Quick backstory for some context, because I need to give credit where credit is due.
January 21, 2015, I had a half day consult with Rich Schefren. Here’s me at Rich’s office in Delray Beach, FL:
Rich is an intense and smart dude.
We started in his “cigar cave” (a separate little out-building next to his office). He asked questions, wanted to get some context on how he could best help and add value.
We chatted about preselling, about influence — the power to shift (reframe) beliefs through how we sequentially expose people to specific bits of marketing (the things we explicitly say and the things we imply).
We then headed to his main office where he had a few big whiteboards. And we riffed through some scenarios:
In the few hours we were together, Rich helped me articulate why the “systems of invisible influence” (what I call, customer-centric narratives) that I had been building for so many years, actually worked so well.
We also explored how to make the system better (by influencing and shifting what people believe NOW, what they NEED to believe, and then how to MOVE them through this chain of beliefs).
The interesting part was how I approached preselling through serialized storytelling and presell sites (customer-centric narratives):
It was (and still is) a unique approach that works exceptionally well (I cover the entire process in a later lesson).
Rich had credited much of this learning and understanding about the Chain of Beliefs to a long phone conversations with his friend Kenrick Cleveland, years earlier.
I had never heard of Kenrick.
The very next day I was at Todd Brown’s BIG IDEA BOOTCAMP just a few miles up the road in West Palm Beach.
In the last session of the first day, Todd taught something he called “Logic Chain of Beliefs” (I’ll be sharing this video presentation with you shortly).
Same stuff I had already been doing for years using presell sites.
Same as what Rich had helped me articulate MORE CLEARLY the previous day.
Todd Brown had worked for Rich, so it made sense they both knew this stuff from Kenrick.
These moments with Rich and then Todd all worked to give more clarity to the elements of my process.
Then back in Gibraltar on January 26, I’m on a private forum reading a post when I see someone mentions “belief sequences.”
Of course, this gets my attention right away. So I buzz the dude, Jared Emin:
Jared responded:
Now the funny part is that Jared is Kenrick Cleveland’s business partner, which I didn’t know until then.
It’s a small world, that’s for damn sure.
So Jared shared some content with me, right from the source. Funny how things come full circle.
What Jared shared created clarity for me. Since then, Jared has shared with me that they recently renamed “chain of beliefs” to ladder of beliefs since the metaphor is better for students.
Although I had already been reframing and moving people through levels of beliefs for many years, I didn’t have an enormous amount of clarity WHY much of what I was doing was working so damn well.
This backstory has allowed me to articulate the beliefs stuff a lot more clearly.
Okay, let’s get dirty and dive in deeper now.
NEXT: Defining Your Chain Of Believe