. There are people who makes 30 to $40,000 a year, and they're totally focused on perception. I have many friends like this. They drive very expensive cars and any receipts for the outside goes, Wow, this person's driving $100,000 car and they must be so rich. I had a friend when I used to sell computers on the phone. We made the exact same amount of money because we were ranked very closely in the ranking, so I know exactly what you made almost to the dollar every single month. He was driving a really nice Lexus and I was driving a much cheaper car and I go, What are you doing? He bought a brand new car, not used or any thing he bought after working together for a few months. And he goes, I want to look awesome. I want to look rich. At the time, he was still living with his parents. Now, let me be very clear. He wasn't sleeping in a bedroom. He was living on a couch in the hallway in his parents house between parents and his younger siblings. Bedrooms reception was so important to him in the outside world that he was willing to sleep in a very uncomfortable situation to improve his perception. He could have had an apartment in a slightly less expensive car, the car every month, payment. His car was almost the total of what he was making everybody. He just had enough left over to pay the gas to and from work. And he said to me, I don't care about the house. No one can see that. And his culture as individual was all about perception. 100%. All the matters is perception. Now, this is 10 years ago. I don't know where he is now. He may have become very, very, very successful. We may have stayed at that level. I left the job before heated. I'm in another direction. But he, of course, had limited option death that he had to make enough money every month to pay this car bill. So while I wanted to leave the job, he obviously couldn't because he owed that too much money. But we end up in these situations where we borrow money to create the perception around us. Whether it's a house we can't really afford or car we can't really afford. Americans is a tendency. We have intended to spend about 10% more than we make a lot of people, especially younger people. We watch these shows like cribs and used the lifestyle of the rich and famous when I was a kid. The thing about cribs and that I know is that it's never the real house. That television show on MTV is actually the celebrity read the house and then pretended to their house for one day because that most ever started. No, hey, I don't want everyone the world to know exactly where I live, so they would use a rental house, so we're watching the house is that the person still rented. It's the same thing, just like the guy. Then he's renting the boat. We watched someone read the house and again affects perception, and you could rent a really, really nice house. We're not that much money to rent like a $10 million house for days, probably $10,000 or less this one day. Amazing perception affects everyone. And so the people who saw that wanna create the state perception. We have this ability to make decisions and to quickly decide how we rank people. It's called thin slicing if you read the Market Gladwell book. But the idea is that you look at someone, you quickly decide where they belong, what they are most similar to from your past. If we look at high school students and you remember being in high school, depending on how old you are. When I was high school broke kids into nerds, jocks got kids, which got kids seem to be gone now. I guess emo kids is the replacement, but we used to have those different groups may be in the seventies. He called a burnout, right? The kids listen ungrateful dad or whatever. So we have, like we group people very quickly get avenue, become adults. We do similar things. We still only group people into 10 or 20 categories. Most oh, he looks like a businessman. She looks like a soccer mob. We have these terms because toe fully analyze people, takes a long time. Imagine you're in a nightclub and there's 100 people in there with you. If you were to try toe fully catalyze 100 people, take the whole night, you wouldn't talk to me and be so busy analyzing in determining where everyone fits. So we do this thing that takes just a couple of seconds where we kind of categorize people. And then once you see what category that we react to that and so understanding, that means we can change that perception. If we change perception, we trained how people treat you, and that's the core of this lesson. That's the core of this episode. We can alter the way people treat you in business, but here's a simple example. You're in a gas station. Someone asked him, Anybody? Can I borrow a dollar? You turn around. It's a homeless guy. You're probably gonna say no, but it was a guy in a suit. You'll probably see yes, and this isn't just my opinion. This is a study that's been conducted many, many times since around the 19 sixties. People tested this idea that we're more likely to loan money to people. You don't actually need it. That comes from perception. We think, Oh, this guy's asking for money is wearing a suit. He doesn't really need it. He's not gonna use it for something bad. For some reason, he just doesn't have a dollar. I'm helping someone out on the same levels. It's a homeless person's they all that probably can use it for something naughty, something bad of helping someone, or I'm encouraging bad behavior. So we have this thought if we give money to someone who's