How to persuade in the courtroom and life, part one

the subtle art of winning your argument before you say a word

king kong, wearing a suit and tie, he is in a courtroom, he is arguing to a judge

“Can you talk about courtroom stuff?”

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What is persuasion?

Persuasion is using skill and technique to get what you want out of life.

Seven years ago, I was on a big Tim Ferriss kick. I knew I wanted more out of life, but was not sure how to get there. I stumbled into an episode with Scott Adams, and everything changed.

Scott is the creator of Dilbert, a comic I have and still enjoy. I was unfamiliar with his background and fascinated how he talked about persuasion. No one had ever explained what persuasion was.

I’ve always been decent at persuasion, but usually through emotional manipulation, aka acting like a child.

BACK IN THE DAY, my fraternity drew names for who would live on what floor at our senior house. Junior year, my name was drawn for the third floor, to live with people I did not want to live with. I wanted the fourth floor, with my close friends and that sweet balcony to yell at people and throw stuff off of.

I tried to smile, but quickly stormed out of the room. People knew I wanted that floor, and I made a scene. The guy who was supposed to live there came over and said, “hey, you can have it, I can tell you care more than me.”

It was childish, but I got my way.

Back to 2016-2017: Learning formal techniques appealed to me. I was in a more sales-y job at the time, and Scott hit home. I bought his book, Win Bigly, on how Trump used persuasion.

I was a CNN reader (if you can believe it), thought the news was….news. My mind was BLOWN. I had no idea there was technique behind Trump, and how much.

I then devoured Scott’s persuasion book list in the back.

First: Robert Chaldini’s Pre-suasion.

What is pre-suasion?