homeless, Oh, if everyone gives this guy's hopeless, she's never gonna charge life. Ride's gonna hold us forever. So as much as I'm gonna be helping in the short term Harding with long term now rather than into the politics of anything, I just want to say that's how we kind of fence life. And that's what no scientific studies show. Obviously, you could be different. You could mean outlier, but this is how the public in general reacts, or, more likely, to loan money to someone who looks nice that someone looks poor, rich for support. Nice for start now, if you're a freelancer, and many of you are starting out trying to hit your first success online. If you're working right now, fast food and you're making 11 12 $15 an hour and you want to jump into the level. Regan paid $5100 an hour writing for people writing articles, writing novels, whatever the way people perceive you affects how much they pay you, and I'm aware of this effect, not even see it. When I have hiring people, the way they talk to me affects how much I offer them for jobs. So when someone is not making much money or someone is struggling, they negotiate very differently than someone who isn't. They act very different across the whole process. When you project success, people will pay you more and the ways to do this or, first of all, to remove desperation, frame your communication and to not push or speed one of the biggest signs that someone really needs to close a deal when they go. I haven't heard from a few days. I want to see what's going on. We do the follow ups. We do them too quickly. It's okay to fall upon. You have heard from someone. But if it becomes clear that you're in a rush because you need that payment, you gotta make your bills that weekend, you're gonna make less. The person's your react differently. If you reveal to someone that you're behind fans like Hey, look, I just need this job. Money's a little tight right out. We disclose this deal. They're gonna pay less, even though they might pay you faster. They might pay $500 now, but they would have paid you 15 a charge that sweet. It could be that much of a difference. And if you're in a tight financial situation, sometimes you get those moments where it's really tough and you think, Hey, if I just tell this first what's going on, they're more likely to close. But it's not true. It's the opposite. As much as you're trying to be honest, what we do is not always the same with what people perceive what matters is that what you say? But it's what the other person hears in the same way as your building up your website or anything. If you act like you're successful, people treat you that way. When I first started selling SCL very first money and made online I post ad on Craigslist, I barely had aware press block up the Texas almost unreadable. It was blue text on a black background. Dark blue Honda, dark black. I'm almost wholly unreadable. Horrible harm, a website. I wish I had pictures of it still just to kind of show you. I wish had a memory of that. But when I met clients, I said, Look, I'm already in the game. I don't have time for non serious clients and because I acted like that because I acted with the level of confidence, I started getting money from the very first meeting. On my very first check for $200 she agreed to start a $200 a month and jumped $5 about three months later. I need it later, and that's how I started making money online, and that was my very first income. Now a couple of important things all the way. I was a perfect. That's why I got a check for $20. But at least I got the check at the very first meeting through my confidence. Over time, I've learned the more you project confidence. And again I talk in the book. Sir, Master, about this house. Sometimes I'll be in a meeting. I would say huge numbers, See what happens, and I do it in both directions. I was talking to someone the other day who says, Hey, how much would you pay for this? I got 100 bucks when I don't know what something's worth. I always bid super low. So what number I'm doing like a technology project. This is where people really tried to play the game. I recently was getting a piece of software developed, and I sent it out to a bunch of different people. I post on up work. I've said a couple direct messages through free forums, and they go, What do you want to spend? And I'm not gonna top it, because if you say 2 to $300 they'll say out strange dollars. If you say one or two years ago. It's 200 offer will say it's the top number and say, No, no, just tell me and I sent it to three people, one person said. $900.1 person, 15 dinars, one person to $300. Do you think I hire? Hardly original. Are persons I knew should be around $3 because it wasn't over the complicated project. Sometimes people, they push perception too far, and they way way overcharge. So they perceive me because we hadn't communicated before they got Oh, this person's a sucker. I'll charge four times going right. So when people miss perceived me, they former wrong bit that you see my success online. They sue for some reason that's combined with dumbness or naivete. And so they tried to overcharge me, even though, of course, I said, I'm actually saying it's up to multiple people. They assumed everyone will send them false bits. And of course, as soon as I said I hired someone else, they go no actual do for $300. You just said it was 1300. What are you doing? So you don't want to go too far in the other direction if you want to work where you charge way more than the going rate. But there is a spectrum for what people pay for writing or for coding. And you can say this is where that some people charge 10% of a penny per word too right, and some people charge 10 cents right. That's 100 times difference. One person charges 10 times more per work, and there are people who will pay it so you could be within that spectrums, all those. You're within the spectrum of what people actually charge. You could put yourself at a higher level. I used to do this all the time. So if you're on up work, constantly tweak your profile constantly. Adding things make you seem more successful and raise your rate every couple of months. You know, if you had a $12 a month now registered 15 than two months raising 20 and raise 25 as you have a higher number of people go, Wow, that's going to be really good to be charging that I've seen quite a bit of the charge 6520 upward. You can create the perception that you're an expert just by raising the price on your profile. And then when you send a bid to someone and it's a little bit lower, they'll be very excited. Be happy to work with you. I work with people where I often start off with a really high bed. They go. We're actually thinking of spending this. You know what? This is our first time working together. I'll do it for that lower price, sometimes at lower price of what was originally anyways. But I bid high that I lowered down into what I was originally thinking about charging and they feel like they what? They feel better about the job. I'm creating the perception. See a best deal? The best deal is we're both people feel like they've won. I feel good because I got what I originally wanted. They feel good because they talked me down to my original stretch price. Now the other reason I do a stretch price is it makes me seem more successfully. Wow, this guy is charging documents really successful. Now here's the thing. I recently went up a huge leap in what I charge. I recently doubled what I charge in the last three months for projects. The first time I did it, I was just putting a toe in the water and see what happens. And I said, Yes, I go. Whoa! I thought he was gonna talk me down, but he did. All he did was negotiate for pay out front 50 50 split pay, which is standard anyways, so I go. Oh, that must be my new rate For the first time. You do it, right. You're just stretching and you're guessing. And then the second time you do it, you go. Oh, no. This is my new rate. And the second time. So what hires with the new price? Now you're okay? Definitely. It's two different data points. That proves the confirmation. This is what I'm worth Now, that's how we can begin to determine our value. You could raise your price. Someone pays it. And you Oh, that's what I'm worth. So the first time that you have to act like it First time you're faking it the second time you go. Maybe it's really 1/3 time ago. Okay? Definitely Israel. And you can keep doing that over and over again. This is how you can keep yours raise the red thing about being a freelancer. Being self employed is that you determine your salary. I know people have been in the same thing for 10 years and haven't given themselves a race. One of the ladies who works for me, I noticed I go Have you not raise your rates in two years? I just I go. I assume that you had at some point. And she was No, it's been the same since you hired me. I go. Well, that's insane. Give yourself a 10% raise as of today. God, what are you doing? I assumed it so some people don't do it. Also, some people only do it between clients. The fair enough, you know, have had a steady relationship. I gave her a raise once I realized that she had it done it herself. I'm so used to it myself that everyone does it. That's okay, So I checked in. But she probably is charging newer clients more, which means I could start to become a released important client. I don't want that. So I often change rates between clients, but sometimes I mean, I have to do it between projects for individual clients. But if you're on a long term project like she is for me, she's been working part time for two or three years now. There wasn't really an opportunity that she asked for it. I guess the manually raise her aides. I just thought she would do it in the background like I do sometimes when you create the perception that you're doing good when you don't reveal that money tightened, you'll reveal This is the first project you've ever done when you hide all of those things and said, Focus on your success when you act like things are going really, really good. It's very easy for you to get those sweet hyping projects, because perception is everything the way we do business and the way we react to projects is based on how people treat themselves. Your self confidence, your sense of self worth determines how much money you make. Would you listen to this podcast if I acted more dim or like I wasn't very successful. If I hid the fact that I live on a chopper violent, I'm standing outside right now, and yes, it's pouring rain because it's the rainy season, So the ocean looks great in front of me, but I'm still only 70 meters from the water and there's nothing between me and the ocean is just a boat in the water that I can see. I don't need to hide my success. I don't so don't flock so hard. You know about whales, websites, right, post how much money and make every month, and some people do that. And so people really like that. Some don't That's just not something that I d'oh, but I allow you to see my success. I'd like to see that perception, and that's why you're interested what I'm doing. So if you didn't precede me a successful, you wouldn't care about my books or my stories or anything. You think this guy's just a just talking the talk. So perceptions very important, even in our relationship and for the people that I follow. There are certainly people who put out courses that I buy, read and follow to improve what I'm doing. I'm always trying to get better at certain things, and this comes from that place as you're thinking about how to move forward of business, whether you're thinking about applying for a new job. I'm going to a job interview. Whether you're thinking about taking on new projects or freelancing or putting down your rates. This principle is consistent. The way I got the job, the university job, the last office job I ever had that was horribly under qualified for the last time. I got that when they fired me from when I was in the meeting, I act like they were lucky out. I showed up. That was my minds of my interview. Mindset is you guys are lucky. I even came. And when I started acting like that, which sounds a little bit of, you know, like a bit of a jerk, I started getting a really high response rate would apply for jobs for a place of Oh my gosh, Please hide me. I really need the money. I would struggle when I started acting up. You got your luck out here. I started getting off in almost every job. I applied for the most powerful things ever tested, but I switched the way I behaved and started focusing on how lucky they're here. I started sitting in a much more casual way. I didn't act in any way like I'm so glad you have here. You know things and said my question to be much more pointing at the end of every interview. They only have any questions. Most those questions they don't ask any because they don't want to say anything that might lose them the job. And instead, I started saying things like, Why should I even take this job? What makes this job so great? Is there any wiggle room on salary? When you start saying things like that, they go, Whoa, this person must be super successful. Even ask that we be really lucky to hire. Even we gotta pay 10% more. So perception can change even when you're doing a traditional job work, even when you're going to another company applying for jobs, any of those things. If you were struggling to get back to work, that slight change in attitude will make a big difference. One of the things that people out of work struggle with is that over time they be more and more depressed or they seem more distant. You know, I have I have a lot of work to put out of work for six weeks of work for six months. As the time gets more, more, your desperation goes up. So your behavior interviews, it's a little worse. You get more and more depressed. I was reading this article yesterday or the day before about someone who try to get a job as a coder. They went through school. They graduated, they had their coding degree and they applied to find their job. 2 392 positions. They applied 392 jobs, and they plotted. Everything was really interesting. Such a technical way to approach the job hunt. How many people have died of foreign jobs and they're looking for work. That's a lot by the 392 places and attract how many places asking for a second interview attracted he tracked when they responded to him and how much they offered him, what the job Waas and whether or not you got a second interview, whether I got offered a job and what's interesting, that actually, after 45 months, I started getting offered better jobs for more money. He leveraged the earlier interviews to get better positions, and there's some technical things were in that industry. You have to take tests to prove you can do the job because it's a science or math job. So they make you do the math or science problems or coding problems and explain how the lower paying jobs made you to one set of tests. Once you could pass those tests, you can actually apply for the high paying jobs, not even doing your job. The first job he got offers around $40,000 a year, and he took a job at 1 40 was very interesting other elements. But the key is that he approached his job hut very scientifically and kept increasing its value in between interviews. So rather than thinking, I've been out of work for six months, I'm desperate starting. I've been out of work for six months because I'm better. He was continually studying. Continue improving his knowledge. The way you use your days when you're in between, jobs will massively change how you act in your interviews. So the lesson I want you to take home today is that there is a huge difference between perception of reality. Stop focusing on reality, start focusing on perception, and you could make a lot more money. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Serve No, Master. Make sure you subscribe, so you never miss another episode. We'll be back tomorrow with more tips and tactics on how to escape that rat race. Head over to serve no master dot com forward slash podcasts Now for your chance to win a free copy of Jonathan's bestseller Serve No, master. All you have to do is leave a five star review of this podcast. See you tomorrow. Thank you for listening to this episode of the serve No master podcast to find out how I can get a free copy of my new book, Head Over to serve no master dot com back slash podcasts right now.